Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  The bottom of the little pin fell to the dirt.

  Druyen plucked the top half of the pin from the loop, bent and picked up the other half, nodded again, to both of them, and took his shears back to the bench.

  Gwladus, shaking harder than ever, reached up and tried to unhinge the collar.

  Hild came around to the front and did it for her. The hinge was stiff. She stepped back, let the collar dangle from her hand, like a dead hare. It felt cold and hard and ugly. She threw it as far from her as she could.

  * * *

  On the way back to Osric’s hall Gwladus kept rubbing her neck. They both stumbled more than once but neither touched the other. Hild’s legs felt the wrong size and made of wood. The muscles of her chest clutched and spasmed. Her mouth throbbed.

  Morud was in Hild’s room. His eyes went perfectly round when he saw them.

  “Not a word,” Gwladus said. “Light the fire. Then bring hot water, wine, food. The fire, Morud.”

  Hild sat on the bed while Morud got the fire going. She could hardly breathe, her chest hurt so much.

  When he left, Gwladus said, “No sense spreading filth on the bed. Come stand by the fire. Let’s get that dress off.”

  When Gwladus saw the bruises her face didn’t change and her breath didn’t catch, but her hands paused for a heartbeat then went on.

  “You lost your drawers.”

  Hild hadn’t noticed.

  “Did you kill him?”

  She started to shake her head, but that hurt her mouth too much.

  “Shall I get Oeric?”

  “No.” She stopped Gwladus’s hand with her own. “Will you leave me, too?”

  Gwladus said nothing. She picked up a comb, worked on a knot. Threw the comb at the wall. Stood there, chest rising and falling.

  “Clemen of Dyfneint would take you in,” Hild said. “If I asked. You could— I owe, I’d give…” But words abandoned her. She began to shiver.

  “Here.” Gwladus dragged a blanket from the bed, draped it over Hild. “Where’s that godfucked boy?”

  23

  HILD TOOK WHAT HAD HAPPENED, put it in a box, wrapped it with a chain, and buried it deep. She wore the ring. She was the king’s fist. She felt nothing, cared for no one.

  She rode with James to York—Craven would have to wait—while Edwin and Paulinus took the war band to Elmet for the muster. Eadfrith would join him there, and Osric and his Craven thegns, and thegns from south Bernicia, Deira, and Elmet with their men. Gwynedd was the greatest kingdom of the British, rich with trade, strong with alliances in Ireland, the north and west, and Less Britain. Cadwallon would field many blades, and good ones. But Edwin would bring more, and better. This time Cadwallon’s neck would meet Edwin’s sword and Cadwallon’s bishops would kiss the Crow’s ring.

  Hild and James arrived in York, where the queen and the infant heir, and all the queen’s women, joined them from Derventio to lock themselves in the fortress. Hild, the king’s niece, the king’s seer, gave up the king’s token to the queen and in exchange was given charge of the twoscore armed men. Men like Bassus and Oeric who had last stood in a shield wall a generation ago, or never.

  But the walls were strong and the water sweet. If Eanfrith Iding brought his Picts down from the north, Osfrith and his men would stop him at the Tine. Oswald Iding was busy with the Irish. She wasn’t worried about Penda: If he was as cunning as she thought, he’d be doing nothing, simply watching and waiting to see how the balance tipped between Edwin and Cadwallon.

  The queen’s women got back to work on the huge embroidery for Dagobert and the lesser one for Æthelric. The queen herself took up the reins of the wīc and the fortress. James reported to the queen, often with Breguswith and Hild at her shoulder, every middæg in the king’s chamber—for life outside the walls went on as usual. Woodcutters and charcoal burners didn’t make war. Wheat and barley grew untroubled except by weeds. Cows must be milked and butter churned in the cool of the morning.

