Ten questions and answers about Hild

detail from the cover of Hild *

This blog began in 2008 with a medievalist blogger's meme game about favourite historical characters. (I was tagged by Michelle of Heavenfield.) I desperately wanted to talk about Hild, the main character of the novel I was working on at the time. But I had no blog. I built one.

So it was oddly satisfying to get tagged five years later for another meme just after I finished working on the copyedits of that novel, Hild.

Here are the ten meme questions and my answers.

1. What is the working title of your book?
The final title is Hild. But it began as Beneath (I wanted to turn over all the early medieval stones and look at what was wriggling on the underside). As I progressed the working title morphed from Light of the World to God in the Nettles to Butcher Bird to As It Must. But in the end my agent said, "Why don't you just call it Hild?" And I couldn't find a good answer: the book, after all, is about the formation and rise of Hild, a child and then woman with a matchless mind who was at the heart of the changes that made England.

2. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
From my publisher's catalogue copy: "A brilliant, lush, sweeping historical novel about the rise of the most powerful woman of the Early Middle Ages: Hild."

But I started off with a question: "In a time of warlords and kings, when might is right, the three year-old Hild, along with her mother and sister, is homeless, hunted, and without material resources. Yet by the end of her life she is the first great abbess of the north, teacher of bishops and counsellor to kings: universally revered. How did she do it?" In other words, I built the seventh century then grew Hild inside to see what would happen. That's what I do: I write to find out.

3. Where did the idea come from?
On some level I've been working towards this since I began my very first novel. Hild is the sum and summit of all I know—in terms of writing and life. But I can tell you the exact moment I became aware of Hild's existence.

In my early twenties, I was living in Hull, a depressed (and depressing) industrialised city on the river Humber (the southern boundry line of Deira, which became part of Northumbria). For a break, my partner and I went north up the coast, to Whitby.

The first thing I saw at Whitby was the ruined abbey on the north cliff. It's an astoundingly gothic silhouette, mesmerising. I didn't wait to unpack but climbed the hundred and ninety-nine steps with my gear on my back. It's difficult to describe how I felt when I first stepped across the threshold of the ruin abbey. It was as though the history of the place punched up through the turf and coursed through me. I knew my life had changed, I just didn't know how.

After that, every year, sometimes twice a year, I visited Whitby. I walked the coastline. I roamed the moors. I spent hours at the abbey. I started picking up brochures and leaflets and imagining how it might have been long, long ago. Even after I moved to the US and started work on what would become my first novel, I came back once a year.

On one visit to England, I picked up a battered 1959 Pelican paperback edition of Trevelyan's A Shortened History of England. I started reading it on the plane on the way back. I read about the Synod of Whitby in 664 and, frankly, don't remember the rest of the flight. This, I thought. This Synod was a pivot point in English history.

Two or three years later, I stumbled across Frank Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England. And I was off. For the last twelve years I've been groping my way through ever more modern scholarship. I've been reading bilingual versions of Old English and Old Welsh poetry, absorbing the latest translations of Isidore's Etymologies, thumbing through translations of Bede, thinking, thinking, dreaming in the rich rolling rhythms of another time and place.

4. How long did it take you to write the first draft?
Three or four years.

5. Who or what inspired this book?
Hild herself. Plus I was born about three miles from where I imagine Hild spent her very early childhood. I grew up where she grew up—in what was Elmet, a part of Yorkshire. As a child I might have walked the hills she walked, climbed trees in the same valleys, poked sticks in the same streams, watched the same shaped clouds, listened to the same seas on the same coast. It felt inevitable.

6. What genre is it?
Literary fiction. Epic page-turner. Historical fiction. Bildungsroman. Political thriller. An ethnography of the seventh century/ethnogenesis of the English.**

7. What other books would you compare yours to?
I was born in Yorkshire in the twentieth century, but as a teenager I rode the stony slopes of Mary Renault's Macedon in winter and gazed out over the fjords of Sigrid Undset's Norway in summer. Alongside Alexander I led bronze-age cavalry and clashed with my father; with Kristin Lavransdatter I managed a fourteenth-century household and refused to behave. I lived their story as deeply as I lived my own; their lessons were my lessons. And from the moment I realised I would write about Hild, I wanted her story to be as powerful to readers as Alexander's and Kristen's had been for me. I wanted readers to live and breathe the seventh century, to reach the end of the book and nod: Yes, that's how it was.

8. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
The book is represented by Stephanie Cabot of the Gernert Company and will be published November 12th by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (In hardcover for $28—according the very nifty app isbn.nu—and, I assume, in a variety of digital formats. No info yet on audio or foreign editions.) Publishing-wise, this has been the best experience of my life so far. At FSG I feel part of a smart, agile, committed team. Everyone is behind the book. It's deeply exciting. This is how publishing should be.

9. Which actor would you choose to play your character in the movie?
I haven't a clue. Several actors would be needed to play Hild. The book opens when she's three and closes when she's nineteen. But—and it's probably heresy to say this—I think the novel is too long for a movie. It might make for a splendid premier cable series though: murder, intrigue, starvation, religion, war, sex, love, betrayal, lust, ambition, change...

10. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
Here's my hope: that Hild will do for Saint Hild and seventh-century Britain what Hilary Mantel did for Cromwell, and Mary Renault did for Alexander—bring a whole world to life for the reader through the lens of a singular character who changed history, one who did so by acting at the very limits of the constraints of her time.

Also, I like to think admirers of British nature writers—Roger Deakin, Rupert Macfarlane, Richard Mabey—might find something to enjoy.

A handful of people have already read it:

"Nicola Griffith is an awe-inspiring visionary, and I am telling everyone to snatch this book up as soon as it is published. Hild is not just one of the best historical novels I have ever read—I think it's one of the best novels, period. It sings with pitch perfect emotional resonance and I damn well believe in this woman and every one she engages. I finished the book full of gratitude that it exists, and longing for more." — Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina and Cavedweller

"An enthralling tale from an extraordinarily talented writer. It drew me into the volatile, dangerous world inhabited by the real Saint Hild fourteen centuries ago. The historical setting feels so real that it seemed that I was walking across the living landscape of seventh-century Britain. The characters are utterly believable in their time and place. Historical accuracy alone would make this novel a remarkable achievement, but the author has given us a thrilling story, too. Brilliant stuff!" — Tim Clarkson, author of The Picts (2010), Columba (2012) and other works. 

