Hild

3

THE QUEEN’S ROOM at Sancton smelt of blood and weeping and, perhaps, Hild thought, something else. She stood by the door hanging, watching, listening, while her mother and the king stood by the empty bed. Like the last time Cwenburh miscarried, her women had washed her and carried her away to a new apartment, so that when she woke she would not have to remember staring at the heroic embroidery of the white horse, or the blooming apple tree, or that knot in the pine cladding on the ceiling while she screamed and bled and pushed and wept: for a bladder-size sack of slimed slipperiness, for nothing.

“It would have been a girl, my king,” said Breguswith. “It would have been your peaceweaver.”

Edwin was trembling. “Her women assured me this time all was well.”

“Yes, my king. They thought it was.”

“They?”

Perhaps her mother hadn’t seen Edwin’s rage. Hild took a step into the room.

“Are you, lady, not one of them?”

Another step, and another until she stood by the small table at the head of the bed.

“Oh, no, my king,” her mother said. “That is, yes, but you may recall I suggested to the queen after the last time that she wait, perhaps for a very long while.”

“And you?” Edwin whirled on Hild, who was sniffing the queen’s cup, and thinking. “Perhaps an eight-year-old may prove wiser than the collective mind of my entire household. Tell me your prophecy, O shining light!”

Hild put the cup down. She didn’t understand why he was so angry. He didn’t care much for his wife, and despite the court’s cautious optimism of the last few weeks about the queen’s pregnancy, no one could be surprised at this event, not after all the others. So it was something else.

“Uncle, your wife will bear no more babies.” Not while Breguswith made her special heather beer and disguised the sweet gale with tansy.

“None?”

She shook her head.

“I need a peaceweaver!”

Hild said nothing.

“I need one. Over the water those cursed Idings are making their name with Eochaid’s freckled brat, Domnall, who took a retinue to Meath and won some small squabble that they name a great battle, and today I find one of them has married a Pictish princess. A Pict! Now I have Idings feeling their oats at both ends of the Roman wall. Do you know what that means?”

“War.”

He blinked. “You’ve seen this?”

Hild shook her head. There would be war, it was the way of the world. Young stags watched for the old to falter. The exiled Idings were feeling their strength, and Edwin had no daughters to marry into alliance with other Anglisc kings, and the Irish and Pictish might watch the old stag and think his antlers too heavy for his head. They might think it time to sweep down from the north and put the Idings as client kings on the throne. “Like the king stag, you must lift your head and show your tines.”

“Well they are still sharp, by the gods. I have three hundred gesiths sworn to me til death. I give them treasure. I am greatly to be feared!”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“I will take the Isle of Vannin.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“You’ve seen this?”

Hild was used to his abrupt decisions and equally sudden reversals, but she could not get used to his insistence on visions. She looked at her mother, who gave her the look she had given on Modresniht more than a year ago—Talk to the king!—and gave the impression of stepping back a pace.

Hild tried to tell Edwin what she saw.

“The rooks in the west wood build their nests high in the elms. The squirrels skip past rowan berries without tasting.”

He waited.

Hild did her best. “The rooks don’t expect great winds; the squirrels know that other forage is plentiful yet.” He didn’t seem to understand. Her mother, at least, was nodding. Hild stepped back very slightly.

“My king,” Breguswith said. “Our guiding light foresees that the winter weather will be a while. And with fine weather you might still take a ship to the Isle of Vannin, while Fiachnae mac Báetáin of the Dál nAriadne is drinking with the Ulaid in their moss-grown, fog-bound land.”

“It is a risky plan.”

“Yes, my king. But you are brave and your war band strong.”

Edwin stared at the brightly woven blanket pulled over the bloodied mattress. Hild doubted he even saw its beautiful pattern, the poppy orange and calf-eye brown. But it didn’t take the light of the world to prophesy that if the blanket were not washed very soon it would be ruined, fit only for housefolk, and a blanket like that took two women a winter to card, spin, dye, and weave. And if someone didn’t take away the cup soon, someone else might work out what had happened.

