The Bone Thief

by V. M. Whitworth

  But, he wondered, did he have to give Toli Silkbeard the Atheling’s real message? He had such dark suspicions now.

  My Lord Seiriol, he thought, what are you planning? I’m so afraid it’s not in the Lady’s interests, even though she’s your cousin, and you claim to love her, too.

  So, what to to do? Tell Toli Silkbeard something else, something anodyne, meaningless, misleading.

  And then Wulfgar thought of the Atheling’s anger when he eventually found out. And he would find out, in the end, and Wulfgar the scholar could hardly claim to have forgotten those few, simple words. He didn’t want the Atheling as an enemy – about that, he had no doubts – and his heart quailed even further.

  All the while, the port-reeve was shoving him through the mire of the streets, the watchmen in front of them forcing a way through the curious townsfolk. Wulfgar struggled to keep up with the pace, stumbling and getting splatters of mud up his leggings, red-faced, ragged of breath. It was not at all how he wanted to present himself in front of this unknown Jarl. They were fast approaching a big stockade with massive iron-bound gates and guards to right and left.

  ‘Wait here.’

  The guards were very close, and armed with spears, standing under the bare branches of a towering ash-tree.

  Wulfgar waited.

  The port-reeve had a muttered word with one of the men, who nodded and turned to slip through the wicket gate, which stood ajar. The same guard came out again moments later and gave a brief nod.

  The port-reeve turned back to Wulfgar, with a cheerless smile on his tired, pouchy face.

  ‘Your lucky day, son. He’s up and he’s broken his fast. Last chance to change your mind?’

  Wulfgar shook his head.

  ‘Like I said,’ the port-reeve said to the guard, ‘more than a few pennies short of his full shilling. In we go, then.’

  The smoke stung Wulfgar’s eyes. The Jarl of Lincoln’s hall was smaller than the Bishop of Worcester’s but he still had to squint deep into the reeky murk. Half a dozen dark figures were standing round the hearth-place where a fire was blazing. Wulfgar wondered which of them was Toli Silkbeard.

  The guard behind him said something in Danish.

  He caught, ‘Englis-mathr’ and ‘Thjófr’.

  Englishman, he thought. Thief.

  The port-reeve’s off-hand manner had evaporated. He bowed to the group of men, suddenly diffident, deferential, as he began to explain what had happened. One of them cut him off with an abrupt gesture.

  ‘Let me see him.’

  Could this blond stripling really be the terrible Toli Silkbeard? He looked even younger than Ednoth, but from the way the port-reeve was twisting his hat in his hands, it had to be him.

  Father Ronan had said he was young, Wulfgar remembered. I thought he’d be dark, Hrafnsson, the Raven’s son, but he’s fair as thistledown, fresh as a girl but for that shimmer of beard. He remembered Ronan’s explanation of the lad’s eke-name. Never call him Silkiskegg, not to his face … He realised that none of the Lincoln men had used it when speaking of their Jarl.

  One of the guards shoved Wulfgar in the small of his back, and he staggered forward almost to Toli’s feet.

  ‘On your knees, thief,’ the guard said.

  ‘So, who is this little thief?’ Toli spoke over his head. ‘And what has he stolen, so early in the morning? Shall I hang him?’

  ‘You’re the law, herra.’

  Toli preened.

  Wulfgar swallowed. He looked up to left and right, and saw only amused faces.

  ‘My Lord—’ he began.

  The port-reeve turned on him.

  ‘Who said you could speak, thief?’ He shoved his hat under one arm and foraged for the pocket under his tunic, eventually bringing out the little gospel-book. ‘This, my Lord, is what he stole.’

  Wulfgar watched the little book pass into Toli’s hands with a despairing pang. The Holy Word in the hands of a heathen. He longed to speak but he didn’t dare interrupt again, not yet.

  Toli turned it over, frowning.

  ‘Ah, silver.’ He looked up at Wulfgar. ‘Is this what you wanted, thief? Do you still want it? Here.’ He held it out, smiling.

  Wulfgar, hardly believing his luck, reached out. His fingertips had just brushed the calfskin binding when Toli snatched it away, still smiling.

  ‘Come and get it, then!’

  And, with no other warning, he tossed it at one of his companions.

