Hild

8

THE GLORY THAT WAS THE VAST AND GLITTERING vill of Rendlesham made Edwin very angry indeed. But he chewed his moustaches in private. In public—sitting at table with Eorpwald in the great and graceful hall with the beautifully tiled Roman-style floor and painted walls, riding past the golden cornfields to get to the king’s forest flickering with game, inspecting the vill’s port two miles away at Woodbridge with its acres of sail-making and rope-making yards—he smiled and smiled. His gesiths, who had seen this smile before, turned their dread into boasts and picked fights wherever they went; Breguswith was kept busy with willow bark and comfrey, mint and lavender oil, malt vinegar and honey. Even old Burgræd dislocated his knee in a wrestling match. Breguswith wrenched it back into place without a word and slapped on a poultice of warmed oatmeal. She did not offer him willow-bark tea or her more precious hellebore. She had no time for this foolishness: There were Kentish envoys, public and not so public, with whom she would rather be conferring. She, too, began to smoulder.

Hereswith was as tense as a dog before a fight. Æthelric, ætheling of the East Angles and prince of the North Folk, who called him Ecgric, would arrive that day from his hall at Deorham.

She drove Mildburh, Ædilgith, and Folcwyn to distraction changing her mind: She wanted the lapis braided into her hair and sewn to her veil; no, she wanted the garnets and pearls; no, the beryl and jet. Hild watched her hurl a veil at Mildburh, and then, as it floated airily to the polished board of the floor, snatch it back and tear it to pieces. Her sister wanted to cry, but she was a woman grown. No one must see her tears, not even her women, for fear of bringing shame on the family name. There was nothing Hild could do. This was Hereswith’s wyrd; it had been since Cwenburh’s death.

Fursey seemed untouched by the tensions of the rest of the Northumbrian party. He and Lintlaf had formed an unlikely friendship. One moment they would be laughing over a woman who dropped her basket of eggs when a crow lifted its wings and crak-crakked at her—a very bad omen, but only for the one so scolded—the next seeing who could skip a stone clear across the fishpond where the geese swam.

Hild found them annoying. They disturbed everything. One had to sit still and quiet to really see, really hear. She sent them to visit the temple Rædwald had built a decade before his death, and took herself off to the priests’ meeting place at the edge of the beech coppice by the stream. She settled out of sight in the deep, dappled shade cast by an uncoppiced tree. Beeches were rare north of the Humber, and she loved the way they whispered in the wind, like women before they fell asleep.

The black-robed Christ priests had flocked like crows to the vill after Rædwald’s death. They all worked for different kings, some with the crown shaved—Romans—some with the forehead shaved, but they all wanted Eorpwald to acknowledge the Christ god, all wanted to be allowed to start reeving among the East Angles in his name. Did the shaved foreheads have an overbishop, like the overbishop of Rome? When they rose one by one to speak to the group they spoke Latin, but from the smaller groups Hild heard Frankish, Irish, the comforting Jutish dialects of young Kentish priests, even, she thought, Greek. But no British.

Frankish was a strange, Latin-stained tongue. She understood perhaps one word in three. As always when trying to learn a new language, she opened her mind and let the sound wash through it.

An ant ran over her hand, and another. They shone in the sun like tiny drops of amber. When she was little she had crushed one creeping on a bench to find out what was inside it to make it glow like that. But it had left nothing but a dark smear on the wood. She ignored them.

A man was speaking intensely, passionately, with a strong accent, spattering words about him like molten glass. She closed her eyes. She didn’t understand most of it—heresy, apostasy, Gehenna—but he seemed upset about something Eorpwald had done.

She was tired of listening to irritable people. She stood up and brushed the ants and dust from her skirts. She would go watch the goldsmiths. Eorpwald had two—and three armourers and two blacksmiths.

There were more than two dozen men and boys, and a handful of women, working in the bend of the River Deben. The air was busy with the rasp of files, the chink of chisels, and the shirring thump of the slurry tub. It smelt of charcoal and clay, hot metal and wax. Four guards in matching leather tunics stood beneath a huge elm. Sun glinted on the scabbard of her seax as she approached, and they straightened and lifted their spears. Then they saw it was only a maid and grounded their spears again. The two boys at the slurry tub paused in their shaking of the watery clay until a woman at the polishing bench shouted at them.

The chief goldsmith wore a thumb ring and a thick silver twist in his long hair, and his slave collar was a mere gesture, light as a lady’s necklace. He was a Svear. A long-ago sword cut had laid open the left side of his jaw and knocked out all the teeth there. Hild picked her way between the workbenches and waited quietly by his place, careful not to come between him and the light. Eventually the Svear paused, blinked at her, then shouted something mushy and broken over his shoulder. A slave—his collar was heavy—grumbling in Irish, stepped from the heat and shadow of the furnace shelter, wiping his brow with his forearm. He took one look at the cut of her dress, the gold at wrist and waist, that huge seax, and rushed to fetch a little three-legged stool.

He dusted it with his hand, withdrew a pace, and cleared his throat.

“Would the little miss care for some water, at all? It being a hot day. And there being a spring close by.” But he kept glancing back at his furnace.

“What’s your name?”

“Finmail. Fin.”

“Fin, you have something on the fire?”

“I do, mistress.”

“Then see to it.” She looked at the benches of enamellers, chasers, polishers. “I am not here.”

Fin frowned.

“I am not,” she said in Irish, and met his sky-blue gaze with her own. He bowed and retreated.

She turned to the Svear, spoke clearly and carefully. “I will watch, if I may.”

He nodded and went back to his work, moulding something palm-size from wax.

At the next bench, a towheaded man rolled wax into little sticks and, with a knife heated in boiling water, cut their ends and fused them to another tiny wax sculpture.

A boy ran up with a heavy faggot of stripped ash twiglets, the kind of thing left after the cattle have eaten everything useful from their winter tree hay. He added it to the fire. The towheaded man put the wax model carefully on a wooden tray. A woman took the tray—again, carefully—and carried it to the slurry tub. At the tub, another woman was lifting out a slurry-coated net; she hung it on a line in the sun next to others. She checked two of the nets at the far end of the line, took them down, carried them to a bench where an old man with gentle hands coated the hard-slurried model in thicker clay, smoothing carefully until there was nothing but a ball of clay like a wasp’s nest. The faggot boy carried the clay to one of the kilns.

Bellows squeezed and furnaces roared. Tiny hammers chink-chinked. The river flowed.

Two creamy white butterflies—the same colour as the Svear’s wax—danced together around the tip of one guard’s spear, while he half dozed.

