Hild: A Novel (30 page)

The gesiths had found the Lindseymen’s beer. One of them, with a finger newly gone and blood all over his leg and teeth, was laughing and pissing in a dead man’s mouth.

The thought of going alone into the king’s tent full of men who had just killed other men made her feel dizzy. She told herself that Eamer, too, had just killed, but still her voice wobbled when she said to him, “Stay out here.”

Just inside the tent, the king, unhelmed, stood with his naked sword in one hand, point resting on the floor, and a goblet in his other. Lilla, still helmed, red with gore, stood under the tent peak, where two short-haired men were bound to the centre pole. One of Lilla’s men stood against the tent wall, deliberately seeing nothing, saying nothing. The tent reeked.

Edwin was smiling. Blood clotted the mail around his elbow. “It’s a clear road to Lindum now, if we’re swift, and we lost only eleven men.”

“Eleven men on this side, King,” Lilla said.

Edwin ignored him and said to Hild, “You were right.” He pointed with his chin at the bound men. “Welshmen.”

Both men were sagging in their ropes. One had been so badly beaten his mother wouldn’t recognise him. The right side of the one closest to her was sopping with blood from a wound Hild couldn’t see. Probably in his armpit. She knew from songs that was a good place to stab a man in armour. But this man wasn’t armoured. He wore a checked cloak.

Hild knew him. The memory was sudden and sharp: the elm wood, the geese in the distance, this man standing with his brother in Ceredig’s hall.
You have your father’s hair
, and, later,
Edwin Snakebeard will come.

Gwynedd. Marro. Cadwallon.

She wished she could run upstairs to bed with Hereswith, wished Onnen would be there to comb her hair. She made herself step closer. She nodded at the unconscious, beaten man and asked Lilla, “Will he die of his wounds?”

“No. Though he’ll never be pretty.”

Hild turned to Edwin. “Edwin king. Uncle. These are Cadfan’s own men.” She saw his twitch of surprise, which he covered with a lift of his goblet. “The bloody one will die. The beaten one can’t talk. Or not soon. Give him to me, and the first will talk before he dies.”

Edwin’s eyes flashed green. “We don’t have time for spells and sacrifice.”

“No.”

Silence. “Oh, very well.” He waved his goblet as though the matter were of no account and stepped to the door flap to speak to Coelgar.

Hild turned back to the blood-soaked man. He was watching her. She said swiftly in British, which she knew Lilla barely understood, “I still have my father’s hair, and my uncle’s. And the serpent has come to you. No, say nothing. You have no time. Marro, you are dying.” Marro stirred at the use of his name. “You are dying, but your brother”—and now he jerked in his ropes; she had guessed right—“your brother will live, I’ll see to it, if you tell me true. Cadfan king is dying, yes or no?”

“Who are you?” It was little more than a whisper, but the same voice from long ago.

“I am the king’s light.”

He blinked as though he couldn’t see well. “Are you real?”

She reached out and touched her thumb to his forehead. “Tell me now, is Cadfan dying?”

“Yes.”

“And Cadwallon will be king.”

“He is king now in all but name.”

“And he plots with whom?”

A long silence. “You are not a man. Are you a demon?”

“I am the king’s light.” King’s light. King’s trembling leaf who hid up a tree. “Who does Cadwallon plot with?”

“You will keep my brother safe, demon, you swear it?”

“I swear it. Who?”

“Eanfrith Iding. Cuelgils princeps. Neithon of Alt Clut. Eochaid Buide of the Dál—”

“You lie,” Hild said. “Alt Clut and Dál Riata would never ally.”

“Enough gold will make for the strange—” He coughed. His tunic glistened as fresh blood seeped from his wound. His hose were soaked and sagging. “… strangest bedfellows.”

“Cadwallon doesn’t have that much gold.”

“Edwin overking does, even when split among seven lords.” His voice was a faint rattle and sigh, like a stirring in the willow rhynes.

“Seven?”

His eyes closed. She shook him gently.

“You said seven lords. Who else? Marro, who else?”

She wasn’t sure but she thought perhaps the strange sound he made was a laugh. “You know. So close to you. Also Dunod…”

“Dunod of Craven?” He sighed, and this time the sigh went on and on. His eyes stayed open. “Marro?”

She blew on his eyes. He did not blink.

She stepped back. “He’s dead,” she said to Lilla. “Tie the other to a horse. When we have horses. Keep him safe.”

