All Saints' Day, 937, Exancester
What she was doing was sacrilege. And she could easily avoid it, choose the higher path, the one closest to God.
She could hold her head high, knowing that she had had temptation thrown in her direction and she had avoided it.
Just like all the other people she had ever known in her life had.
Had Mildrith understood what sarcasm was, she would have recognised the bitter humour in her own mind as she walked the corridors of the vast estate of her godfather. Odda had been a broken man since he had killed his own son, for loyalty.
And for loyalty, he had raised the Devonscir fyrd to fight against the Danish threat in Lundene, the brothers, Eirik and Siegfried, who had taken Aethelflaed hostage and demanded a kingdom's worth of ransom. Even he was dead, now, and with it, her heart.
Sacrilege. Not through her own act, no - Mildrith had never acted. But in putting it down onto paper.
He had sat by her, her husband, Northern prince, displaced from his kingdom, follower of the pagan Danes because a family had shown him unremitting kindness.
Uhtred.
He had sat by her and told her he was sorry for marrying her.
Sorry.
Sorry for marrying a match who had been a trap, in debt to the crown, a growing debt. He had married her to further his own ambition only. Yet, he had claimed he had loved her, once.
Loved her body, but never her spirit. Never knew her, in her heart.
Young Odda had known her heart. But his nobility, his position as his father's heir had made him disdainful, selfish. Made him obnoxious.
Made him arrogant, and the kind, faithful boy Mildrith had known into a cheat and a liar.
As was Alfred himself, taking his tithe from the church after the Bishop of Exancaster had come to speak to Mildrith's father and coerce him into a ruinous payment to the church.
Uhtred, at least by all accounts, had shed tears for their child. He had dug him up, she had been told, and held him close, shocked that their flesh and blood had yielded to fever, had refused to stop crying, until he was finally silent the next morning, silent into oblivion.
It made no difference what she did or did not do. Mildrith, fingers aching with rheumatism, had grasped the quill and ploughed on, the pain receding as she refused her mind to treat with it.
She was discarded, done.
Yet, a face lingered.
Soldier-honest, straightforward, he had treated Mildrith with nothing but respect.
And she had gone to him.
He had not encouraged her, nor had he resisted. Instead, because words had meant little to him,
It was many years ago, and yet, yesterday.
Yesterday, because the name of her husband had come to her by chance as a guard had passed her a pile of papers intended for the monastery.
He had gone, then, to the Valhalla he believed in.
Uhtred.
But Mildrith had found out something she did not know, had never expected: he had a sister, a sister who she had once known.
Osthryth.
It was a name that had lingered in Mildrith's mind, a boy, or so she had thought, a guard.
And now a monk by the name of Findal of Caer Ligualid had written to another monk a confession, a confession that was not, it seemed, intended to be read by Mildrith. Or anyone, really. In fact, Mildrith wondered whether it should even have been included in the reports that had come from the battlefield so far north, in a place called Brunanburh, where the host of Scots, Norse and northern Cymric had stood face-to-face against Angles and Saxons of all kingdoms under King Aethelstan's standard.
The reports seemingly were meant for a monk called Dunstan, and yet detailed things of such intimacy that it made Mildrith blush for shame.
And it had not reached Dunstan. It had reached the fire in her hearth. For, as well as detailing the life of his "greatest friend Osthryth", the rest of the letter contained such abominations that it hurt her conscience just to read them. Dunstan and Findal had clearly known each other very well indeed.
While that door closed, another opened. But, how to get the information to Osthryth? For, if there was one person in the whole of the island of Britain who could help her now, or rather, another person that she had barely given thought to these last fifty years, it was the guard she had once had. Mildrith had followed her career with interest until the trail went cold when Osthryth went to Mercia.
And now the trail had become hot again. Findal had told Dunstan that he was absolutely sure Osthryth was at Bebbanburg.
So, why was Dunstan interested? Unless, he was now in league with -
- well, him.
