Nicola Griffith - Hild

They listened to the wind and the waves.

“But what’s my path? I’m the light of the world. The king’s seer. And I can taste it in the wind, I can feel it in every move Penda makes, every threat from Cadwallon and battle fought by Idings…” But she couldn’t say it aloud, not even to Begu: The Yffings would fall.

At meetings of the king and his counsellors—Paulinus, Coelfrith, and Æthelburh, and Stephanus scratching at his wax tablet—she stood hard and plain as a spear. No one spoke without glancing at her. Even the dogs watched her. She listened to everything everyone said, and weighed it against her own choices, and kept silent.

Paulinus had news that Ricberht was winning.

“No,” she said. “Sigebert will win. Ricberht will die.”

Paulinus’s gaze fastened on hers.

“God made me a seer,” she said. “Listen or not.”

The Yffings would fall, and Paulinus with them. But she was going to live. She would find a way.

A letter came to her from Rhin: The king of Less Britain had given Cadwallon three ships and the men to crew them. Three ships: sixty men, seventy-five at most. Not enough to retake Gwynedd. She said nothing.

A message came to the king from Eadfrith: He had left Clemen of Dyfneint in Caer Uisc and would wend a lazy, meet-the-people route back to Deganwy, where Cian Boldcloak held the fort.

Three days later, Penda besieged Caer Uisc.

“Send the prince Eadfrith back,” Paulinus said. “We will ride down to meet him with the cross on our banners and save Dyfneint from the pagans. Penda will flee and Dyfneint will kneel before God and his rightful representative.”

“No,” Hild said to Edwin. “Let Clemen fall. Let Eadfrith rejoin Boldcloak at Deganwy as fast as he can. Faster than fast.” Three ships from Less Britain. “Cadwallon is coming.”

She sat in her room with Gwladus and listened to the screams of two women giving birth at once. One wailed and moaned, the other cursed. Both voices planed along the iron-hard walls and floors of the fortress, echoing until they seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“You’re wan as a wight,” Gwladus said. “You should eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Eat anyway.”

They ate cheese and wrinkled apples. Gwladus, as she always did, sniffed at her apple before she bit it, and smiled, as at some memory.

“Do you miss Dyfneint?”

“I miss the smell of cider in autumn. There’s nothing like it: The air tastes sticky, sweet with that tang like copper. And the buzz of wasps. Wasps everywhere during cider season. But it was long ago and far away.”

Home was never far away. “Do you mind that I said we shouldn’t rescue Clemen?”

“What do I care for kings? He doesn’t know me. I don’t know him.”

Late the next morning a ship beached on the white sand of the hythe, and a frightened, filthy messenger made his way to the counsellors: Cadwallon, with a retinue of men from Less Britain, had joined Penda at Caer Uisc and slaughtered Clemen. Two days ago. Petroc Splinter Spear had fled west.

Silence. Then Edwin said, “Who the fuck is Petroc Splinter Spear?”

“Clemen’s heir,” Hild said. A king with no country, king now of western rock cliffs and a burnt and broken city. All kings fall. Fate goes ever as it must. And, oh, she had been stupid.

“You’re turning grey,” Edwin said.

“Women worry,” Paulinus said.

Her rib cage was too small. She couldn’t breathe.

“At least the prince Eadfrith wasn’t caught there, my lord,” Coelfrith said.

“And now we know where that nithing is,” Edwin said with some satisfaction.

“With Penda,” Hild said. “With Penda . They broke Caer Uisc and now have a port for more ships to join them from Less Britain. Any day. They won’t need to keep many men there. So they can strike north together. North to retake Gwynedd.”

Gwynedd, where, in the absence of Eadfrith, Cian was playing at prince with Cadwallon’s daughter. Lord of the hall. Men at his command. At ease. At home. No longer wearing armour at meat. Sitting with Angeth on his lap, twirling her dark hair around his finger, eyes shining at some song when armed men burst through the door, men with swords already bloody from the slaughter of his guards at the stockade. He would have time to drop his ale—sudden sharp scent under the peat smoke—and draw his sword. Then they’d be on him, bright and brutal, grunting, sharp steel shoving through soft skin.

No, it wouldn’t happen that fast. She knew the songs. The Welsh liked their punishments slow and public. They would beat the woman, hack off Cian’s hands, stake him out on the mountain for children to throw stones at in the morning, ravens to blind in the afternoon, and wolves to tear into by night.

She closed her eyes, willing her vision to rise from the blood-spattered green mountainside.

In her mind’s eye, she rose like a hawk turning on a pillar of air, rising, widening, taking in the whole isle. She marked boundaries and vills, roads and ditches. Nodded to herself. Yes, if she were Penda, that’s what she’d do. Gwynedd’s ports, and Caer Uisc, and the middle of the country…

Penda was remaking the great weave.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice was thin and keen, the cry of a hawk on a clear morning. She opened her eyes. “They will strike for Gwynedd. No doubt. None. How many men does Eadfrith have?”

Coelfrith said, “Fourscore under his command. Some with him, some with Boldcloak.”

“Penda?”

“Four hundred.”

She turned to Edwin. “Even if Clemen fought hard and killed like a hero, they outnumber your son five to one.”

Silence. Behind her lids, Hild watched armies move. Bebbanburg was a long, long way from Gwynedd.

“Lord King,” Paulinus said, “I will pray. I will hold a Mass tonight, and vigils.”

“We need to do more than pray, Bishop.” Toenails scratched the stone floor as the dogs stirred; they recognised the tone. We’ll eat the horse. “Coelfrith.”

“Lord King?”

“When can the war band ride?”

“Two days.”

Hild’s mind soared over the isle, seeing, weighing, judging. Not soon enough. Even today wouldn’t be soon enough. From Bebbanburg to Deganwy was half again the distance as from Caer Uisc. If Penda had left immediately, he had probably arrived before the messenger’s ship had passed Tinamutha.

If Eadfrith and Cian were still alive, they’d be running for their lives. No, not they . Eadfrith was ætheling. Cian would stay and fight a rearguard action while his prince escaped north. But Cian would gradually be forced north, too. If he lived.

If he was dead, there was nothing she could do, so she wouldn’t consider it. He was alive. Alive and running north, one step behind Eadfrith. Who would give chase, and how many?

An army needed food. Food wagons travelled slowly. Penda could march his men north through Gwynedd on what they could carry, but then he would have to wait for their wagons to catch up before heading north. And after a siege, Penda’s wagons would be empty.

But Cadwallon was fresh. And Cadwallon was a madman who wanted to wipe Edwin and all his kin from the face of the earth. If Eadfrith were known to be running, the Welsh king would give chase, even to Bebbanburg.

Then, in her hawk’s eye, she saw clearly how it would be. Elmet. It had always been Elmet.

Begu stared at her as though she’d lost her mind. “You can’t,” she said. “Gwladus, tell her she can’t!”

But Hild hardly heard her. She was calculating miles, days, rations… She tightened her heavy travel belt and said to Oeric, who was clammy and pale, “Tell Bassus an extra five men might make the difference for the ætheling’s life. The queen is safe as the sun here in Bebbanburg.” To Morud: “Reckon on Bassus’s men. Food for five days, not a sackful more.” If they lived, Elmet would feed them. To Gwladus: “We leave an hour before æfen, ready or not.”