Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

“I welcome Cian as Onnen’s son and my fosterling.” People craned to see Cian; the light was leaking away and the cooking fires were being put out, one by one. Mulstan turned to Swefred, who handed him a long, wrapped bundle. “A thegn’s fosterling should have arms.”

  Cian quivered like a horse bitten by flies.

  “Cian, fosterling, come receive your arms.”

  “Wipe your face,” Begu hissed at him, and when he looked at her, blank as butter, she made a wiping gesture at her cheek. He lifted his hand as though he wasn’t sure it belonged to him.

  “This is your path, brother,” Hild said. “It is come. Walk tall.” Then, as he stood there, overwhelmed, she said as her own mother had long ago, “Walk now.”

  He did.

  And he smiled. He smiled as he tripped over everyone’s feet and knocked over their cups. He smiled as he took the bundle, smiled as he unwrapped the sword, as his mother touched his cheek and Mulstan enveloped him in a bear hug. He smiled wider as the last fires went out and the sea slished. Smiled as he lifted his blade and tried to see it in the sudden rush of dark.

  Then the rising moon, which had been flat as a silvered plate, popped as round as a ball of cheese, and it was full night. Mulstan gave a great shout and the crowd echoed him. He knelt by the tiny pile of birch shavings and sheep’s hair, and with his steel struck a spark, and blew, and a tiny curl of flame, like a dragonlet’s tongue, licked at the salty night. The crowd roared. The flame built, and Swefred, arms full now of unlit brands, handed them one at a time to Mulstan, who plunged each into the flame until it caught, then handed the first to Onnen, and the crowd roared, then one to the smith, and they roared, to Celfled, to the tanner, and on. Behind Swefred, Guenmon gave out unlit torches to everyone within reach and they passed them from hand to hand, still dark. Each initial torchbearer began the walk to hearth or hall, hut or smithy, and along the way touched the torches to those as yet unlit, and rekindled the fire for another year.

  And then the crowd roared again, and this time didn’t stop, and Cian, holding his own torch now, turned, sword raised, as a ship, pale sail glimmering in the moonlight, drew close to the beach.

  Hild reached for a seax that wasn’t there, then found an eating knife with one hand and Begu’s wrist with the other. She began to push her way through the crowd to Cian. We are us. They would die together. But then two men in the bows of the ship unfurled a standard, and after a moment’s flapping in the unsteady night breeze, the linen cloth streamed clear. Moonlight gleamed on the gold stitching and a single garnet sewn at the eye: the royal boar. The king was returned.

  * * *

  Hild was explaining to Begu for the third time why she did not need to dismantle her linden-wood bed, that she would not require silverware, that there was no room on the boat for her pony, that, yes, she could and should bring her ivory tablets, when she became aware of Onnen watching from the doorway.

  Hild had last seen that expression on her almost-mother’s face in the hall of Ceredig king, when the two strange men had beckoned Cian into the light.

  “What are you doing?” Onnen said.

  “We’re packing,” said Begu. “And I had no idea it was such a difficult thing. Hild says I won’t need my bed. She says I won’t need any hangings. But I don’t know. What do you think, Onnen?”

  “You won’t need to pack your bed.”

  “I won’t? Well. If you say so. But—”

  “You won’t need to pack a thing. Hild, with me.”

  They walked into the sunlight and gusting wind but got only halfway down the steps before Onnen took Hild by the shoulders and brought them both to an awkward halt.

  “What have you promised her?”

  “I have told Begu she is to come with me.” Hild looked up into Onnen’s eyes. She had to squint against the sun. “We are to be gemæcce.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  Hild touched the heavy hilt of her seax, given back just this morning by Cian, who, sword-proud, no longer needed it, and drew herself up. It was only because Onnen was on a higher step that she was taller. Only that.

  Onnen laid her hand on her own knife and for a moment they both breathed harshly, then Onnen sighed. “Hild.”

  “We are to be gemæcce. Guenmon said so.”

  “Guenmon is a bleating ewe. Think.”

  “I have chosen.”

  Onnen shook her head. “Your mother will choose.”

  Silence.

