Hild: A Novel (7 page)

The arm ring winked hugely in the light. The white mead shimmered in its great cup. Her arms would not carry both.

Men’s strength is their weakness— A dog, snapping teeth—

The houseman lifted the cup. Hild raised one hand:
Wait.

Neck rigid, haunches bulging. Furrows in the turf. Stretching the line of her back. Bend your legs …

She looked at Edwin. “Edwin, King, I will carry your gold. I will carry it as a princess does, as a crown.” And she bent her head—but also her legs.

When Edwin put the heavy ring on her head, Hild locked her knees and straightened one inch, two. It was like carrying the world. But she pushed with her feet and lifted and lifted until her spine was as straight as a plumb line and the weight poured through the muscles along her spine and in her thighs and calves and feet. She gestured to the houseman and turned to face Dunod and his folk. Then she accepted the cup.

This was for her path, for her freedom, for her life and family. To make her dead da proud. She was strong. She was royal. She would set her will. She would do this.

So she fixed her gaze on Dunod, on the glint of the gold around his throat, and she began. The drumming rose and, from the men, stamping and cheering. From the women, a ululation. And the sound swept her across the room, between the fire pits, to Dunod’s table.

“Do drink it all, lord, if you will,” she said, and he did, in one long draught, and his men shouted and he bellowed, “Hild! Light of the world!” and Hild took the cup back again and, again, was swept across the hall to Edwin’s table. It seemed not so difficult to walk a clear path.

3

T
HE QUEEN’S ROOM
at Sancton smelt of blood and weeping and, perhaps, Hild thought, something else. She stood by the door hanging, watching, listening, while her mother and the king stood by the empty bed. Like the last time Cwenburh miscarried, her women had washed her and carried her away to a new apartment, so that when she woke she would not have to remember staring at the heroic embroidery of the white horse, or the blooming apple tree, or that knot in the pine cladding on the ceiling while she screamed and bled and pushed and wept: for a bladder-size sack of slimed slipperiness, for nothing.

“It would have been a girl, my king,” said Breguswith. “It would have been your peaceweaver.”

Edwin was trembling. “Her women assured me this time all was well.”

“Yes, my king. They thought it was.”

“They?”

Perhaps her mother hadn’t seen Edwin’s rage. Hild took a step into the room.

“Are you, lady, not one of them?”

Another step, and another until she stood by the small table at the head of the bed.

“Oh, no, my king,” her mother said. “That is, yes, but you may recall I suggested to the queen after the last time that she wait, perhaps for a very long while.”

“And you?” Edwin whirled on Hild, who was sniffing the queen’s cup, and thinking. “Perhaps an eight-year-old may prove wiser than the collective mind of my entire household. Tell me your prophecy, O shining light!”

Hild put the cup down. She didn’t understand why he was so angry. He didn’t care much for his wife, and despite the court’s cautious optimism of the last few weeks about the queen’s pregnancy, no one could be surprised at this event, not after all the others. So it was something else.

“Uncle, your wife will bear no more babies.” Not while Breguswith made her special heather beer and disguised the sweet gale with tansy.

“None?”

She shook her head.

“I need a peaceweaver!”

Hild said nothing.

“I need one. Over the water those cursed Idings are making their name with Eochaid’s freckled brat, Domnall, who took a retinue to Meath and won some small squabble that they name a great battle, and today I find one of them has married a Pictish princess. A Pict! Now I have Idings feeling their oats at both ends of the Roman wall. Do you know what that means?”

“War.”

He blinked. “You’ve seen this?”

Hild shook her head. There would be war, it was the way of the world. Young stags watched for the old to falter. The exiled Idings were feeling their strength, and Edwin had no daughters to marry into alliance with other Anglisc kings, and the Irish and Pictish might watch the old stag and think his antlers too heavy for his head. They might think it time to sweep down from the north and put the Idings as client kings on the throne. “Like the king stag, you must lift your head and show your tines.”

“Well they are still sharp, by the gods. I have three hundred gesiths sworn to me til death. I give them treasure. I am greatly to be feared!”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“I will take the Isle of Vannin.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“You’ve seen this?”

