Hild

18

IN YORK, the days warmed and opened. Bluebells began to dot the west woods. Crabapple blossomed. The first larks flew at dusk. Along the little river, kingfishers caught newts and water beetles, and on the big river when Hild walked with her mother and the queen—talking, as always, of wool and trade—she saw the tiny paw prints of otter kits.

On the morning that she heard the first cuckoo—so early!—Uinniau went back to Rheged. He left with many promises to return, and Begu nailed a smile on her face and wept in private; for a few days she didn’t have the heart even to threaten Gwladus with a whipping. Hild wondered if this might be partly due to the change in Gwladus: always to hand, always ready with just what Hild wanted—hot bread, cold water, soothing brushstrokes.

Stitchwort blossomed in white spatters along the riverbanks and figwort grew yellow beneath the great hedge. The world filled with the liquid melody of thrush song, and tits hung upside down from every bush.

Hild’s restlessness rose like the tide. At night she lay still while Begu stroked herself, jerked, and shuddered: Thinking of Uinniau, no doubt. While Begu slept Hild lay awake, hungry and restless and savage. During the day she beat at Cian so ferociously he refused to play again until the bruising on his ribs healed. Hild’s gesiths noticed that they didn’t slip off together and were particularly kind to her, which made her cross. Worse, Oeric then began to behave like a farmer who had won a prize cow, fussing over her, smiling at her. If she didn’t do something, he’d be patting her and putting a bell around her neck. She pondered sending him away to Elmet to see how Rhin and the mene wood were coming along. The peregrines would have brought off a brood. She’d like to see that. And what about the mill wheel? Rhin would be too busy to worry about sending messages.

The whole world seemed to be busy. Far away, Hereswith with child—or already a mother—and Fursey teaching her her letters. Also far away now, Osfrith and Clotrude—swollen with her own child—up in Arbeia rebuilding webs of trade and influence, knitting the Franks and Frisians into the Northumbrian web. Here, Breguswith and Æthelburh planning a new wool trade, something akin to Eorpwald’s goldsmithing trade: shearing, spinning, weaving, dyeing, sewing. Sheep to cloak, Breguswith liked to say. Osric, shorn of influence, in Craven. And Eadfrith, the elder ætheling, all over the isle, talking to the Britons of Rheged and Gododdin, the Mercians, and all manner of Saxon.

So many people doing so many things, except Hild.

Even James was busy, taking up some of the administrative burden of Elmet. Though, as he pointed out, that province was running smoothly now, thanks to Hild’s idea that the king shouldn’t demand tithes from new farmers. Really nothing Coelfrith’s man, Pyr, couldn’t run. All he had to do for now was keep track of who was clearing forest and breaking ground where, and keep the bigger landowners assured of the king’s benevolence. “Which mostly involves feeding them slabs of beef once a month. And mead. The number of mead barrels he’s getting through is iniquitous!”

Paulinus Crow was busy: He could practically taste the white pallium of overbishop, James said, and was building a web of his own priests to shuttle information back and forth. Lindsey was coming along very satisfactorily, so much so that James thought the bishop would soon be pushing for the king to lean on the apostatised Eorpwald in East Anglia. Paulinus would love to baptise him and appoint an underbishop of the East Angles—make himself the overbishop of all the Angles. Let Justus keep the Kentishmen, and welcome. All in the interests of the king, of course.

The king himself spent his days with Coelfrith and bundles of tally sticks, pondering his wīc, what he could funnel through it, what he could charge. Counting, counting, counting, rearranging possibilities, shouting at Coelfrith when he didn’t like the answers. They should have moved to Derventio a fortnight ago, but the king, obsessed with his wīc, would have none of it.

Hild wanted to talk to the king about Rheged: Rhianmelldt might not be capable of weaving peace, now or later, but Rheged didn’t need that, it needed protection. And though Rhianmelldt wasn’t old enough to marry she could be spoken for. If Northumbria didn’t pluck her, someone else would. Mercia or Gwynedd could give Rhoedd what he craved: a strong enough alliance to leave Rheged safe from violent annexation and obliteration when he died.

In the kitchen garth claimed from the rubble at the north corner of the great hall buildings, Hild flicked a caterpillar off a colewort leaf. Caterpillars. Soon there would be butterflies and moths. She’d never seen such things in York. For her York meant stone, brick, winter skies. This greening felt all wrong. They should be at Derventio by now—she missed her secret spinney; she missed the rooks—and then Goodmanham. It would be summer before they knew it, yet here they were, still in the city of stone.

She straightened, twirled her staff slowly, thinking.

“Morud.” He levered himself to his feet. “Run to the kitchen. Find Gwladus and tell her to meet me in my rooms. I want to dress for the king. Oh, and tell the kitchen the colewort is ripe, though they’ll have to hurry to beat the caterpillars to it.”

Gwladus came to Hild’s apartment in time to help with her hair. She told Hild the king was in a bad temper. “Flung the tally sticks at Coelfrith’s head and told him to get out, get out. Then he flung his trencher at the wall hanging and swore he’d have the cook’s breasts for a coin purse if she couldn’t stop burning the lamb, and he was sick to death of lamb, anyway, fed up to the back teeth. Well, lucky him, I say. Today might not be a good day for whatever you had in mind. Even the Crow thought better of going in.”

Hild turned. Gwladus adjusted her brushstrokes deftly. “The Crow? What did he want?”

“Arddun says he’s been pestering the queen to pester the king to send Coifi to Woden’s enclosure at Goodmanham to tear it down.”

Hild closed her eyes and leaned back. She loved the firm pressure of Gwladus’s hand on her crown, the steady strokes of the brush, and the scent of dried lavender and spicy tansy rising from her skirts. She pondered the enclosure. It had to happen. It should happen soon. “Where’s Coifi now?”

“They say he spends time in the church. I don’t know why: howling empty space.”

The church, still only uprights and a roof, was empty but for Coifi. The ex-priest of Woden, wearing a brown tunic and hose—he had thin legs, she realised—stood with his hand on the great stone basin mortared over the well, staring at the painted stone. Hild stood by what would become the main doorway and watched him. He seemed unaware of her—of anything. She doubted he even saw the bright colours under his hand.

She had never liked him much, but she felt for him. The king no longer had use for him. That would be her lot, one day.

She bumped her staff on the doorpost, as though by accident, and stepped under the roof.

He said, without turning, “Do you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“Nothing.” He turned. “I feel nothing. Is there a god here?”

“The priests say he’s omnipresent.” She joined him by the font.

“Then why build him a house?”

She didn’t have an answer. James hadn’t had one, either.

“They haven’t even carved the doorposts,” he said. “What kind of god is expected to visit a house no better than a wealh’s hut? Even the king’s horses have better posts to look at.”

“Paulinus will tear it down. He’ll persuade the king to build a hall-size church of stone.”

