19

HILD RODE WITH HER MOTHER and Begu, accompanied by Gwladus and Oeric and Morud, to York.

In the glow of the setting sun, Cian seemed brighter, denser, his eyes more blue. He laughed when he saw them, swung Begu off her horse and kissed her cheek, bowed to Breguswith, and grinned at Hild. “I’ve learnt a new song of Branwen!” He slapped Oeric on the shoulder, and told him four months among the women had put fat on him and that they’d need to work it off.

Gwladus bobbed her head to Hild and said that, if the lady pleased, she’d take Morud and go straight to their apartment, make sure all was in order. Hild nodded.

Cian watched her go. “Is she quite well?”

“What do you mean?”

“If the lady pleases? And not a bit of cheek. Did you give her a whipping?”

Begu poked him in the ribs. “Four months among women has made us all shy. Now tell me how you’ve been without us.”

* * *

There was no formal feast, just friends sitting in small groups at the board, but after a quiet summer the flash of gold and snap of dogs, the laughter and shouts were sharp and loud. The meat was good, though, and the mead, and Cian entertained them with stories of horse races and hunting parties and the king rubbing his hands over the new wīc.

“You won’t see much of it tomorrow. We’re riding out early.”

After a while he cleared his throat. “Now I’ll sing of Branwen. Not the warrior maid. The other one.” He launched into a song of Branwen, daughter of Lyr, who died of grief. His voice throbbed with emotion, the kind he usually saved for glorious death in battle. Hild wondered if he’d fallen in love with one of his red-handed dairymaids. She closed her eyes, belly full of meat and mead, content between her mother and Begu, and drifted.

Later, in their apartments, Gwladus told them the queen had been unwell; Arddun thought she might be with child.

* * *

The queen and her women, including Begu, removed to Derventio. The king and a small group of advisers—including Hild and her mother—rode to Lindsey to talk to Coelgar about Christ and wool.

Miles from the city of Lindum, on the edge of the thick stink of its tanning and fulling, Paulinus asked the king for a word.

Hild watched the conversation from her horse. Her mother reined in next to her. “You’ve been out of his eye too long.”

Hild nodded without taking her gaze from them. She knew what Paulinus was saying: Beginnings were delicate times, and the king’s seer, despite her prominent gold cross, made Christ-fearing men nervous.

“You’ll have to wait for your moment.”

Hild rested her hand on her seax and wondered what kind of moment. Meanwhile she would wait.

So as the king and his archbishop spoke to the great men of Lindum, while her mother negotiated with Coelgar and his reeve Blæcca by the fire in Coelgar’s hall east and south of the city, Hild walked Coelgar’s fields. The vill was safe enough to wander without Oeric, and Cian was dallying with some girl, the daughter of Coelgar’s bread maker. Not that Cian would have offered to accompany her. He had been acting strangely since the morning they left York: ignoring her, avoiding even Gwladus. Hild did not understand it, but she had done without him for four months over the summer, and he would recover himself at some point. She just hoped it would be soon. She was tired of waiting, always waiting. And she missed fighting.

After nine days she knew the fields so well she could name every clod and stone along their edges. Today, drifting rain blurred the air over the low, tidy furrows and the air smelt dark and rich. She left her hood down, letting the rain cling to her hair, wanting to hear while her body walked and her mind wandered. On rainy afternoons, did the bread maker’s daughter let Cian pleasure her, let Cian see her vulnerable and soft and hold her afterwards while she cried? Or was it only men who cried? Begu hadn’t said. She couldn’t imagine Gwladus crying, even if—

That lump of dirty flint by the hedge, it hadn’t been there yesterday. She slowed. It was a partridge, hunched against discovery.

Rooks and jackdaws croaked and squabbled beyond the brow of the hill, fieldfares and finches hopped back and forth on the worm-rich soil: there were no hawks about. It was hiding from her.

“Don’t be frightened,” she said. It made no sign it had heard. Stupid bird. She glared at it. “What have I ever done to you?”

The bird’s fear made her angry. She picked up a stone. She could kill it. Kill them all: Paulinus, Coelgar, Cian’s woman.

