The Bone Thief Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  900 A.D. A time of turmoil. A kingdom in dispute. An unlikely hero....

  Edward, son of Alfred the Great, has inherited the Kingdom of Wessex and achieved a precarious set of alliances through marriage and military conquest. But the alliance is uneasy and the kingdom of Mercia has more reason than most to fear the might of Wessex. Their Lord is elderly and perhaps mortally sick, and his wife fears that she does not have the power to withstand hostile takeover. She also knows too well what her neighbour is capable of - after all, King Edward is her brother.

  The chance to rescue St Oswald’s bones, beloved patron saint, to consecrate her new church and unite the people behind her, is too good an opportunity to miss. But they are rumoured to be buried a long way north - outside Lincoln, deep in hostile territory. Her secretary, Wulfgar, groomed for the priesthood since he was a boy in the elegant cloisters of Winchester cathedral but naïve in the ways of the wider world - is surprised to be sent on this mission. It will prove an incredibly dangerous journey, requiring resources and courage Wulfgar did not know he had, and support from surprising allies along the way including a maverick priest and a Viking adventuress whose loyalties are far from clear...

  About the Author

  V.M. Whitworth is an academic and historian. After reading English at Oxford, an M.A. and D.Phil from the Centre for Medieval Studies in York, V.M. published Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England. Having worked as a lecturer, tour guide, artist’s model and EFL teacher, V.M. now lives on a smallholding in Orkney with family, cats, ducks and occasional sheep, planning further adventures for Wulfgar.

  DEDICATION

  Barbara Katherine Lacey. Angela Whitworth.

  First readers. Toughest critics. Dearest friends

  Author’s Note

  The Bone Thief is set soon after the death of Alfred the Great of Wessex. In Alfred’s lifetime, the ancient English kingdoms had collapsed under the weight of Viking attack. Alfred had held on to Wessex, but the eastern half of Mercia had been lost to the warlords of the Danish Great Army. Western Mercia had been saved with West Saxon help but at a great price – the loss of its independence as a kingdom. When the story opens, the new king of Wessex, Edward, is planning an aggressive programme of conquest that not only involves defeating the Danes but also assimilating Mercia. Athelfled (Fleda), Lady of the Mercians, has to resist him on her own, as her husband is incapacitated with illness. One possible solution presents itself: heavenly protection and earthly inspiration in the form of the bones of St Oswald, the mighty king and powerful saint who had died nearly two-and-a-half centuries earlier.

  All this is historical enough. Two manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refer briefly to St Oswald’s bones coming from Bardney, in modern Lincolnshire, to Gloucester, in Mercia. They give no detail, and while the D manuscript has it happen in AD 906, the C manuscript files it under 909. Tantalising glimpses like this, riddled with contradiction and possibility, are the raw stuff of Anglo-Saxon history. There is no hint in any source – historical or archaeological – of how St Oswald’s bones survived the fall of the monastery at Bardney to the Danes, to reappear over a generation later. Wulfgar and his companions are almost entirely fictional and, given the contradiction in the Chronicle’s own dates, I have taken the liberty of bringing the rescue of the relics back a few years, to the immediate aftermath of Alfred’s death.

  It is hard now even for many devout Catholic Christians to understand the fervour with which saints’ relics were venerated in the Middle Ages. Fragments of saints’ bones, their clothing and possessions, objects which had come into contact with the relics, were believed to be imbued with extraordinary power. In a profoundly hierarchical age, God the Father and Christ could seem remote figures. Christ’s mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, was a more approachable figure, however, and the saints, especially the local ones, could feel like personal friends and patrons. Wulfgar, my fictional hero, feels a profound connection with St Oswald.

  Wulfgar may be imaginary, but his dilemmas about his future are very real. Priestly celibacy was not the norm at this period, and even many senior clerics had wives and families. There were very few centres of learning left after the Viking depredations. The Anglo-Saxon clergy of 900 bore considerable resemblance to the ‘hunting parsons’ satirised by Anthony Trollope in the 1860s, their way of life differing very little from that of the landed gentry and aristocrats whose kin they were. Anyone whose faith was centred on ideals of scholarship and service would find this a challenging environment.

  Athelfled, Lady of the Mercians, is very much a historical character, however. First with her husband, and later alone, she ruled Mercia. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that she won battles and built fortresses. She and her husband founded St Oswald’s Church in Gloucester, and the ruins of her church are still visible, although the relics have been lost once more. Nonetheless, we do not know when she was born, or how old she was when she married, or whether she led her army into battle in person. Any attempt to flesh out her historical bones moves instantly into the realms of the imagination, but we do know that Mercia stands out among the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for the number of strong women in its history.

