Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  “When is Eadfrith due back?” Osric said, not bothering to lower his voice: Grimhun, on the lyre, had clumsy hands, which only encouraged the other gesiths to sing louder to drown out the sour notes.

  “Tomorrow,” Hild and her mother said together. They looked at each other.

  “I had it from James, from Paulinus,” Hild said.

  “From the queen herself,” said Breguswith.

  “Then soon we’ll move on Elmet,” Osric said.

  Hild and her mother nodded: of course. If Gwynedd and Mercia joined forces, Elmet would be the only buffer between the allied army and Northumbria, more important than ever. Edwin must secure it.

  “He must garrison Elmet and name me as ealdorman.” Osric slapped the board with both hands. “And don’t even think about counselling me to more patience!” One or two gesiths glanced over. He leant forward. “I waited when he took Deira and Bernicia. I waited when he gave Lindsey to that soft-handed reeve. I’m Yffing. I have men, a strong son, healthy daughters. Elmet is mine by right. And I’m tired of waiting.”

  Hild saw that he would not listen to her mother on this. So, clearly, did her mother: She did that thing women do that Hild didn’t yet understand. From one moment to the next her body turned pliant and soft: willow rather than oak.

  “Yes, my lord, it should. And you should not wait. But overkings don’t take kindly to being pushed. So let me be the one. I have just the weight to tip the balance. That wool,” she said to Hild. She turned back to Osric. “Elmet shorted the wool tribute.”

  It took him a moment—so slow!—but then he smiled. Short tribute was an insult. No king could ignore an insult. The smile widened his face and slitted his eyes, and with his sharp bright teeth glittering in the torchlight he looked less like a badger than a broad-headed stoat smelling the hens.

  Breguswith smiled back and Hild was certain her mother pressed her knee to Osric’s under the board. “News best delivered by a woman who doesn’t stand to profit from it. Delivered to the queen, who will drop it in the king’s ear at the right moment. Be ready.”

  * * *

  But Elmet was not Lindsey, peopled by a rich trading nation of soft-handed merchants, and Edwin was a man of greater cunning and ambition than his cousin. He would gather Elmet to Northumbria with care, to hold for life: not only his but his heirs’, and theirs in turn. He would build a kingdom to last longer than song itself.

  The moon waned and waxed and waned again, and the Winterfylleth moon was past the quarter when Coelfrith began to supervise the loading of the king’s wagons.

  It was strange weather: a leaf turn earlier than anyone remembered followed by blue skies and biting cold. The leaves should have blazed in the sun, but they hung dully, like dead brown hands. Strangest of all was the wind. The wealh loading the wagons were chased by whippets of wind that blew one way then another, no rhyme or reason.

  Wight weather, said the kitchen wealh. From the warm side of the kitchen doorway’s leather curtain, they watched the maid, sleeveless and with that staff she often had by her, lift her face just as a silent rush of shiny, black-edged clouds swarmed like silverfish across the sky. They shook their heads: The long-dead kings of Elmet and the Old North were stirring and planning mischief for Edwin Snakebeard.

  Snakebeard knew it, agreed the baker and the cook—who stood, as befitted their rank, at the front, with a view of the goings-on. “For one thing,” said the baker, a man with thinning sandy hair and burns on his wiry forearms, “they’re yoking oxen—young oxen, mind—to the wagons for the trip out, but taking extra horses for the trip back. That means sacrifices. And he’s taking twoscore gesiths—but no women.” The maid didn’t count.

  “You don’t need a war band to fight dead men,” said the cook, which astonished almost everyone, for the cook was not one to talk much, except with her hands. “Just the maid and her four pets.”

  “Five,” piped up the basting boy, who’d had it from Arddun’s nephew, the message runner. “The brothers Berht, Eadric the Brown, Grimhun, and Cian Boldcloak.”

  “Boldcloak’s not the maid’s pet!” said the baker’s lass with scorn, for the basting boy was newly arrived from the west and sorely ignorant. “I had it from Gwladus, the maid’s bodywoman. The maid and Boldcloak grew up together, like brother and sister!” The cook and the baker exchanged looks, but the lass didn’t notice, seeing only the chance to humiliate the new boy with her superior knowledge. “Don’t you know the song, how she gave him a secret knife and he used it to save the king’s life?”

