The King's Hounds (The King's Hounds series Book 1)

by Martin Jensen

  “We had not yet agreed on a price,” Winston said, scratching his thigh absentmindedly. I wondered if he was really as accustomed to spending time with earls and kings as his nonchalant demeanor suggested.

  No. I saw a vein throbbing below his eye. It had never done that before in all the days I had known him.

  Jarl Thorkell cleared his throat. Cnut looked at him and nodded, inviting him to speak.

  “Perhaps, my lord,” the Viking jarl grumbled, “you would consider informing the rest of us of your plans?”

  The king summed up what we had discovered in the shed and Winston’s theory.

  Thorkell studied Winston, who appeared not to notice this scrutiny.

  “And Osfrid’s widow is blaming you for the murder?” Thorkell asked.

  The king nodded.

  “Well, I suppose that was to be expected,” the archbishop said, speaking for the first time. His voice crackled in the way that old men’s voices often do, but he sounded firm and authoritative. Though Wulfstan was slightly stooped with age, his head heavy, and his neck and wrists gaunt, his eyes suggested that he was still quite lucid. Cnut glanced at Wulfstan but did not speak for a moment as he considered the archbishop’s statement.

  “Yes, I suppose it was,” Cnut said with a nod, and turned back to Winston.

  “My lord,” Winston began. “You have earls, ealdormen, and reeves who do this kind of work for you all the time. Why do you want me to investigate this matter?” Winston sounded genuinely curious.

  “Not just you,” Cnut said, waving a hand at me. “Both of you.”

  I looked from Cnut to Winston, aghast. Winston was the one who had been showing off out in that shed. I had simply stood beside him and answered the questions posed to me.

  Cnut must have sensed my surprise as he raised a hand in a gesture that Godskalk—still standing just behind the king’s chair—apparently understood, because he barked an order to everyone in the Hall. Servants instantly came running over with chairs, which they placed behind Winston, Jarl Thorkell, Archbishop Wulfstan, and myself. The jarl and the archbishop quickly took their seats. Winston followed suit. I realized I had no choice and hurriedly sat down.

  The king straightened himself in his chair, leaned forward, and rested his hands on his knees. “Many men believe I am being disingenuous when I say that I want peace to prevail throughout my kingdom,” he said. “Peace between you and us, between Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Danes who have been living here for generations, and more recent Viking arrivals. They will claim I am looking out only for my own interests and that I will show my true colors once I have received the heregeld’s many thousands of pounds of silver.

  “Well, they will see my true colors,” Cnut continued, “because those people are wrong. The silver is mine—there is no debating that. It was won honestly in battle, and in exchange for payment, my army will refrain from fighting, both during the collection period and after the heregeld has been paid.

  “In a few days’ time, once we have received the silver and duly weighed it, it is my intention that the Witenagemot and Thing will meet jointly to decide how this country should be ruled as we move forward,” Cnut said. “Ruled so that Jutes, Saxons, Angles, Danes, and Vikings will enjoy the same rights and obligations and can live side by side and farm their lands in peace.

  “As you may know,” the king continued, “Archbishop Wulfstan is a legal expert. It will be his job to ensure that everyone, be they English or Danish, will be bound by the same laws. As soon as the heregeld has been paid, this will be made clear to one and all.” The king paused.

  “It is vital that the Witenagemot and the Thing meet in peace, with a spirit of mutual trust. But now a man has been murdered, a man you all knew was my enemy. Not killed honorably in battle but murdered in secret and dumped in a back-alley shed like an old dog. Do you think the men who are supposed to meet and secure the peace in England can trust one another as long as this murder remains unresolved? How many people will think I was behind it?

  “I swear to my innocence. Countless others will swear with me. But if I invoke my right to compurgation and swear I am innocent, will that change anyone’s mind? Even if I bring the requisite number of compurgators to testify to my character, the law only requires that I be absolved of guilt—not of suspicion.

  “Which is why I need the murderer found.

