The Bone Thief Read online

  ‘Is it difficult being the only priest in this part of the world?’

  Father Ronan caught his eye, seemed about to say something, and then shrugged.

  ‘Is it easy anywhere?’ He ran his hand through his wiry grizzled hair, leaving it standing up in a crest like a lapwing’s. ‘I baptise the babies, say the Mass, and hold the hands of the dying.’ His voice had taken on a resigned tinge. ‘I can’t get books, I have to bumble through half the liturgy from memory. I did have a grand gilt chalice and paten, once, but they were stolen. So I consecrate the blood of Our Lord in that old mead-horn – and I saw you raise your eyebrows! This isn’t Winchester, you know.’

  Wulfgar nodded, slowly assimilating everything the priest had said. No, this wasn’t Winchester. It wasn’t even Worcester. He remembered the parlous state of affairs at Offchurch and – where was it the Bishop had showed him that letter from? Diddlebury, that was it. Just be grateful there’s a priest here at all, he told himself, and all the more so for one with a real sense of vocation.

  ‘What’s it like once you get north of here?’ he asked.

  The priest eyed him sideways.

  ‘I can answer that one better if you tell me where you’re headed.’

  How much did he need to know? Wulfgar wondered.

  ‘Lincoln, for example,’ he said, a sudden catch in his throat. He glanced at Ednoth to see whether the boy had heard, but he showed no sign of listening, still scowling at the table, picking with his nail at a loose splinter.

  Father Ronan frowned.

  Gunnvor broke in: ‘Oh, Lincoln’s not as bad as some people make out. Though if it’s pottery you’re truly chasing you’ll do better heading due east of here, not north east. It’s Stamford you want. That’s where—’ She clearly had more to say but Father Ronan cut across her words.

  ‘Enough for the moment. Pleasure before business.’ He unfastened the toggles on his bag as he spoke.

  Gunnvor snapped her fingers for another jug.

  ‘Later,’ she murmured in Wulfgar’s ear. ‘And I’ll let you know my commission.’

  Wulfgar nodded, only half-attending. He was too troubled by what they had said – and what they hadn’t said – about Lincoln. He was even more troubled by Ednoth’s silence. The boy hadn’t uttered a word since they had sat down. Now he was still fiddling at that bit of wood at the edge of the table, seemingly giving it his whole mind, and drinking steadily.

  But Wulfgar’s worries were dispelled like darkness by sunrise at the sight of the instrument that Father Ronan was unveiling from her beaver-skin lining. Old, old wood smooth as glass, with silver-gilt plaques in the shape of eagles’ heads to left and right, her bridge of amber, every curve honed and polished where a dozen generations of men had caressed her. A true long-harp to sit on your knee and hold to your heart like a lover.

  Wulfgar caught his breath. He could hear his uncle’s voice sternly quoting canon law at him: a cleric must not sing in taverns in the manner of a common glee-man … and a tavern full of heathens, at that! But the priest’s harp was filling him with an overpowering desire.

  Father Ronan looked over at him and the corners of his mouth tugged into a smile.

  ‘Flotsam from the world before the Flood,’ he said enigmatically. ‘Maple, willow and limewood.’

  Wulfgar nodded, only half-understanding. There was clearly a story here, but now was not the time to ask. The appearance of the harp had been greeted with raucous approval by the other drinkers, and the benches were already being hauled round for a makeshift arena.

  ‘Come on, Father,’ someone yelled, ‘Give us “The Cuckoo Song”.’

  But the priest was taking his time, tuning each string with the aid of a little bronze key, and he just nodded and went on smiling.

  Wulfgar wondered what one might sing for this audience. St Andrew, perhaps, and his mission to the cannibals? Or one of the greats, the songs of doomed heroes, of love and gold and the darkness at the heart of things? He sat up, all eager attention. But when Father Ronan finally finished tuning, a sparkle in his eyes, it was the first request that was rewarded: a song of such startling vulgarity about a promiscuous young wife that Wulfgar didn’t know where to look. It was the sort of song that Wulfgar’s own father would have loved, though. God rest his blemished soul, but my father would have fitted right in with this crowd, Wulfgar thought, he would have been pounding the table and singing along; I can just hear him bellowing Kukkuk along with Father Ronan in the chorus.

