Hild

17

THE MOUTH OF THE GREAT RIVER seemed like another country in another time.

Arbeia was an ancient house, built with stone and plaster and slate. Two hundred years of Anglisc occupation had added wooden wings with thatched roofs and new doorways knocked in two sides, but its bones resisted change. Even the bakehouse was stone, and a stone colonnade ran along the south wall. The walls were high: a stronghold built by the same redcrests who raised the great wall, to oversee all the trade of the north. Ironstone and silver, pearls and pelts, wheat and wool: Goods from Anglisc farmland, from the kings of the north, Rheged and Alt Clut and Gododdin, all flowed into and along the river or down the coast. Tinamutha was the best port north of the Humber.

A man is lord of his own hall, and Hild hated Osric’s hall, hated the men who lounged in its oddly sized rooms—Roman rooms, Osric said proudly—the men with bright blades, whose eyes turned first to Osric and only then to the king. She found herself looking at the forearm of every man she met, looking for that curling scar she had put there with her slaughter seax on that nightmarish flight so many years ago.

At night she dreamt, again and again, of the hand gripping the gunwale, the curve of muscle, the tendons standing out. Over and over she drew her blade along that curve, over and over the skin opened like a flower and she looked at his arm and saw a blossom of meat, red bone, yellow fat, blue vein, plump muscle, before the blood welled up and poured over the memory, blotting it out.

As the king’s seer she should have stayed in those small rooms and watched those men, listening and weighing, judging their interest as Edwin and Paulinus talked to them of the Christ and the bishop of Rome, and the righteousness of a strong shield arm and preferential trade. But she couldn’t settle. She felt restless and trapped. She thought of Hereswith: Æthelric my husband has not put aside his woman… I am with child. She had sent a note with her mother, who, on the way to Mulstanton, would find someone heading south: Flatter Sigebert. And get better at your letters, or have Fursey set them down for you! She needed a window onto what was happening down there.

So instead of sitting in strange cold rooms ignoring her own fear and the sideways looks of Osric’s men, she roamed the estuary, drowning her dreams in the flight of birds, endless flocks of them—goose and redshank, oystercatcher and tern, lapwing and plover, and, for two days, settling drifts of heron and egret. They lifted on the third day at dawn and left the mudflats desolate, flat and ugly and stinking. Did Hereswith’s swamp smell like this?

She walked down to the harbour, watched men and some women bringing in their catch of cod and haddock, mackerel and herring while the gulls wheeled and shrieked and squabbled, and offshore the heads of seals bobbed up and down as they swam. She wondered how that would feel, to swim naked through the heavy, cold water. To navigate the simple currents of brine, not politics.

That night she dreamt of seawater coursing over her glistening skin, of flying underwater and over it, and woke in the glimmer of dawn with a shivering yearning, delicious and unnameable. Gwladus, sleeping at the foot of Hild’s bed, didn’t stir. Hild watched for a while. The curve of her cheek, the top of her shoulder where her shift had slipped, had the bloom and sheen of just-risen cream ready to be licked.

She followed Gwladus’s form under the blanket, the flare of waist to hip. The child didn’t show. Pennyroyal and sweet gale, that’s what she’d recommend. Parsley in a pinch. But she hadn’t seen any yet, this far north, and they weren’t herbs she carried for wound care.

The next night Hild joined the king at mead with his host and their sons and thegns and counsellors. The only woman. She stared at them, still half dreaming of birds lifting, seals diving. One of Osric’s thegns touched his amulet and made a sign.

Edwin threw a duck bone at the man’s head. “You don’t like my seer? You’re in good company. My pet bishop doesn’t like her, either. He tells me he half expects her to dissolve and disappear in a shriek of oily smoke when she’s baptised at Easter.”

Osfrith, sitting next to Hild, and well used to her, laughed, and others laughed cautiously along with him. It struck Hild that the younger ætheling was now seen as a man to be laughed along with, a man in his own right, no longer just a stripling prince. Since his marriage he had found his way. He was becoming the king’s man of business, negotiating affairs of trade with other kings and chieftains the way his brother, Eadfrith, negotiated affairs of state.

But as men laughed she saw the discontent in Edwin’s eyes: like the nights he smiled with Eorpwald at Rendlesham. She remembered Begu telling her of the pope’s letter to the queen. One flesh with the king, once he accepted Christ. The æthelings might be useful but an overking could not abide a rival. The letter from the pope, backed by Paulinus once he was chief priest of the Angles, might be enough to blunt his rivals’ tines. Rivalry, the disease of kings.

Hild became aware of Paulinus’s unwinking gaze. His nose was more bladelike than usual, the muscles around his mouth set and hard. He was angry, no doubt as much for being referred to as a pet, and for disclosure of his thoughts, as for her presence. Righteous anger, the disease of bishops.

The sound of mead, poured into the silver cup next to her hand by a pretty servingwoman—not as pretty as Gwladus—seemed unnaturally loud. The woman’s hand was shaking. Hild motioned Enough; if the woman spilt anything at the overking’s table, she’d be whipped. Being surrounded by the stink of fear, the disease of seers.

She picked up the cup. They all watched. She turned it in her hand. Rivalry, anger, fear.

“I have one very like this,” she said. “A gift from our generous overking. For Lindum.” She smiled at them over the rim.

They looked away. They’d all heard of the seer’s deeds at Lindum.

Edwin laughed. “Perhaps I should have given her something for Bebbanburg.” The room stiffened—like estuary mud drying in the sun, Hild thought, a sucking bog under the cracking skin, treacherous.

Bebbanburg. Osric always denied that he had betrayed them to the Irish, and Edwin, at the time not wholly secure, had deemed it prudent to accept his word. Osric was Yffing, with a claim to be king and the men to back it up. With the Irish swarming, and the æthelings not quite of age, the king had needed his cousin. But now Osric was just another rival.

She sipped her mead. Fine, very fine. She sipped again, rolled it around her mouth, swallowed. “Good mead,” she said to Osric, but pitched to be heard at the farthest tables. “Made from southern honey. No, farther away than that, a land of blossoming walnut groves and poppies.” Obvious, now that she thought about it. “You didn’t tell us you were trading with the Franks, cousin.”

Silence rippled outwards.

Edwin looked at her, nodding. His eyes were ordinary, not black in the middle and banded with swarming green. He wasn’t surprised. He’d just been waiting for her to declare it openly. She nodded back and raised her cup, as though she had known for a week and had waited for the proper moment. But her heart thumped. So obvious but she had nearly missed it. She had nearly missed it.

Edwin smiled at Osric, showing too many teeth. “The Franks, kinsman?” He shaped kinsman with particular edge. They all heard the threat: Being kin will only take you so far. He sipped his Frankish mead. “I’ll take my cut of that trade when we reach York for the baptism. And no doubt the bishop here will put in a word with his god once you donate an equal sum to the glory and beautification of his new church.”

Osric had been king of his hall at Tinamutha, but here, by the Bay of the Beacon, Mulstan was king of his.

