Hild: A Novel (5 page)

The king used the distraction to send the petitioner away with a fine knife and no decision.

*   *   *

Hild was seven, in the stone undercroft of the palace at York, helping her mother count the tuns of honey. Her mother told her she would be seated at the high table for Modresniht, one of the twelve winter feasts.

“You’re to sit by the king. The queen, too. If she’s well. You’re to talk to him.” She counted on her fingers again. “That makes three dozen. Do you have the tally sticks?”

Hild held up the smooth, notched sticks.
You’re to sit by the king
.
You
, not
We
. But she had learnt to say nothing until she understood. She would think about it later.

She loved the undercroft. It was vast and cool and mysterious, room after room, with water running along the southern wall in a sharp-edged gravel-bottomed channel. One room, with thick walls, no windows, and a stout, banded door, was full of treasure, but Edwin kept a man outside it at all times, even during feasts, and Hild had never seen the hoard of gold and garnets that Cian—one early evening, as they ate small wrinkled apples and hard cheese and fresh hazelnuts—assured her were heaped in piles on the tile floor. Hereswith had snorted and said Cian had never seen it, either. And then the two of them fell to throwing nutshells at each other and pulling each other’s hair. They did that a lot now, since Cian had carelessly months ago boasted that his father was a real king, with a real kingdom, and Hereswith shouted back that Ceredig was the chief of a tiny
wealh
forest who, even now, was being hunted like a wounded boar through the wood he’d once called home for killing her father, and Hild’s, who if he’d lived would one day have been overking of all the isle.

Hild had ignored them and concentrated on keeping a stick tucked under her arm like a distaff while she ate. Her mother could do anything with a spindle or a distaff in her hand, and Hereswith and Mildburh were already working on a diamond twill. She hated the idea of not knowing how to do something when it was time.

Besides, everything they said was wrong. Ceredig was not Cian’s real father. And Hereric was an ætheling who had been poisoned in exile and no one cared anymore. Even the men who had come with them from Elmet were deserting them. Her mother was bitter, she knew, but she understood: How was a man to measure his worth without a noble lord to fight for and receive rings from? It was a fall to be a should-be king’s gesith and then a mere fighting man hired to protect a woman and children. Eight had come with them from Elmet. Six now were oathed to Edwin: gesiths again. Only Burgræd and his stripling son were left, and Hild knew by the way the son stood stiff when Edwin was near that he was pulling away in secret.

Hild shivered. It was cool in the undercroft built under the redcrest palace, and shadowy, with pictures of old-fashioned people in robes painted on the walls—painted on the walls! The robes had a border dyed a purple her mother could not reproduce with her lichen. At the western end was a stone table and niches. An altar, Onnen said: whether to Mithras, to the Christ, or to the goddess of the spring, nobody knew. Hild resolved to bring an offering when her mother was busy.

Much of the palace was broken and patched with timber and thatch, but anyone could see it had once been magnificent. Edwin, it was said, planned to restore its former glory.

“… and, little prickle, when you sit by the king, you must talk. You don’t talk enough.”

Quiet mouth, bright mind.

“Oh, this is cloudy.” Breguswith dipped her finger in the honey, sniffed, and gestured to Hild to come close so that she could wipe her finger on her daughter’s brown tabby sash. She pointed to the lid, leaning against the wall. “Pass me that.” She banged the lid back on, fished chalk from the purse at her belt, scrawled a mark, and shook her head. “If Cwenburh would only … No matter. If we strain it well, it might do for mead. Help me roll it over there by the— Bend your legs, not your back.”

A memory of stretching like a dog, the push of feet on turf and flash of teeth, flicked across her mind like a leaf on a gust of wind. She tried to catch it back but it was gone.

They moved on to the wheels of cheese. Breguswith slipped her knife clear of its sheath, paused. “I shall lend you my second-best brooch.”

For Modresniht. “So I’m to be a princess again?” And Hereswith? But that was too many things to think about at once.

“You always were. Pull this tight.” Breguswith sliced the outstretched cheese wrapper, resheathed her knife, and began to unwind.

“Not a mouse in the byre?” She took the linen wrappings as her mother unwound them. They smelt sour.

“That time is ending.”

“Tell me your dream again.” She needed to hear the familiar story. One more time.

