Hild: A Novel (55 page)

When Paulinus turned from the font to the crowd and raised both arms—his arms were very thin Hild saw, very dark against the cream and gold of his robes—time began to flow in its proper course. The Crow cried out in a great voice that they had put on Christ, they had risen with Christ, and they would share the glory of Christ. The air under the roof bulged with choir song and the crowd cheered. She was baptised to Christ—their name for the pattern, her path, her wyrd. She was still herself.

Uinniau smiled at her and winked.

*   *   *

The hall heaved. Every freeman and woman within miles, all wearing their best, squeezed behind long tables; Oeric sat in his white robe with two lesser priests of Woden—no, not priests, not anymore—and several gesiths. Every servingman and woman was pressed into service; even Gwladus, even Morud. The hall roared with conversation, and despite the raw weather, it was hot. The thick slippery scent of the oil on her hands, the chrism of olive and balsam, stuck in her throat. Hild wiped her hands surreptitiously on the board cloth, but it didn’t make much difference to the smell.

She ran her finger around the collar of her robe, as though it itched, but it was the gold chain around her neck she felt. It was thinner than she was used to, a woman’s chain but bearing a massive gold cross. The great garnets flanked by pearls running down the centre looked like the bloodied froth that flew back in ropes from the bit of a hard-driven horse and the chain cut into her neck. But she couldn’t take it off, and she couldn’t look uncomfortable in it; it was the Christ’s symbol and half the people were still wondering if she would vanish with a wail and a puff of smoke.

Begu reached over and lifted the cross as though admiring it. “Better?” She hefted it. “It must weigh half a pound. Not very practical though. That great big knuckle of a thing will catch on everything. Still.” She weighed it again admiringly. “You should hold it yourself every now and again. It looks pious, and it’ll save your neck until we can get you a thicker chain.” She let it go. “Go on.”

Hild cradled the cross in her right hand. Christian.

Begu lifted her own cross—silver gilt, from Breguswith—and leaned in to Hild. “What does the writing say?”

“‘In Christ’s hands.’”

“Sounds like the kind of thing you’d say before running into a burning byre. Not that I’d ever run into a burning byre. You’d have to be mad. But that’s what it sounds like. Are we really supposed to long for death and a seat at Christ’s right hand? Well, I’d be on the left. Maybe you’d be on the right. Christ might look at your seax and your bare arms and get confused.”

Hild smiled. Begu was still most definitely Begu. “I’m sure he’d sort it out. James says Christ is all-knowing and all-powerful. He could put me in both places at once if he wanted.”

“Or maybe all three, or, no, six! At the right and the left of the Father
and
the Son
and
the Holy Ghost. Though … a ghost…” She frowned. “What would a ghost look like in heaven?”

Hild tried to imagine a ghost sitting in the golden light of heaven. Ghosts grew from the thin grey mist of hollow hills, the damp and drizzle of dusk, the breath of the dead. They drifted and glimmered along boundary ditches on moonless nights …

“Are all the men of Rheged Christians?”

Hild blinked.

“Well?”

Hild followed her gaze to the other end of the king’s board, where Uinniau was seating himself after a toast to the king.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was so handsome?”

“I didn’t think of it. I didn’t notice.”

“Well, he’s noticing you.”

Uinniau was smiling in their direction and raising his cup. Hild raised her own.

“And people are noticing him noticing.” Begu nodded at Cian, at the second bench. “He used to scowl just like that when his ma first cast her lot with Fa.” Begu giggled at her foster-brother and stuck out her tongue.

The world sharpened suddenly, as brilliant and bright as when she got rain in her eye. She saw everything: a lick of Cian’s hair curled in front of his right ear; Breguswith sitting with her back to Osric, talking instead to the queen; the queen— “The queen’s breasts are bound.”

“Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? She’s given Eanflæd to nurse. Now that the king’s baptised, she’ll get to work giving him a son. Or maybe she already has. He’s certainly looking pleased with himself.”

Edwin was leaning back, chin on one hand, smiling, eyes half lidded, listening to Osfrith and Clotrude exchange some witticism. It was a look Hild recognised: a cat watching a stunned mouse, in no hurry to kill. Who was his smile for?

