Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  She talked and listened and sampled until the Caer Loid household began to relax. The king would be pleased, she said, over and over, but they still leapt to anticipate her needs, getting underfoot and irritating both her and Gwladus.

  The nights were better. Hild reacquainted herself with Lweriadd and Sintiadd, both plumper than they had been but no less inclined to sly looks and slant comments. Sitting by the fire in the summer evening as Hild the daughter of the might-have-been king, not Hild the seer of the overking, speaking nothing but British, she felt her face setting in a new shape, happier, younger. But as she listened—to every joke, every complaint, every song, every tale of woe—she found that under their contentment ran a thin thread of unease, the sense of trouble a long, long way off. It took a while to tease out the thread: The thegns didn’t come to the hall to gossip and catch up on news as often as the Loides thought they should; the Anglisc were suspicious.

  Suspicious of what? That the Loides were in league with the Christ, and so with the wealh priest web, and so with the spies of the men who would overrun Elmet in their quest to bring down Edwin king.

  Had they not heard that Edwin king had just won a great victory over the Welsh? she asked. Yes, yes indeed, Lweriadd said. She knew that; everyone who ate barley cake knew that. She knew that half the Christ priests around here were sons of priests who had inherited their books and couldn’t spell more than their names. But the wheat-eating Anglisc were suspicious. Where was Cadwallon? they asked. Who was hiding him? Who was plotting with him? She knew that Cian Boldcloak had the Welsh king bottled up tight in one of his green valleys—set a king to catch a king, eh? and such a handsome one!—but the Anglisc thought all wealh were the same.

  The next morning she told Pyr that instead of riding directly for Menewood she would personally escort the gesiths to their post at Aberford: In case Paulinus had any spies in hall, she told him the lady Breguswith would enjoy hearing how the weaving progressed there.

  Morud guided them north and east to Brid’s Dike, past Berewith, and on to Aberford.

  She smelt Aberford before they rode over Becca Bank. She reined in, closed her eyes. Smoke, stale urine, lye, dung, and, sweetening it all, weld. “They’ve been busy,” she said. “There must be a score of women working on cloth here.”

  The men sent as relief for the Aberford garrison glanced at one another, and one touched his breast where no doubt his amulet hung, but Oeric and the others exchanged knowing looks—except for Grimhun, who fidgeted with his arm ring and leaned forward in his saddle. Hild waved him on. “Go on,” she said. “Go see what they’ve made of your walls.”

  He bent his head gratefully and kicked his horse into a canter.

  The rest of them followed at a jingling trot.

  Aberford was an oddly segregated settlement: gesiths in a long house by the banks to the west of the road, women in a series of huts on the east. The east was bright with swaths of yellow, green, brown, and smaller patches of red and blue and black: cloth drying on racks and lines. Goats were tethered—goats had a tendency to eat good wool—and children pulled weeds from plots of weld and other dye plants. A lost-looking duck paddled back and forth on a newly dug pond.

  Hild stayed long enough to meet the garrison commander and Heiu, the woman Breguswith had put in charge of the cloth workers. Hild complimented her on her cloth—Begu was right, it was very fine—and promised that on her way back she would spend a little more time inspecting the weaving huts and talking about supplies.

  Then she rode with Oeric, the brothers Berht, Morud, and Gwladus south and east over the high tussocky sheep land to the holding of Ceadwulf and the other Saxfryth.

  * * *

  The boy Ceadwin now had a little sister, Ceadfryth, in swaddling clothes. Saxfryth still wore Hild’s yellow ring, but now she’d added a thin silver band inset with some muddy-looking blue stone Hild couldn’t identify. The silverwork was fretted, not solid—but real silver.

  The men and Ceadwin went to look at a horse Ceadwulf wanted their opinion on, and Gwladus disappeared into the kitchen to take the measure of the housefolk. Hild and Saxfryth sat with bread and cheese in the garth, with Ceadfryth in a wooden cradle at Saxfryth’s left hand.

  “Good cheese,” Hild said. She smiled at the sleeping baby. “She looks strong, well fed. And Ceadwin must be three hands higher now.”