"What a fabulous book! Hild has all the joys of historical fiction—transportation into a strange, finely detailed world—along with complex characters and a beautiful evocation of the natural world. But the tensions of the gathering plot make Hild feel like a quick read—too quick! I fell into this world completely and was sorry to come out. Truly, truly remarkable." — Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club

The book is available for pre-order.

*  More on the cover later this week.
** My editor and publicist turn pale when I say this. 

Hild: 12 November 2013

This is the seventh draft of Hild. It is the version you will read (after some copyediting). It will be published in the US on 12th November by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

At this stage I don't know when it will be published in the UK, or by whom. I'm guessing I'll have a notion of that in three or four months. Stay tuned.

Hild is a big book: 207,000 words. Depending on book design and typeface that could translate to anything from 650 to 800 bound pages. Just the thing to curl up with before the fire and lose yourself in Hild's world as the wind howls and the hail beats on the window. That's my goal: an immersive read that is so physically, emotionally, and intellectually convincing that you feel as though you've lived another's life alongside your own.

I can't wait to get it into your hands. I'll keep you updated every step of the way.

Hild's grave

After discovering the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture I've been playing with Photoshop, imagining what Hild's grave marker might look like. (This is just a first pass. It will end up looking much better when I've futzed with it.) This is adaptated from the Hildithryth stone found at St Hilda's in Hartlepool.

My dream is that one day someone will find Hild's grave. That, using shotgun proteomics, we can find out how she died (my guess: malaria). Using strontium analysis we can figure out where she was born, where she spent various stages of her life. (I don't think she spent any time in Gaul--or Gwynedd, or Ireland--but what if she had?)

I wonder if she'd be buried with jewellery (which raises the possibility of mineralised textiles), or perhaps a book? (That would be amazing.)

I'll just have to keep dreaming...

Old Irish update

I've got all the help I need right now with my pitiful Old Irish, thank you all so much. When I've finalised the passage I'll repost it here.

Can anyone help with some Old Irish vocabulary?

In terms of writing fiction, Irish has been the bane of my life. It's my own fault; I'm lazy--or perhaps impatient is a better word--when in the grip of the work.

Twenty years ago, when I was writing Ammonite, I created an isolated tribe based on the Mongols. I was hot on the trail of the story, and used placeholder proper nouns based on Gaelic vocabulary. I meant to do the necessary research later and swap out the placeholders for the real words.

But here's the thing about fiction. It doesn't always work according to plan. The characters took on the attributes of their names. I couldn't change the Echraidhe to, say, the Buriyads, or Uaithne for, oh I don't know, Miroslava. It was too late.

Reading through Hild again, I've discovered I'm about to commit the same mistake. Early on in the book, when Hild is about ten, she encounters an old and damaged Irishman who speaks very little Anglisc (Old English). In a cursory online search I couldn't find the Old Irish I needed so I scooped up a hodge-podge of Irish words of dubious provenance, plunked them down, and surged on.

Here's how that passage reads:

The water slapped, the canes rattled, and man, girl, and dog all looked at the sky--clouds piling together, no longer tin but lead--then each other. Hild, encouraged, stood, came closer--oh, her shoes were more mudcake than leather now--and pointed at the willow man, at his white crinkly hair, and said one of the Irish words she knew, "Bán."

And he laughed toothlessly, then loosed a torrent of Irish at her. His accent was strange. She understood three words of it, cailín, maid, Sasanach, Anglisc, and ocrach, hungry, and shook her head. "Go mall," she said, slowly, and "le do thoil," please, and he said it all again. "Go mall," she said again, "lo do thoil." And Madra tilted his head and whined, and then Bán spoke one more time in a jumbled Anglisc/British/Irish mix, and Hild listened with her whole skin, the way she listened to rooks in the field or wind in the trees. She understood, she thought. He was asking her if she was hungry.

She sat in the mud--Onnen would scold her raw--offered a fist to Madra, the first dog she had allowed near her since she watched Od eat the guts of Osric's man, and repeated back to Bán as well as she could, with the words he had used, that she, the Anglisc maid, whose name was Hild, was hungry, a little, but that when she returned she would be very well provided for. And he nodded, but shook his fingers dismissively in that Irish way, just like Fursey, and tutted, and unfastened the sack at his waist and offered her half his cheese and a bite of onion, and a dip in the coarse grey salt collected in the seam of his sack.

So now I'm throwing myself on the mercy of the internets. Do you know Old Irish? Will you check/correct this for me? Or point me to a decent Old Irish glossary/phrase list?

In return I can promise my thanks--and an acknowledgement in the final copy (whether or not the passage above is cut).

Leeds

Just got back from a lightning visit to the UK. I spent a lot of time here:

Those of you who travel to conferences will probably recognise it. If I could have delayed my trip by ten days or so, I could have met some of you.

It'll happen one day. Really. Perhaps next year? Or, hmmn, damn, I'm Guest of Honour at a venerable SF convention over that weekend next year. Gaaargh!! It'll have to be 2014 then. But it'll happen. It'll most definitely happen.

Hild publishing deal

Bamburgh, painted by Norman MacKillop, used by permission

I'm delighted to anounce that Hild will be published next year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It's tentatively scheduled for autumn 2013: a big fat fall read, a perfect match for applewood fires and a snifter of Armagnac...

The announcement is up at Publishers Weekly ("...steeped in the beauty and brutality of a different age...").

It's difficult to capture the mood of a 200,000-word novel in a single paragraph. But here's the short description I sent to my agent in January:

Seventh century Britain is in transition. Small kingdoms are dissolving and merging. Edwin of Northumbria plots to become overking of the Angles using every tool at his disposal: blood, bribery, and belief. Into this world of war and wyrd is born Hild, king's niece: a child with a glittering mind, powerful curiosity, and will of adamant. Edwin is cunning and ruthless, but Hild is matchless. She carves herself a place as his advisor, a young woman at the heart of the violence, subtlety, and mysticism of the early medieval age. But kings don't trust anyone, even nieces. And at this level, the stakes are life and death.

There's a lot to be done before publication. But that's work for the future. For now, I am happy. Hild is the best thing I've ever written. I can't wait to put it in your hands. Cheers!

Beer + Joy = Satisfaction

Where Hild walked

I visited the UK in February and took the opportunity to fossick about in places Hild would have known.