“Ah, now, you’ve smeared mint sauce on your sleeve,” Begu said. “Never mind, we’ll have to dye everything anyway if they’re to be of any use. What a waste and fuss for a bit of water and a few words. Though at least we didn’t have to blunder about in a muddy river. Oh, oh, he’s looking at me.” She tucked her braid behind her ear, untucked it, and turned carrot red.

Hild was on her feet before her thoughts caught up with her body and she realised Begu meant Uinniau.
Uinniau
was looking. Not the king. The king barely knew Begu existed.

The air in her lungs evaporated in a puff that she turned to a laugh, and she sat down. Breathed. Smiled.

Begu glared at her. “It’s not funny.”

She smoothed Begu’s hair. Her hand trembled. “Sshh, sshh. Your hair is fine. You look lovely. White is a good colour for you. You look like … like apple blossom.”

Begu allowed herself to be offered a morsel of lamb. Hild smiled some more and breathed. Behind her smile, her thoughts whirred like a pole lathe, back and forth, shaving away the layers. As she let Morud refill her cup, as she commented on the food, as she chatted about the best way to dye already woven cloth, she studied the table.

Paulinus was standing by a torch-lit pillar with Stephanus, who had arrived the day before from Elmet, almost unnoticed in the press of representatives from neighbouring kingdoms. Hild thought she’d even spotted a man from Craven, though not Dunod himself. For once, Stephanus was not taking notes. For once, Paulinus had drunk more than a single cup of wine: Edwin’s baptism was the beginning of his triumph. And Edwin still needed him. So, the king’s smile was not for Paulinus.

Her mother was still talking to the queen, who listened intently. Hild couldn’t think of any reason why Edwin would go for her now. Not her mother.

Next to her mother, Oswine stabbed sullenly at his trencher with his eating knife. But he was an unimportant piece in the game. Osthryth, with her white robe and pointy teeth, looked more like an ermine than ever. She was even less important than her brother, unless Edwin needed to appease some king with a marriage.

No. Edwin didn’t need to appease anyone today. He was baptised. His plans were in place.

Next to Oswine, Osric sat like a bulldog in a white robe. His little brown eyes alternately tracked Breguswith—she was ignoring him steadfastly—and the king. The king, pretending to be unaware of his kinsman’s regard, gestured to Coelfrith, said something in his ear, and leaned back again. Coelfrith left the table quietly. Osric watched him, watched the reeve’s nod to the scop on the way out, and the scop’s answering nod, and straightened. His shoulders went back—the hound waiting to be tossed the heart of the kill. Hild caught the glint of Edwin’s teeth before he hid his widening smile with a forced yawn and covered both with his hand.

Osric.

Now the pattern was clear: her mother, not staying with Osric at Arbeia; her mother, ignoring him now; her mother, getting baptised early, growing close to the queen, reweaving Onnen into her plans. Her mother, changing sides, so gradually, so carefully that even Hild hadn’t noticed. She had understood, long before Hild, that Edwin was ready to topple his cousin.

At the doorway, Coelfrith, carrying a three-legged table and followed by two of his men—one carrying something brick-shaped, wrapped in closely woven embroidered linen, another with a long, finely carved birch box—made a brief eddy as he entered.

Osric stroked his moustaches with that pleased look men wear when they expect acclaim. Edwin stood.

The scop played a dramatic chord.

Edwin took his time catching the gaze of all his people: the beady black of the Crow, Uinniau’s open hazel, Breguswith’s bright, bright blue, Coifi’s clay brown, the æthelings’ blue-grey, the black-brown of Osthryth and Oswine and Osric.

Edwin, king of Deira and Bernicia, of all Northumbria, overking of the Angles, lord of the north, and most powerful man on the isle, smiled and raised his cup to Osric, who inclined his head and swelled with pleasure. Edwin gestured for him to stand.

This was how it would be for her, she realised, when Edwin king decided he no longer needed a seer. She would stand, plump and fed and brushed like a sacrificial cow, with gilded horns and a ribbon around her neck, too stupid to know she was being led to slaughter.

Edwin poured the white mead with his own hand and held out the cup to Osric.

Hild wanted to throw bread at his head.
Think! It should be poured by the queen!
But the queen watched impassively, and Hild kept her face and hands still. Osric took the cup.

“Our kingdom is growing. We are strong. Yet we need strong men on our right hand to guide the farmers of our borderlands, strong men to crush the vermin who whisper of other kings in other lands, to smash those who skulk like stray dogs in search of the weak and yap at their betters from behind trees.”

