Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  Gwladus shook her head.

  “What?” Begu said. She looked at Hild. “What is it? Is something wrong with Angeth?”

  * * *

  Leaves unfurled. Hedgepigs woke and siffsaffs flew anxiously, endlessly, back and forth from their nest in the nettles with food for the fledglings. Ewes swelled like the fluffy white clouds in the cornflower-blue sky.

  After the king dismissed his counsellors, Hild caught up with Cian outside the hall. “My lord Boldcloak!”

  He turned. “My lady seer. The king wants us back?”

  She shook her head. They stood more than a pace apart. His hair gleamed chestnut in the sun. He wore it differently now, shorter. Perhaps Angeth liked it that way. “Walk with me,” she said.

  They walked without speaking along the path they knew well, west, to the elm wood, where once they had sparred. She had her staff. He wore his sword. She knew they wouldn’t use them, might never use them with each other again.

  Finches sang. A bittern boomed.

  “Do you remember the morning I got baptised?”

  “I do. You wet your head. You had a bite on your jaw. You have the mark of it still, when you burn dark in summer.”

  He touched his chin.

  They came to the clearing.

  “Oh,” he said. There, on the old stump, was a robin. “Not the same one, surely!”

  “His son, perhaps.” It turned its head, looking at them with one eye, then the other, then flew away. “Angeth,” she said. “Is she quite well?”

  He came alert as a dog at the scent. “She was sick yesterday. But women with child do that. Don’t they?”

  Not usually past the fourth month. “And has she gained weight?”

  “They do that, too, surely?”

  “Send her to me.”

  The robin sang from the trees.

  “Cian.”

  “She might not come,” he said. “I … I spoke harshly of you in Deganwy. At first.”

  She looked him in the eye, the eyes she’d seen wide with lust, wet with tears, shining with joy. “I’m sorry. That day … I am sorry. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then send her to me. Make her come.”

  * * *

  Hild pulled her stool next to Angeth’s and took her hand. She pressed it gently with her thumb. Her thumb mark filled out slowly.

  “It’s not usually that bad,” Angeth said. Her face was puffy, too, no longer the smooth tawny health of Elmet.

  “Have you been having headaches?”

  “Yes, but that could be anything. The sick headaches and lights, anyone can have those.”

  “You had the sick headache as a girl?”

  “No.”

  “And you’ve been throwing up?”

  “It could be anything! If every woman who—”

  “And the belly pain, right here.” She touched Angeth at the crease of her baby bulge, right under the ribs. It wasn’t a question. And now she knew this was not her mother’s doing.

  Angeth shook her head. “No. No.”

  Hild wanted to stroke her, soothe her like a horse, but she knew Angeth would shy away. “We have to know.” She stood, stuck her head through the curtain. “Gwladus. Bring the piss bucket.”

  When the bucket came, with two inches of water in the bottom, Angeth shook her head again. “No. No. Not now, not today. My bladder’s empty.”

  “Then we’ll fill it.” Hild got up again. “Gwladus! Small beer. Lots of it.” She sat down. “Tell me a story of Gwynedd.” Silence. “Or not. I could offer you yarn to spin instead.”

  After a while, Angeth said, “You’re so young.” Hild said nothing. “They say you’re a witch.”

  “Your husband knows better.”

  Silence. “You’re very like,” she said eventually. “Now I see why you might have quarrelled. Like to like don’t always agree.” Her hazel eyes were small in the swollen face, but not dull. “So very like. In the wood, when you grabbed me, I thought you were him, just for a heartbeat. Him, or a devil taking his form. When I told him that, he laughed. He laughs a lot with me.”

  “Yes,” Hild said. “He chose you.”

  And then the beer came, and they drank, and they talked peaceably of gesiths and how sometimes they had no more sense than sheep. Of trade from Deganwy to Manau to Ireland. Of the gold route from Tintagel. Of how it was to leave one’s father’s house. And Hild found she liked Angeth, princess of Gwynedd.

  When it came time, Angeth pissed in the bucket and let Hild take it and tilt it towards the light.

  “It’s foamy,” she said. “But there’s no blood.” Not yet. “We have time.”

  Angeth cupped her belly with both hands.

  “You could have another.”

  She shook her head. “I could pray.”