He was on his feet, cup in hand, making one of his rambling but heartfelt speeches welcoming the king and his household to his humble abode. The abode the king’s niece had seen fit to grace just a few short years ago, which visit brought his dear wife and lady, Onnen, to him…

Hild found it eerie to see all the people in her life drawn together: Onnen, with Mulstan on her right, and Cian and Begu to her left. The king, without his usual coterie—Paulinus, Osric, and the æthelings had all headed straight to York from Arbeia—to Mulstan’s right. Hild had chosen to sit on the left side, with Onnen’s people, including her mother.

Breguswith and Onnen had reached some understanding. Begu had given her the news breathlessly that afternoon, jumbled in with news of Cædmon and Winty—that is, Winty’s calf’s calf, who looked just the same, even to the golden tips of her ears—and Guenmon. She thought Guenmon and Gwladus would take to each other very well. And wait til Hild saw Onnen’s twins! Plump as geese and only a little less toothless. Oh, but Hild didn’t like geese. Plump as, as… pigeons! But Bán, Bán she was very sorry to say, had, according to Onnen, died just that winter of the horrible cough that swept through the people around the bay. And his dog, well, that was very sad. His dog had died just a moon before Bán himself…

“Why such a long face?” her mother asked as Mulstan wound up his speech and called for Swefred to Play that song, you know the one. “Not what you remember?”

“It’s just the same. We’re even eating Celfled’s eels. Swefred will now sing the tale of the wight who haunts the wrack, and glare suspiciously at anyone who praises him too much.”

“But?”

“But there are people missing.”

“Yes.” She laid a hand briefly on Hild’s cheek, which startled Hild so much she nearly knocked her cup over. “There are always people missing. And sometimes I see their ghosts.” She looked briefly at Cian, who was laughing at something Begu had said, and, in his polished mail, with long chestnut hair falling about his shoulders, looking every inch the foster-prince of the hall. His eye gleamed, his muscles shone like greased piglets, his bones were as strong as oak. He was the tallest man in the room and shone the brightest. A young god.

It was the closest they had ever come to speaking of it. “Are you… Do you mind?” Hild said.

“If I do, it’s not the son or his mother I blame. Not any more.” Another roar of laughter from down the table. “Even his laugh is the same.”

And Hild had a sudden memory of her father tossing her in the air, laughing, but she didn’t trust it. “Did he toss Hereswith in the air to make her laugh?”

Breguswith nodded. “He liked to see her hair fly about and shine in the sun. But Hereswith didn’t like it. It made her cry.”

“I miss her.”

Breguswith nodded again. It was the most they had agreed on in years. “But she’s well enough where she is. Dream of a son for her tonight, and maybe Eorðe will hear.”

“Shouldn’t you be praying to the Christ?”

“Ah,” her mother said, and smiled. “I forgot.”

Fursey wouldn’t have trusted that smile, but Fursey wasn’t there. Besides, his remedy would have been the same. “Let’s persuade Onnen to give us some of the Gaulish wine Mulstan always has put by. Then let’s drink. A lot. To those who are missing.”

That night, Hild dreamt she crouched in the reeds by the spear-straight rhyne. Tin-grey clouds scudded overhead and willows rattled. In their boat, Bán and his dog Cú glided along the bank, Bán’s little knife on the willow, snick-snick-snick, flashing in the watery light. Hild rose, waved. Bán smiled, and Cú’s tongue lolled in a dog laugh.

Hild and Cian walked along the path by the smith’s beck. Dark lingered under the trees and long slanting shadows fell over the water, where bats still swooped. The river smelt of night, but the early-spring grass along the path, pale green in the growing light, smelt of morning, fresh and sharp as new-forged iron.

Spotted woodpeckers, half a dozen, swooped into the wych elms, and all started hammering at once.

“They do that every spring,” he said. He stopped. “Like a gang of tree cutters.”

The birds fell silent, then one tapped, fell silent, another tapped, fell silent, another.

“More like Witganmot,” she said.

“But shorter!” they said together, and laughed.

They walked some more.

“After you left, I came here a lot,” he said. “I missed you showing me things, making them magic. So I decided to find them myself. Like this.” He reached up into the newly fledged birch and pulled down a handful of tiny leaves, pale as a new kitten’s eyes. He popped some in his mouth, offered the rest to her. “They taste like sorrel.”

They walked on to the smithy, where the fire wasn’t yet quite hot and the smith was happy to talk steel and edge with the thegn’s foster-son. He kept looking at Hild’s seax as he talked, and eventually she took pity on him, drew it, and offered it hilt-first over her forearm.

“Beautiful,” he said. “Northern work, that. I’ll just put a fresh edge on it, shall I?”

On the way back, kingfishers hunted where the bats had been, and morning held full sway.

Cian sighed.

“You’ll miss it so much?”

He didn’t say anything, then he shook himself. “We’ve three more days. Begu will want to show you every last cow.”

“Winty’s calf’s calf.”

“And I want you to see me spar with Mulstan. He’s a wily old bull. I bet you couldn’t get him to drop his shield.”

“I bet I could.” And she pushed him, and he pushed her back, and he slung his arm over her shoulder and she rested her hand on his belt and they walked that way, close together, all the way back to the hall.

Onnen, who was berating a houseman about cobwebs she had found in some dark corner, broke off when they entered.

“Mam, is Mulstan about? I want Hild to watch us cross swords.”

“He’s walking Celfled’s son along the bounds.”

“I thought they’d sorted that.”

Onnen folded her arms. “You know Celfled. Nothing’s ever sorted.” She nodded to the houseman to be on his way, then said to Hild, “Guenmon made some of those pasties you like. You and I will take them up the south cliff, to the beacon.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

Hild insisted that they all go. Onnen was wise to her ways, though, and knew how to deal with that. She handed the girl little Onstan and picked up Mulfryth herself.

Little of course wasn’t the right word. Each twin weighed more than a spring lamb.

As Hild had intended, Cian, carrying the sack of Guenmon’s pasties—which he kept shifting from one side to the other—the chattering Begu, and Breguswith moved ahead of them up the steep cliff path, pulling themselves up using the stunted, still-leafless saplings along the path.

As Onnen and Hild fell farther behind and Begu’s chatter faded, the only sound was the wind in the furze and the grass and the thistles and, a long way down, the steady roll and crash of the incoming tide.

Hild, with her long, strong legs and young lungs scrambled faster. Onnen climbed as fast as she could. By the time she got to the top, she was breathing hard. Hild reached down one-handed and hauled her up.

The girl still had manners, at least. She might look longingly at the church weathering into the dirt and the repaired thorn hedge but she stayed with Onnen while the older woman caught her breath. The others, Begu in the lead, were already halfway to the old beacon tower, which looked to have lost a few more stones since she last climbed this way.

They stood side by side, facing south and east, away from the wind, looking half out to sea, half at the figures in the distance. Begu had stopped and now seemed to be shrieking and laughing and pointing at something. The air smelt of salt.

Hild shifted Onstan to her other arm. He stayed fast asleep, thumb in his mouth. “He’s big for his age,” she said.

“Mulfryth’s bigger. She takes after her father. Sadly, she also has his nose.”

