Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  So many people doing so many things, except Hild.

  Even James was busy, taking up some of the administrative burden of Elmet. Though, as he pointed out, that province was running smoothly now, thanks to Hild’s idea that the king shouldn’t demand tithes from new farmers. Really nothing Coelfrith’s man, Pyr, couldn’t run. All he had to do for now was keep track of who was clearing forest and breaking ground where, and keep the bigger landowners assured of the king’s benevolence. “Which mostly involves feeding them slabs of beef once a month. And mead. The number of mead barrels he’s getting through is iniquitous!”

  Paulinus Crow was busy: He could practically taste the white pallium of overbishop, James said, and was building a web of his own priests to shuttle information back and forth. Lindsey was coming along very satisfactorily, so much so that James thought the bishop would soon be pushing for the king to lean on the apostatised Eorpwald in East Anglia. Paulinus would love to baptise him and appoint an underbishop of the East Angles—make himself the overbishop of all the Angles. Let Justus keep the Kentishmen, and welcome. All in the interests of the king, of course.

  The king himself spent his days with Coelfrith and bundles of tally sticks, pondering his wīc, what he could funnel through it, what he could charge. Counting, counting, counting, rearranging possibilities, shouting at Coelfrith when he didn’t like the answers. They should have moved to Derventio a fortnight ago, but the king, obsessed with his wīc, would have none of it.

  Hild wanted to talk to the king about Rheged: Rhianmelldt might not be capable of weaving peace, now or later, but Rheged didn’t need that, it needed protection. And though Rhianmelldt wasn’t old enough to marry she could be spoken for. If Northumbria didn’t pluck her, someone else would. Mercia or Gwynedd could give Rhoedd what he craved: a strong enough alliance to leave Rheged safe from violent annexation and obliteration when he died.

  In the kitchen garth claimed from the rubble at the north corner of the great hall buildings, Hild flicked a caterpillar off a colewort leaf. Caterpillars. Soon there would be butterflies and moths. She’d never seen such things in York. For her York meant stone, brick, winter skies. This greening felt all wrong. They should be at Derventio by now—she missed her secret spinney; she missed the rooks—and then Goodmanham. It would be summer before they knew it, yet here they were, still in the city of stone.

  She straightened, twirled her staff slowly, thinking.

  “Morud.” He levered himself to his feet. “Run to the kitchen. Find Gwladus and tell her to meet me in my rooms. I want to dress for the king. Oh, and tell the kitchen the colewort is ripe, though they’ll have to hurry to beat the caterpillars to it.”

  Gwladus came to Hild’s apartment in time to help with her hair. She told Hild the king was in a bad temper. “Flung the tally sticks at Coelfrith’s head and told him to get out, get out. Then he flung his trencher at the wall hanging and swore he’d have the cook’s breasts for a coin purse if she couldn’t stop burning the lamb, and he was sick to death of lamb, anyway, fed up to the back teeth. Well, lucky him, I say. Today might not be a good day for whatever you had in mind. Even the Crow thought better of going in.”

  Hild turned. Gwladus adjusted her brushstrokes deftly. “The Crow? What did he want?”

  “Arddun says he’s been pestering the queen to pester the king to send Coifi to Woden’s enclosure at Goodmanham to tear it down.”

  Hild closed her eyes and leaned back. She loved the firm pressure of Gwladus’s hand on her crown, the steady strokes of the brush, and the scent of dried lavender and spicy tansy rising from her skirts. She pondered the enclosure. It had to happen. It should happen soon. “Where’s Coifi now?”

  “They say he spends time in the church. I don’t know why: howling empty space.”

  * * *

  The church, still only uprights and a roof, was empty but for Coifi. The ex-priest of Woden, wearing a brown tunic and hose—he had thin legs, she realised—stood with his hand on the great stone basin mortared over the well, staring at the painted stone. Hild stood by what would become the main doorway and watched him. He seemed unaware of her—of anything. She doubted he even saw the bright colours under his hand.

  She had never liked him much, but she felt for him. The king no longer had use for him. That would be her lot, one day.

  She bumped her staff on the doorpost, as though by accident, and stepped under the roof.

