Nicola Griffith - Hild

Mine , she thought, looking down at the low woods with the water glinting through the green. Mine , when the men and women formed their line to start sickling the barley. Mine , when she smelt the wild garlic in a just-cut glade of coppiced hazel. Mine, mine, mine.

She ignored the rattle of the box buried at her heart, and the whisper of Penda… Not now. Not yet. Here, now, this was hers. Secret. Hidden.

Sometimes she found letters in the hollow pollard oak to the south of the mene, left by some priest or other for Rhin, but more often the priest web was a thing of tired-looking men arriving at night and huddling with Rhin to share rumours of the isle before moving on north or west or east to the coast and a boat to Less Britain.

Sometimes at night she stayed up with Rhin, drinking the last of the heather beer and discussing the news. The Picts had sent some kind of embassy to Rheged and been rebuffed. Yes, he’d try to find out more. Cadwallon, they said, was in Ireland. He was enough of a nuisance that Domnall Brecc had sent a war band, led by Oswald Iding, to subdue the troublemakers. Good news for Edwin, they agreed, two enemies off squabbling with each other.

Good news, too, for Cian Boldcloak: His time in Gwynedd would be much easier without rumours of a king to stir up opposition. Perhaps he would come home soon.

She couldn’t sleep that night and instead walked into the woods and lay on her stomach by the garlic in the coppiced glade, cheek on her hands, sighting along the tips of the grass stems, dull as lead in the moonlight. Was Cian sitting under the moon in Deganwy? Perhaps it was raining. Perhaps he was sitting, chin in one hand, drinking horn dangling from the other, listening to stirring Welsh song, half drunk, half dreaming of glory. Though he had glory in plenty now. Perhaps he was listening to a song about himself. With Eadfrith still in Dyfneint, he was the most important Angle in Gwynedd, and scops and Welsh bards were not stupid.

There were songs in plenty about Penda, too. He was cunning, and young, and strong. But Penda was a decision for another time. She found herself wondering, instead, if Cadwallon would stay in Ireland. He was as wily as a fox, and his hatred ran deep. There was nothing for him in Ireland. He’d find his way back to Gwynedd in the end. Cian needed to come home. He’d be safer. And she could tell him all the things she had seen, the things she’d learnt, the people she was helping. She would show him the mene, tell him of her plans. They could mend what had broken between them. They could ignore it. It hadn’t happened.

A hedgepig wheezed and puffed at the edge of the clearing, nosing in the grass for snails and worms. So we may drink to home wherever we are.

The barley was cut and drying. After a report of bandits, Hild and her gesiths rode out to the Whinmoor.

It was a fine day, sound as a late plum. They rode from flock to flock, copse to copse, but found nothing. As they turned back for the mene, Hild told herself she was glad; she didn’t want to see the light go out in anyone’s eyes. Nonetheless Cygnet was skittish. She wasn’t the only one. Oeric’s mount pranced and snorted.

She caught Oeric’s eye, then Berhtnoth’s. She grinned. “A ring to the first back!” She kicked Cygnet into a gallop. With whoops and whistles, the men raced after her.

And so her blood was singing under her skin and Cygnet hot under her thighs when she saw the birds flying from the old ivy-covered oak just north of the beck, where it flowed west to east before turning south for the mene. She touched Cygnet into a tight, hard curve, slowed to a canter, then a trot, and reined in.

Part of her registered her gesiths shouting and making their own turns to follow her, but she was focused on the tree, unsure of what she’d seen, only that it had made her pay attention.

There. A starling with a worm still wriggling in its beak, disappearing into the deep V of the top boughs about three times her height from the ground. Then, yes, a dove, with a fly. Her heart thundered from the ride, and Cygnet was blowing hard, but gradually they both settled. After a little while, first the dove then the starling flew away from the oak.

She swung off Cygnet. Thick ivy made the climb easy. By the time Oeric jumped down from his snorting mount, she was perched on the right-hand bough, peering into the cleft. She stripped a twig and used it to bend the ivy to one side.

A nest. Four chicks. When the twig poked through the ivy they sat up, peeping, and flapped their tiny wings and opened outsize beaks to show red, red mouths.

Two starlings and two doves.

“Lady?” Oeric called from the base of the tree.

“Doves and starlings,” she said, amazed. “Sharing the same nest.”

“Doves and starlings?”

“Doves and starlings.” She laughed. “Starlings and doves!”

Oeric was looking nervous, but she didn’t care. She laughed again, as chains burst in the dark and a box shattered to splinters. “It’s an omen, Oeric. An omen!” His horse was good, and Grimhun’s, and Berhtnoth’s. Good for hours. “Omens must be spread!”

That evening she drank beer with Rhin. She felt as bright as the first morning of the world. “I sent them galloping to every corner of Elmet—to Caer Loid, to Aberford, to Saxfryth, to the south river, even back to the Whinmoor. Doves and starlings sharing a nest, like Loides and Anglisc sharing Elmet.” An omen that would persuade even Edwin. “It is possible. It’s all possible.”

He was smiling at her. “Of course, lady. Because of you. Have some of these currants. Our latest visitor picked them on the way in this morning and your woman said you were fond of berries.”

Hild ate a handful, bursting them with her tongue against her teeth, one by one, tart-sweet pops of deep red juice. Doves and starlings. Starlings and doves. She only had to think how to couch it to Edwin, and for Cian to come home.

“Sadly, our visitor won’t tell anyone where the patch is; his to know, he says, ours to be grateful. But he did bring news. A rumour of Cadwallon. He’s in Less Britain, they say.”

Less Britain. Cadwallon was lining up the Britons-over-the-sea against the Anglisc. Oh, yes, Edwin would have to listen. Elmet needed Cian. It would work. Doves and starlings. Starlings and doves.

“Just a rumour, less than a rumour, a whisper. Though no doubt it will please Boldcloak, now that he’s taken up with that Welsh princess.”

Hild swallowed carefully. “Welsh princess?”

“It’s the latest news. Cadwallon’s daughter.”

Her tongue felt like wood. “Another wild rumour, no doubt.”

“Oh, no. This one’s true. I’ve heard it twice.”

“A bastard daughter?”

“No. His eldest by his first wife. Angeth, his treasure. A rare beauty by all accounts, ripe as a June strayberry and twice as subtle. Now playing lady and hostess to Boldcloak’s lord and host in the king’s hall at Deganwy. Boldcloak’s to be Edwin’s underking there, do you think?”

This must be what it was like to be fighting, to be winning, to lift your arm for the triumphant blow, only to blink, to sway, to look down and see a thick snake in the grass, but it’s not a snake, it’s your arm, staff still in its hand. Between one blink and the next your arm is no longer your arm. There it is, it’s just not yours. Stupid, stupid Cian.

“Lady?”

She watched her hand—it looked so strange—reach for the currants, pick the reddest, the plumpest, put it in her mouth, and deliberately burst it against her teeth.

The world was easier to understand when choices fell away. It was like understanding a tree when all the leaves dropped: There it was, the pattern of the boughs, the tree itself.