Hild leaned over to peer at Mulfryth’s little face. Her eyes flicked open. Pale brown, almost amber, and fierce. “Hawks,” Hild said. “Begu said they were like geese. But they’re not.”

“They’re my centre now, these two.” Onnen reached over and tucked Onstan’s blanket more securely beneath his chin. “Begu’s no longer my responsibility. She’s yours.”

“Yes.”

The wind shifted, and Onnen thought she heard the clank of cowbells.

She’d said many hard things to the girl over the years, but this might end up being the hardest. The girl was too young to understand the depth of it, but she had to understand the importance.

She nodded to where, in the distance, Cian was shifting his sack yet again. “He always did hate carrying anything that wasn’t a sword.”

The girl nodded.

“You two are very close,” Onnen said.

The girl glanced at her. “Yes.”

Onnen wanted to hug her, smooth her hair, make it better. She hardened her heart. “You can’t have him.”

The girl frowned. “What—”

“You don’t understand. But you will. For now, take heed.”

The girl’s gaze fastened on hers: clear, clever, stubborn. But Cian was her son.

“You can’t have him. And you can’t tell him why. Keeping him ignorant keeps him safe. Whatever he knows always did shine out of him. Like a beacon.” Now the girl’s eyes changed. That part at least she understood.

Below, waves rolled in long easy lines onto the beach. The girl, watching them, said, “I’ve never told him. I never will.” A black-headed gull wheeled overhead, crying. She lifted her face to follow it. “But my mother says gossip flows into gaps.”

“She’s not wrong.” That was the problem. Mother and daughter were both so rarely wrong they thought they never could be. “Yes. I’ll start telling the stories again, the story of Cian taking the sword from Ceredig. I’ll tell Guenmon. She already knows, but I’ll remind her. And what Guenmon knows, all the wealh will know. Including the visitors. Then the king will know.”

“He already knows that one. I told him.”

“But this way, he’ll know that everyone else knows. And the story will crowd out any other that might arise. And being thought as Ceredig’s son, now that Elmet is wholly Edwin’s, makes Cian useful to him. Useful men stay alive.”

Hild found her way to the kitchen, and thanked Guenmon for the pasties.

Guenmon said, “Was there something wrong with them?”

“No. I liked them.”

“Well, no need to sound surprised.”

“It’s not…” But she had no idea how to explain the puzzling conversation she’d just had with Onnen. “I’m glad you remembered I like tarragon.”

“Well of course I remember. Reach me down one of those cups, now.” Hild did. “I remember when you had to stand on a stool, too. Now don’t go away. I want a word with you.”

Another word. Hild hoped she would at least understand this one. She watched as Guenmon measured and ground spices, tipped them into two copper cups.

“Now.” Guenmon handed Hild a cup of spiced wine. “It’s about your bodywoman.”

“Gwladus? Why? Where is she?”

“Poorly. I gave her something to drink.”

“What—”

“What you should have given her a fortnight ago.”

“She’s—”

“Not anymore.”

“Did it, was it—”

“The baby doesn’t matter. It would only have been a slave, anyway. But it hurts to lose them. It hurts.” Guenmon looked lightless for a moment, then huffed, impatient. “It’s done. But you’re to see it doesn’t happen again. That lass is yours. Protect her.”

For the next two days, Gwladus, pale and slow moving, was in the care of Guenmon; Begu happy to renew her acquaintance with the cows and goats; Cian showing off his ringed sword to the young men of the hall; and Breguswith and Onnen lost for hours gathering herbs and talking of old times, or sitting in the sun weaving quietly together, each with a twin at her side. The king was busy with Mulstan, discussing trade and sailing weather and the new wīc at York. No one needed a seer.

Hild was glad to escape the responsibilities she didn’t quite understand and roam the moor.

She watched a goshawk rolling and diving over the gorse and heather, crying like a gull. She didn’t see a mate; perhaps he soared and swooped for joy. She hiked along the cliff’s edge, paused to listen to the rock pipits building their nest in a crevice and watch the male feed beetles to his mate. The eggs would come soon.

When she thought at all, she thought in British, the language of the high places, of wild and wary and watchful things. A language of resistance and elliptical thoughts.

She climbed the paths morning and evening, breathing the salt-sharp air, watching the slow spring dusk tighten around the shore like an adder and the sea turn to jet. She was glad to be alone, to be free, to be high above the world, where she could see everything coming. She had people to protect.

On the last afternoon she walked four miles north along the shore, over sand and shingle and long beach grass. By one rill, where low tangled hawthorn and gorse grew among the long sea grass, she found a row of tiny wrens and mouse pups spiked on thorns: the work of the wariangle, the butcher-bird.

She walked half a mile inland, checking blackthorn hedges, but the only nest she found was abandoned. By it were thorns hung with two caterpillars and a bee: the work of their young. All gone now, master and apprentice, flown to warmer climes. Like kings, they ravaged then moved on, leaving their trophies hanging from battlements, drying to husks, proclaiming, My land, my law.

Hild stood at the aft rail with Breguswith, watching the world slide by and the wake unfurl. The Humber was mushroom brown, still thick with spring silt. On the north bank, as they moved west and inland, the mudflats became wolds, undulating folds of green grass dotted with flinty-coloured sheep and tiny white puffs of lambs.

“A lot of lambs this year,” her mother said. “And their dams with good thick wool after the cold winter.”

Hild nodded, idly pondering the wake, the little curls of dirty cream constantly being born and dying along the edge of the deep trough they cut through the water. There was a pattern there but she hadn’t the words to describe it.

“I talked to Onnen about Aberford and the York wīc. She’ll watch for the good wool that comes down from the north, from Tinamutha. Aberford will make a good place for collecting, sorting, and spinning in winter, as you said. Though I think somewhere along these banks, too, might be handy.”

Hild liked listening to her mother planning to build, rather than destroy or take. It felt as comforting as a larder full of food with only a month til spring. It made her feel safe; that their web, their weft and warp, was wide and strong.

“And between the York wīc and Lindum port we can reach the Frisians and Franks ourselves. We won’t have to go through Gipswīc with sulky Eorpwald taking his cut. Tinamutha and the Bay of the Beacon will feed trade with the men of the north, even west across to Rheged and east over the North Sea.”

On the bank a woman, dress kilted to her waist, threw something in her bark basket and shaded her eyes to watch them glide by. “Not the Irish, though.”

Breguswith shook her head. “Nor the Scots. Gwynedd still has that trade. And a fine, lordly gesith to trumpet their wares.” She nodded to where Cian, bold cloak thrown back from his shoulders, was leaning with Lintlaf against the rails midships and passing comments on the folk, mostly women, working in the bows. Lintlaf offered him the jar of beer he was drinking. Cian shook his head. “We must make him a good Anglisc cloak that he likes better.”

“I like his cloak,” Hild said. “It suits him.”

“Something in blue. The blue that the women of Northumbria make better than any in the world.”

“But not royal blue.”

“No.”

The water slished. The sail rippled.

“No doubt the king will soon be putting Cadwallon and Gwynedd in their place,” Breguswith said. “And, meanwhile, there’s always Dyfneint.”

“Do you know anyone in Dyfneint?”

