Hild

10

THE DOCK AT BROUGH was almost invisible in the rain. It sheeted down, beating itself to froth on the huge wharf timbers, drumming on the roof of the great warehouse, irritating the party waiting beneath. Edwin overking was not used to sharing his presence with baled wool and sacks of grain. But Æthelburh’s ship was due, and this was the only shelter.

A half-drowned river man was shown through the side door: He had seen the red sail! They’d be in, he reckoned, by the time he got his reward, begging your pardon.

On Coelgar’s nod, Coelfrith gave the man half a silver penny. Edwin straightened his gold-crusted belt and the gold band on his forehead, which he’d taken to wearing on important occasions. Breguswith smoothed her skirts. Hild shrugged her shoulders to make sure her long mantle fell in perfect folds. She drew her hood up. The gesiths—in their most gaudy splendour, cloaks thrown back over their shoulders to show their hero-ringed arms—rolled their moustaches between their fingers so that they hung thick and manly, just so. Lilla nodded, and Forthere and a wiry red-haired man new to the household, a West Saxon by his brooch, hauled open the big warehouse doors. The æthelings and Osric and Oswine went first, walking in careful step at the corners of the great canopy that sheltered Hild and Breguswith. Edwin’s betrothed was to be met and tended only by honoured family. Æthelburh had been only four when Breguswith left but, still, she and her daughter were blood kin.

There was little wind, just the gush and runnel of rain. Hild and her mother could barely see beyond their canopy.

Even in the rain, the scent of the river and its mudflats overwhelmed her: old and cold and wide. She wondered if Fursey’s boat had crossed Æthelburh’s wake downstream. Then ropes were being thrown and a gangplank slid out, and the gesiths behind her drew taut as a dozen armed men in red cloaks marched down the plank. Then came a cluster of black-clad priests, six or seven, hunched and hidden in their wet cowls. Then came Æthelburh, escorted by five women and Paulinus Crow.

Paulinus Crow. Bishop Paulinus. Tall, stooped, and black-haired, even at his age. Black-eyed, too, with the high-bridged nose she had seen on broken statues. “Want on legs,” Gwladus said when she saw him. “Though for what, I don’t know.”

Hild did. She saw it for the first time the morning Paulinus and Stephanus stood with her in a cold room of the ruined Roman palace on the River Derwent, just a mile south of the ford.

It was the beginning of the moon of Winterfylleth, when the nights became longer than the days. Osric had finally departed for Arbeia. Hild hoped he had drowned at the mouth of the Tine. The rain had stopped days ago and the mornings had turned dry and crisp. Inside the ruined palace, sun as thin as whey seeped through the gaps under the eaves and washed over the mosaic floor. The priests looked pinched and cold, though Hild didn’t feel the chill. Even inside a broken building it was warmer than up a tree or on the brow of a hill searching for figwort.

“Here, child,” Paulinus said, and pointed with his bishop’s jewelled crook at the picture by his foot: a fish and a cup pieced together of tiny green squares. “Christ’s sign. Those who lived here were good God-fearing citizens.”

Those who died here, Hild thought, looking at the axe marks on the fresco on the wall where someone had hacked out the iron lamp brackets, at the hollowed and charred circle where they had dug out the floor and tried to build a fire.

The Crow turned to Stephanus and dictated instructions in Latin about rededicating the building as a chapel to Saint John. Stephanus lifted the wooden board covered with wax that always hung from his belt and scribbled with a stylus. Hild gave no sign she understood any of it.

No one but her uncle knew that under Fursey’s tutelage she could make her letters or that she understood Latin if it was spoken slowly—and even he seemed content to let her learn privately. Until she knew how these newcomers thought and what they wanted, she would keep it that way, keep her dice rattling in her cup. It was foolish to throw before all bets were on the table.

More Latin. More writing on the tablet. Rebuilding didn’t make sense to her. If the priests wanted a place by the river, they should just tear these ruins down and start afresh.

“Why do you care about this broken place?”

“The people remember Rome. Old and mighty, it stands as a wise father to errant children.” Breath whistled through his bony nose and his olive cheeks darkened. “Here Rome will rise again, shining like a beacon for those who have eyes. We will rebuild here and at Campodunum and at York, at Malton and along the wall, and the people will see Rome come again, and they will fear us and praise us. Even the kings of this isle will fear us and praise us. The faithful will flock to our standard.”

He stood straight and stern, and Hild understood he wasn’t seeing the overking’s tufa but his own silk banner of a cross sewn with pearls, and himself standing at the head of a congregation of faithful, the chief Christ priest of the isle. His ambition was so naked she wondered why the king allowed it.

No doubt her uncle had his reasons. She thrust her hands in her pockets and turned her snakestone over and over. She found it helped her think.

Her uncle had to have reasons for such big changes. Six priests, a deacon—like the trader she had seen at Gipswīc, he had charcoal skin—and a bishop was more god people than the household had ever held. Coifi was unhappy. He wasn’t the only one. The rhythms of the household had changed. The queen and her women, and the Kentish warriors—no longer king’s gesiths but queen’s men—who escorted her everywhere when the king did not, ate only fish on one day of the week. They went to a ceremony called Mass on another. Their housefolk brought different traditions: at the turn of the moon, turn all the silver. They liked watered wine with breakfast rather than small beer. Their clothes were different.

The king had to have a reason.

As she turned her stone and watched Stephanus make neat rows of letters on his wax, she wondered if that was it. Something to do with writing. But that’s what he’d kept Fursey for, to teach her—though since she’d returned from the Bay of the Beacon her uncle had ignored her. Everything a king does is a lie. She would watch and learn. Find out why Paulinus was taking such an interest in her, the king’s niece, why he seemed to want to persuade her of his god.

Gwladus, on her way to the kitchens, told her Fursey was back. Hild ran all the way to the byre and got there in time to see him beating the dirt of travel from his skirts and a young byre hand lead his horse away. She shouted and laughed and surprised them both by hugging him.

“Christ’s sweet smile, but you’ve grown again!” He held her at arm’s length. “You seem well.”

“Yes,” she said, “I am, now that you’re here.” And it was true; she was glad, very glad, to see him. “Fursey, I’m sorry. For making you go. You were right, I wasn’t sorry before, but I am now.” He smiled again, pleased, but it didn’t hide the tightness in his jaw, the worry and weariness. “What’s wrong?”

