Hild

7

HILD WOKE TO THE SMELL OF WOOL. Goodmanham stank of it. The week had been full of the chaos of shearing, and Hild had taken her turn with most of the other women and girls. She climbed out of bed slowly. Her back ached—and the top of her thigh, where a wether had kicked her as she helped flip him onto his back. She had a barely scabbed cut, the shape of a cat’s long pupil, on the back of her left wrist where the shears had clipped her. But yesterday had seen the last of the pitifully naked sheep whistled out of their pens and herded back to the hills by the black-and-white dogs.

A brief memory of rhynes and rattling willow tried to take shape in her head but she pushed it away.

She stretched, pulled on her blue overdress, the hem of which was now three fingers shorter than it should be. Hereswith yesterday, as she and Mildburh dressed—more finely than Hild, even though they would spend the morning in the dairy—had said that no Yffing should look so shabby. Had she turned into a savage away from her family? But she had not had the time to nag at Hild about it, not during shearing season when even the peaceweaver must work like a wealh; and Hild was bone weary, and heart weary, and she didn’t care about her clothes.

She slung on her belt and settled her seax. The haft was newly wrapped with rough ray skin, one of Mulstan’s parting gifts—the rest of the ray skin would make her popular with the gesiths, Fursey said; he was scratching his head over whom they should favour. Later today, she and her mother would meet with Coelgar to discuss Hild’s treasure, which had gone to York from the wall, and to decide what equivalents from the Goodmanham hoard she should be awarded. Part of her personal treasure had been a bolt of silk given in Alt Clut, but Onnen had told her privately at the time that it was old and no doubt rotten in places.

Onnen had a better idea of what, exactly, had been on that packhorse, but Onnen was not here.

As she combed her hair with her fingers she turned, as was now her habit, to the north and east, the direction of the Bay of the Beacon, to Cian and Begu. She tucked her hair behind her ears. Perhaps Onnen combed Begu’s hair now.

Today she would attend her mother in the main weaving hut. Post-shearing, when hands were soft and smooth with sheep grease, was when the most intricate patterns using the most delicate yarns were set up on the looms. She was the only ungirdled girl to work on the main loom, the only one tall enough. The only one with the pattern-making mind, her mother said. The only one without a gemæcce.

She refused to think about the beautifully carved but clumsily painted box on its shelf above her bed, the eight ivory wafers wrapped in violet linen.

Fursey happened to be lurking at the bottom of the hall steps. His skirts were clean, well cut, and very black; his forehead tonsure smooth and shining; his cross made of heavy gold. Not long after they arrived at Goodmanham, Hild had seen a priest who had come about other business give him a freighted look, and she’d known, from watching her mother all these years, that later, when no one would see, there would be an exchange of information and a small, heavy purse.

“I’ll walk with you,” he said. Hild nodded. They both walked carefully, with their skirts held high; it had been a dry month. The dust made Fursey sneeze. In the distance four men shouted and swore as they whipped the oxen hauling a freshly cut oak for the expanded temple enclosure Edwin had given Coifi leave to erect. One ox lifted its tail and squirted shit.

Fursey said, “May they have time to enjoy their heathen temple.”

She wanted to know what he meant but in the game they played she lost points if she had to ask.

“I’d give them a year. Two at most.”

She said nothing, hoping her silence would goad him into explaining.

Two wealh, edge-rolling a half-full barrel of stale urine towards the hut where the fleece would be washed later in the day, saw Fursey and straightened. As they passed, Fursey made a hand gesture, the one Hild now knew was a sign of Christ’s cross. The darker wealh bowed. The urine stank. The barrel had been by the door of the hall for a month, gradually filling, but in the open air its sudden reek made Hild want to wipe the inside of her mouth with her sleeve.

They walked on. Fursey was still silent, still smiling when they reached the sunken weaving hut where today she would work with her mother. Her mother, who hadn’t said a word when Hild came back without Onnen.

Hild stopped by the southwest corner of the low roof where the door, like a trapdoor, lay open. “You can’t come inside,” she said.

“Well, no. But you’ll both be coming out soon enough.”

“Not today. We’ve a deal of work.”

“Oh, yes. Today. Today most definitely.”

She paused with her palm on the first rung of the short elm ladder leading down to the weaving floor, but Fursey just smiled at her. She shook her head, not wanting to play his game today, swung herself onto the ladder, and climbed down.

The hut was small and square, with a beaten-earth floor and brightly coloured loom weights stacked by size on narrow shelves. The loom was in the northeast corner, flooded with light. Beside it stood her mother.

