Nicola Griffith - Hild

“So Prince Dunod says.”

“What do you know of Dunod ap Pabo?”

“That he would be sad for his wife if her brother were to be killed.”

“He told you this?”

“No, King, but what sister wouldn’t grieve for her brother, and what husband wouldn’t hurl himself at the wind to try to keep his wife happy?”

Edwin leaned in. His pupils were expanding, drinking the blue centre from his eyes, until all was green and black. “You have seen this?”

“My king?”

He wrapped his huge hand around her right wrist. “Tell me true, now. You have seen Dunod ap Pabo go to war over the death of Ceredig ap Gualloc?”

Hild blinked.

Edwin shook her slightly, and it took Hild back to a time she couldn’t quite remember, the day her world changed, when her father died, and she saw the grey snakes of hair in Edwin’s beard and heard a voice: Tell Cadfan that he or his son shall have to face this serpent one day.

“Cadwallon,” she whispered. Edwin let go as if scalded. “Cadfan’s son. Your foster-brother. He will have to face you.”

“Hild,” he said. “Now I know that name. You are the one in the lady Breguswith’s dream, the jewel who will light the way.”

Hild nodded. His face looked very strange, so pale that his eyes seemed to shine and crawl like summer flies.

“You will light my way.”

She nodded again. Talk to the king. “Yes, King. Though any light must have fuel to shine.”

“Fuel, is it?” The colour began to come back to Edwin’s face, and, along with it, a knowing look.

Hild felt encouraged. “Yes, King.”

“And what do you ask from me as your… fuel?”

“You are king, and do king things. My sister learns to weave. My—that is Cian—my mother’s… my mother’s gemæcce’s son, learns the sword. I want a path.”

“A path? That is your price?”

Price? She was aware of a houseman approaching bearing her cushion, but dared not pause now. “I want to learn, to wander and ask and think and listen like… like a priest or a prince.”

“Not gold?”

“Gold comes to priests and princes.”

Edwin threw back his head and laughed. “So now we get to it. Gold.” He stood, looked over at his scop. The scop’s rippling music stopped, and he struck two peremptory chords. “Hear me!” the king shouted. “I have a challenge.” Every warrior in the room came to attention. A feast challenge meant gold for the winner. “Though, as it is Modresniht, my challenge is for a maid.”

Puzzlement. Settling back of the men, leaning forward of the women. Breguswith’s eyes shone like blue glass.

Edwin stripped the lowest band on his left arm, wrapped both hands about it—they barely met around the circle—and lifted it over his head. It was soft yellow gold, thick as his thumb, worth a hundred cattle, two hundred, five hundred. He turned slowly, so it reflected light to the farthest ends of every bench. Then he threw it onto the table.

“Hild, princess and niece, jewel of Deira who will light our way in wisdom and prophecy, the gold is yours. To claim it, you must only fill our feasting cup to the brim, and carry it and the ring to our guest’s table without spilling a drop, and then back again.”

Hild stood, beckoned to a houseman, pointed to the cup. Her mother’s eyes glowed so hot they might melt. Gold, acknowledgement of her status, and a path. All for one trip across the hall.

It was impossible. The cup and ring together weighed more than half of what she did.

“Hild,” said her mother, and beat gently with the palm of her hand on the table as her daughter passed her. “Hild,” said Hereswith as her sister walked by.

“Hild,” said the women along the table, and then “Hild!” shouted one gesith, and now the drumming was like the surf at Bebbanburg, loud, unstoppable. “Hild. Hild. Hild.” There wasn’t a one among them who didn’t want to see her win an ætheling’s ransom from the king. She walked on the wave of sound the length of the tables and back up again until she stood before Edwin, on the other side of the board.

The arm ring winked hugely in the light. The white mead shimmered in its great cup. Her arms would not carry both.

Men’s strength is their weakness— A dog, snapping teeth—

The houseman lifted the cup. Hild raised one hand: Wait.

Neck rigid, haunches bulging. Furrows in the turf. Stretching the line of her back. Bend your legs…

She looked at Edwin. “Edwin, King, I will carry your gold. I will carry it as a princess does, as a crown.” And she bent her head—but also her legs.

When Edwin put the heavy ring on her head, Hild locked her knees and straightened one inch, two. It was like carrying the world. But she pushed with her feet and lifted and lifted until her spine was as straight as a plumb line and the weight poured through the muscles along her spine and in her thighs and calves and feet. She gestured to the houseman and turned to face Dunod and his folk. Then she accepted the cup.

This was for her path, for her freedom, for her life and family. To make her dead da proud. She was strong. She was royal. She would set her will. She would do this.

So she fixed her gaze on Dunod, on the glint of the gold around his throat, and she began. The drumming rose and, from the men, stamping and cheering. From the women, a ululation. And the sound swept her across the room, between the fire pits, to Dunod’s table.

“Do drink it all, lord, if you will,” she said, and he did, in one long draught, and his men shouted and he bellowed, “Hild! Light of the world!” and Hild took the cup back again and, again, was swept across the hall to Edwin’s table. It seemed not so difficult to walk a clear path.

THE QUEEN’S ROOM at Sancton smelt of blood and weeping and, perhaps, Hild thought, something else. She stood by the door hanging, watching, listening, while her mother and the king stood by the empty bed. Like the last time Cwenburh miscarried, her women had washed her and carried her away to a new apartment, so that when she woke she would not have to remember staring at the heroic embroidery of the white horse, or the blooming apple tree, or that knot in the pine cladding on the ceiling while she screamed and bled and pushed and wept: for a bladder-size sack of slimed slipperiness, for nothing.

“It would have been a girl, my king,” said Breguswith. “It would have been your peaceweaver.”

Edwin was trembling. “Her women assured me this time all was well.”

“Yes, my king. They thought it was.”

“They?”

Perhaps her mother hadn’t seen Edwin’s rage. Hild took a step into the room.

“Are you, lady, not one of them?”

Another step, and another until she stood by the small table at the head of the bed.

“Oh, no, my king,” her mother said. “That is, yes, but you may recall I suggested to the queen after the last time that she wait, perhaps for a very long while.”

“And you?” Edwin whirled on Hild, who was sniffing the queen’s cup, and thinking. “Perhaps an eight-year-old may prove wiser than the collective mind of my entire household. Tell me your prophecy, O shining light!”

Hild put the cup down. She didn’t understand why he was so angry. He didn’t care much for his wife, and despite the court’s cautious optimism of the last few weeks about the queen’s pregnancy, no one could be surprised at this event, not after all the others. So it was something else.

“Uncle, your wife will bear no more babies.” Not while Breguswith made her special heather beer and disguised the sweet gale with tansy.

“None?”

She shook her head.

“I need a peaceweaver!”