Hild: A Novel (39 page)

“Do you, Æthelburh, on behalf of your daughter, renounce Satan and all his works?”

Hild tensed. She was so aware of the position of her mother and Cian and Begu that she could feel them like firelight on her skin.

“I do,” Æthelburh said in a clear, strong voice.

“Face east,” Paulinus said, as a king would speak to a wealh.

Edwin narrowed his eyes but the Crow did not blink. Edwin turned. The river pushed at the back of their knees.

Paulinus bent and scooped a double handful of water. “In the name of the Father”—he dribbled water on Eanflæd’s head—“and the—”

The rest was lost in the baby’s piercing shrieks.

The gesiths all crouched—Hild very nearly did—then straightened. The shrieks seemed to break the spell: It was just a river before dawn, with people getting wet. Hild saw her mother’s shoulders drop at the same time as she herself realised this was not unlike one of Coifi’s blessings—and they had never met Woden.

Paulinus trickled more water and raised his voice, though no one could tell what he was saying. He wiped at the struggling child’s head with his stole, then dipped his thumb in the second pot and touched her head, then nose, then breast. The outraged shrieks grew louder. Paulinus, unmoved, signed the cross in the air over father, mother, and daughter just as light broke over the river.

“Oh, you should have seen it!” Begu said later to Gwladus. “The baby never shut up, and the Crow scowled at James, and James nodded at his choir to sing, but they started on different notes and it sounded like the cows at Mulstanton when they haven’t been milked! And then James waded into the river at the head of the others to be baptised, and he bumped into the king. They nearly went down,
splosh
. Wonder if the Christ would have saved them then? If the king’d had a sword at least one priest would be headless now. But the big surprise was Cian. The queen stood for his godmother! Took even the Crow by surprise.”

It had taken them all by surprise, especially Hild. She didn’t know much about baptism, but she knew royal favour.

“Cian’s mouth dropped so wide I thought he’d drown when Stephanus and James dipped him backwards in the river. They did it three times. Once for the Father, once for the Son, and once for the Holy Ghost. But the sun was up by then so we didn’t see any ghosts. Not that they might not all be ghosts by next week. You should have heard their teeth chattering on the way back!”

She was exaggerating. The sun had been high as they walked along the river, the choir singing and censer swinging. It had glinted on the wet hair of the gesiths and Breguswith—who had not been forcibly bent backwards like the men, but held at an angle while Paulinus dribbled water on the crown of her head.

Hild had walked next to her mother. Breguswith didn’t seem any different, apart from being wet, but she was not inclined to talk—she had always had a fine sense of occasion, and Hild had told her what Fursey had said, that she was supposed to be filled with grace, washed clean, serene; Breguswith was determined to play the part. Hild then walked with Cian. He didn’t talk, either. He hadn’t talked much since his return from fighting the Saxons with what looked like a bite mark along his jaw. “The shield wall is like being thrown into a pit with boars and blood,” he’d said. “A striving of mud, and muscle, and madness.” And he had refused to say more. The bite was healing. Perhaps baptism would wash him clean of the things he had done.

Hild stayed at his side, content to walk in silence and watch a covey of mallards, all drakes, green heads sparkling in the sun as they dove and preened and made their own kind of baptism.

14

E
ADFRITH THE ELDEST ÆTHELING
continued to pursue the Saxons south and west. Osric returned to Arbeia, but Breguswith stayed. Since her baptism, she and the queen had reached some kind of understanding whose shape Hild was still trying to fathom. The queen’s good word spread: Her mother was once again the woman that women went to with their pains and troubles. The baptism had changed the spin pattern of the whole cloth. Edwin paid more attention to Paulinus and less to Hild. It wouldn’t last long—the king would change his mind, it’s what he did—and meanwhile, he was no longer concerned that Hild bring him Fursey. What was one homeless, hunted priest with a wrongly shaved head to him?

Cadfan died and Cadwallon became king of Gwynedd. Edwin brooded, then married Osfrith, his second son, to Clotrude, second daughter of Clothar, king of the Christian Franks. He would draw more Romish weft to his warp. Let Cadwallon eat that.

Osfrith seemed stunned by marriage. Gwladus reported to Hild that, according to Arddun, Osfrith and Clotrude screamed like stuck pigs every night. The gesiths, including the handful of Franks who had accompanied Clotrude, teased the ætheling without mercy. The Franks wore crosses, very like those worn by the newly baptised Anglisc: squat, heavy things, easily mistaken for the hammers the majority of gesiths still wore. Most gesith crosses were bronze. Some silvered copper. Cian’s was gold.