Whitby Abbey, of course, has been familiar to me for years. Sadly, when I was there this time, it was shut (no doubt as a result of this). No way in. Even the cliff was fenced off. I held my phone up over the wall:

And retired, grumpily, to the pub...

...which, as it was off-season, wasn't serving any food. But, hey, the beer was tasty, and it was right opposite the harbour:

And that was it for Whitby. I hope to get back to the UK soon to try again.

On this visit, I spent most of my time in the part of Yorkshire known in Hild's time as Elmet. This is where I grew up. Most of the places I visited, therefore, were old haunts. One, though, was new to me: Aberford. In the novel, Hild visits Aberford two or or three times. This is one of the places she camped.

A few years later, many Great Events occur here--more specifically, at/in Cock Beck, which, as Hild observes in the novel, is like a fish weir for armies: funnel them into the gap between the beck and Becca Banks and pick them off at your leisure. It was mostly private land, though, so I couldn't get down into it. I took this photo from the bridge over the beck (and edited out the rubbish in the water and the Private: Keep Out! notices nailed to the trees):

I've decided that Edwin built his Elmet vill on the site of what had once been the hall of Ceredig, king of Elmet. The books opens in the heart of Ceredig's territory, in Loidis, what is present-day Leeds. But Leeds is a big place. I had to narrow it down. I chose a site on the north bank of the River Aire, where Kirkstall Abbey now lies in ruins. Why? Because I know that patch of the river, I remember how it sounds and smells--and I remember it in childhood terms. I remember with the bone-deep familiarity I needed to conjure Hild's first memories.

Here's what the Abbey looks like now:

But I spent most of my time with my back to the ruins, looking south at the river, as Hild might have done:

Hild would have climbed every single one of these trees and fished for perch at their roots.

Again, I had to edit out twenty-first- (and twentieth-, and nineteenth-) century artifacts. If I missed a few rugby goalposts, or contrails, or tourist signs, just imagine them away. (I've got so practiced at that that I hardly even see them anymore.)

As you'll have guessed by now, water is a huge part of this book, and I've saved my favourite for last: Meanwood Beck which cuts through Meanwood Park.

I spent hours here on summer days as a child: fishing for tadpoles in the beck, splitting my face open flying off an swing (by going all the way over the top bar), carrying my little sister home after she slashed her foot on broken glass (in the beck--right at this little weir, in fact), dabbling my fingers in the water, dreaming of the mill workers, tannery workers, monks...

In the book, this is Menewood. Hild falls in love with it. For a while.

York in Hild's time, part 2

A couple of weeks ago I posted my thoughts on York in Hild's time, along with some nifty (or pitiful, depending on your Photoshop skills) maps showing where I thought Edwin might have built his wic.

I've since read "Before Eoforwic: New Light on York in the 6th-7th Centuries,"* by Cecily A Spall and Nicola J Toop (Medieval Archaeology, 52, 2008):

This paper offers two new sightings...an early-Anglo-Saxon settlement (6-7th century) from just outside the city, and an extension to the Anglo-Saxon settlement (7th-9th century) already known at Fishergate. Both these settlement occupy the same gravel terrace and are only 2km apart.

I've marked them on the map below, along with the site of the previously discovered eighth-century helmet, Coppergate.

York with features relating to development of the Anglo-Saxon wic (after Spall and Toop). Click to enlarge.

Spall and Toop suggest that:

Heslington Hill appears to represent a small rural farming community that had settled on the closest upland to the Roman city by at least AD 550 and remained there into the 7th century...

However:

The best evidence for subsequent Anglo-Saxon occupation (7th-9th century) has emerged outside the fortress, on the eastern bank of the River Ouse at Fishergate. Excavations undertaken by York Archaeological Trust in the 1980s...encountered remains of a settlement of late-7th to 9th-century date: boundary ditches, postholes, stakeholes and pits... The interpretation is of a pre-determined organised settlement, with rectilinear, post-built structures, property divisions and a possible road with evidence for municipal maintenance.

Fishergate is on the east bank of both Ouse and Foss--and so just outside the area I'd marked out for Edwin's wic:

In Hild (my novel), I assume that Edwin used the Roman fort as one of the stops in his peripatetic perambulations from one royal vill to another. I assume that the hinterlands of the city supplied food for him and his entourage; that occasionally he left the fort lightly garrisoned when he was not in residence; that the city only began to be more populated on a year-round basis once Edwin had been baptised, and Paulinus urged him to consider the symbolism of investing a Roman edifice with Christian ritual and buildings.

I've imagined the wic coming into being after a visit to Gipswic, Eorpwald's East Anglian trading settlement (as part of a royal progress with double purpose: enhance his status as overking--Eorpwald's lord--and hand over his niece, Hereswith, in marriage to Æthelric, a prince of East Anglia) . Edwin saw the money Eorpwald was skimming from the operation and wanted some of that. So he fostered trade in textiles, and centred it on York.

That all collapsed, for a while, after Edwin's death and Oswald's accession. Oswald was far less influenced by Rome; he would have been content to follow his northern heritage and instincts: to avoid ruins and build afresh. Besides, no doubt he would have to spend time consolidating power, not fussing with things like his trading network.

In some ways Spall and Toop's thinking is similar to mine.

This interpretation emphasises the planned nature of the settlement and sees it as a royal centre established de novo on the banks of the Ouse, thriving as part of a polyfocal network of power, with political and ecclesiastical nuclei postulated in the legionary fortress (in the form of Edwin's church near the Minster...)

Though they differ in that they interpret this as

...inextricably linked to wider process of social change...with the concomitant increase in social stratification...

It is particularly significant for the settlement sequence at York that Heslington was abandoned at the same time as the establishment of a new settlement on the bank of the Ouse, less than 2km to the west.

I think they have a point. Most big changes comes from a series of smaller, organic changes at the wider cultural and social level. But I'm writing a novel. It makes better story sense to funnel events through the lens of a Great Man--or, rather, from the perspective of named people, in this case a Great Woman (and her mother, and her uncle, the king). I do, of course, spend a lot of time on this notion of inexorable and organic social and cultural change. Because change is what this book is about: change and the woman at its heart.

* Thanks to Sally Wilde.

Hild and Cuthbert's Gospel

** This is a cross-post from my personal blog **

This is Cuthbert's Gospel, the book that was buried at Lindisarne with St Cuthbert sometime after his death in 687. It is the earliest bound British--or even European--book to survive intact. It's tiny, a pocket Gospel, written in Latin on vellum. It's simple--no illumination, just elaborated initial letters, some with a bit of red--and beautiful.

