Hild

20

WINTER WAS HARSH: wind and snow, then, just as the snowdrops were poking free of the dirt, silence and cracking cold from skies as blue and hard as enamel. Sunlight glittered on ice-cased twigs. Fawns in the wood starved and foxes ran thinner than weasels. In York, folk like Linnet hunched against the cold alongside their byre animals, glad of the warm stink, glad of the dung to burn—while it lasted—eyeing the tree hay, and weighing the coming choice between staying warm and letting the kine starve.

Hild and her mother made sure Æthelburh always had tempting treats to hand; they needed her child to be healthy.

Towards the end of their stay at Bebbanburg, spring came at last. It began to warm. In the valleys, barley shoots poked through the dirt. Folk straightened and began to smile.

Then came the rain. Endless rain, beating the shoots back into the earth, flattening the early flowers, drowning the hum and bumble of bees. Cattle found hillocks where they could, or rotted where they stood. Cloth mildewed and flour mouldered. Rivers rose, and rose again, til herons roosted on roofs and ducks on styles. Pastures turned to mud and roads to slipways. And still it rained.

Everywhere there was unrest. From Tinamutha, Osfrith sent word of blood and mud-soaked raids by young Gododdin. Hild wondered if Coledauc pondered taking his Bryneich to join them. She rested her hand on her seax: Would he risk breaking her prophecy of friendship?

Men murmured: Wights walked the world under the uncanny sky, and moonless nights sent bats and birds mad; nets strung in the usual alleys caught only air. Wildcats and wolves came down from the hills and out from the weald and slunk into farmsteads at night. Eagles snatched sheep from the hillside in what passed for daylight. The king offered a bounty on wolfskins and eagle wings, but bowmen complained of slack strings and warped arrows, and spearmen threw awry.

Christ, folk whispered, was an unchancy god.

They were at Yeavering when Oeric returned with a letter from Fursey, so circumspect as to be brow-furrowing. Your niece is a Noble Joy. It took Hild several reads to determine he meant her name was Æthelwyn. S brings incense of the kind your sister enjoys to drive vermin from the room. That was easier: Sigebert had pledged allegiance to the Franks in return for arms and men. Edwin wouldn’t like that. Your humble correspondent bids you to remember the road to Lindum and our conversation about the brightest bead of all. He is everywhere.

She turned her beads half the night, thinking about that. The little yellow bead, the brightest of all: Christ. He wasn’t talking of the priests—that would be like explaining that the sun rose in the east. What did he mean? She fell asleep holding the beads and dreamt of damp. They all dreamt of damp. The weather was more like autumn than early summer. Rain-lashed seas heaved. Shipping was uncertain. Trade fell.

They moved to Derventio. Edwin fumed in his splendid mosaic-floored hall, guarded at every entrance by a pair of gesiths. Gesiths did not make good guards: guarding wasn’t fighting. Lintlaf told them they’d have real fighting soon enough, and made sure the men changed places four times a day.

Æthelburh, swollen as a drowned ewe and not due for another two months, prayed in her splendid gilt and vermilion-painted chapel. James’s choir sang bravely, but their song seemed to reach only as far as the high roof then fell back to earth, unheard. Hild, seer and prophet, repeated that the king’s son would be strong and healthy. But she made no promise about the rain. The king shouted at her. Men muttered as she passed. Women drew aside their skirts.

Morud brought news of worried men in Rheged and a desperate message from Uinniau: Rhoedd was beset by envoys from the north—Dál Riata and Alt Clut—husbandmen driven from their farms by bad weather and a cattle murrain. He would have to make an alliance soon. Hild still had no one to suggest to Edwin for Rhianmelldt.

She slid her seax in and out of its sheath, thinking, then jammed it home and picked up her staff. Good oak, solid. She hefted it, balanced it in her hands, wondered how it would be to fight Idings. Then she rested it in the crook of her arm and smoothed her hair. The Idings weren’t here, and she had news to take to Edwin in his hall.

Paulinus was there, with Stephanus. Edwin heard her out in silence and then began to rant. With no wheat and no barley harvest likely, he’d had to trade with the queen’s brother in Kent for grain. He’d raised the tithe at his York wīc and Tinamutha. He’d pressed Mulstan for greater revenue from the Bay of the Beacon. He’d sent word to Coelgar in Lindsey, to their cousin Osric in Craven hiding in his birch-clad hills and iron-rich streams, and to Pyr in Elmet: They must be stern; their king needed what could be spared, and more. But what did he get back? Whining, nothing but whining and news of more problems. He wanted to hear some useful suggestions for a change from his so-called counsellors.

Paulinus stepped forward and suggested the king might force the Gododdin and the men of Rheged to pay higher tribute because they didn’t worship Christ through the right priests.

Edwin screamed at him and stabbed the table to tatters: Had his nithing, criminal god stolen his brains in the night? Did he not understand that, in Gaul, Sigebert was kissing the ring of the Franks for aid against the East Angles? The Franks! What was he, Edwin: fried tripe? You’d think so the way the Gododdin were becoming so bold. And now Rheged was mulling an alliance with the Dál Riata. On top of that, Cadwallon was readying Gwynedd for war, and Penda marching his Mercians to meet the West Saxons. He’d win. And then anything could happen, anything, and it was the priests’ job to pray to their mighty god and bring some fine weather and a good end to the queen’s term. And failing that, he should shut his mouth or by the gods he, the king, would pull his bishop’s guts through his belly button and nail them to a tree. And the bishop of Rome could shove that up his arse and shit around it.

“At least Coifi knew his place!” he shouted at his retreating bishop, and followed it with a hurled bowl, which clipped Stephanus on the back of the head.

Hild watched the elm bowl roll in a tight circle on its silver rim, then settle upside down. She knew how it felt: round and round, everyone watching. She longed to throw something: at Paulinus, at Cian, at the king. Or stab something. Anything but stand calm and still and wait, always wait for things over which she had no control but had predicted boldly. A son. And healthy. But no one would know for a month or two.

“Wooden-headed, skirt-wearing lily-livers. Someone bring me another drink. And you,” he said to Hild, “tell me something good.”

Even if she had something good to offer, he wasn’t in the mood to hear it. What he wanted was to shout and stab. After a moment she said, “Coifi was no better. But he at least isn’t here.”

“Ha. Tell me something I don’t know. I wish Osric joy of him. And speaking of our cousin, is the Gododdin folly his doing? It was once his job to keep them quiet.”

“Once,” Hild said.

“Maybe he’s meddling, sending men to stir them up.”

She said nothing. Her uncle saw plots under every bench but it didn’t make him wrong. Besides, Osric was a fool. Those who bet on the behaviour of fools lost.

Edwin’s eyes glittered. “He could be plotting with any of them: Cadwallon, Penda, Dál Riata, Gododdin, Rheged. Any of them. All of them.”

