Nicola Griffith. Hild.
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013.
Review by: Hilary Fox
(hilary.fox@wayne.edu)
Most Anglo-Saxonists
know St. Hild of Whitby, who presides over her pages of Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History, as a teacher, administrator, and
midwife of early English Christianity. The Hild of Nicola Griffith’s
novel of the same name is not the energetic, saintly mother to monks
and nuns described by her venerable biographer; instead, she is the
Hild of the thirty-three years before the habit, who is most
decidedly not a saint but still embodies the energy and
determination that Bede, in his few paragraphs on her, can only hint
at.
As Griffith points out
in her notes, and as Anglo-Saxonists also know, little is known about
Hild’s life prior to her foundation of Whitby. According to Bede,
she is the daughter of Hereric, nephew to Edwin of Northumbria, and
his wife Breguswith. When Hild and her sister Hereswith were still
girls, Hereric died by poison; his death sent his widow and two
daughters to Edwin’s court, where eventually thirteen-year-old Hild
was baptized along with the rest of Edwin’s house by Paulinus of
York. Hild’s childhood and adolescence are the focus of Griffith’s
novel, which sets out not to reaffirm Bede’s hagiography, but to
question it, in order to find out the source of Hild’s reputation
as counselor to kings and prelates. Griffith finds it not in
Breguswith’s vision of her daughter as the light of the world, but
in Hild’s ability to read patterns and the necessity of exploiting
every resource at hand—mental, physical, spiritual—in the service
of survival.
Breguswith’s
vision of a visionary daughter is the centerpiece of Bede’s
portrayal of Hild’s exemplary piety and influence. One night, in
the course of a dream that seems to portend Hereric’s death,
Breguswith discovers a bright necklace beneath her robe, shining so
brightly its light spreads throughout Britain. In Hild,
however, her daughter’s light is not the light of steadfast faith
that guides lesser mortals on the path to Heaven: it is a light
carefully crafted to turn keen insight into prophecy, prophecy into
counsel, and counsel into survival for two women, Breguswith and her
handmaiden, Onnen, as well as their children: Hild, Hereswith, and
the sisters’ half-brother by Hereric, Cian. Indeed, despite its
frequent invocations of prophecy and second sight, and the elves and
sidhe that lurk on the margins of superstition, Hild is
devoted not to fantasy or the supernatural as such, but to how women
make practical use of the uncanny to secure their place in a world
hedged about by men and violence.
While Bede’s Hild is
destined to become a saint, Griffith’s Hild has wyrd, the
“fully-fixed” fate of The Wanderer and Beowulf,
fate which “goes as ever it must.” Her wyrd is to function
as the agent of her people’s survival, and so she takes on multiple
roles in the dangerous court of her uncle: first she is seer, then
warrior, then judge, then, in her own word, butcher-bird, leading the
slaughter of bandits coming out from the lands of Edwin’s rivals.
Like a chameleon, she adapts herself to each role demanded of her;
the people of the court and the lands through which she passes see
her not as a girl, but as a being occupying some strange, hybrid
space between elf, giant, and hag. Paulinus of York, on his mission
to convert Edwin, thinks she’ll go up in smoke when she receives
the chrism. Almost unnaturally tall and large-built, with red-gold
hair and uncanny eyes, Hild’s appearance encourages such
speculation, speculation she puts to good use in moments when Edwin’s
ferocity, pride, and ill-judgment threatens both his rule and the
safety of Hild’s family. Hild’s adaptability is born of
necessity; the brightness of her counsel, like the brightness of the
seax she carries, is not supernatural, but carefully crafted, the
product of conscious deliberation and the knowledge of what will
happen if she fails, or proves useless to Edwin’s plans. On
occasion, such as when Hild gambles everything to tell Edwin
Æthelburh will give birth to a healthy son and heir as a crucial
juncture in Northumbrian politics, or when her brother-friend Cian
foolishly marries the daughter of one of Edwin’s many rivals, we
are reminded that, for all her uncanniness, Hild is only human, and
her sight has definite limits. When Hild repeatedly tells herself she
is “the light of the world,” the phrase is not so much an
invocation of otherworldly power as a reminder of the role her two
mothers—Breguswith and necessity—have thrust upon her.