Hild, who died just seven years before Cuthbert, might well have had a book like this. Sadly, I doubt hers would have been as fine. Her foundation at Whitby would have had a much more pioneering feel to it. The monks of Monkwearmouth/Jarrow, who are believed to have made Cuthbert's Gospel, were a slightly later generation religious, more practiced scribes and book artisans.

But the text itself, the Gospel of John, would have been familiar.

Ever since I saw this image of the prologue, I've imagined Hild reading and rereading those first three lines:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and Word was God...

This is the essence of Hild: the ability to name that which others either don't recognise or are afraid to articulate. Language is her weapon of choice. Naming is her superpower--or one of them. John would have been her Gospel of choice.

The book is now owned by the British Library which has agreed to a co-custody arrangement with Durham University and Durham Cathedral. I hope to see it one day soon.

York in Hild's time

Last week I read in the Guardian about the discovery of what could be indications of a very early Christian church and burial site beneath the current York Minster.

If the more excitable members of the team leading the excavation are right, this could be the wooden church built by Edwin, Hild's uncle:

Potentially the most significant finds are two nondescript round holes, with groundwater bubbling up through the mud. They are post holes that could date from the time of the earliest Christian church on the site [...]

Ian Milsted, of York Archaeological Trust, who is leading the excavation, downplays the significance of the post holes: the timber rotted away centuries ago, and they have found no dateable evidence, not a shard of Anglo-Saxon pottery. But his colleague Jim Williams cannot restrain his excitement: the pits are evidence for very large posts, far too big and using too valuable timber to hold up the roof of a pigsty or a hen house, just outside the walls of the Roman basilica. "I think they've got to be evidence for a significant structure – and from a period when any evidence is incredibly rare and precious."

If Williams is right, this could be the place Hild was baptised by Paulinus in 627 CE. It also means the bones found in situ might belong to some of her relatives. To me, this is all so thrilling I can hardly stand it. I'd give a great deal to be there right now, to look at the pit, to touch those bones, to know, deep down, that Hild really did exist.

I wish, too, that someone would provide a map so I could see exactly where they found those post holes.

I, of course, have already imagined how everything looks. So here are my thoughts on how Anglo-Saxon York might have looked at the time of Hild's baptism. (What follows in part speculation, part fact. There are enough links provided for you to do your own preliminary fossicking about on the way to learning enough to make up your own mind.)

In Roman times York was known as Eboracum, the major city of Northern Britain, legionary headquarters, with an inner, fortified military zone surrounded by a larger, semi-fortified colonia (civilian settlement). It sat in the fork of two rivers, the Ouse and the Foss, and at the nexus of significant roads north and south (which became known as Dere Street and Ermine Street, which in turn became the A59/A1 and A1079/A15/A10, respectively). It was important. It was large (the inner fort alone covered about 50 acres/21.5 ha). The military headquarter building (principia) was 70 meters wide.

The Romans built and rebuilt the walls and roads at various times. They built well. By Hild's time, the walls of the inner fort were still standing, and the roads were in good repair. Edwin rebuilt one tower, now known as the Anglian Tower (marked in red) with stone that was a poor match for the original, made of oolitic limestone as opposed to the beautifully cut magnesian limestone of the original. 

click to enlarge

The Roman colonia was also protected by walls, too, though only the southern half; the north, probably, was protected by marshlands created by the R. Foss spilling over on a regular basis. The Romans would have controlled this to the degree that suited them, but when they left, much of York would have been swamped.

When Edwin reclaimed York the climate was drying a bit so the ground was less swampy. He also redug and partially redrained. As a result he had to put in additional protection, notably in the form of a great thorn hedge to the west of the inner fort. He also strengthened the remains of the stone civilian walls with wood, and built wooden watch towers in the notch of the two rivers.

One thing I'm not sure about is where Edwin might have put his brand new wīc or trading area. It makes sense to me to put it between the rivers and under the eye of armed men on the walls in the wooden towers, so that's what I've done. But I dithered: that bit might still have been too marshy; maybe it should go just east of the thorn hedge. In the end, though, I couldn't resist putting it in a more open, sunny place.

Inside the fort, most of the buildings would already have been scavenged for building stone. I'm imagining the principia, the great headquarters building, still mostly standing. It would have had a great courtyard with a well, and a huge cross hall for state events. This hall I imagined as Edwin's feast hall. Perhaps some of the south-east rooms could have been made habitable again and turned into women's apartments. The rest was mostly cleared for gardens, used as storerooms, or turned into kitchens and bakehouses. One large area in the south east corner of the fort was reserved for exercise/military training. I think of it as the parade ground, the place where Edwin might have assembled his gesiths and baggage trains before marching out.

So where did Edwin build his church? That was easy: in the yard of the principia. There was a well, which Paulinus could easily have turned into a font. It would have been sheltered from the wind by the walls of the headquarters building, and it was in the exact centre of Edwin's most powerful royal vill. We know that the succeeding church, built by Oswald, was made of stone, so the odds are good that if the finds mentioned in the Guardian last week are, in fact, a church, it was the original. I like the odds.

I see no reason for Paulinus not to have followed the usual W-E alignment of Christian churches. So here's how it might have looked:

There's a lot of circumstantial evidence to support this notion. If you superimpose the outline of the current York Minster on top of a plan of the Roman fort, this is what you get:

And given the traditions of the time--to build on what went before, that is, on the same alignment and overlapping the same footprint of the original or its successor--I'm satisfied that my version of events was at least possible.

Hild gets more real every day.

Hild and the 7th century princess

Map adapted from map by Nilfanion, originally created using Ordnance Survey data [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I imagine most people have heard by now that archaeologists from Cambridge's Newnham College have discovered a previously unknown Anglo-Saxon burial site at Trumpington Meadows (on the southern city limits of Cambridge, see map), with remains dating from the mid 7th century:

The girl, aged around 16, was buried on an ornamental bed – a very limited Anglo-Saxon practice of the mid to later 7th century – with a pectoral Christian cross on her chest, that had probably been sewn onto her clothing. Fashioned from gold and intricately set with cut garnets, only the fifth of its kind ever to be found, the artefact dates this grave to the very early years of the English Church, probably between 650 and 680 AD.

