Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  Tondhelm held Hild’s wrists behind her and shook her slightly to encourage her to continue. “Eamer was set by Forthere to guard me, at Lindsey.”

  “Forthere who is dead,” the king said. He twisted in his chair to peer behind him, then back at Hild. “And Eamer saved you at Lindsey yet tried to kill me, his king. Why?”

  There were none of the usual murmurs of a hall audience. No one wanted to be heard; no one wanted to be noticed. Fear lay over them all: fear of the king, fear of the young hægtes, fear of Saxons in the shadows and the fates of men being spun by otherworldly hands. Nothing like the songs. Songs …

  “Because Cwichelm, his lord, told him nothing of me. Because I am not important. Whereas you, lord, are overking. King of all the Angles.”

  “Soon to be king of the Saxons.” He spoke flatly, for his gesiths and counsellors and all those who, having seen his blood, smelt it, might plot against him. He leaned forward. “So tell me how it is that this stranger”—he pointed his smeared sword at Cian—“came to be in my hall with a serpent-tooth knife?”

  She drew herself up. Like a hoofbeat, like a song.

  “Say a wolf cub’s tooth, my king. It is a small blade, but honest. Like the man who bears it.” She was glad that Cian was not whole and uninjured and standing beside her with the height and hair of their father. “His mother, one Onnen, was bodywoman to my own mother. We played together as children. But children grow. Onnen knew my time as a woman approached. She sent Cian with gifts.” She touched her veil band and earrings. Her mother had made her wear every piece of good jewellery she possessed, and hang every mark of womanly rank from the girdle given by the queen—she had even lent her own seeing crystal. “The buckle blade was a gift from me. From my hand to his. Into his hand to protect your life.”

  “Indeed.” He rested his chin on his fist. “And how did you know he would need it?”

  She touched the crystal hanging at her left hip. “I am your seer.”

  “Cwichelm, you say.” He gestured for Tondhelm to let her go. He stared at his seax then sheathed it. He scratched his beard, thinking. “He tried to kill me.”

  “Yes, lord King.” She wanted to rub her wrists but didn’t dare. Anything could irritate Edwin, anything bring the swing of the sword.

  “And you claim you stopped him.”

  “Lord—”

  He lifted his hand. “Yet Paulinus here says it was the Christ’s will that I be saved.”

  “Perhaps it was Christ’s will that I be born to see your path and guide others to keep you safe.”

  Paulinus Crow stared at her. Hild stared back.

  “The bishop of Christ and the handmaid of wyrd,” Edwin said. “Which should I believe?”

  “You have promised me your daughter for baptism, my lord,” Paulinus said.

  “I have promised her if you can promise your Christ will give me victory. Can you? Or will you witter like that fool bishop of the Dyfneint who told me all prophecy is the work of demons?”

  “Not all prophecy, my lord.”

  “And you have seen my victory?”

  “I have prayed. I have asked for the aid of our Lord Jesus Christ and all His saints and angels.”

  “Pity you didn’t ask yesterday.” He ran a finger up and down the clotted channel of his sword, sniffed it, wiped his hand on his thigh. He lifted the sword. “Come closer.”

  The black-clad figure stepped forward.

  “Closer.” Edwin touched the point of his sword to the bishop’s throat, just below the throat apple.

  Hild admired the Crow’s courage, and his self-possession. He wore clean robes and had shaved. The apple in his throat did not bobble.

  “Will you take a wager?” Edwin said.

  “Name the terms, my lord.”

  “My daughter against your life. Victory against the Saxons and you shall baptise her. If not…” He smiled and pushed, gently.

  “I accept the wager.”

  A growl of approval ran through the hall. They liked a brave man. They liked a betting man.

  “Tondhelm!” The whole hall jumped. Edwin lifted the sword away and held it out hilt-first to his thegn. “Clean this and put it away. And bring food. I’m as hungry as a goat. And cut him loose.” Hild along with everyone else followed his gaze to Cian. “And someone find that tooth of a blade and his belt. He’ll need a blade to swear on.”

