Ken Follett - The Evening and the Morning

ALSO BY KEN FOLLETT

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Paper Money

Eye of the Needle

Triple

The Key to Rebecca

The Man from St. Petersburg

On Wings of Eagles

Lie Down with Lions

The Pillars of the Earth

Night over Water

A Dangerous Fortune

A Place Called Freedom

The Third Twin

The Hammer of Eden

Code to Zero

Jackdaws

Hornet Flight

Whiteout

World Without End

Fall of Giants

Winter of the World

Edge of Eternity

A Column of Fire

Notre-Dame

VIKING

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Copyright 2020 by Ken Follett

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Follett, Ken, author.

Title: The evening and the morning / Ken Follett.

Description: New York: Viking, [2020] | Series: The Kingsbridge series

Identifiers: LCCN 2019051791 (print) | LCCN 2019051792 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525954989 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984882028 (ebook)

Subjects: GSAFD: Historical fiction.

Classification: LCC PR6056.O45 E88 2020 (print) | LCC PR6056.O45 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051791

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051792

Map on pp. x-xi by Daren Cook

This is a work of fiction. Apart from the historical figures, any resemblance between fictional characters created by the author and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover design: Daren Cook

Cover art: Ireland, Book of Kells, eighth century, Trinity College Library, Dublin. Dennis Hallinan / Alamy Stock Photo

pid_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

In memoriam,

E. F.

Contents

Cover

Also by Ken Follett

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

Part I: The Wedding (997 CE)

Chapter 1: Thursday, June 17, 997

Chapter 2: Saturday, June 19, 997

Chapter 3: Late June 997

Chapter 4: Early July 997

Chapter 5: Late July 997

Chapter 6: Early August 997

Chapter 7: Late August 997

Chapter 8: Early September 997

Chapter 9: MidSeptember 997

Chapter 10: Late September 997

Chapter 11: Early October 997

Chapter 12: MidOctober 997

Chapter 13: Late October 997

Chapter 14: November 1, 997

Chapter 15: December 31, 997

Part II: The Trial (998 CE)

Chapter 16: January 998

Chapter 17: February 998

Chapter 18: March 998

Chapter 19: June 998

Chapter 20: July 998

Chapter 21: September 998

Chapter 22: October 998

Chapter 23: November 1, 998

Chapter 24: December 998

Part III: The Murder (10011003 CE)

Chapter 25: January 1001

Chapter 26: March 1001

Chapter 27: April 1001

Chapter 28: May 1001

Chapter 29: August and September 1001

Chapter 30: February 1002

Chapter 31: June 1002

Chapter 32: July 1002

Chapter 33: August 1002

Chapter 34: October 1002

Chapter 35: March 1003

Chapter 36: June 1003

Chapter 37: August 1003

Part IV: The City (10051007 CE)

Chapter 38: November 1005

Chapter 39: Spring 1006

Chapter 40: Summer 1006

Chapter 41: September 1006

Chapter 42: October 1006

Chapter 43: January 1007

Acknowledgments

About the Author

When the Roman Empire declined, Britain went backward. As the Roman villas crumbled, the people built one-room wooden dwellings without chimneys. The technology of Roman potteryimportant for storing foodwas mostly lost. Literacy declined.

This period is sometimes called the Dark Ages, and progress was painfully slow for five hundred years.

Then, at last, things started to change . . .

CHAPTER 1Thursday, June 17, 997

t was hard to stay awake all night, Edgar found, even on the most important night of your life.

He had spread his cloak over the reeds on the floor and now he lay on it, dressed in the knee-length brown wool tunic that was all he wore in summer, day and night. In winter he would wrap the cloak around him and lie near the fire. But now the weather was warm: Midsummer Day was a week away.

Edgar always knew dates. Most people had to ask priests, who kept calendars. Edgars elder brother Erman had once said to him: How come you know when Easter is? and he had replied: Because its the first Sunday after the first full moon after the twenty-first day of March, obviously. It had been a mistake to add obviously, because Erman had punched him in the stomach for being sarcastic. That had been years ago, when Edgar was small. He was grown now. He would be eighteen three days after Midsummer. His brothers no longer punched him.

He shook his head. Random thoughts sent him drifting off. He tried to make himself uncomfortable, lying on his fist to stay awake.

He wondered how much longer he had to wait.

He turned his head and looked around by firelight. His home was like almost every other house in the town of Combe: oak-plank walls, a thatched roof, and an earth floor partly covered with reeds from the banks of the nearby river. It had no windows. In the middle of the single room was a square of stones surrounding the hearth. Over the fire stood an iron tripod from which cooking pots could be hung, and its legs made spidery shadows on the underside of the roof. All around the walls were wooden pegs on which were hung clothes, cooking utensils, and boatbuilding tools.

Edgar was not sure how much of the night had passed, because he might have dozed off, perhaps more than once. Earlier, he had listened to the sounds of the town settling for the night: a couple of drunks singing an obscene ditty, the bitter accusations of a marital quarrel in a neighboring house, a door slamming and a dog barking and, somewhere nearby, a woman sobbing. But now there was nothing but the soft lullaby of waves on a sheltered beach. He stared in the direction of the door, looking for telltale lines of light around its edges, and saw only darkness. That meant either that the moon had set, so the night was well advanced, or that the sky was cloudy, which would tell him nothing.

The rest of his family lay around the room, close to the walls where there was less smoke. Pa and Ma were back-to-back. Sometimes they would wake in the middle of the night and embrace, whispering and moving together, until they fell back, panting; but they were fast asleep now, Pa snoring. Erman, the eldest brother at twenty, lay near Edgar, and Eadbald, the middle one, was in the corner. Edgar could hear their steady, untroubled breathing.

At last, the church bell struck.

There was a monastery on the far side of the town. The monks had a way of measuring the hours of the night: they made big, graduated candles that told the time as they burned down. One hour before dawn they would ring the bell, then get up to chant their service of Matins.

Edgar lay still a little longer. The bell might have disturbed Ma, who woke easily. He gave her time to sink back into deep slumber. Then, at last, he got to his feet.