The Evening and the Morning (Kingsbridge, #0)

by Ken Follett

a sealed jug of wine from the wedding at Cana.

Coming to Glastonbury was like visiting the grave of his youth.

good trouble.”

People saw him as a cruel man—which he was—but what was about to happen was a different kind of brutality.

“The bridge will need maintenance,” he said. “But if it’s looked after, it will last a hundred years.”

A slave owner never slept easy.

Edgar was still mulling over Ragna’s visit to Dreng’s Ferry. “Sometimes it’s a comfort to be loved,” she had said, and he was sure she was speaking of his love for her. She had let him hold her hands. And afterward, she had said: “Will they know what we’ve been doing?” and he had asked himself what, exactly, they had been doing. So she knew that he loved her, and she was glad that he loved her, and she felt that in holding hands they had done something that she would not like others to know about. What did all this add up to?

Blod’s ale.

“And that would be sufficient, if we lived in a world that was ruled by laws.”

A king was a remote personage. In theory he was all-powerful but, in practice, edicts issued from a faraway royal court might not be enforced. The decisions of local overlords often had more effect on everyday life. But that changed when the king came to town.

Victims of injustice hoped for restitution when the king came to visit.

He was often amazed at how easy it was to fool people, especially if you had some kind of status.