The Evening and the Morning (Kingsbridge Series Prequel)

by Ken Follett

Overview

#1 New York Times Bestseller
An Amazon Best Book of 2020
 
The thrilling and addictive prequel to The Pillars of the Earth—set in England at the dawn of a new era: the Middle Ages

"Just as transporting as [The Pillars of the Earth] . . . A most welcome addition to the Kingsbridge series." —The Washington Post

It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns.

In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined. A young boatbuilder's life is turned upside down when his home is raided by Vikings, forcing him and his family to move and start their lives anew in a small hamlet where he does not fit in. . . . A Norman noblewoman marries for love, following her husband across the sea to a new land, but the customs of her husband's homeland are shockingly different, and it soon becomes clear to her that a single misstep could be catastrophic. . . . A monk dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a center of learning that will be admired throughout Europe. And each in turn comes into dangerous conflict with a clever and ruthless bishop who will do anything to increase his wealth and power.

Thirty years ago, Ken Follett published his most popular novel, The Pillars of the Earth. Now, Follett's masterful new prequel The Evening and the Morning takes us on an epic journey into a historical past rich with ambition and rivalry, death and birth, love and hate, that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525954989
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Series:	Kingsbridge Series , #4
Pages:	928
Sales rank:	109,772
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Ken Follett is one of the world's best-loved authors, selling more than 170 million copies of his thirty-six books. Follett's first bestseller was Eye of the Needle, a spy story set in the Second World War. In 1989, The Pillars of the Earth was published and has since become Follett's most popular novel. It reached number one on bestseller lists around the world and was an Oprah's Book Club pick. Its sequels, World Without End and A Column of Fire, proved equally popular, and the Kingsbridge series has sold more than forty million copies worldwide. Follett lives in Hertfordshire, England, with his wife, Barbara. Between them they have five children, six grandchildren, and two Labradors.

Hometown:

Hertfordshire, England

Date of Birth:

June 5, 1949

Place of Birth:

Cardiff, Wales

Education:

B.A. in Philosophy, University College, London, 1970

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

 

Thursday, June 17, 997

 

It 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.

 

Silently he picked up his cloak, his shoes, and his belt with its sheathed dagger attached. On bare feet he crossed the room, avoiding the furniture: a table, two stools, and a bench. The door opened silently: Edgar had greased the wooden hinges yesterday with a generous smear of sheep's tallow.

 

If one of his family woke now and spoke to him, he would say he was going outside to piss, and hope they did not spot that he was carrying his shoes.

 

Eadbald grunted. Edgar froze. Had Eadbald woken up, or just made a noise in his sleep? Edgar could not tell. But Eadbald was the passive one, always keen to avoid a fuss, like Pa. He would not make trouble.

 

Edgar stepped out and closed the door behind him carefully.

 

The moon had set, but the sky was clear and the beach was starlit. Between the house and the high-tide mark was a boatyard. Pa was a boatbuilder, and his three sons worked with him. Pa was a good craftsman and a poor businessman, so Ma made all the money decisions, especially the difficult calculation of what price to ask for something as complicated as a boat or ship. If a customer tried to bargain down the price, Pa would be willing to give in, but Ma would make him stand firm.

 

Edgar glanced at the yard as he laced his shoes and buckled his belt. There was only one vessel under construction, a small boat for rowing upriver. Beside it stood a large and valuable stockpile of timber, the trunks split into halves and quarters, ready to be shaped into the parts of a boat. About once a month the whole family went into the forest and felled a mature oak tree. Pa and Edgar would begin, alternately swinging long-handled axes, cutting a precise wedge out of the trunk. Then they would rest while Erman and Eadbald took over. When the tree came down, they would trim it then float the wood downriver to Combe. They had to pay, of course: the forest belonged to Wigelm, the thane to whom most people in Combe paid their rent, and he demanded twelve silver pennies for each tree.

 

As well as the timber pile, the yard contained a barrel of tar, a coil of rope, and a whetstone. All were guarded by a chained-up mastiff called Grendel, black with a gray muzzle, too old to do much harm to thieves but still able to bark an alarm. Grendel was quiet now, watching Edgar incuriously with his head resting on his front paws. Edgar knelt down and stroked his head. "Good-bye, old dog," he murmured, and Grendel wagged his tail without getting up.

