Nicola Griffith - Hild

Breguswith smiled. “Yes. A token of appreciation. Edwin is getting married. To Æthelburh.” King Eadbald of Kent’s sister, Breguswith’s half niece. Hild’s cousin. “She’ll come north next summer. With a priest, Paulinus.”

The afternoon of the day before they were to leave. In Hereswith’s apartment Hild smiled at Mildburh. “The kitchen has saved the very last of the summer ale. I told them not to release it to anyone but you.”

“I don’t—”

“I asked them to make sticky cakes, too,” Hild said. “With run honey and Frankish almonds.” Gwladus had arranged that. She said it had cost two pennies.

Hereswith studied Hild, then turned to her gemæcce. “I like sticky cakes, Mil.”

When they were alone, Hild looked about. The hanging was gone. Being carefully cleaned no doubt. She hoped Hereswith wasn’t in a throwing mood today.

She didn’t know what to say. Her sister, whose fierce whisper and poke were her earliest memory. Her sister.

She took Hereswith’s hand. It was smaller than hers now and hard with rings.

“Perhaps you really will turn out to be a giant,” Hereswith said, lightly enough, but her smile wobbled and Hild knew what she was thinking: I won’t be there to see it.

“This is your wyrd,” Hild said. “You’ll be a queen. You’ll have children.” In pain, and blood, and sweat. “I’ll come and see them.”

But her voice sounded false, and neither of them quite believed it. Wyrd never flowed along expected paths. Hereswith might die in childbed, and Hild wouldn’t know until Æthelric or Eorpwald thought to send a messenger. Even then it would be king to king: The peaceweaver has died, what do you propose?

“Learn to read,” Hild said.

“Read? I don’t—”

“Please.” She should have thought of it before. But she had never left her sister before. “You must. Find a priest to teach you. Pretend you’re interested in their god.”

“What—”

“The Christ. Please. Learn to read. For me.”

“Does it really mean so much to you?” Hereswith’s eyes were so blue. Sister blue. “I’ll always be your sister. I will come if you call. I swear it to you. Please.” She saw that her hand was squeezing Hereswith’s to purple.

Hereswith tugged Hild’s hair, as she had when they were little, but gently. “I’ll learn to read. But you must do something for me.”

Hild nodded, swallowed, saw she was clutching too hard again, tried to loosen her grip but couldn’t. Her sister’s hand…

“Find people. People you know are on your side. Not that priest. Not a slave. Kings die, even overkings. Especially overkings. So find people.”

Hild nodded again. Her tears dripped on their hands. Hereswith wiped them off, as briskly as she would wipe a baby’s nose. And Hild couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stand to face the rest of her life without a sister at her side.

“You’ll be well,” Hereswith said. “I’ll be well. I’m older, and I say so. And on your birth day, and mine, we’ll drink a toast, each to the other, and one day we’ll hold hands again.”

They saw each other the next morning but though there were words, Hild didn’t remember them, they were ritual, for the people: a stern lady of the North Folk bidding smooth travel and fair weather to her uncle the overking, her sister the king’s seer, and her lady mother. The three women were gracious but remote, dry-eyed players in the royal mummery of Eorpwald and Edwin’s grander farewell: the pledges of honour and allegiance between king and overking.

As they rode away, none of them blinked, no one’s smile wavered. But in her head, Hild was already imagining her toast to Hereswith on her own birth day next month, and the simple message she would send on her sister’s birth day in Œstremonath.

And when she had imagined every dot of ink and wrinkle of parchment, she began composing messages to Cian and Begu and Onnen.

IN YEAVERING, AT ŒSTREMONATH, Hild stood in the doorway of the women’s hall and faced the late-morning sun. She raised her cup of grass-rich buttermilk and drank to Hereswith, and felt, for a moment, the sun warm on Hereswith’s back as her sister faced north by northwest and lifted a cup of mead to Hild. But she didn’t send a message: There was no one to trust with the spoken words, no one but Fursey, and East Anglia was too far.

But she could send him to the Bay of the Beacon. And when spring turned to summer and travel was easier, she did.

And now they were back in Goodmanham, and it was almost Weodmonath again. Fursey should be back in a month. On the rough northern pasture, the lambs looked nearly as burly as their shorn mothers. In the valley and on the southern slopes, barley heavy with seed bent its whiskers towards the sun-beaten earth; the weeds stood out livid green against the dark gold grain. Children took turns banging sticks to drive away crows. The crows crak-crakked and rose like black smoke, then settled in the next field and watched with oily black eyes, or indulged in aerial shows with the jackdaws that lived in the elms. During æfen, while the urchins frightened each other with tales—of ghost crows, and giant crows, and breath-stealing crows—Coelgar’s understewards pulled at their beards in frustration as the birds flitted quietly back to the grain and ate their fill.

A week before harvest, the children went out with wide baskets to pull the weeds, which they then fed to the goats. The milk began to taste strange, as it did every year at this time.

The wild taste fed Hild’s restlessness. She climbed her favourite ash tree but couldn’t see anything but pictures of Hereswith in childbed, screaming for her sister.

She strode the woods, wondering if Fursey had given Cian his belt-buckle knife, if he liked it. What if he laughed and thought it foolish? Begu would like her comb, surely. But Begu had such a flighty mind, always flitting from one thing to another. Who? she imagined Begu saying to Fursey. Hild? Oh, yes, she was here last year.

And Onnen. Learn to read , she’d told Fursey to tell her almost-mother. You must learn to read. But Onnen, she knew, would always think of her as the child squirming at the washtub as the cold water ran down her back, or the foolish girl who misled Begu about being gemæcce. She wouldn’t listen.

Hild tramped the wolds, watching birds at the edges of things and gathering plants for her mother. Whatever she did she would find herself thinking of people who weren’t there: Surely Guenmon checked that Bán had a new cloak before winter , or Did Fursey remember to seek out Cú and give him a honey cake all for himself? Once, she remembered she’d sent no message for Cædmon.

And then she was back to Hereswith, to the empty bed in her room and the constant listening for the pointed comment that never came.

And Herewith’s absence was not the only change.

Gwladus voiced strong opinions of what was and was not proper for Hild—she was worse than Onnen that way—and in the vill Hild found herself dressed more splendidly and fed more regularly. She shot up like one of the weeds in the barley field and grew tender breast buds.

Gwladus also grew. She had been eye-catching before but now her pale hair—paler than barley, paler than wheat, paler even than the bryony growing by the alders along the beck—gleamed, her skin grew smooth and tight, and she smelt like wild honey. Lintlaf and the other gesiths seemed mazed by her. For Hild this was useful. Gwladus listened to many conversations between men who forgot to take care, and she repeated them to Hild word for word: Cwichelm, eldest of the ambitious West Saxon brothers, was rumoured to intrigue with old Cadfan of Gwynedd. Young Cadwallon ap Cadfan was in Ireland. British and Irish priests had been seen everywhere—even with Cuelgils of Lindsey, even at Arbeia, Osric’s house in Tinamutha—carrying messages back and forth.