Hild: A Novel (75 page)

Hild wondered at that. Frankia, not Less Britain? She wondered, too, why the queen didn’t have the Crow flayed for such a tone. But the Crow was right, it didn’t matter for now: No one could cross the sea, whether from Frankia or Less Britain, until spring. And there were other things to worry about.

“Cadwallon has two daughters,” she said.

“Oh, by the Christ! Don’t tell me he’s taken the other one, too.”

“No, King. In my worst dreams, she’s in Penda’s bed.”

Edwin’s eyes swarmed green and black, but he turned his gaze not to her but to his queen and reeve and priest. “Just why didn’t any of you think to mention this before?” He swung back to Hild. “And where the fuck have you
been
?”

*   *   *

The winter was mild. To Hild it seemed as though every woman in hall was swelling with child. Except Æthelburh, who smiled relentlessly at other women’s bellies. The queen seemed truly happy only when James arrived for the twelve days of Yule and led a new choir for the Christ Mass. When he went back to Craven, the queen went back to smiling and keeping her own counsel. It occurred to Hild that for a royal woman it must be like living as a hostage in an armed camp. Paulinus was her go-between. Was this how it was for Hereswith, how it had been for her own mother?

She tried to talk to her mother about it, but Breguswith—like Begu—was spending most of her time with her man. She seemed impatient: no armies were moving, no messages could cross the winter seas, no one could do anything about anything until spring. Why didn’t Hild stop thinking and just enjoy herself? Hild wondered if her mother had been possessed by an ælf or if this was just how it was with a man in your life. She could no more stop thinking than stop breathing.

She thought about marrying Penda. Edwin would like it. One of the conditions for the marriage would be Penda’s conversion. Edwin would be his godfather and therefore Penda’s overking. Overking of all the Anglisc.

Paulinus would like it. With all the Anglisc converted, he’d get his pallium at last. He could die happy, knowing that as overbishop he’d sit in heaven at the right hand of the pope.

Penda would like it. Her kin ties were strong, her advice better than gold. She was young and strong. She could manage a household—she could manage a kingdom.

Would she like it? If Penda was as cunning as she thought, she might like him well enough. She could take Begu with her. And her household.

One day when Uinniau was out hunting with Oswine, she asked Begu how she thought Uinniau would like to be her chief gesith. When she got married.

“Who are you marrying?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Because the queen hasn’t said anything. And I thought the king didn’t want to let you go. You’re his seer. Oh, have you annoyed the Crow again?”

“No. Uinniau. Would he like it?”

“Why wouldn’t he like it? I’d like it, anyway. I don’t want him going off to war anymore. He’s done enough now so that Luftmaer can write a song or two for our children. Only I suppose it wouldn’t be Luftmaer who’d be doing the singing, would it?”

Everything would be different. Everybody.

“Do you suppose he’d get fat, like Bassus? Sitting at home safe and sound while everyone went off to war with your husband king. And, oh, Oeric would be cross.”

“Oeric could never be a queen’s chief gesith.”

“You do have someone in mind. I knew it. Or is this just one of your endless plots? It’s winter. You really should just drink some more and find someone to play with. You spend too much time in your head. I wish you’d take Gwladus to your bed again. If you won’t do that, at least climb a tree or something. You’ll start looking like the Crow, nothing but bones and a beaky nose.”

That evening Hild watched Paulinus at meat, eating little, covering his cup with his hand. He was a foreigner, like Æthelburh, a long way from home. But unmarried. A bit like a seer. Did his god talk to him? Did it make him feel the way she did when she felt the pattern looking out at her from every blade of grass, every leaf, every beetle’s wing? Had he watched beetles when he was a boy, at home? She found she couldn’t imagine him as a boy. Couldn’t imagine him at home, belonging. He had always looked like this: planed and hollowed, eyes hooded, lost to the world of men, honed to nothing but patterns and plans.

When Gwladus brought her wash water the next morning she sat and stared at herself. She lifted her hair from her face. Planes and hollows, eyes hooded …

Gwladus’s face appeared over her shoulder. They looked at each other in the water: Gwladus so soft and pliant, Hild hard and clear.

“I’m not pretty.”

“You don’t need to be pretty. You’re like lightning. Like a tide. Like a blizzard.”

“Something to run from.”

