Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  “Cian…”

  He wasn’t listening. She swung at his head, at his legs, even at his wrist. But it was a big shield, and he didn’t seem tired at all.

  He came on like the tide, relentless, eyes hard and blank as blue slate. She stabbed, she swung, she stepped back and back.

  Her back was against a tree. Nowhere to go. He raised his sword.

  The world slowed. A dragonfly glinted to her left. She could see each back-and-forth of its see-through wings, as though the air they beat was as thick as honey.

  He was so close: sweat inching its way over the great vein in his neck; his tunic dark with it, and his hair. Did her hair, too, turn that shade, dark wet chestnut, at the temple? He smelt as tangy as new cheese.

  “I win,” he said, and the world turned again with its usual speed. He grinned and lowered his shield. “You looked as though you expected to wake in the hall of Woden.”

  She laughed, harsh and metallic with relief. She wanted to shout and hug him but settled for pushing herself off the tree with a writhe of her spine and giving him a friendly thump across his rump with her staff.

  * * *

  They sat by the river, by the smooth slope of an otter slide and a fallen alder rotting into pinkish punk. She dabbled her feet in the water. He sat cross-legged, whittling a fist-size lump of pale fawn birch.

  She breathed the rich scent of the dark water, the reeds, the glossy mud.

  She said, “I thought you’d gone mad.” He didn’t say anything, the way only he could: an easy silence, no hurry to know. “The things you said, your face.”

  He looked up. “We were fighting.”

  “What you said about wealh. Did you mean it?”

  “We were fighting.” He turned the nub of wood in his hands. It was the beginnings of a duck.

  “It sounded true.”

  “I’d say I wanted to fuck your mother if it would make you blink.” Now it was her turn to say nothing while he whittled. Perhaps she wasn’t as good at it as he was: He cut too deep.

  He sighed and threw the birch in the river.

  “Perhaps I did mean it.” He sheathed his knife. “In the shield wall I must be one of many, one of the same. Anglisc, not wealh. To the man on my right my mother is the lady of Mulstanton; to the man on my left, I’m a thegn’s foster-son. We’re all king’s gesith.”

  “Don’t hate her,” she said. “She’s your mother.”

  He threw a pebble into the river.

  “Is her word worthless? Was Ceredig’s? He gave you your sword—”

  “A wooden sword.”

  “—as he would any prince of the blood at that age. A sword from the hand of a king.”

  “A prince of the blood…” He aimed to sound careless. “Yet my mother never spoke of it.”

  They had grown up closer than most brothers and sisters, played together naked as eels. He would know if she lied outright.

  “She didn’t need to: He gave you the sword.”

  “But not in public.”

  “Does it need to be witnessed for it to be real here?” She tapped his breastbone with two fingers. It made a round sound, like a drum. A strong sound. She leaned back on her hands. “You had your first sword direct from the hand of a king, and your mother was a royal cousin. Royal, of the blood of Coel Hen. The same blood as Cadwallon. Go with Eadfrith to Gwynedd. Look your royal cousin in the eye. See again a king in a king’s hall—a king from a line ancient when my people were over the sea. And when Eadfrith—or Osfrith if he’s not so married by then—is sent to Craven to take it from Dunod, go there, too. Meet your people—the warriors, the kings, the bards at their harps.”

  “Perhaps I will.” He threw another pebble. “But it will still be all talk talk talk. They’re even sending priests. Priests don’t fight.”

  Hild shook her head. “Paulinus is a Roman bishop. Fursey says wealh bishops and Roman bishops are like cats and dogs. The one will always hiss and the other bark. The wealh bishops will never kiss the Crow’s Roman ring, not even if Cadwallon bends the knee to the king. Paulinus wants Cadwallon to fight and die. Otherwise he can’t be overbishop of the isle, to Edwin’s overking.” Kings picked the chief priest who then picked the underpriests. It was how it had always been. The name of the god didn’t matter.

  Cian considered that. “So no matter what presents Edwin sends or what pretty words Eadfrith speaks, Paulinus will spoil it all by flinging insults about like a dog shaking off the rain?”

  Hild nodded. “Cats and dogs. They won’t be able to help it.”

