Hild

6

FURSEY, HOSTAGE TO THE KING and tutor to the light of the world, was fond of good wine and long conversations at meat about the wrongs of the world and how to right them, and in the course of things the long conversations naturally made him more thirsty. So Mulstan would call for the lyre more often than was usual, for Fursey, being Irish and highborn—the son of the daughter of the king of Connaught and baptised by Saint Brendan himself—respected the makers of music in hall before even his thirst for Mulstan’s fine wine or the sound of his own voice. But tonight it was yet too early for the lyre.

“This truly is a royal wine,” Fursey said to Onnen, who in Mulstan’s hall, where she spoke only Anglisc and wore clothes like a lady, sat at the lord’s table, not in his kitchen.

Onnen could only agree. Iberian, she’d told Hild the day before, as she had ladled up a cupful from one of the great jars fresh from the hold of an East Anglisc merchant. As strong as good dirt and as rich as blood. Fit for an emperor. But Hild had tasted it and spat, and would only drink it watered and sweetened with honey.

“Something Isidore himself might relish,” Fursey said. “Though he would no doubt quote Jerome: Growing girls should avoid wine as poison lest, on account of the fervent heat of their time of life, they drink it and die.” He smiled to himself, as if remembering some sunlit girl and her fervent heat. “Yes. A man’s drink.” He smiled again—but differently, as flat-lipped as an adder—at Onnen. “An expensive drink. Though, given that his lordship Mulstan has charge of all the trade in these parts, it’s no doubt only proper that he take some of the wares for himself every now and again.”

“He takes no more than his due as king’s thegn.”

“Naturally. For everything hereabouts is his due, is it not? And it would be a terrible thing to suggest that one’s host takes more than is quite proper.”

He looked her up and down, lingering on the magnificent chain of Byzantine and Roman medals draped over her breast that Mulstan had given her only last week.

Onnen’s spine was very straight. Hild put down her copper cup and looked over at Cian. He had put down his cup, too, and his face was turning red. Hild had a sudden regret at giving him the use of her seax.

“What’s the matter?” Begu whispered, but Hild shook her head.

“Oh, yes,” mused Fursey, “he does like his treats and his wealh ways.”

Fursey looked over at the red-faced Cian and smiled another of those snake smiles, and Hild saw the priest was drunk—just enough to let his devils out to play, as he might put it. Onnen saw it, too, and called to Cian.

“Cian, tell my lord Mulstan how you acquired your fine shield. Better yet, fetch it for him. My lord would like to see it.” She looked at Mulstan, who looked up from his conversation with the East Anglisc merchant captain and said, “Yes, yes, bring your shield, boy.”

Fursey watched him go then said in a voice pitched for Onnen’s ears, “His hair is a most remarkable colour, is it not? And it is interesting that his mother is making up to the most powerful man on the south Deiran coast. A man once sworn to Æthelfrith the Ferocious and perhaps still to his sons. A man with gold, who could command many swords, should he call for them. And the king already weakened in his fight with the Dál nAriadne.” He laughed, like the slither of silk. “No one expected Fiachnae to run around your king and storm Bebbanburg, did they? Or, oh yes, someone did. Your young charge here. Strange, that. And now here is Mulstan and that boy with the interestingly coloured hair, thrown together at an opportune time.”

Onnen contemplated the eating knife balanced in her hand, four inches of rippled steel honed to a sliver, and then Fursey. “Priest, are you tired of life?”

Begu stared at her. She knew Onnen only as the woman her father liked and who was a stern weaving teacher. Hild, who had seen Onnen gut more living things than most warriors could begin to dream of, did not believe, quite, that she would cut the priest. She found Begu’s hand and squeezed reassuringly.

“Not at all. The little maid’s uncle, your king, hired me as tutor and I am teaching.” Hild snorted inwardly. Hired. It was one way to describe being hauled from the bloodied mud on the south bank of the Tine and put to double use by a canny king. “If she’s to guide kings she’ll need subtlety, and all the Anglisc know is blade and blood and boast.”

Hild said in Irish, “You have not met my mother.”

He threw back his head and laughed, showing teeth and tongue stained dark with wine.

Onnen wiped her blade on the edge cloth, sheathed it, and stood. She leaned across Fursey and took the wine jar. “Our gracious host has been overly generous with his wine. You are not yourself.”

He reached to grab it back.

“Must I explain to my lord that you are in drink?”

Fursey cursed and reached for a sword that was not there. Accusations of drunkenness to an Irish noble, no matter his priestly vows, were tantamount to accusations of faith-breaking, for the word or boast of a drunken man was not to be relied upon.

