Shef floundered to a halt, neither English nor Norse adequate to explain what he meant.
“What I mean is, the Church took too much out of the Northern kingdom and put nothing back. That is why their coins were so bad. King Edmund was less kind to the Church, and so money here was better. Soon it will be the best.
“And not only the money will be the best, Brand.” The young man turned to face his massive colleague, his one eye glittering. “I mean this shire of Norfolk to be the best and the happiest land in the whole of the Northern world. A place where everyone can grow from child to graybeard in safety. Where we can live like people, not like animals scratching for a living. Where we can help each other.
“Because I have learned another thing, Brand, from Ordlaf the reeve of Bridlington, from the slaves who made my mappa and led us to the riddle of Edmund. It is something the Way needs to know. What is the most precious thing to the Way, the Way of Asgarth?”
“New knowledge,” said Brand, automatically clutching his hammer-pendant.
“New knowledge is good. Not everyone has it. But this is just as good, and it can come from anywhere: old knowledge that no one has recognized. It is something I have seen more clearly since I became the jarl. There is always someone who knows the answer to your question, the cure for your need. But usually no one has asked him. Or her. It may be a slave, a poor miner. An old woman, a fisher-reeve, a priest.
“When I have all the knowledge in the county written down, as well as all the land and the silver, then we shall show the world a new thing!”
Brand, on Shef’s blind side, glanced down at the taut tendons in the neck, the young man’s trimmed beard now sprinkled with gray.
What he needs, he thought, is a fine, active woman to keep him busy. But even I, Brand the Champion, even I dare not offer to buy him one.
That evening, as the woodsmoke from the chimneys began to mix with the gray twilight, the priests of the Way met within their corded circle. They sat in the wort-yard, the garden of a cottage outside the jarl’s stockade, in a pleasant smell of apple-sap and green growth. Thrushes and blackbirds trilled vigorously about them.
“He has no idea of the real purpose of your sea-trip?” asked Thorvin.
Brand shook his head. “None.”
“But you passed the news?”
“I passed the news and I got the news. The word of what has happened here has gone to every Way-priest in the Northern lands, and they will tell their followers. It has gone to Birko and to Kaupang, to Skiringssal and to the Tronds.”
“So, we can expect reinforcements,” said Geirulf, Tyr’s priest.
“With the money that has been taken home, and the tales every skald is telling, you can be sure that every warrior of the Way who can raise a ship will be here looking for work. And every priest who can free himself as well. There will be many who take the pendant in hope, also. Liars, some of them. Not believers. But they can be dealt with. There is more important matter.”
Brand paused, looking round the circle of intent faces. “In Kaupang, as I came home, I met the priest Vigleik.”
“Vigleik of the many visions?” asked Farman tensely.
“Even so. He had called a conclave of priests from Norway and from the South Swedes. He told them—and me—that he was disturbed.”
“What about?”
“Many things. He is sure now, as we are, that the boy Shef is the center of the change. He has even thought, as we have, that he may be what he said he was when first he met you, Thorvin: the one who will come from the North.”
Brand looked round the table to meet the eyes fixed on him. “And yet, if that is true, the story is not what any of us expected, not even the wisest. Vigleik says, for one thing, he is not a Norseman. He has an English mother.”