Hild and Cian took to walking along the river at the end of the day when they might go unnoticed. He wore both his sword, with its gold hilt ring from Hild’s uncle the king, and his cross, a gift from his godmother the queen, with the same mix of pride and wariness.

Larks crisscrossed the deepening sky as they walked west along the river’s inside bend, where the flow was sluggish and water bugs dimpled the surface. Hild walked with her skirts kilted up. It was the first hot day of the year, and there was no one to see but Cian.

“I wish we were by the bird cherry at Goodmanham,” she said. “There always seemed to be a breath of wind there.”

“Breath of the tree sprites, you said.”

“You believed me.”

“I did.”

“You believed me, too, about the frog who swallowed the heart of a hægtes.”

“I did not.”

“You did.” The birdsong was fading. Crickets chirred in their place. “Did you ever believe I was a hægtes?” He didn’t say anything and she couldn’t read his face in the gathering twilight. “I don’t mind.”

He stopped, took her arm, a hard grip just below her elbow. “Yes, you do.” His voice was rough as a blacksmith’s file, his eyes a deeper blue than the sky. “We all care, we always care, what they say of us.”

He let go. They walked on. She rubbed her arm.

“You are not a hægtes.”

She walked with her chin up, not understanding why her eyes were suddenly brimming.

“You know the gesiths sing songs about you?”

“I’ve heard them.” She fell behind a moment and surreptitiously blotted her cheek with her shoulder.

“Not all of them.” Now there was a smile in his voice, an encouragement, the kind of tone he’d use to gentle a horse before changing gait. “In their songs you might be a hægtes, but you’re
their
hægtes. You’re the seer who saved Bebbanburg and revealed a conspiracy of kings. Who falls from trees to kill a dozen Lindseymen with one blow. And offers to gut irritating æthelings who get in your way.”

“They know about that?”

“They know the song. Coelwyn wrote it. He got the story from Lintlaf. There’s a chorus that’s very catchy:
I swear I’ll gut you, like a leveret, and fling your parts to feed the royal dogs
.”

“A
leveret
?”

“Sometimes he sings
sucking pig
, for the funny version.”

The funny version.

They walked for a while. Soft shadows pooled between the trees. Soon bats would swoop in place of larks. Dusk. The in-between time, when ælfs might watch quietly from behind the hawthorn, and it was easy to talk, even in Anglisc. “The ætheling was called Ælberht.”

Cian simply nodded.

“I meant to kill him. I could have. But he was afraid. He looked in my eyes and was afraid.”

“Men are, when it comes to it.”

“He wasn’t a man. Don’t you see? That’s the point. He was just a boy.” The trees were denser here, growing almost to the edge of the river. He wouldn’t be able to see her face. “But in three years he’ll have a sword and know how to use it, and I won’t. He’ll be no taller than me, no faster, no more royal, but he’ll have a sword and I won’t. And if he angers me and I draw my seax in earnest he’ll just lay his hand on his sword hilt and I’ll have to bend my head.”

“Not if I’m there. Or the brothers Berht. Or Grimhun or—”

“But you’re sworn to the king, not to me.”

The ring on his hilt tinked dully as he fiddled with it.

“Teach me.”

The creak and scritch of tree frogs rose suddenly, and just as suddenly fell. Swords were man magic. It would be his death if he was caught, ringed sword or no. They would nail him to a tree, pull his lungs through his back ribs, and spread them like wings.

Eventually he said, “You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t want to.”

They were clear of the trees. A fan of cloud in the west reflected the last rose-gold light. She touched his arm. “Stop. Please.”

He stopped, turned, faced her, back to the horizon. His face was in shadow. He could be a wight, risen from a barrow, glinting with gold. But she could smell him, she could hear the creak of his belt as he breathed.

“I was at Lindum. I don’t want to be a gesith. I want to know how to beat a man with a sword. Perhaps with an axe.” Women cut wood sometimes. It might be thought odd to walk about with an axe thrust through her girdle, but it was not forbidden. “One on one, sword against axe, could I do it?”

“No.”

“You brought a message from Onnen: to watch my back. Help me. If not an axe, then what?”

After a moment he said, “A club.”

“A club? Against a sword?”

“Swords aren’t magic.”

