After being dismissed by the abbess, Aleswina set out for Anna’s cottage, paying no attention to the gatekeeper’s startled look when she pushed the side door open and headed off along the main road that ran through the village. She hardly noticed the curious stares she got from villagers who stopped picking up after the guards’ futile Druid hunt to watch her rush by. When she reached the side path that led to Anna’s front door, she practically ran the rest of the way there.
The front door opened into the main room of Anna’s cottage. After stepping from the midday sunlight into the darkened room, Aleswina had to stop and wait for things to take their usual shape. Only they didn’t. The hearth that was always burning with warm, cheerful embers was cold and dead. The shelves that Annwr kept filled with orderly stacks of bowls and dishes were bare. There was only one table and one chair, and they were both lopsided, held upright with mismatched legs.
Anna wasn’t there. But she wouldn’t be inside—not on a bright, sunny day like this. She’d be outside in the garden, planting and weeding, with Solomon and the other geese following after her, snatching at the worms and bugs she dug up . . . or maybe Betrys was in labor, and Anna was helping her have her baby piglets.
Aleswina crossed the room and rushed into the garden.
Anna was there, pouring a bucket of water over a newly planted patch of meadowsweet at the edge of the fence. The rest of the garden lay in ruins. Sodden bits of gray feathers were scattered everywhere and a hint of sickish sweet stench—a scent Aleswina now knew to be the smell of clotted blood—lingered in the air.
“Anna, where are . . .” Aleswina paused mid-sentence, looking for the geese, especially for Solomon, who’d been her special favorite ever since Annwr had let her hold his hatching egg in her hands, and she’d watched as his little yellow beak pushed through a crack in the shell, his damp, fuzzy head popped up, his bright eyes blinking as he gazed into her face.
“They’re dead. The guards killed them—Solomon, Betrys, all of them. They took what they wanted for their supper. I’ve buried what was left.” Anna was looking at Aleswina as if she was having trouble recognizing her. “What are you doing here? The guards are still—”
“The guards are gone back to Gothroc. The abbess said I could come to tell you . . . to tell you . . .”
Everything Aleswina meant to tell Annwr tangled up into a lump in her throat. Choking on it, she somehow mixed the soldiers’ crimes with the wrong she had done keeping Anna away from her own little girl (compounded by the unconfessed sin of thinking about poisoning Caelym), so that when she managed to speak again, it was to repent and plead for forgiveness, falling to her knees under the crushing weight of all the wrongs done by Saxons against Britons and by Christians against Druids.
It wasn’t that Annwr didn’t recognize who Aleswina was so much as that she was confused about what she was—the sweet, loving child that she had raised as her own for the past fifteen years or the spawn of Llwddawanden’s worst enemy. And as for repentance and forgiveness, those were Christian notions, and Annwr only had to look around her to see how much good Christianity did for her.
Out of habit more than anything else, Annwr sat down next to Aleswina and put her arms around her. Then Aleswina started to cry, and Annwr rocked her until the sobs settled into whimpers that turned into snuffling, wet sighs.
By the time Aleswina had finished wiping her eyes and blowing her nose on Annwr’s apron, the gap between them had closed, and they were talking as freely as ever. Annwr explained her plan for Caelym to travel disguised as a monk, and Aleswina told Annwr about how the abbess thought Saint Edeth had talked to her, and they both laughed until their sides ached. Together, they agreed that Aleswina would bring Caelym back to the cottage that night, and that Annwr would have everything packed and ready to go.
Aleswina was adamant in telling Anna that she was to take with her all of the coins and jewels they had brought in secret from the palace and kept hidden in the cottage loft. Annwr had refused at first, but for once Aleswina was the more stubborn and unyielding, and both of them could see that Annwr would need these funds more than Aleswina would. Having worked out their plans, they had sat with their arms around each other for as long as they dared before Aleswina got up, whispered that she’d be back after the late-night prayers, and left, fighting against a new round of tears.