He was so intent on the sound that he failed to notice where he put his feet, and he stumbled heavily over something that tangled his feet, only just saving himself from falling on the damp grass.
A basket. No, a straw pannier. He’d caught his foot in one of the handles. The sort of capacious, saggy old thing that would sit very well on a mule’s flank, full of apples, or leeks, or carrots, to take to market. But this one was empty, apart from a crumpled length of dirty, ragged sack-cloth that trailed from its mouth. Without even noticing he let the horse’s bridle and reins slip from his fingers as he bent to pick the sack-cloth up. But it too was quite empty – except – what was this?
Wedged into a corner.
His fingers scrabbled at the tiny object and brought it before his eyes.
Smooth, brown bone.
The back of his neck and shoulders crawled with a spidery sensation. He longed to doubt the evidence of his eyes and fingers, but he couldn’t. This was the sacking that had held St Oswald’s bones, the very bundle that he had thrust into Leoba’s arms.
So, where was Leoba?
And where were the relics?
Had she stopped – to feed the children, or to clean them, or whatever you did with children – and dropped the bundle? Let the pannier fall off, without noticing? Where were the other bones, then?
What a fool he had been, to expect an unbaptised girl to know their value.
That crying was getting on his nerves. Why didn’t she come out of the bushes? She must have recognised him by now.
He held the one little toe-bone tight in his left fist as he searched, turning the pannier over with his foot, but there were no more bones underneath it, none lying in the grass round about. He searched in circles, moving further and further away from the pannier.
‘Wuffa?’ It was Ronan, calling to him from the road. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
He couldn’t find his voice, his distress was so great; he just stood there, his lips quivering, a terrible cold seeping through his body.
Ronan was riding towards him now.
‘I told the others I’d come back and round you up, lad. Do you need a sheepdog, lad? Hey? What’s wrong?’ He swung out of the saddle, leaving his mount to fend for itself, and ran towards Wulfgar. ‘Christ and all His angels, lad, what are you doing? What’s happened?’
Wulfgar, still voiceless, held out his hand. Ronan took him by the wrist and pried his fingers away from the little bone in his palm. He stared and crossed himself. ‘Is this what I think it is?’
Wulfgar nodded, and pointed wordlessly towards the thicket.
Ronan frowned at him, and then he, too, heard that faltering grizzle.
‘Oh, dearest God, what’s that? Come on, Wuffa!’
Wulfgar let the priest run ahead, and had to force himself to go stumbling in his wake. Whatever there was to see, he wanted Ronan to see it first.
When he rounded the thicket, frothy with blossom, he found Ronan on his knees. There was a bundle of cloth, which the priest first tugged at, and then leaned forward to turn it over.
‘Oh, no,’ Wulfgar said. ‘No.’ He tried to look away but he had already seen. It was the little girl. Thorvald’s little girl. He crossed himself in despair.
Ronan stood up, shaking his head, and walked a few more paces into the thicket.
Blinded by sudden tears, turning the little bone over and over in his fingers, Wulfgar followed him.
The cry was loud now. Leoba lay on her side. Wulfgar had seen her sleeping like that, only yesterday morning, curled around her children, keeping them warm and safe. He didn’t think she was sleeping now – the side of her head was a great clotted mass of blood – but she was still curled around the baby. Ronan bent down and drew the furious, red-faced bundle out of the pouched front of her dress.
Wulfgar held out his arms and Ronan passed him the bundled child. It was damp and it stank, but he held it close.
‘Hush,’ he said. What did mothers say? ‘Husha husha husha.’ He walked up and down. The baby went on screaming.
Ronan stood up, looking around the little hollow where Leoba lay; now bending over her again, lifting her body with great care and looking underneath. He said something.
‘Sorry?’
Ronan raised his voice over the baby’s cries.
‘She’s not been here that long. Her hands are cold, but there’s no dew on her for all the grass is so wet.’ He knelt again. ‘Forgive me, lass,’ as he insinuated his hand into the folds of her dress. ‘Aye, her belly’s warm yet.’
Wulfgar didn’t want to hear any of this. He looked back to the road to see Ednoth and Gunnvor riding towards them. Ronan walked back and forth, searching around the pannier.