Breguswith blazed with triumph. She shivered with it. Her eyes flashed brighter than the blue-glazed loom weights, brighter than the lapis on her veil band, brighter than the hilt inlay on her edgeless Kentish sword, thrust through her belt, which she used as a weft beater.

“Rædwald is dead!”

Hild stood very still. Rædwald. Overking of all the Angles, who had helped Edwin kill Æthelfrith and drive the Idings into exile. Sulky Eorpwald, Rædwald’s second son, who had been too young to fight at Edwin’s side. Eorpwald, who would step into the kingship of the East Angles—but Edwin would inherit the mantle of overking, the most powerful Angle in Britain.

Hild saw immediately what this meant for them. “Hereswith,” she said. Hereswith. So soon.

Her mother nodded. Hereswith was now an overking’s peaceweaver. This was Breguswith’s chance to build for the family power and kinship beyond Northumbria, beyond her own kin in Kent. They would need it. All kings fell, even overkings; it was their nature. And Edwin had many enemies, not least of them his own kin—though no one spoke of Tinamutha and Bebbanburg, and cousin Osric’s betrayal, not even Hild and her mother: Never say the dangerous thing aloud. Hereswith’s marriage would give them a second power holding. But it meant she would leave.

“Eorpwald is married, of course, but he’s weak. And when he topples, his sons will be too young for kingship. The power then would fall sideways to the sons of Eni.”

Eni, Rædwald’s dead brother. “Æthelric Short Leg,” Hild said. The eldest, already subking and lord of the North Folk, who called him Ecgric. Hereswith and Æthelric. “How does she feel about marrying a man with the same name as granfa?” How does she feel about leaving her family? But it was always her wyrd.

“We’ll find out. After the king has the news.”

Mother and daughter considered each other. Different hair, different eyes, different hearts. Both tall enough that people whispered of etin blood. Both with bright, pattern-making minds.

Hild said, “When will she leave us? Or…” Hereswith needs training. Hereswith was the eldest, the best path to power. “Will you… will you go with her?”

“Oh, we’ll all go. If I know Edwin. A royal progress. The king, the æthelings. All the royal family. Even Osric.”

Especially Osric. You didn’t leave powerful kin of questionable loyalty at your back. But who would stay in East Anglia?

Breguswith slid her beater up and down in her belt, thinking. “The overking must show his wealth, the loyalty of his men. Every belt buckle must be gold, every chape silver, every veil like gossamer. Shoes will be new, rings heavy, horses proud. We will shine. We must move swiftly. I’ve sent messages, and I have people whispering in Eorpwald king’s ear and those of his ealdormen, but Eorpwald’s mind is as shallow as a milk tray, easily swayed by gold closer to hand. Others will be bidding for Æthelric. Even though your sister is now the overking’s peaceweaver, we must show our strength and make our persuasions in person.”

Someone at the top of the ladder sneezed.

Breguswith smiled. “He may come, too.” She raised her voice slightly. “Only tell him he must find more subtlety in his messengers. I had word of this one’s coming long, aye long, before his arrival, and could have seen to it that his message never arrived.”

Hild said nothing. She knew Fursey, knew the sound of his sneeze; that one had been deliberate. Her head was full.

“We’ll finish setting up this pattern, but the weaving we’ll leave to others. We must bend our minds to our plans.”

But it was nearly middæg and the weaving hut was brimming with buttercup light when they tied off the last loom weight. Breguswith tested the tension of the warp. “We’ve been too long here. I don’t know what’s wrong with you today.”

Hild nodded. She hadn’t said a word for hours. Her mouth felt turned to stone. Hereswith. Hereswith and Begu and Cian and Onnen.

“You’ll talk to Coelgar on your own. Or take that clever priest of yours. He likes to dicker. I must see the king.”

Hild nodded again. She would be glad not to attend Edwin. She had her father’s hair, more so every day. When her uncle was thinking of power and dynasty it was best not to come to his attention. And she had a lot to think about.

Already middæg. She had no time to find the hornbeam over the river, her preferred thinking perch. She made for the kitchen garth. At this time of day, the herbs would already have been snipped and the rhubarb pulled, and in the shadow of the south wall, overhung by the orchard apples and plums, it would be cool and quiet.

But when she got there, she found a young wealh with thick eyebrows and pretty black hair spreading manure from a loosely woven brown willow basket. The garden stank.

“You,” she said, and the wealh dropped the basket and ran to where Hild stood by the gate. “You know Fursey the Christ priest?”

The wealh bobbed her head.

“Find him. Bring him.”

