Hild

16

BEBBANBURG IN SOLMONATH. A cruel month of blue sky and bitter wind. To the east: the sea, colder than a hægtes’s heart. To the west: fields under a blanket of snow, broken only by the tracks of the king’s messengers.

The king hated Bebbanburg, hated being perched on a hill of rock with its face to the north and flank to the sea. Sea food, he said, was for seals, and high places for wealh and eagles. He liked green rolling hills, gentle valleys, and wide river mouths, good Anglisc dirt under his boots. But no matter how many messengers he sent to ask, the north wall at York was not quite finished nor the west ditch redug, and the end of winter was when starving wolves made desperate forays. Bebbanburg, a fort within a fort on a lump of rock sticking up from a beach, was impregnable. The beach was top-and-tailed by rocks but for a sandy hithe overlooked by a fortified tower on the outer stockade—a massive timber box-parapet. The inner fort had one entrance, tunnelled out of the rock and raised in steps leading to the great gate of the inner stockade. This enclosed the halls, shrine, and well in an area as big as a good-size field. The outer wall protected enough wiry grass for a couple of goats and space enough for workshops and a byre.

Near the end of the month, the king declared they weren’t to call it Bebbanburg anymore. Bebba had been the first wife of Æthelfrith and he would no longer abide reminder of those nithing Idings. They would call it Stānburg, because that was what it was, a fort on stone. Edwin was king; they called it Stānburg. But among themselves the wealh went on calling it Din Guaïroï, as they had since the long ago, and the Anglisc, after a few days, forgot and called it variously Bebbanburg, which infuriated the king—who twice had to be persuaded by his counsellors not to kill a forgetful gesith—or Cwenburg, for Edwin’s dead wife, which irritated the queen.

Hild thought perhaps she and Begu were the only ones who liked the place.

Begu enjoyed the closeness. She didn’t mind the people-upon-kine crowding, she didn’t even mind the food: oysters and mussels, pork—salted pork, pork in goose grease, dried pork—and bread. She liked the gossip all day in the queen’s hall. She loved falling asleep to the sound of the sea.

Hild liked the songs and stories at night: the same songs she’d heard at this time of year every year, but different in hall and in the byre, in the huddled farmstead over the fields and in the overcrowded kitchens where the cook and the baker struggled to feed an overking’s household from a petty king’s fireplaces. During the day, she liked escaping on her own along the snow-dusted beaches and into the unbroken whiteness of the fields. Sometimes she rode Cygnet and sometimes she took Cian, but mostly she walked on her own.

She didn’t remember the first time she had spent Solmonath in the burg, though it had been a time when Edwin was newly king, his household much smaller. But the rhythms were the same: The king paced his small hall like a trapped wildcat, demanding information his counsellors did not have. His counsellors vowed to send out another messenger—to York, to the north, to Lindsey, to Rheged, to Elmet—and to post another lookout on the stockade’s western tower with his eyes fixed on the overland path. They even watched from the seaward tower, though only a fool or a god would attempt a voyage at this time of year.

Osric had returned to Arbeia after Yule, dissatisfied but mollified by Edwin’s declaration that his dear cousin didn’t need to come with the other thegns in spring—he, Edwin, would come to Osric. Breguswith stayed, but Hild had no idea what her mother thought of all this. Though she seemed pensive. Hild watched anxiously for what herbs she might call for, but it was just the usual remedies for this time of year, for pink eye and lung crackle. They were well stocked, and the Crow was always at the king’s side—priests in black robes seemed to skulk everywhere in the thronging shadows of the short days—and Hild had little to do.

The household stewed in its own juice and kegs of mead and winter ale, and gossip and rumour flowed into the gap: The Idings were marching with the Dál Riata—no, the Picts. Cadwallon had allied with Rheged, and the men of the north would stream down the beach in the dead of night. Penda had already taken Lindsey and was even now burning Elmet.

Quarrels, love, hate, alliances, and whispers flared and died and flared again, and every night men fell asleep longing for colewort or nettle leaves or even a pint of cow’s milk—and a time when blue sky promised warm air and not killing frost. Teeth loosened, belts tightened, tempers frayed.

Slate sea on one side, white field on the other, beach scattered with rock to the north and south. At night, Hild listened to the seals moan.

One evening she stood with Cian on the wooden walkway at the highest corner of the stockade and watched the sun setting over the white fields like a winter apple, small and shrunken, staining the snow with its tired juice. The air smelt of iron and brine.

“The weather’s changing,” she said.

“It will never change. It will be like this forever. We will grow old and die and be forgotten, and the foxes will gnaw at our bones.”

He always got like that after spending too much time indoors. “Come with me tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“There’s a farm two leagues west.”

“Two leagues over the snow and two leagues back? With Hel and the frost giants ready to take us if we turn an ankle in a badger hole?”

“The weather will change.”

“It hasn’t changed yet.”

But the next day, just after noon, Hild pointed out puffy little clouds sailing in from the south and west, very white, followed by larger ones, greyer. “The snow is melting inland.”

“But not here,” Cian said.

“Not yet.”

The field, ringed by bare trees, was silent but for the crackle of their breath—no robins, no wrens, no sparrows—and beneath that the faint whisper and rustle of snow melting. The crest of the field showed patches of brown ridge but the low point where they stood was unbroken snow. At their feet lay a dead wood pigeon. What was left of it looked thin.

Hild pointed to the odd, knobby prints on either side. “Peregrine kill. That’s where its talons dug in the snow. There’s where its wings touched when it mantled.”

