The Bone Thief

by V. M. Whitworth

  ‘Can I help?’ he asked Ronan.

  The priest looked down at the baby and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I think you’ve got your hands full.’

  Leoba had found rags and comfrey and water, and she and Ednoth occupied themselves with Fallow’s legs, followed everywhere by the solemn, thumb-sucking little girl.

  Ronan brought out his sword and began to sharpen it with long, slow strokes of a little whetstone, which he took from a leather pocket that hung at his belt.

  Wulfgar was left with the baby, who looked at him with bright, round eyes, small pink hands clutching at his tunic, the swaddling-cloth stale with old milk. Wulfgar remembered again the son born last autumn to his brother’s house, and he dangled the silver ring in front of the baby to see if he liked it. He did, reaching out and gurgling. Wulfgar hunkered down over the little thing in the lee of the hedge, dangling the ring, careful that the baby didn’t scratch himself on the sharp, protruding end of the silver wire.

  Ronan looked across and smiled.

  ‘Have you children?’ he asked Wulfgar.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Little brothers?’

  Wulfgar flinched involuntarily. Ronan doesn’t know about Garmund, he reminded himself. ‘All my siblings are older than me,’ he said carefully. ‘Wystan’s the eldest. He’s inherited our father’s estates near Winchester. He’s got a new son, but I haven’t seen the child yet. And my sister – she’s older than me, too.’ No need to go into further detail.

  Father Ronan nodded.

  ‘Wife?’

  ‘No.’

  The baby let a dribble of milk emerge from a corner of its mouth. Wulfgar found himself profoundly moved by the child’s smallness, his trusting way of clutching a finger in his tiny fist. Why did everyone keep asking him about getting married? He tried to find an honest answer.

  ‘I serve the Lady now. Maybe, if I found a woman to match her, one day …’ This conversation was making him uncomfortable. ‘You?’

  Ronan snorted. ‘Kevin. My altar-boy, remember? At least, his mother’s always claimed he’s my getting, and I’ve no reason to doubt her. He’s a good boy. I’m happy to train him up to fill my shoes.’ He shrugged. ‘Wife? Not for a long time.’

  Wulfgar ruminated on this. It seemed an over-casual arrangement, even for a priest without ambition. I’m in this man’s debt, he thought, I’m in no position to judge him. He forced himself to voice the nagging thought at the back of his mind. ‘I thought, perhaps, you and Gunnvor … You seem so easy with each other.’

  ‘Our lovely Gunnvor.’ Ronan shook his head.

  Wulfgar frowned at him, concerned at the edge of bitterness in the priest’s voice.

  Ronan cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘You feel it too, don’t you? Ach, she’s got the elf-sheen on her, all right. And she likes men to acknowledge it. And – be warned, subdeacon – she likes a challenge. But—’ Father Ronan pressed his lips together as though preventing his thought from becoming speech. At last he said, ‘She’s a law to herself, our Gunnvor. I did suggest I could look after her, a few years back when her father died, but she’s not such a fool as I am.’ He pulled out a bit of well-worn leather and started polishing the sword-blade. ‘Her father was one of Hakon Toad’s house-carls. Came over from Norway to join the Summer Army as a stripling, thirty years since. Hoarded a fair fortune.’ He paused. Wulfgar waited, his hands gripping each other. At last the priest went on, ‘Hard man, Bolli was, with just the one soft spot. She was his only child. He adored her. So did Hakon. His pearl of great price, our old Jarl called her.’

  ‘No,’ Wulfgar said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘She’s not a pearl. She’s more like – oh, I don’t know, carnelian. Or jasper. Something streaked with dark red, with fire—’

  Father Ronan gave him a sharp look. ‘Easy, lad. That’s as may be. Anyway, Bolli died, oh, five, six, years ago?’ He eased his blade back into the fleece of its scabbard. ‘So how does a lass that age, with not a soul to call kin this side of the North Sea, hang on to her father’s fortune?’

  Wulfgar’s mind blanked.

  ‘She doesn’t,’ he said.

  The baby mewed and squawked, and he shifted it to the other arm.