  Hild backed away slowly.

  “And, Niece.” She froze. “Find that priest of yours and bring him to me.”

  Outside, she leaned against the doorpost and threw up her breakfast while Cian swore his life to the king.

  * * *

  Hild forgot about the salve she held and watched Cian spar with Berhtnoth, shield to shield, his moves simple and deft, like a poem: never lunging, never off-balance, always over his feet, always behind his shield.

  Behind them, Coelfrith, as attentive to detail as his father, oversaw the grooms bringing horses in batches from the pasture for his examination. The war band would be moving fast. He ran a hand over fetlocks and face, approved each mount with a nod just like his father’s. Every single mount must carry its gesith forty miles a day into Saxon territory and still have the strength for a hard gallop away if the battle went badly.

  The gesiths paid no attention; the horses were not their concern.

  Berhtnoth began to pant, though Cian did not. Not long after that, Cian banged Berhtnoth’s shield to one side, stepped away when Berhtnoth lunged, and ran his padded sword along the gap between Berhtnoth’s cheek flap and mailed shoulder. Berhtnoth was dead.

  They stepped apart and a wealh ran to take their shields and helmets, and the two gesiths slapped each other on the back and laughed over each stroke while the wealh ran back with cold well water.

  The king was nowhere about. She stepped from the shadow of the wall.

  Cian saw her and walked over, water spilling from the jar into the grass. His leathers reeked of sweat and his mail of grease and iron.

  “You’re very good,” Hild said.

  “I am.” He grinned and wiped his face. The left side was still greenish-yellow. “I’m a king’s gesith! I’m going to war! All those days fighting in the furze with sticks. And then Mulstan—oh, he’s a strong shield fighter! He beat me so many times, just banging me aside, not even breaking a sweat. ‘Hoard your strength!’ he’d say, and wallop me on the head. ‘Mind your feet and hoard your strength! The loser in a shield fight is the one whose legs start to tremble first.’ And soon—” He broke off. “What’s wrong?”

  Hild shook her head. He was going to war. He didn’t need her burden: a missing Fursey to find and nightmares of a suspicious king. Besides, soon she wouldn’t have to worry about the king’s mood.

  “Where’s Begu?”

  “With the queen and the baby.”

  Cian made that face men made when women mentioned babies, and drank more water.

  “Cian.”

  He wiped his mouth.

  Come home safe. Don’t be a hero. Stay away from the king. But he was a king’s gesith. She might as well tell rain not to fall. “Remember Mulstan’s lessons. Wash your wounds well.” She hefted the waxed sausage of salve she’d prepared, then held it out. “And send a message when you can.”

  13

  BEGU’S HAIR STRAYED FROM UNDER HER VEIL BAND and she muttered to herself as she folded dresses and rolled hose. Her muttering became peevish. The war band had been gone a fortnight.

  “Gwladus will do that,” Hild said.

  “Gwladus is busy doing the work of all the men who left with the gesiths. I’m doing this.”

  Hild doubted Gwladus would ever do men’s work, but she said nothing. She leaned against the doorpost, remembering Mulstanton, Begu wondering out loud whether she would need her bed.

  Begu carefully stowed their ivory treasure boxes in the carved trunk that would ride under their direct supervision. “I don’t even see why we have to leave the Derwent. Eanflæd is still so tiny!”

&n
bsp; Hild shrugged. “It’s how it is.”

  “Why can’t we at least wait until the war band comes back?”

  They wouldn’t all come back; they never did. And this time Cian was with them.

  “I wouldn’t move a lamb at that age, never mind a princess!”

  Hild nodded.

  “What’s Sancton like? Is it near the sea?”

  “No. But Brough, where we’ll go later, is on a river as wide as the sea, and sometimes if you’re at the dock early enough you can go out on a boat that will go to the sea and be back in time for dinner.”