“A hawk made this mess?”

“Then a fox, then a crow,” she said, pointing. “They’re all hungry.”

Cian pulled his bold cloak more tightly about him, and they walked on. Not far from the farm Hild thought she saw a stoat—blotched, like the field, with brown—but didn’t bother to point it out. She wondered what it could be eating with most of the birds gone, the hedgepigs and squirrels asleep, and peregrines and owls, foxes and crows fighting over the rest.

Their shadows were slanting by the time they reached the farm.

“Look,” he said. Mixed with the brown melt ridges she saw a very faint hint of green: the tips of winter colewort. Hild swallowed and wiped her mouth. Soon. Two weeks or three.

Hild came to the farm most years but this year she was greeted not by the old man but a child, sitting on a greasy fur in the sun by the hut’s low door, half naked, hair matted, jamming a pebble in its tiny-toothed mouth.

“Aurgh!” it said.

A man burst through the door brandishing a hatchet.

“Peace,” Hild said, empty hands out. “Ulf, he’s fine.”

“I’m not Ulf,” said the man, lowering the axe. Indeed, he wasn’t. He was too young. “I’m Rath. Rathlaf. My father has gone on.”

“I’ll miss him,” she said. “And my friend, Cian Boldcloak, will miss him, too. He has heard how strong and clever he was, how canny a husbandman. We’ll drink to his memory.”

Cian—who had never heard of Ulf or his son, Rath—nodded agreement and swept back his cloak to show the two bottles hanging by straps from his shoulder.

The hut stank of people and goat and leaf litter crushed and soiled all winter, and something else, something rank that Hild couldn’t place. Rath’s wife, Cille, produced a round of stale gritty bread, a pinch of precious salt, and two elm bowls.

Hild shook her head and took the beautifully carved travel cups from her belt. She unstoppered the white mead, filled the smallest cup for Cille, the medium cup for Rath, and the largest for her to share with Cian. Cille looked terrified of such beauty.

“To Ulf, the finest farmer on the coast, father of Rath, who lives on in…” She looked at the child.

“Hathlaf. Hath.”

“Hath, a fine and sturdy farmer-to-be.”

They drank.

“Good luck on this house,” Cian said, and they drank again.

“To spring,” said Rath.

The fire burnt high and clean. They ate the bread with salt, and drank, and studied one another.

Rath was about Cian’s age but already with an eyetooth missing and the knuckles of his right hand beginning to thicken. In eight years he would be stooped, in twelve bent, and in fifteen dead—and Hath’s knuckles beginning to swell and his back to bend.

When the bread was gone they talked: of the lung crackle that had taken Ulf, the hornbeam crop and how it made their pork taste like earth, of the colewort poking up on the ridge of the field. Hild and Rath agreed that they would have to trust to luck that no new frost killed its tender leaves. Cille—her voice was reedy as a pipe—said they might swap some colewort for a milch cow next month. “The lordling looks surprised,” she said, “and I would be, too, but it’s not just for colewort. Though people are famished for greens before the hedgerows sprout, I can tell you. Famished. No, they owe us for the seal meat, and the doctoring.”

So then there was nothing for it but to hear about the terrible winter storm that had brought the seals out of their way when Rath was gathering wood from the beach, and how he’d killed a bull seal, killed it dead, if you please, with his knife, and then dragged it up onto the dune grass out of the reach of the tide and walked all the way down to Heah and Din’s croft—did they know Din and his wife? No? Well they had a lovely daughter, Gode, just lovely, she was surprised the tale of her beauty hadn’t spread far and wide, yes, even as far as Din Guaïroï itself, even to the king! What did young men think about these days…

At which point Rath took over and talked in his slow—and ever slower—voice: of the king, and the harvest, and the milch cow, and his son, and the weather. Hild saw it slowly dawn on Cian that they would be spending the night in this seal-stinking hut, and she was amused. But she wanted to hear everything they had to say. This was why she’d told Cian to bring two bottles of mead.

The boy fell asleep in a heap and Cille tucked him in a wrap in a nest by the fire where she could see him. The fire burnt down and Rath added wood—driftwood: the flames spat blue and green—and the fire burnt down again. High then low, high then low.

Soon they were telling stories. A selkie tale first, from Cille, one they’d all heard before, but told as though true, as though it had happened to her and just yesterday. Then Cian told the story he’d told to Loid and Angle. “… keep the fucking egg!” And they all laughed until they wept. And in the moment of silence when they were done they heard, from far away, in the cold dark hills, an unearthly caterwauling.

Rath put more wood on the fire and told the tale of Cait Sith, the uncanny black wildcat killed, so they say, in times past in the byre of this very farm but still walking the night—aye, and the day, too, when ill luck was abroad—for the cat had been no cat but a hægtes trying her luck with stealing a milch cow for her very own. As she lay gushing out her blood on the straw, she had turned back and sworn with her dying breath that she would return, one bright noon when the tragedy was to befall the farm, and she would have her revenge. And sometimes you could hear her in the night, yowling for the blood of the farmers who had taken her land, yowling…

The wind turned raw and wet. “Just like it is before spring at Mulstanton,” Begu shouted happily, hair blowing every which way, as they roamed the beach. To the south, past the rocks, in the dunes, stood the carved posts of the graveyard. Bebba lay there, it was said, and other queens, Anglisc and British, including Cwenburh. It was ill luck to linger by the dead, so they walked—they ran, they skipped, they laughed, their dresses kilted up like they were children, bags of bread and beer bouncing, noses streaming—north, to the islands.

