Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  More sheep sheared. More wool spun. More yarn dyed. More cloth woven. More cloth cut and sewn and embroidered. More weld cultivated and vats built. More wood cut and burnt. More, more, more.

  The days grew longer, the nights warmer. The barley began to turn gold.

  Breguswith was everywhere, touching everything, assessing, organising, nudging, anticipating. She had noted with Hild that this year at Goodmanham the fleece was thick, and so she sent the undersmith to the fold where he set up a portable forge to heat and hammer and sharpen the shears every night. Yet the shearing rate was still too slow.

  She took Hild with her, and they sat on the sunny hillside and watched the shearers sweat and struggle with the heavy fleeces, and the waiting sheep, penned too long, grow restless and kick, and refuse to keep still, which in turn made everything take twice as long.

  Hild watched the flexing muscles of the strapping young women and men, streaming with sweat, and said, “Begu could help here. She’s good with animals. I’ve seen her keep a cow with a gashed udder calm.”

  Her mother followed her gaze to one particular man with a curl to his rich brown hair and a light in his eyes. After a moment she nodded. “But find out his name and his family.”

  Hild did: Berenic. Two sisters, a mother, an aunt, no wife, no children. Even-tempered and kind, though with a fondness for beer.

  So then Begu spent her days at the fold. Soon after that Oeric was riding with messages to Aberford and Derventio, and Morud was drafted to fetch and carry for the household, to groom a horse, or cut wood, or help dig another pit.

  “At least you’ve left me Gwladus,” she said to her mother, who smiled tiredly and said, “Not for long.”

  And, indeed, when it was time to pull weeds from the barley fields, Hild told her bodywoman she would have to help somewhere. “The dairy,” Gwladus said. And Hild smiled. Of course: cool, easy on the hands, access to food.

  With the king, queen, reeve, and scop at York, along with Cian and the other gesiths, the hall was quiet, talk more a tired murmur than a thing of fire and song and boast.

  One night, as they sat outside, lit and warmed by the setting sun, and ate pottage and drank week-old beer, everyone looked worn and dusty but content. Happy, even.

  Hild leaned back on her bench and refilled her cup. Gwladus would have done it, but Gwladus was refilling her own bowl with the stew of barley and greens and slivers of mutton. Conversation hummed around her, someone laughed, but gently.

  Happy, she thought again, though it was more than that. They weren’t afraid. No drunken fighting and boasting. No gesiths pulling wealh onto their laps or persuading the dogs to fight. No thundering horses or sudden deadly silence as the king smiled that smile at someone. No Woden priests with their omens or Christ priests frowning and chastising. She’d even seen her mother deigning to talk to Gwladus. Was this what it was to live an ordinary life? Orderly, peaceful, calm. Work, yes, endless as rain, but also warmth and plenty and safety.

  Even Mulstanton hadn’t been like this. There she had been worrying about Bebbanburg, about her mother and Hereswith, about what might happen.

  But here she was, and this was how it would be for the whole summer. Four months. More. In one place, with no one watching her.

  * * *

  The first night Begu didn’t return from the fold, Hild didn’t quite sleep—just planed over the surface of sleep and missed her. Twice, Gwladus brought her milk. The second time she rearranged the pillows, and took Begu’s away.

  The world turned, ripened, grew hotter and heavier. The days lengthened and stretched, thinning at each end to a kind of timeless blue twilight in which nightjars churred and moths fluttered.

  Hild slept less and less. She fell into a waking dream and on clear nights walked for miles on the wold and in the woods.

  The woods were thick with sound: hedgepigs and badgers in the understorey, the swoop of a bat and yip of a fox, the splash of an otter sliding into the water, the hoot of an owl. An endless song of life around her, eating, crying, dying, breathing, breeding.

  She began to feel her own rhythm. Between her bleeding days, at the waxing of the moon, her senses opened like a night lily. For two nights she would feel the ruffle of the air against her face when a bat took a moth, taste the sweet sting of honey in the air near a full hive. Just by smell she knew when Breguswith had washed her hair, when Gwladus had walked through the byre, when Morud had stolen a loaf of fresh bread. Her skin felt denser, more alive, her bones stronger, her belly heavy.