  “I have reeves, you say. Yes, Saxon reeves and Danish reeves. If I ask a Saxon to investigate the murder, his fellow Saxons might be satisfied with his findings, but what if he concludes that the killer was a Dane? How many Danes would believe that his investigation was unbiased? And vice versa: If a Danish reeve were to determine the guilty party was a Saxon or an Angle, how many Englishmen would believe him?”

  The king finally stopped speaking and looked at Winston and me. I could have sworn there was a twinkle in his eye. “But now I have been sent the two of you,” he continued. “One Saxon and one Dane. And one of you has demonstrated that he can think.

  “Find the killer, and I will reward you well,” the king said with a nod.

  I cleared my throat and spoke. “I’m only half Danish.”

  Cnut waved his hand dismissively. “You are a Dane. You speak Danish, you act like a Dane. People needn’t know any more than that.”

  And, you know, he was right. There wasn’t a soul who wouldn’t believe me if I said I was a Dane. And my name did not reveal whether my father or my mother was the Dane.

  I didn’t say a word and looked at Winston, who was biting his lip. “I could have simply made a lucky guess out there in the shed,” Winston admitted.

  The king brushed Winston’s concern aside. “Perhaps. But my announcement alone—that I’ve assigned a Saxon and a Dane to investigate the murder together—will be effective. Men will see that I want to know the truth.”

  Winston looked from the king to the archbishop, who nodded his heavy head. Jarl Thorkell initially furrowed his brow, but after a moment he, too, nodded his approval.

  “All right, my lord. I accept the job,” Winston announced.

  I felt a tingle of outrage and cleared my throat loudly. Everyone looked at me in surprise. “We accept the job,” Winston said, correcting himself.

  “Now we’ll see if you can think, half-Dane,” Jarl Thorkell teased me, suppressing a smile.

  “Good.” The king slapped his hands on his thighs and stood up. “Then we’ve reached an agreement.”

  Thorkell and the archbishop immediately stood. Thorkell raised his eyebrows at me sternly, and I obediently stood as well. Winston, however, remained seated.

  “You’re not going to find the killer by just sitting there,” Cnut said, annoyed.

  “I’m going to begin to find the killer by sitting here,” Winston said calmly. “With you, my lord.”

  The king’s eyes darkened.

  “I have other business to attend to.”

  Winston nodded. “But if you want this murder solved, you’ll give me a little of your time.”

  “I don’t know any more than you do,” the king said sharply. “We went to the shed together.”

  “All the same, my lord. I need to know who this Osfrid was. And why you and he were enemies.” Winston calmly observed the king, who bit his lip but sat back down despite being clearly annoyed.

  Cnut gripped his thighs for a moment before looking up.

  “Osfrid was a South Saxon thane, who owned a great deal of land on the plain between the southern uplands,” Cnut began. “He fought with Edmund at Assandun and accompanied him when he retreated. When Edmund the atheling and I divided the country at our meeting”—I noticed Cnut avoided referring to Edmund as king, instead using the term atheling, essentially the heir apparent—“Osfrid was among those who offered his own son as a hostage to ensure that they would abide by the agreement.

  “Oslaf, his son, was ten summers old, a rather wild blond boy. He came with me as I ordered, but he was always getting into trouble. He wanted to ride the wildest hors
es and picked fights with the housecarls—who were twice as old as he was and weighed three times as much. If we were camped by a river and someone reported his boat missing, we knew Oslaf had borrowed it—as he liked to put it—and that we would find him out splashing in the river somewhere.

  “Eventually he got himself into real trouble. He saddled one of Jarl Thorkell’s stallions without permission and swung himself up on his back. You know how it is with a stallion; he won’t tolerate just anyone on his back. Also, this stallion was being trained for horse fighting. As soon as Oslaf rode him out of the stall, he lost control.

  “There were several breeding horses in an enclosure not far from the stall, including a number of stud-crazed brood mares, and as soon as the stallion caught a whiff of them, he threw the boy and raced down to the enclosure.

