The Bone Thief

by V. M. Whitworth

  Silkbeard and his friends came barging in, scabbards swinging and cloaks swirling, shouting for wine. And then he saw Gunnvor.

  ‘Gunnvor Bolladottir! By the Spear, why didn’t you let me know you were honouring my town?’

  They were coming straight over.

  Gunnvor rose at once and went to forestall them, putting on a good show of eagerness. ‘Toli Hrafnsson! Herra! We only arrived today. What’s new? Who’s in town?’ This was another new Gunnvor, sparkly, demure, resting her hand delicately on Silkbeard’s arm, looking up at him from under her lashes. He was evidently dazzled. Wulfgar felt the rustle of rough cloth against his arm and half-glimpsed a shadow slipping past him. It was Thorvald, hood up, dodging along the wall to the door, unnoticed by anyone but Wulfgar while the ale-wife and her slaves were fluttering round Toli Silkbeard and the half-dozen men he’d brought with him like moths round a candle.

  Silkbeard seated himself on the one bench with a back to it, pulling Gunnvor down to sit on his left, pointing Eirik to a place on his right, and disposing the rest around him on low stools. Wulfgar’s party were all being drawn into the circle. He saw Silkbeard nod at Ronan, acknowledging him but with none of the warmth with which he’d greeted Gunnvor. He was asking her for news from Leicester: who was out, who in.

  She laughed. ‘Still buzzing like bees in a toppled hive. Ketil’s flexing his muscles, calling in favours. He’s confirmed my grant of the High Cross south of Leicester.’

  Wulfgar noticed she said nothing about Ketil slapping her face, though the little red welt was still visible.

  ‘And adding to your fortune?’ Silkbeard said. He put his hand on her knee and Wulfgar saw her stiffen.

  She doesn’t like that, he thought. He felt an unfamiliar, protective rage blaze through his veins, but it was damped too quickly by fear as Silkbeard caught his eye and smiled, before turning to the whole room.

  ‘Richest woman in all the Five Boroughs and still she wants more.’ His tone invited their laughter. ‘Richest, and prettiest.’

  ‘Toli Hrafnsson,’ Gunnvor said. ‘Let me present my friends. You know Father Ronan – this is Wulfgar of Winchester—’

  But Toli, who had been nodding impatiently, interrupted her. ‘So, Gunnvor Bolladottir, now that Hakon’s dead, who’s the lucky man? Ketil? Or am I in with a chance?’

  Her mouth twisted. It might have been a smile. ‘Oh, I’m past the age for that, Toli Hrafnsson. Better ask who my heirs are.’

  Silkbeard looked round the company, still inviting their mockery. ‘Listen to her! Ripe as summer berries, she is, and the nonsense that comes out of her mouth.’

  Gunnvor raised her eyebrows. ‘I might ask you the same, Toli Hrafnsson. Look at you, Jarl of all Lincoln for a whole winter and not even one wife yet?’

  Silkbeard laughed.

  ‘Buy a cow, when milk’s mine for the taking?’ He went on stroking her knee. ‘It would depend on what the wife brought with her, of course.’ He glanced over at Wulfgar then. ‘Ulfgeir! When you said “your friends”, I didn’t know you meant Gunnvor Bolladottir. I’d have come straight down with you if I’d known she was here.’

  Thank my guardian angel I didn’t know she was coming, then, Wulfgar thought. He said something in response, he had no idea what.

  Silkbeard snapped his fingers for wine, and in the bustle Father Ronan leaned over, tickling Wulfgar’s ear with his whiskers. ‘Your friends?’ he said meaningly. ‘Have you been hobnobbing with Toli? You’ve got some explaining to do, my lad.’

  Wulfgar nodded, unable to meet the priest’s eyes.

  Ednoth stared at him, too, a furrow deepening between his brows.

  Wulfgar looked away.

  And now Silkbeard was shouting at him: ‘Ulfgeir the Lordless! I want to know you better. Are all your friends so interesting?’ He snapped his fingers again and gestured to the ale-wife, and Wulfgar found his cup was being filled.

  ‘Drink, Ulfgeir! Swear friendship with me!’

  Wulfgar knocked cups with the Jarl and drank, but he couldn’t hold Silkbeard’s gaze; he found his eyes flickering past, looking into the shadows for Thorvald. No sign of him, but then he couldn’t see much beyond the firelight. He hoped the fragile little man had managed to slip out.