“And no peaceweaver?” He was looking at Hild.

“No, Uncle.”

“Will she die?”

She didn’t believe her mother bore Cwenburh any ill will. “Perhaps not, if she tries no more children.”

But two months later, as the court packed its wagons to move to York, where Edwin would consult with his lords on the matter of a winter war—a war that could have been fought and won by now if he hadn’t changed his mind so often—Cwenburh told her cousin, Mildburh, that she was again with child. Mildburh told Hereswith, who told her mother and Hild.

Breguswith was scanning their apartment one last time—all was stowed in chests and bags; housefolk were dismantling the beds—when Edwin sent a boy to call Hild and her mother to his hall. They donned light wraps.

It was a cold, grey morning of wind and fitful rain. Oxen lowed as drovers herded them from their warm byre and began the long business of fitting yokes and checking harnesses. Rain drummed on the stretched leather of the waiting wagons. Coelgar and his men marked wagon beds with chalk as they were loaded.

The hall was dark and cool. The fires were out, the best hangings already taken down and rolled, and Edwin’s great sword and spear lifted from their hooks above his chair. Indeed, housefolk stood about, clearly waiting to remove the chair itself. By him stood Coifi, bare-armed and bear-cloaked as usual. And Lilla and a young gesith—tall as a fifteen-year oak sapling—called Forthere, looking watchful. And the latest Christ bishop, one of the less common ones, who held rolls of pale leather to the light and stared and murmured—their god must be very strange. And even the ugly old woman children threw stones at, who made auguries from burnt pinecones and the flights of birds. Dunne, Hild had heard her called. The hall reeked of sacrifice oils and incenses.

“You told me she would bear no more children,” the king said to them as they walked into the dim hall.

“Nor has she, my king,” said Breguswith.

“Yet,” said Coifi.

“Aye,” said the old woman. “She seems strong as a mare.”

“So she seemed at other times,” Breguswith said.

Everyone looked at Hild, who said nothing.

“I want auguries,” the king said. “I want the opinion of every god mouth in this hall, and I want it before I climb on that miserable wagon.”

“My lord King, the gods require things done in the proper order and in the proper—”

“Today, Coifi. And we’ll start with you.”

“Now?”

“Now. Go find your bullock and knife.” He looked around. “And you, Mother, what do you need?”

“Only the outdoors, and mayhap a fire.”

Edwin stood, gestured to one of the hovering housefolk. “Bring a torch and some firewood, and my cloak while you’re about it. And if you see the priest, tell him we’ll be…” He looked at the old woman.

“By the undern daymark.” The three tall elms south of the gate, where, from the well by the bread kitchen, their silhouette cut the horizon immediately below where the sun hung on a cloudless day in the quarter day before midday, undern. Today was not cloudless. Hild wondered if she should run and fetch her mother’s heavy cloak and a hand muff. In this rain there could be no fire on the brow of the hill, so it would be a bird augury, and Hild knew there would be few rooks by those elms at this time of day. It would be a cold wait, and her mother’s joints had been more painful than usual. But then they were all moving and there wasn’t time.

Auguries and sacrifice: crude tools of toothless petitioners. Or so her mother said, even as she’d rehearsed Hild in every variation. But she said, over and over, there was no power like a sharp and subtle mind weaving others’ hopes and fears and hungers into a dream they wanted to hear. Always know what they want to hear—not just what everyone knew they wanted to hear but what they didn’t even dare name to themselves. Show them the pattern. Give them permission to do what they wanted all along.

What did Edwin want to hear?