But it was just a bird. It hadn’t done anything to her. She let the stone fall and turned back the way she’d come, towards the river.

A hare, sitting in a furrow, almond eyes shining black in the rain light, regarded her. She regarded it. The pale fluff at the tips of its long ears stirred in a breeze Hild couldn’t feel. Then it bolted. Bold hare! Brave hare! Hild gave a great shout and ran after it, knowing she wouldn’t catch it, just wanting to run as it ran, muscles bunching, feet kicking against the loamy dirt, not hiding. It lolloped under the roots of the hedge and she heard a sifting splash, like a sack of grain going into the river. She ran around to a gap in the hedge and got to the bank in time to see the hare swimming like a furious small dog to the other side, where it leapt up the bank and ran, tail flashing this way and that. Then gone.

Her heart beat high. The hedge seemed outlined in crystal. The air was like beer. She held her arms out and turned, taking in sky, water, fields, hedges, the low, tidy, orderly land. She laughed. It was good to be in a field in the rain. Then she sat on a stone and fished a piece of cheese from the purse at her belt.

She was struck by it. A product of a well-run world in the palm of her hand. Deep yellow. Aged from summer milk squeezed from cows fed on rich green grass. She bit into it: fatty and sharp.

The stone she sat on had probably been hauled from the field generations ago and moved, season by season, in frost heaves and spring washes, closer to the river. This was Lindsey, never left to run wild for a generation. Not like Elmet. She imagined sitting in her mene wood with her children, her children’s children. Perhaps it would look as tidy and prosperous.

The sheep here weren’t all that they’d hoped for, though, according to her mother. Too small. They could breed some of the larger ewes with some Deira rams. Coelgar would be only too happy to oblige her mother; he’d always felt kindly towards her.

Hild thought back. Perhaps it had been more than kindly—before Osric.

She popped the last of the cheese into her mouth and savoured it. If only Coelgar liked her as much as he liked her mother. He treated her with extreme courtesy, yes, but that was a mask for his discomfort. He wouldn’t be alone with her, not since the tent in the field at Lindum.

She would have to think of a way to befriend ealdorman Coelgar. She would have to remember that those who weren’t used to her, or who hadn’t been around her for a while, saw the legend first: twice royal, twice uncanny. Wielder of wyrd, dealer of death, the king’s seer.

She stood, checked the far bank just in case the hare had returned, then headed back for the vill.

A column of rooks and jackdaws rose, cawing, from the field over the rise. A hawk. She hoped the partridge was hiding.

But when she reached the brow of the hill, she saw it wasn’t a hawk. It was a column of men riding furiously for the vill, the king’s tufa gleaming at its head.

Hild got to the vill just as the king leapt from his horse. He saw her and strode over. His muscles were tight with more than the ride.

He yanked a sheet of parchment from his saddlebag, waved it in her face. He was holding it upside down.

“Who the fuck is Ricberht?”

“Uncle?”

“Some nithing called Ricberht has killed Eorpwald and set himself up as king of the East Angles! All those messages, all those gifts, for nothing. And no warning, not one single word, from my seer. Well?”

Ricberht. A lesser Wuffing. Surrounded by his men at Hereswith’s betrothal feast, laughing with Eorpwald while Æthelric preened—

Hild was saved from having to answer by the arrival of more riders: Paulinus and his priests.

Edwin whirled. “And you’re no better! Some god, who can’t even protect a king I need.” He threw the letter in the mud and stalked into the hall.

Hild bent to the parchment. The words were dissolving in the rain. Stephanus darted through the riders, mud spattering his sandalled feet. She let him have it.

* * *

The next day rain fell unceasingly. Endless, wind-whipped rain. The men crowded into the hall smelt like a pack of wet dogs. Better than the smell outside, where the wind was bringing the stink of tanneries from Lindum. The hall was thick with damp and smoke and the king’s rage.

Hild, who had been up half the night with her mother, met the men’s regard steadily. Cian was the only one not looking at her.