“Something to get caught up in. Something to remember for the rest of your life.”

*   *   *

As Penda tightened his hold on the middle country, he swept the roads clear of bandits. He appeared to have no quarrel with priests; the web hummed. Hild wondered if this was because he didn’t know about the web or because he wanted it to flourish for his own purposes. He seemed like a canny king. But kings always fell in the end. It was the way of the world.

That night she dreamt Fursey was talking to Hereswith.
It’s what women do: weave the web, pull the strings, herd into the corner. It’s their only power.
Then she was inside Hereswith, and Fursey was talking to her.
Unless they’re seers. Your mother has built you a place where you can speak your word openly.

She lay looking at the elm of her ceiling for a long time. Power. Place. Marriage. She did not see how they fit together. Perhaps Fursey would.

She woke Gwladus to stir the fire and light candles and then wrote Fursey a long letter, using the codes they each hoped the other understood:
S
for Sigebert,
P
for Penda,
R
for Ricberht,
Uncle
for Edwin,
Sister
for Hereswith,
Æ
for Æthelric …

In the morning she took the letter, along with a ham, to Linnet’s house, where a priest would call soon and carry it by a circuitous route to Rhin, who would see it safely to its destination.

Winter passed. Messages flowed freely. Sigebert was still fighting Ricberht in East Anglia. Eadfrith and Clemen were still in Caer Uisc. Still no clear sign of Cadwallon. She pondered Less Britain. Long ago, its kings were the sworn men of Gwynedd. Did that oath hold?

She didn’t share her thoughts about Cadwallon with anyone. She didn’t mention Penda. She didn’t tell anyone of her Elmet omen. For the first time, she could not see her path. She would wait.

24

S
OLMONATH AT BEBBANBURG
, and the world shimmered with light and salt. White-grey sky, grey-white sand dunes, silver driftwood, walls weathered to the colour of limestone. The light, sourceless and bright, seeped into every corner and crevice; it was like living inside a hollow pearl. Many women were huge with child.

Hrethmonath, when they should have been hunched down tight in their wind-lashed fist of stone, isolated. The seas were unnaturally calm and shipping was already creeping along the coast: from Kent to Gipsw
ī
c, to Brough, to the Bay of the Beacon, to Tinamutha, to Bebbanburg. It was the first time anyone could remember getting easy news while the seals sang and the guillemots dived.

Edwin grew restless and shouted at his counsellors. Where was Cadwallon? What good were a seer and a priest if they never brought him information? What if that nithing king, heading a fleet of Frankish ships groaning with Frankish gesiths, was floating up the Humber to York?

Hild said nothing.

Her web hummed: letters from Fursey and Hereswith, and gossip from Onnen in Mulstanton, all funnelled through Rhin in Menewood, then forwarded to the farmstead of Rathlaf and Cille, who held the letters in exchange for mead and, when there was any, soft white bread. She rode out every week or so and accepted with great ceremony any letter they had, along with a bowl of something by the fire. After the third time, they stopped asking after Boldcloak.

One day there were two letters from Fursey. The first read:

As to your question about a union with P, remember that the baptism of the high is wound about with worldly as well as heavenly obligation. Whosoever stands as godfather to another adopts him in religion but this adoption spreads like a smile, like a blessing, into the affairs of the world of men. The son in Christ inherits very much of the godfather’s mantle.

Very much.
Fursey never emphasised words. He thought it vulgar. What was he trying to say?

Cille brought her a bowl of sour ale and settled in the corner to watch Hild read. It seemed to fascinate her.

Hild cracked the seal of the second letter. Long. And much more like Fursey. She sipped the ale and let his soft Irish voice unfurl in her head:

Your ever-fruitful sister has provided her husband with a son, named in Christ Ealdwulf. If volume were to be equated with strength he will in time, no doubt, prove capable of lifting the earth. Æ, with an heir to sharpen his edge, is now swinging most heartily for S. If S, a most Godly man, should prevail over R—and, Christ willing, I now don’t doubt it—then your nephew will be his eventual heir. Your sister is twice-happy because although her husband’s woman also had a child, sadly for both mother and child the issue is female. Howsomever, your sister is less happy at the name chosen for this by-blow: Balthild. It is an offence against her dignity, she believes, that this babe should share even part of her sister’s noble name.

