Hild: A Novel (48 page)

“What does their opinion matter?” he said. “They aren’t baptised. If any want to test my lord King’s rumoured weakness, they’ll meet a wall as implacable as nightfall, bristling with half a thousand spears.”

The new tower began to rise again. The mason swore on his son’s head that the king would have it, aye, and a rebuilt east wall by Yule.

Yule, the queen said, would be the most magnificent ever seen in York. She had Bassus select men to accompany him on the hunt: venison, she said, and boar, swan and blackbird pie, enough to make the undercroft burst at the seams.

Meanwhile, she and James set about rehearsing music in hall, and once again the place was stripped of all its soft furnishings while the choir sang. The scop sulked. The queen laughed at him, and said she and the lady Breguswith were planning the most magnificent new tapestry for the east wall, to hang behind the king’s table, and he should make a song about that.

Breguswith looked to her store of herbs. Hild saw that these were heavy on the comfrey and garlic and other wound-care medicines but said nothing. The seas were now closed to trade, which meant Osric would come down from Arbeia for Yule. She’d winkle out her mother’s secrets soon enough. There could be no war in this weather. Meanwhile, she had secrets of her own.

She wrote a letter to Rhin and sent it with Morud. “If he’s not about, put it in the hollow oak and come back.”

Morud came back with a reply: Rhin had ten and seven men and women with him now, and six children, and had cleared two fields. The goats and pigs were doing well. The cold had not found its way to the mene wood. “And he says, lady, that he has dug out the millrace and found the old millstone, but thinks the building of a new mill to bear the weight of that stone might be beyond him.”

Morud watched her sort yarn but made no move to leave.

“What else?”

“It’s said that Stephanus”—he looked around for a place to spit, thought better of it—“Stephanus, on orders of the Crow, is now beating priests before driving them off.”

“What else?”

“I didn’t meet all of Rhin’s new men. My guess is one or two of them will be wearing hoods for a while.”

At least Rhin was being careful.

Later she walked to the west wall, listening absently to the birds: thrush, sparrow, winter wrens, and tits with song so high she could barely hear it, in the distance a quarrel between resident rooks and a flock of winter incomers. Beyond that the steady, reassuring roar of the rivers. Clouds slid by in layers of grey and white: no sun, but no rain, either. A good day.

The mason could advise her about the mill. A mill would be a fine thing, a steady source of income for her household in years to come. A hen for a sack of meal. A milch goat for three of flour. She had no idea how many farms were growing corn round about, though perhaps more would if there was a mill.

Paulinus was there, looming over the chief Frank: a hole in the light, a hole in life, next to the white-dusted mason. His mate was mixing mortar on a board with a paddle,
slush-scrape-slough
, pretending not to hear anything. Hild stepped quietly to one side of a pile of stone and elm timbers, out of sight, and watched Paulinus. Paulinus, beater of priests, spurner of beggars.

“No, my lord Bishop,” the Frank was saying. “I would, but I daren’t. You’ll have to find help for your church elsewhere. The king wants his wall by Christ Mass.”

“God looks kindly on those who help His servants.”

“Yes, my lord. And I would. But it’s the Anglisc king’s word.”

“The Anglisc Hel is a dark, cold hole, I’m told,” Paulinus said. He was thinner, if that was possible, formidable in his black robes, with the massive amethyst weighting his left hand. In the winter light, its purple glimmer was otherworldly. “But the hell you will go to if you thwart God’s will is not cold. You will burn. Have you ever watched a pig roast? First, the stink of singed hair. Then the eyes melt. The skin bubbles. The fat runs into the coals and the flames burn higher, higher, higher. Imagine if the pig, by some blessing or damnation, still breathed.”

The mason began to sweat.

“Imagine.”
Slush-scrape-slough
. “Breathing your own fat turned to smoke with lungs that sear and crackle. For eternity, mason. Eternity. Weigh that against a day, perhaps two, of advice for a new building dedicated to the greater glory of God, the God who saw us all safely through this terrible time.”

Hild stepped into the Crow’s line of sight. “A time your god didn’t see fit to warn you of,” she said.

His eyes glittered like jet. “My God has no truck with demons.”

Hild nodded at the mason to get back to work. He looked from one to the other, the bent Crow with the power of damnation and the young giant with the uncanny eyes and the ear of the king, and chose his mate and the mortar.