This mystery woman (already dubbed by the Independent, in an otherwise very nicely detailed piece, a 'princess'; the Guardian is more, well, guarded) was buried with three others, "an unsexed invididual in his or her twenties and two other slightly younger women."

The find is exciting for a variety of reasons. One, it's a high-status bed burial, which is rare. Two, the woman/girl in the bed was wearing a gold and garnet pectoral cross, which is very rare. Three, it's possible--given the style of the cross and the sex of those buried--that this is a monastic burial, that is, an indicator of a high-status religious foundation that no one knew about until now.

But here's a nifty video that will tell you more:

Apparently the skeletons and teeth are in relatively good shape, so my hope is that strontium analysis will follow shortly. With luck, there will also be some DNA to play with. Between the two, we might be able to learn whether the people are related and where they grew up. If we're extraordinarily lucky we might find out if they died of plague. (The dates make it possible that they were caught up in the plague of Justinian, c. 664.) Plague would offer one explanation for the death of such young women without obvious wounds. (Sixteen is a little young for death in childbirth. Not impossible, just not, in my opinion, hugely likely.) Another possibility, of course, is malaria: Trumpington isn't that far from the marshy goodness of the Wash.

But who might this woman have been? Well, she could have come from almost anywhere--which is why I'd love to see the strontium data. But if I had to guess (and I'm a novelist so, hey, that's what I do) I'd say she was either a) an oblate given into the care of a foundation as a baby (note the wear on the cross) by a king of, say, East Anglia, or b) a royal daughter of one of the minor, semi-independent groups being absorbed by said East Anglians and made unavailable for marriage (and therefore alliance-building) by tucking her safely away in a church.

What interests me most about this burial is the mix of grave goods: pectoral cross and girdle gear. This makes it an early burial; in my opinion, closer to 650 than 680. It might also argue for this young woman being in the line of succession for the religious house: wearing instruments of temporal power (chatelaine), wealth (bed) and piety (gold and garnet cross).

What does all this have to do with Hild? Perhaps not much. Perhaps a great deal. Until we get more information there's no way to know. So now I'm moving into purely speculative mode.

If these women, as suggested by the Independent, died during the first sweep of plague (c. 664), Hild would have been hosting and facilitating the Synod of Whitby even as they gasped and died. If it happened before that, it's remotely possible that this young woman was Hild's niece: Hild's sister Hereswith married into the royal house of East Anglia. (In my novel I put that marriage at c. 625, though most might argue for it to be a little later.) We don't know the name/s of Hereswith's daughter/s, if any, but I gave her one, born in 627 and called Æthelwyn--Noble Joy. Perhaps when Hereswith left for Faramoutiers (or whatever foundation Bede meant by 'Cale'--I don't think Chelles had been founded), Æthelwyn had to be left behind as a hostage for good behaviour. In which case it would make perfect sense for her to be hustled into the care of the church while her brother was groomed for the throne and their mother was shunted aside by men with powerful interests.

If this young woman (let's call her Æthelwyn; it's as good a name as any), was a nun, it's extremely unlikely she died as the result of childbearing. (Yes, nuns do sometimes get pregnant, but in such a case I doubt she would have been buried with full honours.) So I'm plumping for some infectious agent. The two most obvious culprits are either plague, in which case this isn't Hild's niece, or malaria, in which case she could be.

I'm really looking forward to more information. Perhaps we should take bets: malaria or plague?

Three maps of early 7th century Britain

When a literary agent sends a novel manuscript out to acquiring editors at major publishing houses, s/he likes to send it with everything the editor might need to put the work in context. For Hild, my novel about Hild of Whitby (which of course wasn't called Whitby then), set in early seventh century Britain (the narrative spans 617 - 631 CE), this includes a map, a glossary, and a family tree for the main character/s.

I've spent the last two weeks happily constructing this supplemental material. You've already seen Hild's family tree, along with all my questions and caveats. Today it's the turn of the maps.

I've included three: my first draft attempt, the second iteration made with help from a scientist friend who downloaded GIS data, and the final (so far) representation which collates data from several stages and was polished by a friend who has mad Photoshop skills. If you only have time to look at one, look at the last one.

You can see a much bigger version of each map if you click on it.

So. Map Number One:

I think of of this as my sketch map. I made it by brazenly scanning a map from the endpapers of someone else's book (I will certainly buy the author a drink given the opportunity) and then scrubbing out the names and replacing them with my own (by the squint-and-point method--no claim to accuracy at this stage). This is where you see how sadly lacking I am in Photoshop skills. (Though my Anglo-Saxon Twitter icon might have been an early giveaway.) I hadn't the faintest idea how to make something that looked like a wall, so I just drew a thick line, then 'bit' chunks out of it with dabs of the Brush tool. I used the same tool to dab in the dots for vills and other settlements. And to create Puffin Island/Glannauc, just off the eastern tip of Anglesey/Mon.

Glannauc makes an appearance in the book. More on that later.

But this first map was never intended to be anything but an initial sketch map, a for-personal-use-only building block for the real thing.

For the second map, a friend in New York worked her academic institution's servers half to death to bring me a true projection of Great Britain, complete with relief features. I sent her the sketch map, and coordinates of anything that might be misconstrued (for example, Derventio--see below) and the names of the rivers I needed. She sent me this:

You'll see that there are one or two made up names, too, for example Mulstanton, which is a settlement on the River Esk, below the cliffs of the Bay of the Beacon/Streanæshalch/Whitby (the spellings get fixed in the next iteration). As for Derventio, I plumped for a place close to an old Roman villa, at Malton. (Yes, I know there's another Derventio near Derby, but I wasn't interested in that one, story-wise.)

But I found this map difficult to read. And it still needed territories/peoples adding, and walls, and so on. And I needed more room. So I cropped it to the size I needed, and begged for help from a photographer friend.

This is what we came up with:

If you click on the map, and then zoom in, you'll see that there are actually two Glannaucs: the tiny one is the real one. The big one right next to it is purely imaginary. I just needed the reader/editor to be able to see it. That'll get fixed for publication. So will the relative sizes/fonts of the various peoples and their regions. For this iteration my priority is for editors to be able to find a region on a map quickly, so they didn't have to go look things up and get bumped out of the story.

You'll also see that there's a lot left out. I was ruthless: if it wasn't in the story, it's not on the map. As it is, there are some Irish places, and some non-British locations (Hedeby, Frankia, Less Britain) that are mentioned in the story but not included here for the sake of clarity and simplicity.

