Hild: A Novel (60 page)

A woman whose name Hild didn’t know turned at the waft of warm air and was so startled to see Hild that her churning rhythm faltered.

Gwladus, underdress unpinned and hanging from her belt, was tilting a milk tray. Her bare skin gleamed. She saw Hild and nodded. As the tray tilted to the bottom right corner, she leaned forward and laid her right forearm across the lip. Muscles, small and busy as baby mice, swelled and stretched. Her breast, plumped against her biceps, was much paler than her arm, creamy, but not like the milk—creamy like the inside of a hazelnut.

Gwladus poured the thin greyish skim milk in an expert stream from the corner of the tray into a brown crock. Cream collected in a lake against her arm and breast. When the stream stopped she let the tray lie flat again. She straightened. Followed Hild’s gaze down to her cream-dabbed nipple, then looked back to Hild.

The churning paddle thumped up and down.

“I was thirsty,” Hild said.

Gwladus nodded at the woman churning butter. “Hwl will be done soon.” Then she lifted her forearm and licked along the bone.

Something inside Hild squeezed and dropped. Gwladus nodded at the empty churn in the corner.

“If you help, the butter’ll be done that much sooner. But you should hang your overdress and sleeves.”

Hild turned away, pulled her sleeves from her girdle, hung them by the apron on the wall, unfastened her girdle, hung that, pulled her dress over her head.

Heat. Slipping cream. Gleaming skin. Lift. Tilt. Pour.

Hwl’s thumping began to slow as her cream turned to butter.

Then the trays were empty. Hwl turned the butter out and began to shape it, squeezing out the last trickles of buttermilk.

Gwladus wiped her arm and breast with a cloth and repinned her underdress. Hwl ground salt. Hild listened to the gritty
crunch
and
thump
. Like a stoat eating a bird.

Then it was done. Gwladus brought them a dipper of buttermilk, passed it to Hild, who drank and drank again. It didn’t quench her thirst. She passed it to Gwladus.

Gwladus dipped and drank, wiped the flecks of butter from her chin with her forearm and said, without taking her eyes off Hild, “Hwl, the lady Hild needs to lie down. Pour some of that milk in a jar.”

She took Hild’s clothes from the peg and slung them over her shoulder. She took the jar of milk in one hand, opened the door with the other. “Come on, now, we’re letting the warmth in.”

The sun was high and fat. The air seemed perfectly still.

Gwladus put the flat of her hand on the small of Hild’s back, as you would a person who was old or ill, and Hild’s mind went white.

Gwladus guided her, opening doors, nodding cheerfully at the groom who was carrying a saddle from the byre, closing the door to Hild’s chambers, dropping the latch.

She draped Hild’s clothes on a stool, put the jar on the table by the bed, and said, “Sit.”

Hild sat on the bed. Gwladus knelt by her feet and unfastened the shoes and slipped them off. Then she stood and lifted off the cross on its chain, unfastened the shoulders of Hild’s underdress. It fell around her hips. “Stand.”

Hild stood. Gwladus whisked the underdress away, then her drawers, as she did every night.

But it wasn’t night.

“Lie down.”

“It’s not time.”

“Lady, it’s past time. And you’ll be better lying down.”

Hild lay on the bed. Gwladus sat by her hip.

“Have you ever kissed anyone? Boldcloak? Your gemæcce?”

Hild shook her head.

“Well, perhaps they were frightened of kissing the king’s seer. But I’m not. I know what you need.”

Gwladus smiled, that rich slow curve that blotted out everything but right here, right now, then leaned in and kissed her.

Her lips were soft. Like plums, like rain.

Gwladus put her hand on Hild’s thigh and stroked as though Hild were a restive horse: gently, firmly. Down the big muscles, up the long tight muscle on the inside. Not soothing but … She didn’t know what it was.

Stroking, stroking: down along the big muscle on the outside, up along the soft skin inside. Down. Up. Up more. “There,” Gwladus said, “there now.” And Hild wondering if this was how Cygnet felt to be encouraged for the jump. Her heart felt as big as a horse’s, her nostrils wide, her neck straining, but not quite wild, not quite yet. “There,” said Gwladus again, and ran her palm over Hild’s wiry hair to her belly. “Yes,” she said, and rested there, cupping the soft, rounded belly, and then moved down a little, and a little more, and her hand became the centre of Hild’s world. “Oh, yes, my dear.” She kissed Hild again, and Hild opened her legs.