Onnen smiled and cradled the back of Hild’s head briefly. “Learn well, little prickle. And you, Begu, it won’t hurt you to pay attention, though you must talk to me or Guenmon after of what you think you’ve learnt, for I’d not trust this sotted priest as far as I could fling him. I’ll send more wine when the lyre comes down from the wall.”

The next day Hild and Cian and Begu climbed the headland together, Hild and Cian copying Begu’s natural habit of grasping whatever shrubs or rocks came to hand to ease the strain on thigh and calf. The furze—gorse, Hild reminded herself, gorse—was in full flower. Hild had the Psalter, now carefully wrapped in a soft old cloth, tucked safely into her sash, and used both hands, but Begu seemed perfectly at ease swinging the cowbell with one hand and using only the other to climb. Cian, as usual, wore sword and shield and the slaughter seax. His hair was dressed back with goose grease like that of Mulstan’s men. He looked the very picture of a warrior, though somewhat slight and beardless.

When they reached the top, the headland smelt of windblown grass and cows. The horizon was dusty with purple heather, and daisies starred the grass. There was no sign of Cædmon or cows.

“He’ll be along,” Begu said, “but perhaps not until middæg.”

“A fort!” Cian said, pointing at the broken Roman signal tower, and he ran towards it, drawing his wooden sword. It wasn’t the same sword Ceredig had given him, he’d outgrown that one long ago, and kept it in his kist. This was sized for a man, shaped oak with a square of painted stone Hild had found from a broken pavement in Caer Luel set into the carefully carved hilt, and bits of begged scrap metal hammered into the edges to give it heft. His scabbard was a real one, but old, discarded long ago by one of Mulstan’s men, though now freshly relined with sheepskin and its wood cunningly painted to look jewelled and chased. Hild and Begu were working on a tablet weave to replace the fraying baldric.

Begu and Hild ran, too.

Cian climbed the low east wall, jumped inside, and popped up again, eyes shining. “You shall attack and I’ll defend!” He unslung his shield.

“Aren’t you old for games?” Cædmon, standing, rubbing his eyes. He’d fallen asleep inside the tower, waiting. He studied the odd sword for a moment. “Old for toys, too.”

Cian, ready for battle, slammed his sword hilt on his shield. “This is no toy!” The painted stone fell out of the sword.

Cædmon folded his arms and was about to smile when Begu said, “It isn’t a toy. Truly. My father just last night declared it a shield fit for an ealdorman. Didn’t he, Hild?”

“He did. And it was given to him by a Bryneich lord in the presence of the king. I was there. And the knife he wears slit the arm of a man of the Dál nAriadne.” Though she had been the one wielding it. “Begu and I are working on a baldric fit for a prince. And look, we have brought back your book.”

“And bell.” Begu, holding out the bell, looked about. “Where are the cows?”

“Having to do with the hall’s freemartin. Da thinks Winty—”

“The one caught with thorns,” Begu said to Hild.

“He thinks Winty might be in season and he wants to be sure before he begs the prize bull. Besides, I’ve not mended the hedge.” He unfolded his arms, took the bell and then the book. After a moment Cian sheathed his sword and slung his shield onto his back, then stooped to search for the fallen stone.

Cædmon unwrapped the book. He opened it upside down. “What does it say?”

“God things. Prayers.”

“Like songs?”

“Yes,” Hild said, surprised. “Like songs.”

He held the Psalter out. “Tell them to me.”

Hild stared at the black letters. “They are in Latin.”

“Then speak them to me in Anglisc. Here.” He pointed with his thick finger. “Tell me that.”

Hild remembered some of the words and could puzzle out others. She mouthed the Latin phrases to herself carefully, then thought about it. It would be easier in British, but then Begu wouldn’t understand. “And I am needy and poor. God, hurry for me. You can help me and save me. Lord, don’t dawdle.”

“God sounds like Guenmon,” Begu said. “Or your mam, Cian. Don’t dawdle! Hurry up!”

“Or was that his lord, not his god talking?” Cian said, picking up his painted stone.

“Lord and god are the same in this book, Fursey says.”

“A lord would never say don’t dawdle,” Cædmon said. He looked at Begu. “Would your da say that?”

“Not in hall. Up here he might.”

“Then”—Cædmon squinched his face up, thinking—“then maybe he would say, ‘And I am needy and poor. God, hasten for me. You are my help and saviour. O Lord, do not delay.’” He pointed again. “Tell me this bit.”

