Aldred greeted them, then Edgar said: “Odo has come to ask a favor, Prior Aldred.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Aldred.

“I would like you to look after Ragna’s money for her,” said Odo in his French accent.

“You can’t find her, of course,” Aldred said.

Odo threw up his hands in a gesture of frustration. “In Shiring they say she has gone to Outhenham, and at Outhenham they say she is in Combe, but we came via Combe and she was not there.”

Aldred nodded. “No one can find her. Of course I will take care of her money, if that is your wish. But our latest information is that she has gone home to Cherbourg.”

Odo was astonished. “But she is not there! If she were, we would not have come to England!”

“Of course not,” said Aldred.

Edgar said: “Then where on earth is she?”

Ragna and Cat and their children had been grabbed in their house and tied up and gagged by Wigelm and a group of men-at-arms. Under cover of darkness they had been carried out of the compound then bundled onto a four-wheeled cart and covered with blankets.

The children had been terrified, and the worst of it was that Ragna could not speak words of comfort to them.

The cart had jolted along dry-rutted dirt roads for hours. From what Ragna could hear, it had an escort of half a dozen men on horseback. However, they were quiet, speaking as little as possible and doing so in low voices.

The children had cried themselves to sleep.

When the cart stopped and the blankets were removed, it was daylight. Ragna saw that they were in a clearing in the forest. Agnes was with the escort, and that was when Ragna realized that she was a traitor. Agnes must have betrayed Ragna by telling Wynstan of Ragna’s plan to flee with Edgar. All this time the seamstress had been nursing a secret hatred of Ragna for the execution of her husband, Offa. Ragna cursed the merciful impulse that had led her to reemploy the woman.

She now saw that the children’s cots were on the cart with the prisoners. But everything was covered up. What had this looked like to villagers who saw the group pass by? Certainly not a kidnapping, for the women and children had not been visible. Ragna herself would have assumed, from the armed escort, that the blankets hid a large quantity of silver or other valuables that a wealthy nobleman or clergyman was transferring from one place to another.

Now, with no one around to see, Agnes untied the children and let them pee at the edge of the clearing. They would not run off, of course, for that would mean leaving their mothers behind. They were given bread soaked in milk, then tied up and gagged again. Then the mothers were released, one at a time, and watched carefully by the men as they relieved themselves then ate and drank a little. When all that was done, the prisoners were covered up again and the cart jolted on.