  Eirik was looking at Father Ronan, something unfathomable in his eyes.

  ‘Still wasting your breath preaching, priest?’ he asked.

  ‘You should come along to my Margaret-kirk, next time you’re down in Leicester,’ Father Ronan said easily. ‘I had your friend Orm Ormsson in my flock on Sunday, setting you all a good example.’

  Eirik hawked and spat into the straw.

  ‘Christianity,’ he said with great deliberation, ‘is a faith for thralls. And fools.’

  Wulfgar felt his stomach twisting.

  But Father Ronan only smiled.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘my friend. That’s just what it is.’

  ‘Ormsson is no fool.’ Eirik stared at Ronan, expressionless. ‘Impulsive, maybe. But no fool.’

  Wulfgar stood up, his knees shaky. He was tipsier than he’d realised.

  ‘Where’s the, um …’ He wanted to say necessarium – the need-house.

  But the attentive ale-wife knew what he meant.

  ‘Skitter-house, herra? Through that doorway, in the garth.’

  He stumbled out. The sky was still light but the little backyard with its high walls lay in shadow. He nearly fell over the snoring pig and in steadying himself put his hand into a stand of nettles and swore. The pit had wattle hurdles around it and a wooden seat. He fumbled with his belt and got his leggings down, his guts twisting painfully now. But all to no avail. He sat there in the stench, listening to his belly gripe and gurgle and the pig snorting and rootling in the midden, watching the sunset-tinted clouds move across the sky and wondering how he could face his friends. He thought, I can’t go back in there and explain when I don’t know what I’ve done. Perhaps I could just stay out here, find a refuge with the safe, friendly pig. Like St Frideswide, he thought. Didn’t she work as a swineherd for three years to avoid the unwanted attentions of a wealthy man who wanted to marry her? I can’t see Gunnvor Cat’s-Eyes doing that, he thought, and snorted aloud.

  In the end, it was Ronan who came out looking for him.

  Wulfgar scrambled unsteadily to his feet.

  Ronan stood by the inn door, silent, waiting.

  When Wulfgar had finished tying his leggings, the priest said, ‘More secrets, Wuffa? Or am I talking to Ulfgeir?’

  ‘I only met him for the first time this morning,’ Wulfgar said.

  ‘Toli?’

  ‘Who else?’

  Ronan shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps it’s no business of mine, even though I’ve come along on this escapade solely with the aim of helping you.’

  Wulfgar felt a blush start. He looked down.

  ‘I’m a good listener, though,’ the priest went on. ‘If you need me. And discreet. It comes with the job.’

  The pig was on its feet now and snuffling around Wulfgar’s legs, and he bent to give it a scratch behind its hairy ears. He longed to tell Ronan everything, but he was prevented by a forceful memory of the Atheling: Wulfgar could sense him now, looming over him, gripping his elbow, saying, Tell no one else. No one, do you hear me?

  ‘We need to go,’ Ronan said. ‘Now. If Eirik is here, dancing attendance on Toli Silkbeard, then at least he won’t be at Bardney. And if we go now, we’ll be there for Thorvald at moonrise. God knows, that poor little man and his saint have been kept waiting long enough.’

  The only way out of the yard was through the hall.

  As Wulfgar ducked to go in, Father Ronan put his arm out to block the other man’s path.

  ‘Be warned. These are dangerous men.’

  His hand still on the door curtain, Wulfgar said, ‘Silkbeard has been very kind to me.’ Silkbeard had liked him, he thought, had trusted him. Wulfgar sensed no danger, not from that quarter, anyway. He allowed himself
a little spurt of anger. ‘You and the Spider seem to be old friends.’

  Father Ronan pressed his lips together for a moment. ‘I told you we’d met. Eirik and I, we’ve had our disagreements over these many years. I don’t know what game you’re playing, Wuffa. But remember, no man can serve two masters. I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  Not as devoutly as Wulfgar did himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EDNOTH SAW THEM come in and he stood up. Wulfgar could see at once it was going to be hard for Gunnvor to extricate herself, however. Toli Silkbeard was still paying her that over-flattering attention, turning frequently from his men to speak to her in a low voice, resting his hand on her arm or her thigh. Wulfgar wondered whether Toli would notice him going and bid him farewell, but Lincoln’s Jarl was wholly caught up in his banter with Gunnvor.

