Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  “It’s beautiful,” said Hild, “and I will have it.”

  * * *

  At Caer Loid the weather turned dry and crisp and the farmers began to arrive for the king’s feast. A man and two sons, all with spears, the man with a sturdy linden shield and a seax with a worked-leather sheath. Ceadwulf and two ceorls, with his wife, Saxfryth, wearing Hild’s ring, and their son. From the steading Hild had warned to hide their priest, four men—one shorter and slighter than the others—all carrying spears. Two brothers armed with axes, with the kind of finger rings and cloak brooches unlikely to have been earned through farming.

  Coelfrith, back only two days earlier, was kept busy every moment the sun shone. He would have preferred Pyr to handle the new arrivals but Pyr was half wealh, and who knew what the prideful newcomers might take as an insult, so he put Pyr in charge of the hunting parties and other provisioning details, and toured the growing encampment, listening. This farmer wanted a space in the bend of the river, but his neighbour had taken it—his neighbour who owed him a ram and hadn’t paid. That red-faced man pointed to a bruised boy: This starveling wealh had stolen two loaves and what were they to eat now? What was the king going to do about that? And many, many demanded to speak to the king: It was why they were here; it was their right.

  Hild walked with Coelfrith, watching, learning, sometimes staying for a quiet word, sometimes sending Morud—who seemed to have attached himself to her—back with a message for the farmer to come to her wagon later. She conferred with Coelfrith over which man might be invited to break bread with the king; which might be best seen with others in a group; which to be ignored. And everywhere, the Crow’s priests, accompanied by Osric’s men, questioned the farmers, taking the information to the Crow and Stephanus, who wrote and wrote and wrote.

  At night, Cian took a keg of ale, and Eadric or another hound, to the fires of the new arrivals and compared weapons, and drank and boasted and learnt things that Hild might not. Hild herself, accompanied by Gwladus, talked to Lweriadd; to Morud’s wary sister, Sintiadd; to Saxfryth. She left them ale or cheese. Occasionally they gave her a cloth full of elderberries or mushrooms or wildling apples.

  In the morning, she and Cian broke bread in the cold clear sunlight, sitting on their little stools by the wagon.

  Cian tore another chunk from his loaf and caught up more of the paste from the beautifully turned elm bowl on the table Gwladus had thought to bring with their stools.

  “What is this? Is there more?”

  “Just what you see. Saxfryth brought it for me, as a thank-you, she said. She wanted most particularly for the young gesith with the bold cloak to know that it was her recipe: the first puffballs sliced and fried in goose grease then chopped and packed in butter. When I tell her you liked it she’ll want you to visit, and she’ll push out her chest like a pouter pigeon and twirl her new ring so it gleams in the firelight, and tell you how very tall you are, how long your sword, and so very sharp!”

  Gwladus, bringing more bread and a pot of honey, snorted.

  They ate steadily. “There’s two bandits in from the Whinmoor,” he said.

  “The ones with the axes?”

  “The same. I told Coelfrith. He says it’s the king’s order to leave every man his weapon until the feast tonight.”

  Hild wondered who would be the unlucky gesith honoured with the duty of standing watch over the blades away from all the drinking and boasting.

  “I saw a sword that might have come over with your forefathers: a hilt looking like cheese squeezed in a man’s fist.” Hild knew what he meant; she’d seen swords like that hanging in the firelight, brought down when the scop sang of times past: a ridged hilt, sometimes bound with wire, always with a name and a list of dead kings to its credit.

  “I saw a Loid with an inlaid spear today,” she said. “A dot and a cross on the blade.” Ceredig’s mark.

  Cian looked up from his bread and honey. “A king’s man?”

  “His son, maybe. If you want to ask him, he’s with the Anglisc of that rich steading west of Saxfryth’s. They’re camped south of the orchard—or what was the orchard.”

  At the noon meal, Hild saw Cian sitting with the Loid at a fire of fragrant applewood stumps, listening, nodding, whittling away at his root, while the man mimed thrusting and slamming with his shield. Behind them, slave wealh watched over by Osric’s men worked on the king’s new hall.

  * * *

  Tenscore men and not a few women settled down under a moon bright and white as polished chalk. The air was still and sharp, the river slow. Bonfires roared between the people and the wood, driving the dark back, keeping the wights under the trees.