“We need a spy in his hall, someone in his counsel.”

“I’ve a better idea. I’ll take his son.”

Pointy-toothed Oswine. She turned that in her mind. War was coming, it didn’t take a seer to foresee that. They needed Craven’s iron ore, its willing men. “Cloak it as an honour. Send an honourable man to say…” She saw it, sudden and complete. “To tell Osric that Oswine is to be groomed for a great task. To win renown and position.”

“It better not cost me money.”

“Rheged,” Hild said. “Rhoedd needs to marry off Rhianmelldt. Why not to Oswine?”

“Are you quite mad?”

She saw the opening. She could twist the sword up and away. “Rheged can’t stand alone anymore. It must choose a protector. Let it be Northumbria. Oswine isn’t Osric, he wasn’t raised to believe Deira was his. Rheged will seem a plum. Much better than Craven. Bring him here, smother him in gold and flattery, and he’ll be yours. So will Rheged.” The vision trembled before her, like a drop of rain on an outstretched fingertip, brilliant, beautiful, perfect.

“Oswine, king of Rheged?”

“Ealdorman of Rheged. Your man.” Couldn’t he see? Northumbria from sea to shining sea. “Think of the ports. Northumbria from coast to coast. Cadwallon will be cut off from the north Britons.”

She imagined the tufa, the boar banner, cracking in the wind, the weight of the red ring.

She took a breath, dropped her shoulders, smoothed the impatience from her voice.

“Bring Oswine here, Uncle. And Prince Uinniau. They can make friends under your eye, sword brothers, sworn to you. And Uinniau would be a hostage for Rhoedd’s good behaviour. They would both come, if you sent the right man.”

“Eadfrith Sweet Tongue is with his brother, bringing the Gododdin to heel.”

“Not Eadfrith. A man the wealh might trust.”

“And who might this totem of trust be?”

“Cian Boldcloak.”

A midsummer with no sun. Hild felt wrapped in cloud, suffocated, as though the air were wool. She sat with the king’s counsellors, listening but not speaking, tolling her beads, lingering on the yellow. Christ, the most important of all. He is everywhere. She was missing something. And the queen swelled every day.

She longed to clear her head, stride the moors above Mulstanton, lean into the wind on the cliff by the Bay of the Beacon. She envied Cian riding in Craven with his gesiths, one of many, free to laugh, to shout, to sing. To do, not be stared at and whispered over. Not waiting for the sun, not waiting for the queen to give birth.

A message came from Rhin: Bandits were preying on the people of Elmet. Saxfryth. Lweriadd. Her people. Her Elmet.

“Where’s the king?” she asked Gwladus.

“Hunched in his hall like a moulting hawk, I expect.” She already had out Hild’s favourite earrings, the moss agate and pearl, suitable for delivering bad news to a king. “Keep still or they’ll end up hanging off your nose.”

Hild moved her head, impatient. She wished she hadn’t sent Cian to Craven. She needed him for this.

“Keep still.”

She was tired of being still. She batted Gwladus’s hand away. No, she wouldn’t wait. Why should she? What could Cian do that she could not? “Put those away. Give me my staff instead.”

At the east doorway, Lintlaf saw her coming, folded his arms, and leaned against the doorpost.

The chief gesith glittered; he was growing rich. For most people, a nod to his gesiths to step aside cost something pretty, something precious. He was just another kind of bandit, one who had gripped Gwladus’s wrist hard enough to leave marks.

She met his gaze, then looked him up and down. He had too much weight on one leg. One swing at his knees would have him on the floor before he’d even unfolded his arms. Neither of his gesiths was paying attention: She was the king’s niece, and she didn’t even have a sword.

Cian was better than any of them, and she didn’t always lose against him. They wouldn’t get their blades free before her staff heel took them in the face. Yes. Long sweep to the knees. Snap of heel to one mouth, snap of tip to another. Scatter-patter of teeth. Sharp warmth of blood. Flipping the end of her stave up with her left hand, legs bent. Both hands pulling the length down in a whistling overhead arc. The splitting crack of oak on kneecap. Then kneeling, and the seax to Lintlaf’s balls. The smell of shit.

Should I make a prophecy about spilt yolk and no sons, Lintlaf? No gesith would gallop to war with a doom on his head.

She smiled a creamy smile.

Lintlaf stepped aside.

Edwin was brooding in the shadows at the end of his hall, alone but for a few housemen standing against the wall. A small fire burnt, but the air was damp. She relayed Rhin’s message.

He stared at her for a long moment after she’d finished. “Bandits? What do I care about a few bandits on the Whinmoor?”

“They’re becoming bold. Farmers fear for their lives and livestock.”

“Am I nursemaid to the world? I’m sick of men holding out their hands and bleating.” He slapped the board. His cup jumped. “A man must hold his own steading.”

“At least send men to Pyr at Caer Loid.”

He lifted the cup. A houseman glided over, filled it, and faded back against the wall. “I’m spread thinner than a miser’s butter. Who should I send? My sons are in the north. Coelfrith’s with the Crow in York. I’ve Idings in the north plotting with Scots at one end of the far wall and Picts at the other. Rheged and the Bryneich rumbling below that. In the west Cadwallon’s gathering an army. Nithing!” He slapped the board again. Wine slopped. “Baying at our arse from the middle of the isle, we’ve Penda and his Mercians. In the south and east—”

“Send me.”

Silence. “You?”

“Me, and twelve gesiths.”

“For bandits?” He picked up his cup, eyed her over the rim. “It would be… messy.”

“Needs must.”

“Well, well.” They faced each other, gazes locked. Yffing to Yffing. He sipped, swallowed, put his cup down with a decisive click. “Six gesiths.”

“Eight, and your token to show Pyr in Caer Loid.”

“My token.” He flexed his hand—open, closed—studying her, watching her watch his ring. He opened his fist. Smiled. Nodded once. “Six. And my token. Though you’d better not have to use it.” He pulled the great carved garnet off his pointing finger, and leaned forward. “You’ll ride straight for the Whinmoor. No meddling with Pyr’s work.”

She held out her hand. “Yes.” He dropped it in her palm. She hefted it. She slid it onto her thumb and made a fist.

“King’s fist.”

She felt rather than saw the ripple of attention run through the housemen standing along the wall. King’s fist.

“It suits you, Niece. But I’ll want it back.” He sat back, then swore and turned his arm to look at his elbow. His jacket was sodden with wine. “Someone clean up this mess!” Two housemen leapt to obey. “That goes for you, too, Niece. Clean it up.”

In the queen’s guardroom, Bassus frowned—not at the king’s niece, the king’s fist, but at her question. What did she want with bandits?

He waved the houseman out and threw a log on the fire himself. She poured them both wine, unbidden. She wore the Yffing token. She didn’t need anyone’s permission.

Bandits.