  She touched Hild on her shoulders gently, increased the pressure until Hild turned a little and they were both looking out over Mulstan’s sunlit holding. “Begu is all Mulstan has. She must marry, so that when Mulstan dies, the cowherd and butcher, the shepherd and fisherfolk, the milkmaids and smith, have a lord, have safety, are not turned like slaves from their homes.”

  “I could get the king to give it to me.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  “I am his bringer of light. He promised to reward me with riches beyond human ken.”

  Onnen smiled sadly. “And before how many of his lords did he swear this?”

  Hild didn’t say anything.

  “Beware the ingratitude of kings.”

  Hild gripped the rail. The wood had not yet been smoothed after the winter but she squeezed it as hard as she could, because it was real.

  “I’m sorry, little prickle. But you must leave on the king’s ship, and Begu must stay.”

  “I’ll be all alone,” she said, and she hardly recognised her own voice for the wobble. “You’ll be here, and Cian. Even Fursey … even Fursey…”

  “You’ll have your mother. And Hereswith.”

  “Hereswith will soon be peaceweaver elsewhere.” And maybe her mother would go with her sister. And then it would only be Hild and the king, and her cloak of otherness.

  * * *

  She said her goodbyes in the warmth of the hall and received gifts one by one and handed them unseeing to Eadfrith’s man. She walked alone into the rain, half mad with trying not to remember the soft warmth of Onnen’s motherly breast and the smell of her clothes, trying not to think of the glint of firelight on Begu’s escaping hair because then she’d remember it always, one more memory to torment her. She tried not to take deep, deep breaths of the scent of wind-whipped sea blending with rained-on cowgrass blowing down from the cliff, tried not to think of Cian, Cian woven through everything. We are us. Trying to shut it all out, keep it all away—

  She walked up the gangplank while the ship creaked and rubbed against the wharf. The wood was slippery. Eadfrith, waiting impatiently at the top of the gangplank, called something to his man behind her. Hild paused at the top of the gangplank, looked into the bows, and found Fursey looking back at her.

  She blinked.

  Fursey. Whose ransom had been paid, who should be long gone on his way back to his people.

  Eadfrith shouted again. Hild could make no sense of his words. She could make no sense of anything. The rain increased. Eadfrith’s man stood behind her, saying something. Then Fursey was there, giving her a hand onto the deck. She turned for one last look, for she might never see Mulstan’s holding again, but the bright yellow sail dropped between her and the little wharf.

  Fursey said, “Come out of the rain,” but Hild was so rigid with not crying that she couldn’t move.

  “You,” she said. “Why?”

  “I was free to travel anywhere, and I remembered to myself your thrust at dinner: that I had not met any Anglisc who knew more than blade and blood and boast because I had not met your mother.”

  “My mother.”

  “Yes.” He smiled that smile.

  The sailors shouted in rhythm and tugged on a hemp line that squealed a little as it ran over the wood, and the sail turned. It was a new sail, beautifully dyed and tightly woven, the work of ten women for a year. Beyond it, Mulstan’s man threw the end of a rope to a man in the bows, and the prow of the ship swung out a little.

  “Can you afford passage?”

&nbs
p; “I might have given Eadfrith to understand you wished me still as your tutor.”

  She looked at him, at his sly eyes and stubbled tonsure. “Why?”

  “You have a bright mind but lack subtlety. I could teach you. And life around Edwin will be interesting—oh, very, very interesting, if I’m any judge, which I am—for the next little while. And I’ve a mind to meet your mother.”

  7

  HILD WOKE TO THE SMELL OF WOOL. Goodmanham stank of it. The week had been full of the chaos of shearing, and Hild had taken her turn with most of the other women and girls. She climbed out of bed slowly. Her back ached—and the top of her thigh, where a wether had kicked her as she helped flip him onto his back. She had a barely scabbed cut, the shape of a cat’s long pupil, on the back of her left wrist where the shears had clipped her. But yesterday had seen the last of the pitifully naked sheep whistled out of their pens and herded back to the hills by the black-and-white dogs.

  A brief memory of rhynes and rattling willow tried to take shape in her head but she pushed it away.