The scop must have come up with that.

“My counsellors and wise men say to me: Lord King, the Christ might now be on our side, but the priests tell us their god, our god, helps those who help themselves. And they say, ‘Lord King, our people need a strong man to look up to. It is time,’ they tell me, ‘to appoint ealdormen, to seat men as princes. Known men, trusted men. Strong men. Kinsmen. Men to protect the people and command the respect of all.’” He smiled at Osric over the rim of his cup. “They said this to me at Yule, and I said, ‘Be patient.’ They said this to me again, yesternight, and I said, ‘But tell me what kinsman will be willing to leave his fine and comfortable house to take up this burden? Who will fight in the king’s name to bring fallow land under the plough, to open dark forests to the light?’”

Around the hall men were nodding. They saw, they thought they saw, where the king was heading. Elmet, they whispered to their less sharp neighbours, the king will give his cousin Elmet.

But she knew her uncle. And the fruits of Elmet did not sit in long birch boxes or heavy brick shapes.

“‘Who?’ I asked them. ‘You have sons,’ they said—”

Osric paled.

“—but: ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have other plans for my sons. And I know just the man I need.’”

Osric flushed.

Edwin’s smile widened. So many teeth. “And so, Lord Osric, kinsman, are you willing to leave the lands known to your kith and kin since time out of mind to take up this honour on behalf of your king?”

“Cousin,” Osric said. “My king.” His voice shook with sincerity: ealdorman of Elmet! More or less a king. He would give anything. “I am willing.” His men drummed on the board.

“Then, Lord Osric, Osric Yffing…” The hall breathed, one great lung, in and out, in and out. This would be something to tell their grandchildren: They were there when the Kingdom of Elmet became part of Northumbria forever. The scops would sing of this. “I name you Lord and Ealdorman of Craven.”

Hild wondered how the scop would sing of the two smiles. The king’s spreading like melting lard in a pan, wider and wider. The ealdorman’s widening, jerking, spreading tremulously, wiped out, gone. Even his lips went pale.

She imagined the roaring in his ears.

“… yesterday of Dunod’s death … our shield against the treachery of the men of the north … friendship with the loyal men of Rheged as reaffirmed by Prince Uinniau…”

His legs would be shaking, the world turning black at its edges, but he had to stay upright. His eyes seemed even smaller than before, confused, like a badger driven from its sett and facing a ring of torches.

Then Æthelburh was standing by her husband, and Coelfrith placed the small oak table, carved and inlaid with Edwin’s boar’s-head blazon in red gold, before the king and queen. Coelfrith’s men laid the small covered brick and the long box on the boar’s head. Coelfrith lifted the embroidered cloth to reveal a pig of iron, spotted with rust, despite the glistening grease. Hild could smell it from where she stood: raw iron, the smell of delving and hammering and stoking. He lifted the lid on the birch box: a whole salmon, dried and smoked. The smells of autumn: rust and smoke and hunger. Autumn and the ending of Osric’s hopes.

“Priest,” Edwin said, and Coifi jerked and swayed but did not, quite, step forward. Paulinus did. He lifted the embroidered cloth in both hands and waited. Osric stumbled out from behind his bench to take the oath he could not refuse.

Paulinus put Osric’s right hand on the box. Edwin and Æthelburh laid theirs on top, and the Crow draped the cloth over all.

Paulinus spoke for a long time: of sacred trust; loyalty to the king, beloved of Christ; of the people of Craven. Long enough for Osric to begin to understand what he had been tricked into. The king was taking his house, his family’s house. Edwin the Deceiver was sending him, loyal subject and kinsman, once-and-no-more ætheling of Deira, to the godforsaken wilds of Craven, land of leaping salmon and the stink of pig iron. A land jammed up against the base of the western mountain spine, full of streams rushing down ironstone hills, full of shivering birch and shaking wealh, a land so worthless that no one had bothered to take it away from Dunod.

Long enough, too, for Coifi’s face to mirror his sudden, bitter understanding of his new place: no longer chief priest of the chief god but a simple man without a sword. A man with nothing.

*   *   *

Uinniau hung upside down from the low limb of an apple tree, laughing up at Hild. It was the only apple tree inside the new wooden walls around what would be the w
ī
c on the west side of the big river.