Breguswith shook her head.

“Nor do I,” Hild said, watching the way Lintlaf watched Gwladus, who stood over Morud, bossing him with close to her usual vigour on the proper way to scrub a pot. “But I know who does.”

It was evening by the time the ship docked on the south bank of the Ouse. Ropes were thrown, gangplanks dropped fore and aft, and people disembarked with the usual din of near disaster and swift efficiency that Hild had come to associate with the meeting of ship and land. The deck swarmed with men, all shouting, all carrying things. The ship, now seized tightly to the dock, felt stiff and lifeless underfoot.

The king and most of his retinue were already forming up on the muddy landing near the bridge. Horses milled. Hild stood by the fore gangplank, looked about for Gwladus, thought she saw the flash of her pale hair among the heave of men unstepping the mast. There, midships, pressed back against the larboard rail…

“No,” said Hild, and a man turned, thinking she was talking to him.

“Lady?”

She picked up a batten. “Out of my way.”

Then she stood before Lintlaf and Gwladus. Lintlaf, hand still white and tight around Gwladus’s arm, turned, face slack with drink.

Hild said, “Gwladus. You will take my bag to shore. Now.”

Lintlaf stood there, mazed as an ox just herded from the byre. Hild tapped his hand with the end of her batten.

He blinked, let go. Gwladus rubbed her arm, glared at him.

“Bitch,” Lintlaf said. His breath was sour with ale.

Gwladus spat at him. He raised his hand.

Hild drew his gaze with her batten. “Don’t touch her.”

He put his hand on his seax.

She hefted the batten: good, weathered oak. “I’ll break your arm.”

“She’s wealh.”

She set her feet. “She’s mine.”

His face puckered like a purse with a pulled string. “So. The freemartin has finally learnt what it’s all for.”

She hefted the batten again. “You will not touch her.”

He considered, spat, took his hand from his seax. “She’s soiled, spoiled, and sullen. You’re welcome to her.”

He pushed himself from the rail and walked with care to the gangplank.

Gwladus slid her hand around Hild’s waist and whispered in her ear, “Thank you, lady.” Then she stepped away. “Where’s your bag?”

“My bag?” For a moment, she had no idea what Gwladus was talking about. She still felt that warm whisper in her ear. She gripped the rail. Had someone untied the ship?

“There it is,” Gwladus said, and left Hild standing with batten in one hand, rail in the other.

It was strange to be back in York only a few weeks after Bebbanburg and Yeavering. The new women’s wing was ready, a row of rooms running at a right angle from the hall. The apartment Hild shared with Begu was three small rooms: a bedroom with a curtained doorway to the chamber where Gwladus and others slept, which had a stout door to the next, in which slept Morud and a guard, often Oeric. At the mouth of the corridor, the queen’s men stood guard over the whole wing: the queen’s suite, Clotrude’s, Breguswith’s.

Like Osric’s house at Arbeia, its bones were stone and brick, but it was rebuilt with elm and oak and pine and hung with tapestry and embroideries. Their bed was big, with a padded bench at the foot, and a little table against the northwest wall under the high window—shuttered now, but not proof against the smell of yeast and rising dough and, in the mornings, baking bread from the giant ovens to the east. There were specially built shelves, faced with polished slate, for lamps.

A taper burnt there now, lighting their supper.

Begu leaned forward for her ale, and a curl of hair dabbled in her lamb stew. Hild reached over and lifted it out without comment.

“How am I supposed to keep it out of things if we can’t bind it for the ritual? And what if it’s windy in the morning?”

It would be windy. It was Œstremonath. “The walls should shelter the church well enough.” The church was only a frame and roof in the principia courtyard.

Begu sucked the hair clean and tucked it back into its braid. “Here, eat some more. Who knows how long we’ll have to go hungry tomorrow.”

The baptism of a king would involve more ceremony than that of an infant. A king, two æthelings, Hild and Begu, Osric and Oswine and little Osthryth, Coelfrith, Coifi, and two dozen assorted thegns and gesiths, including Oeric.

Hild ate some of the stew.

“I hope I get all the words right,” Begu said.

“You’ll be fine.”

“He seems like such a solemn god. And fussy. Now, look, you’ve eaten the last of the stew.” She twisted on her stool. “Gwladus!” Gwladus put her head through the curtain. “Oh, for Eorðe’s sake. What do I keep telling you? Don’t pop your head in and out like a woodpecker from its hole. Someone will bite it off. Try to behave.” She lifted her bowl. Gwladus nodded and vanished. “Why can’t she learn? I should have her whipped.”

Gwladus did it because she got to lean forward and show her breasts. Showing off her best points was a habit that had saved her life more than once. And she did have good points.

“They don’t seem to like jokes,” Begu said. “Now what’s that look for? The Christians. They don’t like jokes. I don’t think their god does, either. I asked the queen for a funny story about the Christ, like the one about Ing tricking Herthe with the acorns, and she had to think for a while, and then told me about two villages called Sodom and Gomorrah and God-the-Father turning someone’s wife into salt, which wasn’t funny, and a horrible story about a man called Abram who was supposed to kill his son just because this God-the-Father said so. Not even any bargaining. Just obedience, like a wealh. Imagine! Imagine what Edwin king would say to Thunor if he suggested he kill Eadfrith or Osfrith just because. Which reminds me, Clotrude is very near, your ma thinks so, too. And she thinks it’s a son.”

Hild nodded, wondering about Hereswith. I am with child. The letter had only come two months ago but who knew when it was sent?

“What will I do if I get the words wrong tomorrow?”

“You won’t,” Hild said. “All you have to do is say your name. You know your name. And then swear against their demon Satan and for the Christ.”

“And his father, and the holy breath—or is it flame? That bit never makes sense.”

“No.” She didn’t like to think about it. James talked about a Holy Fire, a cleansing fire. Perhaps it meant being cleansed of the memory of the grit and slide of blade into spine. One quick sear, he’d said, and done, like a cauterising iron. But he had never tended a cauterised wound. Most swelled, turned angry, and leaked stinking pus. But her mother would have mentioned pain. But perhaps her mother hadn’t killed as many people as she had. She put it from her mind, scraped the bowl clean, and licked her fingers. The lamb tasted good this year.

“And I don’t understand why the Christ, or whichever one it is, is so squeamish. No blood in the church. No woman with her monthly bleeding. It makes no sense.”

James hadn’t thought to mention that to Hild. Perhaps they didn’t think a hægtes bled.

“And wearing white. What god likes plain old white and no jewels?”

“It’s so those priests can see if you’re bleeding,” Gwladus said, putting the bowl of stew on the table, along with a wedge of crumbly new white cheese and fresh watercress.

“What would they do if you are?” Begu said.

“No doubt nail you to the door, like the Christ,” Gwladus said. “And jam a hat of thorns on your head.” She laid her hand, brief and light as a drift of hawthorn blossom, on Hild’s head.

Begu didn’t notice. “You’d think their god was a slave, the way he let himself be treated.” She ladled herself some stew. The curtain swished behind Gwladus. “Your bleeding’s due soon, isn’t it?”

“Not tomorrow.”

