Nicola Griffith - Hild

Fursey drank, sighed with pleasure, drank again, handed the jar to Hild, and stood. “And now we must go talk to a man about a dish.”

After the long negotiation with Coelgar—though Fursey did most of it—it was a relief to step into the dairy shed. The windows and doors were hung with gauzy white cloth, which let in light and air but not flies. The smell of curdling milk coated the back of her throat. The floor, like the weaving hut’s, was hard-packed dirt, almost black from a decade of milk spills.

She walked past the rows of benches holding lidded clay pots nested in straw where the warm skimmed milk was clabbering, down a step and through a heavy elm door to a cooler room, the creamery.

Mildburh had a two-handed grip on a butter churn and was pumping it up and down, up and down. Along her spine, her pink underdress had darkened to red. She turned at the waft of warm air through the door and smiled, but didn’t stop churning. Hereswith, sleeves unpinned and hanging through her girdle, did not even look up. She was tilting one of the shallow square oak trays where the milk had lain since yesterday morning’s milking for the cream to rise to the top. As the tray tilted to the bottom right corner, she leaned forward and laid her right forearm across the lip, pouring thin greyish skim milk in an expert stream from the corner into a brown pot and collecting cream in a thick lake against her arm. When the stream stopped she let the tray lie flat again and ran her forearm lightly along the edge to skim off the cream. Then she looked at Hild.

Hild hadn’t set foot inside a dairy since she had left with the war band.

Hereswith looked deliberately at the empty churn in the corner, then back to Hild. “Does the king’s seer, armed and dangerous, wish to sully her hands?”

Hild didn’t know whether to stab her sister or kiss her. But that’s what sisters were for.

She set the lid to one side and picked up the churn by one of its handles. She examined the carved tools hanging from the wall and selected a flat-bladed spatula. She carried both to Hereswith.

“I’ll lift,” she said. Hereswith frowned, but Hild wasn’t smaller anymore. She picked up one end of the tray. It didn’t weigh as much as she thought it would, and she tilted it too sharply. Hereswith slid the open churn under the tray just in time and used the scoop to guide the slipping cream.

Mildburh’s churn paddle thumped up and down more slowly as her cream turned to butter.

Hild and Hereswith moved on to the next tray and then the next. They worked smoothly until all the trays were empty. Mildburh turned the butter out of her churn onto a granite slab set in an elm bench, and she began to shape it with wooden paddles.

While Hereswith wiped her arm and pinned her sleeves back on, Hild fetched a lump of grey salt for Mildburh and mortar and pestle to crush it in. She loved the gritty crunch and thump under her hand. It sounded like a cat eating a bird.

When they were done, Hereswith brought them a dipper of buttermilk and they drank. Hild wondered how many times they had shared buttermilk in the dairy and if they ever would again.

Hereswith wiped the flecks of butter from her chin and said to Hild, “You’re stronger.”

“I’m bigger.”

Hereswith nodded, looked her over. “Taller than Mildburh.”

“As tall as you.”

It came out as a challenge, and two years ago it would have led to a fight, but after a moment Hereswith said only, “But not even half as filled out. You’re as straight up and down as that ridiculous knife.”

“It’s a very useful knife.”

“It’s a very big knife,” Mildburh said.

“I cut an Irishman with it.”

Mildburh looked horrified and thrilled. “Did you kill him?”

“No. But he bled a lot. And shrieked.”

“Men don’t shriek,” Hereswith said.

What did her sister know of such things?

“Was he trying to have his way with you?” Mildburh said.

Hild stared. The thought had never occurred to her.

Hereswith laughed. “No,” she said to Mildburh, “he was probably just trying to steal the king’s prophet. She’s worth a king’s ransom, they say. Even if she looks like a slave wealh in that dress.”

Hild let that pass.

Mildburh slid her arm through Hereswith’s and looked at Hild. “They say you saved us all at Bebbanburg with your seeing. Do you… see anything about our coming journey?”

Mildburh’s eyes were muddy, honest blue, like bilberries. Hereswith’s were as blue as their mother’s, but without the cold blaze. No , Hild wanted to say. I see nothing. Let’s churn the cream and salt the butter and gossip about your husband-to-be. But what could an ungirdled girl have to say about husbands? Except as threads in the great pattern woven by others. And what would they want to hear about travel and sleeping outside a hall?

They were still looking at her. She put her hand on her knife. “I see that you will travel safely.” How could they not? They’d be travelling with twelvescore gesiths and an army of housefolk.

She cut through the byre on the way back from the dairy shed. It smelt of sun on hay and of horse more than cow. At this time of year, the household horses were in their outdoor corral and even the milch cows were at pasture. Two stalls, though, were occupied: a shaggy bay pony and a tall roan gelding. She looked automatically at their hooves and tails.

The roan was shod in dark, high-quality iron, the hooves oiled, the tail long and well brushed. A horse from a royal stable. It was eating single-mindedly but at her approach lifted its head and rolled its eye. She did not step too close. A horse used hard and often, but no cut marks where you might expect them. A beast valued by its rider. She studied the length and strength of its leg muscle: one of the heavy Frankish mixed breeds. The Oiscingas of Kent had Frankish tastes in horses and cloaks, religion and jewels. So it had been a man of Kent who had spoken to her mother before speaking to the king. How did Kent connect to the east warp or the west warp? She tucked that in the back of her mind to discuss with Fursey.

The pony was a calm, even-tempered mare with a curious eye. A typical priest mount: ridden, no doubt, by the man who supplied Fursey’s information. She felt the skin between its forelegs. Cool and dry: stabled long since. The little pony snorted and when she patted its withers its skin wrinkled under her hand, and the feel of it took Hild back to a wintry day by the redcrests’ wall, climbing onto Ilfetu’s back just as the wind blew her cloak sideways, making the gelding’s skin twitch. Hild leaned her head against the pony’s neck, breathed that horse smell that reminded her of so many things, so many people. “Perhaps you are sister to Cian’s Acærn,” she whispered in British, the first time in months she had spoken that tongue. “Perhaps you will see him and Ilfetu on your travels. Tell him I miss, I miss…” Her throat closed. She straightened, said in Anglisc, “But no doubt Cian has a fine new horse now, to go with his fine sword and his foster-sister.”

The court did not leave that month, nor the month after. They would be a great company, four hundred strong, and riders must be sent ahead. An overking travelling with his court did not sleep on the ground, did not go uncombed or eat squirrels and figwort in the lee of a wall. He did not break his teeth on more-grit-than-grain ceorl bread, or let the ribs of his horse show through from lack of oats. He did not ride with one fist on his sword and his helm to hand but confidently, in brilliant clothes, to be seen, knowing his guard had cleared the road for half a mile ahead and to each side. He must be the pip at the centre of an apple of perfect safety and unstinting bounty. He must be as close to a god as any but priests ever saw.