Ragna said: “That’s enough, Cat. I can speak for myself.”

“I beg your pardon, my lady.”

Agnes said: “I have come to ask your forgiveness, my lady, even though I know I don’t merit it.”

Ragna felt that they both needed forgiveness.

Agnes said: “I have lain awake nights thinking and I can see, now, that you did the right thing, the only thing you could. I’m so sorry.”

Ragna did not like apologies. When there was a rift between people it could not be mended by the utterance of a form of words. But she wanted to heal this rift.

Agnes went on: “I couldn’t think straight at the time, I was too distraught.”

Ragna thought: I, too, might curse someone who let my husband be executed, even if he deserved his punishment.

Ragna wondered what to say. Could she reconcile with Agnes? Wilf would have scoffed at the idea, but he was a man.

From a practical point of view she would like to have Agnes back. It was difficult for Cat to manage Ragna’s three sons plus her own two daughters, all under the age of two. Since Agnes left, Ragna had been looking for a replacement, but she had not found the right sort of woman. If Agnes were to come back, that problem would be solved. And the children liked her.

Could she trust Agnes, after what had happened?

“You don’t know what it’s like, my lady, to find that you have chosen the wrong husband.”

Ah, but I do, Ragna thought; then she realized this was the first time she had admitted that to herself.

She felt a surge of compassion. Whatever sins Agnes had committed had been done under the strong influence of Offa. She had married a dishonest man, but that did not make her a dishonest woman.

“It would mean so much to me if you would just say a kind word before I go,” Agnes said, and she did seem pathetic. “Just say ‘God bless you,’ please, my lady.”

Ragna could not refuse her. “God bless you, Agnes.”

“May I just kiss the twins? I do miss them so.”

She did not have children of her own, Ragna reflected. “All right.”

Agnes expertly picked up both babies at the same time, holding one in each arm. “I do love you both,” she said.

Colinan, the younger twin by a few minutes, was the more advanced. He met Agnes’s eye, gurgled, and smiled.

Ragna sighed and said: “Agnes, do you want to come back?”

CHAPTER 27

April 1001

rior Aldred had high hopes of Thane Deorman of Norwood. Deorman was rich. Norwood was a market town, and a market was always a big earner. And Deorman’s wife of many years had died a month ago. That would have put the thane in mind of the afterlife. The death of someone close often prompted a nobleman to make a pious donation.

Aldred needed donations. The priory was not as poor as it had been three years ago—it had three horses, a flock of sheep, and a small herd of milk cows—but Aldred had ambitions. He accepted that he would never take charge of Shiring Abbey, but he now believed he might turn the priory into a center of learning. For that he needed more than a few hamlets. He had to win something big, a prosperous village or a small town, or some moneymaking enterprise such as a port or the fishing rights to a river.