The Bone Thief

by V. M. Whitworth

  Wulfgar didn’t dare look up at that face again and he focused on the hands instead. Crooked and battered; swollen flesh around the massive rings.

  Wulfgar put his hand to his heart, preparing to grovel and scrape and apologise elaborately for coming to this man’s court uninvited and empty-handed, and, as he did so, he felt the outlines of the Bishop’s ring beneath his tunic.

  Perfect.

  He started picking at the knot.

  How in the name of Heaven was he going to explain this to the Bishop when he got back?

  But there was no time to agonise over the propriety of it, or to get worked up about what the Bishop might say.

  Survival was the challenge here.

  ‘As a token of our love,’ he stammered, ‘please accept this ring.’

  The knot was proving stubborn, and his nails kept skidding off it.

  Ronan translated and fell silent.

  Wulfgar tried at last to snap the thong, failed, and had to pick at the hard little knot for another eternity. Ketil didn’t move and Wulfgar found himself sweating under his gaze.

  Finally it came undone. He slid the ring off the end and offered it in his cupped hands.

  He waited, head bowed, not daring to look up. He was getting pins and needles in his left foot. The men were silent. The fire crackled and spat. Finally he felt Ketil’s horny-skinned fingers scraping in his palm. Wulfgar tried not to sag with relief. Ketil leaned over towards the fire, turned the ring over, and squinted at it with his good eye. And now he spoke in thick but clear English.

  ‘Nice. Good gold.’ He picked at the setting of the red stone with his thumbnail. ‘Out of Miklagard? Jasper, is it?’

  ‘Carnelian, I think,’ Wulfgar said, nonplussed.

  Ketil still squinted at the ring. He nodded without looking up.

  ‘Já, good enough.’ He tried to force it over a knuckle and failed, but he had a thong of his own round his neck and it was now his turn to fiddle with knots. Wulfgar watched him adding the ring to his jingling collection.

  Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, he thought, all the Angels and Saints, forgive me. I don’t know whose relic I’ve given into the keeping of this monstrous man, but you do. Forgive me, he prayed. Use it as a channel into his heart. I’m sorry, Queen of Heaven. I’m so sorry.

  The Bishop, on the other hand, would be wanting more than an apology.

  Ketil looked up.

  ‘The priest tells me you have an errand to me.’

  Wulfgar gaped.

  ‘Do I have to say it again?’

  Wulfgar turned to look up at Ronan. The priest gazed into the fire. Wulfgar struggled up from his knees.

  ‘Father Ronan?’

  ‘Am I wrong?’ Ketil asked.

  ‘Father Ronan!’ Wulfgar muttered in outrage. ‘I told you that under the seal of the confessional! And—’ the message wasn’t for Ketil, it was for Hakon. He bit his tongue.

  Ronan shook his head.

  ‘I have not broken the seal,’ he said quietly. He looked hard at Wulfgar. ‘Not yet, at least. Are you going to make me break it, or will you tell the man?’

  Wulfgar was giddy with shock. The secrets of the confessional were beyond sacred.

  ‘I—’ Wulfgar stopped. But he had no choice now, did he? He would have to give Ketil the Atheling’s message. He couldn’t let Ronan throw his own soul away, giving out the secrets of his confession. Treachery, he thought blackly, treachery everywhere. The sin of Judas.

  And then he thought: the Atheling’s message – what does it mean? Is it, Do nothing till All Hallows? That’s what it sounds like.

  Because, if so, that gives Mercia six months’ grace. Six months’ warning. Half a year to drill the levies and sharpen the spear-blades. And for the Lady (and the Lord? Please, dear God, and the Lord) to come up here, let the borderers renew their vows, remember how much they love them, and how much they owe them. Otherwise, what are we left with?

  Ketil poaching the petty thanes along the border. Men like this damned Heremod: I should have seen it coming, when I heard him called the Straddler.

  Toli Silkbeard and the Atheling in cahoots, plotting Heaven knows what, and pouncing when we’re looking the other way.

  Maybe I did the right thing after all, he thought, with a wild flash of hope, in giving the message to Toli.

  And then he wondered, could this be what Ronan is praying for? Give Mercia time.

  When I get home, I can give the Lady every detail of what’s happened, what I’ve seen and heard, and with whom I’ve talked. Whether the Atheling likes it or not.