He stroked the limestone font. “Cold stone. What kind of god is this Christ?”

“Ours, now.”

Silence. “The king refused to see me today.”

“He is… busy.”

“He’ll always be busy for me now, won’t he?”

“Yes.” She heard the faint clash and stamp of gesiths in the yard. He heard it, too. His face twisted: He had exchanged sword for skirt long ago; it was too late. And he had no land, no wife. “Where will you go?”

“Who would have me? The Crow took everything. For his church, he said.” He looked about the rough empty space. “The king smiled and watched.”

That was how kings were. If you were of no use, you didn’t exist. “If you could go anywhere, if I got you something to go with, where would you go?”

He thought about it. “Craven.”

Two displaced men under one roof. Hild turned it over in her mind, looked at its underside, its corners. She imagined the bitterness, the endless stories told over mead and smoking fires, the constant gnawing on the bones of what if. It wouldn’t be a happy hall, but she couldn’t see anything coming of it. Osric was much reduced and a priest without a god was nothing. “I know how you could please the king and win the goodwill of the Crow, and you’ll leave riding a king’s stallion, wearing the rich clothes of a gesith and bearing arms. And your name will last forever.”

It was delicate work, like guiding a team of nervous cart horses along an overgrown track, but not difficult. It was a matter of holding the right tension on the reins and nudging each in turn to take a step, to make promises that would be to their advantage, and then hold them abreast so that each thought the other was taking most of the strain.

Coifi would formally desecrate Woden’s temple, and leave—if he left equipped like a thegn, including a little silver in his purse and a wealh to tend him all the way to Craven. Paulinus would make no argument—if the king agreed to be present and witness the final humiliation and repudiation of the old gods, then acknowledge Paulinus chief priest and bishop of all the Angles. The king in turn would agree to witness and proclaim and provide the gear for Coifi—if it would get both priests off his back and give him the time and space to think about his new wīc.

Coifi further agreed to persuade Osric to invite Paulinus to Craven for baptisms. Paulinus agreed to return one or two of the items appropriated from Coifi. Edwin agreed that the chief church of the new god would be grand enough to honour His glory.

It was stitch-by-stitch work, following a plain pattern. Child’s play. It made her restless and impatient.

She brought her latest proposal to the king and Paulinus in hall. They were going back and forth about just how much honour the new god required—not only stone, the Crow said, but marble, and tile, and glass—when Gwladus glided to Hild’s side and whispered in her ear.

The warm breath, the swirl of tansy and lavender, the words triggered a surge of something wild she couldn’t name. She trembled, like a horse sliced free of its traces. Kings can be dangerous when surprised. She didn’t care. This, this was what she was born for. She was the light of the world.

She stood to her full height.

“An omen, lord King. An omen!” The click and rattle of knucklebones from the gesith’s corner stopped.

King and bishop both faced her. The king’s eyes slowly blackened, then swarmed around the rims with green, and Hild, with absolute certainty, knew what he was thinking: Omens were wyrd-hammers, risky and unpredictable; they could swing in any direction.

But she felt reckless with power; it foamed through her. She knew he would let her speak.

After a moment, he nodded.

She looked down at Paulinus. Less like a crow than a dusty black beetle. She could destroy him with a word.

“My lord Bishop’s book refers often to the Christ as the Lamb of God.”

His eyes glittered. “He has many names.”

“But Lamb of God is one.”

“Yes.”

“And all would acknowledge that the raven is Woden’s bird.”

Nods from every corner of the hall.

“All birds are Christ’s birds!” Paulinus said, but no one paid attention. The raven was Woden’s bird, always had been, always would be, his messenger of life and death and war.

“Attend!” She felt taller than an oak, taller than an elm. They would sing songs of the king’s seer, the queen of wyrd. “My king. Lord Bishop. Even as we stood here and weighed the honour due the Christ, a raven swooped on the fold and took a new lamb.”

Dead silence. Then the hiss of whispers up and down the hall.

“What, then, does it mean, Lord Bishop?”

His cheeks darkened. She knew what he was thinking: that she was about to drive him to the wall, wreck all his plans. And she could. She felt so sure, so clear. But that wouldn’t suit her uncle’s purpose. There was another way.

“What it means, my lord Bishop, is that Woden’s bird is desperate. He is thin, he is hungry. The lamb is plump and new. The raven seized his chance.” She hefted the weight of her words. “Did he steal the ewe? No. Why? He hadn’t the strength. The raven, Woden’s bird, took the lamb, because the lamb is small, because it is new on the fold.” She spiked her words, impaling them along her battlement one by one by one. “This is not Woden’s message.”

The words hung there, a declaration, a taunt: You can’t stop me!

“This is a message from Christ!” Her voice rang. “Christ, our new god. He shouts to us: Fight for me now!”

The whispers swelled to a roar. Fight! This the gesiths understood. But at the centre of the hall silence pooled around the three tall glittering figures: Paulinus wondering why Hild had turned the battle like that, what her deeper game might be. Edwin working out how much new control this might give him over the Crow. And Hild feeling stranded and appalled as the surge of certainty ebbed. Recklessness killed seers as surely as it killed gesiths.

A small party rode through the grey afternoon, along the river that led to Goodmanham. They passed the alders where once, long ago, child Hild and Cian had dozed against the scarred flank of the bitch, Gwen, while the king, sitting on a stool in the shade, heard the case of a man and a widow, and his gesiths horrified the servers with demands for white mead.

Hild smiled, then remembered that Edwin was now far too grand for stools in the grass, Cian was one of the gesiths, and old Gwen was dead.

When they passed the daymark elms, the clouds uncoiled from about the sun, birds wove their song through the trees, and the air smelt of ripening flax, growing corn, and thick-fleeced sheep being gathered to the fold.

The horses slowed to a walk. Sun glittered on the crosses hung on every breast. Gold, glinting with garnet for Edwin, garnet and pearl for Hild. A massive pectoral of gold and amethyst for Paulinus. Plain gold for Cian, from his godmother, the queen. Silver for Stephanus. Copper, silvered and gilded, for Coifi, a good match for his rich red-and-gold warrior jacket—Coelfrith’s, hastily altered—and grey stallion, Edwin’s third-best. His new sword hung well enough in its travelling scabbard at his back, but he held his throwing spear awkwardly. The gesiths—many of them Hild’s hounds—wore crosses of bronze or silvered tin, though more than a few seemed to be wearing two leather thongs around their necks. Their crosses might hang on the outside, for all to see, but she guessed Woden’s spear or Thunor’s hammer lay against their skin. What the Christ didn’t see wouldn’t hurt him. And they were gesiths—used to a battle swinging from victory to disaster and back again in the time it took to roar and shove and slip in the mud. They liked to have a fallback.