  Saxfryth beamed, as women did when you praised their children and housekeeping. “The gods have been kind.” She sighed and rolled her shoulders. “And you, lady? Have the gods been kind to you?”

  “Well enough, though now it’s the Christ that the king and his household look to.”

  “The Christ.” Saxfryth sucked her lip, leaned over the sleeping child, and brushed away a fly that wasn’t there.

  “He’s a god like any other,” Hild said. “With priests who are men and subject to men’s fancies. I know some good priests, wealh and Anglisc alike.”

  “Gesiths came through here last year, hunting wealh priests. Spies, they said. And then Anglisc priests came, but they were more like reeve’s men than priests. You could see it in their eyes, feeling the backs of sheep for the wool, tasting the beer, peering at the cows and the hay in the rick. Weighing in their minds, totting it all up, and making marks on those slates of theirs.”

  If Paulinus wasn’t careful, his zeal would drive a wedge between the Elmetsætne, returning them to Loid and Angle. If she were Cadwallon she could make something of that. “A woman should judge priests for herself, as she would any other man. When they make demands you think unfair, speak to the king’s man at Caer Loid.”

  “He’s half wealh himself, they say.”

  “He is. And a fine king’s man.”

  “The gesith you were here with last time, Boldcloak, he’s wealh, too, they say. Son of a king.”

  Hild nodded blandly.

  “I liked him,” Saxfryth said.

  “Yes. He liked your buttered mushrooms.”

  “He remembers!” Saxfryth gave her an arch look. “So he’s not with you?”

  “He’s in Gwynedd. The king’s right hand.”

  “Well! A wealh.”

  “Another wealh,” Hild reminded her. “Just like Pyr. A trusted man. And worth getting to know.” Saxfryth nodded. “Aberford. You find it a good market for your wool?”

  “It is, lady. Though uncommon picky. Our neighbour had half her weight turned down. Short-fibred, they said.” She smiled complacently. “But my sheep give the best wool. Ceadwulf knows how to breed them.”

  Hild smiled and nodded. “A good market for good wool, then. More than enough to balance out the king’s tithe?”

  Like all good traders, Saxfryth hunted for a way to dodge praising the seller’s goods, or at least hedge that praise, but Hild caught her gaze and held it. “Yes, lady. More than enough.”

  Hild nodded, ate a piece of cheese, tilted her head back to watch a hawk circling against the blue sky.

  “Lady? Ceadwin is seven now.”

  Hild closed her eyes briefly. “If he came with me, he would have no foster-brothers or foster-sisters.”

  “At least not yet.”

  “And he’d have to be baptised.”

  “Christ’s a god like any other,” Saxfryth said. “As you say.”

  “I travel a lot.”

  “Even so. Lady, you promised. He’ll be no trouble. Besides, having a child at your knee will soon make you bear children of your own, everyone knows that. And Boldcloak won’t stay in Gwynedd forever.”

  Hild stood. “I’ll send for him in spring.”

  * * *

  They rode in a glittering, jingling column, past adders sunning themselves on south-facing rocks and knots of red campion. The sky was as blue as the heart of a cornflower and the furze flamed yellow.

  They rode down the slope to the ancient track for a mile or so, until they were moving parallel to the low hills to the north.

  Hild watched the right-hand edge of the ancient track closely. At h
er heel—unlike Gwladus, he still preferred his feet to a horse—Morud said, “You won’t see a path. I used a different way each time. That way it stays secret like.”

  “Secret.”

  “You never said, but I thought you might want it that way.”

  Hild was glad, fiercely glad. Secret. Yes. “Morud, I’ll give you a new knife for this. Two knives.”

  * * *

  Hild had fallen in love with what Menewood could be. Now she fell in love with what it was becoming: a thriving settlement in a fertile, half-secret valley of bogs and becks and ponds and meadow.