When the wealh had gone, Hild moved to the bed of lavender, for the smell, and sat on the grass. Bees bumbled from bloom to bloom. Such clumsy creatures, always bumping into things. She followed the progress of one from the lavender to the foxgloves, which her mother said was good for the faint of heart. Would Hereswith quail? Or would she blaze with triumph like their mother and walk away without a backward glance? The king would never let Hild go, not now. Not until she was dead or of no more use.

The furry bee crawled inside the flower bell, emerged a moment later covered in gold, like a triumphant queen. She didn’t want to think about queens. Its legs looked thicker, too. She stood and followed as it bumbled over to the pots of weld growing near the kitchen door. She knelt and waited for the bee to emerge.

Behind her, the gate creaked. Hild turned: the wealh, now looking pale. Hild realised she was kneeling in shit, and the wealh, wise in the ways of the world, knew she would most likely be blamed. But then the gate creaked again, and Hild dismissed the wealh from her thoughts.

Fursey walked carefully. She could smell the white mead from here.

He smiled at her expression. “It’s a big day: Edwin, overking. It’s important for a foreigner to drink the overking’s health and life with enthusiasm, to show loyalty.”

Hild just pointed at his cross, which hung twisted. While he fumbled with it, she went back to the lavender and sat. The bees were still bumbling about. Stupid bees. They were all stupid. Or maybe just her.

“You let my mother know what you’re about,” she said, in Irish, just in case. “On purpose. My mother knows this. And you two are deep in your game, and I am one of those bees, sent by the queen bee to buzz from hive to flower, not knowing what’s really going on.”

“Well,” he said. “I’m surprised it took you so long.” He settled comfortably on the path by her feet and smiled blandly. “So, now. You dragged me away from my mead for a pressing reason?”

Her thoughts tangled in her head. Hereswith. Her mother. Hereswith. She was so lonely. Edwin. Plots… After a helpless moment she told him instead about Coelgar and the negotiation planned for middæg.

Fursey nodded and, while clearly aware of her frustration, asked her sensible questions about the weight of dishes and their size, the lustre of the cloth Coelgar had carried off to York.

“And do you want treasure of like kind—a dish for a dish, a jewel for a jewel—or what the treasure represents?”

But Hild tugged some more at the knot in her head. “What did you mean, you’re surprised it took me so long?”

Fursey glanced at the wealh, working her way up the lavender bed with her manure basket. “I’d recommend gold and hacksilver, and yes, some silk if they have it. Gold is well and good, but it’s not subtle. Silk as a gift is subtle. And while you have fripperies for men—I’ve taken the liberty already of gifting Coelgar, the æthelings, your mother’s men Burgræd and Burgmod, and young Lintlaf with your ray skins—you’ve not many for women.”

The wealh began moving back down the bed on the other side.

“What I meant was what I said. You had many clues—Christ knows I laid them nicely in your path—but you were slow picking them up. These days there is no luxury to be slow. Events are moving from a trot to a canter. Soon they will gallop. You must have a firm hand on the reins. And you must learn to look ahead—”

“I always look ahead. I’m a seer.”

“Take your mother. You spoke of her as a queen bee. That’s because she thinks herself a queen.”

“She should have been.”

“But she is not. Remember that. The world is full of should-have would-have. As your poets say, ‘Fate goes ever as it must.’ You must, you must, learn to see the world as it is.”

Hild was so sick of musts. She plucked a stalk of lavender and sniffed at it.

Fursey tapped her on the arm. “You’d rather smell lavender than shit. I understand. You’re not yet eleven. Your father is dead. Your sister is leaving. Your, well, let us say your childhood companion has left already. The king fears you—oh, yes, he does. Listen now. It is true that a maid two years from her womanhood should not have to see the world as it is, but you’re not a maid. No, I said listen now. You are a prophet and seer with the brightest mind in an age. Your blood is that of the man who should have been king and a woman who is half sister to the king of Kent and wants to be a queen. That’s what the king and his lords see. And they will kill you, one day. If not Edwin, then the king who kills him.”

She threw her lavender at the wall. A bee zuzzed in surprise and bumped into the apple budding on a bough overhanging the wall.

“Of course, they’ve already tried. But you know that.”

She looked at him.

“Ah, now, that’s better. And you know who, too. The king’s cousin—your cousin—at the mouth of the Tine.”

Hild’s spine went rigid.

Fursey smiled. “No one can hear us. I walked the orchard before I came to find you. Always remember that: Scout the ground. The only person nearby is that slave. And even if she has the Irish, which I doubt, she isn’t close enough. So let us speak of what the king will not: cousin Osric sitting athwart the Tine valley and its flow of trade from the whole north and east. The man who has almost as great a claim to Deira as your uncle, and near as many men.”

