Hild: A Novel (20 page)

Mildburh’s eyes were muddy, honest blue, like bilberries. Hereswith’s were as blue as their mother’s, but without the cold blaze.
No
, Hild wanted to say.
I see nothing. Let’s churn the cream and salt the butter and gossip about your husband-to-be.
But what could an ungirdled girl have to say about husbands? Except as threads in the great pattern woven by others. And what would they want to hear about travel and sleeping outside a hall?

They were still looking at her. She put her hand on her knife. “I see that you will travel safely.” How could they not? They’d be travelling with twelvescore gesiths and an army of housefolk.

*   *   *

She cut through the byre on the way back from the dairy shed. It smelt of sun on hay and of horse more than cow. At this time of year, the household horses were in their outdoor corral and even the milch cows were at pasture. Two stalls, though, were occupied: a shaggy bay pony and a tall roan gelding. She looked automatically at their hooves and tails.

The roan was shod in dark, high-quality iron, the hooves oiled, the tail long and well brushed. A horse from a royal stable. It was eating single-mindedly but at her approach lifted its head and rolled its eye. She did not step too close. A horse used hard and often, but no cut marks where you might expect them. A beast valued by its rider. She studied the length and strength of its leg muscle: one of the heavy Frankish mixed breeds. The Oiscingas of Kent had Frankish tastes in horses and cloaks, religion and jewels. So it had been a man of Kent who had spoken to her mother before speaking to the king. How did Kent connect to the east warp or the west warp? She tucked that in the back of her mind to discuss with Fursey.

The pony was a calm, even-tempered mare with a curious eye. A typical priest mount: ridden, no doubt, by the man who supplied Fursey’s information. She felt the skin between its forelegs. Cool and dry: stabled long since. The little pony snorted and when she patted its withers its skin wrinkled under her hand, and the feel of it took Hild back to a wintry day by the redcrests’ wall, climbing onto Ilfetu’s back just as the wind blew her cloak sideways, making the gelding’s skin twitch. Hild leaned her head against the pony’s neck, breathed that horse smell that reminded her of so many things, so many people. “Perhaps you are sister to Cian’s Acærn,” she whispered in British, the first time in months she had spoken that tongue. “Perhaps you will see him and Ilfetu on your travels. Tell him I miss, I miss…” Her throat closed. She straightened, said in Anglisc, “But no doubt Cian has a fine new horse now, to go with his fine sword and his foster-sister.”

*   *   *

The court did not leave that month, nor the month after. They would be a great company, four hundred strong, and riders must be sent ahead. An overking travelling with his court did not sleep on the ground, did not go uncombed or eat squirrels and figwort in the lee of a wall. He did not break his teeth on more-grit-than-grain ceorl bread, or let the ribs of his horse show through from lack of oats. He did not ride with one fist on his sword and his helm to hand but confidently, in brilliant clothes, to be seen, knowing his guard had cleared the road for half a mile ahead and to each side. He must be the pip at the centre of an apple of perfect safety and unstinting bounty. He must be as close to a god as any but priests ever saw.

Eventually, as the boughs of plum trees began to sag under their own weight, as the cornfields turned gold, as the constant hum of honeybees dropped a tone and maggots fattened themselves on the soft ripe fruit of brambles, they rode out from Goodmanham in great splendour.

Edwin, Osric—whose stripling son, Oswine, and daughter, Osthryth, had been left in Bebbanburg with Coelgar, “for safety”—the æthelings, and Hild rode bare-armed, draped in blue and gold, horses glinting with gold at headstall, tail strap, and saddle. Their scabbard chapes were chased and gilded and their hilts winked with garnet and blue enamel.

Breguswith and Hereswith rode under a canopy held by two of Coelgar’s men, with Burgmod and Burgræd riding behind, hands self-consciously on swords. Tomorrow the two women would ride in the wagons with Ædilgith and Folcwyn and the others, like coddled eggs, but today they rode on display. They wore marigold dresses with deep red borders and boots the colour of owl breasts, and as soft. Their ears and veil bands glinted with lapis and gold. Hereswith’s horse, a dark bay gelding, even had blue beads braided into its mane. Beside them, Mildburh wore the colours of her kin, the dead queen Cwenburh, a spring green, but with her gemæcce’s colours, marigold and red, in the tablet weave at wrist and neck.