Hild traced the words with her finger, muttered the Latin to herself, and tried again. “Praise Him, sun and moon. Praise Him, shiny stars. Praise the Lord, you kings of the land and everybody, princes and judges, here.”

Everyone looked at Cædmon. He shook his head. “No.” No? He had no idea how difficult it was to read. To read in another tongue. To turn that tongue into Anglisc. She would never again make a difficult thing look easy. For a moment she missed being the bringer of light and having people truckle to her.

“No,” he said again. “Like this. ‘Praise Him, sun and moon. Praise Him, all you stars of light. Praise Him, you kings of the earth and all you peoples, you princes and all you judges of the earth.’ You have to say it like a hoofbeat. Like a song.”

Cian and Begu nodded. After a moment, so did Hild.

“Keep the book a while. Come up here at times and tell it to me. Once I get the hedge mended.”

The next morning Hild sought out Fursey and found him in hall eating oyster stew, drinking ale, and complaining to the young servingman about the size of the fire: “… so small it wouldn’t keep a rat’s arse warm, never mind a man about God’s work, and why are you gawping like that, you dim-witted spawn of a toadstool? More wood for the fire. More wood!”

He was talking in Irish of course, something he did on those days when he was still suffering from the night before but not yet drunk again.

“Father Fursey,” Hild said, also in Irish, for Anglisc at these times made him snappish. “Give you a good day. Might you be willing to talk to me, at all, about the worth of this priest’s breviarium psalterii?”

Fursey snorted, slurped up another mouthful of oysters, chewed and swallowed, and scratched his birthmark. “It’s worthless. A poor hand, and the text is corrupt, taken from an old, outmoded, and discredited translation of the Septuagint. And the old priest or, rather, someone who had gone before him made a personal and, might I add, eccentric selection of Psalms. Singularly without use or ornament.” Another slurp, more chewing, a noisy swallow followed by shouting for more ale, which the servant only understood when Fursey shook the empty leather cup in his face. “However, as a palimpsest—though it would take work and some pumice, which no doubt my lord Mulstan could acquire, him being so good at that and, ah”—he rubbed his hand over his chin—“pumice would be so welcome. Now what was I…? Worth. Yes. Well, as a palimpsest it could be worth as much as… Ach, give it to me.” He flipped through the pages, counting, measuring with his hands against the scarred board of the table. “Hmmn. Perhaps the skin of two lambs or one particularly small calf.”

“Thank you. Do you happen to know where Mulstan might be found?”

“I do so happen to know. And as soon as the misbegotten mushroom brings me more ale, I’ll be finding him, for it seems himself has need of my skills.”

“Perhaps you might be willing to name to me the place, so that I might find him and ask him a pressing question without taking up your most valuable time, and may god smile upon the rest of your day.”

“Does God ever smile, except perhaps at His more extravagant jokes?” Here he smiled mockingly, though whether at himself or the servingman refilling his ale cup, Hild could not tell. He took a long, long drink and shrugged. “Howsomever, Mulstan might be found at the dock house by and by, for there I’m to meet him and make record of some exotic shipment, but where he’ll be til then, the hairy creature, I couldn’t begin to say.”

Guenmon could say, and she did, and a lot more besides. She told Hild that if she hurried Mulstan might be found at the smithy, probably with Onnen. “And if you see that great boy skulking about tell him I have an errand or two. Hanging about his mam’s skirts like an unweaned calf…”

Fursey and Guenmon were both right, Hild saw, as she walked downstream beside the beck to the roaring furnace and stinking smoke of the smithy. Mulstan stood with Onnen just outside, out of range of the heat and sparks, watching whatever was happening within, while the smith’s hammer rang in that steady bang-bing-bing rhythm of a man intent upon his work. Mulstan was indeed hairy: His bushy hair, held back by a great gold ring inset with tortoiseshell, glinted red-gold in the sun, and his arms were furred like a fox. And Cian was, in fact, hanging about, standing a few dozen strides from Mulstan and his mother, out of earshot, pretending to be absorbed in a twig he was stripping, the twig he threw into the beck when he saw her.

He came to meet her. They stopped by the lime whose branches shaded a backwater of the beck. Its leaves were now bigger than her palms. When she’d first arrived the branches had been bare.

“Guenmon wants you,” she said.

Cian scowled.

“She has errands.”

“I’m busy.”

Hild said nothing.

“Look at them.” His voice shook with outrage.

Onnen had a hand resting lightly on Mulstan’s arm while he shouted something into the red-lit gloom for the smith; she was smiling.