  He pulled a plate of bark from the alder and drew his knife. “I’m still not sure I want to go to Gwynedd. Eadfrith … worries me.”

  She remembered the Eadfrith of long ago, nuzzling a girl in the heather, laughing, telling her Hild was a hægtes in a cyrtel. She had never liked him.

  He turned the bark this way and that in the light. “Eadfrith’s like the king.”

  “The king has won all his battles.”

  “But he has a dint in his arse from sitting so much on the fence.”

  “He does jump, in the end.” But she wondered about her mother’s thoughtful look.

  “But will Eadfrith?”

  “Um?” She thought about it. “It depends how many men the king sends.”

  He tossed the bark into the river. It floated away like a tiny raft. He sheathed his knife. “Lintlaf thinks the Gwynedd war band is fourscore.”

  Triple the enemy number was usually held to be the right number for overwhelming force: a guarantee of Cadwallon bending the knee. But twelvescore was a lot of men to send just for a talk, especially when the West Saxons and Mercians were allied, Elmet unsecured, and the harvest due.

  She fished her carnelians from her purse and wrapped them around her wrist. “Still, you should go. Meet your people.” She let the beads flash in the sun and grinned. “Besides, you might get presents.”

  * * *

  Five days later Edwin sent Eadfrith west with Paulinus and four priests, sixscore gesiths, and Cian. Osfrith went back to making Clotrude squeal every night—and during the day, too, Gwladus said, and in this heat!—Edwin to brooding like a moulting hawk in his hall, and Æthelburh and James the Deacon to conferring about music.

  “I don’t know what she sees in it,” Begu said to Hild as they counted the skeins of yarn from Elmet that Breguswith had asked them to sort. “Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. That makes threescore of the red. It’s nothing you can hum.” She pulled a soft sack closer and peered dubiously at the green skeins inside. “And this is nothing we can use.” She lifted a badly dyed hank of wool to the light. “More yellow than green.”

  Hild was thinking about the king. Dint in his arse indeed. Sixscore against fourscore. A bold war leader certain of his men might force a battle at those odds. But if Eadfrith did not no one would call him craven out loud. Not in enemy territory. Cian would be angry. But at least he’d be safe.

  “They should be whipped.”

  “Um?”

  “The Elmetsætne. They should be whipped.”

  At least it was Anglisc people she wanted to whip this time. “Give it to me.” Hild pulled a thread from the skein and rolled it between forefinger and thumb. Poor stuff: short-fibred, coarse, and uneven. Not even worth redyeing. She would tell her mother. Her mother would tell the king that he was being fed worthless goods as tribute from the leaderless Anglisc of Elmet. Edwin would brood further and build elaborate stories in his head about why he had not yet brought Elmet firmly into the Northumbrian fold. “Put everything back in the sacks,” she said. “Gwladus will carry it— Where is Gwladus?”

  “Spitting in Lintlaf’s mead, I expect.”

  Lintlaf had returned from the West Saxon campaign with a fistful of gold and the news that he’d turned down an offer of Dyfneint land, Because why would I want to live so far from all the action, with no one to talk to but wealh? And when he pulled Gwladus onto his lap she had not resisted—she was a slave, what choice did she have?�
��but later Begu had seen her spit in the cup she filled for Lintlaf and hand it to him, smiling.

  Hild went to find her mother. She told her of the wool.

  Breguswith listened, nodding.

  “You’re not surprised,” Hild said.

  “They have no lord. No one to protect them or watch for them in bad times. So they protect themselves and hoard their best against the day, yet know they should send the king something so he’ll leave them alone. Meanwhile, he tells himself they’ll come to him of their own accord.” She smiled. “So let’s not worry the king with this just yet. Let’s wait for news from Gwynedd. Why take an unnecessary risk? No. Always approach kings with answers, not questions.”

  In bed that night, Hild listened with half an ear while Begu wondered aloud if Wilnoð, the queen’s gemæcce, might be pregnant. “It would explain the handfasting to Bassus in such a hurry.”

  Hild, still thinking about her mother, said, “Listen to everything the queen says.”

  “You already told me that.”

  “I mean it.”

  “You didn’t mean it before?”

  Hild closed her eyes. How did Begu always make simple things seem so slippery?

  “I need information.”

  “Why?”

