Nicola Griffith - Hild

Osfrith, sitting next to Hild, and well used to her, laughed, and others laughed cautiously along with him. It struck Hild that the younger ætheling was now seen as a man to be laughed along with, a man in his own right, no longer just a stripling prince. Since his marriage he had found his way. He was becoming the king’s man of business, negotiating affairs of trade with other kings and chieftains the way his brother, Eadfrith, negotiated affairs of state.

But as men laughed she saw the discontent in Edwin’s eyes: like the nights he smiled with Eorpwald at Rendlesham. She remembered Begu telling her of the pope’s letter to the queen. One flesh with the king, once he accepted Christ. The æthelings might be useful but an overking could not abide a rival. The letter from the pope, backed by Paulinus once he was chief priest of the Angles, might be enough to blunt his rivals’ tines. Rivalry, the disease of kings.

Hild became aware of Paulinus’s unwinking gaze. His nose was more bladelike than usual, the muscles around his mouth set and hard. He was angry, no doubt as much for being referred to as a pet, and for disclosure of his thoughts, as for her presence. Righteous anger, the disease of bishops.

The sound of mead, poured into the silver cup next to her hand by a pretty servingwoman—not as pretty as Gwladus—seemed unnaturally loud. The woman’s hand was shaking. Hild motioned Enough ; if the woman spilt anything at the overking’s table, she’d be whipped. Being surrounded by the stink of fear, the disease of seers.

She picked up the cup. They all watched. She turned it in her hand. Rivalry, anger, fear.

“I have one very like this,” she said. “A gift from our generous overking. For Lindum.” She smiled at them over the rim.

They looked away. They’d all heard of the seer’s deeds at Lindum.

Edwin laughed. “Perhaps I should have given her something for Bebbanburg.” The room stiffened—like estuary mud drying in the sun, Hild thought, a sucking bog under the cracking skin, treacherous.

Bebbanburg. Osric always denied that he had betrayed them to the Irish, and Edwin, at the time not wholly secure, had deemed it prudent to accept his word. Osric was Yffing, with a claim to be king and the men to back it up. With the Irish swarming, and the æthelings not quite of age, the king had needed his cousin. But now Osric was just another rival.

She sipped her mead. Fine, very fine. She sipped again, rolled it around her mouth, swallowed. “Good mead,” she said to Osric, but pitched to be heard at the farthest tables. “Made from southern honey. No, farther away than that, a land of blossoming walnut groves and poppies.” Obvious, now that she thought about it. “You didn’t tell us you were trading with the Franks, cousin.”

Silence rippled outwards.

Edwin looked at her, nodding. His eyes were ordinary, not black in the middle and banded with swarming green. He wasn’t surprised. He’d just been waiting for her to declare it openly. She nodded back and raised her cup, as though she had known for a week and had waited for the proper moment. But her heart thumped. So obvious but she had nearly missed it. She had nearly missed it.

Edwin smiled at Osric, showing too many teeth. “The Franks, kinsman?” He shaped kinsman with particular edge. They all heard the threat: Being kin will only take you so far. He sipped his Frankish mead. “I’ll take my cut of that trade when we reach York for the baptism. And no doubt the bishop here will put in a word with his god once you donate an equal sum to the glory and beautification of his new church.”

Osric had been king of his hall at Tinamutha, but here, by the Bay of the Beacon, Mulstan was king of his.

He was on his feet, cup in hand, making one of his rambling but heartfelt speeches welcoming the king and his household to his humble abode. The abode the king’s niece had seen fit to grace just a few short years ago, which visit brought his dear wife and lady, Onnen, to him…

Hild found it eerie to see all the people in her life drawn together: Onnen, with Mulstan on her right, and Cian and Begu to her left. The king, without his usual coterie—Paulinus, Osric, and the æthelings had all headed straight to York from Arbeia—to Mulstan’s right. Hild had chosen to sit on the left side, with Onnen’s people, including her mother.

Breguswith and Onnen had reached some understanding. Begu had given her the news breathlessly that afternoon, jumbled in with news of Cædmon and Winty—that is, Winty’s calf’s calf, who looked just the same, even to the golden tips of her ears—and Guenmon. She thought Guenmon and Gwladus would take to each other very well. And wait til Hild saw Onnen’s twins! Plump as geese and only a little less toothless. Oh, but Hild didn’t like geese. Plump as, as… pigeons! But Bán, Bán she was very sorry to say, had, according to Onnen, died just that winter of the horrible cough that swept through the people around the bay. And his dog, well, that was very sad. His dog had died just a moon before Bán himself…

“Why such a long face?” her mother asked as Mulstan wound up his speech and called for Swefred to Play that song, you know the one . “Not what you remember?”

“It’s just the same. We’re even eating Celfled’s eels. Swefred will now sing the tale of the wight who haunts the wrack, and glare suspiciously at anyone who praises him too much.”

“But?”

“But there are people missing.”

“Yes.” She laid a hand briefly on Hild’s cheek, which startled Hild so much she nearly knocked her cup over. “There are always people missing. And sometimes I see their ghosts.” She looked briefly at Cian, who was laughing at something Begu had said, and, in his polished mail, with long chestnut hair falling about his shoulders, looking every inch the foster-prince of the hall. His eye gleamed, his muscles shone like greased piglets, his bones were as strong as oak. He was the tallest man in the room and shone the brightest. A young god.

It was the closest they had ever come to speaking of it. “Are you… Do you mind?” Hild said.

“If I do, it’s not the son or his mother I blame. Not any more.” Another roar of laughter from down the table. “Even his laugh is the same.”

And Hild had a sudden memory of her father tossing her in the air, laughing, but she didn’t trust it. “Did he toss Hereswith in the air to make her laugh?”

Breguswith nodded. “He liked to see her hair fly about and shine in the sun. But Hereswith didn’t like it. It made her cry.”

“I miss her.”

Breguswith nodded again. It was the most they had agreed on in years. “But she’s well enough where she is. Dream of a son for her tonight, and maybe Eorðe will hear.”

“Shouldn’t you be praying to the Christ?”

“Ah,” her mother said, and smiled. “I forgot.”

Fursey wouldn’t have trusted that smile, but Fursey wasn’t there. Besides, his remedy would have been the same. “Let’s persuade Onnen to give us some of the Gaulish wine Mulstan always has put by. Then let’s drink. A lot. To those who are missing.”

That night, Hild dreamt she crouched in the reeds by the spear-straight rhyne. Tin-grey clouds scudded overhead and willows rattled. In their boat, Bán and his dog Cú glided along the bank, Bán’s little knife on the willow, snick-snick-snick , flashing in the watery light. Hild rose, waved. Bán smiled, and Cú’s tongue lolled in a dog laugh.

Hild and Cian walked along the path by the smith’s beck. Dark lingered under the trees and long slanting shadows fell over the water, where bats still swooped. The river smelt of night, but the early-spring grass along the path, pale green in the growing light, smelt of morning, fresh and sharp as new-forged iron.