It was nothing like when she did it for herself. It built like James’s music, like the thunder of a running herd, then burst out, like the sudden slide of cream, like a sleeve pulled inside out, and she wanted to laugh and shout and weep, but instead clutched at Gwladus as she juddered and shuddered and clenched.

Gwladus said, “There now. Better than buttermilk?”

Hild nodded, but couldn’t say anything. Soft, shocking echoes lapped at her bones and squeezed her insides. Gwladus kept stroking her belly and the echoes began to run into one another, like ripples on a pond, and then slowly calmed. She said, “I’m still thirsty,” and laughed for no reason.

*   *   *

Hild and Begu walked through the tall grass by the bend in the river. The moon was full and high. Hild held Begu’s hand, because Begu hadn’t been walking this path for years and at night the world was different. Smells, sounds, shapes loomed from the shadow and were gone, moonlight turned the shadows sharp and steep. It was a bleached world of bone and stone and tin where magic walked.

They came to the alders. One had fallen a year or two ago at an angle to the water. They sat, facing upstream. The water rippled and splashed. Something shook its feathers in the reeds and settled down.

“How are the sheep?”

“Still stupid.” Begu giggled.

“And the shepherd?”

Begu sighed, but Hild heard the smile in it. “He’s sweeter than the ram.” Another giggle, and the kick and scuff of her shoes on the bark. “And he takes longer over his business.”

“Why should he hurry? He has only one to tend.”

“And then, too, I tend him in return.”

“You do?”

Begu sighed again, this time so heavily that Hild felt the heave of her ribs. “It’s like watching a little lamb at suck. He goes all soft and dreamy. He cries, sometimes. And his stick and balls go all little. I can hold them in my hand, like a sleeping mouse.”

Hild wasn’t sure what to say to that. She watched the alders stir in a breeze that didn’t reach the ground, the black tracery of leaves shiver against the moon. She looked for the silhouette of the nightjar she knew lived in the trees but didn’t see it.

“If I hold them long enough, and kiss him on his ear or his neck, they stir again. It’s like watching a pea swell in water. Or a dog when it licks itself. It grows twice as big, three times.”

“How big?” A ram didn’t grow very big. A cat had nothing to speak of. A horse, though …

“As long as my hand?” They stared at her hand, silvery in the moonlight. “Yes, about that. And very thick.” She made a circle with her finger and thumb.

Something plopped in the water.

“I find I want to give him presents. Nothing much, nothing dangerous, your mother warned me about the disapproval of priests, though there aren’t any at the fold. But it’s best if no word reaches Rheged, just in case. But a present—something, a linen undershirt or a better hood. Something to wear against his skin when I’m gone.”

“We’re here another month at least.”

“But I might want to stop visiting the fold before then.”

“Stop?”

Begu shrugged: a strange, writhing movement in the moonlight, uncanny. After a while she said, “Gwladus has a new bracelet.”

Now it was Hild’s turn to scuffle her feet. “It’s not as heavy as it looks.” Another plop from the water. “She keeps talking about a new dress, too. Do you think that would be all right?”

“She’s always been above herself. It might be all right. As long as everyone gets better clothes.”

“You, too?”

“Me especially! And jewels, and new shoes. But mainly clothes. What better way to show the quality and worth of our cloth?”

They grinned at each other, teeth flashing like polished tin in the light.

Hild jumped off the log. “I’ll show you jewels. More beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen. Come on, it’s not far.”

At the river’s edge, the moonlight was brighter. Hild found the overhang where the fern and thung flowers and primroses grew, the stick of ash poking from the water. She pulled it out carefully.

It glistened with fish eggs, perfect as the most delicate pearls on the queen’s veil. They shimmered with moonlit glamour, droplets of dreams.

Hild slid the stick back in the water. They watched the river for a while.

The moon moved higher, drew itself tighter and brighter. Then there it was: true night. That moment when the world seems to stop and wait and the air both stills and quickens, thick with tree breath and the listening of small animals. Foxes were abroad now, and badgers, and uncanny things.

“That smell, it reminds me of something,” Begu said. “Beef tea. The way Guenmon makes it, with thyme and pepper.”

Hild opened her mouth, breathed through her nose, lifting her tongue and letting the air run across the roof of her mouth. At this time of night, anything was possible.

“You look like a slitty-eyed cat when you do that.”

“It tells me things.”

