Edgar and Sam went into the alehouse, leaving the dogs to mind the sheep. Ethel was preparing the midday dinner, watched by Leaf and Dreng. A moment later Blod came in with an armful of firewood.

Edgar said to Dreng: “Sam hasn’t paid yet. He owes five pence and three farthings, but I didn’t have a farthing to give him in change.”

Dreng said to Sam: “Make it a round six pence and you can fuck the slave girl.”

Sam looked eagerly at Blod.

Leaf spoke up. “She’s too far gone.” Blod was now close to nine months pregnant. No one had wanted sex with her for three or four weeks.

But Sam was keen. “I don’t mind that,” he said.

“I wasn’t worrying about you,” Leaf said scathingly. The sarcasm went over Sam’s head. “This late, the baby could be harmed.”

Dreng said: “Who cares? No one wants a slave bastard.” With a contemptuous gesture he motioned Blod to get down on the floor.

Edgar could not see how Sam could possibly lie on top of the bump of Blod’s pregnancy. But she went down on her hands and knees, then threw up the back of her grubby dress. Sam promptly knelt behind her and pulled up his tunic.

Edgar went out.

He walked down to the water and pretended to check the mooring of the ferry, though he knew perfectly well that he had tied it tight. He felt disgusted. He had never understood the men who paid for sex at Mags’s house in Combe. The whole idea seemed joyless. His brother Erman had said: “When you got to have it, you got to have it,” but Edgar had never felt that way. With Sunni, the two of them had enjoyed it equally, and Edgar thought anything less was hardly worth having.

What Sam was doing was worse than joyless, of course.

Edgar sat on the riverbank and looked across the calm gray water, hoping for more passengers to take his mind off what was going on in the alehouse. Brindle sat beside him, waiting patiently to see what he would do next. After a few minutes she went to sleep.

It was not long before the shepherd emerged from the alehouse and drove his flock up the hill between the houses onto the westbound road. Edgar did not wave.

Blod came down to the river.

Edgar said: “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Blod did not look at him. She stepped into the shallows and washed between her legs.

Edgar looked away. “It’s very cruel,” he said.

He suspected that Blod understood English. She pretended not to: when something went wrong she cursed in the liquid Welsh tongue. Dreng gave her orders with gestures and snarls. But sometimes Edgar had the feeling she was following the conversation in the alehouse, albeit furtively.

Now she confirmed his suspicion. “It’s nothing,” she said. Her English was accented but clear, her voice melodic.

“You’re not nothing,” he said.

She finished washing and stepped onto the bank. He met her eye. She was looking suspicious and hostile. “Why so nice?” she demanded. “You think you’ll get a free fuck?”