Hild

In seventh-century Britain, Hild grows up within the exiled and endangered royal family of Deira. Her mother teaches her to study weather, animals, crops and human behaviour until careful observation appears to others as prophecy. When her uncle Edwin gains the thrones of Deira and Bernicia, Hild secures a place beside him as adviser and seer, but royal favour offers protection only while her predictions serve the king’s plans. Marriage alliances, tribute, feud and the arrival of Roman Christianity make every judgement politically dangerous.

The novel is a speculative reconstruction of the childhood and adolescence of Hilda of Whitby, later one of the most influential abbesses of early medieval England. Because Bede records little about her life before adulthood, Griffith builds outward from Hild’s Deiran ancestry, her relationship to Edwin and the conversion of the Northumbrian court. The result is biographical historical fiction rather than a saint’s life: Hild’s intelligence is rooted in disciplined attention, while religion and kingship are shown as competing systems of allegiance, resources and authority.