The place was the same size and shape as most houses, just better built. The edge-to-edge upright planks were sealed with wool soaked in tar, as in the hull of a ship, so that rain could not enter even in the stormiest weather. There was a second door, at one end of the building, leading out into an animal pen. There were smoke holes in the gable ends that made the air in the room more pleasant.

Edgar’s spirit was here, Ragna felt, in the combination of meticulousness and invention with which the house had been built.

She had been here once before. That was the occasion on which he showed her the box he had made for the book she had given him. She remembered the neat rack of tools, the wine barrel and the cheese safe, and Brindle wagging her tail—all gone now. She also remembered how he had held her hands while she wept.

She wondered where he was living now.

As she settled in, she hoped every morning that this would be the day the messengers returned with news of him, but no word came. Normandy was a big region, and Edgar might not even be there: he could have moved on to Paris or even Rome. The messengers might well have got lost. They could have been robbed and murdered. They might even have liked France better than England and decided not to come home.

Even if they found Edgar he might not want to return. He could be married. By now he could have a child learning to talk in Norman French. She knew she should not get her hopes up.

However, she was not going to live like a poor rejected woman. She was wealthy and powerful and she would show it. She hired a dressmaker, a cook, and three bodyguards. She bought three horses and employed a groom. She began to build stables and storehouses and a second house on the neighboring plot for all her extra servants. She made a trip to Combe and bought tableware, cooking equipment, and wall hangings. While there she commissioned a boatbuilder to make her a barge to take her from King’s Bridge to Outhenham. She also ordered a great hall to be built for herself at Outhenham.

She would visit Outhenham soon, to make sure Wigelm did not try to usurp her authority there; but for now she concentrated on her new life at King’s Bridge. In Edgar’s absence the main attraction of the place was Aldred’s school. Osbert was seven and the twins five, and all three had morning lessons six days a week, along with three novice monks and a handful of boys from the neighborhood. Cat did not want her daughters educated—she feared it would give them ideas above their station—but when the boys came home they shared what they had learned.

Ragna would never get used to being without Alain. She worried about him all the time: when she woke up she wondered if he was hungry, in the afternoon she hoped he was not tired, in the evening she knew he should soon be put to bed. Such hopeless thoughts gradually came to occupy her less, but her grief was always in the back of her mind. She refused to accept that her separation from her child was permanent. Something would happen. Ethelred might change his mind and order Wigelm to give the child back. Wigelm might die. Every night she thought about such happy possibilities, and every night she cried herself to sleep.