Her mother considered, then nodded. “One night, in the days when my belly was as flat as a loom and your father was out hunting more than deer, I dreamt of a light, oh such a strange and beautiful light, and the light turned into a jewel—”

“What kind of jewel?” Hild felt four years old again.

“A great glittering gem.”

“What colour?” She loved this part, loved the ritual of the broad, slow Anglisc, pouring like a river in its valley.

“Luscious as your lips.”

“Yes, but what colour?”

“Like your skin with the sun beneath it, with a glow like a blushing pearl. Like a garnet shining through milk.”

“A carnelian!”

“A carnelian. The best, biggest, brightest you ever beheld.”

“As big as a king’s token?”

“Bigger.”

“As big as an overking’s token?”

“Bigger.”

“As big as a redcrest emperor’s?”

“Bigger and brighter than the moon. It hung before me, then it sank into my belly, which swelled, and a voice said, ‘Behold, the light that will shine on all the world!’ And the light shone from my belly, brighter than the best beeswax tapers burning in their sconces of burnished bronze.” And then, in a more normal voice, “And the next day the midwife told me I was to have a child.”

“And who was the child?”

“Hmmn,” Breguswith said, just as she had when Hild was very little. “A baby goat?”

“No!”

“A lamb?”

“No!”

“A heckled little hedgepig?”

Hild chortled and her mother smiled. The smile, as usual, didn’t last long.

“And so, little prickle, you will sit on Edwin’s left hand and you will smile and talk as well as eat. You will make him notice. It is time to give your light to the world.”

You. Your light. The shadows around her loomed longer and darker. She didn’t know what her light was. “Will Hereswith be there?”

“I didn’t dream of your sister.”

“I want Hereswith!”

“Well. Well, perhaps. Yes, I don’t see why not. Yes, indeed. Hereswith.”

“And Onnen.”

Breguswith laughed. “Oh, not Onnen. She’s wealh.”

“And Cian?”

“No. Now come, smell at that cloth and tell me—”

“But what will I do?”

“You will accept your wyrd. If Cwenburh isn’t well … Ah, but who knows?”

Hild had no idea what the queen had to do with anything. Her wyrd. Light of the world.

“Come, tell me what you think of this cheese. Fit for a king or merely his pigs?”

Hild put her wyrd from her mind. “It’s stinky.”

“Indeed. But look, the rind is firm enough. And a good rinse in brine and a fresh wrapping and it may last a while longer. But it should have been rinsed and rewrapped long since. What is Cwenburh thinking?”

After the cheese they moved from the food room to the room of skeins of yarn and bolts of already woven cloth. One bolt, wrapped in plain undyed hemp, stood in the corner on its own. Breguswith pulled down the corner of the outer wrapper.

“Do you see this colour?” It was finely, tightly woven wool as lustrous as linen, a brilliant red. “Fit for a queen. But with your hair blue is better.” She dismissed the roll. “I have the very thing. When we have it cut, I shall work a border with gold.”

“Gold?”

“I have a ring in my chest. Wulf shall beat it thin for me and cut it. Your wrists and neck will outshine the queen.”

“We have gold?”

“There is always a bit hidden away.”

“I don’t want our gold.” That wasn’t exactly what she meant but she didn’t always know how to say gauzy but strong things in Anglisc.

“I dreamt of you, you are to be the light of the world. Of course you shall have gold. What is the matter with you?” Breguswith reached for two skeins of weld-yellow flax and tilted them towards the light, examining the yarn.

“Is it a good ring, and heavy?”

“What use would I have for lightweight trifles?”

“Then give the ring to Burgræd’s son, have him swear on it.”

“Burgræd?”

“His son.”

Her mother put the yarn down. “His son, you say?”

Hild nodded. “Burgmod. He is … drifting.”

“Towards the king?”

“I think so.”

Breguswith’s face stilled and her finger moved very slightly as she ran some calculation. “He is of an age,” she said eventually. “But it will wait until the sixth night … Yes.” Her smile was the kind of smile Hild had imagined on the water sprite’s face as she pulled her down and drowned her. “Yes. You shall have your gold and Burgræd his.”

“His son, Burgmod.”

“Him and his son both. And Hereswith shall bring her gemæcce to Modresniht.”

“Mildburh.”

