Hild: A Novel (59 page)

*   *   *

Hild began to look, for Begu. She began to look through Begu’s eyes. When she sat at the board, she noted where Begu’s gaze lingered, what made her breath catch, her eyes cut sideways, or her hand pause halfway to her mouth. As the days warmed, and men stripped to the waist to wrestle, women cast off their sleeves and wore lighter cloth. Hild learnt to notice her gemæcce’s nipples stiffen and push out the front of her dress when the gesiths wrestled, the way she shifted on the bench and demanded food from a passing wealh, or beer: something to mask how often she swallowed, how her eyes fixed on the men’s hands grabbing a thigh, wrapping arms around another’s waist, or slapping each other’s arses when they stood.

She began to anticipate what might provoke Begu’s flush and swallow: the roll of long muscle under sheened skin, the tightening and hardening of a tendon at the back of a man’s knee as he strained against a hold, the glisten of a red mouth at the lip of a drinking horn, the interesting roll and jostle in a man’s hose when he scratched at himself.

And now, at night, after Begu jerked and shivered and fell asleep, it was Hild’s turn. Her restlessness receded.

Begu’s did not.

Hild told Oeric to watch for likely men for their household. “Strong men,” she said. “And young.”

“Strong, lady?”

“Strong. And clean. With sweet breath. Men who laugh.”

“Gwladus will know,” he said.

*   *   *

The old bird cherry was still alive, though one limb was bare and dead. Cian leaned against the mossy boulder by the little pool and Hild, barefoot and with her underdress still kilted up after fighting, lay on her stomach stroking the still water, sending rolls of ripples this way and that. A water spider slipped and slid then climbed a leaf and waved its front legs in her direction. Hild rested her hand on the surface, pressing slightly as it rocked. It was like resting her hand on Begu’s stomach: soft, elastic, delicate, fascinating. She slid her hand in to the wrist. In. Out. Her arm broke and magically healed, broke and healed. Cian smiled, and she knew he was remembering the magic stick, the tooth.

Butterflies flitted around the bird cherry, white among the almond-scented white blossom.

“I think there are more flowers than last year,” he said. “Perhaps it will bloom forever.”

“It belongs here. Like us.”

It felt like a moment out of time, endless. The grass was pleasantly prickly against her thighs and arms. She stretched, wriggled, laughed: happy.

He shifted slightly and turned away, and Hild became aware that she wore only an underdress, kilted tight between her legs. She sat up.

He picked up a fallen twig, studied the dark oval leaves.

“Cian.” He stilled but didn’t look at her. “Would you go to Rheged? If the queen wanted you to?”

“Rheged? Why? I’m sworn to the king.”

“If he asked you.”

“He’s my lord. But by choice … There’s no glory in Rheged.” Now he looked at her.

“No, I’ve seen no visions of glory, no songs of war and blood and gold. But if the queen mentions Rheged or the princess Rhianmelldt, who is quite mad, tell me.”

“Why would she?”

She shook her head.

He threw the twig at her. She batted it out of the air. “Why would she?”

She scooped water at him. He jerked back, banged his elbow on the boulder, swore. She jumped up, legs flexed.

He stared. “Your legs are strong,” he said eventually. “You should learn to wrestle.”

She looked down at her thighs, paler than her arms, paler than his.

He swallowed. “I could teach you,” he said, and his voice was tighter than it had been, rougher. Her skin tightened and shivered, like a horse when a fly lands on its withers.

“Let’s run,” she said, and did, not caring what branches tore at her, just running, running, running.

*   *   *

Cian and the other gesiths left for York two days later with the king. Edwin was eager to oversee the first season’s trading at his w
ī
c. He wanted Hild and her mother to stay at Goodmanham to oversee the making of cloth for that trade. Paulinus and Stephanus were with the East Angles at Rendlesham: Paulinus to baptise young Eorpwald and appoint an underbishop before Justus could, and Stephanus to negotiate with Eorpwald’s steward over the Frankish trade. Hild considered suggesting to Stephanus that he invite Hereswith to add her voice. She might have if it had been Osfrith, but Osfrith was in Arbeia, consolidating the north trade, pulling it east along the river valley to starve the route down the west sea coast through Gwynedd. Tightening the great weave. Besides, he didn’t want to leave Clotrude, who, by all accounts, was as big as a hut.