In summer it would be a short row from one sandy beach to another, but the water was still too rough. They did, however, find a rocky causeway to scramble over to one of the bigger islands. It was deserted but for a little heap of ruined huts.

On the east beach, they couldn’t hear themselves think: It was seal season, and seals of all colours, white, grey, brindled, black, brown, lay hauled up on the sand barking and moaning. They smelt bigger, like cattle long in the rain.

“They look like shaggy horses,” Begu said. “The same colours, same whorling of hair. Fur. But their eyes are not the same.”

They were not. Hild stared into the eyes of one seal, which stared back: black pools, otherworldly eyes.

Begu sat down on the rough grass of the dune. “Tell me that selkie tale again.”

So Hild did, and then they ate their bread and drank their beer and watched the guillemots and puffins, counted the water rail, dropped their jaws at a sea eagle falling between sky and water like a bolt of lightning.

“Will we have a home one day by the sea?”

Hild took her hand. “Yes.” They would have many homes. But that was for later. For now, her face ached with the cold and the wind and happiness.

The wind died down, and Hild and Cian took to riding out along the beach with the hounds and Oeric. Cian would give Oeric an exercise, and Grimhun—or the brothers Berht, or Gwrast and his cousin Cynan, or Eadric the Brown, or Coelwyn—would hoot and laugh and fall to arguing, with demonstrations, that it wouldn’t work, couldn’t possibly be of any use, but here’s a better way, and Hild and Cian would edge away unobtrusively to find a spot where they could talk and practice alone. The gesiths were used to this. They would nod and wink but say nothing. Hild ignored them and thought Cian didn’t notice. She doubted it would occur to him what the gesiths might be thinking—at least not in terms of her. She’d seen him eyeing the lasses of Bebbanburg, and she knew he slipped away now and again to the crofter to the southwest with large breasts and big feet.

Once they rode out to the cot of Heah and Din and their daughter, Gode—Cian noticed her, Hild saw, and indeed she was supple-handed and fresh as the morning, with a neck pale as milk and a mouth like the promise of summer plums, and young, only a year or two older than Hild, a leaf newly unfurled—and on the way back Hild, unaccountably cross, finally found a way to beat a gesith with a shield.

They had stopped by a stream guarded by a wind-thrawn oak, and Hild attacked Cian furiously, thinking of neck and mouth and supple, supple hands. Cian, with shield and sword, fought back with equal fury, driving her back and back until her back foot was against a root of the tree. No, she thought, this time I will not flinch, I will not lose, and she punched at his face with the end of her staff, threw it up into the tangled branches, and pulled herself up after it. The stream roared, in full spate. The tree creaked a little under her shoes.

Cian shouted, “Come down!”

“Come make me!”

He sheathed his sword, threw his shield aside, and jumped for the branch Hild was standing on. She moved to the other side of the trunk.

He scrambled up, clumsy in his war boots, panting, cursing, then stopped. The heel of Hild’s staff was a foot from his nose. He was defenceless.

“I worked out how to beat you.”

“But I don’t have my shield!”

“That’s right. How to win against a gesith with a shield: Make him drop his shield.”

“No, no, no. What if there isn’t a tree?”

“Let’s see,” she said, and dropped lightly to the ground.

She walked with her staff away from the tree and waited near the stream. Cian dropped more heavily, picked up his shield, and they did it all again: him driving, driving, driving her back to the stream.

She jumped in, half waded, half swam to the other side, climbed out. Cian stayed where he was.

“What if there’s no stream?”

“Come over and we’ll find out.”

“My armour!”

“Yes. A pity. It’ll take a lot of work to polish it.”

“As a favour to me. How can I persuade you?”

Hild wrung out her hair, thinking. “When the harp comes around tonight, sing for me. Sing the song of Branwen.”

“Done.”

She waded back across, shivering, walked past him, then turned, so that he was between her and the stream. “Now come at me fast, for I’m freezing.”

And, again, he drove her back and back and back, and she waited until he smiled in anticipation, and then she turned and ran.

He ran after her, but he was wearing armour, and war boots, and his shield was heavy. He fell farther behind. She turned and waggled her hand at him.

“You’re cheating!”

“Indeed I am.”

“I’ll never catch you, unless…” And he dropped his shield and burst out laughing, and they were still laughing, off and on, when they got back to Bebbanburg, and if anyone thought it strange that the seer should find being cold and wet funny, no one mentioned it.

As the weather improved, messages began to come in from all over the isle. Two, from Rheged and from Alt Clut, said the same thing: Eochaid Buide of the Dál Riata was sending an army to aid the Cenél Cruithen against Fiachnae mac Demmáin of the Dál Fiatach, and chief among the Dál Riatan war band were Idings—though the man from Rheged thought two, Oswald and Osric, called the Burnt, while the messenger from Alt Clut thought three, Oswald, Osric the Burnt, and the young Osbald.

In hall the men argued: Wilgar pointed out that everyone knew Oswald didn’t like any of his brothers, except his little half brother, Oswiu; the messages were clearly false. No, said Coifi, it was clear Eochaid was aiming this spear at the heart of the northern Anglisc, that he couldn’t lose: If the Idings fought well, they would attract followers to lead in a swoop upon the Anglisc throne; if they fought badly, they would die. Perhaps, said Paulinus, but the real message was that the men of the north were feeling their strength, and they had on their side Christ, the one true God—even if served by wrongheaded wealh priests. At which point all eyes turned to the king.

