Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  The totem was taller than she remembered. She walked around the base. Waves, cliffs, a ship’s prow, cut sharp and deep and clear. Cut from wood, not cold stone.

  Christ was a carpenter. Why did his priests build with stone?

  She followed the rising line of the carving. A cliff, a tall pole with a boar banner flying. Flying banner blending with a tracery of oak branches. Birds flying with acorns in their beaks. Up and up. Windblown leaves. Wild geese. Clouds. Mare’s tails. The horses of the wild hunt. Manes and tails becoming the beard, the beard leading to the chin. Up and up. The mouth. Eyes, gigantic but knowable. The eyes of a god who laughed, who lusted, who drank, who threw knucklebones and lost his temper. Up and up. The helmet crested with the boar. Totem and token of the Yffings. And all would warp and wear and weather into the earth as though it had never been.

  She stood alone at the empty heart of a gone god, staff in the crook of her arm, one hand on her seax and the other on her cross. She would not wear and weather. She was Yffing. She would be totem and token for her people, the light of the world.

  * * *

  The next day, Goodmanham still seethed with the controlled chaos of the arrival of the king’s party. Late in the morning Hild left Begu and Gwladus to organise their things and sought out her mother. She wanted to talk about the mad Rhianmelldt, to bring Rheged into Northumbria so that their land would stretch from the North Sea to the Irish Sea, and so that Begu could be happy.

  Breguswith stood with Æthelburh in the middle of the flax fields, pointing. The queen was shaking her head, gesturing vaguely south.

  Hild hesitated. It was best to approach royalty with answers, not questions. But then the queen saw her and waved, and it was too late. Hild waved back and walked towards them.

  The flax came to her hip, as high as it would get, though the seed balls were still small and green. Little tunnelled paths ran through the crop. Voles. If her mother and the queen hadn’t scared them away, there would be a hawk or two soaring over the field.

  They greeted her with smiles. “Perhaps you’ll give us your opinion,” the queen said.

  Her mother said, “We’re of two minds. Risk or reward one way, steady surety the other.”

  Æthelburh cut a stalk of flax with her belt knife and rolled the stem back and forth between her palms. She offered it to Hild.

  Hild bent and sniffed. “The fibre’s ripe. But the seed isn’t.” They nodded. That much was obvious. “So. Oil or linen?”

  “Trading for oil is expensive,” Breguswith said.

  “But so is good linen,” said the queen. “And if we harvest now, we’ll have softer, finer yarn.”

  “The sun came early this year,” Hild said. She closed her eyes, imagined herself as a hawk, high above the field. Imagined the field just south of here, the one next to that, and the next and the next, south all the way to the narrow sea. Summer was always earlier in the south. She opened her eyes. “The Kentish and East Anglisc flax harvest will be an abundance of oil, and a scarcity of fine linen.”

  The two older women smiled at each other. “Linen, then,” the queen said. “We’ll break the news to Coelfrith. He’ll argue.”

  “But the king will take your side,” Breguswith said comfortably, and they both laughed in that womanly way that Hild didn’t understand but that reminded her of the new Begu. They turned to go.

  “Help me,” she blurted. They both looked back, surprised. She plunged on. “Rhianmelldt of Rheged needs a husband.”

  “Rhianmelldt? But she’s young,” Æthelburh said, frowning. “Isn’t she?”

  Breguswith nodded, watching Hild. “But Begu isn’t.”

  “Begu wants to marry Uinniau,” Hild said. “He can’t marry until Rheged’s settled. Rheged won’t be settled until Rhianmelldt marries a strong man. We want, my uncle wants, that man to be our ally.”

  “We need to find this strong man, one of ours, and offer him to Rhoedd for his daughter?”

  “There’d be no hurry, but for Begu,” Breguswith said.

  Æthelburh smiled. “I have just the man.”

  Hild and Breguswith looked at her blankly.

  Æthelburh looked pleased. “He’s young. He’s handsome. He’s brave: He has a ringed sword. He’s respected by Britons and Anglisc alike.” She laughed, delighted with herself. “Oh, oh, he fits like a fist in a glove! He’s a Christian, baptised by soon-to-be Archbishop Paulinus. You haven’t guessed? He saved the king’s life.” Now she looked exasperated. “He’s my godson. Boldcloak himself!”