  Trade ships came and went with the tide. To the Franks, who brought wine and walnut oil in exchange for wool cloaks, it didn’t matter that Domnall Brecc was now king of the Dál Riata, that with the death of Osric Iding in the defeat of the Ulaid, the tide of the other Idings now ran very high indeed. The Frisians, who traded glass and silver for jet and tunics, didn’t care that Edwin had flung his army straight as a spear for the throat of Cadwallon to take Gwynedd before it could ally with Penda and form the solid anvil against which the Idings and the men of the north could hammer the Anglisc. The people of the Baltic, who brought amber for linen, were not interested in the grinding struggle between Sigebert and Ricberht for kingship of the East Anglisc. They cared only for the confluence of trade, the rich mix of goods from north and south, east and west.

  The women grew snappish and the men surly. The army would be in Gwynedd now. Hild kept herself moving in the yard with the men, in the garth with the women, in the dairy, in the byre: If she kept moving, she didn’t have to think. She didn’t have to see into herself. If she kept moving, no one else could see into her, either. She was glad that it was easy to stay away from her mother in York.

  She presented a smooth exterior, cool as enamel, to the world. She watched as the other women began to startle and clutch their crosses at every glimpse of a mail shirt turning a corner and every tramp of nailed war boots on stone, and refused to understand. Then one day, outside in the great yard watching the men try to form two shield walls, she heard the steel slither of blade from scabbard and began to turn, heart tripping, thinking Cian. She knew he was a hundred miles away, maybe lying with his guts fallen like a tangle of rope on the grass, or already dead, but for that moment she knew, just as certainly as she breathed, that it was Cian behind her.

  That night she dreamt of them all dead, banners in the mud, bloodied men of Gwynedd gouging gold bosses from sword hilts and prying loose jewels; thin women stripping clothes and belts; vermin-riddled boys pulling boot nails, rummaging for blood-softened twice-baked bread. All night ravens croaked and thumped into the dream turf and flies boiled off the bodies.

  The next evening, listening to the inferior scop who had been left behind, her throat tightened. He sang of war and glory and returning heroes, and Hild found herself remembering the parts Cian liked, how he sulked when she wouldn’t play the firing of the furze. The box she had buried deep rattled in its chains.

  On the ninth day, in her rooms to choose a gift ring from her box, she picked up instead the cunningly nested travel cups Cian had carved from the Elmet thorn. She touched the little hedgepig and she was there, at Aberford, wreathed in the scent of smoke, listening to Grimhun sing as Cian whittled, flick flick flick, the hairs at his wrist gleaming like bronze in the firelight. She was standing by her wagon in Elmet, holding the cups: So we may drink to home wherever we are.

  “Drink it.”

  She blinked: Begu, sitting opposite, holding out the largest travel cup, now filled. Where had she come from?

  “Drink it.”

  The mead was harsh. Hild drank it without blinking, not taking her eyes off the two smaller cups, still nested together, that Begu was turning over and over in her hands.

  “—horrible mead. Not surprising with Gwladus tiptoeing around like a thief waiting to have her hand struck off. What’s got into you? Oeric and Morud are half convinced you were possessed by an ælf in Craven or had your mind stolen by a river wight. It can’t go on.”

  Hild didn’t understand any of this. She slid the cup forward for more. After a moment, Begu refilled it, then she separated the two remaining cups and, with utmost care, filled those, too. She pushed Hild’s towards her, picked up the medium-size cup, and raised it to the small one.

  “To Cian. May he drink his portion with us soon.”

  Hild didn’t realise she’d been crying until she started again.

  “I thought so.” Begu fished a handkerchief from her belt and mopped at Hild’s face. “You’re messier than Eanflæd. Though not a
s loud. Here. Blow your nose.”

  Hild obeyed.

  “All done? Good. Because when you leave this room, you’ll have your head high and a light in your eye. You’re the lady Hild, the king’s seer. We’re at war. You’ll wear a happy face.”

  She nudged Hild’s cup until Hild picked it up again, and lifted her own.

  “To Cian,” Begu said again, deliberately, and nodded when Hild, dry-eyed, touched cups and tossed off the mead in one swallow. “Now. Listen. What’s going on with Gwladus?”

  “She’s free.”

  Begu huffed. “I didn’t think you’d cast a glamour and made the collar invisible. No. Look at me. Why are you being so mean to her? Anyone would think you were trying to drive her away. If that’s what you’re doing, you should just say so and put the poor woman out of her misery. Your mother would take her faster than that.” Ringing snap of fingers. “But you need her, now more than ever.”