“She’s happy.”

“She’s my mam!”

Onnen liked Mulstan, Hild could tell. She also knew Onnen liked the way he ran his holdings, though it lacked the fine and sharp efficiency a woman would bring to the household. She liked his daughter and his servants and the ease his housefolk felt in hall. And she leaned in towards him as though she liked his smell. And Mulstan liked her; Hild saw the way his nostrils flared as Onnen laughed at something he said and patted his arm.

“They’ll do what they’ll do, whether you’re here or not,” she said. Indeed, she’d be surprised if they hadn’t already done it. Cian knew that, too. They were both familiar enough with the ways of the hall at night, when a woman crossed to a man’s bench and crept under his blanket, and breathing got furtive, then fast. They’d seen the dogs, and the sheep at Yeavering, in the breeding pen by the River Glen; they’d even helped the horse master help the stallion with his stick that was so long he didn’t quite know where to put it.

Hild tried to imagine her own mother with a man with a stick so long he didn’t know where to put it, and couldn’t.

“Cian, come away. Come away now. We will do Guenmon’s errands together.”

She tugged on his belt, as she had when she was little, only now she did not have to reach up, and she realised that though he was tall, she would overtop him when they were both grown. She understood then that they were no longer quite children.

Something in her sudden stillness made him look down at her hand, and he nodded, and with one last look turned away with her down the path.

Once out of sight of the smithy, Hild stopped. “You go on. I must still speak to Mulstan. I’ll catch you up. Go on, go on now.”

She watched him walk down the path—whipping savagely with his sword at harebells by the way—then set about tidying her hair and smoothing her eyebrows. She tore a dock leaf from its stem and cleaned her shoes and straightened her sash. She missed her belt and seax.

Mulstan and Onnen looked up. Mulstan beamed through his beard. He looked like a grinning hedge. “Hild. Are you come to fetch me for something?”

Bang-bing-bing. Bang-bing-bing.

“No, my lord Mulstan.”

“Is something amiss? Is Begu well?”

“All is well, my lord.”

Both Onnen and Mulstan looked relieved.

Onnen smiled at him. “I’ll leave you to it, my lord.” She gave Hild a look, nodded at them both, and walked down the path—more slowly than usual and with a sway that Mulstan watched until she was out of sight.

He turned to Hild.

She tried to imagine how her mother might phrase a request that was not a request. “I’m come to ask a favour within your gift. Two favours. One for myself, and one in the name of my uncle, the king.” It was the longest thing she’d ever said in front of him. He peered about, startled, half expecting to see a voice thrower standing behind her.

He scratched his neck. “The king? Has a messenger come?”

“No, my lord. I owe a debt to one of your people. Royal kin should not owe debts, especially in troubled times.”

“No, no, I can quite see that,” Mulstan said, puzzled, but willing to go along with the odd maid who spoke with strange pauses, like someone receiving messages from the little people under the hill. She was, after all, high, very high, in the king’s favour. “To whom do you owe this debt?”

Bang-bing-bing, followed by a loud hiss as metal was plunged into the water trough.

Mulstan turned and peered into the smithy. “I do like the smell of quenching iron. Quite makes me feel like a young gesith with his first sword.” The maid said nothing. “Yes. So. Now. Who did you say you owe a debt to?”

“One Cædmon by name.”

“My cowherd’s son?”

“Yes, my lord.”

He frowned. “And what is the nature and amount of this… debt?”

“I have a book from Cædmon worth, by Fursey’s estimate, one calf or two lambs, but I have neither to offer.”

Ting-ting-ting: a smaller hammer. Whatever the smith was making it was not large, and it was almost done.

Mulstan smoothed his moustaches, perplexed. “How is it his book?”

“He saved it, when the old priest died. I thought to reward him for it.”

Mulstan pondered that. “And Fursey thinks it worth a healthy calf or two lambs?” The man must be mad. But this was the king’s niece, and one must tread carefully.

“He spoke of the skin of one calf or two lambs.”

“Ah, then that’s a different case.” He looked reflectively at the clouds, started to peer into the smithy again, thought better of it. “Cædmon. Yes, I know the boy. Dekke’s son. Mother dead of the flux that came through here long since.”

“The one that took Begu’s mother?”

The little people under the hill were clearly well informed. But no, the maid spent time with Begu. No doubt they talked as maids did. “The very same. So. No mother. An older sister, Bote, a milkmaid who forages at times for the kitchen. He seems like a good lad. Wealh, of course. Still, if you feel you owe him a debt then, yes, I’ll ask Guenmon what she suggests as good recompense. Perhaps a small pig, or a she-kid.”

