Hild

12

THE DERWENT coursed steely and dark under a scudding sky. Every now and again the sun broke through and shone on a daffodil, early bumblebee, or dangling catkin. Hild walked along the bank with Æthelburh, stepping around puddles so their just-healed chilblains did not get wet and flare again. Bassus and Lintlaf followed behind at a discreet distance.

The queen walked very slowly and, despite her best efforts, with a waddle. She was due to drop anytime. She was frowning.

The queen’s first embroidery had been greeted with such pleasure and confident covetous words from Æthelburh’s trade master that fourteen women were now working on three others. That morning Burgen had declared, louder than a honking goose, that the queen was obviously carrying a girl. She’d never seen such a clear case in her life—and they had to admit she’d had a long and full life. Well, hadn’t she? Indeed, several women murmured. Oh, be quiet you old fool, Æffe said, we’ve all had interesting lives, even the roof-brushing young barehead, there. No, Burgen said, loud enough to override her gemæcce, it was clear: The queen was carrying a girl. You’d only to look at her. Carrying high like that, and nipples pink as a maid’s. Why, probably even bareheaded and ungirdled Hild had nipples darker than that. And look at the width of the queen’s hips…

“It isn’t a girl,” Æthelburh said to Hild. “It isn’t.”

Hild didn’t see why she was worried about it. Her uncle would be pleased to have a peaceweaver—then he could keep Hild as seer. “He already has sons.”

“Not my sons,” Æthelburh said. “Let’s stop here.” She indicated a fallen poplar. Four months ago, Hild would have sat immediately, but she had learnt from watching the queen. So while Lintlaf stripped off his warrior jacket and hurried towards them she examined the fine-downed shoots and unfurling leaves on the poplar. It must have fallen in the recent storm.

Æthelburh smiled at Lintlaf as he laid his jacket on the knurled trunk then withdrew.

“He looks ready to die for you,” Hild said as she helped Æthelburh lower herself gently.

“Even though I lumber like a pregnant sow?”

She knew better than to agree. She sat next to the queen, picked at the heavy burr under her thigh. She wondered why poplars had so many.

“Hild. Does your mother speak to you of women’s things?”

“No.” In the distance a pair of shovelbill ducks rose in a tight flurry of feathers. She wondered what had disturbed them.

“Are you ready for your veil band? A blind man can see you’ll need it soon.”

Hild watched the ducks as they settled back to their eggs. Probably not otter. Perhaps nothing. Nesting ducks could be unpredictable.

“Yet you’re not wearing bindings. Does your mother even have a girdle prepared? A weft beater?”

Hild had no idea. She didn’t want to think about her mother.

“You have no sister here. Your mother, well, she’s busy. You need a gemæcce.”

Hild remembered working on Cian’s tablet weave with Begu, the shadows in Mulstan’s hall all falling one way in the stream of sunlight.

“Hild?”

Hild shook her head. The memory of Begu was hers.

“Child, you need a gemæcce. Would you like me to choose one?”

“No!”

“Ah. So you’ve made your choice. Is she so very unsuitable? No? My dear, I can’t help you if I don’t know. And unlike you’re reputed to be able to, I can’t read minds.”

“I can’t read minds.”

“No. But there are those who say you can.” She nodded down the path to where Lintlaf was scratching his back against an oak tree and Bassus was cleaning his fingernails with a knife. “I warned you that if you didn’t speak for yourself others would speak for you. And they are doing so. It’s dangerous. You must learn to listen to me. But for now, I’m telling you, you must have a veil band and girdle prepared and a gemæcce chosen soon. Very soon. If neither you nor Breguswith take care of it, I will. I’m your aunt.”

Cousin, Hild thought. But perhaps it might be a fine thing for the queen to be her aunt. “She wants me to marry Oswine and have Osthryth as gemæcce. My mother.”

The queen didn’t quite hide her surprise at this burst of confidence. “This doesn’t please you?”

“They look like pointy-faced ermine.”

Æthelburh laughed—then went white around the lips. She put her hands on her belly and, after a moment, said, “He’s impatient.” The pinched look eased. “Help me up.”

Hild hauled the queen to her feet. Lintlaf hurried to retrieve his jacket while Bassus remained to guard the path. As they passed Bassus, the queen went white again and leaned for a moment against the oak tree.

“He wants to come into the world very soon.” She panted. “So much wants to happen soon. Too soon. Think on what I’ve said.” She pushed back against the tree, straightened, and took Hild’s arm. “Look at all these oak apples. Remind me of it when we get back. Stephanus will be grateful for them, for his ink.”

When they got back, Hild forgot about oak apples. Fursey stood by the gate, grinning. But it wasn’t Fursey Hild saw, it was the two who stood beside him: Cian and Begu.

Hild stopped so abruptly that the queen, still leaning on her arm, slewed to one side.

Begu wore a veil band. A veil band and girdle. She was a woman grown. And Cian stood like a young gesith, a thegn’s foster-son: tall, muscled, a hint of moustaches, cloak thrown back from his shoulders, hair greased, sword hilt tall over his left shoulder.

Bassus thought so, too. He stepped in front of his queen and put a hand on his sword. Cian crouched.

“No!” Hild said. “They’re friends.” And, heedless of manners, she abandoned the queen and ran to Cian, and the world filled with hugs and questions and the abrupt, bright laughter of relief and friends well met.

Hild, Begu, and Cian sat on the freshly ground limestone flags of the strange, bare, high-ceilinged room that was to be the Derventio chapel. Under the Crow’s supervision men had cut a row of windows high along the length of the eastern wall. There were no shutters. Everything but those pale, gritty flags had been mudded, plastered, and limed.

“The air stings my tongue,” Begu said, and tipped back her head to look at the ceiling. “A god is going to live here?”

“The Christ,” Hild said.

“It’s a cheerless space for a god,” Cian said. He leaned back on his hands, turning this way and that. His scabbard chape scraped the floor and the sleeves of his warrior jacket rose a little. Hild saw the tip of a new scar snaking over his forearm. “Cold, too.”

Hild, stung, said, “There will be silver and jewels, silk hangings, and gilded carvings to put old King Coel to shame once the walls dry. And the Crow will send to Frankia for glass for the windows!”

“Glass? In a wall?” Begu said, and Cian shook his head. Who had heard of such a thing.

Hild felt reproved, caught in a childish need to show off. Cian was a young warrior, a thegn’s foster-son. Begu was a girdled woman, the thegn’s marriageable heir. Hild might be touch-the-ceiling tall, the seer who saved Bebbanburg and predicted the fall of Lindsey, but she was still, officially, a child. It seemed another lifetime since they had rolled in the kitchen garth at Mulstanton, shrieking with laughter about gods and worms, and dogs and demons.

The silence lengthened.

“I like the queen,” Begu said. A wisp of hair was escaping her forehead band. She noticed Hild looking. “I use your comb every day.”

Hild touched her pocket. “I carry your snakestone.”

“I hoped you’d like it. Cian practically sleeps in his belt buckle.”

“I do not!” His flush emphasised the new strength of his jaw, the thickening bone of his brow. He jumped to his feet. “I hear singing. They’ve broached a new cask. I’m going to drink.”

They watched him leave. The muscles wrapping his knees were bigger, too.

“He doesn’t like to be teased anymore,” Begu said.

He never had, Hild thought. Perhaps they weren’t so changed after all. But Begu, Begu sitting there in her veil band and girdle, amber and gold glinting at her ears.

“What are you staring at?”

“Your veil band. It’s…” It’s a veil band. A woman’s veil band. “It’s lovely.”

“Onnen made it for me. She made one for you, too. I brought it with me. And a girdle. Just in case your ma didn’t remember to. Though she said I wasn’t to say that. Oh.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, then Hild laughed. “I’m glad, so very glad you’ve come.”

Begu laughed, too, that shimmery, silvery laugh Hild would always associate with light along a wet beach and the smell of the sea, and took her hand. “I said I’d come. I said we’d use those tablets. Onnen would have come herself—she’s very agitated for you, but that’s Cian’s to talk about, I don’t know what’s going on, no one tells me anything—but she couldn’t.”

