Page 191 of The Evening and the Morning
“They’ve done it at Glastonbury,” he said with the air of one who produces a winning card. “Aldred told me.”
“Dig our own river?”
“I’ve worked it out. Ten men with picks and shovels would take about twenty days to dig a channel three feet deep and a bit wider than my raft, from the river to the quarry.”
“Is that all?”
“The digging is the easy part. We might need to reinforce the banks, depending on the consistency of the soil as we dig down, but I can do that myself. More difficult is getting the depth right. Obviously it has to go down far enough to make sure water flows in from the river. But I think I can work that out.”
He was smarter than Wilf and perhaps even than Aldred, she thought, but all she said was: “What would it cost?”
“Assuming we don’t use slaves—”
“I’d rather not.”
“Then a halfpenny a day for each man plus a penny a day for a ganger, so one hundred and twenty pennies, which is half a pound of silver; and we’d have to feed them, as most of them would be away from home.”
“And it would save money in the long term.”
“A lot of money.”
Ragna felt bucked up by Edgar and his project. It would be a great new thing. It was costly, but she could afford it.
They arrived at the quarry. There were two houses now. Edgar had built a place for himself so that he did not have to share with Gab and his family. It was a fine house, with walls of vertical planks linked by tongue-and-groove joints. It had two shuttered windows, and the door was made of a single piece of oak. The door had a lock, and Edgar inserted a key and turned it to open the door.
Inside, it was a masculine domain, with pride of place given to tools, coils of rope and balls of cord, and harness. There was a barrel of ale but no wine, a truckle of hard cheese but no fruit, no flowers.
On the wall Ragna noticed a sheet of parchment hanging from a nail. Looking more closely she saw a list of customers, with details of the stones they had received and the money they had paid. Mostcraftsmen kept track of such things with notches on sticks. “You can write?” she said to Edgar.
He looked proud. “Aldred taught me.”
He had kept that quiet. “And obviously you can read.”
“I could if I had a book.”
Ragna resolved to give him a present of a book when his canal was finished.
She sat on the bench and he drew a cup of ale from the barrel for her. “I’m glad you don’t want to use slave labor,” he said.
“What makes you say that?”
“There’s something about having slaves that brings out the worst in people. Slave owners become savage. They beat and kill and rape as if it were all right.”
Ragna sighed. “I wish all men were like you.”
He laughed.
She said: “What?”
“I remember having exactly the same thought about you. I asked you to find me a farm, and you just said yes, without hesitation, and I said to myself: Why aren’t they all like her?”
Ragna smiled. “You’ve cheered me up,” she said. “Thank you.” Impulsively she sprang to her feet and kissed him.
She meant to kiss his cheek but somehow she kissed his mouth. Her lips were on his for only a moment, and she would have thought nothing of it, but he was startled. He jumped back, away from her, and his face turned deep red.
She realized right away that she had made a mistake. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that. I was just grateful to you for making me feel better.”
“I didn’t know you were feeling bad,” he said. He was beginningto recover his composure, but she noticed that he touched his mouth with his fingertips.