  She felt her mother and Gwladus watching her, just as everyone else watched the fields, watching the barley turn gold, the heads bend, the whiskers touch the dirt.

  * * *

  On the night before the harvest, Hild lay naked by the pool. In the moonlight the grass looked like straw, each stem sharp and distinct. She could smell herself: rich, sleek, ready. She put her arms behind her head, watched a stoat creep headfirst like a squirrel down the cherry tree. Then it leapt, and a sudden furious struggle erupted by the hollow alder. The ferns shook. Something ran away, squeaking.

  “Soon,” she told the stoat. “Soon.”

  * * *

  She returned to the vill with the sun, sleeves neatly pinned and girdle tied, to find everyone awake and fed and binding their hair in cloth, preparing for the field work of harvest. A boy tootled on a pipe, and a woman banged her hand drum once, twice, ready to beat out a rhythm. Hild joined her mother at the head of the procession of people and hand carts full of food and sickles.

  “No,” Breguswith said. “Stay. Take charge.”

  Hild had no idea what the handful of wealh left behind—a groom, a cook, the swineherd—might need of her, but she nodded. Perhaps her mother was expecting messages.

  With a great drumming and piping and shrieking of children, the procession moved out. The sound receded slowly, and quiet settled over the vill.

  Hild sat on the south bench, facing the sun, and listened. The caw of crows in the distance, following the people. A brief hiss of wind in the grass. A fluttering butterfly. This was what it would be like after a contagion, or if the king were dead, the people fled, the Idings on the march. She remembered the farmsteads of Elmet, the missing pigs, the doused fires. But then she heard the groom whistling from the byre, a snort and whicker as he mucked out a stall, and saw the blue smoke seeping from the kitchen eaves. Swallows swooped up under the eave and out again. Blue tits, robins, chaffinches began to sing. Hild leaned back, eyes half closed, listening. Her vill.

  * * *

  She woke from a dream of stoat, all long sinuous muscle. It was hot. Milk, that’s what she needed, a long cool drink of buttermilk.

  She unpinned her sleeves as she walked—no one here but wealh—and tucked them in her girdle.

  In the kitchen it was even hotter. The milk crock was not in its usual place.

  “They took it to the field,” the cook said. “But there’s a bit of beer set by. Or there’ll be some in the dairy if they’ve made the butter.”

  It was a relief to step into the dairy shed, to feel the black, hard-packed dirt under her bare feet.

  She walked past the rows of clabbering pots, down a step and to the heavy door of the creamery.

  A woman whose name Hild didn’t know turned at the waft of warm air and was so startled to see Hild that her churning rhythm faltered.

  Gwladus, underdress unpinned and hanging from her belt, was tilting a milk tray. Her bare skin gleamed. She saw Hild and nodded. As the tray tilted to the bottom right corner, she leaned forward and laid her right forearm across the lip. Muscles, small and busy as baby mice, swelled and stretched. Her breast, plumped against her biceps, was much paler than her arm, creamy, but not like the milk—creamy like the inside of a hazelnut.

  Gwladus poured the thin greyish skim milk in an expert stream from the corner of the tray into a brown crock. Cream collected in a lake against her arm and breast. When the stream stopped she let the tray lie flat again. She straight
ened. Followed Hild’s gaze down to her cream-dabbed nipple, then looked back to Hild.

  The churning paddle thumped up and down.

  “I was thirsty,” Hild said.

  Gwladus nodded at the woman churning butter. “Hwl will be done soon.” Then she lifted her forearm and licked along the bone.

  Something inside Hild squeezed and dropped. Gwladus nodded at the empty churn in the corner.

  “If you help, the butter’ll be done that much sooner. But you should hang your overdress and sleeves.”

  Hild turned away, pulled her sleeves from her girdle, hung them by the apron on the wall, unfastened her girdle, hung that, pulled her dress over her head.

  Heat. Slipping cream. Gleaming skin. Lift. Tilt. Pour.

  Hwl’s thumping began to slow as her cream turned to butter.