Hild had forgotten how Begu’s thoughts flocked like starlings, flicking this way then that. It took her a moment to sort through what Begu had said. “Onnen’s ill?”

Begu stared. “Didn’t I tell you? No, perhaps I didn’t. But your veil band— Oh, it’s so pretty! It’s the exact colour of—”

“Begu, tell me what? What’s the matter with Onnen?”

“Why, nothing.”

“Then—” Hild took a breath, let it go. “Tell me how she is.”

“She’s well. She’s cross that she can’t come. She nagged and nagged and nagged Cian: Make that lass understand, mind, make her understand. Oh, she’s like a bee in a bottle, and big as a house. Fa is happy, though. He thinks it will be twins. Just like Winty. Though of course he doesn’t know Winty really. Did I tell you about Winty?”

“Onnen is with child?”

Begu looked surprised. “Well, of course. I just said so. She’s due any day.”

Hild took another breath. This was just how Begu was. She would talk to Cian about Onnen and her message. “You liked the queen, you said.”

“She seems nice. But what was she doing out and about with those gesiths? She could birth if a bird sang suddenly. Any time. Maybe even today. You can always tell when they waddle like that and go white about the lips. The baby’s dropped. And what’s that perfume you smell of?” She lifted Hild’s hand, sniffed her wrist. “You smell like her.”

Hild was getting back the habit of plucking the meaning from the flying words. “Jessamine. It’s a flower oil. And she is nice. For a queen.” But Hild didn’t want to talk about the queen. “What colour’s my veil band?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s like that colour between moss and the sea. To match your eyes. Onnen spent all winter on it. And your girdle! She nagged and nagged at Fa until he gave her the stones.” She frowned, which made her look just like a goat pondering whether to eat a thistle, and tilted her head, listening. The gesiths were singing more loudly. “Do you suppose Cian is getting drunk? I promised Onnen I’d look out for him. She said I was to remind him to keep his sword in his scabbard, that here he’s just a man with a blade, and a young one at that, not the lord’s son.”

Hild had no idea how Begu could protect Cian from quarrelsome, bloody-handed gesiths. She stood. “We’ll go make sure he’s all right.”

When they left the chapel, they paused and blinked in the cold wind, then started across the rough grass—Hild could already see a path between the serving door of the hall and the chapel, where the grass had been flatted by housefolks’ feet—towards the singing.

By the good-natured sound of it, they were not yet very drunk:

“It makes no sense,” Begu said. “No one’s ears are that long.”

“They’re not singing about ears.”

“Oh.”

The gesiths, ten of them, had dragged two benches outside and leaned them against the south wall at the east end of the hall. It was a favourite spot for the younger men and their dogs to lounge: sheltered from the wind that had been blowing cold from the northwest these last few days and bright with midmorning sun. Also close enough to call out to the housefolk passing and repassing and demand food and ale. Two, the black-haired brothers Berhtred and Berhtnoth, were bare-chested and just sheathing swords after a demonstration bout.

Berhtred wiped his chest with his jacket and straddled the bench facing Cian. “And that, young chestnut, is how we did it at Lindum.” Then he deliberately took the wooden bowl sitting before Cian and drank from it.

Hild clamped her hand on Begu’s shoulder, and Begu turned to look at her. But Begu hadn’t seen these men killing Lindseymen and thinking it of no more account than the slaughter of geese.

The men—her hounds; she saw Gwrast, the young Bryneich lord, and his cousin Cynan; Wilfram, son of Wilgar; Lintlaf; Eadric the Brown and his friend Grimhun; and Coelwyn, Coelfrith’s much younger brother; though not Eamer the Gewisse, who hadn’t exchanged so much as a word with her since Lindsey—sat back and waited to see how Cian would respond.

Cian reached for the ale jar, refilled the bowl, and gestured for Berhtred to drink again. “I honour you for it.”

Berhtred’s lip curled: The stripling was a coward.

“Indeed,” Cian went on, “I heard the Lindseymen were so fearsome that even a maid killed half a dozen.”

He knew what she’d done at Lindum.

Berhtred flushed dull red. Lintlaf leapt to his feet. “You insult the lady Hild!”

“No.” Cian deliberately took back the bowl of ale and sipped. “I believe I’m insulting the Lindseymen.”

Grimhun hooted and hurled a chunk of bread at Coelwyn.

Cian grinned at Lintlaf. “Perhaps you will honour me with a bout.” He turned to Berhtred. “After I’ve crossed swords with Berhtred. Unless, sir”—another grin, this time exaggerated for effect—“you feel the need to rest here in the sun to warm your old bones.”

More hooting, catcalling, and thrown objects. Now they understood the shape of things.

Berhtred looked at Lintlaf. “What do you think? Me or you?”

Lintlaf waved one dismissive hand, and sat. “I’ll take the winner.”

“This ring on Lintlaf,” Berhtnoth said, slapping a chunk of gold and topaz on the bench, which earned him a reproachful look from his brother.

“I’ll take that bet,” Cian said. “But only if I try your brother first. No shields.”

No, Hild wanted to shout, you’re too young! But they were all young.

Cian stood, unbuckled his belt—Hild recognised the gold tongue and garnet eyes—and saw the girls.

“Come and watch!” he shouted. “I’m going to show them how we do it in Mulstanton!”

He’s drunk, Hild thought. But, no: His eyes were brilliant, his cheeks hectic, but it was joy. This was what he’d been looking for all his life, to be a gesith and do as gesiths do, and here he was, at the hall of the overking of the Anglisc, about to test his mettle against the king’s own.

“It’s for fun,” she said to Begu. “They won’t hurt him.”

“Of course not,” Begu said. “He won’t let them. He’ll beat those silly boys.”

Those silly boys had disembowelled men and played kickball with children’s heads.

“Come on, let’s sit and watch!”

The gesiths greeted them cheerfully and made room on the sunniest bench. Betting and drinking and rude comments resumed.

Cian stripped off his jacket and threw it to Begu, who folded it lumpily. Hild took it, refolded it, set the package on her knee. It was a blue so dark it was almost black, embroidered in gold and green about the shoulder seams and hem by a hand Hild would recognise anywhere. She imagined Onnen working over it, dreading sending her son away. As it warmed in the sun, it released Cian’s familiar scent, overlain with the tang of iron and copper—a man’s smell.

Cian drew his sword with that slithering ring that set her heart pounding. “Not for blood!” Cian shouted, and tossed the sheath aside.

They circled in the sun. Hild recognised Cian’s familiar stance, left foot leading, at an angle to his opponent, right foot and arm back, sword held back and high. She imagined how hard it was to hold a sword like that. Several gesiths shook their heads: without a shield his left side was exposed. Hild’s heart squeezed. Was he trying to prove something to her, because Begu had teased him?

It was a risky stance, one that relied entirely on timing and joint strength: shoulder, elbow, wrist. And reach. Like Hild, he had the reach. He had the muscle, too, whippy rather than plump, veins like worms coiled around his wrist.

The scar she had noticed in the chapel showed ruched and red. About a year old. An ugly wound. A spear?

Berhtred chose the usual stance: right foot and right arm forward, sword held low. He was a badger of a man, thick body, short arms and legs, built for wrestling, for pushing with a shield at close quarters.

Perhaps Cian wasn’t being foolish after all.

“Hai!” said Cian, and feinted, a fast jab with the point. Berhtred swung his blade up, like a horizontal bar, expecting a hard clash of iron, but Cian’s blade was already back, waiting, and Berhtred met air, and teetered very slightly.

The Cian Hild had known, the Cian with the wooden sword and wicker shield, dreaming of Owein, would have yelled and hurled himself into the attack. This Cian, the one with corded muscles and a half smile, simply kept circling. Then, when Berhtred had the slanting morning sun in his eyes, Cian thrust.

Once for the feint with the tip, which Berhtred expected and so raised his sword only partway, then back and once more forward in a full stepping lunge, right foot leading now, and blade snaking over Berhtred’s in a wrapping leftwise twist that flung Berhtred’s sword up and away and into the grass. Cian stood with the tip of his sword against a curl of black chest hair while his opponent blinked, then he grinned and lifted the sword away in salute.