Another great hiss from the smithy, then silence.

“Would such satisfy your honour?”

“Yes. Thank you. I shall recommend your generosity to my uncle.”

Her uncle the king. “Good, then. Good.” He looked relieved. Hosting people of influence was a chancy business. Then he remembered she had said two favours. “And there was another thing?”

She nodded, but this time imagining what her mother might say was no help, for her mother would not agree. She stood mute.

Mulstan put a hand on her shoulder. She was strange, this maid, but still only a maid and friend to his Begu. “Is this truly a serious matter?”

Hild nodded.

“Then you and I will withdraw to that rock.” He pointed to the boulder in the curve of the beck, worn smooth over the years, where the smith’s customers often sat on sunny days. “I find it easier to say a thing, sometimes, if I have another thing to look at.”

Mulstan sat with his knees wide apart and a great fox-furred hand on each massive thigh. Hild perched cautiously next to him. They watched the water. Insects darted to and fro.

“Are there fish?” she said.

“There are. And if we sit long enough, perhaps a trout will rise for a fly. And if we sit beyond that, perhaps a pike, a water wolf, will ease his way downstream from yonder backwater and find his dinner.” They listened to the splash and gurgle. “Now then. Straight as a spear: Tell me.”

“Cian, Onnen’s son, is unhappy. A sword would make him happy. You could give him one.”

Mulstan tipped his head back and studied the sky. The clouds were like puffs of wool, far away. “Cian is wealh.”

Hild said nothing.

“Aye, and so is his mother, for all her Anglisc ways.” He sighed and slid his seax along his belt to a more comfortable position. “He’s young.”

“He has no father.” Silence. Hild ploughed on. “When he was six, Ceredig, king in Elmet, gave him a wooden sword.”

“Ceredig?” He mused upon the implications of that, humming in his throat.

“And he has been gifted by lords of the north with shield and horse.” An exaggeration perhaps, but the pony, Acærn, like Ilfetu, had not left Tinamutha, so Mulstan would never know. “He has had the esteem of royalty. But Ceredig is no longer king in Elmet, and Cian is here. And his mother.”

The smith’s hammer started up again, ting-ting-ting. More throaty musings from Mulstan, only this time Hild made out words. “Young ram… wants to charge at things… his mother… who knows what at… Ceredig, eh?” He cleared his throat. “Well. Well. Has the boy had instruction?”

“My mother’s sworn man has shown him a little. He’s travelled with the royal war band. He sleeps in hall with your men and exercises all the time. The sword is his path.”

“You speak like a seer.” He sounded disapproving.

“It is his path.”

He knew the rumours. And she sounded so certain. But he hated this notion of meddling with wyrd.

“Please, lord. He is like a brother to me. I wish to see him happy.”

“No doubt so would his mother. Well!” He slapped his thighs and stood. “I thank you for bringing this to my attention, little maid. I will think on it.”

“Thank you, my lord, for listening. And for Cædmon’s kid, or pig. Thank you on behalf of my uncle.” The king.

Hild sat with Begu in hall to one side of the open door. Midafternoon sun poured into the hall, throwing shadows all one way along the floor. It shone on the carefully cleaned table where they sat, on the flat band of red-and-black tablet weave growing between them, and on the walrus ivory of the eight square tablets, each the size of a child’s palm.

“Keep it taut,” Begu said, for the third time.

Hild kept leaning forward to touch the ivory. The tablets she used at home were polished elm. Her mother’s were antler horn. These looked like something you could eat, like wafers of creamy curd or slices of the meat of some gigantic nut.

Each tablet had a separate warp thread through the holes at its four corners. They were twisted a quarter or half turn after every pass of the weft shuttle, also of ivory, to make the pattern. Hild had seen her mother and Onnen weave a band in one afternoon while one also worked a spindle and distaff and the other threaded the weft shuttle back and forth rapidly, beating in the weft every few passes. But she and Begu were new at this, and they must constantly stop to remind the other of something: turn this tablet a half turn, keep that warp taut, beat in that weft. It was a simple pattern but strong, a march of red and black squares.

Guenmon came by with a cup of meat tea for each. The men had killed two oxen that morning for tomorrow’s feast—Hild had heard the snarling and snapping of the bulldogs as they controlled the cattle for the butcher. The fresh bones were boiled with their tatters of meat in salted water to make a tasty drink thick with marrow. Guenmon had added a pinch of thyme and a hint of precious pepper.