Hild returned her attention to the goldsmithing. She had watched the bronze casters at Bebbanburg. This was different. It was like watching seasoned gesiths marching from three corners of a rough field to slot smoothly into a shield wall, or listening to a bard build a familiar song. The Svear didn’t have to watch the furnace or mind the kiln, he didn’t have to shake the slurry, he had only to think of pleasing shapes and build them in wax—smoothly, unhurriedly—so that a clay mould could emerge from the kiln and be filled with gold. She thought of women always having to break the flow of their spinning to catch a child back from the fire, or pause in the heckling of tow to bind a wound…

Hereswith, married, with a child. Her nephew or niece. But she might never meet them. She should give Hereswith something to remember her by, something beautiful, something precious.

The sun climbed higher. The Svear stood, grinned—the way his cheek gaped was hideous; her mother would have stitched that when it was still raw—and gestured for her to follow. She followed him from table to table. She watched the melted wax poured carefully from a clay mould and saved for later; gold poured into the hot mould; the mould set in sand to cool slowly; a raw gold cast, a buckle, getting its gold spines snipped off—always one slave watching another when they were handling naked gold—and polished, then engraved. Back to the enameller’s table, where a man with a squint used the tiniest spoon Hild had ever seen to dip into various bowls of powder and tap the grains carefully into the minute compartments on a gold brooch, made by fusing fine gold wire to a flat gold surface.

“Red,” said the Svear blurrily, pointing to one bowl. “Blue,” pointing to another. They all looked white and cream and grey to Hild.

“How can you tell?”

He picked up a pinch and rubbed it between his fingertips. “Different.” Which war had captured him? His right palm did not have the sword-callus stripe; his left knuckles were not flattened from blows through a shield boss. He touched his finger to his tongue. “Taste different, too.” He held his finger out for her to try. Hild stuck out her tongue.

“Hild,” Fursey said from behind. “What on God’s green earth is so fascinating about watching yet another stinking savage make jewellery?”

Hild felt like a dragonfly batted to the dirt. She turned, angry. Then she took in Fursey’s mottled face. “What’s the matter?”

“Apostasy!”

That word again. She still didn’t know what it meant. Eorpwald’s guards might not know what it meant, either, but they didn’t like the tone. They unslung their shields. Lintlaf came up on his toes.

Men with weapons: as predictable as dogs.

“Stand down,” she said to Lintlaf.

“They are paid men,” he said, with the sting and twist guaranteed to provoke anyone’s temper. The guards levelled their spears.

“Doubtless you could take them even with your sword in your left hand,” she said to Lintlaf. “But you will not.”

No one moved.

Her thoughts came together, smooth as a shield wall: The fact they could check becomes the prophecy they must believe. She fixed her gaze on Lintlaf but spoke to all four men. “I have seen two lives dancing in the guise of butterflies about their spear blades; butterflies dancing with death. Lives waiting to be lost. I have seen it.” In her side vision she caught one of the East Angles nodding: Butterflies, he had seen them. “But no blood will be spilt, no lives lost here today. I say so. You will both walk with me.”

She nodded at the enameller, then to the Svear, and swept away, as her mother would have. They followed.

“Apostasy, heresy, evil!” Fursey hissed in Latin as they walked along the river, then sneezed, which made Hild want to smile, but she remembered Hereswith’s punch on her shoulder and didn’t. Which reminded her that she wanted to give her sister a gift.

Fursey was still spitting like a cat. She looked at Lintlaf for an explanation. He shrugged. “He went into the temple his usual sunny self—ha!—and came out like that.”

It took two hundred strides or more for Fursey to calm himself enough to speak Anglisc. Even then, Hild couldn’t make much sense of it.

“Stop,” she said. “Two altars? One altar for the Christ, one for our gods? Why is that bad?”

And Fursey exploded again like a duck from its covey, this time his Latin peppered with Irish.

“I don’t understand,” Hild said. “Are we in danger?”

“Our immortal souls are in peril! Christ will strike down the apostates! He will—”

“I’m not an apostate. Am I? Good. Are you? Lintlaf, then? No? Then stop it. Answer me this instead. Did the East Angles ever fight the Svear?”

“What?”

“The East Angles. Did they fight the Svear?”

Fursey, speechless, turned away. She looked at Lintlaf.

“No,” he said.

“Then how did Eorpwald, or Rædwald, capture Svearish slaves?”

Fursey, despite himself, said, “He probably bought them.”

“You can buy slaves?”

“Certainly you can buy slaves.”

Lintlaf said, “Coelfrith says that at Gipswīc, you can buy anything. Anything at all. It’s Rædwald’s great wīc. Eorpwald’s now. Like a vill, but a port.”

“Like Woodbridge.”

Fursey snorted. “Like Woodbridge the way Mulstanton is like York.”

Hild felt very rustic. It made her cross. And the fumes of the gold-working had made her head ache. “We shall visit Gipswīc. We shall buy a slave.” A wedding gift for Hereswith. More practical than a gold brooch. Someone to help her sister when Hild could not.

“My apologies, lady,” said Lintlaf. “But not today. Burgmod told me specially that you’re to be there for Æthelric Short Leg’s arrival.”

The men—Yffing and Wuffing alike—were already at their board, and Eorpwald’s womenfolk were being seated while the visiting women waited behind the hanging separating the women’s quarters from the hall. Mildburh peered through a convenient gap between curtain and wall, and gave Hereswith, Hild, and Breguswith a running commentary.

“And now Æthelric Short Leg is standing,” Mildburh said. “He’s escorting the queen to her place. He does it so well. And now he’s returning to his seat at Eorpwald’s right hand. He doesn’t limp.” She giggled—a very annoying giggle, Hild thought, like a whinnying horse. But she had such a headache; everything was irritating her. “And his legs are the same length. And not short.”

Mystifyingly, Hereswith blushed and looked at her mother.

“Saewara was right, then,” Breguswith said, and Mildburh giggled again. Hild knew what that meant: It was something to do with what a man and a woman do in the dark. She pushed Mildburh out of the way so she could see.

Æthelric’s hair was beautifully combed, as thick and lustrous as a beaver pelt, and caught back with a blue-enamelled gold ring. His arm rings were inlaid with garnet and more blue enamel. Like Anna, his brother, he had the dark hair and eyes and fine bones that hinted of a mother with west wealh blood somewhere in her family, though the muscle snaking around his wrists and cording at his neck and throat were anything but delicate. His quilted warrior jacket was the colour of old bronze, with marigold borders. His hose and boots were half a shade darker, the exact brown of his eyes.

Hild looked at Hereswith’s hair, shining like corn and gold; at her overdress of red and marigold; at the ivory underdress embroidered in blue and gold and red, the ivory wool veil secured with gold and garnets. Her sister could not have complemented Æthelric’s colours more closely if she’d tried, nor he hers. Even his enamel matched her eyes.

