Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

But when she got there, she found a young wealh with thick eyebrows and pretty black hair spreading manure from a loosely woven brown willow basket. The garden stank.

  “You,” she said, and the wealh dropped the basket and ran to where Hild stood by the gate. “You know Fursey the Christ priest?”

  The wealh bobbed her head.

  “Find him. Bring him.”

  When the wealh had gone, Hild moved to the bed of lavender, for the smell, and sat on the grass. Bees bumbled from bloom to bloom. Such clumsy creatures, always bumping into things. She followed the progress of one from the lavender to the foxgloves, which her mother said was good for the faint of heart. Would Hereswith quail? Or would she blaze with triumph like their mother and walk away without a backward glance? The king would never let Hild go, not now. Not until she was dead or of no more use.

  The furry bee crawled inside the flower bell, emerged a moment later covered in gold, like a triumphant queen. She didn’t want to think about queens. Its legs looked thicker, too. She stood and followed as it bumbled over to the pots of weld growing near the kitchen door. She knelt and waited for the bee to emerge.

  Behind her, the gate creaked. Hild turned: the wealh, now looking pale. Hild realised she was kneeling in shit, and the wealh, wise in the ways of the world, knew she would most likely be blamed. But then the gate creaked again, and Hild dismissed the wealh from her thoughts.

  Fursey walked carefully. She could smell the white mead from here.

  He smiled at her expression. “It’s a big day: Edwin, overking. It’s important for a foreigner to drink the overking’s health and life with enthusiasm, to show loyalty.”

  Hild just pointed at his cross, which hung twisted. While he fumbled with it, she went back to the lavender and sat. The bees were still bumbling about. Stupid bees. They were all stupid. Or maybe just her.

  “You let my mother know what you’re about,” she said, in Irish, just in case. “On purpose. My mother knows this. And you two are deep in your game, and I am one of those bees, sent by the queen bee to buzz from hive to flower, not knowing what’s really going on.”

  “Well,” he said. “I’m surprised it took you so long.” He settled comfortably on the path by her feet and smiled blandly. “So, now. You dragged me away from my mead for a pressing reason?”

  Her thoughts tangled in her head. Hereswith. Her mother. Hereswith. She was so lonely. Edwin. Plots … After a helpless moment she told him instead about Coelgar and the negotiation planned for middæg.

  Fursey nodded and, while clearly aware of her frustration, asked her sensible questions about the weight of dishes and their size, the lustre of the cloth Coelgar had carried off to York.

  “And do you want treasure of like kind—a dish for a dish, a jewel for a jewel—or what the treasure represents?”

  But Hild tugged some more at the knot in her head. “What did you mean, you’re surprised it took me so long?”

  Fursey glanced at the wealh, working her way up the lavender bed with her manure basket. “I’d recommend gold and hacksilver, and yes, some silk if they have it. Gold is well and good, but it’s not subtle. Silk as a gift is subtle. And while you have fripperies for men—I’ve taken the liberty already of gifting Coelgar, the æthelings, your mother’s men Burgræd and Burgmod, and young Lintlaf with your ray skins—you’ve not many for women.”

  The wealh began moving back down the bed on the other side.

  “What I meant was what I said. You had many clues—Christ knows I laid them nicely in your path—but you were slow picking them up. These days there is no luxury to be slow. Events are moving from a trot to a canter. Soon they will gallop. You must have a firm hand on the reins. And you must learn to look ahead—”

  “I always look ahead. I’m a seer.”

  “Take your mother. You spoke of her as a queen bee. That’s because she thinks herself a queen.”

  “She should have been.”

  “But she is not. Remember that. The world is full of should-have would-have. As your poets say, ‘Fate goes ever as it must.’ You must, you must, learn to see the world as it is.”

  Hild was so sick of musts. She plucked a stalk of lavender and sniffed at it.

  Fursey tapped her on the arm. “You’d rather smell lavender than shit. I understand. You’re not yet eleven. Your father is dead. Your sister is leaving. Your, well, let us say your childhood companion has left already. The king fears you—oh, yes, he does. Listen now. It is true that a maid two years from her womanhood should not have to see the world as it is, but you’re not a maid. No, I said listen now. You are a prophet and seer with the brightest mind in an age. Your blood is that of the man who should have been king and a woman who is half sister to the king of Kent and wants to be a queen. That’s what the king and his lords see. And they will kill you, one day. If not Edwin, then the king who kills him.”

