“In other words, peace is more important than law and order?” I asked.
Winston didn’t respond right away. After a long silence, he nodded and said, “Yes, I do believe it is. But of course we’ll make that decision together, if it should come to that.” He sighed again. “And, fortunately, there is one small sign that Cnut might honestly want us to solve the murder.” He looked into my puzzled eyes. “If the king had really wanted to pump us for information—to prevent us from solving the murder, if that suited his purposes—he would have been wise to meet us in private so that only he could hear what we had learned. But he questioned us in the Hall surrounded by his retinue, his earls, his soldiers, the servants, and anyone else who happened to be around. That suggests that he’s being honest.”
Now it was my turn to sigh. “Let’s hope so. I really don’t want to lose his good graces, as he threatened.”
“Me neither,” Winston said, a cunning smile playing across his lips. “So I guess there’s only one thing to do.”
“What?”
“Solve the murder.”
Chapter 22
The crowd in the tavern had thinned out while Winston and I were talking. Only a few people were left, slurping up the last of their stew and bread. At a long table in the middle of the room sat six strapping, battle-seasoned soldiers. Though they had healthy appetites, I noticed they hadn’t drunk more than a single tankard apiece since Winston and I had sat down.
Suddenly four more soldiers walked in the door, all with the same fearless demeanor, cocky, reckless manner, and sturdy swords hanging at their hips as the first six. The first group got up and left the tavern and the four that had just arrived took their places. Alfilda brought them bowls of the hearty stew right away. Toothless had scarcely set their tankards down in front of them when another three men walked in. Two of them were also soldiers, but the third immediately stood out to me because of his peculiar appearance.
Though not ostentatiously dressed, he was obviously wealthy. He didn’t wear a sword or ax, but rather, had a short dagger tucked into a silver-inlaid leather belt around his narrow waist. When he pulled off his blue cap, he revealed a few scant curls stuck to the top of his head. I couldn’t help but notice that he kept his thick wool doublet on despite the fact that it was quite warm inside.
But it wasn’t his clothes that caught my attention: It was his body that was so striking. It looked as though it was made up of two halves that didn’t go together.
From the waist down, he was slim, if not emaciated. In his red leggings, his legs looked no thicker than willow twigs, giving the impression he was staggering around on chicken legs, and his waist was so narrow that I would swear I could have reached my hands around him and touched my fingertips to each other.
His torso, however, was barrel shaped. His potbelly hung out under his doublet and shirt, his chest was broader than I could reach around with my arms, and his face was fleshy, puffy, and red. His eyes—blinking between the fatty folds of his lids—were black and keen, and his mouth was wide and round, with thick lips under a massive Roman nose.
Winston was sitting with his back to the door, but my wide eyes made him turn around.
“There’s a man you won’t forget,” he mumbled. “I passed him this afternoon.”
I watched as the man sat down at the end of the soldiers’ table and noticed the deferential looks they gave him.
“Who is he?” I asked Winston.
“The devil if I know,” Winston replied, shrugging slightly. “He was standing in the doorway of an imposing-looking house on the square in front of the king’s Hall. He was surrounded by soldiers, and the door to the house was well guarded.”
So he was a nobleman who had reason to be protected by guards and who, judging from the spread on their table, evidently treated them quite well.
I turned my attention back to our conversation. “Have we actually gotten any closer to solving this murder, then?”
Winston inhaled deeply. He held his breath for a bit and then snorted, making a sound that reminded me of the one otters make before they emerge from the water, exposing themselves to the hunter they know is waiting on the bank. “We need to talk to that young lout who’s lodging in the same house as Estrid—that lout who paid Tonild a visit,” he said, standing up to go, but he stopped when he saw my upheld hand. “What?” he asked.
“It’s nighttime,” I said. “They’re not going to let us in.” I ignored Winston’s nod. “The men guarding that lodging house don’t give a rat’s ass about King Cnut’s orders.”
“Hmm,” Winston said, sitting back down. “A shame you didn’t find out any more about him from Estrid.”