  Four dozen souls less one, Rhin told her, with fields of clover and oats, barley and colewort. He showed her tally sticks for everything from folk able to wield a sickle, to pigs, to skeps, to milch cows. They toured the byre, made of good oak; the tiny new forge; and a dairy laid in dry stone. He showed her the cleared millrace, the great gritstone grindstones from over the Whinmoor, and the almost finished elm mill wheel. He took her round to the mix of huts and homesteads, some timber, some wattle, some with stone foundations and reed roofs. And everywhere men and women knelt to her and kissed her hand. She was not just the king’s seer, the king’s niece, she was their dryhten, their lord. They lived and breathed at her pleasure and the efficiency of the land’s management.

  Hild touched the children under the chin so she could look into their eyes, and held the hands of old folk long enough to feel the size of their bones. The dull-eyed ones, Rhin said, were lately come to the mene. They would soon fill out, soon shine. And Hild’s heart filled until she could hardly breathe: her people.

  The first fortnight she spent every morning and most afternoons with Rhin, walking, talking, pointing, running grain through her fingers, listening to the hum of bees. He had taken her at her word and in the spring had set all the children to searching the countryside for hives, giving a reward for every one discovered. They had two beekeepers, though one was mostly plaiting skeps, and those skeps hummed and dripped with honey.

  She walked in the evening through her domain, as aware of it as of her own body. The dragonflies and damselflies zooming over the water; the gush and rush and mineral bite of the millrace compared to the softer babble of the beck. The clatter of reeds by the pond, scented with green secrets; the chatter of wrens and goldcrest flocks, squabbling with each other like rival gangs of children.

  Everywhere she looked, she thought of things she must tell Rhin: Set aside much of the mead for white mead this winter; thin the coppice and make sure they made more charcoal this autumn, for next year when Penda made his move there would be war, long hard war, and war meant iron, and there was no smelting without charcoal. Breed more goats, especially the long-haired kind. Graze them in that overstood beech coppice—pollard the standards and let the goats trim the rest or cut them for firewood and tree hay.

  So she fell in love with the mene, and the mene fell in love with her. She felt buoyed by her people, her land. Everything tasted round and ripe. The air was as rich and sweet as cider. Just breathing fed some part of her. She spent half the nights lying by the pond listening to the bullrushes and the frogs. At dawn she rode Cygnet along the ridge and looked forward to the next month when she might see the peregrines returning.

  Mine, she thought, looking down at the low woods with the water glinting through the green. Mine, when the men and women formed their line to start sickling the barley. Mine, when she smelt the wild garlic in a just-cut glade of coppiced hazel. Mine, mine, mine.

  She ignored the rattle of the box buried at her heart, and the whisper of Penda … Not now. Not yet. Here, now, this was hers. Secret. Hidden.

  Sometimes she found letters in the hollow pollard oak to the south of the mene, left by some priest or other for Rhin, but more often the priest web was a thing of tired-looking men arriving at night and huddling with Rhin to share rumours of the isle before moving on north or west or east to the coast and a boat to Less Britain.

  Sometimes at night she stayed up with Rhin, drinking the last of the heather beer and discussing the news. The Picts had sent some kind of embassy to Rheged and been rebuffed. Yes, he’d try to find out more. Cadwallon, they said, was in Ireland. He was enough of a nuisance that Domnall Brecc had sent a war band, led by Oswald Iding, to subdue the troublemakers. Good news for Edwin, they agreed, two enemies off squabbling with each other.

  Good news, too, for Cian Boldcloak: His time in Gwynedd would be much easier without rumours of a king to stir up opposition. Perhaps he would come home soon.

  She couldn’t sleep that night and instead walked into the woods and lay on her stomach by the garlic in the coppiced glade, cheek on her hands, sighting along the tips of the grass stems, dull as lead in the moonlight. Was Cian sitting under the moon in Deganwy? Perhaps it was raining. Perhaps he was sitting, chin in one hand, drinking horn dangling from the other, listening to stirring Welsh song, half drunk, half dreaming of glory. Though he had glory in plenty now. Perhaps he was listening to a song about himself. With Eadfrith still in Dyfneint, he was the most important Angle in Gwynedd, and scops and Welsh bards were not stupid.

