Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  14

  EADFRITH THE ELDEST ÆTHELING continued to pursue the Saxons south and west. Osric returned to Arbeia, but Breguswith stayed. Since her baptism, she and the queen had reached some kind of understanding whose shape Hild was still trying to fathom. The queen’s good word spread: Her mother was once again the woman that women went to with their pains and troubles. The baptism had changed the spin pattern of the whole cloth. Edwin paid more attention to Paulinus and less to Hild. It wouldn’t last long—the king would change his mind, it’s what he did—and meanwhile, he was no longer concerned that Hild bring him Fursey. What was one homeless, hunted priest with a wrongly shaved head to him?

  Cadfan died and Cadwallon became king of Gwynedd. Edwin brooded, then married Osfrith, his second son, to Clotrude, second daughter of Clothar, king of the Christian Franks. He would draw more Romish weft to his warp. Let Cadwallon eat that.

  Osfrith seemed stunned by marriage. Gwladus reported to Hild that, according to Arddun, Osfrith and Clotrude screamed like stuck pigs every night. The gesiths, including the handful of Franks who had accompanied Clotrude, teased the ætheling without mercy. The Franks wore crosses, very like those worn by the newly baptised Anglisc: squat, heavy things, easily mistaken for the hammers the majority of gesiths still wore. Most gesith crosses were bronze. Some silvered copper. Cian’s was gold.

  Hild and Cian took to walking along the river at the end of the day when they might go unnoticed. He wore both his sword, with its gold hilt ring from Hild’s uncle the king, and his cross, a gift from his godmother the queen, with the same mix of pride and wariness.

  Larks crisscrossed the deepening sky as they walked west along the river’s inside bend, where the flow was sluggish and water bugs dimpled the surface. Hild walked with her skirts kilted up. It was the first hot day of the year, and there was no one to see but Cian.

  “I wish we were by the bird cherry at Goodmanham,” she said. “There always seemed to be a breath of wind there.”

  “Breath of the tree sprites, you said.”

  “You believed me.”

  “I did.”

  “You believed me, too, about the frog who swallowed the heart of a hægtes.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did.” The birdsong was fading. Crickets chirred in their place. “Did you ever believe I was a hægtes?” He didn’t say anything and she couldn’t read his face in the gathering twilight. “I don’t mind.”

  He stopped, took her arm, a hard grip just below her elbow. “Yes, you do.” His voice was rough as a blacksmith’s file, his eyes a deeper blue than the sky. “We all care, we always care, what they say of us.”

  He let go. They walked on. She rubbed her arm.

  “You are not a hægtes.”

  She walked with her chin up, not understanding why her eyes were suddenly brimming.

  “You know the gesiths sing songs about you?”

  “I’ve heard them.” She fell behind a moment and surreptitiously blotted her cheek with her shoulder.

  “Not all of them.” Now there was a smile in his voice, an encouragement, the kind of tone he’d use to gentle a horse before changing gait. “In their songs you might be a hægtes, but you’re their hægtes. You’re the seer who saved Bebbanburg and revealed a conspiracy of kings. Who falls from trees to kill a dozen Lindseymen with one blow. And offers to gut irritating æthelings who get in your way.”

  “They know about that?”

  “They know the song. Coelwyn wrote it. He got the story from Lintlaf. There’s a chorus that’s very catchy: I swear I’ll gut you, like a leveret, and fling your parts to feed the royal dogs.”

  “A leveret?”

  “Sometimes he sings sucking pig, for the funny version.”

  The funny version.

  They walked for a while. Soft shadows pooled between the trees. Soon bats would swoop in place of larks. Dusk. The in-between time, when ælfs might watch quietly from behind the hawthorn, and it was easy to talk, even in Anglisc. “The ætheling was called Ælberht.”

  Cian simply nodded.

  “I meant to kill him. I could have. But he was afraid. He looked in my eyes and was afraid.”

  “Men are, when it comes to it.”

  “He wasn’t a man. Don’t you see? That’s the point. He was just a boy.” The trees were denser here, growing almost to the edge of the river. He wouldn’t be able to see her face. “But in three years he’ll have a sword and know how to use it, and I won’t. He’ll be no taller than me, no faster, no more royal, but he’ll have a sword and I won’t. And if he angers me and I draw my seax in earnest he’ll just lay his hand on his sword hilt and I’ll have to bend my head.”