  “But not at Sancton.”

  “No.”

  “I miss the gulls.”

  Hild stroked the back of Begu’s arm. “I’m sorry we have no home.”

  Begu said without turning, “Moving is stupid!”

  Her hair smelt of the resiny pine they used to ward off moths. Hild didn’t know what to say.

  “Oh, just go away and let me finish this in peace. I think the queen wants to talk to you about something.”

  * * *

  At the door of the queen’s apartment, Hild put her finger to her lips for a moment and old Wulfhere, who had taken a spear behind the knee at some long-ago Kentish battle, nodded and said nothing.

  She watched Wilnoð and the queen, who sat on stools with a tablet weave between them. Every now and again Wilnoð tapped the foot of the painted and gilded cradle and kept it rocking.

  After a moment Hild cleared her throat. Wilnoð looked up. “Good,” she said. “You can take the queen out for a brisk walk. Accept no excuse.” The queen began to shake her head. “The babe’s asleep, Æthelburh. She won’t melt if you let her out of your sight. Go for a walk.”

  * * *

  The string-thin paths of early spring were wider now, wide enough for the queen and Hild to walk abreast. The soft green tapestry of the woods was stitched with the bright gleam of birdcall, too many birds to name.

  They walked silently. It was clear the queen’s thoughts were elsewhere. Or she was trying to find a way to say something.

  They’d been walking now for a while. The queen seemed to have forgotten that they should pause for Wulfhere to catch up but Hild felt no obligation to remind her.

  They heard the creak-crash of a deer deep in the woods, followed by a sudden hammering nearby. Æthelburh clutched at her cross.

  “It’s a woodpecker,” Hild said.

  “Not a wood sprite?”

  Hild shook her head. The hammering, loud—a big woodpecker—came closer. “If we keep still it might fly this— There.” A red plumb-bob shape flicked across the trail in the characteristic rise-and-dip path. It would be heading for the big oak by the clearing. Woodpeckers liked that one; she had seen the plates of bark there the other day; the tree must be infested. Perhaps it would fall in the next big storm, be nothing but broken wood when they came back to the Derwent. Once again, Hild was struck with longing to have a home, year-round, where she could watch and learn a wood, a stream, a hillside in snow and fog and sun, in wind and rain, in summer and winter. Begu was right. Moving all the time was stupid.

  “Begu misses the sound of gulls,” she said. “She misses her home. I never had one. Do you miss yours?”

  Æthelburh stroked her cross. “When Eanflæd fell asleep last night I listened for the sound of the wheat. In the Kentish summer it rattles and hisses in the breeze. Everywhere. Wherever you look, from every vill: golden wheat waving like the sea.”

  Hild felt she should offer the queen something, as a comfort. If it were up to her she would climb the ash and watch the badgers, this was just the kind of weather that badgers liked: warm sun to drag out their bedding to air. But she doubted the queen would want to climb a tree and, besides, badgers reminded her of Osric.

  “Do you want to go see the rookery?”

  “I would be happy to watch the rooks with you.”

  Hild led them onto another, barely discernible path and the scent changed from summery open green to something cooler and loamier. Apart from that once with Begu, on the day they became gemæcce, she was the only one who walked this way. After a week with no rain the rivulet ran clear and quiet, and instead of the vivid primroses of spring, its narrow banks bloomed with blue cornflowers and a spill of delicate creamy yellow petals, over which no butterflies flittered. Bitterwort. An antidote for several poisons, and good for fevers and fatigue. Her mother was always looking for it but the root was the best part and it wouldn’t be ready until autumn, when they wouldn’t be here.

  After a little while, the small, densely packed ash and elder gave way to a clearing and, beyond that, a stand of tall elms. The ground beneath the rookery was white with bird shit. The kah-kah of young birds, recently fledged but still wanting to be by their parents, echoed through the trees.