“My fa taught him that,” Begu said. The gesiths hooted and slapped the bench. “He said it takes a strong, supple wrist. He says not one man in a hundred can do it leftwise like that. He says rightwise, sunwise, is easy but widdershins is special. Though most gesiths think it bad luck. And in a real battle it would get you killed.”

Hild hardly heard her. Cian, her Cian, had disarmed a king’s gesith, blooded in the battle of Lindum, without a scratch or a bruise or even breaking a sweat.

“I’ll take that ring,” Cian said to Lintlaf, voice vibrant with his own power. “Or we could go for double or nothing, you and me.”

“I’ll take that bet. With shield and spear.”

Hild stood. Most of the friendly blood she’d seen spilled had been in spear games. A sharp leaf of iron at the end of a long pole of ash was not easy to control. “Cian, come away with us. Your foster-sister is lonely.”

“You lied!” Begu said, when the three of them were out of earshot. The gesiths were singing again.

“Yes. I want to talk to Cian. It’s easier if his guts are inside his skin.”

Cian gave her a lazy smile. “He wouldn’t have touched me.”

Hild ignored him. She didn’t know how to deal with this confident young lord. She focused on Begu.

“I know, I know. You want me to go away so you can talk to Cian.”

“Ask for Gwladus. My bodywoman. She’s probably in the kitchens.”

When she was out of earshot, Hild turned to Cian. “You have a message.”

“Mam said you were to take care. She said I was to watch you like a hawk. She said not to trust anyone, no one at all. She’s heard rumours.”

“What rumours?”

“I don’t know. All I know is she doesn’t trust you to anyone but me, and I’m to stick to you like honey on bread.”

“Even here, in the vill?”

“Especially. She said especially when you think you’re safe. She said your whole family should look behind them. But she reckons your mam can look after herself and your uncle has his gesiths.”

“I have men, too.”

“Truly yours?”

She thought about that. “They saved my life, near Lindum. Or Eamer did. The red-haired man. But they’re the king’s gesiths.”

Cian nodded. “Their will is not their own. They have given their oath.”

He said oath with the same breathy reverence he had once used to speak of the hero Owein.

Hild studied him. He blushed. He would have to lose that habit if he didn’t want to be teased, though the girls no doubt would like it. She wondered how long it would take Gwladus to snare him, and how she could persuade him and Lintlaf not to fight.

“You want to swear to the king.” He tucked his head down like an ox trying to refuse the yoke and said nothing. “So what would you do if the king orders me dead?”

“It’s not the king who wants you dead.”

“Not today.”

They were both quiet. The gesiths were singing again. “About the king. I could never— I wouldn’t—”

She said to him in British, “An Anglisc oath is like water. It pours into every part of you, every crevice. You can’t hold any piece apart from it.”

The sword was his path, and what better road to walk than the king’s?

His eyes glistened. He rubbed his upper lip with his knuckle. Eventually he said in British, rusty from disuse, “I am not Anglisc.”

She grinned fiercely. Cian. Hers. But he kept rubbing his lip. She said, still in British, “Cian, I will not ask an oath. The oath is yours, like your wooden sword of long ago. But perhaps, for now, you will loan it to me, unspoken, and you may ask its return at any time, because it is yours.”

He smiled. The smile wobbled a little, but it was there. “Any time?”

“Any time.” He remembered. She touched his arm, the scar, and said, now in Anglisc, “A spear, like Owein?”

He shook his head. A tear flew loose, he brushed it away. “A boar.”

“Fearsome, no doubt?”

The queen’s quarters in Derventio were large and bright. Like the chapel, the ceiling and walls were plastered and whitewashed. Like the chapel, the room was cool. The queen, as wide as an ox, found warmth unbearable. Hild didn’t mind, but Begu stood with her arms wrapped around herself, and Wilnoð, the queen’s gemæcce, sitting with Arddun by the empty brazier sorting embroidery threads, wore a heavy overdress. Unlike the chapel, though, the queen’s room had a bed draped with rich blankets—striped and with chevrons in yellow and a red so dark it was almost black—where Æthelburh rested, and a finely woven rug imported from the East via Frankia covered the wide elm floorboards.

The queen looked up from the worked fabrics she had asked Begu to show her and nodded at Hild’s bare arms. “You’re the only woman who doesn’t huddle and shiver and give me reproachful looks.”

Hild nodded, wondering why they were there. Begu watched the queen anxiously.

“My husband”—she never called him the king—“tells me these rooms are as welcoming as an empty barn, though a barn is warmer. I told him I’ll paint and hang as soon as the walls are properly dry.”

Still sorting thread, Wilnoð said, “Not if the chapel dries first. Paulinus Crow will hog the painters and gilders for himself.”

“For the greater glory of God,” Æthelburh said, but Hild could read neither her tone nor her expression. “And speaking of God,” she said to Hild and Begu, “I hope you will both attend chapel with us in the morning. James has been working on a special Mass for Easter. The music, he assures me, would make an angel weep and hens fly. The feast will begin in hall immediately afterwards.”

Hild nodded again. She was curious about the Christ ritual.

“Good.” The queen smiled and stroked the veil band and girdle Begu had brought to show her. “This is fine work. Yours?”

“Oh, no,” said Begu. “That is, yes. Onnen—my father’s new, that is, my— Anyway, Onnen helped.”

Hild opened her mouth to say Onnen is my mother’s— But her mother’s what?

“And the embroidery on your veil band?” the queen asked.

“All mine. Mostly.”

“Come here, let me look.” Begu knelt by the bed. Æthelburh examined the band closely, then ran her fingertips over the violet-and-blue stitching. “Nicely done.”

She sat up straight, arranged her blankets to her satisfaction, and stroked the raised nap while she studied both girls, back and forth. Her attention settled on Begu.

“You are of good family.” Her voice now was strong and formal, and Hild’s blood began to beat hard in her chest and stomach. “Tell me, your father and—Onnen?—would want you to stay?”

“I think so. Onnen sent me. She told me to stay close.”

“And you would like that, to stay close to the lady Hild?”

“Oh, yes!”

Æthelburh turned to Hild, who understood now some of what Cian must have felt that night on the beach when Mulstan unwrapped the sword. “And your mother, the lady Breguswith?”

Hild tried to swallow and speak at the same time. “Yes.” She sounded like a strangling toad. Begu giggled nervously. Hild swallowed again, took a slow breath. “My mother and Onnen know each other well.”

“And this would please you?”

“Yes!”

Æthelburh winced, and Hild thought for one horrible moment that she had bellowed, but then the queen put a hand on her belly and took two deep breaths. After a moment her pinched look faded. She smiled. “Then it shall be so.”

She smiled at Wilnoð, who smiled back fondly, and stood, holding a basket.

“Begu, you are welcome in my house in your own right and as the gemæcce of Hild, niece of the king. And the queen.”

Hild didn’t dare look at her gemæcce—gemæcce!—but Begu’s hand stole into hers. Hild squeezed it.

“To seal the bargain I have a gift.” The queen motioned for Begu to stand and for Hild to come forward.

She lifted items from Wilnoð’s basket one by one and held them up to the light. An ivory spindle each, and distaffs in two lengths. Shears, made of iron and inlaid with fantastical beasts in silver. “The smith swears they are harts, though they look very like foxes to me.” One gold thimble each. Two packets of the finest needles Hild had ever seen, and astonishingly bright. “And for you, Hild, when it’s time to wear your girdle, this.” A deep-dyed blue leather purse, its ivory lid held by three yellow-gold hinges, each inlaid with garnet. Hild longed to hold it to her face and smell the new-leather scent, test its suppleness. “To put inside it—” The queen’s hand, feeling about in the basket, clenched in a fist and her face tightened. Wilnoð laid a professional hand on her belly.

“You may not make tomorrow’s Mass, my lady.” She handed the basket to Begu. “Off you go. My lady needs rest. No, hush now. Tomorrow will be soon enough for thanks.”

Outside, they turned to each other but the courtyard was too busy. Hild looked at the sky. The clouds were little and white; it was unlikely to rain.

“I’ll show you a secret place,” Hild said.

