Chapter 7 | Visitors Bearing Troubling News
Hild's Tale | A Serialised Historical Fiction Novel
This is Chapter 7 of Hild’s Tale, a historical fiction novel based on (though not tied to) real events that took place in the kingdom of the Northumbrians during the late seventh and early eighth centuries. Abbess Hild, or Saint Hild as she later became known, was a woman who defied social and political expectations to become one of the most powerful people - yes, people, not women - in seventh-century England. Despite this, she was sidelined in the major contemporary histories; this story aims to give back the spotlight she so rightly deserves.
Chapter 6 saw Hild ripped from her home at Bamburgh into exile at the royal Northumbrian court, following her father’s disobedience. His dispute with King Edwin over the worship of Jesus versus their ancestral gods came to a head after an invitation to join the king for his inaugural Christ-masse feast. Edwin stormed into Bamburgh’s great hall in a rage and demanded that the family return with him to York, where he could keep a closer eye on their rebellious streak.
📚 You can read all previous chapters at the link below.
Chapter 7 | Visitors Bearing Troubling News
“Brother Bede?”
A pause ensued as she studied his face.
“Brother Bede?” she repeated, this time a little louder and a little closer to him.
Ælfwynn checked the door quickly over her shoulder, then leaned across to shake his shoulder as she shouted, “Brother Bede! Please wake up!”
His eyes flickered open and he looked straight at her, dazed and confused.
“Brother Bede, you have visitors, in the great hall.”
In the long hours since he had fallen asleep, the hearth had grown cold; Sister Ælfwynn’s breath frosted the air as she spoke to him. He eased himself up from the chair stiffly, rubbing his hands over his face and slapping his cheeks gently to encourage some life back into his body. Everything ached, his body no longer protected by youth against awkward chair-bound sleeping positions.
“Were you here all night?”
He yawned. “Mmm. I was trying to read as much of this-” he signalled to the dishevelled pile of papers at his feet- “as I could before the candle burned out. Turns out the candle had more durability than I do!” He squatted down to pick up the precious parchment copy of the Life Hild had written before her death.
Feeling Sister Ælfwynn’s hand upon his back, he paused and looked up at the nun. “Go, see your visitors. I’ll do that for you.”
Peering over his shoulder at the desk piled high with wooden boxes of charters and stacks of odd monastic records, he began to protest but she was insistent.
“And that, too. I’ll sort it. Go.” She gestured towards the door, her other hand still on his back. He smiled.
“Thank you, Sister Ælfwynn.”
Despite the freshness of the day, the great hall was dark and smokey. Much of the monastery had been built in the bright, airy style favoured by the Franks and brought to these lands under the controversial bishop Wilfrid, but the great hall was a relic of Hild’s royal life. Constructed in wood, its walls were hung with heavy tapestries depicting writhing serpents and battling birds, their bodies intertwining and bending around one another so that it became very difficult to know where one ended and another began. The great beams of the roof were carved with twisting trails, painted bright red and yellow, sparkling here and there with gold adornment. It was a spectacle like none Bede had ever seen before, so different to the cold stone hall of his own monastery.
The warmth Bede had felt as he passed through the wool hanging covering the door came from the two, perhaps three hearths that dotted the hall, each surrounded by a number of stools, woven rugs and flat cushions. Once darkness fell, of course, these would be bustling with nuns and monks chattering about their activities and disputing the theology they had heard at lunch or during their own private studies, delicate wine glasses or bronze-rimmed mead tankards in hand. As Bede strained his eyes in the darkness that morning, however, there was just two groups huddling by the hearths, cloaks wrapped tightly around them.
He caught the eye of those by the nearest fire, smiled briefly, then looked away to continue searching for the visitors Sister Ælfwynn told him about, wondering if they were hidden beneath the low sloped roof towards the edges of the hall.
“Brother Bede!”
He smiled weakly. It was the nun whose eye he caught, in the group by the hearth. She signalled for him to come over to them and stood up to greet him.
“Brother Bede, these men are visitors from your monastery. They’ve come here with a message for you from the king.”
While she was talking, four of the men around the hearth raised themselves up to their feet and he smiled broadly as he recognised Brothers Alfred, Eormenbert, Æthelric, and Augustine.
He turned to face the nun, noticing for the first time how pretty she was, the gentle light of the fire in the brazier dancing across her cheeks, a curled wisp of hair escaping from her veil to frame her face. Her blue eyes danced with excitement as they met his.
“Thank you for looking after them, sister…?”
“Edith. Sister Edith.” She turned to face the visitors. “And it was my pleasure, Brother Bede. Your brothers are very learned and have been telling me all about the scriptorium at Jarrow - the envy of all of us, no doubt!”
“Oh I’m not sure about that, Sister Edith,” he chuckled. “They haven’t seen the work of the sisters here: the illuminations they are able to produce are of a far, far higher quality than any man could ever achieve.”