I felt a surge of rage. “Yes, what a shame that I didn’t ask her to tell me about every single man we ran into. How was I supposed to know that that guy was going to go visit Tonild? At the time he was just like any other dumb guy who just happened to greet her.”
“Didn’t she mention that they were staying in the same lodging house?” Winston asked.
I gave a tired sigh. “Well, yes. But how many people are staying there? It’s some kind of Saxon hostel.”
Something tingled in the back of my mind, a memory, something I had noticed but not thought important at the time. I remembered Estrid had only said that they were staying in the same lodging house. Did that matter?
Winston eyed me with curiosity, but I held up my hand to keep him quiet. That young man had come out of Estrid’s place, walked past the guards unhindered, and even nodded to them, the way a man does when he has nothing to hide.
I had seen him once again later on while I was following Estrid. He had been bickering with some Vikings, but I had left it up to the housecarls who were on their way up the street to save him from a thorough drubbing.
I held my breath. That was it! Had I interpreted what I’d seen correctly? Was he just a young Saxon noble who had stepped on the toes of a few Vikings and then refused to apologize? Or …?
I looked across the table at Winston, who was wondering with a raised eyebrow what I was thinking about.
“That lout was scolding two Vikings in the lane,” I finally said.
“Vikings?” Winston furrowed his brow and leaned back. “Do tell.”
Winston listened with his eyes closed as I recounted what I’d seen. When I was done, he kept his eyes closed, and looked as though he were asleep. Only his breathing told me he was awake.
Finally he opened his eyes. “We’ll speak to him first thing in the morning.”
“Well, I don’t see why it’s that important,” I said.
“You don’t?” Winston asked, a haughty look twinkling once again in his eye. “Well, you may be right. But still, this is the first time we’ve seen a Saxon interacting with Vikings. Or vice versa. So far we’ve observed only deep divides between the Saxons on the one hand and the Danes and Vikings on the other. It may not be significant. But you were puzzled by it yourself when you recalled it just now,” he said, then paused. “Besides, what else do we have to go on?”
I thought about it. “There is one thing,” I said hesitantly, unsure how my thought fit into the big picture, but Winston gave me an encouraging look. As I started to explain myself, the idea gradually became clearer in my mind. “Well, first we had Osfrid, then Frida, then Horik. So … a thane was murdered … Then someone tried to kill a young wench, presumably to shut her up … And then a Saxon soldier who had been accompanying the thane was murdered.”
Winston’s mouth gaped as he struggled to understand what I was getting at. “And?”
“Well, that’s it,” I said, growing more confident. “If Osfrid was murdered because—and what do I know?—of jealousy, general malice, ill will, or maybe even by a robber who was just after his money … well, then it should have just ended there, right?”
Winston realized his mouth was open and closed it with a snap. He stared at me, tugging on his nose. Finally, I detected nascent comprehension in his eyes. “But it didn
’t just end there, did it?” he said. “Someone is killing witnesses. It is someone so powerful that he has shamelessly killed not one person, but three! Well, killed two and almost killed another—thanks to you, Halfdan. There has been a trail of dead bodies through the middle of Oxford when not only the king himself is in residence but dozens of housecarls are patrolling the city, which means this cannot be the work of just one person. Yes, yes. I think you’re right. This is not about jealousy, hatred, or revenge. This is a plot to overthrow the king.”
I nodded, pleased at having worked it out correctly.
“Yes,” Winston said again. “Now we just need to figure out whether the plot is Saxon or Danish or—who knows—maybe Viking. And what you observed has just made that a little harder for us to do.”
I looked at him blankly, but then I saw what he meant: We now had an unexpected and enigmatic connection between a Saxon and some Vikings.