She led Begu to the track worn long, long ago between the Roman villa and the ford. Part of it was overgrown, green and mysterious, a tube through woods coppiced generations ago, then run wild, and now gradually being reclaimed.

Every now and again Begu remembered what was in the basket and stopped swinging, stopped chattering, and looked solemn, but then she would notice something—“Look, the hedgepigs are awake already!”—and point and forget.

After a while they left the main track for a rougher, more spidery path. A woodcutter’s trail. They jumped over a rivulet, running busy and brown.

There were eleven ash boles in a circle, all cut early in the season. The woodcutters wouldn’t be back for years. In the centre, leaf mould had collected in a soft heap. Hild sat. Begu sat next to her. They spread their skirts to overlap and laid the queen’s gifts on the cloth one by one then held hands and gazed at their treasure.

The breeze was now soft and light, the sun warm. The woods smelt of green living things. The rivulet bibble-babbled. A nearby wren tut-tutted. Greenfinches sang their creaky mating songs. Hild wanted to laugh and shout and be still all at the same time.

“I feel like my insides just filled with sunshine.”

Begu nodded. “I could burst.” She squeezed Hild’s hand.

Hild squeezed back.

They gazed some more at their treasure. “I like the thimbles best,” Begu said. She let go of Hild’s hand and slid a thimble onto her middle finger, then the other onto her pointing finger. “I expect they’re too small for you,” she said hopefully.

Hild flopped down on her back and laughed. Begu, her jackdaw, her gemæcce.

The weather changed overnight. On Easter morning clouds smoked and twisted across a low sky and those who had to be away from a fire hurried between buildings pulling their clothes close against the cold, wilful wind.

The queen did make it to the Mass, though the king did not. Hild noticed that no men attended but the queen’s Jutes, the priests and choristers, and a few housefolk in tunics painstakingly cleaned for the occasion and spattered about the shoulders with the first fat raindrops—no Anglisc men but Cian.

Cian glared at Hild, but Paulinus, in his cope stiff with jewels and gold thread, had seen him and smiled, and now Cian was duty bound to stay.

Hild ignored him. Her belly ached, strange and heavy, and she felt a little sick. Perhaps it was all the incense smoking in the brass censers two priests swung from chains.

The music made Hild forget her belly. Voices soared overhead. Outside rain runnelled and gushed over the tile roof.

Paulinus’s sonorous Latin brought her back to earth. The ache in her belly returned. She concentrated on shifting her weight unobtrusively from one foot to the other. She wished she could sit down, but only the queen, looking pale, had a three-legged stool.

The Mass droned on. Rain beat on the roof. A wealh woman coughed carefully, persistently.

Music soared again, Paulinus walked in state back up the aisle, preceded by the smoking censers. The wealh woman’s coughing rose to a crescendo. The queen stood, swayed, and Wilnoð and her other women hustled her away. Begu, with a glance back at Hild, who nodded, went with them.

Outside, under the dripping eaves, Stephanus spoke to Cian: The bishop would have words with the young lord at the feast, if the young lord was willing. Cian bowed and suggested that not only was he more than willing, he was honoured. Hild breathed deeply of the damp but fresh air and wondered when he’d learnt to lie like a thegn. Stephanus hurried away, holding his skirts above the wet. Cian scowled after him and wiped his rain-wet forearms against his tunic.

“Well,” said Fursey, and they turned. “Stephanus seems as pleased as a black cockerel. If I were an expert on the matter, which I am, I’d say the Roman bishop anticipates his first gesith baptism.”

“I’m not a gesith—”

“Yet,” said Hild.

“—and I’ve no wish to be a priest!”

“I imagine not,” Fursey said, smiling. “Luckily, baptism does not make you one. Though indeed”—his smile broadened—“it does make you exceedingly wet.”

They followed him, mystified, to the hall for the feast.

Forthere stood watchful at the door while guests removed their weapons and leaned them against the east wall. Cian set his sword next to a sword-and-dirk pair with silver fine work: Pictish. Ciniod’s emissary come at last. Hild laid her seax near an old British blade with a magnificent yellow pommel stone, probably Dyfneint, which meant Geraint had sent yet another petitioner. At least he hadn’t made the mistake of sending a bishop again. She wondered what had happened to Anaoc. As she refastened her belt she scanned the row of weapons for evidence of Dyfneint’s enemy, the Gewisse, but Cian and Fursey were already moving towards a knot of drinking gesiths. She hurried to catch up.

She felt queasy again, and the strange ache low in her belly was back.

The feast proper had not yet begun. The king’s scop—a new one, the East Anglian who had sung the lament for Rædwald—supervised musicians with pipes and lyres; housefolk were still laying out bread trenchers and bowls and cups. Women moved from torch to torch with burning tapers. In the centre, all along the fire pits, men clasped forearms, or bowed, or punched shoulders in greeting. The largest knot stood around the king. The thin Dyfneint emissary in a scarlet cloak—the Dyfneint loved their Roman ways—stood by Paulinus, who had removed the jewelled cope but whose black was relieved by an emperor-purple silk sash wound about his middle. Stephanus hovered respectfully; even James the Deacon was there. The Dyfneint glared at the yellow-haired man with luxuriant moustaches talking in confidential tones to the king; Gewisse, the most powerful of the West Saxons, loved their whiskers.

The king’s group made a good show of being absorbed in one another’s conversation, but every time the king laughed, or sighed, or turned slightly to hold out his cup to a houseman for a refill, they noticed, and their stance or expression or volume subtly matched his.

None wore a blade, not so much as an eating knife, but Lilla stood always by the king’s elbow, and Eamer and even Lintlaf were nearby and drinking sparingly. Eamer and the other Gewisse appeared not to notice one another. Perhaps it was that Eamer no longer considered himself Gewisse: A gesith’s oath took precedence over all else. There again, Eamer didn’t acknowledge her, either. She wondered why. He had seemed to like her well enough in Lindsey, though perhaps she had misread him.

At one end of the fire pit, Osric stood with Breguswith and the brothers Berhtnoth and Berhtred. Osric didn’t lean in to Breguswith the way Mulstan had Onnen but slung his arm around her mother’s waist. Her mother smiled and laughed and gave Osric smouldering eyes but, like a cat with a stranger, faced more away than towards him. They drank freely, as did Eadfrith and Osfrith, looking very much the young princes. Oswine stood nearby, clearly wishing to stand with his cousins the æthelings rather than with his father but uncertain of his welcome.

Cian was tense. A feast day was a time for great boasts, heroic deeds, offers, and oath-taking, and Edwin was overking, the best lord a gesith could hope for. Cian, a thegn’s foster-son, wanted to make an impression.

Hild said to Fursey, “Give Cian your drink. He needs courage. He’s going to talk to the Crow.”

“I am?” Cian said.

“You said you would. Forget the king for now. Drink that. Good. Now another.” She caught Stephanus’s eye, as warning, then took Cian by the elbow and steered him towards Paulinus. Stephanus leaned and murmured something in his bishop’s ear. Paulinus turned, smiling.

“Call him lord bishop,” Hild whispered, and pushed him very slightly.

“Ah. Our Mass-going warrior,” Paulinus said, and held out his hand.

Cian inclined his head but perhaps didn’t know the amethyst ring was to be kissed. “My lord Bishop.”

The muscles around Paulinus’s eyes tightened briefly. “Yes. Well.” He ran the tip of his ringed finger around the rim of his blue glass wine cup. “Stephanus tells me of your interest in the faith, young… Cian of Mulstanton, by the Bay of the Beacon.”

“My lord Bishop. Yes. That is, the music was, the music is very fine.”

“Yes. I brought Deacon James here especially to uplift souls to the greater glory of God.”

“Most foresighted of you, Bishop,” Hild said.

Paulinus focused on her, then looked back at Cian, and again at Hild. “You are cousins perhaps?”

Hild stilled. For a moment she had forgotten how dangerous it was to stand side by side with Cian, how a stranger would see their height, their hair, their solemn faces.

Cian laughed and shook his head. “Though we played together like fox kits for the years of our childhood.”

Paulinus’s hooded eyes gave away nothing, but Hild worried. The Crow was not stupid.