The politics and
familial relationships of the novel are a bog to get trapped in, and
it’s understandable why one would need a seer to make sense of
them. Because of this, one of the strengths of Hild is its
insistence on treating its characters—Anglo-Saxon, British,
Irish—as men and women intimately versed in the exigencies of
political and practical survival. Negotiations for marriage and
alliance are as detailed as descriptions of sheep-shearing, dairying,
and hunting. The Christians—prominent among them are the future
saint Fursey, Paulinus, and James the Deacon—are not the iconic
Scripture-bearing figures pointing the way to a bright Christian
future, but representatives of a foreign king whose claims to divine
aid must be weighed against those of the old faith. The conversion of
Edwin’s court is not spiritual, but immensely practical, and is
acknowledged as such by almost everyone in attendance. Begu, Hild’s
companion, frequently punctures moments of solemnity with hilarious
conjectures on the nature of God and the Holy Spirit—and falls
asleep on Hild’s shoulder while listening to the conversion sermon.
For those who know
their Anglo-Saxon church history, there’s much to delight in the
backstories of the men of the Ecclesiastical History. Fursey,
Hild’s tutor, is as involved in court intrigues as she is, and has
a taste for fine food and drink. James the Deacon, an Italian trapped
in the cold north, enjoys wine and leading the choir—a cheerful
counterpart to “the Crow,” Hild’s name for the dark, brooding
Paulinus. We even have a glimpse of a young Cædmon, still herding
cows in the hills above Hild’s home in Mulstanton.
The world in which Hild
and her kinswomen move is a world unlike the isolated, insular world
most commonly imagined upon hearing the phrase “early Middle Ages”
(or worse, “the Dark Ages”). While the focus remains steadfastly
on the complicated politics surrounding Edwin’s court, the threads
of politics and trade inevitably lead elsewhere: to Ireland,
Scotland, across the channel to Francia and even further, to
Rome—and, beyond that, hints of the Silk Road and the Spice
Islands. Pepper, silk, olive oil, incense, and Rhenish wine have
their places alongside the cows, hunting dogs, and sheep, as well as
the plants the women gather for cooking and healing. When the women
sit weaving, their weaving makes clothes for the court, cloth for
trade, and the fabric for marriage, alliance, and diplomacy.
Griffith’s research on the archaeology and every day life of the
period is extensive, and pays off, as scenes of everyday life become
backdrops for Hild’s consideration and meditation on how to guide
Edwin down safer paths.
Hild’s powers of
observation are also the powers of Griffith’s prose. Most 500+ page
novels would drag under the weight of description, but Hild’s
ability to “see” the future is her ability to read the present,
to identify patterns, to extrapolate, and her insight into her world
is our insight into her political maneuvering. But Hild is also a
girl of thwarted, desperate passion; her anger, determination, and
loneliness are described as acutely as a rare ramble in the woods
with her friends. In the moments she’s allowed release—in bed
with Gwladus, her slave, or in her sparring sessions with Cian—we
are allowed to see the extent to which Hild’s career has forced her
into self-discipline, but cannot entirely tame her. In a world where
she can allow herself few close friendships, her relationships with
Begu and Cian are her touchstones, and are all the more real and
affecting for Hild’s otherwise isolated life.
Hild is
concerned with what goes on behind the making of hagiography, what
gets left out and what is carefully modified in order to paint the
icons it does. Griffith’s Hild, like her name, is a girl of
battles, not the woman who oversees an influential abbey and serves
as mother to her monks and nuns. At the end of the novel, she is
still very much a part of the secular world, embarking on her next
mission to keep herself, her friends, and her people safe, but we
also see the qualities that must lie behind the vigorous abbess of
Bede’s few paragraphs, brought brilliantly to life.
Hilary Fox
Wayne State University
Wayne State University
