Jenny: Presence of Spirit

The Guttersnipe looked up from straightening her doeskin shoe. The song over, Domitia looked no more different than usual, always a little confused and awkward. "Tell him?" she repeated. The misty candlelight must have got into one of their brains. "Tell Ambrosius? But he knows. He has been about and about in the world. He knows an official bard when he sees one."

She could not tell what an official bard meant. She only knew that there was something in Gwenhywfar that Domitia did not yet have, whether some presence of spirit or little more than the gesture of a hand. There was something deep and unmoving in Gwenhywfar, something steadfast to which all her songs and tales, all her knowledge, was anchoured to: a sort of surety which was, she did not doubt, in God and the sovereignty of God, which left her unmoved by all. Domitia did not have this yet - nor, she thought, did she herself - and that was perhaps the world of difference between the one bard and the other.