Hild: A Novel (44 page)

A great cloud of birds rose violently from the wood tangling the low hills just to the north of their path. Cygnet pointed her ears, and Hild suddenly, fiercely, wanted to know what hawk they rose from, and what land lay beneath them.

Morud followed her gaze skyward. “It’ll be raining again by the time we get to Caer Loid.”

“Yes. But we’re not going to Caer Loid.” She pointed at the swirling birds—rooks, jays rising like smoke, and a puff of finches, catching the brief sunlight and gleaming like seeds flung from a thresher’s basket—and laughed. “We’re going there!” She kicked Cygnet into a gallop and after a moment she heard Cian galloping after her, and Morud running, and they were all laughing.

At the trees she slowed to a canter and bent low to Cygnet’s neck. Oak, ash, hawthorn, wild cherry, all growing in a tangle. Then a hornbeam, twisting low across a beck, and Hild kicked Cygnet lightly and lifted up, over, down, and on. Cygnet’s hooves drummed fast and steady, like Hild’s heart.

The drumming softened—the ground grew wet—and they burst into a little valley by a pollarded oak, thick and gnarled, and Hild reined Cygnet in. She walked her slowly around the oak while she blew.

It was an ancient pollard, as old as anything Hild had seen. As old as the one tree that connected the fates of the three realms. It reeked of wyrd. Her wyrd.

She looked north along a winding system of beck and bog and pond. Now that she was looking, she saw the thick, even growth of old willow coppice and what might, under the moss and fern, have been the straight edge of a deliberate channel at an angle to the beck.

Cian’s gelding trotted from the trees, Morud loping comfortably beside him.

“I’ll bet that was once a millrace,” she said, pointing. Someone’s home, once.

“Here?” Cian said. “Why? It’s a bog.”

“It wasn’t always,” said Morud. “Or so they say.” Hild gestured for him to go on. “They say that in the long ago, before even Coel Hen was king, when the redcrests owned the valley, it rained in the summers, it rained in the autumn, it rained through the winter. And the people grumbled but it wasn’t their land to leave. There was nowhere to go that other redcrests didn’t own. And the water rose. The fields turned to bog and the sheep retreated up the hills. The hooves of kine rotted, but there was no field left to plough, so they killed the kine. Ducks took the place of sheep, and heron the hawk. Then the redcrests left, and so did the people, looking for a place less wet.”

“Those birds weren’t rising from a heron. And look.” Hild pointed at the oak, where fern grew all about its roots. “And there.” She pointed along the banks of the beck, east and west, where saplings and nettles grew close to the water—“And up there”—to a pond, what perhaps had been a millmere. “The water is leaving.”

Cian slid from the saddle. His feet squelched. “There’s a lot still here.” His Anglisc sounded alien alongside the rush and runnel of the beck.

“It’s the rainiest season for years.”

“It’s a bog.”

The sun poured sudden and beechnut yellow into the valley. Spiderwebs glistened. A fish plopped. She knew there would be crayfish and frogs, newts and loach, mallards in the spring, and heron and kingfisher, and, on the hills north of the wooded mene, hare and hawk. To the south, a ridge ran alongside a crooked arm of the beck, and she imagined standing there, peregrines tilting on the wind overhead. She imagined standing there last month, swifts pouring overhead on their way south to the sun, and then in May, when they returned. She wanted to see the beck in spring, the frogs’ eggs grow tails, then legs, then leap onto the bank. She wanted to see the acorns grow as well as fall, wanted to see the pigs get fat, wanted it all, wanted it here.

“It’s beautiful,” said Hild, “and I will have it.”

*   *   *

At Caer Loid the weather turned dry and crisp and the farmers began to arrive for the king’s feast. A man and two sons, all with spears, the man with a sturdy linden shield and a seax with a worked-leather sheath. Ceadwulf and two ceorls, with his wife, Saxfryth, wearing Hild’s ring, and their son. From the steading Hild had warned to hide their priest, four men—one shorter and slighter than the others—all carrying spears. Two brothers armed with axes, with the kind of finger rings and cloak brooches unlikely to have been earned through farming.

Coelfrith, back only two days earlier, was kept busy every moment the sun shone. He would have preferred Pyr to handle the new arrivals but Pyr was half wealh, and who knew what the prideful newcomers might take as an insult, so he put Pyr in charge of the hunting parties and other provisioning details, and toured the growing encampment, listening. This farmer wanted a space in the bend of the river, but his neighbour had taken it—his neighbour who owed him a ram and hadn’t paid. That red-faced man pointed to a bruised boy: This starveling wealh had stolen two loaves and what were they to eat now? What was the king going to do about that? And many, many demanded to speak to the king: It was why they were here; it was their right.