  Other elements of my story are matters of historical interpretation. What were relations like, between Mercia and Wessex, once Mercia had been demoted to a lordship rather than a kingdom, particularly after the men who had brokered that deal – Alfred the Great of Wessex and Athelred, Lord of the Mercians – were out of the picture? Many historians see the siblings Athelfled of Mercia and Edward of Wessex as happy partners, united against the Danish threat. But I find it hard to believe that all Mercians readily acquiesced in their subordination, especially as, on several occasions in the later tenth and eleventh centuries, the prospect of Mercian independence was to raise its head again.

  In some ways, I have exaggerated existing contrasts for the sake of the story. In Wessex and English Mercia social values are based on family, land, Christianity and tradition. Across the border, in Danish England, loyalties are fluid, a person’s background is less important
than his or her actions, wealth is based on portable bullion, religion is polytheistic and personal rather than institutional. Englishmen and Danes both value silver, but the English want it stamped with the king’s head, whereas a Dane will accept it in any form – Arabic coin, broken jewellery, ingots – then get out his little scales and weigh it.

  This is the world of Gunnvor Bolladottir. Most armies attract camp followers and the Danish Great Army was no exception. By the 880s there are references to its soldiers needing to defend their ‘women and children’. Were these women Scandinavian, or local? What can life have been like for those children? We have no answers, but the depiction of Bolli, Gunnvor’s father – coming from Hordaland in Norway in the 860s, making his fortune, his daughter growing up as part of the tough raggle-taggle gang of children trailing in the army’s wake, and then inheriting his ill-gotten hoards of treasure – is at least a plausible speculation.

  As is, I hope, is the rest of the story.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  NB These ethnic categories blur and overlap. Some people are identified according to where they are encountered geographically in the story, rather than by ethnicity. Historical characters are marked with an asterisk.

  MERCIANS

  Wulfgar of Meon, known to some as ‘Litter-runt’, a subdeacon trained originally at Winchester Cathedral, now secretary to the Lord and Lady of the Mercians. Son of a king’s thane, a major land-owner with a wergild of 1200 shillings. His friends call him ‘Wuffa’ (Little Wolf/Wolf-Cub)

  *Athelfled, known to her family as Fleda, eldest child of Alfred the Great and a West Saxon princess, now Lady of the Mercians

  *Athelred, the ‘Old Boar’ of Mercia, her Lord

  Kenelm the Deacon, the Bishop of Worcester’s nephew

  *Werferth, the Bishop of Worcester. If he really had only one eye, no chronicler ever bothered to record it

  *Ednoth of Sodbury, a young man from a gentry family, whose father has a wergild of 200 shillings

  Heremod ‘Straddler’ of Wappenbury, a minor land-owner, whose mother is a singularly fearless and stroppy old lady

  WEST SAXONS

  *Athelwald Seiriol, Atheling of Wessex. His father was Alfred the Great’s older brother and predecessor as King of Wessex. Anglo-Saxon laws of inheritance allow him to claim the throne. It is not clear who his mother was; I have invented a Welsh background for her, and a second, Welsh, name for him. He is known among the Danes as ‘Athelwald the Hungry’, also my invention

  Garmund ‘Polecat’, son of Wulfgar’s father and one of the field-slaves on their family estate at Meon in modern Hampshire

  *Edward, King of Wessex, eldest son of Alfred the Great. Historians call him ‘Edward the Elder’ because there was another King Edward later in the tenth century, but obviously this did not apply in the first King Edward’s lifetime

  *Denewulf, Bishop of Winchester. Legend has it that he was the swineherd in whose hut Alfred burnt the cakes. But it’s only a legend

  LEICESTER

  Gunnvor ‘Cat’s-Eyes’ Bolladottir, whose father came from Norway as part of the Scandinavian Great Army. Only she knows where her father’s loot is buried

  Father Ronan, of St Margaret’s Kirk, Leicester Cathedral, son of a canon of Leicester Cathedral and his house-keeper, an Irish slave-woman

  Kevin, his altar-boy and son

  Orm Ormsson, Norwegian chancer

  Ketil ‘Scar’ Grimsson, Jarl of Leicester and younger brother of the late Hakon ‘Toad’ Grimsson. Hakon and his followers grabbed Leicester when Mercia imploded in the 870s

  LINCOLN AND BARDNEY

  Toli ‘Silkbeard’ (Silkiskegg) Hrafnsson, the young Jarl of Lincoln

  Eirik ‘the Spider’, a slave-trader who moves between Lincoln, the Northern Isles, and Dublin

  Thorvald the Reeve (Estate Manager) of Bardney, son of a Danish soldier and an Englishwoman, grandson of the last sacristan of Bardney when it was still a great church and site of pilgrimage

  Leoba, Thorvald’s English wife, and their two young children

  The Spider’s Wife, an Englishwoman of good family, originally from Northumbria, bought by Eirik when she was very young

  CHAPTER ONE

  Worcester, April, 900

  LATE AGAIN.