Even the scop wore a beautifully carved elm cross bound and tipped with silver. Something about the graceful lines made Hild look at Cian and wonder if he’d made it. He seemed lost in another world. Probably dreaming of some long-ago glory. She touched her belt purse where the three thorn-root travel cups nestled with her strike-a-light, tinder, and spoon, and longed to run with him to their little pool by the bird cherry and dip a toast from the spring and talk. Things between them had been strained since Uinniau left. She wasn’t sure why. It unsettled her, and she was unsettled enough, wondering what reckless taunter of fate had come to live inside her skin lately.

Edwin raised his hand. They reined in a hundred paces from the great carved posts of the enclosure.

They dismounted. Edwin nodded for Coifi, Paulinus, Hild, and the scop to join him. Paulinus took his great golden crook from Stephanus, the scop slung his lyre bag over his shoulder, and Coifi’s spear dragged along the grass for a moment before he balanced the weight. Hild simply handed Cygnet’s reins to Oeric and stood: the pattern’s witness.

A wood pigeon called from the ash stand on one side of the entrance, another answered from the oak.

The king made his speech about strong new gods supplanting tired old ones, how those gathered here were about to witness the new god of the Angles casting down the old, the foreshadowing of Anglisc triumph. He told them that the bishop of the Christ would now bless the chief priest of the chief of the old gods, claim him for the new god.

When Coifi went on one knee before Paulinus and the bishop began his own speech, she unfocused her eyes and used her side vision, as she did in the woods to catch the pattern. A score of gesiths standing by their horses. Half with hands on their crosses. Many with hands on their sword hilts—or, rather, on then off, with fearful glances at the enclosure. Woden forbade edged weapons anywhere near his totem. They were uncomfortably close. And Woden, god of war and the wild hunt, god of chaos and uncertainty, pain and death, was unpredictable. This could all be a trick. Some glanced at the sky, alert for bird omens. Some watched the priests as they ploughed on with their parts. Some watched her, she realised, though all except Cian pretended not to.

Paulinus was lifting his arms, finishing his exhortation—iron, stallion, the crumbling of pagan gods!—and raising his face to heaven. Coifi stood.

More gesiths were looking at her now. Coifi wasn’t moving.

She turned to Coifi. Poor Coifi. A lifetime in one throw.

She held out her hand. “I’ll help you.”

Hild nodded for Oeric to hold Coifi’s spear—he’d trip over it, otherwise—and put his right hand on the withers of the king’s third-best stallion. She took his left hand, put it on her shoulder and bent to make a stirrup. He put his foot in it and she heaved and threw him into the saddle. She gave him the reins, made sure he had them in hand, then nodded for Oeric to give him the spear. She turned the horse’s head to face the enclosure.

“There’s no hurry,” she said. “Start at a walk.”

But Coifi, in a panic, kicked harder than he meant, and within a breath was thundering full gallop at the entry posts. Hild gripped her seax and braced herself.

Five spear lengths from the opening, Coifi gave a thin screech and flung the spear into the enclosure.

The stallion, trained to within an inch of its life, knew that a thrown spear meant he should swerve away from the expected reply, and he did.

Priest and horse moved smoothly to the left and the spear, the edged iron, flew into the god’s heart.

Every armed man, even the king, flinched. Hild closed her eyes but there was no flash of light, no last thunderbolt.

The grey stallion came thundering back, white-eyed, Coifi clinging to the saddle horn.

It was the scop who recovered his wits first. “Behold!” he shouted. “Woden is crushed. Christ is God!”

It was a victory cry the gesiths understood. They banged spears on shields and cheered. Hild let go of her seax and flexed her hand to get the blood moving again.

Edwin laughed and clapped the bishop on the back. “Now we persuade Eorpwald to Christ. Then we’ll see who the bishop of Rome calls king of the isle!” Lintlaf brought him his horse.

When the king was mounted, Hild saw Lintlaf fish up something hanging from the string around his neck and toss it aside. She stared at it. God in the nettles.

“Lady.” Oeric, with Cygnet. Horses were wheeling, galloping away.

“Take her back to the vill.”

“Lady?”

“I’ll walk. A god needs a farewell from somebody. I’ll be there for supper.”

When she was alone, she stepped between the entry posts. The spear lay at an angle across the beaten-earth walkway. She picked it up and propped it against the tall wall boards.

The enclosure smelt of weathered wood and soil being moved aside by growing things. The paint, so vivid a year ago, was faded. Many of the thick black outlines were still clear but the bright colours were turning to wood and mud. She walked the spiral corridor, running her hand along the painted horizon—sea, beach, dunes, woods, moors—the journey of her people from over the sea. The story of the Anglisc, woven with Woden back to the dawn of their songs.

Ships. Fire. Bright swords. Kin and kine. Woods and wold. Hearth and home. Where was Christ in this? Christ didn’t fight. Christ didn’t farm.

The totem was taller than she remembered. She walked around the base. Waves, cliffs, a ship’s prow, cut sharp and deep and clear. Cut from wood, not cold stone.

Christ was a carpenter. Why did his priests build with stone?

She followed the rising line of the carving. A cliff, a tall pole with a boar banner flying. Flying banner blending with a tracery of oak branches. Birds flying with acorns in their beaks. Up and up. Windblown leaves. Wild geese. Clouds. Mare’s tails. The horses of the wild hunt. Manes and tails becoming the beard, the beard leading to the chin. Up and up. The mouth. Eyes, gigantic but knowable. The eyes of a god who laughed, who lusted, who drank, who threw knucklebones and lost his temper. Up and up. The helmet crested with the boar. Totem and token of the Yffings. And all would warp and wear and weather into the earth as though it had never been.

She stood alone at the empty heart of a gone god, staff in the crook of her arm, one hand on her seax and the other on her cross. She would not wear and weather. She was Yffing. She would be totem and token for her people, the light of the world.

The next day, Goodmanham still seethed with the controlled chaos of the arrival of the king’s party. Late in the morning Hild left Begu and Gwladus to organise their things and sought out her mother. She wanted to talk about the mad Rhianmelldt, to bring Rheged into Northumbria so that their land would stretch from the North Sea to the Irish Sea, and so that Begu could be happy.

Breguswith stood with Æthelburh in the middle of the flax fields, pointing. The queen was shaking her head, gesturing vaguely south.

Hild hesitated. It was best to approach royalty with answers, not questions. But then the queen saw her and waved, and it was too late. Hild waved back and walked towards them.

The flax came to her hip, as high as it would get, though the seed balls were still small and green. Little tunnelled paths ran through the crop. Voles. If her mother and the queen hadn’t scared them away, there would be a hawk or two soaring over the field.

They greeted her with smiles. “Perhaps you’ll give us your opinion,” the queen said.

Her mother said, “We’re of two minds. Risk or reward one way, steady surety the other.”

Æthelburh cut a stalk of flax with her belt knife and rolled the stem back and forth between her palms. She offered it to Hild.

