The Bone Thief Read online

  Wulfgar could almost admire his ability to see every threat as a new adventure.

  ‘That’ll be something to tell my little brothers,’ Ednoth said. ‘I play Christians and Pagans with them – it’s great fun the way they scream when I get one on the ground and tell him I’m going to cut the blood eagle on his back—’

  Wulfgar cut him short.

  ‘I know the sort of thing.’ Only too well, he thought, his shoulder blades twitching in memory. Great fun, did he call it? We’re going to flay you alive, and hack your ribs open, and pull your lungs out … It’s fun for the bullies, but no one asks the victims what they think.

  ‘I’m looking forward to that ale-house,’ Ednoth said. ‘What did Heremod say it was called?’

  ‘The Wave-Serpent. It’s a Danish word for ship,’ he said, remembering some of the songs the hostage boys had taught him, back in Winchester. He wondered what he and Ednoth would find there.

  They smelt Leicester long before they saw it. But it wasn’t the sickly carrion stench of Wulfgar’s imagination. The air had much the same reek as Worcester: damp thatch, hearth-smoke and cooking fires overlying the rotting detritus of the city ditch. Cautious, they reined in their horses some distance from the southern gatehouse.

  Leicester’s ancient stone walls were every bit as massive as Wulfgar had heard, and greater than any he’d ever seen: their beautifully shaped limestone shone white in the late morning sun, banded with broad stripes of red tile, the old gatehouse still arching over the road. At the city’s heart, the tower of the cathedral overlooked the sea of smoke-hung thatch, and at the sight Wulfgar’s own heart lifted. Whatever horrors Leicester might contain, he thought suddenly, he could face them as long as he was privileged to make his devotions at the cathedral. Just once.

  ‘Do we just walk in?’ The hesitancy was unlike Ednoth. ‘Can’t we go round?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ednoth frowned. ‘Shouldn’t we just press on to Bardney as quickly as we can?’

  Wulfgar sighed, his ribs tight with anxiety. Whatever had the Atheling been thinking? He said this business would only take us a week, and look at us, he thought in frustration. Three nights on the road already, and we’re barely halfway to Bardney. And I’ve got to deliver his wretched message to Leicester’s Jarl, this Hakon Grimsson, which will slow us down even further.

  ‘We need food,’ he told the boy. ‘A fire to dry our cloaks. You said yourself that the horses need a rest. I’m probably too late for Mass, but I should go to the cathedral, anyway. Have you got our story straight?’

  Ednoth nodded and sighed heavily, rolling his eyes.

  ‘Merchants from the south, looking into the pottery trade,’ he recited, sing-song.

  The gates stood open and there were no guards. Even so, they rode under the archway warily, looking to right and left. Closely packed timber buildings, many of them workshops, lined the street and huddled close to the great stone walls. They could hear the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer – on Easter Sunday! – and Wulfgar felt his nostrils tightening against the acrid stench of a tannery. Ahead of them, the street widened out, and a group of men clustered to one side of what looked like the market square. Wulfgar wondered whether to go over and ask the way through the maze of streets to the cathedral, or the Wave-Serpent, but there was something unwelcoming about the men, the way they were huddled, talking in low voices, glancing over their shoulders.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Ednoth still sounded unhappy.

  ‘The cathedral. We’ve got to start somewhere.’

  Down an alleyway to their left, there was a gang of children dodging among the puddles and rubbish, pursuing errant chickens.

  ‘I know, I’ll ask one of those young ones.’

  ‘Not the cathedral. It’s no good to me, is it? Ask where that ale-house is. Will they speak English?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Where’s the Wave-Serpent? He practised hvar er a couple of times under his breath, the foreign sounds uncomfortable on his tongue, then dismounted shakily, and, with as much confidence as he could muster, stopped one bright-looking lad, his dog panting at his feet.

  ‘Ungr mathr, um, hvar er Wave-Serpentinn?’

  Oh, the boy had understood all right.

  ‘Wave-Serpent, herra? Outwith walls, till nor-east.’ He pointed. ‘In Dench town.’

  Wulfgar blinked. The words made no sense to him at first. Then he pulled himself together, realisation seeping through.

  ‘Dench – oh, Danish town. Right. Thank you. How do we get there?’

  The boy pointed back towards the gate.