  “Not if I’m there. Or the brothers Berht. Or Grimhun or—”

  “But you’re sworn to the king, not to me.”

  The ring on his hilt tinked dully as he fiddled with it.

  “Teach me.”

  The creak and scritch of tree frogs rose suddenly, and just as suddenly fell. Swords were man magic. It would be his death if he was caught, ringed sword or no. They would nail him to a tree, pull his lungs through his back ribs, and spread them like wings.

  Eventually he said, “You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t want to.”

  They were clear of the trees. A fan of cloud in the west reflected the last rose-gold light. She touched his arm. “Stop. Please.”

  He stopped, turned, faced her, back to the horizon. His face was in shadow. He could be a wight, risen from a barrow, glinting with gold. But she could smell him, she could hear the creak of his belt as he breathed.

  “I was at Lindum. I don’t want to be a gesith. I want to know how to beat a man with a sword. Perhaps with an axe.” Women cut wood sometimes. It might be thought odd to walk about with an axe thrust through her girdle, but it was not forbidden. “One on one, sword against axe, could I do it?”

  “No.”

  “You brought a message from Onnen: to watch my back. Help me. If not an axe, then what?”

  After a moment he said, “A club.”

  “A club? Against a sword?”

  “Swords aren’t magic.”

  “That’s not what you used to think.” She remembered his singsong recitations about his imaginary sword: snakesteel blooded in battle, bitter blade, widow-maker, defender of honour and boast, winner of glory. Of course they were magic. Just not for her.

  He ignored her. “Show me your wrists.”

  She held out her arms.

  He circled a wrist with each hand. “Big, for a woman. Now make fists.” He tightened his grip. “Spread your fingers.”

  It hurt but she forced her fingers wide.

  “Good.” He let go. “You need strong wrists for a club. But they already call you hægtes. How would you explain a club in your belt?”

  “I wouldn’t carry it all the time.”

  “A weapon’s no use if it’s not to hand. A gesith is always ready.”

  “I’m not a gesith.” She pondered. “How about a staff? They’re everywhere. The handle of a rake, a spade, a broom—”

  “Or a crooked tree limb by a pool?”

  She laughed. “We are us!”

  He sighed. “We are us.”

  * * *

  The midges were breeding and biting when Eadfrith brought back the remainder of the war band. Cwichelm and Cynegils had escaped.

  Hild, alerted by a message from Begu, who’d had it from the queen, was sitting in the shadow by the hall’s western door by the time Eadfrith, filthy and stinking of horse and worse, arrived and took a seat at the board with Edwin, his counsellors, the glazed-looking Osfrith, and Paulinus. Hild laid her left arm carefully on her lap, palm up, to hide the scabbed slice along her left forearm where the tip of Cian’s sword had caught her. The great bruise on her shin was covered by her dress. Her mother, by the queen, gave her a look. Hild wondered if she’d winced.

  Gesiths—Cian among them—lounged nearby pretending to dice and drink.

>   “The West Saxons had help,” Eadfrith said. “From Penda.” He paused to strip the meat from a cold pork rib with his teeth. His normally pale hair—like Osfrith, he had inherited the gilt hair of his mother—was dark with sweat and dull with dust. “I left Tondhelm to treat with the Dyfneint, with a score of swords at his back. I told him to help them rebuild Caer Uisc. We can’t have the Mercians and West Saxons”—he paused to drink and the hall was so quiet Hild heard his every gulp—“can’t have them joining forces without argument. Not now, not with Cadwallon king.”

  “No,” Edwin said. He pushed a loaf at his son. “What’s the mood?”

  “Cadwallon, they say, is eager for a fight.”

  “We’ll make him bend the knee.” Edwin scratched his chin. He gestured at Stephanus to make a note, and said to Eadfrith, “In a fortnight, once you’re rested, you’ll take the war band to Gwynedd.”

  Eadfrith glanced at Osfrith, clean and well fed, then at his father.

  Edwin leaned forward. “That’s my word.”