  He swallowed.

  ‘My Lord – Jarl – of Leicester, Father Ronan is right. I bring you a private message.’

  ‘Private?’ The Jarl held out his hand.

  ‘It’s not a written message, my Lord.’

  Ketil Scar could read?

  Ketil gestured for Wulfgar to rise and come a little way towards the dais end of the hall.

  ‘The message?’ he said softly, after a dozen paces separated them from the nearest of the fascinated bystanders.

  Wulfgar bit down hard on his lower lip to stop it trembling.

  Ketil cocked his eye at him.

  ‘Have they told you I’m a monster? Don’t worry, little Englishman. I don’t flay men. Or hack out their lungs. Or hang them on my house-tree. Not for my own pleasure, any road. Now, whisper it in my ear.’ He beckoned with a crooked, swollen finger.

  Wulfgar tried to clear his throat.

  ‘From Athelwald Seiriol, Atheling of Wessex.’

  Ketil grunted and nodded at him to continue.

  ‘We light the fires at All Hallows,’ he muttered.

  Ketil seemed to frown then, though with that face it was hard to be sure.

  ‘You have been to Lincoln.’

  Wulfgar nodded. How in the name of Heaven did Ketil Scar know that?

  ‘This message was also for him?’

  ‘For Jarl Toli, you mean, my Lord?’

  ‘Já. Silkiskegg.’ He spat into the straw. ‘Toli the child. Why did he get the message first?’

  ‘He – I – when we came to Leicester before, your brother had just died. We didn’t want to intrude …’

  Ketil was silent.

  ‘Was this message for me, or my brother?’

  ‘For –’ he swallowed, and lied ‘– for both of you.’

  ‘I was expecting it,’ Ketil said. ‘My brother hid nothing from me.’ He growled, deep in his throat. ‘Go back to your master. Tell him, I hear what he says. I am honoured. But Leicester does not dance when he pipes.’ He jerked his head at the guards. ‘When I have need of your hungry little Atheling, I will send him a message of my own.’ He gave Wulfgar a long, level look. ‘I understand your visit to Silkiskegg now. But I am still puzzled. What do men of Mercia have to do with Eirik of Bardney?’

  Wulfgar thought, Queen of Heaven, how does he know that? He knows so much more about us than I’d realised.

  ‘Pottery trading,’ said a voice at his back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  ‘JÁ?’ KETIL WAS turning that dreadful battle-mask in Ednoth’s direction. ‘Go on.’

  ‘We’d seen examples of the stuff they’re making in Stamford.’ Ednoth’s face was bright and open, his voice cheerful. ‘We’d heard – Wulfgar and I – that Eirik had an interest. We wanted to offer him a deal. We were told we could corner the market south of Watling Street.’

  Ketil was already nodding.

  Wulfgar was bowled over. Where had all this come from?

  ‘Who told you this?’

  ‘Heremod Straddler,’ Ednoth went on, ‘who else? For a share of any profit, of course. But he says the future is in dealing with the Danish states, not fighting them – you, I mean, my Lord.’ He smiled, self-deprecating. ‘Of course, you know all this much better than I do. We didn’t think you’d be interested in a little venture like ours, but we’d be more than happy to have you on board. In fact, we’d be honoured.’

  Keti
l scowled.

  ‘But why deal with Eirik?’

  ‘His was the name we were given, but we haven’t committed ourselves to anyone yet.’ Ednoth was wide-eyed, frank, utterly plausible.

  Ketil was definitely frowning this time. ‘But Eirik looks to Toli Silkiskegg. And he’s too far north. Why should you go to him if you want to deal with Stamford?’ He looked from Ednoth to Wulfgar and back again.

  To Wulfgar’s amazement, Ednoth took this, too, in his stride.

  ‘Ermin Street, of course, my Lord. We thought that the man who controls the great south road would be the right person to talk to.’

  ‘You thought wrong.’ Ketil swung round and summoned one of his men. ‘Wine. Stools.’ He turned back to them. ‘You want the man who holds Watling Street. Me. And, in any case, little Silkiskegg does not hold Ermin Street, no matter what he might claim. We need to talk about this.’ Ketil waved a hand towards the group of women. ‘Serve us. Is that you hiding there, Bolladottir? Bring us some wine.’