  ‘Through bar, follow walls till Margaret-kirk, along Gallowtree-gate. Wave-Serpent’s gainhand in garth.’

  Wulfgar blinked again. It might not be Danish, but it certainly wasn’t any variety of English he was familiar with.

  ‘Margaret-kirk? Do you mean the cathedral?’ But the boy had been pointing in the opposite direction.

  ‘Nay, nay. Margaret-kirk.’ The child grinned. ‘It’s right by Mam’s. I’d put you on right gate myself?’ He indicated Wulfgar’s saddle hopefully.

  ‘That would be very kind.’

  He wasn’t sure how to get the boy up on his crupper, but before he knew it the child had scrambled up like a cat.

  ‘Back through bar, first on.’ He whistled, and the dog ran up beside.

  Wulfgar had the uncomfortable feeling that Ednoth was laughing at him.

  They rode back under the double arches of the gate. The horses picked their way through a landscape of stinking ditches and pits, middens and market garden trash, keeping the bulk of the walls on their left. The boy chattered away in his near-incomprehensible dialect but his gestures were clear enough.

  ‘What’s your name, young man?’ Wulfgar had been wondering if the lad would have an English name or a Danish one. But the answer came as a surprise.

  ‘Kevin, herra.’

  Kevin? What sort of a name was that? Irish? Wulfgar thought back to the huddled groups of men in the market square, gossiping like so many fishwives.

  ‘What’s going on, Kevin?’ Wulfgar asked. ‘What was everyone talking about?’

  ‘Don’t tha ken?’ The lad twisted round to stare up at Wulfgar in wide-eyed disbelief. ‘Our Jarl’s dead. Three days gone. Arval ended at dawn.’

  ‘Jarl? Arval?’ Wulfgar found the hair rising on the back of his neck. Three days? The Jarl of Leicester must have been dying, maybe even dead already, when the Atheling had entrusted him with the message. He wondered fleetingly how his own Lord was faring, and his Lady, and how he would know if the worst had happened.

  The boy stared at him even harder.

  ‘The Jarl. His lyke-wake. Hakon Grimsson, tha ken? Hakon Toad.’ He said the name slowly and clearly, as though he thought Wulfgar were daft.

  Ednoth, riding a few feet away, hadn’t been able to hear much of their exchange. ‘Can you understand him? What’s he saying?’

  ‘I – I’ll tell you in a moment.’

  Wulfgar was finding it hard to think clearly. I can’t take a message to a dead man. What am I going to do? He could see the Atheling’s dark, smiling face, feel the warm pressure of his hand on his upper arm. What was he going to say? It’s the best possible excuse, he thought. The man’s dead and buried. I’m reprieved, from half my burden, at least.

  ‘Kirk’s yon,’ Kevin said.

  Wulfgar hadn’t known what to expect from the Danish quarter outside the walls, but it seemed little different from the English town within them: the same sort of mongrel dogs barking; similar children charging headlong through a flurry of squawking geese, with their mothers’ voices wrathful in their wake – and come here and help me, he thought, sounds much the same in both languages. There were the familiar smells of privy and hearth-fire. He was very aware, however, that heads were turning, curious eyes following the strangers on their horses.

  Wulfgar found his voice again.

  ‘So, Kevin, there’s a new lord – a new jarl �
�� in Leicester now?’

  ‘Now arval’s done, já. Old Jarl’s little brother.’

  Wulfgar remembered what Heremod had told him.

  ‘Is that Ketil Scar?’

  The boy turned his head away and spat.

  ‘There’s Mam, herra. Wave-Serpent’s down the ginnel. Let me down?’

  A sturdy woman stood in a low doorway, arms akimbo. The boy ran towards her, shouting with excitement and pointing at the horses. Wulfgar winced. They were attracting far too much interest.

  He told Ednoth what the boy had said.

  ‘Nothing we need worry about, then. We’re not here to see the Jarl, are we?’ Ednoth was still smirking. ‘You should have seen your face when he jumped up into your saddle! Now, where’s that ale-house?’

  ‘I would like to go to the church the boy mentioned, first.’ His voice was wistful. ‘Margaret-kirk. He said it was just here.’ Another church, he thought. Not just the cathedral, then. Leicester promised to be full of surprises.

  Ednoth looked at the expression on Wulfgar’s face and shrugged.