By the time the king, swathed in a blue cloak (With our hair colour, blue is better), stood by the elms, almost forty people, including Coifi and his assistants—free of all edged iron, as befitted servants of the god—leading a calf, were assembled. Twenty or more were gesiths. They’d been bored at Sancton, nothing to do but play knucklebones, fight over women, and burnish their chain mail, and they loved a good prophecy. They stood about, smelling of iron and strong drink, spears resting on their shoulders, sword hilts jutting from the waist at their left hand, for the warrior gesith did not wear cloaks, except on a hard march. One was throwing his knife, a pretty jewelled thing, at the burr partway up the trunk of the closest elm, yanking it free, pacing, throwing. Soon there would be jeers, then boasts, then bets, then more ale, then a fight.

At least it had stopped raining.

A man, the head drover, trotted up the rise, fell to one knee in the wet grass, and spoke to the king. The king nodded, then shouted out to the old woman. “The wagons are ready, Mother. Will your gods speak?”

“I will call the gods to speak, if you lend me a war horn.”

“A war horn? Very well.” He gestured to Lilla, who handed him the great horn of the Yffings. He held it up for all to see. “Will this do?” The gold filigree around the rim and tip shone as yellow as the absent sun. “Mind now, Mother, even if the omens are the right ones, you don’t get to keep this one.” He handed it back to Lilla, who walked it over to the old woman.

She weighed it in her hands. “You are familiar, lords, with omens of black-winged birds.” Hild, who had been watching the gesith with the dagger—it would be Cian’s birthday soon and she was wondering where she could get him a pretty thing like that—focused on the old woman. Her mother straightened subtly. They didn’t look at each other. Black-winged bird. Why not just say rook? “If the birds fly from the southwest during undern, it portends numerous offspring. If they fly overhead, the fulfilment of wishes.”

Hild ran through the portents her mother had schooled her in. If the birds flew from the southeast during morgen, the first quarter of the day, the enemy will approach. From the east was more difficult: relatives coming, or battle to arise, or death by disease. During æfen, and on into sunset, if they flew in the southeast, treasure would come, and overhead meant the petitioner would obtain the advantages hoped for. Then there were the more ominous single-bird sightings, and the opposite meanings assigned to two birds. But now it was undern, the quarter day before the sun stood at its height, and they were interested in rooks, many rooks, flying from the southwest or overhead, because it was rooks that roosted in the undern elms and the elm wood beyond. What did Edwin want to hear? He wanted a peaceweaver, yes, but what else?

The old woman lifted the horn and blew a blast that surprised everyone. Below, in the fenced settlement, two warhorses screamed. War hounds bayed and other dogs barked. The gesiths all dropped spears to the ready. One, with a shield, brought it to the defence position. And then Hild understood. A war horn. Recognised by man and beast. Even crows and ravens. And crows and ravens nested to the south and east of Sancton, among the elm and oak on the other side of the river. Ravens knew war, knew the tasty morsels war offered. They would come.

They did, seven of them: big and black and bright, croaking up from the southwest, then flying overhead once and landing with audible thumps on the turf at the top of the hill.

“Seven black-winged birds from the southwest, that then flew overhead, my king. Seven, the luckiest number of all. Numerous offspring and the fulfilment of your wishes, King. Dunne says you shall have your peaceweaver.”

“Well, Mother Dunne, you shall have your reward.” Edwin looked for Coelgar, remembered he would be with the wagons. “Lilla here will see word is given for your winter comfort.”

It was an undeniable omen. The old woman was clever. A war horn to call ravens. Hild would remember that.

The king, now in high good humour, looked at the Christ bishop. “And you, Anaoc?”

The Christ priests were mostly envoys from British kingdoms, come to talk to a rising king about trade and alliances and marriages. Anaoc was from the kingdom of the southwest wealh, or as they called it, Dyfneint, whose every other king seemed to be named Geraint.

“Christ and all his followers abjure superstitiones.”

The king, still smiling, said, “Don’t spit.”

Anaoc swallowed. “My lord, we refuse divination, idolatry, and the swearing on the heads of beasts.”

Superstitiones. Hild tried the word in her mouth. Superstitiones. It must be Latin.