  She stretched, pulled on her blue overdress, the hem of which was now three fingers shorter than it should be. Hereswith yesterday, as she and Mildburh dressed—more finely than Hild, even though they would spend the morning in the dairy—had said that no Yffing should look so shabby. Had she turned into a savage away from her family? But she had not had the time to nag at Hild about it, not during shearing season when even the peaceweaver must work like a wealh; and Hild was bone weary, and heart weary, and she didn’t care about her clothes.

  She slung on her belt and settled her seax. The haft was newly wrapped with rough ray skin, one of Mulstan’s parting gifts—the rest of the ray skin would make her popular with the gesiths, Fursey said; he was scratching his head over whom they should favour. Later today, she and her mother would meet with Coelgar to discuss Hild’s treasure, which had gone to York from the wall, and to decide what equivalents from the Goodmanham hoard she should be awarded. Part of her personal treasure had been a bolt of silk given in Alt Clut, but Onnen had told her privately at the time that it was old and no doubt rotten in places.

  Onnen had a better idea of what, exactly, had been on that packhorse, but Onnen was not here.

  As she combed her hair with her fingers she turned, as was now her habit, to the north and east, the direction of the Bay of the Beacon, to Cian and Begu. She tucked her hair behind her ears. Perhaps Onnen combed Begu’s hair now.

  Today she would attend her mother in the main weaving hut. Post-shearing, when hands were soft and smooth with sheep grease, was when the most intricate patterns using the most delicate yarns were set up on the looms. She was the only ungirdled girl to work on the main loom, the only one tall enough. The only one with the pattern-making mind, her mother said. The only one without a gemæcce.

  She refused to think about the beautifully carved but clumsily painted box on its shelf above her bed, the eight ivory wafers wrapped in violet linen.

  * * *

  Fursey happened to be lurking at the bottom of the hall steps. His skirts were clean, well cut, and very black; his forehead tonsure smooth and shining; his cross made of heavy gold. Not long after they arrived at Goodmanham, Hild had seen a priest who had come about other business give him a freighted look, and she’d known, from watching her mother all these years, that later, when no one would see, there would be an exchange of information and a small, heavy purse.

  “I’ll walk with you,” he said. Hild nodded. They both walked carefully, with their skirts held high; it had been a dry month. The dust made Fursey sneeze. In the distance four men shouted and swore as they whipped the oxen hauling a freshly cut oak for the expanded temple enclosure Edwin had given Coifi leave to erect. One ox lifted its tail and squirted shit.

  Fursey said, “May they have time to enjoy their heathen temple.”

  She wanted to know what he meant but in the game they played she lost points if she had to ask.

  “I’d give them a year. Two at most.”

  She said nothing, hoping her silence would goad him into explaining.

  Two wealh, edge-rolling a half-full barrel of stale urine towards the hut where the fleece would be washed later in the day, saw Fursey and straightened. As they passed, Fursey made a hand gesture, the one Hild now knew was a sign of Christ’s cross. The darker wealh bowed. The urine stank. The barrel had been by the door of the hall for a month, gradually filling, but in the open air its sudden reek made Hild want to wipe the inside of her mouth with her sleeve.

  They walked on. Fursey was still silent, still smiling when they reached the sunken weaving hut where today she would work with her mother. Her mother, who hadn’t said a word when Hild came back without Onnen.

  Hild stopped by the southwest corner of the low roof where the door, like a trapdoor, lay open. “You can’t come inside,” she said.

  “Well, no. But you’ll both be coming out soon enough.”

  “Not today. We’ve a deal of work.”

  “Oh, yes. Today. Today most definitely.”

  She paused with her palm on the first rung of the short elm ladder leading down to the weaving floor, but Fursey just smiled at her. She shook her head, not wanting to play his game today, swung herself onto the ladder, and climbed down.

  The hut was small and square, with a beaten-earth floor and brightly coloured loom weights stacked by size on narrow shelves. The loom was in the northeast corner, flooded with light. Beside it stood her mother.

  Breguswith blazed with triumph. She shivered with it. Her eyes flashed brighter than the blue-glazed loom weights, brighter than the lapis on her veil band, brighter than the hilt inlay on her edgeless Kentish sword, thrust through her belt, which she used as a weft beater.