  “But she’s free.”

  “Don’t be such a child. Where should she go? She wouldn’t last a day outside these walls. And working for you suits her. People step aside for her. She shines with your reflected wyrd. Like Oeric. Like Coelfrith with the king, or Stephanus with Paulinus. Why should it be any different for Gwladus just because she’s free?” She sipped at her mead, pulled a face, took another sip anyway. “You’d have to pay her a little. Especially for the bed duties.”

  Hild shook her head. “No more of that.”

  Begu tilted her head. “Only Cian will do?”

  “No!”

  “So anyone will do?”

  “I can’t. Not with Cian.”

  “Well, no,” Begu said. “He’s not here.”

  “Not ever. You don’t understand.”

  Begu laughed, but it was the same old hurt laugh she’d laughed a year ago over Uinniau. “I can recognise foals from the same stallion, even if I never met the stallion.”

  Hild stared at her.

  “I’m not blind. And I’m not stupid. Though a lot of other people seem to be. But he’s my foster-brother and you’re my gemæcce. So, this once, we will speak of it.”

  Hild said nothing.

  “So. Cian’s father is your father. But if that was common knowledge, his life would be worth nothing next time the king gets nervous. Even Cian himself doesn’t know, and you don’t want him to because he’d give it away and get himself killed. Yes?”

  Hild looked at nothing in particular for a while.

  Begu sighed. “But I know, just from looking at him. Your mother knows, and Onnen, of course. And you. Who else?”

  Eventually Hild said, “Fursey.”

  “That priest? Well.” She tilted her head, thinking. “I think the queen wonders. And what the queen knows or suspects, so does Wilnoð.”

  “Bassus?”

  Begu waved her free hand dismissively. “He’s just her husband.”

  “The Crow.”

  “Ah. Yes. He’s not stupid either, more’s the pity.”

  Hild felt sick.

  Begu nodded. “Too many people. One day it’ll come out.”

  So many things to keep hidden. It would be easier to go to war, to charge with spear and shield, to fight in the open.

  “Well, we can no more control that than we can control the birds. We can only control what we can control.”

  Control. Yes. Not of the thing itself but of the understanding of the thing. That’s what she did. Nudge. Guide. Control.

  “… control yourself, at least. Me, I’ll just continue to pretend I am both blind and stupid, and brightly say the things other people find foolish, and so make the truth foolish.” She squeezed Hild’s hand and let go. “Tidy your hair now, go talk to Gwladus, and set this house in order. Do rethink those bed duties. You’d only be punishing yourself and you can’t be distracted. We’re at war. You’re the king’s seer, the king’s fist in all but name. Hold your head high and tell everyone it’s going to be all right.”

  Silence.

  “Hild, gemæcce, we all have men at war. So tell us it will be all right. Make us believe it. Please. Tell the queen. Tell your mother. Tell me.”

  Uinniau. Luftmaer the scop. The king himself. Every one of those thousand men had women waiting for news. But news would be a while. She would have to bridge the gap. She would have to do it alone. She was the king’s seer. This was her path.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll feast.”

  * * *

  It was a great feast. The fat of a fecund land at midsummer. Fruit, meat, bread, rich butter and sweet cream, fresh mead, the scent of roasting rosemary and thyme. At Hild’s bidding, the scop sang only glad songs, songs of hearth and home, children and harvest.

  Women wore their finest, children ran between benches, laughing, and if the dogs were too few and the din of conversation lacking the deep bass rumble of the war band, no one chose to notice.

  The queen moved from bench to bench with the guest cup—not white mead but the gentler, sweeter yellow summer mead—offering it to traders and drovers, sailors and farmfolk who might never drink from such a thing again.

  Hild had suggested to James that he give a blessing. He should wear bright robes, and speak only of grace and good fortune, speak simply and not at length; a hall was not a church, a feast not a Mass. James, more used to supervising fellow religious and attending to administrative detail, seemed thankful for the advice.