“But it works, Anaoc.”

“We have no quarrel with that, my lord. We who live in the light of Christ find superstitiones sinful not because they are not efficacious but because they are efficacious due to the intervention of demons.”

“Demons.”

“Servants of the devil, God’s adversary.”

Edwin scratched the snakes of his beard. “You’re a bold man. Does this boldness mean your prince no longer wishes my help against the Gewisse?”

“No, my lord! That is, yes, my lord, our need is as urgent as ever. It is only that I cannot help you because my God will not speak through animals or other portents.”

“Though your god’s enemies will?”

Anaoc nodded unhappily.

“So the god saying through his birds that I will have more children speaks as the enemy of your god?”

Anaoc said nothing.

“Now this is very interesting, priest. Am I to believe, then, that your god does not wish me to have more children?”

One of the drunker gesiths spat. Hild doubted he’d even been listening, but Anaoc swallowed again and bent his head. “My lord, forgive me, I am but a mortal. My God does not make His wishes known to me.”

“Then what use are you to man or beast?”

A gust of wind shook a spatter of raindrops from the daymark elms. Coifi’s bullock lowed.

Edwin smiled. “We’ll talk more of your Christ god and his enemies another time, priest. Coifi, the priest of Woden, has a calf whose innards wish to speak of our destiny.”

Anaoc bowed and withdrew. When he thought no one was watching, he wiped his shaved forehead with his sleeve. The Dyfneint’s petition would fail because Anaoc had failed; the kingdom would soon fall to the Gewisse and its people be sold into slavery. Hild wondered if the priest’s god would be a comfort to him then.

She turned her attention to Coifi, whose attendants had the bullock by the nostrils and who himself was beginning the slow one-handed drumbeat. Dum-dum, dum-dum, like a heartbeat—though, without the hard enclosure of the ritual place, the drum had no resonance, no menace.

The drum beat faster, like a heart speeding up. Away from the usual ceremonies it sounded thin and wrong. Perhaps it was because childbirth was a woman’s issue, and Woden was leader of the Wild Hunt, carrier-off of the dead, god of gods, a man’s god; even the elms they stood by were men’s trees.

The nearest stand of ash was a good mile or so up the river. Hild had been there with Cian only a few days ago. It had been wet then, too, and Cian had been wondering aloud, again, who would sponsor him for his sword. The leaves would fall soon, he said, and it would be his birthday, and Hild’s, and one day his fifteenth birthday would come and there would be no one to give him his sword. Hild had told him, again, that all would be well, she knew it would be, she just wasn’t sure how.

The drum stopped. Coifi handed it to the young man behind him, raised his bare arms. “Woden! All father! Husband to Eorðe.” Edwin leaned forward and Hild sensed her mother move slightly; she had realised something. But Hild didn’t dare look at her. “Here stands your many times son, Edwin 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, and of his wife, Eorðe. He asks that you both guide my hand as I give to you a bullock, so that you may speak your wills in the matter of a peaceweaver for your son and his wife, Cwenburh.”

He held out his hand to the assistant with the drum, who handed him the black knife.

At Goodmanham, and in the enclosure here at Sancton, Coifi had roofless temples floored in boards that were scrubbed white before every sacrifice. Hild wondered how the blood patterns would be read on the wet and already slippery grass.

The bullock knew something was up. Perhaps he smelt the blood awareness in the tightening attention of the gesiths. He bellowed and tried to kick out at Coifi’s assistants but one managed to grab the bullock’s tail and lift it, and the bullock stretched out his neck and lowered his head. Coifi, slick as goose grease, slashed its throat with one diagonal backhand slice. Blood dropped like a red sheet from the open neck, like something in a mummer’s play. It spattered and gurgled and just as the bullock’s front legs buckled Coifi moved again, but this time Hild saw his muscles bunch and strain as he whipped the knife along the beast’s underside. Its guts fell out.

