Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  That made her lonelier than ever.

  So she sifted through what she had just heard in Eorpwald’s hall. Paulinus was colluding with Edwin behind his chief bishop’s back. Edwin didn’t like Paulinus. Osric was stupid, but Breguswith had smiled at him and he had smiled back. Sword and skirt, book and blade. She couldn’t understand the pattern. She wished the pear trees were big enough to climb.

  Gwladus, carrying a basket, bumped open the wicker gate with her hip. Hild sat up and brushed at her dress.

  “I’ll have to wash that, I suppose,” Gwladus said in British.

  “Anglisc, Gwladus.”

  “It’s all over filth.” She plunked the basket on the grass. Some kind of meat pie and a jar of ale.

  “One of the vill wealh will do it.” A flock of young swallows swooped over the trees and settled on the great hall’s rooftrees, chattering. Where did they go in the winter? Did they fly south to the land of eternal sun or sleep, like squirrels, in some snug hole? Perhaps they nested in rows on the gables under the roof of the hall.

  “Did your mam drop you on your head at birth?”

  Hild blinked, then put her hand on her knife.

  “There. Like that. Threatening to stab your own bodywoman. No one does that. If you’re displeased, you have me whipped.”

  Hild frowned. “You want me to whip you?”

  “No!” Gwladus leaned back and folded her arms.

  Perhaps all wealh learnt to fold their arms that way.

  Gwladus unfolded her arms. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Will I tell you some things?”

  Hild nodded. The pie smelt good. Pigeon?

  “Well, then. The vill wealh will not wash your dress because it’s your dress and I attend your body now. I do it. No one else.” Hild thought about it, then nodded. She reached for the pie. Gwladus didn’t move.

  Hild sighed and withdrew her hand. “Yes?”

  “If you didn’t want me for your person, why did you buy me?”

  Because a slave can’t leave me. But she couldn’t say that.

  “I’ll tell you then, shall I? You’re a seer. A seer’s woman makes sure the seer wears clean clothes and eats fine food and gets a decent bed to sleep in. She makes sure the seer gets the white mead and the hero’s portion and the bench by the fire, like the king himself. It’s a seer’s due. And do you know how the seer’s woman does this?”

  Hild shook her head, looking at the pie.

  “She is seen to have the care and protection of the seer. She has respect. She has good clothes of her own, and good food and … and a bracelet! And pretty shoes. And a warm cloak, and a bedroll to herself. And the housefolk will see how she is valued by the seer, see that offending her is to offend the seer herself, that she must be given in to when she asks the baker for the first hot white loaf and the cook for the first hare pie. And she has, yes, she has pennies in her purse!”

  “Pennies?”

  “Just one or two, mind. For those times when a visiting stranger has news. So that the seer always has the news first, for a seer taken by surprise is a very sorry seer indeed.”

  Hild hadn’t thought of it that way.

  Gwladus flushed. “It needn’t be pennies. It could be little trinkets, worthless things.”

  “What is the worth of a worthless thing?” Gwladus’s flush spread. It was a pale bloom of a blush, quite unlike Hereswith’s dark rush. Hild did not understand why she had thought them alike.

  “I didn’t mean to say you were a sorry seer, that you needed your visions bought and paid for. No doubt you are a good seer, a great seer. No doubt you’ve the keenest vision since, since…” Gwladus floundered.

  Hild stood. She was taller than Gwladus. “Pennies, you said. You understand coins?”

  Gwladus bobbed her head. “Yes, lady.”

  “You will teach me. Then we will go back to the wīc.” She wanted to see that counting table.

  “And you won’t have me whipped?”

  Hild touched her knife. “A seer’s bodywoman is never whipped. A seer’s bodywoman loses her nose, or her hand, or her life.” The same punishment as a king’s bodyman, or a chief priest’s.

  She had gone seax to seax with an ætheling. She understood why a king often threatened violence. It felt good, and it worked.

  * * *

  They all made the journey to the market again: Fursey, Hild, Lintlaf, the two bearers of the hacksilver, and Gwladus.

  “Is it deliberate?” Fursey said as they rode along by a field of barleycorn stalks turning the colour of cured oak. Weeds showed bright green. “Child?”

  “Um?”