“It smells like a dream,” Begu said.

“Wait til you see the meat itself,” Guenmon said. “Luscious and marbled through with fine white fat. The spring grass always does it. And there are to be three fat-tailed sheep, as well as all those waterfowl Mulstan will be bringing home in his net. Celfled has promised us a stitch of eels and a hind from her woods. And Cædmon’s sister brought us sacks of the freshest greens. But so she should, given that plump little milk goat the lord gave her. And I tasted that batch of mead we made from the run honey. Onnen’s the finest brewster I’ve met. Though I think I might be a better maltster.” She saw that neither girl had an opinion on the matter. “Well, now, that’s a fine bold pattern. For Cian is it?”

“It is.”

“Red and black. So as not to show the dirt and the blood, I expect.” Begu paled and paused. Guenmon tutted to herself. What did the girl think got spattered on such things? “Will it be ready for the feast?”

“I hope so,” Hild said.

Now there was a maid who wouldn’t be surprised by blood. “I’ll leave you busy little gemæcces to it, then.”

She smiled to herself at the sudden shyness that fell on the two girls as she walked away.

Gemæcce, Hild thought, staring at the pattern. She looked up, found Begu looking at her, blushed, looked down again. After a breath or two she looked up.

“Is it good?” Begu asked.

“Yes,” Hild said. “Yes, it’s good.” And she sipped at her tea and scalded her mouth and spat and laughed. “Ow. Be sure to blow on it. At my uncle’s table, no one blows on their food. You will have to learn to clap.”

“You will teach me.”

“Yes. At his table no one waits. The food arrives just right, or the housefolk are punished.” The wealh are punished. And Begu was half wealh—though beyond Mulstanton by the Bay of the Beacon no one would know.

When the housefolk began putting out the fires in hall, Hild went to find Onnen. She walked to the beach, where the grass met sand, past the place where kitchen servants turned their vast spits in their outdoor kitchens while others built a long, long board on the sand for the food, and found her between the two towering piles of wood that would be lit that night—that is, one towering pile, and one fallen mess.

Onnen was shouting at a slave in Anglisc. “Did I not say, throw the faggots on the shadow side of the pile, the shadow side?”

The slave hung his head. He was nearly as old as Mulstan, but thin and knob-kneed and barefoot.

“And where is the shadow? Look at me. Where is the shadow?”

The slave pointed.

“Yes. And why didn’t you throw the wood there, as I told you? Because you’re lazy, witless, and ignorant. And now the whole thing is a disordered heap and must be built again. I should have you whipped.” She saw Hild approaching from the wood path and walked to meet her with a step that was as quick as usual but not light.

“Will you really have him whipped?”

“I might.”

Hild had never seen her threaten a slave with a whipping for such a little thing. “Are you… well?”

Onnen folded her arms. “I could cheerfully strangle you. I feel like a bee in a bottle. Mulstan is plotting something, I can feel it, and it’s something to do with you, with what you said to him. What are you meddling with?”

“Cian needs his sword.”

“Sweet gods! Cian is too young for his sword! Oh, he would get the benighted blade, all in good time, if you simply let things alone. Look, look here.” She tapped the brand-new iron hangers on her belt. “I have the keys. The rest would follow naturally, in time. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Hild didn’t know what to say. Love and bed games were one thing, keys another. Onnen might be a cousin of Ceredig king, but Ceredig was dead, and Breguswith, daughter of kings, might not want to let her go.

“My mother—”

“Aye, your mother. Well, I warned her my decisions wouldn’t—” She made an impatient gesture. “I don’t want Cian to be a man just yet. If he must ape his betters, he should at least wait until he’s grown before he goes off to get killed. Think what would have happened at Tinamutha if he’d had a sword.”

Red and black, blood and dirt. Her seax opening the Irishman’s arm, skin and muscle gaping like a flower.

Onnen smoothed her dress and sighed. “I don’t know what possessed you, but it’s done. Tonight stay close. Stay with Cian, stay with me. For once, do as you’re told. Now leave me alone to see to this mess. Unless you want to help?”

At the beach the tide was out, whispering to itself as it ran along the pebbly sand and put a pale frothy line along the deep blue near the horizon. As the sky darkened, people—perhaps two hundred, all Mulstan’s fighting men and kin, the beekeepers and swineherds and milkmaids, the sailors and guests and visitors, sitting in the sandy grass as heedless on this one night as children—began to lean back and loosen their belts and girdles and sashes and pick at the mountains of food of every kind. The beef, marinated all morning in vinegar and imported olive oil, and roasted right there on the beach, the sheep, the hind, the songbirds, the eels, the chard and mallow and goosefoot, the sow thistle and cresses and coleworts, all flavoured with vinegar and dill and sage, savoury and pennyroyal, rosemary and rue.

