Nicola Griffith - Hild

The sky was busy with birds—siffsaffs and blackcaps, nuthatches and greenfinches—and the river was at slack tide, quieter than usual, smelling of spring: mud, ducks on their nests of twigs, caterpillars, the fresh-sawn smell of the beaver dam, newly moved earth where shoots pushed through to the light. More bumblebees buzzed and bumped over the hedge’s freshly leafed hazel and the pink-and-white snow of blackthorn and hawthorn blossom.

Cian was a thundercloud.

“Look at the thorns,” he said loudly. Uinniau and Begu turned. “That one’s the size of my thumb.” He waved at the road disappearing arrow-straight to the northwest and Rheged. “By summer it’ll take an army with axes to break through.”

“Rheged is not your enemy.”

Cian gave him a look that would scorch iron. “No,” he said, meaning, Not today . “But there are men north of Rheged. And if they got a mad notion to march down Dere Street to the wīc, they’d get a nasty surprise.”

“None would be fool enough to try surprise. Your king—”

“The overking.”

“The over king has told the world how strong his new wīc is. Besides, the men of Rheged keep their ears close to the ground. And Rhoedd king sends his assurance to Northumbria that Rheged, and beyond us Alt Clut, is with you.”

“Oh, indeed.” Cian clapped the young prince on the back—harder than necessary, Hild thought. A reminder that, while Uinniau was a princeling, Cian topped him by a head, that he was a thegn’s—an Anglisc thegn’s—foster-son, and that Uinniau was walking with his foster-sister.

Begu rolled her eyes at Hild, but her lips were full and her cheeks flushed and she skipped along like a new-born kid.

Begu sighed again and kicked at the covers for good measure. Hild, emerging from a half dream—of swimming naked as a seal, water coursing over her skin, between her legs—propped herself up on her elbow. The waning moon lit the room enough to see that her gemæcce’s face had that stubborn set Hild knew well, the my-fa-the-thegn-will-make-you-give-that-to-me look. “What?”

“Rhianmelldt.”

“What about her?”

“Whoever marries her could be king-in-waiting of Rheged.”

“So?”

“And who wouldn’t want to be king of Rheged? Even if it means taking a woman to wife whose mind is at a slant.”

Hild waited.

“Uinny says she sometimes hears voices and bangs her head on the wall.”

Hild nodded.

“They say she was pretty once.”

“She was pretty when I met her.”

“Perhaps she bangs her face, too. But some princeling will marry her anyway, and then he’ll have to fight Uinny to be king-in-waiting.”

Hild knew where this was going, but questions would only send Begu’s thoughts flying in all directions.

Begu fixed her eyes on the strange smooth ceiling over their bed. “To be king, he would have to marry well. Very well. A thegn’s daughter won’t do.”

“He didn’t say that.”

Begu turned to face Hild. Her breath was fresh with the elm seeds she’d been eating lately, ever since she gave Uinniau his circlet of dandelions. “He didn’t have to. People look at him and see a child.”

Hild couldn’t disagree.

“He’d need to marry someone formidable. Someone like you.” Begu flopped on her back again. “No, he didn’t say that, either. There’s no point. After all, you’ll marry someone much more important.”

She couldn’t disagree with that, either. So she stroked Begu’s forehead, smoothing back her hair. “Does Uinniau want so badly to be a king?”

Begu laughed, but it was a soft laugh, quite grown-up, and it made Hild long to hold her and shield her from the world.

“If you don’t want to be a queen, all will be well. Think. Uinniau didn’t grow up to be heir. That was his brother. I don’t think he wants it. And once Rhianmelldt marries her king-in-waiting, Uinniau can please himself. He can marry you.”

“But Rhianmelldt’s a child. She won’t marry for years. Years! You don’t know what it’s like!” Begu reached for Hild’s hand, laid it on her belly. “Here. That’s where I feel it. It’s like… It makes me feel wild as the autumn and nervous as a kitten, and the world is big and new. I smell everything, I hear everything, and inside I feel…” Under her hand, Hild felt Begu’s blood beating, thump-thump , thump-thump , like an Irish drum. “It’s like, I feel like a leaf on a river pouring over a fall—I’m being hurried along, then sucked under. I look at his arms and his shoulders and I’m drowning. I want to lick them, I want to gnaw at them like a teething puppy. No, not like a puppy, like a wolf. I want to tear him apart, eat him up. You can’t stop teeth from growing. I can’t wait years.”

“You don’t have to wait to marry for that.” She imagined bodies in the dark. The panting. Hægtes in a cyrtel…

“But I want to be by him forever. I want to hear his silly laugh—he sounds like a sheep, have you noticed?—at night. I want to watch him split wood, stack flax, practice spear and shield. Oh, I love to watch his skin move on his bones when he swings a sword with Cian. And his smell. He smells like a young colt, new and bright. What does Cian smell like?”

“Hot iron. Sometimes copper. And salt.” Hild lifted her hand from Begu’s belly. “We can watch them tomorrow, if you like.”

“And maybe you’ll think of a way for Rhianmelldt to marry someone soon?”

“Maybe,” Hild said, but she couldn’t think of any man her uncle would approve of.

She forgot about her dream of swimming, set aside the nameless yearning, and thought about Rheged. Who could her uncle offer to Rhoedd, which of his kinsmen could he control? Three days ago, she would have suggested Oswine, but after yesterday, that would be madness. Who could Edwin trust, who would both suit a British kingdom and be thought great enough for Rhoedd’s daughter?

IN YORK, the days warmed and opened. Bluebells began to dot the west woods. Crabapple blossomed. The first larks flew at dusk. Along the little river, kingfishers caught newts and water beetles, and on the big river when Hild walked with her mother and the queen—talking, as always, of wool and trade—she saw the tiny paw prints of otter kits.

On the morning that she heard the first cuckoo—so early!—Uinniau went back to Rheged. He left with many promises to return, and Begu nailed a smile on her face and wept in private; for a few days she didn’t have the heart even to threaten Gwladus with a whipping. Hild wondered if this might be partly due to the change in Gwladus: always to hand, always ready with just what Hild wanted—hot bread, cold water, soothing brushstrokes.

Stitchwort blossomed in white spatters along the riverbanks and figwort grew yellow beneath the great hedge. The world filled with the liquid melody of thrush song, and tits hung upside down from every bush.

Hild’s restlessness rose like the tide. At night she lay still while Begu stroked herself, jerked, and shuddered: Thinking of Uinniau, no doubt. While Begu slept Hild lay awake, hungry and restless and savage. During the day she beat at Cian so ferociously he refused to play again until the bruising on his ribs healed. Hild’s gesiths noticed that they didn’t slip off together and were particularly kind to her, which made her cross. Worse, Oeric then began to behave like a farmer who had won a prize cow, fussing over her, smiling at her. If she didn’t do something, he’d be patting her and putting a bell around her neck. She pondered sending him away to Elmet to see how Rhin and the mene wood were coming along. The peregrines would have brought off a brood. She’d like to see that. And what about the mill wheel? Rhin would be too busy to worry about sending messages.