  “Rædwald is dead!”

  Hild stood very still. Rædwald. Overking of all the Angles, who had helped Edwin kill Æthelfrith and drive the Idings into exile. Sulky Eorpwald, Rædwald’s second son, who had been too young to fight at Edwin’s side. Eorpwald, who would step into the kingship of the East Angles—but Edwin would inherit the mantle of overking, the most powerful Angle in Britain.

  Hild saw immediately what this meant for them. “Hereswith,” she said. Hereswith. So soon.

  Her mother nodded. Hereswith was now an overking’s peaceweaver. This was Breguswith’s chance to build for the family power and kinship beyond Northumbria, beyond her own kin in Kent. They would need it. All kings fell, even overkings; it was their nature. And Edwin had many enemies, not least of them his own kin—though no one spoke of Tinamutha and Bebbanburg, and cousin Osric’s betrayal, not even Hild and her mother: Never say the dangerous thing aloud. Hereswith’s marriage would give them a second power holding. But it meant she would leave.

  “Eorpwald is married, of course, but he’s weak. And when he topples, his sons will be too young for kingship. The power then would fall sideways to the sons of Eni.”

  Eni, Rædwald’s dead brother. “Æthelric Short Leg,” Hild said. The eldest, already subking and lord of the North Folk, who called him Ecgric. Hereswith and Æthelric. “How does she feel about marrying a man with the same name as granfa?” How does she feel about leaving her family? But it was always her wyrd.

  “We’ll find out. After the king has the news.”

  Mother and daughter considered each other. Different hair, different eyes, different hearts. Both tall enough that people whispered of etin blood. Both with bright, pattern-making minds.

  Hild said, “When will she leave us? Or…” Hereswith needs training. Hereswith was the eldest, the best path to power. “Will you … will you go with her?”

  “Oh, we’ll all go. If I know Edwin. A royal progress. The king, the æthelings. All the royal family. Even Osric.”

  Especially Osric. You didn’t leave powerful kin of questionable loyalty at your back. But who would stay in East Anglia?

  Breguswith slid her beater up and down in her belt, thinking. “The overking must show his wealth, the loyalt
y of his men. Every belt buckle must be gold, every chape silver, every veil like gossamer. Shoes will be new, rings heavy, horses proud. We will shine. We must move swiftly. I’ve sent messages, and I have people whispering in Eorpwald king’s ear and those of his ealdormen, but Eorpwald’s mind is as shallow as a milk tray, easily swayed by gold closer to hand. Others will be bidding for Æthelric. Even though your sister is now the overking’s peaceweaver, we must show our strength and make our persuasions in person.”

  Someone at the top of the ladder sneezed.

  Breguswith smiled. “He may come, too.” She raised her voice slightly. “Only tell him he must find more subtlety in his messengers. I had word of this one’s coming long, aye long, before his arrival, and could have seen to it that his message never arrived.”

  Hild said nothing. She knew Fursey, knew the sound of his sneeze; that one had been deliberate. Her head was full.

  “We’ll finish setting up this pattern, but the weaving we’ll leave to others. We must bend our minds to our plans.”

  But it was nearly middæg and the weaving hut was brimming with buttercup light when they tied off the last loom weight. Breguswith tested the tension of the warp. “We’ve been too long here. I don’t know what’s wrong with you today.”

  Hild nodded. She hadn’t said a word for hours. Her mouth felt turned to stone. Hereswith. Hereswith and Begu and Cian and Onnen.

  “You’ll talk to Coelgar on your own. Or take that clever priest of yours. He likes to dicker. I must see the king.”

  Hild nodded again. She would be glad not to attend Edwin. She had her father’s hair, more so every day. When her uncle was thinking of power and dynasty it was best not to come to his attention. And she had a lot to think about.

  * * *

  Already middæg. She had no time to find the hornbeam over the river, her preferred thinking perch. She made for the kitchen garth. At this time of day, the herbs would already have been snipped and the rhubarb pulled, and in the shadow of the south wall, overhung by the orchard apples and plums, it would be cool and quiet.