‘What are you two doing?’ Ednoth shouted. ‘Come on! Do you want to hear a riddle?’
Ronan called something to him then, and Ednoth stiffened. He jumped down from his saddle and joined the search, looking closely at the grass. They conferred. Wulfgar looked at Gunnvor. Her creamy skin had gone chalk-white, her lips bluish. He watched her knuckles whiten as she gripped the reins. He thought she might faint and fall from the saddle, but even as he took a step towards her she took a deep breath and sat straighter.
‘Do you know anything about babies?’ He was pleased to hear how normal he sounded.
‘They need cleaning,’ she said. ‘I can smell it from here.’ She took another deep breath and lifted her head. ‘She was under my protection. I didn’t think I needed to send a man with her.’ She closed her eyes. ‘My name should have been enough.’
Ednoth had picked up the pannier and the roll of sacking, and he came over to them then.
‘Only two sets of hoof prints,’ he said. ‘Coming separately, and leaving together.’ There was a wobble in his voice.
Wulfgar held the little bundle of howling baby against his heart.
‘It’s hungry,’ he said. He kept seeing Thorvald bringing the mule down to the lambing pens, and the little girl leaving her mother’s skirts and running towards him with that happy shout of ‘Dadda!’ Less than two days ago, and now all three of them were dead, and it was his fault. The baby’s screams were reaching an unbearable level. He clutched it tightly to him.
‘Give it here,’ Ednoth said. He looked at Wulfgar’s face. ‘I’ve got little brothers and sisters. You can have it back when I’ve cleaned it.’
Ronan came over then, his step heavy and slow.
‘Both of them, one blow to the head.’ He looked at Wulfgar. ‘They didn’t suffer long.’
Wulfgar could feel his lips trembling.
‘Why did he have to kill the little girl?’
‘Why did he have to kill either of them?’ Ronan shook his head. ‘The way they’ve fallen, I’m guessing he killed the little girl first. It wouldn’t be hard. A hammer could have done it, or the back of an axe. Even a stone. And only one horse, so I’m thinking it was a man alone. And he’s not far ahead of us.’
Ednoth looked up from where he was wiping the baby’s bottom with a handful of leaves and grass.
‘Then let’s get after him.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
IT HAD BEEN a hasty burial, horribly reminiscent of Thorvald’s: dry branches and a few squares of turf, hacked out with their belt-knives and laid over the bodies of mother and daughter, both looking so small now. The crows and foxes would find little difficulty breaching those barriers.
Father Ronan said a brief prayer.
Wulfgar found himself unable to join him. All he could hear was the voice in his head, shouting – no, screaming – at St Oswald: They died for you. They would have been baptised if they had had any say. Why didn’t you help them? You’re famous for your care of the widow and orphan. Where were you? You’ve got to help them now. He clutched the little bone convulsively in his hand.
The baby was asleep now, exhausted and lulled by the easy rhythm of the horse. Wulfgar had rigged up a kind of sling for it to rest against his shoulder. Ednoth had shown him how, wh
en it started fussing, to hold it at arm’s length and bare its scrawny little bottom. Gunnvor had produced dried apple from a bag, and he had chewed it into a mush and poked it into the toothless mouth. Some of it had gone down.
‘Will it die, too?’ Wulfgar asked.
Gunnvor had shrugged.
‘Probably.’ Then, ‘Don’t look at me like that! What do I know about babies?’
They rode close together now. Even Wulfgar’s horse was behaving itself, as if picking up their powerful sense of purpose. There were no hoof prints visible on the road, but Ednoth scouted the verges, on the look out for any sign that two mounts had left the road, and he had found none.
‘It won’t be Eirik himself,’ Ronan said. ‘But it could be one of his men.’
‘It’s not Eirik,’ Ednoth said. ‘If it were, he’d be heading back to Lincoln, or cutting across to Bardney. Not going on the Leicester road. My money’s on Garmund.’
Not Garmund. Wulfgar shook his head. Garmund wouldn’t kill a girl not yet four years old. Wouldn’t smash a young mother’s skull. Wouldn’t. Please. I don’t want it to be Garmund.
Ronan was shaking his head, too. ‘But if it’s Garmund, why is he alone?’
‘One of his men, then,’ Ednoth said.