  ‘She did. You might have thought she looked like a doe-faun among wolves back there in the ale-house, but don’t be fooled. Sharpest teeth in the pack.’ There was a note of sadness there that Wulfgar had not heard from him before. ‘Her father bequeathed her into Hakon’s protection, and the Toad was only too happy to oblige. He may be in his grave, too, now but he throws a long shadow. And Ketil would like to pick up what his brother had to let drop, but she’s not so sure. Not so sure at all. You’ve seen his temper.’

  ‘You’re saying Hakon never married her?’ Wulfgar felt as though the earth had shuddered beneath him. That exquisite, fastidious woman had been kept by a man known as the Toad?

  Father Ronan snorted. ‘She didn’t marry him, you mean.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Cold out here, isn’t it? Don’t mind me. Cat’s-Eyes has the right to use all the weapons God gives her, God knows. But these things have a way of turning in the hand, to bite the wielder, not the foe. That’s all.’ He cocked his head and frowned eastwards. ‘I hope that’s Thorvald. I’ve had enough surprises for one day.’

  It was. Punctual to his time, the moon in the east just beginning to lift free of the reeds, he was leading a mule, burdened by what turned out to be three spades and a couple of digging sticks bundled up in sacking, and a lantern. As he came through the gap in the thorn-hedge, the little girl left her mother’s skirts for the first time and hurtled towards him with shouts of ‘Dadda! Dadda!’ He dropped the bridle and scooped her up just as she was about to go headlong – and then he pivoted on his heel, nearly overbalancing in his turn, to stare up the slope.

  Then they all heard it: the thud of hoof-beats, coming from the darkening west.

  Wulfgar scrambled awkwardly to his feet, the increasingly restless baby under one arm. Ednoth scrambled for his sword while Father Ronan hefted his own newly whetted blade. For a long moment it was sickeningly reminiscent of Offchurch.

  ‘One horse only,’ Ronan said, after a moment.

  Ednoth, alert now, nodded.

  The galloping horse came into view, a dark shadow in the dusk. Wulfgar heard Ronan’s blade loosening in its scabbard.

  And then they breathed again. It was Gunnvor Cat’s-Eyes, almost kneeling on her saddle, riding her grey mare headlong down the track. She swung herself down before the horse had skidded to a halt and stood there looking at them, holding the snorting mare by the bridle.

  ‘I should have known. I should have known.’ Wulfgar, still queasy with nerves, looked behind her for the signs of pursuit. ‘Is Eirik close behind you?’

  She wasn’t even out of breath.

  ‘No one’s after me.’ She stifled a laugh. ‘Not like that, anyroad. I didn’t want to miss the fun, that’s all. Or have to be poking about in the fen after you, in the dark.’ Now she wrestled with the buckles of her saddle. Wulfgar noticed she’d taken those little bells off the harness. ‘I’ve been hearing all about you from Toli. Ulfgeir the Mysterious. You are a deep one, aren’t you?’

  Their eyes met, and then hers dropped to the baby in his arms.

  ‘Yours?’

  He thought he heard mockery in her voice.

  ‘Mine,’ Leoba said firmly, relieving Wulfgar of him and tucking him back into that fold of her outer dress.

  Wulfgar took a step or two closer to Gunnvor.

  ‘What did Toli Silkbeard say about me?’ He badly needed to know.

  She lowered the saddle onto the ground and looped her mare’s reins to a post before replying. ‘He said, “My, what soft hands the man has”.’

  Their eyes met and he saw her mouth twitch.

  He recoiled, stung. ‘They’re not that soft!’ He turned them palm upwards, offered them to her. ‘Look, I’ve got calluses from playing my harp.’

/>   She reached out a hand and stroked across his fingertips and over his palm with unexpected gentleness. ‘So you have.’

  ‘Why did you come after us?’ he said. His palm tingled, the nerves set on fire.

  She pulled a silver pin from her hair and plunged it back in to recapture an errant braid.

  ‘I don’t like Eirik the Spider, and I despise his master. I’d like to see them bested.’ Her face was alight with mischief suddenly. ‘And I do like a gamble. Though I must say –’ and her eyes ranged from Wulfgar to Father Ronan to Ednoth and back to Wulfgar ‘– I usually prefer better odds.’

  ‘Mind your manners, lass.’ Father Ronan’s gaze was still directed up the track. ‘You’re sure you’ve not been followed? It was daft of you to come straight here.’

  Her face turned scornful.

  ‘They’d just broached a kilderkin of southern wine. They’ll not be budging, not in the dark.’

