Abbot Osmund had told him he was too passionate. “A monk should develop an accepting disposition,” he had said when saying good-bye to Aldred. “We can’t correct all the evil in the world.” Aldred had lain awake night after night chewing over that judgment in bitterness and anger. Two passions had undone him: first his love for Leofric, then his rage at Wynstan. But in his heart he still could not agree with Osmund. Monks ought never to accept evil. They had to fight against it.

He was weighed down with despair, but not crippled by it. He had said that the old minster was a disgrace, so now he could throw his energy into making the new priory a shining example of what men of God ought to do. The little church already looked different: the floor had been swept and the walls whitewashed. The old scribe Tatwine, one of the monks who had chosen to migrate to Dreng’s Ferry with Aldred, had begun a wall painting, a picture of the Nativity, a birth scene for the reborn church.

Edgar had repaired the entrance. He had taken out the stones of the arch one by one, trimmed them to shape, and reset them so that they sat precisely on the spokes of an imaginary wheel. That was all that was needed, he said, to make it stronger. Aldred’s sole consolation in Dreng’s Ferry was that he saw more of the clever, charming young man who had captured his heart.

The house looked different, too. When Degbert and his crew left they had naturally taken with them all their luxuries, the wall hangings and the ornaments and the blankets. The place was now bare and utilitarian, as monks’ accommodation ought to be. But Edgar had welcomed Aldred with a gift of a lectern he had made of oak, so that while the monks were eating they could listen to one of their number reading from the Rule of Saint Benedict or the life of a saint. It had been made with love, and although this was not the kind of love Aldred sometimes dreamed of, not a love of kisses and caresses and embraces in the night, nevertheless the gift brought tears to his eyes.

Aldred knew that work was the best solace. He told the brothers that the history of a monastery normally began with the monks rolling up their sleeves and clearing ground, and here in Dreng’s Ferry they had already started to fell trees on the wooded hillside above the church. A monastery needed land for a vegetable garden, an orchard, a duck pond, and grazing for a few goats and a cow or two. Edgar had made axes, hammering out the blades on the anvil in Cuthbert’s old workshop, and had taught Aldred and the other monks how to chop down trees efficiently and safely.

The rents Aldred got as landlord of the hamlet were not sufficient to feed even the monks, and Abbot Osmund had agreed to pay the priory a monthly subsidy. Hildred had, of course, argued for an amount that was hopelessly inadequate. “If it’s not enough you can come back and discuss it,” Hildred had said, but Aldred had known that once the subvention was fixed the treasurer would never agree to an increase. The upshot had been an allowance that would keep the monks alive and the church functional but no more. If Aldred wanted to buy books, plant an orchard, and build a cowshed, he would have to find the funds himself.