Her belly ached.

The crowd rippled. “No,” the king said loudly—for the second time, Hild realised. “No, my lord Ceadda. I won’t be badgered in my own hall.” He turned deliberately from the West Saxon, looked over to Hild’s group, waved at the Dyfneint. “Lord Dywel, come speak to me of Geraint king’s proposal. In fact, all of you there, my lord Bishop, yes, and your priests, and Niece, come here and speak to me of things suitable for a feast day.”

The scop stroked his lyre. Coelfrith looked up, caught the signal from the kitchen master by the hanging, and nodded to the king. Edwin smiled. “Saved by the food. Come. We’ll feast.”

He gestured at the table behind Hild’s party and took a step towards them.

The world went mad.

Hild caught a wink of light. Lilla, two paces behind the king, bellowed and threw himself at Edwin and Eamer, and blood spurted in a short red arc.

Everything slowed down, sound stretched.

Torchlight glittered on rings, jewelled collars, a dripping blade. Flash. Flash.

Hild couldn’t take it in, could only watch while a rivulet of blood wormed over the floor rushes and soaked into her shoe. Blood, in the king’s hall.

Then the smell hit her and the world snapped back to the right speed. She crouched and her hand dropped to a seax that wasn’t there.

Then Forthere knocked her aside, and Cian, and around her men reached for swords that weren’t there and froze for a moment. Shouting, bellowing, a howling shriek, another knife flash, another.

Edwin rolled up from the floor, blood dripping from his upper arm, white-faced with pain, with Cian shielding him, wild-eyed, a tiny blade sprouting between his knuckles, gleaming garnet red. And blood, so much blood, spreading in a thick pool from Forthere, whose throat gaped. Lilla, cradling his own guts as though they were a small glistening dog. And Eamer, still holding the long thin knife. An assassin’s knife. Eamer didn’t move.

Cian reached behind him to make sure the king was safe. “To me!” he shouted. “To the king!”

And then the hubbub broke against them: shouting, men running for their swords, the king with blood running down his arm, swaying.

Cian, and men armed with swords now, were backing slowly from the room, blades pointing everyway, like the spines of a hedgepig. Cian’s belt-buckle blade looked tiny and vicious, like a red viper’s tooth.

The Gewisse was gone. Fursey was gone.

Flames flickered quietly in Hild and Begu’s chamber, glinting on the silver thread of the single hanging. Begu wrung out the cloth over the slop bowl and dipped it again in the copper bowl of warm water. She wiped Hild’s neck carefully. Hild sat like a statue.

“How did you get it on your neck?”

“I don’t know.” Her tongue felt heavy.

“There’s some on your shoe, too. Ooof, it’s soaked through to your hose. Your best blue hose, too. And splashed on your skirt.” She rinsed and wrung and wiped again.

Begu beckoned Gwladus from the shadow by the alcove. “We need cold water—something to soak these clothes. And more rags. And food.” She looked at Hild. “You look peaky. I expect it’s the shock. Though perhaps you’re hungry. I know I didn’t get fed while the queen birthed.” Hild said nothing. She felt nothing. “Bring a lot,” Begu said to Gwladus, “a lot of everything.”

Gwladus left.

“Take it all off,” Begu said to Hild. “Every scrap.”

Hild stood and stripped, hands cold and clumsy, and Begu washed her head to toe, firm, soothing strokes. “Oh. You have a little cut here, on your shin.”

Hild looked at it. It seemed very far away. Not her leg.

“Does it hurt? Well, it’s nothing much.” Begu mopped at it. Hild felt a distant tingle. Begu seemed to mop at it for a long time, then she wrapped a rag around it and tied it. “There, now.”

Now Hild felt cold, cold to her marrow, cold as marble. Everything smelt of blood, as though she was drowning in it.

Begu murmured on and dried Hild as she would a newborn calf, then helped her into a clean, long-sleeved bedshift. “Let’s get you warm.” She helped Hild into bed, then covered her and stroked the hair from her face. “Stay there while I tidy this away.”

Begu began to examine each piece of clothing for blood, folding and smoothing the unmarked things.

“I’ll tell you about the baby, shall I?”

“Cian…”

“I’m sure Cian’s fine. He’s a hero. Lie quietly now.”

The king would be half mad with fear. She should be there. But she couldn’t seem to move.

Begu talked about the way the queen’s women had fussed. “Anyone would think they’d never seen a baby born before. And the queen. She looks so quiet, but she swore like a gesith! Mind, they always do…”

Cian. She should be there.

“… Eanflæd, she’s called.”

Eanflæd. The new peaceweaver, born in blood. They were all born in blood.

“I worried for a bit that she’d reject the little thing. But then she— Well, what’s this?”

Hild opened her eyes. Begu was frowning over Hild’s drawers. She touched a fingertip to the red stain. “It’s still wet.” She looked up. “It’s yours.”

Hild didn’t understand.

“Does your belly ache?”

Hild put a hand on her belly.

Begu beamed. “You’re a woman! Though you’ve picked a fine night for it: the king half dead, the queen with a new daughter, everything in uproar.”

Hild rested her hand on her belly. A woman. Then she realised what Begu had said. “The king’s half dead?”

Begu waved aside the king’s health. She shook Hild’s drawers. “You’re a woman!”

Gwladus came in, followed by two kitchenfolk carrying a massive tray and two buckets of water. Begu waved the drawers again and said, “We’ll need more rags, and raspberry-leaf tea!”

Gwladus sighed, told the kitchenfolk where to put their burdens, and turned to leave with them.

“Wait.” Hild sat up. “Find out how the king is, and Cian.”

“And bring mead. We’ll have a feast! Up, up, you,” she said to Hild. “You’re looking a lot better. It takes people that way sometimes I suppose. That and the shock. Nothing a bit of food won’t cure. Come on. Get dressed.”

“Cian—”

“Stop fussing about Cian. He can take care of himself. He saved the king’s life. They’ll make him a hero. Besides, you can’t help him from that bed, can you?”

Hild couldn’t argue with that.

“That’s right. No, no. Proper clothes. You’re a woman now. Your finest gown, with the underdress and shoes Onnen sent that will match your veil band. Make sure you line your drawers.” She handed Hild a clean rag, showed her how to fold it. “I’ll just do this.”

So Hild dressed for the first time as a woman to the sound of Begu dipping and wringing, and visions of Cian dead at a half-mad king’s hand.

“Don’t forget your necklace, that thick gold one.” Hild found the heavy necklace, put it on, moving like someone under water. Was this what it meant to be a woman? No one had ever told her about the thick tongue and the strange distance. She lifted the girdle Begu had brought from Onnen, let it dangle from one hand.

“It’s like a toothache in your belly, isn’t it?” Begu nodded at Hild’s other hand curled protectively over her stomach. “The tea will help with that. And mead. Besides, the ache’ll be gone tomorrow. Here, give me that.” She took the girdle from Hild. “I can’t put it on until you stop clutching yourself. There. Too tight?”

Hild shook her head.

“It’s a pity your good hose are in the bucket. Still, no one will see. Besides, if that cut reopens you’d only bleed on them again. Keep still.” She rummaged in the sueded leather purse hanging from her own girdle and took out the comb Hild had given her. “We’ll comb you out nicely before we try the veil band. No, no, you’ll have to sit on the bed. It’s like trying to comb the top of a tree!”

Hild sat blankly while Begu combed, working methodically from the ends to the crown. When the tangles were dealt with, Begu lifted Hild’s hair, bunching it close to the scalp, then stroked the comb through it vigorously, as though brushing out a horse’s tail.

“I swear, your hair’s the exact same colour as Cian’s. You could be twins.”

Begu let go of the hair and let it fall over her forearm, then carefully slid her arm away so it fell thick and straight between Hild’s shoulder blades.

“There. No, keep still.” She pushed the veil band carefully over Hild’s forehead.

Modresniht, Edwin putting the heavy arm ring on her head like a crown. Her path.

“—ever is the matter? Oh, shush, shush, it’s all right.” Begu wrapped her arms around Hild. “It’s all right. It happens to everyone. You’ll like it soon, I promise.”