Hild, watching silently, as befitted a seer, saw that this speech was prepared, for Edwin nodded at his scop, who struck a chord, and the men quieted.

“The bishop Paulinus is right. He has counselled me well on Elmet and other matters. He brings the promise of the friendship of the greatest priest in middle-earth, the bishop of Rome. It seems to me good that we consider what he says. For that reason I will send messages to Sancton and Derwent, to Goodmanham and Brough, to Lindum and Elmet, and ask my thegns to meet at Yeavering. There we will have it out about this Christ god and we will see if it is good, and if it is, I will accept baptism from the hands of Paulinus in York on Easter Day. Paulinus, who through his foresight has driven out the priestly spies of the men of the north.”

Uproar.

Hild, though, listening past the noise, found no surprise. Edwin had been laying the groundwork since his marriage to the queen. His daughter had been baptised, and a dozen gesiths, and no harm had come of it. Indeed, Elmet was now theirs and with no wealh priests sending their uncanny messages north or west. The word would go out. Men would show up with their kine and their arguments next month as the grass greened and the milk began to flow. They thought this god of no more account than the others.

Morud came to find her. “Lady, the queen wants you.”

Oeric escorted her back to the women’s quarters, where she found the queen and Wilnoð, and her mother and Begu and Gwladus waiting.

The queen handed her a package. It was small and lumpy. “A man came. He said he’d had it from a man wearing East Anglisc buckles. He said it was for the lady Hild, sister to Hereswith.”

Hild’s heart squeezed. She found Begu holding one arm and Gwladus the other, and was glad of it. Gwladus smells different, she thought vaguely. Her mother gave her a stern look: You are Yffing!

The queen was still talking, but Hild concentrated on taking a breath, then another, while Wilnoð, herself as big as a hut now, brought her a stool.

She sat, turned the package over. Waxed linen, sealed. She didn’t recognise the seal, which looked like some kind of duck. She broke it.

Inside was another wrapped lump, the size of a plover’s egg, and a letter. She unrolled it. The letters were clumsily formed and the words badly spelt:

Dearest sister. Æthelric my husband has not put aside his woman. Fursey is here and sends greetings. He says my letters will improve with practice. I am to take baptism. Here, too, is Æthelric’s half brother Sigebert, visiting from Frankia. He already is baptised. I send you a lump of Frank’s incense. I am with child. H.

There was no date. She read it again.

“What does it say?” Begu said.

Hild gave her the letter.

Begu frowned. “Yes, but what does it say?”

Æthelburh gave Eanflæd to Arddun, plucked the letter from Begu’s hand, and read it aloud.

Fursey. Sigebert. Frankincense. With child.

Someone put a hand on her shoulder. Hild looked up: Gwladus, with a cup of mulled ale. Hild sipped gratefully while Æthelburh read the letter again.

“Is that the incense?” Begu said. “I want to see.”

Obediently, Hild unwrapped it. The astonishing smell filled the room. Hereswith, she thought. Hereswith forming her letters under the eye of Fursey. Both safe. And making friends with the Franks, making sure of a refuge.

“Worth more than gold I should think,” Wilnoð said, then clutched at her belly and gasped: The baby was kicking.

The women fussed.

Hild sipped again at her ale. Hereswith. Perhaps as big as Wilnoð. Sitting in a swamp. Perhaps she’d already had the child. Perhaps Hild was an aunt.

Wilnoð gasped again.

Perhaps Hereswith had died in childbirth, as Cwenburh had in these very chambers, in a great sigh of blood.

Hild woke from a dream of Gwladus standing in a pool of blood, an Gwladus the wrong size, the wrong smell.

“Shhh,” said Begu, “it’s just a dream.” She stroked Hild’s head. “Just a dream.”

Hild clung to her.

“What’s wrong? What is it?”

“Hereswith’s having a child.”

“Well, that’s true,” Begu said. “But people have babies all the time.”

“They die all the time, too.”

Begu kissed her forehead. “You dreamt that?”

Hild shook her head. “Talk to me,” Hild said. “Anything. Please.”

Begu sat up, reached over Hild, and pulled open the curtain. The banked light of the fire was enough to show Gwladus already sitting up on her pallet and yawning.

“Light a rush,” Begu whispered. “Bring some milk. No, not milk, I forgot, some small beer and come talk to us. The lady Hild has had a bad dream. No no, not a dream dream, just a dream.”

They set the rush in its bowl on the shelf at the foot of the bed, and Begu lifted the cover and told Gwladus to get in.

“My feet are cold,” Gwladus said.

“Hild won’t mind. She burns like a forge. It’ll take her mind off things, anyway.”

So Hild found herself warming her bodywoman’s cold feet with her warm hands while Begu talked about this and that.

“… why’s she still breast-feeding Princess Eanflæd? She’s ten months old.”

Hild massaged Gwladus’s ankles, stroking the strong bone on the inside, thinking of the place to press to bring a birth more quickly.

“Maybe she doesn’t want another just yet,” Gwladus said. “Maybe she doesn’t want pawing at, and swelling, and nothing to look forward to but a growing ache in her back and the thing in her belly eating her from the inside.”

And then Hild understood. Gwladus was with child.