She broke his gaze, looking down at her hands. “You flatter us too much, Brother Bede. You’ll have to excuse me now, brothers: I am needed in the weaving rooms. Good day,” she nodded at Bede, then the others, and hurried from the hall out into the whirling snow.
Bede smiled, chuckling under his breath as he watched her leave, then turned to his visitors, hugging each of them in turn by way of proper greeting. They shared news of life back at Jarrow for a few minutes as they huddled round the fire, mulled wine warming them from the inside, and then Alfred shared the real reason behind their surprise visit.
“King Ceolwulf visited Jarrow last week. He was there to talk to the abbot about various matters, and he was very interested to know how your Historia is going.”
Bede groaned. Ceolwulf had commissioned the Historia Ecclesiastica in which Hild’s Life would feature as one of many parts, but apart from presenting the finished manuscript to the king, Bede hadn’t thought there would be any royal involvement in its production.
“That good eh, brother?” Eormenbert slapped him on the back.
He managed a half smile as he began telling them about the first-hand account of Hild’s life that Abbess Ælfflæd had presented him with during the first week of his stay, and the damning revelations it contained about the abbess they had all come to revere in the decades following her death.
“I just don’t know how I can weave together a tale that foregrounds her greatness. So far all I’ve read is disappointing.”
“Surely it will get better though, right?” Æthelric asked. “When she becomes abbess? She was spectacular - otherwise she wouldn’t have been asked to take part in the Synod of Whitby. Can’t you just skip over the parts about her pagan father?”
A hand slipped into the huddle of men and filled his cup with hot wine; he nodded thanks.
He rubbed his forehead. “I can’t just skip it, Æthelric: Ceolwulf wants each of these holy lives to show God’s glorious plan from start to finish. He wants them to be an example for godly living to all who read it.”
“But if she starts as a pagan and is saved for Christ and ends up becoming a powerful figure in the Church through God’s saving grace,” countered Æthelric, “surely that is an extremely compelling example for our countrymen who persist in their worship of idols?”
Bede stared at his cup, digging his fingernail into the join between the soft wood and glistening bronze rim. He kept his eyes fixed on the cup as he spoke.
“Are you suggesting that I include everything, brother? Even the parts where she talks about the lovers she took in her youth?”
Bede’s voice had been so low that it had almost been a whisper, but the shock of his brothers seemed to dispense a heavy, thick silence throughout the hall, broken only by the crackling of the fire.
He drained his cup, feeling its warmth spread throughout his body, his ears ringing and head feeling fuzzy despite the early hour. Ceolwulf’s commission was beginning to wear him down.
“I’m not sure why she saw fit to include it - seems very odd to me,” Bede said. “But it’s there and I need to do something with it because she clearly thought it was important to the story of the monastery.”
“Perhaps she never intended the Life to be read by others?” Alfred suggested.
Bede shook his head. “It’s addressed to those reading her Life to learn about the way God used her in the establishment of the monastery. She says the nuns asked her to write it down. I can’t see her anticipating that it wouldn’t be read by anyone, which makes it so strange - nay, uncomfortable, troubling - that she included the details about her life before she was saved for Christ.”
A figure gestured to refill his cup but he shook his head; he’d had enough for the time being. He looked up to see that they had been served by Sister Edith, who clearly hadn’t been needed in the weaving rooms after all, and offered her a warm smile by way of thanks. He prayed silently that she hadn’t heard their conversation about the holy abbess’s lovers.
Bede stood stiffly, hands on his knees as he rose to his full height.
“Brothers, I must be off to see what Abbess Hild has in store for me today. I expect that Abbess Ælfflæd has offered you a bed for the night and if you wish to help me in my task you can find me in the library where there are hundreds of miscellaneous documents relating to the abbey that need reading; few of them will be as shocking as Hild’s account I’m sure. For now, I must bid my leave.”
As he strode across the hall, Bede hoped that he would find Sister Ælfwynn still in the library. He had a lot of questions to ask her about her cousin Hild.
You’ve been reading Hild’s Tale, a serialised historical fiction novel by Holly Brown.
The next instalment will be available on Wednesday 26th March, exclusively on Substack. I hope you enjoy it!
Did you enjoy Chapter 7 of Hild’s Tale?
You can read my previous novel, Bertha’s Tale, at the link below. In a similar vein to Hild’s Tale, it presents the story of England’s first Christian queen, Bertha of Kent, and her battle to evangelise her husband Æthelberht, overlord of the Southumbrian kingdoms. Though this story is rooted in history, Bertha was largely pushed to the sidelines in contemporary records and later histories, so much of her story here is a creative reconstruction, built on over a decade of academic research into early medieval England, to put her back into the spotlight where she deserves to be.
Loved the description of the great hall! A fantastic reminder that this period in history was far from as dark and grey as it is often imagined.