Birds began to chirp as the sky paled in the east. Shef picked his way carefully through the tangles of hawthorn and nettle, found himself on a narrow path. It reminded him of the path he had followed with Godive the year before, as they had fled from Ivar. Sure enough, it led to a clearing and a shelter.
The day was up as he reached the clearing, and he could see plainly. The shelter was a mere hut. As he watched it, the ill-hung door opened and a woman came out. An old woman? Her face was worn with care, and had the pale, pinched look of the chronically underfed. But she was not so old, Shef realized, standing silent and motionless under the trees. She looked round, not seeing him, and then sank down in the feeble sunlight by the side of her hut. Put her face in her hands and began to weep silently.
“What’s the matter, Mother?”
She started convulsively as she heard Shef’s question, looked up with terror in her eyes. As she realized there was only one man, unarmed, she calmed.
“The matter? An old story, most of it. My man was taken off to join the king’s army…”
“Which king?” asked Shef.
She shrugged. “I do not know. It was months ago. He has never come back. All summer we were hungry. We are not slaves, but we have no land. With Edi not here to work for the rich, we had nothing. When the harvest started they let me glean grain from what the reapers missed—little enough. But it would have been enough, only it was too late. My child died, my daughter, two weeks ago.
“And now this is the new story. For when I took her to the church to be buried, there was no priest there. He had fled, driven out, they say, by the pagans. The ‘Way-folk’? I do not know the right name. The men in the village were happy, they said now they would pay no more tithes, no more for Peter’s pence. But what good was that to me? I was too poor to tithe, and the priest would give me a dole, sometimes, from what he had. And who was there to bury my child? How could she rest without the words said over her? Without the Christ-child himself to take her part in heaven?”
The woman began to weep again, rocking backwards and forwards. How would Thorvin answer this? Shef wondered. Maybe he would say that the Christians had not always been bad, till the Church went rotten. But at least the Church gave comfort, to some. The Way must do that as well, not think only of those who tread the path of the heroes to Valhalla with Othin, or to Thruthvangar with Thor. He fumbled at his belt for money, realized that he had none.
“You see now what you have done?” said a voice behind him.
Shef turned slowly, found himself confronting Alfred. The young king had dark rings under his eyes, his clothes were stained and muddy. He had neither sword nor cloak, but still wore mail, with a dagger at his belt.
“I have done? I think she is one of your subjects, this side of the Thames. The Way may have taken her priest away, but you took her man away.”
“What we have done, then.”
The two men stood looking down at the woman. This is what I have been sent to stop, thought Shef. But I cannot do it by following the Way alone. Or not the Way as Thorvin or Farman see it.
“I will make you an offer, king,” he said. “You have a purse at your belt and I have none. Give it to this poor woman here, so that at least she may live to see if her man returns. And I will give you your jarldom back. Or rather we will share till we have defeated your enemies, the Cross-wearers, as I have already defeated mine.”
“Share the jarldom?”
“Share all we have. Money. Men. Rule. Risk. Let our fates run together.”
“We will share our luck, then?” said Alfred.
“Yes.”