  Wulfgar stumbled to his feet. The man caught it in one hand as Wulfgar lunged, and threw it back-handed to another. They were laughing now, surrounding him, shoving him with one hand, throwing the book with the other. Faster and faster the little book flew, with Wulfgar, dizzy and distracted, turning on the spot to follow its path, always too late to reach out for it as it winged past him. It was the sort of game he was familiar with from his childhood, but now the stakes were all too high. Toli’s men feinted left then right, jeering and cat-calling, tossed it back and forth over the fire, skimming it lower and lower through the flames.

  Wulfgar, heart-sick, stopped trying in the end. He stood, head bowed, at the centre of their merriment, waiting until they tired of their sport and dreading the prospect of their next game. He thought instead of Pilate’s soldiers mocking the Saviour, a crown of thorns, a purple robe, a reed. Queen of Heaven, get me out of this alive, he prayed. Why had he come here? The port-reeve had been right: Wulfgar should have gone with him quietly to the watch-house.

  At long last, Toli, too, tired of the game. He reached out a lazy hand and plucked the little gospel-book from the air.

  ‘Silver,’ he said again. ‘I suppose someone should weigh it and find out how much it’s worth before I hang you, thief.’ He tugged a little knife from his belt and, holding the book in his left hand, began prising at the fittings.

  ‘I am no thief, my Lord!’ Wulfgar’s voice came out high, ragged, on the edge of breaking. ‘But an errand-bearer, from Wessex.’

  And Toli stopped, the absolute stillness of a hunting cat, the moment before it pounces. The background hum of voices fell silent.

  ‘What errand?’

  ‘I need to speak with you in private, my Lord.’

  And Toli Silkbeard laughed.

  ‘Very well, little thief. This had better be good.’ He put his knife away again. ‘Come with me.’

  He sat down at the high table, gesturing his men to the other end of the hall. A waiting woman approached but she, too, was dismissed.

  Wulfgar stood with his back to the hall. He could feel the whispers and giggles as prickles on his nape. The little gospel sat on the table between them.

  ‘Well?’ Toli tapped his fingers on the board, glanced at Wulfgar, and then looked down the length of the hall. ‘I’m waiting. Show me you’re telling the truth.’

  Wulfgar’s lips felt numb. He swallowed twice, watching Toli’s impatience mount, those restless, tapping fingers.

  ‘I’ve a word for you, my Lord,’ he managed to say. ‘A word from Athelwald Seiriol of Wessex. From the Atheling.’

  The tapping stopped.

  Toli’s eyes came to meet Wulfgar’s.

  ‘Do you?’

  His eyes stayed on Wulfgar’s for a long-drawn, searching moment.

  ‘Do you indeed? Athalvald inn hungrathr, we call him up here. So, tell me. What’s this word from my sharp-set friend?’

  Sharp-set. Hungry. Athelwald the Hungry … It suited him.

  Wulfgar thought back to the bishop’s stable-yard in Worcester, the Atheling’s hand warm and firm on his shoulder, his soft, persuasive words. Take a message to my friends …

  ‘We light the fire at All Hallows,’ Wulfgar whispered.

  It was done.

  There was a long, long silence. Toli Silkbeard stared at the table, but Wulfgar thought he wasn’t seeing it. His lips moved as if he were praying – to his heathen powers, Wulfgar thought, flinching – or tallying something. What would he be counting? Soldiers? Weapons?

&
nbsp; Wulfgar observed him closely. Now that the threat of the wolf-pack was beginning to withdraw, and his heart beating less wildly, he was able to look at this boy. Toli’s sparse beard was almost invisible except where its cropped strands caught the flickering light of lamp and fire. He had hair fine as gossamer, a soft red mouth, eyelashes and brows so light they too almost vanished against his smooth skin. He looked so very young, his pale eyes pink-rimmed, misleadingly like those of a new lamb.

  ‘So,’ he said at last, and again, ‘So. He gives me half a year.’ He seemed to be looking through Wulfgar to some distant prospect, his eyes flickering in tiny movements. Then he asked, ‘Who else gets this message?’

  The Atheling had said nothing of whether Lincoln and Leicester were to know about each other. But Wulfgar had hesitated too long now, to say nothing.