She wore royal blue, her arms bare and her hair tucked behind her ears, gesith-style. In the firelight gold glinted from her ears and throat, arms and fingers. Her cross gleamed on her breast and carnelians winked at her wrist. The silver of her belt ends shimmered. She rested her hand on her seax and stood tall. Unlike Paulinus, she was both skirt and sword. The saviour of Lindum and, before that, Bebbanburg. Let them not forget it.

“My king, Eorpwald Sulkmouth was used to the summer mead of Woden. His thegns were used to it. Christ belief, though, is a foreign wine, a heady wine, and Eorpwald Sulkmouth was foolish. He drank too fast. He lost his senses.”

Here and there, a gesith nodded. They all knew the perils of heady foreign wines. Paulinus, standing on the king’s right, leaned on his jewelled shepherd’s crook and watched her carefully.

“My king, you’re wise. You understood the value of persuading your thegns first, letting them taste, letting them judge the strength of your pour. And, my king, you are rich. You are known as generous. You felt no need to pour all at once to win approval. You could advise men to begin slowly, and it was like a father speaking to his son: kindly and wise, not rushed, not hasty in the hope of avoiding the name of niggard.”

Now Edwin was nodding: He was a wise king, and generous, and rich. Paulinus stared at her, unwinking. In this hall, with his black hair and eyes, he looked like a foreign shadow. His skin drank in the Anglisc light.

“A drunken man, my king, gives away too much too fast to the wrong people. And so it was with Eorpwald. He gave too much too fast to his new priests. The king had no wise adviser to temper his generosity.” No one like her, skirt and sword. Book and blade. “The king’s thegns were bewildered.”

Coelgar was now looking speculatively at Paulinus.

“The thegns rose up. They swore to Ricberht, who swore to shun the Christ.” She looked around the room and smiled. “Who here hasn’t sworn to never drink again?”

Laughter.

“But, my lord King, like all of us, Ricberht will one day no doubt be persuaded to sip of this foreign wine anew. And, failing that, his thegns might listen to suggestions for another king. Sigebert, they say, is safe in Frankia. Where we have many friends.” And her mother’s relatives, her sister’s, her own. “And much new trade.”

“Meanwhile,” Edwin said, “the East Angles are not bending the knee, and this Ricberht, they say”—ironic smile—“has friends in Mercia.”

“Yes, my king.” She had no idea if that was true, but it was best not to contradict one’s king in public. “However, my sister’s husband, Æthelric, is still prince of the North Folk.” They would have heard otherwise. “He will hold the fens against the men of Mercia and the West Saxons. We will regain Rendlesham and, meanwhile, my sister’s husband will guard the border. Lindsey is safe.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am.” Hereswith would persuade Æthelric. Hereswith and Fursey. Between them they would remind him of Hild’s prophecy: He would be king. “Meanwhile, my king, we must in future make sure that any kings whom we seek to turn to Christ are supported with wise advisers.”

Coelgar nodded, and Hild turned deliberately to him. As ealdorman in his own hall, he did not need the king’s permission to speak.

“She’s right, my lord. I don’t hold with this hurry.” He looked over at Paulinus. “I hear they killed your underbishop. Put his head on the altar.”

“Bishop Thrythnoth is in heaven. He was much loved by God and has been gathered to His bosom.”

“Well,” said Coelgar, “I’m not in a hurry to be loved that way by any god.”

Gesiths laughed, black-clad priests crossed themselves, and Paulinus said nothing.

“My dear Coelgar,” Edwin said, “I’ll make sure that with you, Paulinus takes all the time you need. I’ll make sure he stays here all winter if necessary. Is that all right with you, Paulinus?”

Paulinus had no choice but to bow.

Coelgar said, “Let’s eat,” and housefolk poured into the hall to move benches.

The king crooked his finger to Hild and waved Paulinus away. While everything rearranged itself around them, turning them momentarily into a private island, he tapped his ring on the arm of his chair. Hild wondered how that ring might feel. All that power. No more waiting.

