The Bone Thief

by V. M. Whitworth

  ‘Thorvald?’ The Spider’s wife was listening now. ‘What has Thorvald to do with this?’ She went to the door, shouted to summon a slave, gave orders, turned in the doorway. ‘Where is Thorvald?’

  ‘Where you and yours can’t get at him,’ Father Ronan said.

  She bared her teeth.

  ‘He’s our thrall. Was he working for you? Are you telling me he’s dead?’

  Ronan crossed himself. ‘May he rest in peace. But not your thrall, and not your husband’s. Your people here are free men and women of Bardney.’

  She seemed to find something funny in that.

  ‘Freedom in Bardney? There’s no freedom anywhere Eirik wields the rod.’ She turned back into the hall and stared down at the rug with its treasure-trove of coins. ‘You,’ she said to Ronan, ‘you think you’re so clever. Do some work for once. You bag my silver again and stow it in my kist.’ She gestured at a small leather-covered chest that stood on the inside of the west wall and began fumbling with the keys at her belt. Ronan, meekly obedient, scooped up the rug, gathering stray coins, as she opened the lid of the chest and kicked the money bags towards him.

  ‘Help me, Wuffa. Let’s do a bag each.’

  The Spider’s wife nodded. ‘Get on with it.’

  Wulfgar shuffled across. He had never seen such a pile of money in his life. He peered curiously at the first one he picked up. Deorwald’s workshop – the Winchester moneyer’s name was there for him to read, but he thought he would have known the old man’s craftsmanship anyway by the beautiful cutting of the tiny letters. He turned it over and tilted it to read the name circling round the rim with a pang. EDWARDUS REX. New-minted, indeed. Edward had wasted no time.

  The coin was snatched from his hand.

  ‘Stop laiking about.’

  It was a slow job, the Spider’s wife watching like a cat at a mouse-hole to see that not a single gleaming disc went astray. She stood over them the whole time, her hands knotted and clenching.

  ‘What are you so afraid of?’ Ronan asked, almost gently.

  The Spider’s wife made a noise; it sounded almost like a whimper, and Wulfgar looked up at her, startled. Her shawl had fallen back, revealing a flash of metal at her long throat.

  ‘That’s a thrall ring, for all its silver,’ Father Ronan said slowly.

  She looked at him with hatred.

  ‘My wedding ring,’ she said.

  Ronan had filled his bag. He stood up, holding it out to the Spider’s wife, who snatched it from him with both hands. ‘Come with us, lady,’ he said. He put his hand on his heart. ‘Bring your silver. Come away with us.’

  Her eyes had widened. Wuffa watched in fascination.

  ‘Come back to the faith of your parents,’ Ronan said,

  ‘My parents?’ She laughed, a brittle sound that tailed away into coughing. ‘Who was it sold me to Eirik, think you?’ she said, when she had got her breath back. Her mouth twisted. ‘May well be I’m not staying here. But I’ll put no faith in the word of Christians, either. You’d kill me for the silver.’

  ‘Lady, lady!’ A young woman ran into the hall, her face wild, too short of breath to do more than point a frantic arm out into the courtyard.

  The sound of horses outside.

  A voice shouting a harsh command in Danish.

  In Danish.

  Her head swivelled from side to side, eyes wide like a doe at bay. She snatched at the other bag of silver, the one Wulfgar was holding up to her, but he hadn’t fastened the draw-string and it up-ended. A shower of coins slid from its mouth, flickering like fish-scales in the shaft of sunlight, ringing sweetly as they tumbled onto the flagged floor.

  ‘Help me,’ she said.

  The doorway darkened. Wulfgar looked towards it, hoping for the first time in his life to see Garmund.

  A lanky, angular figure, his hair backlit grey.

  Eirik.

  He looked slowly around him, eyes adjusting to the smoky gloom. His eyes lingered, squinting, on each small group, as he tallied the unexpected scene. Ednoth sitting in the corner, still resting his head on his folded arms. Their guards. Ronan, standing, holding an obviously heavy bag. Wulfgar, still kneeling by the rug, empty-handed. The woman scrabbling on the floor for a small fortune in silver.