  ‘Hakon Grimsson, but—’

  ‘He’s dead.’ So he knew that too. ‘Who else? Ketil Scar?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘So I’m the first.’ Toli smiled at that. ‘And Stamford? Nottingham?’

  Wulfgar shook his head again.

  ‘Derby?’

  Where? Wulfgar wondered.

  Toli Silkbeard saw Wulfgar’s frown, and laughed.

  ‘Northworthy, you’d call it. On the Derwent. No? What about York?’

  ‘I don’t know, my Lord.’

  Wulfgar was feeling ever more inadequate in the face of these relentless queries.

  ‘I was only told to take the message to you and Hakon Grimsson,’ he said desperately, ‘but the Atheling might have a dozen other errand-boys.’ He hadn’t thought of that before, but as he said it he realised the truth of his words. He had no idea how widely this net was being cast.

  Toli Silkbeard stood up then and took a few restless paces, back and forth behind the high table.

  ‘York would be good. There’s power there!’ He shook the stray lock out of his eyes. ‘And if it’s just me and Leicester? Well, why not? My father was daggers-drawn with Hakon, but that’s no reason why I shouldn’t stand shoulder to shoulder with Ketil. I’m one of the players now.’ He was thinking aloud.

  Wulfgar pulled himself back into the shadows. He was still cold with fear, not knowing what remark might provoke another cruel game.

  ‘Ha!’

  Wulfgar jumped, and flinched when Toli turned to him, but the boy who had played cruel cat and mouse with him had vanished. Instead Wulfgar found himself being ushered round the table to sit at the Jarl’s side, with Toli clapping him on the shoulder and beckoning the servant to pour wine for them both.

  ‘The old men, eh? How they squat on our lives. Look at me: my father six months dead and I can still feel him tugging on the bit. I expect yours is the same?’ He smiled, waiting for a response, and despite himself, despite everything, Wulfgar found himself being charmed, smiling back. They were drinking from chased silver cups, and the wine was sweet.

  His father? That broad, loud king’s thane, with his bluff persona of good cheer hiding a cold-eyed, ruthless ambition? Wulfgar had the sudden, unwelcome realisation that his father would have been proud of Garmund at Offchurch. He would have said, That’s the way to treat the damned Mercians, keep them on their toes, show them who’s wielding the sword these days. It had been the luckiest day of his life when they had given him into the care of his mother’s brother at the cathedral. Wulfgar realised then that he hadn’t just been homesick for Winchester; he was missing the tough, scholarly old man to whom he had been apprenticed, whose voice he could hear so often in his head. Tugging on the bit? It was a good way of putting it.

  ‘For me it was always my uncle, my Lord,’ he answered at last, with a lump in his throat, ‘but, yes, I know what you mean.’

  ‘Uncles, fathers!’ Toli waved a hand. ‘Well, I’m free now, to rule my own roost.’

  ‘You speak such good English,’ Wulfgar said curiously.

  Toli laughed.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? I was born here. My mother, my wet-nurse, my first girl, all Lincoln women.’ His face grew serious again. ‘Does your Lord want an answer?’

  ‘He’s not my Lord,’ Wulfgar blurted before he could think better of it. ‘But no, he didn’t say anything about wanting an answer.’

  ‘Not your Lord?’ Toli Silkbeard looked at him, curious. ‘Do you know what this message means?’

  Wulfgar shook his head. He realised, through the warm, honeyed mist of wine, that he didn’t want to know.

  ‘Will you take word back to him?’

  Wulfgar nodded a yes, sensing that this boy would not take a flat refusal well.

  ‘Tell him …’ Toli drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Tell him that I received you graciously, that I listened to the message with interest, and that I will see what I can do. If he hears nothing more from me then, yes, let it be All Hallows. And I will wait for further word.’

  Wulfgar repeated it verbatim, not understanding anything, and Toli Silkbeard nodded, satisfied.

  Then he looked at Wulfgar, head on one side.

  ‘Why are you doing this, and you a man of Wessex? What has he promised you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Nothing but words.

  Toli Silkbeard widened his eyes.

  ‘Nothing? We reward our men better than that here, I can tell you.’ His voice was suddenly kind. ‘What do you need? Silver? Money?’

  Wulfgar shook his head.

  ‘I’m not a paid messenger, my Lord.’

