Nicola Griffith - Hild

In Goodmanham, the harvest would be in. Coifi would have celebrated a much-reduced Woden’s festival in a half-built enclosure. There would be no point going to a great deal of trouble celebrating the Yffings’ god when there were no Yffings present. But when Edwin returned, it would be as overking. Next year’s festival would be a thing of great pomp and ceremony. But Hereswith wouldn’t be there. Hereswith would never be there again.

She stopped thinking about that and wondered instead how autumn might be in Mulstan’s hall. Were Cian and Begu getting along? Did Cædmon still walk his cows on the cliffs above the bay? It seemed like a lifetime since she’d played in the kitchen garth, drunk Guenmon’s beef tea, stood on the beach with an angry Onnen.

That made her lonelier than ever.

So she sifted through what she had just heard in Eorpwald’s hall. Paulinus was colluding with Edwin behind his chief bishop’s back. Edwin didn’t like Paulinus. Osric was stupid, but Breguswith had smiled at him and he had smiled back. Sword and skirt, book and blade. She couldn’t understand the pattern. She wished the pear trees were big enough to climb.

Gwladus, carrying a basket, bumped open the wicker gate with her hip. Hild sat up and brushed at her dress.

“I’ll have to wash that, I suppose,” Gwladus said in British.

“Anglisc, Gwladus.”

“It’s all over filth.” She plunked the basket on the grass. Some kind of meat pie and a jar of ale.

“One of the vill wealh will do it.” A flock of young swallows swooped over the trees and settled on the great hall’s rooftrees, chattering. Where did they go in the winter? Did they fly south to the land of eternal sun or sleep, like squirrels, in some snug hole? Perhaps they nested in rows on the gables under the roof of the hall.

“Did your mam drop you on your head at birth?”

Hild blinked, then put her hand on her knife.

“There. Like that. Threatening to stab your own bodywoman. No one does that. If you’re displeased, you have me whipped.”

Hild frowned. “You want me to whip you?”

“No!” Gwladus leaned back and folded her arms.

Perhaps all wealh learnt to fold their arms that way.

Gwladus unfolded her arms. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Will I tell you some things?”

Hild nodded. The pie smelt good. Pigeon?

“Well, then. The vill wealh will not wash your dress because it’s your dress and I attend your body now. I do it. No one else.” Hild thought about it, then nodded. She reached for the pie. Gwladus didn’t move.

Hild sighed and withdrew her hand. “Yes?”

“If you didn’t want me for your person, why did you buy me?”

Because a slave can’t leave me. But she couldn’t say that.

“I’ll tell you then, shall I? You’re a seer. A seer’s woman makes sure the seer wears clean clothes and eats fine food and gets a decent bed to sleep in. She makes sure the seer gets the white mead and the hero’s portion and the bench by the fire, like the king himself. It’s a seer’s due. And do you know how the seer’s woman does this?”

Hild shook her head, looking at the pie.

“She is seen to have the care and protection of the seer. She has respect. She has good clothes of her own, and good food and… and a bracelet! And pretty shoes. And a warm cloak, and a bedroll to herself. And the housefolk will see how she is valued by the seer, see that offending her is to offend the seer herself, that she must be given in to when she asks the baker for the first hot white loaf and the cook for the first hare pie. And she has, yes, she has pennies in her purse!”

“Pennies?”

“Just one or two, mind. For those times when a visiting stranger has news. So that the seer always has the news first, for a seer taken by surprise is a very sorry seer indeed.”

Hild hadn’t thought of it that way.

Gwladus flushed. “It needn’t be pennies. It could be little trinkets, worthless things.”

“What is the worth of a worthless thing?” Gwladus’s flush spread. It was a pale bloom of a blush, quite unlike Hereswith’s dark rush. Hild did not understand why she had thought them alike.

“I didn’t mean to say you were a sorry seer, that you needed your visions bought and paid for. No doubt you are a good seer, a great seer. No doubt you’ve the keenest vision since, since…” Gwladus floundered.

Hild stood. She was taller than Gwladus. “Pennies, you said. You understand coins?”

Gwladus bobbed her head. “Yes, lady.”

“You will teach me. Then we will go back to the wīc.” She wanted to see that counting table.

“And you won’t have me whipped?”

Hild touched her knife. “A seer’s bodywoman is never whipped. A seer’s bodywoman loses her nose, or her hand, or her life.” The same punishment as a king’s bodyman, or a chief priest’s.

She had gone seax to seax with an ætheling. She understood why a king often threatened violence. It felt good, and it worked.

They all made the journey to the market again: Fursey, Hild, Lintlaf, the two bearers of the hacksilver, and Gwladus.

“Is it deliberate?” Fursey said as they rode along by a field of barleycorn stalks turning the colour of cured oak. Weeds showed bright green. “Child?”

“Um?”

He pointed to Hild’s blue dress, knotted up to one side under her belt, showing a faint stain still. “Is it deliberate? A reminder to the market sellers that it would be as well to give you what you want, at your price, before you pull that pigsticker?”

“Gwladus suggested it.”

“Did she?” He twisted in the saddle to look back at the wealh, who sat sideways across Lintlaf’s saddlebow, gurgling with laughter. She had started their travel walking, with the other wealh. “She’s a cunning thing.” He turned back. “What other pearls of wisdom has she dropped in your ready ear?”

Hild shrugged.

“I still don’t know what possessed you to buy such a vixen.”

“I need someone of my own.” Someone who had to put her first.

Fursey surprised her by agreeing. “Indeed. But have a care. This one’s as pretty as a grass snake but much more dangerous. See how she’s already charmed the oaf. Though, granted, he has no more brains than a bull calf.”

“She says I was dropped on my head at birth.”

Fursey shouted with laughter, and behind them Gwladus gurgled, and they rode into the wīc wreathed in mirth.

The counting table was grooved with vertical lines, eight long strokes beneath eight short ones. The grooves were inlaid in yellow enamel. The long ones each held four blue beads, the shorter a single red bead. The Frisian money changer slid the beads up and down as he counted and added coins for a merchant but moved too fast for Hild to follow.

Then it was their turn. One of Hild’s chests of hacksilver was emptied and expertly weighed under the eye of a Frank holding an axe who, every time he moved to brush at his weeping left eye, made Lintlaf twitch. The money changer asked Hild what coins she wished in exchange, how much gold, how much silver.

She hefted a gold coin in her left hand. The same size around as a cherry but as heavy as a plum. Good yellow gold, with a picture of a Frankish king on one side and writing that made no sense on the other.

“If I took all in gold, how many would they be?” She hefted the satisfying weight one more time, then put it down.

“By weight, the silver is fifteen and a half pounds. That would make”— flick flick flick —“fivescore and eight gold scillings and three silver pennies.”

She rolled one of the little pennies, no bigger around than a willow withy, between thumb and forefinger. “And if I changed half to scillings and half to pennies?”