Hild: A Novel (53 page)

And Hild had a sudden memory of her father tossing her in the air, laughing, but she didn’t trust it. “Did he toss Hereswith in the air to make her laugh?”

Breguswith nodded. “He liked to see her hair fly about and shine in the sun. But Hereswith didn’t like it. It made her cry.”

“I miss her.”

Breguswith nodded again. It was the most they had agreed on in years. “But she’s well enough where she is. Dream of a son for her tonight, and maybe Eorðe will hear.”

“Shouldn’t you be praying to the Christ?”

“Ah,” her mother said, and smiled. “I forgot.”

Fursey wouldn’t have trusted that smile, but Fursey wasn’t there. Besides, his remedy would have been the same. “Let’s persuade Onnen to give us some of the Gaulish wine Mulstan always has put by. Then let’s drink. A lot. To those who are missing.”

That night, Hild dreamt she crouched in the reeds by the spear-straight rhyne. Tin-grey clouds scudded overhead and willows rattled. In their boat, Bán and his dog Cú glided along the bank, Bán’s little knife on the willow,
snick-snick-snick
, flashing in the watery light. Hild rose, waved. Bán smiled, and Cú’s tongue lolled in a dog laugh.

*   *   *

Hild and Cian walked along the path by the smith’s beck. Dark lingered under the trees and long slanting shadows fell over the water, where bats still swooped. The river smelt of night, but the early-spring grass along the path, pale green in the growing light, smelt of morning, fresh and sharp as new-forged iron.

Spotted woodpeckers, half a dozen, swooped into the wych elms, and all started hammering at once.

“They do that every spring,” he said. He stopped. “Like a gang of tree cutters.”

The birds fell silent, then one tapped, fell silent, another tapped, fell silent, another.

“More like Witganmot,” she said.

“But shorter!” they said together, and laughed.

They walked some more.

“After you left, I came here a lot,” he said. “I missed you showing me things, making them magic. So I decided to find them myself. Like this.” He reached up into the newly fledged birch and pulled down a handful of tiny leaves, pale as a new kitten’s eyes. He popped some in his mouth, offered the rest to her. “They taste like sorrel.”

They walked on to the smithy, where the fire wasn’t yet quite hot and the smith was happy to talk steel and edge with the thegn’s foster-son. He kept looking at Hild’s seax as he talked, and eventually she took pity on him, drew it, and offered it hilt-first over her forearm.

“Beautiful,” he said. “Northern work, that. I’ll just put a fresh edge on it, shall I?”

On the way back, kingfishers hunted where the bats had been, and morning held full sway.

Cian sighed.

“You’ll miss it so much?”

He didn’t say anything, then he shook himself. “We’ve three more days. Begu will want to show you every last cow.”

“Winty’s calf’s calf.”

“And I want you to see me spar with Mulstan. He’s a wily old bull. I bet you couldn’t get him to drop his shield.”

“I bet I could.” And she pushed him, and he pushed her back, and he slung his arm over her shoulder and she rested her hand on his belt and they walked that way, close together, all the way back to the hall.

Onnen, who was berating a houseman about cobwebs she had found in some dark corner, broke off when they entered.

“Mam, is Mulstan about? I want Hild to watch us cross swords.”

“He’s walking Celfled’s son along the bounds.”

“I thought they’d sorted that.”

Onnen folded her arms. “You know Celfled. Nothing’s ever sorted.” She nodded to the houseman to be on his way, then said to Hild, “Guenmon made some of those pasties you like. You and I will take them up the south cliff, to the beacon.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

*   *   *

Hild insisted that they all go. Onnen was wise to her ways, though, and knew how to deal with that. She handed the girl little Onstan and picked up Mulfryth herself.

Little
of course wasn’t the right word. Each twin weighed more than a spring lamb.

As Hild had intended, Cian, carrying the sack of Guenmon’s pasties—which he kept shifting from one side to the other—the chattering Begu, and Breguswith moved ahead of them up the steep cliff path, pulling themselves up using the stunted, still-leafless saplings along the path.

As Onnen and Hild fell farther behind and Begu’s chatter faded, the only sound was the wind in the furze and the grass and the thistles and, a long way down, the steady roll and crash of the incoming tide.

Hild, with her long, strong legs and young lungs scrambled faster. Onnen climbed as fast as she could. By the time she got to the top, she was breathing hard. Hild reached down one-handed and hauled her up.