  Thorvald was holding his little girl by the hand. ‘We’ll have to go by foot across the causeway. We can’t chance the horses – too heavy, too much noise. When we get back, we’ll be six, and the two bairns, four horses and the mule. The bairns can go in the mule’s panniers.’

  ‘How will you keep their mouths shut?’ Gunnvor asked.

  Leoba took the little girl’s other hand and pulled her gently away from her father. To Gunnvor’s question, she said, ‘Enough honey beer and they’ll keep quiet, never you mind.’ She looked heavenwards for a moment, then took a deep breath. ‘We never thought we’d see this day come. We’d been wanting to flit for so long. Tor and me. We’d been talking and talking about how our holy man might get us free, and no word came from your Bishop. And then when we heard yon man was coming back we thought we’d left it too late—’

  Thorvald made a chopping gesture with his hand.

  ‘Have you not told them?’ Leoba asked him. ‘You’re a fool, Tor.’

  ‘What man?’ Father Ronan’s voice was full of weariness.

  ‘Don’t listen to the woman, Father,’ Thorvald said, ‘she doesn’t know what she’s about. Never can hold her tongue.’

  Father Ronan ignored him. He spoke urgently now to Leoba.

  ‘What man? What is he not telling us?’

  Wulfgar thought he knew, and said, ‘Orm Ormsson.’

  But Leoba shook her head. She bent down and hoisted up the little girl, settling her against her left hip like something very precious, a shield, a harp. She spoke into the child’s hair.

  ‘No, no, I know him. Everyone knows him. This was a southron. A stranger from the English lands. Spoke like you,’ she said to Wulfgar, suddenly. ‘Came very courteous last Yuletide, talked to Eirik’s wife. Word was, he said, there might be a great treasure of the Christians somewhere about her land. Something no use to her but for which his master would pay. She said she had to think about it. He said he would be back.’

  ‘And who is he? Who’s his master?’ Wulfgar found his hackles were prickling. There was a long pause, filled with the crying of lambs.

  ‘His master, I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I heard his name, or the name he went by.’

  Wulfgar waited on her words, terribly afraid of what he might be going to hear.

  ‘He called himself Garmund. Garmund Polecat.’

  Wulfgar bit his tongue.

  Ednoth swung round, swearing violently, flinging the bridle he’d been holding to the ground.

  ‘You fool, woman.’ Thorvald said. Even in the near-darkness the fury was visible on his face.

  Leoba buried her face briefly in the child’s wispy hair. Then she looked up at him and said passionately, ‘Word gets out, Tor. Everyone in the island knew he had come, and why. Folk have been gabbing, even if none else but you knows right where our saint lies. You know they have.’

  Wulfgar knew, even if Thorvald was claiming not to. When is a dead man a better bargain than a live one? Others beside Orm Ormsson could guess the answer to that riddle. His temple had started throbbing again as though Garmund’s boot had only just made contact.

  ‘What? Did you think we wouldn’t come to Bardney if we foresaw trouble?’ he said to Thorvald. ‘Would we have come this far if that was the case?’ Yes, and probably not, he answered himself, silently. And, sixteen, was it, or seventeen, men Garmund had with him at Offchurch? Mounted and armed.

  ‘But why should we let this fret at us?’ Gunnvor asked. ‘He isn’t here now, is he?’

  At that, Leoba and Wulfgar both began to speak. She stopped at once and looked at him.

  Sighing, he said, ‘We met him on the road, with a big armed band. Coming up from the south. And, yes, I’d guess coming here, though I don’t know how quickly so large a gang would be travelling. I’ve cause to think he’s King Edward’s man.’

  Wulfgar looked at Leoba then.

  ‘They were expected soon,’ she said. ‘Today, maybe. Maybe there now.’

  ‘They don’t know where the saint lies,’ Thorvald said. ‘Only I know that for sure. But the bone-garth’s not so great that they won’t find him in the end.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THORVALD TOLD THEM to keep their mouths shut while they crossed the marsh.

  ‘Sound travels far in fen. And there are always a few folk around at night this time of year, netting for eels and the like. A man in a boat could get back to Bardney and rouse the hunt and we’d never know till they were on us. Follow me, tread where I tread, never you leave the causeway.’

