Hild: A Novel (67 page)

Back at the vill the first person she saw was Swid, the byre man, leading two horses round the yard. Cian, she thought, and Uinniau. But they didn’t look good enough for something a prince of Rheged might ride. “Been rode hard all day,” Swid said. “From parts south.”

The horses’ withers were curded with sweat but there was no blood at the bit. Important, but not urgent. She would have time to change before the king called her.

Gwladus gave her the news as she dressed: Penda had caught the West Saxons at Cirencaester and thrashed them like washing, dashed Cynegils and Cwichelm’s army to pieces. Cwichelm had fled—mortally wounded, said some, already dead, said others—and Penda had crowned Cynegils king and married him to his sister.

Penda now ruled the Mercians and the West Saxons, the whole middle of the isle and its southwestern toe.

The middle of the isle. The middle of the isle: Woden worshippers surrounded on all sides by baptised kings. Gwynedd, Kent, Rheged, Dyfneint, Dál Riata, Pictland, Northumbria, even the Idings.
Christ, the most important of all.
That was what Fursey meant. The Christ was everywhere, his priests were everywhere, advising every king, writing it all down. Penda was surrounded.

He must choose an ally. Cadwallon, in the west, with his shaved foreheads. Or Edwin, in the east, with his shaved crowns. Wealh or Roman. Whichever he chose, he would alter the great weave.

Penda was clever. He would choose Cadwallon because Cadwallon was weaker, more easily absorbed and overcome. But in the end it wouldn’t matter. Even if Penda sided with Edwin, they would one day fight. Penda needed the Christ. Edwin needed the Christ. But only one could have the Christ’s chief priest and the trade web allied with Rome.

21

C
IAN RETURNED FROM RHEGED
with Uinniau. But Hild didn’t see them much. They and Oswine were always riding out—the Bay of the Beacon, a visit to the Bryneich—at Edwin’s suggestion, or so Hild persuaded herself. She hoped it was not that Cian could not bear to be near the butcher-bird.

The court moved to York. The longest Cian, Uinniau, and Oswine were with the household was at Yule, when they sat with the gesiths who were not Hild’s hounds.

*   *   *

Spring came late to Yeavering that year. The court had been there a fortnight and still the top of Ad Gefrin was speckled with snow and the roe deer hadn’t dropped their young. In the vill, the snow was gone, but a cold, wet wind blew without cease. In the king’s hall the fires smoked. In the queen’s hall, Eanflæd coughed until she turned red and wailed, and little Wuscfrea coughed himself pale and silent. All the children, wealh and Anglisc, visitor and local, sickened. The hall filled with mothers bringing children with sticky eyes and heaving chests to breathe the clearer air of the high women’s hall and for Breguswith to tend. Begu and Gwladus helped. Hild did not. Hægtes, they called her. Freemartin. Butcher-bird.

Hild went out into the weather to find chickweed. It was too early in the year for full potency, but she gathered it anyway, gave it to Gwladus to put to steep in boiling water, and went back out to find more.

*   *   *

Uinniau, crouched in the lee of the hill to wash his bloody hands, paused, hands dripping. “What was that?”

Cian looked up from the doe he was butchering. Oswine dropped the twig he’d been feeding to the flickering flame.

“The fire!” Lintlaf said, as a gust of wind nearly snuffed it out. “Fuck.”

“Sshh.” Uinniau tried to listen past the bibble-babble of the water. “There’s something out there.”

He pulled his cloak tighter and peered into the windblown dusk. There were four of them, royal gesiths, no need to fear the dark. But the wind had been picking up, wuthering and moaning over the stones, like the orphans of Arawn pouring from the hollow hills, and they’d all heard the yowls of Cait Sith.

A pebble rattled into the wash upstream.

He drew his knife. Lintlaf picked up his spear.

He looked at Boldcloak; they all looked at him. But Boldcloak was looking only at the doe, as though it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“It’s probably just a lost goat,” Oswine said, but Uinniau didn’t think so. He sniffed. Something …

The darkness tightened, curdled, and stepped forward. It was tall. Its hands trailed long fingers, too long, a wight’s fingers …

“Look at its hands,” Oswine said. “Look at its hands!”

“No farther,” Uinniau said to the thing. “Show me your hands.”

The tall figure said, “It’s chickweed, Uinniau.”