  They had listened to the scop’s stirring songs of hearth and hall, gold and honour, and the fate of man. They had drunk jar after jar of spiced ale, and eaten the oxen that had pulled their wagons from Goodmanham. The first beef most of them had eaten in years. Good red meat that made them feel like heroes.

  The king rose, gleaming with gold, and to many of the men there—full of more beer and food, aye, and better, than they’d had in an age—he seemed a song made flesh, a hero of old, a king worth listening to. And while the king’s men passed among the crowd with mead—mead! the drink of warriors!—the scop declaimed the king’s lineage: Edwin the son of Ælla, the son of Yffi, the son of Wuscfrea, the son of Wilgisl, the son of Westerfalca, the son of Sæfugl, the son of Sæbald, the son of Segegeat, the son of Swebdæg, the son of Sigegar, the son of Wædæg, the son of Woden. A son of kings, and he stood among them like an equal. The scent of mead made them glad. Their hearts beat high.

  Edwin said in a great voice, “I have never lost a battle. I have two strong sons, with many more to come. Kings—Briton, Saxon, Angle—bend the knee before me. Like the men of Lindsey, you may now look to me as lord. I swear to keep your larders full, your pasture free from marauding Mercians, your fields unburnt by the savage men of Gwynedd. I stand between you and harm. To you I extend the cloak of the king’s justice, the king’s vengeance, the king’s protection. In return I ask no more than before. Indeed, I will ask less, no more than any man can bear. But you must give it, in full and with goodwill. And your neighbours will be responsible for you and you for your neighbours. Your tithe weights must be fair, your cloth fine, your kine healthy. Smell the mead, now, men of Elmet. It is a gift from your king. Will you take it?” He lifted his great jewelled cup, a cup, surely, like one a god might drink from. “Men of Elmet, will you drink with me? Will you swear your oath?”

  With a roar like a host, they shouted Yea! and Aye! and Edwin king! They drank, and drank again, and the scop and his drummers and whistle men set up a merry tune.

  * * *

  The bonfires burnt low and men drew into groups around smaller fires. The gesiths had their own fires near the wagons, and many farmers were already sleeping, but perhaps half a hundred lingered, unwilling to end the night. Someone was plinking on an old lyre, playing the tune of a bawdy song that he kept getting wrong.

  Hild sat with Gwladus, half asleep, wrapped in her cloak, half aware of murmured Anglisc on her right, British on her left. Cian was nearby, she thought, and Morud, but she was not sure where. She drifted, dreaming of the ridge over the valley, the beck, the pond. That pollarded oak at the head of the mene was hollow …

  Gradually she became aware of a conversation, an Anglisc man saying, “‘I’ll ask less,’ he said. But that black-haired priest kept asking, ‘How many sheep? How many milch cows? How many pigs?’ The gleam in his eyes didn’t promise less.”

  “He’ll keep us safe,” a younger voice said. “He said so.” Hild knew that kind of voice: a stripling, ready to run to war for glory and gold, the kind of voice that ended torn out on a muddy, bloody field. “You, wealh, bring me more ale.”

  The sudden silence was as sharp as salt. Hild opened her eyes. The young Angle with the glory voice looked just as she’d imagined: unkempt blond hair, downy moustaches, flushed face, muscled like a young bullock.
The man he faced was a little older, a hand’s-breadth shorter: the Loid who had carried the spear of a king’s man. But all weapons were under guard for the night, by order of the king, and farmers didn’t wear the jewels of a gesith, and the young Angle didn’t know that this Loid was his own man.

  Two Angles got up and stood behind the Loid—farmers from the same steading. They had hands on their eating knives.

  And then Cian was there, sheathing his whittling knife, squatting easy by the fire, smiling, beer jar swinging from one hand. The Anglisc gold at his throat and on his hands gleamed, the red checks of his bold Welsh cloak glowed.

  He said, “Once upon a time, if there was such a time, an Anglisc farmer built his steading alongside a Loid. The Loid owned a hen, a fine hen, that laid one egg every morning as the sun came up. Every morning the Loid’s wife would carry the egg from the coop to the kitchen to break into his beer for breakfast. One day, she looked in the coop and there was no egg. But then she saw into the Angle’s garth and there was her foolish hen, sitting on her egg.”