She shook her head. Never say the dangerous thing aloud. Never.

Fursey waved to get the wealh’s attention. He called, “If you’re about finished with this lovely manure, the lady and I would appreciate a jug of beer.” The wealh put down her manure basket and approached.

She bobbed her head. “Father?”

He repeated his request in Anglisc. She bobbed again, then glanced at Hild, who, after a moment, nodded. “But bring small beer.” Before Fursey could protest she said, “Coelgar is a canny bargainer. I don’t want you any drunker.”

When the wicker gate slapped behind the wealh, Fursey said, “They treat you like a prince, so think like one. Your mother does. She’s already planning. She’ll wed your sister to the man who’ll become king of the East Angles. Why?”

“So we’ll have somewhere to run. When it’s time.”

He laughed. “Do you really think so little of your mother? No. Try again.”

Hild went blank.

“Think. What do you know of Rædwald?”

“He’s dead.”

“And?”

“And he was rich.”

“Ah. Good. And?”

“But I don’t see what good it is to be rich if someone like my uncle with all his gesiths will come along and take it all away.”

“What do you think pays for gesiths? Gold. And there’s as much gold to be had from trade as from killing a man and taking his. More. Think. See the whole isle. Who controls the flow of trade?”

She hadn’t thought about this before. “Osric?”

“He controls the trade that flows from the north to the Tine valley.” From the Picts, the Gododdin, the Bernicians, the north Deirans. “But Rædwald, now Eorpwald, soon Æthelric, controls the Anglisc trade for all of the south, trade with Frankia, Rome, Iberia.”

Suddenly she saw the whole east side of the isle as one strong warp, weighted by the overking, with the main pattern wefts flowing through Tinamutha and Gipswīc, lesser threads through Lindum and the Humber, and minor threads like the Bay of the Beacon. But cloth had more than one warp.

Fursey was nodding. “Now you begin to see. Who hates your uncle with a deep and abiding hatred?”

“Cadfan and his son Cadwallon.”

“Why?”

Hild didn’t see what that had to do with anything. “Because my uncle was foster-son to Cadfan, and he and Cadwallon quarrelled—”

“Ha! That old Cain and Abel story. No doubt they did quarrel, boys do, but this is a hatred of kings. The fight for wealth and power. For gold. Edwin is now overking of the Anglisc. All ports in the east bow to him. Just as all ports in the west bow to Cadfan. Dál Riata and Alt Clut, Rheged and the Irish—to reach the wines of the Franks, the priests of Rome, they must all bend the knee to Gwynedd.”

Hild frowned. “Sometimes ships from Less Britain stop at Caer Uisc in Dyfneint.”

“And Dyfneint bends the knee to Cadfan of Gwynedd.”

It was true. “But my mother, and Hereswith—”

“Someone will be overking after your uncle. Your mother is plotting. With East Anglia in her pocket—”

“She’ll gather the next weft. Osric?”

“Perhaps. But don’t forget the Idings, also your cousins. Most of them.”

Not Eanfrith, the eldest. His mother was Bebba of the Bryneich. But when she’d died Æthelfrith had taken Edwin’s sister Acha to wife. Hild’s aunt. You’re all cousins in this benighted wood. She couldn’t remember who’d said that.

A thought struck her. “And you. You’re woven through the other warp.”

He tilted his head and smiled slyly. “My king hates your king. But he also hates the other Irish kings and the Dál Riata, who are sheltering the younger Idings. So we might be on the same side. Or we might not. But the end of that song is not yet written. For just a little while, at least, I am your friend.”

The gate creaked.

“Blessings upon you!” Fursey called to the wealh in Anglisc, while making the Christ sign at her with one hand and taking the beer with the other. Hild wished that she had let the wealh bring full beer, or even mead. Hereswith. Osric. Hereswith…

Fursey drank, sighed with pleasure, drank again, handed the jar to Hild, and stood. “And now we must go talk to a man about a dish.”

After the long negotiation with Coelgar—though Fursey did most of it—it was a relief to step into the dairy shed. The windows and doors were hung with gauzy white cloth, which let in light and air but not flies. The smell of curdling milk coated the back of her throat. The floor, like the weaving hut’s, was hard-packed dirt, almost black from a decade of milk spills.

She walked past the rows of benches holding lidded clay pots nested in straw where the warm skimmed milk was clabbering, down a step and through a heavy elm door to a cooler room, the creamery.