She put her eye back to the gap just in time to catch Saewara, as she took her place next to her husband, shoot a significant glance at the hanging behind which they stood.

Of course. Cousins. Her sister and gemæcce already had the beginnings of a kin web here in this foreign land. They wouldn’t be all alone.

The king’s scop struck a chord and the steward drew back the hanging with a flourish. The pipers piped and drummers drummed. Everyone stood. Even the flames seemed to roar as they entered.

Gold gleamed from every shadow, every hanging and dish, every arm and waist and veil. Jewels glittered at ears and throats and fingers. White wax tapers burnt like stars in silver holders down the middle of every board. Light sparked and shot and bounced from every fold and every corner. It hurt Hild’s eyes.

The noise and heat and music were overwhelming. Food and drink poured into the hall.

A swan on a great silver platter, its feathers boiled clean and glued back on with honey. Wine like blood, and mead the colour of sunshine. A sea of jellied eels. Sturgeon in a lake of bilberry sauce. Pearl-white bread. And music, music from all sides of the hall and from the centre, all playing parts of the same song. It was like being inside a lyre, inside a drum, inside a pipe. Hild thought her head might burst.

Eorpwald’s flat-faced queen carried the great cup from guest to guest, and one by one important men from different kin groups stood to toast. It seemed to Hild that Æthelric and his North Folk formed a distinct group, one of three: the North Folk; Eorpwald and his men; and another thegn, Ricberht, whose men seemed easier with the king’s gesiths than Æthelric’s. He looked Wuffing, but something about the bunch and flex of his shoulders, the aggressive jut of his chin, made her think perhaps he was from a lesser branch and easily offended. Like Osric? Her mother would know.

Edwin smiled at every toast, and drank and drank. Hild was offered the great cup, and again. White mead. She drank deep.

More food. More wine. Another gulp of the guest cup, and another. The world seemed as though she was peering at it through a hollow reed. She drank more of the white mead and it writhed down her gullet like a fiery snake. She drank again. The burning was something to hold on to as her headache threatened to engulf the world.

More food. More wine. Flames burning higher. Speeches. Songs. Long recitations of kin. Hereswith the daughter of Hereric, the son of Æthelric Spear, the son of Ælla, the son of Yffi, the son of Wuscfrea, the son of Wilgisl, the son of Westerfalca, the son of Sæfugl, the son of Sæbald, the son of Segegeat, the son of Swebdæg, the son of Sigegar, the son of Wædæg, the son of Woden.

Hereswith, she thought, sister of Hild. And she didn’t even have a gift.

Guests stood one by one and pledged mighty gifts. And Hild, drinking again from the guest cup, saw her wavering face reflected on the surface of the white mead, like a face slipping over the sea, leaving, leaving, and then she understood: heresy, apostasy, dancing with death. Her mother was right: Eorpwald was weak, he couldn’t even decide between gods. He would die. Æthelric would be king. But what Hild knew now, what her mother hadn’t yet seen, was that Æthelric, too, would fall. He was self-satisfied, pleased with his vanity, and not deigning to work for the respect of other men. Hereswith would flee to her nearest family: her mother’s kin across the sea.

Hild stood. She raised her arms. She was the bringer of light, seeker of patterns. She had just the gift for Hereswith, something to help her in the time to come: the truth.

Hild was lying down somewhere and every time she opened her eyes the world began to spin. She closed her eyes. Her mouth tasted of vomit.

“What possessed her?” Hereswith’s voice. “What did she mean by it?”

“I don’t know, child.” Her mother.

“But why did…”

Hild’s mind slipped off the table. When she came back Fursey was talking.

“Possessed her? No. She isn’t possessed.”

“She—”

“With respect, Lady Hereswith, although Eorpwald king has apostatised, using the word possessed where Romanists can hear you is not healthy.”

“But—”

“Go back to the table, child,” Breguswith said. “It’s your feast. Don’t let your sister’s gift spoil it.”

“Gift? She prophesied my—”

“Gift,” Breguswith said firmly. “Your husband will be king. Your son will be king. You will live long and happily… overseas, with kin. Go back. Smile at your betrothed. Tell your uncle all is well.”

The world was muffled for a time.

Someone slapped her right cheek. “Child. Wake up.” A hand behind her head, tilting it. A cup against her lips. A vile smell. “Drink.”

Hild squirmed weakly. But the hand was implacable. She drank.

A blink later she was on her side and vomiting violently.

The hand again, and then the cup. “Drink.” This time it was water. “Rinse and spit. And open your eyes. You can hear me.”

Hild opened her eyes: her mother, squatting by her head, a dull pewter cup in her hand.

“Good.” Breguswith nodded at the wealh to take the bucket of vomit away. She put the cup back to Hild’s lips. “Drink.”

Hild swallowed the lukewarm water.

“Now this.” Her glass-claw beaker.

“What is it?”

“Necessary. Now drink. Only a little.”

It tasted like burning earth. Hild felt her face turn instantly red.

“Again.”

“I’ll be sick.”

Breguswith laughed grimly. “You won’t.” Hild drank. “You will lie there for the count of fivescore. Then you will stand, wipe your face, check your dress, and walk with me back into the hall. You are a seer overwhelmed by vision, not a silly maid who can’t hold her drink. You will not hide. You will not hang your head. You will smile. You will eat. You will make a show of drinking your wine. One more sip of this. Good. Now gather your wits.”

Hild didn’t remember much of the rest. Her muscles trembling. Her insides hot and tight. The hall swollen with light and heat. Rows of pale faces with staring eyes. Gold gleaming from deeper shadows, though darker now, grimmer, like the stuff of dragon hoards and monsters and exiles… Æthelric saying something to her of a burial—would she see it? Smiling and agreeing. Smiling and sipping, hanging on, hanging on.

They approached Rædwald’s burial mound from the river at dawn.

Hild, on the first boat with Eorpwald and Edwin, smelt it before she saw it: the old, cold scent of deep, turned dirt; the smell of bones. Then bluffs on the eastern bank emerged from the mist. The mound loomed long, high, and oval against the horizon. Bare earth, easily twoscore ells long, longer than Edwin’s great hall at Yeavering. The gilded stem and stern post of a ship reared from each end. Six ells high at least. The carved eyes, gilded and inset with glass, glimmered with an otherworldly light.

Æthelric Short Leg stood at the prow of the second boat, his chief gesith beside him. His eyes burnt like a wight’s. He knew his fate: a warrior’s fate, a king’s. He would be ring-giver, hero, laid into the earth with his treasure like his uncle Rædwald; sung for on the river at dawn, in hall at night, on the road at noon. Remembered. Renowned. She had said so, before every Angle in hall.

