Hild: A Novel (79 page)

“Hold her!”

It was like trying to hold a greased pig.

“It’s coming!” Breguswith said, and there it was, crowning. “Push. Push.”

Angeth couldn’t hear them. Hild pressed on the quaking belly, timing it to the ripple of muscle under her hands.

Angeth jerked and thrashed. Breguswith hung on to a foot, grunting like a man in a tug-of-war. Hild, half tangled in the blanket, held the belly down with both arms.

Angeth foamed at the mouth. Hild tried to wipe it away.

“Just push!” her mother shouted.

And the baby slid out, slick and blue and still. Breguswith whipped it, her, into a blanket. Hild lifted Angeth’s head, floppy now. Her eyes were rolled up, blank as eggs.

Her mother had the baby. She focused on Angeth. She cradled her in her arms—perhaps she would feel like Cian—and whispered, “It’s a little girl. Breathe, Angeth.”

And Angeth did. She opened her eyes, smiled. “I smell rosemary, love.” And died.

Hild picked up the blanket.

“Wait,” her mother said. She laid the tiny wrapped baby next to her. The baby was still blue. In the swaying candlelight, Hild thought she moved, but it was just shadow.

“You can tell Cian you did your best. Wash the blood from your face, change your dress. Go. I’ll wash them. Send Begu to help.”

When Cian saw Hild, his face emptied. “You took time to wash,” he said. “She’s in no hurry, then?”

“No.”

“Then neither am I.” He drained his cup, poured more. “I don’t want to see her.”

“Them. The baby was a girl. She had black hair.”

He didn’t seem to be listening. “She was never going to live, was she?”

She wanted to shake him.
I tried!

But she did nothing, said nothing. For the first time, she was afraid of Cian. His face was as smooth as sand, his voice bleached and light as driftwood. His tide had gone out. She dreaded what it might bring back.

*   *   *

The court moved to Goodmanham. Then Brough. On the surface, Cian’s waters were still, but the undertow was vicious. He never raised his voice, never got drunk, but every week Breguswith had to splint some gesith’s arm or leg after sparring. The only time he seemed alive, the only time he smiled, was with children. He took to spending time with Eanflæd and Wuscfrea. Æthelburh, his godmother, allowed it.

Eanflæd now was as sturdy as a small oak and bossy; Wuscfrea toddled determinedly. Cian made him a tiny blunt spear. Wuscfrea threw it at everything, including his father.

“That’s my little man,” Edwin said, when Wuscfrea flung the stick at the table where his closest counsellors were talking idly after sorting the business of the day.

A houseman wiped up the spilled beer. Hild poured more, nearly spilled it afresh when she saw what Edwin was staring at: son and chief gesith sitting on the floor, head to head, torchlight glinting from chestnut hair.

“He likes you,” Edwin said. A dog whined. “Anyone might think you were his uncle.”

Hild’s skin felt too tight. But Cian just ruffled Wuscfrea’s hair and smiled.
Keeping him ignorant keeps him safe.
But she didn’t know if his obvious innocence would be enough.

As summer turned to autumn she hardly dared lift her gaze from the king’s face. He gave no sign, but her dreams rang and echoed with danger.

*   *   *

At the Christ Mass in the still-unfinished church of York, Paulinus asked God’s blessing for the fruit of the royal loins, and Æthelburh was observed to leave the church to vomit. She was too unwell to attend the feast.

Hild carried the guest cup the length of the board. Hereswith wasn’t there, or Osfrith and Eadfrith. Lilla and Lintlaf and Dunod were long dead. But it looked the same: silver and gold and rich colours, but for the Crow’s black. It sounded the same: the boom and roll of laughter of people glad to be alive, stitched through with the sinewy plink of the lyre. It smelt the same: roast meat, unwashed men, fruit paste, and sharp white mead. Light of the world. This was what she knew. This was who she was. Her wyrd had been born before she was. She chose this path, this place, because she had always chosen.

She raised the cup to Edwin and wondered how much longer she could help him stay king.

26

T
HE WORLD TURNED
. They moved to Bebbanburg, to Yeavering, to Derventio. It was a warm spring, a warmer summer. The queen swelled.

At Goodmanham, dogs panted in the shade and every day the heat thickened. Fleeces piled in the woodshed stank. Milk curdled. Æthelburh, big as a cow, leaned on her women and sweated and did not always attend the king’s counsels.

