Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  James seemed to be walking a new path. “If you could choose, would you stay here or go back to York?” she said.

  “I miss my choir,” he said. “But I love it here. So wild and young and pure.” And some steady yearning in his voice made her think of Uinniau when he spoke of Begu, and she knew James wasn’t talking about the river.

  She smiled. “Perhaps the bishop would be better advised to focus on his church in York and leave his deacon to supervise the new church of Catterick?” He straightened. “And perhaps the deacon might find a local man to help recruit labour through payment and persuasion rather than force.”

  “I have just the man. Quiet and strong, something of a leader in these parts.”

  “I’m happy to hear it. I’ll speak to the king.”

  A kingfisher dove and missed.

  “And you?” he said. “You’re well?”

  She nodded. “Though God hasn’t told me anything yet.” She kicked at her boulder, glanced up at him from under her brows. “Deacon … there’s … It’s said that God only listens to the pure of heart.”

  “Then he listens to no one. We’re all sinners.”

  “Sin.” She sighed. “I still don’t understand sin.”

  “You don’t need to understand it. You need to confess it, be absolved, and approach your prayer afresh.”

  She remembered Fursey’s long, rambling opinions on the matter of confession. “But confession is an admission of guilt. A king or a seer … we can’t just admit wrong. It’s not…” She couldn’t think what it was exactly. “Besides, what if we don’t think what we’ve done is wrong?”

  He watched the river. “I counsel my flock that, if in doubt, they should consider the ten commandments.”

  “Does Paulinus see it that way?”

  “There are no commandments against love,” he said.

  She ran through them in her head. Not unless someone was married.

  “God is love,” he said. “Love is never wrong.”

  She was thinking of a different commandment. “But sometimes we do have to kill people.”

  “Then confess and be absolved.”

  “Also, for a priest or a seer what, exactly, counts as helping yourself so God will help you, and what counts as a lie?”

  James burst out laughing. Hild had no idea what was so funny, but seeing his eyes turn to slits, his face turn red under the charcoal, and his greying curls bob as he bleated made her mouth stretch despite herself.

  He wiped his eyes. “‘What counts as a lie?’ You’re as slippery as a bishop. If only women could take the vow!”

  Hild said solemnly, “What, exactly, counts as a woman?” And this time she laughed, too.

  * * *

  They stayed in Craven for a month. Edwin seemed to enjoy eating his new ealdorman out of house and home.

  She walked every day with James. She asked those she met about bandits, but no one knew anything. He introduced her to a farmer and part-time farrier called Druyen, who was indeed tall and quiet and strong. She practiced praying while walking, while lying down, while kneeling—that hurt, and worked no better than anything else—then tried confession.

  “It’s like picking out stepping-stones in the dark,” she said.

  “You’re very good at it,” he said.

  At night, she composed a letter in her head to Fursey, about love and killing and confession, and in his imaginary reply, he told her to take care, take very great care, and not to fall in.

  * * *

  She went through another growth spurt, this time putting on muscle and curves. Gwladus shook her head and said she hoped Hild had a lot of silver put by, because when they got to Goodmanham, her lady mother, who now thought of little other than wool—apart, that is, from her scop—would charge an arm and a leg to clothe such a giant.

  Cian also changed. He, too, put on muscle, and the bones in his face grew harder and bigger. His height increased a little; not nearly as much as his weight. His neck seemed to swell overnight, and his jaw looked clenched all the time, there was so much strength in it. Something more than his size changed, too. His laugh was harder, his words edged. Men began to back down more quickly when he disagreed with them.

  He had a new woman, though Hild didn’t know who. He disappeared at night and came back smelling of her in the morning. He still smiled, still told stories—to others. He had no time for walking, or riding, or sparring with her. No time even for talking. When he wasn’t with the gesiths, he was hunting and drinking with Uinniau and Oswine.

  * * *

  And then Fursey sent her a real letter. Or part of one.