The three boats cut silently through the clear water, then slowed. Slack tide, when the muscular surge of the water stops, is just gone, like a dying man’s breath.

Water slapped the bank. Boats rocked.

Eorpwald said in a strong voice, “My father, who was king.”

“Rædwald, who was king,” Edwin said.

And Hild and Breguswith, and the gesiths of the north and the East Angles, and Æthelric and Hereswith, and Anna and Saewara murmured, “Rædwald.” “King.” “Lord.”

The scop stroked his lyre and struck a pose. He plucked a chord and chanted:

“Rædwald, king,” they said.

“He is gone.”

“So, too, it goes.”

So it all goes. Hild shivered. She was cold and sick and poisoned to the bone. Her skin felt greasy and her teeth hurt.

Beside her, Edwin stirred. Rædwald the overking was dead and under the dirt. Now Edwin was overking. Hild could feel him swelling like bread.

Gipswīc, Rædwald’s wīc, was as big as Rendlesham, bigger, and humming with the sting and salt of a port. There were king’s men in their matching tunics and spears everywhere. And everywhere coins. Gold and silver, Roman, Frankish, Byzantine. And everything for sale.

Hild and Fursey and Lintlaf—who was vilely hungover and worried about his mare and her gaudy regalia, which they’d had to leave in the king’s enclosure: No droppings between the stalls, the guards said, princess or no, hero with a ringed sword or no—had never seen anything like it. Fursey muttered to himself about the dangers of pride and usurping the glories of heaven, and nagged at the two sturdy wealh Eorpwald’s steward had lent Hild to carry her small chests of hacksilver. Lintlaf assumed the dangerous-hero-with-a-quick-sword mien he adopted whenever he felt overwhelmed. Hild, at first wary of so many strangers, soon forgot her caution under the weight of sheer wonder. They wandered the waterfront—filled with ships, more ships than any of them had seen at any one time, and swarming with men in strange clothes and with skin of every colour (one was as black as wet charcoal)—stopping at random to finger merchandise, calling out to one another: Touch this! Look at this! Smell this!

Rhenish glass: cups and bowls and flasks. Wheel-thrown pottery, painted in every colour and pattern. Cloth. Wine. Swords—swords for sale—and armour. Jewels, with stones Hild had never seen, including great square diamonds, as grey as a Blodmonath sky. Perfume in tiny stoppered jars, and next to them even smaller jars—one the size of Hild’s fingernail—sealed with wax: poison. Lumps of incense wrapped in waxed linen in straw-lined baskets. Timber arranged in layered rows: oak and elm, poplar and birch; raw and seasoned. Bronze ewers. Frankish throwing axes. Pigs of lead and iron. Knives: too glorious to use, inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl; or plain, with sturdy elm hilts; or shark’s-tooth size with cunning sheaths, to be worn at wrist or ankle. One even fit neatly behind the great buckle of a belt—Lintlaf lingered a long time over that. A horn of some sea beast, twisted like rope. Ivory caskets. Cedar and sandalwood boxes lined with silk. Sandals with laces tipped with silver and blue glass. Belts. A six-stringed lyre inlaid with walnut and copper, and the beaver-skin bag to go with it. A set of four nested silver bowls from Byzantium, chased and engraved with lettering that Fursey, peering over her shoulder, said was Greek. But Hild barely heard him: Somewhere a man was calling in a peculiar cadence, and he sounded almost Anglisc. Almost. Instead of the rounded apple thump of Anglisc, these oddly shaped words rolled just a little wrong. Not apples, she thought. Pears. Heavy at the bottom, longer on the top.

She wandered away from Fursey, following the voice with the lopsided words, trying to make sense of them, and found herself in a ring of buyers watching an auction for a naked slave.

The Frisian auctioneer shouted, “For two scillings, done!,” and pointed at a plump man with a grey streak in his hair and a much-worn purse. Then he bent his head to the youth standing next to Grey Streak. “And a fine bargain, may I say, my lord.” The youth had a warrior jacket the same dark blue as Eorpwald’s, the same pelt-like hair as Æthelric. An ætheling. Of what branch? No doubt he’d been at the feast three days ago. But she didn’t want to think about that.

The Frisian gestured for the slave, a short-haired wealh youth with an ugly bruise along his left thigh and his hands manacled to a slave yoke, to get off the block. One of the Frisian’s men prodded another to take his place. A girl. A pretty one with hair the colour of honey, like Hereswith, and about the same age.

Hild’s lungs felt too big for her ribs. She turned away, willing herself to breathe. It was not Hereswith. It was not. Still turned, she saw another of the Frisian’s men using a huge key to unlock the sold wealh’s yoke, and the ætheling’s steward taking charge of him, moving with the slave and two gesiths to the edge of the crowd where two men sat at a table behind two sets of scales—and a counting board. She had heard of such things. But then the steward and the slave blocked her view of it.

“This is a fine and healthy girl,” shouted the Frisian. “See the plump muscles, the strong bones. Show your teeth, girl. Your teeth.” The sound of a goad striking flesh. Hild turned back. The girl, with a fresh red stripe across the top of her arm, stood with bared teeth. “Very shapely. Turn for the lords, slave. See those dimples? A lot of sport there. Good hips for childbearing later—”

“Skinny ankles!” the man next to Hild shouted.

“Show your dugs, slave. Lift them up. Good milk machines, those. Good—”

Two squealing piglets ran, tails bouncing, across the auction floor, closely followed by a hobbling wealh woman, swearing with abandon. The crowd laughed. The Frisian laughed, too, but the curve of his mouth was not jolly. His selling rhythm was broken.

He began again and got as far as how the slave’s hair alone could inflame a man, make him stiff as a spear, when the old wealh woman came back, a piglet tucked firmly under each arm, and the crowd applauded. He motioned her out of the way. She didn’t move fast enough. The Frisian nodded at the man with the goad, who slashed at the woman’s behind.

The woman shrieked and dropped one of the piglets, which ran into the good-humoured crowd, and the ætheling shouted to the Frisian, “You break her, you buy her.” The crowd hooted. The ætheling grinned and stuck out his chest. “Plus, now you owe me for the sucking pig.” The crowd laughed; their prince would take this foreigner down a peg or two. “Or,” the princeling said, “I’ll take a discount on the wealh.”

The Frisian’s hand twitched—Hild had seen Lilla’s hand do the same when he overheard a veiled insult to his king in another man’s hall—but he bowed. “My lord, Ælberht.”

Ælberht waved his hand. “Deliver her to me. Same price as the other.”

“My lord! This is valuable stock.” The Frisian thwacked the slave’s buttocks with the flat of his hand, a meaty sound. The man next to Hild breathed through his mouth. “Four scillings at least!”

“Frisian, I won’t bargain.”

