Aldfrith can never know.
She walked up the dirt street, her thoughts turning inward. Overhead, the sky had clouded over, dimming the day—yet Osana barely noticed it. All she could think about was the fact that soon her belly would start to swell. In a few months, folk would start to notice.
They would stare and whisper behind her back. What would she do then?
Osana swallowed as her throat constricted. Would Hagona allow her to remain with her? As sharp-tongued as her aunt could be, she was not a pitiless woman. Surely she would not cast a pregnant woman out?
Despite that she had told herself she would not weep, Osana’s vision misted. She blinked rapidly, fighting the tears that threatened to well. She could cry later when she was alone in her annex, not here in the middle of town where folk would see. Her arrival had set tongues wagging as it was.
Wait till they realize I’m bearing a child … they’ll have fodder for gossip for years.
Despite that the day was not cold, Osana drew the woolen shawl she wore around her shoulders tighter. She felt shivery and light-headed. Inhaling deeply, she fought against the panic that now cramped her bowels. She needed to calm down, to think clearly.
The news had felt like a condemnation, yet she knew that once the shock passed she would learn to live with it. She needed to plan for the future and decide how she would keep her aunt’s prying at bay.
What would she tell the child about its father?
Stop it.She was getting ahead of herself. Many women lost their babes during the early period of pregnancy. There was a chance she might lose hers. She would deal with what to tell the child later, after this first hurdle had been scaled.
Osana made her way across town, passing through the market square where the ealdorman’s hall loomed over the busy cluster of stalls and shoppers. The sight of the hall made her remember her old life in Hagustaldes, her daily unhappiness as Raedwulf’s wife.
The memory calmed her.
As upset as she was this morning, she was no longer that woman. Penniless and pregnant she might be, but she no longer lived under Raedwulf’s thumb. She no longer felt like a failure as a wife—as a woman. Strangely, despite her hurt and lingering anger toward Aldfrith, he had somehow freed her. And Hagona, although bossy, did not treat her as property. She was happier in her fowl coop than she had ever been in the ealdorman’s hall.
She walked on, and presently found herself passing Jedworth’s church. A sturdy building made of timber, with a steeply pitched roof crested by an iron cross, the sight of the church made Osana pause.
The church in Hagustaldes had been her refuge. Before Raedwulf’s death, she had taken to visiting regularly, for it was one of the few places where she could sit alone with her thoughts. She had not visited the church in Bebbanburg so often. The priest, Oswald, was not an offensive man, and left her alone to pray, yet Bishop Wilfrid was such a frequent visitor at the fort that Osana often worried he would corner her there.
Jedworth was different. The bishop did not live here, and Osana was reluctant to return home to Hagona’s interrogation.
Instead, she climbed the stone steps before the church and went inside. She entered a quiet space where the scuff of her shoes on the stone pavers seemed suddenly loud, as did her breathing.
Grey light filtered in through the high windows, illuminating floating dust motes, and Osana breathed in the fatty odor of tallow and the scent of incense. The local priest—a portly fellow named Torht—did not appear to be in residence.
The realization relieved Osana. She wanted to be alone for a while so she could sort through her thoughts.
Low wooden benches filled the church, and Osana walked up the aisle between them. Before her loomed a high altar, where a crucifix gleamed in the morning light. It was an arresting sight, and Osana kept her gaze upon it as she sat down upon one of the benches near the front.
Seated there, she clasped her hands together and raised them before her.
She did not pray. Instead, she closed her eyes a moment, letting the peace of this place settle upon her.
Osana was hesitant to pray. It had been a while, and where did she start? She had never used church as a place to divest herself of sin and salve her conscience, and she did not want to start now. Instead, it was a place where she could just ‘be’, without being questioned or judged.
And so she remained there, still and silent, looking for answers she knew she would never find.
Chapter Twenty-six
Only One Cure
ALDFRITH STARED DOWN at the sheet of vellum before him. He had spent all morning on these lines, had concentrated so much over them that the muscles on the back of his neck felt stiff and sore, and a headache formed in his temples.
A few months earlier, he would have looked upon the words with pride, yet now they irritated him. Frowning, he read the first paragraph aloud:
“Abandonment results in slander.
Humility wins good favor.
