The Bone Thief Read online

  The leader turned to look at him. A little toss of the head and shrug of the shoulders and the hood fell obediently back. It revealed what Wulfgar had begun to suspect – the leader of this band of brigands was a woman. No more than his own age, Wulfgar guessed. She had been bare-headed beneath the hood, her dark hair tightly braided and coiled. The details of her face were blurred in the dusk, but he was struck by her eyebrows, flaring up and out to left and right, giving her the look of some imperious predator.

  And he and Ednoth seemed to be her prey.

  She didn’t return his smile.

  ‘A man of sense. Good. A shilling from each of you.’

  One of the men muttered something below his breath, subsiding into silence when his leader’s head snapped round.

  ‘How much?’ The woman’s self-possession seemed only to be feeding Ednoth’s outrage. ‘We’re exempt from tolls. We’re on the Lady’s business—’

  ‘Ednoth, be quiet.’

  But the woman was laughing now.

  ‘No ladies round here but me, little one. Now, where’s my money?’

  It was a hefty sum, but Wulfgar wasn’t about to argue. The coin the Bishop had given them was tucked away deep in his saddlebag, out of reach. He started to dismount. There was an instant response from the horsemen, a stir and a rustle that sounded ominously like the scrape of knives in their sheaths.

  He stopped and, unbidden, raised his arms above his head again.

  One of the men came forward, urging his horse with his knees and gestured for him to remove his cloak. He unfastened the pin and shrugged it off, letting it slump in a sodden grey mass across the back of his saddle. The horseman ran his hands over Wulfgar’s torso front and back, and nodded. Wulfgar swung his right leg wearily over Fallow’s rump.

  And as he slithered down Ednoth came to the end of his tether.

  ‘Wulfgar, how can you let these people walk all over you? We’re still in Mercia, for God’s sake—’ but he wasn’t given the time to finish.

  The dark-haired woman jerked her head, and said something fast that Wulfgar didn’t catch – something in Danish.

  The man who had checked Wulfgar for weapons urged his horse sideways while a second man came up fast from the rear. Ednoth was still looking from one to the other when the first man pushed his horse hard up against Starlight’s right flank and got Ednoth’s arms pinioned behind his back. The other came in from the left and unbuttoned Ednoth’s scabbard from his sword belt, ignoring his outraged yells. It was swiftly done, by expert hands.

  He tossed it across to the woman, who caught it neatly, half-drew the sword from its scabbard and examined both blade and hilt critically.

  ‘Good enough.’ She handed it back to the man, hilt first.

  ‘That’s my grandfather’s sword!’ Ednoth twisted frantically, slipping in the saddle. Starlight, ears pinned back, looked about to buck. ‘Give me back my sword!’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Give it to me!’ His voice broke with anger.

  ‘I have the right to exact my tolls as I see fit.’ She nodded to her man. ‘Let him go.’

  He looked across: ‘Wulfgar? Wuffa!’

  But Wulfgar hid behind Fallow, busying himself with finding the money. His cold hands fumbled with the knotted strings. A sword could always be replaced. It wasn’t worth dying for.

  He straightened up just in time to see Ednoth clap his heels to Starlight’s flanks and put him at the fallen tree. They cleared it from an almost standing start and vanished up the track. One of the horsemen applauded. Wulfgar thought he was mocking, but the woman nodded in approval.

  ‘Já, he can ride, your little friend.’ She turned back to her men and said something in Danish.

  ‘Two shillings, I think you said?’ Wulfgar’s legs were trembling but his voice was steadier than he had hoped. One of the horsemen thudded past him, making him stagger. Was he going after Ednoth? Wulfgar scrabbled for the right money, pulling out a fistful of coins. If I pay quickly, he thought, perhaps they’ll just go away, without bloodshed.

  And I won’t hear her voice again.

  He paused, shocked, wondering where that thought had come from.

  She had taken off one of her gloves and reached down for the coins. He counted the twenty-four silver pennies into her bare palm, and she nodded and put them away somewhere beneath her cloak as the horseman returned, shaking his head. A sigh of relief escaped Wulfgar, and she eyed him curiously.

  ‘Your business on my road?’

  What could he say without betraying his Lady, or the Atheling?