  “Christ doesn’t always listen. Angeth, please. We have time, but not much.”

  Angeth shook her head. “There’s always hope.”

  “I’ve seen this before. And there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. You’ll puff up like a fungus. Your muscles will start to ache. Your piss will turn pink. You’ll have fits. You’ll fall unconscious. You’ll die. There’s a tea.”

  “I want my baby.”

  “It’s wise not to wait.”

  “You want it dead. You all want it dead.” She sounded more tired than angry. Then she bent suddenly, head in her hands. “It hurts so.”

  Hild put a hand on her shoulder. The shoulder hardened to iron. Angeth straightened. A princess of Gwynedd.

  “Can you say there is no hope, not one jot or tittle? No. Only God is infallible. Can you say you have never been wrong? Can you swear it? Can you swear that I’d live?”

  “It’s not—”

  “Can you swear it?”

  She had no power over life and death. “No.”

  “Then I won’t take your tea.”

  * * *

  Seven weeks later, in Derventio, Hild found Cian kneeling in the church. It was splendid now, nothing like the plain stone of long ago. Carved and painted wall panels glimmered with gilding. Candles burnt against the violet dusk.

  He lifted his face from his hands. His pupils were dark with despair, like holes scorched in wood. “I didn’t believe you when you told me they’d put glass up there. But there it is.” The wick on one of the candles flickered and spat. “She had a fit. She can’t see. You must save her.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “You must.”

  “I’ll do everything I can.”

  “Swear to me.” He gripped her arm. Strong hand on strong arm. “I’m sorry, for everything that’s passed. I’m sorry. Swear you’ll do what you can, for both of them. Swear to me.” The grain of his face was taut and twisted, knotted as a burr, hard as iron.

  Hild looked at his hand. A match with her own. “I swear.”

  And she tried. While the rain drummed outside and Cian drank steadily in hall, she and her mother fought like dogs to save Angeth and her baby. To drive the shadows from Angeth’s chamber they lit candles as though beeswax cost nothing. After her water broke they walked the semiconscious Angeth back and forth. They sang to her.

  A cup of pennyroyal tea two months ago and it would all have been over. The baby dead but the mother alive. Pennyroyal now might bring the baby fast enough for it to survive, but it would kill Angeth. And though she couldn’t see, she could smell, and nothing would hide the minty scent of pennyroyal. And she was mad with fear.

  “We should make her comfortable,” Breguswith said, meaning dose her insensible and let her die in peace.

  Can you swear? Angeth had asked. Hild shook her head.

  “It’s cruel,” Breguswith said.

  “I swore,” Hild said. “Help me.”

  They did what they could. They stripped her naked and bathed her with scented rosemary when she was hot, wrapped her in blankets when she shivered. They tried to get her to drink parsley broth. They massaged her belly with goose grease, felt the shive
r and squeeze, counted.

  Angeth seemed to think she was a girl again, on the mountainside, falling over, bruising her belly on a stone, crying about the pain. Hild hoped she stayed there. The green grass of Gwynedd was a better way to end than blind agony in a dark, close room.

  Hild measured Angeth’s hand across the knuckles, then measured the same distance above her inner ankle and rubbed the shin. Felt her belly, counted. Too slow.

  Angeth passed out again. They flipped her over. While Breguswith held her face free, so she could breathe, Hild tried to find the dimple by the spine, above the bottom, but Angeth was so swollen she wasn’t sure if she was rubbing the right place.

  They turned her over, propped her up. She shuddered, half conscious. Breguswith laid her hand on her belly, counted, shook her head.

  Angeth moaned like a child. Then shrieked, hard and sudden, and fainted again. After a moment, she writhed. Her arms and legs shot out, stiff and straight.

  “Hold her!”

  It was like trying to hold a greased pig.

  “It’s coming!” Breguswith said, and there it was, crowning. “Push. Push.”

  Angeth couldn’t hear them. Hild pressed on the quaking belly, timing it to the ripple of muscle under her hands.

  Angeth jerked and thrashed. Breguswith hung on to a foot, grunting like a man in a tug-of-war. Hild, half tangled in the blanket, held the belly down with both arms.

  Angeth foamed at the mouth. Hild tried to wipe it away.

  “Just push!” her mother shouted.