  Hild breathed softly. Since the attempt on his life, Edwin couldn’t abide being questioned, even sideways. He trusted no one. Lesser folk would be whipped around a tree for such insolence. The gesiths paid attention to their dice.

  But then Edwin laughed and tossed another loaf at Eadfrith, who caught it without thinking. “Of course it must be you. You’re the eldest. Besides, your brother’s still mazed with marriage.” He raised his hand so the garnet glinted blood-red. “You’ll wear my token and speak with my voice.”

  Breguswith looked thoughtful. Hild wished she could talk to Fursey. She had no idea what path her mother’s thoughts might be taking.

  * * *

  Just inside the elm wood west of Sancton, in a glade where dragonflies glinted like enamelled pins as they swept the air clean of midges, where just a week ago Hild had seen a young fox play-stalking a hare and the leaves smelt of afternoon sun and unstirred dust, Cian swung hard and two-handed at Hild’s neck. Hild met his blade with her staff, met it at the right angle with the right speed so that oak and steel rang and sprang apart. Cian lifted his left hand, palm out, sheathed his sword, and reached for the new shield leaning against a gnarled crabapple.

  While he attended to the business of adjusting his straps, Hild sighted down her staff to make sure the sword hadn’t weakened it. It was unmarked. She was getting better at judging the angle to swat aside the flat of the blade. She wiped her forehead with her forearm and hitched her kilted shift tighter. There was no wind. There had been little rain for a fortnight. The glade sweltered.

  A wood pigeon called from deeper in the trees. A flick of red caught her eye as a robin redbreast hopped on the fallen trunk nearby. She had seen him here before. Sometimes he pretended to study the clump of blue speedwell by the mouldering roots or to peck for ants on the flaking bark, but Hild thought he just liked to know what was going on.

  She twirled the staff in her hand, enjoying the heft and balance. She liked oak best, it was hard and sure, solid as an ox’s shoulder under her hand. Ash was more plentiful—broken and discarded spears, or green poles cut from one of the coppices found near every royal vill—and whippy, which had its advantages. Birch was soft wood, and light, almost useless. Elm wasn’t much better—softer than oak, less whippy than ash. But if she had to, she could fight with a staff made of anything, whether smoothed and seasoned heartwood or a knobbed bough recently fallen.

  She preferred something her own height and as thick as a boar spear, but she had practiced with axe handles, with split-lathe poles and a lumpy cudgel made of blackthorn root. Wood was everywhere, as common as air; she always had a weapon to hand. She practiced with Cian every day and often when she was alone. The exercises came easily: She had spent time every day of her childhood stamping and swinging alongside Cian and his wooden sword. In addition to her tree-climbing calluses she now had a knot against the inside of both middle fingers. She had distinct muscles along both forearms that danced when she rippled her fingers, and shoulders as wide as a stripling. She knew the strength and speed needed to send a man’s sword flying, to crack his neck, to sweep his feet from under him or punch out a rib. She knew the play of muscle from its anchor on the ribs, across the front of her chest, and running up over her collarbone like a rope over the lip of a well. She knew the knack of using her fingers and the muscles in her forearms to lift the tip of the staff just a little, until it balanced itself, as one dairy bucket on a yoke balances the other. She knew pain. But she’d had worse falling out of trees. Pain was just pain. She healed quick as a young dog.

  Now, with a full-length oak staff, a moment’s warning to get distance, and an opponent without a shield, she might not lose.

  Shields, though. Shields were a problem.

  Cian had a new one, painted with his colours: the red and black of that first baldric Hild and Begu had made at Mulstanton. Fine red leather around the rim. With the spoils of his fighting against the West Saxons he had persuaded the smith to add a layer of gleaming tin to the iron boss and two silvered fish mounts, one on either side. He breathed on it now and rubbed it with the hem of his tunic.

  “Very pretty,” Hild called, and edged east a little, so that when he looked up from his strap and buckle the sun was in his eyes. “But while you hurred and polished, I stole the sun.”