  ‘We’re riding to Leicester –’ he cleared his throat ‘– on the recommendation of Heremod of Wappenbury. We have a business proposition for a friend of his.’

  ‘Heremod, eh? Heremod Straddler, he’s called in Leicester. One foot each side of the fence.’ She sounded thoughtful.

  Wulfgar, unsettled by her words and even more so by the musicality of her voice, looked up at her outline, misty and unreadable. The rain fell on his upturned face.

  ‘Good luck, then,’ she said, suddenly brisk. ‘I hope you’ve some money left. Heremod has thirsty friends.’

  He flushed. Had he been dismissed? He tried to heave himself back onto Fallow, who had been snatching the opportunity for a few mouthfuls of grass. Lacking a mounting block, it took him a few attempts before he was securely in the saddle. His back tingled with the sensation of her amused eyes watching him. He yanked angrily on Fallow’s reins, trying to get her away from her grazing, to point her head up the road in Ednoth’s wake.

  But the dark-haired Danish woman hadn’t finished with him yet. When he was safely mounted she beckoned him over. Eventually he persuaded Fallow to obey his dogged tugging.

  She leaned over in her saddle towards him.

  ‘A word,’ she said softly. ‘Teach your little friend to tread more warily. A southron needs to look out in Leicester.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Southerner.’ She glanced over her shoulder at her men and then turned back to Wulfgar. ‘Lucky for him, he travels in wise company. I admire a man who knows when it’s a waste of time to fight.’ She raised those eloquent eyebrows. ‘And I can afford to slacken the rope a little, this time.’ She turned back to the men. A little jerk of her head. ‘Give him the sword.’

  Wulfgar blinked, startled and confused.

  No one moved.

  She waited for a moment, then pointed at Wulfgar and said something fast and foreign, a new and angry edge to her voice. Whatever she’d said, it didn’t go down too well. Voices were raised in guttural protest.

  Wulfgar sat in his saddle, feeling like a lump, the ready blood burning his cheeks.

  She had to give her order for a third time, and only then, and clearly unwillingly, did the man who held Ednoth’s sword give it to Wulfgar.

  Blinking in astonishment, he took it, holding it awkwardly across his saddle-bow, unsure how to manage both sword and reins. He thought, I’ll have to dismount and strap it up with the saddle-bags. And then get back into the saddle. Again.

  He was about to stammer his thanks when she said, ‘Safe journey,’ and turned her horse’s head before she and her men melted back into the shadows as swiftly as they had come.

  He was alone.

  It was deep twilight now, nearly dark, with the rain falling ever more heavily. Grudgingly obedient, Fallow plodded along and crested the ridge at last. Wulfgar, in the last stages of weariness, barely glanced at Watling Street as he crossed it and rode on, down the gentle slope the other side.

  And there was Ednoth, Queen of Heaven be thanked, a pale face in the gloom, waiting a little way away on the other side.

  ‘There you are! Thank you for waiting,’ Wulfgar called.

  But, when Wulfgar had almost reached him, the boy wrenched his bridle round and kicked Starlight into a canter. The startled Fallow followed the gelding’s lead, even when Starlight broke into a gallop.

  They were hurtling down a tunnel of overgr
own briar and bramble, thorny sprays lashing their faces. Wulfgar closed his eyes for fear of being blinded, his arms round Fallow’s neck, not nearly good enough a horseman to cope with this pace for long. Now he began to lurch sideways out of his saddle, a little further with every stride, and gasping at the sudden pain of the elf-shot in his side. He wasn’t sure if he was more afraid of staying on, or falling off. He didn’t have a choice, as it turned out. Fallow gave one last wild plunge and, slowly but helplessly, he slid over her shoulder, out of his wet saddle, to land sprawling and winded in a patch of mud. The horse cantered off down the path.

  Wulfgar lay still for a few moments before he dared ease himself to sitting and feel his arms and legs, neck, collarbones … no, nothing broken that he could find. The mud had been soft, at least, saturated with the rain. Dizzy and disoriented, he got to his feet, to find that Fallow’s hoof beats had died away. Now what should he do?

  Go on: it was the only possible answer. Go on, on foot, all the way to Leicester. All the way to Bardney, if he had to. I can do it, he thought savagely. I don’t need Ednoth, or anyone else, to help me.