  “Cian?” Hild said, bewildered. Cian?

  “They say he’s the son of Ceredig king, yet he saved the Anglisc overking’s life and is sworn to him. He’s perfect!”

  * * *

  In the sheepfold, Hild held the fat white ewe against her while Breguswith rubbed the fleece at its flank between her fingers, ran her palm over its shoulder, nodded to herself, then felt its front legs, neck, and belly. She frowned and tried its back legs, tugging enough for the ewe to bleat. She shook her head. Hild set the struggling ewe back on its feet and let it go. “The breech wool is worse than I thought. But the back and flank is thick. Thick and soft and good enough for a king.”

  “What are we going to do about Cian?”

  “The front wool might not be fine enough for the Franks, but it will do well enough for the Frisians. Now let’s try one of the brownlings.”

  Hild caught one of the little grey-brown ewes and hauled it up and back until it balanced on its hind hooves and its eyes rolled in panic. She pulled back a little more until it gave up and let go, and its slotted eyes went blank.

  Her mother knelt and began running her hands over its neck. “You should have talked to me first,” she said.

  “Yes. But—”

  “It’s not like you.”

  “No. But—”

  “This is very soft,” Breguswith said, “very fine. But delicate. We’ll have to try different bleaches.” She stood up. Hild let the ewe go. “Why did you speak before thinking?”

  “It’s—”

  “This isn’t the first time, is it?”

  Hild looked at her feet.

  “I need to know. But bring me that yearling first.”

  And so while her mother ran her hands over the bleating lamb, Hild stared at the tight black hairs at the tufts of its ears and tried to tell her mother of the restlessness that rose like the tide, the formless longings, the dreams, the sleeplessness, the strange distance of the world, the urge to play with danger, to touch something she couldn’t reach. “It’s like … like climbing a great ash tree, higher and higher, and the boughs are bending, and I’m reaching, reaching for something, and part of me knows the bough will break, but I don’t care. I want it. I just don’t know what it is.”

  “And now Cian might end up in Rheged.”

  “Yes. We—”

  “But not today. Today we need to sort you. You’re a danger to yourself and others.” She looked up. “Have you started touching yourself?”

  Like Begu, under the covers.

  “Next time you feel … restless, try it. It will help you sleep. But that won’t work for long. You need a person to anchor you. Someone whose smell and touch will keep your feet on the ground, stop you from climbing until you fall, or from running off a cliff.” She stood up.

  “A person?”

  Breguswith wiped her hands. “Someone no one will notice. Someone no one will believe.”

  The yearling bleated and struggled.

  “You can let him go now.” Hild did. He trotted over to a ewe and butted her anxiously on the flank. The ewe ignored him. Breguswith held her apron out for Hild to wipe her hands. “People can always tell who you’ve chosen, but if it’s someone they can dismiss, they won’t dismiss you. Do you understand?”

  “No.”

  “If they’re not your equal, if they don’t matter, you will be seen to be you, still.” She looked at Hild and sighed. Hild felt stupid. “Look around you. Pay attention to peo
ple. Like Lintlaf with your bodywoman and now Wilnoð’s. Or Cian with that red-handed dairymaid at Bebbanburg—no one thought anything of it. But if he took up with one of the queen’s women, everyone would gossip because it matters. Like it mattered to the people of the bay about Mulstan and Onnen.”

  “She’s wealh.”

  “Don’t be dense. She was the seer’s companion, cousin of Ceredig king. Just as Cian is rumoured to be his son. Your bodywoman, now, she’s no one important. Do you see?”

  Hild felt as anxious and bewildered as the yearling.

  “Also, make sure they’re clean. Shall I find someone for you? No? Well, don’t get yourself with child. Do everything but that. You know what I mean. If not, talk to your bodywoman. The king will have no use for a swollen seer, and you’ll be more interested in your belly than anything else in the world. Oh, yes, even you. So anything but that. And don’t attract the attention of priests. Why Christ or his priests should care what we do with each other, I don’t know. But they like to meddle. So be careful. And should you slip, come to me immediately. Just remember, no one who matters.”

  “You chose Osric,” Hild said.

  “Osric was a mistake.”