“But my lord, a sucking pig is a penny, at most.”

“Frisian—”

“No,” Hild said. Her voice rang. Everyone turned.

She stepped forward just as Fursey arrived and snatched at her dress. He missed. She pitched her voice to the Frisian but kept her eyes on the ætheling. Now she knew why gesiths smiled in hall when they threw down their food with a shout, and stood.

The bones in her face felt light and tight. “Three scillings!” She didn’t know how much a scilling was, exactly, but she had two chests of hacksilver and could always get more.

“She’s mine,” the ætheling said, and put his hand on his seax.

Hild put her hand on her own. “No.”

The crowd oohed and stepped back a pace. Royal children with knives: better than a cockfight. The ætheling faced Hild.

Hild crouched, as she had seen gesiths do. The ætheling crouched in return, without thinking, as he had been trained.

Fursey hopped from foot to foot. “Stop,” he hissed in Irish. “Think!”

She didn’t want to think. She was sick of thinking. It never got her anywhere. Hereswith was this wealh woman’s age, being sold by Edwin—in a finer marketplace, it was true, but still, sold like a sucking pig. Cian was gone. Onnen was gone. Hereswith was staying here in a strange land. And maybe her mother would stay with her. And one day Fursey would leave. What did it matter?

She drew her knife. “It will be sheathed in blood.” There, it was said. Now no one but a kinsman could stop them without making her an oath-breaker. No more thinking. She began to circle.

The ætheling drew his blade and circled away. Hild studied his blade. It shimmered, oily as an eel. A good blade, with a good edge. Hers was better, and longer. So were her arms and legs. She overtopped him by three fingers. She shifted her knife to the blade-along-the-forearm grip gesiths favoured for serious knife fights, and felt light and free. She smiled.

The ætheling stumbled, and that was when Hild saw how dark his freckles were: He was pale with fright. He was just a little boy who had never drawn a knife for real, never faced the Dál nAriadne on the quay at Tinamutha, never thought his sister and mother dead and that he was all alone. This wasn’t his fault.

The piglet burst from the crowd, trotters twinkling. Hild moved easily, like a mother scooping up her toddler as it runs gurgling towards the fire. The piglet squealed as she swung it up by its hind legs, then stopped when she swept her blade across its throat.

Blood pattered on hard-packed dirt.

She wiped her knife on her thigh. Sheathed in pig blood. It would do.

She looked around the circle of silent men. To the ætheling she said, “Two pennies for your pig,” which was more than fair, and, to the Frisian, “Three scillings for the wealh.” She thrust the dead pig at Fursey. “Pay them.” The crowd parted silently and she strode through.

In Eorpwald’s garth Breguswith looked at Fursey, then at the blood across the front of Hild’s dress, then at the naked slave.

“Well. I hope she’s good with stains. Put some clothes on her.” She turned away, then back. “Priest, with me.”

When they were gone, Hild turned to the wealh, who was tugging at her iron collar, trying to ease the chafing. “What’s your name?”

“Gwladus.”

Oo-la-doose. A west wealh name. Southwest. Dyfneint. Hild had witnessed Edwin’s refusal of their man, Bishop Anaoc, and his plea for aid against the Gewisse, against war. Perhaps this woman was taken in that war. “When were you collared?”

“Last cider-making.”

The Dyfneint were great cider-makers. It was a land of apples, so they said.

Gwladus tugged at her collar again. She looked nothing like Hereswith. She was at least two years older, half a hand shorter. Her eyes were grey-green, and her hair would be paler when washed. Her whole body would be paler. Her nipples were more pink than red.

Gwladus covered herself with her hands. “Lady, can I have clothes? Like the queen said?”

“She’s not a queen. She’s my mother.”

In the kitchens, Gwladus, now in a plain tabby dress and with half a loaf in her hand, sat opposite the killer child, who said, “What skills have you?”

Gwladus chewed the bread and said nothing. Her chief skill wasn’t likely to please this one.

“I could sell you back to the princeling, Ælberht.”

Gwladus had heard worse threats. She tore another bite from the bread and thought. It was the best bread she had eaten for nearly a year, and Ælberht was probably also too young to appreciate her talents. She’d be best off here by the princess with the slaughter seax.

She tried to remember what she’d done the first week in the collar before she’d learnt her other skills. “I shovel shit.” Then, in British, to herself, “Gwladus of the Dyfneint shovels shit!”

To her horror, the princess said, also in British, “In Dyfneint, there is no shit?”

Gwladus wanted to throw her ale in the proud little face. But the princess would kill her, dead as a sucking pig.

“And your family,” the princess said, “what do they do?”

“My family are dead. Now.”

“So, then. You are lucky to be shovelling shit.”

It was true. Gwladus’s shoulders dropped.

The princess nodded at Gwladus’s collar. “Your neck is sore.”

After a moment, Gwladus put down her bread. The killer child was her mistress. For now. “Yes, lady.”

“Tell the kitchen you are to lave it with comfrey and slather it with goose grease. Then we’ll see about getting you a lighter collar.”

The doors to Eorpwald’s hall stood open but gloom filled the corners. No firelight, no rushes, no tapers called forth the glint of gold and jewels. Edwin sat with Lilla, Osric, and Coelfrith at a bench opposite the door. They were playing taff and sipping ale, but every time a passing shadow darkened the doorway, Edwin looked up.

Hild sat quietly with her mother in the corner between the wall and the inset doorway, where someone entering might not think to look. There were no housefolk present.

Breguswith nodded and Hild turned one of the elm tablets. The vine pattern, sunset red and gold, was barely visible in the gloom, but men, her mother assured her, wouldn’t think to wonder at that. Listen and draw no attention, she said. Quiet mouth, bright mind.

Hild listened to the muffled rattle of antler dice in their leather cup, the brighter spill onto the table, Osric’s mutter of disgust, the click as he scooped them up again. He and her uncle looked nothing alike. Osric was more like a badger: thick, splayed fingers, sloping shoulders, black hair, and pointed teeth. She hated him. Hated him for the mud and blood of Tinamutha. She hoped her uncle would one day burn him out of his sett, stake him out as a warning to all his kind.

A man in priest skirts entered the hall. Breguswith nodded. Hild turned a tablet. Breguswith wove the shuttle through the warp, beat the weft, nodded. Hild turned the next tablet.

The priest stood before Edwin’s bench and bent his head. Shaved at the crown: Romish. Edwin looked at him over the rim of his cup and Lilla gestured the priest forward. The priest raised his arms. Lilla ran practiced hands over the priest’s forearms and ribs, around his waist, down his thighs and calves. Clearly the priest was used to this: He turned unbidden for Lilla to feel between his shoulders. He had the blackest hair Hild had ever seen and a dark shadow along his jaw.