Hild sucked the juices from her bread trencher and gnawed the soft insides from the crust. She sat a few paces down from Mulstan, who had his arm around Onnen. Cian and Begu had competed to see who could eat the most red carrots in the time it took Hild to drink a cup of sweet elderflower wine, and now both were smeared with herby, vinegary streaks, and as neither had thought to count their carrots they were contemplating another contest. But then Mulstan unwound his arm from Onnen, nodded to his scop to strike a chord—Hild recognised Swefred, Mulstan’s chief sword man, drafted for the purpose—and stood.

It took a while for the quiet to spread down the boards, but eventually all that could be heard was the slish-run-whisper of the surf and a querulous child, soon shushed.

“We stand on the other side of another winter and at the beginning of a summer that all the signs point to as good beyond memory. We live on good land, by a rich sea. Our stock is healthy, our crops thrive, and our children are strong.”

Hearty, if sleepy and well-fed, rumbles of approval all around.

Mulstan gestured to Onnen, who stood. “I have taken to wife this woman, Onnen, of the Elmetsætne, and she will help me husband this land and see the old snug in winter and the young fat in spring.” He twined his hand in Onnen’s and raised it, and again there were rumbles of approval, though not as many; this was old news. “And Onnen has a son.”

Mulstan looked down the board at Cian and gestured for him to stand. Cian scrambled up, wiping his hands down the front of his tunic.

“I welcome Cian as Onnen’s son and my fosterling.” People craned to see Cian; the light was leaking away and the cooking fires were being put out, one by one. Mulstan turned to Swefred, who handed him a long, wrapped bundle. “A thegn’s fosterling should have arms.”

Cian quivered like a horse bitten by flies.

“Cian, fosterling, come receive your arms.”

“Wipe your face,” Begu hissed at him, and when he looked at her, blank as butter, she made a wiping gesture at her cheek. He lifted his hand as though he wasn’t sure it belonged to him.

“This is your path, brother,” Hild said. “It is come. Walk tall.” Then, as he stood there, overwhelmed, she said as her own mother had long ago, “Walk now.”

He did.

And he smiled. He smiled as he tripped over everyone’s feet and knocked over their cups. He smiled as he took the bundle, smiled as he unwrapped the sword, as his mother touched his cheek and Mulstan enveloped him in a bear hug. He smiled wider as the last fires went out and the sea slished. Smiled as he lifted his blade and tried to see it in the sudden rush of dark.

Then the rising moon, which had been flat as a silvered plate, popped as round as a ball of cheese, and it was full night. Mulstan gave a great shout and the crowd echoed him. He knelt by the tiny pile of birch shavings and sheep’s hair, and with his steel struck a spark, and blew, and a tiny curl of flame, like a dragonlet’s tongue, licked at the salty night. The crowd roared. The flame built, and Swefred, arms full now of unlit brands, handed them one at a time to Mulstan, who plunged each into the flame until it caught, then handed the first to Onnen, and the crowd roared, then one to the smith, and they roared, to Celfled, to the tanner, and on. Behind Swefred, Guenmon gave out unlit torches to everyone within reach and they passed them from hand to hand, still dark. Each initial torchbearer began the walk to hearth or hall, hut or smithy, and along the way touched the torches to those as yet unlit, and rekindled the fire for another year.

And then the crowd roared again, and this time didn’t stop, and Cian, holding his own torch now, turned, sword raised, as a ship, pale sail glimmering in the moonlight, drew close to the beach.

Hild reached for a seax that wasn’t there, then found an eating knife with one hand and Begu’s wrist with the other. She began to push her way through the crowd to Cian. We are us. They would die together. But then two men in the bows of the ship unfurled a standard, and after a moment’s flapping in the unsteady night breeze, the linen cloth streamed clear. Moonlight gleamed on the gold stitching and a single garnet sewn at the eye: the royal boar. The king was returned.

Hild was explaining to Begu for the third time why she did not need to dismantle her linden-wood bed, that she would not require silverware, that there was no room on the boat for her pony, that, yes, she could and should bring her ivory tablets, when she became aware of Onnen watching from the doorway.

Hild had last seen that expression on her almost-mother’s face in the hall of Ceredig king, when the two strange men had beckoned Cian into the light.

“What are you doing?” Onnen said.