Hild met the Crow’s gaze. Beater of priests, spurner of beggars. He didn’t move, but the cross on his chest rose and fell, rose and fell.

*   *   *

In the stripped great hall Hild had barely finished telling the king about the Crow’s attempt to frighten the masons before Edwin turned to Coelfrith. “Bring the bishop. Now.” He glared at James the Deacon, who was about to launch his choir into another round of endless practice. James herded his boys out of the hall.

Edwin and Hild had nothing to say to each other. The king chewed at a callus on his thumb and Hild merely stood, still as a heron waiting for a fish.

Paulinus arrived, attended by two priests, and Edwin didn’t bother with courtesies.

“Bishop, this will stop. I’ve Penda and Cadwallon circling like wolves. I need men. I get men by showering them with gold. I need gold at hand, gold I’ll take from trade. For trade I need a w
ī
c. A safe w
ī
c. I need walls. I need towers on those walls. Until that stone is laid, my masons will do nothing else. Nothing. Do you understand?”

Paulinus focused his black eyes on Hild. “My lord, this is not a conversation for women.”

“She’s not a woman,” Edwin said with half-shuttered eyes. “She’s my seer.”

“Christ admits of no seers.”

Hild said, “He has prophets.”

Edwin waved her to silence. “Priest, you forget that this is my hall, and the Christ is not yet my god.”

Hild had heard that tone before. She still dreamt it:
We’ll eat the horse.
The Crow heard it, inclined his head, and backed up, step by step, until he reached the door, turned, and hurried away.

Edwin turned to Hild. “That man and his god are useful to me. Don’t annoy him unnecessarily.”

*   *   *

In the ash coppice, Cian and Hild fought in light rain. Hild’s legs were splashed with mud. Cian had a bruise swelling on his sword arm. She still hadn’t found a way to defeat his shield.

They talked in bursts as they swung and parried.

“Coifi’s offered the Crow use of his carpenters,” she said. “And some prime timber for the building of a new church.” On
church
, she lunged for his right knee.

He deflected her staff into the turf. “Seems only a month ago he was plotting to smother the Crow in his sleep.”

“I doubt the Crow sleeps.” She slipped slightly in the mud but distracted Cian with a low sweep at his ankles. He jumped back. They circled each other. “Coifi is a worm but he’s not stupid. Everyone knows the king will take baptism at Easter, and then what use will it be to be a high priest of Woden?”

“High priest of sheepherders and cheese-makers.”

*   *   *

Begu, hair already braided for bed, knelt on the bed behind Hild and combed her hair. “It feels like an age since I’ve done this.”

“Gwladus does a good job.”

“Not as good as me.”

Hild closed her eyes, enjoying the steady rhythmic tugging, the crackle of flame, the wool-and-weld smell of Begu, her chatter.

She talked of Wilnoð’s growing belly, Bassus’s foolish grin, the queen’s lessons about Christ—they were spending less time on letters than Hild, more on women’s things, the rhythm of blessings and baptism, of when a woman was deemed clean and when she had to avoid sacraments. So much to learn before Easter …

“… Eanflæd is eight months old now and chewing the queen to tatters. She’ll give her out to nurse soon enough. Not before time. The king needs a son.”

“The king has two,” Hild said, half asleep.

“A proper son, Wilnoð says, one born to a Christian marriage. You should come and see how we’re getting on with the tapestry. Your mother set up the weave. She was boasting of you today as we worked. The pattern-making mind of the world, she said.”

“Mmmn.”

“We miss you.”

“I’m right here.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I miss weaving with you, too.” And she did, a little.

“No, I don’t think you do. But it’s not your wyrd. I know that. Ha, here’s a knot Gwladus missed.”

*   *   *

Snow arrived two days before Yule, along with Osric, who brought with him a larger retinue than usual. Hild watched them dismounting, greeting king’s gesiths: the usual unsubtle testing and jeering. If they were to fight Edwin, Osric’s men knew nothing of it. No, the retinue was to impress the other thegns. He wanted Elmet. As she left the stables she had to stand aside for a herd of fat pigs being driven up Ermine Street and through the southeast gate. A gift from Stephanus in Elmet, the herder called to her when she asked. Coelfrith would be happy.

That evening she was brooding over Osric when Morud came to her with a gaunt man wearing nothing but grey rags tied together with twine.

“From the lea west of Caer Loid,” Morud said. Then, in British, “Tell the lady what you told me.”