  There were songs in plenty about Penda, too. He was cunning, and young, and strong. But Penda was a decision for another time. She found herself wondering, instead, if Cadwallon would stay in Ireland. He was as wily as a fox, and his hatred ran deep. There was nothing for him in Ireland. He’d find his way back to Gwynedd in the end. Cian needed to come home. He’d be safer. And she could tell him all the things she had seen, the things she’d learnt, the people she was helping. She would show him the mene, tell him of her plans. They could mend what had broken between them. They could ignore it. It hadn’t happened.

  A hedgepig wheezed and puffed at the edge of the clearing, nosing in the grass for snails and worms. So we may drink to home wherever we are.

  * * *

  The barley was cut and drying. After a report of bandits, Hild and her gesiths rode out to the Whinmoor.

  It was a fine day, sound as a late plum. They rode from flock to flock, copse to copse, but found nothing. As they turned back for the mene, Hild told herself she was glad; she didn’t want to see the light go out in anyone’s eyes. Nonetheless Cygnet was skittish. She wasn’t the only one. Oeric’s mount pranced and snorted.

  She caught Oeric’s eye, then Berhtnoth’s. She grinned. “A ring to the first back!” She kicked Cygnet into a gallop. With whoops and whistles, the men raced after her.

  And so her blood was singing under her skin and Cygnet hot under her thighs when she saw the birds flying from the old ivy-covered oak just north of the beck, where it flowed west to east before turning south for the mene. She touched Cygnet into a tight, hard curve, slowed to a canter, then a trot, and reined in.

  Part of her registered her gesiths shouting and making their own turns to follow her, but she was focused on the tree, unsure of what she’d seen, only that it had made her pay attention.

  There. A starling with a worm still wriggling in its beak, disappearing into the deep V of the top boughs about three times her height from the ground. Then, yes, a dove, with a fly. Her heart thundered from the ride, and Cygnet was blowing hard, but gradually they both settled. After a little while, first the dove then the starling flew away from the oak.

  She swung off Cygnet. Thick ivy made the climb easy. By the time Oeric jumped down from his snorting mount, she was perched on the right-hand bough, peering into the cleft. She stripped a twig and used it to bend the ivy to one side.

  A nest. Four chicks. When the twig poked through the ivy they sat up, peeping, and flapped their tiny wings and opened outsize beaks to show red, red mouths.

  Two starlings and two doves.

  “Lady?” Oeric called from the base of the tree.

  “Doves and starlings,” she said, amazed. “Sharing the same nest.”

  “Doves and starlings?”

  “Doves and starlings.” She laughed. “Starlings and doves!”

  Oeric was looking nervous, b
ut she didn’t care. She laughed again, as chains burst in the dark and a box shattered to splinters. “It’s an omen, Oeric. An omen!” His horse was good, and Grimhun’s, and Berhtnoth’s. Good for hours. “Omens must be spread!”

  That evening she drank beer with Rhin. She felt as bright as the first morning of the world. “I sent them galloping to every corner of Elmet—to Caer Loid, to Aberford, to Saxfryth, to the south river, even back to the Whinmoor. Doves and starlings sharing a nest, like Loides and Anglisc sharing Elmet.” An omen that would persuade even Edwin. “It is possible. It’s all possible.”

  He was smiling at her. “Of course, lady. Because of you. Have some of these currants. Our latest visitor picked them on the way in this morning and your woman said you were fond of berries.”

  Hild ate a handful, bursting them with her tongue against her teeth, one by one, tart-sweet pops of deep red juice. Doves and starlings. Starlings and doves. She only had to think how to couch it to Edwin, and for Cian to come home.

  “Sadly, our visitor won’t tell anyone where the patch is; his to know, he says, ours to be grateful. But he did bring news. A rumour of Cadwallon. He’s in Less Britain, they say.”

  Less Britain. Cadwallon was lining up the Britons-over-the-sea against the Anglisc. Oh, yes, Edwin would have to listen. Elmet needed Cian. It would work. Doves and starlings. Starlings and doves.

  “Just a rumour, less than a rumour, a whisper. Though no doubt it will please Boldcloak, now that he’s taken up with that Welsh princess.”

  Hild swallowed carefully. “Welsh princess?”