  He pointed to Hild’s blue dress, knotted up to one side under her belt, showing a faint stain still. “Is it deliberate? A reminder to the market sellers that it would be as well to give you what you want, at your price, before you pull that pigsticker?”

  “Gwladus suggested it.”

  “Did she?” He twisted in the saddle to look back at the wealh, who sat sideways across Lintlaf’s saddlebow, gurgling with laughter. She had started their travel walking, with the other wealh. “She’s a cunning thing.” He turned back. “What other pearls of wisdom has she dropped in your ready ear?”

  Hild shrugged.

  “I still don’t know what possessed you to buy such a vixen.”

  “I need someone of my own.” Someone who had to put her first.

  Fursey surprised her by agreeing. “Indeed. But have a care. This one’s as pretty as a grass snake but much more dangerous. See how she’s already charmed the oaf. Though, granted, he has no more brains than a bull calf.”

  “She says I was dropped on my head at birth.”

  Fursey shouted with laughter, and behind them Gwladus gurgled, and they rode into the wīc wreathed in mirth.

  * * *

  The counting table was grooved with vertical lines, eight long strokes beneath eight short ones. The grooves were inlaid in yellow enamel. The long ones each held four blue beads, the shorter a single red bead. The Frisian money changer slid the beads up and down as he counted and added coins for a merchant but moved too fast for Hild to follow.

  Then it was their turn. One of Hild’s chests of hacksilver was emptied and expertly weighed under the eye of a Frank holding an axe who, every time he moved to brush at his weeping left eye, made Lintlaf twitch. The money changer asked Hild what coins she wished in exchange, how much gold, how much silver.

  She hefted a gold coin in her left hand. The same size around as a cherry but as heavy as a plum. Good yellow gold, with a picture of a Frankish king on one side and writing that made no sense on the other.

  “If I took all in gold, how many would they be?” She hefted the satisfying weight one more time, then put it down.

  “By weight, the silver is fifteen and a half pounds. That would make”—flick flick flick—“fivescore and eight gold scillings and three silver pennies.”

  She rolled one of the little pennies, no bigger around than a willow withy, between thumb and forefinger. “And if I changed half to scillings and half to pennies?”

  Flick flick. “Fifty-four gold scillings and eighty-six-score and eight pennies. Less the eight for my service.”

  “Three,” said Fursey. Hild picked up another gold coin, smaller, the same size as the silver penny but heavier. The Frank wiped at his eye. Lintlaf twitched. The lustre, like the sheen of run honey or parsnips cooked in butter, made her want to put it in her mouth; she put it down reluctantly. Fursey and the Frisian haggled for a while and settled on a fee of five pennies, with a promise of custom if they exchanged the second chest. Hild was dazed. Scores, hundreds of coins. And that was only one chest.

  Coins were power of themselves. They didn’t need a king uncle or an almost-queen mother or the strength of a seer’s gaze. She could take a gold scilling or a silver penny and offer it anywhere in the wīc and everyone would understand its worth. And there would be no weighing of hacksilver or a gold ring, no hagglin
g and accusations of inferior workmanship, just the weight of these Frankish and Roman and Byzantine coins.

  She took two-thirds in gold scillings and one-third in silver pennies. The money changer counted the coins into small sueded sacks stamped with his mark. Fursey laid them in plump lines along the bottom of the chest. The two bearer wealh and Gwladus watched as if under a spell. Lintlaf watched the Frank. Fursey watched Hild. Hild told Fursey to set aside the short sack of four scillings and one sack of pennies and carry them himself. Now they would buy.

  * * *

  They were a strange procession. Word spread fast from the money changer’s table. Hild was recognised: a tall maid with fathomless eyes, a very big knife, and the pig’s blood still on her skirts. But they remembered she had paid, and paid well, for that pig. Every stall holder cried out as she passed and sent boys running alongside with lengths of cloth, or tiny glass bottles, or a basket of honey cakes.

  Hild bought and bought until the wealh were staggering and even Fursey was carrying a sack of small items. Lintlaf kept his hands free for his sword, though Fursey noted that this would do him no good if he didn’t keep his mind free of the sway of Gwladus’s hips. Gwladus herself carried three bolts of cloth, finely woven but plain Kentish stuff in apple colours—green, russet, gold—shoes fit to her feet, and, most precious of all, a thin silver bracelet with a red glass stone.