Hild bent and sniffed. “The fibre’s ripe. But the seed isn’t.” They nodded. That much was obvious. “So. Oil or linen?”

“Trading for oil is expensive,” Breguswith said.

“But so is good linen,” said the queen. “And if we harvest now, we’ll have softer, finer yarn.”

“The sun came early this year,” Hild said. She closed her eyes, imagined herself as a hawk, high above the field. Imagined the field just south of here, the one next to that, and the next and the next, south all the way to the narrow sea. Summer was always earlier in the south. She opened her eyes. “The Kentish and East Anglisc flax harvest will be an abundance of oil, and a scarcity of fine linen.”

The two older women smiled at each other. “Linen, then,” the queen said. “We’ll break the news to Coelfrith. He’ll argue.”

“But the king will take your side,” Breguswith said comfortably, and they both laughed in that womanly way that Hild didn’t understand but that reminded her of the new Begu. They turned to go.

“Help me,” she blurted. They both looked back, surprised. She plunged on. “Rhianmelldt of Rheged needs a husband.”

“Rhianmelldt? But she’s young,” Æthelburh said, frowning. “Isn’t she?”

Breguswith nodded, watching Hild. “But Begu isn’t.”

“Begu wants to marry Uinniau,” Hild said. “He can’t marry until Rheged’s settled. Rheged won’t be settled until Rhianmelldt marries a strong man. We want, my uncle wants, that man to be our ally.”

“We need to find this strong man, one of ours, and offer him to Rhoedd for his daughter?”

“There’d be no hurry, but for Begu,” Breguswith said.

Æthelburh smiled. “I have just the man.”

Hild and Breguswith looked at her blankly.

Æthelburh looked pleased. “He’s young. He’s handsome. He’s brave: He has a ringed sword. He’s respected by Britons and Anglisc alike.” She laughed, delighted with herself. “Oh, oh, he fits like a fist in a glove! He’s a Christian, baptised by soon-to-be Archbishop Paulinus. You haven’t guessed? He saved the king’s life.” Now she looked exasperated. “He’s my godson. Boldcloak himself!”

“Cian?” Hild said, bewildered. Cian?

“They say he’s the son of Ceredig king, yet he saved the Anglisc overking’s life and is sworn to him. He’s perfect!”

In the sheepfold, Hild held the fat white ewe against her while Breguswith rubbed the fleece at its flank between her fingers, ran her palm over its shoulder, nodded to herself, then felt its front legs, neck, and belly. She frowned and tried its back legs, tugging enough for the ewe to bleat. She shook her head. Hild set the struggling ewe back on its feet and let it go. “The breech wool is worse than I thought. But the back and flank is thick. Thick and soft and good enough for a king.”

“What are we going to do about Cian?”

“The front wool might not be fine enough for the Franks, but it will do well enough for the Frisians. Now let’s try one of the brownlings.”

Hild caught one of the little grey-brown ewes and hauled it up and back until it balanced on its hind hooves and its eyes rolled in panic. She pulled back a little more until it gave up and let go, and its slotted eyes went blank.

Her mother knelt and began running her hands over its neck. “You should have talked to me first,” she said.

“Yes. But—”

“It’s not like you.”

“No. But—”

“This is very soft,” Breguswith said, “very fine. But delicate. We’ll have to try different bleaches.” She stood up. Hild let the ewe go. “Why did you speak before thinking?”

“It’s—”

“This isn’t the first time, is it?”

Hild looked at her feet.

“I need to know. But bring me that yearling first.”

And so while her mother ran her hands over the bleating lamb, Hild stared at the tight black hairs at the tufts of its ears and tried to tell her mother of the restlessness that rose like the tide, the formless longings, the dreams, the sleeplessness, the strange distance of the world, the urge to play with danger, to touch something she couldn’t reach. “It’s like… like climbing a great ash tree, higher and higher, and the boughs are bending, and I’m reaching, reaching for something, and part of me knows the bough will break, but I don’t care. I want it. I just don’t know what it is.”

“And now Cian might end up in Rheged.”

“Yes. We—”

“But not today. Today we need to sort you. You’re a danger to yourself and others.” She looked up. “Have you started touching yourself?”

Like Begu, under the covers.

“Next time you feel… restless, try it. It will help you sleep. But that won’t work for long. You need a person to anchor you. Someone whose smell and touch will keep your feet on the ground, stop you from climbing until you fall, or from running off a cliff.” She stood up.

“A person?”

Breguswith wiped her hands. “Someone no one will notice. Someone no one will believe.”

The yearling bleated and struggled.

“You can let him go now.” Hild did. He trotted over to a ewe and butted her anxiously on the flank. The ewe ignored him. Breguswith held her apron out for Hild to wipe her hands. “People can always tell who you’ve chosen, but if it’s someone they can dismiss, they won’t dismiss you. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“If they’re not your equal, if they don’t matter, you will be seen to be you, still.” She looked at Hild and sighed. Hild felt stupid. “Look around you. Pay attention to people. Like Lintlaf with your bodywoman and now Wilnoð’s. Or Cian with that red-handed dairymaid at Bebbanburg—no one thought anything of it. But if he took up with one of the queen’s women, everyone would gossip because it matters. Like it mattered to the people of the bay about Mulstan and Onnen.”

“She’s wealh.”

“Don’t be dense. She was the seer’s companion, cousin of Ceredig king. Just as Cian is rumoured to be his son. Your bodywoman, now, she’s no one important. Do you see?”

Hild felt as anxious and bewildered as the yearling.

“Also, make sure they’re clean. Shall I find someone for you? No? Well, don’t get yourself with child. Do everything but that. You know what I mean. If not, talk to your bodywoman. The king will have no use for a swollen seer, and you’ll be more interested in your belly than anything else in the world. Oh, yes, even you. So anything but that. And don’t attract the attention of priests. Why Christ or his priests should care what we do with each other, I don’t know. But they like to meddle. So be careful. And should you slip, come to me immediately. Just remember, no one who matters.”

“You chose Osric,” Hild said.

“Osric was a mistake.”

They listened to the sheep tearing grass. “What was he like?”

Her mother sighed, then smiled a slow, regretful, entirely human smile that made Hild like her. “When no one was watching? Biddable.”

Biddable. She could see how that might be good. But what would she bid her person to do, exactly? She had seen people, in hall, in the byre. She had watched from the trees and through cracks in the wall. But not up close, not properly, just movement, blank eyes, flushed faces. She’d seen animals.

“Help me with this gate.” They opened the fold, shooed the sheep out. They watched them flow like woolly clouds over the grass. “One thing. Whatever you do, make sure it’s not your gemæcce: When these things go wrong, and they always do, you’ll need her to be on your side, the one constant. And you’ll need to find someone for her, now Uinniau’s gone. I’d suggest you buy her a slave. In Kent you can buy gelded ones.”

Hild stared.