Hild leaned into the buffeting wind on the top of Ad Gefrin. She opened her mouth and let the wind whip her breath away. She loved it up here with the goats, loved the scudding clouds, the sun and shadow chasing each other over bent and silvered grass. From here she couldn’t hear the lowing of the little cattle the British lords drove in as tribute; she couldn’t hear the constant shuffle of hooves in the enclosure where ponies, smelling spring and the promise of green grass, pushed for room at the fence. Up here there was just the whistle of the wind, the occasional dull clank of a goat bell, the cry of a hawk circling, tilting, sliding down the air.

She liked Bebbanburg, but here she could see for miles. Here she could think.

Change was coming, and it wasn’t just spring, wasn’t just the first milk of the year, or stallions flaring their nostrils when the mares walked by, or little throstles pecking at the backs of the goats to carry away the soft hair for their nests. It wasn’t just the hammer and shout of the king’s new talking stage rising west of the great hall.

The thegns thought they understood. Oh, they would talk for two days, yes, the tide of conversation ebbing and flowing, but they knew the story of Edwin’s dream at the court of King Æthelberht long ago, and why should they deny him? What was one more god? Gods were like the flotsam that washed up with the waves, always coming and going, and those big enough to remain gradually were worn away by wind and water and time. But the thing must be talked about, beards tugged, and the last of the year’s mead drunk.

The thegns were wrong. The Christ and his priests were different. They were a storm that would change everything. They read. They would sweep the beach clean. But not of her. That was not her wyrd.

When the thegns understood their Witganmot wasn’t to be at the big oak, or even in hall over mead, but at the new talking stage, they muttered. It was Romish, not Anglisc. It wasn’t right. But then Coifi announced he had blessed a new totem to stand witness to their pledges. And wasn’t a totem better even than an oak?

Hild listened to the newly arrived thegns as they inspected the talking stage. It looked like a wedge of cheese, Tondhelm said, though higher at the edge than the point. He stood with two others on the stage at the wedge’s tip, careful not to brush against the still-drying paint on Coifi’s Woden totem. Tomorrow they’d sit with other listeners in rows rising to the back. The thing reeked of new wood. Hunric, a thegn from near Goodmanham who had ridden in with many men, said that there would be splinters in all their arses by moonrise the next night.

That night, after the main feasting, the queen withdrew from the great hall with her women and those who had ridden with their men to the Witganmot. Breguswith and Begu went with them to the women’s hall, but Hild stayed awhile with Oeric at her elbow. The men got down to the serious business of drinking. Cian and her hounds drank as mightily as the rest, or seemed to, though she suspected several were pacing themselves for the wrestling and boasting to come.

There was much gossip among the thegns, who had less to prove than the young gesiths: who had brought the most cattle for the king, who wore the most gold, who had a new wife, a new son. The scop sang songs of their ancestry, flattering them outrageously, his boy scooping up armlets and finger rings and sparkling daggers as the progressively drunk thegns sought to outdo each other in generosity.

Hild noticed that Hunric threw his smallest ring, and boasted merely that he had brought the most cattle, which was true, and that his son would beat anyone else’s son at anything—once he was grown. Given that his son still ran bare-legged with a wooden knife, this was a safe boast, one no one would remember in a dozen years. A canny man. Edwin, she saw, had raised his cup to Hunric and Hunric toasted him in return. Hild knew what Hunric didn’t: that the king was only amused by those he thought little of.

Faces grew redder and drinking competitions sprang up at every bench. Bets were laid. Soon they would start boasting about their horses, and the scop’s man—traditionally the keeper of the boasts—would set up the racing for the morning. Meanwhile, the scop’s praise grew more extravagant. The thegns roared: The scop was teasing Tondhelm about a brain as small as his ear finger and a prick bigger than his arm.

She picked her way through the raucous men—who were too worried about what other men might be thinking of them to bother with a woman—to Cian, who was telling some involved story about the little sheep of Gwynedd and why the men of that land were also small.

He grinned at her when he was finished. “I’m leaving now for the women’s hall,” she said. “I’ll send Oeric back. Take him under your wing. Don’t let him make any boasts he can’t keep. And if you’re planning to ride Acærn to riches tomorrow, don’t drink too much more of that.”

To which he just grinned again and offered her his cup, and she grinned back and sipped.

The women’s hall, if anything, was even bawdier than the men’s. Veils were askew and sleeves tucked in belts. Arddun and Gwladus could barely keep up with filling the cups, and Hunric’s wife, inarticulate with mead, was shaking a broken-stringed lyre as though it were a choking baby.

Breguswith was deep in conversation with two women Hild didn’t know, and Begu was whistling like a cowherd. Hild sat next to her on one of the queen’s prettily embroidered cushions and took off her shoes.

“Stop thinking,” Gwladus said. “You’ll frighten everyone and spoil the party. Drink this.” Hild sipped: stinging white mead, made from… She sipped again… heather honey. Part of some thegn’s tribute or a gift? She looked up, saw Breguswith looking at her, then back at the women she was in conversation with. Hild made a note to herself to make friends with whoever that was.

“Stop it,” Gwladus said, but then had to fill another cup.

Hild sipped absently, then heard her name. “Hild knows that song. We sang it together at Mulstanton. Don’t you?”

Hild nodded.

“How does the tune go? The one Cædmon sings to Winty.”

So Hild sang the jaunty tune about running free in green, green grass, and Begu joined her, and someone restrung the lyre and plinked the tune.

Gwladus refilled her cup. “Better,” she said. “But the queen says you must drink this down in one, then smile, then drink another.”