Mildburh had a two-handed grip on a butter churn and was pumping it up and down, up and down. Along her spine, her pink underdress had darkened to red. She turned at the waft of warm air through the door and smiled, but didn’t stop churning. Hereswith, sleeves unpinned and hanging through her girdle, did not even look up. She was tilting one of the shallow square oak trays where the milk had lain since yesterday morning’s milking for the cream to rise to the top. As the tray tilted to the bottom right corner, she leaned forward and laid her right forearm across the lip, pouring thin greyish skim milk in an expert stream from the corner into a brown pot and collecting cream in a thick lake against her arm. When the stream stopped she let the tray lie flat again and ran her forearm lightly along the edge to skim off the cream. Then she looked at Hild.

Hild hadn’t set foot inside a dairy since she had left with the war band.

Hereswith looked deliberately at the empty churn in the corner, then back to Hild. “Does the king’s seer, armed and dangerous, wish to sully her hands?”

Hild didn’t know whether to stab her sister or kiss her. But that’s what sisters were for.

She set the lid to one side and picked up the churn by one of its handles. She examined the carved tools hanging from the wall and selected a flat-bladed spatula. She carried both to Hereswith.

“I’ll lift,” she said. Hereswith frowned, but Hild wasn’t smaller anymore. She picked up one end of the tray. It didn’t weigh as much as she thought it would, and she tilted it too sharply. Hereswith slid the open churn under the tray just in time and used the scoop to guide the slipping cream.

Mildburh’s churn paddle thumped up and down more slowly as her cream turned to butter.

Hild and Hereswith moved on to the next tray and then the next. They worked smoothly until all the trays were empty. Mildburh turned the butter out of her churn onto a granite slab set in an elm bench, and she began to shape it with wooden paddles.

While Hereswith wiped her arm and pinned her sleeves back on, Hild fetched a lump of grey salt for Mildburh and mortar and pestle to crush it in. She loved the gritty crunch and thump under her hand. It sounded like a cat eating a bird.

When they were done, Hereswith brought them a dipper of buttermilk and they drank. Hild wondered how many times they had shared buttermilk in the dairy and if they ever would again.

Hereswith wiped the flecks of butter from her chin and said to Hild, “You’re stronger.”

“I’m bigger.”

Hereswith nodded, looked her over. “Taller than Mildburh.”

“As tall as you.”

It came out as a challenge, and two years ago it would have led to a fight, but after a moment Hereswith said only, “But not even half as filled out. You’re as straight up and down as that ridiculous knife.”

“It’s a very useful knife.”

“It’s a very big knife,” Mildburh said.

“I cut an Irishman with it.”

Mildburh looked horrified and thrilled. “Did you kill him?”

“No. But he bled a lot. And shrieked.”

“Men don’t shriek,” Hereswith said.

What did her sister know of such things?

“Was he trying to have his way with you?” Mildburh said.

Hild stared. The thought had never occurred to her.

Hereswith laughed. “No,” she said to Mildburh, “he was probably just trying to steal the king’s prophet. She’s worth a king’s ransom, they say. Even if she looks like a slave wealh in that dress.”

Hild let that pass.

Mildburh slid her arm through Hereswith’s and looked at Hild. “They say you saved us all at Bebbanburg with your seeing. Do you… see anything about our coming journey?”

Mildburh’s eyes were muddy, honest blue, like bilberries. Hereswith’s were as blue as their mother’s, but without the cold blaze. No, Hild wanted to say. I see nothing. Let’s churn the cream and salt the butter and gossip about your husband-to-be. But what could an ungirdled girl have to say about husbands? Except as threads in the great pattern woven by others. And what would they want to hear about travel and sleeping outside a hall?

They were still looking at her. She put her hand on her knife. “I see that you will travel safely.” How could they not? They’d be travelling with twelvescore gesiths and an army of housefolk.

She cut through the byre on the way back from the dairy shed. It smelt of sun on hay and of horse more than cow. At this time of year, the household horses were in their outdoor corral and even the milch cows were at pasture. Two stalls, though, were occupied: a shaggy bay pony and a tall roan gelding. She looked automatically at their hooves and tails.

The roan was shod in dark, high-quality iron, the hooves oiled, the tail long and well brushed. A horse from a royal stable. It was eating single-mindedly but at her approach lifted its head and rolled its eye. She did not step too close. A horse used hard and often, but no cut marks where you might expect them. A beast valued by its rider. She studied the length and strength of its leg muscle: one of the heavy Frankish mixed breeds. The Oiscingas of Kent had Frankish tastes in horses and cloaks, religion and jewels. So it had been a man of Kent who had spoken to her mother before speaking to the king. How did Kent connect to the east warp or the west warp? She tucked that in the back of her mind to discuss with Fursey.

