Hild: A Novel (41 page)

“Spitting in Lintlaf’s mead, I expect.”

Lintlaf had returned from the West Saxon campaign with a fistful of gold and the news that he’d turned down an offer of Dyfneint land,
Because why would I want to live so far from all the action, with no one to talk to but wealh?
And when he pulled Gwladus onto his lap she had not resisted—she was a slave, what choice did she have?—but later Begu had seen her spit in the cup she filled for Lintlaf and hand it to him, smiling.

Hild went to find her mother. She told her of the wool.

Breguswith listened, nodding.

“You’re not surprised,” Hild said.

“They have no lord. No one to protect them or watch for them in bad times. So they protect themselves and hoard their best against the day, yet know they should send the king something so he’ll leave them alone. Meanwhile, he tells himself they’ll come to him of their own accord.” She smiled. “So let’s not worry the king with this just yet. Let’s wait for news from Gwynedd. Why take an unnecessary risk? No. Always approach kings with answers, not questions.”

In bed that night, Hild listened with half an ear while Begu wondered aloud if Wilnoð, the queen’s gemæcce, might be pregnant. “It would explain the handfasting to Bassus in such a hurry.”

Hild, still thinking about her mother, said, “Listen to everything the queen says.”

“You already told me that.”

“I mean it.”

“You didn’t mean it before?”

Hild closed her eyes. How did Begu always make simple things seem so slippery?

“I need information.”

“Why?”

“My mother is … She’s planning something. Making up a pattern to weave all the threads into, to tell a story. I want to know if it’s based on anything real. Listen carefully for anything about the north. Or the king’s sons. Please?”

Begu made an indistinct noise: She was falling asleep. She fell into sleep like a stone into a well. She always had, even in her little linden-wood bed in Mulstanton. There was no stopping her once she started to drop.

Hild talked anyway. Of Osric—he would be back from Arbeia at the mouth of the Tine once the harvest was in and the season’s last trade goods shipped—and how she wished her mother hadn’t taken his part. She didn’t understand why her mother was doing it. Their bodies didn’t lean towards each other the way Onnen’s and Mulstan’s did, or Lintlaf’s and Gwladus’s had. And Edwin didn’t trust him. It was just a matter of time. Then she wondered about Fursey: Was he in East Anglia with Hereswith yet? Would he like it there? She missed him—she missed the gleam of his wit, she missed his information. Where would she get information now? And Onnen: Had she had her baby? Was it a boy or a girl? Would it look like Onnen or Mulstan, or maybe Cian …

The moon rose. Begu snored gently.

*   *   *

In the weaving huts at Goodmanham the women worked in two sets of two. For days, the weather was perfect: steady sun and a light breeze from the northwest smelling of wildflowers and ripening corn. Hild, decent in veil band and girdle, strong hands disguised with rings, sometimes worked with her mother setting up loom patterns, but often with Begu and the queen and Wilnoð, relaxing in the back-and-forth of conversation about nothing in particular as they lifted the warps, shot the shuttle, and beat the weft. There were advantages to being ignored by the king.

Hild studied Wilnoð. She looked as plump as a winter wren. Begu was right.

The infant Eanflæd lay on her stomach on a striped cloth by Æthelburh’s feet, wriggling about, sometimes lifting herself onto her hands and being surprised by the late-afternoon sunlight slanting through the open roof door, sometimes stretching her hands in the direction of the hanging loom weights and cooing. Whenever Æthelburh or Wilnoð spoke, Eanflæd looked at them and beamed gummily. Her hair and eyelashes were fine and sooty, darker even than Æthelburh’s. Very like those of Cygnet, Hild’s mare.

Hild stood and stretched. Her fingertips brushed the thatch.

The queen said to Wilnoð, “Look at that. Like a young oak. I doubt even Bassus could reach so high.”

“Oh, he could. If he jumped.” They laughed at the very idea of red-cloaked Bassus so risking his dignity.

“Cian could,” Begu said. “I think.”

Perhaps Hild only imagined the queen and Wilnoð deliberately not looking at each other.