  He had gained confidence, now that the time had come to be doing. He handed out the tools, passing them into groping hands. The last glimmer of the daylight had left the western sky and the bats were hunting over the reeds.

  They’d never have found their way through the marshes without a man who’d grown up treading those wetlands. For all that, Thorvald took them slowly, pondering every few moments.

  ‘How do you know the way?’ Ednoth asked him. ‘Especially in the dark?’

  He paused and pointed.

  ‘There are markers. See?’

  Willow wands, no more than waist-height, staked into the causeway, slender and hard to see, some fallen, many of the others sprouting new growth.

  ‘I need to come by and make new ones,’ he said. Then he laughed. ‘Someone else’s business now, I reckon.’

  The causeway itself was little more than packed reed bundles, added to through life after life of men. With each step Wulfgar found his feet sinking and the water welling up around, and into, his shoes; he had kept them well-greased but long before they got to the far side he was sodden up to the knees and stinking. In some parts the way was more mud than reed, a mud that sucked hungrily at their feet, splashing and squelching. At certain points on the track, Wulfgar thought they might as well throw caution to the wind and shout, ‘Eirik, the thieves are on their way!’ But Eirik was in Lincoln, he hoped, and prayed.

  The rising moon, low and gibbous in the eastern sky, was giving just enough light to cast shadows. More shadows moved to the left and right, dazzling dark and flashes of silver, and splashes not made by men. The hair was prickling on the back of Wulfgar’s neck, but no one else showed any sign of being afraid. So he told himself it was otters, or beavers, or merely moorhens, and kept on plodding, dogged in Father Ronan’s wake. Muscles he thought he’d tamed with a week on horseback were waking up and turning vicious. Neither land nor water: this was no place for men.

  They had no idea how long it was taking, but the moon was already high when at last, almost too slowly to be noticed, the ground began to slope upwards and to dry out. The causeway went on rising until there was a drop the height of a man either side, down into the marsh below. Wulfgar became aware of dim massive shapes ahead of them, and his nostrils prickled at new scents, not bog and rot now but smoke and midden. Thorvald had stopped, and now he held out his arms to draw them into a tight little group.

  ‘We’re at the outer bank,’ he breathed. ‘But we can’t enter here – we’d need to go too nigh the main door of the
hall, and past the kitchen. We need to go right round.’ His arm described an arc. ‘Don’t fall in the dyke,’ and he turned and moved on in the direction he’d indicated.

  The mood was changing, being so close. Wulfgar’s heart buzzed in his breast to think of the saint only yards away. Surely he must be on their side, having let them come this far unscathed. St Oswald wanted to be delivered. The moon was on their right now, blocked by the great earth ditch and bank that curved ahead to the north and east, and they followed its line. Out of the moonlight they were invisible, even to each other. Thorvald stepped out briskly, too fast for Wulfgar over the tussocky ground and he kept stumbling.

  Ronan grabbed his elbow. ‘All right?’ he breathed.

  Wulfgar nodded, forgetting the priest couldn’t see the gesture, and nearly walked into Thorvald, who’d stopped again. The reeve pressed Wulfgar’s shoulder, meaning for him and the others to squat down in the lee of the bank, and spoke under his breath. ‘Coming this way, from the north, we come through the orchard and then into the old bone-garth of the monastery. Tread carefully there, it’s full of haunts. After-gangers. Souls of the unchristened dead. We’ve all seen things.’

  ‘But we have to go there?’ Ednoth sounded jumpy.

  Thorvald’s shrug was audible. ‘That’s where the saint lies.’

  Wulfgar’s hand groped after the Bishop’s ring for comfort.

  ‘I know where my grandfather said he is,’ the reeve went on, ‘but it’s hard by the wall of the old kirk, and inside the old kirk is where they’ll all be tonight. If your man, your King’s man, is here, that’s where he’ll be.’

  Wulfgar nodded, digesting his warning, resisting the urge to say Not my King. Not his man, either. But Wulfgar’s father’s son, for all that. My half-brother, he thought, and one day I’ll have to face up to the truth of that. He shivered.

  Thorvald gestured that it was safe for them to go on.

  There was a way over the ditch and through the bank, a sudden powerful whiff of pig, and then they were among the silvery apple trees. The night was heavy with the scent of new blossom. Dry twigs cracked under their feet and they slowed, easing their feet to the ground.