If you see something you don't agree with, please let me know--either by email or in a comment. I want to get this right.

I'm hoping I can do the final map for the book in colour. I'm hoping I can do an absolutely enormously detailed map for the website I'll build to support the book closer to publication. I'd love to illustrate tiny little scenes from the book on this enormous map, and include tokens/banners/signs of dynasties/peoples on their region (ravens, boars, bulls, eagles).

What else have you often wished authors included on their maps? Tell me what you'd love to see. Please.

---

Many thanks to Angélique and Jennifer for their labour of love. Good friends, both.

Hild's family tree

The new title for my novel about Hild is...Hild. It just makes sense :)

My hand-drawn family tree for Hild is now neatly printed and legible. I'm hoping readers of this blog will give me some feedback.

click to enlarge

As you can see, there are several names missing. For example those Æthelfrithings who died before they amounted to much, historically speaking: Osbald, Osric, etc. There are also wholly fictitious characters, and some invented names for people who know must have existed.

For example Osfrith's wife. We know he had a son. I thought a high-status Frank would suit nicely. And what's higher at the time than the Frankish king? Clotrude sounded like a reasonable name for the sister of Clothar II. There's plenty of time to change this before publication, though, so if anyone out there has a better idea, please make a suggestion. Or at least tell me why this won't work. Or, even better, point me to Osfrith's real wife, whose name I somehow missed.

Similarly, if you know--or are willing to make an informed guess--regarding Osric's wife/Oswine's mother--I'd be grateful. (I didn't bother to invent a name because she doesn't appear in the book.)

You'll see, too, that I invented the name of the daughter of Hereswith and Æthelric: Ælfwyn. I hope that sounds acceptable. If it raises red flags, do please let me know. I have lots of leeway at the moment, but as the book gets closer to publication, change will grow more difficult.

I couldn't find a name anywhere for the niece of Beli of Alt Clut, and I didn't feel competent to even guess at something suitable. If anyone has any notions about that, I'm all ears. Ditto the Pictish wife of Eanfrith Æthelfrithing.

You'll see that I chose to make Eanfrith's mother, Æthelfrith's first wife, Bebba (of Bebbanburg fame). Given the Brittonic sound, I rather arbitrarily plumped for Alt Clut antecedents. If any of that in any way clashes with what's known to be known, sing out.

I also posit a fruitful liaison between Hereric and 'Onnen, some leftwise cousin of Ceredig, king of Elmet'. Their son is Cian. He's one of the major characters in the novel, so if, historically speaking, this is ridiculous, please speak now.

My major choice was to make Æthelric, the king of Deira before Æthelfrith swept in from Bernicia, Edwin's much older brother. This means that when the Iffings fled Northumbria and scattered, Hereric, Hild's father, was the heir-in-exile. I expect some disagreement over that one, but at this point I'm reluctant to change it. Though I'll definitely listen to well-reasoned argument.

Hereric's wife is Breguswith. We know as much from Bede. I pondered making her East Anglian, but for reasons I forget, I couldn't quite make that work. Instead, she's now Æthelbert's daughter--Eadbald's half sister.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, on any and all this.

And sometime soon I'll have a spiffy map to discuss...

Light of the World

Hild is done (for now). She has a working title: Light of the World. (Subtitle, if novels had such things, might be something like The woman at the heart of war, politics, and religion in seventh century Britain.)

The book, volume one of three, is huge: 963 pages, 197,878 words (excluding the title).

I've sent it off to my agent. She'll get back to me with suggestions, in terms of possible cuts. (With something this length, they're always looking for cuts. It wouldn't shock me if they suggested I cut it in two and publish as separate volumes. I just don't know if I'll listen...)

Now I start looking for expert readers. Key word = expert. This is not a finished work. It still needs shaping. The input I need now is from those who know some aspect/s of the period, Britain 617 - 631 CE: politics, monetary systems, trade, health, family relationships, religion, flora and fauna, war gear, liturgy, metallurgy, textiles... Anything and everything, really. [ETA: Also languages, Old Irish, Old English, and Latin in particular.]

For example, there are two lengthy scenes set in Gipswīc. It mentions trade goods, coinage, exchange rates, food, slavery, elite hierarchy, etc. There's a lot of potential, in just those scenes, to get things laughably wrong. And I have no doubt I do. Some of it will be easy to fix. Some of, given the story, might not be fixable.

If you think you can help, if you're willing to read nearly a thousand manuscript pages of rip-roaring fiction (life, death, politics, nature, sex, violence, grief, joy) and not forward the ms. around to all your friends, if you're willing to accept that the needs of fiction sometimes clash with the facts, please email me or drop a comment to that effect. I can send you a raw .doc file. I can promise that I'll do my utmost to take your input and use it (with deference to the exigencies of story) and I'll thank you in the acknowledgements. (Actually, in the interests of full disclosure, if you're an expert, and are reading this, I probably also read you--so it's likely I'll be acknowledging your expertise anyway, ha. So, okay, I'll also think of some other nifty Thank You.)

I can say this without blushing: I'm a good novelist. This book, though, is a stretch. I've never written a coming of age story, never written from the point of view of a child, never written historical fiction. I need all the help I can get.

I've done my best to get things right. I've had to make some dubious choices here and there for the sake of story (I've mentioned already some of the heinousness regarding music and Fursey). What happens isn't impossible, but some of it is rather, ah, unlikely.

What kind of novel is this? It's difficult to describe because I've never seen anything like it. Imagine Kristin Lavransdatter meets Game of Thrones (only without the dragons). It's epic in every way. Except for actually being an epic in the accepted lit-tech sense: it isn't from multiple viewpoints; Hild is in every scene. So it's an "intimate novel of character painted on an epic canvas." With warlords, priests, and kings. And anxious reeves, stressed out seers, and beleaguered queens. Plus some slaves and farmwives and scops. And more trees than you can shake a stick at. And rivers and oceans and rills and burns and becks, and seals and cows and crows and otters and herons, and death and destruction and famine and plague (well, not plague plague--or maybe just a hint of a possibility of it, in Kent, once--just illness and cattle murrain). And song, and heroism, and gold-and-sparkly-jewels, and plotting...

If I were Empress of the Universe, and if this were a graphic novel not, ahem, a literary work of wide popular appeal, I'd call it: Butcher Bird! (Everything you know about the 7th C is Rong!) Because you don't get to be famous by being all sweetness and light.