The queen spent half a week in Goodmanham talking to Breguswith and then took her nurse and little Eanflæd and followed the king to York. The cloth trade was important but getting a son by the king mattered more.

With none to gainsay her, Breguswith ran Goodmanham with a rod of iron: Her weaving sword was always in her hand, and she was free with the flat of it if any man or woman didn’t hurry to obey. Without anyone to please, she no longer bent and swayed. No longer willow but oak.

Hild had helped work out how the new wool trade would run, but even she was astonished at its efficiency. Sheep sheared in every royal vill, from the Tine valley to Pickering to the wolds to Elmet. Fleece sorted and sent by grade to rows of huts in Aberford, or Flexburg by the Humber, or Derventio. Armies of women to separate out the staples, to mix soapwort, urine, and pennyroyal to wash out the grease. Children to lay the washed wool in the sun to dry, to watch and turn it and to drive off the birds who liked to steal it. Men to barrel and cart oil and grease to the vills to make the fibre more manageable for the first finger-combing and sorting. Smiths hammering out double-rowed combs and woodworkers shaping wooden handles, for women to comb out wool in the new way, the better way, a comb in each hand. Carpenters to build the stools and tables. Bakers to bake the bread so the wool workers could work. Lathe workers to turn the spindles and distaffs—the long and the short—and, everywhere, women and men making spindle whorls and loom weights of clay and lead and stone, of every shape and size and heft.

It was a constant, endless river of work just to make the clothes for a household—cloaks and tunics, shirts and hose, veils and dresses and underdresses and hoods and caps—in addition to blankets, wall hangings, bandages, sacks, saddle cloths, wipes, shrouds, breech cloths. And now Breguswith wanted enough fine wool—the very best, silky, long-fibred wool—to weave cloaks of the size, quality, and quantity to trade for precious goods from the Franks: jessamine, myrrh, poppy paste, garnets, gold, walnut and olive oil, silk. Coelfrith’s men were even now talking to the Franks and Frisians at York, agreeing on colours, sizes, seasons; spitting and shaking hands.

More sheep sheared. More wool spun. More yarn dyed. More cloth woven. More cloth cut and sewn and embroidered. More weld cultivated and vats built. More wood cut and burnt. More, more, more.

The days grew longer, the nights warmer. The barley began to turn gold.

Breguswith was everywhere, touching everything, assessing, organising, nudging, anticipating. She had noted with Hild that this year at Goodmanham the fleece was thick, and so she sent the undersmith to the fold where he set up a portable forge to heat and hammer and sharpen the shears every night. Yet the shearing rate was still too slow.

She took Hild with her, and they sat on the sunny hillside and watched the shearers sweat and struggle with the heavy fleeces, and the waiting sheep, penned too long, grow restless and kick, and refuse to keep still, which in turn made everything take twice as long.

Hild watched the flexing muscles of the strapping young women and men, streaming with sweat, and said, “Begu could help here. She’s good with animals. I’ve seen her keep a cow with a gashed udder calm.”

Her mother followed her gaze to one particular man with a curl to his rich brown hair and a light in his eyes. After a moment she nodded. “But find out his name and his family.”

Hild did: Berenic. Two sisters, a mother, an aunt, no wife, no children. Even-tempered and kind, though with a fondness for beer.

So then Begu spent her days at the fold. Soon after that Oeric was riding with messages to Aberford and Derventio, and Morud was drafted to fetch and carry for the household, to groom a horse, or cut wood, or help dig another pit.

“At least you’ve left me Gwladus,” she said to her mother, who smiled tiredly and said, “Not for long.”

And, indeed, when it was time to pull weeds from the barley fields, Hild told her bodywoman she would have to help somewhere. “The dairy,” Gwladus said. And Hild smiled. Of course: cool, easy on the hands, access to food.

With the king, queen, reeve, and scop at York, along with Cian and the other gesiths, the hall was quiet, talk more a tired murmur than a thing of fire and song and boast.

One night, as they sat outside, lit and warmed by the setting sun, and ate pottage and drank week-old beer, everyone looked worn and dusty but content. Happy, even.

Hild leaned back on her bench and refilled her cup. Gwladus would have done it, but Gwladus was refilling her own bowl with the stew of barley and greens and slivers of mutton. Conversation hummed around her, someone laughed, but gently.

