“I’m honored and flattered as well as surprised, my lord archbishop,” he said. “But I beg to be excused. I can’t leave King’s Bridge.”

Alphage looked cross. “That’s a great disappointment,” he said. “You’re a man of unusual potential—you might have my job, one day—but you’ll never rise in the church hierarchy if you remain merely prior of King’s Bridge.”

Once again Aldred hesitated. Few clergymen could be indifferent to the prospect that was being held out to him. But he was struck by a new thought. “My lord,” he said, thinking aloud, “is it impossible that the seat of the diocese could be moved to King’s Bridge?”

Alphage looked startled. Clearly it was a new thought to him, too. He spoke tentatively. “Certainly I have the power to do that. But you don’t have a big enough church here.”

“I’m building a new one, much bigger. I’ll show you round the site.”

“I noticed it as I rode in. But when will the church be ready?”

“We can start using it long before it’s finished. I’ve already begun work on the crypt. We could be holding services there in five years.”

“Who’s in charge of the design?”

“I asked Edgar, but he turned me down. However, I want a Norman master mason. They’re the best.”

Alphage looked doubtful. “In the interim, would you be willing to travel to Shiring for every major festival—Easter, Whitsun, Christmas—say six times a year?”

“Yes.”

“So I could give you a letter promising to make King’s Bridge the bishop’s seat as soon as you’re able to use the new church?”

“Yes.”

Alphage smiled. “You drive a hard bargain. Very well.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

Aldred felt jubilant. Bishop of King’s Bridge! He was only forty-two.

Alphage became thoughtful again. “I wonder what I am to do with Wynstan.”

“Where is he now?”

“Locked up in Wigelm’s old hunting lodge.”

Aldred frowned. “It looks bad, a bishop imprisoned.”

“And there’s always the danger that Garulf or Degbert might try to break him out.”

Aldred’s face cleared. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know just the place for him.”

At the end of the evening Ragna stood on Edgar’s bridge, listening to the ever-present warble of the river, watching a red sun set downstream, remembering the day she had arrived here for the first time, cold and wet and muddy and miserable, and had looked with dismay at the settlement where she had to spend the night. What a change.

A heron stood on the bank of Leper Island, as still as a tombstone, gazing with intense concentration into the water. As Ragna watched the bird, a vessel appeared, coming upstream fast. She squinted into the sun, trying to make it out. It was a boat with four oarsmen and a passenger standing forward. King’s Bridge had to be their destination: it was too late to go farther.

The boat approached the beach in front of the alehouse. There was a black dog aboard, Ragna saw, sitting still in the prow, looking ahead, quiet but alert. Ragna recognized something familiar about the passenger, and her heart seemed to thud in her chest. He almost looked like Edgar. She could not tell: the sun was in her eyes. It might have been wishful thinking.