Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  Hild couldn’t disagree.

  “You prophesied her doom.”

  “Not hers. Æthelric’s.”

  “Paulinus would say a woman’s doom is her husband’s.”

  “Why?”

  The queen, startled, laughed. “It probably comforts him to think so.” They walked quietly for a while. “You learnt your letters from the Irish priest, Fursey.”

  Hild nodded.

  “You will introduce him to me. You will not speak of it to anyone.”

  Hild glanced at her.

  “You must learn to speak those thoughts of yours sometimes, child, or those who watch—like those gesith hounds of yours—will decide for themselves what you think, who you are, whose side you’re on. For there are sides. Though I don’t know which is yours.”

  If Hild thought of sides, she thought of plots, of her mother, of Lindsey, its blood, its stink, and the world began to dissolve in a white hiss so that she wanted to step from her body and become the marble maid again. She breathed slowly, carefully. She was in York, by the river, with the queen, her cousin. Or aunt. Who had offered her a gift of perfume. Who was trying to be her friend. Maybe.

  She would offer a gift in return, and an answer of sorts. “I shall sew with your women.”

  “Thank you. We’d be glad to have you.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Hild that they might not be. She pretended to watch a pair of swans gliding by.

  “And your mother, do you think she would sew with us? When she returns?”

  Hild thought of the old queen dying in a pool of blood and the world began to turn cold around the edges.

  “Never mind. We’ll leave that for another time.”

  * * *

  She introduced Fursey to Æthelburh, but what discussion they had Fursey didn’t share.

  The ice came early. An illness swept the city, racking old and young alike with wet coughs. The fingers and toes of wealh and then even of royal Anglisc grew red and shiny with chilblains. Hild offered the parsley in her pots for the royal table, but suggested privately to the queen that she might not want to eat it, in her condition. The queen declared that all, even wealh, would get cheese as well as barley bread or oats for breakfast.

  Hild sewed with the queen’s women in the morning, when the light was good. In the afternoon twilight she walked along the river, and at night she listened to the music with one ear and to the gesiths as they boasted and drank, and the thegns who manoeuvred for favour, with the other. The men drank gallons of beer and as much white mead as the women of the household could freeze out overnight from the yellow mead poured into the special tall barrels—all men but Paulinus Crow, who drank sparingly of the wine Æthelburh provided. Hild suspected that James the Deacon—who did not eat in hall but with his boys—was not sparing. James and Fursey had become friends, though Hild did not know if it was a natural affinity or at the direction of the queen.

  For a while, she enjoyed a life in which she behaved exactly as she should: a royal maid with no secrets. She sat at her place of high honour on the bench, often near the æthelings Eadfrith and Osfrith, who were now men with no time for a maid, and sipped her mead. She let the ebb and flow of the hall wash over her, much as she sometimes sat behind bracken at the edge of a clearing or by reeds at the edge of a pool. Life, death, change, they happened most at the edges of things: where forest meets clearing, air meets water. A spider has only to spin at the edge of a puddle to catch the fly that dives to drink. A shrew has only to watch in turn for the spider. For the fly must come to the edge to drink, and the spider must follow the fly. Fate goes ever as it must.

  * * *

  Yule approached. Breguswith returned from Arbeia, followed a day later by Osric.

  In Hild’s room, mother and daughter regarded each other silently. “You’ve grown,” Breguswith said. “Your woman is taking good care of you.”

  “I’ve told her to make up a bed for you next to mine.” Despite her best intentions, Hild’s voice rose in a question.

  But Breguswith merely nodded.

  That night, Hild didn’t sleep well. The next night, her mother didn’t come to bed. Hild made no effort to find out where she spent her time.

  * * *

  The high men of the isle gathered to seek favour and pay homage to Edwin and his new queen. Every evening, arriving at the beat of a drum or the ripple of a lyre, a handful of brightly cloaked men, wearing enough gold to dazzle a jay, would swing into the hall and bend their proud heads to the high table. Bryneich from the north, with their short hair, red mouths, and enamelled brooches, under Coledauc king—who bowed to Hild and gave best wishes from Prince Morcant. The piglet, Hild remembered. Men from Rheged, under Rhoedd the Lesser, Rhoedd’s sister-son and little Uinniau’s older brother, styling himself prince and bearing gifts from Rhoedd for the king and queen—and a beautiful double pin inlaid with garnet from the princess Rhianmelldt for the princess Hild. Coelgar, returned from Lindsey, with half a dozen Lindsey thegns at his back and a kinglike bearing. And Dunod, lord of Craven, whom some called king.