 

Also in the yard was one finished vessel, and Edgar thought of it as his own. He had built it himself to an original design, based on a Viking ship. Edgar had never actually seen a Viking-they had not raided Combe in his lifetime-but two years ago a wreck had washed up on the beach, empty and fire blackened, its dragon figurehead half smashed, presumably after some battle. Edgar had been awestruck by its mutilated beauty: the graceful curves, the long serpentine prow, and the slender hull. He had been most impressed by the large out-jutting keel that ran the length of the ship, which-he had realized after some thought-gave the stability that allowed the Vikings to cross the seas. Edgar's boat was a lesser version, with two oars and a small, square sail.

 

Edgar knew he had a talent. He was already a better boatbuilder than his elder brothers, and before long he would overtake Pa. He had an intuitive sense of how forms fitted together to make a stable structure. Years ago he had overheard Pa say to Ma: "Erman learns slowly and Eadbald learns fast, but Edgar seems to understand before the words are out of my mouth." It was true. Some men could pick up a musical instrument they had never played, a pipe or a lyre, and get a tune out of it after a few minutes. Edgar had such instincts about boats, and houses, too. He would say: "That boat will list to starboard," or: "That roof will leak," and he was always right.

 

Now he untied his boat and pushed it down the beach. The sound of the hull scraping on the sand was muffled by the shushing of the waves breaking on the shore.

 

He was startled by a girlish giggle. In the starlight he saw a naked woman lying on the sand, and a man on top of her. Edgar probably knew them, but their faces were not clearly visible and he looked away quickly, not wanting to recognize them. He had surprised them in an illicit tryst, he guessed. The woman seemed young and perhaps the man was married. The clergy preached against such affairs, but people did not always follow the rules. Edgar ignored the couple and pushed his boat into the water.

 

He glanced back at the house, feeling a pang of regret, wondering whether he would ever see it again. It was the only home he could remember. He knew, because he had been told, that he had been born in another town, Exeter, where his father had worked for a master boatbuilder; then the family had moved, while Edgar was still a baby, and had set up home in Combe, where Pa had started his own enterprise with one order for a rowboat; but Edgar could not remember any of that. This was the only home he knew, and he was leaving it for good.

 

He was lucky to have found employment elsewhere. Business had slowed since the renewal of Viking attacks on the south of England when Edgar was nine years old. Trading and fishing were dangerous while the marauders were near. Only the brave bought boats.

 

There were three ships in the harbor now, he saw by starlight: two herring fishers and a Frankish merchant ship. Dragged up on the beach were a handful of smaller craft, river and coastal vessels. He had helped to build one of the fishers. But he could remember a time when there had always been a dozen or more ships in port.

 

He felt a fresh breeze from the southwest, the prevailing wind here. His boat had a sail-small, because they were so costly: a

full-size sail for a seagoing ship would take one woman four years to make. But it was hardly worthwhile to unfurl for the short trip across the bay. He began to row, something that hardly taxed him. Edgar was heavily muscled, like a blacksmith. His father and brothers were the same. All day, six days a week, they worked with ax, adze, and auger, shaping the oak strakes that formed the hulls of boats. It was hard work and it made strong men.

 

His heart lifted. He had got away. And he was going to meet the woman he loved. The stars were brilliant; the beach glowed white; and when his oars broke the surface of the water, the curling foam was like the fall of her hair on her shoulders.

 

Her name was Sungifu, which was usually shortened to Sunni, and she was exceptional in every way.

 

He could see the premises along the seafront, most of them workplaces of fishermen and traders: the forge of a tinsmith who made rustproof items for ships; the long yard in which a roper wove his lines; and the huge kiln of a tar maker who roasted pine logs to produce the sticky liquid with which boatbuilders waterproofed their vessels. The town always looked bigger from the water: it was home to several hundred people, most making their living, directly or indirectly, from the sea.