Hild walked with Coelfrith, watching, learning, sometimes staying for a quiet word, sometimes sending Morud—who seemed to have attached himself to her—back with a message for the farmer to come to her wagon later. She conferred with Coelfrith over which man might be invited to break bread with the king; which might be best seen with others in a group; which to be ignored. And everywhere, the Crow’s priests, accompanied by Osric’s men, questioned the farmers, taking the information to the Crow and Stephanus, who wrote and wrote and wrote.

At night, Cian took a keg of ale, and Eadric or another hound, to the fires of the new arrivals and compared weapons, and drank and boasted and learnt things that Hild might not. Hild herself, accompanied by Gwladus, talked to Lweriadd; to Morud’s wary sister, Sintiadd; to Saxfryth. She left them ale or cheese. Occasionally they gave her a cloth full of elderberries or mushrooms or wildling apples.

In the morning, she and Cian broke bread in the cold clear sunlight, sitting on their little stools by the wagon.

Cian tore another chunk from his loaf and caught up more of the paste from the beautifully turned elm bowl on the table Gwladus had thought to bring with their stools.

“What is this? Is there more?”

“Just what you see. Saxfryth brought it for me, as a thank-you, she said. She wanted most particularly for the young gesith with the bold cloak to know that it was her recipe: the first puffballs sliced and fried in goose grease then chopped and packed in butter. When I tell her you liked it she’ll want you to visit, and she’ll push out her chest like a pouter pigeon and twirl her new ring so it gleams in the firelight, and tell you how very tall you are, how long your sword, and so very sharp!”

Gwladus, bringing more bread and a pot of honey, snorted.

They ate steadily. “There’s two bandits in from the Whinmoor,” he said.

“The ones with the axes?”

“The same. I told Coelfrith. He says it’s the king’s order to leave every man his weapon until the feast tonight.”

Hild wondered who would be the unlucky gesith honoured with the duty of standing watch over the blades away from all the drinking and boasting.

“I saw a sword that might have come over with your forefathers: a hilt looking like cheese squeezed in a man’s fist.” Hild knew what he meant; she’d seen swords like that hanging in the firelight, brought down when the scop sang of times past: a ridged hilt, sometimes bound with wire, always with a name and a list of dead kings to its credit.

“I saw a Loid with an inlaid spear today,” she said. “A dot and a cross on the blade.” Ceredig’s mark.

Cian looked up from his bread and honey. “A king’s man?”

“His son, maybe. If you want to ask him, he’s with the Anglisc of that rich steading west of Saxfryth’s. They’re camped south of the orchard—or what was the orchard.”

At the noon meal, Hild saw Cian sitting with the Loid at a fire of fragrant applewood stumps, listening, nodding, whittling away at his root, while the man mimed thrusting and slamming with his shield. Behind them, slave wealh watched over by Osric’s men worked on the king’s new hall.

*   *   *

Tenscore men and not a few women settled down under a moon bright and white as polished chalk. The air was still and sharp, the river slow. Bonfires roared between the people and the wood, driving the dark back, keeping the wights under the trees.

They had listened to the scop’s stirring songs of hearth and hall, gold and honour, and the fate of man. They had drunk jar after jar of spiced ale, and eaten the oxen that had pulled their wagons from Goodmanham. The first beef most of them had eaten in years. Good red meat that made them feel like heroes.

The king rose, gleaming with gold, and to many of the men there—full of more beer and food, aye, and better, than they’d had in an age—he seemed a song made flesh, a hero of old, a king worth listening to. And while the king’s men passed among the crowd with mead—mead! the drink of warriors!—the scop declaimed the king’s lineage: Edwin the son of Ælla, the son of Yffi, the son of Wuscfrea, the son of Wilgisl, the son of Westerfalca, the son of Sæfugl, the son of Sæbald, the son of Segegeat, the son of Swebdæg, the son of Sigegar, the son of Wædæg, the son of Woden. A son of kings, and he stood among them like an equal. The scent of mead made them glad. Their hearts beat high.

