Hild: A Novel (73 page)

Edwin couldn’t allow an alliance between Gwynedd and Mercia. She couldn’t allow it.

They are our enemies. We marry them.

And there it was. So simple. Her and Penda.

“Tighter,” Begu said. Hild blinked. Begu nodded at the sagging weave, then more closely at Hild. “You look … I don’t know. Are you too hot? Come on, we’ll go inside. Wilnoð says Arddun found someone who knows of a patch of strayberries. You like those. I want to talk to your mother, anyway, about that brown cloth she got in from Aberford yesterday. It has a lovely hand, truly fine—better than that tunic the king got from the pope, I bet. Though not as lustrous; you need those foreign goats for that. But the colour would suit Uinniau, don’t you think? Besides, if we’re to be married, there’s half a hundred things I need to be making.”

Married. What would be, is. But there was no harm in being cautious and making sure of her fallbacks. And Cian’s. What had happened between them had been a mistake born of her fear for his safety. Just fear. She could mend that.

“Ask Wilnoð to save some strayberries for me. I must speak to the king.”

*   *   *

The king put his chin on his fist. “It seems we’ve been here before, Niece. If you’re so in love with your bog, by all means go slog about in it.”

“Thank you, Uncle.”

The Crow never smiled, but she felt the intensity of his regard drop a notch. He was reassured by the king’s indulgent tone. Rivals weren’t indulged; counsellors weren’t indulged. Nieces, mere maids and marriage counters, were indulged.

“Just try not to spike anyone important.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“And if you should happen to hear or see anything interesting, I’d be happy for a message.”

“Yes, Uncle. May I take some men along for the purpose?”

The Crow’s gaze sharpened.

“There are men leaving tomorrow for Caer Loid and Aberford, as you well know.”

“Yes, Uncle. But Pyr, I’m sure, will have a use for every one of them.”

“Oh, very well, pick your usual faithful hounds. But you’ll ride without my token.”

The Crow’s attention eased.

“Yes, Uncle.” She would have refused the token if offered. The point of the visit was to find out what kind of token she did or didn’t need.

*   *   *

She travelled with her household, a score of Edwin’s men to bolster the garrisons at Caer Loid and Aberford, and a wagon of goods those garrisons—and her own Menewood—couldn’t produce on their own. Some of the gesiths had recently healed wounds; she set an easy pace.

When they hit the old army street heading into Elmet, she turned in her saddle and said to Oeric, “Sing something! Something jaunty!” And so they marched into the cool wood singing about the Curly-Haired Cat from Caer Daun, who involved herself in an improbable number of adventures with an impressive variety of men.

When they left the shelter of the trees and crested the rise, she braced herself. But the new hall and tidy huts looked nothing like Ceredig’s palace, nothing like the long ago with Cian. The orchards might never have been, and the great gouge where the thorn had been torn from the earth was grassed over and partly hidden by a stout stockade. The old oak was still there, but next to a new church. The smoke seeping from the eaves was wood smoke, not peat, and a cow lowed where the geese had cackled. This was a royal vill, thoroughly Anglisc.

Arrayed before it, spear blades glittering in the sun, a row of armed men drawn up to greet her. She smiled. Clearly it didn’t matter to Pyr whether or not she bore a token.

*   *   *

Pyr and his new wife, the daughter of a local thegn, welcomed them with a feast, and every time Hild complimented him on a dish, he explained exactly where it came from and how he had made it possible. The swan? From the bywater north and east, which he knew about because of his careful survey last year. The salmon? Oh, yes, he’d not let the gesiths piss in the river east of the weir, so their breeding ground was clear. The medlar butter? Well, that was a lucky trade just this spring, though not really lucky because of course it was careful cultivation of the trade web the wealh—beg pardon, the Loides—had had since Ceredig was king. It had taken some patience to set up again, and careful negotiation …

Careful
was his favourite word, and as she studied him from beneath half-lowered lids she wondered if he used it so often to counter the wealh reputation for recklessness and improvidence. What would it be like to grow up with that burden? But it was Pyr’s wealhness that made it possible for him to be steward of such an important vill without the king worrying too much. Even if Edwin didn’t visit often and mark it as his own, the local thegns wouldn’t follow a wealh. At least not a common wealh.