 

He looked across the bay to his destination. In the darkness he would not have been able to see Sunni even if she had been there, which he knew she was not, since they had arranged to meet at dawn. But he could not help staring at the place where she soon would be.

 

Sunni was twenty-one, older than Edgar by more than three years. She had caught his attention one day when he was sitting on the beach staring at the Viking wreck. He knew her by sight, of course-he knew everyone living in the small town-but he had not particularly noticed her before and did not recall anything about her family. "Were you washed up with the wreck?" she had said. "You were sitting so still, I thought you were driftwood." She had to be imaginative, he saw right away, to say something like that off the top of her head; and he had explained what fascinated him about the lines of the vessel, feeling that she would understand. They had talked for an hour and he had fallen in love.

 

Then she told him she was married, but it was already too late.

 

Her husband, Cyneric, was thirty. She had been fourteen when she married him. He had a small herd of milk cows, and Sunni managed the dairy. She was shrewd, and made plenty of money for her husband. They had no children.

 

Edgar had quickly learned that Sunni hated Cyneric. Every night, after the evening milking, he went to an alehouse called the Sailors and got drunk. While he was there, Sunni could slip into the woods and meet Edgar.

 

However, from now on there would be no more hiding. Today they would run away together; or, to be exact, sail away. Edgar had the offer of a job and a house in a fishing village fifty miles along the coast. He had been lucky to find a boatbuilder who was hiring. Edgar had no money-he never had money, Ma said he had no need of it-but his tools were in a locker built into the boat. They would start a new life.

 

As soon as everyone realized they had gone, Cyneric would consider himself free to marry again. A wife who ran away with another man was, in practice, divorcing herself: the Church might not like it, but that was the custom. Within a few weeks, Sunni said, Cyneric would go into the countryside and find a desperately poor family with a pretty fourteen-year-old daughter. Edgar wondered why the man wanted a wife: he had little interest in sex, according to Sunni. "He likes to have someone to push around," she had said. "My problem was that I grew old enough to despise him."

 

Cyneric would not come after them, even if he found out where they were, which was unlikely at least for some time to come. "And if we're wrong about that, and Cyneric finds us, I'll beat the shit out of him," Edgar had said. Sunni's expression had told him that she thought this was a foolish boast, and he knew she was right. Hastily, he had added: "But it probably won't come to that."

 

He reached the far side of the bay, then beached the boat and roped it to a boulder.

 

He could hear the chanting of the monks at their prayers. The monastery was nearby, and the home of Cyneric and Sunni a few hundred yards beyond that.

Editorial Reviews

06/29/2020

Follett delivers a lackluster prequel to his Kingsbridge series. The structure will feel familiar to series devotees; it centers on the intertwined stories of three people: a man who is good with his hands, an attractive noblewoman, and a cleric. This time, the action spans 997–1007 CE, and the leads are Edgar, Ragna, and Aldred, whose lives intersect multiple times despite their disparate backgrounds. Edgar, the teenage son of a boatbuilder, is planning to run off with a married woman until a Viking attack on his village in the west of England leaves her dead; that tragedy leads to his family’s move to Dreng’s Ferry, the future Kingsbridge, and to his developing career as a builder. At Dreng’s Ferry, he reunites with Ragna, a Norman woman he’d met years earlier, who has married Wilf, the royal official overseeing the area. Ragna, smart, independent, and beautiful, is trapped in an unfulfilling marriage. The “miraculously handsome” Brother Aldred, a scholar, finds himself confronted with corruption in the church, personified in Wilf’s cartoonishly evil brother, Wynstan, a bishop. The prose is often stilted and overwrought (“This was the funeral of his hopes”), and the plot elements are derivative of Follett’s past work, adding up to an epic full of romance tropes rather than a reimagined time and place. This is only for series completists. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

[A] richly told, complex story . . . Follett is a powerful storyteller . . . [whose] fans will enjoy this jaunt through the days before England was merry.”
—Kirkus (starred)

“Follett has done it again. Readers will gobble up this exciting prequel.”
—Library Journal

“[An] absorbing and lengthy saga of life in a chaotic and unstable England on the cusp of the Middle Ages . . . Fans of Follett's ever-popular Kingsbridge series . . . will flock to this . . . while intrigued newcomers can start here.”
—Booklist

