Hild: A Novel (62 page)

“Yes, Uncle.”

“Wear that cross outside your clothes. And no … distractions.” She didn’t want to think what he meant by that. “About Rendlesham. Work out with your mother how to make up for the loss of trade.” He moved restlessly in his chair. “We’ll be here another fortnight now. May the Christ bend Eorpwald Sulkmouth over a heavenly bench and fuck him!” He slammed both hands on the chair. “Someone bring me a drink!”

*   *   *

In York, birds were eating the last of the hornbeam nuts, the hazelnuts had been gathered, and the ash between the north pasture and the east fields pollarded. Everywhere smoke rose into the hard blue sky: fragrant ash from the hearth, keeping them warm; applewood smouldering under butchered pig, turning it to bacon; thorn-brush coals roasting hazelnuts.

Cian one day started talking to Hild again, though there were odd moments of silence, quick looks that she couldn’t read, and every time she considered asking him, she found she couldn’t. Their friendship grew back, like tree bark growing over a wound. But they did not fight anymore. “It’s different now,” was all he said. And, again, Hild couldn’t bring herself to ask him why. She sparred sometimes with Oeric, but it wasn’t the same.

She helped her mother persuade the queen that, even tucked up in Derventio with a swollen belly, she and her women could make embroideries more efficiently; talk Osfrith into squeezing his thegns just a little harder; and make sure the dyeing and fulling of cloth didn’t slow despite the fading light. Then she turned her mind to keeping abreast of news from everywhere. The priests had had a network before Paulinus unravelled it. Hild would reweave it, to her own purpose.

*   *   *

In the woodland south of the site cleared for the w
ī
c, Hild had to reassure two thin and owl-eyed charcoal burners that she wasn’t a wraith from the long ago; she was looking for the hut of a woman called Linnet. Here, see, she was bringing Linnet and her old mother a sack of hazelnuts. Charcoal burners were often strange; not getting enough sleep for weeks led to a tendency to visions. And a gesith-tall maid draped in gold was not something you saw every day. She gave them a handful of nuts, and the earthiness of the little brown nuggets seemed to persuade them. They pointed her to a narrow path. Her boots crunched on the fallen leaves.

At the hut, Hild knocked on the doorpost.

Linnet’s mother opened the door.

“It’s you, then.”

Hild agreed it was.

“And what’s that?”

“Don’t be rude,” Linnet said, moving her mother aside. She leaned through the door, peered behind Hild, and frowned. “You’re on your own, lady?”

“As you see.” Hild shifted her sack to both hands and held it out. “Hazelnuts. I have more than I can use.”

“Tuh,” said Linnet’s mother. “Doesn’t everyone, this year?”

Linnet took the sack.

“They’re from my own land in Elmet. Fresh and fresh. Elmet’s—”

A pig squealed from behind the hut, a bubbling jagged shriek that reminded Hild of Lindum, the fallen wailing and begging, the sow rooting in the Lindsey man’s belly.

“What are they doing to the poor thing?”

“It’s my sons. They’re young and don’t yet have the hang of it. But, as Mam says, they have to learn sometime. Will you come in?”

*   *   *

Cian sat cross-legged on his folded cloak by the hearth, whittling hard white hornbeam. He hummed tunelessly, concentrating on the wood. His fingers worked. Firelight glinted red-gold in his hair. His throat apple moved as he hummed. His clothes smelt of the crisp green-apple smoke of burning birch from the hearth of Wen, the young widow with the freckles, who shaved the priests and those of the king’s men who liked smooth chins.

“What are you making?”

He smiled and held it out: a horse. “Du likes horses.” Du was Wen’s toddler. Before she could stop it, Hild was imagining Wen stropping her razors on the velvety skin of birch-bracket fungus, Cian leaning back, head on her breast, Wen holding his chin with one hand, holding the razor against his throat with the other. They were both naked.

She poured mead. Gwladus was in the other room, brushing the mud out of her cloak.
If you must keep visiting these hovels
, she’d said,
at least try not to tread in the pig shit
.

“Will you paint it?”

“Um? I hadn’t thought to.” He drew his knife carefully down the tail, and again, blew away the shavings, hummed some more.

“Rhin sent twoscore sacks of nuts and a flitch of bacon from the mene wood. I sent a score and the bacon back. I would have sent everything but Morud tells me they truly have more nuts than they can use. So does everyone this year. Except the squirrels.” The squirrels were almost frantic. And the newly arrived rooks were building low to the ground. “It won’t be an easy winter.”

