Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  He came to meet her. They stopped by the lime whose branches shaded a backwater of the beck. Its leaves were now bigger than her palms. When she’d first arrived the branches had been bare.

  “Guenmon wants you,” she said.

  Cian scowled.

  “She has errands.”

  “I’m busy.”

  Hild said nothing.

  “Look at them.” His voice shook with outrage.

  Onnen had a hand resting lightly on Mulstan’s arm while he shouted something into the red-lit gloom for the smith; she was smiling.

  “She’s happy.”

  “She’s my mam!”

  Onnen liked Mulstan, Hild could tell. She also knew Onnen liked the way he ran his holdings, though it lacked the fine and sharp efficiency a woman would bring to the household. She liked his daughter and his servants and the ease his housefolk felt in hall. And she leaned in towards him as though she liked his smell. And Mulstan liked her; Hild saw the way his nostrils flared as Onnen laughed at something he said and patted his arm.

  “They’ll do what they’ll do, whether you’re here or not,” she said. Indeed, she’d be surprised if they hadn’t already done it. Cian knew that, too. They were both familiar enough with the ways of the hall at night, when a woman crossed to a man’s bench and crept under his blanket, and breathing got furtive, then fast. They’d seen the dogs, and the sheep at Yeavering, in the breeding pen by the River Glen; they’d even helped the horse master help the stallion with his stick that was so long he didn’t quite know where to put it.

  Hild tried to imagine her own mother with a man with a stick so long he didn’t know where to put it, and couldn’t.

  “Cian, come away. Come away now. We will do Guenmon’s errands together.”

  She tugged on his belt, as she had when she was little, only now she did not have to reach up, and she realised that though he was tall, she would overtop him when they were both grown. She understood then that they were no longer quite children.

  Something in her sudden stillness made him look down at her hand, and he nodded, and with one last look turned away with her down the path.

  Once out of sight of the smithy, Hild stopped. “You go on. I must still speak to Mulstan. I’ll catch you up. Go on, go on now.”

  She watched him walk down the path—whipping savagely with his sword at harebells by the way—then set about tidying her hair and smoothing her eyebrows. She tore a dock leaf from its stem and cleaned her shoes and straightened her sash. She missed her belt and seax.

  Mulstan and Onnen looked up. Mulstan beamed through his beard. He looked like a grinning hedge. “Hild. Are you come to fetch me for something?”

  Bang-bing-bing. Bang-bing-bing.

  “No, my lord Mulstan.”

  “Is something amiss? Is Begu well?”

  “All is well, my lord.”

  Both Onnen and Mulstan looked relieved.

  Onnen smiled at him. “I’ll leave you to it, my lord.” She gave Hild a look, nodded at them both, and walked down the path—more slowly than usual and with a sway that Mulstan watched until she was out of sight.

  He turned to Hild.

  She tried to imagine how her mother might phrase a request that was not a request. “I’m come to ask a favour within your gift. Two favours. One for myself, and one in the name of my uncle, the king.” It was the longest thing she’d ever said in front of him. He peered about, startled, half expecting to see a voice thrower standing behind her.

  He scratched his neck. “The king? Has a messenger come?”

  “No, my lord. I owe a debt to one of your people. Royal kin should not owe debts, especially in troubled times.”

  “No, no, I can quite see that,” Mulstan said, puzzled, but willing to go along with the odd maid who spoke with strange pauses, like someone receiving messages from the little people under the hill. She was, after all, high, very high, in the king’s favour. “To whom do you owe this debt?”

  Bang-bing-bing, followed by a loud hiss as metal was plunged into the water trough.

  Mulstan turned and peered into the smithy. “I do like the smell of quenching iron. Quite makes me feel like a young gesith with his first sword.” The maid said nothing. “Yes. So. Now. Who did you say you owe a debt to?”

  “One Cædmon by name.”

  “My cowherd’s son?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  He frowned. “And what is the nature and amount of this … debt?”

  “I have a book from Cædmon worth, by Fursey’s estimate, one calf or two lambs, but I have neither to offer.”