  There were no shouts, no angry questions. Eirik just stood there, waiting, until they all had seen him, had stopped what they were doing, until he had their full attention. And even then the silence stretched on and on.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked his wife at last in his guttural, lifeless tone. He pointed accusingly at the scattering of silver and the tumbled rug. ‘Stand up. Who were those men riding out on my road?’

  She was silent.

  His eyes narrowed as he acknowledged Ronan, and he looked around the group again, nodding.

  ‘You,’ he said, pointing. ‘Friend of Silkbeard. You stand up too.’

  He means me, Wulfgar realised.

  ‘What is all this? What are you doing here?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ his wife asked. ‘You never come here. Never.’

  ‘People are talking in Lincoln,’ he said. ‘Saying there is a great treasure hid at Bardney, and Eirik the Spider is a fool not to know about it. A bigger fool to trust his wife.’ He spat onto the tiles. ‘Nobody calls me a fool.’ He took another step towards them. ‘Then yesterday this one –’ he indicated Wulfgar again ‘– starts asking questions. Bardney, Bardney, Bardney. So I decided I would come and see. And what do I find? Strangers on the road, and – not strangers – in my house.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘You have been cheating me, haven’t you?’ Eirik said.

  She shook her head, speechless.

  He sucked his teeth.

  ‘I should have known.’

  Extemporising frantically, Wulfgar said, ‘Those men you saw on the road, they’ve taken your treasure.’

  ‘What?’

  Encouraged by Eirik’s response, Wulfgar spread his hands.

  ‘They stole it from the churchyard. We were too late.’ He looked at Ronan: support me here. But the big priest was silent. He went on, scrabbling after words with a sense of digging his own grave. ‘We were after the treasure, but we’ve only just got here. We found those men already here, they’d been digging in the graveyard, and when – when they saw us they jumped on their horses and rode away. The hole they left was empty, and their saddle-bags looked full, so we assumed—’ Where is my eloquence when we need it? ‘I can show you the hole,’ he said, desperate.

  Eirik’s head swung round to find one of the men who had been guarding them. ‘Search their bags.’ It didn’t take him long, up-ending and stirring with his foot. He found the Bishop’s silver, and handed it to Eirik.

  ‘Glad now I didn’t bring my harp?’ Ronan muttered.

  Wulfgar nodded, only too aware of the Bishop’s ring and his little gospel of St John, both lying warm and secret against his breast.

  ‘See,’ Wulfgar said, wishing someone else would join in his storytelling. How had he ended up being the only spokesman of their little party? ‘We haven’t got it. We’re telling you the truth.’

  Eirik looked up from inspecting the two little bags of coins from Wulfgar’s saddle-bag.

  ‘You have not got it here. So? You might have hidden it.’ He looked at the floor. ‘And what was she doing? Whose silver is that?’

  Wulfgar cleared his throat.

  ‘Um, well, we brought that silver, hoping to buy the treasure, but your wife was just telling us that unfortunately she can’t help us, because we’re too late.’ Hollow, hollow, hollow.

  Eirik looked out at him from those deep eye-sockets.

  ‘Then why is she putting it in her own kist?’

  ‘Well, perhaps she was going to keep it,’ Wulfgar conceded. ‘But she’s innocent of anything else, and so are we. We’ve all been tricked, by those men – those thieves – on the road.’ Go after them, he thought desperately.

  ‘
Who were those men?’ Eirik asked.

  ‘Wessex,’ Wulfgar said shortly. ‘Silkbeard’s enemies, and ours.’

  Eirik was silent a moment. Then he said, ‘And this famous treasure? What is it?’

  His wife began to laugh. The laughter went on and on, more like sobbing all the time.

  Eirik looked around helplessly.

  ‘Make her stop. Stop her.’

  But the woman brought herself back under control without help. Wiping her eyes and coughing, she said, ‘Bones. Old bones. That’s what all this is about.’

  ‘Bones?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But what about the gold?’ Eirik’s eyes narrowed. ‘People in Lincoln have been saying gold.’

  ‘Just bones,’ his wife repeated. ‘Dry old bones you’d not insult a dog with. And these men here have offered me – us – silver for them. Who’s the fool now?’

  ‘How much silver is here?’

