Nicola Griffith - Hild

“Hild,” Fursey said from behind. “What on God’s green earth is so fascinating about watching yet another stinking savage make jewellery?”

Hild felt like a dragonfly batted to the dirt. She turned, angry. Then she took in Fursey’s mottled face. “What’s the matter?”

“Apostasy!”

That word again. She still didn’t know what it meant. Eorpwald’s guards might not know what it meant, either, but they didn’t like the tone. They unslung their shields. Lintlaf came up on his toes.

Men with weapons: as predictable as dogs.

“Stand down,” she said to Lintlaf.

“They are paid men,” he said, with the sting and twist guaranteed to provoke anyone’s temper. The guards levelled their spears.

“Doubtless you could take them even with your sword in your left hand,” she said to Lintlaf. “But you will not.”

No one moved.

Her thoughts came together, smooth as a shield wall: The fact they could check becomes the prophecy they must believe. She fixed her gaze on Lintlaf but spoke to all four men. “I have seen two lives dancing in the guise of butterflies about their spear blades; butterflies dancing with death. Lives waiting to be lost. I have seen it.” In her side vision she caught one of the East Angles nodding: Butterflies, he had seen them. “But no blood will be spilt, no lives lost here today. I say so. You will both walk with me.”

She nodded at the enameller, then to the Svear, and swept away, as her mother would have. They followed.

“Apostasy, heresy, evil!” Fursey hissed in Latin as they walked along the river, then sneezed, which made Hild want to smile, but she remembered Hereswith’s punch on her shoulder and didn’t. Which reminded her that she wanted to give her sister a gift.

Fursey was still spitting like a cat. She looked at Lintlaf for an explanation. He shrugged. “He went into the temple his usual sunny self—ha!—and came out like that.”

It took two hundred strides or more for Fursey to calm himself enough to speak Anglisc. Even then, Hild couldn’t make much sense of it.

“Stop,” she said. “Two altars? One altar for the Christ, one for our gods? Why is that bad?”

And Fursey exploded again like a duck from its covey, this time his Latin peppered with Irish.

“I don’t understand,” Hild said. “Are we in danger?”

“Our immortal souls are in peril! Christ will strike down the apostates! He will—”

“I’m not an apostate. Am I? Good. Are you? Lintlaf, then? No? Then stop it. Answer me this instead. Did the East Angles ever fight the Svear?”

“What?”

“The East Angles. Did they fight the Svear?”

Fursey, speechless, turned away. She looked at Lintlaf.

“No,” he said.

“Then how did Eorpwald, or Rædwald, capture Svearish slaves?”

Fursey, despite himself, said, “He probably bought them.”

“You can buy slaves?”

“Certainly you can buy slaves.”

Lintlaf said, “Coelfrith says that at Gipswīc, you can buy anything. Anything at all. It’s Rædwald’s great wīc. Eorpwald’s now. Like a vill, but a port.”

“Like Woodbridge.”

Fursey snorted. “Like Woodbridge the way Mulstanton is like York.”

Hild felt very rustic. It made her cross. And the fumes of the gold-working had made her head ache. “We shall visit Gipswīc. We shall buy a slave.” A wedding gift for Hereswith. More practical than a gold brooch. Someone to help her sister when Hild could not.

“My apologies, lady,” said Lintlaf. “But not today. Burgmod told me specially that you’re to be there for Æthelric Short Leg’s arrival.”

The men—Yffing and Wuffing alike—were already at their board, and Eorpwald’s womenfolk were being seated while the visiting women waited behind the hanging separating the women’s quarters from the hall. Mildburh peered through a convenient gap between curtain and wall, and gave Hereswith, Hild, and Breguswith a running commentary.

“And now Æthelric Short Leg is standing,” Mildburh said. “He’s escorting the queen to her place. He does it so well. And now he’s returning to his seat at Eorpwald’s right hand. He doesn’t limp.” She giggled—a very annoying giggle, Hild thought, like a whinnying horse. But she had such a headache; everything was irritating her. “And his legs are the same length. And not short.”

Mystifyingly, Hereswith blushed and looked at her mother.

“Saewara was right, then,” Breguswith said, and Mildburh giggled again. Hild knew what that meant: It was something to do with what a man and a woman do in the dark. She pushed Mildburh out of the way so she could see.

Æthelric’s hair was beautifully combed, as thick and lustrous as a beaver pelt, and caught back with a blue-enamelled gold ring. His arm rings were inlaid with garnet and more blue enamel. Like Anna, his brother, he had the dark hair and eyes and fine bones that hinted of a mother with west wealh blood somewhere in her family, though the muscle snaking around his wrists and cording at his neck and throat were anything but delicate. His quilted warrior jacket was the colour of old bronze, with marigold borders. His hose and boots were half a shade darker, the exact brown of his eyes.

Hild looked at Hereswith’s hair, shining like corn and gold; at her overdress of red and marigold; at the ivory underdress embroidered in blue and gold and red, the ivory wool veil secured with gold and garnets. Her sister could not have complemented Æthelric’s colours more closely if she’d tried, nor he hers. Even his enamel matched her eyes.

She put her eye back to the gap just in time to catch Saewara, as she took her place next to her husband, shoot a significant glance at the hanging behind which they stood.

Of course. Cousins. Her sister and gemæcce already had the beginnings of a kin web here in this foreign land. They wouldn’t be all alone.

The king’s scop struck a chord and the steward drew back the hanging with a flourish. The pipers piped and drummers drummed. Everyone stood. Even the flames seemed to roar as they entered.

Gold gleamed from every shadow, every hanging and dish, every arm and waist and veil. Jewels glittered at ears and throats and fingers. White wax tapers burnt like stars in silver holders down the middle of every board. Light sparked and shot and bounced from every fold and every corner. It hurt Hild’s eyes.

The noise and heat and music were overwhelming. Food and drink poured into the hall.

A swan on a great silver platter, its feathers boiled clean and glued back on with honey. Wine like blood, and mead the colour of sunshine. A sea of jellied eels. Sturgeon in a lake of bilberry sauce. Pearl-white bread. And music, music from all sides of the hall and from the centre, all playing parts of the same song. It was like being inside a lyre, inside a drum, inside a pipe. Hild thought her head might burst.

Eorpwald’s flat-faced queen carried the great cup from guest to guest, and one by one important men from different kin groups stood to toast. It seemed to Hild that Æthelric and his North Folk formed a distinct group, one of three: the North Folk; Eorpwald and his men; and another thegn, Ricberht, whose men seemed easier with the king’s gesiths than Æthelric’s. He looked Wuffing, but something about the bunch and flex of his shoulders, the aggressive jut of his chin, made her think perhaps he was from a lesser branch and easily offended. Like Osric? Her mother would know.

Edwin smiled at every toast, and drank and drank. Hild was offered the great cup, and again. White mead. She drank deep.

More food. More wine. Another gulp of the guest cup, and another. The world seemed as though she was peering at it through a hollow reed. She drank more of the white mead and it writhed down her gullet like a fiery snake. She drank again. The burning was something to hold on to as her headache threatened to engulf the world.