  The hall hushed when Dunod was announced.

  He and his retinue—twenty strong, defiance in their bearing, and wearing knives just a little too long for manners—strode along the benches, careless of their cloaks near the fire pit, and dropped, to a man, on one knee before Edwin. The room hummed; all knew what Cadfan’s man had told the hægtes about traitors. Dunod laid a heavy casket on the floor before him. Edwin leaned back, pretending to sniff at the mead in his goblet, but Hild saw the green glitter of his eyes.

  “Edwin king!” Dunod said in a strong voice, and the hum dropped—even the housefolk paused. “Edwin king, foul lies have been visited upon my honour. I am your loyal man.” He lifted the casket; the man on either side put a hand on the lid. “I bring you a gift.” They flung the lid back with a crash. “Ceredig of Elmet.”

  Even Edwin leaned forward.

  The head was unrecognisable. It was the colour of the underside of a mushroom, the eyes sunken. Dark purple lips were pulled back in a snarl from black gums and long yellowing teeth. The hair was red-streaked grey, and a golden torc circled a stringy neck.

  No one spoke.

  Then Edwin looked down the table at Breguswith, who sat by Osric. “Cousin, is this Ceredig?”

  Breguswith stood, leaned forward on both hands for a better view, and after a moment said, “It’s his torc. And it’s his hair as it might be after ten years.”

  Edwin gestured for her to sit. He tapped his great ring—the garnet carved now with his boar—against his cup, thinking. “Dunod. We accept your loyalty, and we thank you for the torc.” He gestured, smiling, for Coelfrith to find places for the new guests, pleased with himself: not admitting it was Ceredig, not admitting the favour, but accepting the gift. “No,” he said to Coelfrith’s man, who bent to the casket. “Leave it there. We wish to enjoy it.”

  Hild watched her mother from the corner of her eye. She seemed to have swelled and hardened. Dunod had declared for Edwin. But if Edwin accepted Ceredig’s death, Elmet now lay in Edwin’s gift. Twelfth night was the traditional time for such things.

  * * *

  The morning of twelfth night, over a breakfast of hot spiced bread and mulled cider, the queen gave all her women gifts. Hild’s was a tiny vial of jessamine oil.

  At a formal feast, kin sat in strict order of precedence. Hild was seated to the right of the æthelings on the king’s right. Breguswith sat to her right rather than with Osric. When Hild took her place, her mother’s nostrils flared. “You’ve been busy while I was away. Good.” But then Edwin and Æthelburh entered. “We’ll speak of this later.”

  The king and queen and Coelgar held hands over the great war horn of the Yffings, which sat on a beautiful square of calfskin, dyed blue, and a hank of white wool—symbols of the leather and wool goods of Lindum—and swore Lindsey to Coelgar as ealdorman.

  The king and queen swore to be generous, just, and vengeful of his honour, a
s need occasioned. “By our breath we swear this, by our blood we swear this, by our lives we swear this.” And Coelgar swore to be loyal and true to his king, and to be just to his people in turn. “May every river hide its face from me, may my food fall to dust and my kin turn their backs if I be false.”

  And then the roasted meat from the sacrifice was carried in, the ritual cup drunk, and the feast begun in earnest.

  Osric, sitting to the king’s left with a face like curdling milk, shouted for more white mead. Breguswith saw Hild watching him. “His day will come, little prickle. Our day. Coelgar might have Lindsey but Elmet is the key. And soon Edwin will see that he must lean on kin.”

  12

  THE DERWENT coursed steely and dark under a scudding sky. Every now and again the sun broke through and shone on a daffodil, early bumblebee, or dangling catkin. Hild walked along the bank with Æthelburh, stepping around puddles so their just-healed chilblains did not get wet and flare again. Bassus and Lintlaf followed behind at a discreet distance.

  The queen walked very slowly and, despite her best efforts, with a waddle. She was due to drop anytime. She was frowning.