“We’ll talk in the byre,” he said in Irish, and bent to his saddlebags.

“Let me.” She slung them over her shoulder without effort.

The guest byre, recently rebuilt and stinking of raw timber, was full, but the other animals had been tended to long since. The only person about the place was the boy rubbing down Fursey’s horse.

“Will we be sitting here now?” she said, and pointed to the hay bales along the wall opposite the stalls.

“Your fine dress—”

“This?” She regarded her beautifully embroidered overdress in dark blue. “I suppose it is fine, isn’t it? But Gwladus insists, especially since the queen and her ladies arrived.” She dropped the bags and sat. She brushed at the dust on her shoulder. “Well, sit before you fall. Say your piece then we’ll find you food and clean clothes.”

“It’s not an easy message to deliver quick off the tongue.”

Something horrible had happened to Cian or Begu. Or Onnen. She closed her eyes.

“Ach, no, no, they’re all well.” She blinked. “I’m tired to stupidity. My apologies. No, everyone is well. But Onnen bids me give you news. She reminds you that she is cousin to the wife of the lord of Craven—”

Hild nodded while her heart calmed down. Cousin to the sister of Ceredig of Elmet, Dwynai, who married Dunod ap Pabo of Craven, whom some called prince of that land—the first guest she had ever offered the cup to.

“—and messages are exchanged with kin often and often, especially in times of unrest.”

Unrest. Hild fixed him with her gaze.

“Onnen, the lady of Mulstanton should I say, has word from her cousin Lady Dwynai that Cadfan of Gwynedd is not long for this world, may his soul find swift peace. And that his son, Cadwallon, wishes you dead.”

“Me?” Dead?

“You and every root and branch of Edwin’s kin.”

“Yes, but I’m only—”

“Only? You are Edwin’s bringer of light and seer. You saved Bebbanburg. You are his niece, his peaceweaver. Must we have this conversation again? There is no more only for you.” He tapped her on the knee. “Listen, now. Cadwallon has boasted at mead that when he is king he will wipe the Yffings from the face of the earth. He has sworn it. To that end he is talking now to any lordling who will listen. He has talked to Cuelgils of Lindsey—”

The man who called himself princeps, who had fed them on their journey south, at Lindum.

“—and to Ciniod of the Picts.”

“But Ciniod is sending a man to my uncle in friendship! Or so said the messenger in hall last night.”

“Yes. No doubt Ciniod sends a man in friendship because, indeed, he refused Cadwallon’s embassy.”

“I don’t—”

“But his fosterling did not.”

“His…” Hild was momentarily at a loss. Then she remembered. “Eanfrith Iding.”

“The same.” The eldest son of Æthelfrith and his first wife, Bebba. Ciniod’s fosterling. Enemy.

“We had heard Eanfrith took a Pictish princess to wife.”

“Indeed. And now they have a son, Talorcan.”

The name said it all. Talorc, like Beli, was one of the names reserved for potential Pictish overkings.

She thought furiously. “Will Ciniod lend Eanfrith his war band?”

“Perhaps. Unofficially.”

“But my uncle’s war band is huge now, easily twice the size of any other. It would be madness. They couldn’t hope to— Ah, but if Cuelgils…”

Fursey was nodding. “Yes. If Cadwallon persuades Lindsey, then the Saxons might throw in their bet, too—at which point Ciniod might see an opportunity, using Eanfrith as a puppet. Then your uncle would be caught between the hammer of the Picts and the anvil of the massed Saxons and Lindseymen and Welsh.”

“Not just the Picts,” said Hild.

If the Pictish war band rose and joined Gwynedd, Cadwallon and Eanfrith between them might also carry the men of the north, the Bryneich and Gododdin, who might bring Alt Clut. Even Rheged. It would be like watching the birth of a winter bourne: a trickle becomes a chattering stream then a roaring spate tumbling boulders before it, tearing out trees. Hundreds upon hundreds marching, singing their songs of wealh glory.

All would go down in red ruin.

But there was nothing she could do. Ciniod’s mouthpiece, when he came, would smile and know nothing. Seer or not, no one would listen until there was something to point at. Something she could prove. She would have to wait until it began.

They wanted her dead…

On the east bank of the Derwent the day glittered with scent-of-winter sunshine. The women sat at their heckling benches, wooden boards set with dense clusters of iron spikes. In the distance Coelgar supervised the hammering and adzing of the snug new settlement rising alongside the shell of the broken Roman remains. The king was with the queen. The gesiths had taken the dogs hunting. The few housefolk not labouring with adzes were asleep and the place was quiet.

Hild sat with the women. Her mother had told her she’d been spending too much time alone—the rumours of hægtes and etin blood were starting again. Hild wasn’t sure how sitting with a handful of tow before the spikes of what looked like an etin’s comb would dispel those rumours.

Pulling the fibres through the spikes, over and over, until the tow was fined down to line, was normally hot and dusty work, but the Winterfylleth sun was as cool as glass and the air damp with the burly river and soon-to-fall leaves. Every now and again a light ruffle of wind brought the scent of pork roasting with wildling apples and damson—legacy of the Roman gardens—and Hild’s mouth watered.

Over the last few days she had rarely lifted her hand from her seax and had eaten nothing not prepared by Gwladus. Then she had begun to wonder about even Gwladus. She started awake at the sound of footsteps, stood more than a sword’s length from every gesith, and listened and listened and listened, until she thought her ears might start twitching like a cat’s.

But no one popped from behind a mulberry bush with an axe, no one slipped poison in her beer, and even fear lost its grip after a while. Now, at the scent of pork and apples, she was hungry.

She sat with her mother, next to old Burgen and Æffe. Æffe was bundled in a scarf and a cloak, as was Burgen. Hild, after years of roaming the valleys and ridges, or sitting in the top of a tree in the moonlight, had long since hardened off. She was warm. She considered unpinning her sleeves and hanging them in her belt but decided not to: She would be the only one, and the muscles in her shoulders would just fuel the rumours.