The king’s gesiths’ belts and baldric buckles could each have rendered enough gold to buy a prize ram and two ewes. Osric’s were scarcely less splendid, and even the men of the Deiran thegns Wilgar and Trumwine could have been the gesiths of lesser kings. Many rode still spattered across face and sword arm with the blood of the sacrificial bullock. Coifi would stay in Goodmanham, home of his god, praying for an easy journey brimming with good fortune. He had promised the new enclosure by the time they returned. Hild still hadn’t asked Fursey what he’d meant by his remark about them only having a year or two to enjoy it. How did that fit into the great weave?

Fursey rode a creamy gelding. No priest pony for him. He rode now as a prince of Munster, with marten fur trimming his fine black robe and rings on his fingers—though being in skirts he carried no sword. And behind everything creaked the swaying wagons, pulled by oxen with white-painted horns. One wagon, the one with the gilded elm wheel hubs and the pliant willow bed covered with feather bolsters, Hereswith’s wagon, had a pale, sueded covering painted with the Deiran boar’s head in blood-red. Later, of course, that covering would be taken down and folded carefully until their triumphal entry into the vill of the king of the East Angles, and a plain brown leather awning raised in its stead. But even that leather was the finest cowhide, dyed in one batch to the colour of walnuts.

*   *   *

It took them nine days to travel from Goodmanham to Lindum, a prosperous wool-and-leather trading centre overflowing its crumbling Roman walls. The war band, taking it easy, could have done it in two—less if they’d been willing to abuse their horses—but the wagons were like houses on wheels and not to be hurried. They stayed only one night. The city reminded Hild of Caer Luel, though less ruined and more patched: thatching on the roofs where the tiles had fallen away, timber replacing broken stone lintels. The chief man, Cuelgils, called himself princeps. The walls of his great hall were painted like the fading pictures in the understorey of the hall at York.

“Princeps,” Fursey had snorted, during the usual ceremonies. “I doubt he can even read.” But he’d said it in Irish, just in case.

The milestone outside Lindum, beyond the city’s tannery and wool-fulling stench, was made of pale grey stone, as thick as Hild’s thigh and taller than a tall man on a horse. It was much taller than Fursey. Taller even than Lintlaf, the hero of the ride to Tinamutha and proud as Thunor of the new gold ring from the king, glinting at the hilt of his sword. But a hero needs to constantly burnish his deeds in the eyes of others, he must seek out opportunities to shine, and Lintlaf had appointed himself guardian to the strange maid and the prince-priest. The two reeked of wyrd. Something was bound to happen at some point, and his name would be gilded by songs of fresh prowess.

When they reined in by the stone, therefore, so did Lintlaf, and the column of wagons toiled on into the overcast afternoon.

When Fursey and Hild dismounted, Lintlaf sighed. He loosened his sword just in case, though the road hereabouts was well cleared of scrub and any possible hiding place for wild men and robbers.

While their horses stood patiently nose to nose, the maid and the Irish priest walked around the stone. The day was hot and bright as dirty water, with no sharp shadows, no clean wind. Perhaps the gods would fight later, throwing insult and thunderbolt at each other then weeping with rage until the ditches at either side of the road runnelled and gushed with their tears.

“‘Durobrivae something miles,’” the maid read to Fursey. She had to stand on her tiptoes to touch the wind-scoured numbers: LII. “The citizens of Lindum paid for this road. Is that right?”

“It is.”

“But on the last one it said Emperor Caracalla restored the roads ‘which had fallen into ruin and disuse through old age.’” The priest said nothing. “Fifty-two!” the maid said triumphantly. “Fifty-two miles to Durobrivae! What’s Durobrivae?”

“The place fifty-two miles farther south on this road.”

Which Lintlaf suspected meant he had no idea.

It was hot, and it seemed the stone would tell them nothing more. They walked back to where Lintlaf held their horses. He led the horses to a piece of stone—part of a broken wall of some redcrest building of long ago—which the priest used first to mount. As Lintlaf handed the maid her reins and she boosted herself into the saddle, he nodded at the milestone and said, “Are the runes favourable?”

“We’ll be in Durobrivae in … nine days. If the gods give us good weather.”

He looked at the sky and shook his head. “At least the rain will cut the dust.”

The priest rinsed his mouth with beer and spat. “Even dust is better than mud.”

“Too bad,” Lintlaf said. Gloomy lot, priests, no matter who they prayed to.