  The queen’s first embroidery had been greeted with such pleasure and confident covetous words from Æthelburh’s trade master that fourteen women were now working on three others. That morning Burgen had declared, louder than a honking goose, that the queen was obviously carrying a girl. She’d never seen such a clear case in her life—and they had to admit she’d had a long and full life. Well, hadn’t she? Indeed, several women murmured. Oh, be quiet you old fool, Æffe said, we’ve all had interesting lives, even the roof-brushing young barehead, there. No, Burgen said, loud enough to override her gemæcce, it was clear: The queen was carrying a girl. You’d only to look at her. Carrying high like that, and nipples pink as a maid’s. Why, probably even bareheaded and ungirdled Hild had nipples darker than that. And look at the width of the queen’s hips …

  “It isn’t a girl,” Æthelburh said to Hild. “It isn’t.”

  Hild didn’t see why she was worried about it. Her uncle would be pleased to have a peaceweaver—then he could keep Hild as seer. “He already has sons.”

  “Not my sons,” Æthelburh said. “Let’s stop here.” She indicated a fallen poplar. Four months ago, Hild would have sat immediately, but she had learnt from watching the queen. So while Lintlaf stripped off his warrior jacket and hurried towards them she examined the fine-downed shoots and unfurling leaves on the poplar. It must have fallen in the recent storm.

  Æthelburh smiled at Lintlaf as he laid his jacket on the knurled trunk then withdrew.

  “He looks ready to die for you,” Hild said as she helped Æthelburh lower herself gently.

  “Even though I lumber like a pregnant sow?”

  She knew better than to agree. She sat next to the queen, picked at the heavy burr under her thigh. She wondered why poplars had so many.

  “Hild. Does your mother speak to you of women’s things?”

  “No.” In the distance a pair of shovelbill ducks rose in a tight flurry of feathers. She wondered what had disturbed them.

  “Are you ready for your veil band? A blind man can see you’ll need it soon.”

  Hild watched the ducks as they settled back to their eggs. Probably not otter. Perhaps nothing. Nesting ducks could be unpredictable.

  “Yet you’re not wearing bindings. Does your mother even have a girdle prepared? A weft beater?”

  Hild had no idea. She didn’t want to think about her mother.

  “You have no sister here. Your mother, well, she’s busy. You need a gemæcce.”

  Hild remembered working on Cian’s tablet weave with Begu, the shadows in Mulstan’s hall all falling one way in the stream of sunlight.

  “Hild?”

  Hild shook her head. The memory of Begu was hers.

  “Child, you need a gemæcce. Would you like me to choose one?”

  “No!”

  “Ah. So you’ve made your choice. Is she so very unsuitable? No? My dear, I can’t help you if I don’t know. And unlike you’re reputed to be able to, I can’t read minds.”

  “I can’t read minds.”

  “No. But there are those who say you can.” She nodded down the path to where Lintlaf was scratching his back against an oak tree and Bassus was cleaning his fingernails with a knife. “I warned you that if you didn’t speak for yourself others would speak for you. And they are doing so. It’s dangerous. You must learn to listen to me. But for now, I’m telling you, you must have a veil band and girdle prepared and a gemæcce chosen soon. Very soon. If neither you nor Breguswith take care of it, I will. I’m your aunt.”

  Cousin, Hild thought. But perhaps it might be a fine thing for the queen to be her aunt. “She wants me to marry Oswine and have Osthryth as gemæcce. My mother.”

  The queen didn’t quite hide her surprise at this burst of confidence. “This doesn’t please you?”

  “They look like pointy-faced ermine.”

  Æthelburh laughed—then went white around the lips. She put her hands on her belly and, after a moment, said, “He’s impatient.” The pinched look eased. “Help me up.”

  Hild hauled the queen to her feet. Lintlaf hurried to retrieve his jacket while Bassus remained to guard the path. As they passed Bassus, the queen went white again and leaned for a moment against the oak tree.

  “He wants to come into the world very soon.” She panted. “So much wants to happen soon. Too soon. Think on what I’ve said.” She pushed back against the tree, straightened, and took Hild’s arm. “Look at all these oak apples. Remind me of it when we get back. Stephanus will be grateful for them, for his ink.”