  “Now, we can say many things about Oslaf, but he was a brave boy, and he ran after that stallion, grabbed its reins, and tried to hold on. But as I’m sure you know, it is as hard to lead a stallion away from willing brood mares as it is to stem the tide.

  “Several men there saw what was going on and rushed over, but in vain. The boy had been trampled to death before they could reach him. I had the boy’s body sent back to his father with my apologies, but that wasn’t enough for Osfrid.

  “In his eyes—and he was not shy about telling me this—I owed him wergeld for the boy, since he died in my custody. Naturally I refused, since the boy died because he tried to take a pleasure ride on another man’s stallion without permission.”

  The king stood. “There, now you know. So, go solve the murder.”

  I stepped up to Cnut, who raised his eyebrows at me.

  “My sword, my lord.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Of course.”

  I accepted my belt and sword from a housecarl and put them on.

  “My lord,” Winston said, now also standing. “I am a Saxon illuminator, unknown to anyone. Halfdan is an equally unknown Dane. What right do we have to question thanes, warriors, and other people?”

  Cnut looked over at Godskalk and said, “Make it known that Winston and Halfdan are acting in our name.”

  Godskalk bowed and walked through the Hall to the door. Shortly thereafter, we heard him issuing orders to the housecarls in the square out front.

  Cnut, Wulfstan, and Thorkell had left us before Godskalk even made it to the door. Thorkell smiled at us on his way out. Though he may have intended it to be encouraging, it came across as condescending.

  I looked at Winston, wondering what we had just gotten ourselves into. He just shook his head at me as if to say he had had no choice.

  “A man would have to be bigger than we are to say no to King Cnut,” he said quietly.

  “Maybe he means it when he says he will reward us,” I said, nodding. “Where do we start?”

  Winston bit his lip. “With the body. Maybe it can tell us more than we noticed the first time.”

  Chapter 8

  Someone had removed the body, which came as no great surprise. Tonild, the dead man’s widow, hadn’t wanted her deceased husband lying in plain sight in a shed, so she had him taken back to the camp north of town, where he now lay in their tent, surrounded by his own men.

  Someone—presumably Godskalk, because I hadn’t noticed the king give any such order—had stationed a housecarl in front of the shed and he willingly told us that when Tonild had brought Osfrid’s men by to retrieve the body, she swore her husband’s murder would not go unavenged.

  “Well,” Winston said, scratching his chin and carefully studying the doorway. “But the murderer must be found, first.”

  He ducked into the shed. I followed him and looked around. It wasn’t a big shed. Five paces long by three wide. The unfinished floorboards were scoured white, as I had noticed earlier, and a bloodstain marked where the body had lain.

  Winston looked over at me. “They must have turned the body over.”

  What did he mean? Then I understood. “Unless he was stabbed all the way through,” I pointed out.

  “Hmm,” Winston said. Now it was his turn to stop and think. “I can’t remember if he was … Let’s hope the widow will let us examine the body.”

  He walked over to the back wall, which was constructed of horizontal boards but looked older than the floor. “Who owns this shed?”

  I shrugged. How in the world would I know that? “I guess we’ll have to ask,” I said. “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe.” Winston was standing in the doorway now and placed his hand on the rough-hewn door. He stepped outside and closed it. Suddenly I was in the dark.

  “Can you see any light in there anywhere?” Winston asked, his voice quiet through the door planks.

  When he swung the door back open, I shook my head.

  “The walls and door don’t let any light in,” he said. “What does that tell us?”

  I had no idea where Winston was going with this, and I said as much.

  “I’m just wondering whether we’ll find that this shed belongs to a merchant,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling. I got the feeling he was teasing me. I just blinked back at him, so he added, “It’s recently been converted into a mouseproof storage space.” Then he turned to the guard. “Who owns this shed?”

  The housecarl shrugged but then looked thoughtful for a moment. “Alfred the Merchant, I think.”