“I hunted them in Kent, when Eadbald was ætheling.” He immediately felt foolish. The girl—not girl, king’s fist—wouldn’t care who’d been ætheling. He lifted his cup and sniffed it. Iberian. His favourite. The same colour as her ring. “It’s hard and filthy work. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

The log caught, setting shadows dancing along the wall and the Yffing token glinting blood-red. He wished his words back: She was the king’s fist. It didn’t do to use the word enemy in the same room.

“I’ll show you the scar they gave me?”

She nodded, and he thumped his wine cup on the board and his right foot on the bench. He took off his belt, unfastened the tie under his jacket, and peeled down his hose. The scar along his shin was the size of a grass snake, thick and twisting, blueish-white and sunken in the middle, pink at the edges. It hadn’t healed fast, and the infection had taken some of the bone with it.

“Worse than anything I took in a shield wall. Not made with good clean steel. An iron-edged spade,” he said. “Filthy thing. Still aches sometimes, when it rains.”

“I’ll send you something for it.”

“Thank you, lady.” It wouldn’t do to refuse.

He pulled his hose up again, tied them carefully, rearranged his jacket. He picked up his belt. Paused. “They fight with teeth and hands, slings and stones, sickles and spades. They turn on you, even when they’ve a hole torn right through the belly. Like mindless rats, never knowing when they’re beaten. You should hunt them like rats, with nets and clubs, or dogs and a ring of bowmen. Or poison. Kill them all.”

“Not all, surely.”

“All, lady. And their young.” She’d killed at Lindum, so they said. But you didn’t understand bandits until you’d had one turn under your heel like a broken-backed snake. “Some say bandits are good men fallen on hard times. And perhaps some begin that way. But they become savages.”

He ran his belt through his hands, half listening to the clink of gold fastenings won in his time as king’s gesith.

“Lady, it’s not like war. Bandits give no quarter, and you don’t offer it, you can’t, because they’ve no honour. None. I wouldn’t do it again, not for all the wine in Iberia.”

While Gwladus packed, Hild turned her wrist, tilting the ring this way and that. This way, even in the overcast, the carved garnet pulsed like lifeblood. That way turned it dark as a scab. Light, dark. King’s token, king’s fist.

King’s weight.

She checked her packets of healing herbs, tucked them into their pockets next to the bandages and needles, rolled the leather, and tied it.

When Gwladus put her own dress in the small pile by the leather saddlebags, Hild said, “No. You’re not coming.”

Gwladus stopped, looked at her. “Then who’s to attend you?”

“No one. Pack enough for a month.”

“A month? You can’t—”

“You’re not coming.”

“But—”

“Enough. I don’t want you.”

Gwladus flinched.

She wasn’t riding as Lady Hild, king’s niece, king’s seer. She was riding as Hild, king’s fist. She doubted it would be as bad as old Bassus thought, but it was clear bandit-hunting was not a task that required well-dressed hair or clean clothes. She wouldn’t ride with anyone who couldn’t kill, nor anyone who might recall her to herself. She had to be the king’s fist, a killer. She had asked for this task. It must be done.

She rode south into Elmet through the blazing heather, Morud running beside her, and Oeric and six gesiths arrayed in a jingling crescent about her: Gwrast and Cynan, Coelwyn and Eadric, and the brothers Berht.

She rode light, no spare clothes, just two slim saddlebags holding hard bread, mead, and her wound roll. She carried her tokens on her body: her beads, her seax, her cross, the cups Cian had carved, Begu’s snakestone, and Edwin’s ring. When the sun came out the stone on her thumb glowed, her carnelians burnt, and the gold on her belt and Ilfetu’s headstall gleamed.

They camped the first night in the lee of a lichened rock: the moor’s bones, poking from the thin soil. Apart from Oeric and Morud the men were used to the war trail and comfortable enough, though unhappy that she wanted them to take off their rings and wrap their horse gear in cloth.

“Even in the moonlight you’ll glitter like barrow wights. They’ll see you coming from a mile away.”

“Good!” Coelwyn said. “We’ll freeze their marrow.”

“Would you want birds to know the net is there?”

“Birds? We’re gesiths. We hunt fearsome beasts. We don’t bother with small frightened things.”

“You do now.”

She took off her beads, coiled them in her hand, dropped them in the purse on her belt.

“If we let them run, they’ll come back when we’re gone. We’re here to trap them, judge them, then settle or kill them.”

They nodded. They’d all seen her kill, except Oeric.

It was as their lady, dealer of wyrd and woe, that she judged the miserable bandits they chased down, the children, women, and men hauled cowering in groups of six from bramble thickets, hiding by twos in an overstood coppice, or snivelling alone over a half-eaten bird in the lee of a rock.

Children, weak and starveling, who could cry on command and, if you offered comfort, would poke your eye with a filthy finger and rip the pin from your cloak. That’s what had happened to Coelwyn. He would most probably lose that eye, though she’d done what she could.

Women, lush as a water meadow but with no teeth. Women with broken knives hidden in both hands. It served Gwrast right, she told him every night when she changed his bandage. It would be a while before he could carry a shield—but he didn’t need a shield to fight bandits.

Men, with muscles like steel bands and broken minds. Men who’d try to rape a nettle bush if it kept still.

Hild judged them all. She judged them as impersonally as a murrain or a bolt of lightning.

She sent children with milk teeth, even the wicked ones, to her mene wood, with Morud to guide and Coelwyn to guard. Morud brought back news that the beck glistened with eggs and flickered with flies; there would be a fine run of fish, sun or no sun. The mene would survive. Next year it might thrive. There would be plenty of work for healthy children. He also brought back two bow hunters and a netman; Rhin hoped the lady would return them by Blodmonath.

She was glad of the bow hunters: Bassus had been right about some things.

She rode from dawn to dusk, judging, settling, listening to the folk. Every steading had a story of a band of wolf’s-heads, bandit fiends who raped and murdered and slaughtered the kine, burnt the fields, shat in the well from sheer wickedness. But like the Cait Sith these fiends always seemed to visit misery on someone else, someone over the hill or in the next valley.

She smashed the right elbows of two brothers they found stealing cattle from a widow and her sons at Brown Crag. Without use of their arms they would only survive if there were people who loved them well enough to feed them for a few weeks.

She settled one couple and nearly grown son, whom they’d caught holding nothing but a handful of stolen carrots, with a farmer just west of Rhin’s old church. A week later, she led her band back to the farm hoping for an evening sleeping dry under a roof and a hot meal. They found the place smouldering, the farmwife raped and dead, and the husbandman’s guts spilt in the straw of the byre where the bandits had cut off the milch cow’s hind legs and tried to start a fire.

Hild looked at the dead couple, not skipping the gleam of bone and glisten of gut, the carefully mended shift now torn right across the wobbly weave. These people had taken the bandits in because she’d asked. Because she’d had mercy.