  He said, without turning, “Do you feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  “Nothing.” He turned. “I feel nothing. Is there a god here?”

  “The priests say he’s omnipresent.” She joined him by the font.

  “Then why build him a house?”

  She didn’t have an answer. James hadn’t had one, either.

  “They haven’t even carved the doorposts,” he said. “What kind of god is expected to visit a house no better than a wealh’s hut? Even the king’s horses have better posts to look at.”

  “Paulinus will tear it down. He’ll persuade the king to build a hall-size church of stone.”

  He stroked the limestone font. “Cold stone. What kind of god is this Christ?”

  “Ours, now.”

  Silence. “The king refused to see me today.”

  “He is … busy.”

  “He’ll always be busy for me now, won’t he?”

  “Yes.” She heard the faint clash and stamp of gesiths in the yard. He heard it, too. His face twisted: He had exchanged sword for skirt long ago; it was too late. And he had no land, no wife. “Where will you go?”

  “Who would have me? The Crow took everything. For his church, he said.” He looked about the rough empty space. “The king smiled and watched.”

  That was how kings were. If you were of no use, you didn’t exist. “If you could go anywhere, if I got you something to go with, where would you go?”

  He thought about it. “Craven.”

  Two displaced men under one roof. Hild turned it over in her mind, looked at its underside, its corners. She imagined the bitterness, the endless stories told over mead and smoking fires, the constant gnawing on the bones of what if. It wouldn’t be a happy hall, but she couldn’t see anything coming of it. Osric was much reduced and a priest without a god was nothing. “I know how you could please the king and win the goodwill of the Crow, and you’ll leave riding a king’s stallion, wearing the rich clothes of a gesith and bearing arms. And your name will last forever.”

  * * *

  It was delicate work, like guiding a team of nervous cart horses along an overgrown track, but not difficult. It was a matter of holding the right tension on the reins and nudging each in turn to take a step, to make promises that would be to their advantage, and then hold them abreast so that each thought the other was taking most of the strain.

  Coifi would formally desecrate Woden’s temple, and leave—if he left equipped like a thegn, including a little silver in his purse and a wealh to tend him all the way to Craven. Paulinus would make no argument—if the king agreed to be present and witness the final humiliation and repudiation of the old gods, then acknowledge Paulinus chief priest and bishop of all the Angles. The king in turn would agree to witness and proclaim and provide the gear for Coifi—if it would get both priests off his back and give him the time and space to think about his new wīc.

  Coifi further agreed to persuade Osric to invite Paulinus to Craven for baptisms. Paulinus agreed to return one or two of the items appropriated from Coifi. Edwin agreed that the chief church of the new god would be grand enough to honour His glory.

  It was stitch-by-stitch work, following a plain pattern. Child’s play. It made her restless and impatient.

  She brought her latest proposal to the king and Paulinus in hall. They were going back and forth about just how much honour the new god required—not only stone, the Crow said, but marble, and tile, and glass—when Gwladus glided to Hild’s side and whispered in her ear.

  The warm breath, the sw
irl of tansy and lavender, the words triggered a surge of something wild she couldn’t name. She trembled, like a horse sliced free of its traces. Kings can be dangerous when surprised. She didn’t care. This, this was what she was born for. She was the light of the world.

  She stood to her full height.

  “An omen, lord King. An omen!” The click and rattle of knucklebones from the gesith’s corner stopped.

  King and bishop both faced her. The king’s eyes slowly blackened, then swarmed around the rims with green, and Hild, with absolute certainty, knew what he was thinking: Omens were wyrd-hammers, risky and unpredictable; they could swing in any direction.

  But she felt reckless with power; it foamed through her. She knew he would let her speak.

  After a moment, he nodded.

  She looked down at Paulinus. Less like a crow than a dusty black beetle. She could destroy him with a word.

  “My lord Bishop’s book refers often to the Christ as the Lamb of God.”

  His eyes glittered. “He has many names.”

  “But Lamb of God is one.”

  “Yes.”

  “And all would acknowledge that the raven is Woden’s bird.”

  Nods from every corner of the hall.

