Hild: A Novel (74 page)

“Secret.”

“You never said, but I thought you might want it that way.”

Hild was glad, fiercely glad. Secret. Yes. “Morud, I’ll give you a new knife for this. Two knives.”

*   *   *

Hild had fallen in love with what Menewood could be. Now she fell in love with what it was becoming: a thriving settlement in a fertile, half-secret valley of bogs and becks and ponds and meadow.

Four dozen souls less one, Rhin told her, with fields of clover and oats, barley and colewort. He showed her tally sticks for everything from folk able to wield a sickle, to pigs, to skeps, to milch cows. They toured the byre, made of good oak; the tiny new forge; and a dairy laid in dry stone. He showed her the cleared millrace, the great gritstone grindstones from over the Whinmoor, and the almost finished elm mill wheel. He took her round to the mix of huts and homesteads, some timber, some wattle, some with stone foundations and reed roofs. And everywhere men and women knelt to her and kissed her hand. She was not just the king’s seer, the king’s niece, she was their dryhten, their lord. They lived and breathed at her pleasure and the efficiency of the land’s management.

Hild touched the children under the chin so she could look into their eyes, and held the hands of old folk long enough to feel the size of their bones. The dull-eyed ones, Rhin said, were lately come to the mene. They would soon fill out, soon shine. And Hild’s heart filled until she could hardly breathe: her people.

The first fortnight she spent every morning and most afternoons with Rhin, walking, talking, pointing, running grain through her fingers, listening to the hum of bees. He had taken her at her word and in the spring had set all the children to searching the countryside for hives, giving a reward for every one discovered. They had two beekeepers, though one was mostly plaiting skeps, and those skeps hummed and dripped with honey.

She walked in the evening through her domain, as aware of it as of her own body. The dragonflies and damselflies zooming over the water; the gush and rush and mineral bite of the millrace compared to the softer babble of the beck. The clatter of reeds by the pond, scented with green secrets; the chatter of wrens and goldcrest flocks, squabbling with each other like rival gangs of children.

Everywhere she looked, she thought of things she must tell Rhin: Set aside much of the mead for white mead this winter; thin the coppice and make sure they made more charcoal this autumn, for next year when Penda made his move there would be war, long hard war, and war meant iron, and there was no smelting without charcoal. Breed more goats, especially the long-haired kind. Graze them in that overstood beech coppice—pollard the standards and let the goats trim the rest or cut them for firewood and tree hay.

So she fell in love with the mene, and the mene fell in love with her. She felt buoyed by her people, her land. Everything tasted round and ripe. The air was as rich and sweet as cider. Just breathing fed some part of her. She spent half the nights lying by the pond listening to the bullrushes and the frogs. At dawn she rode Cygnet along the ridge and looked forward to the next month when she might see the peregrines returning.

Mine
, she thought, looking down at the low woods with the water glinting through the green.
Mine
, when the men and women formed their line to start sickling the barley.
Mine
, when she smelt the wild garlic in a just-cut glade of coppiced hazel.
Mine, mine, mine.

She ignored the rattle of the box buried at her heart, and the whisper of
Penda …
Not now. Not yet. Here, now, this was hers. Secret. Hidden.

Sometimes she found letters in the hollow pollard oak to the south of the mene, left by some priest or other for Rhin, but more often the priest web was a thing of tired-looking men arriving at night and huddling with Rhin to share rumours of the isle before moving on north or west or east to the coast and a boat to Less Britain.

Sometimes at night she stayed up with Rhin, drinking the last of the heather beer and discussing the news. The Picts had sent some kind of embassy to Rheged and been rebuffed. Yes, he’d try to find out more. Cadwallon, they said, was in Ireland. He was enough of a nuisance that Domnall Brecc had sent a war band, led by Oswald Iding, to subdue the troublemakers. Good news for Edwin, they agreed, two enemies off squabbling with each other.

Good news, too, for Cian Boldcloak: His time in Gwynedd would be much easier without rumours of a king to stir up opposition. Perhaps he would come home soon.