“It’s the freemartin,” Lintlaf said, and lowered his spear.

Uinniau stepped forward. “Lady?”

Hild said, “Yes. Your fire’s about to go out.”

Oswine fed it a twig. Lintlaf snorted. Uinniau glanced at Boldcloak again, but the doe seemed more interesting than ever.

Uinniau sheathed his knife. “Won’t you join us, lady?”

The dark moved and glimmered. A headshake. “They need this back at the hall. The children.”

“They’re no better?”

“No. If you want to help, you can finish butchering that doe and search for more chickweed and some figwort.”

The fire caught and flared, showing sad bundles of weeds held in scratched, filthy hands. He stepped back. Women’s work.

She must have read his mind. Her laugh was flat. “Well. It’s true mud and nettles can be terrifying at night. Enjoy the glory of the hunt, my lords.”

She faded back into the gloom.

Uinniau looked at Cian. “You knew it was her.”

Boldcloak wiped his knife on the turf. “Goats don’t smell of jessamine.” He dumped out the entrails and swore when they slopped on his foot.

Uinniau stared into the dark and crossed himself. He’d heard the songs. They all had. He’d kept expecting Boldcloak to defend her, but he’d stayed silent. He understood now. She was different. Cold, hard, uncanny. She’d been out there listening to them in the dark before she deliberately kicked that pebble. He shivered. Now he understood why her hounds spoke of her as they did: not human, more like a wall, a tide, the waxing of the moon. A force of nature. Implacable, untouchable.

*   *   *

Hild, cloak thrown back from her shoulders and face red from the wind, watched her mother cool the chickweed infusion by pouring it back and forth from one bowl to another.

Breguswith said, “You look like you’ve swallowed a thistle.”

Hild didn’t say anything. She rarely did now. Who wanted to listen to the hægtes, the wyrd woman, the butcher-bird? No one. No more than they wanted to be tended by her. A woman, but one who killed.

She turned and nodded for Begu to start bringing the children for Breguswith to dose. She stepped back.

Three-year-old Eanflæd was first. She shrieked at the taste; she had very powerful lungs. The chickweed was helping her throat, at least. Begu shepherded her back to the other toddlers. Eanflæd shrieked some more and punched one of the wealh children, who promptly wailed. Begu stroked Eanflæd’s pink, sweaty forehead and murmured something Hild couldn’t hear.

The queen carried Wuscfrea. Breguswith spooned warm liquid into his tiny mouth. He didn’t swallow, just let the viscous stuff dribble from his mouth and laboured to breathe.

Breguswith wiped his mouth and nodded to Æthelburh, who tucked the soft brown blanket around his chin again. “Keep wiping his eyes.”

They both watched the queen sit next to Wilnoð on the south hearth and settle into the same pose as a score of women in hall: children resting in left arms and laps, heads bent, cloaks sheltering them like tents.

At the east end of the hall, the older children played with a rag ball and wiped their noses on their shifts.

Hild said, “Is Wuscfrea all right?”

Breguswith hesitated, then nodded. “His lungs will clear, but I worry about his eyes. Did you find more figwort?”

Hild pointed to the hearth, where Gwladus stirred a brass pot. “Juice from the stems warming with honey. There isn’t much.” Blossoms were better, but it was too early in the year. “I think little Bassus is in most need.”

Breguswith nodded, but Hild knew what she was thinking: Little Bassus wasn’t the heir.

“I’ll find some more.” She pulled her cloak forward, reached for her hood.

On the way out she stopped by the hearth. Just to get warm.

Gwladus looked soft and rosy in the glow of the fire. Hild said, “Don’t let it burn.”

“Do I ever? Don’t you stay out too long. That wind is as raw as a washwoman’s knuckle and swollen with wickedness.”

*   *   *

They buried little Bassus with the horn spoon he’d teethed on, at the foot of the south slope of Ad Gefrin. “So he’ll face the sun, at least,” Wilnoð said. “If ever there is sun again.”

They buried seven children, lying next to one another for company. Hild held a blanket over the grave to keep the rain from their faces while Stephanus gave his blessing and hurried back to the important business of the men’s hall. Why were there no women priests?

The rain strengthened. An earthworm writhed on the side of the mound, pink against the dark dirt. Hild hoped none of the mothers had seen it. She folded the blanket then nodded to the housefolk standing by with wooden shovels.

