Hild: A Novel (23 page)

Rhenish glass: cups and bowls and flasks. Wheel-thrown pottery, painted in every colour and pattern. Cloth. Wine. Swords—swords for
sale
—and armour. Jewels, with stones Hild had never seen, including great square diamonds, as grey as a Blodmonath sky. Perfume in tiny stoppered jars, and next to them even smaller jars—one the size of Hild’s fingernail—sealed with wax: poison. Lumps of incense wrapped in waxed linen in straw-lined baskets. Timber arranged in layered rows: oak and elm, poplar and birch; raw and seasoned. Bronze ewers. Frankish throwing axes. Pigs of lead and iron. Knives: too glorious to use, inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl; or plain, with sturdy elm hilts; or shark’s-tooth size with cunning sheaths, to be worn at wrist or ankle. One even fit neatly behind the great buckle of a belt—Lintlaf lingered a long time over that. A horn of some sea beast, twisted like rope. Ivory caskets. Cedar and sandalwood boxes lined with silk. Sandals with laces tipped with silver and blue glass. Belts. A six-stringed lyre inlaid with walnut and copper, and the beaver-skin bag to go with it. A set of four nested silver bowls from Byzantium, chased and engraved with lettering that Fursey, peering over her shoulder, said was Greek. But Hild barely heard him: Somewhere a man was calling in a peculiar cadence, and he sounded almost Anglisc. Almost. Instead of the rounded apple thump of Anglisc, these oddly shaped words rolled just a little wrong. Not apples, she thought. Pears. Heavy at the bottom, longer on the top.

She wandered away from Fursey, following the voice with the lopsided words, trying to make sense of them, and found herself in a ring of buyers watching an auction for a naked slave.

The Frisian auctioneer shouted, “For two scillings, done!,” and pointed at a plump man with a grey streak in his hair and a much-worn purse. Then he bent his head to the youth standing next to Grey Streak. “And a fine bargain, may I say, my lord.” The youth had a warrior jacket the same dark blue as Eorpwald’s, the same pelt-like hair as Æthelric. An ætheling. Of what branch? No doubt he’d been at the feast three days ago. But she didn’t want to think about that.

The Frisian gestured for the slave, a short-haired wealh youth with an ugly bruise along his left thigh and his hands manacled to a slave yoke, to get off the block. One of the Frisian’s men prodded another to take his place. A girl. A pretty one with hair the colour of honey, like Hereswith, and about the same age.

Hild’s lungs felt too big for her ribs. She turned away, willing herself to breathe. It was not Hereswith. It was not. Still turned, she saw another of the Frisian’s men using a huge key to unlock the sold wealh’s yoke, and the ætheling’s steward taking charge of him, moving with the slave and two gesiths to the edge of the crowd where two men sat at a table behind two sets of scales—and a counting board. She had heard of such things. But then the steward and the slave blocked her view of it.

“This is a fine and healthy girl,” shouted the Frisian. “See the plump muscles, the strong bones. Show your teeth, girl. Your teeth.” The sound of a goad striking flesh. Hild turned back. The girl, with a fresh red stripe across the top of her arm, stood with bared teeth. “Very shapely. Turn for the lords, slave. See those dimples? A lot of sport there. Good hips for childbearing later—”

“Skinny ankles!” the man next to Hild shouted.

“Show your dugs, slave. Lift them up. Good milk machines, those. Good—”

Two squealing piglets ran, tails bouncing, across the auction floor, closely followed by a hobbling wealh woman, swearing with abandon. The crowd laughed. The Frisian laughed, too, but the curve of his mouth was not jolly. His selling rhythm was broken.

He began again and got as far as how the slave’s hair alone could inflame a man, make him stiff as a spear, when the old wealh woman came back, a piglet tucked firmly under each arm, and the crowd applauded. He motioned her out of the way. She didn’t move fast enough. The Frisian nodded at the man with the goad, who slashed at the woman’s behind.

The woman shrieked and dropped one of the piglets, which ran into the good-humoured crowd, and the ætheling shouted to the Frisian, “You break her, you buy her.” The crowd hooted. The ætheling grinned and stuck out his chest. “Plus, now you owe me for the sucking pig.” The crowd laughed; their prince would take this foreigner down a peg or two. “Or,” the princeling said, “I’ll take a discount on the wealh.”

The Frisian’s hand twitched—Hild had seen Lilla’s hand do the same when he overheard a veiled insult to his king in another man’s hall—but he bowed. “My lord, Ælberht.”