Hild shook her head. Her ears fluttered as though filled with butterflies.

“Put your head down. Down. There now.” Begu stroked her back. “There now.”

“Take it off.”

“Your band? But—”

“Take it off!”

Begu lifted it off carefully. Hild breathed. Begu nodded to herself. “That’s better. You went as white as milk.” She felt carefully around the embroidered, jewelled band. “I can’t feel anything sticking out.”

“That’s not it.”

“What is, then?”

“It’s all different. Everything.”

“Well of course it is.”

“You don’t understand.” They came for her in Lindsey. They came for the king in his own hall. Cian, her Cian, killed a man. She should have stayed. How would she be the light of the world feeling like this?

“Of course I do. It happened to me not long since.” She flapped her hand at Hild’s worry. “In a fortnight you won’t even remember how it was to be a child. Besides”—she took Hild’s hand—“it’s happened. There’s nothing to be done. And I’m here. Your gemæcce.”

“But—”

“No buts. No nothing. It is as it is. How does that new scop’s song go?”

“Fate goes ever as it must.”

“Just so. Cian’s a man now. A hero. You’re a woman. So are you ready to try again, with the band?”

Fate goes ever as it must. Hild bent her head, to all of it.

This time when the circle pressed on her head, she was ready. I’m not a child in hall, she told herself. We’re none of us children.

“Stand up. Now put this on.” Begu handed her the purse the queen had given her. “And your seax. There.” Begu’s face stilled. Her hands dropped into her lap. She smiled: slow, surprised, proud. “Your mother will never tell you what to do again.” Again that smile. “Wait there.”

She stood, poured drinking water into the clothes bucket until it brimmed and trembled.

“Now come and see. No, wait. I forgot. I have a present for you.” She jumped on the bed, stood carefully, and felt along the shelf for the twin of the clumsily painted box she’d given Hild. “Here.” Earrings. Moss agate strung on gold wire. “Keep still. Oh. Oh, yes. They match your eyes exactly. And this.” She tucked an ivory distaff through the girdle, a match to the one at her own waist, then jumped off the bed. “Now come and look.” Hild came and stood next to her. “You look like a queen.”

Hild looked down at her reflection. A tall, obdurate woman gazed back. Blue-green veil band embroidered with gold-and-silver thread, sewn with lapis and agate and beryl. Agate swinging from each ear. Heavy yellow gold resting between her breasts. Dyed-blue girdle. A matching purse with ivory lid. Distaff.

She reeked of power: richly dressed, strong-boned, uncanny. She laid her hand on her seax and gave herself a long look. Begu was right. No one would be fool enough to get in the way of this woman. She looked like a pale and unearthly queen.

“You could order flame to leap back into the log and it would,” Begu said.

Hild smiled, feeling the power of it. The smile turned the unearthly queen to a haggard and bony youth playing dress-up. She stepped back, startled.

Gwladus burst in. “Ha,” she said, and put a massive tray on the table. “Scrying for your fortunes? Well, here’s some news for you. Lilla is dead as a doornail. The king’s roaring like a bear stuck with a pin but is said to be breathing easy now. They say tomorrow he’ll be none the worse for wear than that scratch on his arm. Arddun said the witch, that is, begging your pardon, the lady Breguswith, sniffed the blade and thought the poison poor work.”

“Poison?” Begu looked at Hild.

Poison.

“What?” said Gwladus.

“Tell me of the poison.”

“He couldn’t talk, Lintlaf said. Tongue sticking out like a dead thing. And he was dizzy and cold. His heart kicked. But he’s fine now. As I said.”

Poison. “I’m fine,” she said to Begu. If it was Eamer’s blade that nicked her shin, it was poor work indeed. “Go on.”

“The bishop is telling everyone God saved the king. The king is shouting for his army and vowing fit to turn black in the face. He’s shouting at the bishop that if the Christ will give him bloody victory over the West Saxons, he, the king, will give his new daughter for baptism to the Christ. The bishop is shouting at his priests to pray for victory. The captains are shouting for their men—and at each other, for both Lilla and Forthere are dead and no one knows who’s in charge. Lintlaf just shakes his head and the brothers Berht scowl like black dogs. The queen is shouting at her women to shut the king up or he’ll wake the baby. The baby is crying. The baby’s name will be Eanflæd. Her hair is black and her eyes blue. And she’s a pair of lungs on her. Pink and plump and loud as a sow.”

“Cian?”

“He’s fine, Lintlaf says. He’s under guard til tomorrow when everyone’s calmed down—but guarded by your dogs, who think he’s a hero.”

She gauged the impact of her news, nodded in satisfaction, then whipped the cloth off the tray, and began to point. “I brought the white mead, and sweet pastries, and an underbelt for the rags. There’s so much shouting that no one cares what leaves the kitchen tonight.”

“See?” Begu said. “There’s nothing you can do. He’s fine. You’re fine. Now we celebrate.”

They feasted and drank, fierce swallows to themselves as gemæcce, to Æthelburh and Eanflæd, to the king for surviving, to Gwladus for the feast, to Arddun for the news, to Cian.

“He’ll get a ring for this night’s work, Lintlaf says,” Gwladus said. By now it seemed natural that their wealh should be sitting on the bed with them, sipping from a walnut cup with a silver rim. “A young gesith who saved the king. It’s like one of the old songs.”

“Cian saved the king!” Begu said. She jumped off the bed and danced about with her mead. “Cian saved the king!”

For some reason they all found this funny.

More drinking, more toasts, then they were kneeling by the brimming water bucket watching as Gwladus blew out all the tapers and lit a twist of hemp fibre floating in a dish of tallow.

After the white wax light, bright as moonlight, the broad flame flaring and dying in the rough clay dish felt like something from the beginning of the world. The water gleamed, ochre and black.

“Look, you,” Gwladus said. “Look into the water and tell us what you see.”

“Yes,” said Begu, “oh yes! Do seer magic.”

Hild looked down at the water, at herself, a woman. A woman who knows. Standing like a queen. Light of the world. Queen of the world.

“I could be a queen,” she said.

“Is that what you see? Is that your wyrd?”

Hild looked deeper, letting her mind sink into the glimmer and shadow, as she might in the wood, looking at the leaves, or lying on her back watching the clouds, letting the thoughts come, letting the things she already knew arrange themselves in a pattern, a story that others might call a prophecy.

“Is that your wyrd?” Begu said again.

“No.” There was no world in which she would be queen to another’s king. Eanflæd would be peaceweaver. She was the light of the world.

“And what about Cian?”

“Shh,” Gwladus said, “she’s seeing.”

Cian. Gwladus was right. He would swear an oath to the king, swear to lay his life down for the king’s honour. He would be a hero with a ringed sword. And more, for Lilla was dead, and Forthere, and Edwin wouldn’t know whom to trust, and Cian had proved his loyalty. Edwin… She shook her head.

“What? What are you seeing now? What’s she seeing now?”

“Hush,” said Gwladus, and to Hild, in British, “Drink this. Ah, and another sip. Now look you, look deeper.”

And with the mead burning in her gullet, Hild felt all-wise, all-seeing, all-powerful.

She looked in the water, watched the rippling faces of her companions. Rustic little Begu, who knew nothing of the world. Gwladus, a wealh of the Dyfneint, who just wanted to go home. And perhaps she would. A Gewisse had tried to kill the king, a Gewisse who had forsworn himself.

“The king will hunt Gewisse. There will be war with the West Saxons.” Enemies of the Dyfneint. But they knew that.

“Will Lintlaf fight the West Saxons alongside the king?”

“Yes,” Hild said, in British. He was a gesith. What else would he do? “He will kill many Saxons.”

“Will he come home to me safe?”

“Home…” If the war went well—and of course it would, Edwin’s war band was huge—perhaps he would choose to hold the land he took from the West Saxons, the land they had taken lately from the Dyfneint. And if Lintlaf did well… “The king will take the Dyfneint land. Lintlaf, if he chooses, could hold some of it in the king’s name.”

“Dyfneint land, Lintlaf? He could take me home?”

“What?” said Begu. “What? What are you saying?”