  One enterprising stall holder sent two piping boys to follow them and blow jaunty tunes until they would come see his wares. Hild remembered the stall: a green cloth laid over the table and cunning little steps built beneath to show a cascade of luxury geegaws. She stopped before a row of tiny matching red glass bottles with gilded stoppers. The stall holder encouraged her to smell the oils: rose, myrrh, sandalwood. She bought them for Hereswith, to remind her of Hild when she left to live with the North Folk with Æthelric. She bought lesser oils—rosemary, sage, lavender—for Mildburh and Ædilgith and Folcwyn. Then she saw an ivory comb carved with a goat and inlaid with gold and thought of Begu, scrambling like a goat up the hill, hair springing free of her braid. She would send it. She could. Writing and coin. She could send a message and gift to anyone, anywhere. She could watch and weave the pattern of the world. And all she had to do to earn the gifts to turn into coin was to see clearly, to see first.

  She let Fursey negotiate prices while she looked over the rest of the items laid out on the green cloth. A silver hand mirror polished on one side and chased on the other, with an ivory handle, for Onnen. Gwladus suggested a small chest of unguents to go with it, “In case the lady is getting old and her face is changing.”

  Now she needed something for Cian.

  They moved on to the weapons stall. Lintlaf’s eye was caught by a small knife with a blue glass pommel and blue-tooled sheath strapped for the forearm. “Try it on,” Hild said, and when Lintlaf did, and beamed and flexed his muscles to test the fit, she gestured for Fursey to pay. Lintlaf’s lord and oath-keeper was Edwin, only he could give swords and hilt rings, but this knife was more ornament than a tool of death to be employed at the lord’s word. Giving it was permissible.

  “Last time there was a cunning buckle knife,” she said to the stall holder.

  “This, lady?” He held up the massive gilded bronze buckle but, perhaps mindful of her last marketplace performance with a blade, did not pass it to her.

  “Show me.”

  He obliged by putting two fingers in clever looped handles and pulling free a wicked tooth of a blade three inches long.

  * * *

  Hild and Gwladus were halfway up the steps to the door to the women’s quarters, carefully sheltering their burdens from the drizzle, when they heard Hereswith shouting. They looked at each other. Hild shrugged; they couldn’t stand out here in the wet. They went in.

  The housefolk—four of them, all tight-shouldered and tense—did not look up, but Mildburh and Hereswith turned. Mildburh was red-faced, unhappy. Hereswith’s face was gelid and pale, like custard.

  “And what unwelcome news do you bring this time?” Hereswith said. “Am I to die horribly in childbed?”

  Hild had no idea how to respond.

  “Oh, don’t stand there like a carving. Come in and keep out the rain. Tell me, what dreadful news does Ma have now?”

  “I brought these. For you.” And she held out the silk-wrapped packet.

  Hereswith took it, unwrapped the first fold, and burst into tears.

  “But you don’t even know what it is,” Hild said, and to her consternation Hereswith wrapped her arms around her and wept harder. “What is it? Are you ill? What’s the matter?” She motioned Gwladus forward. “Here, I brought you buttermilk, too. It’s still cool from the dairy. Here.” She put the cup in her sister’s free hand. She didn’t know what else to do. “And summer ale for Mildburh.” It was Mildburh’s favourite. Always know what they like, her mother said. They will love you for it.

  And then Mildburh started crying, too.

  “Please, stop,” Hild said. “Please. Here.” She sat on the bed and tugged gently at Hereswith’s arm. “Sit. What’s wrong?”

  Hereswith wouldn’t sit, but Mildburh did, clutching her ale.

  Hereswith threw her buttermilk at a hanging of a hart hunt. It dripped solemnly.

  “I’m to wed this Æthelric and follow him to the stinking fen that he calls home.” Drip. “Where he already has a woman.” Drip. “You didn’t predict that, did you, little seer? A princess of the South Gyrwe. A woman and two children.”