  “Looks as though it’s been eaten by a pig and shat out,” Morud said when Gwladus let him into the room and he handed it to Hild. Indeed, the folded scrap was filthy and bedraggled, with half torn away.

  She pulled her robe around her and ignored the looks Morud was giving Gwladus, whose hair was hanging loose.

  She read it fast, or as fast as she could—some of the tiny lettering was blurred, as though rained on, or dropped in a puddle—then again more slowly. S sent word to your sister’s man that he arrives with arms and threescore men as soon as the weather is fair for war.

  Fair for war. In the south the first ship crossing from Frankia to East Anglia could have been a month ago or more. Sigebert and his threescore gesiths could be with Æthelric’s war band already. How many men could Ricberht king-killer command?

  She imagined her mother’s cynical smile: As many as see advantage for themselves.

  For ealdormen and thegns, advantage was tied to the web of trade and obligation woven over generations: Who could give them more power, more gold, more land, more influence? Sigebert and the Christian Franks, or Ricberht king-killer? For farmers, it was about food: the hams hanging from the ceiling, the honey in the crock, the grain in the sacks. If the weather in the south and east was good for the next two years, they wouldn’t want anything to change; Ricberht would stay king.

  Your sister is, by the way, with child again, though so is her husband’s woman of the South Gyrwe. She—

  But that was all. No matter how many times she read it, the rest was still torn away.

  “Where’s the priest who brought it?” Gwladus asked Morud. She’d repinned her braids. Beautiful hair. Hild loved the silky drag of it across her belly …

  She missed Morud’s reply.

  “Find him,” Gwladus said. “Put him somewhere out of the way, see that he’s got food. What are you waiting for? Go.”

  Hild wished Gwladus hadn’t tidied away her hair.

  “You’ll want to talk to the king after that priest?”

  Hild nodded.

  “I’ll fetch your dress.”

  For most East Anglisc, the Christ was just the excuse. But underneath, baptism was the riptide dragging all boats off course. Baptism is very much like a sword in this way: that the man whose hands the sword or the soul passes through adds his lustre. Baptism added another pattern to the warp and weft of allegiance and obligation.

  The murdered Eorpwald had been the godson of Edwin. Sigebert was of a different Christian lineage. He had spent his time across the narrow sea at the Frankish court of Clothar, and now Dagobert. If Sigebert was bringing threescore men, they would be Dagobert’s. If he won with their help, he would be obliged to align himself with the Franks. What would that mean for Edwin? Where was Dagobert in relation to the growing alliances of the middle country and the west—Penda and Cadwallon—and the men of the north: Idings, Picts, Scots of Dál Riata, Alt Clut, perhaps Rheged?

  Gwladus fastened Hild’s sleeves, then began to dress her hair.

  Cadwallon was the key, the thread between the Mercians of Penda, the Irish, and the men of the north. With Dagobert now added to the great weave, they needed to snip that thread, cut Cadwallon out. They had to do it now. Swift, sure, hard. War.

  Was there time to call Osfrith from Tinamutha? No, he should remain with his household to watch the men of the north. But Eadfrit
h could be recalled. The time for talking was over, at least with Cadwallon—

  “Lady?”

  Oeric. Pale, dark-eyed, and hands working.

  “News from Ireland of a battle at Fid Eoin. Connad Cerr is killed, and with him Osric Iding the Burnt. Domnall Brecc is now king of the Dál Riata and Oswald Iding his right hand.”

  So. It must be now. War. Real war. One king or another would die, and all his gesiths with him. Cian …

  * * *

  The yard stank of that sharp tang men give off when they want to fuck or kill. The smell of war.

  The dogs knew it, they had been snarling since yesterday and the news of the battle of Fid Eoin. The horses knew it; those in the byre were kicking; outside, the stallions had to be corralled separately.

  The men knew it most of all.

  Hild, come from a bitter talk with the king, stood by the trough. She planted her staff before her, one hand wrapped around the other, and looked at Cian.