  He just smiled his crooked smile, slid a hand through the straps, and swung the shield up. Reflected sunlight leapt from the boss and dazzled her. She jumped to one side but he was too fast. He ran at her, knocked the staff away with his shield, and walloped her across her left hip with the flat of his blade. She went down—but rolled efficiently to her feet, remembering to avoid the fallen tree, blinking furiously, trying to see, testing her weight on her left leg. It held. He’d pulled his blow, again, and outwitted her, again.

  They circled each other warily. Hild kept her gaze very slightly unfocused and spread wide, as she did in the woods, to see change: the unmoving shadow, the flick of a fox ear against wind-bent grass, the hunching back ready for the spring. With Cian it was the trick he had of moving the point of his sword a finger’s width to the right before he moved his feet. While she watched, she let her own feet find their way; she knew every root, every rut and hare scrape, every fallen bough in this glade.

  “So will you ask to go with Eadfrith to Gwynedd?”

  “Why?” He feinted with his shield but Hild didn’t blink.

  “Because you’re a gesith and there might be glory.”

  “Glory,” he said. The healing bite on his jaw darkened very slightly; he leapt in the air, sword high, but Hild wasn’t there when he landed.

  They were both breathing harder now.

  “What’s wrong with glory?” She shifted her grip slightly, watching, watching. His new shield seemed heavier than his old one. She could find a way to use that. “You’re a sworn gesith.”

  “Sworn to the king, not his son,” he said.

  Hild stabbed with the end of her staff at his face and, fast as a tiddler squirting from its nest, again at his knee. She almost got him. “You’re slow with your pretty new shield.”

  “It’s yew.”

  Hild nodded. Denser, springier, harder than lime. Good for a shield wall. Good against axes and thrusting spears. She feinted. He feinted. They circled. The robin flew off, offended.

  “Besides,” Cian said, “there won’t be fighting. You heard the king. It will be all talk talk talk. That’s why he’s sending Eadfrith. Cadwallon will bend the knee.”

  “He might not.” Those warps were not yet ready to be woven into the same tapestry.

  He didn’t respond. She blinked hard and shook her head, as though she had something in her eye. But he knew her too well and didn’t take the bait. She would have to distract him some other way.

  “Cadwallon hates Edwin king.”

  “He’s always hated the king. What does it matter? You know the songs: Cadwallon’s word turns corners no one else can see. He’ll smile and bow whil
e we’re there, and lead an army when we’re not looking. But it’s just Gwynedd.”

  “Just Gwynedd? Land of heroes! Remember Gwyrys: Bull of the host, oppressor of the battle of princes.”

  “We’re all Anglisc now.” His attention never wavered.

  “You had your first sword from Ceredig of Elmet!”

  “He’s dead. To be wealh is to be dead or a slave.”

  “Cadwallon is a king. Not a slave, not dead.”

  He shrugged. He made it look easy, despite the sword, despite the shield. Wouldn’t he ever get tired?

  “Do you remember those little streams in the dell at Goodmanham?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you do. By the boggy place, where the hægtes frog lived.”

  He smiled. “I didn’t believe you.”

  “You did.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did.”

  They both laughed, but didn’t stop circling.

  “Besides, they weren’t streams,” he said, “they were trickles. Not much bigger than the sweat running down your face.”

  Now she wanted to wipe her face with her shoulder. Oh, he was clever. “Trickles, then. Little, harmless—on their own. But if they joined together, they’d cut through that soft bank in a week.” She tried a lunge followed by a swift uppercut. Nearly. “Penda’s Mercian trickle has already joined the Saxon trickle of Cwichelm and Cynegils—”

  “And if Gwynedd joins them they’ll wash us all away. Yes.” He lifted his sword high and back, and his shield over his body. “But they won’t join Mercia.”

  Hild retreated, unsure of his intent. “They might. Because Cadwallon hates Edwin king.”

  Cian advanced. “Aye, he hates like a wealh.” Cut. “And like a wealh he won’t say so to an Anglisc face.” Cut. Backhand cut. “And any vow he makes will be a worthless wealh vow.” Thrust.

  He sounded hard, bored, careless. A stranger. And he kept coming. She swung hard, right, left, but the shield was always there and the oak and painted yew thumped dully.

  His lips skinned back. The vein in his neck throbbed. He swung hard, at her ribs, edge-on. She only just deflected it. He kept coming. She backed away.