Cian examined his horse. “Is it ever?” He set the horse on the hearth. In the flickering light, it seemed to be trotting. It stood perfectly, as his animals always did.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

He looked at her. “It’s just a horse.” She looked away, sipped at her mead. He leaned back on his hands. “So how’s the rest of the mene? Still wet?”

“Rhin tells me he has twoscore and six souls under his charge. He says the harvest was good. There’s more land under the plough—and it’s draining well. He says, too, that the crayfish from the beck are tasty and go well with pepper. If he could but get some.”

He laughed. His lips were very red. “The poor man, suffering crayfish without pepper. I might send him a sack. When is Morud going back?”

“He’s already there. I sent him out again with the nuts and bacon. Though perhaps he stopped to talk to his aunt. Lweriadd sends her best love to Lord Boldcloak, by the bye.”

He nodded. Nothing out of the ordinary now in being called lord and Boldcloak. Cian, king of Rheged. It could happen. At least the queen was still in Derventio. No doubt she’d make it to York for Yule, but perhaps by then she would be more concerned with her belly than with marrying her godson to poor mad Rhianmelldt.

Someone entered the other room; she heard voices. If it was important, Gwladus would let them in.

Cian stretched, turned the horse the other way. “Perhaps next time Rhin will send us salmon.”

“Do you remember the story you used to tell about the salmon of Elmet? Tell me again.”

He poured himself more mead, sipped, put his cup down, and opened his hands. “Once upon a time, if there was such a time, nine hazel trees grew around a pool. Now, these trees were sacred trees, and the pool a sacred pool, and in the pool lived a throng, a rush, a river of salmon. Every year the hazel trees dropped their nuts in the pool. Every year the salmon rose up and ate the nuts. These nuts, as everyone knows, were creamy and fat not only with goodness but with wisdom. The fish ate the nuts and grew wise in their turn, and as they grew wiser they grew more spots. One day—”

“Lady.” Gwladus stood at the curtain. “The boy is back. He has news from his aunt, news the king doesn’t yet have.”

Hild nodded. Gwladus lifted the curtain and Morud burst in and dropped to one knee. He was trembling with excitement. Or perhaps exhaustion. He must have run half the way from Elmet. Hild stifled her answering longing to run, to match staff to blade, to command with her own voice instead of others’.

Morud poured out the news from the British priest web, three main points.

Oswald Iding, his brother Osric the Burnt, and the Dál Riata under the prince Domnall Brecc had won great renown at the battle of Ard Corann across the North Channel in Ireland. They’d killed Fiachnae mac Demmáin of the Dál Fiatach. Domnall Brecc, the son of Eochaid, king of the Dál Riata north of Alt Clut, had declared the Idings brothers and heroes, high among Dál Riatans.

The men of Alt Clut had now sent an envoy to the Dál Riata, undisputed lords of the Scots and Irish. Hild remembered her first war trail, the way the men of Alt Clut had crossed themselves and not let her join their councils. The king sitting on the rock of Alt Clut, Hild standing tall and prophesying of Bebbanburg.

Rhoedd of Rheged was rumoured to be considering an offer for his daughter, though no one knew whose. Whoever married Rhianmelldt would one day sit by the fountain in Caer Luel, her fountain, while he laid plans to rally the men of the north …

She stood, and Gwladus was draping her newly brushed cloak, before Morud had quite finished. Hild gulped her mead, held it out to be refilled, gulped again. The king wouldn’t like any of her news. “Find Oeric,” she told Gwladus. “Find my mother. Be ready for anything when I get back.” She looked at Cian. “Anything.”

She wondered how it felt to be Cian, or to be an Iding, and fight for a place with muscle and bone, not just words. Fiachnae mac Demmáin dead. She remembered cutting open his man’s arm. But she couldn’t remember why it had upset her so.

*   *   *

When she got back they were all waiting: her mother, Begu, Oeric, Morud, Gwladus … No, not all. Not Cian. Hadn’t he understood? Of course he had.

Gwladus took her cloak, shot a look at Oeric that Hild didn’t understand, and brought her a cup of mulled wine. Hild sat opposite her mother. Sipped.

Eventually Breguswith said, “Well, you’re not dead.”

“I might be by next summer.” She sipped some more. “I had to promise him a son.”

Breguswith’s spine went rigid.

