Nicola Griffith - Hild

The gesiths had time for an hour’s war play—they formed two shield walls and took turns pushing each other across the meadow and trying to stab at lower legs and feet with their leaf-bladed spears—and the housefolk to heat the porridge and roasted sheep and heather beer Cuelgils had given them in parting, before hissing rain turned their fires to ash and mud.

Some of the younger gesiths, half drunk, staged small group attacks with sword and shield. Like Hild, the older ones sought shelter. They knew from long experience that beer wears off by dark but clothes stay damp until morning, and wet blades and chain-link armour rust slowly and thoroughly if not sanded and regreased immediately.

Hild sat in her mother and sister’s wagon while the rain drummed on the waxed canvas pegged tentlike over the oiled leather canopy. The rain was coming straight down, so Breguswith had left the doorway unlaced, for the air and light.

They sat on the padded floor, their backs against cushioned chests cunningly carpentered to hold a variety of objects safely as they travelled. Breguswith and Hereswith talked quietly of etiquette in the south and eastern Angle courts, with Mildburh occasionally adding her perspective on the Saxons. Ædilgith and Folcwyn embroidered the sleeves of a dress, though Folcwyn spent more time wiping her forehead and neck than plying her needle. Hild lay with her head on Hereswith’s thigh, half listening, half drowsing, tolling through the carnelians around her wrist. She wondered what Ædilgith and Folcwyn thought about having to stay among the East Anglisc with Hereswith, and what Cian might be doing at the Bay of the Beacon.

Breguswith talked about ancestry. When she talked about her relatives, the Oiscingas of Kent, her Jutish accent broadened. Hild listened to the familiar chant. Her uncle Æthelberht, dead king of Kent. Her cousin Eadbald, now king of Kent. Æthelwald, her younger cousin, ætheling of Kent and prince of the West Kentishmen.

Hild tolled a bead, a big one, the one the colour of an old flame. Eadbald, uncle. She didn’t bother with Æthelwald—he was sickly—and Eadbald already had two sons.

Ricula, Breguswith’s aunt, married Sledd, of the East Saxons. Breguswith paused and looked at Hereswith, who chanted, “Sledd, father of Sabert, the father of Sæward, now dead, and Seaxred king.”

“And Seaxbald,” Mildburh said.

Hild tolled a little bead, the one with the brown occlusion like a drying wound. Seaxbald, cousin.

“They have a sister,” Breguswith said to Hereswith. “Saewara. Now wife to Anna.” Anna, Æthelric Short Leg’s younger brother and heir. “You’ll have a cousin at court.”

Saewara, cousin. Enemy or friend?

The West Saxons, Breguswith went on, Cynegils and his three sons, were friendly enough with their eastern kin.

She sorted through her beads to find the asymmetrical one, deep angry red. Cynegils of the Gewisse. Then three reddish-orange beads for his sons. One had a chip. She named that one Cwichelm, the eldest. Bad-tempered, all of them, and greedy.

Lightning cracked. Young, drunken gesiths hooted. Hild knew they would be jabbing their spears at the sky, daring Thunor to fling one of his bolts at them. She’d seen Thunor answer such a taunt, last year, just south of the wall. Thunor did not like to be made game of.

Fursey would be with the older gesiths and thegns, gaming, drinking, picking their thoughts. She pondered the Frankish horses in the Goodmanham byre, the fact that her mother had the news of Rædwald’s death before Edwin, before the king. Her mother was a daughter of kings, widow of a man who should have been king, mother of a future queen, cousin to every court in the land and not a few across the sea. And yet Fursey had had the news earlier still. How?

The rain surged. The wagon rocked slightly under the weight of water. The ropes thrummed. Breguswith’s voice rose and fell.

They rode through a land washed clean and humming with plenty, Lintlaf frankly dozing in the saddle behind them. His mail smelt of rust.

Hild tolled through her beads for Fursey, explaining who was the biggest and most brightly coloured, and why.

“You have forgotten the most powerful of all.” He leaned across her and tapped a small, fiery bead, almost yellow in the morning sun. “You forgot Christ.”

“A god?” He wasn’t supposed to talk about that.

“A decidedly worldly influence. The Frankish queen who married your uncle in Kent brought Romans with her. Not soldiers but priests. Bishops.”

She shrugged. “The wealh have bishops.” A mangy lot.

“Roman bishops are different. They’re as much ealdormen as priests.”

Hild scratched the back of her hand. After the rain, midges were swarming.

“These priestly reeves collect not for their king but for the bishop of Rome.”

The bishop of Rome. A kind of priestly overking, then, but unacknowledged. She tried to imagine a system of ealdormen who were reeving for an overking no one knew about. “Why don’t the kings kill the reeving priests?”

Fursey smiled.

“They’re useful to him?”

“Very. They read.”

They read.

The sense of the world shifting was so strong she swayed in the saddle.

They read.

One man in Kent or East Anglia could write something and give it to a man, who could gallop until he and his horse were half dead, then pass it to another man, a stranger, who also could gallop, or board a ship, and pass it to another messenger, and another. The message would cross the island in a day. It wouldn’t be garbled. It couldn’t be intercepted and understood by any but priests. Shave-pated spies. Not just skirt on one side and sword on the other but book balanced against blade.

“Close your mouth, it will fill with flies.” He looked enormously pleased with himself.

THE GLORY THAT WAS THE VAST AND GLITTERING vill of Rendlesham made Edwin very angry indeed. But he chewed his moustaches in private. In public—sitting at table with Eorpwald in the great and graceful hall with the beautifully tiled Roman-style floor and painted walls, riding past the golden cornfields to get to the king’s forest flickering with game, inspecting the vill’s port two miles away at Woodbridge with its acres of sail-making and rope-making yards—he smiled and smiled. His gesiths, who had seen this smile before, turned their dread into boasts and picked fights wherever they went; Breguswith was kept busy with willow bark and comfrey, mint and lavender oil, malt vinegar and honey. Even old Burgræd dislocated his knee in a wrestling match. Breguswith wrenched it back into place without a word and slapped on a poultice of warmed oatmeal. She did not offer him willow-bark tea or her more precious hellebore. She had no time for this foolishness: There were Kentish envoys, public and not so public, with whom she would rather be conferring. She, too, began to smoulder.

Hereswith was as tense as a dog before a fight. Æthelric, ætheling of the East Angles and prince of the North Folk, who called him Ecgric, would arrive that day from his hall at Deorham.

She drove Mildburh, Ædilgith, and Folcwyn to distraction changing her mind: She wanted the lapis braided into her hair and sewn to her veil; no, she wanted the garnets and pearls; no, the beryl and jet. Hild watched her hurl a veil at Mildburh, and then, as it floated airily to the polished board of the floor, snatch it back and tear it to pieces. Her sister wanted to cry, but she was a woman grown. No one must see her tears, not even her women, for fear of bringing shame on the family name. There was nothing Hild could do. This was Hereswith’s wyrd; it had been since Cwenburh’s death.