  “All birds are Christ’s birds!” Paulinus said, but no one paid attention. The raven was Woden’s bird, always had been, always would be, his messenger of life and death and war.

  “Attend!” She felt taller than an oak, taller than an elm. They would sing songs of the king’s seer, the queen of wyrd. “My king. Lord Bishop. Even as we stood here and weighed the honour due the Christ, a raven swooped on the fold and took a new lamb.”

  Dead silence. Then the hiss of whispers up and down the hall.

  “What, then, does it mean, Lord Bishop?”

  His cheeks darkened. She knew what he was thinking: that she was about to drive him to the wall, wreck all his plans. And she could. She felt so sure, so clear. But that wouldn’t suit her uncle’s purpose. There was another way.

  “What it means, my lord Bishop, is that Woden’s bird is desperate. He is thin, he is hungry. The lamb is plump and new. The raven seized his chance.” She hefted the weight of her words. “Did he steal the ewe? No. Why? He hadn’t the strength. The raven, Woden’s bird, took the lamb, because the lamb is small, because it is new on the fold.” She spiked her words, impaling them along her battlement one by one by one. “This is not Woden’s message.”

  The words hung there, a declaration, a taunt: You can’t stop me!

  “This is a message from Christ!” Her voice rang. “Christ, our new god. He shouts to us: Fight for me now!”

  The whispers swelled to a roar. Fight! This the gesiths understood. But at the centre of the hall silence pooled around the three tall glittering figures: Paulinus wondering why Hild had turned the battle like that, what her deeper game might be. Edwin working out how much new control this might give him over the Crow. And Hild feeling stranded and appalled as the surge of certainty ebbed. Recklessness killed seers as surely as it killed gesiths.

  * * *

  A small party rode through the grey afternoon, along the river that led to Goodmanham. They passed the alders where once, long ago, child Hild and Cian had dozed against the scarred flank of the bitch, Gwen, while the king, sitting on a stool in the shade, heard the case of a man and a widow, and his gesiths horrified the servers with demands for white mead.

  Hild smiled, then remembered that Edwin was now far too grand for stools in the grass, Cian was one of the gesiths, and old Gwen was dead.

  When they passed the daymark elms, the clouds uncoiled from about the sun, birds wove their song through the trees, and the air smelt of ripening flax, growing corn, and thick-fleeced sheep being gathered to the fold.

  The horses slowed to a walk. Sun glittered on the crosses hung on every breast. Gold, glinting with garnet for Edwin, garnet and pearl for Hild. A massive pectoral of gold and amethyst for Paulinus. Plain gold for Cian, from his godmother, the queen. Silver for Stephanus. Copper, silvered and gilded, for Coifi, a good match for his rich red-and-gold warrior jacket—Coelfrith’s, hastily altered—and grey stallion, Edwin’s third-best. His new sword hung well enough in its travelling scabbard at his back, but he held his throwing spear awkwardly. The gesiths—many of them Hild’s hounds—wore crosses of bronze or silvered tin, though more than a few seemed to be wearing two leather thongs around their necks. Their crosses might hang on the outside, for all to see, but she guessed Woden’s spear or Thunor’s hammer lay against their skin. What the Christ didn’t see wouldn’t hurt him. And they were gesiths—used to a battle swinging from victory to disaster and back again in the time it took to roar and shove and slip in the mud. They liked to have a fallback.

  Even the scop wore a beautifully carved elm cross bound and tipped with silver. Something about the graceful lines made Hild look at Cian and wonder if he’d made it. He seemed lost in another world. Probably dreaming of some long-ago glory. She touched her belt purse where the three thorn-root travel cups nestled with her strike-a-light, tinder, and spoon, and longed to run with him to their little pool by the bird cherry and dip a toast from the spring and talk. Things between them had been strained since Uinniau left. She wasn’t sure why. It unsettled her, and she was unsettled enough, wondering what reckless taunter of fate had come to live inside her skin lately.

  Edwin raised his hand. They reined in a hundred paces from the great carved posts of the enclosure.