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  * * *

  Breguswith, hand wrapped around the pendant she wore, smiled, and said to Hild, “It isn’t a fen. Not all of it. And of course the man already has a woman, he’s a man isn’t he? He’s sworn to set the strumpet aside—sworn to me, and to Edwin, his overking.”

  Hild wondered how much that meant. A man was lord of his own hall, king or no. And it was as Eorpwald’s brother, Æthelric ætheling of the South Folk, he had sworn to Edwin, not as Ecgric, lord of the North Folk. Ecgric prince—and ally of the South Gyrwe and East Wixna.

  “Besides, the Gyrwe woman’s given him only daughters. He’s more in need of an heir than a peaceweaver. One son, or even the hope of one, from your sister and the woman will be forgotten. And Hereswith will have Ædilgith and Folcwyn with her, and six gesiths—hardly alone.”

  Breguswith let go of her pendant: the biggest garnet Hild had ever seen, cut like a seashell and set among slices of the same stone. The workmanship was as fine as the Svear’s but by a different hand. Kentish.

  Breguswith smiled. “Yes. A token of appreciation. Edwin is getting married. To Æthelburh.” King Eadbald of Kent’s sister, Breguswith’s half niece. Hild’s cousin. “She’ll come north next summer. With a priest, Paulinus.”

  * * *

  The afternoon of the day before they were to leave. In Hereswith’s apartment Hild smiled at Mildburh. “The kitchen has saved the very last of the summer ale. I told them not to release it to anyone but you.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I asked them to make sticky cakes, too,” Hild said. “With run honey and Frankish almonds.” Gwladus had arranged that. She said it had cost two pennies.

  Hereswith studied Hild, then turned to her gemæcce. “I like sticky cakes, Mil.”

  * * *

  When they were alone, Hild looked about. The hanging was gone. Being carefully cleaned no doubt. She hoped Hereswith wasn’t in a throwing mood today.

  She didn’t know what to say. Her sister, whose fierce whisper and poke were her earliest memory. Her sister.

  She took Hereswith’s hand. It was smaller than hers now and hard with rings.

  “Perhaps you really will turn out to be a giant,” Hereswith said, lightly enough, but her smile wobbled and Hild knew what she was thinking: I won’t be there to see it.

  “This is your wyrd,” Hild said. “You’ll be a queen. You’ll have children.” In pain, and blood, and sweat. “I’ll come and see them.”
<
br />   But her voice sounded false, and neither of them quite believed it. Wyrd never flowed along expected paths. Hereswith might die in childbed, and Hild wouldn’t know until Æthelric or Eorpwald thought to send a messenger. Even then it would be king to king: The peaceweaver has died, what do you propose?

  “Learn to read,” Hild said.

  “Read? I don’t—”

  “Please.” She should have thought of it before. But she had never left her sister before. “You must. Find a priest to teach you. Pretend you’re interested in their god.”

  “What—”

  “The Christ. Please. Learn to read. For me.”

  “Does it really mean so much to you?” Hereswith’s eyes were so blue. Sister blue. “I’ll always be your sister. I will come if you call. I swear it to you. Please.” She saw that her hand was squeezing Hereswith’s to purple.

  Hereswith tugged Hild’s hair, as she had when they were little, but gently. “I’ll learn to read. But you must do something for me.”

  Hild nodded, swallowed, saw she was clutching too hard again, tried to loosen her grip but couldn’t. Her sister’s hand …

  “Find people. People you know are on your side. Not that priest. Not a slave. Kings die, even overkings. Especially overkings. So find people.”

  Hild nodded again. Her tears dripped on their hands. Hereswith wiped them off, as briskly as she would wipe a baby’s nose. And Hild couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stand to face the rest of her life without a sister at her side.

  “You’ll be well,” Hereswith said. “I’ll be well. I’m older, and I say so. And on your birth day, and mine, we’ll drink a toast, each to the other, and one day we’ll hold hands again.”

  * * *

  They saw each other the next morning but though there were words, Hild didn’t remember them, they were ritual, for the people: a stern lady of the North Folk bidding smooth travel and fair weather to her uncle the overking, her sister the king’s seer, and her lady mother. The three women were gracious but remote, dry-eyed players in the royal mummery of Eorpwald and Edwin’s grander farewell: the pledges of honour and allegiance between king and overking.