  A groom led out a string of horses: gesith mounts, with glittering headstalls and tooled leather girths.

  “The pets going are all baptised,” the baker said. “The Crow’s hand, no doubt. And he’s taking five priests. Five. Elmet wood is full of wights.”

  Behind him everyone crossed themselves deliciously.

  “The maid’s from Elmet, long ago,” said the baker’s lass.

  “I heard she’s half hægtes,” said the basting boy. “Or half etin!”

  The lass snorted. “She’s twice royal so twice as tall! Everyone knows that.”

  “What about Boldcloak, then?” said the boy. “He’s tall.”

  At which point the cook slapped the back of his head with her meaty hand, the baker’s lass took the opportunity to elbow him in the ribs, and the undercook said, “At least Lintlaf will get a rest, poor man.” Knowing looks were exchanged. Gwladus, who of course went where the maid went, had expressed a certain unhappiness at the young gesith’s inclusion, so he was staying behind and, for a while, he would be free of grit in his gruel, beetles in his bedcloak.

  “The Loides won’t,” said the baker. Osric’s men were all to take whips, which didn’t bode well for the wealth of Elmet.

  They watched Coelfrith’s underreeve, a half wealh called Pyr, instructing the yardfolk to handle the sacks more carefully. As he walked away, the foreman flipped his fingers at Pyr’s back, and the yardfolk threw the sacks with renewed force.

  “That’s a month’s worth of twice-baked bread,” said the baker. “And mead. More mead than even twoscore gesiths could drink in a fortnight. There’ll be feasting with the sacrifice.”

  “Aye,” said the cook. “But feasting with who? Sacrifice to what? It’s a strange party. Strange weather. Strange days.”

  * * *

  As Hild had known it would, the rain started when the king’s party had made it barely a mile down the road from Goodmanham and hadn’t stopped even for a heartbeat since. She didn’t care. This felt like the first time on the war trail but better. This time she rode next to Cian—who wore his new cloak of red-and-black checks, densely woven from the little Gwynedd sheep that had run the West Welsh mountains since the time of the redcrests—with her four gesiths behind. Back on the second wagon, it was Gwladus, not Onnen, who rode with everything Hild could possibly need for a fortnight on the road. For once she didn’t have to sleep on hard ground, rolled in her cloak and hand on her seax. She didn’t have to share a bed with her mother or dream bitter dreams. She didn’t even spend every moment in dread of the king: He and Paulinus were wrapped in some plan on which they had not asked her counsel. Though she could guess what it was. Edwin wanted to win the Anglisc Elmetsætne without bloodshed; he wanted to be acknowledged rightful heir, not murdering usurper. Paulinus wanted to see every wealh priest driven into the river. Clearly the king had a use for her or she wouldn’t be here, but for now she was happy.

  Usually wagons followed the old Roman road to Aberford and Berewith, where Ceredig, after Hereric’s death, had marched with his Loides to meet Edwin’s invading Anglisc, before fleeing to his ill-fated refuge in Craven. But after a conference with Paulinus, Edwin had ordered the party to strike west on the wood road to Caer Loid Coit, Ceredig’s hall at the heart of Elmet by the great River Aire.

  The endless rain had turned what had been little more than a track into a sucking mess of mud and wheel-clogging leaves. Drivers cursed, oxen heaved, axles creak
ed—and two broke, but they were surrounded by the elm wood; axles were easy to replace.

  The elm wood woke something in Hild. She found herself breathing faster, pausing mid-word and listening past the drip of rain and snort of men and beasts. Perhaps it was that no children ran alongside the horse, shouting, begging for an apple, a lump of bread, a meat pasty; no anxious local lords or their ladies were sent to ensure royal comfort.

  They saw no wealh—no Loides, Hild reminded herself. By the time the royal party crossed a faint track to a settlement in the trees, its inhabitants had long since vanished, along with their pigs and dogs and iron cook pots. They did see Anglisc. Three times they crossed great clearings centred on sturdy homesteads, too modest to be called halls, flanked by outbuildings, with firewood neatly stacked, goats tethered, pigs penned, and watchful farmer and sons leaning on their spears, nodding at the tufa, which seemed boastful and tawdry in this dripping wood.