The pony was a calm, even-tempered mare with a curious eye. A typical priest mount: ridden, no doubt, by the man who supplied Fursey’s information. She felt the skin between its forelegs. Cool and dry: stabled long since. The little pony snorted and when she patted its withers its skin wrinkled under her hand, and the feel of it took Hild back to a wintry day by the redcrests’ wall, climbing onto Ilfetu’s back just as the wind blew her cloak sideways, making the gelding’s skin twitch. Hild leaned her head against the pony’s neck, breathed that horse smell that reminded her of so many things, so many people. “Perhaps you are sister to Cian’s Acærn,” she whispered in British, the first time in months she had spoken that tongue. “Perhaps you will see him and Ilfetu on your travels. Tell him I miss, I miss…” Her throat closed. She straightened, said in Anglisc, “But no doubt Cian has a fine new horse now, to go with his fine sword and his foster-sister.”

The court did not leave that month, nor the month after. They would be a great company, four hundred strong, and riders must be sent ahead. An overking travelling with his court did not sleep on the ground, did not go uncombed or eat squirrels and figwort in the lee of a wall. He did not break his teeth on more-grit-than-grain ceorl bread, or let the ribs of his horse show through from lack of oats. He did not ride with one fist on his sword and his helm to hand but confidently, in brilliant clothes, to be seen, knowing his guard had cleared the road for half a mile ahead and to each side. He must be the pip at the centre of an apple of perfect safety and unstinting bounty. He must be as close to a god as any but priests ever saw.

Eventually, as the boughs of plum trees began to sag under their own weight, as the cornfields turned gold, as the constant hum of honeybees dropped a tone and maggots fattened themselves on the soft ripe fruit of brambles, they rode out from Goodmanham in great splendour.

Edwin, Osric—whose stripling son, Oswine, and daughter, Osthryth, had been left in Bebbanburg with Coelgar, “for safety”—the æthelings, and Hild rode bare-armed, draped in blue and gold, horses glinting with gold at headstall, tail strap, and saddle. Their scabbard chapes were chased and gilded and their hilts winked with garnet and blue enamel.

Breguswith and Hereswith rode under a canopy held by two of Coelgar’s men, with Burgmod and Burgræd riding behind, hands self-consciously on swords. Tomorrow the two women would ride in the wagons with Ædilgith and Folcwyn and the others, like coddled eggs, but today they rode on display. They wore marigold dresses with deep red borders and boots the colour of owl breasts, and as soft. Their ears and veil bands glinted with lapis and gold. Hereswith’s horse, a dark bay gelding, even had blue beads braided into its mane. Beside them, Mildburh wore the colours of her kin, the dead queen Cwenburh, a spring green, but with her gemæcce’s colours, marigold and red, in the tablet weave at wrist and neck.

The king’s gesiths’ belts and baldric buckles could each have rendered enough gold to buy a prize ram and two ewes. Osric’s were scarcely less splendid, and even the men of the Deiran thegns Wilgar and Trumwine could have been the gesiths of lesser kings. Many rode still spattered across face and sword arm with the blood of the sacrificial bullock. Coifi would stay in Goodmanham, home of his god, praying for an easy journey brimming with good fortune. He had promised the new enclosure by the time they returned. Hild still hadn’t asked Fursey what he’d meant by his remark about them only having a year or two to enjoy it. How did that fit into the great weave?

Fursey rode a creamy gelding. No priest pony for him. He rode now as a prince of Munster, with marten fur trimming his fine black robe and rings on his fingers—though being in skirts he carried no sword. And behind everything creaked the swaying wagons, pulled by oxen with white-painted horns. One wagon, the one with the gilded elm wheel hubs and the pliant willow bed covered with feather bolsters, Hereswith’s wagon, had a pale, sueded covering painted with the Deiran boar’s head in blood-red. Later, of course, that covering would be taken down and folded carefully until their triumphal entry into the vill of the king of the East Angles, and a plain brown leather awning raised in its stead. But even that leather was the finest cowhide, dyed in one batch to the colour of walnuts.

It took them nine days to travel from Goodmanham to Lindum, a prosperous wool-and-leather trading centre overflowing its crumbling Roman walls. The war band, taking it easy, could have done it in two—less if they’d been willing to abuse their horses—but the wagons were like houses on wheels and not to be hurried. They stayed only one night. The city reminded Hild of Caer Luel, though less ruined and more patched: thatching on the roofs where the tiles had fallen away, timber replacing broken stone lintels. The chief man, Cuelgils, called himself princeps. The walls of his great hall were painted like the fading pictures in the understorey of the hall at York.