“Take what we can use, then finish what they started.” She looked at her men one by one. Her gaze rested on Oeric longest. “Burn it well. May the smoke of the dead follow the wolf’s-heads and carry their doom.”

Oeric shivered, and swallowed, and hoped he wouldn’t be sick. The bandit choked and his heels drummed on the turf; his shoes were more gap than leather, different shapes. Instead of hose he wore filthy wrappings from ankle to knee. The choking was the same sound Morud made when he hawked up phlegm before spitting, only the choking went on and on. Spitting made Gwladus angry. If Gwladus was here maybe then the lady would smile sometimes. Maybe she wouldn’t be so pitiless.

It began to rain, a fat pattering summer rain, lifting the scent of earth and gorse flowers. Three ravens circled. From over the rise where the others waited, a horse whickered.

“The horses are getting cold,” the lady said.

He had given an oath. Without that oath, without the lady, he’d be a farmer who bent the knee to any man with a sword. But men who carried swords must be able to use them. And it was just going to get worse. They were tracking a band, at least half a dozen, and now it looked as though the three from the farmstead had joined them. They would catch them soon. Tomorrow or the day after.

“Oeric.”

He drew Clifer. Maybe the bandit would just die. Maybe the lady would hit him again and finish it. But she only leaned on her staff and watched him choke.

Those eyes saw everything. The green saw your heart, they said, the blue your mind, and the black… the black drank in wyrd and your woe so others might be safe. Killing was nothing to what those eyes had seen.

He swallowed again. He should stab the bandit through the throat, it was the surest thing, but he couldn’t bear to look at what the heel of the lady’s staff had done to it, oak driven hard and sure, with all her terrible strength. Since burning the farmstead the lady never hesitated. The lady never seemed unsure. Perhaps he wouldn’t either once he had killed a man.

But this wasn’t the hot glory of battle, the stuff scops sang of. This was like killing a wether with a broken leg. Only the wether didn’t wear clothes, didn’t laugh, didn’t long for a swig of mead or the squeeze of a woman’s thighs. A wether didn’t try to kill your lady with a sickle.

His legs felt like wood. The hand wrapped around Clifer’s hilt could have been a stranger’s. The bandit stank.

“Don’t shut your eyes,” the lady said.

He lifted Clifer with both hands, plunged for the chest. Clifer jarred in his hands and skidded over the man’s ribs. He stabbed again, again, again. Gore slapped him across the mouth.

Then he was on his knees, not sure how he’d got there. He lifted his face to the rain. It smelt musty.

“Make sure he’s dead,” she said.

Of course he was dead, he was hacked almost in two. But always be sure, she said. Always check.

“When you’re done, clean your sword, then join us. Don’t take too long.”

The lady strode over the rise and it was just him and the dead man. A raven thumped into the turf.

The lady had said just yesterday, An eyeless face discourages others. He looked at that thick black beak and levered himself to his feet. He felt very tired.

By the fire, Eadric lent Oeric his bottle of linseed oil and Gwrast showed him how to use a chewed twig dipped in oil to work flecks of dried blood from under the wire wrapping on Clifer’s hilt. Hild watched him. His smiles were jerky, his eyes shone too bright, and he blinked a great deal, but she didn’t offer comfort. What he needed was the solace of ordinary companionship, of others like him.

Indigo drained from the predawn sky behind them. Flicks and flirts of wind ran over the sparsely grassed slope. Hild lay on her belly. Dew soaked slowly through her wool. She ignored it. To either side, her gesiths inched forward. She checked to the north and south: Both bow hunters were in place, bows strung, ready to block escape west with a rain of arrows.

Another flick of wind brought the smell of greasy ash, singed hair, smouldering hooves, and the thick stink of unwashed bandits. She counted the huddles around the remains of the fire below. Nine. Some were large enough for two. One was wrapped in a striped blanket that would be blue and green in daylight. The farmwife had been showing the bandit woman how to beat it clean the day Hild had ridden away feeling wise.

One of the lumps by the fire, she knew, was dead.

They’d tracked the family for four days, always heading north and west. On the second day they’d joined the band of wolf’s-heads: hard, lean, and armed. Not poor folk getting by the best they could.

She’d listened to them last night, drinking whatever it was they’d stolen from some steading, then singing and laughing, and taking it in turns to fuck someone to death. From the sound she couldn’t tell if it had been a woman or a stripling. Not a child. A child’s screams would have been higher. While they fucked and roared and giggled, the last of the rancid cow leg thrown in the fire burnt. They must feel close to safety. There was no watch, and whatever they’d been drinking was potent.

Nothing stirred. Light leaked into the hollow, though not enough to change the greys to colour.

One of the bundles twitched, then unfolded to become a thin woman who tottered two paces before slumping into a squat with her shift around her waist.

Hild looked right and left. Nodded. The hunters nocked arrows. Gesiths loosened their blades and checked their spears. She tightened her grip on her stave and settled her seax. Gathered her feet under her. Lifted her stave. Bowmen drew, gesiths rose.

She drew her hand across her throat: no mercy. Strings thrummed, spears lofted. She ran.

She ran silent as a deer, muscles pumping, heels thudding on the turf. Straight for the squatting woman.

A spear thumped into the woman’s foot and she started to shriek and turn, thin shit running down her leg. Hild was already swinging. Her stave took the woman in the throat. She felt the soft shock all the way to her shoulders, then she was leaping over the writhing ruin, lips skinned back, gaze fixed on the blanket.

“Death!” she howled. “Death!” And the dark hollow filled with men and spears and screams.

She stood on the brow of the rise, leaning on her staff, looking west and north to a great gap in the hills. They were twenty-five miles west of the Whinmoor. Those were the foothills of the backbone mountains. In the low sun the river running through the Gap glittered, and faint sheep tracks showed along the valley on either side. This was where the bandits had been heading: north, through the Gap, to Craven.

Cian was in Craven. It wasn’t so very far. She could lead her men through the Gap and find out if Osric was such a poor ealdorman he didn’t know about the bandits rooted on his land, or if he knew full well. Ealdorman Osric would have to kneel to her ring…

But perhaps Cian was already back in Sancton with Oswine. And the queen would be very nearly due. She had to be there for that.

Morud knelt and kept his eyes on the grass. “Lady, the iron’s hot.”

She followed him down into the hollow, past the row of bodies, to the youth struggling between the brothers Berht. Unlike Morud they were not afraid to meet her gaze. Their own was worshipful. A lady of wyrd, a lady who could kill. Skirt and sword.

A pile of goods for burning lay to one side of the dead fire. A much smaller pile lay on the green-and-blue blanket to the other. It was a good blanket. Rhin would be able to use it.

The stripling had curly brown hair, hazel eyes, and teeth still new enough to be straight. He went limp when he saw her, but he weighed so little the brothers didn’t sag.

She nodded at the brothers and drew her seax. “Turn him to the light.”