“Better wear a rag just in case, or it’s a hat of thorns for you.” She paused, spoon over her bowl. “Do you suppose we’ll feel any different? I asked Cian if he felt different, afterwards. He said he felt… better. But he wouldn’t tell me how.”

No, thought Hild, because then he’d have to explain what he’d felt bad about, and neither of them wanted Begu to know what they did in war.

“Then I asked your mam, and she put on her meek-as-milk face and said it made her a better person, but the queen was listening, so you know how much that means.”

Hild nodded. Saying what made the people in power think well of her was as much a habit for Breguswith as showing her curves was for Gwladus.

“Do you think it odd that we’ll be swearing fealty to a god, like a gesith to his king?” When Hild didn’t say anything, Begu sighed. “Now what are you thinking about?”

“Um? Oh. My mother. And Gwladus. How they’re not so different.”

To Hild’s astonishment, Begu just nodded. She picked up her knife. “Let’s eat some of this lovely cheese. Let’s eat a lot of it. It’ll be a long morning.” She paused, cheese in hand. “What do you suppose the body of a god tastes like?”

“It’s bread. Like the bread Coifi buried at the root of the hedge.”

“But bread dipped in god juice. I expect it tastes like the air from a forge, buttered.”

Buttered?

“… cheese, then you can tell me about this Uinniau who’s coming from Rheged to witness for the king.”

Uinniau, prince of Rheged, sister-son of Rhoedd king, stood by the font. He was older than Cian, and though he had done some growing, he still was not tall. He still was freckled. His eyes still were the clear hazel Hild remembered. But he was no longer the boy who had bounced like an apple on the back of his too-large mare on the way from Caer Luel to Broac. He was there to stand in for his uncle as British witness to the baptism of Edwin, overking of the Anglisc. He wore the air of power the role lent him.

The font was the beautifully carved stone Paulinus had taken from Elmet, now mortared over the old well in the principia courtyard and bright with gilding and fresh red and blue paint. The font took up the north corner of what would become the church but was now merely a freshly sawn timber frame and a roof, open to the air. Beyond the brick of the principia, wind twisted the clouds this way and that, sometimes tearing them open and loosing flurries of cold rain, sometimes driving the sky clean for a moment and making way for a brief flood of daffodil-yellow sun. When the sun shone for more than a few heartbeats, it raised a strong smell of the dung with which the gardens north and west of the principia had been manured that morning.

Uinniau—and the priests, and the baptismal candidates and their sponsors—stayed dry and relatively sheltered. The crowd spilling into the courtyard was not so lucky. They didn’t seem to mind. They’d all enjoyed the big Easter breakfast the queen had ordered for anyone within the walls who asked. Anyone who wasn’t about to be baptised.

Hild tried not to think about her empty belly or how tired she was of standing. The morning had started with singing in hall, then a procession—led by Stephanus with the great cross, James with the choir, priests with censers, Paulinus with his crook, then the white-robed candidates, then their sponsors—cutting smoothly through the crowd to the church. Then the great Easter Mass began, complete with special blessings of a giant candle—thick around as a gesith’s thigh and nearly as tall as Hild, carved and gilded—and the water in the well, or font.

At the very dawn of creation your Spirit breathed on the waters, making them wellsprings of all holiness…

Two priests swung censers over the font. Wind whipped the heavy smoke into the women’s side of the royal party. Wilnoð coughed. She tried to stifle it, but that just made her eyes water. At least it covered the smell of dung.

Paulinus began the proclamation of the word of God. Begu, in the second rank of white-clad candidates and short enough to be half hidden, frankly leaned on Hild and shut her eyes. Hild, always visible, always watched, settled an attentive look on her face and drifted away into the music still cycling through her head. Cool, clear, endless as sky. Perhaps it would help with any cleansing burn to come.

Begu stirred and Hild came back to the moment. Stephanus was passing along the rows of candidates, touching a glistening thumb to each forehead.

… oil of catechumens… liberation from sin and its instigator, the devil…

She had to bend slightly for Stephanus to reach her forehead. His touch was light and quick. The oil didn’t seem to smell of anything.

… profession of faith…

And the world slowed, for this was the oath.

All around her, she felt chests rise and lungs fill, ready to give voice to the words they had learnt. Then she would be baptised and god’s flame would burn her, or not.

Paulinus’s gaze fastened on her.

He, at least, hoped for her to burn. She breathed deep. She was Anglisc. She would not burn. She would endure and hold true to her oath. An oath, a bond, a boast. A truth, a guide, a promise. To three gods in one. To the pattern. For even gods were part of the pattern, even three-part gods. The pattern was in everything. Of everything. Over everything.

“God the Father,” she said. God the pattern. “God the Son, God the Holy Spirit…”

All around her, words took shape and rolled from their mouths, high-pitched and low, harsh and smooth, loud and soft. They spoke together, oathed together, breathed together. Her kith, her kin, her king. Her people.

Her heart beat with it, her tears fell with it, her spirit soared with it. Here, now, they were building a great pattern, she could feel it, and she would trace its shape one day: that was her wyrd, and fate goes ever as it must. Today she was swearing to it, swearing here, with her people.

She watched the king bend to the font and the water poured three times on his head in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He flinched but didn’t burn. Paulinus welcomed him to God with a kiss on the cheek and a great gold-and-garnet cross to hang about his neck, then turned to her.

She met his gaze, agate to jet. She would not flinch, not even if the water turned to a river of fire. She stepped forward, bent her head, and set her will.

The water was cold, like ice, like flame, and she clamped her muscle to her bone so hard that she felt turned to stone. The world faltered then resumed and the queen was kissing her cheek, welcoming her to God, and she wasn’t burnt.

She hardly felt the queen fastening a cross around her neck or leading her from the font. Watched through a daze as Paulinus poured the water three times over Begu’s head, anointed her on forehead, breast, and both palms, and Breguswith came forward to kiss her cheek.

White-clad back after white-clad back bent over the font. After the king and his family came his counsellors. Coifi and his priests. Rank after rank of gesiths joining Christ, now their god, god of Yffings.

When Paulinus turned from the font to the crowd and raised both arms—his arms were very thin Hild saw, very dark against the cream and gold of his robes—time began to flow in its proper course. The Crow cried out in a great voice that they had put on Christ, they had risen with Christ, and they would share the glory of Christ. The air under the roof bulged with choir song and the crowd cheered. She was baptised to Christ—their name for the pattern, her path, her wyrd. She was still herself.

Uinniau smiled at her and winked.

The hall heaved. Every freeman and woman within miles, all wearing their best, squeezed behind long tables; Oeric sat in his white robe with two lesser priests of Woden—no, not priests, not anymore—and several gesiths. Every servingman and woman was pressed into service; even Gwladus, even Morud. The hall roared with conversation, and despite the raw weather, it was hot. The thick slippery scent of the oil on her hands, the chrism of olive and balsam, stuck in her throat. Hild wiped her hands surreptitiously on the board cloth, but it didn’t make much difference to the smell.

