Nicola Griffith - Hild

He had a new woman, though Hild didn’t know who. He disappeared at night and came back smelling of her in the morning. He still smiled, still told stories—to others. He had no time for walking, or riding, or sparring with her. No time even for talking. When he wasn’t with the gesiths, he was hunting and drinking with Uinniau and Oswine.

And then Fursey sent her a real letter. Or part of one.

“Looks as though it’s been eaten by a pig and shat out,” Morud said when Gwladus let him into the room and he handed it to Hild. Indeed, the folded scrap was filthy and bedraggled, with half torn away.

She pulled her robe around her and ignored the looks Morud was giving Gwladus, whose hair was hanging loose.

She read it fast, or as fast as she could—some of the tiny lettering was blurred, as though rained on, or dropped in a puddle—then again more slowly. S sent word to your sister’s man that he arrives with arms and threescore men as soon as the weather is fair for war.

Fair for war. In the south the first ship crossing from Frankia to East Anglia could have been a month ago or more. Sigebert and his threescore gesiths could be with Æthelric’s war band already. How many men could Ricberht king-killer command?

She imagined her mother’s cynical smile: As many as see advantage for themselves.

For ealdormen and thegns, advantage was tied to the web of trade and obligation woven over generations: Who could give them more power, more gold, more land, more influence? Sigebert and the Christian Franks, or Ricberht king-killer? For farmers, it was about food: the hams hanging from the ceiling, the honey in the crock, the grain in the sacks. If the weather in the south and east was good for the next two years, they wouldn’t want anything to change; Ricberht would stay king.

Y our sister is, by the way, with child again, though so is her husband’s woman of the South Gyrwe. She—

But that was all. No matter how many times she read it, the rest was still torn away.

“Where’s the priest who brought it?” Gwladus asked Morud. She’d repinned her braids. Beautiful hair. Hild loved the silky drag of it across her belly…

She missed Morud’s reply.

“Find him,” Gwladus said. “Put him somewhere out of the way, see that he’s got food. What are you waiting for? Go.”

Hild wished Gwladus hadn’t tidied away her hair.

“You’ll want to talk to the king after that priest?”

Hild nodded.

“I’ll fetch your dress.”

For most East Anglisc, the Christ was just the excuse. But underneath, baptism was the riptide dragging all boats off course. Baptism is very much like a sword in this way: that the man whose hands the sword or the soul passes through adds his lustre. Baptism added another pattern to the warp and weft of allegiance and obligation.

The murdered Eorpwald had been the godson of Edwin. Sigebert was of a different Christian lineage. He had spent his time across the narrow sea at the Frankish court of Clothar, and now Dagobert. If Sigebert was bringing threescore men, they would be Dagobert’s. If he won with their help, he would be obliged to align himself with the Franks. What would that mean for Edwin? Where was Dagobert in relation to the growing alliances of the middle country and the west—Penda and Cadwallon—and the men of the north: Idings, Picts, Scots of Dál Riata, Alt Clut, perhaps Rheged?

Gwladus fastened Hild’s sleeves, then began to dress her hair.

Cadwallon was the key, the thread between the Mercians of Penda, the Irish, and the men of the north. With Dagobert now added to the great weave, they needed to snip that thread, cut Cadwallon out. They had to do it now. Swift, sure, hard. War.

Was there time to call Osfrith from Tinamutha? No, he should remain with his household to watch the men of the north. But Eadfrith could be recalled. The time for talking was over, at least with Cadwallon—

“Lady?”

Oeric. Pale, dark-eyed, and hands working.

“News from Ireland of a battle at Fid Eoin. Connad Cerr is killed, and with him Osric Iding the Burnt. Domnall Brecc is now king of the Dál Riata and Oswald Iding his right hand.”

So. It must be now. War. Real war. One king or another would die, and all his gesiths with him. Cian…

The yard stank of that sharp tang men give off when they want to fuck or kill. The smell of war.

The dogs knew it, they had been snarling since yesterday and the news of the battle of Fid Eoin. The horses knew it; those in the byre were kicking; outside, the stallions had to be corralled separately.

The men knew it most of all.

Hild, come from a bitter talk with the king, stood by the trough. She planted her staff before her, one hand wrapped around the other, and looked at Cian.

Where Lintlaf’s shield had caught him between the ribs, a purple bruise, the colour of the loosestrife growing along the tumbled wall by Osric’s byre, spread. But Lintlaf was bleeding from the scalp and sitting in the dirt. He held his jacket to his head, laughing, they were all laughing. War drove men mad.

She shouted, “Heroes!”

They turned. She uncovered her hand, the king’s token burning red as blood.

“In the kitchens: a new barrel of beer and fresh bread!” The last fresh bread before they marched. The last some might ever eat. “Get it while it’s hot!”

She wore the ring. It was not a suggestion.

She caught Cian’s eye: Wait. He leaned his sword against the trough and sluiced himself with water as the gesiths left.

Blood thumped in his neck vein. A muscle jumped in his calf. She imagined how it might be: the muscle jumping in her own calf, her own blood flowing like a millrace, her muscle straining against bone to begin, to end this waiting, to sweep down on Cadwallon and crush the men of Gwynedd. Or be crushed. Real war.

He dropped the dipper, lifted his naked sword, tilted it to check along its length for nicks.

He looked at her. His chest rose and fell in rhythm with hers, his brows arched like hers, his hair, the same colour as hers, clung to his nape just as hers did. They were the same height. But his eyes were a sharper blue, and the bones of his face heavier. They were the two great timbers of a doorway, massive, matched.

She turned and walked from the vill.

He followed her without speaking to a flat grassy place by the racing river. The air still smelt like the first day of the world.

Remember this smell, she told herself, and stripped dress, hose, shoes, everything but the ring—the ring she was forbidden to take off until she gave it to the queen. She stood, stave at the ready, in only her shift. As she always had.

He hung his bloody jacket on a bush and kicked off his shoes. As he always had. He drew his sword with a slithering ring and tossed the sheath aside.

Hild saw the memory take him, as it took her: Derventio, his first fight with a king’s gesith. He moved his left foot forward, right foot and arm back and waited. As though they had practiced it, she took Berhtred’s stance of long ago: right foot and right arm forward, stave held out low.

Cian feinted, a fast jab with the point. As Berhtred had, she swung her weapon up, like a horizontal bar, but Cian’s blade was already back, waiting, and she met only air. But she moved more lightly than Berhtred ever had, and she knew this dance, and she didn’t teeter.

They circled, eyes bright, cheeks red, like the children they had once been. When she had the slanting morning sun in his eyes, Cian thrust. Once for the feint with the tip, to which she raised her stave only partway, then back and once more forward in a full stepping lunge, right foot leading now, and blade snaking over her weapon in a wrapping leftwise twist that would have flung Berhtred’s sword up and into the grass.