He struggled, but the brothers tightened their grip. She slit the tattered remnants of his tunic. Flea bites ran down his hairless chest. She shifted the seax to her left hand, laid her right palm against his breastbone. His heart beat wildly. She fixed her gaze on his eyes.

“What’s your name?”

“Lady—”

“Your name.”

“Tims, lady. Lady, I beg you—”

“Look at me.” He did. His heart steadied, then slowed. “Tims, are you from Craven?”

His heart jumped. “Lady—”

“Sshh, sshh. No matter.” His heart slowed again. “Tims, answer me now. Are you willing to do honest work?”

“Yes! Lady, I swear!” But his heart kicked like a hare, and his pupils shrank to dots.

She stepped back, sheathed her seax, and nodded to Coelwyn, who shoved a spear up through Tims’s sunken belly and under his ribs. Tims screamed and writhed and Coelwyn shouted for the brothers to hold him still, still, you arseholes, and levered the spear to and fro, swearing until he found the big vein and Tims poured out, red on the bleached grass.

She toed through the pile on the blanket: a skin of mead, two good axes, a flawed beryl, a painted leather belt, and a bag of rust powder. She hooked up the mead skin, unstoppered it, sniffed. Mad honey. She poured it away.

Cynan and Gwrast hacked the heads and hands from bodies. Eadric carried them to the fire, where Oeric lifted the brand from the coals and burnt the wolf’s-head onto every forehead and hand. He hated doing it, especially the women, but Hild had said, “I’m the king’s fist and you’re mine,” and like the others he didn’t dare argue with this new Hild, hard as iron. He was hers to command.

They hammered stakes across the Gap and impaled the bodies, the heads, the hands, in a long row facing Craven, all branded with the wolf’s-head. That night, by firelight, her men limewashed their unused shields and painted a staked man and a wariangle in a glistening mix of blood, rust, and oil. Men of the butcher-bird.

Bandits would not trouble Elmet now for a while. She sent the bowmen back to her Menewood with the blanket and the axe heads. They were good blades, and the mene had no smith.

As she and her men rode north and east, the sky clouded and the ground turned soft. The sun hadn’t shone here yet, but it would; she could smell the change of weather following them. It wasn’t the only thing that followed them; but the Elmetsætne, instead of coming out to talk to her, stayed in the trees.

She told herself it was all to the good. The rumours were doing her work for her. But not far from the road a tremulous voice shrieked Butcher-bird! and a hazel tree shook as someone small scrambled out of reach.

She wanted to leap off her horse, climb the tree, back the child against the trunk, and shout, It’s how I keep us safe!

But there was no us. Belonging was not a seer’s wyrd. She held Ilfetu to a walk and didn’t blink.

They returned to Sancton at midmorning under a tattered sky. Even as she reined in, she saw the looks that passed between the housefolk. She could have made her gesiths paint out their shields but it wouldn’t have made a difference. Gesiths would tell their tales. Fate goes ever as it must.

She unhooked her saddlebags and tossed them to Morud. “Tell Gwladus to bring food to my room.” The whispers left the byre before her, running through the vill like bracken fire: butcher-bird…

She strode to the hall. In the doorway, the low morning sun caught the carved boar on her thumb and struck fire from her carnelians. Gesiths paused in their games and stared, silent, at the enormous shadow with its stave, glittering around the edges like a wight. One was Oswine, playing knuckles with Lintlaf. But no king, no priests, no Cian. Had he been and gone again? She left without a word.

She found Edwin and Coelfrith, heads together by the gate in the east hedge where housefolk were gathering elm boughs. She hadn’t seen anyone but wealh set elm aside since she was a child. The inner bark, when added to soups and stews of nettles, would thicken them enough to keep you alive, for a while.

Six gesiths, armed and armoured, stood to one side. Edwin gave no sign that he knew they were there, but they had an air of hurry about them, and their shields were on their arms, not their backs. When they dipped their heads to her ring they did not lower their eyes, and two did not bother to conceal the fact that they looked beyond her to see if she had brought her hounds: brothers who now wore shields painted with an emblem that was not the king’s boar.

She stopped outside stave-reach of the king and bent her head. “Uncle.”

He waited. She knelt.

He nodded. “Niece.”

Coelfrith sighed and the tension left his knees. Hild felt herself split in two: the butcher-bird thinking, I could take him, and the seer, I serve the king. She leaned her staff in the crook of her arm and wrapped her fingers around the ring. Hesitated.

Now the king gave her an amused look: Told you I’d want it back. “Did you bring me anything worthwhile, Niece?”

She let go of the ring and pointed up. “The sun, Uncle.”

“So we won’t need these?” He waved at the housefolk with armsful of elm branches.

“Will Eadbald not trade his Kentish wheat?”

“Of course he’ll trade. But why spend if I don’t have to?”

She turned the ring on her thumb. “The sun’s here to stay. You could plant a barley crop.”

Coelfrith said to the king, “Why risk the seed? We should save it for next year.”

“Don’t look at me. She’s the seer. Besides, she’s still wearing the boar. Even from her knees she speaks for the king. So what should the king say, Niece?”

Hild understood why the king hated decisions. There were always so many of them. “Wheat and barley both from Eadbald?” she asked Coelfrith.

He nodded. “It’s landed at Brough. It’ll come by barge to York.”

No risk of starvation, then, just silver. “Plant,” she said.

“How much?”

“All of it. But plant today. Plant now.”

“That’s what I like,” Edwin said. “Bold choice.” He held out his hand for the ring. Coelfrith moved to go.

“Wait,” she said. “Coelfrith, your brother. Coelwyn lost an eye. But he’s hearty. He’s strong. He fought well.”

After a moment, Coelfrith said, “An eye. Well, he has another,” because that was what gesiths were supposed to say. Just an eye, just an ear, just a finger. The gods gave us more than one. What will be, is.

He nodded to her, to the king, and walked back to the vill.

Edwin turned his hand over, palm down, pointing finger out. “Ring.”

Hild pulled it off her thumb and slid it onto his finger.

He flexed his hand, rolled his shoulders.

“So. Staking them out. A strong statement for a few bandits.”

“They came from Craven.”

His eyes glittered. “You’re sure?”

“You should ask Oswine.”

“Ah, you’ve seen him, then. Oh, do get up. Very well, we’ll ask Oswine. But don’t upset him. Remember he’s our honoured guest.”

He had rolled the work from his, to theirs, to hers, slick as goose grease. She would remember that trick. She wanted to stretch but didn’t want to seem too tall or too strong next to the king. “And our other honoured guest?”

“If, as you promised, the weather holds, your Boldcloak will be back from Rheged with Uinniau before the first leaves fall.”

Her mother dropped the door of the weaving hut behind her and studied Hild. She nodded at her empty thumb. “It’s left a mark.”

Hild looked at the band of pale skin. She scratched it.