Hild looked up from the water. The wealh’s eyes glistened. It was so easy to change a life. “He could.”

Gwladus shrieked, hugged Begu. “I’m going home! I’m going home!”

“My turn, my turn,” Begu said. “See what’s for me.”

Hild smiled, looked in the water. That was even easier. Begu would marry and teach her children the name of every horse, cow, and goat on the land. But no, wait. Wait. Begu was now her gemæcce; she must follow Hild. But where would Hild go?

The foot of her hose, swollen with trapped air, rose from the depth of the pail, turned, and sank again, like a whale diving deep in the cold waters of the North Sea. Down and down and down into the dark…

She shivered. Begu’s fate was wedded to her own. She should have thought of that. Begu had no idea of Hild’s life; Hild should have explained. But it was too late. The queen herself had made them gemæcce; it couldn’t be undone. Begu’s life would never be simple again.

Why had the queen done it? The queen… The queen who had brought Paulinus, the Christ bishop… The Christ to whom the king was vowing to give the queen’s child for victory in battle. A Christian peaceweaver…

The wick floating in its fat flared yellow, and Hild remembered the road to Rendlesham, Fursey tapping the small fiery bead. You have forgotten the most powerful of all.

The yellow bead, blazing with light, next to the other beads: the one for Cynegils of the West Saxons, a deep angry red, and the reddish-orange beads for his three sons. One with a chip. Chipped. Chafing at his father. Oh.

“Cwichelm!” she said. “It was Cwichelm, prince of the Gewisse. He sent Eamer.”

She couldn’t remember the name of the other Saxon at the feast. Ceadda? He had not looked at Eamer but he must have passed some signal. Why hadn’t she seen it? Why hadn’t she been looking? Because she’d had Fursey at her elbow and Cian in her thoughts. Her mother would be angry. Her mother… Did she have anything to do with this? No: The chaos after assassination was not something she could control, and Breguswith liked control. Osric? She thought about the way his body showed his thoughts: No, he’d been as surprised as anyone. And where was Fursey?

“Hild, what about me?” Begu said. “What about my future—our future? Will we be happy? Will I?”

The wick flared again and spat. The Christ. Cwichelm. Fursey. Everything was changing, and she couldn’t see the pattern. It wasn’t easy anymore. The ache in her belly was making her feel sick.

The silver rim of Gwladus’s cup pressed against her bottom lip. “Drink.”

She swallowed. She wanted to lie down. But now her head was full of pictures: Edwin, looking wildly about him, blood dripping from his arm: Whom to trust, whom to trust? And she was glad, then, oh so very glad, that Eamer was not one of her hounds. She saw Edwin sitting on his great chair, eyes darting, making and unmaking decisions all spring and into summer until his advisers despaired and began to listen to the promises of other kings and princes. So many other kings: Anglisc, British, and Saxon, Irish, Pictish, and Scots. So much fear and greed, so many whispers: a foster-brother in Gwynedd, hard-faced nephews in exile with Picts and Scots, and Osric his black-haired cousin plotting in Arbeia. The clash of swords.

“Black hair and chestnut,” she said, watching the pattern of light and shadow twine and shimmer on the surface of the water.

Her hose rose again, like a dead and bloated whale.

She leaned closer. “So much blood.”

“Don’t touch it!” Begu caught her with her face so close to the water she could have flicked out her tongue and touched it. “It will spill and break the spell.”

“It smells,” she whispered.

“Well, yes. It’s full of your dirty clothes.”

Hild blinked. Clothes. Dirty water. Just dirty water. She straightened, then reached out and flicked the surface with her fingertip. The trembling water spilled down the side of the bucket. Hild stood, said to Gwladus, “When you’ve cleaned that up, bring me raspberry tea.”

Her belly did not ache the next day but her head did, and her skin smelt different, like a stranger’s.

Gwladus brought food and news that, according to Lintlaf, Cian was still whole, and according to Arddun, the queen and the baby were doing well. Hild sent her to make sure Cian had been fed, and she and Begu were sipping small beer and munching stickily on warm bread and honey when the curtain parted and Breguswith swept in.

“There you are. The king wants—” She stopped. “Well.” There was more in that one word than in the whole of a scop’s song. “What a lovely veil band.” For a moment—so briefly Hild wondered if she’d imagined it—her mother’s face seemed to thicken and pucker, like the skin on warmed milk, but then it smoothed to its usual unreadable expression. “A very fine purse, too. Kentish work, if I don’t mistake.” She stared deliberately at the spindle in Hild’s girdle, then at its match in Begu’s.

Hild brushed crumbs carefully from her skirts. Your mother will never tell you what to do again. She stood. She was taller than Breguswith. “What does my uncle want?” My uncle, not yours.

“Your meddling priest has found the West Saxon, Ceadda, the Gewisse who ran.”

“And the king wants me to question him?”

Breguswith smiled, a bright spark of eyes and teeth, like a flint striking steel. “Sadly, the king killed him before he could speak. He would have killed your priest, too, if he hadn’t run like a hare. If he’s any sense, he’ll keep running. However, word of your vision, black hair fighting chestnut hair, and your naming of Cwichelm, has run wild through the kitchen and reached Edwin. He is… anxious.”

Breguswith turned to Begu. “You must be the girl from Mulstanton. I thought you’d be better dressed.”

Begu tilted her head and studied Hild’s mother with one eye, then the other. “You must be Hild’s mother. I thought you’d be taller.”

Hild had a horrible urge to giggle. Instead, she took her gemæcce’s hand. “Perhaps the queen would like to see you.”

Begu turned that bird gaze on Hild, considering. Eventually she nodded. Hild and her mother were silent as Begu collected her things and left.

“You stupid girl!” Breguswith said. She sounded like a hissing swan. “Cwichelm! What if you’re wrong?”

Hild sat down. “I’m not.” She ate a piece of cheese.

Her mother sat, too. “How do you know?”

Hild stopped chewing, surprised. She swallowed. “I’m the light of the world.”

“Yes, yes. Light of the world, the king’s seer. But he’s going to ask you what you saw, and how. So what will you tell him?”

“I looked in the water.”

“A sacred pool, I hope?” Hild shook her head. “A silver bowl under the full moon? A pool you found while following an eagle? No. No, you stupid child. A tub full of dirty clothes! I heard as much from the kitchen. Does a wash bucket fill the listener with awe? Do filthy garments inspire fear of the otherworldly message and she who bears it? No. It inspires only thoughts of dirt, of human stink. Human. Human lies and trickery, the treachery of plots and assassins with poisoned knives.”

“It was only a game.”

“At the king’s vill, the king’s seer’s words are weighed like poison, or like pearls. Nothing you say is a game.”

Hild glared at her shoes. It wasn’t her fault that the housefolk were spreading rumours. It was just a game.

“No, little prickle. Now is not the time to curl up and wait for the hunter to go away. The king will kill you or Cian if you so much as look at him sideways. Look at me.” She tipped Hild’s chin up until she lifted her gaze. “Think.”

Hild wanted to snatch at her mother’s hand and bite it. But her mother was right. Edwin was mad with pain, mad with fear. She pushed her mother’s hand aside, but gently. “What was the poison on Eamer’s blade?”

“Something akin to wolfsbane. Brewed by an incompetent.” That sparking smile again: If she’d made it, the king would be dead. “I gave the king a cold tea of foxglove. He’s well. In his body at least.” She dismissed his health, much as Begu had, with a wave. “Tell me about your vision. Leave nothing out.”

Hild listened to her heartbeat: steady. Her breathing: smooth. She didn’t need foxglove tea. “It wasn’t a vision.” Breguswith quelled her with a look. “Vision. Yes.” She told her mother of the clothes, the blood, the water.

“Ah.” Breguswith leaned back, thinking. “The blood of a king and the first blood of a virgin seer mixed with water drawn cold from the well under moonlight. Yes. Very good. Your wealh and that— Your gemæcce. They will both swear to it?”

“Her name is Begu.”

“I know her name. It was a foolish—” She mastered herself. “Done is done. For now we must be quick. We can recast your seeing so it reeks of sidsa: king, virgin, blood, well water under the moon. And it was witnessed. Well and good. But how will you answer to the charge that Eamer, the assassin, was your man?”

