Nicola Griffith - Hild

The scop stroked his lyre. Coelfrith looked up, caught the signal from the kitchen master by the hanging, and nodded to the king. Edwin smiled. “Saved by the food. Come. We’ll feast.”

He gestured at the table behind Hild’s party and took a step towards them.

The world went mad.

Hild caught a wink of light. Lilla, two paces behind the king, bellowed and threw himself at Edwin and Eamer, and blood spurted in a short red arc.

Everything slowed down, sound stretched.

Torchlight glittered on rings, jewelled collars, a dripping blade. Flash. Flash.

Hild couldn’t take it in, could only watch while a rivulet of blood wormed over the floor rushes and soaked into her shoe. Blood, in the king’s hall.

Then the smell hit her and the world snapped back to the right speed. She crouched and her hand dropped to a seax that wasn’t there.

Then Forthere knocked her aside, and Cian, and around her men reached for swords that weren’t there and froze for a moment. Shouting, bellowing, a howling shriek, another knife flash, another.

Edwin rolled up from the floor, blood dripping from his upper arm, white-faced with pain, with Cian shielding him, wild-eyed, a tiny blade sprouting between his knuckles, gleaming garnet red. And blood, so much blood, spreading in a thick pool from Forthere, whose throat gaped. Lilla, cradling his own guts as though they were a small glistening dog. And Eamer, still holding the long thin knife. An assassin’s knife. Eamer didn’t move.

Cian reached behind him to make sure the king was safe. “To me!” he shouted. “To the king!”

And then the hubbub broke against them: shouting, men running for their swords, the king with blood running down his arm, swaying.

Cian, and men armed with swords now, were backing slowly from the room, blades pointing everyway, like the spines of a hedgepig. Cian’s belt-buckle blade looked tiny and vicious, like a red viper’s tooth.

The Gewisse was gone. Fursey was gone.

Flames flickered quietly in Hild and Begu’s chamber, glinting on the silver thread of the single hanging. Begu wrung out the cloth over the slop bowl and dipped it again in the copper bowl of warm water. She wiped Hild’s neck carefully. Hild sat like a statue.

“How did you get it on your neck?”

“I don’t know.” Her tongue felt heavy.

“There’s some on your shoe, too. Ooof, it’s soaked through to your hose. Your best blue hose, too. And splashed on your skirt.” She rinsed and wrung and wiped again.

Begu beckoned Gwladus from the shadow by the alcove. “We need cold water—something to soak these clothes. And more rags. And food.” She looked at Hild. “You look peaky. I expect it’s the shock. Though perhaps you’re hungry. I know I didn’t get fed while the queen birthed.” Hild said nothing. She felt nothing. “Bring a lot,” Begu said to Gwladus, “a lot of everything.”

Gwladus left.

“Take it all off,” Begu said to Hild. “Every scrap.”

Hild stood and stripped, hands cold and clumsy, and Begu washed her head to toe, firm, soothing strokes. “Oh. You have a little cut here, on your shin.”

Hild looked at it. It seemed very far away. Not her leg.

“Does it hurt? Well, it’s nothing much.” Begu mopped at it. Hild felt a distant tingle. Begu seemed to mop at it for a long time, then she wrapped a rag around it and tied it. “There, now.”

Now Hild felt cold, cold to her marrow, cold as marble. Everything smelt of blood, as though she was drowning in it.

Begu murmured on and dried Hild as she would a newborn calf, then helped her into a clean, long-sleeved bedshift. “Let’s get you warm.” She helped Hild into bed, then covered her and stroked the hair from her face. “Stay there while I tidy this away.”

Begu began to examine each piece of clothing for blood, folding and smoothing the unmarked things.

“I’ll tell you about the baby, shall I?”

“Cian…”

“I’m sure Cian’s fine. He’s a hero. Lie quietly now.”

The king would be half mad with fear. She should be there. But she couldn’t seem to move.

Begu talked about the way the queen’s women had fussed. “Anyone would think they’d never seen a baby born before. And the queen. She looks so quiet, but she swore like a gesith! Mind, they always do…”

Cian. She should be there.

“… Eanflæd, she’s called.”

Eanflæd. The new peaceweaver, born in blood. They were all born in blood.

“I worried for a bit that she’d reject the little thing. But then she— Well, what’s this?”

Hild opened her eyes. Begu was frowning over Hild’s drawers. She touched a fingertip to the red stain. “It’s still wet.” She looked up. “It’s yours.”

Hild didn’t understand.

“Does your belly ache?”

Hild put a hand on her belly.

Begu beamed. “You’re a woman! Though you’ve picked a fine night for it: the king half dead, the queen with a new daughter, everything in uproar.”

Hild rested her hand on her belly. A woman. Then she realised what Begu had said. “The king’s half dead?”

Begu waved aside the king’s health. She shook Hild’s drawers. “You’re a woman!”

Gwladus came in, followed by two kitchenfolk carrying a massive tray and two buckets of water. Begu waved the drawers again and said, “We’ll need more rags, and raspberry-leaf tea!”

Gwladus sighed, told the kitchenfolk where to put their burdens, and turned to leave with them.

“Wait.” Hild sat up. “Find out how the king is, and Cian.”

“And bring mead. We’ll have a feast! Up, up, you,” she said to Hild. “You’re looking a lot better. It takes people that way sometimes I suppose. That and the shock. Nothing a bit of food won’t cure. Come on. Get dressed.”

“Cian—”

“Stop fussing about Cian. He can take care of himself. He saved the king’s life. They’ll make him a hero. Besides, you can’t help him from that bed, can you?”

Hild couldn’t argue with that.

“That’s right. No, no. Proper clothes. You’re a woman now. Your finest gown, with the underdress and shoes Onnen sent that will match your veil band. Make sure you line your drawers.” She handed Hild a clean rag, showed her how to fold it. “I’ll just do this.”

So Hild dressed for the first time as a woman to the sound of Begu dipping and wringing, and visions of Cian dead at a half-mad king’s hand.

“Don’t forget your necklace, that thick gold one.” Hild found the heavy necklace, put it on, moving like someone under water. Was this what it meant to be a woman? No one had ever told her about the thick tongue and the strange distance. She lifted the girdle Begu had brought from Onnen, let it dangle from one hand.

“It’s like a toothache in your belly, isn’t it?” Begu nodded at Hild’s other hand curled protectively over her stomach. “The tea will help with that. And mead. Besides, the ache’ll be gone tomorrow. Here, give me that.” She took the girdle from Hild. “I can’t put it on until you stop clutching yourself. There. Too tight?”

Hild shook her head.

“It’s a pity your good hose are in the bucket. Still, no one will see. Besides, if that cut reopens you’d only bleed on them again. Keep still.” She rummaged in the sueded leather purse hanging from her own girdle and took out the comb Hild had given her. “We’ll comb you out nicely before we try the veil band. No, no, you’ll have to sit on the bed. It’s like trying to comb the top of a tree!”

Hild sat blankly while Begu combed, working methodically from the ends to the crown. When the tangles were dealt with, Begu lifted Hild’s hair, bunching it close to the scalp, then stroked the comb through it vigorously, as though brushing out a horse’s tail.