Happy, she thought again, though it was more than that. They weren’t afraid. No drunken fighting and boasting. No gesiths pulling wealh onto their laps or persuading the dogs to fight. No thundering horses or sudden deadly silence as the king smiled that smile at someone. No Woden priests with their omens or Christ priests frowning and chastising. She’d even seen her mother deigning to talk to Gwladus. Was this what it was to live an ordinary life? Orderly, peaceful, calm. Work, yes, endless as rain, but also warmth and plenty and safety.

Even Mulstanton hadn’t been like this. There she had been worrying about Bebbanburg, about her mother and Hereswith, about what might happen.

But here she was, and this was how it would be for the whole summer. Four months. More. In one place, with no one watching her.

*   *   *

The first night Begu didn’t return from the fold, Hild didn’t quite sleep—just planed over the surface of sleep and missed her. Twice, Gwladus brought her milk. The second time she rearranged the pillows, and took Begu’s away.

The world turned, ripened, grew hotter and heavier. The days lengthened and stretched, thinning at each end to a kind of timeless blue twilight in which nightjars churred and moths fluttered.

Hild slept less and less. She fell into a waking dream and on clear nights walked for miles on the wold and in the woods.

The woods were thick with sound: hedgepigs and badgers in the understorey, the swoop of a bat and yip of a fox, the splash of an otter sliding into the water, the hoot of an owl. An endless song of life around her, eating, crying, dying, breathing, breeding.

She began to feel her own rhythm. Between her bleeding days, at the waxing of the moon, her senses opened like a night lily. For two nights she would feel the ruffle of the air against her face when a bat took a moth, taste the sweet sting of honey in the air near a full hive. Just by smell she knew when Breguswith had washed her hair, when Gwladus had walked through the byre, when Morud had stolen a loaf of fresh bread. Her skin felt denser, more alive, her bones stronger, her belly heavy.

She felt her mother and Gwladus watching her, just as everyone else watched the fields, watching the barley turn gold, the heads bend, the whiskers touch the dirt.

*   *   *

On the night before the harvest, Hild lay naked by the pool. In the moonlight the grass looked like straw, each stem sharp and distinct. She could smell herself: rich, sleek, ready. She put her arms behind her head, watched a stoat creep headfirst like a squirrel down the cherry tree. Then it leapt, and a sudden furious struggle erupted by the hollow alder. The ferns shook. Something ran away, squeaking.

“Soon,” she told the stoat. “Soon.”

*   *   *

She returned to the vill with the sun, sleeves neatly pinned and girdle tied, to find everyone awake and fed and binding their hair in cloth, preparing for the field work of harvest. A boy tootled on a pipe, and a woman banged her hand drum once, twice, ready to beat out a rhythm. Hild joined her mother at the head of the procession of people and hand carts full of food and sickles.

“No,” Breguswith said. “Stay. Take charge.”

Hild had no idea what the handful of wealh left behind—a groom, a cook, the swineherd—might need of her, but she nodded. Perhaps her mother was expecting messages.

With a great drumming and piping and shrieking of children, the procession moved out. The sound receded slowly, and quiet settled over the vill.

Hild sat on the south bench, facing the sun, and listened. The caw of crows in the distance, following the people. A brief hiss of wind in the grass. A fluttering butterfly. This was what it would be like after a contagion, or if the king were dead, the people fled, the Idings on the march. She remembered the farmsteads of Elmet, the missing pigs, the doused fires. But then she heard the groom whistling from the byre, a snort and whicker as he mucked out a stall, and saw the blue smoke seeping from the kitchen eaves. Swallows swooped up under the eave and out again. Blue tits, robins, chaffinches began to sing. Hild leaned back, eyes half closed, listening. Her vill.

*   *   *

She woke from a dream of stoat, all long sinuous muscle. It was hot. Milk, that’s what she needed, a long cool drink of buttermilk.

She unpinned her sleeves as she walked—no one here but wealh—and tucked them in her girdle.

In the kitchen it was even hotter. The milk crock was not in its usual place.

“They took it to the field,” the cook said. “But there’s a bit of beer set by. Or there’ll be some in the dairy if they’ve made the butter.”

It was a relief to step into the dairy shed, to feel the black, hard-packed dirt under her bare feet.

She walked past the rows of clabbering pots, down a step and to the heavy door of the creamery.