The tavern had quieted down. Aside from the soldiers and that strange nobleman who was with them, there was only one other man left, a clearly inebriated Viking. With a great deal of effort, Alfilda managed to get him onto his feet and guide him toward the door. He became agitated and tried to yank his arm back. I stood up, but Alfilda didn’t need any help. She got him under control with a solid punch to the kidney, and escorted him out the door while he was still moaning. She came back in and flashed me a smile that meant, I’m woman enough to run my own tavern, thanks.
The soldiers stood up now, bid their nobleman a quiet farewell, and headed for the door, which flung back open just as they reached it. The drunk Viking staggered forwards, screwing up his eyes to try to spot an evidently blurry Alfilda from across the room, but the first soldier stopped him and, following a nod from the hostess, dragged the bastard back out again.
The Viking grumbled loudly outside until we heard a smack, and then peace once again settled over the inn and its narrow street. The funny-shaped nobleman stood up. He nodded aloofly to us, headed for the rear door that led to the hallway, and disappeared, leaving us with only the diminishing sound of his footsteps.
Alfilda put the buxom Toothless to work cleaning up then grabbed an empty tankard and a pitcher of ale and brought them to our table. She sat down, poured a round, and raised her tankard to us. “Closing time.”
We raised our tankards back to her.
“Who’s your other guest?” Winston asked, wiping the foam from his lips.
“Oh him,” Alfilda smiled roguishly. “He’s a man it might pay off to seduce—if he were for sale, I mean. Which I happen to know he isn’t. He’s King Cnut’s most trusted man in Oxford these days.”
Winston and I exchanged glances.
“But who is he?” I asked, now wiping the foam from my own mouth.
“His name’s Baldwin, and he’s the king’s master of accounts,” Alfilda said.
That didn’t help me at all, and I said as much, but Winston just nodded to himself.
“That well-guarded house across from the king’s Hall?” Winston asked.
“It houses the heregeld, or what’s come in of it so far,” Alfilda said. “There are still two days until the deadline.”
That explained the brutish and incorruptible-looking guards.
“So the king is collecting the heregeld here?” I asked, fishing a fly out of my ale.
“The king is sticking to his agreement,” Alfilda said. “Seventy-two thousand pounds of silver, plus an extra ten and a half thousand pounds specifically from London, need to be in that building by nightfall the day after tomorrow.”
Winston smiled wryly. “We’re a rich people in a rich country.”
“Add the thousands of pounds we’ve bled out in recent years, and this is what I own now,” Alfilda said, showing us the empty palms of her hands.
“And Baldwin is responsible for all the silver?” I asked, setting the fly on the table and crushing it with my thumbnail.
“Baldwin does all the computations and counting. The Witenagemot and the Thing won’t meet until he’s satisfied,” Alfilda explained, shoulders drooping. I could tell she was tired. And yet she didn’t miss a thing going on around her. She turned to Toothless, who had just run a rag over the last table. “That’s great, Emma. You can go to bed.”
The serving girl with the same name as the queen didn’t have to be told twice.
When the door had shut behind her, Alfilda continued, “But the king is a man of his word. You have to give him that.”
Winston and I both cocked our heads, wondering what she meant.
“There was news today. Haven’t you heard?” she continued. We shook our heads.
“Cnut sent his fleet home, just like he’d said he would.”
“Home? To Denmark?” I asked. That didn’t seem plausible.
But yes, Alfilda assured me it was. After Cnut had repelled an attack by an unaffiliated fleet of Viking pirates, just a month ago, the Witenagemot had stated unanimously that the Saxons would not negotiate with Cnut if his entire fleet were just sitting there threatening to start harrying England again. Cnut had promised to order a good portion of his fleet home as a sign of good faith, and there had just been an announcement that Cnut had actually done so.
“So Cnut is leaving the country defenseless?” I asked. That was just as hard for me to grasp. If he wanted to be England’s king, he had to be able to defend the country’s coasts.
“He’s keeping forty longboats here, but that’s all,” Alfilda said, rubbing her neck.
That was probably enough. Under the command of Thorkell or the king himself, that many longboats would be a devastatingly effective fleet—if the enemy consisted merely of a few Viking warlords out plundering, that is. But if the Vikings decided to launch a full-scale attack, forty ships would be nothing.
