“I have a brother,” Dunston replied at last. “But I have not seen him since Michaelmas this past year.”
“Nobody else?”
“No. No one else, damn your nosiness, girl.” He crammed the rest of the oat cake into his mouth and chewed sullenly. The girl said nothing, but her eyes brimmed with tears as she finished her food and set about clearing the things away.
“I am sorry,” Dunston said. “You are right, I was tired. And hungry.”
“It is no matter. Father was always ill-tempered in the morning before he broke his fast.”
“Ill-tempered, am I?” he said, unable to keep the smile from his face. “I suppose I am at that. I am not used to having company.” He wiped his hands through his beard. “And what of you, do you have kin…” he hesitated, “… beyond your father?”
The girl’s face crumpled, her lower lip quivering. She stood, picking up the soiled cooking things.
He felt a pang of guilt at her reaction. Damn his clumsiness. He understood as well as anyone the anguish of grief.
“I do not wish to cause you more pain,” he said, stumbling over the words, unsure of himself. “I have never been good with words.” He held up his hands. They were thick-fingered and callused. “I only have skill with these,” he said. “It has ever been so. Whenever I speak, I cause offence.”
“What do you make?” Aedwen said, her voice small.
Dunston was confused. He grunted, leaning his head to one side. Surprisingly, Aedwen grinned.
“What is so funny, girl?” Dunston said, suddenly annoyed once more.
Aedwen bit her lip.
“I beg your pardon, it is just…” her voice trailed off.
“Just what?”
When she did not reply immediately, he continued. “You had better tell me. One thing I like worse than waking up late are secrets.”
Aedwen took a deep breath, but still she hesitated.
“Well?” he said, his voice taking on an edge of iron.
With a sigh, Aedwen said, “The way you looked at me just then, with your head to one side, you looked just like Odin.”
For a long while Dunston stared at the girl. To his surprise and her credit she held his gaze, until at last, he allowed himself to smile.
“Like Odin, you say?” The hound looked up at him and cocked its head at an angle. Dunston let out a guffaw and he was pleased to see that Aedwen was laughing too. “Well,” he said, through his chuckles, “it would seem I have been too long in the company of this hound. As we walk to Briuuetone you will have to teach me once again the ways of mankind.”
They laughed together as they cleaned the plates with some of the water from a barrel by the door. For a moment it was almost as though the previous day, with its blood and terror, had never happened. But when they returned to the hut, they both looked upon the shadowed shape of Aedwen’s father, wrapped in the makeshift shroud.
“Have you any inkling of who the attackers were?” he asked, unable to avoid returning to the dark subject of her father’s murder.
“No,” she said, “I thought they must be wolf-heads.”
Dunston nodded, saying nothing of the cart laden with goods that had been left behind.
“But I have been thinking about that,” she continued. “Men living outside the law would be desperate for anything of value. They would never leave the cart.”
Dunston said nothing. The girl impressed him. She was sharp and thoughtful.
“In answer to your question,” she said, “I have no close kin. My father had two sisters, but they married and moved away before I was born. I know nothing of my mother’s family. She never talked of them.”
“It seems we are both alone,” he said, feeling a stab of pity. It was one thing for a man of his age to look at a future devoid of companionship and family, but for one so young… Aedwen must be terrified of what her life would be now.
“You are not alone,” she said. “You have Odin.”
Dunston grunted.
“And I am not truly alone,” she said. “While I was hiding in the forest, I prayed.” Aedwen’s voice grew wistful. “I prayed to the Blessed Virgin.” Her eyes burnt with a new passion. “And the Mother of God answered me. She sent me you.”
“I don’t know about that, girl,” said Dunston, uneasy at the thought of being part of some sacred plan.
“The Virgin Mary sent you to help me.”
“Well,” he said, lifting up one of the sacks that belonged to Aedwen and carrying it out to the waiting handcart, “I am happy to help you to reach Briuuetone. You will not be alone there. The reeve will know what to do with you. His wife is kindly and he has daughters too. Perhaps you can stay with them.”
She followed him out into the warming daylight.
“I do not wish to go to Briuuetone. I have been praying and I believe you were sent to me for a purpose.”
Dunston did not like the sound of this, or the direction that the conversation was headed. He returned inside for another sack. Aedwen followed him.
“And what purpose would that be?” he asked, unsure that he wanted to hear what this child would answer.
“You are adept at following tracks in the forest, are you not?”
He dropped the sack into the bed of the cart and its timbers creaked.
“I am a hunter. I can see where beasts or men have trod,” he allowed.
“And you are clearly a strong man. A warrior.”
Dunston bridled, not liking one bit the turn this morning had taken.
“I am no warrior,” he spat and stalked back inside.
Aedwen ignored his protestations.
“I think you are,” she said, “and I think the Virgin answered my pleas by sending you, and in the night, while you slept, I understood what we should do next.”
“We?” he said, his tone incredulous. “There is no ‘we’, girl. I will take you to the reeve at Briuuetone and then you can pray to the Virgin all you want. But whatever you pray for, think not that I will be part of your prayers.”
“I do not believe you are a man who would allow something like the brutal murder of my father to go unpunished.”
“It is not my place to seek justice. I am not the reeve and I am no warrior.”
“And yet you have not denied my words. You would see the men who killed my father punished.”
Anger began to bubble within Dunston. The girl’s words raked through the embers of his ire at seeing her father’s ripped and savaged corpse.
He bent to lift the heavy form of the dead man onto his shoulder. He noticed how blood had soaked through the cloak. The burden was cumbersome and his back once again cried in pain, but he wrestled the corpse up and walked stiffly towards the sunlight and the cart.
“Of course I would have the men who did this thing brought before the moot and tried,” he gasped, breathless from the exertion. “But I am but one old man.” The words threatened to catch in his throat, but he knew the truth of them. He knew that years before, he would have swung the corpse up and onto his back with barely a thought. Now his bones and joints screamed out in protest. “What would you have me do?”
Aedwen placed a small hand on his burly forearm. He halted and looked into her limpid eyes.