Nicola Griffith - Hild

Then she rode with Oeric, the brothers Berht, Morud, and Gwladus south and east over the high tussocky sheep land to the holding of Ceadwulf and the other Saxfryth.

The boy Ceadwin now had a little sister, Ceadfryth, in swaddling clothes. Saxfryth still wore Hild’s yellow ring, but now she’d added a thin silver band inset with some muddy-looking blue stone Hild couldn’t identify. The silverwork was fretted, not solid—but real silver.

The men and Ceadwin went to look at a horse Ceadwulf wanted their opinion on, and Gwladus disappeared into the kitchen to take the measure of the housefolk. Hild and Saxfryth sat with bread and cheese in the garth, with Ceadfryth in a wooden cradle at Saxfryth’s left hand.

“Good cheese,” Hild said. She smiled at the sleeping baby. “She looks strong, well fed. And Ceadwin must be three hands higher now.”

Saxfryth beamed, as women did when you praised their children and housekeeping. “The gods have been kind.” She sighed and rolled her shoulders. “And you, lady? Have the gods been kind to you?”

“Well enough, though now it’s the Christ that the king and his household look to.”

“The Christ.” Saxfryth sucked her lip, leaned over the sleeping child, and brushed away a fly that wasn’t there.

“He’s a god like any other,” Hild said. “With priests who are men and subject to men’s fancies. I know some good priests, wealh and Anglisc alike.”

“Gesiths came through here last year, hunting wealh priests. Spies, they said. And then Anglisc priests came, but they were more like reeve’s men than priests. You could see it in their eyes, feeling the backs of sheep for the wool, tasting the beer, peering at the cows and the hay in the rick. Weighing in their minds, totting it all up, and making marks on those slates of theirs.”

If Paulinus wasn’t careful, his zeal would drive a wedge between the Elmetsætne, returning them to Loid and Angle. If she were Cadwallon she could make something of that. “A woman should judge priests for herself, as she would any other man. When they make demands you think unfair, speak to the king’s man at Caer Loid.”

“He’s half wealh himself, they say.”

“He is. And a fine king’s man.”

“The gesith you were here with last time, Boldcloak, he’s wealh, too, they say. Son of a king.”

Hild nodded blandly.

“I liked him,” Saxfryth said.

“Yes. He liked your buttered mushrooms.”

“He remembers!” Saxfryth gave her an arch look. “So he’s not with you?”

“He’s in Gwynedd. The king’s right hand.”

“Well! A wealh.”

“Another wealh,” Hild reminded her. “Just like Pyr. A trusted man. And worth getting to know.” Saxfryth nodded. “Aberford. You find it a good market for your wool?”

“It is, lady. Though uncommon picky. Our neighbour had half her weight turned down. Short-fibred, they said.” She smiled complacently. “But my sheep give the best wool. Ceadwulf knows how to breed them.”

Hild smiled and nodded. “A good market for good wool, then. More than enough to balance out the king’s tithe?”

Like all good traders, Saxfryth hunted for a way to dodge praising the seller’s goods, or at least hedge that praise, but Hild caught her gaze and held it. “Yes, lady. More than enough.”

Hild nodded, ate a piece of cheese, tilted her head back to watch a hawk circling against the blue sky.

“Lady? Ceadwin is seven now.”

Hild closed her eyes briefly. “If he came with me, he would have no foster-brothers or foster-sisters.”

“At least not yet.”

“And he’d have to be baptised.”

“Christ’s a god like any other,” Saxfryth said. “As you say.”

“I travel a lot.”

“Even so. Lady, you promised. He’ll be no trouble. Besides, having a child at your knee will soon make you bear children of your own, everyone knows that. And Boldcloak won’t stay in Gwynedd forever.”

Hild stood. “I’ll send for him in spring.”

They rode in a glittering, jingling column, past adders sunning themselves on south-facing rocks and knots of red campion. The sky was as blue as the heart of a cornflower and the furze flamed yellow.

They rode down the slope to the ancient track for a mile or so, until they were moving parallel to the low hills to the north.

Hild watched the right-hand edge of the ancient track closely. At her heel—unlike Gwladus, he still preferred his feet to a horse—Morud said, “You won’t see a path. I used a different way each time. That way it stays secret like.”

“Secret.”

“You never said, but I thought you might want it that way.”

Hild was glad, fiercely glad. Secret. Yes. “Morud, I’ll give you a new knife for this. Two knives.”

Hild had fallen in love with what Menewood could be. Now she fell in love with what it was becoming: a thriving settlement in a fertile, half-secret valley of bogs and becks and ponds and meadow.

Four dozen souls less one, Rhin told her, with fields of clover and oats, barley and colewort. He showed her tally sticks for everything from folk able to wield a sickle, to pigs, to skeps, to milch cows. They toured the byre, made of good oak; the tiny new forge; and a dairy laid in dry stone. He showed her the cleared millrace, the great gritstone grindstones from over the Whinmoor, and the almost finished elm mill wheel. He took her round to the mix of huts and homesteads, some timber, some wattle, some with stone foundations and reed roofs. And everywhere men and women knelt to her and kissed her hand. She was not just the king’s seer, the king’s niece, she was their dryhten, their lord. They lived and breathed at her pleasure and the efficiency of the land’s management.

Hild touched the children under the chin so she could look into their eyes, and held the hands of old folk long enough to feel the size of their bones. The dull-eyed ones, Rhin said, were lately come to the mene. They would soon fill out, soon shine. And Hild’s heart filled until she could hardly breathe: her people.

The first fortnight she spent every morning and most afternoons with Rhin, walking, talking, pointing, running grain through her fingers, listening to the hum of bees. He had taken her at her word and in the spring had set all the children to searching the countryside for hives, giving a reward for every one discovered. They had two beekeepers, though one was mostly plaiting skeps, and those skeps hummed and dripped with honey.

She walked in the evening through her domain, as aware of it as of her own body. The dragonflies and damselflies zooming over the water; the gush and rush and mineral bite of the millrace compared to the softer babble of the beck. The clatter of reeds by the pond, scented with green secrets; the chatter of wrens and goldcrest flocks, squabbling with each other like rival gangs of children.

Everywhere she looked, she thought of things she must tell Rhin: Set aside much of the mead for white mead this winter; thin the coppice and make sure they made more charcoal this autumn, for next year when Penda made his move there would be war, long hard war, and war meant iron, and there was no smelting without charcoal. Breed more goats, especially the long-haired kind. Graze them in that overstood beech coppice—pollard the standards and let the goats trim the rest or cut them for firewood and tree hay.

So she fell in love with the mene, and the mene fell in love with her. She felt buoyed by her people, her land. Everything tasted round and ripe. The air was as rich and sweet as cider. Just breathing fed some part of her. She spent half the nights lying by the pond listening to the bullrushes and the frogs. At dawn she rode Cygnet along the ridge and looked forward to the next month when she might see the peregrines returning.