“Princeps,” Fursey had snorted, during the usual ceremonies. “I doubt he can even read.” But he’d said it in Irish, just in case.

The milestone outside Lindum, beyond the city’s tannery and wool-fulling stench, was made of pale grey stone, as thick as Hild’s thigh and taller than a tall man on a horse. It was much taller than Fursey. Taller even than Lintlaf, the hero of the ride to Tinamutha and proud as Thunor of the new gold ring from the king, glinting at the hilt of his sword. But a hero needs to constantly burnish his deeds in the eyes of others, he must seek out opportunities to shine, and Lintlaf had appointed himself guardian to the strange maid and the prince-priest. The two reeked of wyrd. Something was bound to happen at some point, and his name would be gilded by songs of fresh prowess.

When they reined in by the stone, therefore, so did Lintlaf, and the column of wagons toiled on into the overcast afternoon.

When Fursey and Hild dismounted, Lintlaf sighed. He loosened his sword just in case, though the road hereabouts was well cleared of scrub and any possible hiding place for wild men and robbers.

While their horses stood patiently nose to nose, the maid and the Irish priest walked around the stone. The day was hot and bright as dirty water, with no sharp shadows, no clean wind. Perhaps the gods would fight later, throwing insult and thunderbolt at each other then weeping with rage until the ditches at either side of the road runnelled and gushed with their tears.

“‘Durobrivae something miles,’” the maid read to Fursey. She had to stand on her tiptoes to touch the wind-scoured numbers: LII. “The citizens of Lindum paid for this road. Is that right?”

“It is.”

“But on the last one it said Emperor Caracalla restored the roads ‘which had fallen into ruin and disuse through old age.’” The priest said nothing. “Fifty-two!” the maid said triumphantly. “Fifty-two miles to Durobrivae! What’s Durobrivae?”

“The place fifty-two miles farther south on this road.”

Which Lintlaf suspected meant he had no idea.

It was hot, and it seemed the stone would tell them nothing more. They walked back to where Lintlaf held their horses. He led the horses to a piece of stone—part of a broken wall of some redcrest building of long ago—which the priest used first to mount. As Lintlaf handed the maid her reins and she boosted herself into the saddle, he nodded at the milestone and said, “Are the runes favourable?”

“We’ll be in Durobrivae in… nine days. If the gods give us good weather.”

He looked at the sky and shook his head. “At least the rain will cut the dust.”

The priest rinsed his mouth with beer and spat. “Even dust is better than mud.”

“Too bad,” Lintlaf said. Gloomy lot, priests, no matter who they prayed to.

They cantered along the soft side of the road, Fursey sneezing in the wagon dust, until they reached the front, where they settled in behind the æthelings. Edwin beckoned Hild forward.

“What did the stones tell you?”

“That it’s the same distance to Durobrivae as we’ve travelled from Goodmanham.”

“And did the stones tell you that the road is very good for a while, so that we’ll do nine days’ travel in eight?”

She shook her head.

“I travelled this road eight years ago.”

Eight years ago. When he’d taken the throne that should have been her father’s, her father who died poisoned like a dog.

Edwin’s horse sidestepped. “Don’t look at me like that.” He had his thumb on his seax. Then he relaxed and laughed. “Eight years, eh, Lilla?”

Lilla said, “It rained then, too, my king.”

“So it did. But this time we have servants, and this time we’re in no hurry.” And he shouted at Coelgar’s young son, who was riding ahead with the standard-bearer. “Coelfrith! Send your men to find a place to stop.” He sniffed the still air. “There’s a river nearby. Bound to be a place to shelter and eat something hot before the weather gods start their games.”

They stopped a mile farther on, where a well-used trackway showed many travellers before had turned off the road to the graceful curve of a river with two convenient hills, a mixed hazel and oak wood, and what might have been the ruins of a bridge from the bank to the little island midstream.

The gesiths had time for an hour’s war play—they formed two shield walls and took turns pushing each other across the meadow and trying to stab at lower legs and feet with their leaf-bladed spears—and the housefolk to heat the porridge and roasted sheep and heather beer Cuelgils had given them in parting, before hissing rain turned their fires to ash and mud.

Some of the younger gesiths, half drunk, staged small group attacks with sword and shield. Like Hild, the older ones sought shelter. They knew from long experience that beer wears off by dark but clothes stay damp until morning, and wet blades and chain-link armour rust slowly and thoroughly if not sanded and regreased immediately.

Hild sat in her mother and sister’s wagon while the rain drummed on the waxed canvas pegged tentlike over the oiled leather canopy. The rain was coming straight down, so Breguswith had left the doorway unlaced, for the air and light.