“Child, I know their names.” She picked up the two skeins again. “Yes, it’s time to declare ourselves. We shall make a striking group at the feast. Now, tell me whether and why we should choose the left-spun yarn or the right.”

*   *   *

Hild, in fact, did not choose either. Her mother chose for her—armsful of both—and with Onnen wove a beautiful spin-patterned pale yellow underdress with wrist- and throat-work in blue and glittering real gold. Her long, rather old-fashioned—as was right for a child, light of the world or not—sleeveless jacket was as blue as the summer sky just after sunset, and fastened with a great wheel-like gilt-copper brooch whose rim was as large around as her closed fist, like a hand on her chest it was so heavy, for all that it was mostly copper.

Every time she swallowed, she gleamed. Every time she lifted a hand, she glittered. Every time she breathed, she glinted. She was breathing fast; her legs trembled; the glitter and gleam and glint became an endless shimmer.

She stood behind the hanging in the doorway between the kitchen corridor and the hall proper, thirty women and girls waiting beyond her. They did not talk to her. With Cwenburh still ill, she was to be cupbearer. “But Hereswith is older,” she’d said when her mother prepared her, but her mother had taken Hild’s face between her hands and said, “This is your wyrd.”

Beyond, in the columned hall, the scop was finishing his praise of Edwin’s vast holdings, the whiteness of his sheep, the richness of his soil: the necessary preamble to the introduction of the women of the household to begin the Modresniht feast. The hall had been quiet at first, less to listen to the scop than because everyone was hungover from yesterday’s Yule feast. As the informal jars of heather beer began to empty and housefolk brought in the wooden platters of intricately woven and spiced breads with their little pots of fruit butters and jams and herb pastes, stomachs and heads settled and conversation began to rise like a tide. The scop’s chant moved majestically from folk and fold to hearth and hall, wealth and wine, his rolling Anglisc now transmuted into the language of flame, and gold, and honour.

Hild’s legs trembled. She stood as straight as she could.

“Soon now,” her mother said.

Hild nodded but couldn’t speak. What if she dropped the cup? Or spilled it? Or tripped? What if she took it to guests in the wrong order? The omens would be calamitous.

“Hold out your hands.”

She obeyed.

“It’s heavy,” Breguswith said. She put the great cup in Hild’s hands. Hild sagged. She had never held anything so weighty.

It was as wide around as her rib cage, not gilded bronze but pure gold, with silver and gold filigree, studded with garnet and beryl and blue enamel. It was empty.

Breguswith gestured to a houseman in a work tunic, who passed her a red-glazed jar. She unstoppered it. The stinging scent of white mead made Hild blink.

As Breguswith began to pour, a houseboy lifted the hanging cloth and a rush of housefolk carrying stoppered jars flowed around Hild and into the hall. “Hold still!” Breguswith said.

Hild did her best. The boy still held the curtain. The housefolk in hall were spreading out along the wall behind the benches, ready with their jars. The scop’s voice rose.

The weight of the cup was unbearable. The noise was unbearable. The heat was unbearable.

Her mother was smoothing Hild’s hair back from her forehead, tucking it securely behind her ears. She was saying something. “… since a maid without a girdle was cupbearer? Never, is my guess. It’s a job for a queen but today, O my light, O my jewel, it is you. Today you are queen in this hall. You step first, with me just one step behind, and your sister and her gemæcce…”

She wanted Onnen. She wanted Cian. She wanted the queen to rise from her sickbed and take this cup from her.

“… Edwin first, then the guest at his right, the guest at his left, then across the hall to his…”

She wanted her mother to have dreamt of Hereswith as jewel and light. She wanted the king to be dead, dead, dead so that someone else’s closest female relative would do this.

Even over the din of conversation, the scop’s voice rang with that triumphal note which, whether in Anglisc or British, meant it was time.

“… here at your shoulder. But you step first, you step first. Step now, Hild.”

From behind her she felt the women smoothing their dresses, checking their wrist cuffs, and flicking their veils one last time. The houseboy was looking at her. Her hands felt slippery on the gold. It was too heavy. Her hands were too small. She would drop it.

The boy stuck out his tongue. She blinked. He crossed his eyes.

“They’ll get stuck,” she said in British. He nearly dropped the curtain in surprise, and it was with a private smile she stepped into the hall.