“Don’t,” Hild said. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Her mother looked at her. There was always a choice. But in a fight you risked all on an opening; you didn’t think about what happened if you missed. “I told him the bad news, told him it was going to be a bad winter in other ways, too—”

“How do—”

“It will. If you stopped thinking about wool for an hour, you’d see it. So I told him that. And the Crow started talking about witches bringing misfortune. The king … you know how he is.” First the half-lidded look, then the widening eyes, the black pupils swelling like ink dropped in water, swallowing the blue centres, leaving the outer pleats of his eyes green and glistening, swarming like flies looking for something to eat, someone to hurt to make himself feel strong and safe. “So I told him it would be a hard winter, yes, but that he was strong and canny and his land rich, that the gods would grant him a son, a fine strong son, born into a Christian marriage, one blessed by the pope. A pope who, with the conversion of so many people, would be happy to call him king of all the Anglisc, happy to call him so to the Franks and the Jutes, happy to bless his heir. Heir to the overkingship of all the Anglisc. So what, in the end, would it matter about the men of the north and who they called brother and hero if he, Edwin king, could call on all the Anglisc?”

A boy. And healthy. Two risks, not one. But it was done.

She finished her wine, held the cup out for more. “Is there any bread? I’m starved.”

Oeric cleared his throat. “There’s more news, lady.”

Hild stared. “More?”

“It’s not urgent,” Gwladus said.

“How do we know?” Oeric said. “It’s a letter.”

Hild held out her hand. Red wax, a goose. “It’s from Hereswith.” She broke it, read quickly. “She has a daughter, fine and strong.”

“When?” Breguswith said. “What colour are her eyes?”

Hild held out the letter, then remembered her mother couldn’t read. “It doesn’t say.” She smoothed the letter, so no one would see her hand trembling. Her mother couldn’t read. Her mother hadn’t noticed the signs of a bad winter. Cian wasn’t even there. Hereswith was far away, and Fursey. She had taken a double risk and there was no one to help her.

“Well, what does it say?” Begu asked.

Hereswith’s writing had improved. “The baby came just before midsummer.”

“Late,” Begu said.

Hild nodded, reading one thing, thinking another. “Æthelric is holding the fen, though he won’t challenge Ricberht.”
He is happy to cower in our stinking fen and play prince to the North Folk and stallion to his pagan woman.
She’d been right. She must tell Hereswith to watch what she wrote. Not everyone who could read was on their side … “Father Fursey sends his love and prayers.”

Breguswith looked at her, and her thoughts were plain to everyone in the room: They’d have to be powerful prayers if the prediction about a son didn’t come true.

“But for now,” Begu said, “you’re a grandmother. And Hild’s an aunt.” She smiled. “An aunt! What’s her name?”

Hild shook her head. “She’s didn’t say. She’s not very used to writing letters.” She turned to Oeric. “Bring me ink. And get ready for a long ride. You’re taking letters to Hereswith and to her priest, Fursey. Take two men, a pair of spare mounts each. I’ll want replies faster than fast. Morud, you’ll rest. I’ll need your eyes in half a dozen places.” Rhin had at least one wealh priest hiding with him. One of them could reshave his forehead and get up to Rheged, with Morud, and take the lie of the land. With the Idings ascendant, no man of the north would talk to Edwin’s Anglisc now, priest or gesith. And now was not the time to stop being right.

20

W
INTER WAS HARSH:
wind and snow, then, just as the snowdrops were poking free of the dirt, silence and cracking cold from skies as blue and hard as enamel. Sunlight glittered on ice-cased twigs. Fawns in the wood starved and foxes ran thinner than weasels. In York, folk like Linnet hunched against the cold alongside their byre animals, glad of the warm stink, glad of the dung to burn—while it lasted—eyeing the tree hay, and weighing the coming choice between staying warm and letting the kine starve.

Hild and her mother made sure Æthelburh always had tempting treats to hand; they needed her child to be healthy.

Towards the end of their stay at Bebbanburg, spring came at last. It began to warm. In the valleys, barley shoots poked through the dirt. Folk straightened and began to smile.

Then came the rain. Endless rain, beating the shoots back into the earth, flattening the early flowers, drowning the hum and bumble of bees. Cattle found hillocks where they could, or rotted where they stood. Cloth mildewed and flour mouldered. Rivers rose, and rose again, til herons roosted on roofs and ducks on styles. Pastures turned to mud and roads to slipways. And still it rained.