The king can compromise as long as the world doesn't know about it.

After confirming that Abbot Benedict had been kidnapped by thieves, Edgar gave up on the idea of paying a huge ransom, and the bastards may have learned of the king's arrival from the abbot, in which case it is difficult to predict how the lawless bandits will react.

Burton's life didn't stop with the tragedy, as farmers began turning over vineyards or repairing crushed fences. The priests of Buckingham were soon to hold a ceremony for the land, and Edgar, out of personal interest, forced the elders to agree to his presence to watch, and he could see the uneasiness of the other party, the old ritual of the restoration of the land came from a more violent era, rooted in the pagan memory of the Anglo-Saxons, and on the surface it was a "spell" approved by the Church, but the sacred faith itself was incompatible with the concept of charms, not to mention the fact that in practice, this "spell" called "Etherbert" by the English It's basically a complete pagan ritual!

The governor of Sittrickshire did not know why the king was involved in such a tiring country business, but he did not dare to disobey the will of the king, and the West Saxon warriors and Mercian knights who followed the king would not hesitate to carry out any orders of Edgar, and the king could do almost whatever he wanted, which was true.

The ritual began at sunrise, and the turf collected from all directions of the land to be restored, mixed with the trees and the milk of the animals, and the seven herbs, was consecrated at the altar of the church, a tedious process, and Edgar lost interest when the second round of the Mass sounded. He did not see Theowulf outside the church, probably because of his identity - shepherds were one of the oldest professions in the world, but they were pagans and traders by nature, and in many villages the herdsmen were not considered their own, they were herded from place to place, and they lived in huts in the mountains according to the cycles of grass and trees and the movement of the heavenly bodies, and only maidens and wool merchants would come into contact with them.

In present-day England, where large numbers of sheep belong to churches and lords, Theowulf was once the shepherd of Burton, shepherding sheep for the lords and offering wool to the county and village elders every year. Later, through intermarriage with the local population, he obtained the right to graze cattle on the communal land, but the peasants near the parish still regarded him as a barbarian, a timid barbarian. The nickname "Boneless" comes from a long time ago, when in the autumn of that autumn Theowulf drove his flock across the great river to the west into the meadow enclosed by the abbess of Brackley, and this invasion angered the bishop himself, and he sent ten thugs to confiscate Theowulf's sheep, and many people were a little afraid of the rough young shepherd, but when the thugs arrived, they found a huge pancake waiting for them, and Theowulf invited them to a sumptuous dinner to ward off the calamity. After the news spread by those he had invited to accompany him, the "Boneless" became a well-known nickname near and far.

Once in the wilderness, Edgar, cloaked in a cloak and disguised as the governor's squire, heard more local rumors, many of them about Elder Alden, or more precisely, about the old fellow's young wife, Lady Hildegard. The countryside of this era was the frontier of faith, and Augustine's creed did not penetrate into the countryside even on the mainland, let alone in a land heavily influenced by the customs of the Danfa region, where it was not considered immoral for the people to consecrate bread and sleep with maids in their own way.

It was not surprising that the king heard the villagers relishing the names of the young Lady German's bed, and surprisingly, Theowulf was at the center of these scandals! More than one woman compared the shepherd's thing with that of Father Bilig, whose smell of garlic and cheese was evidently diminished, and the priest was a respectable figure, many of whom had heard of the saint's name as children, and whose husbands did not care that their wives slept with such a saint, but only warned them to be wary of other men.

Even so, the affairs of Madame Hildegard were not unusual, this was not a mountainous place in the west, and although the noblewoman would even laugh and gossip with the peasant woman on weekdays, the noble-born people were often much more picky in the choice of marriage and bed mate, and some of the more sensible villagers thought that the lady and the passionate Father Bilig might have had some private dealings, but the rumors of the other men were mostly nonsense.

To the king's astonishment, the villagers who had been attending the ceremony had not mentioned the bandits of Mercia for a whole morning, as if all the previous tension and precautions had not been present.

"What about the shepherds in the village?" When the groggy priest chanted the name of Mother Earth, which had belonged to the pagan Saxons, in a strange tone, the king asked the magistrate as if nothing had happened.

"My lord, I don't know that." The Governor of Sittrick replied hurriedly, as if he had been awakened.

"Looks like we need to talk to the Alden chief." Edgar brought up the name of the cuckold elder in many rumors.

"Grow in the name of the Father, and may the Lord bless you!" The priest's voice continued, and they needed to do so until after sunset.

At night, the leaves of the poplars trembled in the moonlit breeze, and the chief of Alden stepped up the steps of the magistrate's hall with a heavy heart, he had not expected to be received at such a moment, but the samurai in armor were clearly not to be disobeyed.

"We already know about you, Lord Alden!" The king's shouting almost frightened Elder Alden out of his body, but the old fellow held back his fear and did not lose his temper completely.

"What does Your Majesty mean?" The elder's teeth trembled, and his tongue seemed to be knotted.

"Of course it's your 'deal' with those Mercians, why, do you think we're going to know about the interrogation of the 'prey' you handed over?" Hearing the king's words, the magistrate hung his head in shame.

The elder's courage seems to have returned: "In order to survive, people will say all kinds of things, my lord, and the words of thieves are not trustworthy. ”

"And your wife, is her word credible?" With a wave of Edgar's hand, the eldest son of the Earl of Mercia greeted a young woman in a blue-green and silver shawl.

The noble warriors began to watch the tragicomedy between husband and wife, the jealous husband and the wife who pursued love, the performance of the two protagonists really lived up to expectations, the king didn't even ask a word, the couple who hated each other began to take the initiative to expose each other, and the monarch of Sittrick was stunned to learn all the terrible secrets that happened under his nose: the elders and villagers of Burton Village colluded with thieves in Shropshire, one side provided information, the other side robbed pedestrians and sold them into slavery, and the turn of events came from a murder, A relative of a blacksmith, a merchant who supplied them with weapons disappeared near the village of Burton with the goods stolen, and the robbers naturally knew about the fact that the fellow had come to see his lover before he died, and the chief came to ask for the stolen goods, but was picked up by the greedy elder and handed over to the magistrate.

"Where do you say, where did your husband keep Theowulf in prison?" Edgar interrupted the Germanic woman who was crying.

"He wouldn't tell me, he said that if I went to see the man again, he would kill him early......"

Edgar understood Elder Burton's fears, he was afraid of himself, and when he found out that his wife's lover was a friend of the king's, he was afraid that the matter would be exposed by the shepherd, and until then the old fellow had only repaid the "normal" anger for his wife's love with a lowly shepherd, and he felt that the relationship was an insult to himself, for which he might have found fault with the shepherd, but now he was apparently waiting for his own departure to kill the rival.

"Your Majesty, what now?" The Sheriff Sittrick asked feebly, for he had lost all hope for his future.

"Wait." Edgar replied briefly, during the day, while everyone was attending the ceremony, he asked Edwin to secretly interrogate the county chief's prisoners, and then in the evening, he saw the heroine of countless scandals, and now that everything was known, he naturally didn't have to worry about anything, Buckingham County Mayor didn't know how powerful a king was, but he would quickly realize it - the king didn't need to touch a finger himself, he could affect the life and death of countless people, even those who were outside the law.