  “My mother is … She’s planning something. Making up a pattern to weave all the threads into, to tell a story. I want to know if it’s based on anything real. Listen carefully for anything about the north. Or the king’s sons. Please?”

  Begu made an indistinct noise: She was falling asleep. She fell into sleep like a stone into a well. She always had, even in her little linden-wood bed in Mulstanton. There was no stopping her once she started to drop.

  Hild talked anyway. Of Osric—he would be back from Arbeia at the mouth of the Tine once the harvest was in and the season’s last trade goods shipped—and how she wished her mother hadn’t taken his part. She didn’t understand why her mother was doing it. Their bodies didn’t lean towards each other the way Onnen’s and Mulstan’s did, or Lintlaf’s and Gwladus’s had. And Edwin didn’t trust him. It was just a matter of time. Then she wondered about Fursey: Was he in East Anglia with Hereswith yet? Would he like it there? She missed him—she missed the gleam of his wit, she missed his information. Where would she get information now? And Onnen: Had she had her baby? Was it a boy or a girl? Would it look like Onnen or Mulstan, or maybe Cian …

  The moon rose. Begu snored gently.

  * * *

  In the weaving huts at Goodmanham the women worked in two sets of two. For days, the weather was perfect: steady sun and a light breeze from the northwest smelling of wildflowers and ripening corn. Hild, decent in veil band and girdle, strong hands disguised with rings, sometimes worked with her mother setting up loom patterns, but often with Begu and the queen and Wilnoð, relaxing in the back-and-forth of conversation about nothing in particular as they lifted the warps, shot the shuttle, and beat the weft. There were advantages to being ignored by the king.

  Hild studied Wilnoð. She looked as plump as a winter wren. Begu was right.

  The infant Eanflæd lay on her stomach on a striped cloth by Æthelburh’s feet, wriggling about, sometimes lifting herself onto her hands and being surprised by the late-afternoon sunlight slanting through the open roof door, sometimes stretching her hands in the direction of the hanging loom weights and cooing. Whenever Æthelburh or Wilnoð spoke, Eanflæd looked at them and beamed gummily. Her hair and eyelashes were fine and sooty, darker even than Æthelburh’s. Very like those of Cygnet, Hild’s mare.

  Hild stood and stretched. Her fingertips brushed the thatch.

  The queen said to Wilnoð, “Look at that. Like a young oak. I doubt even Bassus could reach so high.”

  “Oh, he could. If he jumped.” They laughed at the very idea of red-cloaked Bassus so risking his dignity.

  “Cian could,” Begu said. “I think.”

  Perhaps Hild only imagined the queen and Wilnoð deliberately not looking at each other.

  But then Begu was talking about Eanflæd—she’d be teething soon, no doubt, look how she was drooling, and she bet that Hild’s fine carnelian beads would never be safe again, the baby would always be wanting to stuff them in her mouth. From there they talked of the best smooth stones for a baby to gum—Æthelburh claimed to have had an agate circle to chew as a child, “The very colour of your eyes,” she told Hild—and what herbs worked best when the endless wailing and bleeding gums began. They had reached a discussion of fennel when Hild felt the vibration of hoofbeats, a horse ridden at speed. Then they all heard it, followed by the messenger’s shout: “News for the king! News from Gwynedd!”

  * * *

  The hall didn’t have the light of the weaving hut but it was too hot for torches. Edwin sat in his great chair, his gesiths ranged about him, Coelfrith at his right hand, and the tufa looming behind him in the shadow and half-light.

  He was livid.

  Hild glanced at the messenger, sitting on a bench out of the way, trying to eat while the scop pestered him with questions. She would have to wait her turn for news of Cian.

  Everyone was there, waiting to hear Edwin’s pronouncement: the gesiths, James the Deacon, Coifi and one of his underpriests, a visiting emissary from Rheged, even dazed-looking Osfrith. On the women’s benches on the left side sat the queen and her ladies, including Breguswith and Begu, most giving a decent appearance of spinning.

  Edwin stood.

  “Am I not the overking of the Angles?” No one was foolish enough to speak. “It was a simple enough message. Acknowledge me overking and keep your miserable mountain fastness. Hard to misunderstand.” He looked around the assembly, settled on the emissary from Rheged. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  The emissary, there only to deliver the news of the death of Rhoedd the Lesser, said carefully, “Perhaps Cadwallon king did not misunderstand, lord.”

