All this was good but not good enough. At this rate Dreng’sFerry might become a great monastery in a hundred years. All the same, Aldred had forged on as best he could—until Osmund died and Wynstan cut off the money.
He looked across the river and was heartened to see a small group of pilgrims on the far side, sitting on the ground near the water’s edge, waiting for the ferry. That was a good sign so early in the morning. But it looked as if Dreng was still asleep and no one was operating the boat. Aldred went down the hill to wake him.
The alehouse door was closed and the windows shuttered. Aldred banged on the door but got no reply. However, there was no lock, so Aldred lifted the latch and went in.
The house was empty.
Aldred stood in the doorway, looking around, baffled. Blankets were piled neatly, and the straw on the floor was raked. The barrels and jars of ale had been put away, probably in the brewhouse, which had a lock. There was a smell of cold ashes: the fire was out.
The inhabitants had gone.
There was no one to operate the ferry. That was a blow.
Well, Aldred thought, we’ll operate it ourselves. We have to get those pilgrims across. The monks can take turns. We can do it.
Puzzled but determined, he went back outside. That was when he noticed that the ferry was not at its mooring. He looked up and down the bank, then scanned the opposite side with a sinking heart. The boat was nowhere to be seen.
He reasoned logically. Dreng had gone, with his two wives and his slave girl, and they had taken the boat.
Where had he gone? Dreng did not like to travel. He left the hamlet about once a year. His rare trips were usually to Shiring, and you could not get there by river.
Upstream, to Bathford and Outhenham? Or downstream, to Mudeford and Combe? Neither made much sense, especially as he had taken his family.
Aldred might have been able to guesswhereif he had knownwhy.What reason could Dreng possibly have for going away?
He realized grimly that this was not a coincidence. Dreng knew all about Saint Adolphus and the Whitsun invitation. The malicious ferry owner had left on the very day when Aldred was hoping that hundreds of people would come to his church. Dreng had known that the absence of the ferry would ruin Aldred’s plan.
It must have been deliberate.
And once Aldred had figured that out, the next logical deduction was inevitable.
Dreng had been put up to this by Wynstan.
Aldred wanted to strangle them both with his bare hands.
He suppressed such irreligious passions. Rage was pointless. What could he do?
The answer came immediately. The boat was gone, but Edgar had a raft. It was not moored here by the tavern, but that was not unusual: Edgar sometimes tied it up near the farmhouse.
Aldred’s spirits lifted. He turned from the river and set off up the hill at a fast walk.
Edgar had decided to build his new house opposite the site of the new church, even though there was no church there yet and might never be. The walls of the house were up but the roof was not yet thatched. Edgar sat on a bale of straw, writing with a stone on a large piece of slate that he had fixed into a wooden frame. He was making a calculation, frowning with his tongue between his teeth,perhaps adding up the materials he would need to rebuild the saint’s chapel in stone.
Aldred said: “Where’s your raft?”
“On the riverbank by the tavern. Has something happened?”
“The raft is not there now.”
“Damn.” Edgar stepped outside to see, and Aldred followed. They both looked down the hill to the riverside. There were no vessels of any kind in sight. “That’s odd,” said Edgar. “They can’t both have come untied accidentally.”
“No. We’re not talking about an accident here.”
“Who...?”
“Dreng has vanished. The tavern is empty.”
“He must have taken the ferry... and taken my raft, too, to prevent us using it.”
