“Our kingdom is growing. We are strong. Yet we need strong men on our right hand to guide the farmers of our borderlands, strong men to crush the vermin who whisper of other kings in other lands, to smash those who skulk like stray dogs in search of the weak and yap at their betters from behind trees.”
The scop must have come up with that.
“My counsellors and wise men say to me: Lord King, the Christ might now be on our side, but the priests tell us their god, our god, helps those who help themselves. And they say, ‘Lord King, our people need a strong man to look up to. It is time,’ they tell me, ‘to appoint ealdormen, to seat men as princes. Known men, trusted men. Strong men. Kinsmen. Men to protect the people and command the respect of all.’” He smiled at Osric over the rim of his cup. “They said this to me at Yule, and I said, ‘Be patient.’ They said this to me again, yesternight, and I said, ‘But tell me what kinsman will be willing to leave his fine and comfortable house to take up this burden? Who will fight in the king’s name to bring fallow land under the plough, to open dark forests to the light?’”
Around the hall men were nodding. They saw, they thought they saw, where the king was heading. Elmet, they whispered to their less sharp neighbours, the king will give his cousin Elmet.
But she knew her uncle. And the fruits of Elmet did not sit in long birch boxes or heavy brick shapes.
“‘Who?’ I asked them. ‘You have sons,’ they said—”
Osric paled.
“—but: ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have other plans for my sons. And I know just the man I need.’”
Osric flushed.
Edwin’s smile widened. So many teeth. “And so, Lord Osric, kinsman, are you willing to leave the lands known to your kith and kin since time out of mind to take up this honour on behalf of your king?”
“Cousin,” Osric said. “My king.” His voice shook with sincerity: ealdorman of Elmet! More or less a king. He would give anything. “I am willing.” His men drummed on the board.
“Then, Lord Osric, Osric Yffing…” The hall breathed, one great lung, in and out, in and out. This would be something to tell their grandchildren: They were there when the Kingdom of Elmet became part of Northumbria forever. The scops would sing of this. “I name you Lord and Ealdorman of Craven.”
Hild wondered how the scop would sing of the two smiles. The king’s spreading like melting lard in a pan, wider and wider. The ealdorman’s widening, jerking, spreading tremulously, wiped out, gone. Even his lips went pale.
She imagined the roaring in his ears.
“… yesterday of Dunod’s death … our shield against the treachery of the men of the north … friendship with the loyal men of Rheged as reaffirmed by Prince Uinniau…”
His legs would be shaking, the world turning black at its edges, but he had to stay upright. His eyes seemed even smaller than before, confused, like a badger driven from its sett and facing a ring of torches.
Then Æthelburh was standing by her husband, and Coelfrith placed the small oak table, carved and inlaid with Edwin’s boar’s-head blazon in red gold, before the king and queen. Coelfrith’s men laid the small covered brick and the long box on the boar’s head. Coelfrith lifted the embroidered cloth to reveal a pig of iron, spotted with rust, despite the glistening grease. Hild could smell it from where she stood: raw iron, the smell of delving and hammering and stoking. He lifted the lid on the birch box: a whole salmon, dried and smoked. The smells of autumn: rust and smoke and hunger. Autumn and the ending of Osric’s hopes.
“Priest,” Edwin said, and Coifi jerked and swayed but did not, quite, step forward. Paulinus did. He lifted the embroidered cloth in both hands and waited. Osric stumbled out from behind his bench to take the oath he could not refuse.
Paulinus put Osric’s right hand on the box. Edwin and Æthelburh laid theirs on top, and the Crow draped the cloth over all.
Paulinus spoke for a long time: of sacred trust; loyalty to the king, beloved of Christ; of the people of Craven. Long enough for Osric to begin to understand what he had been tricked into. The king was taking his house, his family’s house. Edwin the Deceiver was sending him, loyal subject and kinsman, once-and-no-more ætheling of Deira, to the godforsaken wilds of Craven, land of leaping salmon and the stink of pig iron. A land jammed up against the base of the western mountain spine, full of streams rushing down ironstone hills, full of shivering birch and shaking wealh, a land so worthless that no one had bothered to take it away from Dunod.