Pyr’s wife, Saxfryth, filled her cup anxiously. Hild reminded herself to guard her expression. They watched everything she did. She might not bear the token but they knew the songs, and she was still the king’s niece and seer. No doubt they wanted to be reeve and steward to whomever Edwin named ealdorman, and her word carried weight. She smiled at the woman and said, “I know another woman called Saxfryth who lives south and east of Aberford. She’s a fine weaver but could learn a thing or two from you when it comes to brewing. This is good mead.”

The woman blushed.

“Pyr, you and your wife are stewarding the king’s vill well. He’ll hear that from me.” Perhaps he blushed, too, but his skin was too sun-browned to tell.

She spent three days by the Aire, talking to everyone at the vill, spilling fulsome praise: for the sturdy stockade, the fine carving in the hall, the black earth and healthy coleworts in the kitchen garth, the strong hum of bees in the skeps along the garth’s edge. She listened to the groom talk about pasture for horses and the unwillingness of the local thegns to part with the right feed. She discussed with Saxfryth the best way to recruit more women; the hall was still sadly lacking in fine linens. She suggested to Pyr’s garthman that the place really did need an orchard and that, yes, she knew from experience apples and pears both would grow well just east of the stockade.

She talked and listened and sampled until the Caer Loid household began to relax. The king would be pleased, she said, over and over, but they still leapt to anticipate her needs, getting underfoot and irritating both her and Gwladus.

The nights were better. Hild reacquainted herself with Lweriadd and Sintiadd, both plumper than they had been but no less inclined to sly looks and slant comments. Sitting by the fire in the summer evening as Hild the daughter of the might-have-been king, not Hild the seer of the overking, speaking nothing but British, she felt her face setting in a new shape, happier, younger. But as she listened—to every joke, every complaint, every song, every tale of woe—she found that under their contentment ran a thin thread of unease, the sense of trouble a long, long way off. It took a while to tease out the thread: The thegns didn’t come to the hall to gossip and catch up on news as often as the Loides thought they should; the Anglisc were suspicious.

Suspicious of what? That the Loides were in league with the Christ, and so with the wealh priest web, and so with the spies of the men who would overrun Elmet in their quest to bring down Edwin king.

Had they not heard that Edwin king had just won a great victory over the Welsh? she asked. Yes, yes indeed, Lweriadd said.
She
knew that; everyone who ate barley cake knew that.
She
knew that half the Christ priests around here were sons of priests who had inherited their books and couldn’t spell more than their names. But the wheat-eating Anglisc were suspicious. Where was Cadwallon? they asked. Who was hiding him? Who was plotting with him?
She
knew that Cian Boldcloak had the Welsh king bottled up tight in one of his green valleys—set a king to catch a king, eh? and such a handsome one!—but the Anglisc thought all wealh were the same.

The next morning she told Pyr that instead of riding directly for Menewood she would personally escort the gesiths to their post at Aberford: In case Paulinus had any spies in hall, she told him the lady Breguswith would enjoy hearing how the weaving progressed there.

Morud guided them north and east to Brid’s Dike, past Berewith, and on to Aberford.

She smelt Aberford before they rode over Becca Bank. She reined in, closed her eyes. Smoke, stale urine, lye, dung, and, sweetening it all, weld. “They’ve been busy,” she said. “There must be a score of women working on cloth here.”

The men sent as relief for the Aberford garrison glanced at one another, and one touched his breast where no doubt his amulet hung, but Oeric and the others exchanged knowing looks—except for Grimhun, who fidgeted with his arm ring and leaned forward in his saddle. Hild waved him on. “Go on,” she said. “Go see what they’ve made of your walls.”

He bent his head gratefully and kicked his horse into a canter.

The rest of them followed at a jingling trot.

Aberford was an oddly segregated settlement: gesiths in a long house by the banks to the west of the road, women in a series of huts on the east. The east was bright with swaths of yellow, green, brown, and smaller patches of red and blue and black: cloth drying on racks and lines. Goats were tethered—goats had a tendency to eat good wool—and children pulled weeds from plots of weld and other dye plants. A lost-looking duck paddled back and forth on a newly dug pond.

Hild stayed long enough to meet the garrison commander and Heiu, the woman Breguswith had put in charge of the cloth workers. Hild complimented her on her cloth—Begu was right, it was very fine—and promised that on her way back she would spend a little more time inspecting the weaving huts and talking about supplies.