  The little church was easy to find, its lime-washed walls dazzling among the cob and timber houses, the shingled roof standing proud of the thatched buildings around it, with a sunlit wooden cross fixed to one gable end. But Margaret-kirk was no new, wooden church for the new Danish settlement: it was as ancient-looking as the city walls, stone and tile exposed in the walls where patches of plaster had flaked and fallen. The door in the west wall stood ajar, luring him in.

  He slid down from Fallow and handed her reins to Ednoth.

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  An alcove by the door held a battered and faded painting, a lamp guttering before it. He could just make out the lineaments of a young woman, one foot resting casually on a terrible fanged serpent. St Margaret. The Martyr of Antioch, so beloved of women in childbirth.

  ‘St Margaret,’ he whispered, ‘pray for me, too …’

  The door creaked on its iron hinges. After the bright daylight, the church seemed all fire and darkness. A pair of candles in sconces flanking the door gave off a smoky yellow flame and the reek of tallow. Someone had kindled these lights recently but there was no sign of life now. Wulfgar stepped over the threshold and let the door swing to behind him.

  ‘Hallo?’ No more than a whisper; his voice was caught in his throat. He felt his hackles rise.

  The building had two cells, the nave in which he stood and the chancel ahead of him, hardly wide enough to contain its altar. A third light, a little oil-lamp, glimmered there, hinting at the solemn presences of the saints painted on the chancel walls. The pungent scent of tallow mingled with damp, and he could see on the walls the tracks of water. A draft had followed him in and sent the flames leaping, starting dizzying shadows. The green-tinged saints danced in the candlelight. He noticed with a shiver that most of them had had their eyes scratched out. Was that the work of the Danes?

  ‘Hallo?’

  He took a step towards the chancel, but no one was there. Was this still a church? The blinded saints made him nervous. From force of habit, he bowed to the altar and turned to take his leave.

  As he turned, he froze.

  Something was emerging from the far side of the altar.

  Something dark, shapeless, lurching, shuffling out of the shadows.

  Wulfgar took a step backwards and crossed himself, his hand clutching at last the Bishop’s reliquary ring on its thong around his neck.

  ‘Holy Mary, Queen of Heaven—’

  ‘Who’s that, there? Did I startle you?’ came a muffled voice.

  And he sagged with relief. The creature was unfolding into something no more than human. Its shapelessness explained itself: a big, burly man, on his hands and knees, retreating bottom-first from where he had been crawling in the narrow gap on the south side of the altar.

  He hauled himself to his feet now, turning, coming through the tall, narrow chancel arch.

  The flickering light showed deep-set eyes and a badger-striped beard, and a friendly but filthy hand which the stranger rapidly pulled back, rubbed down the side of his tunic, squinted at, and offered again at last.

  ‘Were you looking for me?’ he said.

  Wulfgar nodded, his heart still in his throat.

  ‘I was putting down a bit of poison for the mice. You wouldn’t think they could get up onto the altar but they do. Do they fly, think you? And it goes against the grain for me to be offering the holy blood and body of Our Lord on an altar that’s no better than a mouse’s privy, wouldn’t you agree? Today, of all days?’

  Wulfgar would, and did, though just then he would have agreed to almost anything.

  ‘Are you the priest here, then?’ Wulfgar asked. He scanned the other man for clues. No tonsure, he thought, his lips tightening, and his leggings and short tunic those of a layman. But then, he thought belatedly, I’m in layman’s attire, too, and although I should have had my hair cut on Maundy Thursday it’s still a shaggy mess for the Resurrection of Our Lord. Who am I to carp?

  ‘I am, in faith,’ the big man agreed. ‘Father Ronan, at your service. And a Happy Resurrection to you.’

  ‘You too, Father. Oh, you too.’ Wulfgar felt a grin of sheer relief tugging at the corners of his mouth. ‘Wulfgar of Winchester, at yours.’

  ‘Winchester?’ The priest had been turning to pick up the lamp from the altar, but now he swung round. ‘You’re a long way from home.’ He stared, his eyes narrowing. ‘Forgive me, lad, but I pride myself on a fool-proof nose for a whiff of ordination. Is it a brother in the Church I’m talking to?’ He raised the lamp higher and squinted through its rays.

  Fear and relief had driven all thought of their cover story from Wulfgar’s head.