She couldn’t sleep that night and instead walked into the woods and lay on her stomach by the garlic in the coppiced glade, cheek on her hands, sighting along the tips of the grass stems, dull as lead in the moonlight. Was Cian sitting under the moon in Deganwy? Perhaps it was raining. Perhaps he was sitting, chin in one hand, drinking horn dangling from the other, listening to stirring Welsh song, half drunk, half dreaming of glory. Though he had glory in plenty now. Perhaps he was listening to a song about himself. With Eadfrith still in Dyfneint, he was the most important Angle in Gwynedd, and scops and Welsh bards were not stupid.

There were songs in plenty about Penda, too. He was cunning, and young, and strong. But Penda was a decision for another time. She found herself wondering, instead, if Cadwallon would stay in Ireland. He was as wily as a fox, and his hatred ran deep. There was nothing for him in Ireland. He’d find his way back to Gwynedd in the end. Cian needed to come home. He’d be safer. And she could tell him all the things she had seen, the things she’d learnt, the people she was helping. She would show him the mene, tell him of her plans. They could mend what had broken between them. They could ignore it. It hadn’t happened.

A hedgepig wheezed and puffed at the edge of the clearing, nosing in the grass for snails and worms.
So we may drink to home wherever we are.

*   *   *

The barley was cut and drying. After a report of bandits, Hild and her gesiths rode out to the Whinmoor.

It was a fine day, sound as a late plum. They rode from flock to flock, copse to copse, but found nothing. As they turned back for the mene, Hild told herself she was glad; she didn’t want to see the light go out in anyone’s eyes. Nonetheless Cygnet was skittish. She wasn’t the only one. Oeric’s mount pranced and snorted.

She caught Oeric’s eye, then Berhtnoth’s. She grinned. “A ring to the first back!” She kicked Cygnet into a gallop. With whoops and whistles, the men raced after her.

And so her blood was singing under her skin and Cygnet hot under her thighs when she saw the birds flying from the old ivy-covered oak just north of the beck, where it flowed west to east before turning south for the mene. She touched Cygnet into a tight, hard curve, slowed to a canter, then a trot, and reined in.

Part of her registered her gesiths shouting and making their own turns to follow her, but she was focused on the tree, unsure of what she’d seen, only that it had made her pay attention.

There. A starling with a worm still wriggling in its beak, disappearing into the deep V of the top boughs about three times her height from the ground. Then, yes, a dove, with a fly. Her heart thundered from the ride, and Cygnet was blowing hard, but gradually they both settled. After a little while, first the dove then the starling flew away from the oak.

She swung off Cygnet. Thick ivy made the climb easy. By the time Oeric jumped down from his snorting mount, she was perched on the right-hand bough, peering into the cleft. She stripped a twig and used it to bend the ivy to one side.

A nest. Four chicks. When the twig poked through the ivy they sat up, peeping, and flapped their tiny wings and opened outsize beaks to show red, red mouths.

Two starlings and two doves.

“Lady?” Oeric called from the base of the tree.

“Doves and starlings,” she said, amazed. “Sharing the same nest.”

“Doves and starlings?”

“Doves and starlings.” She laughed. “Starlings and doves!”

Oeric was looking nervous, but she didn’t care. She laughed again, as chains burst in the dark and a box shattered to splinters. “It’s an omen, Oeric. An omen!” His horse was good, and Grimhun’s, and Berhtnoth’s. Good for hours. “Omens must be spread!”

That evening she drank beer with Rhin. She felt as bright as the first morning of the world. “I sent them galloping to every corner of Elmet—to Caer Loid, to Aberford, to Saxfryth, to the south river, even back to the Whinmoor. Doves and starlings sharing a nest, like Loides and Anglisc sharing Elmet.” An omen that would persuade even Edwin. “It is possible. It’s all possible.”

He was smiling at her. “Of course, lady. Because of you. Have some of these currants. Our latest visitor picked them on the way in this morning and your woman said you were fond of berries.”

Hild ate a handful, bursting them with her tongue against her teeth, one by one, tart-sweet pops of deep red juice. Doves and starlings. Starlings and doves. She only had to think how to couch it to Edwin, and for Cian to come home.

“Sadly, our visitor won’t tell anyone where the patch is; his to know, he says, ours to be grateful. But he did bring news. A rumour of Cadwallon. He’s in Less Britain, they say.”

Less Britain. Cadwallon was lining up the Britons-over-the-sea against the Anglisc. Oh, yes, Edwin would have to listen. Elmet needed Cian. It would work. Doves and starlings. Starlings and doves.