Cian made Wuscfrea a tiny bow with blunted arrows, and Eanflæd borrowed it and nearly blinded her brother. The queen, who knew of her godson’s troubles, did not forbid him her children. Instead, she asked Hild to watch over them until she herself could do so again.

So Hild took to bringing berries and small beer to the yard where Cian played with the children, and then would sit and spin while they ate in the shade of the great elm. Sometimes she and Cian talked a little, idly, of the weather, or of Eanflæd’s fearlessness, or of Æthelburh’s health. Sometimes he would float away while still sitting there, and Hild, who knew him so well, heard the wash and lap of his thoughts as though they were her own.
My daughter also would have been fearless; my daughter would have been crawling by now; my daughter might have taken her first step today.

As far as she knew, he had not wept.

One day, over strayberries, while Eanflæd played with her new toy—a cunningly carved dog—and Wuscfrea piled dirt, they began to talk about the news they’d discussed in council with the king: a contagion in the south, sweeping through Kent, and the death in East Anglia of Ricberht.

“Hereswith’s husband, Æthelric, is Sigebert’s heir,” she said.

“So. And, after him, your nephew Ealdwulf?”

She nodded, but he had already drifted away, though this time, when he came back, he spoke aloud. “They would have been of an age.”

“Yes,” she said, and gave him the reddest strayberry in the bowl. A strayberry for a daughter. But it was all she had.

Hereswith had also written, in part:

For my wedding present you foretold my husband’s death as king. Pray that it is not soon.

Pray, not for her to be wrong—kings fell—but that it would not be soon.

Eanflæd shrieked: Wuscfrea had snapped the tail off her dog. After she had been persuaded to stop trying to make him eat it, Hild and Cian talked of other things.

The queen got bigger. Goodmanham sweltered.

News came to the counsellors from Osfrith at Tinamutha: Clotrude, his wife, had died in childbirth. For the rest of the morning, Cian was drawn and distant. As they left Edwin’s council, he asked Hild how the queen did.

“She’s well,” Hild said. “But it’s too hot to carry such weight in public with grace.”

The heat did not ease. Tempers frayed. Hallfolk and housefolk alike slept outside, and talked late, and drank too much, and were up at dawn, looking to the south and west, hoping for cloud. The sky stayed blue. The midden heaps reeked.

“We should go to Elmet,” her mother said. “Or north to the Bay of the Beacon. A bit of sea air would do us all good.”

“You could go,” Hild said. “Take Luftmaer.”

The queen came to the next meeting of counsellors and their hangers-on. Hild relayed her latest news from Fursey: the Burgundian bishop, Felix, had moved from Canterbury to Rendlesham. Perhaps to escape the contagion. More likely at the behest of Sigebert.

Edwin looked at Paulinus. “A Frankish bishop at the court of a Frankish puppet king of the East Angles. Where is your pope in this? And where else is Dagobert dabbling his long Frankish fingers?”

Hild looked at Æthelburh, who was herself from the Frankish-influenced court of Kent. There again, so was her own mother. But her mother thought now only of herself and her children.

Æthelburh said, “Your son’s son is half Frankish.”

Paulinus said, “And Osfrith has no wife now. What if he chooses a Kentishwoman or one of the East Anglisc, builds ties with those Frankish-leaning kingdoms? What if he has plans?”

Æthelburh wanted her son to be heir. Paulinus also saw advantage in that. Between them, they knew all Edwin’s fears: Osfrith was well liked, and, at the cusp of Deira and Bernicia, well-placed. And he had given his heir a dynastic name.

“Bring the child to court, my lord,” Paulinus said. “An honoured guest.”

A hostage for good behaviour of kin, like Oswine for Osric.

“Yffi’s very young,” Edwin said. But Hild could see he was thinking about it. “And what of the rest of the north? What of Rheged?”

“We’re grooming Oswine for Rhianmelldt,” she said, and glanced at Æthelburh. The queen’s eyes glimmered, but Hild had no notion what she was thinking. Would she raise the old idea of marrying the mad maid to Cian? But Æthelburh said nothing. “Meanwhile we have Uinniau.”

“A nephew,” Paulinus said. “Any king would sacrifice a nephew.” Any king would sacrifice anyone, but no one thought it prudent to say so.

“Then send Eadfrith to charm Rhoedd,” Hild said. “He could talk the birds from the trees.” And he was no use at the head of an army; gesiths no longer quite trusted him. Perhaps he could even be married to Rhianmelldt. It would flatter Rhoedd, and suit Æthelburh …

“Lord King,” Cian said, and everyone turned. Boldcloak rarely spoke on matters other than war. “Lord Eadfrith might be better sent to Penda. To counter Cadwallon’s sway. Penda is Gwynedd’s friend, yes, but perhaps not yet wholly our enemy.”