  ‘A bed for the night? A girl? I’ve got some new ones. Pretty.’

  Wulfgar, blushing, shook his head again.

  Toli picked up the little book.

  ‘This?’

  It’s not yours to give, Wulfgar thought, with a surge of bitterness. Toli held it out to him, though. Wulfgar clasped his hands together and concentrated on the feeling of interlocking fingers, gripping ever more tightly until his hands began to prickle and throb.

  Toli frowned at him curiously.

  ‘You’d steal it, but you won’t take it as a gift?’ He began to pull his hand back.

  What would Toli do with that glorious little book? Strip off the silver and throw the goatskin and vellum on his midden? Wulfgar’s fingers slowly uncurled and with a will of their own reached out. The little book nestled into his grasp like a child into his mother’s bosom.

  ‘I’m not a thief, my Lord,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t steal it. It was a misunderstanding in the market. The stall-holder will need paying.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’ll have someone sort it out. More wine for my new friend!’

  It was still too early in the morning for Wulfgar to be happy drinking so deeply. He shook his head.

  Toli Silkbeard put an arm around his shoulders.

  ‘Just a drop. Seal our friendship. There’s really nothing more I can do for you?’

  Rueful, Wulfgar thought – for the first time since he had set eyes on the little gospel-book – of the real object of his quest. Bardney. Had his lips moved?

  Toli was on to him at once.

  ‘What?’

  Lulled, flattered, tipsy, he blurted it out: ‘Bardney. I’d like some news of Bardney.’

  ‘Bardney? Is that all? That’s easy enough.’ Toli Silkbeard raised his voice. ‘Eirik? Come here, will you?’

  And one of the group of lounging figures by the door detached himself and began to stalk the length of the hall towards the high table.

  Wulfgar scrambled to keep ahead of his panic. It only took a few heartbeats for the newcomer to move into their lamplight.

  ‘Herra?’

  A long grey wolf-spider of a man, tall and stringy and lantern-jawed. Not one of the group of flashy lads who had teased Wulfgar earlier; it was hard to imagine this man teasing anyone. Alone among the men in the hall, he wore no jewellery, had no ornaments on his belt, no gold or silver braid trimming on his tunic of undyed grey wool. At first sight, he didn’t look as though he were trying to impress, or intimidate, anyone. Even so, Wulfgar did not like the way the man looked
at him, eyeing him up as if he was putting a price on his head. And not thinking he’d get a good one, at that.

  ‘English, please, Eirik. This man is a good servant of some southern friends of ours, and he has travelled a long way to bring me important news. And in turn he asks for news of Bardney.’ Toli Silkbeard clapped Wulfgar on the shoulder and withdrew his arm. ‘Go on, ask him.’

  ‘Bardney? What do you want with Bardney?’ Eirik’s voice was flat, devoid of expression, thick with strange consonants. Vot do you vant …

  Wulfgar swallowed.

  ‘Oh, nothing, just old family associations … the saint, you know … I was wondering if the church is still there?’ He could have bitten his tongue off, he was so angry with himself and his blabbing.

  ‘Kirk? Já, it is still there.’

  ‘Eirik and his family use it as their hall, don’t you?’ Toli Silkbeard said encouragingly.

  Eirik turned to him and said something rapid and angry in Danish.

  Toli Silkbeard laughed.

  ‘Did you catch that?’ he asked Wulfgar.

  Wulfgar shook his head. Something about Bardney …

  ‘“Between my wife and the mosquitoes, why would I ever want to go to Bardney?”’ Toli Silkbeard translated, and laughed. ‘My Eirik is an important man with business that takes him far and wide; the backwaters of the Lindsey fen are the least of his concerns, I can tell you. Have you learned what you wanted?’

  Wulfgar nodded, mute. He was afraid now of opening his mouth for fear of what else might emerge.

  Eirik looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘And there’s nothing else we can do for you?’ Toli Silkbeard asked.

  Wulfgar thought, he’s getting suspicious, too. But he just wanted to be out of there.

  ‘I need to get back to my friends,’ he said.

  Toli Silkbeard looked hard at Wulfgar, shaking his head. His colourless locks were tied away from his face by a band of dark fabric interwoven with gold, but one thick strand had worked free. He brushed it out of his eyes and grinned.