Four of the queen’s women sat at the next bench. Their chatter was flat with Jutish vowels; Breguswith’s vowels sometimes flattened in sympathy. Beyond them were Teneshild, the old queen’s gemæcce, and Ædilgith, whose gemæcce, Folcwyn, had died in childbirth last year—though some thought the ague more to blame—and with them the young pair girdled only the summer before last, Cille and Leofe. Leofe, who barely came to Hild’s shoulder, was already big with Forthere’s child.

“What are you shaking your head at?” her mother asked.

“Leofe. Forthere is so big and she’s so small.”

Old Æffe leaned forward and leered. “Not as big as I hear your sister’s man is.”

“Eh?” said Burgen.

Æffe repeated herself at a shout.

“Does she remember my advice about goose grease?” Burgen said. “Ask her. I did tell you young ones about goose grease, didn’t I?”

Æffe shouted, “I can’t ask her, you old fool, she’s long gone, away in that infested swamp with her new man, Æthelric Short Leg.” She cackled. “Short leg!”

But Burgen was getting anxious. “I did tell you?” she asked Hild. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did, Mother,” Hild said. She gestured at Leofe with a handful of tow. “And clearly one at least listened.”

“And you, young giant,” Æffe said, “do you have your eye on a man yet? I see those pretty beads of yours. Some heroic gesith, eh?”

“No, Mother. These were a gift from the princess Rhianmelldt.”

“Who?” Burgen looked about, fastened on the queen’s women. “Which one is Rhianmelldt?”

Æffe started a shouted explanation of the genealogy of Rheged—though she was getting it wrong, forgetting that Urien was long dead—and Hild was reminded of Alt Clut and the songs of the men of the north, and wondered if, even now, they were sharpening their swords and boasting of who would kill the king and his uncanny niece.

Her mother was looking at her.

“Æffe is old. But she’s not wrong. Unless I’m mistaken you’ll be bleeding by summer. We should consider husbands.”

Hild pulled her tow through the heckles. If she married and left court she would no longer be counted an Yffing.

“How do you find Oswine?”

Hild bent and brushed the rind dust from the hem of her skirts. Oswine, son of the treacherous badger Osric.

“He is handsome, don’t you think?”

“No.”

“His prospects are handsome,” Breguswith said, softly now, as the old women shouted in the background. “How would you like to be married to Oswine, to be, say, lady of Elmet?”

Hild had a fleeting memory of jackdaws in the elms, a smoky hall. “I like Elmet,” she said eventually. “But Ceredig king is said to be alive still, somewhere.” And Oswine’s father hadn’t stopped Fiachnae mac Báetáin from trying to kill them. At some point, Edwin would either have to publicly forgive Osric the trouble at Tinamutha or kill him.

“At some point your uncle will make it worth someone’s while to kill him.”

Hild nodded, then realised her mother wasn’t talking about Osric but Ceredig. With Ceredig gone, Elmet would get its own ealdorman—traditionally a royal kinsman. If Osric was still alive when Ceredig died, Elmet would go to him. “Would Osric step aside for his son?”

“What if he didn’t need to?”

Hild pondered her mother. Breguswith’s eyes were hard, bright blue, with none of that milky aging Hild saw in Æffe’s and Burgen’s eyes. Her fingers were beginning to thicken at the knuckles, yes, and her honey-gold hair looked dusty, but it was still thick, the skin at her throat was still firm, and her breasts full. She still bled every month. Bed games were one thing, keys another.

“Will you marry Osric?”

“Your uncle would not permit it.” Her mother’s voice was rich and round with secrets. Hild tried a trick she had learnt from Gwladus, and studied her mother through half-closed eyes while she lowered her head to her apparent task. Breguswith was smiling to herself.

Hild changed direction. “Would my uncle want me to marry Oswine?”

Her mother lowered her own eyes and said conversationally, “Your uncle won’t live forever.”

Hild’s heart squeezed.

Breguswith nodded at Hild’s hands: keep working. Hild pulled the tow through the heckles. Behind them, Burgen was cackling about something, and the other women were calling out good-natured insults. She leaned forward a little.

Breguswith’s voice was very soft. “At Arbeia, a West Saxon has been indiscreet. You know something of this.”

It wasn’t a question. She should have expected her mother to know she knew.

“Osric doesn’t understand his danger, though the danger is nigh. But a word in the right ear, a careful word, would break that egg before it hatches.”

“I don’t—”

“It will hatch soon.”

“But—”

“Are you whispering about love?” Æffe shouted. “Of course you are. Empty-headed youngsters—look at that tow. You’ve heckled it to ruination.”

When the moon was up, Gwladus brought Fursey to the byre.

“What is it that won’t wait for me to finish my food? The last of the damson and fresh-killed pork. And I don’t know where they found those apples but they were the sweetest…” Hild stepped forward so the moon caught her face, thin and pale. “Ach. Well, at least it’s warm in here.”

Gwladus turned to leave, but Fursey barred her way.

“Gwladus, my honey, bring us food. Bring us a lot of it. Your lady is all bone; her face looks sharp enough to cut cheese.”

“It’s not—”

“Be a lamb and don’t talk. Run. Bring food—and mead, of course—and I’ll absolve you of all that sin you’ve been gathering to yourself.” He watched Gwladus pick her way across the yard, already beginning to glitter with frost, and turned back to Hild. “Now let us sit on the bales by that post.” They sat. “What is it?”

She said nothing for a moment. Around them the horses, which had stirred when she came in, began to settle back to their dreams.

“Osric knows of Cadwallon’s plot against Edwin. The plot that’s begun.”

“Begun?”

“In Lindsey. My mother told me.”

“She told you. Why?”

“I don’t know.” She clenched her hands around her belt. He assumed she wished it were her mother’s neck. He certainly did. “If Edwin finds Osric is plotting, he’ll kill him.”

“And if he doesn’t find out, Cadwallon will eventually kill Osric, plot or no. He’s Yffing, too.”

“I know that!”

“Osric is stupid.”

“Yes—”

“But your mother is not.”

“She wants me to tell Edwin there’s a plot, and stop it, and keep Osric out of it.”

Fursey nodded. “She wants him alive and to herself.”

Silence. She seemed to be staring at the post. Some stable hand or gesith, bored while waiting for his mount, had carved a stallion into the new wood. A stallion with improbable natural attributes.

