Hild: A Novel (25 page)

Hild had no idea how to respond.

“Oh, don’t stand there like a carving. Come in and keep out the rain. Tell me, what dreadful news does Ma have now?”

“I brought these. For you.” And she held out the silk-wrapped packet.

Hereswith took it, unwrapped the first fold, and burst into tears.

“But you don’t even know what it is,” Hild said, and to her consternation Hereswith wrapped her arms around her and wept harder. “What is it? Are you ill? What’s the matter?” She motioned Gwladus forward. “Here, I brought you buttermilk, too. It’s still cool from the dairy. Here.” She put the cup in her sister’s free hand. She didn’t know what else to do. “And summer ale for Mildburh.” It was Mildburh’s favourite.
Always know what they like
, her mother said.
They will love you for it.

And then Mildburh started crying, too.

“Please, stop,” Hild said. “Please. Here.” She sat on the bed and tugged gently at Hereswith’s arm. “Sit. What’s wrong?”

Hereswith wouldn’t sit, but Mildburh did, clutching her ale.

Hereswith threw her buttermilk at a hanging of a hart hunt. It dripped solemnly.

“I’m to wed this Æthelric and follow him to the stinking fen that he calls home.”
Drip.
“Where he already has a woman.”
Drip.
“You didn’t predict that, did you, little seer? A princess of the South Gyrwe. A woman and two children.”

Drip. Drip. Drip.

*   *   *

Breguswith, hand wrapped around the pendant she wore, smiled, and said to Hild, “It isn’t a fen. Not all of it. And of course the man already has a woman, he’s a man isn’t he? He’s sworn to set the strumpet aside—sworn to me, and to Edwin, his overking.”

Hild wondered how much that meant. A man was lord of his own hall, king or no. And it was as Eorpwald’s brother, Æthelric ætheling of the South Folk, he had sworn to Edwin, not as Ecgric, lord of the North Folk. Ecgric prince—and ally of the South Gyrwe and East Wixna.

“Besides, the Gyrwe woman’s given him only daughters. He’s more in need of an heir than a peaceweaver. One son, or even the hope of one, from your sister and the woman will be forgotten. And Hereswith will have Ædilgith and Folcwyn with her, and six gesiths—hardly alone.”

Breguswith let go of her pendant: the biggest garnet Hild had ever seen, cut like a seashell and set among slices of the same stone. The workmanship was as fine as the Svear’s but by a different hand. Kentish.

Breguswith smiled. “Yes. A token of appreciation. Edwin is getting married. To Æthelburh.” King Eadbald of Kent’s sister, Breguswith’s half niece. Hild’s cousin. “She’ll come north next summer. With a priest, Paulinus.”

*   *   *

The afternoon of the day before they were to leave. In Hereswith’s apartment Hild smiled at Mildburh. “The kitchen has saved the very last of the summer ale. I told them not to release it to anyone but you.”

“I don’t—”

“I asked them to make sticky cakes, too,” Hild said. “With run honey and Frankish almonds.” Gwladus had arranged that. She said it had cost two pennies.

Hereswith studied Hild, then turned to her gemæcce. “I like sticky cakes, Mil.”

*   *   *

When they were alone, Hild looked about. The hanging was gone. Being carefully cleaned no doubt. She hoped Hereswith wasn’t in a throwing mood today.

She didn’t know what to say. Her sister, whose fierce whisper and poke were her earliest memory. Her sister.

She took Hereswith’s hand. It was smaller than hers now and hard with rings.

“Perhaps you really will turn out to be a giant,” Hereswith said, lightly enough, but her smile wobbled and Hild knew what she was thinking: I won’t be there to see it.

“This is your wyrd,” Hild said. “You’ll be a queen. You’ll have children.” In pain, and blood, and sweat. “I’ll come and see them.”

But her voice sounded false, and neither of them quite believed it. Wyrd never flowed along expected paths. Hereswith might die in childbed, and Hild wouldn’t know until Æthelric or Eorpwald thought to send a messenger. Even then it would be king to king:
The peaceweaver has died, what do you propose?

“Learn to read,” Hild said.

“Read? I don’t—”

“Please.” She should have thought of it before. But she had never left her sister before. “You must. Find a priest to teach you. Pretend you’re interested in their god.”

“What—”

“The Christ. Please. Learn to read. For me.”