  And the baby slid out, slick and blue and still. Breguswith whipped it, her, into a blanket. Hild lifted Angeth’s head, floppy now. Her eyes were rolled up, blank as eggs.

  Her mother had the baby. She focused on Angeth. She cradled her in her arms—perhaps she would feel like Cian—and whispered, “It’s a little girl. Breathe, Angeth.”

  And Angeth did. She opened her eyes, smiled. “I smell rosemary, love.” And died.

  Hild picked up the blanket.

  “Wait,” her mother said. She laid the tiny wrapped baby next to her. The baby was still blue. In the swaying candlelight, Hild thought she moved, but it was just shadow.

  “You can tell Cian you did your best. Wash the blood from your face, change your dress. Go. I’ll wash them. Send Begu to help.”

  When Cian saw Hild, his face emptied. “You took time to wash,” he said. “She’s in no hurry, then?”

  “No.”

  “Then neither am I.” He drained his cup, poured more. “I don’t want to see her.”

  “Them. The baby was a girl. She had black hair.”

  He didn’t seem to be listening. “She was never going to live, was she?”

  She wanted to shake him. I tried!

  But she did nothing, said nothing. For the first time, she was afraid of Cian. His face was as smooth as sand, his voice bleached and light as driftwood. His tide had gone out. She dreaded what it might bring back.

  * * *

  The court moved to Goodmanham. Then Brough. On the surface, Cian’s waters were still, but the undertow was vicious. He never raised his voice, never got drunk, but every week Breguswith had to splint some gesith’s arm or leg after sparring. The only time he seemed alive, the only time he smiled, was with children. He took to spending time with Eanflæd and Wuscfrea. Æthelburh, his godmother, allowed it.

  Eanflæd now was as sturdy as a small oak and bossy; Wuscfrea toddled determinedly. Cian made him a tiny blunt spear. Wuscfrea threw it at everything, including his father.

  “That’s my little man,” Edwin said, when Wuscfrea flung the stick at the table where his closest counsellors were talking idly after sorting the business of the day.

  A houseman wiped up the spilled beer. Hild poured more, nearly spilled it afresh when she saw what Edwin was staring at: son and chief gesith sitting on the floor, head to head, torchlight glinting from chestnut hair.

  “He likes you,” Edwin said. A dog whined. “Anyone might think you were his uncle.”

  Hild’s skin felt too tight. But Cian just ruffled Wuscfrea’s hair and smiled. Keeping him ignorant keeps him safe. But she didn’t know if his obvious innocence would be enough.

  As summer turned to autumn she hardly dared lift her gaze from the king’s face. He gave no sign, but her dreams rang and echoed with danger.

  * * *

  At the Christ Mass in the still-unfinished church of York, Paulinus asked God’s blessing for the fruit of the royal loins, and Æthelburh was observed to leave the church to vomit. She was too unwell to attend the feast.

  Hild carried the guest cup the length of the board. Hereswith wasn’t there, or Osfrith and Eadfrith. Lilla and Lintlaf and Dunod were long dead. But it looked the same: silver and gold and rich colours, but for the Crow’s black. It sounded the same: the boom and roll of laughter of people glad to be alive, stitched through with the sinewy plink of the lyre. It smelt the same: roast meat, unwashed men, fruit paste, and sharp white mead. Light of the world. This was what she knew. This was who she was. Her wyrd had been born before she was. She chose this path, this place, because she had always chosen.

  She raised the cup to Edwin and wondered how much longer she could help him stay king.

  26

  THE WORLD TURNED. They moved to Bebbanburg, to Yeavering, to Derventio. It was a warm spring, a warmer summer. The queen swelled.

  At Goodmanham, dogs panted in the shade and every day the heat thickened. Fleeces piled in the woodshed stank. Milk curdled. Æthelburh, big as a cow, leaned on her women and sweated and did not always attend the king’s counsels.

  Cian made Wuscfrea a tiny bow with blunted arrows, and Eanflæd borrowed it and nearly blinded her brother. The queen, who knew of her godson’s troubles, did not forbid him her children. Instead, she asked Hild to watch over them until she herself could do so again.

