Hild: A Novel (15 page)

“You didn’t earn him.”

“Nor did she.”

“He’s mine to dispose of as I please.” Eadfrith said nothing, but drew his foot back again. “He’s not yours to damage. Unless you want to buy him from me?”

Eadfrith hadn’t done well in the fight—few had, it was more flight than fight—and had no bounty to show.

“No? Just as well. You’ve no need of books. You have a blade.”

While father and maybe-heir measured each other’s gaze, Fursey met Hild’s, raised his eyebrows, and looked pointedly at her seax.

Edwin missed nothing. He leaned down and said in that pleasant we’ll-eat-the-horse tone, “She might wear a blade but she also wears skirts, priest, like you. So she will learn. Teach her. But not about your Christ. There’ll be others for that, in time.” And to Hild, “While he eats at my expense, see you learn the full use of these books, if any.”

In the crook of the lime tree by the beck Hild closed the book. Fursey was now eating—and drinking, always drinking—at Mulstan’s expense, not her uncle’s. The gift of kings, her mother said: to make others pay. Another saying of her mother’s popped into her head:
Women make and men break
. She frowned. What about men in skirts, where did they fit? Skirt or sword, book or blade …

*   *   *

“It’s a strange book,” she said to Bán in Irish, and he said, “Is it?” in Anglisc, because Hild had decided that was best. With Fursey unwilling to translate, that was how they would learn the most, one from the other. She would speak Bán’s tongue and he hers, so that when she left—for she would leave by summer, surely—when she was gone, he could talk to the folk at the hall. And she would know more of how Fursey’s tricky Irish mind worked.

They were walking along a track raised between the rhynes. It was spring even here now, minty green leaves on everything, and the air full of the scent of blossom that in the valleys would already be tiny fruit. Assuming Osric’s men had joined Edwin’s, that their march up the coast had gone well, and that they had broken the host around Bebbanburg, the court would be moving to Yeavering, to the sweet green pastures and the constant wind on Goat Hill. But if they had, why was she still here? Why had no one come? Perhaps the Irish were still at sea. She reached for her seax but found her sash instead of her belt, and remembered she had lent it to Cian.
It’s still mine
, she’d said,
but you may have the use of it, for a while. Only not when we play, because it is very sharp.

As they walked, Cú would run into the meadowsweet, comfrey, and reeds that lined the banks, and sniff and scratch, and sometimes whine, and then Bán would go look and untangle the tall golden withies from one another so they would grow straight. The golden willow grew fastest, he said, but the black willow was best for baskets. He had to shape “basket” with his hands twice before he found the word, but although Hild knew what he was trying to say, she didn’t interrupt. She had found that people, especially people who spoke a different tongue, would get anxious if they didn’t get to have their say in their own way, even if they spoke in a long rush, hurrying to get their words out. Like the strange Psalter.

“The Psalms are all written together,” she said. “No beginning and no end, all in one long rush. Fursey says it’s to imitate the long breath of god.”

“Father lord Fursey is a godly man,” Bán said absently, in Irish, and then stopped to test the suppleness of the withy. “Not now,” he said to himself. “Not yet.” They walked on.

“But what I don’t understand,” she said, “is how, if it’s the breath of god, it’s a different breath to Fursey’s little book. Fursey says there is only one god, but surely that’s wrong.”

“It is not. There is God, only God, and God lives in everything. In the air and in the earth, in the rhyne and the willow, in you and in me and in Cú. How can there be two when God dwells in everything?”

Hild was glad she was speaking in Irish, because in Anglisc gods lived in particular places. In Anglisc it made no sense to say god was everywhere. Gods were called Thunor and Eorðe and Sigel, and they lived in their own places, in oak, or a deep well, or the sun. She wished Fursey were allowed to talk to her of his god. “If your god lives in your dog, why don’t you kneel before him?”

“Because God is in me, too.”

Hild pondered that as they walked. The sun was warming her back. “Once I met a British Christ bishop, Anaoc. He said prophecy was demon work. Is his Christ the same as your Irish god, and Fursey’s?”

“There is only one Christ.”

“Then if his god is in everything, too, where do the demons live?”

Bán looked at her helplessly, then said, “The willow in the yard will be dry now. Will I show you how to strip the bark?”