  Ting-ting-ting: a smaller hammer. Whatever the smith was making it was not large, and it was almost done.

  Mulstan smoothed his moustaches, perplexed. “How is it his book?”

  “He saved it, when the old priest died. I thought to reward him for it.”

  Mulstan pondered that. “And Fursey thinks it worth a healthy calf or two lambs?” The man must be mad. But this was the king’s niece, and one must tread carefully.

  “He spoke of the skin of one calf or two lambs.”

  “Ah, then that’s a different case.” He looked reflectively at the clouds, started to peer into the smithy again, thought better of it. “Cædmon. Yes, I know the boy. Dekke’s son. Mother dead of the flux that came through here long since.”

  “The one that took Begu’s mother?”

  The little people under the hill were clearly well informed. But no, the maid spent time with Begu. No doubt they talked as maids did. “The very same. So. No mother. An older sister, Bote, a milkmaid who forages at times for the kitchen. He seems like a good lad. Wealh, of course. Still, if you feel you owe him a debt then, yes, I’ll ask Guenmon what she suggests as good recompense. Perhaps a small pig, or a she-kid.”

  Another great hiss from the smithy, then silence.

  “Would such satisfy your honour?”

  “Yes. Thank you. I shall recommend your generosity to my uncle.”

  Her uncle the king. “Good, then. Good.” He looked relieved. Hosting people of influence was a chancy business. Then he remembered she had said two favours. “And there was another thing?”

  She nodded, but this time imagining what her mother might say was no help, for her mother would not agree. She stood mute.

  Mulstan put a hand on her shoulder. She was strange, this maid, but still only a maid and friend to his Begu. “Is this truly a serious matter?”

  Hild nodded.

  “Then you and I will withdraw to that rock.” He pointed to the boulder in the curve of the beck, worn smooth over the years, where the smith’s customers often sat on sunny days. “I find it easier to say a thing, sometimes, if I have another thing to look at.”

  Mulstan sat with his knees wide apart and a great fox-furred hand on each massive thigh. Hild perched cautiously next to him. They watched the water. Insects darted to and fro.

  “Are there fish?” she said.

  “There are. And if we sit long enough, perhaps a trout will rise for a fly. And if we sit beyond that, perhaps a pike, a water wolf, will ease his way downstream from yonder backwater and find his dinner.” They listened to the splash and gurgle. “Now then. Straight as a spear: Tell me.”

  “Cian, Onnen’s son, is unhappy. A sword would make him happy. You could give him one.”

  Mulstan tipped his head back and studied the sky. The clouds were like puffs of wool, far away. “Cian is wealh.”

  Hild said nothing.

  “Aye, and so is his mother, for all her Anglisc ways.” He sighed and slid his seax along his belt to a more comfortable position. “He’s young.”

  “He has no father.” Silence. Hild ploughed on. “When he was six, Ceredig, king in Elmet, gave him a wooden sword.”

  “Ceredig?” He mused upon the implications of that, humming in his throat.

  “And he has been gifted by lords of the north with shield and horse.” An exaggeration perhaps, but the pony, Acærn, like Ilfetu, had not left Tin
amutha, so Mulstan would never know. “He has had the esteem of royalty. But Ceredig is no longer king in Elmet, and Cian is here. And his mother.”

  The smith’s hammer started up again, ting-ting-ting. More throaty musings from Mulstan, only this time Hild made out words. “Young ram … wants to charge at things … his mother … who knows what at … Ceredig, eh?” He cleared his throat. “Well. Well. Has the boy had instruction?”

  “My mother’s sworn man has shown him a little. He’s travelled with the royal war band. He sleeps in hall with your men and exercises all the time. The sword is his path.”

  “You speak like a seer.” He sounded disapproving.

  “It is his path.”

  He knew the rumours. And she sounded so certain. But he hated this notion of meddling with wyrd.

  “Please, lord. He is like a brother to me. I wish to see him happy.”