“She wants me to take my knowledge to Edwin, clothed in portents. She wants me to start the war to keep that treacherous oaf safe. She is weaving a spider’s web and I must rush about at her bidding. Again.”

“Stopping the plot would save all the Yffings’ lives. Including yours.”

The child strangled her belt slowly with both hands. “That’s just part of it. She’s aiming for something… I can’t… Why is she doing this? Why is she defending him? Osric’s men could have killed me at Tinamutha!”

“Strictly speaking they were Fiachnae mac Báetáin’s men. As I was. Am.” Ah, she’d forgotten that. Well, the child needed reminding sometimes.

“You’re confusing me.”

“It’s a confusing world.”

She pulled her seax, leapt, and stabbed the post with a vicious overhand thrust. The mare in the nearest stall swung her head around and huffed down her nose.

His heart thumped like a rabbit. She was so fast. And strong. The battle-hard tip had sunk three fingers deep into the elm.

“If she had just asked! But no. She pushes me into a corner where there’s no choice.”

“It’s what women do: weave the web, pull the strings, herd into the corner. It’s their only power. Unless they’re seers.” He was proud that his voice didn’t shake.

The child massaged her hands.

“Your mother has built you a place where you can speak your word openly. Now she asks you to use that for her, and for yourself of course.”

Outside someone, several someones, crunched over the frozen grass.

He turned. It was Gwladus, now wearing a cloak against the cold—and because the russet colour made her hair shine like sunlit water, he suspected—and two housemen he didn’t know. The men stood behind Gwladus and flinched when Hild looked at them. They were afraid of the child. Fursey didn’t know whether to pity her or be glad for her. Fear could always be used.

He raised his eyebrows at Gwladus.

“You said bring a lot. And this should be enough to buy me a forgiveness. Two of them. One now and one tomorrow, for the sins I’ll gather tonight.” She smiled to herself as she stroked her cloak, then noticed the seax stuck in the wood. She gestured for the housefolk to put down the trays. “We’ll leave you to your business.”

She swept out. The men almost trod on her cloak in their eagerness to get away from the hægtes.

Hild began to work her seax free while Fursey fussed with the food. “I’m not hungry,” she said without looking up from her task, but her stomach growled.

“Of course not. But humour an old man and eat anyway. There’s pork in its crackling. Damsons, oh so plump and running with juice. And what’s this? Oh, blessings upon that girl. Horse mushrooms fried in pork grease. Hazelnut with the apples. Good sharp cheese. And, may she be thrice blessed, wine.” He sniffed. “The Crow’s special cache, unless I’m mistaken.”

She sheathed her seax and sat. “She stole the Crow’s wine?”

Was that a smile? He handed her a round of floured bread, a pot of chestnut paste—more fruit of Derwent’s Roman past—and a birch cup with a silver rim. “We’d better drink up the evidence.”

The moon was high and small by the time she sat back and sucked the fat from behind the last piece of crackling. Fursey finished the wine while she chewed on the skin.

“You look better.”

She nodded, picked the last hazelnut from the tray and crunched it. “Tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll go to my uncle tomorrow, in the middle morning, with his counsellors about him.”

“Kings can be dangerous when surprised.”

The child pondered that. “I should talk to him privately first?”

He nodded. “Seek him all ravaged with dream. He’ll call his counsellors and you can speak in more certain terms.” And pray. Pray no one is clever enough to look beyond the child to her mother and the terrible ambition there.

Hild studied herself in the polished silver. “Wilder about the eyes,” she said, and lowered the mirror for Gwladus to dab ash in quick sweeps beneath her eyes. This time the king wasn’t puzzled and far from home. This time he was newly married and content. It would take every portent she could muster. And dreams were the most potent seeing of all.

“Wait,” Gwladus said, “hold still,” and she dipped a chewed twig in Hild’s ewer of water and streaked the ash deftly. Once, twice. “Look at that,” she said with great satisfaction.

Hild looked. She looked like a tear-streaked maid sleepless under the weight of unbearable knowledge. She smiled.

“Don’t smile. It makes you look mad.”

Hild looked at her.

“You could try trembling your bottom lip. Go on. Just try it.”

Hild lifted the mirror and tried it. Gwladus was right. The tremble turned her from madwoman to frightened maid.

Gwladus arranged her hair to an artful tousle and draped her with a heavy crimson robe: the very picture of a seer of the royal blood who leaps from her loyal bed to warn her king.

She strode from the room, calling for Burgmod.

In his sleeping apartment, Edwin, beard uncombed, sat on a stool. He had thrown a cloak over his sleeping tunic—though it was not cold, for the king’s fire never went out.

Hild stood, but not too close. Even frowsy and hardly awake enough to be wary, kings did not like those who loomed—even royal kin. Especially royal kin. Was the queen listening from the curtained bed? She must speak up, just in case.

She had dreamt of eagles, she said, like to the eagles of Gwynedd, nesting over Lindum, with one eaglet pushing its brother from the nest.

“Cadwallon!”

In her dream she had swooped through the air alongside a jackdaw that flew into a just-dyed red cloth hanging by the Lindum gate and stained its beak scarlet.

He frowned.

“A common bird tangling with royal crimson, King. In Lindum.”

“Cuelgils! That jumped-up ceorl. Intriguing with Cadwallon.”

Hild bowed.

“Go on, go on.”

And then she had woken, to hear that the vill’s newest bull calf, “the same liver brown as the Lindsey Bull, lord King,” had died, and some swore they had seen boar tracks around the pen.

This last was true, the death at least; Gwladus had told her.

Edwin turned his head and shouted, “Forthere!” The huge gesith stuck his head around the door. Hild caught sight of Burgmod beyond him, scratching at the back of his neck, tilting his helmet forward over his nose. “Is the new bull calf dead?”

“Bull calf, King?”

“Bull calf. Born yesterday. Is it dead or isn’t it? Find out.”

Housefolk, alerted to the king’s early waking, hurried to bring hot water, breads, breakfast beer. One man slid the cloak from the king’s shoulders and folded it while another unlaced his shirt. His chest hair glinted here and there with grey. A puckered and twisted spear scar ran along his left ribs.