“No? Perhaps not. Filthy Frankish custom. But she’s the seer’s gemæcce. She matters because of that. Because of you.” She put a hand on Hild’s shoulder. “Be careful.”

Careful. Always being watched, always spied on. “I’m so tired of being careful.”

“We all get tired of being careful.” She cupped Hild’s cheek. Her hand was soft with sheep grease. “But it will never change. It will never stop.” She dropped her hand. “I’m sorry for it.”

A breeze lifted the corner of her veil. Hild wanted to smooth it for her, but her mother hated to be fussed over. “Don’t you ever want to… just walk away?” She waved her hand at the elms on the crest of the hill and the rolling wolds beyond.

“I could have,” Breguswith said. “When your father died. I didn’t matter. But your sister mattered, matters still, though it’s out of my hands now. And you mattered—and will until this king is dead and gone, and his successor after him, and even the one after that. You can never walk away. They’ll always find you. You matter for your blood. And your mind.”

“Which you made.”

“To keep you safe.”

Your mother has built you a place where you can speak your word openly.

“So be careful, child. Delay finding a person until you must—because once you’ve shared yourself with another, touching yourself isn’t enough. But find someone for your gemæcce soon.”

Hild began to look, for Begu. She began to look through Begu’s eyes. When she sat at the board, she noted where Begu’s gaze lingered, what made her breath catch, her eyes cut sideways, or her hand pause halfway to her mouth. As the days warmed, and men stripped to the waist to wrestle, women cast off their sleeves and wore lighter cloth. Hild learnt to notice her gemæcce’s nipples stiffen and push out the front of her dress when the gesiths wrestled, the way she shifted on the bench and demanded food from a passing wealh, or beer: something to mask how often she swallowed, how her eyes fixed on the men’s hands grabbing a thigh, wrapping arms around another’s waist, or slapping each other’s arses when they stood.

She began to anticipate what might provoke Begu’s flush and swallow: the roll of long muscle under sheened skin, the tightening and hardening of a tendon at the back of a man’s knee as he strained against a hold, the glisten of a red mouth at the lip of a drinking horn, the interesting roll and jostle in a man’s hose when he scratched at himself.

And now, at night, after Begu jerked and shivered and fell asleep, it was Hild’s turn. Her restlessness receded.

Begu’s did not.

Hild told Oeric to watch for likely men for their household. “Strong men,” she said. “And young.”

“Strong, lady?”

“Strong. And clean. With sweet breath. Men who laugh.”

“Gwladus will know,” he said.

The old bird cherry was still alive, though one limb was bare and dead. Cian leaned against the mossy boulder by the little pool and Hild, barefoot and with her underdress still kilted up after fighting, lay on her stomach stroking the still water, sending rolls of ripples this way and that. A water spider slipped and slid then climbed a leaf and waved its front legs in her direction. Hild rested her hand on the surface, pressing slightly as it rocked. It was like resting her hand on Begu’s stomach: soft, elastic, delicate, fascinating. She slid her hand in to the wrist. In. Out. Her arm broke and magically healed, broke and healed. Cian smiled, and she knew he was remembering the magic stick, the tooth.

Butterflies flitted around the bird cherry, white among the almond-scented white blossom.

“I think there are more flowers than last year,” he said. “Perhaps it will bloom forever.”

“It belongs here. Like us.”

It felt like a moment out of time, endless. The grass was pleasantly prickly against her thighs and arms. She stretched, wriggled, laughed: happy.

He shifted slightly and turned away, and Hild became aware that she wore only an underdress, kilted tight between her legs. She sat up.

He picked up a fallen twig, studied the dark oval leaves.

“Cian.” He stilled but didn’t look at her. “Would you go to Rheged? If the queen wanted you to?”

“Rheged? Why? I’m sworn to the king.”

“If he asked you.”

“He’s my lord. But by choice… There’s no glory in Rheged.” Now he looked at her.

“No, I’ve seen no visions of glory, no songs of war and blood and gold. But if the queen mentions Rheged or the princess Rhianmelldt, who is quite mad, tell me.”

“Why would she?”

She shook her head.

He threw the twig at her. She batted it out of the air. “Why would she?”

She scooped water at him. He jerked back, banged his elbow on the boulder, swore. She jumped up, legs flexed.

He stared. “Your legs are strong,” he said eventually. “You should learn to wrestle.”

She looked down at her thighs, paler than her arms, paler than his.

He swallowed. “I could teach you,” he said, and his voice was tighter than it had been, rougher. Her skin tightened and shivered, like a horse when a fly lands on its withers.

“Let’s run,” she said, and did, not caring what branches tore at her, just running, running, running.

Cian and the other gesiths left for York two days later with the king. Edwin was eager to oversee the first season’s trading at his wīc. He wanted Hild and her mother to stay at Goodmanham to oversee the making of cloth for that trade. Paulinus and Stephanus were with the East Angles at Rendlesham: Paulinus to baptise young Eorpwald and appoint an underbishop before Justus could, and Stephanus to negotiate with Eorpwald’s steward over the Frankish trade. Hild considered suggesting to Stephanus that he invite Hereswith to add her voice. She might have if it had been Osfrith, but Osfrith was in Arbeia, consolidating the north trade, pulling it east along the river valley to starve the route down the west sea coast through Gwynedd. Tightening the great weave. Besides, he didn’t want to leave Clotrude, who, by all accounts, was as big as a hut.

The queen spent half a week in Goodmanham talking to Breguswith and then took her nurse and little Eanflæd and followed the king to York. The cloth trade was important but getting a son by the king mattered more.

With none to gainsay her, Breguswith ran Goodmanham with a rod of iron: Her weaving sword was always in her hand, and she was free with the flat of it if any man or woman didn’t hurry to obey. Without anyone to please, she no longer bent and swayed. No longer willow but oak.

Hild had helped work out how the new wool trade would run, but even she was astonished at its efficiency. Sheep sheared in every royal vill, from the Tine valley to Pickering to the wolds to Elmet. Fleece sorted and sent by grade to rows of huts in Aberford, or Flexburg by the Humber, or Derventio. Armies of women to separate out the staples, to mix soapwort, urine, and pennyroyal to wash out the grease. Children to lay the washed wool in the sun to dry, to watch and turn it and to drive off the birds who liked to steal it. Men to barrel and cart oil and grease to the vills to make the fibre more manageable for the first finger-combing and sorting. Smiths hammering out double-rowed combs and woodworkers shaping wooden handles, for women to comb out wool in the new way, the better way, a comb in each hand. Carpenters to build the stools and tables. Bakers to bake the bread so the wool workers could work. Lathe workers to turn the spindles and distaffs—the long and the short—and, everywhere, women and men making spindle whorls and loom weights of clay and lead and stone, of every shape and size and heft.