*   *   *

In the kitchen garth that had become the children’s place at the end of the afternoons once the kitchenfolk had taken the herbs they needed for cooking, Hild finally found a way to tell the story of dogs and gods and demons in Anglisc to Begu and Cian. She had no idea why it was so much harder for her to talk in Anglisc to anyone but Begu, it just was, though these last weeks she was learning how to let the words come. It helped if there was no weightiness behind them, no import; if they were only words with no life or death hanging in the balance.

While Cian hefted his exercise stones up and down, up and down, and Begu wove daises together, Hild finished her story, and Cian laughed. Hild was glad. He hadn’t laughed for a week.

“Gods and demons in dogs and worms!” He dropped his stones and smoothed his hair back from his forehead—it was now entirely the same colour as Hild’s and as long as any warrior’s. Hild saw Begu looking at it and wondered if she would think Cian’s hair felt nice, too. “So when I cast my line into the river and catch a fish,” he said, “and the fish eats the worm, will the worm gods have to fight with the fish gods?”

“And when we eat the fish,” Begu said, “will the gods inside us fight the gods inside the worm inside the fish?” Her plait was coming undone, again.

Hild said, “And will the demons then fight the other demons or band together against the gods like the Gododdin and the men of Rheged did against the Deivyr and Bryneich?”

And then of course having mentioned Cian’s favourite song, which she did deliberately, nothing would do but that they reenact the drinking of the wine and mead of Morei, then the fighting in the fosse with a bold and mighty arm, and the falling, always the falling in the fosse, the funeral fosse. But once they’d all fallen, they wiggled like worms in a pile, then like worms possessed by demons, then like people and dogs and demons and gods all fighting it out, and laughed until the dust on their cheeks turned to mud with their tears, and Begu’s hair was one big knot. And Hild, for a while, was not the bringer of light who predicted the death of a queen and the siege of a fortress, not the seer tasked with learning to read, but just a child.

6

F
URSEY, HOSTAGE TO THE KING
and tutor to the light of the world, was fond of good wine and long conversations at meat about the wrongs of the world and how to right them, and in the course of things the long conversations naturally made him more thirsty. So Mulstan would call for the lyre more often than was usual, for Fursey, being Irish and highborn—the son of the daughter of the king of Connaught and baptised by Saint Brendan himself—respected the makers of music in hall before even his thirst for Mulstan’s fine wine or the sound of his own voice. But tonight it was yet too early for the lyre.

“This truly is a royal wine,” Fursey said to Onnen, who in Mulstan’s hall, where she spoke only Anglisc and wore clothes like a lady, sat at the lord’s table, not in his kitchen.

Onnen could only agree.
Iberian
, she’d told Hild the day before, as she had ladled up a cupful from one of the great jars fresh from the hold of an East Anglisc merchant.
As strong as good dirt and as rich as blood. Fit for an emperor.
But Hild had tasted it and spat, and would only drink it watered and sweetened with honey.

“Something Isidore himself might relish,” Fursey said. “Though he would no doubt quote Jerome: Growing girls should avoid wine as poison lest, on account of the fervent heat of their time of life, they drink it and die.” He smiled to himself, as if remembering some sunlit girl and her fervent heat. “Yes. A man’s drink.” He smiled again—but differently, as flat-lipped as an adder—at Onnen. “An expensive drink. Though, given that his lordship Mulstan has charge of all the trade in these parts, it’s no doubt only proper that he take some of the wares for himself every now and again.”

“He takes no more than his due as king’s thegn.”

“Naturally. For everything hereabouts is his due, is it not? And it would be a terrible thing to suggest that one’s host takes more than is quite proper.”

He looked her up and down, lingering on the magnificent chain of Byzantine and Roman medals draped over her breast that Mulstan had given her only last week.

Onnen’s spine was very straight. Hild put down her copper cup and looked over at Cian. He had put down his cup, too, and his face was turning red. Hild had a sudden regret at giving him the use of her seax.

“What’s the matter?” Begu whispered, but Hild shook her head.

“Oh, yes,” mused Fursey, “he does like his treats and his wealh ways.”

Fursey looked over at the red-faced Cian and smiled another of those snake smiles, and Hild saw the priest was drunk—just enough to let his devils out to play, as he might put it. Onnen saw it, too, and called to Cian.

