Messengers from home, Edgar thought, and he felt a mixture of excitement and fear. Would it be good news or bad?

He noticed that Clothild looked dismayed.

“I’m Edgar,” he said, speaking in the now-unfamiliar language of English.

The monk slumped with relief. “It has taken us a long time to find you,” he said.

Edgar said: “Who are you?”

“We’re from King’s Bridge Priory. I’m William and this is Athulf. May we have private words with you?”

“Of course.” Neither man had been at the monastery when Edgar left. The place must be expanding, he realized. He led them across the site to the timber stack, where there was less noise. They sat on the piles of planks. “What’s happened?” Edgar said. “Did someone die?”

“Our news is different,” William said. “Prior Aldred has decided to build a new stone church.”

“Halfway up the slope? Opposite my house?”

“Exactly where you planned it.”

“Has work begun?”

“When we left, the monks were clearing tree stumps from the site, and we were starting to receive deliveries of stone from Outhenham quarry.”

“Who will design the church?”

William paused and said: “You, we hope.”

So that was it.

“Aldred wants you to come home,” William went on, verifying Edgar’s deduction. “He has kept your house empty for you. You will be the master builder. He has ordered us to find out how much a master is paid here in Normandy and to offer you the same wages. And anything else you care to demand.”

There was really only one thing Edgar wanted. He hesitated to bare his heart to these two strangers, but probably everyone in Shiring knew the story. After a moment he just blurted it out. “Is the lady Ragna still married to Ealdorman Wigelm?”

William looked as though he had expected this question. “Yes.”

“She still lives with him at Shiring?”

“Yes.”

The flicker of hope in Edgar’s heart died away. “Let me think about this. Do you two have somewhere to lodge?”

“There is a monastery nearby.”

“I’ll give you an answer tomorrow.”

“We will pray for your agreement.”

The monks moved away, and Edgar stayed where he was, thinking, staring at a muscular woman stirring a mountain of mortar with a wooden paddle, hardly seeing her. Did he want to go back to England? He had left because he could not bear to see Ragna married to Wigelm. If he returned, he would meet them often. It would be torture.

On the other hand, he was being offered the top job. He would be the master. Every detail of the new church would be for him to decide. He could create a magnificent building in the radical new style Giorgio had shown him. It might take ten years, perhaps twenty, possibly more. It would be his life.

He got up from his perch on the wood pile and went back to his work. Clothild had gone. Giorgio was working on a sample voussoir, and had drawn the circle and radii he had described earlier. Edgar was about to resume his current task, which was to make the wooden support, called formwork, that would hold the stones in place while the mortar hardened, but Giorgio detained him.