  They listened to the sheep tearing grass. “What was he like?”

  Her mother sighed, then smiled a slow, regretful, entirely human smile that made Hild like her. “When no one was watching? Biddable.”

  Biddable. She could see how that might be good. But what would she bid her person to do, exactly? She had seen people, in hall, in the byre. She had watched from the trees and through cracks in the wall. But not up close, not properly, just movement, blank eyes, flushed faces. She’d seen animals.

  “Help me with this gate.” They opened the fold, shooed the sheep out. They watched them flow like woolly clouds over the grass. “One thing. Whatever you do, make sure it’s not your gemæcce: When these things go wrong, and they always do, you’ll need her to be on your side, the one constant. And you’ll need to find someone for her, now Uinniau’s gone. I’d suggest you buy her a slave. In Kent you can buy gelded ones.”

  Hild stared.

  “No? Perhaps not. Filthy Frankish custom. But she’s the seer’s gemæcce. She matters because of that. Because of you.” She put a hand on Hild’s shoulder. “Be careful.”

  Careful. Always being watched, always spied on. “I’m so tired of being careful.”

  “We all get tired of being careful.” She cupped Hild’s cheek. Her hand was soft with sheep grease. “But it will never change. It will never stop.” She dropped her hand. “I’m sorry for it.”

  A breeze lifted the corner of her veil. Hild wanted to smooth it for her, but her mother hated to be fussed over. “Don’t you ever want to … just walk away?” She waved her hand at the elms on the crest of the hill and the rolling wolds beyond.

  “I could have,” Breguswith said. “When your father died. I didn’t matter. But your sister mattered, matters still, though it’s out of my hands now. And you mattered—and will until this king is dead and gone, and his successor after him, and even the one after that. You can never walk away. They’ll always find you. You matter for your blood. And your mind.”

  “Which you made.”

  “To keep you safe.”

  Your mother has built you a place where you can speak your word openly.

  “So be careful, child. Delay finding a person until you must—because once you’ve shared yourself with another, touching yourself isn’t enough. But find someone for your gemæcce soon.”

  * * *

  Hild began to look, for Begu. She began to look through Begu’s eyes. When she sat at the board, she noted where Begu’s gaze lingered, what made her breath catch, her eyes cut sideways, or her hand pause halfway to her mouth. As the days warmed, and men stripped to the waist to wrestle, women cast off their sleeves and wore lighter cloth. Hild learnt to notice her gemæcce’s nipples stiffen and push out the front of her dress when the gesiths wrestled, the way she shifted on the bench and demanded food from a passing wealh, or beer: something to mask how often she swallowed, how her eyes fixed on the men’s hands grabbing a thigh, wrapping arms around another’s waist, or slapping each other’s arses when they stood.

  She began to anticipate what might provoke Begu’s flush and swallow: the roll of long muscle under sheened skin, the tightening and hardening of a tendon at the back of a man’s knee as he strained against a hold, the glisten of a red mouth at the lip of a drinking horn, the interesting roll and jostle in a man’s hose when he scratched at himself.

  And now, at night, after Begu jerked and shivered and fell asleep, it was Hild’s turn. Her restlessness receded.

  Begu’s did not.

  Hild told Oeric to watch for likely men for their household. “Strong men,” she said. “And young.”

  “Strong, lady?”

  “Strong. And clean. With sweet breath. Men who laugh.”

  “Gwladus will know,” he said.

  * * *

  The old bird cherry was still alive, though one limb was bare and dead. Cian leaned against the mossy boulder by the little pool and Hild, barefoot and with her underdress still kilted up after fighting, lay on her stomach stroking the still water, sending rolls of ripples this way and that. A water spider slipped and slid then climbed a leaf and waved its front legs in her direction. Hild rested her hand on the surface, pressing slightly as it rocked. It was like resting her hand on Begu’s stomach: soft, elastic, delicate, fascinating. She slid her hand in to the wrist. In. Out. Her arm broke and magically healed, broke and healed. Cian smiled, and she knew he was remembering the magic stick, the tooth.

  Butterflies flitted around the bird cherry, white among the almond-scented white blossom.

  “I think there are more flowers than last year,” he said. “Perhaps it will bloom forever.”

  “It belongs here. Like us.”