Long enough, too, for Coifi’s face to mirror his sudden, bitter understanding of his new place: no longer chief priest of the chief god but a simple man without a sword. A man with nothing.
* * *
Uinniau hung upside down from the low limb of an apple tree, laughing up at Hild. It was the only apple tree inside the new wooden walls around what would be the wīc on the west side of the big river.
Cian sat on the grass with his back to them. Begu was on the riverbank, making a flower chain from dandelions. Oeric had been pressed into holding them for her.
Uinniau laughed again. “I’m stuck.”
Hild reached down. “Swing a bit and give me your hand.” He swung, she caught his hand and hauled. He came up. Hild dropped down next to him. They sat facing each other, astride the bough. Uinniau had blossom in his hair.
Hild picked some of it off, rolled the tiny petals idly between her fingers.
He pointed to the mound of dirt growing in the fork of the rivers. “It won’t be a very big tower.”
“Tall enough to shoot fire arrows onto the deck of a ship.”
“What about chains across the river?”
Hild blinked. And when she didn’t say anything he tilted his head back and looked at her down his nose with all the arrogance of a prince.
“It’s been a long time since Broac. I’m short, not a child.”
She sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
He waved the apology away. “You and I, we should be friends. One day, perhaps, if I’m … Well. Perhaps those days will never come again to Rheged and the north.” He shrugged, the kind of shrug that went with songs of the Old North: an elegy for what once was great. “Your uncle is making himself a name,” he said. “He’s like Arthur come again.”
She flicked the rolled-up petal at him. “No, he isn’t.”
He grinned. “Some people like flattery.”
“Not me.”
He peered down at Cian, out at Begu and Oeric, at his hands. Finally he looked at her. “So we’ll speak truth, you and I?”
She thought about it. She liked the feel of him. He was clever, but straight-grained. Sound as an oak staff. She nodded.
“What will happen to Osric?”
“He’ll go to Craven and brood in his upland hall, plotting to take back Arbeia from Osfrith and Clotrude, pouring his bitterness into Oswine’s ear and filling him with twisty dreams of being king of all Deira.” She stripped a leaf from the branch overhead, turned it this way and that. “Just like, I imagine, Eanfrith in Pictland, and the other Idings with the Dál Riata.”
“Such dreams are not for you?”
“It’s not my wyrd. Besides, they’re hopeless.” Speaking straight felt different. She found she liked it.
“Perhaps not if you … they had allies.” She threw the leaf at him. He watched it flutter down, then shrugged. “Will they, Osric and Oswine, try to ally with the Idings in secret?”
“Why would the Idings keep it secret?”
Uinniau nodded. The middle Idings had a claim to Deira through Acha Yffing, Edwin’s sister, as well as to Bernicia through their father, Æthelfrith Iding. If they had Osric Yffing on their side, they would shout it out and march.
“It’s more likely Osric would try to ally with Eanfrith.” The eldest Iding, son of Bebba. “Osric would take Deira, Eanfrith Bernicia. But my uncle will be watching for that.”
“Cadwallon would be a surer bet as an ally,” he said. “Or Penda.”
“Not even
Osric would trust Cadwallon. Not even for an hour. As for Penda…”
“No one knows him.”
She nodded. “They say he’s clever.”
“They say you’re clever, that you see into men’s hearts.” His hazel eyes shone with something. Perhaps it was the reflection of new leaves. She hoped so. “Hild. I—”
“How’s Rhianmelldt?”
“Rhianmelldt? She’s … no better.”
Hild thought of the fey child she had met in Caer Luel, that ravaged ælf.
“Hild, please. Listen to me.”
For a moment, she was tempted to push him out of the tree. She didn’t want to hear his moony words. He was going to spoil it all. But she was Hild, king’s seer and light of the world. She didn’t push princes out of apple trees. She motioned for him to speak.
“The lady Begu. Does she like me?”
A bee bumped into her hand. Hild waved it away, and it sizzled crossly against the trunk for a heartbeat or two before it found a way around.
“I think she does,” he said. “But you know her best. Would she…” He turned the same carrot colour Begu had at the feast. “I’m a man of Rheged. But sister-son to the king. Only, who should I … I don’t…”
It was interesting how people lost their words when they liked someone. As though it drained their senses.