  Then the trays were empty. Hwl turned the butter out and began to shape it, squeezing out the last trickles of buttermilk.

  Gwladus wiped her arm and breast with a cloth and repinned her underdress. Hwl ground salt. Hild listened to the gritty crunch and thump. Like a stoat eating a bird.

  Then it was done. Gwladus brought them a dipper of buttermilk, passed it to Hild, who drank and drank again. It didn’t quench her thirst. She passed it to Gwladus.

  Gwladus dipped and drank, wiped the flecks of butter from her chin with her forearm and said, without taking her eyes off Hild, “Hwl, the lady Hild needs to lie down. Pour some of that milk in a jar.”

  She took Hild’s clothes from the peg and slung them over her shoulder. She took the jar of milk in one hand, opened the door with the other. “Come on, now, we’re letting the warmth in.”

  The sun was high and fat. The air seemed perfectly still.

  Gwladus put the flat of her hand on the small of Hild’s back, as you would a person who was old or ill, and Hild’s mind went white.

  Gwladus guided her, opening doors, nodding cheerfully at the groom who was carrying a saddle from the byre, closing the door to Hild’s chambers, dropping the latch.

  She draped Hild’s clothes on a stool, put the jar on the table by the bed, and said, “Sit.”

  Hild sat on the bed. Gwladus knelt by her feet and unfastened the shoes and slipped them off. Then she stood and lifted off the cross on its chain, unfastened the shoulders of Hild’s underdress. It fell around her hips. “Stand.”

  Hild stood. Gwladus whisked the underdress away, then her drawers, as she did every night.

  But it wasn’t night.

  “Lie down.”

  “It’s not time.”

  “Lady, it’s past time. And you’ll be better lying down.”

  Hild lay on the bed. Gwladus sat by her hip.

  “Have you ever kissed anyone? Boldcloak? Your gemæcce?”

  Hild shook her head.

  “Well, perhaps they were frightened of kissing the king’s seer. But I’m not. I know what you need.”

  Gwladus smiled, that rich slow curve that blotted out everything but right here, right now, then leaned in and kissed her.

  Her lips were soft. Like plums, like rain.

  Gwladus put her hand on Hild’s thigh and stroked as though Hild were a restive horse: gently, firmly. Down the big muscles, up the long tight muscle on the inside. Not soothing but … She didn’t know what it was.

  Stroking, stroking: down along the big muscle on the outside, up along the soft skin inside. Down. Up. Up more. “There,” Gwladus said, “there now.” And Hild wondering if this was how Cygnet felt to be encouraged for the jump. Her heart felt as big as a horse’s, her nostrils wide, her neck straining, but not quite wild, not quite yet. “There,” said Gwladus again, and ran her palm over Hild’s wiry hair to her belly. “Yes,” she said, and rested there, cupping the soft, rounded belly, and then moved down a little, and a little more, and her hand became the centre of Hild’s world. “Oh, yes, my dear.” She kissed Hild again, and Hild opened her legs.

  It was nothing like when she did it for herself. It built like James’s music, like the thunder of a running herd, then burst out, like the sudden slide of cream, like a sleeve pulled inside out, and she wanted to laugh and shout and weep, but instead clutched at Gwladus as she juddered and shuddered and clenched.

  Gwladus said, “There now. Better than buttermilk?”

  Hild nodded, but couldn’t say anything. Soft, shocking echoes lapped at her bones and squeezed her insides. Gwladus kept stroking her belly and the echoes began to run into one another, like ripples on a pond, and then slowly calmed. She said, “I’m still thirsty,” and laughed for no reason.

  * * *

  Hild and Begu walked through the tall grass by the bend in the river. The moon was full and high. Hild held Begu’s hand, because Begu hadn’t been walking this path for years and at night the world was different. Smells, sounds, shapes loomed from the shadow and were gone, moonlight turned the shadows sharp and steep. It was a bleached world of bone and stone and tin where magic walked.

  They came to the alders. One had fallen a year or two ago at an angle to the water. They sat, facing upstream. The water rippled and splashed. Something shook its feathers in the reeds and settled down.

