Hild

21

CIAN RETURNED FROM RHEGED with Uinniau. But Hild didn’t see them much. They and Oswine were always riding out—the Bay of the Beacon, a visit to the Bryneich—at Edwin’s suggestion, or so Hild persuaded herself. She hoped it was not that Cian could not bear to be near the butcher-bird.

The court moved to York. The longest Cian, Uinniau, and Oswine were with the household was at Yule, when they sat with the gesiths who were not Hild’s hounds.

Spring came late to Yeavering that year. The court had been there a fortnight and still the top of Ad Gefrin was speckled with snow and the roe deer hadn’t dropped their young. In the vill, the snow was gone, but a cold, wet wind blew without cease. In the king’s hall the fires smoked. In the queen’s hall, Eanflæd coughed until she turned red and wailed, and little Wuscfrea coughed himself pale and silent. All the children, wealh and Anglisc, visitor and local, sickened. The hall filled with mothers bringing children with sticky eyes and heaving chests to breathe the clearer air of the high women’s hall and for Breguswith to tend. Begu and Gwladus helped. Hild did not. Hægtes, they called her. Freemartin. Butcher-bird.

Hild went out into the weather to find chickweed. It was too early in the year for full potency, but she gathered it anyway, gave it to Gwladus to put to steep in boiling water, and went back out to find more.

Uinniau, crouched in the lee of the hill to wash his bloody hands, paused, hands dripping. “What was that?”

Cian looked up from the doe he was butchering. Oswine dropped the twig he’d been feeding to the flickering flame.

“The fire!” Lintlaf said, as a gust of wind nearly snuffed it out. “Fuck.”

“Sshh.” Uinniau tried to listen past the bibble-babble of the water. “There’s something out there.”

He pulled his cloak tighter and peered into the windblown dusk. There were four of them, royal gesiths, no need to fear the dark. But the wind had been picking up, wuthering and moaning over the stones, like the orphans of Arawn pouring from the hollow hills, and they’d all heard the yowls of Cait Sith.

A pebble rattled into the wash upstream.

He drew his knife. Lintlaf picked up his spear.

He looked at Boldcloak; they all looked at him. But Boldcloak was looking only at the doe, as though it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“It’s probably just a lost goat,” Oswine said, but Uinniau didn’t think so. He sniffed. Something…

The darkness tightened, curdled, and stepped forward. It was tall. Its hands trailed long fingers, too long, a wight’s fingers…

“Look at its hands,” Oswine said. “Look at its hands!”

“No farther,” Uinniau said to the thing. “Show me your hands.”

The tall figure said, “It’s chickweed, Uinniau.”

“It’s the freemartin,” Lintlaf said, and lowered his spear.

Uinniau stepped forward. “Lady?”

Hild said, “Yes. Your fire’s about to go out.”

Oswine fed it a twig. Lintlaf snorted. Uinniau glanced at Boldcloak again, but the doe seemed more interesting than ever.

Uinniau sheathed his knife. “Won’t you join us, lady?”

The dark moved and glimmered. A headshake. “They need this back at the hall. The children.”

“They’re no better?”

“No. If you want to help, you can finish butchering that doe and search for more chickweed and some figwort.”

The fire caught and flared, showing sad bundles of weeds held in scratched, filthy hands. He stepped back. Women’s work.

She must have read his mind. Her laugh was flat. “Well. It’s true mud and nettles can be terrifying at night. Enjoy the glory of the hunt, my lords.”

She faded back into the gloom.

Uinniau looked at Cian. “You knew it was her.”

Boldcloak wiped his knife on the turf. “Goats don’t smell of jessamine.” He dumped out the entrails and swore when they slopped on his foot.

Uinniau stared into the dark and crossed himself. He’d heard the songs. They all had. He’d kept expecting Boldcloak to defend her, but he’d stayed silent. He understood now. She was different. Cold, hard, uncanny. She’d been out there listening to them in the dark before she deliberately kicked that pebble. He shivered. Now he understood why her hounds spoke of her as they did: not human, more like a wall, a tide, the waxing of the moon. A force of nature. Implacable, untouchable.

