“I’ve never heard of her,” I said.
The two older nuns, who had been looking at me with stern disapproval, suddenly broke into giggles. Hild smiled. “Hedda was a man,” she told me gently, “and he was born in Northumbria and he was the first bishop of Wintanceaster. He is remembered as a most holy and good man, and I chose him because you are from Northumbria and it was your unwitting generosity that let us build this house in the town where Saint Hedda preached. We vowed to pray to him every day until you returned, and now we shall pray to him every day to thank him for answering our prayers.”
I said nothing for I did not know what to say. I remember thinking that Hild’s voice was forced as if she were persuading herself as well as me that she was happy, and I was wrong about that. It was forced because my presence brought her unpleasant memories, and in time I learned she truly was happy. She was useful. She had made her peace with her god and after she died she was remembered as a saint. Not so very long ago a bishop told me all about the most holy and blessed Saint Hildegyth and how she had been a shining example of Christian chastity and charity, and I was sorely tempted to tell him that I had once spread-eagled the saint among the buttercups, but managed to restrain myself. He was certainly right about her charity. Hild told me that the purpose of Saint Hedda’s nunnery was not just to pray for me, its benefactor, but to heal the sick. “We are busy all day,” she said, “and all night. We take the poor and we tend them. I’ve no doubt there are some waiting outside our gate right now.”
“There are,” I said.
“Then those poor folk are our purpose,” she said, “and we are their servants.” She gave me a brisk smile. “Now tell me what I have prayed to hear. Tell me your tales.”
So I told her and I did not tell her all of what had happened, but made light of slavery, saying only that I had been chained so I could not escape. I told her of the voyages, of the strange places and of the people I had seen. I spoke of the land of ice and fire, of watching the great whales breach in the endless sea, and I told her of the long river that twisted into a land of birch trees and lingering snow, and I finished by saying that I was glad to be a free man again and grateful to her for making me so.
Hild was silent when I finished. The milk still spurted into the pail outside. A sparrow perched on the window ledge, preened itself and flew away. Hild had been staring at me, as if testing the veracity of my words. “Was it bad?” she asked after a while.
I hesitated, tempted to lie, then shrugged. “Yes,” I said shortly.
“But now you are the Lord Uhtred again,” she said, “and I have your possessions.” She signaled to one of the nuns, who left the room. “We kept everything for you,” Hild said brightly.
“Everything?” I asked.
“Except your horse,” she said ruefully. “I couldn’t bring the horse. What was he called? Witnere?”
“Witnere,” I said.
“I fear he was stolen.”
“Stolen?”
“The Lord Ivarr took him.”
I said nothing because the nun had come back into the room with a cumbersome armful of weapons and mail. She had my helmet, my heavy coat of leather and mail, she had my arm rings and she had Wasp-Sting and Serpent-Breath, and she dropped them all at my feet and there were tears in my eyes as I leaned forward and touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt. “The mail coat was damaged,” Hild said, “so we had one of the king’s armorers repair it.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I have prayed,” Hild said, “that you will not take revenge on King Guthred.”
“He enslaved me,” I said harshly. I could not take my hand from the sword. There had been so many moments of despair in the last two years, moments when I thought I would never touch a sword again, let alone Serpent-Breath, yet here she was, and my hand slowly closed about the hilt.
“Guthred did what he felt was best for his kingdom,” Hild said sternly, “and he is a Christian.”
“He enslaved me,” I said again.
“And you must forgive him,” Hild said forcefully, “as I have forgiven the men who wronged me and as God has forgiven me. I was a sinner,” she went on, “a great sinner, but God has touched me and poured his grace into me and so forgiven me. So swear to me that you will spare Guthred.”
“I will make no oaths,” I said harshly, still holding Serpent-Breath.
“You are not an unkind man,” Hild said. “I know that. You were kinder to me than I ever deserved. So be kind to Guthred. He’s a good man.”
“I will remember that when I meet him,” I said evasively.
“And remember that he regretted what he did,” Hild said, “and that he did it because he believed it would preserve his kingdom. And remember too that he has given this house money as a penance. We have much need of silver. There is no shortage of poor, sick folk, but there is ever a shortage of alms.”
I smiled at her. Then I stood and I unbuckled the sword I had taken from one of Sven’s men at Gyruum and I unpinned the brooch at my neck, and I dropped cloak, brooch, and sword onto the rushes. “Those you can sell,” I said. Then, grunting with the effort, I pulled on my old mail coat and I buckled on my old swords and I picked up my wolf-crested helmet. The coat felt monstrously heavy because it had been so long since I had worn mail. It was also too big for me for I had become thinner in those years of pulling Sverri’s oar. I slipped the arm rings over my hands, then looked at Hild. “I will give you one oath, Abbess Hildegyth,” I said. She looked up at me and she was seeing the old Uhtred, the shining lord and sword-warrior. “I will support your house,” I promised, “and you will have money from me and you will thrive and you will always have my protection.”
She smiled at that, then reached into a purse that hung at her belt and held out a small silver cross. “And that is my gift to you,” she said, “and I pray that you will revere it as I do and learn its lesson. Our Lord died on that cross for the evil we all do, and I have no doubt, Lord Uhtred, that some of the pain he felt at his death was for your sins.”
She gave me the cross and our fingers touched and I looked into her eyes and she snatched her hand away. She blushed, though, and she looked up at me through half-lowered lids. For a heartbeat I saw the old Hild, the fragile, beautiful Hild, but then she composed her face and tried to look stern. “Now you can go to Gisela,” she said.
I had not mentioned Gisela and now I pretended the name meant little. “She will be married by now,” I said carelessly, “if she even lives.”
“She lived when I left Northumbria,” Hild said, “though that was eighteen months ago. She would not speak to her brother then, not after what he did to you. I spent hours comforting her. She was full of tears and anger. A strong girl, that one.”
“And marriageable,” I said harshly.
Hild smiled gently. “She swore to wait for you.”
I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt. I was so full of hope and so racked by dread. Gisela. In my head I knew she could not match a slave’s feverish dreams, but I could not rid my head of her.
“And perhaps she does wait for you,” Hild said, then she stepped back, brusque suddenly. “Now we have prayers to say, folk to feed, and bodies to heal.”
And so I was dismissed and I ducked out of the door in the convent wall to stand in the muddy alleyway. The beggars were allowed inside, leaving me leaning against the wooden wall with tears in my eyes. Folk edged by on the alley’s far side, fearful of me for I was dressed for war with my two swords.
Gisela, I thought, Gisela. Maybe she did wait, but I doubted it for she was too valuable as a peace cow, but I knew I would go back north as soon as I could. I would go for Gisela. I gripped the silver cross until I could feel its edges hurting through the great callouses that Sverri’s oar had made on my hand. Then I drew Serpent-Breath and I saw that Hild had looked after the blade well. It shone with a light coating of lard or lanolin that had prevented the patterned steel from rusting. I raised the sword to my lips and kissed her long blade. “You have men to kill,” I told her, “and revenge to take.”
And so she had.
I found a swordsmith the next day and he told me he was too busy and could not do my work for many days and I told him that he would do my work that day or else he would do no work ever again, and in the end we came