Hild doubted Æthelburh had said any such thing. She looked up, but couldn’t even see the queen.

“Oh, for earth’s sake,” Gwladus said, and took Hild’s face between her hands. “Look at me.” Hild found herself looking straight down Gwladus’s bodice. Gwladus tilted her chin until their eyes met. “Listen to me. Truly: Arddun told me that the queen has ordered that anyone sober enough to walk a straight line tonight will be put in the corner and covered with honey. So drink, look stupid. Better still, be stupid. Look at your mother.” Breguswith’s cheeks were now cherry red, her sleeves undone. “She knows when to let go. You should, too.”

And, later, when the women were kilting up their dresses and setting loose their hair to dance, Hild did, too, and a little while after that she even forgot to think about what she was doing.

Hild squinted in the morning light, glad of the keen wind and low clouds. She didn’t think it would rain. She stood with the other women, pale but tidy, at the north end of the horse path. At least they merely had to cheer while the men rode their horses against one another.

In the first race, one gesith had to vomit from his saddle before he could drink the race toast. He was better off than his race mate, though, who fell off at the first bend and broke his collarbone. Edwin gave the winner a dagger.

More racing, more accidents, more wagers, more straining and shouting and falling in the mud.

Gold, boast, blood, sweat: The crowd shook off its lethargy and grew cheerful.

The only grumbles came when the midday feast—roast ox and heather beer, on benches set under a canopy of branch and reeds—was delayed for the Crow to give thanks to his Christ. Christ wasn’t their god, some muttered, not yet. But most didn’t care. They were happy to eat. They planned to doze on full stomachs for most of the Witganmot and rouse themselves sufficiently to vote as their chief men directed.

Hild watched the looks and nods travel up and down the benches—the king and the Crow, Hunric and Coelfrith, Coifi and Tondhelm—and knew Paulinus would be pleased.

The king and his chief men—the æthelings, Coelfrith, Paulinus, Coifi—sat on a bench at the back of the speaking platform. The men of the kingdom sat in the tiers rising before them. The women sat at ground level to one side, out of the thegns’ direct line of sight; they did not have a voice in the Witganmot. Begu sat next to Hild, nibbling on the bread she’d tucked in her pouch at breakfast. She chattered about this and that as one by one the men—wearing their finest, groaning with gold, moustaches carefully greased—stood and swore their oath to their king, named the tribute they had brought, and numbered the spears they could rally at the king’s word. Many of them got very florid: They liked the sound of their own voices, liked the regard of their fellows.

Many of the women were frank in their assessment of the men, gossiping about which would make a good husband, which good sport. Hild mostly listened to the birds. “… Trum something, I forget what,” Begu said. She was pointing at the man now standing, wearing rich brown embroidered with gold. “Isn’t that a lovely colour? Like a polished acorn—like Cian’s horse. Oh, I was so pleased that he beat Lintlaf today. I bet one of my combs on the race. No, no, not the comb you gave me! I’d never part with that. But anyway I won, so now I have two extra combs, I’ll give you one…”

Hild listened to the hweet of a siffsaff somewhere over the rise and thought perhaps later she’d walk to the west of Ad Gefrin where last year she’d found a throstle’s nest with eight eggs—eight!—bright with their red blotches. But it was probably too early for eggs.

The king’s feet were dancing this way and that, but even the king had to listen when men spoke at Witganmot. Eventually, though, the speeches came to an end, and then the king stood, walked to the front of the platform and the totem, and made his own speech, full of praise for the strength of his men, the wealth of their tithe, the generosities he would visit upon them during the next year in reward for their loyalty. He named a man here, a man there, sometimes joking, sometimes flattering, pleasing everyone with his notice. Then he said he would stop, for there was a fine feast in the making, and once they had made their weighty pronouncement on his question, they could eat until dawn. But for now, he would let the Romish high priest, Bishop Paulinus, speak. Paulinus had words from his god. The god had also spoken to the king in a dream at the court of Æthelberht—they all knew that story, he wouldn’t repeat it here—but they were to understand that Paulinus spoke as with the king’s mouth: His words were the king’s words.

The thegns roared and thumped their benches.

Paulinus took the king’s place. His white robe, embroidered in crimson and yellow, shimmered. The cloth-of-gold stole around his neck must have weighed more than a sucking pig, and the gold-headed crook in his left hand blazed with jewels. When he raised his right hand, his ring flashed like Earendal, the dawn star.

The thegns sat back, enjoying the display of wealth and power, expecting a short, rousing speech about wealth and wyrd, the king’s protection and the Christ god’s cunning, the promise of good weather and better luck, of alliances and strength of arms and honour, larded with flattery.

The Crow began well enough, speaking loudly and clearly, careful of his accent: the bishop of Rome held the king of the Anglisc in high regard, and his power and favour would shine upon the isle as a mark of his blessing and the blessings of God. The Franks would honour them, and the Frisians, and the people of Rome. Their cattle would grow fat, the corn tall, and gesiths would flock to the tufa to make one nation under God. Everyone would know the name of their king, of the Yffings, of Northumbria! They had but to accept Christ as their God, and all those who were in agreement with him would be cleansed in the Fount of Life.

The thegns nodded and murmured among themselves. Fine promises, exactly what you wanted from a god.

Begu whispered to Hild, “We’ll be going into the feast early.” Indeed, one thegn was already standing to make his agreement.