She dropped her eyes to the tablet weave until he turned around again.

Edwin put down his cup. “You have a message for me?”

“I do, lord.” A Jutish accent. Kent.

“Is it long?”

“No, lord.”

“Then spit it out.”

Hild leaned forward but at a frown from Breguswith leaned back again until the weave was taut. She turned a tablet.

“Father Paulinus bids Edwin king to remember his dream.” Paulinus. A reeve for the bishop of Rome?

“Does he now. Does he indeed.”

The men at the table did not even glance at one another. Clearly they knew of this dream.

“And does Eadbald king also bid me to remember?”

The priest hesitated. “My message comes from Father Paulinus.”

Now there were swift looks between Edwin and his thegns. Edwin leaned back. “But we have been remiss to keep you standing and thirsty. Sit.”

Breguswith rose, laid the weave in Hild’s lap, and bent for the jar of wine and five cups on the floor behind her.

Hild busied herself with rolling the tablet weave while her mother moved gracefully from king to thegn to priest, pouring and smiling. She could still make men watch.

When she was done she settled at the farthest end of the bench with the wine jar, giving the impression that the only thing on her mind was the hope to give exact and prompt service.

“So,” said Edwin, “from Paulinus. What of Mellitus?”

“Archbishop Mellitus went to Christ three months since. Our father now is Archbishop Justus.”

“Justus? I don’t remember him.”

“He is a wise and holy arbiter, my lord.”

“Of course he is. And does he, like Paulinus Crow, think it time to remember my dream?”

“I am not privy to the archbishop’s thoughts, my lord.” The priest drank. Hild heard his gulp.

“A little more?” Breguswith said in a very strong Jutish accent. “It’s the finest Frankish grape.” She smiled. The priest beamed back at his fellow countrywoman. “Though perhaps you are used to such things, spending time at Eadbald’s court with the archbishop.”

“Oh, no,” the priest said. “Father Paulinus does not travel at the archbishop’s side.”

“But I bet he wishes he did, eh?” Osric said.

The priest put his cup down.

Breguswith smiled at Osric but Hild knew from the set of her shoulders that she was irritated by his clumsiness. Hild didn’t like the way Osric smiled back.

Edwin smiled, too, but his smile wasn’t meant to fool anybody. “Forgive our cousin, priest. What’s your name?”

“Stephanus, lord. Stephanus the Black.”

“Then drink up, Stephanus, and we will hear more from Father Paulinus.”

Hild lay on her back in the pear orchard, arms behind her head, watching the leaves shiver in the breath of air that passed for wind in the flatlands of the East Anglisc. Where did wind come from? A great cave far to the north, her mother said, where everything was white, even the bears. From Arawn’s realm, Onnen said, stirred by the hooves of the horses and hounds of Hel as they hunted high in the sky. Especially in autumn, when the leaves turned brown and began to fall. These leaves were still green, but not for much longer.

In Goodmanham, the harvest would be in. Coifi would have celebrated a much-reduced Woden’s festival in a half-built enclosure. There would be no point going to a great deal of trouble celebrating the Yffings’ god when there were no Yffings present. But when Edwin returned, it would be as overking. Next year’s festival would be a thing of great pomp and ceremony. But Hereswith wouldn’t be there. Hereswith would never be there again.

She stopped thinking about that and wondered instead how autumn might be in Mulstan’s hall. Were Cian and Begu getting along? Did Cædmon still walk his cows on the cliffs above the bay? It seemed like a lifetime since she’d played in the kitchen garth, drunk Guenmon’s beef tea, stood on the beach with an angry Onnen.

That made her lonelier than ever.

So she sifted through what she had just heard in Eorpwald’s hall. Paulinus was colluding with Edwin behind his chief bishop’s back. Edwin didn’t like Paulinus. Osric was stupid, but Breguswith had smiled at him and he had smiled back. Sword and skirt, book and blade. She couldn’t understand the pattern. She wished the pear trees were big enough to climb.

Gwladus, carrying a basket, bumped open the wicker gate with her hip. Hild sat up and brushed at her dress.

“I’ll have to wash that, I suppose,” Gwladus said in British.

“Anglisc, Gwladus.”

“It’s all over filth.” She plunked the basket on the grass. Some kind of meat pie and a jar of ale.

“One of the vill wealh will do it.” A flock of young swallows swooped over the trees and settled on the great hall’s rooftrees, chattering. Where did they go in the winter? Did they fly south to the land of eternal sun or sleep, like squirrels, in some snug hole? Perhaps they nested in rows on the gables under the roof of the hall.

“Did your mam drop you on your head at birth?”

Hild blinked, then put her hand on her knife.

“There. Like that. Threatening to stab your own bodywoman. No one does that. If you’re displeased, you have me whipped.”

Hild frowned. “You want me to whip you?”

“No!” Gwladus leaned back and folded her arms.

Perhaps all wealh learnt to fold their arms that way.

Gwladus unfolded her arms. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Will I tell you some things?”

Hild nodded. The pie smelt good. Pigeon?

“Well, then. The vill wealh will not wash your dress because it’s your dress and I attend your body now. I do it. No one else.” Hild thought about it, then nodded. She reached for the pie. Gwladus didn’t move.

Hild sighed and withdrew her hand. “Yes?”

“If you didn’t want me for your person, why did you buy me?”

Because a slave can’t leave me. But she couldn’t say that.

“I’ll tell you then, shall I? You’re a seer. A seer’s woman makes sure the seer wears clean clothes and eats fine food and gets a decent bed to sleep in. She makes sure the seer gets the white mead and the hero’s portion and the bench by the fire, like the king himself. It’s a seer’s due. And do you know how the seer’s woman does this?”

Hild shook her head, looking at the pie.

“She is seen to have the care and protection of the seer. She has respect. She has good clothes of her own, and good food and… and a bracelet! And pretty shoes. And a warm cloak, and a bedroll to herself. And the housefolk will see how she is valued by the seer, see that offending her is to offend the seer herself, that she must be given in to when she asks the baker for the first hot white loaf and the cook for the first hare pie. And she has, yes, she has pennies in her purse!”

“Pennies?”

“Just one or two, mind. For those times when a visiting stranger has news. So that the seer always has the news first, for a seer taken by surprise is a very sorry seer indeed.”

Hild hadn’t thought of it that way.

Gwladus flushed. “It needn’t be pennies. It could be little trinkets, worthless things.”

“What is the worth of a worthless thing?” Gwladus’s flush spread. It was a pale bloom of a blush, quite unlike Hereswith’s dark rush. Hild did not understand why she had thought them alike.

“I didn’t mean to say you were a sorry seer, that you needed your visions bought and paid for. No doubt you are a good seer, a great seer. No doubt you’ve the keenest vision since, since…” Gwladus floundered.