But then Begu was talking about Eanflæd—she’d be teething soon, no doubt, look how she was drooling, and she bet that Hild’s fine carnelian beads would never be safe again, the baby would always be wanting to stuff them in her mouth. From there they talked of the best smooth stones for a baby to gum—Æthelburh claimed to have had an agate circle to chew as a child, “The very colour of your eyes,” she told Hild—and what herbs worked best when the endless wailing and bleeding gums began. They had reached a discussion of fennel when Hild felt the vibration of hoofbeats, a horse ridden at speed. Then they all heard it, followed by the messenger’s shout: “
News for the king! News from Gwynedd!
”

*   *   *

The hall didn’t have the light of the weaving hut but it was too hot for torches. Edwin sat in his great chair, his gesiths ranged about him, Coelfrith at his right hand, and the tufa looming behind him in the shadow and half-light.

He was livid.

Hild glanced at the messenger, sitting on a bench out of the way, trying to eat while the scop pestered him with questions. She would have to wait her turn for news of Cian.

Everyone was there, waiting to hear Edwin’s pronouncement: the gesiths, James the Deacon, Coifi and one of his underpriests, a visiting emissary from Rheged, even dazed-looking Osfrith. On the women’s benches on the left side sat the queen and her ladies, including Breguswith and Begu, most giving a decent appearance of spinning.

Edwin stood.

“Am I not the overking of the Angles?” No one was foolish enough to speak. “It was a simple enough message. Acknowledge me overking and keep your miserable mountain fastness. Hard to misunderstand.” He looked around the assembly, settled on the emissary from Rheged. “Wouldn’t you say?”

The emissary, there only to deliver the news of the death of Rhoedd the Lesser, said carefully, “Perhaps Cadwallon king did not misunderstand, lord.”

“Don’t name that nithing king in my hall!” Edwin roared. “Soon he’ll be king of nothing! He will kneel at my feet in shackles and watch as I burn his hall and use his women and sell his children as slaves. I’ll hack off his limbs and stake them at the four corners of his land. I’ll salt his fields. I’ll tear out the tongues of those who speak his name. I spit on him!”

He spat on the rushes before him. One by one, every man in hall hawked and spat.

*   *   *

Hild refilled James the Deacon’s cup with Rhenish wine. “I imagine the bishop’s anger was almost as great as the king’s,” she said.
Worse
, the messenger had told her. He’d also told her that Cian had sent her a message: He had a bold new cloak from his kin. Hild had given the messenger a ring pulled from her thumb and tucked away the news to ponder later.

James nodded, sipped. “The letter was in Stephanus’s hand, of course, so it was smooth and bold as usual—a lovely hand that man has, lovely. If he sang half as well as he wrote … No, no. No more for me. Oh, very well, just a little.”

“So Paulinus was angry.”

“Incandescent. He said to make sure that by the time he got back every single wealh priest was to be gone from Goodmanham. Even that pathetic wisp up by the well.”

“The priest of Saint Elen?”

“Even so. And then we must rid the entire kingdom, he said. Rip them out, root and branch. All spies, he said. But I doubt most of them can even read, never mind write secret messages to a king they’ve never seen. And how I’m supposed to do it all in two days I don’t know.” He shook his head, setting his grey curls abounce. He pushed his cup aside with regret and tapped the brown-bound book on the bench. “Now. Where did we get to yesterday?”

“James, son of Zebedee and brother of John.”

James beamed. “Most beloved of Christ.”

“Yes,” Hild said. She liked hearing James’s stories. She liked his accent, hot and spicy as mulled wine. Even his Latin, when he spoke it: such a different Latin to Fursey’s.

“I visited his shrine you know. In Iberia. Gold, gold everywhere, studded with gems of every colour. More gems than stars in the sky. And, oh, the singing there. Like the angelic host. It makes me weep to think of it.”

She refilled his cup. “Did James like music?”

“Of course he liked music! He was the brother of the beloved of Christ! His soul was as fine as silk, and as pure. He lived in a country full of sun and wine and fine food. Until the wicked Herod Agrippa struck off his head with a sword. Is that all kings can think of, swords?”

Then he was off, talking of swords and how they should all be thrown in the sea, that life should be love and music, a heaven on earth of angels and sunshine, of wine flowing like water, and kings of ancient and settled lineage whose people were all happy, all obedient to their church, and of priests who tended their flock and didn’t worry about kings and armies and imaginary spies!

*   *   *

Gwladus caught her as she was leaving the deacon’s rooms. “Herself wants you to eat with her in hall.” She handed Hild a ring—a yellow stone, big and gaudy, though not as heavy as it looked—to replace the one the messenger now wore. Hild slid it onto her thumb. “Hold still,” Gwladus said. She adjusted Hild’s veil band. “Osric is back. With Oswine.”