‘Could be.’ The priest sucked his teeth. ‘Heading for a meeting place on the Fosse somewhere. We need to look out – we could find ourselves outnumbered again.’
‘Couldn’t it just be some horse-thief?’ Wulfgar’s voice shook. ‘Mule-thief, I mean.’
‘Faith, an ordinary thief wouldn’t have killed them,’ Father Ronan said. ‘Robbed them, aye, but where would be the need to kill? And no ordinary thief would have been interested in the bones. Chances are this is someone we’ve come across before.’
‘There was no need to kill.’ Gunnvor sounded bitter. ‘We’re looking for someone who likes killing.’
‘No shortage of candidates round these parts, then.’ Father Ronan sighed. ‘Sorry, Wuffa, but it keeps coming back to Garmund. How did he get called Polecat?’
‘Have you ever seen a chicken-roost when a polecat’s been in?’ Ednoth asked. ‘They kill a dozen for every one they eat.’
Wulfgar felt their words on his skin like blows. For the first time in his life he felt the need to defend Garmund. ‘He had a tame polecat, a little one, when he was a boy. That’s why he’s called Polecat.’ Then the creature had bitten him, Wulfgar remembered, and escaped. ‘Yes, all right, it could have been Garmund!’ He found he was shaking. ‘But how would he know Leoba had St Oswald with her?’
‘They had met before, remember?’ Father Ronan said slowly. ‘The first time he came to Bardney. Maybe he recognised her, got talking to her, she let something slip—’
‘She wouldn’t give him the bones,’ Ednoth chimed in, ‘there was a struggle …’
The pictures were horribly clear. Wulfgar put his free hand up to fend them off.
‘That still doesn’t explain why he’s doing this alone,’ said Gunnvor.
Wulfgar felt ridiculously grateful.
‘Come up with a better idea then,’ Ednoth said.
Silence.
They rode on late into the night, stopping only once to buy a leather bottle full of milk from a farmwife, and finally camping off the road when exhaustion forced them. The occasional pile of dung had been the only sign that another rider might be a few hours ahead of them and, even so, as Ednoth muttered to Ronan, there was no guarantee that the dung had been left by the beasts they were seeking.
Wulfgar couldn’t sleep, disturbed by the butting and whimpering of the baby he carried next to his chest. He dipped a rag in milk and let it suck that, or his little finger, and watched the slow greying of the sky. The others woke after a few hours’ rest. Leicester was only a dozen miles off.
‘Do we need to stop in Leicester?’ Ronan asked, rolling his shoulders and yawning.
‘We?’ Ednoth paused in buckling his sword-belt.
‘Oh, I’ll keep with you a few miles past Leicester,’ Ronan said.
Gunnvor seemed about to speak, then closed her mouth again.
Ronan raised an eyebrow.
‘It’s wonderful of you to want to help—’ Wulfgar said to her.
‘Help?’ she said. ‘You think I care about your bag of bones? Those two were under my hand. We’ll find their killer.’
Wulfgar looked at her face, pale in the dawn, the set of her mouth and the faint line between her brows, and he was reminded again of a hawk, its cruel beak and remorseless yellow eyes. He was glad someone else was her quarry.
‘What about the baby?’ Ronan leaned over and turned the fold of Wulfgar’s cloak away from his shoulder. Owlish little eyes gazed back at him. ‘You’re doing a grand job, Wuffa, but he needs a wet-nurse.’
Wulfgar pulled away. ‘I brought the trouble to his house. He’s my responsibility.’
‘So find him a foster mother in Leicester,’ Gunnvor said.
Mulish, Wulfgar shook his head.
‘He’ll die, you know,’ Ronan said.
‘We’ll need to go into Leicester anyway,’ Gunnvor said, ‘to ask about a man with a horse and a mule.’ She looked at Wulfgar then. ‘And a bag of bones.’
They met a farmer driving his ox-cart up from Leicester, and grilled him for news. He’d seen no one who might be the murderer they sought. But, Ketil was away, he told them: ‘Aye, off with great pomp last night. Ganging the round of the out-lands that answer to the Jarl.’
‘Taking men’s oaths?’ Ronan asked.
‘Taking their taxes, forbye.’ He spat.