Ælberht waved his hand. “Deliver her to me. Same price as the other.”

“My lord! This is valuable stock.” The Frisian thwacked the slave’s buttocks with the flat of his hand, a meaty sound. The man next to Hild breathed through his mouth. “Four scillings at least!”

“Frisian, I won’t bargain.”

“But my lord, a sucking pig is a penny, at most.”

“Frisian—”

“No,” Hild said. Her voice rang. Everyone turned.

She stepped forward just as Fursey arrived and snatched at her dress. He missed. She pitched her voice to the Frisian but kept her eyes on the ætheling. Now she knew why gesiths smiled in hall when they threw down their food with a shout, and stood.

The bones in her face felt light and tight. “Three scillings!” She didn’t know how much a scilling was, exactly, but she had two chests of hacksilver and could always get more.

“She’s mine,” the ætheling said, and put his hand on his seax.

Hild put her hand on her own. “No.”

The crowd
oohed
and stepped back a pace. Royal children with knives: better than a cockfight. The ætheling faced Hild.

Hild crouched, as she had seen gesiths do. The ætheling crouched in return, without thinking, as he had been trained.

Fursey hopped from foot to foot. “Stop,” he hissed in Irish. “Think!”

She didn’t want to think. She was sick of thinking. It never got her anywhere. Hereswith was this wealh woman’s age, being sold by Edwin—in a finer marketplace, it was true, but still, sold like a sucking pig. Cian was gone. Onnen was gone. Hereswith was staying here in a strange land. And maybe her mother would stay with her. And one day Fursey would leave. What did it matter?

She drew her knife. “It will be sheathed in blood.” There, it was said. Now no one but a kinsman could stop them without making her an oath-breaker. No more thinking. She began to circle.

The ætheling drew his blade and circled away. Hild studied his blade. It shimmered, oily as an eel. A good blade, with a good edge. Hers was better, and longer. So were her arms and legs. She overtopped him by three fingers. She shifted her knife to the blade-along-the-forearm grip gesiths favoured for serious knife fights, and felt light and free. She smiled.

The ætheling stumbled, and that was when Hild saw how dark his freckles were: He was pale with fright. He was just a little boy who had never drawn a knife for real, never faced the Dál nAriadne on the quay at Tinamutha, never thought his sister and mother dead and that he was all alone. This wasn’t his fault.

The piglet burst from the crowd, trotters twinkling. Hild moved easily, like a mother scooping up her toddler as it runs gurgling towards the fire. The piglet squealed as she swung it up by its hind legs, then stopped when she swept her blade across its throat.

Blood pattered on hard-packed dirt.

She wiped her knife on her thigh. Sheathed in pig blood. It would do.

She looked around the circle of silent men. To the ætheling she said, “Two pennies for your pig,” which was more than fair, and, to the Frisian, “Three scillings for the wealh.” She thrust the dead pig at Fursey. “Pay them.” The crowd parted silently and she strode through.

*   *   *

In Eorpwald’s garth Breguswith looked at Fursey, then at the blood across the front of Hild’s dress, then at the naked slave.

“Well. I hope she’s good with stains. Put some clothes on her.” She turned away, then back. “Priest, with me.”

When they were gone, Hild turned to the wealh, who was tugging at her iron collar, trying to ease the chafing. “What’s your name?”

“Gwladus.”

Oo-la-doose
. A west wealh name. Southwest. Dyfneint. Hild had witnessed Edwin’s refusal of their man, Bishop Anaoc, and his plea for aid against the Gewisse, against war. Perhaps this woman was taken in that war. “When were you collared?”

“Last cider-making.”

The Dyfneint were great cider-makers. It was a land of apples, so they said.

Gwladus tugged at her collar again. She looked nothing like Hereswith. She was at least two years older, half a hand shorter. Her eyes were grey-green, and her hair would be paler when washed. Her whole body would be paler. Her nipples were more pink than red.

Gwladus covered herself with her hands. “Lady, can I have clothes? Like the queen said?”

“She’s not a queen. She’s my mother.”

*   *   *

In the kitchens, Gwladus, now in a plain tabby dress and with half a loaf in her hand, sat opposite the killer child, who said, “What skills have you?”

Gwladus chewed the bread and said nothing. Her chief skill wasn’t likely to please this one.

“I could sell you back to the princeling, Ælberht.”