  They sat quietly on a rock, beyond the patch of shit. The breeze was soft and warm. They watched the birds.

  “They look like crows,” Æthelburh said.

  “They’re young. They’ll lose those face feathers in autumn and look like rooks. At least, that’s what happens at Goodmanham and York.”

  Æthelburh’s face, pale and plump for a week or two after the birth, was beginning to plane down again. Her eyes were half closed.

  Hild lost herself for a while in the gossiping to-and-fro of the young birds. The breeze changed slightly, coming now from the south as well as the west. Coming from where Cian was. Perhaps he was fighting. Perhaps he was hurt. Gradually she became aware that Æthelburh, no longer sleepy, was watching her.

  “You look like that when you listen to music,” she said. “You watch everything, don’t you? Why?”

  “It’s peaceful. I learn things.”

  Æthelburh untied her braid and began combing through it with her fingers. “What things?”

  “That rooks—dogs, cats, people—do some kinds of things depending on how old they are. Like those young rooks. In autumn they’ll lose their face feathers, and they’ll start playing—flying for the fun of it, only they’re not doing it for the fun of it, they’re proving they’re good enough for the rookery, that they can stay. Like gesiths with their boasting and fighting. And rooks are like jackdaws—like people. They have families. They talk. They don’t like change. There’s an ash spinney a mile away where they like to go pluck the twigs for their nest. Always the same place; one patch is almost bare of twigs. But they’re just twigs, why fly all that way? I don’t know. But that’s what they do.”

  Æthelburh untangled a burr from her hair and flicked it away. “And what do dogs and cats do?”

  “Dogs own space and cats own time.”

  Æthelburh’s hands paused for a moment, then resumed their comb-and-pick.

  “The cats share the barn and the byre. All of them. But you’ve seen the big ginger tom with the torn ear?” For a moment she couldn’t remember which vill he belonged to. It didn’t matter. “He gets to sit on the hay bale by the door at middæg. The two grey queens curl up there at æfen. The tom wouldn’t go there in the evening, and the queens wouldn’t go there at middæg. But a dog in hall or the kennel likes his own corner, morning, noon, and night. That’s his corner, no one else’s.”

  “And people?”

  “Kings travel from place to place like a cat but want to own those places like a dog. It’s why there are wars.”

  The queen blinked. “And the queen?”

  “The queen…” She was realising she’d just compared Æthelburh’s husband to a dog. “The queen is like a new bird in the colony. She finds new grubs, builds new nests as her price for belonging.” Hild tilted her head back, in the direction of the vill.

  “Derventio was Paulinus’s idea. A lot of things are Paulinus’s idea.”

  Ah. She waited.

  “Like Eanflæd’s baptism. It was agreed as part of the marriage settlement—any girl would be mine to baptise—but the timing … That’s Paulinus.”

  Some hint was moving, eellike, just out of Hild’s reach. “Ha
ve you had news?”

  “No. But it will come. The king, my husband, will be victorious. He’ll return laden with gold and glory to Sancton, where Eanflæd will be baptised as my husband’s tribute to God, the first Yffing.”

  It didn’t need a seer to foretell that. An Anglisc overking with a huge war band against a rabble of petty Saxon lords, all calling themselves king. The only question was how long it would take to subdue them, and who Edwin would install as his underking.

  “Don’t you see, child, what I’m telling you? When we get to Sancton, Eanflæd will be baptised. She will need powerful sisters and brothers in baptism. I had thought of asking you, but you’re Yffing. Blood kin. My husband will not allow any greater tribute than an infant. You can’t be baptised until he is. And he won’t take baptism yet—though when he does, all must follow. Do you understand what I’m saying? Those who go first will find themselves in positions of favour. It happened in my father’s court.”

  “But as you say, I’m blood kin.”

  “Your mother is not. Nor your … your gemæcce’s foster-brother. You might mention it to them.”

  * * *