  So Hild took to bringing berries and small beer to the yard where Cian played with the children, and then would sit and spin while they ate in the shade of the great elm. Sometimes she and Cian talked a little, idly, of the weather, or of Eanflæd’s fearlessness, or of Æthelburh’s health. Sometimes he would float away while still sitting there, and Hild, who knew him so well, heard the wash and lap of his thoughts as though they were her own. My daughter also would have been fearless; my daughter would have been crawling by now; my daughter might have taken her first step today.

  As far as she knew, he had not wept.

  One day, over strayberries, while Eanflæd played with her new toy—a cunningly carved dog—and Wuscfrea piled dirt, they began to talk about the news they’d discussed in council with the king: a contagion in the south, sweeping through Kent, and the death in East Anglia of Ricberht.

  “Hereswith’s husband, Æthelric, is Sigebert’s heir,” she said.

  “So. And, after him, your nephew Ealdwulf?”

  She nodded, but he had already drifted away, though this time, when he came back, he spoke aloud. “They would have been of an age.”

  “Yes,” she said, and gave him the reddest strayberry in the bowl. A strayberry for a daughter. But it was all she had.

  Hereswith had also written, in part:

  For my wedding present you foretold my husband’s death as king. Pray that it is not soon.

  Pray, not for her to be wrong—kings fell—but that it would not be soon.

  Eanflæd shrieked: Wuscfrea had snapped the tail off her dog. After she had been persuaded to stop trying to make him eat it, Hild and Cian talked of other things.

  The queen got bigger. Goodmanham sweltered.

  News came to the counsellors from Osfrith at Tinamutha: Clotrude, his wife, had died in childbirth. For the rest of the morning, Cian was drawn and distant. As they left Edwin’s council, he asked Hild how the queen did.

  “She’s well,” Hild said. “But it’s too hot to carry such weight in public with grace.”

  The heat did not ease. Tempers frayed. Hallfolk and housefolk alike slept outside, and talked
late, and drank too much, and were up at dawn, looking to the south and west, hoping for cloud. The sky stayed blue. The midden heaps reeked.

  “We should go to Elmet,” her mother said. “Or north to the Bay of the Beacon. A bit of sea air would do us all good.”

  “You could go,” Hild said. “Take Luftmaer.”

  The queen came to the next meeting of counsellors and their hangers-on. Hild relayed her latest news from Fursey: the Burgundian bishop, Felix, had moved from Canterbury to Rendlesham. Perhaps to escape the contagion. More likely at the behest of Sigebert.

  Edwin looked at Paulinus. “A Frankish bishop at the court of a Frankish puppet king of the East Angles. Where is your pope in this? And where else is Dagobert dabbling his long Frankish fingers?”

  Hild looked at Æthelburh, who was herself from the Frankish-influenced court of Kent. There again, so was her own mother. But her mother thought now only of herself and her children.

  Æthelburh said, “Your son’s son is half Frankish.”

  Paulinus said, “And Osfrith has no wife now. What if he chooses a Kentishwoman or one of the East Anglisc, builds ties with those Frankish-leaning kingdoms? What if he has plans?”

  Æthelburh wanted her son to be heir. Paulinus also saw advantage in that. Between them, they knew all Edwin’s fears: Osfrith was well liked, and, at the cusp of Deira and Bernicia, well-placed. And he had given his heir a dynastic name.

  “Bring the child to court, my lord,” Paulinus said. “An honoured guest.”

  A hostage for good behaviour of kin, like Oswine for Osric.

  “Yffi’s very young,” Edwin said. But Hild could see he was thinking about it. “And what of the rest of the north? What of Rheged?”

  “We’re grooming Oswine for Rhianmelldt,” she said, and glanced at Æthelburh. The queen’s eyes glimmered, but Hild had no notion what she was thinking. Would she raise the old idea of marrying the mad maid to Cian? But Æthelburh said nothing. “Meanwhile we have Uinniau.”

  “A nephew,” Paulinus said. “Any king would sacrifice a nephew.” Any king would sacrifice anyone, but no one thought it prudent to say so.

  “Then send Eadfrith to charm Rhoedd,” Hild said. “He could talk the birds from the trees.” And he was no use at the head of an army; gesiths no longer quite trusted him. Perhaps he could even be married to Rhianmelldt. It would flatter Rhoedd, and suit Æthelburh …