“Please, say something.”
Hild pointed down.
Begu stood at the base of the tree with a chain of dandelions around her head, like a crown, like a princess. She stood on her tiptoes and held another out to Uinniau. “I made one for you.”
* * *
They walked along the new hedge: Uinniau and Begu in their circlets of golden dandelion, laughing and talking—though, as far as Hild could tell, about nothing very much—followed by Cian and Hild, and, a few paces back, Oeric.
The sky was busy with birds—siffsaffs and blackcaps, nuthatches and greenfinches—and the river was at slack tide, quieter than usual, smelling of spring: mud, ducks on their nests of twigs, caterpillars, the fresh-sawn smell of the beaver dam, newly moved earth where shoots pushed through to the light. More bumblebees buzzed and bumped over the hedge’s freshly leafed hazel and the pink-and-white snow of blackthorn and hawthorn blossom.
Cian was a thundercloud.
“Look at the thorns,” he said loudly. Uinniau and Begu turned. “That one’s the size of my thumb.” He waved at the road disappearing arrow-straight to the northwest and Rheged. “By summer it’ll take an army with axes to break through.”
“Rheged is not your enemy.”
Cian gave him a look that would scorch iron. “No,” he said, meaning, Not today. “But there are men north of Rheged. And if they got a mad notion to march down Dere Street to the wīc, they’d get a nasty surprise.”
“None would be fool enough to try surprise. Your king—”
“The overking.”
“The overking has told the world how strong his new wīc is. Besides, the men of Rheged keep their ears close to the ground. And Rhoedd king sends his assurance to Northumbria that Rheged, and beyond us Alt Clut, is with you.”
“Oh, indeed.” Cian clapped the young prince on the back—harder than necessary, Hild thought. A reminder that, while Uinniau was a princeling, Cian topped him by a head, that he was a thegn’s—an Anglisc thegn’s—foster-son, and that Uinniau was walking with his foster-sister.
Begu rolled her eyes at Hild, but her lips were full and her cheeks flushed and she skipped along like a new-born kid.
* * *
Begu sighed again and kicked at the covers for good measure. Hild, emerging from a half dream—of swimming naked as a seal, water coursing over her skin, between her legs—propped herself up on her elbow. The waning moon lit the room enough to see that her gemæcce’s face had that stubborn set Hild knew well, the my-fa-the-thegn-will-make-you-give-that-to-me look. “What?”
“Rhianmelldt.”
“What about her?”
“Whoever marries her could be king-in-waiting of Rheged.”
“So?”
“And who wouldn’t want to be king of Rheged? Even if it means taking a woman to wife whose mind is at a slant.”
Hild waited.
“Uinny says she sometimes hears voices and bangs her head on the wall.”
Hild nodded.
“They say she was pretty once.”
“She was pretty when I met her.”
“Perhaps she bangs her face, too. But some princeling will marry her anyway, and then he’ll have to fight Uinny to be king-in-waiting.”
Hild knew where this was going, but questions would only send Begu’s thoughts flying in all directions.
Begu fixed her eyes on the strange smooth ceiling over their bed. “To be king, he would have to marry well. Very well. A thegn’s daughter won’t do.”
“He didn’t say that.”
Begu turned to face Hild. Her breath was fresh with the elm seeds she’d been eating lately, ever since she gave Uinniau his circlet of dandelions. “He didn’t have to. People look at him and see a child.”
Hild couldn’t disagree.
“He’d need to marry someone formidable. Someone like you.” Begu flopped on her back again. “No, he didn’t say that, either. There’s no point. After all, you’ll marry someone much more important.”
She couldn’t disagree with that, either. So she stroked Begu’s forehead, smoothing back her hair. “Does Uinniau want so badly to be a king?”
Begu laughed, but it was a soft laugh, quite grown-up, and it made Hild long to hold her and shield her from the world.
“If you don’t want to be a queen, all will be well. Think. Uinniau didn’t grow up to be heir. That was his brother. I don’t think he wants it. And once Rhianmelldt marries her king-in-waiting, Uinniau can please himself. He can marry you.”