  “Don’t name that nithing king in my hall!” Edwin roared. “Soon he’ll be king of nothing! He will kneel at my feet in shackles and watch as I burn his hall and use his women and sell his children as slaves. I’ll hack off his limbs and stake them at the four corners of his land. I’ll salt his fields. I’ll tear out the tongues of those who speak his name. I spit on him!”

  He spat on the rushes before him. One by one, every man in hall hawked and spat.

  * * *

  Hild refilled James the Deacon’s cup with Rhenish wine. “I imagine the bishop’s anger was almost as great as the king’s,” she said. Worse, the messenger had told her. He’d also told her that Cian had sent her a message: He had a bold new cloak from his kin. Hild had given the messenger a ring pulled from her thumb and tucked away the news to ponder later.

  James nodded, sipped. “The letter was in Stephanus’s hand, of course, so it was smooth and bold as usual—a lovely hand that man has, lovely. If he sang half as well as he wrote … No, no. No more for me. Oh, very well, just a little.”

  “So Paulinus was angry.”

  “Incandescent. He said to make sure that by the time he got back every single wealh priest was to be gone from Goodmanham. Even that pathetic wisp up by the well.”

  “The priest of Saint Elen?”

  “Even so. And then we must rid the entire kingdom, he said. Rip them out, root and branch. All spies, he said. But I doubt most of them can even read, never mind write secret messages to a king they’ve never seen. And how I’m supposed to do it all in two days I don’t know.” He shook his head, setting his grey curls abounce. He pushed his cup aside with regret and tapped the brown-bound book on the bench. “Now. Where did we get to yesterday?”

  “James, son of Zebedee and brother of John.”

  James beamed. “Most beloved of Christ.”

  “Yes,” Hild said. She liked hearing James’s stories. She liked his accent, hot and spicy as mulled wine. Even his Latin, when he spoke it: such a different Latin to Fursey’s.

  “I visited his shrine you know. In Iberia. Gold, gold everywhere,
studded with gems of every colour. More gems than stars in the sky. And, oh, the singing there. Like the angelic host. It makes me weep to think of it.”

  She refilled his cup. “Did James like music?”

  “Of course he liked music! He was the brother of the beloved of Christ! His soul was as fine as silk, and as pure. He lived in a country full of sun and wine and fine food. Until the wicked Herod Agrippa struck off his head with a sword. Is that all kings can think of, swords?”

  Then he was off, talking of swords and how they should all be thrown in the sea, that life should be love and music, a heaven on earth of angels and sunshine, of wine flowing like water, and kings of ancient and settled lineage whose people were all happy, all obedient to their church, and of priests who tended their flock and didn’t worry about kings and armies and imaginary spies!

  * * *

  Gwladus caught her as she was leaving the deacon’s rooms. “Herself wants you to eat with her in hall.” She handed Hild a ring—a yellow stone, big and gaudy, though not as heavy as it looked—to replace the one the messenger now wore. Hild slid it onto her thumb. “Hold still,” Gwladus said. She adjusted Hild’s veil band. “Osric is back. With Oswine.”

  Hild sighed.

  “Shall I say I couldn’t find you?”

  Hild shook her head. “Go find Begu. Tell her Cian’s safe and will be back the day after tomorrow.”

  Gwladus nodded, and Hild knew the news that the men were returning in two days would be sold around the kitchen: a bannock cake here, a cup of milk there.

  * * *

  Hild sat with her mother and Osric and Oswine at a corner of the table. At the other end of the hall, gesiths sang something maudlin about hearth and hall. When Osric touched her mother’s hand, Hild kept her spine straight and her expression pleasant. It wouldn’t fool her mother but Osric wouldn’t know how much she longed to take her seax to his throat, to open it as she had opened that man’s forearm on the dock at Tinamutha. Instead, she twisted the new ring round and round, as any bored young maid might. It was slightly too big. It wasn’t nearly as fine as the one she’d given the messenger.

  Oswine was paying more attention to the gesiths’ end of the hall, clearly longing to be one of them. Hild reminded herself to talk to him when no one might overhear.