Nicola Griffith - Hild

“If, as you promised, the weather holds, your Boldcloak will be back from Rheged with Uinniau before the first leaves fall.”

Her mother dropped the door of the weaving hut behind her and studied Hild. She nodded at her empty thumb. “It’s left a mark.”

Hild looked at the band of pale skin. She scratched it.

Breguswith put her hand under Hild’s chin and turned her face this way and that. “The flesh is nearly burnt from your bones and the human from your heart. You’re nothing but wyrd and ælf breath. Spend less time in the wind.”

“Where is… everyone?”

“Begu attends the queen. It’ll be soon. The Crow is no doubt hotfooting it back from his stone church in York. You’ve seen the king? He’s been banishing people or whipping their feet raw. He’s fretting about food.”

“Not anymore.”

Breguswith nodded. “You gave him good news, then. It’s all he’ll listen to. He drove the scop out, said if he had to listen to one more tale of luck and wyrd, he’d cut his throat and use his sinews for bowstrings.”

She didn’t care about the scop. “Where’s—”

“Your bodywoman is no doubt making the housefolk miserable. Fear makes her vicious.”

Fear. What did Gwladus know of fear?

Hild sat on the blanket. It was new: green-and-blue chevrons. She stood, paced. Unfastened her belt, slid off her seax and purse. Put them on the shelf by the bed. Sat. She was hungry.

She tried to turn the ring that wasn’t there. She turned her beads, tolled through them. Penda. Cadwallon. Eanfrith, Oswald, Oswiu. And the yellow bead, the brightest. Christ, the most important of all. Whatever that meant.

She unfastened the beads, coiled them in her palm, weighed them. How mad was little Rhianmelldt now? What did Cian think of her? What would Cian think of the butcher-bird?

He’d come back with that bite on his jaw. He knew how it was.

She leaned over and put the beads next to her seax on the shelf.

Blue and green…

She felt the soft shock of stave on throat, the shriek of Tims as Coelwyn levered his spear up and down. She realised her lips were skinned back. She shook the memory out of her head. She was hungry, thirsty. More than hungry. Her clothes were filthy. She peeled them off, dropped them in a heap by the door. Sat down again.

What was keeping Gwladus?

She was so tired of waiting. Always waiting. She was the butcher-bird. She didn’t have to wait; she could take.

The door rattled then swung open, framing Gwladus: holding a tray, hair unbound and freshly combed, smelling of flowers. An offering: herself; all she had.

Neither said anything.

A pot on the tray rattled as Gwladus lowered it to the table. Hild made no move towards it. Gwladus, very pale, took a breath, climbed onto the bed, lay on the blanket, and spread her bright hair over the pillow.

When Hild still said nothing, made no move, Gwladus took Hild’s hand and laid it on her belly.

A thin linen dress. Nothing underneath. Hild let her hand lie there, feeling the heat and tremble through the light weave. Like Tims. She could tear it with one hand, tear Gwladus’s heart out.

Who’s to stop me, who in all the world?

She ached. She felt so alone. She wanted to feel Gwladus respond, rise under her, strong and fierce. Hers. She could take her, take her pleasure on her. This time Gwladus wouldn’t try to stop her. She would pretend to cry out with need. She had to. She was a slave. With nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Hild had left her behind once. She had to please Hild or be thrown away, to gesiths like Lintlaf.

Who’s to stop me?

She ran her hand up Gwladus’s belly, touched her bare shoulder, pushed the dress down, cupped her breast—so pale against her dark hand, so plump, so soft. How would it be to lay her naked length against Gwladus, feel her tremble with need, not fear? Did it matter if it wasn’t real? She swallowed. Rose to her knees, ran her hands down the pale ribs, bumping over them, one by one—so small—to her waist, her thighs, her hem. She lifted the hem, lifted the dress, pulled it with both hands, pulled it up, pulled it off. Left it draped over the pillow, over the spread hair. The vein at Gwladus’s neck beat and fluttered like a trapped bird. Hers.

Gwladus closed her eyes.

Hild straddled naked cream and gold and ivory and breathed her flowery hair, her own sharp woman scent. She lifted the dress from the pillow, crushed it in her hands: so fine, so soft, nothing like the wobbly tabby of the farmwife.

Who in all the world?

On the shelf, her beads glittered.

Then I tell you truly, you must learn to stop yourself.

She hurled the dress at the floor. Gwladus flinched but did not move. Hild climbed off, muscles clenching, hands in fists. “Look at me!”

Gwladus opened her eyes.

“You’re mine. You’ll grow old in my household, die warm and well fed. You’re my bodywoman. Some services I’ll require, from time to time. But I won’t… I won’t.”

Silence.

“Do you understand?”

Gwladus nodded.

Hild got off the bed, brought back the dress. “Then I will eat some cheese. And you may… comb my hair. And afterwards dress me in my lightest weave. The sun is here for a while.”

With the sun came heat like a fist. The sky turned into a bronze-and-enamel bowl on which the sun beat until their world swelled and rang. The earth steamed. The people sweltered. The barley grew fast, green as grass, greener than the king’s eyes.

The king toasted Hild in hall and tossed the empty cup at her to keep. The Crow looked as though he would prefer to throw a dagger. His priests crossed themselves if her shadow touched theirs. They had heard her gesiths’ songs: wyrd dealer, miracle healer, butcher-bird. They all watched everything she did, watched everything she watched—and everyone. So she refused to see the men’s strong jaws and women’s soft skin, refused to notice the bright eyes, the clean limbs, and the swelling curves all around her. She would make do with Gwladus, for a while.

She made sure her cross hung on the outside of her dress, kept the impatience from her stride and command from her voice, and settled in to understand Oswine.

He spent his time with Lintlaf. She didn’t approach them. She and Lintlaf might come to blows. The butcher-bird wanted that; Gwladus lay between them. And she might win. But then he’d be shamed, broken as chief gesith, and her uncle hated people to break his tools. Besides, she might lose. Lintlaf might kill her. Then her gesiths would try to kill him. Whoever won, men would die. She had sworn to be totem and token to her people, to light their path, not darken it. And she had the queen’s impending birth to think about.

She sent for Morud—who seemed to sense that here she was Hild, his lady of the mene, the king’s niece, not the awful butcher-bird—and set him to get close to Oswine’s bodyman, find out what Oswine and his father knew about bandits.

“Dull as hammers,” Morud said two days later. “Both him and his da. If either of them knows anything I’ll eat that blanket.”

“Does he think Osric plans to retake Deira one day?”

“Think?” Morud squinted, as he did when he was trying not to laugh. “He wants and he whines and he worries, but he doesn’t think.”

“What does he worry about?”

Morud shrugged. “That no one really likes him. That he’s wearing the wrong brooch or fastens his jacket the wrong way. That the first time he’s in a shield wall he’ll get himself killed or, worse, make himself a laughingstock.”

With the heat came the mosquitoes and flies. Cows lowed piteously and flicked their tails, men in the fields cursed and swatted, housefolk woke with swollen faces, and the cook swore she would kill anyone who left the door open again and let the flies in, she didn’t care if the kitchens were hotter than the Satan’s hell.