The girl still had manners, at least. She might look longingly at the church weathering into the dirt and the repaired thorn hedge but she stayed with Onnen while the older woman caught her breath. The others, Begu in the lead, were already halfway to the old beacon tower, which looked to have lost a few more stones since she last climbed this way.

They stood side by side, facing south and east, away from the wind, looking half out to sea, half at the figures in the distance. Begu had stopped and now seemed to be shrieking and laughing and pointing at something. The air smelt of salt.

Hild shifted Onstan to her other arm. He stayed fast asleep, thumb in his mouth. “He’s big for his age,” she said.

“Mulfryth’s bigger. She takes after her father. Sadly, she also has his nose.”

Hild leaned over to peer at Mulfryth’s little face. Her eyes flicked open. Pale brown, almost amber, and fierce. “Hawks,” Hild said. “Begu said they were like geese. But they’re not.”

“They’re my centre now, these two.” Onnen reached over and tucked Onstan’s blanket more securely beneath his chin. “Begu’s no longer my responsibility. She’s yours.”

“Yes.”

The wind shifted, and Onnen thought she heard the clank of cowbells.

She’d said many hard things to the girl over the years, but this might end up being the hardest. The girl was too young to understand the depth of it, but she had to understand the importance.

She nodded to where, in the distance, Cian was shifting his sack yet again. “He always did hate carrying anything that wasn’t a sword.”

The girl nodded.

“You two are very close,” Onnen said.

The girl glanced at her. “Yes.”

Onnen wanted to hug her, smooth her hair, make it better. She hardened her heart. “You can’t have him.”

The girl frowned. “What—”

“You don’t understand. But you will. For now, take heed.”

The girl’s gaze fastened on hers: clear, clever, stubborn. But Cian was her son.

“You can’t have him. And you can’t tell him why. Keeping him ignorant keeps him safe. Whatever he knows always did shine out of him. Like a beacon.” Now the girl’s eyes changed. That part at least she understood.

Below, waves rolled in long easy lines onto the beach. The girl, watching them, said, “I’ve never told him. I never will.” A black-headed gull wheeled overhead, crying. She lifted her face to follow it. “But my mother says gossip flows into gaps.”

“She’s not wrong.” That was the problem. Mother and daughter were both so rarely wrong they thought they never could be. “Yes. I’ll start telling the stories again, the story of Cian taking the sword from Ceredig. I’ll tell Guenmon. She already knows, but I’ll remind her. And what Guenmon knows, all the wealh will know. Including the visitors. Then the king will know.”

“He already knows that one. I told him.”

“But this way, he’ll know that everyone else knows. And the story will crowd out any other that might arise. And being thought as Ceredig’s son, now that Elmet is wholly Edwin’s, makes Cian useful to him. Useful men stay alive.”

*   *   *

Hild found her way to the kitchen, and thanked Guenmon for the pasties.

Guenmon said, “Was there something wrong with them?”

“No. I liked them.”

“Well, no need to sound surprised.”

“It’s not…” But she had no idea how to explain the puzzling conversation she’d just had with Onnen. “I’m glad you remembered I like tarragon.”

“Well of course I remember. Reach me down one of those cups, now.” Hild did. “I remember when you had to stand on a stool, too. Now don’t go away. I want a word with you.”

Another word. Hild hoped she would at least understand this one. She watched as Guenmon measured and ground spices, tipped them into two copper cups.

“Now.” Guenmon handed Hild a cup of spiced wine. “It’s about your bodywoman.”

“Gwladus? Why? Where is she?”

“Poorly. I gave her something to drink.”

“What—”

“What you should have given her a fortnight ago.”

“She’s—”

“Not anymore.”

“Did it, was it—”

“The baby doesn’t matter. It would only have been a slave, anyway. But it hurts to lose them. It hurts.” Guenmon looked lightless for a moment, then huffed, impatient. “It’s done. But you’re to see it doesn’t happen again. That lass is yours. Protect her.”

*   *   *

For the next two days, Gwladus, pale and slow moving, was in the care of Guenmon; Begu happy to renew her acquaintance with the cows and goats; Cian showing off his ringed sword to the young men of the hall; and Breguswith and Onnen lost for hours gathering herbs and talking of old times, or sitting in the sun weaving quietly together, each with a twin at her side. The king was busy with Mulstan, discussing trade and sailing weather and the new w
ī
c at York. No one needed a seer.

