Hild

Author’s Note

Hild was real. She was born fourteen hundred years ago in Anglo-Saxon England. Everything we know about her comes from the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, the foundational text of English history.[1] The first half of her life can be summed up in one short paragraph:

She was born circa 614, after her mother, Breguswith, had a dream about her unborn child being a jewel that brings light to the land. Hild’s father, Hereric, of the royal house of Deira, was poisoned while in exile at the court of Ceredig, king of Elmet. Her older sister, Hereswith, married a nephew of Rædwald, king of East Anglia. Hild, along with much of Edwin’s household, was baptised by Paulinus circa 627, in York. She then disappeared from the record until 647, when she reappeared in East Anglia about to take ship for Gaul to join her sister—at which point she was recruited to the church by Bishop Aidan.

We don’t know exactly where Hild was born and when her father died—or her mother. We have no idea what she looked like, what she was good at, whether she married or had children. But clearly she was extraordinary. In a time of warlords and kings, when might was right, she began as the second daughter of a homeless widow, probably without much in the way of material resources and certainly in an illiterate culture, and ended up a powerful adviser to statesmen-kings and teacher of five bishops. Today she is revered as Saint Hilda.

So how did Hild ride this cultural transformation of petty kingdoms into sophisticated, literate states? We don’t know. I wrote this book to find out. I learnt what I could of the late sixth and early seventh centuries: ethnography, archaeology, poetry, numismatics, jewellery, textiles, languages, food production, weapons, and more. And then I re-created that world and its known historical incidents, put Hild inside the world, and watched, fascinated, as she grew up, influenced and influencing. (The deeper I go, the more certain I become that I’ve caught a tiger by the tail. I’m writing the next part of her story now.)

While people in Hild’s time may have understood their world a little differently from how we understand ours, they were still people—as human as we are. Their dreams, fears, political machinations, fights, loves, and hesitations were shaped by circumstance and temperament, as are ours. Hild, though singular, was singular within the constraints of her time. Her time was occasionally brutal.

I don’t pretend to be an historian. Although I did my utmost not to contravene what is known about the early seventh-century material culture, languages, natural world, power politics, and individuals of the British Isles, this is a novel. I made it up.

Hild would have encountered at least four languages on a regular basis: Old Irish (Irish), Ancient British (Brythonic), Latin, and Old English (Anglisc).

I won’t attempt to codify the pronunciation of Old Irish; it’s defeated better than me.

Ancient British is easier. If you think of it in the same terms as modern Welsh, you’ll get a sense of how to proceed. Every letter is sounded, c is pronounced k, dd as th, ff as v, rh as hr, and u, g, and w can be… mercurial. So:

Cian: KEE-an

Gwladus: OO-la-doose

Arddun: AR-thun

Rhroedd: HRO-eth

Urien: IRRI-yen

Uinniau: oo-IN-NI-eye (the short form sounds very like Winny)

Latin sounds much as it looks with the exception of v, which sounds like w. Consonants are hard (g as in go, and c as k).

Old English is a particular and deliberate tongue, with every consonant and vowel sounded, r’s trilled, and dipthongs accented on the first element. Some simplified rules include pronouncing:

æ: like the a in cat

sc: sh, as in ship

g: sometimes y, as in yes

īc: usually as itch

f: sometimes as v, as in very

ð: th, as in then

So:

Gipswīc: Yips-witch

gesith: yeh-SEETH

gemæcce: yeh-MATCH-eh

thegn: thayn

ætheling: ATH-ell-ing

scop: SHOW-p

Anglisc: ANG-glish

Eanflæd: AY-on-vlad

seax: sax

Yffi: IFF-y

Hereric: herr-EHR-itch

Wilnoð: oo-ILL-noth