His scowl was hidden briefly as his bodyman dropped a new tunic over his head.

No one offered Hild anything.

When his warrior jacket was fastened Edwin looked considerably more alert. His bodyman was combing his beard when Forthere stuck his head through the doorway again.

“It died, King. The freemartin born with it, too.”

Edwin pushed his man away and looked at Hild. “The freemartin?”

“It signifies nothing.”

He gave her a sly look.

“The bull calf is the one that matters, lord King. The calf the colour of the Lindsey Bull.”

“Unless you’re wrong.”

“Have I ever been wrong?”

“So Cadwallon allies with Cuelgils to raise Lindsey.” He stared at the fire, calculating. “Yet no armies have marched from Gwynedd.”

“Not yet.”

“It is winter.”

His meaning was clear: If he took the war band to Lindsey in this weather and found nothing, he would have no spoil to share among his gesiths. He would have to gift them from his personal hoard. He would take his losses out of her hide.

“The armies of Gwynedd will come to Lindsey in spring. If Cuelgils still rules.”

The long silence was broken only by the crackle of flames taking hold of the new wood on the fire. Edwin was looking at her.

“How old are you now?”

“Eleven, King.”

“You want me to go haring off to Lindsey on the dreams of a maid of eleven years…” It was not a question, and in any case Hild had no answer. She simply stood. “So when I swoop upon Lindsey and slaughter them all, how will I know if you were right or not?”

Hild had no idea. “You will know.” And now her life hung on her mother’s information.

A maid of eleven years. A child.

Facing a formal summons to the king’s hall, a woman girdled and veiled would have bolstered her breasts and painted around her eyes, cinched her girdle tight to accentuate her hips and the symbols of her rank hanging about them: the keys and crystal and weft beater.

Very well.

Hild unpinned her sleeves to show arms tan and tight as a stripling’s, wore a light cloak in royal blue flung back from her shoulders gesith-style, and tucked her hair behind her ears, to remind them of a fighting man with greased-back hair.

When she was escorted by Lintlaf and Coelfrith into the hall she stopped four paces from Edwin’s great chair, rather than the usual three, to stand in the shaft of winter light so that her hair blazed more chestnut even than the king’s. She stood tall—she overtopped all but Forthere now—with her hand on her seax, and let rich royal certainty invade her every word: Cuelgils was a traitor. Remember Bebbanburg. Remember treachery.

“We will take Lindsey,” Edwin said, and not one voice dissented.

This time there were no wagons, no women, no bags packed with finery for show. There were two hundred gesiths wearing their metal wealth, with their mounts and remounts, a hundred war hounds, a hundred servants on their own mounts, a smith-armourer, and fifty packhorses. This time they ate in the saddle and slept rolled in blankets, and the outriders had orders to kill anyone—Angle or wealh, man, woman, or child—who saw them. It drizzled steadily; they rode robed in tiny jewels of rain. They crossed into Lindsey on the second day.

Everything was mud. Horses foundered. Hild, being light, was easier on her mount than most, but even so, when they reached the shallow valley of the River Trent, she felt Cygnet trembling under her, just as her own thighs trembled and her wrists ached.

The river gleamed dully, like pewter. Patches of linden woods formed misty thickets along the banks. Clearly the outriders had missed someone: the Lindseymen had had warning enough to throw down trees on the west bank of the river, branches facing the road, and to form their shield wall on the east bank.

The Northumbrians laughed. The shield wall was only twenty shields wide and three deep and the clutter thrown in their path was light; the Lindseymen had had time to cut only small trees.

Edwin ordered a halt—long enough to wipe faces and eat a handful of twice-baked road bread—while fifty gesiths and the wealh dismounted to clear the road and collar the dogs in their war harnesses. The outriders rejoined them from the woods.

The horses and wealh did the work while the fifty gesiths formed an arrow shield facing the woods. No arrows flew. Lilla and the king exchanged looks.

The horses stamped and steamed, and the unoccupied gesiths laughed and talked in great booming voices, though some were pale. All made the motions of eating, though few actually chewed and swallowed. Many threw their bread to the dogs. The dogs fought over it. In the hissing rain the noise was sudden and violent.

Hild gnawed her bread. Her mouth was drier than summer straw. But she chewed stolidly and managed to swallow one mouthful. She raised her arm to toss the rest to the dogs, then thought better of it. Some were bleeding already, seeping red under the rain, standing in pink puddles.

Hild drank from the flask of small beer at her saddlebow and forced herself to chew and swallow again. She felt strange, as though it were someone else who lifted the bread, who chewed and swallowed, who carefully unfastened the flap of her saddlebag and put away the bread. Someone else who loosened her seax in its sheath, someone else who studied the fallen leaf rubbish and thought it beautiful.

A man put his hand on Cygnet’s neck. Lintlaf, on foot. “The king wants you to stay on this side with the wealh and the horses,” he said. Hild nodded. Most of the gesiths were dismounting. “Don’t try to fight. It’s not like a knife fight. You don’t know… Forthere and his men will guard you.” She nodded again. “Forthere is angry.”

Forthere was. As Lintlaf and the rest of the war band checked their weapons and the dogs sat in a dreadful, eager silence, Forthere wrenched his horse’s head this way and that, and shouted at the wealh to stop their Thunor-cursed hand-waving and get behind those trees with all the horses, all, mind, or he would lop off the left leg of any lackadaisical lily-livered limpknob.

Hild kneed Cygnet into his path. “Are you angry with your horse, Forthere?” She nodded at the great rope of drool that hung from its bit.

“You…” His face worked. But she was the seer who had saved Bebbanburg; she was the king’s niece. She was the reason they were here.

She nodded. “Me.” She understood his anger. Forthere, giant Forthere, was used to being in the van, running under the banner or stalwart behind a shield, not being left behind to guard the baggage. “Nonetheless, have a care for your horse.”

He loosened the rein a little. “Stay behind the wealh, behind the horses, behind me. You lose so much as an eyelash and the king will have my ears.” He lifted his huge ham hand, stuck two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. A gesith looked up. Forthere waved him over. “This is Eamer.” It was the whip-muscled redhead Hild had noticed at Brough, now on a thin black gelding. “You will stick to him like honey on bread,” Forthere told her, and then, to Eamer, “Everywhere she goes, you go. Even to piss. You, her, til the Lindseymen are dead.”