Hild, cloak thrown back from her shoulders and face red from the wind, watched her mother cool the chickweed infusion by pouring it back and forth from one bowl to another.

Breguswith said, “You look like you’ve swallowed a thistle.”

Hild didn’t say anything. She rarely did now. Who wanted to listen to the hægtes, the wyrd woman, the butcher-bird? No one. No more than they wanted to be tended by her. A woman, but one who killed.

She turned and nodded for Begu to start bringing the children for Breguswith to dose. She stepped back.

Three-year-old Eanflæd was first. She shrieked at the taste; she had very powerful lungs. The chickweed was helping her throat, at least. Begu shepherded her back to the other toddlers. Eanflæd shrieked some more and punched one of the wealh children, who promptly wailed. Begu stroked Eanflæd’s pink, sweaty forehead and murmured something Hild couldn’t hear.

The queen carried Wuscfrea. Breguswith spooned warm liquid into his tiny mouth. He didn’t swallow, just let the viscous stuff dribble from his mouth and laboured to breathe.

Breguswith wiped his mouth and nodded to Æthelburh, who tucked the soft brown blanket around his chin again. “Keep wiping his eyes.”

They both watched the queen sit next to Wilnoð on the south hearth and settle into the same pose as a score of women in hall: children resting in left arms and laps, heads bent, cloaks sheltering them like tents.

At the east end of the hall, the older children played with a rag ball and wiped their noses on their shifts.

Hild said, “Is Wuscfrea all right?”

Breguswith hesitated, then nodded. “His lungs will clear, but I worry about his eyes. Did you find more figwort?”

Hild pointed to the hearth, where Gwladus stirred a brass pot. “Juice from the stems warming with honey. There isn’t much.” Blossoms were better, but it was too early in the year. “I think little Bassus is in most need.”

Breguswith nodded, but Hild knew what she was thinking: Little Bassus wasn’t the heir.

“I’ll find some more.” She pulled her cloak forward, reached for her hood.

On the way out she stopped by the hearth. Just to get warm.

Gwladus looked soft and rosy in the glow of the fire. Hild said, “Don’t let it burn.”

“Do I ever? Don’t you stay out too long. That wind is as raw as a washwoman’s knuckle and swollen with wickedness.”

They buried little Bassus with the horn spoon he’d teethed on, at the foot of the south slope of Ad Gefrin. “So he’ll face the sun, at least,” Wilnoð said. “If ever there is sun again.”

They buried seven children, lying next to one another for company. Hild held a blanket over the grave to keep the rain from their faces while Stephanus gave his blessing and hurried back to the important business of the men’s hall. Why were there no women priests?

The rain strengthened. An earthworm writhed on the side of the mound, pink against the dark dirt. Hild hoped none of the mothers had seen it. She folded the blanket then nodded to the housefolk standing by with wooden shovels.

As the housefolk sifted in the dirt, layer by layer, the women sang a lullaby, turned by the rain and the wind into a dirge, a drone of abandoned mothers, eyes blind with tears.

When the song was done, the housefolk tamped the earth gently with the backs of their shovels. Wilnoð clutched the queen’s hand so hard Æthelburh’s fingertips turned purple. Later, Hild knew, the housefolk would walk on the dirt, press it down, but not now, not while the mothers were here.

Her mother stood remote as a totem, as though she had never felt a thing in her life. Hild supposed she looked the same. But in their ways they had fought for every single life, fought as thin chests heaved and lips turned blue, fought as a dozen women prayed, frantically, feverishly, begging Christ and his mother, Mary, and all his saints to help, just this once. Never, they said aloud, careless of their secrets, I’ll never do this, or that again. And God had listened to five of them, but Hild didn’t know why; their prayers had sounded the same as the rest, and their guilty secrets.

She had fought and lost. And none of the secrets she had heard were useful.