They fell in one neat package, a good omen, though still attached by the intestine, and in some ugly turn of fate looked like nothing but a gigantic stillbirth, dangling its umbilical cord. Coifi cut the gut cord swiftly, but everyone had seen it.

“The blood, my king,” he said, and pointed with the knife. His whole forearm was red-sleeved and glistening, but even as Hild watched wiry hairs on his arm sprang upright, like red worms after rain.

The king, like all of them, had difficulty moving his eyes from the obscene gut package to the edge of the blood moving sluggishly, as a cold snake might, downslope to the elms.

“Woden has spoken!” Coifi shouted. “He calls the blood to him. He accepts your sacrifice. You will have your peaceweaver.” But without the enclosure his voice was trained for, his pronouncement sounded insubstantial, a cast skin rather than the snake itself.

No one said anything for a moment. The smell of blood was overwhelming, thick and sweet. The gesiths didn’t like it, it reminded them of too many brothers fallen. Edwin was shaking his head. He didn’t like it, either.

Clouds thickened and darkened overhead and birdsong changed. It was about to rain again.

Breguswith slung one side of her wrap over her shoulder and stepped forward, her hand touching the crystal seer stone on her belt. She gestured at the sack of entrails glistening by the gutted bullock. “This is the smell of the queen’s bed.”

Edwin said, “You have seen this?”

“Waking and sleeping.” Dreams were the most powerful of all prophecies. “There will be no peaceweaver from this queen.”

This queen.

Hild’s stomach tightened down to a lump as hard as twice-baked bread. The smell was terrible and her mother would make it happen again, over and over. Couldn’t they see?

She lifted her face to the sky. The clouds were as dense as the tight black wool of the upland sheep. She wished it would rain now.

“And you?” Edwin said to her, his eyes glimmering and green in the darkening morning. “You have seen this, too?”

Hild had a sudden hideous thought: What if everything that had ever died lay rotting where it fell? All the frozen birds, the misborn lambs, the leverets savaged by foxes. One stinking charnel pit. What if the world never came clean? “It will all wash away,” Hild said desperately. It always had before. “It will rain, and the blood will wash away and the carcass will be taken away and all will be fresh and new.” Wouldn’t it?

Then a fat droplet burst against the back of her neck. She lifted her face to the rain, cold and clean.

Coifi looked at her. His eyes were black and blank, like a stoat’s when it eyes a fledgling fallen from the nest, but then Breguswith pulled her mantle up over her head and her elbow broke the priest’s line of sight. Though not Edwin’s, not the gesiths’, not Anaoc’s. Her mother wanted them to remember what she’d said: All will be fresh and new. She had no idea why that was important and her heart was kicking like a hare. But she had been trained to show a still face so she raised her own mantle and looked back. Anaoc made that flickering hand gesture over face and chest that Christ priests made when they were afraid.

The drover reappeared, this time with Coelgar. As they spoke to the king, the drover shifted from foot to foot. Edwin listened and nodded and turned to his entourage.

“The wagons are miring themselves so rapidly they’ll sink to meet the root of the one tree if we delay much longer. We will leave now.” The look he directed at Coifi and Anaoc as they backed away respectfully was dissatisfaction. The gesiths ambled off as they pleased; they were the king’s chosen, they had never needed to learn the obsequiousness of priests.

Edwin turned to her. “So you’re a weather worker, too.”

She started to shake her head but her mother put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed and said, “She is filled with a light she does not yet understand, my king.”

“Though you do, of course.” He laughed shortly. “Then ride in my wagon and we will discuss Cwenburh and her health and where to look for these new beginnings.”

In the wagon her mother and uncle talked of marriage prospects. Hild listened as best she could, recognising the names of some Kentish princesses and East Anglisc æthelings and, to her surprise, Hereswith. That’s what Edwin wanted: not just the alliance forged by a peaceweaver but a new wife, bringing her own, even more powerful bond to another kingdom. Coifi hadn’t understood. Her mother had, and had plans… But Hild had had a fright and was now safe from the priests and with her mother. She didn’t want to think about it. She fell asleep.