The king’s drummer began the beat. Both men went rigid for a moment, like hounds pointing, as the gesiths formed up in two bands. Forthere shook himself, gathered his reins.

Hild’s scalp tightened. A battle, shield wall to shield wall. Linden wood to linden wood. She imagined meeting a man the size of Forthere, huge with battle rage, stinking with it; dogs dripping and snarling at her legs, her arms. Sharp swords cleaving down, splintering shields, crushing skulls, slicing off faces. Men sworn to follow their lord or die. Victory or death, no middle ground. They sang so they didn’t piss themselves.

Forthere cantered off, already shouting.

“Lady,” Eamer said, and backed up his mount to allow Cygnet past in the direction of the horse picket among the linden trees.

The two bands of gesiths were now shin-deep in the river, the dogs already swimming. She was glad she had no choice but to hide among the trees, hide from the blood and the rage, the striving to kill. She kneed Cygnet forward.

The drumbeat stopped. Hild twisted in her saddle. The gesiths were halfway across and up to their chests, and the drummer held his drum high above his head. The gesiths sang, to give themselves heart, and one group swung upstream from the Lindseymen, one downstream.

The picket lines were strung between trees. Hild slid from her horse, and the instant her foot touched the ground all sound of the river and the gesiths’ singing disappeared. Gone, as though sliced through with a knife. She blinked. Pulled herself back in the saddle: the singing rising to a roar, like logs rolling off a wagon.

“Lady.”

She got down again. The sound vanished. “The sound…”

“A sound shadow,” Eamer said. “Cupped by a god’s hand. Or so they say. But I like to hear what’s happening.” He unstrapped his spear and slung his linden shield before dismounting.

She loosened Cygnet’s girth and handed the reins to a wealh, and listened again: nothing but the murmur of the wealh, Forthere’s shouted command to the ten gesiths at the edge of the copse, and the dripping in the trees. She sat on the mossy top of a limestone rock shaped like a giant mushroom cap. A sword fern grew at its base. She tipped her head back and studied the bare branches of the linden tree above. If she stood to her full height she might just touch it.

Sword fern, shield tree, and a maid whose name meant battle. Yet she was shivering.

A horse stamped. Hild and the wealh jumped. Forthere’s gesiths laughed.

The rain seemed to be easing. A few birds called from the trees. Hild pushed her hood back, trying to hear them better. She didn’t recognise their call.

“How long will it take?”

Eamer leaned his spear against the rock, took off his helmet, and scratched his head. “When fools are in charge, wise men make no predictions.”

“Fools?”

He put his helmet back on, took up his spear again. “Does war interest you, lady?”

Hild had never been asked a question by a gesith before. She looked at him afresh, at his Gewisse brooch. “It does today.”

“Then the Lindseymen should have laid trees on the far side of the bank, where we would have to climb them already tired from the crossing, heavy with water and slippery with mud. Or they could have hidden bowmen on this side to pick off those who cleared the path. They are fools.”

Hild pondered that. “Why are they so few?”

“Likely most are at Lindum, to guard the gold. If—” He broke off, slid his shield from his back onto his arm. “Down. Get down. Behind the rock.”

An arrow chunked into his shield. She stared at it. Another hissed into the fern by her feet, and then she was scrambling to her feet, leaping, up, up, up into the tree. She balanced on a slippery smooth bough, arms wrapped around the trunk, heart banging like a drum.

She peered down at the clearing. Everything moved like flies stuck in honey.

Eamer brushed the arrow from his shield with his spear shaft. The broken arrow spun away, lazy as dandelion seed, and landed in the moss on the boulder, directly beneath Hild. Fletched with goose feathers.

Sword fern, shield tree, goose feathers. Part of your wyrd.

A horse screamed and others whinnied, and whinnied again farther away. Men shouted. The sound was wavery and unreal. Hild stared at the goose feathers glistening tawny and white on the bright green of the mossy boulder.

More arrows hissed from the woods. Men fell.

Lindseymen poured into the clearing. Forthere shouted, “Shields!” and the Northumbrians—the ones not lying on the green ground with arrows standing from their chests—locked shields, and the Lindseymen, running and leaping over the fallen, parted around them like water. Forthere shouted, “Break!” and then they were all running, gesiths chasing Lindseymen. To her end of the clearing.

“Death!” Eamer bellowed, and with a clang of iron that shook the tree, he slammed his shield at one Lindseyman’s head and his spear at another’s.

A Lindseyman in a round leather helmet took Eamer’s spear under his jaw and the blade burst through his cheek. Eamer shook the man like a dead rat on a stick. Then, cursing, he flung spear and man down and drew his sword. Lindseymen, pursued by gesiths, poured around the boulder. Hild, shrieking like a gutted horse, half fell, half leapt from the tree, seax flashing.

Someone slammed into her, then another picked her up and threw her back down behind the rock.

Wealh were catching the horses the Lindseymen had loosed and killing the ones they had hamstrung. Forthere was asking her anxiously, loudly, if she was all right. Hild wiped the blood off her face with a wet dock leaf and nodded. It wasn’t her blood. It was the blood of those who had fought over her like mad beasts while she lay stunned.

A while later, she didn’t know how long, it was Eamer nodding while Forthere shouted. From this distance she saw Forthere had a dent in his helm, over his ear. Eamer wasn’t listening; he had his foot on the dead Lindseyman’s face and was trying to pull his spear free. Forthere kept shouting nonetheless. “… with her, like a burr. Like a burr. Woden’s beard, it was her they were after. The maid.” Eamer’s spear pulled loose with a grating suck. “The king wants her over on the east bank. Get her there safe if you value your ears.”

Threescore men lay twisted and burst open on the grass. A handful, Edwin’s men, were laid tidily at the side of the field, covered with their cloaks and shields, swords at their sides. A dozen or so of the Lindseymen stirred and moaned and called for water. No one paid attention. The sound scraped at her bones. She focused between Cygnet’s ears as her mare and Eamer’s gelding picked their way delicately across the trampled, slimy expanse to the leather tent where the king’s banner poles were driven deep in the dirt.