At the foot of Ad Gefrin, the little shaggy cattle in the tithe stockade huddled close against the wind. Not as many of them as there should be, she noted, and all those of bad temperament, bad health, and bad luck. Men tried to underpay every year, but this felt different.

A band of local chiefs on their ponies, wrapped in cloaks, also huddled close. Several wore their cloaks with a hint of wealh style—a subtle check, old tribal colours, pinned here and there with an old-fashioned brooch. She thought she might even have glimpsed a torc—the thick, twisted kind usually found only in hoards, except when hauled out and worn for battle—gleaming from one old man’s throat.

The north was turning, she could feel it. At night, when they rode in from the hills with their tithe of cattle, she could hear it: Not all of them spoke Anglisc all the time. The songs they sang were of old battles, of Coel Hen, only they weren’t slow and sad and glorious, they were hard and bright and fierce. The men of the north tasted change in the wind and were remembering old slights, complaining of heavy tribute and ill omens.

They knew that Oswald Iding was marrying the niece of Beli of Alt Clut. They knew Eochaid Buide had died and been succeeded by Connad Cerr mac Connell, but that behind Connad waited Domnall Brecc, young and strong—and friend and champion of the Idings. They knew the north was beginning to ally against the Yffings, while to the south and mountainous west, Penda and Cadwallon rode horses to death in their eagerness to exchange messages. Edwin was not a lucky king, they said. The Christ was not a generous god.

She wondered what else they were saying now, in their little mounted huddle, but she made no attempt to approach and listen unnoticed. She was taller than any of them, and better dressed, and wearing more gold than an ætheling. They knew who she was. She was an ælf, a freemartin, a hægtes. She was an angel, a maid, a butcher-bird. She was rich, she was subtle, she could break your mind and read your heart. She had the ear of the king. The mouth of the gods. She could call the weather or sway a battle. She could speak any tongue of man and many of beasts. She would listen, she would feed you, and a gift from her hand had a way of multiplying. She walked in the night, invisible, said some, like Cait Sith. She could tell you where to plant or how to birth your cow. She could set a loom that would weave a cloak that would make you famous. She would hold your hand if you were dying, hold it like your sister might, or your mother. No doubt she would fuck your sister, or your mother, or your brother—maybe even your cow, for good measure. She could heal you or poison you, charm you, charm away your warts, charm the birds from the trees, fly up into a tree.

The rumours were inventive and always changing. “Bring me every word,” she said to Morud, to Gwladus, to Oeric. “If I’m rumoured to turn into a frog and eat flies, I want to know.”

They brought her rumours and gossip. The more she heard, the worse her dreams became.

Two nights after the burial, Begu woke her. “That’s the second time you’ve kicked me. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“They’re afraid of me.”

“Well, of course they are. You kill people. You save people. And you may as well be a carved totem for all the talking you do.”

Begu bumped her forehead against Hild’s shoulder, like a cat hoping for a stroke.

“You should talk to people. Ordinary people, about ordinary things. Like you used to with Cian.”

Cian, who said nothing when others called her a freemartin.

“… out hunting all the time, ever since you and— Well. I don’t like the way Uinniau behaves when he’s with them. So. People. You have to talk to them. And I don’t mean freemen who only talk to other people who don’t matter. I mean people like Lintlaf.”

“He’s not ordinary. He’s the chief of the king’s gesiths.”

“You know what I mean. People listen to him.”

“I don’t want to talk to Lintlaf.” She would rather kill him.

“You should try.” She turned over and tugged at the blankets. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“But what should I talk about?”

“Anything! Just open your mouth and let words fall out. But not tonight. Go to sleep.”