  It took an age to plod and slither through the mud to the next bend, but when he rounded it, he saw Ednoth through a veil of rain. He was out of his saddle, Starlight’s reins looped in one hand and with the other holding Fallow’s bridle, stroking her nose and talking to her in a low, soothing voice.

  ‘Ednoth! Thank Heaven!’ Wulfgar, relieved despite himself, tried to hobble a little faster. ‘I thought I might never catch you up.’

  Ednoth ignored him until he was only a few feet away. Then he turned abruptly.

  ‘Don’t you know you should never let go of your horse’s reins? You’re useless.’

  ‘Me, useless?’ Wulfgar really lost his temper then. ‘You’re the one who keeps acting like a headstrong fool. You’ll get us killed if you don’t rein in that temper of yours before we get to Leicester. Anyone would think we were on this road for your pleasure. You have to remember where we are.’

  Ednoth was silent.

  Wulfgar waited but the boy still said nothing and finally turned away, his shoulders hunched. Starlight put his head down and started tearing at the grass.

  Suddenly Wulfgar found his anger fading. He was too cold and wet and weary from constant fear of attack. He didn’t want to have to go on alone.

  ‘Ednoth?’

  Still no response.

  ‘Shall we look for some shelter?’

  No answer. The boy was sulking, and in desperation Wulfgar reverted to the language of childhood.

  ‘Ednoth, pax, all right?’

  Still no response.

  Wulfgar made a conscious effort. Give me strength, he prayed. Queen of Heaven, aid me. St Oswald, guide me and guard me and help me find the right words, or our whole mission will fall apart. He took his courage in both hands and went towards Ednoth. Then he realised to his horror that the boy was sobbing, and he hesitated.

  Ednoth muttered something.

  ‘I beg your pardon, I didn’t hear what you said.’ Wulfgar took a step closer, and then flinched as Ednoth rounded on him violently, his face tear-stained and distorted.

  ‘How can you live with yourself? Coward! The way you just surrendered – and you let them take my sword. I was only given it just before Lent.’ He choked back a sob. ‘How could you let that bitch take my sword?’

  ‘I’ve got your sword,’ Wulfgar said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got your sword.’

  ‘Where?’

  Wulfgar pointed at Fallow’s pack.

  Ednoth was over there at once, unbuckling and rummaging. He didn’t ask how the sword came to be there, Wulfgar noticed, or even bother to say thank you, so caught up was he in his delight at having his treasure restored.

  Tired of waiting for an expression of gratitude, Wulfgar said, ‘Well, let’s find shelter.’ His teeth were chattering, and he found himself so exhausted suddenly that he could hardly speak. But shelter proved hard to find. That deserted landscape of patchy scrub and overgrown fields offered little more than spindly clumps of young birch, hazel and hawthorn. None of it would serve to keep the rain off. And the wood was full of green sap and soaking wet, none of which would burn.

  Wulfgar, who couldn’t stop shivering, was only vaguely aware of Ednoth’s frown as he hobbled the horses’ legs with rope.

  ‘We’ve got to get you out of this wind,’ he kept saying, and ‘Take my cloak, it’s lined with lambskins.’ Finally he found them a big, old bell-shaped holly. ‘Crawl in there.’

  Wulfgar was too weary to do anything but obey. In the near-darkness he heard Ednoth scrabbling a space of bare earth among the layers of prickly dead leaves and trying half a dozen times to get a fire going, but the handful of fleece he kept in his fire pouch just flared and died without kindling a blaze. In the end he threw his strike-a-light down on the pile of damp tinder in frustration.

  ‘The Devil’s in these twigs.’

  Wulfgar was slumped with his back against the narrow trunk of the tree, a ringing in his ears. I am come into deep waters, he thought he heard the choir singing. Was it one of the psalms? The floods run over me. His teeth rattled uncontrollably, louder in his ears than the rain pattering on the holly leaves all around him.

  He found Ednoth had squatted down next to him and held his hand, rubbing it between his palms.

  ‘Wuffa, I’m frightened you’ve caught a chill, or worse. You shouldn’t be this cold.’

  Wulfgar felt him chafe his hands for a little longer, and then he was aware of the sodden weight of his cloak being pushed away from him.