  ‘An honour, herra.’ If Gunnvor was being sarcastic there was no sign in her reverent face or her deep curtsey.

  While she was doing the rounds with the great horn, Ketil looked back at them.

  ‘So, is this a deal? I get you all the pottery you want to sell south, and you give me a share? How much were you giving Eirik?’

  Wulfgar blinked. Again, he wasn’t given a chance to reply.

  ‘Forgive me, my Lord, but we need to know whether the goods you can provide are fine enough for us.’ Ednoth’s expression said, I’m being perfectly reasonable. ‘We’re thinking of supplying the Lord and Lady of Mercia, you know. Possibly even the West Saxon court. We can’t accept anything but the best. Eirik’s pottery samples were superb. Wonderful yellow glazes.’

  Wulfgar felt panic rise in his throat. You might have the old dog-wolf safely trapped but you still don’t goad him with a stick.

  But Ketil stretched his face into a smile. It was a terrible sight.

  ‘Not a problem. You’ve seen what Gunnvor Bolladottir uses at the Wave-Serpent? What Heremod has here?’

  Wulfgar nodded, trying not to wince.

  ‘Good enough for you? We can get you yellow if you want yellow, or green, or red. Cooking pots, lamps, tableware, storage jars. Tell my men how much you need. We can arrange packing, transport.’ He was in his element.

  And so, it seemed, was Ednoth.

  Ronan caught Wulfgar’s eye and winked at him.

  Wulfgar turned his head away and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to think about how Ronan had bullied him. How the priest had flirted with the fires of damnation, just to ingratiate himself with Leicester’s terrifying Jarl.

  ‘Come along and sit down.’ Ronan reached out a hand from the other side of the fire, gesturing at a stool. ‘Well done, subdeacon. You and the boy are learning fast, aren’t you?’

  Wulfgar went over to Ronan and stood in front of him, spoiling for a fight. ‘What sort of a priest do you call yourself?’

  Father Ronan’s face went still. ‘Not the kind you’re used to, I’m guessing. I’m sorry, Wuffa. It was a dirty trick.’

  Wulfgar just listened, his face tight, incapable of speech.

  Father Ronan rubbed his beard. ‘But I had my reasons. I don’t think you realised the danger you were in just now, you and the lad. How could I have known you were planning to sacrifice the Bishop’s ring?’

  ‘Your reasons?’

  Father Ronan shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t break the seal of the confessional lightly, lad. But we needed to keep Ketil at bay, just long enough for his temper to cool.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  As Wulfgar ruminated on the priest’s words, he found the first blaze of his anger subsiding. Buying time for me, he thought. It’s only what I hoped I was doing myself, for the Lady. He nodded slowly.

  ‘You mean, he would really have hanged us? If we hadn’t found the right things to say?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Father Ronan said. ‘Hanging would have been the least of it.’ He reached up and ruffled Wulfgar’s hair. ‘Tell you what, lad, if we can lay our hands on a harp, I’ll teach you that song about the raven and St Oswald. That’ll brisk you up.’

  The trestle tables were being laid with enormous platters of food. Gunnvor was still holding the great horn, now empty, on her knee, as she sat with the others on the stools around the hearth. Red hair and gold and silver jewellery glinted in the firelight as one of Ketil’s hangers-on came forward to squat down on his haunches between Gunnvor and Wulfgar.

  ‘All right, Cat’s-Eyes?’ he said to Gunnvor. He turned to Wulfgar. ‘All right, Englishman?’

  Wulfgar nodded. The man looked hauntingly familiar. Where, he wondered, had he seen that combination of glittering bullion and fox-coloured hair before?

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Gunnvor said, without turning her head. She was still listening to Ketil and Ednoth’s cheerful haggling.

  ‘Where’s my drink, Cat’s-Eyes?’

  ‘Get it yourself, Ormsson,’ she retorted. ‘I’m busy.’

  And Wulfgar trapped the elusive memory. The sun slanting though into Father Ronan’s little Margaret-kirk in Leicester, and Orm Ormsson glittering like motes of dust in a ray of light. And then that watershed of a conversation in the yard at the Wave-Serpent. How could he conceivably have forgotten? But so much had happened to him, in the interim.

  Orm Ormsson sighed and shook his head.

  ‘Word is you’re going soft, Cat’s-Eyes.’