And so Hild spent more time with people. She helped the kitchenfolk seek out fresh shoots for soups and stews. She consulted with the drovers on the state of the countryside they’d travelled, the turns of the weather. She let Wilnoð clutch her hand as she wept, and gave Bassus the Elder a small keg of white mead to share with the queen’s other men, enough to drink until he sang through his tears and swore vengeance on the men of the north for bringing ill luck upon his house. Mead produced greater miracles than all the prayers in the world. Mead was the key to good fellowship. A better gift, sometimes, than gold. Her Menewood was good country for bees: She must remember to send word to Rhin for more mead as and when he could manage it. Or she could talk to the king about trading with the Franks for more. But then it would be the king’s gift, the king’s favour, not hers.

She attended Mass twice a week, bringing different of her gesiths each time, and eating with them afterwards, and dicing, or telling them to find a woman to patch their jackets, as suited each. She smiled at their jokes and offered opinions on their swordplay, which they accepted as they would advice from the king.

She consulted with the queen on an embroidery for Dagobert, newly king of Frankia, to remind him of their trade agreements. She sketched out a weave pattern she had thought of while watching wind in the grass at the edge of the ash coppice: a subtle ripple like ripe grain waving in the sun, like water as fish rose to feed, the flick and turn of bird flocks across a dawn sky. A spin-pattern weave that suggested ripe land and riches. On top would be an embroidery of royal blue, gold, and silver: wealth on wealth. She mentioned that, if it were possible, it might be good to make something, too, for Æthelric, prince of the Anglisc North Folk. He and the folk of the Gyrwe, south and north, were all that stood between an alliance of the middle and East Anglisc against their northern kin.

There was something about alliances she could not quite see, but the more she thought about it the less clear it became, so she set it aside for later.

She approached Cian just once. He was with Lintlaf and Oswine. They were cleaning their weapons by the fire: young lords, brothers of the shield wall, discussing the ætheling Eadfrith. They didn’t see her in the shadow.

“… heard he was talking to the East Angles and the Kentishmen.”

“Talking,” Cian said. He dipped his twig carefully in his bowl of oil. “He’s good at talking.”

Oswine slapped his sword. “This does my talking!”

Lintlaf and Cian exchanged glances, and Hild didn’t like the amused contempt they shared for the hostage who thought he was a gesith.

She withdrew unseen.

Cian was better around Uinniau, but Uinniau spent as much time as he could with Begu. Hild didn’t know who Cian’s latest bed partner was. Perhaps he hadn’t had a chance to find one while being princely with the two guests of the king and riding around as a shining example of wealh and Anglisc friendship. She didn’t like princely Boldcloak much. She missed her Cian. Missed the Cian she might have told of misjudging bandits and what eagles saw.

She couldn’t talk to Cian, she didn’t want to talk to Lintlaf, and Uinniau’s was busy with Begu. So when the young lords weren’t riding around, she walked with Oswine and his dogs and listened to his worries over whether he was a hostage or a guest. He assured her his father was loyal to the overking. She mentioned the delights of Rheged. He agreed that, yes, no doubt it was lovely country, and he’d heard the stag hunting was good—but he seemed puzzled. Hild wondered if anyone could really be so dull. She tried not to feel the same contempt she’d seen from Lintlaf: Contempt for others, like a dog driven from the hall, always found its way back.

After Hild had spent four days talking to people, Breguswith drew her aside. “Stop it. You’re making people anxious. The only person whose opinion counts is the king. Keep him happy, and you’re safe.”

Edwin was not happy. “It’s slipping like yolk between my fingers!” he shouted at Coelfrith, whose latest tallies were not cheering: The northern cattle tithe was down, fewer men had come to bend the knee, and more of them brought complaints. More lords told of families selling themselves into their thegn’s keeping because they could no longer feed themselves. Robbery and banditry were on the rise. There were rumours of murrain in the highlands and ague in the lowlands. Folk murmured about ill luck.

“My lord,” Paulinus said, “if we have a good harvest this summer, all will be well.”

Edwin looked at him. “And will Christ give us a good harvest, Bishop? Oh, I forgot, he doesn’t speak to you of prophecy.” He looked at Hild.

“Sick and hungry farmers don’t harvest as much as those who are well and safe,” she said.