At York, Edwin’s counsellors and thegns and gesiths agreed that the Isle of Vannin, midway between Ireland and the mainland, could and should be taken. The war band left just as the leaves began to turn. Cwenburh’s belly grew during the two months before Yule, grew during the twelve days of feasting at the kingless court, grew as the royal women and their personal retainers—men like Burgræd and his now-strapping son, Burgmod—made their slow way by ship down the river to Brough and then transferred to bigger ships and sailed up the rocky coast of the northern sea to Bebbanburg. As the sea dashing against the fort’s stone foundation turned from the cold, heavy waves of winter to the restless turbulence of spring, the queen’s belly grew. It grew as news came that the cattle at Yeavering were swollen with calf and in the vales the bumblebees were out early and in large numbers and it would be a spring of plenty.

In the stone fastness Hild watched her mother, who, in Edwin’s absence and Cwenburh’s absorption in her belly, tightened her reins on the running of the household and laughed with the queen at her happiness. She seemed unperturbed by the queen’s continuing good health. As the days lengthened, she spent time teaching Hereswith and Mildburh the intricate work of piled weaves. It must have been difficult, because it made Hereswith bad-tempered. In the evenings, with the light good for nothing but spinning and skeining, they joined the other women of the household in their gemæcce pairs, old woman with old, young with young, women who had woven and spun and carded together for years, through first blood and marriage and babies, who had minded each other’s crawling toddlers and bound each other’s scraped youngsters, and wept as each other’s sons and daughters died of the lung wet, or at hunt, or giving birth to their own children—all while they spun, and carded and wove, sheared and scutched and sowed. Hereswith and Mildburh, Breguswith and Onnen, Cwenburh and Teneshild, old Burgen and Æffe. Onnen was the only wealh. Hild watched them, and the other not-yet-girdled girls—Cille and Leofe, who were already meant for each other, and half a dozen younger—and wondered when her mother might choose her gemæcce and who it might be. She was taller than all the unmatched girls, even the ones with breast buds, just as her mother was taller than the queen and Cian was unusually tall for a boy with a wealh mother. In the stories, tall and royal ran in the same breath.

It was usual that a highborn girl was paired with one who was slightly less so, that they might travel together when one married. In Hereswith and Mildburh’s case, Mildburh might be the queen’s cousin, but Hereswith was the highest ranking unmarried female blood relative of the king. She was the default peaceweaver. But perhaps not for long, not if Cwenburh brought her child to term and it was a girl.

Tonight, they were using beeswax tapers, a new luxury, because Ædilgith, recently returned with her gemæcce, Folcwyn, from the court of the East Angles, said that Rædwald’s queen and daughters made magnificent embroideries by such light, and the court was the richer for it. And indeed, Hild thought, as she rewound Ædilgith’s skein of blue-green wool while Ædilgith held—for Folcwyn was shaking with the ague, caught no doubt from the East Anglisc marsh they had passed on their way to the coast—the tapers cast a light as white and clean as moonlight. Though moonlight never wavered the way the taper light did when one of them flicked a veil back over a shoulder—Ædilgith said the East Anglisc wore their veils longer, too—or stood to rearrange her dress and then resettled on her stool or the cushioned travelling chests.

Ædilgith tapped the side of Hild’s hand and motioned for her to pay attention to the tension on the yarn between them. “I like this colour.”

“It’s uneven,” Hild said, thinking about the East Anglisc. Good enough only for housefolk.

Ædilgith glared at her. Hild glared back. After a moment Ædilgith decided to ignore the insult. “Folc thinks that if the year is as rich as it seems it could be, and trade is good and the king generous, we might buy indigo. Think of it. Weld and indigo would make a green bright as a grebe’s feather.”