  ‘Only a subdeacon, I’m afraid,’ he admitted.

  ‘A subdeacon, and of Winchester? Not from the cathedral?’

  Wulfgar nodded.

  ‘But this is miraculous! You can help me celebrate Mass here this afternoon, can’t you?’

  ‘This afternoon? I’m not too late?’

  Father Ronan grinned.

  ‘What with our late Jarl’s arval and the feast after midnight mass last night, I don’t think most folk will be crawling out of bed until it’s gone noon today. It’ll be a very humble affair compared to what you’ll be used to, but you would raise the tone immeasurably, on this day of days. It’s usually just me and my altar boy.’

  ‘Of course.’ Wulfgar felt his cheeks warm with pleasure. ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Come with me. Where are you staying? Just arrived? Make the presbytery your home while you’re in Leicester. Come and have a bite of food.’

  Wulfgar was wanting to ask his own questions, about the church, about its priest, about the Jarl who was dead, about the one who was still alive, but he had to surrender himself up to the spate of welcoming talk while the priest gathered together a few bits and pieces, handed him the poison jar to hold, snuffed the candle out, picked up the lamp, took back the jar and ushered him blinking out of the church and into the daylight.

  Ednoth looked long-suffering.

  ‘I thought you said you wouldn’t be long?’

  Wulfgar turned to the priest.

  ‘My travelling companion,’ he said. ‘Ednoth of Sodbury. Ednoth, this is Father Ronan.’

  Ednoth dismounted and they clasped hands.

  ‘Never tell me you’re another subdeacon! I have to tell you, lad, you’ve not quite the look of one.’

  Ednoth was visibly taken aback.

  ‘No.’ He sounded puzzled. ‘We’re merchants from the south. Pottery merchants.’ He turned to Wulfgar, frowning, a question forming on his lips.

  Wulfgar, embarrassed, spoke very fast.

  ‘Yes, that’s quite right. Father, we’ve a name given us by Heremod of Wappenbury, to help with our trade enquiries. Go to an ale-house called the Wave-Serpent, he said, and ask for a man called Gunnar, Gunnar Cat’s-Eyes. Is that anyone you know?’

  Now it was Father R
onan’s turn to frown.

  ‘Heremod Straddler, is it now? And Gunnar? Indeed? Sure, are you now, that that’s what Heremod said?’

  ‘Yes.’ Wulfgar was puzzled in the face of this rain of questions. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, no reason.’ The priest smiled now. ‘And aye, I think I can help you. The Wave-Serpent’s no more nor a step away down the ginnel. We can go there after Mass, if you can wait? Let’s just bring your horses round; if we tie them up in my garth none will meddle, not if you’re my guest-friends.’ He took Starlight’s bridle and led the way round the south side of the church and into a fenced yard as he spoke.

  They unloaded their bags and lifted the saddles off the horses’ steaming backs.

  Father Ronan filled a couple of leather buckets with water and looked Starlight and Fallow over with a critical eye.

  ‘You’ll be resting them today?’ he asked them.

  Ednoth and Wulfgar glanced at each other. Ednoth nodded.

  ‘Because Sunday is given for beasts as well as men,’ Father Ronan said firmly, ‘and those two poor brutes look in dire need. The righteous man regards the life of his beast. My stable for them tonight, and my hearth for you. How about it?’

  Wulfgar looked at Fallow. Mud-spattered, eyes dull, her head hanging wearily. He felt a creeping sense of guilt. ‘We’ll be resting.’

  The priest nodded in approval.

  ‘Now, give me anything that needs putting away in safekeeping. Your sword, lad, for one. That’s a fine-looking piece of kit, but you don’t want to take it into an ale-house in Leicester’s Dench town. I’ll just clear a little space in here, so I will – I won’t keep you more than a moment,’ and, his arms full of their gear, he ducked under the low thatch above his door.

  Ednoth rounded on Wulfgar.

  ‘You said—’

  Wulfgar held up his hands to ward him off.

  ‘I know. I’m really sorry. He was so friendly – I spoke out of turn and I gave more away than I meant to. I’ve been a fool.’

  ‘Been a fool? Are a fool, more like.’ But Ednoth couldn’t quite hide his smile.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. But—’

  ‘The horses do need a rest.’ Ednoth said. ‘What kind of a name is Father Ronan, anyway?’