  Where Lintlaf’s shield had caught him between the ribs, a purple bruise, the colour of the loosestrife growing along the tumbled wall by Osric’s byre, spread. But Lintlaf was bleeding from the scalp and sitting in the dirt. He held his jacket to his head, laughing, they were all laughing. War drove men mad.

  She shouted, “Heroes!”

  They turned. She uncovered her hand, the king’s token burning red as blood.

  “In the kitchens: a new barrel of beer and fresh bread!” The last fresh bread before they marched. The last some might ever eat. “Get it while it’s hot!”

  She wore the ring. It was not a suggestion.

  She caught Cian’s eye: Wait. He leaned his sword against the trough and sluiced himself with water as the gesiths left.

  Blood thumped in his neck vein. A muscle jumped in his calf. She imagined how it might be: the muscle jumping in her own calf, her own blood flowing like a millrace, her muscle straining against bone to begin, to end this waiting, to sweep down on Cadwallon and crush the men of Gwynedd. Or be crushed. Real war.

  He dropped the dipper, lifted his naked sword, tilted it to check along its length for nicks.

  He looked at her. His chest rose and fell in rhythm with hers, his brows arched like hers, his hair, the same colour as hers, clung to his nape just as hers did. They were the same height. But his eyes were a sharper blue, and the bones of his face heavier. They were the two great timbers of a doorway, massive, matched.

  She turned and walked from the vill.

  He followed her without speaking to a flat grassy place by the racing river. The air still smelt like the first day of the world.

  Remember this smell, she told herself, and stripped dress, hose, shoes, everything but the ring—the ring she was forbidden to take off until she gave it to the queen. She stood, stave at the ready, in only her shift. As she always had.

  He hung his bloody jacket on a bush and kicked off his shoes. As he always had. He drew his sword with a slithering ring and tossed the sheath aside.

  Hild saw the memory take him, as it took her: Derventio, his first fight with a king’s gesith. He moved his left foot forward, right foot and arm back and waited. As though they had practiced it, she took Berhtred’s stance of long ago: right foot and right arm forward, stave held out low.

  Cian feinted, a fast jab with the point. As Berhtred had, she swung her weapon up, like a horizontal bar, but Cian’s blade was already back, waiting, and she met only air. But she moved more lightly than Berhtred ever had, and she knew this dance, and she didn’t teeter.

  They circled, eyes bright, cheeks red, like the children they had once been. When she had the slanting morning sun in his eyes, Cian thrust. Once for the feint with the tip, to which she raised her stave only partway, then back and once more forward in a full stepping lunge, right foot leading now, and blade snaking over her weapon in a wrapping leftwise twist that would have flung Berhtred’s sword up and into the grass.

  But she was not Berhtred. She did not carry a sword. And when one end of her staff went whipping through the air she simply let the other end whip around in its turn and hit him, hard, left to right, across his bruise from Lintlaf.

  Shock blanked the gleam in his eye, and she imagined that same look as a man of Cadwallon slid his sword into Cian’s belly and she couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear someone doing to him what she had done to the wolf’s-heads.

  “Wake up,” she said. And hit him again, right to left, on the other side.

  They bared their teeth—the same muscles, the same sinews, the same teeth—in the same wild grin. The same-shaped arms swung over the same strong rib cages. The same long feet moved over the grass. And now they laughed, like children. But they fought like dogs in a pit. They fought against fate.

  They moved lickeringly fast, brutally hard, king’s gesith and butcher-bird. The end of her staff split the skin on his shoulder. His blade sliced open her forearm: the same cut, the same place, as the first scar he had ever given her.

  Her hands, slick with her own blood, began to slip on her stave.

  She drove him back and back. He stepped on a thistle and she swept his legs out from under him. She lifted her stave.

  He scissored her legs. She fell. He leapt on her.

  Such weight. And, mixed with his wild scent, the smell of that woman. She shifted her grip.

  “I can smell her on you,” she said, and heaved him over her head. She landed astride him. “Who is she?”

  “Not a slave,” he said. “I don’t need to own my women.”