Hild sighed.

“Shall I say I couldn’t find you?”

Hild shook her head. “Go find Begu. Tell her Cian’s safe and will be back the day after tomorrow.”

Gwladus nodded, and Hild knew the news that the men were returning in two days would be sold around the kitchen: a bannock cake here, a cup of milk there.

*   *   *

Hild sat with her mother and Osric and Oswine at a corner of the table. At the other end of the hall, gesiths sang something maudlin about hearth and hall. When Osric touched her mother’s hand, Hild kept her spine straight and her expression pleasant. It wouldn’t fool her mother but Osric wouldn’t know how much she longed to take her seax to his throat, to open it as she had opened that man’s forearm on the dock at Tinamutha. Instead, she twisted the new ring round and round, as any bored young maid might. It was slightly too big. It wasn’t nearly as fine as the one she’d given the messenger.

Oswine was paying more attention to the gesiths’ end of the hall, clearly longing to be one of them. Hild reminded herself to talk to him when no one might overhear.

“When is Eadfrith due back?” Osric said, not bothering to lower his voice: Grimhun, on the lyre, had clumsy hands, which only encouraged the other gesiths to sing louder to drown out the sour notes.

“Tomorrow,” Hild and her mother said together. They looked at each other.

“I had it from James, from Paulinus,” Hild said.

“From the queen herself,” said Breguswith.

“Then soon we’ll move on Elmet,” Osric said.

Hild and her mother nodded: of course. If Gwynedd and Mercia joined forces, Elmet would be the only buffer between the allied army and Northumbria, more important than ever. Edwin must secure it.

“He must garrison Elmet and name me as ealdorman.” Osric slapped the board with both hands. “And don’t even think about counselling me to more patience!” One or two gesiths glanced over. He leant forward. “I waited when he took Deira and Bernicia. I waited when he gave Lindsey to that soft-handed reeve. I’m Yffing. I have men, a strong son, healthy daughters. Elmet is mine by right. And I’m tired of waiting.”

Hild saw that he would not listen to her mother on this. So, clearly, did her mother: She did that thing women do that Hild didn’t yet understand. From one moment to the next her body turned pliant and soft: willow rather than oak.

“Yes, my lord, it should. And you should not wait. But overkings don’t take kindly to being pushed. So let me be the one. I have just the weight to tip the balance. That wool,” she said to Hild. She turned back to Osric. “Elmet shorted the wool tribute.”

It took him a moment—so slow!—but then he smiled. Short tribute was an insult. No king could ignore an insult. The smile widened his face and slitted his eyes, and with his sharp bright teeth glittering in the torchlight he looked less like a badger than a broad-headed stoat smelling the hens.

Breguswith smiled back and Hild was certain her mother pressed her knee to Osric’s under the board. “News best delivered by a woman who doesn’t stand to profit from it. Delivered to the queen, who will drop it in the king’s ear at the right moment. Be ready.”

*   *   *

But Elmet was not Lindsey, peopled by a rich trading nation of soft-handed merchants, and Edwin was a man of greater cunning and ambition than his cousin. He would gather Elmet to Northumbria with care, to hold for life: not only his but his heirs’, and theirs in turn. He would build a kingdom to last longer than song itself.

The moon waned and waxed and waned again, and the Winterfylleth moon was past the quarter when Coelfrith began to supervise the loading of the king’s wagons.

It was strange weather: a leaf turn earlier than anyone remembered followed by blue skies and biting cold. The leaves should have blazed in the sun, but they hung dully, like dead brown hands. Strangest of all was the wind. The wealh loading the wagons were chased by whippets of wind that blew one way then another, no rhyme or reason.

Wight weather, said the kitchen wealh. From the warm side of the kitchen doorway’s leather curtain, they watched the maid, sleeveless and with that staff she often had by her, lift her face just as a silent rush of shiny, black-edged clouds swarmed like silverfish across the sky. They shook their heads: The long-dead kings of Elmet and the Old North were stirring and planning mischief for Edwin Snakebeard.

Snakebeard knew it, agreed the baker and the cook—who stood, as befitted their rank, at the front, with a view of the goings-on. “For one thing,” said the baker, a man with thinning sandy hair and burns on his wiry forearms, “they’re yoking oxen—young oxen, mind—to the wagons for the trip out, but taking extra horses for the trip back. That means sacrifices. And he’s taking twoscore gesiths—but no women.” The maid didn’t count.