  Eirik the Spider saw him, though. His face didn’t change but Wulfgar could feel those hollow-socketed eyes following his progress all the way around the hall. He glanced back when they got to the door into the main courtyard to find Eirik was still watching him, his body twisted round, one elbow resting on the back of the bench.

  As soon as the three of them were outside, Wulfgar said, ‘What about Gunnvor? We can’t just abandon her.’

  ‘Who wants her to come?’ Ednoth asked.

  Ronan shook his head, smiling wryly. ‘If any woman can look after herself in that company, it’s Cat’s-Eyes.’ He saw Wulfgar still hesitated. ‘Leave it, Wuffa. She knows what she’s doing. Silkbeard won’t leave while she’s there, and Eirik can’t leave while Silkbeard’s there.’

  Wulfgar took the point.

  The ostler helped them saddle and pack the horses. Within moments they were riding out the way they’d come, but instead of bearing south west for the Fosse Way again, they took another road, just as old, just as straight, once they had splashed across the ford in accordance with Thorvald’s instructions. The new road took them due south, and they climbed the far side of Lincoln’s steep river valley and up onto open heathland. Ermin Street: the name drifted up from some long-forgotten charter. But they didn’t keep to the great road for long. As the sun westered, casting their shadows far to their left, Ronan steered his sturdy little beast off on a track that led away from the heathland and down through groves of lime just coming into leaf.

  The track wound slowly but steadily downwards; Wulfgar was surprised when he looked back briefly and realised how steeply the heathland rose behind them. Darkness was drawing in more quickly here in its eastern lee. His skin prickled in a chill and rising wind that came to meet them face on, and he took one hand off Fallow’s reins to tug his cloak more closely about him.

  Ronan had stopped.

  Wulfgar caught up with him, and asked, ‘Do you know where you’re going?’

  ‘Following my nose,’ Ronan said thoughtfully. ‘There isn’t that much room to farm along this edge of the fen, and we’ve done as Thorvald said. We should be close.’

  They were; a few more twists of the track, the trees thinning, and Ronan reined in again, holding up his hand.

  Ednoth nodded.

  ‘What?’ Wulfgar asked.

  ‘Barnyard fowl,’ Father Ronan said.

  ‘Lambs,’ Ednoth added.

  The yard was fenced with a high ring of bundles of dead thorn, with a single entrance. Ducks and chickens scattered, raucous in their displeasure, from under the horses’ hooves. There was one low building, reed-thatched, with smoke trickling out where it could, a dung heap to the left and a lambing pen to the right. A mule was tied to a stump. There was a young woman coming out of the hut, a child of three or four clinging to her skirts. She saw the men riding through the gap in the thorn-hedge and stopped dead, then glanced wildly to left and right. There was nowhere to run. She fell to her knees. The little girl at her side began to scream.

  Ronan reined in sharply and gestured to the other two to do the same. He handed his reins to Ednoth and swung down out of the saddle. He raised his empty hands. Without taking a step towards the woman, he said, softly, ‘Leoba. Your husband sent us. Thorvald. Your husband. It’s all right. I’m a priest. No one here is going to hurt you or yours.’

  Slowly she got back to her feet, hushing the child.

  ‘Who are you?’ Her voice trembled.

  ‘We’ve come from the Bishop of Worcester,’ Ronan said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

  She looked at him long and hard, and then did the same for Ednoth and for Wulfgar. Her little girl was still crying, clinging to her legs.

  ‘Thank God,’ she said. And again, ‘Thank God.’

  She was shaking uncontrollably now, her arms cupped about her body, and Wulfgar realised she was holding another child in there, a very young one, pouched against her breast in a fold of cloth.

  Thorvald’s son.

  Father Ronan looked up at the sky. ‘Why do we have to live in a world where strangers mean trouble?’ he asked.

  Wulfgar didn’t think he expected an answer.

  There was nothing to do then but wait.

  Leoba had some pottage simmering over the hearth: more oats and much less meat than Wulfgar was used to, but warm and welcome all the same. There was just the one wooden bowl, which they passed around, squatting on their haunches to keep their heads below the blue smoke that hung in loops and skeins below the thatch.