It was a constant, endless river of work just to make the clothes for a household—cloaks and tunics, shirts and hose, veils and dresses and underdresses and hoods and caps—in addition to blankets, wall hangings, bandages, sacks, saddle cloths, wipes, shrouds, breech cloths. And now Breguswith wanted enough fine wool—the very best, silky, long-fibred wool—to weave cloaks of the size, quality, and quantity to trade for precious goods from the Franks: jessamine, myrrh, poppy paste, garnets, gold, walnut and olive oil, silk. Coelfrith’s men were even now talking to the Franks and Frisians at York, agreeing on colours, sizes, seasons; spitting and shaking hands.

More sheep sheared. More wool spun. More yarn dyed. More cloth woven. More cloth cut and sewn and embroidered. More weld cultivated and vats built. More wood cut and burnt. More, more, more.

The days grew longer, the nights warmer. The barley began to turn gold.

Breguswith was everywhere, touching everything, assessing, organising, nudging, anticipating. She had noted with Hild that this year at Goodmanham the fleece was thick, and so she sent the undersmith to the fold where he set up a portable forge to heat and hammer and sharpen the shears every night. Yet the shearing rate was still too slow.

She took Hild with her, and they sat on the sunny hillside and watched the shearers sweat and struggle with the heavy fleeces, and the waiting sheep, penned too long, grow restless and kick, and refuse to keep still, which in turn made everything take twice as long.

Hild watched the flexing muscles of the strapping young women and men, streaming with sweat, and said, “Begu could help here. She’s good with animals. I’ve seen her keep a cow with a gashed udder calm.”

Her mother followed her gaze to one particular man with a curl to his rich brown hair and a light in his eyes. After a moment she nodded. “But find out his name and his family.”

Hild did: Berenic. Two sisters, a mother, an aunt, no wife, no children. Even-tempered and kind, though with a fondness for beer.

So then Begu spent her days at the fold. Soon after that Oeric was riding with messages to Aberford and Derventio, and Morud was drafted to fetch and carry for the household, to groom a horse, or cut wood, or help dig another pit.

“At least you’ve left me Gwladus,” she said to her mother, who smiled tiredly and said, “Not for long.”

And, indeed, when it was time to pull weeds from the barley fields, Hild told her bodywoman she would have to help somewhere. “The dairy,” Gwladus said. And Hild smiled. Of course: cool, easy on the hands, access to food.

With the king, queen, reeve, and scop at York, along with Cian and the other gesiths, the hall was quiet, talk more a tired murmur than a thing of fire and song and boast.

One night, as they sat outside, lit and warmed by the setting sun, and ate pottage and drank week-old beer, everyone looked worn and dusty but content. Happy, even.

Hild leaned back on her bench and refilled her cup. Gwladus would have done it, but Gwladus was refilling her own bowl with the stew of barley and greens and slivers of mutton. Conversation hummed around her, someone laughed, but gently.

Happy, she thought again, though it was more than that. They weren’t afraid. No drunken fighting and boasting. No gesiths pulling wealh onto their laps or persuading the dogs to fight. No thundering horses or sudden deadly silence as the king smiled that smile at someone. No Woden priests with their omens or Christ priests frowning and chastising. She’d even seen her mother deigning to talk to Gwladus. Was this what it was to live an ordinary life? Orderly, peaceful, calm. Work, yes, endless as rain, but also warmth and plenty and safety.

Even Mulstanton hadn’t been like this. There she had been worrying about Bebbanburg, about her mother and Hereswith, about what might happen.

But here she was, and this was how it would be for the whole summer. Four months. More. In one place, with no one watching her.

The first night Begu didn’t return from the fold, Hild didn’t quite sleep—just planed over the surface of sleep and missed her. Twice, Gwladus brought her milk. The second time she rearranged the pillows, and took Begu’s away.

The world turned, ripened, grew hotter and heavier. The days lengthened and stretched, thinning at each end to a kind of timeless blue twilight in which nightjars churred and moths fluttered.

Hild slept less and less. She fell into a waking dream and on clear nights walked for miles on the wold and in the woods.

The woods were thick with sound: hedgepigs and badgers in the understorey, the swoop of a bat and yip of a fox, the splash of an otter sliding into the water, the hoot of an owl. An endless song of life around her, eating, crying, dying, breathing, breeding.

She began to feel her own rhythm. Between her bleeding days, at the waxing of the moon, her senses opened like a night lily. For two nights she would feel the ruffle of the air against her face when a bat took a moth, taste the sweet sting of honey in the air near a full hive. Just by smell she knew when Breguswith had washed her hair, when Gwladus had walked through the byre, when Morud had stolen a loaf of fresh bread. Her skin felt denser, more alive, her bones stronger, her belly heavy.

She felt her mother and Gwladus watching her, just as everyone else watched the fields, watching the barley turn gold, the heads bend, the whiskers touch the dirt.

On the night before the harvest, Hild lay naked by the pool. In the moonlight the grass looked like straw, each stem sharp and distinct. She could smell herself: rich, sleek, ready. She put her arms behind her head, watched a stoat creep headfirst like a squirrel down the cherry tree. Then it leapt, and a sudden furious struggle erupted by the hollow alder. The ferns shook. Something ran away, squeaking.

“Soon,” she told the stoat. “Soon.”

She returned to the vill with the sun, sleeves neatly pinned and girdle tied, to find everyone awake and fed and binding their hair in cloth, preparing for the field work of harvest. A boy tootled on a pipe, and a woman banged her hand drum once, twice, ready to beat out a rhythm. Hild joined her mother at the head of the procession of people and hand carts full of food and sickles.

“No,” Breguswith said. “Stay. Take charge.”

Hild had no idea what the handful of wealh left behind—a groom, a cook, the swineherd—might need of her, but she nodded. Perhaps her mother was expecting messages.

With a great drumming and piping and shrieking of children, the procession moved out. The sound receded slowly, and quiet settled over the vill.

Hild sat on the south bench, facing the sun, and listened. The caw of crows in the distance, following the people. A brief hiss of wind in the grass. A fluttering butterfly. This was what it would be like after a contagion, or if the king were dead, the people fled, the Idings on the march. She remembered the farmsteads of Elmet, the missing pigs, the doused fires. But then she heard the groom whistling from the byre, a snort and whicker as he mucked out a stall, and saw the blue smoke seeping from the kitchen eaves. Swallows swooped up under the eave and out again. Blue tits, robins, chaffinches began to sing. Hild leaned back, eyes half closed, listening. Her vill.

She woke from a dream of stoat, all long sinuous muscle. It was hot. Milk, that’s what she needed, a long cool drink of buttermilk.

She unpinned her sleeves as she walked—no one here but wealh—and tucked them in her girdle.

In the kitchen it was even hotter. The milk crock was not in its usual place.

“They took it to the field,” the cook said. “But there’s a bit of beer set by. Or there’ll be some in the dairy if they’ve made the butter.”

