Nicola Griffith - Hild

“It is good land,” Begu said, turning slowly and looking at the headland as though she’d never seen it before. “More than just grazing. Eel traps in the river. Hares on the edges of the woods. Mushrooms and mast in the woods. Cows, sheep, oysters, seagull eggs… Do you want to see the secret spring?”

“A spring?”

“Of course there’s a spring.” They started walking. “You thought there was just that pond? Huh.”

“It’s not a bad pond. You could put fish in it.”

“Why? There’s lots of fish out there.” Begu waved in the direction of the sea.

Bebbanburg was by the sea. It could withstand the Irish because it had everything you could possibly need inside an unbreachable wall. But Begu was smiling at her and Hild couldn’t think how to explain without making that smile falter.

“Here.” Begu stopped by a stand of ferns, knelt, and used the cattle switch to move them to one side. Hild smelt mint. “It was Sirona’s spring once, long ago.”

Hild didn’t know Sirona. She didn’t know half the wealh gods of well and wall and wood.

It was a rocky pool as wide as the biggest soup cauldron at Bebbanburg. But deeper. A blade of grass turned slowly, sunwise, on the surface. A little horn cup stood on a shelf of rock among the ferns. Begu dipped it in the spring and poured a thin stream out to the spring and the goddess, then handed it to Hild. Hild sipped.

“It’s so cold!” She sipped again. “It tastes good.” Like fern and mint.

“It’s the best water in the world, my mother said. We used to come here in summer when it was hot down below. She told me stories of how she came here as a lass.”

Hild rolled the little horn cup between her hands. It felt old. She imagined Begu’s mother, Enynny, and Enynny’s mother, and her mother, and her mother before her, back into memory, sitting here by the ferns drinking the cold, minty water and talking quietly in British. So many. All gone into the mist. She felt a twist inside, a longing for a family and home that never was. “Do you miss her, your mother?”

“Yes. I think so. It was a long time ago. I was very little.”

“I miss my mother.”

“But you’ll see her soon. You’ll see. My fa says no one can take Bebbanburg.” Hild didn’t say anything. “What’s she like?”

“Tall.”

“You’re tall.”

“She’s very tall. Taller than the king.”

“Is he very small?”

“He’s as tall as Mulstan.”

“No! Then she must touch the sky!”

Hild laughed. “Nothing touches the sky. Except birds.” It was easy to talk to Begu. Perhaps because she said such strange things, perhaps because Hild got the sense she never took people seriously.

Begu flung herself down on her back in the sun. “What do you suppose the sky feels like?”

Hild put the cup carefully back in its niche and lay down, too. The grass was damp. They looked up and up at the blue sky. “Like mist. Like a blue veil. Like a cobweb.”

“Do you suppose it goes up and up forever? A world of blue?”

“And of black, at night.” When things that weren’t birds flew.

They were silent. The ferns whispered in the wind. Far away the sea hissed. Geese honked. Hild shivered.

“Perhaps geese are part of your wyrd.”

Hild looked at her.

“What? You don’t like them. I’ve marked that.”

“They’re loud and dirty.”

“So are goats. They all taste good, though.”

Hild turned back to the sky. She listened past the geese to the gulls crying in the distance. The sound seemed floatier up here, unlike the sharp piercing cries on the beach. The wind sounded different, too. No tall trees to rustle and shiver and speak. But then what was that rhythmic creaking?

“What’s—” The creaking deepened, stopped, was followed by a loud bellow and a wrenching crash. She sat up.

“The cows!”

They ran.

A cow, tempted by the tender grass among the graves, had tried to push through the fallen gate in the blackthorn hedge and got stuck. It was still stuck; it was thrashing and bellowing, destroying the hedge and driving thorns deeper into its neck and the tender pink udder. Blossom lay on the grass like snow.

“Keep them together.” Begu threw the switch to Hild and ran straight to the distressed cow.

Hild advanced on the cattle. “Sweff,” she called softly, as cowherds did. “Sweff sweff.” She walked slowly around them so they bunched together but not so tightly that they panicked. “Sweff sweff.” They began to lower their heads. One bent to the grass and tore a mouthful. Another swished its tail. This wasn’t so hard. It was not unlike reassuring dogs. She wondered what it was about the sweff sound, the shape or the fall, that the cows found so calming. “Swip,” she said, in the same tone. The browsing cow lifted its head. “Swip swip swip,” she said on a falling note. Eye rolls, a nervous snort. “Sweff sweff,” she said, with the proper rise and fall. They relaxed, though not as much as before.

“What are you doing?” Cædmon, one hand still on the sapling he’d been using to haul himself up the steep slope, one holding something wrapped in sacking. “Why are—” He caught sight of the cow stuck in the hedge and swore. “Gast!”

With Begu talking to her, the cow had calmed but was now lowing piteously. Begu was pondering the thorns. Cædmon dropped the sacking bundle, knelt by her, and patted the cow on the neck. He glanced at Hild. “Look to the others.”

“They’re fine now you’re here.” They were: all grazing peacefully. She wanted to look at the book, see if she could puzzle out some words. “You should take her collar off.”

Cædmon shook his head; he seemed as immune to her reputation as Begu. He pointed at the pierced udder. “This is what hurts most.”

“Won’t she kick when you pull the thorns?”

“She might. But we have to get every single one or in a few days she’ll leak yellow and stink.”

She wasn’t a big cow, but she weighed more than all three children put together. Hild longed for Cian’s old wicker shield or, better still, the one of sturdy wood and hide with the painted boss the Bryneich had given him last year. She took a deep breath and knelt. Down here the hooves looked huge and sharp, and they were covered in the shit the cow had loosed in her panic. She set the book aside. “Where should I begin?”

An hour later, by the foot of the daymark hill, Hild and Begu put down their burdens, the collar and its bell—for Cædmon said the cow would need salve round her neck, not a collar, and Hild wanted to look at the bell—and the sack-wrapped book, and did their best to tidy each other up. Hild unbraided Begu’s left plait, and with the leather tie held in her teeth combed the hair through with her fingers, picking out thorns and blossom petals and bits of grass.

Begu tried wiping her shoes on the grass.

“It won’t help,” Hild said, replaiting.

“It might.”

“It won’t. They can probably smell us from here.” She tied off the plait, unbound the other. “Keep still. There. Now you do mine.”

“Yours are fine and tidy. I don’t know how you keep them so.”

“I have my fa’s hair. Not soft like yours.”

“I like how yours feels, wiry and strong. Like you.”

No one had ever said that to her before.

“What’s wrong? Are you worried about the cow shit? I won’t let Guenmon shout at you.”

Guenmon was a beginner compared to Onnen, but being protected, and by someone who only came up to her chin, was so novel to Hild that she had no idea how to respond.

Fursey pursed his lips and turned the little brown book over and over in his hands, then knocked the cover with his knuckles. His fine black robe gaped a little at the neck, showing more than usual of the splotch of spilt-wine birth stain that ran from his left shoulder to his jawbone. “Cowhide over wooden board. Home-tanned skin at that.” He opened it, shut it, opened it again. “A breviarium psalterii . And in a terrible hand, something a peasant might write. Is this anything to do with that Irish serf you wanted me to speak to?”