“Does it really mean so much to you?” Hereswith’s eyes were so blue. Sister blue. “I’ll always be your sister. I will come if you call. I swear it to you. Please.” She saw that her hand was squeezing Hereswith’s to purple.

Hereswith tugged Hild’s hair, as she had when they were little, but gently. “I’ll learn to read. But you must do something for me.”

Hild nodded, swallowed, saw she was clutching too hard again, tried to loosen her grip but couldn’t. Her sister’s hand …

“Find people. People you know are on your side. Not that priest. Not a slave. Kings die, even overkings. Especially overkings. So find people.”

Hild nodded again. Her tears dripped on their hands. Hereswith wiped them off, as briskly as she would wipe a baby’s nose. And Hild couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stand to face the rest of her life without a sister at her side.

“You’ll be well,” Hereswith said. “I’ll be well. I’m older, and I say so. And on your birth day, and mine, we’ll drink a toast, each to the other, and one day we’ll hold hands again.”

*   *   *

They saw each other the next morning but though there were words, Hild didn’t remember them, they were ritual, for the people: a stern lady of the North Folk bidding smooth travel and fair weather to her uncle the overking, her sister the king’s seer, and her lady mother. The three women were gracious but remote, dry-eyed players in the royal mummery of Eorpwald and Edwin’s grander farewell: the pledges of honour and allegiance between king and overking.

As they rode away, none of them blinked, no one’s smile wavered. But in her head, Hild was already imagining her toast to Hereswith on her own birth day next month, and the simple message she would send on her sister’s birth day in Œstremonath.

And when she had imagined every dot of ink and wrinkle of parchment, she began composing messages to Cian and Begu and Onnen.

9

I
N YEAVERING, AT ŒSTREMONATH
, Hild stood in the doorway of the women’s hall and faced the late-morning sun. She raised her cup of grass-rich buttermilk and drank to Hereswith, and felt, for a moment, the sun warm on Hereswith’s back as her sister faced north by northwest and lifted a cup of mead to Hild. But she didn’t send a message: There was no one to trust with the spoken words, no one but Fursey, and East Anglia was too far.

But she could send him to the Bay of the Beacon. And when spring turned to summer and travel was easier, she did.

And now they were back in Goodmanham, and it was almost Weodmonath again. Fursey should be back in a month. On the rough northern pasture, the lambs looked nearly as burly as their shorn mothers. In the valley and on the southern slopes, barley heavy with seed bent its whiskers towards the sun-beaten earth; the weeds stood out livid green against the dark gold grain. Children took turns banging sticks to drive away crows. The crows crak-crakked and rose like black smoke, then settled in the next field and watched with oily black eyes, or indulged in aerial shows with the jackdaws that lived in the elms. During æfen, while the urchins frightened each other with tales—of ghost crows, and giant crows, and breath-stealing crows—Coelgar’s understewards pulled at their beards in frustration as the birds flitted quietly back to the grain and ate their fill.

A week before harvest, the children went out with wide baskets to pull the weeds, which they then fed to the goats. The milk began to taste strange, as it did every year at this time.

The wild taste fed Hild’s restlessness. She climbed her favourite ash tree but couldn’t see anything but pictures of Hereswith in childbed, screaming for her sister.

She strode the woods, wondering if Fursey had given Cian his belt-buckle knife, if he liked it. What if he laughed and thought it foolish? Begu would like her comb, surely. But Begu had such a flighty mind, always flitting from one thing to another. Who? she imagined Begu saying to Fursey. Hild? Oh, yes, she was here last year.

And Onnen.
Learn to read
, she’d told Fursey to tell her almost-mother.
You must learn to read.
But Onnen, she knew, would always think of her as the child squirming at the washtub as the cold water ran down her back, or the foolish girl who misled Begu about being gemæcce. She wouldn’t listen.

Hild tramped the wolds, watching birds at the edges of things and gathering plants for her mother. Whatever she did she would find herself thinking of people who weren’t there:
Surely Guenmon checked that Bán had a new cloak before winter
, or
Did Fursey remember to seek out Cú and give him a honey cake all for himself?
Once, she remembered she’d sent no message for Cædmon.

And then she was back to Hereswith, to the empty bed in her room and the constant listening for the pointed comment that never came.

*   *   *

And Herewith’s absence was not the only change.

Gwladus voiced strong opinions of what was and was not proper for Hild—she was worse than Onnen that way—and in the vill Hild found herself dressed more splendidly and fed more regularly. She shot up like one of the weeds in the barley field and grew tender breast buds.

