text: "I cannot believe Dunston is a killer," said Aedwen. Her voice quavered as once more the pain of her father's death washed over her.
  
  Gytha gently placed a small log onto the fire, careful not to disturb the embers. The fire-glow painted her features the hue of fresh blood.
  
  "Oh, he is a killer all right." She sat back in her chair and gazed at the tongues of flame that licked hungrily at the dry wood. "Or he was."
  
  "He was a warrior?" asked Aedwen.
  
  "One of the deadliest ever to walk the earth, Rothulf used to say. Though my husband was prone to exaggeration and he loved Dunston like a brother." Gytha fell silent for a time, perhaps thinking of the husband she had lost. "Still, Rothulf had seen the old man fight, years ago. They stood together in the shieldwall at Ellandun and Rothulf always said he had never seen a man so destined to slay others as Dunston. As men do when they are in their cups, he had boasted of how the corpses of the Mercians lay heaped before Dunston that day. How his axe had scythed through their ranks as if they were so many ripe heads of barley. To listen to Rothulf you would think nobody else had fought that day. But many brave men gave their lives on both sides."
  
  Gytha looked wistfully into the fire, lost in the past and the sadness of remembered loss.
  
  The flames and embers swam before Aedwen, and she cuffed angrily at the tears that brimmed in her eyes. It was as she had surmised when she'd seen Dunston standing beside the cart with his hand on his axe. If he was a great warrior, a slayer of countless foe-men, then surely he could have killed her father without a thought. She shuddered. Had she been so wrong?
  
  As if the girl's movement had awoken Gytha from a dream, the widow started and turned her attention to Aedwen.
  
  "Dunston may not have been the hero my Rothulf liked to brag about, but he was a killer. Of that there is no doubt."
  
  Aedwen sighed.
  
  "But make no mistake, child," Gytha continued. "I do not believe for one moment that Dunston slew your father. Woe betide any man who crosses him, even now, but the old man is no murderer."
  
  Aedwen sighed again, but now with relief, not despair.
  
  "Who do you think killed him?" she asked.
  
  "I know not. But I think you are right to question Hunfrith's part in this. I fear that what your father spoke of with the new reeve was what led to him being killed."
  
  "But what could they have talked about? My father knew nobody in these parts. This is the first time we have travelled this way." Aedwen didn't mention how she had argued against the trip. How she had warned her father against the folly of this new scheme of his. If only she had been more persuasive. But nothing could change the past.
  
  "I do not know," said Gytha rubbing her fingers distractedly against her temples. "But I can only think that their meeting and his murder are connected in some way."
  
  "Could it be that Hunfrith ordered my father to be slain?" Aedwen whispered, scared to voice her fear.
  
  Gytha thought for a moment.
  
  "I do not know," she repeated. "But Briuuetone has changed these past months. Nothing is as it was. It no longer feels safe."
  
  "Why? What has happened?"
  
  "Two things. First my husband drowned and then Hunfrith moved in as the new reeve."
  
  Aedwen stared at the widow, sensing a deeper meaning in her words.
  
  "You think Hunfrith murdered your husband," she said.
  
  "Quiet, girl," Gytha hissed, as if the very sound of the words stung her. For a time, they were both silent. Aedwen watched as Gytha composed herself, smoothing her dress over her thighs. At last, Gytha nodded, the movement barely visible in the dim light from the embers. "I have no proof, and I have not spoken of this to anyone." She let out a long breath. "I fear for my girls."
  
  "Why do you think Hunfrith would do such a thing? He is the reeve."
  
  Gytha sighed.
  
  "I have long thought on these matters. It is like a riddle that I cannot unravel." She looked down at her hands. She was rubbing them as if seeking to rid them of dirt. "Something had made Rothulf anxious, and he was not a nervous man. I asked him about it, but he said he would not talk of it until he had spoken to Lord Ælfgar."
  
  Aedwen frowned.
  
  "What tidings were so unsettling, so important?" she asked. "And why not tell you?"
  