It was a relief to step into the dairy shed, to feel the black, hard-packed dirt under her bare feet.

She walked past the rows of clabbering pots, down a step and to the heavy door of the creamery.

A woman whose name Hild didn’t know turned at the waft of warm air and was so startled to see Hild that her churning rhythm faltered.

Gwladus, underdress unpinned and hanging from her belt, was tilting a milk tray. Her bare skin gleamed. She saw Hild and nodded. As the tray tilted to the bottom right corner, she leaned forward and laid her right forearm across the lip. Muscles, small and busy as baby mice, swelled and stretched. Her breast, plumped against her biceps, was much paler than her arm, creamy, but not like the milk—creamy like the inside of a hazelnut.

Gwladus poured the thin greyish skim milk in an expert stream from the corner of the tray into a brown crock. Cream collected in a lake against her arm and breast. When the stream stopped she let the tray lie flat again. She straightened. Followed Hild’s gaze down to her cream-dabbed nipple, then looked back to Hild.

The churning paddle thumped up and down.

“I was thirsty,” Hild said.

Gwladus nodded at the woman churning butter. “Hwl will be done soon.” Then she lifted her forearm and licked along the bone.

Something inside Hild squeezed and dropped. Gwladus nodded at the empty churn in the corner.

“If you help, the butter’ll be done that much sooner. But you should hang your overdress and sleeves.”

Hild turned away, pulled her sleeves from her girdle, hung them by the apron on the wall, unfastened her girdle, hung that, pulled her dress over her head.

Heat. Slipping cream. Gleaming skin. Lift. Tilt. Pour.

Hwl’s thumping began to slow as her cream turned to butter.

Then the trays were empty. Hwl turned the butter out and began to shape it, squeezing out the last trickles of buttermilk.

Gwladus wiped her arm and breast with a cloth and repinned her underdress. Hwl ground salt. Hild listened to the gritty crunch and thump. Like a stoat eating a bird.

Then it was done. Gwladus brought them a dipper of buttermilk, passed it to Hild, who drank and drank again. It didn’t quench her thirst. She passed it to Gwladus.

Gwladus dipped and drank, wiped the flecks of butter from her chin with her forearm and said, without taking her eyes off Hild, “Hwl, the lady Hild needs to lie down. Pour some of that milk in a jar.”

She took Hild’s clothes from the peg and slung them over her shoulder. She took the jar of milk in one hand, opened the door with the other. “Come on, now, we’re letting the warmth in.”

The sun was high and fat. The air seemed perfectly still.

Gwladus put the flat of her hand on the small of Hild’s back, as you would a person who was old or ill, and Hild’s mind went white.

Gwladus guided her, opening doors, nodding cheerfully at the groom who was carrying a saddle from the byre, closing the door to Hild’s chambers, dropping the latch.

She draped Hild’s clothes on a stool, put the jar on the table by the bed, and said, “Sit.”

Hild sat on the bed. Gwladus knelt by her feet and unfastened the shoes and slipped them off. Then she stood and lifted off the cross on its chain, unfastened the shoulders of Hild’s underdress. It fell around her hips. “Stand.”

Hild stood. Gwladus whisked the underdress away, then her drawers, as she did every night.

But it wasn’t night.

“Lie down.”

“It’s not time.”

“Lady, it’s past time. And you’ll be better lying down.”

Hild lay on the bed. Gwladus sat by her hip.

“Have you ever kissed anyone? Boldcloak? Your gemæcce?”

Hild shook her head.

“Well, perhaps they were frightened of kissing the king’s seer. But I’m not. I know what you need.”

Gwladus smiled, that rich slow curve that blotted out everything but right here, right now, then leaned in and kissed her.

Her lips were soft. Like plums, like rain.

Gwladus put her hand on Hild’s thigh and stroked as though Hild were a restive horse: gently, firmly. Down the big muscles, up the long tight muscle on the inside. Not soothing but… She didn’t know what it was.

Stroking, stroking: down along the big muscle on the outside, up along the soft skin inside. Down. Up. Up more. “There,” Gwladus said, “there now.” And Hild wondering if this was how Cygnet felt to be encouraged for the jump. Her heart felt as big as a horse’s, her nostrils wide, her neck straining, but not quite wild, not quite yet. “There,” said Gwladus again, and ran her palm over Hild’s wiry hair to her belly. “Yes,” she said, and rested there, cupping the soft, rounded belly, and then moved down a little, and a little more, and her hand became the centre of Hild’s world. “Oh, yes, my dear.” She kissed Hild again, and Hild opened her legs.

It was nothing like when she did it for herself. It built like James’s music, like the thunder of a running herd, then burst out, like the sudden slide of cream, like a sleeve pulled inside out, and she wanted to laugh and shout and weep, but instead clutched at Gwladus as she juddered and shuddered and clenched.

Gwladus said, “There now. Better than buttermilk?”

Hild nodded, but couldn’t say anything. Soft, shocking echoes lapped at her bones and squeezed her insides. Gwladus kept stroking her belly and the echoes began to run into one another, like ripples on a pond, and then slowly calmed. She said, “I’m still thirsty,” and laughed for no reason.

Hild and Begu walked through the tall grass by the bend in the river. The moon was full and high. Hild held Begu’s hand, because Begu hadn’t been walking this path for years and at night the world was different. Smells, sounds, shapes loomed from the shadow and were gone, moonlight turned the shadows sharp and steep. It was a bleached world of bone and stone and tin where magic walked.

They came to the alders. One had fallen a year or two ago at an angle to the water. They sat, facing upstream. The water rippled and splashed. Something shook its feathers in the reeds and settled down.

“How are the sheep?”

“Still stupid.” Begu giggled.

“And the shepherd?”

Begu sighed, but Hild heard the smile in it. “He’s sweeter than the ram.” Another giggle, and the kick and scuff of her shoes on the bark. “And he takes longer over his business.”

“Why should he hurry? He has only one to tend.”

“And then, too, I tend him in return.”

“You do?”

Begu sighed again, this time so heavily that Hild felt the heave of her ribs. “It’s like watching a little lamb at suck. He goes all soft and dreamy. He cries, sometimes. And his stick and balls go all little. I can hold them in my hand, like a sleeping mouse.”

Hild wasn’t sure what to say to that. She watched the alders stir in a breeze that didn’t reach the ground, the black tracery of leaves shiver against the moon. She looked for the silhouette of the nightjar she knew lived in the trees but didn’t see it.

“If I hold them long enough, and kiss him on his ear or his neck, they stir again. It’s like watching a pea swell in water. Or a dog when it licks itself. It grows twice as big, three times.”

“How big?” A ram didn’t grow very big. A cat had nothing to speak of. A horse, though…

“As long as my hand?” They stared at her hand, silvery in the moonlight. “Yes, about that. And very thick.” She made a circle with her finger and thumb.