  “And does this Alfred also own stables nearby?”

  This time the guard was certain of the answer. “That building down there,” he said, pointing to a long building on the corner where the alley met a narrow cross street.

  “Aha,” Winston said, rubbing his hands together. “This whole complex wouldn’t happen to be Alfred’s, would it?”

  The guard nodded.

  And with that, Winston was off. By the time I caught up to him, he was standing in front of the door to the stable, peering in at three horses, a donkey, and a mule. In addition, there were four empty stalls. The stable’s packed-dirt floor had several damp patches on it.

  I was about to follow Winston—who was already walking calmly through each of the stalls with his head tilted down—but he turned around and told me to stay where I was.

  Once he’d examined the whole floor twice, he looked up with a satisfied smile.

  “There!” He pointed to a flattened pile of horse dung. “There are drops of blood in the manure.”

  Then he pointed toward me in the doorway. “And there’s a wide swath where the surface of the packed soil has been disturbed. The swath shows where the murderer dragged Osfrid’s lifeless body across the floor. Go follow it, would you? See if it continues all the way to the shed.”

  I did as he asked, and walked back down the alley to the shed, scanning the dirt alley for marks.

  “Can you see the drag marks?” Winston called to me from the stable.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Too many people must have walked through here already. There was certainly no shortage of curious bystanders earlier.”

  Winston walked back to the shed with me, cocked his head to the side, and asked, “Did you notice anything strange by the door up there?”

  Again I shook my head.

  “There was no lock …” Winston began.

  “What’s so strange about that?” I asked.

  He gave me a quizzical look. “Don’t you find it strange that someone spent money to convert this shed into a secure storeroom but didn’t bother putting a lock on the door?”

  “Nope.” I was pleased with myself for knowing the answer for once, though I tried not to sound too smug. “I mean, the shed was empty, right?”

  Winston blinked at me for a moment, then broke into a smile. “Good point. Let’s return to the important question now.”

  “Why someone would kill Osfrid?” I asked.

  “No, it’s too soon for that question. We’ll likely know who killed him by the time we figure that out. I was thinking instead about why the body had to be moved at all.”


  Once again I tried to keep my voice from sounding smug. “The killer needed to hide the body,” I said.

  “Of course,” Winston said, slapping his leg. “People come and go from stables all the time. The killer hoped that with a little luck, the body wouldn’t be found for several days in the shed.”

  He paused and stood for a long time, lost in thought. Finally he asked, “Who found the body, anyway?”

  I shrugged. “Tonild obviously already knew he’d been found when she burst into the king’s Hall.”

  “With her retinue of armed men, yes. Someone must have found the body and notified Tonild, who then assembled her men and set off to accuse the king,” Winston said. He stopped to think again. “Strange, though. Wouldn’t she have gone to see her dead husband first? Why didn’t she attend to the body before approaching the king?”

  The answer was obvious. “She wanted revenge.”

  “Maybe. Maybe she’s a noblewoman first and a widow second? I mean that’s how it is with nobles, right?” Winston said with a wink, as though those of us born into noble families were somehow less than human.

  I didn’t dignify that with a response.

  “So,” Winston said with a look of satisfaction on his face. “Whom should we go see first: the widow or the merchant?”

  Before I could respond, a homunculus dressed in gray turned into the alley and headed straight for us. He stopped short a couple of paces away and curtly asked what we were doing there.

  “Are you Alfred?”

  He ignored Winston’s question. “I said what are you doing here?”

  “We are here on the king’s business,” I said, casually moving my hand to the hilt of my sword.

  “There’s nothing else for you to take here. My lord has already paid his outrageous share of the heregeld,” the gnarled man said in a whiny, outraged voice.

  “So you’re saying you’re not Alfred,” Winston confirmed.

  The gnome looked crossly at Winston. “I’m Wigstan, Alfred’s servant.”

  “And Alfred? Where is he?” Winston asked.

  “In his market stall.”