  The first time they passed such a farm, Paulinus motioned to his priests and turned his horse from the path, obviously preparing to go make them kneel to their God. But Edwin shook his head. The second time, they’d heard the bleating of sheep but seen no sign of the animals. “Lord King, they’re hiding their riches,” the Crow said, but again Edwin gestured for him to stay with the wagons.

  “They’re Anglisc, and proud. We’ll bring them to heel, but not yet.”

  At their next stop—another wagon mired in the mud—Edwin sent for Cian. Hild came with him.

  “That’s a fine cloak, boy.”

  “A gift from Gwynedd, my king.”

  “A wealh cloak, bright and bold.”

  “Yes, my king,” Cian said.

  “It wouldn’t hurt if you rode a little ahead of the wagons. Make sure you and your bright and bold wealh cloak are seen. Keep the maid at your side.”

  * * *

  Hild and Cian broke through the trees at the crest of the rise and looked down at Caer Loid Coit.

  She remembered—as much from dream and song as from life—a grassy slope with a well-tended wide way leading to a massive blackthorn hedge and timber gate, around which some king of the long ago had thrown up a flinty earthwork and ditch, which in turn had gradually softened and greened over the generations. Then, the gates had stood open during the day; blue peat smoke seeped from the eaves of the mixed-timber and stone hall, and people went about their lives: the goosegirl with her hazel switch, the milkmaid—such red hands; she hadn’t remembered that for years—the old man with the leather apron who sharpened sickles in summer, butcher knives in autumn. She smelt the ghosts of toasting malt, sour mash, and, from the orchards to the north and west, apples. Past the apples and plums had stood the tiny stone church whose scruffy priest and his wife made the worst bannock cakes in all Elmet but who were always ready to smooth disputes between folk not mighty enough to be judged by the king. To the south and east of the enclosure, the hazel wood, ash coppice, and the elm wood full of jackdaws. Behind everything, the Aire, wide and slow. On the far bank, clothing the rise in gold and bronze—up and up, as far as one could see—the great forest of mixed oak and elm that gave the country its name.

  The river was still there, and beyond it the oak and elm—the canopy thinner than it should be, with this early autumn—but there was no smoke, no people, no sound but the drip of rain and the pour of the river.

  Cian’s mount stamped and sidestepped. Cygnet settled for turning her head against Hild’s slack rein and rolling her eye, trying to see what was upsetting her rider.

  Ceredig’s royal enclosure lay dark and broken and forlorn: the gate torn down, the roofs fallen in, the coppice overstood. Scrub broke the once hard-packed dirt of corral and path, and bare saplings poked through the collapsing wattle of the goose pen. A buzzard wheeled at the crest of the far ridge, its belly flashing pale against the dark cloud. It called twice, kee-wik kee-wik, cut across the river, soared over the tangle of branches that had once been carefully tended rows of apples and plums, and vanished.

  Hooves thumped up the rise behind them: Edwin, Paulinus, the tufa bearer, Coelfrith, Osric.

  “So,” Edwin said, and the Anglisc word was lumpy and alien to Hild. “We’ll tear it down and build a better one.”

  * * *

  They tore it down: every stone, every gate, every leaning timber on the near side of the river.

  Edwin’s men and the Crow’s priests strode into the trees, to the wealh houses with their just-returned pigs and unsuspecting owners, rounded up every able-bodied man, woman, and child, and drove them, clutching what they had in the way of billhooks and mattocks and mallets, to the ruined enclosure. Over the next fortnight, as the sun broke free of the clouds and the early autumn retrod its steps to a threadbare copy of late summer, Osric, with an eye to his own likes, supervised the cutting of every tree but one within five hundred paces of the ditch—every tall elm, every wide oak, sending up clouds of cawing rooks and jackdaws—even the orchard, though with patient snedding many of the trees could have been brought back. Paulinus insisted that the tiny church be pulled apart, stone by stone, though the wealh had to be encouraged with ox goads for that. The font and altar stone, finely carved, he put on a cart.

  It was seeing the thorn hedge torn up and burnt that made Cian rub his lip with his knuckle and turn away. Hild swapped her staff to her left hand and reached past his cloak with her right and tugged his belt, as she had long ago, and they walked to the river.

  “Those roots were planted in the days of Coel Hen,” he said in British.