“They will work for God,” Paulinus said. “I will baptise them, and Christ will wash their hearts clean.” Sometimes he sounded as though he believed what he said.

“And then they will gratefully pay a further portion in tithe,” Stephanus said.

“With which we will beautify the church,” Paulinus said. “And so fill their souls with awe.”

“Awe will not give them back the seed you demand in tithe,” Hild said. “Awe will not heal them of ague.”

The gesiths around the room nodded: Nothing healed the ague, which came from the uncanny air stirred by the wings of mosquitoes.

“If they believe, Christ will heal them.”

Edwin waved his hand: A few folk with ague were neither here nor there. “You promised Christ would bring luck and full coffers,” he said. “But all he’s brought is bad weather. He sent his luck to the Idings. They grow strong to the north, and Penda to the south. Pray harder, Bishop.”

“With more souls to pray, Christ will listen.”

“Then, by all means, go baptise. And you”—he turned to Lintlaf—“put a stop to the murmurings.”

Hild knew how Lintlaf would go about that. To be token and totem, the light of the world, meant protecting people from more than blades and hunger. It meant shielding them from fear. One people at peace, content from sea to shining sea…

She slipped out and found Morud. “Delay Lord Lintlaf. I need to speak to Boldcloak.”

She found Cian with Uinniau and Oswine. Cian would have seen that she wanted to talk alone and found a charming dismissal for his friends. Boldcloak saw it and didn’t care. He gave her a flat look and didn’t even stand.

She planted her staff before her. She had learnt to talk to others; she could learn to talk to this stranger. “Lintlaf is to be sent out to stop the murmurs,” she said. “No doubt you’ll ride with him.”

“Sending me on another errand?” His tone was as flat as his expression.

Uinniau stood. “Come on, Os.”

“But—”

“Come on.”

When they’d gone, she said, “I’m not sending you. The king is. But I’d like to find you men. To ride under your orders.”

“My orders?”

“Yours. Lintlaf… You know how Lintlaf is.”

He neither agreed nor disagreed.

“The more men go, the faster the murmurs stop. It will make the king happy. If the king’s happy, we’re all safer.” The Cian who had rubbed his lip might never have existed. “Say something.”

He gave her that look and said, “You’re a woman.”

Her heart dropped into her belly.

“You could ask the queen for men.”

She blinked. The queen. She should have thought of that. She turned her staff in her hands. “You’d lead them?”

After a long moment, he nodded once.

The queen smiled when she made her request. “Of course. Bassus would be glad to have something to do. I’m glad you came to me. I was beginning to wonder if I’d offended you in some way. We’ve missed you.”

Hild wanted to believe her, but she had been different since Wuscfrea was so ill. At the best of times queens hid their true feelings; it was the way of the world. And Begu had spoken of her being on her knees to Christ all the time, terrified of the omens. Hild wondered how it must feel to have someone you didn’t quite trust make prophecies about what mattered most to you in the world.

The brothers Berht were happy to go, along with Eadric and Grimhun. Oswine and Uinniau, of course, went wherever Boldcloak went.

“Listen,” Hild said to the assembled gesiths. Half of them had a shine in their eyes she remembered from the field at Lindum, and the firelight as they painted their shields. For them, she didn’t need a ring. “Heed me: honey, not vinegar. Nothing but good words about the generosity and strength of our king.”

“For the bandits, steel, not words,” Cian said.

She couldn’t tell how he meant that. “Yes. For the bandits. For ordinary folk, food and kind words.” She gave them sacks of bread and a small keg of mead each. “For the folk, not for you.”

“Though we’ll have to drink with them,” Cian said to his men with a smile, and Uinniau hooted. They rode out, still hooting, horses high-stepping, glittering with gold and jewels.

Hild and Begu waved until they were lost to sight.

“Three princes,” Begu said. “Like a hero song.”