  ‘Thirty pounds. For old bones! Thirty pounds and—’ She pressed her lips tight.

  And then one of the guards spoke very quietly to Eirik, in Danish. His tone was tentative, even apologetic, his eyes flickering constantly over to the Spider’s wife. Wulfgar strained to hear, a terrible cold fear growing in his belly, but the man’s voice was little more than a murmur in Eirik’s ear.

  He finished, and stood back. Eirik nodded, his face a mask. His wife looked half-furious, half-terrified.

  Ronan stirred then.

  ‘We’ve nothing of yours, Spider. You’ve got the silver, and lost nothing that you value.’

  Nothing but your reeve, Wulfgar thought. He looked down at his hands. Thorvald’s blood was still clogged thick under his fingernails.

  ‘You’re lying to me,’ Eirik said again. ‘If what my man tells me is true, those riders on the road have your bones, but you did the digging. And he tells me this is their money. If you wanted to buy my treasure, then where is your money?’ He turned to Wulfgar. ‘And whose blood is that? He tells me, my reeve is dead. Have you killed him?’ Eirik sounded frustrated, almost peevish. ‘Enough. This has gone on long enough. Take off your ring.’

  Wulfgar blinked, hand at his collar. How had the Spider known about the Bishop’s ring? But Eirik’s attention had moved on.

  His wife had known exactly what he meant. Her hands had gone to her own throat, gripping the thick silver ring as though for protection. Earlier Wulfgar had thought he had seen the traces of beauty in her face, but there was none there now. Her skin had gone the colour of curdled milk and there were beads of sweat on her upper lip. Wulfgar felt a sudden, unexpected pang of pity for this woman, who had been a child once. Free once, too, he thought.

  ‘Take it off,’ Eirik repeated. Slowly, as though some external force were compelling her, his wife dragged at the ends of the metal, and, slowly, obedient to her white-knuckled grip, the silver wire bent apart. She pulled it from her neck, leaving a red mark behind.

  ‘Drop it.’

  It clanged on the flag-stones.

  ‘Nobody cheats me,’ Eirik said, almost lightly, ‘but especially not my wife.’ He nodded to the men in the doorway, and said something in Danish.

  Wulfgar blinked. Had he understood Eirik properly?

  The Spider’s wife had been standing as if frozen, but now she looked wildly from one side to the other.

  ‘Nei! I—’

  But they were bundling her out of the door as if she were a ewe brought unwilling to her shearing. The sunlight sent long, thrashing shadows across the threshold, and then the doorway was empty and still. There was a brief silence, and then a wild, frantic scream, agony on the ears, ending in a splutter and choke, and silence again.

  Eirik walked to the doorway and paused, looking out, blocking any view from inside. He stood there for a long time. Eventually he said something in Danish.

  Wulfgar didn’t understand, and wasn’t sure he wanted to. But Ronan stirred at the words.

  ‘No. Give her a clean burial. The marsh is for unfaithful wives.’

  Eirik turned.

  ‘And what is this called? Faith?’ His gesture took in their little party, the rug, the spilled silver. He sucked his teeth again. ‘Better she had been bedding another man.’

  Wulfgar was finding it impossible to breathe. The casual way in which this man had given his orders, the readiness with which his servants had committed the horror, somehow all the worse for happening out of sight. Over and over his imagination painted in the missing details, too easy after the violence he had witnessed – no, be honest – the violence he had partaken of, last night. He closed his eyes. That long white throat bared in the evening light, the head dragged back, the knife … and the life-blood, soaking into her ill-kept cobblestones.

  He blinked, and swallowed, and tried to pray for her. The Spider’s wife. She must have done something in her life that merited redemption. She must have suffered …

  He’d never even learnt her name.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ONE OF EIRIK’S men hovered in the doorway.

  ‘Já?’

  Wulfgar tried to follow, but could make nothing of it. He looked in hope at Ronan, who had drawn his breath in sharply.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’ve gone to bury her. In the bone-garth. In the hole we dug last night.’ He crossed himself, and Wulfgar followed suit. ‘Dear Christ, Wulfgar, I hope our saint is worth it. There’s a mort of blood been shed over this.’

  It was all supposed to have been so easy. Go to Bardney. Get the relics. Go home.

