Nicola Griffith - Hild

Coifi further agreed to persuade Osric to invite Paulinus to Craven for baptisms. Paulinus agreed to return one or two of the items appropriated from Coifi. Edwin agreed that the chief church of the new god would be grand enough to honour His glory.

It was stitch-by-stitch work, following a plain pattern. Child’s play. It made her restless and impatient.

She brought her latest proposal to the king and Paulinus in hall. They were going back and forth about just how much honour the new god required—not only stone, the Crow said, but marble, and tile, and glass—when Gwladus glided to Hild’s side and whispered in her ear.

The warm breath, the swirl of tansy and lavender, the words triggered a surge of something wild she couldn’t name. She trembled, like a horse sliced free of its traces. Kings can be dangerous when surprised. She didn’t care. This, this was what she was born for. She was the light of the world.

She stood to her full height.

“An omen, lord King. An omen!” The click and rattle of knucklebones from the gesith’s corner stopped.

King and bishop both faced her. The king’s eyes slowly blackened, then swarmed around the rims with green, and Hild, with absolute certainty, knew what he was thinking: Omens were wyrd-hammers, risky and unpredictable; they could swing in any direction.

But she felt reckless with power; it foamed through her. She knew he would let her speak.

After a moment, he nodded.

She looked down at Paulinus. Less like a crow than a dusty black beetle. She could destroy him with a word.

“My lord Bishop’s book refers often to the Christ as the Lamb of God.”

His eyes glittered. “He has many names.”

“But Lamb of God is one.”

“Yes.”

“And all would acknowledge that the raven is Woden’s bird.”

Nods from every corner of the hall.

“All birds are Christ’s birds!” Paulinus said, but no one paid attention. The raven was Woden’s bird, always had been, always would be, his messenger of life and death and war.

“Attend!” She felt taller than an oak, taller than an elm. They would sing songs of the king’s seer, the queen of wyrd. “My king. Lord Bishop. Even as we stood here and weighed the honour due the Christ, a raven swooped on the fold and took a new lamb.”

Dead silence. Then the hiss of whispers up and down the hall.

“What, then, does it mean, Lord Bishop?”

His cheeks darkened. She knew what he was thinking: that she was about to drive him to the wall, wreck all his plans. And she could. She felt so sure, so clear. But that wouldn’t suit her uncle’s purpose. There was another way.

“What it means, my lord Bishop, is that Woden’s bird is desperate. He is thin, he is hungry. The lamb is plump and new. The raven seized his chance.” She hefted the weight of her words. “Did he steal the ewe? No. Why? He hadn’t the strength. The raven, Woden’s bird, took the lamb, because the lamb is small, because it is new on the fold.” She spiked her words, impaling them along her battlement one by one by one. “This is not Woden’s message.”

The words hung there, a declaration, a taunt: You can’t stop me!

“This is a message from Christ!” Her voice rang. “Christ, our new god. He shouts to us: Fight for me now!”

The whispers swelled to a roar. Fight! This the gesiths understood. But at the centre of the hall silence pooled around the three tall glittering figures: Paulinus wondering why Hild had turned the battle like that, what her deeper game might be. Edwin working out how much new control this might give him over the Crow. And Hild feeling stranded and appalled as the surge of certainty ebbed. Recklessness killed seers as surely as it killed gesiths.

A small party rode through the grey afternoon, along the river that led to Goodmanham. They passed the alders where once, long ago, child Hild and Cian had dozed against the scarred flank of the bitch, Gwen, while the king, sitting on a stool in the shade, heard the case of a man and a widow, and his gesiths horrified the servers with demands for white mead.

Hild smiled, then remembered that Edwin was now far too grand for stools in the grass, Cian was one of the gesiths, and old Gwen was dead.

When they passed the daymark elms, the clouds uncoiled from about the sun, birds wove their song through the trees, and the air smelt of ripening flax, growing corn, and thick-fleeced sheep being gathered to the fold.

The horses slowed to a walk. Sun glittered on the crosses hung on every breast. Gold, glinting with garnet for Edwin, garnet and pearl for Hild. A massive pectoral of gold and amethyst for Paulinus. Plain gold for Cian, from his godmother, the queen. Silver for Stephanus. Copper, silvered and gilded, for Coifi, a good match for his rich red-and-gold warrior jacket—Coelfrith’s, hastily altered—and grey stallion, Edwin’s third-best. His new sword hung well enough in its travelling scabbard at his back, but he held his throwing spear awkwardly. The gesiths—many of them Hild’s hounds—wore crosses of bronze or silvered tin, though more than a few seemed to be wearing two leather thongs around their necks. Their crosses might hang on the outside, for all to see, but she guessed Woden’s spear or Thunor’s hammer lay against their skin. What the Christ didn’t see wouldn’t hurt him. And they were gesiths—used to a battle swinging from victory to disaster and back again in the time it took to roar and shove and slip in the mud. They liked to have a fallback.

Even the scop wore a beautifully carved elm cross bound and tipped with silver. Something about the graceful lines made Hild look at Cian and wonder if he’d made it. He seemed lost in another world. Probably dreaming of some long-ago glory. She touched her belt purse where the three thorn-root travel cups nestled with her strike-a-light, tinder, and spoon, and longed to run with him to their little pool by the bird cherry and dip a toast from the spring and talk. Things between them had been strained since Uinniau left. She wasn’t sure why. It unsettled her, and she was unsettled enough, wondering what reckless taunter of fate had come to live inside her skin lately.

Edwin raised his hand. They reined in a hundred paces from the great carved posts of the enclosure.

They dismounted. Edwin nodded for Coifi, Paulinus, Hild, and the scop to join him. Paulinus took his great golden crook from Stephanus, the scop slung his lyre bag over his shoulder, and Coifi’s spear dragged along the grass for a moment before he balanced the weight. Hild simply handed Cygnet’s reins to Oeric and stood: the pattern’s witness.

A wood pigeon called from the ash stand on one side of the entrance, another answered from the oak.

The king made his speech about strong new gods supplanting tired old ones, how those gathered here were about to witness the new god of the Angles casting down the old, the foreshadowing of Anglisc triumph. He told them that the bishop of the Christ would now bless the chief priest of the chief of the old gods, claim him for the new god.

When Coifi went on one knee before Paulinus and the bishop began his own speech, she unfocused her eyes and used her side vision, as she did in the woods to catch the pattern. A score of gesiths standing by their horses. Half with hands on their crosses. Many with hands on their sword hilts—or, rather, on then off, with fearful glances at the enclosure. Woden forbade edged weapons anywhere near his totem. They were uncomfortably close. And Woden, god of war and the wild hunt, god of chaos and uncertainty, pain and death, was unpredictable. This could all be a trick. Some glanced at the sky, alert for bird omens. Some watched the priests as they ploughed on with their parts. Some watched her, she realised, though all except Cian pretended not to.