It was true. Cian carried himself like a prince, and Prince Uinniau looked up to him, as did Oswine, who would one day—if Edwin’s plans worked—be ealdorman of Rheged. Everyone knew the tale of Ceredig king and the boy with the wooden sword. Cian Boldcloak: a far cry from the boy who almost wept at the thought of being in the same hall as the son of the son of the son of Owein, his sword blue and gleaming, his spurs of gold.

Paulinus rode out in even greater state with Stephanus and the new priest, Hrothmar, an oddly pale man with eyes the colour of water and white hair. It wasn’t long before news trickled in to Hild of feverish mass baptisms on the River Glen, of men and women dragged from their homes and forcibly submerged in the fast, cold waters. To save their souls. To save the Anglisc.

She shared the news with the queen one afternoon as they compared the blue of their most recent dye batch to their standard, a loose skein and a swatch of fullered cloth kept in a tightly woven bag against the light.

“He’ll turn the whole north against us,” Æthelburh said. “How can we stop him?”

Hild rewound the new skein. She could never be certain of the queen’s feelings, but perhaps on this they were of the same mind. “James the Deacon could help.”

James arrived from York in a hurry of mud. Morud led him to the queen’s chambers, where Hild waited.

“Your bishop has gone mad,” Hild said, in Latin and quietly. Gwladus was at the door, but there was no point in taking chances. “He’s baptising anything on two legs, willing or not. The whole north is murmuring. We have to stop him.”

James stood there. Eventually he said, “It wasn’t the queen who sent for me, was it?”

She poured wine. Rhenish, his favourite. “She’s at meat with the king. She knows I’m here.”

“You speak for her?”

“We share the same worry.” She handed him a cup. After a moment he took it. They both sat. “The north is balanced on a sword edge. Your bishop could tip it the wrong way.”

“What is it you want from me?”

“First, tell me exactly, tell me clearly, why he’s forcing baptism.”

“Boniface won’t give him the pallium, won’t make him archbishop of the north, until all the north is converted.”

“But how will Boniface know? Does God keep count and drop tally sticks from heaven on the bishop of Rome’s head?”

“Stephanus keeps the tally. He sends it to me. I compile the report that goes out under the bishop’s name.”

“If you wrote that we were all baptised, would Paulinus get his white wool shawl and leave us alone?”

“I can’t lie to the pope!”

“Why?”

“Because.” But she fixed him with her steady gaze. He sighed. “The pope is God’s representative on earth. Lying to His Holiness would be like lying to God Himself. I’d go to Gehenna.” The hot hell where you burnt like a pig on the spit, forever. “It would be a sin.”

Sin: an oath-breaking, a straying from the path. She sipped her wine. “The Crow has to stop. The north will turn if he doesn’t. The king could make him stop. But the king hears only what he wants to hear. Someone must persuade him the Crow is mistaken.”

“Child—”

“Do you want the church in York to rise and your choir’s voice to rise with it? Then the king must stay on his throne and ensure the church’s tithe. He won’t stay on the throne if the north turns. The north will turn unless your bishop is muzzled.”

“How is that something the king will want to hear?”

“He’ll hear if there’s more than one voice. I’ll speak. The queen will speak.”

“The queen?” He looked into the distance, calculating the benefit. After a long moment he said, “It can’t get back to the bishop.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“Thank me by pouring me another cup. In York they’re very near with the wine when the king’s away.”

She wondered why he didn’t ask his Christ to make wine out of water, but no doubt he’d have an answer for that, too. She poured, then excused herself to check with Gwladus, who told her that in hall the king had called for the scop; there was no hurry.

She went back to James. They drank steadily. He told her of the church in York: The Frankish stonemasons were skittish about every omen, fractious about the weather, finicky about the food. The choir, on the other hand, was beautiful, just wondrous, like heavenly angels.

His eyes glistened, his chin lifted. He stroked his carved cup. The wine made him happy. When you understood what made people happy, you understood them.

“Deacon,” she said, “have you ever seen Paulinus happy?”

He ran a finger round the rim of his cup. “I have seen him uplifted in the service of God.”

“Especially when it is in service to himself?”