She ran her finger around the collar of her robe, as though it itched, but it was the gold chain around her neck she felt. It was thinner than she was used to, a woman’s chain but bearing a massive gold cross. The great garnets flanked by pearls running down the centre looked like the bloodied froth that flew back in ropes from the bit of a hard-driven horse and the chain cut into her neck. But she couldn’t take it off, and she couldn’t look uncomfortable in it; it was the Christ’s symbol and half the people were still wondering if she would vanish with a wail and a puff of smoke.

Begu reached over and lifted the cross as though admiring it. “Better?” She hefted it. “It must weigh half a pound. Not very practical though. That great big knuckle of a thing will catch on everything. Still.” She weighed it again admiringly. “You should hold it yourself every now and again. It looks pious, and it’ll save your neck until we can get you a thicker chain.” She let it go. “Go on.”

Hild cradled the cross in her right hand. Christian.

Begu lifted her own cross—silver gilt, from Breguswith—and leaned in to Hild. “What does the writing say?”

“‘In Christ’s hands.’”

“Sounds like the kind of thing you’d say before running into a burning byre. Not that I’d ever run into a burning byre. You’d have to be mad. But that’s what it sounds like. Are we really supposed to long for death and a seat at Christ’s right hand? Well, I’d be on the left. Maybe you’d be on the right. Christ might look at your seax and your bare arms and get confused.”

Hild smiled. Begu was still most definitely Begu. “I’m sure he’d sort it out. James says Christ is all-knowing and all-powerful. He could put me in both places at once if he wanted.”

“Or maybe all three, or, no, six! At the right and the left of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Though… a ghost…” She frowned. “What would a ghost look like in heaven?”

Hild tried to imagine a ghost sitting in the golden light of heaven. Ghosts grew from the thin grey mist of hollow hills, the damp and drizzle of dusk, the breath of the dead. They drifted and glimmered along boundary ditches on moonless nights…

“Are all the men of Rheged Christians?”

Hild blinked.

“Well?”

Hild followed her gaze to the other end of the king’s board, where Uinniau was seating himself after a toast to the king.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was so handsome?”

“I didn’t think of it. I didn’t notice.”

“Well, he’s noticing you.”

Uinniau was smiling in their direction and raising his cup. Hild raised her own.

“And people are noticing him noticing.” Begu nodded at Cian, at the second bench. “He used to scowl just like that when his ma first cast her lot with Fa.” Begu giggled at her foster-brother and stuck out her tongue.

The world sharpened suddenly, as brilliant and bright as when she got rain in her eye. She saw everything: a lick of Cian’s hair curled in front of his right ear; Breguswith sitting with her back to Osric, talking instead to the queen; the queen— “The queen’s breasts are bound.”

“Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? She’s given Eanflæd to nurse. Now that the king’s baptised, she’ll get to work giving him a son. Or maybe she already has. He’s certainly looking pleased with himself.”

Edwin was leaning back, chin on one hand, smiling, eyes half lidded, listening to Osfrith and Clotrude exchange some witticism. It was a look Hild recognised: a cat watching a stunned mouse, in no hurry to kill. Who was his smile for?

“Ah, now, you’ve smeared mint sauce on your sleeve,” Begu said. “Never mind, we’ll have to dye everything anyway if they’re to be of any use. What a waste and fuss for a bit of water and a few words. Though at least we didn’t have to blunder about in a muddy river. Oh, oh, he’s looking at me.” She tucked her braid behind her ear, untucked it, and turned carrot red.

Hild was on her feet before her thoughts caught up with her body and she realised Begu meant Uinniau. Uinniau was looking. Not the king. The king barely knew Begu existed.

The air in her lungs evaporated in a puff that she turned to a laugh, and she sat down. Breathed. Smiled.

Begu glared at her. “It’s not funny.”

She smoothed Begu’s hair. Her hand trembled. “Sshh, sshh. Your hair is fine. You look lovely. White is a good colour for you. You look like… like apple blossom.”

Begu allowed herself to be offered a morsel of lamb. Hild smiled some more and breathed. Behind her smile, her thoughts whirred like a pole lathe, back and forth, shaving away the layers. As she let Morud refill her cup, as she commented on the food, as she chatted about the best way to dye already woven cloth, she studied the table.

Paulinus was standing by a torch-lit pillar with Stephanus, who had arrived the day before from Elmet, almost unnoticed in the press of representatives from neighbouring kingdoms. Hild thought she’d even spotted a man from Craven, though not Dunod himself. For once, Stephanus was not taking notes. For once, Paulinus had drunk more than a single cup of wine: Edwin’s baptism was the beginning of his triumph. And Edwin still needed him. So, the king’s smile was not for Paulinus.

Her mother was still talking to the queen, who listened intently. Hild couldn’t think of any reason why Edwin would go for her now. Not her mother.

Next to her mother, Oswine stabbed sullenly at his trencher with his eating knife. But he was an unimportant piece in the game. Osthryth, with her white robe and pointy teeth, looked more like an ermine than ever. She was even less important than her brother, unless Edwin needed to appease some king with a marriage.

No. Edwin didn’t need to appease anyone today. He was baptised. His plans were in place.

Next to Oswine, Osric sat like a bulldog in a white robe. His little brown eyes alternately tracked Breguswith—she was ignoring him steadfastly—and the king. The king, pretending to be unaware of his kinsman’s regard, gestured to Coelfrith, said something in his ear, and leaned back again. Coelfrith left the table quietly. Osric watched him, watched the reeve’s nod to the scop on the way out, and the scop’s answering nod, and straightened. His shoulders went back—the hound waiting to be tossed the heart of the kill. Hild caught the glint of Edwin’s teeth before he hid his widening smile with a forced yawn and covered both with his hand.

Osric.

Now the pattern was clear: her mother, not staying with Osric at Arbeia; her mother, ignoring him now; her mother, getting baptised early, growing close to the queen, reweaving Onnen into her plans. Her mother, changing sides, so gradually, so carefully that even Hild hadn’t noticed. She had understood, long before Hild, that Edwin was ready to topple his cousin.

At the doorway, Coelfrith, carrying a three-legged table and followed by two of his men—one carrying something brick-shaped, wrapped in closely woven embroidered linen, another with a long, finely carved birch box—made a brief eddy as he entered.

Osric stroked his moustaches with that pleased look men wear when they expect acclaim. Edwin stood.

The scop played a dramatic chord.

Edwin took his time catching the gaze of all his people: the beady black of the Crow, Uinniau’s open hazel, Breguswith’s bright, bright blue, Coifi’s clay brown, the æthelings’ blue-grey, the black-brown of Osthryth and Oswine and Osric.

Edwin, king of Deira and Bernicia, of all Northumbria, overking of the Angles, lord of the north, and most powerful man on the isle, smiled and raised his cup to Osric, who inclined his head and swelled with pleasure. Edwin gestured for him to stand.

This was how it would be for her, she realised, when Edwin king decided he no longer needed a seer. She would stand, plump and fed and brushed like a sacrificial cow, with gilded horns and a ribbon around her neck, too stupid to know she was being led to slaughter.

Edwin poured the white mead with his own hand and held out the cup to Osric.