  ‘That’s not doing you any good.’ Ednoth clucked with his tongue as though he were trying to soothe a startled horse. ‘Steady there. Steady. At least you’re not too wet next to the skin. But we need a fire,’ he said. ‘The cloaks are too damp. I’ve got to get you warm somehow.’

  Wulfgar sank into the embrace as though into the arms of the mother he hardly remembered, so young he had been when he had last seen her. His shivering slowed, and in the end it stopped. And he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Easter Sunday

  HIS MOTHER WAS in the dream somewhere. He hoped to see her face, the face he couldn’t quite recall, but when she turned at last it was the Lady looking at him instead, her face unspeakably sad. Then, ‘There you are, Wuffa! At last! I knew you’d come. I’ve been waiting for you.’ The young man rose, his fair face breaking into a smile, his hand reaching out to claim Wulfgar’s own … He wore a royal helmet. Was he St Oswald? Or Alfred of Wessex, the Lady’s father, young and hale as Wulfgar had never known him? It didn’t seem to matter, somehow.

  The rest of the dream faded into the fog of waking, and when Wulfgar surfaced at last he remembered little more than a sense of deep happiness. A good dream. He rolled over and squinted out between the spiky leaves at new grass, celandines and daisies, all sparkling with dew. The rain had stopped at last. The rising sun gave a liquid gilding to the air, though the shallow valley was full of a lingering mist. Kites were screaming as they circled, invisible and far above.

  That strange sense of good cheer stayed with him as he staggered to his feet, realising as his body unfolded that his riding muscles ached no more than the rest of him. His left shoulder was stiff and tender, though, and he remembered the fall of the day before. He guessed there would be a fine bruise forming there to add to the one on his face. What I must look like …

  What must she have thought of me?

  The question took him unawares. He winced slightly at the memory of the cool, appraising gaze of the woman at the crossroads. The encounter still disturbed him.

  The previous evening was beginning to come back to Wulfgar in more detail, and he paused and looked down at Ednoth. He kept me warm. He may have saved my life. I remember now. He was holding me, giving me his own warmth, until I went to sleep. What did he call us at Offchurch? Shoulder-to-shoulder men … Wulfgar reflected on his own f
olly in imagining that he could get to Bardney and redeem the relics by himself, when he didn’t even know enough to shelter from the rain. The Bishop had known what he was doing in choosing this lad to come with him, after all.

  Ednoth stretched and groaned, and Wulfgar looked away. The mist was lifting. When he turned back the lad was coming awake, sleepy-eyed and smiling, still hugging his sword in its fleece-lined scabbard close.

  ‘Next time we’re caught out on the road at nightfall,’ he said between yawns, ‘let’s stop a bit earlier, and get a proper shelter built.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Wulfgar said.

  Ednoth shrugged.

  ‘Don’t let yourself get chilled like that again. You could have died.’ He got up and pushed past Wulfgar to where Fallow and Starlight were tethered.

  ‘The horses could do with a rest,’ he said. ‘Shelter. A hot mash.’ Fallow nuzzled at the boy’s hair, whickering.

  They looked all right to Wulfgar, sturdy and shaggy and soft-eyed as ever. A bit muddy, perhaps. But he knew so little about horses.

  ‘It’s Sunday today, anyway,’ Wulfgar said, folding his damp cloak away, and sighing. ‘Easter Sunday, and Leicester.’ He suppressed a shudder. He had heard too many songs about the fall of Leicester, and the ignominious flight south of its bishop. The Danes of the Great Army had tried to take Leicester, and had failed many times, defeated by those famous walls, before they had at last succeeded. What would he and Ednoth find? If the songs he’d been taught were anything to go by, they would walk into a burnt-out city, black smoke billowing to Heaven, the eyeless corpses of women and children in the streets, glutted crows with bloody beaks, and the godless victors swilling communion wine from stolen chalices.

  Smoke still rising after thirty years?

  Perhaps not.

  A lot must have changed since the Great Army wielded the killing-fields of eastern Mercia, he thought. Heremod said there’s law in Leicester now, didn’t he?

  ‘Did Heremod say they are pagans?’

  Was Ednoth reading his mind?

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘I’ve never met a pagan.’ Ednoth’s brown eyes were eager.