  When he rose to give the blessing, the din quieted a little. His face seemed more ash than charcoal, his hair less bouncy than usual, and he tugged the collar of his robe from his neck; perhaps the thick embroidery itched. He lifted both hands, as Paulinus or Stephanus would but without the conviction.

  Hild made a slight movement of her shoulders, a rolling, to draw his attention. When he looked at her, she lifted her cup and mouthed behind it Food! Wine! and nodded at the scop, who strummed a chord.

  The din fell to a hum.

  “Let us be thankful for our blessings!”

  A few Ayes! and scattered thumps on the board set a muscle in his cheek twitching. Choirs didn’t do that when he exhorted them. Hild smiled at him reassuringly.

  “He brings us this food. He gives us this wine.”

  Then he seemed to lose the thread. Hild mouthed Grace, good fortune, God’s blessing.

  “And let us ask for His grace and favour for our army, whose cause is just.”

  Calls of agreement. Short, Hild mouthed. Simple.

  “May His light shine upon them. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  “Amen!” Hild said loudly. Amen, said the queen and Breguswith. Amen, said the Gaulish stonemasons.

  Amen, said the folk hesitantly. Then again, Amen! Amen!

  James sat. Hild stood and spread both arms like an incantation.

  “I had a dream!”

  Silence settled into every corner of the hall. Every movement ceased. Every eye fixed on her.

  “I had a dream. And in my dream the enemy gathered on a cold, wet heath. The men of Gwynedd tucked their helmets under their arms to listen to their treacherous king. But in my dream, they heard only the cawing of crows and ravens sitting wing to wing on a withered tree. Cadwallon Twister spoke but the men of Gwynedd heard nothing. For the crows rose like a black cloud and stooped on them. They flew and flapped about their bare heads, clutched at their skulls, and tugged at their hair. Black eyes, black beaks, black wings beating, beating. And when the enemy could look past the flurry of feathers, what did they see?”

  Not a sound.

  “The enemy saw, on the roof ridge of the hall, a raven with a red thread in its beak. And the enemy lost heart. For they knew, for we all know: They ride to disaster and ruin. The pulling of human hair means death. The perching on a withered tree means no food or drink. The red thread brings fire. I have seen it. Our enemies will starve in the saddle, they will fall before us, and behind them their homes will burn.”

  She lifted a hand and the drummer began a sof
t, slow beat.

  “I say to you: The very trees and stones and sods of the earth will be against the men of Gwynedd. Every stream will run foul or hide its face from them. Their horses will stumble blind with terror and fall over shadows. Their army will scatter like birds before a thrown stone. Their bones will break, their wounds rot, and their children cry out. And with every cry, courage will leave them.”

  She looked at the women and men and children one by one. Up one bench. Down the next.

  “But our men, oh, our fine men, every breath they draw will increase their courage. Every swing of the sword will multiply their strength. Every river will make itself known to them and its waters will be sweet.”

  The drumbeat quickened.

  “No Anglisc spear will separate from its shaft, no sword break in battle. No spear will miss its cast, no shield fail. I say to you: Our men will reap the enemy like corn. I say to you: Our men will drive Gwynedd into the sea. It is their wyrd. I have seen it. Our gesiths, with their shining mail and inlaid helmets, with their swords and arm rings, with their bright cloaks and painted shields, our menfolk mounted on horses with glittering headstalls and chased-leather saddles, our husbands and sons and brothers will come home to us.”

  She looked at Æthelburh.

  “Edwin Yffing, overking of the Anglisc, will return dark with sun and unscratched by anything but brambles.”

  She looked at Begu.

  “Uinniau, prince of Rheged, will return wreathed in glory and glittering with spoil.”

  She looked at her mother.

  “Luftmaer the scop will come home. He will come soon, with news that will make our faces split with smiling and our throats ache with song.”

  The housefolk began to move through the hall filling cups.

  “So let us drink to our men, who will sit by us once again. To our men, who will be here for the corn harvest. To our men, oh, our shining men, who will sing with us at our next feast.” She lifted the great guest cup. It still took two hands. “To our men!”