Nicola Griffith - Hild

Begu worried about the queen. “She’s due and past due. But at least she doesn’t fret all the time now about the crops and omens. She was wearing her knees away, and it’s not good for a woman that big to kneel so long. You came back just in time.” Gwladus poured her beer. “And I must say, service has improved lately, too. How do you keep the beer cool in this heat, Gwladus?”

“By the power of her tongue,” Morud said from the corner, then blushed strayberry red. “Her words, lady. Her words. She bullies people. It’s for the lady Hild, she says. It’s for the king’s seer. Where do you think your bread is coming from this year? From the lady’s word and wyrd, from her goodwill, so if there’s only room in the cellar for one cask of beer, then that’s the lady Hild’s cask.”

“What is wrong with him?” Begu said to Hild. “And what’s wrong with you? Is it the heat?” But Hild saw the knowing glint in her eye.

Gwladus stepped back to the curtain, lifted it, and jerked her head at Morud.

When they’d gone, Begu stretched. “Well, I’m glad things are back to normal. Eat some more strayberries. You’re still too thin.”

Hild obeyed. “Gwladus tells me we have a new houseman.”

Begu didn’t even blush. “Swidhelm. Swid. He’s a byre man, really. Good with colts. Strong.”

“Cian will be back with Uinniau in autumn.”

Begu smiled and bit a berry in half. “If it’s a son, we’ll need a scop to sing his praises, to bring his wyrd.” For one heart-stopping moment, Hild thought Begu was with child. “Your mother will find one, she says, but I think she already has. I think she found him the day after the king banished the other one—the one who told the good story about the Geats and the dragon. You never know about babies, when they’ll come. Even royal ones. Especially royal ones. You have to be ready anytime. I think the queen’s dropped. She’ll have her son soon. He’ll be an Yffing…”

Begu believed in her powers completely; if Hild had said it would be a son, then it would be. When Begu was talking, Hild didn’t worry that she might be wrong.

“…the Crow will throw holy water on his head and burn incense and sing hymns, but an Yffing needs a song about his father and his father’s father, and on and back, so everyone, not just Christ on his cloud, knows who the little ætheling is.”

Christ on his cloud… A thought streaked across her mind but was gone so fast she couldn’t catch it. Begu chattered on. If she used weapons the way she used words, no one would stand against her; they’d have no idea where the stroke would fall next.

But she trusted Begu on the matter of birth as completely as her gemæcce trusted her prophesying, so when the queen went into labour late that night, Hild was ready for the king’s summons.

In the audience hall by the feast hall, with one silent attendant standing by the south wall, the king paced. “Tell me again how it will be.”

This was a duel already begun. No backing away now. “The queen will have a son. Big and healthy. An Yffing with the strong hand and hard mind of his kin.”

“And?”

“And autumn will be late coming. The barley will be brought in safely. We’ll have barley bread this winter.”

“And the men of the north?”

“The men of the north will truckle to the Anglisc.”

“You don’t say when.” He scratched the welt on the back of his left hand, peered at it, rubbed it instead on his thigh and looked at her. “And you don’t say to which Anglisc.”

Hild wished there was a fire to crackle, even a fly to drone, something to fill the quiet, to stop her listening for a cry from Æthelburh. “What does Bishop Paulinus say?”

Edwin cracked his knuckles. “He can’t see beyond that white shawl that he expects from the bishop of Rome with every ship.” He paced again, back and forth. “Well, fuck the men of the north. Fuck Penda, bugger the West Saxons, and piss on Cadwallon.”

Someone would, one day.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Scratch scratch scratch. “Your mother tells me you have a niece.”

“Æthelwyn—”

A knock at the door. The king yanked it open before his attendant could get there. Wilnoð. A smear of blood on her sleeve. The king’s gaze fixed upon it. Wilnoð bowed. Straightened. “May it please my lord King, you have a son.”

Edwin swelled. Hild breathed out, but quietly.

“The queen is well. Your son is well. He’s heavy. Big and strong.”

Edwin clapped Hild on the shoulder. “You’ll have his weight in silver! And a gift for your niece.” Down the corridor, past Wilnoð, the air stirred then filled with striding priests: Paulinus and two attendants. “I have a son,” Edwin said. “His name is Wuscfrea!”

Wuscfrea, the father of Yffi of long ago. A name announcing a claim and precedence.

When Breguswith brought the scop, Luftmaer, to the king’s audience hall after breakfast, Hild saw immediately how it was. He was tall, young, wide-mouthed, and clean. He already wore an arm ring Hild had last seen in her mother’s chest. The hands resting on his lyre case were long-fingered, his shoulders well-balanced.

The king told Coelfrith and Stephanus to come back with the accounts later, called for ale, and told the scop to sing the praise song he’d prepared for the feast.

Luftmaer unshipped his lyre with practiced hands, tuned the strings—though more out of habit, she thought, than need—and began. His peat-brown eyes filled with tears every other line, but none of them fell. His deep-grained voice drew and released verses, perfectly flighted. Along the side of the hall, gesiths began to beat out the rhythm with the flat of their hands. It was the kind of song they loved: blood and gold, never grow old, never feel cold, honey in the comb, hearth and home, glory and story, all topped, like foam on just-pulled milk, by the rousing, rhythmic chant of the forebears:

“Wuscfrea the son of Edwin king of the Anglisc, the son of Ælla, the son of Yffi, the son of Wuscfrea, the son of Wilgisl, the son of Westerfalca, the son of Sæfugl, the son of Sæbald, the son of Segegeat, the son of Swebdæg, the son of Sigegar, the son of Wædæg, the son of Woden, god of gods.”

“King of the Anglisc, god of gods!” Edwin bellowed. “Again!”

Luftmaer obliged, eyes filling, fingers picking, voice drawing and releasing, exactly as before.

“Wuscfrea… king of the Anglisc… god of gods!” the gesiths sang.

“Wuscfrea!” the king shouted, and raised his cup. “My son!”

Everyone drank, and then the gesiths made boasts about how each would outdo the other to serve the young ætheling, the wounds they would endure, the fights they would relish, the gold they would win.

The gesiths had taken their singing outside, her mother had taken the scop away, and Hild half drowsed in the sunlight by the door while Edwin listened to Coelfrith give his accounting. With the better weather, trade had picked up. Two extra shipments of wheat had arrived from Eadbald…

She had a headache: partly the air, which was tightening and brooding though the sky was clear, partly too much beer that morning. It was good to not be worrying. Her neck itched. She scratched it. A mosquito bite. She wondered if there were mosquitoes in Rheged. She didn’t remember any during the season she spent north of the wall, but it hadn’t been hot like this. Which way would Cian bring Uinniau back? Ride the wall road, then Dere Street to York, or sail down the west coast, then ride east then south through Craven? But then he’d be bringing him through the Gap.

The staked bandits would be nothing but bones now, fallen and long picked over. She shook her mind free of that. Here she wasn’t the butcher-bird. Here she was the well-dressed seer wearing her cross. Tidy and clean. Tidy and listening. Tidy and restless.