Hild: A Novel by Nicola Griffith Read Free Book Online Page A

windows up there. But she wasn’t cold.
    Wood coals glowed in a series of pits down the centre of the room. You could lay a herd of cows on those coals, end to end. Torches roared and rushed in their brackets along the high second-storey wall (how had the housefolk lit those? ladders?) and matching torches burnt less vigorously along the inner colonnades, behind the benches where the men sat in two long—long, long—rows facing one another across the fire pit. The walls were draped with tapestries and smaller hangings brocaded in gold and stitched with jewels. The shadows gleamed.
    In the centre of the right-hand row was Edwin’s bench. He wore red. Four huge bands glittered on his left arm, three on his right. Royal bands. Every time he reached for bread, muscles in his neck and shoulder bunched and corded. Any one ring would, she knew, make her cup seem light. His sons, Eadfrith and Osfrith, sat on his right; Lilla, his chief gesith, on his left. As Hild approached slowly with her cup, Edwin looked at her and put down his bread. The scop played a dramatic chord on his lyre. Many turned to look and saw the girl in yellow and blue, carrying gold. Conversation dropped from deafening to loud.
    Hild moved with as much grace as she could muster until she stood before Edwin and slightly to his left so that her back was not quite turned to the guests—British in Anglisc clothes—across the way.
    “Edwin king,” she said as loud as she could, and because her voice was higher than any other voice in hall it cut through the din and the hall quieted more. Now she could hear distinctly the hiss and roar of the torches. “My king,” she said. And her carefully prepared speech fled. What could she say before so many that any would want to hear? “Great King. For you, a drink.” And she held out the cup. She nearly lost her balance.
    Edwin, smiling, stood, leaned over the table, and took the cup in one hand. “I will lighten it for you,” he said, and took a great swallow. The gold at his temple and throat and arms, pinned to his chest and along his belt, winked. He handed it back. Hild took it carefully. Then she turned to the eldest ætheling, Eadfrith, who stood and drank, then to his brother, Osfrith. All around her, men began to stand. Her arms ached, but she held the cup out straight, as though it weighed nothing. She moved down the bench to the chief gesith, held it out.
    “Ah, empty it for the maid, Lilla,” Edwin said. “She can barely hold it.”
    The gesith laughed and swallowed once, twice, three times, then turned it upside down to show it empty. The crowd roared. Hild stood straighter. The weight of the brooch at her chest was terrible. She looked over at the houseman behind Edwin’s chair.
    “The cup is empty,” she said.
    He ran with his jar all the way down to the end of the bench and all the way back up to Hild, where he knelt and poured into the proffered cup. How did he do that without seeming to look?
    She said clearly, using her stomach the way the great hounds belled when hunting, “Fill it high. Then bring your jar, in case our guests have a great thirst.” She knew full well that now the guests would feel it necessary to empty the cup twice over, and then she would go back to Edwin and he would have to maintain Anglisc prowess and drink more than those British in Anglisc clothes. And wasn’t that the point of a feast, to drink and sing? She remembered Ywain in Ceredig’s hall saying, Ah, if you make men drink they will sing, and if they sing, they are happy, and if they are happy, they throw gold to the harper and compliments to their guests. And Onnen had told her who was among the guests.
    She spilled not a drop, and when she got to the guest bench, she held the cup to the head guest, who stood, and his entourage with him. “Dunod ap Pabo,” she said. “Drink and be welcome.” Then, quietly, in British, as he took the cup, “If your lady wife were here, I would give to her greetings as