Breguswith put her hand under Hild’s chin and turned her face this way and that. “The flesh is nearly burnt from your bones and the human from your heart. You’re nothing but wyrd and ælf breath. Spend less time in the wind.”

“Where is… everyone?”

“Begu attends the queen. It’ll be soon. The Crow is no doubt hotfooting it back from his stone church in York. You’ve seen the king? He’s been banishing people or whipping their feet raw. He’s fretting about food.”

“Not anymore.”

Breguswith nodded. “You gave him good news, then. It’s all he’ll listen to. He drove the scop out, said if he had to listen to one more tale of luck and wyrd, he’d cut his throat and use his sinews for bowstrings.”

She didn’t care about the scop. “Where’s—”

“Your bodywoman is no doubt making the housefolk miserable. Fear makes her vicious.”

Fear. What did Gwladus know of fear?

Hild sat on the blanket. It was new: green-and-blue chevrons. She stood, paced. Unfastened her belt, slid off her seax and purse. Put them on the shelf by the bed. Sat. She was hungry.

She tried to turn the ring that wasn’t there. She turned her beads, tolled through them. Penda. Cadwallon. Eanfrith, Oswald, Oswiu. And the yellow bead, the brightest. Christ, the most important of all. Whatever that meant.

She unfastened the beads, coiled them in her palm, weighed them. How mad was little Rhianmelldt now? What did Cian think of her? What would Cian think of the butcher-bird?

He’d come back with that bite on his jaw. He knew how it was.

She leaned over and put the beads next to her seax on the shelf.

Blue and green…

She felt the soft shock of stave on throat, the shriek of Tims as Coelwyn levered his spear up and down. She realised her lips were skinned back. She shook the memory out of her head. She was hungry, thirsty. More than hungry. Her clothes were filthy. She peeled them off, dropped them in a heap by the door. Sat down again.

What was keeping Gwladus?

She was so tired of waiting. Always waiting. She was the butcher-bird. She didn’t have to wait; she could take.

The door rattled then swung open, framing Gwladus: holding a tray, hair unbound and freshly combed, smelling of flowers. An offering: herself; all she had.

Neither said anything.

A pot on the tray rattled as Gwladus lowered it to the table. Hild made no move towards it. Gwladus, very pale, took a breath, climbed onto the bed, lay on the blanket, and spread her bright hair over the pillow.

When Hild still said nothing, made no move, Gwladus took Hild’s hand and laid it on her belly.

A thin linen dress. Nothing underneath. Hild let her hand lie there, feeling the heat and tremble through the light weave. Like Tims. She could tear it with one hand, tear Gwladus’s heart out.

Who’s to stop me, who in all the world?

She ached. She felt so alone. She wanted to feel Gwladus respond, rise under her, strong and fierce. Hers. She could take her, take her pleasure on her. This time Gwladus wouldn’t try to stop her. She would pretend to cry out with need. She had to. She was a slave. With nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Hild had left her behind once. She had to please Hild or be thrown away, to gesiths like Lintlaf.

Who’s to stop me?

She ran her hand up Gwladus’s belly, touched her bare shoulder, pushed the dress down, cupped her breast—so pale against her dark hand, so plump, so soft. How would it be to lay her naked length against Gwladus, feel her tremble with need, not fear? Did it matter if it wasn’t real? She swallowed. Rose to her knees, ran her hands down the pale ribs, bumping over them, one by one—so small—to her waist, her thighs, her hem. She lifted the hem, lifted the dress, pulled it with both hands, pulled it up, pulled it off. Left it draped over the pillow, over the spread hair. The vein at Gwladus’s neck beat and fluttered like a trapped bird. Hers.

Gwladus closed her eyes.

Hild straddled naked cream and gold and ivory and breathed her flowery hair, her own sharp woman scent. She lifted the dress from the pillow, crushed it in her hands: so fine, so soft, nothing like the wobbly tabby of the farmwife.

Who in all the world?

On the shelf, her beads glittered.

Then I tell you truly, you must learn to stop yourself.

She hurled the dress at the floor. Gwladus flinched but did not move. Hild climbed off, muscles clenching, hands in fists. “Look at me!”

Gwladus opened her eyes.

“You’re mine. You’ll grow old in my household, die warm and well fed. You’re my bodywoman. Some services I’ll require, from time to time. But I won’t… I won’t.”

Silence.

“Do you understand?”

Gwladus nodded.

Hild got off the bed, brought back the dress. “Then I will eat some cheese. And you may… comb my hair. And afterwards dress me in my lightest weave. The sun is here for a while.”

With the sun came heat like a fist. The sky turned into a bronze-and-enamel bowl on which the sun beat until their world swelled and rang. The earth steamed. The people sweltered. The barley grew fast, green as grass, greener than the king’s eyes.

The king toasted Hild in hall and tossed the empty cup at her to keep. The Crow looked as though he would prefer to throw a dagger. His priests crossed themselves if her shadow touched theirs. They had heard her gesiths’ songs: wyrd dealer, miracle healer, butcher-bird. They all watched everything she did, watched everything she watched—and everyone. So she refused to see the men’s strong jaws and women’s soft skin, refused to notice the bright eyes, the clean limbs, and the swelling curves all around her. She would make do with Gwladus, for a while.

She made sure her cross hung on the outside of her dress, kept the impatience from her stride and command from her voice, and settled in to understand Oswine.

He spent his time with Lintlaf. She didn’t approach them. She and Lintlaf might come to blows. The butcher-bird wanted that; Gwladus lay between them. And she might win. But then he’d be shamed, broken as chief gesith, and her uncle hated people to break his tools. Besides, she might lose. Lintlaf might kill her. Then her gesiths would try to kill him. Whoever won, men would die. She had sworn to be totem and token to her people, to light their path, not darken it. And she had the queen’s impending birth to think about.

She sent for Morud—who seemed to sense that here she was Hild, his lady of the mene, the king’s niece, not the awful butcher-bird—and set him to get close to Oswine’s bodyman, find out what Oswine and his father knew about bandits.

“Dull as hammers,” Morud said two days later. “Both him and his da. If either of them knows anything I’ll eat that blanket.”

“Does he think Osric plans to retake Deira one day?”

“Think?” Morud squinted, as he did when he was trying not to laugh. “He wants and he whines and he worries, but he doesn’t think.”

“What does he worry about?”

Morud shrugged. “That no one really likes him. That he’s wearing the wrong brooch or fastens his jacket the wrong way. That the first time he’s in a shield wall he’ll get himself killed or, worse, make himself a laughingstock.”

With the heat came the mosquitoes and flies. Cows lowed piteously and flicked their tails, men in the fields cursed and swatted, housefolk woke with swollen faces, and the cook swore she would kill anyone who left the door open again and let the flies in, she didn’t care if the kitchens were hotter than the Satan’s hell.