He leaned forward. “I don’t like surprises. I don’t want any more. Do whatever you have to.” They both glanced at Paulinus, who clearly wished he could hear what they were saying. “What he doesn’t know, he won’t hector me for. If the wyrd needs a little help”—he tapped the thick gold band around his left arm—“let me know.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“Wear that cross outside your clothes. And no… distractions.” She didn’t want to think what he meant by that. “About Rendlesham. Work out with your mother how to make up for the loss of trade.” He moved restlessly in his chair. “We’ll be here another fortnight now. May the Christ bend Eorpwald Sulkmouth over a heavenly bench and fuck him!” He slammed both hands on the chair. “Someone bring me a drink!”

* * *

In York, birds were eating the last of the hornbeam nuts, the hazelnuts had been gathered, and the ash between the north pasture and the east fields pollarded. Everywhere smoke rose into the hard blue sky: fragrant ash from the hearth, keeping them warm; applewood smouldering under butchered pig, turning it to bacon; thorn-brush coals roasting hazelnuts.

Cian one day started talking to Hild again, though there were odd moments of silence, quick looks that she couldn’t read, and every time she considered asking him, she found she couldn’t. Their friendship grew back, like tree bark growing over a wound. But they did not fight anymore. “It’s different now,” was all he said. And, again, Hild couldn’t bring herself to ask him why. She sparred sometimes with Oeric, but it wasn’t the same.

She helped her mother persuade the queen that, even tucked up in Derventio with a swollen belly, she and her women could make embroideries more efficiently; talk Osfrith into squeezing his thegns just a little harder; and make sure the dyeing and fulling of cloth didn’t slow despite the fading light. Then she turned her mind to keeping abreast of news from everywhere. The priests had had a network before Paulinus unravelled it. Hild would reweave it, to her own purpose.

* * *

In the woodland south of the site cleared for the wīc, Hild had to reassure two thin and owl-eyed charcoal burners that she wasn’t a wraith from the long ago; she was looking for the hut of a woman called Linnet. Here, see, she was bringing Linnet and her old mother a sack of hazelnuts. Charcoal burners were often strange; not getting enough sleep for weeks led to a tendency to visions. And a gesith-tall maid draped in gold was not something you saw every day. She gave them a handful of nuts, and the earthiness of the little brown nuggets seemed to persuade them. They pointed her to a narrow path. Her boots crunched on the fallen leaves.

At the hut, Hild knocked on the doorpost.

Linnet’s mother opened the door.

“It’s you, then.”

Hild agreed it was.

“And what’s that?”

“Don’t be rude,” Linnet said, moving her mother aside. She leaned through the door, peered behind Hild, and frowned. “You’re on your own, lady?”

“As you see.” Hild shifted her sack to both hands and held it out. “Hazelnuts. I have more than I can use.”

“Tuh,” said Linnet’s mother. “Doesn’t everyone, this year?”

Linnet took the sack.

“They’re from my own land in Elmet. Fresh and fresh. Elmet’s—”

A pig squealed from behind the hut, a bubbling jagged shriek that reminded Hild of Lindum, the fallen wailing and begging, the sow rooting in the Lindsey man’s belly.

“What are they doing to the poor thing?”

“It’s my sons. They’re young and don’t yet have the hang of it. But, as Mam says, they have to learn sometime. Will you come in?”

* * *

Cian sat cross-legged on his folded cloak by the hearth, whittling hard white hornbeam. He hummed tunelessly, concentrating on the wood. His fingers worked. Firelight glinted red-gold in his hair. His throat apple moved as he hummed. His clothes smelt of the crisp green-apple smoke of burning birch from the hearth of Wen, the young widow with the freckles, who shaved the priests and those of the king’s men who liked smooth chins.

“What are you making?”

He smiled and held it out: a horse. “Du likes horses.” Du was Wen’s toddler. Before she could stop it, Hild was imagining Wen stropping her razors on the velvety skin of birch-bracket fungus, Cian leaning back, head on her breast, Wen holding his chin with one hand, holding the razor against his throat with the other. They were both naked.

She poured mead. Gwladus was in the other room, brushing the mud out of her cloak. If you must keep visiting these hovels, she’d said, at least try not to tread in the pig shit.