  “How are the sheep?”

  “Still stupid.” Begu giggled.

  “And the shepherd?”

  Begu sighed, but Hild heard the smile in it. “He’s sweeter than the ram.” Another giggle, and the kick and scuff of her shoes on the bark. “And he takes longer over his business.”

  “Why should he hurry? He has only one to tend.”

  “And then, too, I tend him in return.”

  “You do?”

  Begu sighed again, this time so heavily that Hild felt the heave of her ribs. “It’s like watching a little lamb at suck. He goes all soft and dreamy. He cries, sometimes. And his stick and balls go all little. I can hold them in my hand, like a sleeping mouse.”

  Hild wasn’t sure what to say to that. She watched the alders stir in a breeze that didn’t reach the ground, the black tracery of leaves shiver against the moon. She looked for the silhouette of the nightjar she knew lived in the trees but didn’t see it.

  “If I hold them long enough, and kiss him on his ear or his neck, they stir again. It’s like watching a pea swell in water. Or a dog when it licks itself. It grows twice as big, three times.”

  “How big?” A ram didn’t grow very big. A cat had nothing to speak of. A horse, though …

  “As long as my hand?” They stared at her hand, silvery in the moonlight. “Yes, about that. And very thick.” She made a circle with her finger and thumb.

  Something plopped in the water.

  “I find I want to give him presents. Nothing much, nothing dangerous, your mother warned me about the disapproval of priests, though there aren’t any at the fold. But it’s best if no word reaches Rheged, just in case. But a present—something, a linen undershirt or a better hood. Something to wear against his skin when I’m gone.”

  “We’re here another month at least.”

  “But I might want to stop visiting the fold before then.”

  “Stop?”

  Begu shrugged: a strange, writhing movement in the moonlight, uncanny. After a while she said, “Gwladus has a new bracelet.”

  Now it was Hild’s turn to scuffle her feet. “It’s not as heavy as it looks.” Another plop from the water. “She keeps talking about a new dress, too. Do you think that would be all right?”

  “She’s always been above herself. It might be all right. As long as everyone gets better clothes.”

  “You, too?”

  “Me especially! And jewels, and new shoes. But mainly clothes. What better way to show the quality and worth of our cloth?”

  They grinned at each other, teeth flashing like polished tin in the light.

  Hild jumped off the log. “I’ll show you jewels. More beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen. Come on, it’s not far.”

  At the river’s edge, the moonlight was brighter. Hild found the overhang where
the fern and thung flowers and primroses grew, the stick of ash poking from the water. She pulled it out carefully.

  It glistened with fish eggs, perfect as the most delicate pearls on the queen’s veil. They shimmered with moonlit glamour, droplets of dreams.

  Hild slid the stick back in the water. They watched the river for a while.

  The moon moved higher, drew itself tighter and brighter. Then there it was: true night. That moment when the world seems to stop and wait and the air both stills and quickens, thick with tree breath and the listening of small animals. Foxes were abroad now, and badgers, and uncanny things.

  “That smell, it reminds me of something,” Begu said. “Beef tea. The way Guenmon makes it, with thyme and pepper.”

  Hild opened her mouth, breathed through her nose, lifting her tongue and letting the air run across the roof of her mouth. At this time of night, anything was possible.

  “You look like a slitty-eyed cat when you do that.”

  “It tells me things.”

  “What things?”

  “I can smell … bats. Not here, but close.”

  Begu sniffed, shook her head.

  “Sharp, but musty. Like lye and old leather.” A moth fluttered over the reflection of the moon on the water. She spoke quietly in the still, scented air. “When bats are hunting, a moth will fold its wings and fall as though caught in a sudden frost. I’ve seen it. The moths fall down, lie on the turf like dead leaves, and when the bats have passed, they fly away again.”

  They held hands. The river poured. The trees whispered. Hild thought she could already hear the difference in the leaves, stiffer than a month ago, though in the daylight the colour was just the same.

  The air changed. Once again, it was just a beautiful night.

  Begu stirred. “Oeric. He won’t be happy when he comes back and sees how it is.”

  Hild shrugged.