Hild was glad to escape the responsibilities she didn’t quite understand and roam the moor.

She watched a goshawk rolling and diving over the gorse and heather, crying like a gull. She didn’t see a mate; perhaps he soared and swooped for joy. She hiked along the cliff’s edge, paused to listen to the rock pipits building their nest in a crevice and watch the male feed beetles to his mate. The eggs would come soon.

When she thought at all, she thought in British, the language of the high places, of wild and wary and watchful things. A language of resistance and elliptical thoughts.

She climbed the paths morning and evening, breathing the salt-sharp air, watching the slow spring dusk tighten around the shore like an adder and the sea turn to jet. She was glad to be alone, to be free, to be high above the world, where she could see everything coming. She had people to protect.

On the last afternoon she walked four miles north along the shore, over sand and shingle and long beach grass. By one rill, where low tangled hawthorn and gorse grew among the long sea grass, she found a row of tiny wrens and mouse pups spiked on thorns: the work of the wariangle, the butcher-bird.

She walked half a mile inland, checking blackthorn hedges, but the only nest she found was abandoned. By it were thorns hung with two caterpillars and a bee: the work of their young. All gone now, master and apprentice, flown to warmer climes. Like kings, they ravaged then moved on, leaving their trophies hanging from battlements, drying to husks, proclaiming,
My land, my law.

*   *   *

Hild stood at the aft rail with Breguswith, watching the world slide by and the wake unfurl. The Humber was mushroom brown, still thick with spring silt. On the north bank, as they moved west and inland, the mudflats became wolds, undulating folds of green grass dotted with flinty-coloured sheep and tiny white puffs of lambs.

“A lot of lambs this year,” her mother said. “And their dams with good thick wool after the cold winter.”

Hild nodded, idly pondering the wake, the little curls of dirty cream constantly being born and dying along the edge of the deep trough they cut through the water. There was a pattern there but she hadn’t the words to describe it.

“I talked to Onnen about Aberford and the York w
ī
c. She’ll watch for the good wool that comes down from the north, from Tinamutha. Aberford will make a good place for collecting, sorting, and spinning in winter, as you said. Though I think somewhere along these banks, too, might be handy.”

Hild liked listening to her mother planning to build, rather than destroy or take. It felt as comforting as a larder full of food with only a month til spring. It made her feel safe; that their web, their weft and warp, was wide and strong.

“And between the York w
ī
c and Lindum port we can reach the Frisians and Franks ourselves. We won’t have to go through Gipsw
ī
c with sulky Eorpwald taking his cut. Tinamutha and the Bay of the Beacon will feed trade with the men of the north, even west across to Rheged and east over the North Sea.”

On the bank a woman, dress kilted to her waist, threw something in her bark basket and shaded her eyes to watch them glide by. “Not the Irish, though.”

Breguswith shook her head. “Nor the Scots. Gwynedd still has that trade. And a fine, lordly gesith to trumpet their wares.” She nodded to where Cian, bold cloak thrown back from his shoulders, was leaning with Lintlaf against the rails midships and passing comments on the folk, mostly women, working in the bows. Lintlaf offered him the jar of beer he was drinking. Cian shook his head. “We must make him a good Anglisc cloak that he likes better.”

“I like his cloak,” Hild said. “It suits him.”

“Something in blue. The blue that the women of Northumbria make better than any in the world.”

“But not royal blue.”

“No.”

The water slished. The sail rippled.

“No doubt the king will soon be putting Cadwallon and Gwynedd in their place,” Breguswith said. “And, meanwhile, there’s always Dyfneint.”

“Do you know anyone in Dyfneint?”

Breguswith shook her head.

“Nor do I,” Hild said, watching the way Lintlaf watched Gwladus, who stood over Morud, bossing him with close to her usual vigour on the proper way to scrub a pot. “But I know who does.”

It was evening by the time the ship docked on the south bank of the Ouse. Ropes were thrown, gangplanks dropped fore and aft, and people disembarked with the usual din of near disaster and swift efficiency that Hild had come to associate with the meeting of ship and land. The deck swarmed with men, all shouting, all carrying things. The ship, now seized tightly to the dock, felt stiff and lifeless underfoot.