He leaned back, hands behind his head. “That’s not quite it. It’s more that he’s a man, though he likes to pretend otherwise.”

She waited but he did not seem inclined to say more. “He doesn’t think he’s a man?”

“No, no. Simply that as a man he can persuade himself of ridiculous things in order to persuade others.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Most of the time he believes he is truly saving all those hundreds of half-drowned baptisands.” He mused for a moment. “And when he doubts himself, I’d say he banishes those doubts by banishing his bodily needs, denying his humanness.”

Reminded, he eyed the wine jug. She nodded and gestured for him to go ahead. He poured and sipped.

“Ah. That’s a truly lovely wine. But when it comes to the joys of the flesh, I am weak. No doubt because I’m a mere deacon. Paulinus, being a bishop, is made of sterner stuff.”

“I’ve noticed that he doesn’t care for food or wine.”

“He thinks bodily joy—love of wine, of a handsome figure, of venison smothered in bilberries—a weakness, a sin.”

“But you don’t.”

“God made our bodies. And God is love. Love is never wrong. And so love of bodily joy, I think the Christ would agree, is never wrong.” He picked up his cup. “Except when it becomes greed. Which leads to gluttony. Which is most definitely a sin.”

“How can you tell the difference?”

“That, dear child, is a mystery. For today, let us say five cups of wine is love, and six gluttony.”

“Then you can have one more.”

He beamed. “That’s so.”

“I have another question.”

He waved a hand magnanimously.

“Why does God speak to some people and not others?”

She pretended to sip while he picked carefully through his thoughts. Next time she would suggest that the line between love and gluttony might be moved to eight cups.

“The only priests God speaks to, in my experience, are those who think they should be overbishop.” He raised his eyebrows: Did she understand?

She nodded. All priests lie. Except to the pope. “But God does listen to some people. He listened to some of the mothers when their children were dying.”

“Listening is not the same as speaking.”

“He will speak to me. Tell me how.”

“Oh, my dear. I wish we were sitting in the sunshine of Rome.”

She frowned. “Does sunshine make a difference?”

“No, no. But Rome does. There are Greek texts… The Greeks thought about these things. You’d like them.” He shook his head. “But I have none here. The bishop doesn’t see the value. To tell you the truth, I don’t think he reads it very well.”

“Teach me how to talk to him. I want to ask something.”

“Well, I don’t think the bishop would disagree with me if I said that God helps those who help themselves.”

She considered that. “So I can ask for something if I do something?” Give a gift, get an audience. That made sense. She had already arranged the alliance between deacon, queen, and seer. She would ask for an omen.

God sent an omen at dawn, tangled in a birder’s net.

Hild stood in a shaft of light in the king’s hall and held out the jay by its unnatural white legs. She shook it lightly. The king, the queen, even James stepped back.

“Look closely, my king.”

But Edwin wouldn’t come near it.

“White legs, white bill, white eyes. White as a ghost. But caught in a net, killed by hunters who already had full bags.” She gestured at two men by the door, with nets and slings tucked in their wide leather belts and bloodstained game bags at their hips. They looked as though they would bolt, but for Gwrast on one side and Oeric on the other.

Edwin ignored them. “Tell me what it means.”

“A warning about greed. Christ, they say, is often spoken of as a white bird.” She looked at James, who nodded. Doves were white birds, after all. “The people ask: Why would I want to be baptised if my wyrd is to end strangled in a net? Others say: Greed is what killed the white bird, the hunter’s greed. That sometimes the birds in the bag are enough. Greed and hurry, Edwin king.”

“Ah. You’re talking about the Crow. You want me to rein him in.” He looked at Æthelburh, who nodded, and at James, who bowed his assent. Then at Hild. “I’ll have to give him something to do,” he said.

“There’s Craven. We’re to go in summer. The bishop could go ahead of us.”

He thought about it. “Well, why not? Make him cousin Osric’s problem. But not too much of a problem. We can’t have more murmuring. The deacon here will go to keep an eye on him.”