  “No doubt so would his mother. Well!” He slapped his thighs and stood. “I thank you for bringing this to my attention, little maid. I will think on it.”

  “Thank you, my lord, for listening. And for Cædmon’s kid, or pig. Thank you on behalf of my uncle.” The king.

  * * *

  Hild sat with Begu in hall to one side of the open door. Midafternoon sun poured into the hall, throwing shadows all one way along the floor. It shone on the carefully cleaned table where they sat, on the flat band of red-and-black tablet weave growing between them, and on the walrus ivory of the eight square tablets, each the size of a child’s palm.

  “Keep it taut,” Begu said, for the third time.

  Hild kept leaning forward to touch the ivory. The tablets she used at home were polished elm. Her mother’s were antler horn. These looked like something you could eat, like wafers of creamy curd or slices of the meat of some gigantic nut.

  Each tablet had a separate warp thread through the holes at its four corners. They were twisted a quarter or half turn after every pass of the weft shuttle, also of ivory, to make the pattern. Hild had seen her mother and Onnen weave a band in one afternoon while one also worked a spindle and distaff and the other threaded the weft shuttle back and forth rapidly, beating in the weft every few passes. But she and Begu were new at this, and they must constantly stop to remind the other of something: turn this tablet a half turn, keep that warp taut, beat in that weft. It was a simple pattern but strong, a march of red and black squares.

  Guenmon came by with a cup of meat tea for each. The men had killed two oxen that morning for tomorrow’s feast—Hild had heard the snarling and snapping of the bulldogs as they controlled the cattle for the butcher. The fresh bones were boiled with their tatters of meat in salted water to make a tasty drink thick with marrow. Guenmon had added a pinch of thyme and a hint of precious pepper.

  “It smells like a dream,” Begu said.

  “Wait til you see the meat itself,” Guenmon said. “Luscious and marbled through with fine white fat. The spring grass always does it. And there are to be three fat-tailed sheep, as well as all those waterfowl Mulstan will be bringing home in his net. Celfled has promised us a stitch of eels and a hind from her woods. And Cædmon’s sister brought us sacks of the freshest greens. But so she should, given that plump little milk goat the lord gave her. And I tasted that batch of mead we made from the run honey. Onnen’s the finest brewster I’ve met. Though I think I might be a better maltster.” She saw that neither girl had an opinion on the matter. “Well, now, that’s a fine bold pattern. For Cian is it?”

  “It is.”

  “Red and black. So as not to show the dirt and the blood, I expect.” Begu paled and paused. Guenmon tutted to herself. What did the girl think got spattered on such things? “Will it be ready for the feast?”

  “I hope so,” Hild said.

  Now there was a maid who wouldn’t be surprised by blood. “I’ll leave you busy little gemæcces to it, then.”

  She smiled to herself at the sudden shyness that fell on the two girls as she walked away.

  Gemæcce, Hild thought, staring at the pattern. She looked up, found Begu looking at her, blushed, looked down again. After a breath or two she looked up.

  “Is it good?” Begu asked.

  “Yes,” Hild said. “Yes, it’s good.” And she sipped at her tea and scalded her mouth and spat and laughed. “Ow. Be sure to blow on it. At my uncle’s table, no one blows on their food. You will have to learn to clap.”

  “You will teach me.”

  “Yes. At his table no one waits. The food arrives just right, or the housefolk are punished.” The wealh are punished. And Begu was half wealh—though beyond Mulstanton by the Bay of the Beacon no one would know.

  * * *

  When the housefolk began putting out the fires in hall, Hild went to find Onnen. She walked to the beach, where the grass met sand, past the place where kitchen servants turned their vast spits in their outdoor kitchens while others built a long, long board on the sand for the food, and found her between the two towering piles of wood that would be lit that night—that is, one towering pile, and one fallen mess.

  Onnen was shouting at a slave in Anglisc. “Did I not say, throw the faggots on the shadow side of the pile, the shadow side?”

  The slave hung his head. He was nearly as old as Mulstan, but thin and knob-kneed and barefoot.

