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himself elsewhere before landing. But Llyrica reached out of her peach shroud and touched Byrnstan’s arm, a gesture that made Slayde’s flesh tingle with damnable envy.
    “Might I count on asylum within the Church, Father Byrnstan?” she asked. “Will my Christian faith be rewarded? I only pray for sennight to find my brother, who will be lost without me. Keep these goods and money as collateral and keep me under watch if you must. Allow me to be of service while I wait.” Now she turned to Slayde. “I have seen the faded condition of your men’s tunicas. I can see them put to right with redipping. As for the braid on those of your men who wear it ...” Her brief pause nearly made Slayde look down at his own tunica, battle worn, its braid no longer vibrant. “If I have not found my brother within the allotted time, you may put me on a boat and ship me out.” She took a deep breath. “I am only one woman, surely of no danger to you. In this, and in my efforts to makes amends, I vow reverently.”
    “And if you do find your brother?” Slayde asked.
    “I hope you will see that he is not much more than a boy, and will let us go to where we can be with our own. In Danelaw we will begin new and better lives.”
    Llyrica proposed this arrangement with such reason and sincerity, Slayde wavered in his inclination to oppose it. The light in Byrnstan’s eyes, a twinkle of equal parts mischief and compassion, informed StoneHeart of the priest’s intention to overrule him.
    “You are a testament to the redemption of the fallen woman, Llyrica,” said Byrnstan. “For your promise to reform, I give you my vow. Under my protection shall you find sanctuary. You will come and live under our roof.  The roof of StoneHeart.”
    Slayde did not jerk his head up in dismay nor burst out an expletive. Nor did he accuse his godfather of softhearted meddling. Nay, he hid his reaction to Byrnstan’s misguided charity behind a facade of indifference, and a silence which stretched the limits of comfort. The muscle above his right eye twitched its provoking tick.
    “I bow to your Christian sensibility, Byrnstan,” he finally said. “And I wash my hands of this matter, leaving her to you. But she will not stay under our roof and you know well why.” Slayde unfolded his frame to its formidable height, left the priest and Llyrica crouched on the floor of the deck. “But we will find a dwelling close by, perhaps the thralls’ quarters. I put her in your care and bid you take heed lest we awaken one morning and find she has absconded with our property. Or worse, that what she sought to escape will come to our door.”
    “I have only just given her my word, son, that she stay with us. Should I snatch it back only seconds after it was given?” Byrnstan kept a tight hold of the woman’s hand.
    Slayde could not dispute Byrnstan’s case, and in full view of his crewmen, he should not look to fear a woman’s presence. Slayde would not win this one. He shrugged and feigned interest at an indeterminate point at the coast.
    “‘Tis a large house, and a sennight is not so long,” he said. Byrnstan, Llyrica’s champion, patted the arm of his new charge, winked at her.
    But Slayde set his jaw, knowing that now, and the days soon following, was not the time to have a woman ...this woman of intoxicating softness ...disrupting the order of his life and home. He had the state of the shire to attend to. His conflict with the East Anglian Vikings threatened to escalate to war, a probability for which he prepared himself and his men through weaponry and endurance training. King Alfred had also put StoneHeart in charge of the changing of Kent’s fyrd, when half of the Wessex laymen return to their civilian professions, while the other half take their places in the country’s militia. It was StoneHeart’s pursuit of the warlord Haesten though, which took priority over all else.
    When I have rid the Kentish citizens of him I will have proved to