Nicola Griffith - Hild

Something growled behind the dune. A dog? She stood, hand on seax. “Come out. Heah, Din, I won’t hurt—”

“Don’t say their names!” A woman’s voice. A woman in a sealskin cloak, whirling a sling, lit by the setting sun. “Don’t say their names, wight!”

A woman with supple hands and a mouth like plums. Gode. Cian’s woman.

“Why shouldn’t I say… their names?”

Gode came sideways down the dune, sling still in her hand but not swinging. “They’re dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

Gode ignored her. “Put that down.”

“Put—? Oh.” She rolled the letter, stowed it in her purse.

Gode’s shoulders relaxed. “I thought you were him. You’re as like to him as a pea in a pod. But you’re not him.” She walked around Hild, sniffing. “Are you an ælf?”

An ælf? “I remember you.” Like a goddess of the sea, Cian had said. Like a river, like a wave.

Gode’s belly growled.

“I’m Hild.” Her belly rumbled, too.

“You’re hungry.” Gode tipped the pebble from her sling, tucked the leather in her belt. “Come with me. If you like.”

Inside, Gode shrugged off her sealskin cloak, dropped it by the fire, added driftwood, and set the stew bubbling. Hild unclasped her cloak.

“Lay it over mine. Protect your nice dress.”

They sat hip to hip on the fine blue cloak and ate from the same bowl. Gode held it. Every now and again she nudged Hild to take a spoonful.

“The lord liked to look at me, too,” she said. She took the bowl from Hild, put it to one side. She unfastened the neck of her shift. “He sang me songs. He sang to me of my white throat and supple hands. He sang of my plump breasts and mouth dark as plums.”

Hild swallowed. “I don’t sing.”

“What would you like to do?” She kept unfastening her shift.

Do? She gazed into the interesting swell and shadow.

Gode made a throaty sound that Hild thought might be a laugh and pushed the smock from her shoulders. “Come here.” She opened her arms.

It was an astonishment, a blessing, a gift. To feel a nipple swell in your mouth, to not know whose breast was plump on whose palm, to feel the thing pour back and forth between you, her breath harsh as a hound on your shoulder, her eyes turning black. The strength in her shudders.

And she was strong. They were both strong. They held each other down, let each other up. Like drowning, like swimming, like breathing.

Afterwards, they lay together under Hild’s fine blue cloak. “It’s different with a woman,” Gode said. “But not so different.” She stroked the soft cloak.

“Why did you think I was an ælf?”

Gode, fingering the dense weave, said, “Because you’re taller than the world. Because I watched you sit and open a spell.”

Hild hitched herself up on her elbow. “A spell?”

“You opened it and it leapt into you and possessed you. You didn’t move for an age.”

“Oh. No. That’s a letter. A message. Words from someone far away.”

Gode nodded. “Magic.”

“No.” But it was magic, in a way.

“And you looked so like him, but you weren’t him, not quite. And you smell like flowers, like someone from the land of summer who finds herself in winter.”

The jessamine. “But you invited me in.”

“Your belly growled, and I saw the way you looked at me. Besides, this cloak wasn’t made by ælfs.”

“I’ll send you one.” But not in royal blue. She lay back and folded her arms behind her head. “Have you ever seen an omen?”

“Everything’s an omen. The cry of a seal. The colour of a cloud’s belly at sunset. But everyone disagrees about what they mean. My ma and da disagreed. They drowned.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You said that. People die. Omens lie.”

“Not always.”

Gode shrugged. “When you don’t know if they’re lying or not, it’s best not to listen.”

“I’m never wrong.”

“Never?”

“Never. Only… I don’t know how to make this one come true.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. That’s what Ma always said.”

But Hild knew there was no way for this. Never.

“There again, she’s dead. Da said the trick was to know what you want, exactly. He’s dead, too.”

Hild knew Gode wasn’t really listening to her and wouldn’t understand even if she were. But she had to tell someone, before she let it all go forever. And so, as the firelight turned from yellow to orange to red, she told this woman she would never see again about the nest, and the doves and starlings, and how Cian had ruined it all, just thrown it away. “My whole life, wherever I’ve been, I’ve known where he was, and part of me has pointed towards him, the way cows and deer point south when they chew. I thought he pointed to me, too. We are us. Whatever I did, I thought about how I’d tell him about it, how I’d explain what it means. If I could make him understand, then it was real. Even when I was angry with him, even when I thought he was stupid, I was angry with him . And I’ve been angry. So angry. Thinking about how I’ll fight him when he gets back, how I’ll shout, how I’ll make him understand.”

But he wasn’t coming back. Not to her. And now her anger was running out of her like the tide, leaving her empty.

“You didn’t eat a thing tonight,” Begu said when they undressed for bed. “Was it that song about Branwen?”

“Um?”

“I told Oeric a fortnight ago to bribe Luftmaer so he didn’t sing any of those maudlin things, especially the ones Cian used to sing. But I forgot to remind him. Besides, I thought you were getting better, until today.”

Begu turned down the cover.

“Anger always spends itself in the end. I thought I’d be glad when you weren’t angry anymore, but I’m not. I don’t like this look. Like a calf standing by its dead dam, too forlorn even to bawl.”

They climbed into bed.

“You’re the king’s seer. You can’t go around with a face like that. I think you frightened Luftmaer so much he forgot himself.”

“Listen,” Hild said. “The seals are singing.”

Begu said nothing, but she stretched out her arm. “Come here. Don’t argue.”

Slowly, carefully, like an orphaned foal folding itself down on the straw by a cat and her litter, Hild tucked herself alongside Begu and laid her head on her shoulder.

“You smell of seals,” Begu said.

Silence.

“Hild, gemæcce, talk to me. You’re frightening me.”

“I did something today. It was… No one even knows she exists. But it was stupid. She and Cian used— I thought, is this what it’s like for him? Does she look like the Welsh princess? Well, that wasn’t why. But it was part of it.”

“Did you kill something?”

“In a way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Pick people who don’t matter, my mother said. But people who don’t matter aren’t equals. We pick them up, play with them, then put them down.”

“Not if you get married.”

“I’d have to leave here. Marry an enemy. Or at best be like Æthelburh. Never quite belonging. Careful. Always careful.”

“But you are now.”

“But I hoped. I thought one day… Tonight, I looked at the men singing. I looked at their belts. I wondered what it would be like to hold on to one of them, to stand next to a man and think, We are us. Do you think I could ever do that with Penda?”

“So it’s Penda?”

“Today I understood: It’s real. All of this. I was angry: He ruined everything, all my plans, even the ones I hid from myself.”

“Penda?”

“Forget Penda.” She would never marry Penda. She knew that now. She pressed her cheek into Begu’s arm. “A princess of Gwynedd is not a dairymaid at Mulstanton or a sealer’s daughter on the beach. A princess of Gwynedd isn’t a passing fancy. She’s a knife in the table, there for all to see. He’s made his choice: That’s his place, she’s his path.”