“We’re packing,” said Begu. “And I had no idea it was such a difficult thing. Hild says I won’t need my bed. She says I won’t need any hangings. But I don’t know. What do you think, Onnen?”

“You won’t need to pack your bed.”

“I won’t? Well. If you say so. But—”

“You won’t need to pack a thing. Hild, with me.”

They walked into the sunlight and gusting wind but got only halfway down the steps before Onnen took Hild by the shoulders and brought them both to an awkward halt.

“What have you promised her?”

“I have told Begu she is to come with me.” Hild looked up into Onnen’s eyes. She had to squint against the sun. “We are to be gemæcce.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

Hild touched the heavy hilt of her seax, given back just this morning by Cian, who, sword-proud, no longer needed it, and drew herself up. It was only because Onnen was on a higher step that she was taller. Only that.

Onnen laid her hand on her own knife and for a moment they both breathed harshly, then Onnen sighed. “Hild.”

“We are to be gemæcce. Guenmon said so.”

“Guenmon is a bleating ewe. Think.”

“I have chosen.”

Onnen shook her head. “Your mother will choose.”

Silence.

She touched Hild on her shoulders gently, increased the pressure until Hild turned a little and they were both looking out over Mulstan’s sunlit holding. “Begu is all Mulstan has. She must marry, so that when Mulstan dies, the cowherd and butcher, the shepherd and fisherfolk, the milkmaids and smith, have a lord, have safety, are not turned like slaves from their homes.”

“I could get the king to give it to me.”

“Are you so sure?”

“I am his bringer of light. He promised to reward me with riches beyond human ken.”

Onnen smiled sadly. “And before how many of his lords did he swear this?”

Hild didn’t say anything.

“Beware the ingratitude of kings.”

Hild gripped the rail. The wood had not yet been smoothed after the winter but she squeezed it as hard as she could, because it was real.

“I’m sorry, little prickle. But you must leave on the king’s ship, and Begu must stay.”

“I’ll be all alone,” she said, and she hardly recognised her own voice for the wobble. “You’ll be here, and Cian. Even Fursey… even Fursey…”

“You’ll have your mother. And Hereswith.”

“Hereswith will soon be peaceweaver elsewhere.” And maybe her mother would go with her sister. And then it would only be Hild and the king, and her cloak of otherness.

She said her goodbyes in the warmth of the hall and received gifts one by one and handed them unseeing to Eadfrith’s man. She walked alone into the rain, half mad with trying not to remember the soft warmth of Onnen’s motherly breast and the smell of her clothes, trying not to think of the glint of firelight on Begu’s escaping hair because then she’d remember it always, one more memory to torment her. She tried not to take deep, deep breaths of the scent of wind-whipped sea blending with rained-on cowgrass blowing down from the cliff, tried not to think of Cian, Cian woven through everything. We are us. Trying to shut it all out, keep it all away—

She walked up the gangplank while the ship creaked and rubbed against the wharf. The wood was slippery. Eadfrith, waiting impatiently at the top of the gangplank, called something to his man behind her. Hild paused at the top of the gangplank, looked into the bows, and found Fursey looking back at her.

She blinked.

Fursey. Whose ransom had been paid, who should be long gone on his way back to his people.

Eadfrith shouted again. Hild could make no sense of his words. She could make no sense of anything. The rain increased. Eadfrith’s man stood behind her, saying something. Then Fursey was there, giving her a hand onto the deck. She turned for one last look, for she might never see Mulstan’s holding again, but the bright yellow sail dropped between her and the little wharf.

Fursey said, “Come out of the rain,” but Hild was so rigid with not crying that she couldn’t move.

“You,” she said. “Why?”

“I was free to travel anywhere, and I remembered to myself your thrust at dinner: that I had not met any Anglisc who knew more than blade and blood and boast because I had not met your mother.”

“My mother.”

“Yes.” He smiled that smile.

The sailors shouted in rhythm and tugged on a hemp line that squealed a little as it ran over the wood, and the sail turned. It was a new sail, beautifully dyed and tightly woven, the work of ten women for a year. Beyond it, Mulstan’s man threw the end of a rope to a man in the bows, and the prow of the ship swung out a little.

“Can you afford passage?”

“I might have given Eadfrith to understand you wished me still as your tutor.”

She looked at him, at his sly eyes and stubbled tonsure. “Why?”

“You have a bright mind but lack subtlety. I could teach you. And life around Edwin will be interesting—oh, very, very interesting, if I’m any judge, which I am—for the next little while. And I’ve a mind to meet your mother.”