“Just a rumour, less than a rumour, a whisper. Though no doubt it will please Boldcloak, now that he’s taken up with that Welsh princess.”

Hild swallowed carefully. “Welsh princess?”

“It’s the latest news. Cadwallon’s daughter.”

Her tongue felt like wood. “Another wild rumour, no doubt.”

“Oh, no. This one’s true. I’ve heard it twice.”

“A bastard daughter?”

“No. His eldest by his first wife. Angeth, his treasure. A rare beauty by all accounts, ripe as a June strayberry and twice as subtle. Now playing lady and hostess to Boldcloak’s lord and host in the king’s hall at Deganwy. Boldcloak’s to be Edwin’s underking there, do you think?”

This must be what it was like to be fighting, to be winning, to lift your arm for the triumphant blow, only to blink, to sway, to look down and see a thick snake in the grass, but it’s not a snake, it’s your arm, staff still in its hand. Between one blink and the next your arm is no longer your arm. There it is, it’s just not yours. Stupid, stupid Cian.

“Lady?”

She watched her hand—it looked so strange—reach for the currants, pick the reddest, the plumpest, put it in her mouth, and deliberately burst it against her teeth.

*   *   *

The world was easier to understand when choices fell away. It was like understanding a tree when all the leaves dropped: There it was, the pattern of the boughs, the tree itself.

She saw patterns everywhere. Where before she had seen flowers humming and rippling with bees, now she saw that bees liked red flowers best. Red and striped.

“Plant more phlox,” she told Rhin. “Phlox, red clover, campion.” She didn’t bother to explain. She didn’t repeat herself. More red meant more honey, which meant more mead, and therefore more people willing to listen. She was going to need people to listen, or Cian would die and Elmet with him. Edwin would not like this news. She needed time to think, to plan, before Edwin heard it.

As the days cooled the colours around her did, too. Bright red flowers were replaced by dark red berries. The sun set earlier. The berries now were tinged with blue. Perhaps it was warmth that made the colour. Red meant life. Blue meant the blue lips of harsh breathing and death. The end of things.

*   *   *

She rode out often on her own, or walked, from dawn to dusk, watching everything. Cows, she noticed, stood broadside to the sun on a cool day, but nose into the wind, and otherwise, when sleeping, when chewing, pointed their head or tail south.

Then she realised deer also lined up north to south.

There were patterns everywhere. She saw it in the tiny yellow clusters of a late daisy, and they reminded her of the seeds on a strayberry. There was an order there, she could almost taste it, but she couldn’t articulate it. If she just kept looking it would all come clear.

Migrant peregrines began to arrive. The young, first. Brown and buff. Females followed by smaller males. Why were young birds so dull? It was always the same, no matter what kind of bird. The adults, which followed days later, were much more definite: blue-black on top, whitish barred with grey beneath. Did that mean something?

The sky turned grey. Grass bleached. Leaves fell. More rumours came from Gwynedd: Cadwallon was readying ships in Less Britain. Eadfrith ætheling was planning to stay in Caer Uisc with Clemen for Yule. Boldcloak’s woman was with child.

When Morud brought the message from Caer Loid that the king wanted his seer in York, Gwladus was already packing.

*   *   *

Hild stood before Edwin still in her travel cloak. The queen was with him, and Paulinus and Coelfrith, but no others, not even the endlessly scratch-scratch-scratching Stephanus.

Edwin’s eyes were red-rimmed. “What the fuck is Boldcloak doing?”

Killing us all.
But the habit of protection was too strong.

She flicked dirt off a fold of her cloak. “Being a man, my king.”

“With the Twister’s own daughter?” Paulinus said.

“With all of them, no doubt.”

Silence.

“He is young,” said Æthelburh. “And he feels like a conqueror.”

“
I’m
the conqueror.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Paulinus. “He’s a gesith getting above himself.”

“He’s thinking with his breeches, lord King,” Hild said. “As young men do.”

“I never did.”

And Hild, surprised, realised he was right. She had never seen him take a woman after a battle. “You’re a king, lord. Cian is a king’s man. Your loyal man.”

“But to get her with child!”

Hild bent her head. Cian had been stupid.

“Perhaps it’ll bring Cadwallon back,” Æthelburh said.

“It’s too late in the year for a ship to cross from Frankia,” the Crow said dismissively.