That, at least, seemed clear enough: Sigebert was winning. He would be king of the East Angles, and Æthelric his heir.

She rolled up the parchment, tucked it in her belt. A sound thread of news she would share with the king—when it would work to her advantage.

She sipped the ale.

Hereswith now had a daughter and a son, heir to the East Anglisc king. Did that make her feel safe? In a strange hall, what made a wife belong? It was different for men. They stayed in their hall, the women came to them. Except Cian, who was in Angeth’s hall. What did she look like? Did he feel at home there?

She didn’t want to think about Cian. She was sick of thinking about Cian. She swallowed the last sour mouthful of ale. She stood, produced the bottle of mead Cille had been hoping for, and solemnly accepted four dwarfish winter coleworts in return. It took more effort than it should have to put them in her saddlebags; Cygnet kept sidling and dancing. The mare hadn’t been ridden enough. Like Hild, she needed a run.

Instead of heading south over the fields and back to the fort, she rode north angling towards the beach. She’d forgotten how stony it was. Cygnet’s hooves slid and clattered on the pebbles. The vegetable-heavy bags flapped and bounced and Cygnet rolled her eyes.

“Steady down.” But Cygnet snorted and fought the bit. Hild thumped her withers. “What’s wrong with you?”

Then she smelt it, a solid rancid stink. Seal. She reined in, swung a leg over the mare’s neck, and slid off. She led, one hand on her seax.

The hut tucked into the lee of a dune was familiar but she couldn’t remember whose it was. A wisp of smoke curled from the crude stone-weighted driftwood roof.

“Hello!”

Nothing but the hiss of sea through pebbles and the mewl of gulls.

She lifted the leather door curtain. The reek nearly overpowered her. Now she remembered. Heah and Din. She’d visited them once with Cian. She hung the curtain over the twist of wood jammed in the doorframe and peered into the gloom. Empty, but the fire was unbanked, and a pot of sea stew still steamed on the hearth: recently lifted from the coals. The sound of a horse had no doubt frightened them. They’d be back.

She sat in some dune grass and got out Fursey’s first letter again.
Whosoever stands as godfather to another adopts him in religion.

She read it over and over until the light began to die and the grass hissed in the rising wind.

Something growled behind the dune. A dog? She stood, hand on seax. “Come out. Heah, Din, I won’t hurt—”

“Don’t say their names!” A woman’s voice. A woman in a sealskin cloak, whirling a sling, lit by the setting sun. “Don’t say their names, wight!”

A woman with supple hands and a mouth like plums. Gode. Cian’s woman.

“Why shouldn’t I say … their names?”

Gode came sideways down the dune, sling still in her hand but not swinging. “They’re dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

Gode ignored her. “Put that down.”

“Put—? Oh.” She rolled the letter, stowed it in her purse.

Gode’s shoulders relaxed. “I thought you were him. You’re as like to him as a pea in a pod. But you’re not him.” She walked around Hild, sniffing. “Are you an ælf?”

An ælf? “I remember you.” Like a goddess of the sea, Cian had said. Like a river, like a wave.

Gode’s belly growled.

“I’m Hild.” Her belly rumbled, too.

“You’re hungry.” Gode tipped the pebble from her sling, tucked the leather in her belt. “Come with me. If you like.”

Inside, Gode shrugged off her sealskin cloak, dropped it by the fire, added driftwood, and set the stew bubbling. Hild unclasped her cloak.

“Lay it over mine. Protect your nice dress.”

They sat hip to hip on the fine blue cloak and ate from the same bowl. Gode held it. Every now and again she nudged Hild to take a spoonful.

“The lord liked to look at me, too,” she said. She took the bowl from Hild, put it to one side. She unfastened the neck of her shift. “He sang me songs. He sang to me of my white throat and supple hands. He sang of my plump breasts and mouth dark as plums.”

Hild swallowed. “I don’t sing.”

“What would you like to do?” She kept unfastening her shift.

Do? She gazed into the interesting swell and shadow.

Gode made a throaty sound that Hild thought might be a laugh and pushed the smock from her shoulders. “Come here.” She opened her arms.

It was an astonishment, a blessing, a gift. To feel a nipple swell in your mouth, to not know whose breast was plump on whose palm, to feel the thing pour back and forth between you, her breath harsh as a hound on your shoulder, her eyes turning black. The strength in her shudders.