Coelgar lifted the door flap for the king to leave and the moans of Lindseymen filled the tent. Edwin said over his shoulder to Hild, “With me.” Lilla caught the eye of his man by the tent wall, gestured to the Welshman, and joined the king.

Eamer fell in behind them.

As they walked, Edwin and Coelgar talked of horses and supplies, and Lilla wiped at the gore on his mail, succeeding only in smearing it. The noise of the suffering Lindseymen was terrible, much louder than before. No one but Hild seemed to notice.

She said to Eamer, “Why don’t they kill them?”

Eamer shrugged. “It’s wealh work, and the wealh are on the other side of the river. Wealh work. Or women’s work.”

*   *   *

It was not like slitting the throat of a sucking pig. The pig had not looked into her eyes.

After the first one, the thrashing and choking and mess, Hild wiped her hands on the grass and asked Eamer to find her a spear, a short one. He brought her one broken halfway down the shaft. The pale ash was warm. She stooped to the second man, curled on his side with his leg almost off at the knee, and said, “Lie still now, and it will be quick.” She tugged off his helmet and felt with her thumb for the soft spot at the base of his skull, set the point of the broken spear, and killed him with one leaning thrust.

It was not unlike sticking a skewer in a roast to see if it was done. The same pop as the skin broke, then a good push through the meat gripping the iron. The juices that leaked were red, though, not clear, and the smell was quite different: shit and rust and mud.

Around her men cried out louder, some asking to be next, some saying that, for pity’s sake, it was a broken leg, only a broken leg, if she would just bind it, and bring water …

Hild moved in a bubble of quiet, her own sound shadow, but after the third man she found a knot of gesiths following her. She ignored them, knelt by the fourth man, and struggled with his helmet. He moaned, like a man in his sleep, but Hild thought he was probably too far gone to feel much. It was difficult to tell; half his face was missing. Behind her, the gesiths spoke in hushed voices.

She knew … she knew the Welshman’s name … knew they were brothers … had foreseen everything … she’d vanished from sight … fell from the sky like an eagle … wouldn’t die even when a score, twoscore, threescore Lindseymen attacked from ambush … hadn’t she saved them at Bebbanburg?… she had the true sight …

At the edge of the field a man shrieked; a sow rooted in his belly. “Eamer, please. Kill him.”

“Lady, I must stay at your—”

“Please.”

But it was another gesith who drew his sword, ran to the edge of the field, and brought his blade down hard, once, twice, three times, and threw a clod of dirt at the sow. She ran off, hoinking in outrage, but didn’t go far.

The gesith ran back. “He’s dead, lady.”

“Thank you.”

Another gesith drew his sword, and another. They looked at her, as though for permission. “I thank you, too.” They moved off through the strewn field, swords rising and falling. Killing at a seer’s bidding was fit work for gesiths.

Hild bent over and vomited stinging bile, then, through her weeping, killed the man at her feet.

*   *   *

They left their wounded with a handful of wealh to care for them and to strip the dead enemy of arms and armour, and rode hard for Lindum. Hild’s eyes would not stop leaking. Lilla dropped back through the ranks long enough to give her his flask. Mead. “Drinking helps.”

*   *   *

Sometime later her eyes dried. Not long after that, the horses dropped to a walk and the message came back: The king wants the maid. Hild and her shadow, Eamer, cantered forward. Others cantered behind her: the gesiths from the field. Nine, all told.

The gesiths they passed sang a cheerful, ugly song. One in four rode with poles topped by the brutalised heads of Lindseymen. They did not look human. Hild pretended they were not.

Lilla put his hand on his sword as they approached, and Hild nodded at Eamer, who made a
Hold
gesture to her followers, and stayed with them while she approached the king.

“We near Lindum,” Edwin said. “What will we find?”

Leathers creaked as those close by leaned in to listen. Her mind was empty of everything but the feel of iron gritting through muscle and cartilage. She shook her head.

His eyes swarmed green and black. “You are a seer. You will tell your king.”

Hild stared at him, her mind as smooth as wax.

He kicked his horse, then reined it in savagely. “You knew the men in the tent. You couldn’t, but you did. And you witched them so they talked to you, Lilla said. Now you’ve witched my own men so they follow you like puppies. So tell me, or, by Woden, I’ll throw you in the river with your tongue and toes in a bag around your neck.”

He would do it. She had seen enough that day to know he would. Who would stop him?

With a white hiss, the world began to turn. The ground seemed a long, long way off. She clung to her saddle horn. If she fell now, he would kill her. She must hold on.