Begu worried about the queen. “She’s due and past due. But at least she doesn’t fret all the time now about the crops and omens. She was wearing her knees away, and it’s not good for a woman that big to kneel so long. You came back just in time.” Gwladus poured her beer. “And I must say, service has improved lately, too. How do you keep the beer cool in this heat, Gwladus?”

“By the power of her tongue,” Morud said from the corner, then blushed strayberry red. “Her words, lady. Her words. She bullies people. It’s for the lady Hild, she says. It’s for the king’s seer. Where do you think your bread is coming from this year? From the lady’s word and wyrd, from her goodwill, so if there’s only room in the cellar for one cask of beer, then that’s the lady Hild’s cask.”

“What is wrong with him?” Begu said to Hild. “And what’s wrong with you? Is it the heat?” But Hild saw the knowing glint in her eye.

Gwladus stepped back to the curtain, lifted it, and jerked her head at Morud.

When they’d gone, Begu stretched. “Well, I’m glad things are back to normal. Eat some more strayberries. You’re still too thin.”

Hild obeyed. “Gwladus tells me we have a new houseman.”

Begu didn’t even blush. “Swidhelm. Swid. He’s a byre man, really. Good with colts. Strong.”

“Cian will be back with Uinniau in autumn.”

Begu smiled and bit a berry in half. “If it’s a son, we’ll need a scop to sing his praises, to bring his wyrd.” For one heart-stopping moment, Hild thought Begu was with child. “Your mother will find one, she says, but I think she already has. I think she found him the day after the king banished the other one—the one who told the good story about the Geats and the dragon. You never know about babies, when they’ll come. Even royal ones. Especially royal ones. You have to be ready anytime. I think the queen’s dropped. She’ll have her son soon. He’ll be an Yffing…”

Begu believed in her powers completely; if Hild had said it would be a son, then it would be. When Begu was talking, Hild didn’t worry that she might be wrong.

“…the Crow will throw holy water on his head and burn incense and sing hymns, but an Yffing needs a song about his father and his father’s father, and on and back, so everyone, not just Christ on his cloud, knows who the little ætheling is.”

Christ on his cloud… A thought streaked across her mind but was gone so fast she couldn’t catch it. Begu chattered on. If she used weapons the way she used words, no one would stand against her; they’d have no idea where the stroke would fall next.

But she trusted Begu on the matter of birth as completely as her gemæcce trusted her prophesying, so when the queen went into labour late that night, Hild was ready for the king’s summons.

In the audience hall by the feast hall, with one silent attendant standing by the south wall, the king paced. “Tell me again how it will be.”

This was a duel already begun. No backing away now. “The queen will have a son. Big and healthy. An Yffing with the strong hand and hard mind of his kin.”

“And?”

“And autumn will be late coming. The barley will be brought in safely. We’ll have barley bread this winter.”

“And the men of the north?”

“The men of the north will truckle to the Anglisc.”

“You don’t say when.” He scratched the welt on the back of his left hand, peered at it, rubbed it instead on his thigh and looked at her. “And you don’t say to which Anglisc.”

Hild wished there was a fire to crackle, even a fly to drone, something to fill the quiet, to stop her listening for a cry from Æthelburh. “What does Bishop Paulinus say?”

Edwin cracked his knuckles. “He can’t see beyond that white shawl that he expects from the bishop of Rome with every ship.” He paced again, back and forth. “Well, fuck the men of the north. Fuck Penda, bugger the West Saxons, and piss on Cadwallon.”

Someone would, one day.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Scratch scratch scratch. “Your mother tells me you have a niece.”

“Æthelwyn—”

A knock at the door. The king yanked it open before his attendant could get there. Wilnoð. A smear of blood on her sleeve. The king’s gaze fixed upon it. Wilnoð bowed. Straightened. “May it please my lord King, you have a son.”

Edwin swelled. Hild breathed out, but quietly.

“The queen is well. Your son is well. He’s heavy. Big and strong.”

Edwin clapped Hild on the shoulder. “You’ll have his weight in silver! And a gift for your niece.” Down the corridor, past Wilnoð, the air stirred then filled with striding priests: Paulinus and two attendants. “I have a son,” Edwin said. “His name is Wuscfrea!”

Wuscfrea, the father of Yffi of long ago. A name announcing a claim and precedence.

When Breguswith brought the scop, Luftmaer, to the king’s audience hall after breakfast, Hild saw immediately how it was. He was tall, young, wide-mouthed, and clean. He already wore an arm ring Hild had last seen in her mother’s chest. The hands resting on his lyre case were long-fingered, his shoulders well-balanced.

The king told Coelfrith and Stephanus to come back with the accounts later, called for ale, and told the scop to sing the praise song he’d prepared for the feast.

Luftmaer unshipped his lyre with practiced hands, tuned the strings—though more out of habit, she thought, than need—and began. His peat-brown eyes filled with tears every other line, but none of them fell. His deep-grained voice drew and released verses, perfectly flighted. Along the side of the hall, gesiths began to beat out the rhythm with the flat of their hands. It was the kind of song they loved: blood and gold, never grow old, never feel cold, honey in the comb, hearth and home, glory and story, all topped, like foam on just-pulled milk, by the rousing, rhythmic chant of the forebears:

“Wuscfrea the son of Edwin king of the Anglisc, the son of Ælla, the son of Yffi, the son of Wuscfrea, the son of Wilgisl, the son of Westerfalca, the son of Sæfugl, the son of Sæbald, the son of Segegeat, the son of Swebdæg, the son of Sigegar, the son of Wædæg, the son of Woden, god of gods.”

“King of the Anglisc, god of gods!” Edwin bellowed. “Again!”

Luftmaer obliged, eyes filling, fingers picking, voice drawing and releasing, exactly as before.

“Wuscfrea… king of the Anglisc… god of gods!” the gesiths sang.

“Wuscfrea!” the king shouted, and raised his cup. “My son!”

Everyone drank, and then the gesiths made boasts about how each would outdo the other to serve the young ætheling, the wounds they would endure, the fights they would relish, the gold they would win.

The gesiths had taken their singing outside, her mother had taken the scop away, and Hild half drowsed in the sunlight by the door while Edwin listened to Coelfrith give his accounting. With the better weather, trade had picked up. Two extra shipments of wheat had arrived from Eadbald…

She had a headache: partly the air, which was tightening and brooding though the sky was clear, partly too much beer that morning. It was good to not be worrying. Her neck itched. She scratched it. A mosquito bite. She wondered if there were mosquitoes in Rheged. She didn’t remember any during the season she spent north of the wall, but it hadn’t been hot like this. Which way would Cian bring Uinniau back? Ride the wall road, then Dere Street to York, or sail down the west coast, then ride east then south through Craven? But then he’d be bringing him through the Gap.

The staked bandits would be nothing but bones now, fallen and long picked over. She shook her mind free of that. Here she wasn’t the butcher-bird. Here she was the well-dressed seer wearing her cross. Tidy and clean. Tidy and listening. Tidy and restless.