  But it was no fitting song for a priest. Wulfgar, who had been longing with a passion to try out that glorious harp himself, was now quite sure it would be wrong.

  But no one was watching, he realised with a shock. No one who was going to carry spiteful tales back to his uncle, that upright canon of Winchester, anyway. Queen of Heaven, forgive me, he thought, but Winchester is a very long way away.

  When Father Ronan had finished, Wulfgar half-stretched out his hand despite the nagging voice of conscience, but Gunnvor Cat’s-Eyes was too quick for him. As she leaned across him to grasp the harp, her clothes gave off a sharp, spicy scent. Cinnamon, he thought, nostrils quivering. Pepper. She shifted away from him to the bench-end and turned sideways slightly to make room, retuning the harp quickly, as though she played it often.

  ‘New one,’ she said shortly. ‘I heard it from one of my men.’

  Her song was in Danish; Wulfgar could only catch scraps of the meaning. Her singing had the same husky, crooning quality as her speech. He frowned, watching her mouth while she sang, trying to make what sense he could from her words. Swan-feathers … Whiter arms … Something about girls – the maidens yearned – or were they swans? Flying away … and a man left lamenting his unbearable loss.

  ‘You don’t like it?’

  He blinked. The spell was over and she was staring back at him.

  ‘Or you don’t like my voice?’ There was a challenge there.

  ‘No, I do, I really do. Both. I’d like to hear it again. I only—’

  ‘Your turn,’ and she shoved the harp straight at his chest.

  He clutched at it helplessly.

  ‘I really shouldn’t—’

  ‘Come on, Wulfgar, don’t be a Caedmon.’ Father Ronan grinned. This was another kind of challenge, one Wulfgar found more familiar.

  He sat up.

  ‘I have no intention of being a Caedmon,’ he said indignantly, ‘unless you mean after the angel gave him the miraculous gift of song?’ But what about singing ‘Caedmon’s Dream’? His thoughts ran for a moment after the tale of the Whitby cowherd, miserably exiling himself evening after evening from the cheerful gatherings in the feast-hall, until that miraculous night when a heavenly visitor had awarded him not only an angelic voice but also a song to sing …

  He realised a thick, grizzled eyebrow was being raised.

  ‘Cocky, aren’t we, lad? Let’s hear you, then. No hymns, mind, not for this audience.’

  Cocky? Aren’t you confusing me with Ednoth? But the priest was offering him the harp now, and he gave it his full attention. It nestled thrillingly into his left arm’s embrace. He held out his other hand for the tuning key. It was topped with a little bronze figure of a stag, burnished almost to gold, old as the harp herself. He plucked at the strings experimentally, retuned them a little. Nothing too long. Something that they might not have heard. He didn’t want to break the spell Gunnvor had cast.

  And, swimming up out of nowhere, he remembered scraps of a song his mother used to sing. Not remotely suitable for someone who wanted to be a bishop, or even for a subdeacon, but it responded to something plaintive in Gunnvor’s lament, something that had touched his core.

  ‘When it was rainy weather,

  And I, weeping, sat …

  Wulf, my Wulf,

  Why did you come so seldom?

  Easily parted, what was never joined –

  Our song together.’

  He drew his fingers across the strings with a last plangent little flouri
sh, like tears.

  There was a moment’s silence. And then that roar of approval, the pounding of fists on the table, that warmed his heart like little else. He looked across at Gunnvor, a challenge in his own eyes now.

  She nodded.

  ‘Já, so there’s more to you than meets the eye. He –’ she jerked her chin at Ednoth ‘– can ride and you can sing.’

  ‘Sentimental twaddle,’ Father Ronan said, but he said it with a smile.

  ‘Me now.’

  Ednoth hauled himself to his feet. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d sat down. Wulfgar offered the harp to him across the table but he brushed it aside with a rough gesture that had Wulfgar clutching the instrument protectively.

  ‘You don’t need a harp, not for what I’m going to sing.’ He swayed slightly, still scowling, and leaned forward to brace himself with one hand on the edge of the table, half-turning to include the whole room.