  “And where is the shadow? Look at me. Where is the shadow?”

  The slave pointed.

  “Yes. And why didn’t you throw the wood there, as I told you? Because you’re lazy, witless, and ignorant. And now the whole thing is a disordered heap and must be built again. I should have you whipped.” She saw Hild approaching from the wood path and walked to meet her with a step that was as quick as usual but not light.

  “Will you really have him whipped?”

  “I might.”

  Hild had never seen her threaten a slave with a whipping for such a little thing. “Are you … well?”

  Onnen folded her arms. “I could cheerfully strangle you. I feel like a bee in a bottle. Mulstan is plotting something, I can feel it, and it’s something to do with you, with what you said to him. What are you meddling with?”

  “Cian needs his sword.”

  “Sweet gods! Cian is too young for his sword! Oh, he would get the benighted blade, all in good time, if you simply let things alone. Look, look here.” She tapped the brand-new iron hangers on her belt. “I have the keys. The rest would follow naturally, in time. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  Hild didn’t know what to say. Love and bed games were one thing, keys another. Onnen might be a cousin of Ceredig king, but Ceredig was dead, and Breguswith, daughter of kings, might not want to let her go.

  “My mother—”

  “Aye, your mother. Well, I warned her my decisions wouldn’t—” She made an impatient gesture. “I don’t want Cian to be a man just yet. If he must ape his betters, he should at least wait until he’s grown before he goes off to get killed. Think what would have happened at Tinamutha if he’d had a sword.”

  Red and black, blood and dirt. Her seax opening the Irishman’s arm, skin and muscle gaping like a flower.

  Onnen smoothed her dress and sighed. “I don’t know what possessed you, but it’s done. Tonight stay close. Stay with Cian, stay with me. For once, do as you’re told. Now leave me alone to see to this mess. Unless you want to help?”

  * * *

  At the beach the tide was out, whispering to itself as it ran along the pebbly sand and put a pale frothy line along the deep blue near the horizon. As the sky darkened, people—perhaps two hundred, all Mulstan’s fighting men and kin, the beekeepers and swineherds and milkmaids, the sailors and guests and visitors, sitting in the sandy grass as heedless on this one night as children—began to lean back and loosen their belts and girdles and sashes and pick at the mountains of food of every kind. The beef, marinated all morning in vinegar and imported olive oil, and roasted right there on the beach, the sheep, the hind, the songbirds, the eels, the chard and mallow and goosef
oot, the sow thistle and cresses and coleworts, all flavoured with vinegar and dill and sage, savoury and pennyroyal, rosemary and rue.

  Hild sucked the juices from her bread trencher and gnawed the soft insides from the crust. She sat a few paces down from Mulstan, who had his arm around Onnen. Cian and Begu had competed to see who could eat the most red carrots in the time it took Hild to drink a cup of sweet elderflower wine, and now both were smeared with herby, vinegary streaks, and as neither had thought to count their carrots they were contemplating another contest. But then Mulstan unwound his arm from Onnen, nodded to his scop to strike a chord—Hild recognised Swefred, Mulstan’s chief sword man, drafted for the purpose—and stood.

  It took a while for the quiet to spread down the boards, but eventually all that could be heard was the slish-run-whisper of the surf and a querulous child, soon shushed.

  “We stand on the other side of another winter and at the beginning of a summer that all the signs point to as good beyond memory. We live on good land, by a rich sea. Our stock is healthy, our crops thrive, and our children are strong.”

  Hearty, if sleepy and well-fed, rumbles of approval all around.

  Mulstan gestured to Onnen, who stood. “I have taken to wife this woman, Onnen, of the Elmetsætne, and she will help me husband this land and see the old snug in winter and the young fat in spring.” He twined his hand in Onnen’s and raised it, and again there were rumbles of approval, though not as many; this was old news. “And Onnen has a son.”

  Mulstan looked down the board at Cian and gestured for him to stand. Cian scrambled up, wiping his hands down the front of his tunic.