The king was restless, too, twisting this way and that in his chair, tapping his ring on its gilded arm. She remembered the weight of it.

She turned her beads. They were tight around her hard muscle and big bones. Muscle, bone, skin sliding on skin… She shook her mind free of that, too, and thought instead of when she’d first got the beads from mad little Rhianmelldt. Back then, she could wrap the strand around her wrist four times. Now only three. Everything changes.

Christ, the most important of all… Again the glimpse of an idea was gone before she could grasp it, drowned in others’ talk. This time Coelfrith saying two more stonemasons had come for the church, which now stood higher than a man’s shoulder. And tithes from Craven were a little low. She would suggest to the king that they visit Osric in Craven, take the gesiths, claim the tithe in the form of hospitality. Maybe she should go. With the king’s token.

Butcher-bird. Was that her wyrd?

She didn’t want to think about it today. She closed her eyes. What did Æthelwyn look like? Like Hereswith or like Æthelric? Begu said sometimes children looked more like other kin than their parents: Perhaps little Æthelwyn would look like Hild. But even if she saw her niece, how would she know if Æthelwyn looked anything like she had when she was little? Perhaps when Cian got back they could visit the East Angles, and she could see for herself. If he got back before the autumn gales made it too risky to sail down the east coast.

Her mother could come, too—now Wuscfrea was born, cloth-making could be left to the queen. She didn’t much like the idea of spending time with that scop on a boat, though. Then, too, maybe Cian wouldn’t like being cooped up with her and Gwl—

The Crow was talking. She opened her eyes.

Paulinus stood with Stephanus before the king. “The ætheling Wuscfrea is to be baptised at the end of the week. Yet Father Stephanus tells me his praise song claims he’s descended from Woden. It is blasphemy.”

Edwin massaged the back of his neck. “Woden is my forefather.”

“He’s a false god. You may not name him.”

Edwin gave Paulinus a long look. “May not?”

Hild would have liked nothing better than to see the Crow whipped around a tree, but That man and his god are useful to me. Paulinus was part of the plan to keep the kingdom safe, keep the Yffings safe. Keep her safe. Until she saw her wyrd more clearly.

She checked her cross, stood. “My king?”

Edwin nodded. She stepped forward.

“My lord Bishop. We Christians say that there is no god but Christ.”

Paulinus looked at her down his nose, though he had to tip his head back to do so. She watched him test the assertion, looking for the trap. But he couldn’t disagree. “There is no God but God, and Christ is His son.”

“Then how can Woden be a god, false or otherwise? Woden is a man. A great man, a mighty man, the overking’s forefather, but a man. It won’t be blasphemy to name him so: honoured forefather of Wuscfrea. King of kings in his time. A man such as our new ætheling may hope one day to be.”

“Ha!” said Edwin, with a beat of both palms on the arms of his chair. “Woden, king of kings! I’ll hear no more of it.”

The barley had grown heavy and golden. Wuscfrea thrived. Cian would be back soon with Uinniau.

Hild lay on her back in the hummocky grass, arms behind her head, alone on the moor. She had made it clear to her hounds that she liked to go away by herself. They had seen her kill. They knew she was a creature of the uncanny, so let her protect herself with wyrd and stave while she went to other worlds and communed with gods.

She smiled to herself and watched the sky, hearing nothing but wind feathered by the heather, seeing nothing, not a bird nor a bee nor a cloud, just endless sky. The empty blue worked itself between her and the world at her back, lifted, levered, pried her free, and then she was falling, up, up into the bottomless well…

An eagle sliced across a corner of the blue, and once again there was an up and a down, and she slid back into her body, right-way up, once more sheathed in muscle and skin.

The hummock under her back felt different, as though she’d been away a long time. She stretched and laughed to herself. It would make a good story: stolen by hobs and hidden in a fold of the world while the rest turned to dust. She would tell Cian.

She stood and dusted off her dress. The eagle began to rise. Round and round, higher and higher on its pillar of air, pinions flaring gold in the sun. What she must see…

As she walked her mind was with the eagle, soaring over the whole isle. North and east over the high moor to Onnen at the Bay of the Beacon where Mulstan tithed to Edwin and the ruined church crumbled into the cliff. Tilting north over hilly woodland to the wall, where Bryneich still talked of her prophecy of friendship forever. Still farther north to Yeavering and the strange talking stage, the totem now carved with a cross. Then arcing west over Rheged where mad little Rhianmelldt balanced at the crux of its future. Out over the heaving waters of the North Channel that divided the two lands of the Dál Riata. Back towards the mainland, the isle of Manau at her left wing tip. The northern mountains of Gwynedd, and Deganwy, the fort on the river that led to the sea, where Cadwallon held the warp of the Irish Sea trade and the web of shaved-forehead priests. Then south and east over the midland valleys and woodland of Penda’s Mercia; Penda, unbaptised, who was pursuing unbaptised West Saxons south and west to Dyfneint towards an end no one knew. Turning again, rising east, Kent and the pope’s overbishop out of sight, beyond her right wing. Over the fenland where Hereswith suckled her baby and listened to Fursey’s advice. North again, over Lindsey where Coelgar oversaw the rich, tidy, newly Christian farmland…

Back at the vill the first person she saw was Swid, the byre man, leading two horses round the yard. Cian, she thought, and Uinniau. But they didn’t look good enough for something a prince of Rheged might ride. “Been rode hard all day,” Swid said. “From parts south.”

The horses’ withers were curded with sweat but there was no blood at the bit. Important, but not urgent. She would have time to change before the king called her.

Gwladus gave her the news as she dressed: Penda had caught the West Saxons at Cirencaester and thrashed them like washing, dashed Cynegils and Cwichelm’s army to pieces. Cwichelm had fled—mortally wounded, said some, already dead, said others—and Penda had crowned Cynegils king and married him to his sister.

Penda now ruled the Mercians and the West Saxons, the whole middle of the isle and its southwestern toe.

The middle of the isle. The middle of the isle: Woden worshippers surrounded on all sides by baptised kings. Gwynedd, Kent, Rheged, Dyfneint, Dál Riata, Pictland, Northumbria, even the Idings. Christ, the most important of all. That was what Fursey meant. The Christ was everywhere, his priests were everywhere, advising every king, writing it all down. Penda was surrounded.

He must choose an ally. Cadwallon, in the west, with his shaved foreheads. Or Edwin, in the east, with his shaved crowns. Wealh or Roman. Whichever he chose, he would alter the great weave.

Penda was clever. He would choose Cadwallon because Cadwallon was weaker, more easily absorbed and overcome. But in the end it wouldn’t matter. Even if Penda sided with Edwin, they would one day fight. Penda needed the Christ. Edwin needed the Christ. But only one could have the Christ’s chief priest and the trade web allied with Rome.