“But Rhianmelldt’s a child. She won’t marry for years. Years! You don’t know what it’s like!” Begu reached for Hild’s hand, laid it on her belly. “Here. That’s where I feel it. It’s like … It makes me feel wild as the autumn and nervous as a kitten, and the world is big and new. I smell everything, I hear everything, and inside I feel…” Under her hand, Hild felt Begu’s blood beating, thump-thump, thump-thump, like an Irish drum. “It’s like, I feel like a leaf on a river pouring over a fall—I’m being hurried along, then sucked under. I look at his arms and his shoulders and I’m drowning. I want to lick them, I want to gnaw at them like a teething puppy. No, not like a puppy, like a wolf. I want to tear him apart, eat him up. You can’t stop teeth from growing. I can’t wait years.”
“You don’t have to wait to marry for that.” She imagined bodies in the dark. The panting. Hægtes in a cyrtel …
“But I want to be by him forever. I want to hear his silly laugh—he sounds like a sheep, have you noticed?—at night. I want to watch him split wood, stack flax, practice spear and shield. Oh, I love to watch his skin move on his bones when he swings a sword with Cian. And his smell. He smells like a young colt, new and bright. What does Cian smell like?”
“Hot iron. Sometimes copper. And salt.” Hild lifted her hand from Begu’s belly. “We can watch them tomorrow, if you like.”
“And maybe you’ll think of a way for Rhianmelldt to marry someone soon?”
“Maybe,” Hild said, but she couldn’t think of any man her uncle would approve of.
She forgot about her dream of swimming, set aside the nameless yearning, and thought about Rheged. Who could her uncle offer to Rhoedd, which of his kinsmen could he control? Three days ago, she would have suggested Oswine, but after yesterday, that would be madness. Who could Edwin trust, who would both suit a British kingdom and be thought great enough for Rhoedd’s daughter?
18
IN YORK, the days warmed and opened. Bluebells began to dot the west woods. Crabapple blossomed. The first larks flew at dusk. Along the little river, kingfishers caught newts and water beetles, and on the big river when Hild walked with her mother
and the queen—talking, as always, of wool and trade—she saw the tiny paw prints of otter kits.
On the morning that she heard the first cuckoo—so early!—Uinniau went back to Rheged. He left with many promises to return, and Begu nailed a smile on her face and wept in private; for a few days she didn’t have the heart even to threaten Gwladus with a whipping. Hild wondered if this might be partly due to the change in Gwladus: always to hand, always ready with just what Hild wanted—hot bread, cold water, soothing brushstrokes.
Stitchwort blossomed in white spatters along the riverbanks and figwort grew yellow beneath the great hedge. The world filled with the liquid melody of thrush song, and tits hung upside down from every bush.
Hild’s restlessness rose like the tide. At night she lay still while Begu stroked herself, jerked, and shuddered: Thinking of Uinniau, no doubt. While Begu slept Hild lay awake, hungry and restless and savage. During the day she beat at Cian so ferociously he refused to play again until the bruising on his ribs healed. Hild’s gesiths noticed that they didn’t slip off together and were particularly kind to her, which made her cross. Worse, Oeric then began to behave like a farmer who had won a prize cow, fussing over her, smiling at her. If she didn’t do something, he’d be patting her and putting a bell around her neck. She pondered sending him away to Elmet to see how Rhin and the mene wood were coming along. The peregrines would have brought off a brood. She’d like to see that. And what about the mill wheel? Rhin would be too busy to worry about sending messages.
The whole world seemed to be busy. Far away, Hereswith with child—or already a mother—and Fursey teaching her her letters. Also far away now, Osfrith and Clotrude—swollen with her own child—up in Arbeia rebuilding webs of trade and influence, knitting the Franks and Frisians into the Northumbrian web. Here, Breguswith and Æthelburh planning a new wool trade, something akin to Eorpwald’s goldsmithing trade: shearing, spinning, weaving, dyeing, sewing. Sheep to cloak, Breguswith liked to say. Osric, shorn of influence, in Craven. And Eadfrith, the elder ætheling, all over the isle, talking to the Britons of Rheged and Gododdin, the Mercians, and all manner of Saxon.
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