Hild wanted to throw bread at his head. Think! It should be poured by the queen! But the queen watched impassively, and Hild kept her face and hands still. Osric took the cup.

“Our kingdom is growing. We are strong. Yet we need strong men on our right hand to guide the farmers of our borderlands, strong men to crush the vermin who whisper of other kings in other lands, to smash those who skulk like stray dogs in search of the weak and yap at their betters from behind trees.”

The scop must have come up with that.

“My counsellors and wise men say to me: Lord King, the Christ might now be on our side, but the priests tell us their god, our god, helps those who help themselves. And they say, ‘Lord King, our people need a strong man to look up to. It is time,’ they tell me, ‘to appoint ealdormen, to seat men as princes. Known men, trusted men. Strong men. Kinsmen. Men to protect the people and command the respect of all.’” He smiled at Osric over the rim of his cup. “They said this to me at Yule, and I said, ‘Be patient.’ They said this to me again, yesternight, and I said, ‘But tell me what kinsman will be willing to leave his fine and comfortable house to take up this burden? Who will fight in the king’s name to bring fallow land under the plough, to open dark forests to the light?’”

Around the hall men were nodding. They saw, they thought they saw, where the king was heading. Elmet, they whispered to their less sharp neighbours, the king will give his cousin Elmet.

But she knew her uncle. And the fruits of Elmet did not sit in long birch boxes or heavy brick shapes.

“‘Who?’ I asked them. ‘You have sons,’ they said—”

Osric paled.

“—but: ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have other plans for my sons. And I know just the man I need.’”

Osric flushed.

Edwin’s smile widened. So many teeth. “And so, Lord Osric, kinsman, are you willing to leave the lands known to your kith and kin since time out of mind to take up this honour on behalf of your king?”

“Cousin,” Osric said. “My king.” His voice shook with sincerity: ealdorman of Elmet! More or less a king. He would give anything. “I am willing.” His men drummed on the board.

“Then, Lord Osric, Osric Yffing…” The hall breathed, one great lung, in and out, in and out. This would be something to tell their grandchildren: They were there when the Kingdom of Elmet became part of Northumbria forever. The scops would sing of this. “I name you Lord and Ealdorman of Craven.”

Hild wondered how the scop would sing of the two smiles. The king’s spreading like melting lard in a pan, wider and wider. The ealdorman’s widening, jerking, spreading tremulously, wiped out, gone. Even his lips went pale.

She imagined the roaring in his ears.

“… yesterday of Dunod’s death… our shield against the treachery of the men of the north… friendship with the loyal men of Rheged as reaffirmed by Prince Uinniau…”

His legs would be shaking, the world turning black at its edges, but he had to stay upright. His eyes seemed even smaller than before, confused, like a badger driven from its sett and facing a ring of torches.

Then Æthelburh was standing by her husband, and Coelfrith placed the small oak table, carved and inlaid with Edwin’s boar’s-head blazon in red gold, before the king and queen. Coelfrith’s men laid the small covered brick and the long box on the boar’s head. Coelfrith lifted the embroidered cloth to reveal a pig of iron, spotted with rust, despite the glistening grease. Hild could smell it from where she stood: raw iron, the smell of delving and hammering and stoking. He lifted the lid on the birch box: a whole salmon, dried and smoked. The smells of autumn: rust and smoke and hunger. Autumn and the ending of Osric’s hopes.

“Priest,” Edwin said, and Coifi jerked and swayed but did not, quite, step forward. Paulinus did. He lifted the embroidered cloth in both hands and waited. Osric stumbled out from behind his bench to take the oath he could not refuse.

Paulinus put Osric’s right hand on the box. Edwin and Æthelburh laid theirs on top, and the Crow draped the cloth over all.

Paulinus spoke for a long time: of sacred trust; loyalty to the king, beloved of Christ; of the people of Craven. Long enough for Osric to begin to understand what he had been tricked into. The king was taking his house, his family’s house. Edwin the Deceiver was sending him, loyal subject and kinsman, once-and-no-more ætheling of Deira, to the godforsaken wilds of Craven, land of leaping salmon and the stink of pig iron. A land jammed up against the base of the western mountain spine, full of streams rushing down ironstone hills, full of shivering birch and shaking wealh, a land so worthless that no one had bothered to take it away from Dunod.

Long enough, too, for Coifi’s face to mirror his sudden, bitter understanding of his new place: no longer chief priest of the chief god but a simple man without a sword. A man with nothing.

Uinniau hung upside down from the low limb of an apple tree, laughing up at Hild. It was the only apple tree inside the new wooden walls around what would be the wīc on the west side of the big river.

Cian sat on the grass with his back to them. Begu was on the riverbank, making a flower chain from dandelions. Oeric had been pressed into holding them for her.

Uinniau laughed again. “I’m stuck.”

Hild reached down. “Swing a bit and give me your hand.” He swung, she caught his hand and hauled. He came up. Hild dropped down next to him. They sat facing each other, astride the bough. Uinniau had blossom in his hair.

Hild picked some of it off, rolled the tiny petals idly between her fingers.

He pointed to the mound of dirt growing in the fork of the rivers. “It won’t be a very big tower.”

“Tall enough to shoot fire arrows onto the deck of a ship.”

“What about chains across the river?”

Hild blinked. And when she didn’t say anything he tilted his head back and looked at her down his nose with all the arrogance of a prince.

“It’s been a long time since Broac. I’m short, not a child.”

She sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He waved the apology away. “You and I, we should be friends. One day, perhaps, if I’m… Well. Perhaps those days will never come again to Rheged and the north.” He shrugged, the kind of shrug that went with songs of the Old North: an elegy for what once was great. “Your uncle is making himself a name,” he said. “He’s like Arthur come again.”

She flicked the rolled-up petal at him. “No, he isn’t.”

He grinned. “Some people like flattery.”

“Not me.”

He peered down at Cian, out at Begu and Oeric, at his hands. Finally he looked at her. “So we’ll speak truth, you and I?”

She thought about it. She liked the feel of him. He was clever, but straight-grained. Sound as an oak staff. She nodded.

“What will happen to Osric?”

“He’ll go to Craven and brood in his upland hall, plotting to take back Arbeia from Osfrith and Clotrude, pouring his bitterness into Oswine’s ear and filling him with twisty dreams of being king of all Deira.” She stripped a leaf from the branch overhead, turned it this way and that. “Just like, I imagine, Eanfrith in Pictland, and the other Idings with the Dál Riata.”

“Such dreams are not for you?”

“It’s not my wyrd. Besides, they’re hopeless.” Speaking straight felt different. She found she liked it.

“Perhaps not if you… they had allies.” She threw the leaf at him. He watched it flutter down, then shrugged. “Will they, Osric and Oswine, try to ally with the Idings in secret?”

“Why would the Idings keep it secret?”

Uinniau nodded. The middle Idings had a claim to Deira through Acha Yffing, Edwin’s sister, as well as to Bernicia through their father, Æthelfrith Iding. If they had Osric Yffing on their side, they would shout it out and march.

“It’s more likely Osric would try to ally with Eanfrith.” The eldest Iding, son of Bebba. “Osric would take Deira, Eanfrith Bernicia. But my uncle will be watching for that.”

