‘Osgar! Thegn! Good morning!’
‘Hello Wistan, we haven’t seen you at this time for a while, are you back?’
‘Yes, I think I’m released from the custody of my family for now.’
Wistan glanced around the privy, finding it empty besides himself, the thegn of Gefndene and a lone figure at the far end of the bench, busy putting belt and breeks in order ready to depart. Wistan lowered his voice, his breeks and his behind to sit beside Osgar ‘Lytelman’ on the plank over the privy trench.
‘Lytelman, I thought I’d better have a discreet word or two with you. It’s my family that concerns us.’
‘No, no, let me guess Wistan. You’re returning to the bosom of your loving family, now they have found their runaway wolfcub?’
‘Ha. Ha. No. You’re not that lucky yet Lytelman. In fact I rather got the impression they wanted me out of the way as soon as possible, lest any lack of control on my part should queer their pitch. They don’t feel a ‘family heritage’ event would in any way be helpful to them right now, to the extent that if I embarrass them they said they’d have to “deal with me” — which is an incentive for my practice at concentration and cultivating a peaceful mind. But that’s my problem.
‘What they seem to be here for is, well, the old family business of influence and keeping in touch with power. The stuff I left home to get away from, particularly as no one would tell me what was going on. That seems to have been because they didn’t have high expectations of me; which is to say they could smell that I wasn’t a changer, then, but cousin Linda realised I am now. A late developer it seems. They seemed slightly surprised when I told them it happened because we’d met the one-eye’d man and I’d got the heritage as a gift. That meeting probably improved your standing in their eyes too; no one at home has seen him in generations.
‘Uncle Sigbert, cousins Cuthraid and Linda reckon the Wulfings’ time is come again. They say Wiglaf is inexperienced, temperamentally unsuited to kingship and will soon overreach and fall. He is a Hrethling, with more Yngling blood than is mete for a king of the Geats. If he falls the Geats will likely then have to choose between the claim of the Yngling king, Eadgils of the Sweons, or the only line strong enough to resist him which, no surprise, they hold to be the Wulfings.
‘I guess you’ll see the picture. The Geats are split, with parts of the West Geats being, if I am polite about it, lukewarm in their support of the king, East and likely Weather Geats being wooed by Eadgils’ people like that skop Fraomar the Far-Travelled who called at Gefndene and was definitely probing and emphasising his master’s Geatish connections.
‘Wiglaf needs to win this to bring the Geats together behind him with a success. I wonder how badly he’ll want to do that, at what cost to the ordinary warrior — and how hard some people nominally on our side, not just the Eowin, will try to stop that. We’ll need to keep our wits about us.
‘Anyway my business here is done — unless you’ve any questions?’