  It felt like a moment out of time, endless. The grass was pleasantly prickly against her thighs and arms. She stretched, wriggled, laughed: happy.

  He shifted slightly and turned away, and Hild became aware that she wore only an underdress, kilted tight between her legs. She sat up.

  He picked up a fallen twig, studied the dark oval leaves.

  “Cian.” He stilled but didn’t look at her. “Would you go to Rheged? If the queen wanted you to?”

  “Rheged? Why? I’m sworn to the king.”

  “If he asked you.”

  “He’s my lord. But by choice … There’s no glory in Rheged.” Now he looked at her.

  “No, I’ve seen no visions of glory, no songs of war and blood and gold. But if the queen mentions Rheged or the princess Rhianmelldt, who is quite mad, tell me.”

  “Why would she?”

  She shook her head.

  He threw the twig at her. She batted it out of the air. “Why would she?”

  She scooped water at him. He jerked back, banged his elbow on the boulder, swore. She jumped up, legs flexed.

  He stared. “Your legs are strong,” he said eventually. “You should learn to wrestle.”

  She looked down at her thighs, paler than her arms, paler than his.

  He swallowed. “I could teach you,” he said, and his voice was tighter than it had been, rougher. Her skin tightened and shivered, like a horse when a fly lands on its withers.

  “Let’s run,” she said, and did, not caring what branches tore at her, just running, running, running.

  * * *

  Cian and the other gesiths left for York two days later with the king. Edwin was eager to oversee the first season’s trading at his wīc. He wanted Hild and her mother to stay at Goodmanham to oversee the making of cloth for that trade. Paulinus and Stephanus were with the East Angles at Rendlesham: Paulinus to baptise young Eorpwald and appoint an underbishop before Justus could, and Stephanus to negotiate with Eorpwald’s steward over the Frankish trade. Hild considered suggesting to Stephanus that he invite Hereswith to add her voice. She might have if it
had been Osfrith, but Osfrith was in Arbeia, consolidating the north trade, pulling it east along the river valley to starve the route down the west sea coast through Gwynedd. Tightening the great weave. Besides, he didn’t want to leave Clotrude, who, by all accounts, was as big as a hut.

  The queen spent half a week in Goodmanham talking to Breguswith and then took her nurse and little Eanflæd and followed the king to York. The cloth trade was important but getting a son by the king mattered more.

  With none to gainsay her, Breguswith ran Goodmanham with a rod of iron: Her weaving sword was always in her hand, and she was free with the flat of it if any man or woman didn’t hurry to obey. Without anyone to please, she no longer bent and swayed. No longer willow but oak.

  Hild had helped work out how the new wool trade would run, but even she was astonished at its efficiency. Sheep sheared in every royal vill, from the Tine valley to Pickering to the wolds to Elmet. Fleece sorted and sent by grade to rows of huts in Aberford, or Flexburg by the Humber, or Derventio. Armies of women to separate out the staples, to mix soapwort, urine, and pennyroyal to wash out the grease. Children to lay the washed wool in the sun to dry, to watch and turn it and to drive off the birds who liked to steal it. Men to barrel and cart oil and grease to the vills to make the fibre more manageable for the first finger-combing and sorting. Smiths hammering out double-rowed combs and woodworkers shaping wooden handles, for women to comb out wool in the new way, the better way, a comb in each hand. Carpenters to build the stools and tables. Bakers to bake the bread so the wool workers could work. Lathe workers to turn the spindles and distaffs—the long and the short—and, everywhere, women and men making spindle whorls and loom weights of clay and lead and stone, of every shape and size and heft.

  It was a constant, endless river of work just to make the clothes for a household—cloaks and tunics, shirts and hose, veils and dresses and underdresses and hoods and caps—in addition to blankets, wall hangings, bandages, sacks, saddle cloths, wipes, shrouds, breech cloths. And now Breguswith wanted enough fine wool—the very best, silky, long-fibred wool—to weave cloaks of the size, quality, and quantity to trade for precious goods from the Franks: jessamine, myrrh, poppy paste, garnets, gold, walnut and olive oil, silk. Coelfrith’s men were even now talking to the Franks and Frisians at York, agreeing on colours, sizes, seasons; spitting and shaking hands.