Edwin said in a great voice, “I have never lost a battle. I have two strong sons, with many more to come. Kings—Briton, Saxon, Angle—bend the knee before me. Like the men of Lindsey, you may now look to me as lord. I swear to keep your larders full, your pasture free from marauding Mercians, your fields unburnt by the savage men of Gwynedd. I stand between you and harm. To you I extend the cloak of the king’s justice, the king’s vengeance, the king’s protection. In return I ask no more than before. Indeed, I will ask less, no more than any man can bear. But you must give it, in full and with goodwill. And your neighbours will be responsible for you and you for your neighbours. Your tithe weights must be fair, your cloth fine, your kine healthy. Smell the mead, now, men of Elmet. It is a gift from your king. Will you take it?” He lifted his great jewelled cup, a cup, surely, like one a god might drink from. “Men of Elmet, will you drink with me? Will you swear your oath?”

With a roar like a host, they shouted
Yea!
and
Aye!
and
Edwin king!
They drank, and drank again, and the scop and his drummers and whistle men set up a merry tune.

*   *   *

The bonfires burnt low and men drew into groups around smaller fires. The gesiths had their own fires near the wagons, and many farmers were already sleeping, but perhaps half a hundred lingered, unwilling to end the night. Someone was plinking on an old lyre, playing the tune of a bawdy song that he kept getting wrong.

Hild sat with Gwladus, half asleep, wrapped in her cloak, half aware of murmured Anglisc on her right, British on her left. Cian was nearby, she thought, and Morud, but she was not sure where. She drifted, dreaming of the ridge over the valley, the beck, the pond. That pollarded oak at the head of the mene was hollow …

Gradually she became aware of a conversation, an Anglisc man saying, “‘I’ll ask less,’ he said. But that black-haired priest kept asking, ‘How
many
sheep? How
many
milch cows? How
many
pigs?’ The gleam in his eyes didn’t promise
less
.”

“He’ll keep us safe,” a younger voice said. “He said so.” Hild knew that kind of voice: a stripling, ready to run to war for glory and gold, the kind of voice that ended torn out on a muddy, bloody field. “You, wealh, bring me more ale.”

The sudden silence was as sharp as salt. Hild opened her eyes. The young Angle with the glory voice looked just as she’d imagined: unkempt blond hair, downy moustaches, flushed face, muscled like a young bullock. The man he faced was a little older, a hand’s-breadth shorter: the Loid who had carried the spear of a king’s man. But all weapons were under guard for the night, by order of the king, and farmers didn’t wear the jewels of a gesith, and the young Angle didn’t know that this Loid was his own man.

Two Angles got up and stood behind the Loid—farmers from the same steading. They had hands on their eating knives.

And then Cian was there, sheathing his whittling knife, squatting easy by the fire, smiling, beer jar swinging from one hand. The Anglisc gold at his throat and on his hands gleamed, the red checks of his bold Welsh cloak glowed.

He said, “Once upon a time, if there was such a time, an Anglisc farmer built his steading alongside a Loid. The Loid owned a hen, a fine hen, that laid one egg every morning as the sun came up. Every morning the Loid’s wife would carry the egg from the coop to the kitchen to break into his beer for breakfast. One day, she looked in the coop and there was no egg. But then she saw into the Angle’s garth and there was her foolish hen, sitting on her egg.”

“You said it was a fine hen,” called someone from the crowd.

“It was the finest hen that ever clucked, though being a hen, it was not very bright, and thought an egg was a great achievement no matter on whose land it was laid.” He took a pull of the ale. “So the wife fetched her husband, the Loid, and he began to step over the ditch to fetch the hen when the Angliscman steps out of his hall, sees the hen, and picks up the egg. The Loid shouted, ‘That’s my egg!’ but the Anglisc shouted back, ‘It was laid on my land!’

“They shouted at each other—for they’d not had breakfast and were testy—and finally the Loid said, ‘My people have a way of solving disputes,’ and the Anglisc said, ‘Good, then tell me what it is because I fancy this egg while it’s still warm.’ So the Loid said, ‘I kick you in the balls and count how many times I can sing the bread song before you manage to get back up. Then you kick me in the balls and see how long it takes me to get up. Whoever gets up quicker wins the egg.’

“The Anglisc, being brave and strong, agreed to this. So the Loid went to find his boots, his best boots, with the reinforced lace holes, and put them on, and hopped over the ditch. ‘Are you ready?’ he called, and the Anglisc stood with his feet wide and his jaw set, and the Loid ran at him like a cart horse and kicked the Anglisc as hard as he could in the balls. The Anglisc fell to the ground clutching himself, gasping then howling then cursing in agony, while the Loid sang the bread song a score and twice. Eventually the Anglisc stood up and said, ‘Now it’s my turn to kick you.’”