  Wulfgar was still tugging at his choir robe as he hurried across the courtyard through the mild spring drizzle. He had pulled the robe straight on over his tunic, to save time, and now he was too hot and flustered, and there was an uncomfortable ruck of fabric somewhere round his lower back.

  The bell summoning Worcester’s clerics to Vespers tolled for the last time.

  Despite his best efforts to scrub his hands clean with pumice, ink had now somehow transferred itself to the cuff of his white robe.

  Why, he wondered, am I bothering? I could have just stayed at my desk in the muniments room. Heaven and the Saints all know I’ve got more than enough to do, with the shire-court commencing this evening. Now I’ll be going in to Vespers late and all their horrible, smug faces will be staring at me. He found his feet were beginning to drag.

  Come on, he encouraged himself, you’ve got this far! If you’re ever going to be accepted by the Mercian minster-men you’ve got to show your face sometimes. He could hear their singing now, blessedly muffled by the cathedral’s thick stone walls.

  All the clerics might already be in the choir, but the courtyard outside the cathedral was bustling with activity, and he was nearly knocked over by a couple of harassed-looking palace servants staggering with trestles out of the Bishop’s great hall. ‘Look where you’re going,’ one of them shouted, just in time, and then laughed when Wulfgar had to jump out of the way.

  He hurried through the gate, away from the thronged courtyard, his eyes on the cathedral’s north door, the nearest one to his stall in the choir. He was so intent on it that he didn’t notice the small boy running full pelt towards him. Likewise, the boy failed to notice Wulfgar because, as he ran, he was looking back over his shoulder.

  Inevitably they collided. The little boy went flying across the slippery cobbles.

  Wulfgar recovered his wits first.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  The child had gone crashing down with his arms extended, and he was now looking ruefully at two grazed and grubby palms. A pair of bigger boys had appeared out of nowhere and were gazing at them balefully from a short distance away. The expression on the little one’s face told Wulfgar everything he needed to know, and he couldn’t help but see his own past reflected in the young boy’s terrified eyes. The difference is, he thought, that I’m no longer the runt of the litter.

  He straightened up and started walking towards the older boys. Older, yes, but only by a year or two. All three of them were clearly cathedral oblates, though their tonsures, like his own, were grown out from the long Lenten weeks of neglect.

  ‘You should know better,’ he said, when he was close enough. ‘Leave him alone.’

  One of the boys looked as though he was backing down, but the other, a snub-nosed, freckled little monster, put on a pugnacious face.

  ‘We don’t have to do what you tell us. You’re not the oblate-master. You’re just that West Saxon.’

  ‘I’m the Lord and Lady’s secretary,’ he said sharply, ‘and that’s quite good enough.’ Five months in the post, and it still gave him a thrill to be able to say it. ‘And why aren’t you in Vespers?’

  ‘We’re helping get the hall ready for the shire-court,’ said the smaller, more conciliatory one.

  ‘Then do what you’re supposed to be doing,’ he said curtly. ‘Go on!’

  The freckled one looked as though he were about to answer back again. Wulfgar wondered what he would do if the boys flatly refused to obey him. He rubbed his chin, trying to look stern and authoritative. Perhaps the six weeks’ growth of beard would help. Maundy Thursday tomorrow – Shear Thursday, as some jokingly called it. Every cleric in Worcester would be shaven and tonsured again by the evening,
and not before time, he thought.

  The freckled lad was pulling a sulky face.

  ‘Do what you’re told,’ Wulfgar said sharply, and at last the two older boys turned in the direction of the hall.

  Hiding his relief, Wulfgar turned his attention back to the youngest one.

  ‘Let’s have a look at those hands. Why were they chasing you?’

  The little boy was getting to his feet.

  ‘They wanted this.’ He dug down under the collar of his tunic and produced a leather thong with a small, trumpery, bronze cross on it. ‘They said new boys aren’t allowed to have anything of their own. But my mother gave it to me, before I left home, and I wasn’t going to let them take it …’ His chin wobbled, but he kept the tears at bay.

  Wulfgar nodded. Mindful of the child’s dignity, he only said, ‘If they get at you again, you can always come to me.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. But—’

  ‘But what?’

  He was shoving the cross back down the neck of his tunic and took a moment to answer. When he did, his mutter was inaudible, and he couldn’t meet Wulfgar’s eyes.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s just – like they said – you’re from Wessex. And they’ll probably be worse to me now, because of what you said.’

  Wulfgar nodded, suppressing a sigh. It was a familiar story. How many times had the palace steward, back home in Winchester, saved him from the clutches of Edward and his gang, only for them to redouble their efforts when they finally caught up with him? No, he couldn’t fault the child’s reasoning, but he did resent the way all Mercians, even the smallest, seemed to dislike West Saxons.