They sat on the padded floor, their backs against cushioned chests cunningly carpentered to hold a variety of objects safely as they travelled. Breguswith and Hereswith talked quietly of etiquette in the south and eastern Angle courts, with Mildburh occasionally adding her perspective on the Saxons. Ædilgith and Folcwyn embroidered the sleeves of a dress, though Folcwyn spent more time wiping her forehead and neck than plying her needle. Hild lay with her head on Hereswith’s thigh, half listening, half drowsing, tolling through the carnelians around her wrist. She wondered what Ædilgith and Folcwyn thought about having to stay among the East Anglisc with Hereswith, and what Cian might be doing at the Bay of the Beacon.

Breguswith talked about ancestry. When she talked about her relatives, the Oiscingas of Kent, her Jutish accent broadened. Hild listened to the familiar chant. Her uncle Æthelberht, dead king of Kent. Her cousin Eadbald, now king of Kent. Æthelwald, her younger cousin, ætheling of Kent and prince of the West Kentishmen.

Hild tolled a bead, a big one, the one the colour of an old flame. Eadbald, uncle. She didn’t bother with Æthelwald—he was sickly—and Eadbald already had two sons.

Ricula, Breguswith’s aunt, married Sledd, of the East Saxons. Breguswith paused and looked at Hereswith, who chanted, “Sledd, father of Sabert, the father of Sæward, now dead, and Seaxred king.”

“And Seaxbald,” Mildburh said.

Hild tolled a little bead, the one with the brown occlusion like a drying wound. Seaxbald, cousin.

“They have a sister,” Breguswith said to Hereswith. “Saewara. Now wife to Anna.” Anna, Æthelric Short Leg’s younger brother and heir. “You’ll have a cousin at court.”

Saewara, cousin. Enemy or friend?

The West Saxons, Breguswith went on, Cynegils and his three sons, were friendly enough with their eastern kin.

She sorted through her beads to find the asymmetrical one, deep angry red. Cynegils of the Gewisse. Then three reddish-orange beads for his sons. One had a chip. She named that one Cwichelm, the eldest. Bad-tempered, all of them, and greedy.

Lightning cracked. Young, drunken gesiths hooted. Hild knew they would be jabbing their spears at the sky, daring Thunor to fling one of his bolts at them. She’d seen Thunor answer such a taunt, last year, just south of the wall. Thunor did not like to be made game of.

Fursey would be with the older gesiths and thegns, gaming, drinking, picking their thoughts. She pondered the Frankish horses in the Goodmanham byre, the fact that her mother had the news of Rædwald’s death before Edwin, before the king. Her mother was a daughter of kings, widow of a man who should have been king, mother of a future queen, cousin to every court in the land and not a few across the sea. And yet Fursey had had the news earlier still. How?

The rain surged. The wagon rocked slightly under the weight of water. The ropes thrummed. Breguswith’s voice rose and fell.

They rode through a land washed clean and humming with plenty, Lintlaf frankly dozing in the saddle behind them. His mail smelt of rust.

Hild tolled through her beads for Fursey, explaining who was the biggest and most brightly coloured, and why.

“You have forgotten the most powerful of all.” He leaned across her and tapped a small, fiery bead, almost yellow in the morning sun. “You forgot Christ.”

“A god?” He wasn’t supposed to talk about that.

“A decidedly worldly influence. The Frankish queen who married your uncle in Kent brought Romans with her. Not soldiers but priests. Bishops.”

She shrugged. “The wealh have bishops.” A mangy lot.

“Roman bishops are different. They’re as much ealdormen as priests.”

Hild scratched the back of her hand. After the rain, midges were swarming.

“These priestly reeves collect not for their king but for the bishop of Rome.”

The bishop of Rome. A kind of priestly overking, then, but unacknowledged. She tried to imagine a system of ealdormen who were reeving for an overking no one knew about. “Why don’t the kings kill the reeving priests?”

Fursey smiled.

“They’re useful to him?”

“Very. They read.”

They read.

The sense of the world shifting was so strong she swayed in the saddle.

They read.

One man in Kent or East Anglia could write something and give it to a man, who could gallop until he and his horse were half dead, then pass it to another man, a stranger, who also could gallop, or board a ship, and pass it to another messenger, and another. The message would cross the island in a day. It wouldn’t be garbled. It couldn’t be intercepted and understood by any but priests. Shave-pated spies. Not just skirt on one side and sword on the other but book balanced against blade.

“Close your mouth, it will fill with flies.” He looked enormously pleased with himself.