“Will you paint it?”

“Um? I hadn’t thought to.” He drew his knife carefully down the tail, and again, blew away the shavings, hummed some more.

“Rhin sent twoscore sacks of nuts and a flitch of bacon from the mene wood. I sent a score and the bacon back. I would have sent everything but Morud tells me they truly have more nuts than they can use. So does everyone this year. Except the squirrels.” The squirrels were almost frantic. And the newly arrived rooks were building low to the ground. “It won’t be an easy winter.”

Cian examined his horse. “Is it ever?” He set the horse on the hearth. In the flickering light, it seemed to be trotting. It stood perfectly, as his animals always did.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

He looked at her. “It’s just a horse.” She looked away, sipped at her mead. He leaned back on his hands. “So how’s the rest of the mene? Still wet?”

“Rhin tells me he has twoscore and six souls under his charge. He says the harvest was good. There’s more land under the plough—and it’s draining well. He says, too, that the crayfish from the beck are tasty and go well with pepper. If he could but get some.”

He laughed. His lips were very red. “The poor man, suffering crayfish without pepper. I might send him a sack. When is Morud going back?”

“He’s already there. I sent him out again with the nuts and bacon. Though perhaps he stopped to talk to his aunt. Lweriadd sends her best love to Lord Boldcloak, by the bye.”

He nodded. Nothing out of the ordinary now in being called lord and Boldcloak. Cian, king of Rheged. It could happen. At least the queen was still in Derventio. No doubt she’d make it to York for Yule, but perhaps by then she would be more concerned with her belly than with marrying her godson to poor mad Rhianmelldt.

Someone entered the other room; she heard voices. If it was important, Gwladus would let them in.

Cian stretched, turned the horse the other way. “Perhaps next time Rhin will send us salmon.”

“Do you remember the story you used to tell about the salmon of Elmet? Tell me again.”

He poured himself more mead, sipped, put his cup down, and opened his hands. “Once upon a time, if there was such a time, nine hazel trees grew around a pool. Now, these trees were sacred trees, and the pool a sacred pool, and in the pool lived a throng, a rush, a river of salmon. Every year the hazel trees dropped their nuts in the pool. Every year the salmon rose up and ate the nuts. These nuts, as everyone knows, were creamy and fat not only with goodness but with wisdom. The fish ate the nuts and grew wise in their turn, and as they grew wiser they grew more spots. One day—”

“Lady.” Gwladus stood at the curtain. “The boy is back. He has news from his aunt, news the king doesn’t yet have.”

Hild nodded. Gwladus lifted the curtain and Morud burst in and dropped to one knee. He was trembling with excitement. Or perhaps exhaustion. He must have run half the way from Elmet. Hild stifled her answering longing to run, to match staff to blade, to command with her own voice instead of others’.

Morud poured out the news from the British priest web, three main points.

Oswald Iding, his brother Osric the Burnt, and the Dál Riata under the prince Domnall Brecc had won great renown at the battle of Ard Corann across the North Channel in Ireland. They’d killed Fiachnae mac Demmáin of the Dál Fiatach. Domnall Brecc, the son of Eochaid, king of the Dál Riata north of Alt Clut, had declared the Idings brothers and heroes, high among Dál Riatans.

The men of Alt Clut had now sent an envoy to the Dál Riata, undisputed lords of the Scots and Irish. Hild remembered her first war trail, the way the men of Alt Clut had crossed themselves and not let her join their councils. The king sitting on the rock of Alt Clut, Hild standing tall and prophesying of Bebbanburg.

Rhoedd of Rheged was rumoured to be considering an offer for his daughter, though no one knew whose. Whoever married Rhianmelldt would one day sit by the fountain in Caer Luel, her fountain, while he laid plans to rally the men of the north…

She stood, and Gwladus was draping her newly brushed cloak, before Morud had quite finished. Hild gulped her mead, held it out to be refilled, gulped again. The king wouldn’t like any of her news. “Find Oeric,” she told Gwladus. “Find my mother. Be ready for anything when I get back.” She looked at Cian. “Anything.”