As the housefolk sifted in the dirt, layer by layer, the women sang a lullaby, turned by the rain and the wind into a dirge, a drone of abandoned mothers, eyes blind with tears.

When the song was done, the housefolk tamped the earth gently with the backs of their shovels. Wilnoð clutched the queen’s hand so hard Æthelburh’s fingertips turned purple. Later, Hild knew, the housefolk would walk on the dirt, press it down, but not now, not while the mothers were here.

Her mother stood remote as a totem, as though she had never felt a thing in her life. Hild supposed she looked the same. But in their ways they had fought for every single life, fought as thin chests heaved and lips turned blue, fought as a dozen women prayed, frantically, feverishly, begging Christ and his mother, Mary, and all his saints to help, just this once.
Never
, they said aloud, careless of their secrets,
I’ll never do this, or that again
. And God had listened to five of them, but Hild didn’t know why; their prayers had sounded the same as the rest, and their guilty secrets.

She had fought and lost. And none of the secrets she had heard were useful.

*   *   *

At the foot of Ad Gefrin, the little shaggy cattle in the tithe stockade huddled close against the wind. Not as many of them as there should be, she noted, and all those of bad temperament, bad health, and bad luck. Men tried to underpay every year, but this felt different.

A band of local chiefs on their ponies, wrapped in cloaks, also huddled close. Several wore their cloaks with a hint of wealh style—a subtle check, old tribal colours, pinned here and there with an old-fashioned brooch. She thought she might even have glimpsed a torc—the thick, twisted kind usually found only in hoards, except when hauled out and worn for battle—gleaming from one old man’s throat.

The north was turning, she could feel it. At night, when they rode in from the hills with their tithe of cattle, she could hear it: Not all of them spoke Anglisc all the time. The songs they sang were of old battles, of Coel Hen, only they weren’t slow and sad and glorious, they were hard and bright and fierce. The men of the north tasted change in the wind and were remembering old slights, complaining of heavy tribute and ill omens.

They knew that Oswald Iding was marrying the niece of Beli of Alt Clut. They knew Eochaid Buide had died and been succeeded by Connad Cerr mac Connell, but that behind Connad waited Domnall Brecc, young and strong—and friend and champion of the Idings. They knew the north was beginning to ally against the Yffings, while to the south and mountainous west, Penda and Cadwallon rode horses to death in their eagerness to exchange messages. Edwin was not a lucky king, they said. The Christ was not a generous god.

She wondered what else they were saying now, in their little mounted huddle, but she made no attempt to approach and listen unnoticed. She was taller than any of them, and better dressed, and wearing more gold than an ætheling. They knew who she was. She was an ælf, a freemartin, a hægtes. She was an angel, a maid, a butcher-bird. She was rich, she was subtle, she could break your mind and read your heart. She had the ear of the king. The mouth of the gods. She could call the weather or sway a battle. She could speak any tongue of man and many of beasts. She would listen, she would feed you, and a gift from her hand had a way of multiplying. She walked in the night, invisible, said some, like Cait Sith. She could tell you where to plant or how to birth your cow. She could set a loom that would weave a cloak that would make you famous. She would hold your hand if you were dying, hold it like your sister might, or your mother. No doubt she would fuck your sister, or your mother, or your brother—maybe even your cow, for good measure. She could heal you or poison you, charm you, charm away your warts, charm the birds from the trees, fly up into a tree.

The rumours were inventive and always changing. “Bring me every word,” she said to Morud, to Gwladus, to Oeric. “If I’m rumoured to turn into a frog and eat flies, I want to know.”

They brought her rumours and gossip. The more she heard, the worse her dreams became.

Two nights after the burial, Begu woke her. “That’s the second time you’ve kicked me. Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“They’re afraid of me.”

“Well, of course they are. You kill people. You save people. And you may as well be a carved totem for all the talking you do.”

Begu bumped her forehead against Hild’s shoulder, like a cat hoping for a stroke.

“You should talk to people. Ordinary people, about ordinary things. Like you used to with Cian.”

Cian, who said nothing when others called her a freemartin.

“… out hunting all the time, ever since you and— Well. I don’t like the way Uinniau behaves when he’s with them. So. People. You have to talk to them. And I don’t mean freemen who only talk to other people who don’t matter. I mean people like Lintlaf.”