  She threw her lavender at the wall. A bee zuzzed in surprise and bumped into the apple budding on a bough overhanging the wall.

  “Of course, they’ve already tried. But you know that.”

  She looked at him.

  “Ah, now, that’s better. And you know who, too. The king’s cousin—your cousin—at the mouth of the Tine.”

  Hild’s spine went rigid.

  Fursey smiled. “No one can hear us. I walked the orchard before I came to find you. Always remember that: Scout the ground. The only person nearby is that slave. And even if she has the Irish, which I doubt, she isn’t close enough. So let us speak of what the king will not: cousin Osric sitting athwart the Tine valley and its flow of trade from the whole north and east. The man who has almost as great a claim to Deira as your uncle, and near as many men.”

  She shook her head. Never say the dangerous thing aloud. Never.

  Fursey waved to get the wealh’s attention. He called, “If you’re about finished with this lovely manure, the lady and I would appreciate a jug of beer.” The wealh put down her manure basket and approached.

  She bobbed her head. “Father?”

  He repeated his request in Anglisc. She bobbed again, then glanced at Hild, who, after a moment, nodded. “But bring small beer.” Before Fursey could protest she said, “Coelgar is a canny bargainer. I don’t want you any drunker.”

  When the wicker gate slapped behind the wealh, Fursey said, “They treat you like a prince, so think like one. Your mother does. She’s already planning. She’ll wed your sister to the man who’ll become king of the East Angles. Why?”

  “So we’ll have somewhere to run. When it’s time.”

  He laughed. “Do you really think so little of your mother? No. Try again.”

  Hild went blank.

  “Think. What do you know of Rædwald?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “And?”

  “And he was rich.”

  “Ah. Good. And?”

  “But I don’t see what good it is to be rich if someone like my uncle with all his gesiths will come along and take it all away.”

  “What do you think pays for gesiths? Gold. And there’s as much gold to be had from trade as from killing a man and taking his. More. Think. See the whole isle. Who controls the flow of trade?”

  She hadn’t thought about this before. “Osric?”

  “He controls the trade that flows from the north to the Tine valley.” From the Picts, the Gododdin, the Bernicians, the north Deirans. “But Rædwald, now Eorpwald, soon Æthelric, controls the Anglisc trade for all of the south, trade with Frankia, Rome, Iberia.”

  Suddenly she saw the whole east side of the isle as one strong warp, weighted by the overking, with the main pattern wefts flowing through Tinamutha and Gipswīc, lesser threads through Lindum and the Humber, and minor threads like the Bay of the Beacon. But cloth had more than one warp.

  Fursey was nodding. “Now you begin to see. Who hates your uncle with a deep and abiding hatred?”

  “Cadfan and his son Cadwallon.”

  “Why?”

  Hild d
idn’t see what that had to do with anything. “Because my uncle was foster-son to Cadfan, and he and Cadwallon quarrelled—”

  “Ha! That old Cain and Abel story. No doubt they did quarrel, boys do, but this is a hatred of kings. The fight for wealth and power. For gold. Edwin is now overking of the Anglisc. All ports in the east bow to him. Just as all ports in the west bow to Cadfan. Dál Riata and Alt Clut, Rheged and the Irish—to reach the wines of the Franks, the priests of Rome, they must all bend the knee to Gwynedd.”

  Hild frowned. “Sometimes ships from Less Britain stop at Caer Uisc in Dyfneint.”

  “And Dyfneint bends the knee to Cadfan of Gwynedd.”

  It was true. “But my mother, and Hereswith—”

  “Someone will be overking after your uncle. Your mother is plotting. With East Anglia in her pocket—”

  “She’ll gather the next weft. Osric?”

  “Perhaps. But don’t forget the Idings, also your cousins. Most of them.”

  Not Eanfrith, the eldest. His mother was Bebba of the Bryneich. But when she’d died Æthelfrith had taken Edwin’s sister Acha to wife. Hild’s aunt. You’re all cousins in this benighted wood. She couldn’t remember who’d said that.

  A thought struck her. “And you. You’re woven through the other warp.”

  He tilted his head and smiled slyly. “My king hates your king. But he also hates the other Irish kings and the Dál Riata, who are sheltering the younger Idings. So we might be on the same side. Or we might not. But the end of that song is not yet written. For just a little while, at least, I am your friend.”