But, oof, I'm getting punchy. So I'll leave you with this photo of carnelians, to which Hild is passionately attached. In the book, they're a political gift from the infant Rhianmelldt to the child Hild. I don't specify the hows and whys in the text, but I imagine they were acquired by numeri in Greco-Roman Egypt, then brought to Hadrian's Wall on deployment, passed down through generations (or stolen, or retrieved from a hoard or accidentally-unearthed grave goods, or...), ending up with the British elite. I am also passionately attached to these beads; I own them. (Supposedly they're 1st century Greco-Roman grave goods, dug up from an Egyptian oasis.)

Photo: Jennifer Durham

Britain After Rome, Robin Fleming

(This is a cross-post from my Ask Nicola blog.)

Thanks to a generous reader, I now have a copy of Robin Fleming's Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070. (I talk about why I wanted it so much here.) Yesterday, after lunch, before I went back to working on Hild, I flipped through it. I was struck by this statement on page 175:

Hartlepool's abbess Hild had learned the religious life from her sister--the mother of the king of the East Angles and a nun--who had trained at a Frankish monastery...

Bearing in mind that Fleming's book is largely based on material culture, I'm sorely puzzled. I don't understand how the above inference can be drawn from archaeology. Especially as it directly contradicts Bede:

When she decided to abandon the secular life and serve God alone, she went to the province of the East Angles, whose king was her kinsman; for having renounced her home and all that she possessed, she wished if possible to travel on from there into Gaul, and to live an exile for our Lord's sake in the monastery of Cale, so that she might the more easily attain her eternal heavenly home. For her sister Hereswith, mother of Aldwulf, King of the East Angles, was already living there as a professional nun and awaiting her eternal crown. Inspired by her example, Hilda remained in the province a full year, intending to join her overseas; but she was recalled by Bishop Aidan and was granted one hide of land on the north bank of the River Wear, where she observed the monastic rule with a handful of companions for another year.1

As I say, I was just flipping through it. It might be that there's some explanation, some interesting archaeological trail I'm unaware of. That would be thrilling. But right now I have a sinking feeling that she's just imagining.

Just imagining is fine. It is, after all, what I do for a living. But I'm a novelist. This book is presented as a narrative history. I have difficulty accepting that Hild learnt from her sister. In their adult lives, the two sisters follow two different religious traditions. Hereswith was either at Faramoutiers, which, though run under the Rule of Columbanus, was founded in a time and place much steeped in Roman culture (material and otherwise), or, possibly (though much later--it wasn't founded until 658), Chelles. Both would have been under the authority of Roman Christian bishops. Hild, on the other hand, led Hartlepool and Whitby, under Bishop Aidan, who was Ionian-trained, as 'Celtic' a Christian as it was possible to be.

As I don't think Hild learnt from her sister, I'm now going to worry that I have to be sceptical about all her statements regarding eras with which I have no real familiarity. (Almost everything. I know the seventh century well enough to play Jeopardy, maybe, that is, until 680, when Hild dies...)

So if anyone out there has read the book, I'd love to be reassured. I've been looking forward to this one!

1 HE iv.23, trans. Leo Sherley-Price

The never-ending mystery of English

One of the big mysteries to me as a novelist (as opposed to professional historian) is the lack of a convincing explanation for the apparent obliteration of Brythonic (the native Celtic language of Britain before the Romans came and muddled everything up) and substitution of Old English, a Germanic language. (My terminology is imprecise; I'm not an academic.)

Over at Historian on the Edge, Guy Halsall discusses Steve Brohan's theory of Old English as a lingua franca between the "language of lowland Britain...a Romance low Latin" and "a late Brythonic/proto-Welsh" of the highlands in post-imperialist Britain (think roughly 400 - 600 CE):

Pre-Anglo-Saxon British highlanders would know some Latin but not much - enough to be able to make transactions with lowland villa-owners etc, especially to pay taxes and so on. The villa owners, by contrast, would know no British. When an Anglo-Saxon military elite came to power, however, both would need to learn Old English to communicate with these warrior aristocrats, and knowing this language would enable them to communicate with each other in the new set up.

This makes perfect sense to me. Apart from anything else, it's a survival tactic to learn the language of those who carry the weapons. Misunderstandings could be fatal.

What also makes sense to me: the survival of the native syntax. You can hear this in periphrastic phrasing of local dialect. (I grew up in Yorkshire. My mother's family was from Ireland, my father's from London. When either of them got tired, I could hear entirely different syntactical bones shining through their vocabulary skin.)

All making perfect sense. And yet, and yet... Food for thought.

I just wish, growing up, that I'd known there was such a thing as philology. I might have done a better job of my 2004 memoir, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner notes to a writer's early life:

Yorkshire's history is stamped on its landscape, literally and figuratively, and it moulded the language that I absorbed with my mother's milk (and grandmother's whisky). A quick survey of Yorkshire place names (from natural features, to street names, to towns, to pubs) is like cutting a language core: in the sturdy bedrock of Anglo-Saxon there is the occasional gleam of Brythonic Celt heaved up from an earlier age, the pale glint of Norse, even strangely evolved fossils of Latin and Norman French. This hybrid and textured language is largely responsible for who I am. To explain, let me give you a few broad strokes of West Yorkshire history.

In the Iron Age, the place that was to be Leeds was an agriculturally various land enjoyed by the Brigantes, Brythonic Celts. In the first century the Romans arrived, and started building forts which became cities. Then they laid nature-defying roads across hill and dale between those cities, followed by armed camps to guard those roads. The Romans abandoned the region after about three hundred years and left the native Britons in charge again. Around this time, Angles, Saxons and other Germanic peoples started visiting Britain and staying, forming kingdoms and acquiring territory. A couple of hundred years later the Norse--Danes, mainly--arrived and the region lived under the Danelaw, with its own language and coinage and culture. Gradually, after battles and negotiations and marriages and so forth, the Danelaw melded with England. And then the Normans came.

