Ma said: “Is Dean Degbert here?”
“What do you want with my husband?” said the woman.
Clearly, Edgar thought, this was not the stricter kind of religious community. In principle the Church preferred priests to be celibate, but the rule was broken more often than it was kept, and even married bishops were not unheard of.
Ma said: “The bishop of Shiring sent us.”
The woman shouted over her shoulder: “Degsy? Visitors.” She stared at them a moment longer then disappeared inside.
The man who took her place was about thirty-five, but had a head like an egg, without even a monkish fringe. Perhaps his baldness was due to some illness. “I’m the dean,” he said, with his mouth full of food. “What do you want?”
Ma explained again.
“You’ll have to wait,” Degbert said. “I’m in the middle of my dinner.”
Ma smiled and said nothing, and the three brothers followed her example.
Degbert seemed to realize he was being inhospitable. All the same he did not offer to share his meal. “Go to Dreng’s alehouse,” he said. “Have a drink.”
Ma said: “We can’t afford to buy ale. We’re destitute. The Vikings raided Combe, where we lived.”
“Wait there, then.”
“Why don’t you just tell me where the farm is?” Ma said pleasantly. “I’m sure I can find it.”
Degbert hesitated, then said in a tone of irritation: “I suppose I’ll have to take you.” He looked back. “Edith! Put my dinner by the fire. I’ll be an hour.” He came out. “Follow me,” he said.
They walked down the hill. “What did you do in Combe?” Degbert asked. “You can’t have been farmers there.”
“My husband was a boatbuilder,” Ma said. “The Vikings killed him.”
Degbert crossed himself perfunctorily. “Well, we don’t need boats here. My brother, Dreng, has the ferry and there’s no room for two.”
Edgar said: “Dreng needs a new vessel. That canoe is cracking. One day soon it will sink.”
“Maybe.”
Ma said: “We’re farmers now.”
“Well, your land begins here.” Degbert stopped on the far side of the tavern. “From the water’s edge to the tree line is yours.”
The farm was a strip about two hundred yards wide beside the river. Edgar studied the ground. Bishop Wynstan had not told them how narrow it was, so Edgar had not imagined that such a large proportion of the land would be waterlogged. As the ground rose away from the river it improved, becoming a sandy loam, with green shoots growing.
Degbert said: “It goes west for about seven hundred yards, then there’s forest again.”
Ma set off to walk between the marsh and the rising ground, and the others followed.
Degbert said: “As you see, there’s a nice crop of oats coming up.”
Edgar did not know oats from any other grain, and he had thought the shoots were plain grass.
Ma said: “There’s as much weeds as there is oats.”
They walked for less than half a mile and came to a pair of buildings at the crest of a rise. Beyond the buildings, the cleared land came to an end and the woods went down to the bank of the river.
Degbert said: “There’s a useful little orchard.”
It was not really an orchard. There were a few small apple trees and a cluster of medlar shrubs. The medlar was a winter-ripening fruit that was hardly palatable to humans, and was sometimes fed to pigs. The flesh was tart and hard, though it could be softened either by frost or by overripening.
“The rent is four fat piglets, payable at Michaelmas,” Degbert said.
That was it, Edgar realized; they had seen the whole farm.
“It’s thirty acres, all right,” said Ma, “but they’re very poor acres.”
“That’s why the rent is low.”
Ma was negotiating, Edgar knew. He had seen her do this many times with customers and suppliers. She was good at it, but this was a challenge. What did she have to offer? Degbert would prefer the farm to be tenanted, of course, and he might want to please his cousin the bishop; but on the other hand he was clearly not much in need of the small rent, and he could easily tell Wynstan that Ma had refused to take on such an unpromising prospect. Ma was bargaining from a weak position.
They inspected the house. Edgar noted that it had earth-set timber posts with wattle-and-daub walls between the posts. The reeds on the floor were moldy and smelled bad. Cwenburg had been right; there were holes in the thatched roof, but they could be patched.
Ma said: “The place is a dump.”
“A few simple repairs.”
“It looks like a lot of work to me. We’ll have to take timber from the forest.”
“Yes, yes,” said Degbert impatiently.
Despite the peevish tone Degbert had made an important concession. They could fell trees, and there was no mention of payment. Free timber was worth a lot.
The smaller building was in worse condition than the house. Ma said: “The barn is practically falling down.”
Degbert said: “At the moment you have no need of a barn. You have nothing to store there.”
“You’re right, we’re broke,” Ma said. “So we won’t be able to pay the rent come Michaelmas.”
Degbert looked foolish. He could hardly argue. “You can owe me,” he said. “Five piglets at Michaelmas next year.”
“How can I buy a sow? These oats will be barely enough to feed my sons this winter. I won’t have anything left over to trade.”
“Are you refusing to take the farm?”
“No, I’m saying that if the farm is to be viable you have to give me more help. I need a rent holiday, and I need a sow. And I need a sack of flour on credit—we have no food.”
It was a bold set of demands. Landlords expected to be paid, not to pay out. But sometimes they had to help tenants get started, and Degbert had to know that.
Degbert looked frustrated, but he gave in. “All right,” he said. “I’ll lend you flour. No rent this year. I’ll get you a female piglet, but you’ll have to owe me one from your first litter, and that’s on top of the rent.”
“I suppose I’ll have to accept that,” said Ma. She spoke with apparent reluctance, but Edgar was pretty sure she had made a good bargain.
“And I’ll have to get back to my dinner,” Degbert said grumpily, sensing that he had been defeated. He left, heading back to the hamlet.