  This did get her attention. She didn’t say anything, but she shifted round on her stool and gave him a long stare. He balanced himself by holding on to the edge of her stool with one hand and toyed with the trinkets at his neck with the other, looking up at her from under his long lashes.

  Father Ronan was talking to another of Ketil’s men now, still apparently on his quest for a harp, and Wulfgar had nothing to do but drink and listen.

  Orm shook his head sadly.

  ‘First you turn down the chance to fund my eastern trip. Where’s the fun in that? Then I hear you’re buying more land – that’s an Englishman’s game, Cat’s-Eyes. A fool’s game. You want to stick to portable goods. Keep to what you know.’ He jingled his pendants at her.

  ‘I’m not short of silver, Ormsson. Unlike you, I have the taste not to wear it all at the same time.’

  ‘And now you’re jaunting around with these English. Pets of yours, are they? Someone told me you’d bought them, but I said you had a better eye for a bargain.’

  His tone was taunting.

  Wulfgar, wincing, didn’t know where to look.

  ‘Pets?’ she said. ‘You could say that, Ormsson.’ She looked over his head and straight into Wulfgar’s eyes. ‘But I prefer to think of them as my friends.’

  She held Wulfgar’s astonished gaze for a moment, and he tried to find something to say.

  But by the time he had gathered his wits and opened his mouth, her attention was already turned elsewhere: she had shifted back to watch Ednoth and Ketil again, over the far side of the fire. He looked at her back-lit profile. My friends, she had said. Gunnvor Bolladottir, I am proud to be called your friend, he thought. But was it even possible for a man and a woman to be friends? What’s more, she’s one of the lost, he thought. A heathen. One of the damned.

  And you, Wulfgar of Winchester?

  Where had that voice come from? He swung round on his stool.

  Are you so cocksure of your own salvation?

  Clear as a bell in his ear. But there was no one there. He shivered, suddenly and violently. Nobody else seemed to have noticed anything.

  Orm tossed his russet hair back and rolled his eyes.

  ‘As I said, Cat’s-Eyes. Soft.’ The firelight caught the gold and silver at his throat, a dozen or more filigreed and chased and embossed and chip-carved ornaments hanging against his breast-bone, jingling gently against tiny hammers and spears. Most of his hoard looked like English work, or Irish, and Wulfgar wonde
red bitterly how many of those trinkets had been gouged from reliquaries and book-bindings.

  Then his face froze. What was that?

  He blinked and looked again.

  There must be hundreds of such things. A little slip of silver wire, looped round and twisted back on itself, to make a ring.

  Hundreds, thousands, of such things, yes. But Wulfgar would have laid his hands on the Holy Cross itself and sworn that he knew that particular one.

  He had dangled it in front of Electus’s fascinated little hands just – he counted – four days ago, outside Leoba’s hut at Hanworth. He only had to close his eyes to see her unlooping that strand of blue wool from around her neck and pressing the ring into his hand. He squinted. Three twists, yes, and a protruding end of wire, and surely that was a snag of wool caught on the end?

  He had never thought to check whether the ring on its loop of yarn was still around Leoba’s neck, before they had done what little they could to bury her.

  He was very cold of a sudden, despite his proximity to the fire.

  And here was Ronan, holding a harp aloft.

  ‘Success! Make room, boys. Time for the glee of St Oswald and the Raven!’

  I’ve got to know, Wulfgar thought. But how?

  ‘It’s not exactly my Uhtsang,’ Ronan said, ‘but it’ll give us a tune.’

  Wulfgar leaned in close to Orm.

  ‘Didn’t you say something about looking for St Oswald, back in Leicester?’ he breathed in the other man’s ear. ‘Any luck?’

  Orm shifted almost imperceptibly towards him.

  ‘What’s your interest, Englishman?’

  Under the cover of Ronan tuning the harp and uttering loud complaints about the quality of its strings, Wulfgar breathed, ‘I speak for the Lady of Mercia. We can pay … almost anything … for the right bones.’

  A sideways flicker of the amber eyes.

  ‘Count a long hundred, then come outside.’

  Wulfgar clasped his cold hands between his knees, forcing himself to hold them loosely, to keep his shoulders slack, his breathing even. He had no idea what he was going to do. He wasn’t even sure if Orm Ormsson had really left the hall, or whether he was being watched from behind a pillar.