  They dismounted. Edwin nodded for Coifi, Paulinus, Hild, and the scop to join him. Paulinus took his great golden crook from Stephanus, the scop slung his lyre bag over his shoulder, and Coifi’s spear dragged along the grass for a moment before he balanced the weight. Hild simply handed Cygnet’s reins to Oeric and stood: the pattern’s witness.

  A wood pigeon called from the ash stand on one side of the entrance, another answered from the oak.

  The king made his speech about strong new gods supplanting tired old ones, how those gathered here were about to witness the new god of the Angles casting down the old, the foreshadowing of Anglisc triumph. He told them that the bishop of the Christ would now bless the chief priest of the chief of the old gods, claim him for the new god.

  When Coifi went on one knee before Paulinus and the bishop began his own speech, she unfocused her eyes and used her side vision, as she did in the woods to catch the pattern. A score of gesiths standing by their horses. Half with hands on their crosses. Many with hands on their sword hilts—or, rather, on then off, with fearful glances at the enclosure. Woden forbade edged weapons anywhere near his totem. They were uncomfortably close. And Woden, god of war and the wild hunt, god of chaos and uncertainty, pain and death, was unpredictable. This could all be a trick. Some glanced at the sky, alert for bird omens. Some watched the priests as they ploughed on with their parts. Some watched her, she realised, though all except Cian pretended not to.

  Paulinus was lifting his arms, finishing his exhortation—iron, stallion, the crumbling of pagan gods!—and raising his face to heaven. Coifi stood.

  More gesiths were looking at her now. Coifi wasn’t moving.

  She turned to Coifi. Poor Coifi. A lifetime in one throw.

  She held out her hand. “I’ll help you.”

  Hild nodded for Oeric to hold Coifi’s spear—he’d trip over it, otherwise—and put his right hand on the withers of the king’s third-best stallion. She took his left hand, put it on her shoulder and bent to make a stirrup. He put his foot in it and she heaved and threw him into the saddle. She gave him the reins, made sure he had them in hand, then nodded for Oeric to give him the spear. She turned the horse’s head to face the enclosure.

  “There’s no hurry,” she said. “Start at a walk.”

  But Coifi, in a panic, kicked harder than he meant, and within a breath was thundering full gallop at the entry posts. Hild gripped her seax and braced herself.

  Five spear lengths from the opening, Coifi gave a thin screec
h and flung the spear into the enclosure.

  The stallion, trained to within an inch of its life, knew that a thrown spear meant he should swerve away from the expected reply, and he did.

  Priest and horse moved smoothly to the left and the spear, the edged iron, flew into the god’s heart.

  Every armed man, even the king, flinched. Hild closed her eyes but there was no flash of light, no last thunderbolt.

  The grey stallion came thundering back, white-eyed, Coifi clinging to the saddle horn.

  It was the scop who recovered his wits first. “Behold!” he shouted. “Woden is crushed. Christ is God!”

  It was a victory cry the gesiths understood. They banged spears on shields and cheered. Hild let go of her seax and flexed her hand to get the blood moving again.

  Edwin laughed and clapped the bishop on the back. “Now we persuade Eorpwald to Christ. Then we’ll see who the bishop of Rome calls king of the isle!” Lintlaf brought him his horse.

  When the king was mounted, Hild saw Lintlaf fish up something hanging from the string around his neck and toss it aside. She stared at it. God in the nettles.

  “Lady.” Oeric, with Cygnet. Horses were wheeling, galloping away.

  “Take her back to the vill.”

  “Lady?”

  “I’ll walk. A god needs a farewell from somebody. I’ll be there for supper.”

  When she was alone, she stepped between the entry posts. The spear lay at an angle across the beaten-earth walkway. She picked it up and propped it against the tall wall boards.

  The enclosure smelt of weathered wood and soil being moved aside by growing things. The paint, so vivid a year ago, was faded. Many of the thick black outlines were still clear but the bright colours were turning to wood and mud. She walked the spiral corridor, running her hand along the painted horizon—sea, beach, dunes, woods, moors—the journey of her people from over the sea. The story of the Anglisc, woven with Woden back to the dawn of their songs.

  Ships. Fire. Bright swords. Kin and kine. Woods and wold. Hearth and home. Where was Christ in this? Christ didn’t fight. Christ didn’t farm.