  Their hostess said little, but Wulfgar found himself watching her every move. She thrummed like a plucked harp-string. Much younger than Thorvald, closer to Ednoth’s age. A dark girl with fine eyes, but her looks were marred by her thinness and the same harried air as her husband. She was like some marsh-wading bird, all drab plumage and bright eyes, dunlin or sandpiper. Both children stayed almost invisible, the little girl hiding in the folds of Leoba’s skirts and the baby tucked into her bodice, suckling, its fingers toying with a twisted silver ring that hung from a loop of blue yarn around her neck. Wulfgar caught a glimpse of blue-veined breast and moist, pink nipple as the baby quested, eyes closed and open-mouthed, and he looked away. An orphan lamb lay crying faintly in a basket.

  After they’d eaten, Wulfgar got up and stretched and went outside to a late evening full of birdsong and the robust bleating of those new lambs who still had their mothers. He was finding the waiting hard. The lambing pens were right on the edge of the dry land. Beyond the thorn-hedge, hazel scrub quickly gave way to swampy-looking meadow thick with pink cuckoo-flower, and beyond that the reed-beds began. The wind was bitter, carrying the smell of damp and decay. The marsh looked mild enough in the afterglow of the sunset, but his flesh prickled at the thought of going down there in darkness. Three cormorants sat on a dead tree drying their inky wings, and a noisy arrow of greylags went over, low enough for Wulfgar to hear the beat and whistle of the wind in their flight-feathers. His eyes followed them flying high towards the fen, but even as he watched the geese banked and turned and flew over his head, circling the enclosure and crying as they flew, their wings catching the last of the light.

  ‘That’s bad luck.’ Ronan had come out to join him. ‘Or so my mother would have said.’

  Wulfgar glimpsed a flurry of movement from the corner of his eye. Leoba, standing just behind them with the baby in the crook of her arm, had crossed herself at Ronan’s words.

  ‘Are you really taking us from here?’ she asked quietly.

  Wulfgar nodded.

  ‘The Spider’s a bad master. He and his, they can’t tell a freeman from a thrall.’ She lifted her eyes to Wulfgar’s. ‘Thorvald and me, we’re old Bardney folk. Our kin served the monks before Eirik and his like ever came. But they don’t see we’re here along of the place. Eirik thinks we’re his. He thinks our bairns will be his to do as he wants with, when they’re old enough.’

  She had all their attention.

  ‘And what would he do with them, when they’re old enough?’ Ronan said lightly.

  ‘What he’s done with others. Sell over the western sea.’

  ‘Dublin?
’

  ‘Aye, happen.’

  Ronan was silent a moment. Then he said, ‘We’ll get you away.’

  ‘You’re a priest,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Margaret-kirk, in Leicester.’

  ‘Would you christen my bairns? And me?’

  ‘Now?’

  She shook her head. ‘In your kirk. Done right, not here.’

  ‘Done right,’ he said. ‘We might even find you some godparents.’

  Ednoth had been busy unsaddling all three horses and rubbing them down with wisps of grass, and now he ran his hand up and down their legs. He got to his feet and came over.

  ‘I think Fallow’s got a splint, Father.’ He was speaking to Ronan but his tone was accusing and Wulfgar knew the words were intended for him. He didn’t know what to say; he wasn’t even sure what Ednoth meant, or how he could have prevented it.

  Father Ronan sighed.

  ‘Let’s have a look.’

  When he had felt Fallow’s front legs he nodded.

  ‘All this way on hard roads, no great surprise there.’

  Now Ednoth did look at Wulfgar.

  ‘She must have been lame all day. But you’re such a rotten horseman, you wouldn’t notice, would you, Ulfgeir?’

  Wulfgar found himself wishing Ednoth would just shout at him. He could deal with that. He thought, oh, damn it. I like that horse. She’s looked after me better than I’ve looked after her.

  ‘Steady,’ said Ronan. ‘It could have happened to either of your two nags, neither in the best condition, ridden day after day.’

  ‘Cold poultices,’ Leoba said. ‘I’ll see to them. She should rest but there’s little we can do there.’

  ‘You know about horses?’ Ednoth asked.

  ‘I know mules,’ she said, thrusting the baby at Wulfgar. ‘Take this, he likes to play with it.’ She pulled the loop of wool with its silver ring over her head and pushed it into his hand.

  He’d never held such a young child before. It – no, he – was astonishingly light. Not knowing where to put the baby, he tried to copy Leoba’s stance, holding the swathed bundle against his shoulder. It felt as though there were a conspiracy against him, to make him look a fool. He wanted to explain everything to Ednoth but he didn’t know where to start.