“That’s not what you used to think.” She remembered his singsong recitations about his imaginary sword: snakesteel blooded in battle, bitter blade, widow-maker, defender of honour and boast, winner of glory. Of course they were magic. Just not for her.

He ignored her. “Show me your wrists.”

She held out her arms.

He circled a wrist with each hand. “Big, for a woman. Now make fists.” He tightened his grip. “Spread your fingers.”

It hurt but she forced her fingers wide.

“Good.” He let go. “You need strong wrists for a club. But they already call you hægtes. How would you explain a club in your belt?”

“I wouldn’t carry it all the time.”

“A weapon’s no use if it’s not to hand. A gesith is always ready.”

“I’m not a gesith.” She pondered. “How about a staff? They’re everywhere. The handle of a rake, a spade, a broom—”

“Or a crooked tree limb by a pool?”

She laughed. “We are us!”

He sighed. “We are us.”

*   *   *

The midges were breeding and biting when Eadfrith brought back the remainder of the war band. Cwichelm and Cynegils had escaped.

Hild, alerted by a message from Begu, who’d had it from the queen, was sitting in the shadow by the hall’s western door by the time Eadfrith, filthy and stinking of horse and worse, arrived and took a seat at the board with Edwin, his counsellors, the glazed-looking Osfrith, and Paulinus. Hild laid her left arm carefully on her lap, palm up, to hide the scabbed slice along her left forearm where the tip of Cian’s sword had caught her. The great bruise on her shin was covered by her dress. Her mother, by the queen, gave her a look. Hild wondered if she’d winced.

Gesiths—Cian among them—lounged nearby pretending to dice and drink.

“The West Saxons had help,” Eadfrith said. “From Penda.” He paused to strip the meat from a cold pork rib with his teeth. His normally pale hair—like Osfrith, he had inherited the gilt hair of his mother—was dark with sweat and dull with dust. “I left Tondhelm to treat with the Dyfneint, with a score of swords at his back. I told him to help them rebuild Caer Uisc. We can’t have the Mercians and West Saxons”—he paused to drink and the hall was so quiet Hild heard his every gulp—“can’t have them joining forces without argument. Not now, not with Cadwallon king.”

“No,” Edwin said. He pushed a loaf at his son. “What’s the mood?”

“Cadwallon, they say, is eager for a fight.”

“We’ll make him bend the knee.” Edwin scratched his chin. He gestured at Stephanus to make a note, and said to Eadfrith, “In a fortnight, once you’re rested, you’ll take the war band to Gwynedd.”

Eadfrith glanced at Osfrith, clean and well fed, then at his father.

Edwin leaned forward. “That’s my word.”

Hild breathed softly. Since the attempt on his life, Edwin couldn’t abide being questioned, even sideways. He trusted no one. Lesser folk would be whipped around a tree for such insolence. The gesiths paid attention to their dice.

But then Edwin laughed and tossed another loaf at Eadfrith, who caught it without thinking. “Of course it must be you. You’re the eldest. Besides, your brother’s still mazed with marriage.” He raised his hand so the garnet glinted blood-red. “You’ll wear my token and speak with my voice.”

Breguswith looked thoughtful. Hild wished she could talk to Fursey. She had no idea what path her mother’s thoughts might be taking.

*   *   *

Just inside the elm wood west of Sancton, in a glade where dragonflies glinted like enamelled pins as they swept the air clean of midges, where just a week ago Hild had seen a young fox play-stalking a hare and the leaves smelt of afternoon sun and unstirred dust, Cian swung hard and two-handed at Hild’s neck. Hild met his blade with her staff, met it at the right angle with the right speed so that oak and steel rang and sprang apart. Cian lifted his left hand, palm out, sheathed his sword, and reached for the new shield leaning against a gnarled crabapple.

While he attended to the business of adjusting his straps, Hild sighted down her staff to make sure the sword hadn’t weakened it. It was unmarked. She was getting better at judging the angle to swat aside the flat of the blade. She wiped her forehead with her forearm and hitched her kilted shift tighter. There was no wind. There had been little rain for a fortnight. The glade sweltered.

A wood pigeon called from deeper in the trees. A flick of red caught her eye as a robin redbreast hopped on the fallen trunk nearby. She had seen him here before. Sometimes he pretended to study the clump of blue speedwell by the mouldering roots or to peck for ants on the flaking bark, but Hild thought he just liked to know what was going on.