Nicola Griffith - Hild

Hild said nothing.

“I need one. Over the water those cursed Idings are making their name with Eochaid’s freckled brat, Domnall, who took a retinue to Meath and won some small squabble that they name a great battle, and today I find one of them has married a Pictish princess. A Pict! Now I have Idings feeling their oats at both ends of the Roman wall. Do you know what that means?”

“War.”

He blinked. “You’ve seen this?”

Hild shook her head. There would be war, it was the way of the world. Young stags watched for the old to falter. The exiled Idings were feeling their strength, and Edwin had no daughters to marry into alliance with other Anglisc kings, and the Irish and Pictish might watch the old stag and think his antlers too heavy for his head. They might think it time to sweep down from the north and put the Idings as client kings on the throne. “Like the king stag, you must lift your head and show your tines.”

“Well they are still sharp, by the gods. I have three hundred gesiths sworn to me til death. I give them treasure. I am greatly to be feared!”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“I will take the Isle of Vannin.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“You’ve seen this?”

Hild was used to his abrupt decisions and equally sudden reversals, but she could not get used to his insistence on visions. She looked at her mother, who gave her the look she had given on Modresniht more than a year ago— Talk to the king! —and gave the impression of stepping back a pace.

Hild tried to tell Edwin what she saw.

“The rooks in the west wood build their nests high in the elms. The squirrels skip past rowan berries without tasting.”

He waited.

Hild did her best. “The rooks don’t expect great winds; the squirrels know that other forage is plentiful yet.” He didn’t seem to understand. Her mother, at least, was nodding. Hild stepped back very slightly.

“My king,” Breguswith said. “Our guiding light foresees that the winter weather will be a while. And with fine weather you might still take a ship to the Isle of Vannin, while Fiachnae mac Báetáin of the Dál nAriadne is drinking with the Ulaid in their moss-grown, fog-bound land.”

“It is a risky plan.”

“Yes, my king. But you are brave and your war band strong.”

Edwin stared at the brightly woven blanket pulled over the bloodied mattress. Hild doubted he even saw its beautiful pattern, the poppy orange and calf-eye brown. But it didn’t take the light of the world to prophesy that if the blanket were not washed very soon it would be ruined, fit only for housefolk, and a blanket like that took two women a winter to card, spin, dye, and weave. And if someone didn’t take away the cup soon, someone else might work out what had happened.

“And no peaceweaver?” He was looking at Hild.

“No, Uncle.”

“Will she die?”

She didn’t believe her mother bore Cwenburh any ill will. “Perhaps not, if she tries no more children.”

But two months later, as the court packed its wagons to move to York, where Edwin would consult with his lords on the matter of a winter war—a war that could have been fought and won by now if he hadn’t changed his mind so often—Cwenburh told her cousin, Mildburh, that she was again with child. Mildburh told Hereswith, who told her mother and Hild.

Breguswith was scanning their apartment one last time—all was stowed in chests and bags; housefolk were dismantling the beds—when Edwin sent a boy to call Hild and her mother to his hall. They donned light wraps.

It was a cold, grey morning of wind and fitful rain. Oxen lowed as drovers herded them from their warm byre and began the long business of fitting yokes and checking harnesses. Rain drummed on the stretched leather of the waiting wagons. Coelgar and his men marked wagon beds with chalk as they were loaded.

The hall was dark and cool. The fires were out, the best hangings already taken down and rolled, and Edwin’s great sword and spear lifted from their hooks above his chair. Indeed, housefolk stood about, clearly waiting to remove the chair itself. By him stood Coifi, bare-armed and bear-cloaked as usual. And Lilla and a young gesith—tall as a fifteen-year oak sapling—called Forthere, looking watchful. And the latest Christ bishop, one of the less common ones, who held rolls of pale leather to the light and stared and murmured—their god must be very strange. And even the ugly old woman children threw stones at, who made auguries from burnt pinecones and the flights of birds. Dunne, Hild had heard her called. The hall reeked of sacrifice oils and incenses.

“You told me she would bear no more children,” the king said to them as they walked into the dim hall.

“Nor has she, my king,” said Breguswith.

“Yet,” said Coifi.

“Aye,” said the old woman. “She seems strong as a mare.”

“So she seemed at other times,” Breguswith said.

Everyone looked at Hild, who said nothing.

“I want auguries,” the king said. “I want the opinion of every god mouth in this hall, and I want it before I climb on that miserable wagon.”

“My lord King, the gods require things done in the proper order and in the proper—”

“Today, Coifi. And we’ll start with you.”

“Now?”

“Now. Go find your bullock and knife.” He looked around. “And you, Mother, what do you need?”

“Only the outdoors, and mayhap a fire.”

Edwin stood, gestured to one of the hovering housefolk. “Bring a torch and some firewood, and my cloak while you’re about it. And if you see the priest, tell him we’ll be…” He looked at the old woman.

“By the undern daymark.” The three tall elms south of the gate, where, from the well by the bread kitchen, their silhouette cut the horizon immediately below where the sun hung on a cloudless day in the quarter day before midday, undern. Today was not cloudless. Hild wondered if she should run and fetch her mother’s heavy cloak and a hand muff. In this rain there could be no fire on the brow of the hill, so it would be a bird augury, and Hild knew there would be few rooks by those elms at this time of day. It would be a cold wait, and her mother’s joints had been more painful than usual. But then they were all moving and there wasn’t time.

Auguries and sacrifice: crude tools of toothless petitioners. Or so her mother said, even as she’d rehearsed Hild in every variation. But she said, over and over, there was no power like a sharp and subtle mind weaving others’ hopes and fears and hungers into a dream they wanted to hear. Always know what they want to hear—not just what everyone knew they wanted to hear but what they didn’t even dare name to themselves. Show them the pattern. Give them permission to do what they wanted all along.

What did Edwin want to hear?

By the time the king, swathed in a blue cloak ( With our hair colour, blue is better ), stood by the elms, almost forty people, including Coifi and his assistants—free of all edged iron, as befitted servants of the god—leading a calf, were assembled. Twenty or more were gesiths. They’d been bored at Sancton, nothing to do but play knucklebones, fight over women, and burnish their chain mail, and they loved a good prophecy. They stood about, smelling of iron and strong drink, spears resting on their shoulders, sword hilts jutting from the waist at their left hand, for the warrior gesith did not wear cloaks, except on a hard march. One was throwing his knife, a pretty jewelled thing, at the burr partway up the trunk of the closest elm, yanking it free, pacing, throwing. Soon there would be jeers, then boasts, then bets, then more ale, then a fight.

At least it had stopped raining.

A man, the head drover, trotted up the rise, fell to one knee in the wet grass, and spoke to the king. The king nodded, then shouted out to the old woman. “The wagons are ready, Mother. Will your gods speak?”