Something plopped in the water.

“I find I want to give him presents. Nothing much, nothing dangerous, your mother warned me about the disapproval of priests, though there aren’t any at the fold. But it’s best if no word reaches Rheged, just in case. But a present—something, a linen undershirt or a better hood. Something to wear against his skin when I’m gone.”

“We’re here another month at least.”

“But I might want to stop visiting the fold before then.”

“Stop?”

Begu shrugged: a strange, writhing movement in the moonlight, uncanny. After a while she said, “Gwladus has a new bracelet.”

Now it was Hild’s turn to scuffle her feet. “It’s not as heavy as it looks.” Another plop from the water. “She keeps talking about a new dress, too. Do you think that would be all right?”

“She’s always been above herself. It might be all right. As long as everyone gets better clothes.”

“You, too?”

“Me especially! And jewels, and new shoes. But mainly clothes. What better way to show the quality and worth of our cloth?”

They grinned at each other, teeth flashing like polished tin in the light.

Hild jumped off the log. “I’ll show you jewels. More beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen. Come on, it’s not far.”

At the river’s edge, the moonlight was brighter. Hild found the overhang where the fern and thung flowers and primroses grew, the stick of ash poking from the water. She pulled it out carefully.

It glistened with fish eggs, perfect as the most delicate pearls on the queen’s veil. They shimmered with moonlit glamour, droplets of dreams.

Hild slid the stick back in the water. They watched the river for a while.

The moon moved higher, drew itself tighter and brighter. Then there it was: true night. That moment when the world seems to stop and wait and the air both stills and quickens, thick with tree breath and the listening of small animals. Foxes were abroad now, and badgers, and uncanny things.

“That smell, it reminds me of something,” Begu said. “Beef tea. The way Guenmon makes it, with thyme and pepper.”

Hild opened her mouth, breathed through her nose, lifting her tongue and letting the air run across the roof of her mouth. At this time of night, anything was possible.

“You look like a slitty-eyed cat when you do that.”

“It tells me things.”

“What things?”

“I can smell… bats. Not here, but close.”

Begu sniffed, shook her head.

“Sharp, but musty. Like lye and old leather.” A moth fluttered over the reflection of the moon on the water. She spoke quietly in the still, scented air. “When bats are hunting, a moth will fold its wings and fall as though caught in a sudden frost. I’ve seen it. The moths fall down, lie on the turf like dead leaves, and when the bats have passed, they fly away again.”

They held hands. The river poured. The trees whispered. Hild thought she could already hear the difference in the leaves, stiffer than a month ago, though in the daylight the colour was just the same.

The air changed. Once again, it was just a beautiful night.

Begu stirred. “Oeric. He won’t be happy when he comes back and sees how it is.”

Hild shrugged.

“And then there’s Cian.”

Hild didn’t say anything.

“We’re like the moths,” Begu said. “The priests and Uinniau and Cian are like bats. When we go back to York, we’ll have to stop, lie down, for a while.”

The barley was in the barn, the wheat cut, the sheep back on the wolds. Wagons creaked away, laden with sacks of fleece, to Sancton, to Derventio, to Flexburg, to Aberford.

Begu came down from the fold. She slept in Hild’s bed again. She made sure she was not in the room in the afternoons. But she watched Gwladus carefully for a while. Gwladus behaved respectfully, and even Begu had to admit that Hild was better taken care of than ever.

Oeric returned.

When he reported to Hild and Begu on the mene wood, he stood stiff as a board and shot Hild wounded looks. Gwladus, who served them, was particularly careful to behave like a wealh slave in a room of wellborn Anglisc—Hild wondered how long that would last—but Oeric looked daggers until Hild nodded for her to leave.

When he had finished his report—the mene thrived, Loid and Anglisc were in accord—and had, in his turn, left, Begu said, “Was I that bad?”

“Not that bad.”

“At least Gwladus is acting well.”

And Gwladus was. In public, she never once overstepped her role. In private, the one time Hild had tried to give back, Gwladus had put her hand on Hild’s and stopped her. “No, lady.”

“But you let Lintlaf.”

Gwladus stilled, like a mouse under a cat’s paw. “Of course, lady. As it pleases you.” Her eyes stayed open, but she could have been dead. Even her skin felt different: lumpen as a flitch of bacon.

Hild stopped. “Why?”

Gwladus said nothing.

Hild felt as though she’d bitten an apple and swallowed, then seen half a worm in the white fruit. She sat up. “Pass my dress.”

While Gwladus dressed her, she stared at nothing, moving her arms when told, thinking. Gwladus had liked it, she was sure. She had felt Gwladus’s blood beating, heard her breath come faster, seen her nipples rise and pebble, smelt the sharp tang and glisten between her legs. So why?

That night she lay awake next to Begu. Berenic cried sometimes, Begu had said, and his eyes went soft. But Berenic was not a slave, and Berenic would stay on the wold.

The next afternoon, before she lay on the bed, Hild gave Gwladus a small purse of coins. She said, “I won’t do it again,” and later tried not to see Gwladus watching her when she came around her hand.

After that, some afternoons Hild stayed away from her room. But she always ended up going back.

The days were rich and fine and sweet. Most mornings Hild spent with her mother and Begu, tallying, discussing weaving patterns, trying the hand and drape of different cloths, trying cloak sizes. Begu had many good ideas about what people might like for next year. Hild could see ways to set up the pattern on the loom.

Hild walked the hills in the golden time before dusk, senses wide open but no longer restless. One evening she was moved to tears by the blaze of crimson, gold, and green of the wold, moving at the centre of a vast pattern that she knew she would never have the words to explain. The pattern watched over her from the face of every leaf and every tiny flower of furze. She felt sure and safe.

Word came from Arbeia: Clotrude and Osfrith had a fine, strong son and named him Yffi.

At the name, Hild, Breguswith, and Begu looked at one another. Yffi was a king’s name, an heir’s name. Æthelburh had better hurry.

King’s messengers came from York, but never with anything they most wanted to know. Nothing about who the king would choose for Rheged. Nothing of the wīc. Nothing of Penda or Cwichelm or Cadwallon. Nothing from Cian. Breguswith’s own messengers brought her samples of the cloth that came off the looms, along with tallies of the quantity. The quality was good. She forwarded the news to the king and Coelfrith in York.

Hild had a letter from James: Paulinus had converted Eorpwald king to the faith, Christ be praised, though it meant more work for James. The king had disbursed more monies for the church at York. They would all be stunned and amazed by its appointments, though he imagined she herself might not get to see it for some time: Paulinus, rather than consolidating his new flock, was now aiming to round up the people of Lindsey. But ealdorman Coelgar was a stubborner man than Eorpwald, and he knew the king’s aims, the king’s goals that lay behind the bishop’s actions. He would not be as easy to persuade. No doubt the king would require the lady Hild’s thoughts on the matter.