“What things?”

“I can smell … bats. Not here, but close.”

Begu sniffed, shook her head.

“Sharp, but musty. Like lye and old leather.” A moth fluttered over the reflection of the moon on the water. She spoke quietly in the still, scented air. “When bats are hunting, a moth will fold its wings and fall as though caught in a sudden frost. I’ve seen it. The moths fall down, lie on the turf like dead leaves, and when the bats have passed, they fly away again.”

They held hands. The river poured. The trees whispered. Hild thought she could already hear the difference in the leaves, stiffer than a month ago, though in the daylight the colour was just the same.

The air changed. Once again, it was just a beautiful night.

Begu stirred. “Oeric. He won’t be happy when he comes back and sees how it is.”

Hild shrugged.

“And then there’s Cian.”

Hild didn’t say anything.

“We’re like the moths,” Begu said. “The priests and Uinniau and Cian are like bats. When we go back to York, we’ll have to stop, lie down, for a while.”

*   *   *

The barley was in the barn, the wheat cut, the sheep back on the wolds. Wagons creaked away, laden with sacks of fleece, to Sancton, to Derventio, to Flexburg, to Aberford.

Begu came down from the fold. She slept in Hild’s bed again. She made sure she was not in the room in the afternoons. But she watched Gwladus carefully for a while. Gwladus behaved respectfully, and even Begu had to admit that Hild was better taken care of than ever.

Oeric returned.

When he reported to Hild and Begu on the mene wood, he stood stiff as a board and shot Hild wounded looks. Gwladus, who served them, was particularly careful to behave like a wealh slave in a room of wellborn Anglisc—Hild wondered how long that would last—but Oeric looked daggers until Hild nodded for her to leave.

When he had finished his report—the mene thrived, Loid and Anglisc were in accord—and had, in his turn, left, Begu said, “Was I that bad?”

“Not that bad.”

“At least Gwladus is acting well.”

And Gwladus was. In public, she never once overstepped her role. In private, the one time Hild had tried to give back, Gwladus had put her hand on Hild’s and stopped her. “No, lady.”

“But you let Lintlaf.”

Gwladus stilled, like a mouse under a cat’s paw. “Of course, lady. As it pleases you.” Her eyes stayed open, but she could have been dead. Even her skin felt different: lumpen as a flitch of bacon.

Hild stopped. “Why?”

Gwladus said nothing.

Hild felt as though she’d bitten an apple and swallowed, then seen half a worm in the white fruit. She sat up. “Pass my dress.”

While Gwladus dressed her, she stared at nothing, moving her arms when told, thinking. Gwladus had liked it, she was sure. She had felt Gwladus’s blood beating, heard her breath come faster, seen her nipples rise and pebble, smelt the sharp tang and glisten between her legs. So why?

That night she lay awake next to Begu. Berenic cried sometimes, Begu had said, and his eyes went soft. But Berenic was not a slave, and Berenic would stay on the wold.

The next afternoon, before she lay on the bed, Hild gave Gwladus a small purse of coins. She said, “I won’t do it again,” and later tried not to see Gwladus watching her when she came around her hand.

After that, some afternoons Hild stayed away from her room. But she always ended up going back.

*   *   *

The days were rich and fine and sweet. Most mornings Hild spent with her mother and Begu, tallying, discussing weaving patterns, trying the hand and drape of different cloths, trying cloak sizes. Begu had many good ideas about what people might like for next year. Hild could see ways to set up the pattern on the loom.

Hild walked the hills in the golden time before dusk, senses wide open but no longer restless. One evening she was moved to tears by the blaze of crimson, gold, and green of the wold, moving at the centre of a vast pattern that she knew she would never have the words to explain. The pattern watched over her from the face of every leaf and every tiny flower of furze. She felt sure and safe.

Word came from Arbeia: Clotrude and Osfrith had a fine, strong son and named him Yffi.

At the name, Hild, Breguswith, and Begu looked at one another. Yffi was a king’s name, an heir’s name. Æthelburh had better hurry.

King’s messengers came from York, but never with anything they most wanted to know. Nothing about who the king would choose for Rheged. Nothing of the w
ī
c. Nothing of Penda or Cwichelm or Cadwallon. Nothing from Cian. Breguswith’s own messengers brought her samples of the cloth that came off the looms, along with tallies of the quantity. The quality was good. She forwarded the news to the king and Coelfrith in York.