  * * *

  When they got back, Hild forgot about oak apples. Fursey stood by the gate, grinning. But it wasn’t Fursey Hild saw, it was the two who stood beside him: Cian and Begu.

  Hild stopped so abruptly that the queen, still leaning on her arm, slewed to one side.

  Begu wore a veil band. A veil band and girdle. She was a woman grown. And Cian stood like a young gesith, a thegn’s foster-son: tall, muscled, a hint of moustaches, cloak thrown back from his shoulders, hair greased, sword hilt tall over his left shoulder.

  Bassus thought so, too. He stepped in front of his queen and put a hand on his sword. Cian crouched.

  “No!” Hild said. “They’re friends.” And, heedless of manners, she abandoned the queen and ran to Cian, and the world filled with hugs and questions and the abrupt, bright laughter of relief and friends well met.

  * * *

  Hild, Begu, and Cian sat on the freshly ground limestone flags of the strange, bare, high-ceilinged room that was to be the Derventio chapel. Under the Crow’s supervision men had cut a row of windows high along the length of the eastern wall. There were no shutters. Everything but those pale, gritty flags had been mudded, plastered, and limed.

  “The air stings my tongue,” Begu said, and tipped back her head to look at the ceiling. “A god is going to live here?”

  “The Christ,” Hild said.

  “It’s a cheerless space for a god,” Cian said. He leaned back on his hands, turning this way and that. His scabbard chape scraped the floor and the sleeves of his warrior jacket rose a little. Hild saw the tip of a new scar snaking over his forearm. “Cold, too.”

  Hild, stung, said, “There will be silver and jewels, silk hangings, and gilded carvings to put old King Coel to shame once the walls dry. And the Crow will send to Frankia for glass for the windows!”

  “Glass? In a wall?” Begu said, and Cian shook his head. Who had heard of such a thing.

  Hild felt reproved, caught in a childish need to show off. Cian was a young warrior, a thegn’s foster-son. Begu was a girdled woman, the thegn’s marriageable heir. Hild might be touch-the-ceiling tall, the seer who saved Bebbanburg and predicted the fall of Lindsey, but she was still, officially, a child. It seemed another lifetime since they had rolled in the kitchen garth at Mulstanton, shrieking with laught
er about gods and worms, and dogs and demons.

  The silence lengthened.

  “I like the queen,” Begu said. A wisp of hair was escaping her forehead band. She noticed Hild looking. “I use your comb every day.”

  Hild touched her pocket. “I carry your snakestone.”

  “I hoped you’d like it. Cian practically sleeps in his belt buckle.”

  “I do not!” His flush emphasised the new strength of his jaw, the thickening bone of his brow. He jumped to his feet. “I hear singing. They’ve broached a new cask. I’m going to drink.”

  They watched him leave. The muscles wrapping his knees were bigger, too.

  “He doesn’t like to be teased anymore,” Begu said.

  He never had, Hild thought. Perhaps they weren’t so changed after all. But Begu, Begu sitting there in her veil band and girdle, amber and gold glinting at her ears.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “Your veil band. It’s…” It’s a veil band. A woman’s veil band. “It’s lovely.”

  “Onnen made it for me. She made one for you, too. I brought it with me. And a girdle. Just in case your ma didn’t remember to. Though she said I wasn’t to say that. Oh.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, then Hild laughed. “I’m glad, so very glad you’ve come.”

  Begu laughed, too, that shimmery, silvery laugh Hild would always associate with light along a wet beach and the smell of the sea, and took her hand. “I said I’d come. I said we’d use those tablets. Onnen would have come herself—she’s very agitated for you, but that’s Cian’s to talk about, I don’t know what’s going on, no one tells me anything—but she couldn’t.”

  Hild had forgotten how Begu’s thoughts flocked like starlings, flicking this way then that. It took her a moment to sort through what Begu had said. “Onnen’s ill?”

  Begu stared. “Didn’t I tell you? No, perhaps I didn’t. But your veil band— Oh, it’s so pretty! It’s the exact colour of—”

  “Begu, tell me what? What’s the matter with Onnen?”

  “Why, nothing.”

  “Then—” Hild took a breath, let it go. “Tell me how she is.”