The gaunt man looked at Hild sideways but didn’t dare speak. Morud elbowed him aside. “Aunt Lweriadd said they took our pannage. The Roman priests. ‘King’s pigs only in the king’s wood,’ they said. But without pigs what will we eat?”

Hild thought of Stephanus, well fed, writing his careful letters with columns of numbers for Paulinus. Osric would be an even more demanding master. She said, “You will go to my wood.” Her voice was harsh; the Loid cowered. She took a breath, said more softly, in British, “First, you will go to the kitchens and eat. Morud will take you.”

Fighting with Stephanus meant fighting with Paulinus, which Edwin had forbidden. But how many men could her mene wood support?

*   *   *

Hild walked with Æthelburh along the north bank of the great river, trailed by Bassus—much heftier than he had been, and wearing a new red cloak, Wilnoð’s work—and Oeric, with his wisp of beard, new war hat, and steel-ringed leather tunic.

“My husband keeps his plans for Elmet close,” the queen said. “But you know why he’s letting Paulinus drive the wealh priest from the countryside.”

“Spies, yes.”

“And for the friendship of the bishop of Rome. An alliance that was foretold before he was king.”

“Paulinus told me Christians don’t believe in prophecy.”

The queen kicked a little stone into the river. “Not in prophecy by women.”

They said nothing for a while.

“Perhaps I will give you a Yule gift,” the queen said. “Perhaps my husband will give me all those pigs and perhaps I will give them to you and you may herd them to your wood for slaughter.”

“Thank you.” Coelfrith would be unhappy, but she didn’t care.

Behind them the two men were talking about how to pad a war hat properly.

“Will there be war in spring?” Æthelburh said.

“No.” Cadwallon needed to consolidate his new kingdom. Penda was still reining in the West Saxons. “At least not here. Not in spring.”

16

B
EBBANBURG IN SOLMONATH
. A cruel month of blue sky and bitter wind. To the east: the sea, colder than a hægtes’s heart. To the west: fields under a blanket of snow, broken only by the tracks of the king’s messengers.

The king hated Bebbanburg, hated being perched on a hill of rock with its face to the north and flank to the sea. Sea food, he said, was for seals, and high places for wealh and eagles. He liked green rolling hills, gentle valleys, and wide river mouths, good Anglisc dirt under his boots. But no matter how many messengers he sent to ask, the north wall at York was not quite finished nor the west ditch redug, and the end of winter was when starving wolves made desperate forays. Bebbanburg, a fort within a fort on a lump of rock sticking up from a beach, was impregnable. The beach was top-and-tailed by rocks but for a sandy hithe overlooked by a fortified tower on the outer stockade—a massive timber box-parapet. The inner fort had one entrance, tunnelled out of the rock and raised in steps leading to the great gate of the inner stockade. This enclosed the halls, shrine, and well in an area as big as a good-size field. The outer wall protected enough wiry grass for a couple of goats and space enough for workshops and a byre.

Near the end of the month, the king declared they weren’t to call it Bebbanburg anymore. Bebba had been the first wife of Æthelfrith and he would no longer abide reminder of those nithing Idings. They would call it St
ā
nburg, because that was what it was, a fort on stone. Edwin was king; they called it St
ā
nburg. But among themselves the wealh went on calling it Din Guaïroï, as they had since the long ago, and the Anglisc, after a few days, forgot and called it variously Bebbanburg, which infuriated the king—who twice had to be persuaded by his counsellors not to kill a forgetful gesith—or Cwenburg, for Edwin’s dead wife, which irritated the queen.

Hild thought perhaps she and Begu were the only ones who liked the place.

Begu enjoyed the closeness. She didn’t mind the people-upon-kine crowding, she didn’t even mind the food: oysters and mussels, pork—salted pork, pork in goose grease, dried pork—and bread. She liked the gossip all day in the queen’s hall. She loved falling asleep to the sound of the sea.

Hild liked the songs and stories at night: the same songs she’d heard at this time of year every year, but different in hall and in the byre, in the huddled farmstead over the fields and in the overcrowded kitchens where the cook and the baker struggled to feed an overking’s household from a petty king’s fireplaces. During the day, she liked escaping on her own along the snow-dusted beaches and into the unbroken whiteness of the fields. Sometimes she rode Cygnet and sometimes she took Cian, but mostly she walked on her own.