Praise for Ken Follett and the Kingsbridge series

“Follett is a master.”
—The Washington Post

“Follett takes you to a time long past with brio and razor-sharp storytelling. An epic tale in which you will lose yourself.”
—The Denver Post

“[Follett is a] master of the sweeping, readable epic.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

From the Publisher

08/01/2020

It's still the Dark Ages in 997 CE, England, where a young man, Edgar, steals away from his house to flee with his love, Sunni. But the Vikings attack and Sunni is killed; so are his mother and father. Edgar's livelihood—boatmaking—is gone, too. Ragna is an aristocrat, daughter of the Norman count of Cherbourg. Her father's plans for her are upended when she meets an English thane, Wilf, and sparks fly. Soon Ragna is in England and married to Wilf, all she had hoped for. But life doesn't proceed as she'd expected. Wilf's family proves to be her enemy, and her hold over him isn't as absolute as she'd thought. The Vikings attack again, and Wilf returns from battle an invalid, his wits addled. The vultures gather. During these times, Ragna and Edgar cross paths several times. Their feelings for each other grow, but Edgar's a commoner and Ragna's a noblewoman and married. It takes 10 years, during which calamity after calamity rolls over them, before there is any possibility for them to be together. VERDICT Follett has done it again. Readers will gobble up this exciting prequel to his 1989 classic, The Pillars of the Earth.—David Keymer, Cleveland

Library Journal

★ 2020-07-01
Murder, sex, and unholy ambition threaten to overwhelm the glimmers of light in Dark Ages England in this prequel to The Pillars of the Earth (1989).

A Viking raid in 997 C.E. kills Edgar’s one true love, Sungifu, and he vows never to love another—but come on, he’s only 18. The young man is a talented builder who has strong personal values. Weighing the consequences of helping a slave escape, he muses, “Perhaps there were principles more important than the rule of law.” Meanwhile, Lady Ragna is a beautiful French noblewoman who comes to Shiring, marries the local ealdorman, Wilwulf, and starts a family. Much of the action takes place in Dreng’s Ferry, a tiny hamlet with “half a dozen houses and a church.” Dreng is a venal, vicious ferryman who hurls his slave’s newborn child into a river and is only one of several characters whose death readers will eagerly root for. Bishop Wynstan lusts to become an archbishop and will crush anyone who stands in his way. He clashes with Ragna as she announces she is lord of the Vale of Outhen. “Wait!” he says to the people, “Are you going to be ruled by a mere woman?” (Wynstan’s fate is delicious.) Aldred is a kindly monk who harbors an unrequited love for Edgar, who in turn loves Ragna but knows it’s hopeless: Although widowed after Wilwulf’s sudden death, she remains above Edgar’s station. There are plenty of other colorful people in this richly told, complex story: slaves, rapists, fornicators, nobles, murderers, kind and decent people, and men of the cloth with “Whore’s Leprosy.” The plot at its core, though, is boy meets girl—OK, Edgar meets Ragna—and a whole lot of trouble stands in the way of their happiness. They are attractive and sympathetic protagonists, and more’s the pity they’re stuck in the 11th century. Readers may guess the ending well before Page 900—yes, it’s that long—but Follett is a powerful storyteller who will hold their attention anyway.

Follett's fans will enjoy this jaunt through the days before England was merry.

Kirkus Reviews

John Lee returns to narrate the long-awaited prequel to the Pillars of the Earth epic series. In 997 CE, Vikings attack a small English fishing village, and a young boatbuilder named Edgar must strike out to survive elsewhere. With his trademark eloquence, Lee portrays the ambitious Edgar, who finds success through his carpentry skills and develops a growing friendship with the wise monk Brother Aldred. Lee employs a lighter tone and delicate accent for Lady Ragna, a French noblewoman who marries the regional elderman. In an unlikely partnership over the ten-year span of the novel, Ragna supports Edgar’s vision and skills in building a bridge that is key to the flourishing of a community that grew to become the city of Kingsbridge. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2020 - AudioFile