  “They grew strong in the days of Eliffer of the Great Retinue,” she said, in the rhythm of the dirge.

  “And were mighty when the princes Gwyrgi and Peredur were born.” Amen, a priest would have said. Woe!, a bard.

  Cian said, “My people.”

  By the river, gesiths were throwing stones at the roots of the lone willow where one had spied a fish shadow. Chub or perch, she knew. She felt, suddenly, a memory of hot sun on her bare back as she and Cian squatted by the ditch, fishing for tadpoles under Onnen’s keen eye, though perhaps that, too, was part of some song she had made her own.

  They turned and walked south along the bank. After a while they were among the elms. She remembered moss on her cheek, a stream of jackdaws crying Home now! Home!, the faint honk of geese. Something inside her threatened to break and spill.

  “My people,” Cian said again. “Food for wolves, food for the ravens.”

  She shook her head, trying to catch and pin the memory she knew was her own.

  “They’re not dead?”

  She shook her head again, and her memory eeled into the dappled shadows thrown by dreams and song.

  “Then where are they?”

  He was thinking of the men of the Old North, princes with their fish-scale mail and bright swords and mead-soaked voices. The glorious, arrogant dead. Not the flea-ridden, filth-caked Loides being whipped by Osric. She wanted to explain, but she couldn’t let go of the memory swimming now into the deep—and, in following it, was three again. She lifted the edge of his new cloak—the one that could have been the twin of the one worn by Cadfan’s messenger, Marro, had it not been red and black—and shook it.

  He didn’t understand at first, but she pointed at the Loides and kept shaking it. Then he did.

  “Those are not my people!” he said in Anglisc, and the memory dived away, deeper than she could follow.

  She breathed carefully, as though unused to air. “Then whose are they?”

  * * *

  The Loides sat in small groups around their tiny fires, hunched in what rough cloth they had been able to snatch up when the Crow’s men herded them to the river.

  Hild squatted by a woman who reminded her of someone—Guenmon maybe, someone sensible—and gestured for Gwladus to come forward with the basket. “Bread,” she said in British to the woman. “And hard cheese. You’ll see it’s shared?”

  The woman looked at her. “I will. Your name, lady?”

  “H
ild.”

  The woman nodded. “So tall. Like your da.”

  “You knew him?”

  The woman laughed. Hild was astonished by that laugh. It wasn’t bitter, not the laugh of a woman torn from her home and driven like a goat, but a laugh like spring, the laugh of a young girl. “Know the Anglisc king-in-exile!” Two other Loides looked up, though they were so hunched and dirty and the firelight so wavering that Hild knew that they were human only by their smell. “No, chickie, I used to watch him ride out past my geese, in his fine byrnie and thick blue cloak, and once he smiled at me, and I smiled at him, saucy-like, and dreamt in my foolish dreams that he might one day climb off his horse and say, Lweriadd, here’s a pretty for you, and a kiss.”

  “You’re the goosegirl!”

  “Aye, once upon a time.”

  “I never knew your name.”

  Gwladus snorted. Lweriadd. A lofty name for someone wrapped in sacking: Lweriadd, daughter of Belenos the sun god; Lweriadd, mother of Beli Mawr.

  “Lweriadd of the Loides, enjoy your bread and cheese.”

  “We’ll need more. And blankets. Or at least the time and tools to build a shelter.” She stabbed her thumb up at the gauzy clouds dimming the waxing moon: thin but dark, dark blue—the kind of blue any woman would kill to get from her dyes—a blue that meant more rain. “Tell that to the whipping thegn.”

  “I’ll see you get them. If you don’t, ask for me or for Gwladus here.”

  “Or for that fine lordling in the British cloak you walk about with?”

  Wealh, even tired and hungry wealh—especially tired and hungry wealh—noticed everything. Hild nodded. “Cian, son of Onnen.”

  “Ah.”

  * * *

  While the Loides toiled by the Aire, Edwin sat with his counsellors beneath the one great oak left standing. Beneath it, his men had built a rough shelter: a reed roof, one solid wall behind him, and painted leather curtains to each side. His tufa stood at his right hand, his scop on the left, and about a brazier his travelling court. Most perched on three-legged stools—if their body servants had thought to bring one; some stood.