  ‘Is this Toli’s law, Spider?’ Ronan asked. ‘You can kill your own wife without cause, without trial?’

  Eirik spat into the rushes.

  ‘You can kill your own thrall, priest. Any law allows that.’

  Wulfgar found a ghost of a voice.

  ‘Not in Wessex,’ he said. ‘And not in Mercia.’

  ‘And you can kill the thief found with your goods in his hand.’ Eirik nodded at them, his face almost happy. ‘That’s good Army-law. And we still have Army-law in Lincoln.’ He turned to the four men in the doorway. ‘Them, now.’ He jerked his head at Wulfgar. ‘Him first.’

  ‘I told Toli where we were going,’ Ronan said evenly. ‘He’ll want to know if you’ve seen us.’

  Eirik bared his teeth in a parody of a smile.

  ‘I haven’t seen you. Nobody has seen you.’

  Ronan smiled. ‘But we have a meeting planned, Silkbeard and I.’

  ‘Now I know you’re lying, prestr,’ Eirik said again. ‘I was there when you left Toli. You said nothing to him. What would Toli plan with you?’

  ‘Can you be sure? Would he tell you all his plans?’

  ‘Toli doesn’t know you came here,’ Eirik said, but he sounded less happy.

  ‘You’ve profited by thirty pounds of best Wessex silver,’ Ronan said. ‘We’ve got nothing of yours, not in our hand or anywhere else. What kind of thieves does that make us?’

  ‘What about me?’ Wulfgar said, ‘I’m Toli’s friend. You saw us swear friendship, you just said as much!’

  Eirik shrugged.

  ‘Toli swears and forswears as it suits him.’ He walked over to Wulfgar and looked into his eyes. ‘You want to risk it? You want to go back to Toli and see how he values you, compared to me?’

  Wulfgar found himself flinching at the proximity of that gaunt, greyish face. Yes, it was easy to believe that Eirik was telling the truth.

  But it had worked last time – Take me to Toli, he’d said, and escaped scot-free – and what alternative did they have?

  ‘You want good law?’ Ronan said. ‘Then respect Toli’s law, Eirik. You need to take us to Toli. Charge us in public.’

  Eirik turned. ‘I should have had you killed twenty years ago in Dublin.’

  Ronan grinned. ‘As you found then, I don’t kill so easy.’

  Eirik jerked his head. ‘Tie them up. They want to go to Toli. Let them. I want to see them regret it.’

  The three of them had the
ir hands tied behind their back and were shoved up onto scrawny, dull-eyed mules, a rope tying ankle to ankle under the girth. Wulfgar thought with a sudden pang of his Fallow, abandoned at the lambing pens all day. She’d been tethered near plenty of grass, hadn’t she? Would she need water? How long before someone found her, and Starlight, and Ronan’s black Dub? One of Eirik’s men had a massive coil of rope in his hands, and Wulfgar watched him lash it behind his saddle. There was a dark puddle on the cobblestones at the horse’s feet, and Wulfgar suddenly recognised it for what was. The flies helped him to understand. He flinched, and looked away.

  They made a strange cavalcade, Eirik riding in front with a couple of armed men and a third bringing up the rear. Wulfgar thought – prayed – that Lincoln could be no more than an hour’s ride, because this was agony. Although the mules went at no more than a shambling plod, he was lurched from side to side at every pace, his thighs clenched around the mule’s ribs, the knobs of its backbone digging into his groin. His bound hands scrabbled behind his back but there was not so much as the hem of a saddle-cloth to cling to. If I do fall, I’ll get tangled up with the mule’s hooves, and it’ll tread on me. I mustn’t fall. Think of something else. The coil of rope tied to the guard’s saddle caught his eye again, and the thought flashed across his mind: that’s for hanging us. And, if Lincoln’s no more than an hour away, then does that mean my death is only an hour away? Toli wouldn’t hang a man he’d sworn friendship with, surely? He wouldn’t hang a priest …

  He glanced across at Ednoth: stiff and furious and, it seemed to Wulfgar, terribly vulnerable.

  ‘Ronan,’ he hissed.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What’s Army-law?’

  ‘For outlanders like us? No court. No right to plead. We live or die on Toli’s say-so.’