  “You said it was a fine hen,” called someone from the crowd.

  “It was the finest hen that ever clucked, though being a hen, it was not very bright, and thought an egg was a great achievement no matter on whose land it was laid.” He took a pull of the ale. “So the wife fetched her husband, the Loid, and he began to step over the ditch to fetch the hen when the Angliscman steps out of his hall, sees the hen, and picks up the egg. The Loid shouted, ‘That’s my egg!’ but the Anglisc shouted back, ‘It was laid on my land!’

  “They shouted at each other—for they’d not had breakfast and were testy—and finally the Loid said, ‘My people have a way of solving disputes,’ and the Anglisc said, ‘Good, then tell me what it is because I fancy this egg while it’s still warm.’ So the Loid said, ‘I kick you in the balls and count how many times I can sing the bread song before you manage to get back up. Then you kick me in the balls and see how long it takes me to get up. Whoever gets up quicker wins the egg.’

  “The Anglisc, being brave and strong, agreed to this. So the Loid went to find his boots, his best boots, with the reinforced lace holes, and put them on, and hopped over the ditch. ‘Are you ready?’ he called, and the Anglisc stood with his feet wide and his jaw set, and the Loid ran at him like a cart horse and kicked the Anglisc as hard as he could in the balls. The Anglisc fell to the ground clutching himself, gasping then howling then cursing in agony, while the Loid sang the bread song a score and twice. Eventually the Anglisc stood up and said, ‘Now it’s my turn to kick you.’”

  Cian put the jar down and leaned back on his hands. The crowd leaned forward.

  “And then the Loid tucked his hen under his arm, stepped back smartly, and said, ‘Keep the fucking egg!’”

  The crowd roared and Cian handed the beer to the Loid, who drank and passed it to the Angle, and shouted, “Someone give me that lyre!” and someone else shouted, “Sing the bread song!” and they laughed some more.

  Hild motioned for Gwladus and Morud. “Bring more food, and wood for the fire. Tell Coelfrith I said so.”

  * * *

  The next day, as a stream of important Anglisc, those with six or more spears to their name, swore their oaths to the king before witnesses—who included, at the Crow’s suggestion, for he had been baptised, Cian Boldcloak—Hild accepted a trickle of lesser folk, Anglisc and Loid, who came to her in ones and twos.

  Lweriadd brought Morud. “Lady, has he served you well?”

  “He has.”

  “Then it would please me for you to take him with you when you leave.”

  Morud then knelt, put Hild’s hand to his forehead, and swore the threefold oath: to keep faith until the sky fell on his head, until the earth opened and swallowed him, until the seas rose and drowned him. He was standing behind her stool on one side, and Gwladus on the other, when Saxfryth approached with her young son.

  Saxfryth held out Hild’s ring. Hild folded the woman’s hand around it. “A gift.”

  Saxfryth’s smile was brilliant but almost immediately extinguished by indecision and anxious looks at her son.

  Hild sighed to herself. “I don’t know your boy’s name.”

  “Ceadwin, lady.”

  “A strong name for a strong lad.”

  “He is strong, lady, very strong for his age.”

  “How many winters has he?”

  “Five, lady.”

  “In two years he’ll be old enough to foster.”

  “Yes, lady.”

  “Does he have brothers?”

  “Not yet, lady.”

  “When he does, or when he is seven, whichever is sooner, you may send him to me, if you wish.”

  “Lady!” She looked as though she might fly apart with joy, but instead pulled the boy to her and hugged him so hard he began to struggle. Eventually she recovered her wits enough to pick up her skirts in one hand and take the boy’s little fist in the other and hurry away, stopping every stride or two to turn and say thank you.

  “Her husband won’t thank you,” Gwladus said as they watched her go. “You wait, she’ll kill that man this winter trying to get another son.”

  “Anglisc, Gwladus. Morud needs the practice. From now on, Anglisc, both of you, until we leave this place. And Morud, you will do as Gwladus tells you.” She sat back on her stool, watching the now-distant figures of Saxfryth and the boy. “Five. Really. What am I, a wet nurse?”