The gesiths had found the Lindseymen’s beer. One of them, with a finger newly gone and blood all over his leg and teeth, was laughing and pissing in a dead man’s mouth.

The thought of going alone into the king’s tent full of men who had just killed other men made her feel dizzy. She told herself that Eamer, too, had just killed, but still her voice wobbled when she said to him, “Stay out here.”

Just inside the tent, the king, unhelmed, stood with his naked sword in one hand, point resting on the floor, and a goblet in his other. Lilla, still helmed, red with gore, stood under the tent peak, where two short-haired men were bound to the centre pole. One of Lilla’s men stood against the tent wall, deliberately seeing nothing, saying nothing. The tent reeked.

Edwin was smiling. Blood clotted the mail around his elbow. “It’s a clear road to Lindum now, if we’re swift, and we lost only eleven men.”

“Eleven men on this side, King,” Lilla said.

Edwin ignored him and said to Hild, “You were right.” He pointed with his chin at the bound men. “Welshmen.”

Both men were sagging in their ropes. One had been so badly beaten his mother wouldn’t recognise him. The right side of the one closest to her was sopping with blood from a wound Hild couldn’t see. Probably in his armpit. She knew from songs that was a good place to stab a man in armour. But this man wasn’t armoured. He wore a checked cloak.

Hild knew him. The memory was sudden and sharp: the elm wood, the geese in the distance, this man standing with his brother in Ceredig’s hall. You have your father’s hair, and, later, Edwin Snakebeard will come.

Gwynedd. Marro. Cadwallon.

She wished she could run upstairs to bed with Hereswith, wished Onnen would be there to comb her hair. She made herself step closer. She nodded at the unconscious, beaten man and asked Lilla, “Will he die of his wounds?”

“No. Though he’ll never be pretty.”

Hild turned to Edwin. “Edwin king. Uncle. These are Cadfan’s own men.” She saw his twitch of surprise, which he covered with a lift of his goblet. “The bloody one will die. The beaten one can’t talk. Or not soon. Give him to me, and the first will talk before he dies.”

Edwin’s eyes flashed green. “We don’t have time for spells and sacrifice.”

“No.”

Silence. “Oh, very well.” He waved his goblet as though the matter were of no account and stepped to the door flap to speak to Coelgar.

Hild turned back to the blood-soaked man. He was watching her. She said swiftly in British, which she knew Lilla barely understood, “I still have my father’s hair, and my uncle’s. And the serpent has come to you. No, say nothing. You have no time. Marro, you are dying.” Marro stirred at the use of his name. “You are dying, but your brother”—and now he jerked in his ropes; she had guessed right—“your brother will live, I’ll see to it, if you tell me true. Cadfan king is dying, yes or no?”

“Who are you?” It was little more than a whisper, but the same voice from long ago.

“I am the king’s light.”

He blinked as though he couldn’t see well. “Are you real?”

She reached out and touched her thumb to his forehead. “Tell me now, is Cadfan dying?”

“Yes.”

“And Cadwallon will be king.”

“He is king now in all but name.”

“And he plots with whom?”

A long silence. “You are not a man. Are you a demon?”

“I am the king’s light.” King’s light. King’s trembling leaf who hid up a tree. “Who does Cadwallon plot with?”

“You will keep my brother safe, demon, you swear it?”

“I swear it. Who?”

“Eanfrith Iding. Cuelgils princeps. Neithon of Alt Clut. Eochaid Buide of the Dál—”

“You lie,” Hild said. “Alt Clut and Dál Riata would never ally.”

“Enough gold will make for the strange—” He coughed. His tunic glistened as fresh blood seeped from his wound. His hose were soaked and sagging. “… strangest bedfellows.”

“Cadwallon doesn’t have that much gold.”

“Edwin overking does, even when split among seven lords.” His voice was a faint rattle and sigh, like a stirring in the willow rhynes.

“Seven?”

His eyes closed. She shook him gently.

“You said seven lords. Who else? Marro, who else?”

She wasn’t sure but she thought perhaps the strange sound he made was a laugh. “You know. So close to you. Also Dunod…”

“Dunod of Craven?” He sighed, and this time the sigh went on and on. His eyes stayed open. “Marro?”

She blew on his eyes. He did not blink.

She stepped back. “He’s dead,” she said to Lilla. “Tie the other to a horse. When we have horses. Keep him safe.”

Coelgar lifted the door flap for the king to leave and the moans of Lindseymen filled the tent. Edwin said over his shoulder to Hild, “With me.” Lilla caught the eye of his man by the tent wall, gestured to the Welshman, and joined the king.

Eamer fell in behind them.

As they walked, Edwin and Coelgar talked of horses and supplies, and Lilla wiped at the gore on his mail, succeeding only in smearing it. The noise of the suffering Lindseymen was terrible, much louder than before. No one but Hild seemed to notice.

She said to Eamer, “Why don’t they kill them?”

Eamer shrugged. “It’s wealh work, and the wealh are on the other side of the river. Wealh work. Or women’s work.”

It was not like slitting the throat of a sucking pig. The pig had not looked into her eyes.

After the first one, the thrashing and choking and mess, Hild wiped her hands on the grass and asked Eamer to find her a spear, a short one. He brought her one broken halfway down the shaft. The pale ash was warm. She stooped to the second man, curled on his side with his leg almost off at the knee, and said, “Lie still now, and it will be quick.” She tugged off his helmet and felt with her thumb for the soft spot at the base of his skull, set the point of the broken spear, and killed him with one leaning thrust.

It was not unlike sticking a skewer in a roast to see if it was done. The same pop as the skin broke, then a good push through the meat gripping the iron. The juices that leaked were red, though, not clear, and the smell was quite different: shit and rust and mud.

Around her men cried out louder, some asking to be next, some saying that, for pity’s sake, it was a broken leg, only a broken leg, if she would just bind it, and bring water…

Hild moved in a bubble of quiet, her own sound shadow, but after the third man she found a knot of gesiths following her. She ignored them, knelt by the fourth man, and struggled with his helmet. He moaned, like a man in his sleep, but Hild thought he was probably too far gone to feel much. It was difficult to tell; half his face was missing. Behind her, the gesiths spoke in hushed voices.

