Nicola Griffith - Hild

Hild watched the conversation from her horse. Her mother reined in next to her. “You’ve been out of his eye too long.”

Hild nodded without taking her gaze from them. She knew what Paulinus was saying: Beginnings were delicate times, and the king’s seer, despite her prominent gold cross, made Christ-fearing men nervous.

“You’ll have to wait for your moment.”

Hild rested her hand on her seax and wondered what kind of moment. Meanwhile she would wait.

So as the king and his archbishop spoke to the great men of Lindum, while her mother negotiated with Coelgar and his reeve Blæcca by the fire in Coelgar’s hall east and south of the city, Hild walked Coelgar’s fields. The vill was safe enough to wander without Oeric, and Cian was dallying with some girl, the daughter of Coelgar’s bread maker. Not that Cian would have offered to accompany her. He had been acting strangely since the morning they left York: ignoring her, avoiding even Gwladus. Hild did not understand it, but she had done without him for four months over the summer, and he would recover himself at some point. She just hoped it would be soon. She was tired of waiting, always waiting. And she missed fighting.

After nine days she knew the fields so well she could name every clod and stone along their edges. Today, drifting rain blurred the air over the low, tidy furrows and the air smelt dark and rich. She left her hood down, letting the rain cling to her hair, wanting to hear while her body walked and her mind wandered. On rainy afternoons, did the bread maker’s daughter let Cian pleasure her, let Cian see her vulnerable and soft and hold her afterwards while she cried? Or was it only men who cried? Begu hadn’t said. She couldn’t imagine Gwladus crying, even if—

That lump of dirty flint by the hedge, it hadn’t been there yesterday. She slowed. It was a partridge, hunched against discovery.

Rooks and jackdaws croaked and squabbled beyond the brow of the hill, fieldfares and finches hopped back and forth on the worm-rich soil: there were no hawks about. It was hiding from her.

“Don’t be frightened,” she said. It made no sign it had heard. Stupid bird. She glared at it. “What have I ever done to you?”

The bird’s fear made her angry. She picked up a stone. She could kill it. Kill them all: Paulinus, Coelgar, Cian’s woman.

But it was just a bird. It hadn’t done anything to her. She let the stone fall and turned back the way she’d come, towards the river.

A hare, sitting in a furrow, almond eyes shining black in the rain light, regarded her. She regarded it. The pale fluff at the tips of its long ears stirred in a breeze Hild couldn’t feel. Then it bolted. Bold hare! Brave hare! Hild gave a great shout and ran after it, knowing she wouldn’t catch it, just wanting to run as it ran, muscles bunching, feet kicking against the loamy dirt, not hiding. It lolloped under the roots of the hedge and she heard a sifting splash, like a sack of grain going into the river. She ran around to a gap in the hedge and got to the bank in time to see the hare swimming like a furious small dog to the other side, where it leapt up the bank and ran, tail flashing this way and that. Then gone.

Her heart beat high. The hedge seemed outlined in crystal. The air was like beer. She held her arms out and turned, taking in sky, water, fields, hedges, the low, tidy, orderly land. She laughed. It was good to be in a field in the rain. Then she sat on a stone and fished a piece of cheese from the purse at her belt.

She was struck by it. A product of a well-run world in the palm of her hand. Deep yellow. Aged from summer milk squeezed from cows fed on rich green grass. She bit into it: fatty and sharp.

The stone she sat on had probably been hauled from the field generations ago and moved, season by season, in frost heaves and spring washes, closer to the river. This was Lindsey, never left to run wild for a generation. Not like Elmet. She imagined sitting in her mene wood with her children, her children’s children. Perhaps it would look as tidy and prosperous.

The sheep here weren’t all that they’d hoped for, though, according to her mother. Too small. They could breed some of the larger ewes with some Deira rams. Coelgar would be only too happy to oblige her mother; he’d always felt kindly towards her.

Hild thought back. Perhaps it had been more than kindly—before Osric.

She popped the last of the cheese into her mouth and savoured it. If only Coelgar liked her as much as he liked her mother. He treated her with extreme courtesy, yes, but that was a mask for his discomfort. He wouldn’t be alone with her, not since the tent in the field at Lindum.

She would have to think of a way to befriend ealdorman Coelgar. She would have to remember that those who weren’t used to her, or who hadn’t been around her for a while, saw the legend first: twice royal, twice uncanny. Wielder of wyrd, dealer of death, the king’s seer.

She stood, checked the far bank just in case the hare had returned, then headed back for the vill.

A column of rooks and jackdaws rose, cawing, from the field over the rise. A hawk. She hoped the partridge was hiding.

But when she reached the brow of the hill, she saw it wasn’t a hawk. It was a column of men riding furiously for the vill, the king’s tufa gleaming at its head.

Hild got to the vill just as the king leapt from his horse. He saw her and strode over. His muscles were tight with more than the ride.

He yanked a sheet of parchment from his saddlebag, waved it in her face. He was holding it upside down.

“Who the fuck is Ricberht?”

“Uncle?”

“Some nithing called Ricberht has killed Eorpwald and set himself up as king of the East Angles! All those messages, all those gifts, for nothing. And no warning, not one single word, from my seer. Well?”

Ricberht. A lesser Wuffing. Surrounded by his men at Hereswith’s betrothal feast, laughing with Eorpwald while Æthelric preened—

Hild was saved from having to answer by the arrival of more riders: Paulinus and his priests.

Edwin whirled. “And you’re no better! Some god, who can’t even protect a king I need.” He threw the letter in the mud and stalked into the hall.

Hild bent to the parchment. The words were dissolving in the rain. Stephanus darted through the riders, mud spattering his sandalled feet. She let him have it.

The next day rain fell unceasingly. Endless, wind-whipped rain. The men crowded into the hall smelt like a pack of wet dogs. Better than the smell outside, where the wind was bringing the stink of tanneries from Lindum. The hall was thick with damp and smoke and the king’s rage.

Hild, who had been up half the night with her mother, met the men’s regard steadily. Cian was the only one not looking at her.

She wore royal blue, her arms bare and her hair tucked behind her ears, gesith-style. In the firelight gold glinted from her ears and throat, arms and fingers. Her cross gleamed on her breast and carnelians winked at her wrist. The silver of her belt ends shimmered. She rested her hand on her seax and stood tall. Unlike Paulinus, she was both skirt and sword. The saviour of Lindum and, before that, Bebbanburg. Let them not forget it.

“My king, Eorpwald Sulkmouth was used to the summer mead of Woden. His thegns were used to it. Christ belief, though, is a foreign wine, a heady wine, and Eorpwald Sulkmouth was foolish. He drank too fast. He lost his senses.”

Here and there, a gesith nodded. They all knew the perils of heady foreign wines. Paulinus, standing on the king’s right, leaned on his jewelled shepherd’s crook and watched her carefully.

“My king, you’re wise. You understood the value of persuading your thegns first, letting them taste, letting them judge the strength of your pour. And, my king, you are rich. You are known as generous. You felt no need to pour all at once to win approval. You could advise men to begin slowly, and it was like a father speaking to his son: kindly and wise, not rushed, not hasty in the hope of avoiding the name of niggard.”