Gwladus had heard worse threats. She tore another bite from the bread and thought. It was the best bread she had eaten for nearly a year, and Ælberht was probably also too young to appreciate her talents. She’d be best off here by the princess with the slaughter seax.

She tried to remember what she’d done the first week in the collar before she’d learnt her other skills. “I shovel shit.” Then, in British, to herself, “Gwladus of the Dyfneint shovels shit!”

To her horror, the princess said, also in British, “In Dyfneint, there is no shit?”

Gwladus wanted to throw her ale in the proud little face. But the princess would kill her, dead as a sucking pig.

“And your family,” the princess said, “what do they do?”

“My family are dead. Now.”

“So, then. You are lucky to be shovelling shit.”

It was true. Gwladus’s shoulders dropped.

The princess nodded at Gwladus’s collar. “Your neck is sore.”

After a moment, Gwladus put down her bread. The killer child was her mistress. For now. “Yes, lady.”

“Tell the kitchen you are to lave it with comfrey and slather it with goose grease. Then we’ll see about getting you a lighter collar.”

*   *   *

The doors to Eorpwald’s hall stood open but gloom filled the corners. No firelight, no rushes, no tapers called forth the glint of gold and jewels. Edwin sat with Lilla, Osric, and Coelfrith at a bench opposite the door. They were playing taff and sipping ale, but every time a passing shadow darkened the doorway, Edwin looked up.

Hild sat quietly with her mother in the corner between the wall and the inset doorway, where someone entering might not think to look. There were no housefolk present.

Breguswith nodded and Hild turned one of the elm tablets. The vine pattern, sunset red and gold, was barely visible in the gloom, but men, her mother assured her, wouldn’t think to wonder at that. Listen and draw no attention, she said.
Quiet mouth, bright mind.

Hild listened to the muffled rattle of antler dice in their leather cup, the brighter spill onto the table, Osric’s mutter of disgust, the click as he scooped them up again. He and her uncle looked nothing alike. Osric was more like a badger: thick, splayed fingers, sloping shoulders, black hair, and pointed teeth. She hated him. Hated him for the mud and blood of Tinamutha. She hoped her uncle would one day burn him out of his sett, stake him out as a warning to all his kind.

A man in priest skirts entered the hall. Breguswith nodded. Hild turned a tablet. Breguswith wove the shuttle through the warp, beat the weft, nodded. Hild turned the next tablet.

The priest stood before Edwin’s bench and bent his head. Shaved at the crown: Romish. Edwin looked at him over the rim of his cup and Lilla gestured the priest forward. The priest raised his arms. Lilla ran practiced hands over the priest’s forearms and ribs, around his waist, down his thighs and calves. Clearly the priest was used to this: He turned unbidden for Lilla to feel between his shoulders. He had the blackest hair Hild had ever seen and a dark shadow along his jaw.

She dropped her eyes to the tablet weave until he turned around again.

Edwin put down his cup. “You have a message for me?”

“I do, lord.” A Jutish accent. Kent.

“Is it long?”

“No, lord.”

“Then spit it out.”

Hild leaned forward but at a frown from Breguswith leaned back again until the weave was taut. She turned a tablet.

“Father Paulinus bids Edwin king to remember his dream.” Paulinus. A reeve for the bishop of Rome?

“Does he now. Does he indeed.”

The men at the table did not even glance at one another. Clearly they knew of this dream.

“And does Eadbald king also bid me to remember?”

The priest hesitated. “My message comes from Father Paulinus.”

Now there were swift looks between Edwin and his thegns. Edwin leaned back. “But we have been remiss to keep you standing and thirsty. Sit.”

Breguswith rose, laid the weave in Hild’s lap, and bent for the jar of wine and five cups on the floor behind her.

Hild busied herself with rolling the tablet weave while her mother moved gracefully from king to thegn to priest, pouring and smiling. She could still make men watch.

When she was done she settled at the farthest end of the bench with the wine jar, giving the impression that the only thing on her mind was the hope to give exact and prompt service.

“So,” said Edwin, “from Paulinus. What of Mellitus?”

“Archbishop Mellitus went to Christ three months since. Our father now is Archbishop Justus.”

“Justus? I don’t remember him.”

“He is a wise and holy arbiter, my lord.”

“Of course he is. And does he, like Paulinus Crow, think it time to remember my dream?”

“I am not privy to the archbishop’s thoughts, my lord.” The priest drank. Hild heard his gulp.