But where would such an attack come from, anyway? Cnut was the most powerful Viking king in all the Nordic lands. His enemies had either been defeated or spread to the four winds, and he had won over the only force he needed to fear—the Duke of Normandy—through marriage.
The English would now realize that the king planned to live up to his word. See? was his message, I don’t need a fleet to subdue England. The country is mine, and I will govern it with the consent and support of Saxons, Angles, and Danes alike. You can see that I keep my word. Now you keep yours. Send me the heregeld, and meet me in the meadow outside Oxford so that we can decide together how to govern the country.
Winston’s eyes met mine and he nodded.
“Yes,” Winston said, “it seems that the king is a man of his word.”
Chapter 23
I don’t know long I’d been asleep when Winston’s thunderous snoring woke me up. He had told me to just give him a shove. I sighed. It was pitch black, and even straining my eyes, I couldn’t make out the window in the wall.
I rolled over.
The penetrating rumble rattled the blankets; I rubbed my ears.
I jabbed him in the side with my elbow.
“Huh, what?” he grunted.
“You’re snoring,” I told him.
The bed boards creaked as he rolled over.
I drifted off to sleep again and then woke with a start.
I did my elbow trick again.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but I was becoming increasingly tense and irritated. Every time I jabbed him, Winston abruptly sat halfway up in bed, sounding chipper and well rested. A pale outline of the window started to take shape in the wall as the spring morning dawned.
I got out of bed, cursing. I wrapped myself in the blanket and walked out into the hallway, but my companion’s codfish-out-of-water gasps could be heard even from there. I wondered if anyone in the whole building could possibly be sleeping.
I bit my lip. I was tempted for a moment to open the nearest door and crawl into bed with whoever happened to be in there, but instead I headed toward the tavern door.
Alfilda woke me. Our hostess was already fully dressed, while Emma, mid-yawn, stared sleep
-drunk at me in the doorway behind her.
“Are you afraid of an attack?” Alfilda asked me.
I sat up. My back ached, and my body felt heavy from lack of sleep. Though I’d wrapped the blanket tightly around me, it hadn’t made the hard, oaken table any softer to lie on.
“Attack?” I yawned.
“Weren’t you lying here in the tavern keeping guard?” Alfilda asked, blowing some life into the coals on the baking stones.
After shaking my head to wake myself up, I explained why I was lying on her table.
She laughed as she laid some kindling over the coals. “I know how that goes. My blessed husband snored until the house shook.”
“What did you do about it?” I asked, now on my feet.
She poured some ale into a cauldron. “There are lots of other rooms here. He found his way into one of them every time.”
I excused myself and headed to the well. After drinking a dipperful of water, I washed myself, snorting from the cold. It was a bright, crisp morning, and the swallows were chattering between the thatched roofs.
Winston was sitting at the table when I returned, looking shamelessly well rested.
“So you abandoned me?” he asked, warm ale dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
“Well, I hope you slept well,” I said, sitting down heavily.
He drizzled golden, slow-flowing honey over his slice of bread. “The blanket was nowhere to be found, but once I put on my doublet and warmed up again, I slept marvelously.”
We spent the rest of the meal in silence.
The tavern began to fill up with other guests. Baldwin the Master of Accounts was the first to arrive. After giving us a brief, reserved bow, he sat down at a table by himself, and began to bite off carefully measured mouthfuls of bread. He chewed them rapidly and methodically, like a squirrel, rinsed them down with ale, and had finished eating in the time it took me to cover a single slice of bread with honey.
As he left, likely on his way to accept more heregeld deliveries, several other customers walked in. A monk who had achieved a certain high rank within his monastery—judging by the silver cross on his chest—was accompanied by a novice with a little peach fuzz on his chin. The older friar talked steadily, but the novice didn’t open his mouth except to take bites of his bread.
The King's Hounds (The King's Hounds series Book 1) Page 18