“Cian, tell my lord Mulstan how you acquired your fine shield. Better yet, fetch it for him. My lord would like to see it.” She looked at Mulstan, who looked up from his conversation with the East Anglisc merchant captain and said, “Yes, yes, bring your shield, boy.”

Fursey watched him go then said in a voice pitched for Onnen’s ears, “His hair is a most remarkable colour, is it not? And it is interesting that his mother is making up to the most powerful man on the south Deiran coast. A man once sworn to Æthelfrith the Ferocious and perhaps still to his sons. A man with gold, who could command many swords, should he call for them. And the king already weakened in his fight with the Dál nAriadne.” He laughed, like the slither of silk. “No one expected Fiachnae to run around your king and storm Bebbanburg, did they? Or, oh yes, someone did. Your young charge here. Strange, that. And now here is Mulstan and that boy with the interestingly coloured hair, thrown together at an opportune time.”

Onnen contemplated the eating knife balanced in her hand, four inches of rippled steel honed to a sliver, and then Fursey. “Priest, are you tired of life?”

Begu stared at her. She knew Onnen only as the woman her father liked and who was a stern weaving teacher. Hild, who had seen Onnen gut more living things than most warriors could begin to dream of, did not believe, quite, that she would cut the priest. She found Begu’s hand and squeezed reassuringly.

“Not at all. The little maid’s uncle, your king, hired me as tutor and I am teaching.” Hild snorted inwardly. Hired. It was one way to describe being hauled from the bloodied mud on the south bank of the Tine and put to double use by a canny king. “If she’s to guide kings she’ll need subtlety, and all the Anglisc know is blade and blood and boast.”

Hild said in Irish, “You have not met my mother.”

He threw back his head and laughed, showing teeth and tongue stained dark with wine.

Onnen wiped her blade on the edge cloth, sheathed it, and stood. She leaned across Fursey and took the wine jar. “Our gracious host has been overly generous with his wine. You are not yourself.”

He reached to grab it back.

“Must I explain to my lord that you are in drink?”

Fursey cursed and reached for a sword that was not there. Accusations of drunkenness to an Irish noble, no matter his priestly vows, were tantamount to accusations of faith-breaking, for the word or boast of a drunken man was not to be relied upon.

Onnen smiled and cradled the back of Hild’s head briefly. “Learn well, little prickle. And you, Begu, it won’t hurt you to pay attention, though you must talk to me or Guenmon after of what you think you’ve learnt, for I’d not trust this sotted priest as far as I could fling him. I’ll send more wine when the lyre comes down from the wall.”

*   *   *

The next day Hild and Cian and Begu climbed the headland together, Hild and Cian copying Begu’s natural habit of grasping whatever shrubs or rocks came to hand to ease the strain on thigh and calf. The furze—gorse, Hild reminded herself, gorse—was in full flower. Hild had the Psalter, now carefully wrapped in a soft old cloth, tucked safely into her sash, and used both hands, but Begu seemed perfectly at ease swinging the cowbell with one hand and using only the other to climb. Cian, as usual, wore sword and shield and the slaughter seax. His hair was dressed back with goose grease like that of Mulstan’s men. He looked the very picture of a warrior, though somewhat slight and beardless.

When they reached the top, the headland smelt of windblown grass and cows. The horizon was dusty with purple heather, and daisies starred the grass. There was no sign of Cædmon or cows.

“He’ll be along,” Begu said, “but perhaps not until middæg.”

“A fort!” Cian said, pointing at the broken Roman signal tower, and he ran towards it, drawing his wooden sword. It wasn’t the same sword Ceredig had given him, he’d outgrown that one long ago, and kept it in his kist. This was sized for a man, shaped oak with a square of painted stone Hild had found from a broken pavement in Caer Luel set into the carefully carved hilt, and bits of begged scrap metal hammered into the edges to give it heft. His scabbard was a real one, but old, discarded long ago by one of Mulstan’s men, though now freshly relined with sheepskin and its wood cunningly painted to look jewelled and chased. Hild and Begu were working on a tablet weave to replace the fraying baldric.

Begu and Hild ran, too.

Cian climbed the low east wall, jumped inside, and popped up again, eyes shining. “You shall attack and I’ll defend!” He unslung his shield.