She wondered how it felt to be Cian, or to be an Iding, and fight for a place with muscle and bone, not just words. Fiachnae mac Demmáin dead. She remembered cutting open his man’s arm. But she couldn’t remember why it had upset her so.

* * *

When she got back they were all waiting: her mother, Begu, Oeric, Morud, Gwladus… No, not all. Not Cian. Hadn’t he understood? Of course he had.

Gwladus took her cloak, shot a look at Oeric that Hild didn’t understand, and brought her a cup of mulled wine. Hild sat opposite her mother. Sipped.

Eventually Breguswith said, “Well, you’re not dead.”

“I might be by next summer.” She sipped some more. “I had to promise him a son.”

Breguswith’s spine went rigid.

“Don’t,” Hild said. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Her mother looked at her. There was always a choice. But in a fight you risked all on an opening; you didn’t think about what happened if you missed. “I told him the bad news, told him it was going to be a bad winter in other ways, too—”

“How do—”

“It will. If you stopped thinking about wool for an hour, you’d see it. So I told him that. And the Crow started talking about witches bringing misfortune. The king… you know how he is.” First the half-lidded look, then the widening eyes, the black pupils swelling like ink dropped in water, swallowing the blue centres, leaving the outer pleats of his eyes green and glistening, swarming like flies looking for something to eat, someone to hurt to make himself feel strong and safe. “So I told him it would be a hard winter, yes, but that he was strong and canny and his land rich, that the gods would grant him a son, a fine strong son, born into a Christian marriage, one blessed by the pope. A pope who, with the conversion of so many people, would be happy to call him king of all the Anglisc, happy to call him so to the Franks and the Jutes, happy to bless his heir. Heir to the overkingship of all the Anglisc. So what, in the end, would it matter about the men of the north and who they called brother and hero if he, Edwin king, could call on all the Anglisc?”

A boy. And healthy. Two risks, not one. But it was done.

She finished her wine, held the cup out for more. “Is there any bread? I’m starved.”

Oeric cleared his throat. “There’s more news, lady.”

Hild stared. “More?”

“It’s not urgent,” Gwladus said.

“How do we know?” Oeric said. “It’s a letter.”

Hild held out her hand. Red wax, a goose. “It’s from Hereswith.” She broke it, read quickly. “She has a daughter, fine and strong.”

“When?” Breguswith said. “What colour are her eyes?”

Hild held out the letter, then remembered her mother couldn’t read. “It doesn’t say.” She smoothed the letter, so no one would see her hand trembling. Her mother couldn’t read. Her mother hadn’t noticed the signs of a bad winter. Cian wasn’t even there. Hereswith was far away, and Fursey. She had taken a double risk and there was no one to help her.

“Well, what does it say?” Begu asked.

Hereswith’s writing had improved. “The baby came just before midsummer.”

“Late,” Begu said.

Hild nodded, reading one thing, thinking another. “Æthelric is holding the fen, though he won’t challenge Ricberht.” He is happy to cower in our stinking fen and play prince to the North Folk and stallion to his pagan woman. She’d been right. She must tell Hereswith to watch what she wrote. Not everyone who could read was on their side… “Father Fursey sends his love and prayers.”

Breguswith looked at her, and her thoughts were plain to everyone in the room: They’d have to be powerful prayers if the prediction about a son didn’t come true.

“But for now,” Begu said, “you’re a grandmother. And Hild’s an aunt.” She smiled. “An aunt! What’s her name?”

Hild shook her head. “She’s didn’t say. She’s not very used to writing letters.” She turned to Oeric. “Bring me ink. And get ready for a long ride. You’re taking letters to Hereswith and to her priest, Fursey. Take two men, a pair of spare mounts each. I’ll want replies faster than fast. Morud, you’ll rest. I’ll need your eyes in half a dozen places.” Rhin had at least one wealh priest hiding with him. One of them could reshave his forehead and get up to Rheged, with Morud, and take the lie of the land. With the Idings ascendant, no man of the north would talk to Edwin’s Anglisc now, priest or gesith. And now was not the time to stop being right.

Загрузка...