It must have been deliberate.

And once Aldred had figured that out, the next logical deduction was inevitable.

Dreng had been put up to this by Wynstan.

Aldred wanted to strangle them both with his bare hands.

He suppressed such irreligious passions. Rage was pointless. What could he do?

The answer came immediately. The boat was gone, but Edgar had a raft. It was not moored here by the tavern, but that was not unusual: Edgar sometimes tied it up near the farmhouse.

Aldred’s spirits lifted. He turned from the river and set off up the hill at a fast walk.

Edgar had decided to build his new house opposite the site of the new church, even though there was no church there yet and might never be. The walls of the house were up but the roof was not yet thatched. Edgar sat on a bale of straw, writing with a stone on a large piece of slate that he had fixed into a wooden frame. He was making a calculation, frowning with his tongue between his teeth, perhaps adding up the materials he would need to rebuild the saint’s chapel in stone.

Aldred said: “Where’s your raft?”

“On the riverbank by the tavern. Has something happened?”

“The raft is not there now.”

“Damn.” Edgar stepped outside to see, and Aldred followed. They both looked down the hill to the riverside. There were no vessels of any kind in sight. “That’s odd,” said Edgar. “They can’t both have come untied accidentally.”

“No. We’re not talking about an accident here.”

“Who . . . ?”

“Dreng has vanished. The tavern is empty.”

“He must have taken the ferry . . . and taken my raft, too, to prevent us using it.”

“Exactly. He will have set it adrift several miles away. He’ll claim he has no idea what happened to it.” Aldred felt defeated. “With no ferry and no raft, we can’t bring the visitors across the river.”

Edgar snapped his fingers. “Mother Agatha has a boat,” he said. “It’s very small—with one person rowing and two passengers it’s crowded—but it floats.”

Aldred’s hopes rose again. “A little boat is better than nothing.”

“I’ll swim across and beg a loan. Agatha will be happy to help, especially when she finds out what Dreng and Wynstan are trying to do.”

“If you’ll start rowing the visitors over, I’ll send a monk to relieve you after an hour.”

“They’re also going to want to buy food and drink at the alehouse.”

“There’s nothing there, but we can sell them everything in the priory stores. We’ve got ale and bread and fish. We’ll manage.”

Edgar ran down the hill to the riverside and Aldred hurried to the monks’ house. It was still early: there was time to get passengers across the river and turn the monastery into a tavern.

Fortunately it was a fine day. Aldred told the monks to set up trestle tables outside and round up all the cups and bowls in the hamlet. He mustered barrels of ale from the stores and loaves of bread both fresh and stale. He sent Godleof to buy all the stock Bucca Fish had in his store. He built a fire, spitted some of the fresh fishes, and started cooking them. He was run off his feet, but he was happy.