They cantered along the soft side of the road, Fursey sneezing in the wagon dust, until they reached the front, where they settled in behind the æthelings. Edwin beckoned Hild forward.

“What did the stones tell you?”

“That it’s the same distance to Durobrivae as we’ve travelled from Goodmanham.”

“And did the stones tell you that the road is very good for a while, so that we’ll do nine days’ travel in eight?”

She shook her head.

“I travelled this road eight years ago.”

Eight years ago. When he’d taken the throne that should have been her father’s, her father who died poisoned like a dog.

Edwin’s horse sidestepped. “Don’t look at me like that.” He had his thumb on his seax. Then he relaxed and laughed. “Eight years, eh, Lilla?”

Lilla said, “It rained then, too, my king.”

“So it did. But this time we have servants, and this time we’re in no hurry.” And he shouted at Coelgar’s young son, who was riding ahead with the standard-bearer. “Coelfrith! Send your men to find a place to stop.” He sniffed the still air. “There’s a river nearby. Bound to be a place to shelter and eat something hot before the weather gods start their games.”

*   *   *

They stopped a mile farther on, where a well-used trackway showed many travellers before had turned off the road to the graceful curve of a river with two convenient hills, a mixed hazel and oak wood, and what might have been the ruins of a bridge from the bank to the little island midstream.

The gesiths had time for an hour’s war play—they formed two shield walls and took turns pushing each other across the meadow and trying to stab at lower legs and feet with their leaf-bladed spears—and the housefolk to heat the porridge and roasted sheep and heather beer Cuelgils had given them in parting, before hissing rain turned their fires to ash and mud.

Some of the younger gesiths, half drunk, staged small group attacks with sword and shield. Like Hild, the older ones sought shelter. They knew from long experience that beer wears off by dark but clothes stay damp until morning, and wet blades and chain-link armour rust slowly and thoroughly if not sanded and regreased immediately.

Hild sat in her mother and sister’s wagon while the rain drummed on the waxed canvas pegged tentlike over the oiled leather canopy. The rain was coming straight down, so Breguswith had left the doorway unlaced, for the air and light.

They sat on the padded floor, their backs against cushioned chests cunningly carpentered to hold a variety of objects safely as they travelled. Breguswith and Hereswith talked quietly of etiquette in the south and eastern Angle courts, with Mildburh occasionally adding her perspective on the Saxons. Ædilgith and Folcwyn embroidered the sleeves of a dress, though Folcwyn spent more time wiping her forehead and neck than plying her needle. Hild lay with her head on Hereswith’s thigh, half listening, half drowsing, tolling through the carnelians around her wrist. She wondered what Ædilgith and Folcwyn thought about having to stay among the East Anglisc with Hereswith, and what Cian might be doing at the Bay of the Beacon.

Breguswith talked about ancestry. When she talked about her relatives, the Oiscingas of Kent, her Jutish accent broadened. Hild listened to the familiar chant. Her uncle Æthelberht, dead king of Kent. Her cousin Eadbald, now king of Kent. Æthelwald, her younger cousin, ætheling of Kent and prince of the West Kentishmen.

Hild tolled a bead, a big one, the one the colour of an old flame. Eadbald, uncle. She didn’t bother with Æthelwald—he was sickly—and Eadbald already had two sons.

Ricula, Breguswith’s aunt, married Sledd, of the East Saxons. Breguswith paused and looked at Hereswith, who chanted, “Sledd, father of Sabert, the father of Sæward, now dead, and Seaxred king.”

“And Seaxbald,” Mildburh said.

Hild tolled a little bead, the one with the brown occlusion like a drying wound. Seaxbald, cousin.

“They have a sister,” Breguswith said to Hereswith. “Saewara. Now wife to Anna.” Anna, Æthelric Short Leg’s younger brother and heir. “You’ll have a cousin at court.”

Saewara, cousin. Enemy or friend?

The West Saxons, Breguswith went on, Cynegils and his three sons, were friendly enough with their eastern kin.

She sorted through her beads to find the asymmetrical one, deep angry red. Cynegils of the Gewisse. Then three reddish-orange beads for his sons. One had a chip. She named that one Cwichelm, the eldest. Bad-tempered, all of them, and greedy.

Lightning cracked. Young, drunken gesiths hooted. Hild knew they would be jabbing their spears at the sky, daring Thunor to fling one of his bolts at them. She’d seen Thunor answer such a taunt, last year, just south of the wall. Thunor did not like to be made game of.