“Like your eyes,” Hild said, to be friends again. Ædilgith was notoriously vain about her eyes. Her most prized possession was a beryl ring, and Hild had overheard her tell Folcwyn that she wouldn’t marry any man who couldn’t give her beryls for her ears and green garnets for her veil band. Hild wondered who Hereswith might marry, then remembered that mention of her name in the king’s wagon. Already it seemed a long time ago. Hereswith’s bleeding had come more than a year since; it was past time, Onnen said, to find her a husband. But would she marry as peaceweaver to a victorious overking or as the gemæcce of the cousin of the queen by marriage of a defeated northern warlord? It all depended not only on Cwenburh but on the fight for the Isle of Vannin, and they’d had no word.

Hild did what she always did when she couldn’t influence a thing; she stopped thinking about it.

Cwenburh was sitting quietly, leaning against Teneshild, who was laughing at Æffe, who was pointing at the newly whitewashed wall opposite the doorway. “Yes,” Æffe was saying. “Coloured paint on the walls, like the undercroft in York. Anything you like. I saw it in Frankia, oh, long ago.”

“A picture of anything?” Teneshild said.

“The queen had a picture of rutting couples which she kept covered by a tapestry except when she and her women would be undisturbed.”

Now everyone was listening.

“Hung like stallions, they were.”

“Sounds uncomfortable to me,” Burgen said.

Several women shifted on their stools.

“Mind you, in my younger days I saw a man once who would have put old Thuddor the Yeavering bull to shame.”

“Only saw?” Burgen said.

“Yes,” Æffe said with such regret that they all laughed. “He was my brother’s cowherd. He’d been rounding up the calves for gelding. It was a hot day. He didn’t know I was there. He pulled off his tunic and just poured water all over himself.” She grinned. “The water was very cold. He might have looked like Thuddor before he got wet but more like a freemartin after.”

Off-colour jokes followed, until Burgen began a more serious talk about how to keep your cunny slick so you could take your man inside as many times as you wanted, no matter how big his stick. She had dismissed goose grease, pondered flaxseed oil, and was about to discuss the merits of Frankish walnut oil when Cwenburh straightened and said, “Have you ever seen a fountain?”

A few older, well-travelled women, who knew what a fountain was, smiled, expecting another joke.

Burgen obliged. “All husbands are fountains if you treat them right.”

“No,” the queen said. “A real fountain, built of stone. Have you seen one?” In the strange white wax light, she looked pale. “I’ve heard that there’s one up by the great wall, at Caer Luel, a fountain that still works. That’s the picture I’d like on my bedchamber wall.”

“What’s a fountain?” Leofe said.

“It’s a white stone spout in a white stone courtyard from which water squirts like a whale’s breath.”

“Truly?” said Ædilgith.

“Oh, yes,” said Æffe, “and then the whole thing bursts into song and flies away.”

“No,” said Cwenburh, “no, it’s real. A Christ priest told me of it, once. He said in summer it was like standing by a waterfall, cool as a cave. Imagine, being cool as a cave in the middle of summer.” She wiped her neck. She was sweating. In winter.

Hild looked around, saw her mother watching the queen intently.

“A fountain,” Cwenburh said. “I would like a fountain. A picture of one at least, so that when I lie on my bed, when I lie on my bed…” And she bent suddenly in the middle like a hairpin.

Teneshild put a hand on Cwenburh’s shoulder. “My queen?”

Cwenburh cried out, forlorn as a bird in a net.

Breguswith stood. “Lie her down, lie her down now. Loosen her girdle.”

“It’s the babe,” Teneshild said.

“Yes, and too early. Hild, bring me my bundle. Ædilgith, go fetch cold water—cold, mind, for drinking—and you, ladies, if you will,” this to Æffe and Burgen, “please gather the tapers so I can see, and send everyone away, and then ask the housefolk for hot water. Mildburh, Hereswith, stay with me. The queen will have need of a kinswoman at this hour. No,” she said to Teneshild, who was lifting the curtain to Cwenburh’s bed alcove, “there’s no time for that. Onnen, help me.”