Hild was used to his abrupt decisions and equally sudden reversals, but she could not get used to his insistence on visions. She looked at her mother, who gave her the look she had given on Modresniht more than a year ago—
Talk to the king!
—and gave the impression of stepping back a pace.

Hild tried to tell Edwin what she saw.

“The rooks in the west wood build their nests high in the elms. The squirrels skip past rowan berries without tasting.”

He waited.

Hild did her best. “The rooks don’t expect great winds; the squirrels know that other forage is plentiful yet.” He didn’t seem to understand. Her mother, at least, was nodding. Hild stepped back very slightly.

“My king,” Breguswith said. “Our guiding light foresees that the winter weather will be a while. And with fine weather you might still take a ship to the Isle of Vannin, while Fiachnae mac Báetáin of the Dál nAriadne is drinking with the Ulaid in their moss-grown, fog-bound land.”

“It is a risky plan.”

“Yes, my king. But you are brave and your war band strong.”

Edwin stared at the brightly woven blanket pulled over the bloodied mattress. Hild doubted he even saw its beautiful pattern, the poppy orange and calf-eye brown. But it didn’t take the light of the world to prophesy that if the blanket were not washed very soon it would be ruined, fit only for housefolk, and a blanket like that took two women a winter to card, spin, dye, and weave. And if someone didn’t take away the cup soon, someone else might work out what had happened.

“And no peaceweaver?” He was looking at Hild.

“No, Uncle.”

“Will she die?”

She didn’t believe her mother bore Cwenburh any ill will. “Perhaps not, if she tries no more children.”

*   *   *

But two months later, as the court packed its wagons to move to York, where Edwin would consult with his lords on the matter of a winter war—a war that could have been fought and won by now if he hadn’t changed his mind so often—Cwenburh told her cousin, Mildburh, that she was again with child. Mildburh told Hereswith, who told her mother and Hild.

Breguswith was scanning their apartment one last time—all was stowed in chests and bags; housefolk were dismantling the beds—when Edwin sent a boy to call Hild and her mother to his hall. They donned light wraps.

It was a cold, grey morning of wind and fitful rain. Oxen lowed as drovers herded them from their warm byre and began the long business of fitting yokes and checking harnesses. Rain drummed on the stretched leather of the waiting wagons. Coelgar and his men marked wagon beds with chalk as they were loaded.

The hall was dark and cool. The fires were out, the best hangings already taken down and rolled, and Edwin’s great sword and spear lifted from their hooks above his chair. Indeed, housefolk stood about, clearly waiting to remove the chair itself. By him stood Coifi, bare-armed and bear-cloaked as usual. And Lilla and a young gesith—tall as a fifteen-year oak sapling—called Forthere, looking watchful. And the latest Christ bishop, one of the less common ones, who held rolls of pale leather to the light and stared and murmured—their god must be very strange. And even the ugly old woman children threw stones at, who made auguries from burnt pinecones and the flights of birds. Dunne, Hild had heard her called. The hall reeked of sacrifice oils and incenses.

“You told me she would bear no more children,” the king said to them as they walked into the dim hall.

“Nor has she, my king,” said Breguswith.

“Yet,” said Coifi.

“Aye,” said the old woman. “She seems strong as a mare.”

“So she seemed at other times,” Breguswith said.

Everyone looked at Hild, who said nothing.

“I want auguries,” the king said. “I want the opinion of every god mouth in this hall, and I want it before I climb on that miserable wagon.”

“My lord King, the gods require things done in the proper order and in the proper—”

“Today, Coifi. And we’ll start with you.”

“Now?”

“Now. Go find your bullock and knife.” He looked around. “And you, Mother, what do you need?”

“Only the outdoors, and mayhap a fire.”

Edwin stood, gestured to one of the hovering housefolk. “Bring a torch and some firewood, and my cloak while you’re about it. And if you see the priest, tell him we’ll be…” He looked at the old woman.

“By the undern daymark.” The three tall elms south of the gate, where, from the well by the bread kitchen, their silhouette cut the horizon immediately below where the sun hung on a cloudless day in the quarter day before midday, undern. Today was not cloudless. Hild wondered if she should run and fetch her mother’s heavy cloak and a hand muff. In this rain there could be no fire on the brow of the hill, so it would be a bird augury, and Hild knew there would be few rooks by those elms at this time of day. It would be a cold wait, and her mother’s joints had been more painful than usual. But then they were all moving and there wasn’t time.