“You’re thinking marriage?” Hild said. “I don’t think Penda has another sister. Or a daughter.”

Paulinus bent his gaze on Hild. “Perhaps the king of Mercia has a spare son.”

“He doesn’t,” she said.

“Pity,” Edwin said.

“But what of Penda himself?” Paulinus said to Edwin. “Your niece is of age.”

Now they all turned to look at her: woman, not seer. Future queen of Mercia. But she watched the queen, whose smooth face hid something.

“You would stand as Penda’s godfather at his baptism,” Paulinus said. “He would acknowledge you as overking.”

Overking of all the Anglisc. But marriage to Penda was not her path, had never been her path.

Hild did her best to sound bored. “My king, a priest once told me, ‘Whosoever stands as godfather to another adopts him in religion.’ Penda would be as your adopted son. He would expect to inherit your mantle as overking. My lord bishop is a priest. He forgets how much a man wants for his sons.”

Counsellors murmured agreement and cast sidelong glances at the foreign man in the black skirts. Hild turned back to Æthelburh, expecting gratitude for protecting Wuscfrea’s inheritance, but met, instead, a polished, impenetrable queen.

*   *   *

Edwin sent a messenger to Eadfrith in Tinamutha: Bring Yffi to me, then go to Mercia to charm Penda.

Paulinus, thwarted, began to nag Edwin. About Elmet. About more money for the church in York, to hasten the building. About bringing Rheged firmly into the fold. Paulinus was feeling his age, Hild realised. He wanted his pallium before some old-man’s illness swept him to heaven.

The heat built. Æthelburh no longer attended the council. Housefolk and hall folk were irritable and sleepless. In council Paulinus raised the subject of Woden’s enclosure.

“It’s an affront to God on our very doorstep, a monument to pagan practice. We must tear it down.”

“The people won’t like it,” Hild said. “They’re already uneasy.”

“The people must do as the king directs,” Paulinus said. “God is on our side.”

Hild bent her head to her uncle. “My king, not yet. In autumn, perhaps, or when the weather breaks. But not yet.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“It’s empty of its god. It has no power. But last night ravens and jays were calling after the owl was abroad.” A murmur went round the room. “Housefolk say: ravens and jays in conversation with the restless dead.”

“Superstition,” Paulinus said.

Ten years ago, Edwin would have smiled and said,
Don’t spit.
But he was getting older, too. He had called his son Wuscfrea. He was as desperate as Paulinus to make his mark. He said nothing.

“You need a husband,” Paulinus said.

Edwin studied her, then turned to Paulinus. “Burn it.”

*   *   *

The day they tore down Woden’s totem, lightning cracked the sky open and spilled thick, cold rain. Cool wind gushed through the hall. That night, as the rotting timbers burnt, Æthelburh, attended by Begu, gave birth to twins, quickly, easily, like popping peas.

In counsel the next morning, Paulinus smiled at Hild triumphantly: the heathen totem was destroyed, the weather had broken, the queen was well and the twins healthy. He would baptise them on Sunday.

But on Friday, Hild was woken by Gwladus before dawn. “Wilnoð says come. The twins are hot as fire.”

Their cheeks were red, their eyes dull, their lungs full. “They’re going to die,” the queen said. “I know it. They’re going to die.”

“No,” Hild said. “Not if we rub their chests til they cough out the phlegm, and then keep them warm when they start sweating.”

Æthelburh didn’t seem to hear her. “They’re going to die.”

Hild laid the back of her hand across Æthelburh’s forehead. “You’re hot.” She looked at Wilnoð. “Has she been coughing?”

Wilnoð nodded.

“Well, nothing to worry about,” Hild said. “I’ll give you some tea.”

“You wanted to give Angeth tea,” Æthelburh said.

“This is a different tea.”

“We have to baptise them,” Æthelburh said.

“No, lady,” Hild said. “That’s not what they need. They need—”

“You were going to marry Penda and steal the overkingship from my son.”

“Lady, that was the Crow’s idea.”

“You put it in his head. You’ve put demons in my babies.” She clutched her cross. “Get back, hægtes! I won’t listen to you.”

Hild shook her head, hurt. She said to Wilnoð, “She’s raving. Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

Æthelburh shouted, “Don’t listen to her! Is she the queen? I’m the queen! Bring me the bishop!”