“Cadwallon would be a surer bet as an ally,” he said. “Or Penda.”

“Not even Osric would trust Cadwallon. Not even for an hour. As for Penda…”

“No one knows him.”

She nodded. “They say he’s clever.”

“They say you’re clever, that you see into men’s hearts.” His hazel eyes shone with something. Perhaps it was the reflection of new leaves. She hoped so. “Hild. I—”

“How’s Rhianmelldt?”

“Rhianmelldt? She’s… no better.”

Hild thought of the fey child she had met in Caer Luel, that ravaged ælf.

“Hild, please. Listen to me.”

For a moment, she was tempted to push him out of the tree. She didn’t want to hear his moony words. He was going to spoil it all. But she was Hild, king’s seer and light of the world. She didn’t push princes out of apple trees. She motioned for him to speak.

“The lady Begu. Does she like me?”

A bee bumped into her hand. Hild waved it away, and it sizzled crossly against the trunk for a heartbeat or two before it found a way around.

“I think she does,” he said. “But you know her best. Would she…” He turned the same carrot colour Begu had at the feast. “I’m a man of Rheged. But sister-son to the king. Only, who should I… I don’t…”

It was interesting how people lost their words when they liked someone. As though it drained their senses.

“Please, say something.”

Hild pointed down.

Begu stood at the base of the tree with a chain of dandelions around her head, like a crown, like a princess. She stood on her tiptoes and held another out to Uinniau. “I made one for you.”

They walked along the new hedge: Uinniau and Begu in their circlets of golden dandelion, laughing and talking—though, as far as Hild could tell, about nothing very much—followed by Cian and Hild, and, a few paces back, Oeric.

The sky was busy with birds—siffsaffs and blackcaps, nuthatches and greenfinches—and the river was at slack tide, quieter than usual, smelling of spring: mud, ducks on their nests of twigs, caterpillars, the fresh-sawn smell of the beaver dam, newly moved earth where shoots pushed through to the light. More bumblebees buzzed and bumped over the hedge’s freshly leafed hazel and the pink-and-white snow of blackthorn and hawthorn blossom.

Cian was a thundercloud.

“Look at the thorns,” he said loudly. Uinniau and Begu turned. “That one’s the size of my thumb.” He waved at the road disappearing arrow-straight to the northwest and Rheged. “By summer it’ll take an army with axes to break through.”

“Rheged is not your enemy.”

Cian gave him a look that would scorch iron. “No,” he said, meaning, Not today. “But there are men north of Rheged. And if they got a mad notion to march down Dere Street to the wīc, they’d get a nasty surprise.”

“None would be fool enough to try surprise. Your king—”

“The overking.”

“The overking has told the world how strong his new wīc is. Besides, the men of Rheged keep their ears close to the ground. And Rhoedd king sends his assurance to Northumbria that Rheged, and beyond us Alt Clut, is with you.”

“Oh, indeed.” Cian clapped the young prince on the back—harder than necessary, Hild thought. A reminder that, while Uinniau was a princeling, Cian topped him by a head, that he was a thegn’s—an Anglisc thegn’s—foster-son, and that Uinniau was walking with his foster-sister.

Begu rolled her eyes at Hild, but her lips were full and her cheeks flushed and she skipped along like a new-born kid.

Begu sighed again and kicked at the covers for good measure. Hild, emerging from a half dream—of swimming naked as a seal, water coursing over her skin, between her legs—propped herself up on her elbow. The waning moon lit the room enough to see that her gemæcce’s face had that stubborn set Hild knew well, the my-fa-the-thegn-will-make-you-give-that-to-me look. “What?”

“Rhianmelldt.”

“What about her?”

“Whoever marries her could be king-in-waiting of Rheged.”

“So?”

“And who wouldn’t want to be king of Rheged? Even if it means taking a woman to wife whose mind is at a slant.”

Hild waited.

“Uinny says she sometimes hears voices and bangs her head on the wall.”

Hild nodded.

“They say she was pretty once.”

“She was pretty when I met her.”

“Perhaps she bangs her face, too. But some princeling will marry her anyway, and then he’ll have to fight Uinny to be king-in-waiting.”

Hild knew where this was going, but questions would only send Begu’s thoughts flying in all directions.

Begu fixed her eyes on the strange smooth ceiling over their bed. “To be king, he would have to marry well. Very well. A thegn’s daughter won’t do.”

“He didn’t say that.”

Begu turned to face Hild. Her breath was fresh with the elm seeds she’d been eating lately, ever since she gave Uinniau his circlet of dandelions. “He didn’t have to. People look at him and see a child.”

Hild couldn’t disagree.

“He’d need to marry someone formidable. Someone like you.” Begu flopped on her back again. “No, he didn’t say that, either. There’s no point. After all, you’ll marry someone much more important.”

She couldn’t disagree with that, either. So she stroked Begu’s forehead, smoothing back her hair. “Does Uinniau want so badly to be a king?”

Begu laughed, but it was a soft laugh, quite grown-up, and it made Hild long to hold her and shield her from the world.

“If you don’t want to be a queen, all will be well. Think. Uinniau didn’t grow up to be heir. That was his brother. I don’t think he wants it. And once Rhianmelldt marries her king-in-waiting, Uinniau can please himself. He can marry you.”

“But Rhianmelldt’s a child. She won’t marry for years. Years! You don’t know what it’s like!” Begu reached for Hild’s hand, laid it on her belly. “Here. That’s where I feel it. It’s like… It makes me feel wild as the autumn and nervous as a kitten, and the world is big and new. I smell everything, I hear everything, and inside I feel…” Under her hand, Hild felt Begu’s blood beating, thump-thump, thump-thump, like an Irish drum. “It’s like, I feel like a leaf on a river pouring over a fall—I’m being hurried along, then sucked under. I look at his arms and his shoulders and I’m drowning. I want to lick them, I want to gnaw at them like a teething puppy. No, not like a puppy, like a wolf. I want to tear him apart, eat him up. You can’t stop teeth from growing. I can’t wait years.”

“You don’t have to wait to marry for that.” She imagined bodies in the dark. The panting. Hægtes in a cyrtel…

“But I want to be by him forever. I want to hear his silly laugh—he sounds like a sheep, have you noticed?—at night. I want to watch him split wood, stack flax, practice spear and shield. Oh, I love to watch his skin move on his bones when he swings a sword with Cian. And his smell. He smells like a young colt, new and bright. What does Cian smell like?”

“Hot iron. Sometimes copper. And salt.” Hild lifted her hand from Begu’s belly. “We can watch them tomorrow, if you like.”

“And maybe you’ll think of a way for Rhianmelldt to marry someone soon?”

“Maybe,” Hild said, but she couldn’t think of any man her uncle would approve of.

She forgot about her dream of swimming, set aside the nameless yearning, and thought about Rheged. Who could her uncle offer to Rhoedd, which of his kinsmen could he control? Three days ago, she would have suggested Oswine, but after yesterday, that would be madness. Who could Edwin trust, who would both suit a British kingdom and be thought great enough for Rhoedd’s daughter?