Auguries and sacrifice: crude tools of toothless petitioners. Or so her mother said, even as she’d rehearsed Hild in every variation. But she said, over and over, there was no power like a sharp and subtle mind weaving others’ hopes and fears and hungers into a dream they wanted to hear. Always know what they want to hear—not just what everyone knew they wanted to hear but what they didn’t even dare name to themselves. Show them the pattern. Give them permission to do what they wanted all along.

What did Edwin want to hear?

By the time the king, swathed in a blue cloak (
With our hair colour, blue is better
), stood by the elms, almost forty people, including Coifi and his assistants—free of all edged iron, as befitted servants of the god—leading a calf, were assembled. Twenty or more were gesiths. They’d been bored at Sancton, nothing to do but play knucklebones, fight over women, and burnish their chain mail, and they loved a good prophecy. They stood about, smelling of iron and strong drink, spears resting on their shoulders, sword hilts jutting from the waist at their left hand, for the warrior gesith did not wear cloaks, except on a hard march. One was throwing his knife, a pretty jewelled thing, at the burr partway up the trunk of the closest elm, yanking it free, pacing, throwing. Soon there would be jeers, then boasts, then bets, then more ale, then a fight.

At least it had stopped raining.

A man, the head drover, trotted up the rise, fell to one knee in the wet grass, and spoke to the king. The king nodded, then shouted out to the old woman. “The wagons are ready, Mother. Will your gods speak?”

“I will call the gods to speak, if you lend me a war horn.”

“A war horn? Very well.” He gestured to Lilla, who handed him the great horn of the Yffings. He held it up for all to see. “Will this do?” The gold filigree around the rim and tip shone as yellow as the absent sun. “Mind now, Mother, even if the omens are the right ones, you don’t get to keep this one.” He handed it back to Lilla, who walked it over to the old woman.

She weighed it in her hands. “You are familiar, lords, with omens of black-winged birds.” Hild, who had been watching the gesith with the dagger—it would be Cian’s birthday soon and she was wondering where she could get him a pretty thing like that—focused on the old woman. Her mother straightened subtly. They didn’t look at each other. Black-winged bird. Why not just say rook? “If the birds fly from the southwest during undern, it portends numerous offspring. If they fly overhead, the fulfilment of wishes.”

Hild ran through the portents her mother had schooled her in. If the birds flew from the southeast during morgen, the first quarter of the day, the enemy will approach. From the east was more difficult: relatives coming, or battle to arise, or death by disease. During æfen, and on into sunset, if they flew in the southeast, treasure would come, and overhead meant the petitioner would obtain the advantages hoped for. Then there were the more ominous single-bird sightings, and the opposite meanings assigned to two birds. But now it was undern, the quarter day before the sun stood at its height, and they were interested in rooks, many rooks, flying from the southwest or overhead, because it was rooks that roosted in the undern elms and the elm wood beyond. What did Edwin want to hear? He wanted a peaceweaver, yes, but what else?

The old woman lifted the horn and blew a blast that surprised everyone. Below, in the fenced settlement, two warhorses screamed. War hounds bayed and other dogs barked. The gesiths all dropped spears to the ready. One, with a shield, brought it to the defence position. And then Hild understood. A war horn. Recognised by man and beast. Even crows and ravens. And crows and ravens nested to the south and east of Sancton, among the elm and oak on the other side of the river. Ravens knew war, knew the tasty morsels war offered. They would come.

They did, seven of them: big and black and bright, croaking up from the southwest, then flying overhead once and landing with audible thumps on the turf at the top of the hill.

“Seven black-winged birds from the southwest, that then flew overhead, my king. Seven, the luckiest number of all. Numerous offspring and the fulfilment of your wishes, King. Dunne says you shall have your peaceweaver.”

“Well, Mother Dunne, you shall have your reward.” Edwin looked for Coelgar, remembered he would be with the wagons. “Lilla here will see word is given for your winter comfort.”