Nicola Griffith - Hild

Fursey and Guenmon were both right, Hild saw, as she walked downstream beside the beck to the roaring furnace and stinking smoke of the smithy. Mulstan stood with Onnen just outside, out of range of the heat and sparks, watching whatever was happening within, while the smith’s hammer rang in that steady bang-bing-bing rhythm of a man intent upon his work. Mulstan was indeed hairy: His bushy hair, held back by a great gold ring inset with tortoiseshell, glinted red-gold in the sun, and his arms were furred like a fox. And Cian was, in fact, hanging about, standing a few dozen strides from Mulstan and his mother, out of earshot, pretending to be absorbed in a twig he was stripping, the twig he threw into the beck when he saw her.

He came to meet her. They stopped by the lime whose branches shaded a backwater of the beck. Its leaves were now bigger than her palms. When she’d first arrived the branches had been bare.

“Guenmon wants you,” she said.

Cian scowled.

“She has errands.”

“I’m busy.”

Hild said nothing.

“Look at them.” His voice shook with outrage.

Onnen had a hand resting lightly on Mulstan’s arm while he shouted something into the red-lit gloom for the smith; she was smiling.

“She’s happy.”

“She’s my mam!”

Onnen liked Mulstan, Hild could tell. She also knew Onnen liked the way he ran his holdings, though it lacked the fine and sharp efficiency a woman would bring to the household. She liked his daughter and his servants and the ease his housefolk felt in hall. And she leaned in towards him as though she liked his smell. And Mulstan liked her; Hild saw the way his nostrils flared as Onnen laughed at something he said and patted his arm.

“They’ll do what they’ll do, whether you’re here or not,” she said. Indeed, she’d be surprised if they hadn’t already done it. Cian knew that, too. They were both familiar enough with the ways of the hall at night, when a woman crossed to a man’s bench and crept under his blanket, and breathing got furtive, then fast. They’d seen the dogs, and the sheep at Yeavering, in the breeding pen by the River Glen; they’d even helped the horse master help the stallion with his stick that was so long he didn’t quite know where to put it.

Hild tried to imagine her own mother with a man with a stick so long he didn’t know where to put it, and couldn’t.

“Cian, come away. Come away now. We will do Guenmon’s errands together.”

She tugged on his belt, as she had when she was little, only now she did not have to reach up, and she realised that though he was tall, she would overtop him when they were both grown. She understood then that they were no longer quite children.

Something in her sudden stillness made him look down at her hand, and he nodded, and with one last look turned away with her down the path.

Once out of sight of the smithy, Hild stopped. “You go on. I must still speak to Mulstan. I’ll catch you up. Go on, go on now.”

She watched him walk down the path—whipping savagely with his sword at harebells by the way—then set about tidying her hair and smoothing her eyebrows. She tore a dock leaf from its stem and cleaned her shoes and straightened her sash. She missed her belt and seax.

Mulstan and Onnen looked up. Mulstan beamed through his beard. He looked like a grinning hedge. “Hild. Are you come to fetch me for something?”

Bang-bing-bing. Bang-bing-bing.

“No, my lord Mulstan.”

“Is something amiss? Is Begu well?”

“All is well, my lord.”

Both Onnen and Mulstan looked relieved.

Onnen smiled at him. “I’ll leave you to it, my lord.” She gave Hild a look, nodded at them both, and walked down the path—more slowly than usual and with a sway that Mulstan watched until she was out of sight.

He turned to Hild.

She tried to imagine how her mother might phrase a request that was not a request. “I’m come to ask a favour within your gift. Two favours. One for myself, and one in the name of my uncle, the king.” It was the longest thing she’d ever said in front of him. He peered about, startled, half expecting to see a voice thrower standing behind her.

He scratched his neck. “The king? Has a messenger come?”

“No, my lord. I owe a debt to one of your people. Royal kin should not owe debts, especially in troubled times.”

“No, no, I can quite see that,” Mulstan said, puzzled, but willing to go along with the odd maid who spoke with strange pauses, like someone receiving messages from the little people under the hill. She was, after all, high, very high, in the king’s favour. “To whom do you owe this debt?”

Bang-bing-bing , followed by a loud hiss as metal was plunged into the water trough.

Mulstan turned and peered into the smithy. “I do like the smell of quenching iron. Quite makes me feel like a young gesith with his first sword.” The maid said nothing. “Yes. So. Now. Who did you say you owe a debt to?”

“One Cædmon by name.”

“My cowherd’s son?”

“Yes, my lord.”

He frowned. “And what is the nature and amount of this… debt?”

“I have a book from Cædmon worth, by Fursey’s estimate, one calf or two lambs, but I have neither to offer.”

Ting-ting-ting : a smaller hammer. Whatever the smith was making it was not large, and it was almost done.

Mulstan smoothed his moustaches, perplexed. “How is it his book?”

“He saved it, when the old priest died. I thought to reward him for it.”

Mulstan pondered that. “And Fursey thinks it worth a healthy calf or two lambs?” The man must be mad. But this was the king’s niece, and one must tread carefully.

“He spoke of the skin of one calf or two lambs.”

“Ah, then that’s a different case.” He looked reflectively at the clouds, started to peer into the smithy again, thought better of it. “Cædmon. Yes, I know the boy. Dekke’s son. Mother dead of the flux that came through here long since.”

“The one that took Begu’s mother?”

The little people under the hill were clearly well informed. But no, the maid spent time with Begu. No doubt they talked as maids did. “The very same. So. No mother. An older sister, Bote, a milkmaid who forages at times for the kitchen. He seems like a good lad. Wealh, of course. Still, if you feel you owe him a debt then, yes, I’ll ask Guenmon what she suggests as good recompense. Perhaps a small pig, or a she-kid.”

Another great hiss from the smithy, then silence.

“Would such satisfy your honour?”

“Yes. Thank you. I shall recommend your generosity to my uncle.”

Her uncle the king. “Good, then. Good.” He looked relieved. Hosting people of influence was a chancy business. Then he remembered she had said two favours. “And there was another thing?”

She nodded, but this time imagining what her mother might say was no help, for her mother would not agree. She stood mute.

Mulstan put a hand on her shoulder. She was strange, this maid, but still only a maid and friend to his Begu. “Is this truly a serious matter?”

Hild nodded.

“Then you and I will withdraw to that rock.” He pointed to the boulder in the curve of the beck, worn smooth over the years, where the smith’s customers often sat on sunny days. “I find it easier to say a thing, sometimes, if I have another thing to look at.”

Mulstan sat with his knees wide apart and a great fox-furred hand on each massive thigh. Hild perched cautiously next to him. They watched the water. Insects darted to and fro.

“Are there fish?” she said.

“There are. And if we sit long enough, perhaps a trout will rise for a fly. And if we sit beyond that, perhaps a pike, a water wolf, will ease his way downstream from yonder backwater and find his dinner.” They listened to the splash and gurgle. “Now then. Straight as a spear: Tell me.”