  The gate creaked.

  “Blessings upon you!” Fursey called to the wealh in Anglisc, while making the Christ sign at her with one hand and taking the beer with the other. Hild wished that she had let the wealh bring full beer, or even mead. Hereswith. Osric. Hereswith …

  Fursey drank, sighed with pleasure, drank again, handed the jar to Hild, and stood. “And now we must go talk to a man about a dish.”

  * * *

  After the long negotiation with Coelgar—though Fursey did most of it—it was a relief to step into the dairy shed. The windows and doors were hung with gauzy white cloth, which let in light and air but not flies. The smell of curdling milk coated the back of her throat. The floor, like the weaving hut’s, was hard-packed dirt, almost black from a decade of milk spills.

  She walked past the rows of benches holding lidded clay pots nested in straw where the warm skimmed milk was clabbering, down a step and through a heavy elm door to a cooler room, the creamery.

  Mildburh had a two-handed grip on a butter churn and was pumping it up and down, up and down. Along her spine, her pink underdress had darkened to red. She turned at the waft of warm air through the door and smiled, but didn’t stop churning. Hereswith, sleeves unpinned and hanging through her girdle, did not even look up. She was tilting one of the shallow square oak trays where the milk had lain since yesterday morning’s milking for the cream to rise to the top. As the tray tilted to the bottom right corner, she leaned forward and laid her right forearm across the lip, pouring thin greyish skim milk in an expert stream from the corner into a brown pot and collecting cream in a thick lake against her arm. When the stream stopped she let the tray lie flat again and ran her forearm lightly along the edge to skim off the cream. Then she looked at Hild.

  Hild hadn’t set foot inside a dairy since she had left with the war band.

  Hereswith looked deliberately at the empty churn in the corner, then back to Hild. “Does the king’s seer, armed and dangerous, wish to sully her hands?”

  Hild didn’t know whether to stab her sister or kiss her. But that’s what sisters were for.

  She set the lid to one side and picked up the churn by one of its handles. She examined the carved tools hanging from the wall and selected a flat-bladed spatula. She carried both to Hereswith.

  “I’ll lift,” she said. Hereswith frowned, but Hild wasn’t smaller anymore. She picked up one end of the tray. It didn’t weigh as much as she thought it would, and she tilted it too sharply. Hereswith slid the open churn under the tray just in time and used the scoop to guide the slipping cream.

  Mildburh’s churn paddle thumped up and down more slowly as her cream turned to butter.

  Hild and Hereswith moved on to the next tray and then the next. They worked smoothly until all the trays were empty. Mildburh turned the butter out of her churn onto a granite slab set in an elm bench, and she began to shape it with wooden paddles.

  While Hereswith wiped her arm and pinned her sleeves back on, Hild fetched a lump of grey salt for Mildburh and mortar and pestle to crush it in. She loved the gritty crunch and thump under her hand. It sounded like a cat eating a bird.

  When they were done, Hereswith brought them a dipper of buttermilk and they drank. Hild wondered how many times they had shared buttermilk in the dairy and if they ever would again.

  Hereswith wiped the flecks of butter from her chin and said to Hild, “You’re stronger.”

  “I’m bigger.”

  Hereswith nodded, looked her over. “Taller than Mildburh.”

  “As tall as you.”

  It came out as a challenge, and two years ago it would have led to a fight, but after a moment Hereswith said only, “But not even half as filled out. You’re as straight up and down as that ridiculous knife.”

  “It’s a very useful knife.”

  “It’s a very big knife,” Mildburh said.

  “I cut an Irishman with it.”

  Mildburh looked horrified and thrilled. “Did you kill him?”

  “No. But he bled a lot. And shrieked.”

  “Men don’t shriek,” Hereswith said.

  What did her sister know of such things?

  “Was he trying to have his way with you?” Mildburh said.

  Hild stared. The thought had never occurred to her.

  Hereswith laughed. “No,” she said to Mildburh, “he was probably just trying to steal the king’s prophet. She’s worth a king’s ransom, they say. Even if she looks like a slave wealh in that dress.”

  Hild let that pass.

  Mildburh slid her arm through Hereswith’s and looked at Hild. “They say you saved us all at Bebbanburg with your seeing. Do you … see anything about our coming journey?”