She held on.

It didn’t matter that she had nothing in her stomach, that she had pushed a spear into four men and snuffed their lives like guttering candles. It didn’t matter that she was an ungirdled girl in an army of men who would piss in a dead man’s mouth and leave another holding his own insides because to help was women’s work.

I am the light, she thought. I am not a maid. I am the light. Cold as a sword. I will show no weakness.

She stepped to one side of her feelings, like stepping out of her clothes. She did not hurt. She had no need to eat, no mortal concern with life. She could breathe easily.

She lifted her head.

“Edwin king, seven lords are arrayed against you.” Seven, a number brimming with wyrd. “I do not know every name. Yet.”

He assessed her, then turned to Coelgar. “Keep the men moving at a walk. Lilla, with me. No,” he said to Eamer, and then to the pack of gesiths who had followed, “you hounds will stay.” To Hild he said, “Come.”

*   *   *

“You’re lying,” he said when their horses were fifty paces down the trail. “Oh, not about the names you’ve given me: Cadwallon with Cuelgils and Eanfrith, Neithon, and Eochaid—the gold he must have promised for that unnatural pairing! Even Dunod. No, they’re true enough. But you’re not telling me something.” He tapped his teeth with his thumbnail, thinking. “The trap was for you on the west bank. A score of men. For you. Why?”

“Ransom?”

“Look at you. What are you worth as a niece?”

As a peaceweaver, more than an ætheling. But Hild did not bother to say so.

“You shouldn’t have let the Welshman die before he gave up the last name.”

“Men die, Uncle.”

“And that’s something you can’t do, eh? Shine your light beyond death.”

From the strange, cold distance in which she had placed herself, Hild wondered what he would do if she said she could see into the realm of the dead. He would believe her. They all believed her, no matter what she said.

She heard again Marro’s whisper.
You know. So close.
She did know, or could guess, the seventh name: Osric. He was an Yffing, a man in his prime, with an almost-grown heir. If Edwin died tomorrow half the kingdom would side with Osric against the young æthelings. But to betray Osric was to betray Breguswith.

“Well,” Edwin said, “we’ll have the truth of it from Cuelgils himself soon enough.”

*   *   *

They took Lindum before æfen. Lindum, city of tanners and fullers, stinking for generations of stale urine and skin turning to leather, stinking now of blood.

Edwin and his counsellors, each with his own man, sat at the scarred marble table that had belonged to Cuelgils. Hild, who had brought Lintlaf—for Forthere had reclaimed Eamer, and she didn’t even know the names of her hounds—sat a little apart. No one knew if she was in favour or not. Beyond the painted walls, gesiths hooted as they played kickball with the heads of Cuelgils’s sons. They were small heads. The head of Cuelgils himself was being washed, its hair carefully dried and moustaches combed, to be mounted on a gilded pike.

Edwin was relaxed and smiling. Cuelgils was dead in the fight, a pity, but he had Lindsey and its gold. A lot of gold. Enough gold to buy his way past any northern conspiracy. On his forefinger he wore a new ring, a massive garnet.

He threw a great golden collar, probably Irish work, to Coelgar, “Wisest of counsellors,” who bowed his head. An arm ring inset with silver and enamel to Lilla, “Bravest of men.” A cuff to Blæcca, “Most loyal thegn,” and on around the table, until everyone was looking at Hild.

Edwin extracted a small, heavy cup from the hoard. Polished silver from Byzantium, inlaid with gold: a lewd figure of a woman on one side and a stately queen on the other. Both women wore the same face. Edwin weighed it for a moment, then set it on the table with a click and pushed it to Hild. “For Hild, seer, prophet, and most favoured niece, on her birth day.”

Hild had forgotten. She was twelve years old.

11

T
HE WEATHER TURNED
. The first leaves fell. In Goodmanham, Marro’s brother woke and died of the black vomit the same day. Hild hadn’t even learnt his name. Breguswith left for Arbeia the next day. She would return for Yule.

The court moved to York. Æthelburh’s people gradually took over the household: James the Deacon, the dark-skinned music master, took administration. Eormenfrith, her trade master, suggested the women embroider hangings he could exchange for a variety of goods from the continent. Paulinus, her adviser and priest, stayed at the king’s side, offering counsel, always accompanied by Stephanus. The queen herself became the woman that women went to with complaints, though her healing, Gwladus said, was as much a thing of prayer as of poultice.