There was no time for anything. No time for Ædilgith to return with water, no time for farewells, time only for one long wail and a great slow seep of blood and a sigh, and the queen was dead.

Hild regarded her mother as she closed the queen’s eyes. Her mother’s hair was no longer the same colour as Hereswith’s. The rich honey shine was duller, as though dusted with ash, the way petals lose their brilliance before they shrivel and fall. But Hereswith was about to bloom. And thanks to her mother, when the time came she would take her place as peaceweaver.

Breguswith looked up, saw Hild watching her, and smiled. She didn’t say anything, but Hild knew what she was thinking: Thanks to me your prophecy has now come true. The king will give us everything we have dreamt of.

Hild lay on her stomach in the loft of the new Yeavering byre, looking down through the platform timbers at the old tom who liked to curl up in the straw between the milch cows. The faggots of tree hay prickled through her underdress but she barely noticed. Part of her mind was on the tom—his left ear was missing in a line too clean to be from a cat fight—and part was daydreaming of the war trail. She was going with the king and his war band when summer turned from green to gold. She would see a fountain, deeds worthy of song. She might be the one they sang about. She was the light of the world. Everything she said became true.

The tom liked to clean himself before curling up. He always began with his balls. He reminded her of the old thegns who had once been gesiths but now lived on land given by the king. When they came to visit they scratched themselves in hall, and after too much mead bored the young gesiths with stories of how hard it had been in their day, swearing that, by Thunor, if they didn’t have responsibilities at home, they’d stand with them in the shield wall and the youngsters would see a thing or two!

Perhaps she’d get to see a shield wall. Perhaps she would see patterns that no one else could. She might be worth a score of gesiths to a king who would listen…

The tom had cleaned his balls and his belly and was now working on his forepaws in that on-off, this-then-that way that meant he was falling asleep, when Hild heard her mother’s low voice.

“… can not. No. Anglisc ladies don’t tread the war trail.”

“But lowly wealh do?” Onnen. They were right beneath her. “For pity’s sake, she’s a child.”

She couldn’t see them; the gap between the timbers was in the wrong place. She inched to the edge of the platform then stopped. If they were facing her way they’d see her if she peered over. She flattened herself to the boards, willed her heart to stop its noisy banging, and listened hard.

“… she’s Yffing,” her mother was saying.

“She’s nine.”

“Needs must.” Rustle of straw, catch of fingernail on cloth. Her mother stepping forward to put her hand on Onnen’s arm? “And Edwin was just through those territories on his way to Vannin. Most of them. They know his strength. They can’t match it. They won’t try. She’ll be safe enough. And think: months under the eye of the king as the light of the world. Months!”

“And months for you out of the eye of the king to weave your schemes.”

Silence. Hild knew that silence and wasn’t surprised by her mother’s cool tone. “Hereswith needs training. Here.”

Here. Hild frowned.

“Please,” her mother said, and Hild’s heart squeezed. She had never heard her mother say please. “Keep her safe for me.”

Onnen sighed. “And if I can’t?”

“You will.”

Hild tried to sort it out. Her mother wasn’t coming. She was staying to train Hereswith. Her mother and Hereswith weren’t coming.

“…not like you,” Onnen was saying. “Some of the choices I make—you won’t like them.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” And now her mother sounded weary, which frightened Hild even more.

Rustle, flick. The sound of women turning to go, making sure their wrist cuffs and veils were in order.

Wait, she thought. Wait. She didn’t want to go on the war trail. She didn’t want to be part of a song. She wanted to stay with her mother.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the rafters. It didn’t matter. The king had already said yes, and when the king said yes, that was that. She was going, with or without her mother. Yffing, her mother had said. Needs must. And Please.

When she peered over the edge of the loft platform, the old tom was gone. If she never came back, would anyone miss him?