Nicola Griffith - Hild

Hild had a horrible urge to giggle. Instead, she took her gemæcce’s hand. “Perhaps the queen would like to see you.”

Begu turned that bird gaze on Hild, considering. Eventually she nodded. Hild and her mother were silent as Begu collected her things and left.

“You stupid girl!” Breguswith said. She sounded like a hissing swan. “Cwichelm! What if you’re wrong?”

Hild sat down. “I’m not.” She ate a piece of cheese.

Her mother sat, too. “How do you know?”

Hild stopped chewing, surprised. She swallowed. “I’m the light of the world.”

“Yes, yes. Light of the world, the king’s seer. But he’s going to ask you what you saw, and how. So what will you tell him?”

“I looked in the water.”

“A sacred pool, I hope?” Hild shook her head. “A silver bowl under the full moon? A pool you found while following an eagle? No. No, you stupid child. A tub full of dirty clothes! I heard as much from the kitchen. Does a wash bucket fill the listener with awe? Do filthy garments inspire fear of the otherworldly message and she who bears it? No. It inspires only thoughts of dirt, of human stink. Human. Human lies and trickery, the treachery of plots and assassins with poisoned knives.”

“It was only a game.”

“At the king’s vill, the king’s seer’s words are weighed like poison, or like pearls. Nothing you say is a game.”

Hild glared at her shoes. It wasn’t her fault that the housefolk were spreading rumours. It was just a game.

“No, little prickle. Now is not the time to curl up and wait for the hunter to go away. The king will kill you or Cian if you so much as look at him sideways. Look at me.” She tipped Hild’s chin up until she lifted her gaze. “Think.”

Hild wanted to snatch at her mother’s hand and bite it. But her mother was right. Edwin was mad with pain, mad with fear. She pushed her mother’s hand aside, but gently. “What was the poison on Eamer’s blade?”

“Something akin to wolfsbane. Brewed by an incompetent.” That sparking smile again: If she’d made it, the king would be dead. “I gave the king a cold tea of foxglove. He’s well. In his body at least.” She dismissed his health, much as Begu had, with a wave. “Tell me about your vision. Leave nothing out.”

Hild listened to her heartbeat: steady. Her breathing: smooth. She didn’t need foxglove tea. “It wasn’t a vision.” Breguswith quelled her with a look. “Vision. Yes.” She told her mother of the clothes, the blood, the water.

“Ah.” Breguswith leaned back, thinking. “The blood of a king and the first blood of a virgin seer mixed with water drawn cold from the well under moonlight. Yes. Very good. Your wealh and that— Your gemæcce. They will both swear to it?”

“Her name is Begu.”

“I know her name. It was a foolish—” She mastered herself. “Done is done. For now we must be quick. We can recast your seeing so it reeks of sidsa: king, virgin, blood, well water under the moon. And it was witnessed. Well and good. But how will you answer to the charge that Eamer, the assassin, was your man?”

“What? No! Near Lindsey he was set to guard me—”

“Who gave that order?”

“Forthere. Who had his orders from Lilla. Who had them from the king.”

“He was not one of your hounds?”

“No. Never. I’d wondered why. I thought he liked me—”

“Perhaps he did. If he knew his fate it was an act of kindness to ignore you. Now tell me the story of your vision again, as you will tell the king.”

Her mother took her through her story, step by step, shaping it, sharpening it.

“It will do. But be careful, child. Above all, you must soothe his vanity. You must make him feel strong and in control. Make him feel like a king.”

In hall, Hild wished she had her mother with her. The king seemed barely to be listening to her story. He could not keep still. A muscle by his eye and one at the corner of his mouth fluttered and twitched. He sat in his great chair on the dais with a bloody sword across his knee and a seax in his left hand. Every now and again he lifted the seax hand and blotted his forehead with his forearm. His great garnet shone hot red, the bandage on his upper arm was bulky and clumsily tied. Not Breguswith’s work. His gaze flicked this way and that, probing the shadows. Paulinus stood at his left hand, his bony forehead like old wax and his eyes glittering. Stephanus sat at the foot of the dais at a tilted wooden contraption: some kind of writing table piled with wax tablets. Everyone was there—every man: Osric the badger, the æthelings, Coelfrith, the brothers Berht—unwashed, unshaven, unrested, muscles coiled, ready to leap on any moving shadow and crush it. Cian, swordless and beltless, knelt in one corner, wrists tied back to his ankles. The right side of his face was dark and swollen. Blood, his own by the looks of it, matted his hair. He looked bewildered and very young. Being a hero wasn’t like in the songs.

Tondhelm held Hild’s wrists behind her and shook her slightly to encourage her to continue. “Eamer was set by Forthere to guard me, at Lindsey.”

“Forthere who is dead,” the king said. He twisted in his chair to peer behind him, then back at Hild. “And Eamer saved you at Lindsey yet tried to kill me, his king. Why?”

There were none of the usual murmurs of a hall audience. No one wanted to be heard; no one wanted to be noticed. Fear lay over them all: fear of the king, fear of the young hægtes, fear of Saxons in the shadows and the fates of men being spun by otherworldly hands. Nothing like the songs. Songs…

“Because Cwichelm, his lord, told him nothing of me. Because I am not important. Whereas you, lord, are overking. King of all the Angles.”

“Soon to be king of the Saxons.” He spoke flatly, for his gesiths and counsellors and all those who, having seen his blood, smelt it, might plot against him. He leaned forward. “So tell me how it is that this stranger”—he pointed his smeared sword at Cian—“came to be in my hall with a serpent-tooth knife?”

She drew herself up. Like a hoofbeat, like a song.

“Say a wolf cub’s tooth, my king. It is a small blade, but honest. Like the man who bears it.” She was glad that Cian was not whole and uninjured and standing beside her with the height and hair of their father. “His mother, one Onnen, was bodywoman to my own mother. We played together as children. But children grow. Onnen knew my time as a woman approached. She sent Cian with gifts.” She touched her veil band and earrings. Her mother had made her wear every piece of good jewellery she possessed, and hang every mark of womanly rank from the girdle given by the queen—she had even lent her own seeing crystal. “The buckle blade was a gift from me. From my hand to his. Into his hand to protect your life.”

“Indeed.” He rested his chin on his fist. “And how did you know he would need it?”

She touched the crystal hanging at her left hip. “I am your seer.”

“Cwichelm, you say.” He gestured for Tondhelm to let her go. He stared at his seax then sheathed it. He scratched his beard, thinking. “He tried to kill me.”

“Yes, lord King.” She wanted to rub her wrists but didn’t dare. Anything could irritate Edwin, anything bring the swing of the sword.

“And you claim you stopped him.”

“Lord—”

He lifted his hand. “Yet Paulinus here says it was the Christ’s will that I be saved.”

“Perhaps it was Christ’s will that I be born to see your path and guide others to keep you safe.”

Paulinus Crow stared at her. Hild stared back.

“The bishop of Christ and the handmaid of wyrd,” Edwin said. “Which should I believe?”