But Paulinus wasn’t finished. He fixed them with his glittering eye—so dark, so foreign—and began to admonish them about Satan, about driving out the wealh priests as his spies, about obeying the will of the one true God, who spoke only through His bishop in Rome. Their king willed it! Their king demanded it! Their new God commanded it!

The thegn next to the one who had stood shouted: Who was this god to command a king? To command thegns in good standing?

Paulinus overrode him in a torrent of words. They had no choice but to obey! If they obeyed their God’s commandments, He would deliver them from their earthly troubles, save them from the everlasting doom of the wicked, and give them a place in His eternal kingdom forever. But they must obey. They must bow their heads.

The rumble of disgruntled thegns drowned out the Crow’s now thickly accented last words.

Bargaining? They were used to that. Persuasion? Yes, of course. Bribes and promises? Naturally. But commands to submit? They didn’t even know this god. What had he done for them? Had there been a battle the god had won for them, a crop he had brought home with unexpected bounty? Yet the priest wanted them to obey. Was he mad?

It was Coifi who stepped in. He sprang onto the platform and strode forward, holding out his arms so his leaf-green cloak billowed. “Hear me! Hear me!”

He stepped in front of Paulinus.

“You know me!”

They couldn’t disagree.

“I am the chief priest of the chief god.”

Even more unarguable.

“Look at me!”

“You just get uglier!” Tondhelm shouted. Laughter.

“Am I rich?”

Frowns.

“I ask you, am I rich? I am not. Why? Because my god is not as powerful as the Christ god!”

Begu whispered, “Why would he say that? Why—”

“Woden’s shrine is made of wood. Painted wood. But in Rome they stain glass like jewels, they build of stone like the giants of old, they cover their ceilings in gold!”

Gold.

“Woden is a great god, a fine god, but there is a new god, more mighty still. His altars are spreading. The men who have been to Kent, to East Anglia, have seen how rich their kings are, how generous to their thegns. I have seen it.” He pointed to Coelfrith, to Osric, to the others sitting behind him on the bench. “They have seen it.”

“I have seen it!” Coelfrith shouted.

“Gesiths who took the Christ’s blessing do well for themselves,” Coifi said. “They have rings on their swords, jewels at their belts, horses swifter than the wind.”

“Does he mean Cian?” Begu whispered. “I think he does. Cian! And you said this was going to be boring!”

“The Christ god will make us richer than the Franks! I tell you truly. It is our wyrd.”

Behind him, Coelfrith was stretching his eyes at someone in the front tier: now, now.

A man leapt to his feet. Hunric. “Edwin king! I say the chief priest of the chief god is the one to know! If any man can. For what can men know? Our understanding is like that of a sparrow flying through the king’s hall at Yule. Outside it’s all howling darkness and rain, inside it’s a warm hearth and music. The sparrow flies in one door, into light and laughter. Then out the other door, back into the dark. And that moment for the sparrow is like our moment in middle-earth. Because, like the bird, we know nothing of what came before now or what’ll happen after.”

“I know what comes after this!” Tondhelm shouted. “Food!”

“The food’s not going anywhere,” Hunric shouted back. “I say that if the priests are right, and they were right in the king’s dream long ago, when he was just an exiled ætheling—and look at him now! our king! overking!—then men aren’t on middle-earth for long. We’re like that sparrow, mazed by a moment of comfort. Well, if the priests say they can teach us the before and the promise of the after, then I say we listen!”

Other thegns were standing to speak, and Hild knew they’d be there all afternoon.

“Hunric’s sparrow is a very stupid sparrow,” she said to Begu. “Birds always know where they’re going!”

“Don’t be silly,” Begu said. “It’s not about the bird. It’s about people who don’t know where the bird is from or where it’s flying to. I think.”

“Then the people are stupid. I know where all the birds around here nest.”

“You’re getting peevish,” Begu said. “Are you hungry? Eat this bread.”

She got more peevish when, at the door of the great hall, Gwladus, waiting with Morud, told her the feast was delayed: The king wanted her in his small room with the other counsellors. She handed Hild a lump of cheese. “Eat this. You might be a while. Two messengers came, with three letters.”

“The deacon talked to them while you were all out there listening to the windbags,” Morud said. “Something’s up. The deacon looked right peaky.”

Hild arrived in the small room just as one of the messengers—they were both priests with the Roman tonsure—unrolled the letter. Others were still arriving—no sign of Paulinus—and she took a place next to James. Morud was right. James looked a little damp around the hairline, and his complexion was tinged with ash.

The priest began to read in Latin in that peculiar, weighty voice that Hild realised was common to those used to waiting for an echo from stone walls.

“To the illustrious Edwin, king of Anglisc: from Boniface, bishop, servant of the servants of God…”

King of Anglisc, not all the Anglisc.

The second priest translated, in a voice of brass, better suited to the hangings and corners of a king’s hall.

“The words of man can never express the power of the supreme Divinity…”

In this at least, Boniface, the bishop of Rome, was just like a scop. The words of man can never express… But he was going to try, and at length, by the look of that letter.

Clearly Edwin had just reached the same conclusion. He leaned back in his great chair, tufa at his right hand, Coelfrith at his left, looking bored and mildly irritable. No doubt he was hungry, too.

Paulinus arrived finally, looking slitty-eyed as a cat who’d killed a pigeon. Three letters.

“… Divine Majesty who alone created and established the heaven and the earth, the sea…

“To Him are subject all imperial power and authority, for it is by Him that kingship is conferred.”

The king put his chin on his fist.