  She hit him. The king’s ring tore his nose. He threw her off. She landed on her face, and her lip burst. They faced each other on all fours, dripping.

  She wiped her mouth. “At least mine doesn’t stink.”

  “She does to me.”

  Hild blinked and when he punched her she was slow, and he hit between the breasts, a punch to the bone with a fist that could break a one-inch plank. Her heart stuttered and her lungs stopped, as though someone had filled them with milk. She couldn’t see.

  He scrambled around her, grabbed her from behind with arms like trees. Skin to skin, bone to bone; her shift was in tatters. He would crush her, snap her ribs like kindling. But he was holding her up. “You should have moved. You should have moved.”

  So many things they should have done. But now they never would. She turned in his arms, and they tripped, and in a confusion of scrabble and scramble, she was on top of him again, only she was leaning down and he was straining up, neck tendons taut, and they met.

  She kissed him, hard, blood on blood. She lifted her head and looked down at his fallen body. She set her mouth against the line of muscle running like a thick rope, like the back of a salmon, from shoulder to nipple. She took the muscle and tendon between her teeth but didn’t bite. She ran down the rope to the nipple, leaving a smear of red. Such a tiny thing, like a red currant.

  He looked up at her. “King’s fist,” he said.

  “King’s gesith.”

  She folded down onto him like honey from the comb, slow and thick and gold. Cunt on his belly, belly on his breast, breast plump to his face. He closed his eyes and took her breast in his mouth, eyes closed, like the queen taking the host at Mass.

  You can’t have him.

  She rolled away.

  Startled, he got his legs under him to come after her.

  “No!” she said harshly. He stayed where he was.

  You can’t have him. You don’t understand. But you will.

  She stood. A light breeze turned the wet hair between her legs cold. She looked down at him where he knelt, at his glistening prick poking through his hose, at the sun-dark chest, darker arms, white shins. The smear on his belly, the bruise on his ribs, the hurt in his eyes.

  “No,” she said again, and now her cheeks were cold and wet, too. She wiped them with the back of her hand. She wanted to touch his face, wanted to stand next to him, but didn’t, couldn’t.

  Keeping him ignorant keeps him safe.

  S
he picked up her clothes and stave.

  “Cian.” I miss you. “We are us,” she said, and walked away.

  She dressed herself, somehow, as she walked. Her throat ached.

  The first person she saw in Osric’s yard was Gwladus.

  “There you are! The king has—”

  “Shut up.” The words ground over each other like millstones. “Follow me.”

  She walked fast, out of the yard, onto the hill path, not stopping to think or check that Gwladus was following. They walked up into the hills, along the river, down a track, to the shed where Druyen was hammering the last nail on a horse’s shoe. He lifted the foot from his leather-aproned lap and set it back on the grass, straightened. “Lady?”

  Hild nodded at Gwladus. “Cut her collar off.”

  Gwladus’s hands flew to the collar. Her eyes turned black with shock, and her face white.

  He came to Gwladus, lifting his big hand, slowly, deliberately, as he would with a horse, so no one would be startled, and reached out. Gwladus dropped her hands.

  Druyen turned to Hild. “There’s a stool in the forge. Fetch it, lady, before she falls down.”

  When she came back out with the three-legged stool, Druyen was rooting through a row of tools on the trestle by the trough. The gelding he’d been shoeing cropped a thin patch of grass.

  He lifted a pair of what looked like shears, though oddly shaped: long black iron handles, tiny bright blades. “It’s just the pin needs cutting,” he said in British, to Gwladus. In Anglisc he said, “Lady, stand behind her, let her lean so she’s steady.”

  Hild stood behind Gwladus, put her hands on her shoulders—so soft—and pulled her back so her head rested against Hild’s bruised breastbone.

  Gwladus trembled.

  “Sshh,” Hild said.

  Druyen frowned, positioned the shears, held them with his left hand while he fiddled with the pin slotted through the iron-loop ends of the collar, nodded, put his right hand back on the shears, squeezed.