Hild stood. She was taller than Gwladus. “Pennies, you said. You understand coins?”

Gwladus bobbed her head. “Yes, lady.”

“You will teach me. Then we will go back to the wīc.” She wanted to see that counting table.

“And you won’t have me whipped?”

Hild touched her knife. “A seer’s bodywoman is never whipped. A seer’s bodywoman loses her nose, or her hand, or her life.” The same punishment as a king’s bodyman, or a chief priest’s.

She had gone seax to seax with an ætheling. She understood why a king often threatened violence. It felt good, and it worked.

They all made the journey to the market again: Fursey, Hild, Lintlaf, the two bearers of the hacksilver, and Gwladus.

“Is it deliberate?” Fursey said as they rode along by a field of barleycorn stalks turning the colour of cured oak. Weeds showed bright green. “Child?”

“Um?”

He pointed to Hild’s blue dress, knotted up to one side under her belt, showing a faint stain still. “Is it deliberate? A reminder to the market sellers that it would be as well to give you what you want, at your price, before you pull that pigsticker?”

“Gwladus suggested it.”

“Did she?” He twisted in the saddle to look back at the wealh, who sat sideways across Lintlaf’s saddlebow, gurgling with laughter. She had started their travel walking, with the other wealh. “She’s a cunning thing.” He turned back. “What other pearls of wisdom has she dropped in your ready ear?”

Hild shrugged.

“I still don’t know what possessed you to buy such a vixen.”

“I need someone of my own.” Someone who had to put her first.

Fursey surprised her by agreeing. “Indeed. But have a care. This one’s as pretty as a grass snake but much more dangerous. See how she’s already charmed the oaf. Though, granted, he has no more brains than a bull calf.”

“She says I was dropped on my head at birth.”

Fursey shouted with laughter, and behind them Gwladus gurgled, and they rode into the wīc wreathed in mirth.

The counting table was grooved with vertical lines, eight long strokes beneath eight short ones. The grooves were inlaid in yellow enamel. The long ones each held four blue beads, the shorter a single red bead. The Frisian money changer slid the beads up and down as he counted and added coins for a merchant but moved too fast for Hild to follow.

Then it was their turn. One of Hild’s chests of hacksilver was emptied and expertly weighed under the eye of a Frank holding an axe who, every time he moved to brush at his weeping left eye, made Lintlaf twitch. The money changer asked Hild what coins she wished in exchange, how much gold, how much silver.

She hefted a gold coin in her left hand. The same size around as a cherry but as heavy as a plum. Good yellow gold, with a picture of a Frankish king on one side and writing that made no sense on the other.

“If I took all in gold, how many would they be?” She hefted the satisfying weight one more time, then put it down.

“By weight, the silver is fifteen and a half pounds. That would make”—flick flick flick—“fivescore and eight gold scillings and three silver pennies.”

She rolled one of the little pennies, no bigger around than a willow withy, between thumb and forefinger. “And if I changed half to scillings and half to pennies?”

Flick flick. “Fifty-four gold scillings and eighty-six-score and eight pennies. Less the eight for my service.”

“Three,” said Fursey. Hild picked up another gold coin, smaller, the same size as the silver penny but heavier. The Frank wiped at his eye. Lintlaf twitched. The lustre, like the sheen of run honey or parsnips cooked in butter, made her want to put it in her mouth; she put it down reluctantly. Fursey and the Frisian haggled for a while and settled on a fee of five pennies, with a promise of custom if they exchanged the second chest. Hild was dazed. Scores, hundreds of coins. And that was only one chest.

Coins were power of themselves. They didn’t need a king uncle or an almost-queen mother or the strength of a seer’s gaze. She could take a gold scilling or a silver penny and offer it anywhere in the wīc and everyone would understand its worth. And there would be no weighing of hacksilver or a gold ring, no haggling and accusations of inferior workmanship, just the weight of these Frankish and Roman and Byzantine coins.

She took two-thirds in gold scillings and one-third in silver pennies. The money changer counted the coins into small sueded sacks stamped with his mark. Fursey laid them in plump lines along the bottom of the chest. The two bearer wealh and Gwladus watched as if under a spell. Lintlaf watched the Frank. Fursey watched Hild. Hild told Fursey to set aside the short sack of four scillings and one sack of pennies and carry them himself. Now they would buy.

They were a strange procession. Word spread fast from the money changer’s table. Hild was recognised: a tall maid with fathomless eyes, a very big knife, and the pig’s blood still on her skirts. But they remembered she had paid, and paid well, for that pig. Every stall holder cried out as she passed and sent boys running alongside with lengths of cloth, or tiny glass bottles, or a basket of honey cakes.

Hild bought and bought until the wealh were staggering and even Fursey was carrying a sack of small items. Lintlaf kept his hands free for his sword, though Fursey noted that this would do him no good if he didn’t keep his mind free of the sway of Gwladus’s hips. Gwladus herself carried three bolts of cloth, finely woven but plain Kentish stuff in apple colours—green, russet, gold—shoes fit to her feet, and, most precious of all, a thin silver bracelet with a red glass stone.

One enterprising stall holder sent two piping boys to follow them and blow jaunty tunes until they would come see his wares. Hild remembered the stall: a green cloth laid over the table and cunning little steps built beneath to show a cascade of luxury geegaws. She stopped before a row of tiny matching red glass bottles with gilded stoppers. The stall holder encouraged her to smell the oils: rose, myrrh, sandalwood. She bought them for Hereswith, to remind her of Hild when she left to live with the North Folk with Æthelric. She bought lesser oils—rosemary, sage, lavender—for Mildburh and Ædilgith and Folcwyn. Then she saw an ivory comb carved with a goat and inlaid with gold and thought of Begu, scrambling like a goat up the hill, hair springing free of her braid. She would send it. She could. Writing and coin. She could send a message and gift to anyone, anywhere. She could watch and weave the pattern of the world. And all she had to do to earn the gifts to turn into coin was to see clearly, to see first.

She let Fursey negotiate prices while she looked over the rest of the items laid out on the green cloth. A silver hand mirror polished on one side and chased on the other, with an ivory handle, for Onnen. Gwladus suggested a small chest of unguents to go with it, “In case the lady is getting old and her face is changing.”

Now she needed something for Cian.

They moved on to the weapons stall. Lintlaf’s eye was caught by a small knife with a blue glass pommel and blue-tooled sheath strapped for the forearm. “Try it on,” Hild said, and when Lintlaf did, and beamed and flexed his muscles to test the fit, she gestured for Fursey to pay. Lintlaf’s lord and oath-keeper was Edwin, only he could give swords and hilt rings, but this knife was more ornament than a tool of death to be employed at the lord’s word. Giving it was permissible.