“… our Redeemer in His mercy has brought light to our excellent son Eadbald and the nations subject to him…”

Our excellent son Eadbald. Boniface was putting himself on a par with the god, and a Jutish king on a lower bench.

“… your gracious queen and true partner…”

The queen wasn’t there, Hild realised. Three letters.

“… affectionately urge Your Majesties to renounce idol-worship, reject the mummery of temples and the deceitful flattery of omens, and believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. This faith will free you from Satan’s bondage…”

The king flushed dull red but the reader ploughed on, oblivious.

“… cannot understand how people can be so deluded as to worship as god objects to which they themselves have given the likeness of a body…”

The translator faltered momentarily, then steadied.

“Accept the message of the Christian teachers and the Gospel that they proclaim. Believe in God, the Father Almighty…

“We impart to you the blessing of your protector, blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles. With it we send you a tunic with a golden ornament, and a cloak from Ancyra, asking Your Majesty to accept these gifts with the same goodwill as that with which we send them.”

The Anglisc translation continued for a moment, followed by silence.

Everyone looked at the king. “So. I’m in some wight called Satan’s bondage but this princeling priest, Peter, will protect me. Did I hear that right?”

The translator swallowed.

“This Romish bishop thinks himself my foster-father, and tells me if I’m a good boy, I can be almost as good as his son Eadbald. Are you sure you got those words right?”

The priest swallowed again and couldn’t speak.

“Eadbald is my wife’s brother. The Kentish king, king of the Jutes. A small people, who owe their grace and favour to the Franks. I, on the other hand, am Edwin, overking of all the Anglisc. So, priest, are you sure you got those words exactly right?”

Paulinus took a half step forward. “If my lord King—”

“Shut up.” Edwin hadn’t taken his eyes off the translator. “So not only am I in bondage to a wight, beholden to a mere prince, and striving to be as good as a Jutish king, I’m to be grateful for a tunic, which is the mark and favour from a godlike bishop. You’d better show me this tunic, then, this most marvellous tunic for which I will be happy to acknowledge my fealty to a priest in Rome.”

The translator, white-faced, didn’t move. It was Paulinus who strode forward, took the package, unfastened it, and went to one knee before Edwin’s chair.

Edwin took the tunic, shook it out, held it up to the light.

It was purple, with a silklike lustre and sheen.

“It drapes beautifully,” Edwin said. “Don’t you think?”

Dead silence.

Edwin smiled at the messengers. “There’s going to be a reply.”

Hild poured wine for James and for herself. They both drank fast. She refilled their cups. They drank again.

“By Christ I thought he’d kill them,” James said.

They drank more.

“No, by God, I thought he’d kill the bishop.”

Edwin couldn’t kill Paulinus. He planned to trot him out to all the great houses of the north on the grand progress to York for Easter. “The king likes a brave man.”

“Well, I was quaking like a jellyfish. But I’m a mere deacon. A lesser mortal than a bishop. Though indeed he’s now practically an archbishop.”

“That’s what his letter said?”

“Oh, yes. He gets a pallium the day the Anglisc come to Christ. He can feel it on his shoulders. Then he won’t have to bend the knee to Archbishop Justus in Kent.”

What would the Mercians think of that? And Cadwallon? An overbishop in the court of the overking tilted the balance. The threads of trade and tithe and obligation were about to run through Edwin.

While Frisians had always traded directly with the Angles of the east and the Saxons in London, Franks mostly went through the Jutish Kentishmen. Justus, the overbishop in Kent, Paulinus’s overbishop, reported directly to the bishop of Rome. It had always made Edwin unhappy. An overking’s priest should not be lower than a lesser king’s priest.

But soon Paulinus would be overbishop in his own right, reporting directly to the bishop of Rome. And Frankish trade would come through the new wīc at York. More gold meant more gesiths, which meant more victories and more gold again.

And Paulinus’s priests had already tightened their grip on Elmet, cutting off information to the north, to the Idings.

While Gwladus combed Hild’s hair, Begu told Hild about the pope’s letter to the queen. She couldn’t remember much about it, only that it mentioned something about becoming one flesh with the king, once he accepted Christ. “But they did that already. Or does the pope person think Eanflæd fell from the sky? Or, oh, maybe that’s what the queen’s been waiting for, before she weans Eanflæd. Eorðe knows, if she wants a son she should be getting started. But the presents were nice, a silver mirror—it’s like looking in a pond!—and a gold-and-ivory comb. You’ll do my hair after hers?” This to Gwladus. Then, to Hild, “Not as nice as the one you gave me, of course, but it’s heavy. Very heavy. Which is silly when you think about it, because who wants a comb so heavy you can’t use it? I suppose now we’ve had the Witganmot, we’ll be packing up again. When do we go to Mulstanton?”

“After Osric’s house, at Arbeia.”

“How long will we be at Arbeia?”

“Not long.”

“You don’t like it there, do you? I can hear it in your voice.”

She hadn’t been back since she and the king and three dozen gesiths had escaped with their lives. “I have to go. But you don’t. My mother is thinking of taking a boat from Tinamutha to the bay as soon as we arrive.”

“Not staying with Osric?”

“She has things to sort out with Onnen. You could go with her.”

Begu’s face lit like a candle. “Oh! Home! And Cian could come, too. Couldn’t he?”

“If you persuade the queen to persuade the king to give permission.”

“But what about you?”

“I’m the king’s seer. But we won’t be at Arbeia long. The king would kill Osric, else. And, besides, I’ll have Gwladus.”