By the time I showed up, 894 years after the Battle of Hastings, layer after layer of language was stamped on the place names of Yorkshire. The first street I remember living on was hilly street called Balbec Avenue. Bal is from a Celtic word for hill. Our family would drive for day trips to Otley Chevin, a big rocky outcropping overlooking an ancient market town (Otley bears the distinction of having the most pubs per capita in the British Isles). "Chevin," it turns out, descends from a word very similar to the Welsh (also a Brythonic language) cefn which means "hill." On the way to the coast for a holiday, we'd drive through Wetherby, a name that comes from wedrebi, a combination of wether, that is, neutered sheep, and -by, a Norse word for settlement. The hills were called the fells, from fjell, a Norse word for hill. York (I could write two pages on the evolution of that name) was built on the river Ouse, a name that comes from a Celtic root word, -udso, meaning water (water, in Irish--a Goedelic Celtic language--is uisc, which is the root of "whiskey"). The name of the River Esk, which bisects Whitby (a town on the North Yorkshire coast), also comes from that Celtic root word for water. The River Aire, which flows through Leeds, empties into the Ouse at Airmyn, "myn" being an Anglo-Saxon word for rivermouth. Esk, Ouse, Airmyn... I had a childish vision of waves of invaders, marching along with their Roman shields or Anglo-Saxon leaf-bladed spears or beautiful long Norse swords, coming to a river and saying arrogantly to a local fishing along the bank, "You there, what do you people call this?" and the local scratching her head and saying, "This, your honour? We call this 'water'."

I imagined the officer nodding self-importantly and reporting to his commander, later, "...and so we forded the river, which locals hereabouts call the River Water..." And, just like that, history to me was no longer what you found in history books, but was thronged with real people. Words assumed hidden power; I began to understand them as keys to the puzzle of the universe.

Words are like icebergs; nine tenths below the waterline. We don't see the entire meaning immediately but it has mass and momentum; it matters. To me there is all the difference in the world between "muscle" and "flesh," or "red" and "scarlet." Rhythm and grammar matter, too. Yorkshire syntax, more than many regions of England, shows its Celtic roots, its periphrastic, roundabout manner of speaking: "Dyuh fancy going down t'pub, then?"

I'm the product of two thousand years of history. It shows in my work.

Speaking of which, the second draft of Hild is cruising along. I'm four-fifths of the way through. It is most definitely not a Romance...

First draft of Hild is finished

I finished the first draft of the first volume of my novel about Hild. It's huge: 976 pages (more than 200,000 words). I'll lose a lot of that in the rewrite, of course, but it will still be long.

Submitted as proof:

Photo taken with crapcam (sorry about that). It turns out that 976 pages is nearly 11cm (4.5 in) high and weighs north of 4 kilos (>9 lbs).

Why all the detail? So I can avoid actually beginning the rewrite...

Two excerpts from Hild-as-child

Sentences are something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I've always been a fan of clarity and simplicity: poetry masquerading as prose. Rhythm matters. Word choice matters. Metaphor matters. I love to vary the rhythm and shape of sentences in a paragraph--unless I'm going for a particular effect.

But while writing about Hild, all my notions about sentences fall to pieces. I find myself writing these vinous, sinuous things--in a variety of modes, depending on the mood, geography, and languages spoken by the characters.

Here's a paragraph from the first couple of pages when Hild and her family still live in exile, in Elmet, at the court (I use the word loosely) of Ceredig. She's nearly four:

Hild recalled no sights or sounds of the place they'd come from, the standard against which all was compared, the long-left home. She had vague memories of sun-on-grapes, others of a high place of lowing cattle and bitter wind, of ships and wagons and the crook of her father's arm as he rode, but she knew none of them were home, could be home. She recognised people who might be from that long-lost perhaps never-real home when they galloped in on foundering horses, or slipped through the enclosure fence during the dark of the moon. She knew them by their thick woven cloaks, their hanging hair and beards, and their Anglisc voices: words drumming like apples spilt over wooden boards, round, rich, stirring. Her father's words, and her mother's, and her sister's. Utterly unlike Onnen's otter-swift British, or the dark liquid gleam of Irish. Nor like the cool clicking tiles of bishops' Latin. Hild spoke each to each. Apples to apples, otter to otter, gleam to gleam, though she had only sung snatches of the strange Latin in songs under her breath. And only when her mother wasn't there: Never stoop to wealh speech, never trust wealh, especially those shaved priestly spies.

And here she is, a handful of pages later, her father dead, at the court of her uncle, Edwin, in Northumbria:

In some ways, Hild's new life was not so different. Her days, the court's days, were one of constant movement from royal vill to royal vill: Bebbanburgh at the end of the lean months for the safety of the rock walls and the cold grey sea, and Yeavering at the end of spring, when the cattle ate sweet new grass and the milk flowed rich and fat. Then south to the old emperor's wall, to the small towns built of stone, and a day at Tinamutha and a boat down the coast to that wide river mouth, wide as a sea, and up the river to Barton in early summer and then, sometimes, Sancton, and always to Goodmanham's slow river valley at summer's height--the rolling wolds crimson with flowers, the skeps heavy with honey, and the fields waving with grain. Then the twenty mile journey to York, with its strong walls and snug stonework, its river roads for carrying the last of the sweet apples and the first of the pears, and high towers in case of bitter war, winter war.

War there was, but in summer. Edwin took war on the road with his warband, ten score gesiths and their men, their horses and wagons, a few handsful of shared women. They were always back before autumn, weighed down, depending on the war, with Anglisc arm rings and great gaudy brooches, British daggers with chased silver hilts--though the blades were no match for Anglisc or Frankis work--or strange heavy coin, and they would wind themselves about with boasts and intricate inlaid sword belts. And always by the end of summer there was a double handful more of big-voiced, hard-chested men glittering with gold. Not all were Anglisc, but they drank and shouted and boasted the same way.

These are sweeping let's-move-time-along sentences, quite unlike the kind of thing I'm used to writing in novels. Certainly there wasn't much like this in the novels about Aud. Aud thought in arrow-straight sentences. Hild is much more elliptical and, of course, much younger. One of the surprises for me writing this book has been the number of asides--often in dashes--I feel compelled to include: something I've never done before in fiction.

As the novel progresses, I do a lot more focus-changing: zooming in on a personal moment, widening out a little to follow interactions closely for a scene or two, then pulling right out and up again to 70,000', to describe the ebb and flow of kingdoms and religions. Generally speaking, the older Hild gets, the more the narrative slows down and sticks with her moment to moment. But the constant zoom and pull is a bit dizzying. I don't always get the focus sharp, or hold it for the appropriate time. But, hey, that's what rewrites are for.

Speaking of which, enjoy the above paragraphs. Who know what will actually make it into the finished product.