Then she rode with Oeric, the brothers Berht, Morud, and Gwladus south and east over the high tussocky sheep land to the holding of Ceadwulf and the other Saxfryth.

*   *   *

The boy Ceadwin now had a little sister, Ceadfryth, in swaddling clothes. Saxfryth still wore Hild’s yellow ring, but now she’d added a thin silver band inset with some muddy-looking blue stone Hild couldn’t identify. The silverwork was fretted, not solid—but real silver.

The men and Ceadwin went to look at a horse Ceadwulf wanted their opinion on, and Gwladus disappeared into the kitchen to take the measure of the housefolk. Hild and Saxfryth sat with bread and cheese in the garth, with Ceadfryth in a wooden cradle at Saxfryth’s left hand.

“Good cheese,” Hild said. She smiled at the sleeping baby. “She looks strong, well fed. And Ceadwin must be three hands higher now.”

Saxfryth beamed, as women did when you praised their children and housekeeping. “The gods have been kind.” She sighed and rolled her shoulders. “And you, lady? Have the gods been kind to you?”

“Well enough, though now it’s the Christ that the king and his household look to.”

“The Christ.” Saxfryth sucked her lip, leaned over the sleeping child, and brushed away a fly that wasn’t there.

“He’s a god like any other,” Hild said. “With priests who are men and subject to men’s fancies. I know some good priests, wealh and Anglisc alike.”

“Gesiths came through here last year, hunting wealh priests. Spies, they said. And then Anglisc priests came, but they were more like reeve’s men than priests. You could see it in their eyes, feeling the backs of sheep for the wool, tasting the beer, peering at the cows and the hay in the rick. Weighing in their minds, totting it all up, and making marks on those slates of theirs.”

If Paulinus wasn’t careful, his zeal would drive a wedge between the Elmetsætne, returning them to Loid and Angle. If she were Cadwallon she could make something of that. “A woman should judge priests for herself, as she would any other man. When they make demands you think unfair, speak to the king’s man at Caer Loid.”

“He’s half wealh himself, they say.”

“He is. And a fine king’s man.”

“The gesith you were here with last time, Boldcloak, he’s wealh, too, they say. Son of a king.”

Hild nodded blandly.

“I liked him,” Saxfryth said.

“Yes. He liked your buttered mushrooms.”

“He remembers!” Saxfryth gave her an arch look. “So he’s not with you?”

“He’s in Gwynedd. The king’s right hand.”

“Well! A wealh.”

“Another wealh,” Hild reminded her. “Just like Pyr. A trusted man. And worth getting to know.” Saxfryth nodded. “Aberford. You find it a good market for your wool?”

“It is, lady. Though uncommon picky. Our neighbour had half her weight turned down. Short-fibred, they said.” She smiled complacently. “But my sheep give the best wool. Ceadwulf knows how to breed them.”

Hild smiled and nodded. “A good market for good wool, then. More than enough to balance out the king’s tithe?”

Like all good traders, Saxfryth hunted for a way to dodge praising the seller’s goods, or at least hedge that praise, but Hild caught her gaze and held it. “Yes, lady. More than enough.”

Hild nodded, ate a piece of cheese, tilted her head back to watch a hawk circling against the blue sky.

“Lady? Ceadwin is seven now.”

Hild closed her eyes briefly. “If he came with me, he would have no foster-brothers or foster-sisters.”

“At least not yet.”

“And he’d have to be baptised.”

“Christ’s a god like any other,” Saxfryth said. “As you say.”

“I travel a lot.”

“Even so. Lady, you promised. He’ll be no trouble. Besides, having a child at your knee will soon make you bear children of your own, everyone knows that. And Boldcloak won’t stay in Gwynedd forever.”

Hild stood. “I’ll send for him in spring.”

*   *   *

They rode in a glittering, jingling column, past adders sunning themselves on south-facing rocks and knots of red campion. The sky was as blue as the heart of a cornflower and the furze flamed yellow.

They rode down the slope to the ancient track for a mile or so, until they were moving parallel to the low hills to the north.

Hild watched the right-hand edge of the ancient track closely. At her heel—unlike Gwladus, he still preferred his feet to a horse—Morud said, “You won’t see a path. I used a different way each time. That way it stays secret like.”