  Mildburh’s eyes were muddy, honest blue, like bilberries. Hereswith’s were as blue as their mother’s, but without the cold blaze. No, Hild wanted to say. I see nothing. Let’s churn the cream and salt the butter and gossip about your husband-to-be. But what could an ungirdled girl have to say about husbands? Except as threads in the great pattern woven by others. And what would they want to hear about travel and sleeping outside a hall?

  They were still looking at her. She put her hand on her knife. “I see that you will travel safely.” How could they not? They’d be travelling with twelvescore gesiths and an army of housefolk.

  * * *

  She cut through the byre on the way back from the dairy shed. It smelt of sun on hay and of horse more than cow. At this time of year, the household horses were in their outdoor corral and even the milch cows were at pasture. Two stalls, though, were occupied: a shaggy bay pony and a tall roan gelding. She looked automatically at their hooves and tails.

  The roan was shod in dark, high-quality iron, the hooves oiled, the tail long and well brushed. A horse from a royal stable. It was eating single-mindedly but at her approach lifted its head and rolled its eye. She did not step too close. A horse used hard and often, but no cut marks where you might expect them. A beast valued by its rider. She studied the length and strength of its leg muscle: one of the heavy Frankish mixed breeds. The Oiscingas of Kent had Frankish tastes in horses and cloaks, religion and jewels. So it had been a man of Kent who had spoken to her mother before speaking to the king. How did Kent connect to the east warp or the west warp? She tucked that in the back of her mind to discuss with Fursey.

  The pony was a calm, even-tempered mare with a curious eye.
A typical priest mount: ridden, no doubt, by the man who supplied Fursey’s information. She felt the skin between its forelegs. Cool and dry: stabled long since. The little pony snorted and when she patted its withers its skin wrinkled under her hand, and the feel of it took Hild back to a wintry day by the redcrests’ wall, climbing onto Ilfetu’s back just as the wind blew her cloak sideways, making the gelding’s skin twitch. Hild leaned her head against the pony’s neck, breathed that horse smell that reminded her of so many things, so many people. “Perhaps you are sister to Cian’s Acærn,” she whispered in British, the first time in months she had spoken that tongue. “Perhaps you will see him and Ilfetu on your travels. Tell him I miss, I miss…” Her throat closed. She straightened, said in Anglisc, “But no doubt Cian has a fine new horse now, to go with his fine sword and his foster-sister.”

  * * *

  The court did not leave that month, nor the month after. They would be a great company, four hundred strong, and riders must be sent ahead. An overking travelling with his court did not sleep on the ground, did not go uncombed or eat squirrels and figwort in the lee of a wall. He did not break his teeth on more-grit-than-grain ceorl bread, or let the ribs of his horse show through from lack of oats. He did not ride with one fist on his sword and his helm to hand but confidently, in brilliant clothes, to be seen, knowing his guard had cleared the road for half a mile ahead and to each side. He must be the pip at the centre of an apple of perfect safety and unstinting bounty. He must be as close to a god as any but priests ever saw.

  Eventually, as the boughs of plum trees began to sag under their own weight, as the cornfields turned gold, as the constant hum of honeybees dropped a tone and maggots fattened themselves on the soft ripe fruit of brambles, they rode out from Goodmanham in great splendour.

  Edwin, Osric—whose stripling son, Oswine, and daughter, Osthryth, had been left in Bebbanburg with Coelgar, “for safety”—the æthelings, and Hild rode bare-armed, draped in blue and gold, horses glinting with gold at headstall, tail strap, and saddle. Their scabbard chapes were chased and gilded and their hilts winked with garnet and blue enamel.

  Breguswith and Hereswith rode under a canopy held by two of Coelgar’s men, with Burgmod and Burgræd riding behind, hands self-consciously on swords. Tomorrow the two women would ride in the wagons with Ædilgith and Folcwyn and the others, like coddled eggs, but today they rode on display. They wore marigold dresses with deep red borders and boots the colour of owl breasts, and as soft. Their ears and veil bands glinted with lapis and gold. Hereswith’s horse, a dark bay gelding, even had blue beads braided into its mane. Beside them, Mildburh wore the colours of her kin, the dead queen Cwenburh, a spring green, but with her gemæcce’s colours, marigold and red, in the tablet weave at wrist and neck.