  “Here comes one,” Morud said in otter-splash but understandable Anglisc.

  “Another,” said Hild. “Here comes another.”

  This time it was the young man with the ancient sword.

  He was too young and tightly strung for any greeting. He simply drew his sword, knelt, and offered it to her, hilt-first over his forearm. “I am Oeric, lady, and I would serve you.”

  She touched his hand. He looked up. Brown eyes, tight and anxious. Fading pimples. Strong bone at brow and jaw. Older than Cian by a year or so, but not as tall. But then few were.

  His brown tunic, restitched with sleeves and padded in an approximation of a warrior jacket, was faded and patched. He would never be able to afford the mail shirt to wear over it. A knuckle on his right hand looked as though it had been crushed at some point but he’d had no difficulty handling the sword. The blade, as Cian had said, was ancient. Perhaps his father’s father’s grandfather’s. Part of its edge, near the point, was missing and the wire inset in the grip black with age. The blade itself, though, was lovingly polished of hammer-folded snakesteel.

  “Your sword, it has a name?”

  “Clifer,” he said. Claw. But he didn’t offer a lineage, and Hild wondered if he’d found it somewhere or taken it from a dead man.

  “How would you serve me, Oeric?”

  He blinked. “Lady?”

  “How would you serve me?”

  “I have a sword…”

  Hild nodded. A sword. What use did she have for a sword? “Are you hungry?” Of course he was hungry. He was a stripling. He could eat an ox and still have room for a sheep and a score of loaves. “Morud here will bring you a stool and Gwladus will find us something to eat and you will tell me of your family.”

  “My mother is dead—”

  “But first you will get off your knees.” She must ask Gwladus to find a mat or a fur to put before her stool so these people didn’t have to get down on the muddy grass.

  He scrambled to his feet.

  “And put the sword away before someone gets the wrong idea.”

  He sheathed it—not with the unthinking ease of a gesith but with more skill than she’d expected.

  Morud came back with a stool and placed it with ceremony opposite Hild. Clearly he also made some kind of face at Oeric, who glared at him.

  Hild pointed to the stool. Oeric sat. He perched gingerly on the padded embroidered cushioning but relaxed quickly enough when no god flung a thunderbolt at him for soiling such fine work with his farm clothes.

 
; Adaptable, at least. “You were telling me of your family.”

  His father was Grim, son of Grim the Elder. His mother dead these six years. When his mother’s sister’s husband had gone away one day and not come back, the widowed Grim had married her. Grim had three more sons now and a daughter. He farmed a hide south of the Aire, mixed land, some barley, some oats. Pigs, of course, they couldn’t get by without the pigs, who ate their bodyweight in mast every autumn, and two milch cows. Their horse, though, had died this spring when the grass came so late. The cows’ milk had been late, too. Perhaps without Oeric to feed they might have enough for a colt next spring.

  “Perhaps your father could swap Clifer for a mare in foal.”

  “Clifer is mine! From my mother’s father, who had no sons.”

  Gwladus brought a tray with bread, bowls of barley stew with beef shreds, and the beautiful cup Edwin had given Hild in Lindsey. The cup was half filled with mead. She gave Hild one bowl of stew, Oeric another. Oeric took a spoon from his pouch, remembered to check that Hild had a spoon, and waited for her to take the first mouthful. Manners and restraint. Hild had seen worse at Edwin’s board. She took a taste so that Oeric could begin. It needed more salt. “Does your father know you’re here?”

  Oeric swallowed hastily. “I am of age!”

  Hild gestured for him to keep eating. She applied herself to her own bowl. “Why?” she said, when half her stew was gone. “Why me? Why not swear to the king?”

  “Would he have me?” They both knew the answer. Oeric had a sword but no mount, no mail, no men. “They say you’re powerful. That you see a man’s wyrd. That you’ve used that seax.”

  Hild studied him. “And you would swear an oath?” An Anglisc oath, from a man with a sword.

  “I would.”

  It wasn’t usual. But neither was she. And this boy with his old, broken sword wouldn’t threaten her uncle.

  She stood, and gestured for him to do likewise. She put her hand on his chest. “I am the king’s seer. I shine light on the way. I look into men’s hearts. Is your heart free to make an oath, Oeric son of Grim?”