Gwladus also grew. She had been eye-catching before but now her pale hair—paler than barley, paler than wheat, paler even than the bryony growing by the alders along the beck—gleamed, her skin grew smooth and tight, and she smelt like wild honey. Lintlaf and the other gesiths seemed mazed by her. For Hild this was useful. Gwladus listened to many conversations between men who forgot to take care, and she repeated them to Hild word for word: Cwichelm, eldest of the ambitious West Saxon brothers, was rumoured to intrigue with old Cadfan of Gwynedd. Young Cadwallon ap Cadfan was in Ireland. British and Irish priests had been seen everywhere—even with Cuelgils of Lindsey, even at Arbeia, Osric’s house in Tinamutha—carrying messages back and forth.

At night, when Gwladus was asleep on her pallet on the floor, Hild lay in her wide bed—her mother was elsewhere again; she didn’t want to think about that—and mulled the rumours and whispers, turning her carnelians, flicking the bright angry orange beads one way then another. Cwichelm. Sending embassies to all parts of the country—even the north. What was he planning? She mused on the words and beads for days but couldn’t see the pattern. There was a piece missing.

Fursey would know more, but he wouldn’t be back from Mulstanton for half a month.

*   *   *

Hild and her mother worked side by side in the still room. They stood hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder: Hild was now as tall as Breguswith. While her mother rinsed an ox horn with hot vinegar, Hild strained the onion and garlic mash, steeped in a copper bowl for nine days with wine and bull’s gall, through a fine cloth. When the liquid was clear, Hild poured it carefully into the clean horn. Breguswith pushed in the wooden stopper and Hild warmed beeswax to seal it. In winter, when eyelids were red and angry, they’d dip a feather into the mixture and use it to paint a line along the eyelash roots to treat styes. Eye infections were always worse in winter when everyone crowded together and the fires smoked.

“Did you harvest that figwort you said you’d found?”

Hild shook her head, but carefully; she didn’t want to spill the hot wax on the back of Breguswith’s hand. “Tomorrow, or the day after.”

That would be another morning of squeezing the orange sap into brass pots and warming it gently with honey. That mixture was good for pink eye, but it was best fresh.

Orange reminded Hild of Cwichelm. She told her mother of the rumours. “And the priests have been seen as far north as the Tine.”

Breguswith started stripping the leaves from the ribwort Hild had brought in that morning. “The Irish are always plotting something. Always sending their priests hither and thither.” She gave Hild a sideways look. “Not the only ones.”

“Fursey carries my messages to Cian and Onnen.” And Begu, but she had never told her mother about Begu. “He’ll be back any day. When I send him out again, are there any words you’d like him to take to Onnen?”

“None I’d trust a priest with.”

Hild realised her mother had deflected her somehow, as she always did.

While her mother chopped the ribwort, Hild dipped up sheep grease from the little pot on the shelf and rubbed it into her hand. This year there were so many housefolk at the vill, so many women arriving with the new folk, so many slaves given in tribute, that Hild, king’s niece, king’s seer, had not been called upon to help with shearing. If Hereswith were here, she wouldn’t be needed in the dairy.

There were many new gesiths, too, so many—Anglisc and Saxon, Irish and Frankish, Svear and Pict—swearing oaths to the new overking, feasting and gorging and drinking themselves to a heroic stupor, that beef and mead were running low and Coelgar scowled at the number of boastful mouths to be fed day in, day out. Edwin had taken to counting his arm rings. He would have to start another war soon to maintain his gift-giving.

War. Cwichelm. Cadwallon. Cuelgils. Osric? When would Edwin feel strong enough to openly oppose his cousin? What if he left it too late?

A thought struck her. What if he was planning to use her as a peaceweaver? She looked at her mother, who shifted slightly but didn’t acknowledge Hild’s attention. What was she planning?

*   *   *

Hild hung her hose in her belt and dabbled her toes in the pool where she had once sat with Cian, where she had made her offering, long ago. It smelt green and cool and secret.

Goodmanham drowsed, but Hild was wide awake.

The pattern was changing, she could taste it, feel it in the different weight and heft of her body every morning, in the way her mother looked at her. One day, to suit some purpose of their own, her mother or her uncle would pluck her from her life and send her to live in a fen with a man she didn’t know. In the world of skirt and sword, it was part of her wyrd. But not all her wyrd, and not yet. There was so much to learn, so much to know.