Nicola Griffith - Hild

“Then, Lord Osric, Osric Yffing…” The hall breathed, one great lung, in and out, in and out. This would be something to tell their grandchildren: They were there when the Kingdom of Elmet became part of Northumbria forever. The scops would sing of this. “I name you Lord and Ealdorman of Craven.”

Hild wondered how the scop would sing of the two smiles. The king’s spreading like melting lard in a pan, wider and wider. The ealdorman’s widening, jerking, spreading tremulously, wiped out, gone. Even his lips went pale.

She imagined the roaring in his ears.

“… yesterday of Dunod’s death… our shield against the treachery of the men of the north… friendship with the loyal men of Rheged as reaffirmed by Prince Uinniau…”

His legs would be shaking, the world turning black at its edges, but he had to stay upright. His eyes seemed even smaller than before, confused, like a badger driven from its sett and facing a ring of torches.

Then Æthelburh was standing by her husband, and Coelfrith placed the small oak table, carved and inlaid with Edwin’s boar’s-head blazon in red gold, before the king and queen. Coelfrith’s men laid the small covered brick and the long box on the boar’s head. Coelfrith lifted the embroidered cloth to reveal a pig of iron, spotted with rust, despite the glistening grease. Hild could smell it from where she stood: raw iron, the smell of delving and hammering and stoking. He lifted the lid on the birch box: a whole salmon, dried and smoked. The smells of autumn: rust and smoke and hunger. Autumn and the ending of Osric’s hopes.

“Priest,” Edwin said, and Coifi jerked and swayed but did not, quite, step forward. Paulinus did. He lifted the embroidered cloth in both hands and waited. Osric stumbled out from behind his bench to take the oath he could not refuse.

Paulinus put Osric’s right hand on the box. Edwin and Æthelburh laid theirs on top, and the Crow draped the cloth over all.

Paulinus spoke for a long time: of sacred trust; loyalty to the king, beloved of Christ; of the people of Craven. Long enough for Osric to begin to understand what he had been tricked into. The king was taking his house, his family’s house. Edwin the Deceiver was sending him, loyal subject and kinsman, once-and-no-more ætheling of Deira, to the godforsaken wilds of Craven, land of leaping salmon and the stink of pig iron. A land jammed up against the base of the western mountain spine, full of streams rushing down ironstone hills, full of shivering birch and shaking wealh, a land so worthless that no one had bothered to take it away from Dunod.

Long enough, too, for Coifi’s face to mirror his sudden, bitter understanding of his new place: no longer chief priest of the chief god but a simple man without a sword. A man with nothing.

Uinniau hung upside down from the low limb of an apple tree, laughing up at Hild. It was the only apple tree inside the new wooden walls around what would be the wīc on the west side of the big river.

Cian sat on the grass with his back to them. Begu was on the riverbank, making a flower chain from dandelions. Oeric had been pressed into holding them for her.

Uinniau laughed again. “I’m stuck.”

Hild reached down. “Swing a bit and give me your hand.” He swung, she caught his hand and hauled. He came up. Hild dropped down next to him. They sat facing each other, astride the bough. Uinniau had blossom in his hair.

Hild picked some of it off, rolled the tiny petals idly between her fingers.

He pointed to the mound of dirt growing in the fork of the rivers. “It won’t be a very big tower.”

“Tall enough to shoot fire arrows onto the deck of a ship.”

“What about chains across the river?”

Hild blinked. And when she didn’t say anything he tilted his head back and looked at her down his nose with all the arrogance of a prince.

“It’s been a long time since Broac. I’m short, not a child.”

She sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He waved the apology away. “You and I, we should be friends. One day, perhaps, if I’m… Well. Perhaps those days will never come again to Rheged and the north.” He shrugged, the kind of shrug that went with songs of the Old North: an elegy for what once was great. “Your uncle is making himself a name,” he said. “He’s like Arthur come again.”

She flicked the rolled-up petal at him. “No, he isn’t.”

He grinned. “Some people like flattery.”

“Not me.”

He peered down at Cian, out at Begu and Oeric, at his hands. Finally he looked at her. “So we’ll speak truth, you and I?”

She thought about it. She liked the feel of him. He was clever, but straight-grained. Sound as an oak staff. She nodded.

“What will happen to Osric?”

“He’ll go to Craven and brood in his upland hall, plotting to take back Arbeia from Osfrith and Clotrude, pouring his bitterness into Oswine’s ear and filling him with twisty dreams of being king of all Deira.” She stripped a leaf from the branch overhead, turned it this way and that. “Just like, I imagine, Eanfrith in Pictland, and the other Idings with the Dál Riata.”

“Such dreams are not for you?”

“It’s not my wyrd. Besides, they’re hopeless.” Speaking straight felt different. She found she liked it.

“Perhaps not if you… they had allies.” She threw the leaf at him. He watched it flutter down, then shrugged. “Will they, Osric and Oswine, try to ally with the Idings in secret?”

“Why would the Idings keep it secret?”

Uinniau nodded. The middle Idings had a claim to Deira through Acha Yffing, Edwin’s sister, as well as to Bernicia through their father, Æthelfrith Iding. If they had Osric Yffing on their side, they would shout it out and march.

“It’s more likely Osric would try to ally with Eanfrith.” The eldest Iding, son of Bebba. “Osric would take Deira, Eanfrith Bernicia. But my uncle will be watching for that.”

“Cadwallon would be a surer bet as an ally,” he said. “Or Penda.”

“Not even Osric would trust Cadwallon. Not even for an hour. As for Penda…”

“No one knows him.”

She nodded. “They say he’s clever.”

“They say you’re clever, that you see into men’s hearts.” His hazel eyes shone with something. Perhaps it was the reflection of new leaves. She hoped so. “Hild. I—”

“How’s Rhianmelldt?”

“Rhianmelldt? She’s… no better.”

Hild thought of the fey child she had met in Caer Luel, that ravaged ælf.

“Hild, please. Listen to me.”

For a moment, she was tempted to push him out of the tree. She didn’t want to hear his moony words. He was going to spoil it all. But she was Hild, king’s seer and light of the world. She didn’t push princes out of apple trees. She motioned for him to speak.

“The lady Begu. Does she like me?”

A bee bumped into her hand. Hild waved it away, and it sizzled crossly against the trunk for a heartbeat or two before it found a way around.

“I think she does,” he said. “But you know her best. Would she…” He turned the same carrot colour Begu had at the feast. “I’m a man of Rheged. But sister-son to the king. Only, who should I… I don’t…”

It was interesting how people lost their words when they liked someone. As though it drained their senses.

“Please, say something.”

Hild pointed down.

Begu stood at the base of the tree with a chain of dandelions around her head, like a crown, like a princess. She stood on her tiptoes and held another out to Uinniau. “I made one for you.”

They walked along the new hedge: Uinniau and Begu in their circlets of golden dandelion, laughing and talking—though, as far as Hild could tell, about nothing very much—followed by Cian and Hild, and, a few paces back, Oeric.