Nicola Griffith - Hild

The king was restless, too, twisting this way and that in his chair, tapping his ring on its gilded arm. She remembered the weight of it.

She turned her beads. They were tight around her hard muscle and big bones. Muscle, bone, skin sliding on skin… She shook her mind free of that, too, and thought instead of when she’d first got the beads from mad little Rhianmelldt. Back then, she could wrap the strand around her wrist four times. Now only three. Everything changes.

Christ, the most important of all… Again the glimpse of an idea was gone before she could grasp it, drowned in others’ talk. This time Coelfrith saying two more stonemasons had come for the church, which now stood higher than a man’s shoulder. And tithes from Craven were a little low. She would suggest to the king that they visit Osric in Craven, take the gesiths, claim the tithe in the form of hospitality. Maybe she should go. With the king’s token.

Butcher-bird. Was that her wyrd?

She didn’t want to think about it today. She closed her eyes. What did Æthelwyn look like? Like Hereswith or like Æthelric? Begu said sometimes children looked more like other kin than their parents: Perhaps little Æthelwyn would look like Hild. But even if she saw her niece, how would she know if Æthelwyn looked anything like she had when she was little? Perhaps when Cian got back they could visit the East Angles, and she could see for herself. If he got back before the autumn gales made it too risky to sail down the east coast.

Her mother could come, too—now Wuscfrea was born, cloth-making could be left to the queen. She didn’t much like the idea of spending time with that scop on a boat, though. Then, too, maybe Cian wouldn’t like being cooped up with her and Gwl—

The Crow was talking. She opened her eyes.

Paulinus stood with Stephanus before the king. “The ætheling Wuscfrea is to be baptised at the end of the week. Yet Father Stephanus tells me his praise song claims he’s descended from Woden. It is blasphemy.”

Edwin massaged the back of his neck. “Woden is my forefather.”

“He’s a false god. You may not name him.”

Edwin gave Paulinus a long look. “May not?”

Hild would have liked nothing better than to see the Crow whipped around a tree, but That man and his god are useful to me . Paulinus was part of the plan to keep the kingdom safe, keep the Yffings safe. Keep her safe. Until she saw her wyrd more clearly.

She checked her cross, stood. “My king?”

Edwin nodded. She stepped forward.

“My lord Bishop. We Christians say that there is no god but Christ.”

Paulinus looked at her down his nose, though he had to tip his head back to do so. She watched him test the assertion, looking for the trap. But he couldn’t disagree. “There is no God but God, and Christ is His son.”

“Then how can Woden be a god, false or otherwise? Woden is a man. A great man, a mighty man, the overking’s forefather, but a man. It won’t be blasphemy to name him so: honoured forefather of Wuscfrea. King of kings in his time. A man such as our new ætheling may hope one day to be.”

“Ha!” said Edwin, with a beat of both palms on the arms of his chair. “Woden, king of kings! I’ll hear no more of it.”

The barley had grown heavy and golden. Wuscfrea thrived. Cian would be back soon with Uinniau.

Hild lay on her back in the hummocky grass, arms behind her head, alone on the moor. She had made it clear to her hounds that she liked to go away by herself. They had seen her kill. They knew she was a creature of the uncanny, so let her protect herself with wyrd and stave while she went to other worlds and communed with gods.

She smiled to herself and watched the sky, hearing nothing but wind feathered by the heather, seeing nothing, not a bird nor a bee nor a cloud, just endless sky. The empty blue worked itself between her and the world at her back, lifted, levered, pried her free, and then she was falling, up, up into the bottomless well…

An eagle sliced across a corner of the blue, and once again there was an up and a down, and she slid back into her body, right-way up, once more sheathed in muscle and skin.

The hummock under her back felt different, as though she’d been away a long time. She stretched and laughed to herself. It would make a good story: stolen by hobs and hidden in a fold of the world while the rest turned to dust. She would tell Cian.

She stood and dusted off her dress. The eagle began to rise. Round and round, higher and higher on its pillar of air, pinions flaring gold in the sun. What she must see…

As she walked her mind was with the eagle, soaring over the whole isle. North and east over the high moor to Onnen at the Bay of the Beacon where Mulstan tithed to Edwin and the ruined church crumbled into the cliff. Tilting north over hilly woodland to the wall, where Bryneich still talked of her prophecy of friendship forever. Still farther north to Yeavering and the strange talking stage, the totem now carved with a cross. Then arcing west over Rheged where mad little Rhianmelldt balanced at the crux of its future. Out over the heaving waters of the North Channel that divided the two lands of the Dál Riata. Back towards the mainland, the isle of Manau at her left wing tip. The northern mountains of Gwynedd, and Deganwy, the fort on the river that led to the sea, where Cadwallon held the warp of the Irish Sea trade and the web of shaved-forehead priests. Then south and east over the midland valleys and woodland of Penda’s Mercia; Penda, unbaptised, who was pursuing unbaptised West Saxons south and west to Dyfneint towards an end no one knew. Turning again, rising east, Kent and the pope’s overbishop out of sight, beyond her right wing. Over the fenland where Hereswith suckled her baby and listened to Fursey’s advice. North again, over Lindsey where Coelgar oversaw the rich, tidy, newly Christian farmland…

Back at the vill the first person she saw was Swid, the byre man, leading two horses round the yard. Cian, she thought, and Uinniau. But they didn’t look good enough for something a prince of Rheged might ride. “Been rode hard all day,” Swid said. “From parts south.”

The horses’ withers were curded with sweat but there was no blood at the bit. Important, but not urgent. She would have time to change before the king called her.

Gwladus gave her the news as she dressed: Penda had caught the West Saxons at Cirencaester and thrashed them like washing, dashed Cynegils and Cwichelm’s army to pieces. Cwichelm had fled—mortally wounded, said some, already dead, said others—and Penda had crowned Cynegils king and married him to his sister.

Penda now ruled the Mercians and the West Saxons, the whole middle of the isle and its southwestern toe.

The middle of the isle. The middle of the isle: Woden worshippers surrounded on all sides by baptised kings. Gwynedd, Kent, Rheged, Dyfneint, Dál Riata, Pictland, Northumbria, even the Idings. Christ, the most important of all. That was what Fursey meant. The Christ was everywhere, his priests were everywhere, advising every king, writing it all down. Penda was surrounded.

He must choose an ally. Cadwallon, in the west, with his shaved foreheads. Or Edwin, in the east, with his shaved crowns. Wealh or Roman. Whichever he chose, he would alter the great weave.

Penda was clever. He would choose Cadwallon because Cadwallon was weaker, more easily absorbed and overcome. But in the end it wouldn’t matter. Even if Penda sided with Edwin, they would one day fight. Penda needed the Christ. Edwin needed the Christ. But only one could have the Christ’s chief priest and the trade web allied with Rome.

CIAN RETURNED FROM RHEGED with Uinniau. But Hild didn’t see them much. They and Oswine were always riding out—the Bay of the Beacon, a visit to the Bryneich—at Edwin’s suggestion, or so Hild persuaded herself. She hoped it was not that Cian could not bear to be near the butcher-bird.