She knew… she knew the Welshman’s name… knew they were brothers… had foreseen everything… she’d vanished from sight… fell from the sky like an eagle… wouldn’t die even when a score, twoscore, threescore Lindseymen attacked from ambush… hadn’t she saved them at Bebbanburg?… she had the true sight…

At the edge of the field a man shrieked; a sow rooted in his belly. “Eamer, please. Kill him.”

“Lady, I must stay at your—”

“Please.”

But it was another gesith who drew his sword, ran to the edge of the field, and brought his blade down hard, once, twice, three times, and threw a clod of dirt at the sow. She ran off, hoinking in outrage, but didn’t go far.

The gesith ran back. “He’s dead, lady.”

“Thank you.”

Another gesith drew his sword, and another. They looked at her, as though for permission. “I thank you, too.” They moved off through the strewn field, swords rising and falling. Killing at a seer’s bidding was fit work for gesiths.

Hild bent over and vomited stinging bile, then, through her weeping, killed the man at her feet.

They left their wounded with a handful of wealh to care for them and to strip the dead enemy of arms and armour, and rode hard for Lindum. Hild’s eyes would not stop leaking. Lilla dropped back through the ranks long enough to give her his flask. Mead. “Drinking helps.”

Sometime later her eyes dried. Not long after that, the horses dropped to a walk and the message came back: The king wants the maid. Hild and her shadow, Eamer, cantered forward. Others cantered behind her: the gesiths from the field. Nine, all told.

The gesiths they passed sang a cheerful, ugly song. One in four rode with poles topped by the brutalised heads of Lindseymen. They did not look human. Hild pretended they were not.

Lilla put his hand on his sword as they approached, and Hild nodded at Eamer, who made a Hold gesture to her followers, and stayed with them while she approached the king.

“We near Lindum,” Edwin said. “What will we find?”

Leathers creaked as those close by leaned in to listen. Her mind was empty of everything but the feel of iron gritting through muscle and cartilage. She shook her head.

His eyes swarmed green and black. “You are a seer. You will tell your king.”

Hild stared at him, her mind as smooth as wax.

He kicked his horse, then reined it in savagely. “You knew the men in the tent. You couldn’t, but you did. And you witched them so they talked to you, Lilla said. Now you’ve witched my own men so they follow you like puppies. So tell me, or, by Woden, I’ll throw you in the river with your tongue and toes in a bag around your neck.”

He would do it. She had seen enough that day to know he would. Who would stop him?

With a white hiss, the world began to turn. The ground seemed a long, long way off. She clung to her saddle horn. If she fell now, he would kill her. She must hold on.

She held on.

It didn’t matter that she had nothing in her stomach, that she had pushed a spear into four men and snuffed their lives like guttering candles. It didn’t matter that she was an ungirdled girl in an army of men who would piss in a dead man’s mouth and leave another holding his own insides because to help was women’s work.

I am the light, she thought. I am not a maid. I am the light. Cold as a sword. I will show no weakness.

She stepped to one side of her feelings, like stepping out of her clothes. She did not hurt. She had no need to eat, no mortal concern with life. She could breathe easily.

She lifted her head.

“Edwin king, seven lords are arrayed against you.” Seven, a number brimming with wyrd. “I do not know every name. Yet.”

He assessed her, then turned to Coelgar. “Keep the men moving at a walk. Lilla, with me. No,” he said to Eamer, and then to the pack of gesiths who had followed, “you hounds will stay.” To Hild he said, “Come.”

“You’re lying,” he said when their horses were fifty paces down the trail. “Oh, not about the names you’ve given me: Cadwallon with Cuelgils and Eanfrith, Neithon, and Eochaid—the gold he must have promised for that unnatural pairing! Even Dunod. No, they’re true enough. But you’re not telling me something.” He tapped his teeth with his thumbnail, thinking. “The trap was for you on the west bank. A score of men. For you. Why?”

“Ransom?”

“Look at you. What are you worth as a niece?”

As a peaceweaver, more than an ætheling. But Hild did not bother to say so.

“You shouldn’t have let the Welshman die before he gave up the last name.”

“Men die, Uncle.”

“And that’s something you can’t do, eh? Shine your light beyond death.”

From the strange, cold distance in which she had placed herself, Hild wondered what he would do if she said she could see into the realm of the dead. He would believe her. They all believed her, no matter what she said.

She heard again Marro’s whisper. You know. So close. She did know, or could guess, the seventh name: Osric. He was an Yffing, a man in his prime, with an almost-grown heir. If Edwin died tomorrow half the kingdom would side with Osric against the young æthelings. But to betray Osric was to betray Breguswith.

“Well,” Edwin said, “we’ll have the truth of it from Cuelgils himself soon enough.”

They took Lindum before æfen. Lindum, city of tanners and fullers, stinking for generations of stale urine and skin turning to leather, stinking now of blood.

Edwin and his counsellors, each with his own man, sat at the scarred marble table that had belonged to Cuelgils. Hild, who had brought Lintlaf—for Forthere had reclaimed Eamer, and she didn’t even know the names of her hounds—sat a little apart. No one knew if she was in favour or not. Beyond the painted walls, gesiths hooted as they played kickball with the heads of Cuelgils’s sons. They were small heads. The head of Cuelgils himself was being washed, its hair carefully dried and moustaches combed, to be mounted on a gilded pike.

Edwin was relaxed and smiling. Cuelgils was dead in the fight, a pity, but he had Lindsey and its gold. A lot of gold. Enough gold to buy his way past any northern conspiracy. On his forefinger he wore a new ring, a massive garnet.

He threw a great golden collar, probably Irish work, to Coelgar, “Wisest of counsellors,” who bowed his head. An arm ring inset with silver and enamel to Lilla, “Bravest of men.” A cuff to Blæcca, “Most loyal thegn,” and on around the table, until everyone was looking at Hild.

Edwin extracted a small, heavy cup from the hoard. Polished silver from Byzantium, inlaid with gold: a lewd figure of a woman on one side and a stately queen on the other. Both women wore the same face. Edwin weighed it for a moment, then set it on the table with a click and pushed it to Hild. “For Hild, seer, prophet, and most favoured niece, on her birth day.”

Hild had forgotten. She was twelve years old.