ALSO BY KEN FOLLETT
The Modigliani Scandal
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
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
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/.914—dc23
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: Mid−September 997
Chapter 10: Late September 997
Chapter 11: Early October 997
Chapter 12: Mid−October 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 (1001–1003 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 (1005–1007 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 pottery—important for storing food—was 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 1 Thursday, 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. Edgar’s elder brother Erman had once said to him: “How come you know when Easter is?” and he had replied: “Because it’s 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.
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