  "I know not," replied Gytha, her voice catching in her throat. "I like to think he was protecting us. He travelled to Ælfgar's hall, and then… I never saw him alive again."
  
  Aedwen understood.
  
  "You think his death was no accident?"
  
  Gytha drew in a deep breath, as if girding herself for what she was about to say.
  
  "I fear he was murdered." She sighed and smoothed her dress over her thighs. "There, I have said it."
  
  "But why? What could Rothulf have said to Ælfgar that would have got him killed?"
  
  For a moment, Gytha was silent, perhaps thinking whether she should continue.
  
  "I have heard rumours," she said at last.
  
  "Rumours?"
  
  "That Hunfrith was born out of wedlock."
  
  "I do not understand."
  
  "Ealdorman Ælfgar appointed Hunfrith to be reeve of this hundred. Hunfrith is very young for such a post. He has no experience."
  
  Aedwen thought for a moment, trying to deduce the meaning of what Gytha was saying.
  
  "Ælfgar is his father?"
  
  The widow nodded.
  
  "That is what some say."
  
  "You think Rothulf heard this rumour. That it was these tidings that he took to Ælfgar?"
  
  "Maybe." She sighed. "But it makes no sense. Such a thing is not uncommon. There must be dozens of bastards in every hundred in every shire in the kingdom."
  
  "But why then kill Rothulf?"
  
  Gytha shrugged.
  
  "All I know is that my husband went to Ælfgar with some news that had troubled him. The next day, he was dead. And then, Hunfrith came."
  
  "What do you think Hunfrith will do with Dunston?"
  
  "I know not, but I do not believe he means him well. Perhaps he will put him before the moot, as he says. But without you as a plaintiff, I see no point."
  
  "But if Hunfrith killed Rothulf and my father. He could mean to slay Dunston too." The thought terrified her. Was it possible that a reeve could be so evil, so corrupt? A man trusted to dispatch justice by the lord of the shire and, through him, by the king himself.
  
  "We have not one jot of evidence that Hunfrith had anything to do with my husband's or your father's deaths."
  
  "But why not say that he knew my father then? Why keep that secret?"
  
  Gytha shook her head in the gloom.
  
  "And why," Aedwen went on, anger tinging her words, "lock up Dunston when he has shown me nothing but kindness?"
  
  They went around and around these questions, circling and herding their thoughts the way dogs round up wayward sheep until there was nowhere else for them to go.
  
  After a time, they grew silent and listened to the soft night-time hush. The crackle of the fire; the quiet snoring of one of the girls; the creaking of the timbers as a gust of wind shook the house.
  
  Gytha got up and walked silently to a chest that rested beside the small table where they had eaten. She opened it and brought something out and returned to Aedwen beside the fire. She carried a flask and two wooden cups. She handed a cup to Aedwen, unstopped the flask and poured liquid into each vessel.
  
  Aedwen sniffed the contents and was surprised to smell the pungent bite of strong mead. She had only sipped mead before, at the end of the Crístesmæsse fast.
  
  "I do not like mead," she said quietly, not wishing to appear rude to her hostess.
  
  "Neither do I," replied Gytha with a bleak smirk. "But I think we could both use some fortification if we are going to do what I think we must. So drink it down, and let us get on with preparations, before I change my mind."
  
  With that, the widow tossed the liquid into her mouth and swallowed it down with a grimace.
  
  Confused, Aedwen raised the cup slowly up to her own lips and hesitated, unsure of whether to sip it, or just to swallow it quickly as the older woman had done.
  
  "But what is it we are going to do?" she asked.
  
  "It seems we have convinced ourselves of Dunston's innocence and Hunfrith's guilt, at least in keeping a secret, and at worst of having a hand in my husband's death and your father's murder."
  
  "But what are we to do about that?" Aedwen asked, tentatively sipping a tiny amount of mead into her mouth. It was sweet and she was surprised to find it not unpleasant. It was warm as it trickled down her throat.
  
  "Why, we are going to free Dunston, of course," said Gytha.