Mildrith had tried to keep him out of her mind as much as she could, for it hurt her to think about him. But now, it was all in her mind, like a collected pool of spring rainwater that could not drain into the saturated land. She had to beg Osthryth for help, for there was no-one else.
And the person to whom she must write was as pagan as her husband.
But he was kind. And the gift of a bible meant Mildrith's confession would leave Wessex and pass through Mercia and Northumbria unarrested. For, why wouldn't she, a humble sinner, not present a gift to the flourishing bishopric at that once city of pagans, now Christianising again, Dunholm.
The owner of the land was...
...was...
...son of Kjartan...
Mildrith trawled her mind for the name...
...Sihtric...
Mildrith closed her mind, and remembered when she had gone to him. Her grief was so internalised that she felt bold, as if nothing in the world mattered. Uhtred had been upstairs, drunk out of his skull in the company of Alfred and his pagan family, Brida, and Ragnar.
He had been in the stables.
"...hello, lady."
He had looked up from packing the saddlebags.
Loyal, that's what he was. They were leaving Odda's estate the next day, and -
" - one of us has to be sober."
Even now, Mildrith remembered his words to be fast, pattered out with a hint of nervousness, wondering why, Mildrith inferred, she had approached him.
If she could have chosen anyone...
...because, anyone who spoke of God as if justifying their actions was a hollow shell, she had discovered, all actions explainable, all sins permissible...
...he had chosen to go with Uhtred to Cornwalum, and had not discouraged her husband from bringing back Iseult.
But had come into her house when Uhtred and Iseult had chosen to sleep outside, to express his regret that this had happened to her.
And that had been all. A humble warrior's words. No more, no less. An honesty, of a sort, which had pervaded Mildrith's soul, her being. Her heart.
So, in the stables, she had placed her hands on Leofric's body, her hands quavering at first, but quickly finding their way.
He did not encourge. But, he did not resist. Leofric the warrior had let Mildrith, the ex-wife of his best friend, undo his jerkin and place her hands on his body, to where her thoughts went when she was at the edge of despair.
Long had she imagined touching him, feeling his scars won in battle, the story of his life.
She had chosen him, Mildrith told herself then, and the days and weeks and months after, rather than be the choice, and have to survive other people's choices.
She wanted it; she deserved his body, after everything. After being so pious, so good for so long. She was no-one's but God's, and even then, she was a novice, not yet a nun. She had taken no vows; her status was liminal, between definition.
Mildrith didn't know how long it took to undress him, so his body was before her, naked, as she felt his skin. All tears, all regret and sorrow had flown from her as she caressed him, loving the feeling of being in charge of him, her fingers going to his breeches and easing them down.
If she could have taken all her feelings with her of that moment, she would have. Their voices were unified in the silence as they spoke nothing to one another. Leofric did not even make to touch her, and Mildrith proved she was a lady no more by stepping from her dress and standing before him, naked.
She led him to the stall, ostensibly the one he had just given new straw to, and he sat, but not for long as she smoothed her tiny hands over his muscles.
Only when she had pushed him flat did she put a knee over his leg and began to work herself against him, not on his cock - which soon became alert to the possibility - instead, against his body, until all her manners had flown from her and she was where she wanted to be, with whom she had chosen, never encouraging, never discouraging her, either.
Leofric the warrior, a man Mildrith, under different circumstances, could have loved with her heart.
"He went the next morning, and on to Ethandun," Mildrith had written. "With Uhtred."
And that would have been all. Except, that Leofric was not in the past. He was Mildrith's present and, when she knew there was a safe future, had paid the Briton heathen, whose name was Ula, and had been on her way to Winchester.
Had she not known she was dying, would Mildrith have written this, and to her husband's sister, no less?
And yet, she had known that Osthryth had helped the Britons, was Briton herself, through the Hen Ogledd, whose people were not that dissimilar to those Britons still lurking in Wessex.
Osthryth would know what to do, Mildrith reassured herself.
And a few days later, Saint Mildrith the Good, took her place with the rank and the file of other Insular saints and was venerated and worshipped in a way that the once young wife of Uhtred of Bebbanburg would have found amusing indeed.