“Last time there was a cunning buckle knife,” she said to the stall holder.

“This, lady?” He held up the massive gilded bronze buckle but, perhaps mindful of her last marketplace performance with a blade, did not pass it to her.

“Show me.”

He obliged by putting two fingers in clever looped handles and pulling free a wicked tooth of a blade three inches long.

Hild and Gwladus were halfway up the steps to the door to the women’s quarters, carefully sheltering their burdens from the drizzle, when they heard Hereswith shouting. They looked at each other. Hild shrugged; they couldn’t stand out here in the wet. They went in.

The housefolk—four of them, all tight-shouldered and tense—did not look up, but Mildburh and Hereswith turned. Mildburh was red-faced, unhappy. Hereswith’s face was gelid and pale, like custard.

“And what unwelcome news do you bring this time?” Hereswith said. “Am I to die horribly in childbed?”

Hild had no idea how to respond.

“Oh, don’t stand there like a carving. Come in and keep out the rain. Tell me, what dreadful news does Ma have now?”

“I brought these. For you.” And she held out the silk-wrapped packet.

Hereswith took it, unwrapped the first fold, and burst into tears.

“But you don’t even know what it is,” Hild said, and to her consternation Hereswith wrapped her arms around her and wept harder. “What is it? Are you ill? What’s the matter?” She motioned Gwladus forward. “Here, I brought you buttermilk, too. It’s still cool from the dairy. Here.” She put the cup in her sister’s free hand. She didn’t know what else to do. “And summer ale for Mildburh.” It was Mildburh’s favourite. Always know what they like, her mother said. They will love you for it.

And then Mildburh started crying, too.

“Please, stop,” Hild said. “Please. Here.” She sat on the bed and tugged gently at Hereswith’s arm. “Sit. What’s wrong?”

Hereswith wouldn’t sit, but Mildburh did, clutching her ale.

Hereswith threw her buttermilk at a hanging of a hart hunt. It dripped solemnly.

“I’m to wed this Æthelric and follow him to the stinking fen that he calls home.” Drip. “Where he already has a woman.” Drip. “You didn’t predict that, did you, little seer? A princess of the South Gyrwe. A woman and two children.”

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Breguswith, hand wrapped around the pendant she wore, smiled, and said to Hild, “It isn’t a fen. Not all of it. And of course the man already has a woman, he’s a man isn’t he? He’s sworn to set the strumpet aside—sworn to me, and to Edwin, his overking.”

Hild wondered how much that meant. A man was lord of his own hall, king or no. And it was as Eorpwald’s brother, Æthelric ætheling of the South Folk, he had sworn to Edwin, not as Ecgric, lord of the North Folk. Ecgric prince—and ally of the South Gyrwe and East Wixna.

“Besides, the Gyrwe woman’s given him only daughters. He’s more in need of an heir than a peaceweaver. One son, or even the hope of one, from your sister and the woman will be forgotten. And Hereswith will have Ædilgith and Folcwyn with her, and six gesiths—hardly alone.”

Breguswith let go of her pendant: the biggest garnet Hild had ever seen, cut like a seashell and set among slices of the same stone. The workmanship was as fine as the Svear’s but by a different hand. Kentish.

Breguswith smiled. “Yes. A token of appreciation. Edwin is getting married. To Æthelburh.” King Eadbald of Kent’s sister, Breguswith’s half niece. Hild’s cousin. “She’ll come north next summer. With a priest, Paulinus.”

The afternoon of the day before they were to leave. In Hereswith’s apartment Hild smiled at Mildburh. “The kitchen has saved the very last of the summer ale. I told them not to release it to anyone but you.”

“I don’t—”

“I asked them to make sticky cakes, too,” Hild said. “With run honey and Frankish almonds.” Gwladus had arranged that. She said it had cost two pennies.

Hereswith studied Hild, then turned to her gemæcce. “I like sticky cakes, Mil.”

When they were alone, Hild looked about. The hanging was gone. Being carefully cleaned no doubt. She hoped Hereswith wasn’t in a throwing mood today.

She didn’t know what to say. Her sister, whose fierce whisper and poke were her earliest memory. Her sister.

She took Hereswith’s hand. It was smaller than hers now and hard with rings.

“Perhaps you really will turn out to be a giant,” Hereswith said, lightly enough, but her smile wobbled and Hild knew what she was thinking: I won’t be there to see it.

“This is your wyrd,” Hild said. “You’ll be a queen. You’ll have children.” In pain, and blood, and sweat. “I’ll come and see them.”

But her voice sounded false, and neither of them quite believed it. Wyrd never flowed along expected paths. Hereswith might die in childbed, and Hild wouldn’t know until Æthelric or Eorpwald thought to send a messenger. Even then it would be king to king: The peaceweaver has died, what do you propose?

“Learn to read,” Hild said.

“Read? I don’t—”

“Please.” She should have thought of it before. But she had never left her sister before. “You must. Find a priest to teach you. Pretend you’re interested in their god.”

“What—”

“The Christ. Please. Learn to read. For me.”

“Does it really mean so much to you?” Hereswith’s eyes were so blue. Sister blue. “I’ll always be your sister. I will come if you call. I swear it to you. Please.” She saw that her hand was squeezing Hereswith’s to purple.

Hereswith tugged Hild’s hair, as she had when they were little, but gently. “I’ll learn to read. But you must do something for me.”

Hild nodded, swallowed, saw she was clutching too hard again, tried to loosen her grip but couldn’t. Her sister’s hand…

“Find people. People you know are on your side. Not that priest. Not a slave. Kings die, even overkings. Especially overkings. So find people.”

Hild nodded again. Her tears dripped on their hands. Hereswith wiped them off, as briskly as she would wipe a baby’s nose. And Hild couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stand to face the rest of her life without a sister at her side.

“You’ll be well,” Hereswith said. “I’ll be well. I’m older, and I say so. And on your birth day, and mine, we’ll drink a toast, each to the other, and one day we’ll hold hands again.”

They saw each other the next morning but though there were words, Hild didn’t remember them, they were ritual, for the people: a stern lady of the North Folk bidding smooth travel and fair weather to her uncle the overking, her sister the king’s seer, and her lady mother. The three women were gracious but remote, dry-eyed players in the royal mummery of Eorpwald and Edwin’s grander farewell: the pledges of honour and allegiance between king and overking.

As they rode away, none of them blinked, no one’s smile wavered. But in her head, Hild was already imagining her toast to Hereswith on her own birth day next month, and the simple message she would send on her sister’s birth day in Œstremonath.

And when she had imagined every dot of ink and wrinkle of parchment, she began composing messages to Cian and Begu and Onnen.