Leicester looked welcoming and familiar to Wulfgar this time, the great roof of its cathedral a reminder – even with its thatch of weeds – that they were coming back into a world he understood, a world that recognised his status and his talents. Even more welcoming, now that he knew Ketil was out of town. They left the horses to be fed and watered and curried in the yard at the Wave-Serpent.
‘Leave the baby with Kevin’s mother while we’re here,’ Ronan had said. He pointed out the house. ‘My altar-boy, remember?’
And your son, Wulfgar thought. But he no longer felt in any position to judge the priest’s short-comings.
‘She loves children,’ Ronan went on. ‘Tell her I sent you – she’ll do anything for me.’
And, indeed, the plump, dark woman had glowed with delight when Wulfgar explained his errand.
‘Grand to have a little one to cuddle again, even if it’s only for a day or so,’ she said, pulling the child’s swaddling bands aside, ‘and such a handsome boy, too. What’s your name, my little lovely?’
Although she had cooed her words to the baby, she seemed to expect Wulfgar to answer.
‘Do they have names, this small?’
She shook her head at him, amused.
‘What was his father’s name, then?’
Wulfgar shook his head in turn. Thorvald, may he rest in peace, is no fitting name for a child in my care.
‘Well, I have to call him something.’ She kissed the baby on the top of its wispy head.
He thought wildly. Every name he came up with seemed too much of a burden for this tiny scrap.
‘His name is … is Electus.’ The Chosen One. I have chosen this child.
‘Splendid,’ Father Ronan said briskly. ‘We’ll baptise him this afternoon, and then we’ll press on, if we don’t find our quarry here.’
‘Taking that poor baby with you?’ Kevin’s mother sounded outraged. ‘Then let me pack up some clean tail-clouts, and a flask of milk at least.’
While they had been talking, Gunnvor had vanished into the depths of the Wave-Serpent. Emerging now through its door, she said, ‘I’m sending everyone out to ask questions.’
But the people of the houses round the Wave-Serpent appeared to be far more interested in Gunnvor, and what she had been doing, than in some putative stranger, possibly accompanied by a horse, a mule and a mysterious lumpy sack. Wulfgar intercepted a lot of curiou
s glances, and he overheard her name, and Hakon’s and Ketil’s, over and over in the mouths of the passers-by, and the women standing in the low doors of their houses. He and Ednoth were also the focus of much interest, sidelong stares and jerking of heads and muttering of utlendingar. It was making him nervous.
And, in the event, Gunnvor’s enquiries led nowhere.
‘He can’t have stopped here. We need to be getting on.’
They only waited for the christening. Kevin’s mother and Wulfgar stood as godparents. Wulfgar’s hand shook, holding the candle on the baby’s behalf, watching the wax drip onto the packed earth floor of St Margaret’s, listening to the oaths he was swearing. Do you abjure the Enemy? And all his works? And all his empty promises? I do, I do, I do.
But I can’t even keep these vows for myself, he thought in despair, so how can I make them for you, little soul?
His eyes swam, blurring the candle flame into a huge cloud of light. Father Ronan refused to skimp the ceremony, for all their need to hurry. Flame and salt and water and oil all played their part, and when Wulfgar took the baby into his arms at the end of the ceremony, he felt another small fragment of his burden lift.
I’m stuck with you now, little soul.
Closer than blood.
I’m all your family now.
CHAPTER THIRTY
GUNNVOR’S PRESENCE, DISTURBING as Wulfgar might find it, was making their journey so much easier. For all the excited, salacious muttering and the sidelong glances from her neighbours, she was someone who mattered in Leicester and along the upper reaches of the Fosse Way. She had brought two of her men with her, and they all felt safer for the silent company of her well-armed shadows. Wulfgar was all too aware that he and Ednoth would have been penniless and horse-less now, without her.
And, without her desire for revenge, there would have been no pursuing the man who had killed Thorvald’s wife and daughter, and stolen the bones.
A man who seemed to have vanished like morning mist in sunlight. They asked everyone they met as they rode steadily south west; no one had seen any man who answered to that description. They spent the night at the house at High Cross where Gunnvor’s toll-collector lived, and the morning found them riding back down to Heremod’s estate at Wappenbury.
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