“What? No! Near Lindsey he was set to guard me—”

“Who gave that order?”

“Forthere. Who had his orders from Lilla. Who had them from the king.”

“He was not one of your hounds?”

“No. Never. I’d wondered why. I thought he liked me—”

“Perhaps he did. If he knew his fate it was an act of kindness to ignore you. Now tell me the story of your vision again, as you will tell the king.”

Her mother took her through her story, step by step, shaping it, sharpening it.

“It will do. But be careful, child. Above all, you must soothe his vanity. You must make him feel strong and in control. Make him feel like a king.”

In hall, Hild wished she had her mother with her. The king seemed barely to be listening to her story. He could not keep still. A muscle by his eye and one at the corner of his mouth fluttered and twitched. He sat in his great chair on the dais with a bloody sword across his knee and a seax in his left hand. Every now and again he lifted the seax hand and blotted his forehead with his forearm. His great garnet shone hot red, the bandage on his upper arm was bulky and clumsily tied. Not Breguswith’s work. His gaze flicked this way and that, probing the shadows. Paulinus stood at his left hand, his bony forehead like old wax and his eyes glittering. Stephanus sat at the foot of the dais at a tilted wooden contraption: some kind of writing table piled with wax tablets. Everyone was there—every man: Osric the badger, the æthelings, Coelfrith, the brothers Berht—unwashed, unshaven, unrested, muscles coiled, ready to leap on any moving shadow and crush it. Cian, swordless and beltless, knelt in one corner, wrists tied back to his ankles. The right side of his face was dark and swollen. Blood, his own by the looks of it, matted his hair. He looked bewildered and very young. Being a hero wasn’t like in the songs.

Tondhelm held Hild’s wrists behind her and shook her slightly to encourage her to continue. “Eamer was set by Forthere to guard me, at Lindsey.”

“Forthere who is dead,” the king said. He twisted in his chair to peer behind him, then back at Hild. “And Eamer saved you at Lindsey yet tried to kill me, his king. Why?”

There were none of the usual murmurs of a hall audience. No one wanted to be heard; no one wanted to be noticed. Fear lay over them all: fear of the king, fear of the young hægtes, fear of Saxons in the shadows and the fates of men being spun by otherworldly hands. Nothing like the songs. Songs…

“Because Cwichelm, his lord, told him nothing of me. Because I am not important. Whereas you, lord, are overking. King of all the Angles.”

“Soon to be king of the Saxons.” He spoke flatly, for his gesiths and counsellors and all those who, having seen his blood, smelt it, might plot against him. He leaned forward. “So tell me how it is that this stranger”—he pointed his smeared sword at Cian—“came to be in my hall with a serpent-tooth knife?”

She drew herself up. Like a hoofbeat, like a song.

“Say a wolf cub’s tooth, my king. It is a small blade, but honest. Like the man who bears it.” She was glad that Cian was not whole and uninjured and standing beside her with the height and hair of their father. “His mother, one Onnen, was bodywoman to my own mother. We played together as children. But children grow. Onnen knew my time as a woman approached. She sent Cian with gifts.” She touched her veil band and earrings. Her mother had made her wear every piece of good jewellery she possessed, and hang every mark of womanly rank from the girdle given by the queen—she had even lent her own seeing crystal. “The buckle blade was a gift from me. From my hand to his. Into his hand to protect your life.”

“Indeed.” He rested his chin on his fist. “And how did you know he would need it?”

She touched the crystal hanging at her left hip. “I am your seer.”

“Cwichelm, you say.” He gestured for Tondhelm to let her go. He stared at his seax then sheathed it. He scratched his beard, thinking. “He tried to kill me.”

“Yes, lord King.” She wanted to rub her wrists but didn’t dare. Anything could irritate Edwin, anything bring the swing of the sword.

“And you claim you stopped him.”

“Lord—”

He lifted his hand. “Yet Paulinus here says it was the Christ’s will that I be saved.”

“Perhaps it was Christ’s will that I be born to see your path and guide others to keep you safe.”

Paulinus Crow stared at her. Hild stared back.

“The bishop of Christ and the handmaid of wyrd,” Edwin said. “Which should I believe?”

“You have promised me your daughter for baptism, my lord,” Paulinus said.

“I have promised her if you can promise your Christ will give me victory. Can you? Or will you witter like that fool bishop of the Dyfneint who told me all prophecy is the work of demons?”

“Not all prophecy, my lord.”

“And you have seen my victory?”

“I have prayed. I have asked for the aid of our Lord Jesus Christ and all His saints and angels.”

“Pity you didn’t ask yesterday.” He ran a finger up and down the clotted channel of his sword, sniffed it, wiped his hand on his thigh. He lifted the sword. “Come closer.”

The black-clad figure stepped forward.

“Closer.” Edwin touched the point of his sword to the bishop’s throat, just below the throat apple.

Hild admired the Crow’s courage, and his self-possession. He wore clean robes and had shaved. The apple in his throat did not bobble.

“Will you take a wager?” Edwin said.

“Name the terms, my lord.”

“My daughter against your life. Victory against the Saxons and you shall baptise her. If not…” He smiled and pushed, gently.

“I accept the wager.”

A growl of approval ran through the hall. They liked a brave man. They liked a betting man.

“Tondhelm!” The whole hall jumped. Edwin lifted the sword away and held it out hilt-first to his thegn. “Clean this and put it away. And bring food. I’m as hungry as a goat. And cut him loose.” Hild along with everyone else followed his gaze to Cian. “And someone find that tooth of a blade and his belt. He’ll need a blade to swear on.”

Hild backed away slowly.

“And, Niece.” She froze. “Find that priest of yours and bring him to me.”

Outside, she leaned against the doorpost and threw up her breakfast while Cian swore his life to the king.

Hild forgot about the salve she held and watched Cian spar with Berhtnoth, shield to shield, his moves simple and deft, like a poem: never lunging, never off-balance, always over his feet, always behind his shield.

Behind them, Coelfrith, as attentive to detail as his father, oversaw the grooms bringing horses in batches from the pasture for his examination. The war band would be moving fast. He ran a hand over fetlocks and face, approved each mount with a nod just like his father’s. Every single mount must carry its gesith forty miles a day into Saxon territory and still have the strength for a hard gallop away if the battle went badly.

The gesiths paid no attention; the horses were not their concern.

Berhtnoth began to pant, though Cian did not. Not long after that, Cian banged Berhtnoth’s shield to one side, stepped away when Berhtnoth lunged, and ran his padded sword along the gap between Berhtnoth’s cheek flap and mailed shoulder. Berhtnoth was dead.

They stepped apart and a wealh ran to take their shields and helmets, and the two gesiths slapped each other on the back and laughed over each stroke while the wealh ran back with cold well water.

The king was nowhere about. She stepped from the shadow of the wall.

Cian saw her and walked over, water spilling from the jar into the grass. His leathers reeked of sweat and his mail of grease and iron.

“You’re very good,” Hild said.

“I am.” He grinned and wiped his face. The left side was still greenish-yellow. “I’m a king’s gesith! I’m going to war! All those days fighting in the furze with sticks. And then Mulstan—oh, he’s a strong shield fighter! He beat me so many times, just banging me aside, not even breaking a sweat. ‘Hoard your strength!’ he’d say, and wallop me on the head. ‘Mind your feet and hoard your strength! The loser in a shield fight is the one whose legs start to tremble first.’ And soon—” He broke off. “What’s wrong?”

Hild shook her head. He was going to war. He didn’t need her burden: a missing Fursey to find and nightmares of a suspicious king. Besides, soon she wouldn’t have to worry about the king’s mood.

“Where’s Begu?”

“With the queen and the baby.”

Cian made that face men made when women mentioned babies, and drank more water.

“Cian.”

He wiped his mouth.

Come home safe. Don’t be a hero. Stay away from the king. But he was a king’s gesith. She might as well tell rain not to fall. “Remember Mulstan’s lessons. Wash your wounds well.” She hefted the waxed sausage of salve she’d prepared, then held it out. “And send a message when you can.”