  ‘Hey!

  We’ve heard and we’ve told of the battles of old

  when we first won this land as of right

  but the greatest of all was that wonderful brawl

  men know as Edington fight.’

  The room had fallen silent again, but there was a different quality to it now. Wulfgar’s warm glow was evaporating like dew in the sun.

  One verse of ‘The Battle of Edington’ should be quite enough in present company, he thought. More than enough. He cleared his throat.

  But Ednoth was already raising his voice and swinging into the chorus. In Winchester, even in Worcester, everyone in the room would have joined him. Here in Leicester, the silence was growing ominous.

  ‘Edington! Edington! Fed the wolf from sun to sun!

  Edington! Edington! Made the Danish buggers run!’

  He was still singing alone, but his stride wasn’t thrown for a moment.

  ‘By the Wessex White Horse those sons of old whores,

  Guthrum and Halfdan and—’

  Crash!

  One of the benches had gone over. Wulfgar squinted into the smoke and glow to see a massive figure staggering towards them. It looked as though Ednoth had got his fight at last.

  ‘My father fell in Guthrum’s service!’ the big Dane bellowed. He had already pulled back a fist to swing.

  Ednoth’s head went up, nostrils flaring, a fierce joy in his face.

  Father Ronan shoved the harp and its bag at Wulfgar and forced his bulk out round the end of the table.

  ‘Steady on, lads, we’re all family under this roof. That battle was a lifetime ago, Alfred and Guthrum are both in their graves—’

  ‘Not your business, Father,’ the Dane said, never taking his eyes from Ednoth.

  ‘Oh, I think you’ll find it is,’ Father Ronan responded amiably. He was between the two of them now, and they were circling him, trying to get at each other.

  ‘Come on, Englishman,’ said the Dane. ‘Hiding behind a priest? Typical of you people.’

  Ednoth roared with frustration and lunged, shouldering the priest out of the way. They grappled and swayed, and Wulfgar saw to his horror that they were coming his way. Hugging the harp to his breast he wormed down from the bench, his only thought to save the harp – and himself – from harm. He crawled under the table, onto his hands and knees on the sticky packed earth of the floor.

  The racket of swearing and shouting was deafening. A confused forest of legs wove and stumbled back and forth, a crash and a yell and a flurry of sparks as someone fell into the fire. Wulfgar hoped it would be the Dane, the man whose father had fought against Alfred of Wessex at Edington, but then he glimpsed him still on his feet, a solid lump of a man, a good decade older than Ednoth.

  Ednoth was never going to win this fight. Wulfgar began a frantic squirm out from under, desperate to stop the madness somehow. And then, just as he was emerging, there came a gut-wrenching groan and the thud of a body falling, and an uproar of voices.

  Wulfgar went cold from top to toe and fell flat again, squinnying out through the trestles, wondering despairingly who had drawn his knife, and whose the corpse would be.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BEFORE WULFGAR COULD crawl out from under the table, the door from the courtyard burst open. The ale-house was crowded suddenly with men with lanterns and sticks. They came piling in, three or four of them, their swaying lanterns bringing a little more light. A pause, and then a fifth man came slowly stepping over the threshold. And the room, at loggerheads only a moment before, was united in silence.

  Father Ronan stepped forward, his hands spread in pacifying mode.

  ‘My Lord Ketil! You honour us! No trouble here. Just a little – lively – political debate between friends.’

  To his disbelief, through the legs of the bench, Wulfgar saw the former combatants beyond the priest, on the far side of the room: Ednoth grinning, the big Dane feeling his windpipe and swallowing, but both apparently otherwise unhurt. Wulfgar wondered for a moment about worming his way out now, making himself known to Ketil as the priest had recommended, but something stopped him.

  The sound of one person’s footsteps.

  Coming towards the centre of the room, crunching on shards of pottery, stopping by their table. His shins were inches from Wulfgar’s nose. All Wulfgar could see of Leicester’s new Jarl was his kid leather boots, the fringed and braided hem of his tunic, the fine gilding and the filigree chape of the leather scabbard swinging at his hip. He moved stiffly, as if his joints troubled him. But Wulfgar could also see the others falling back, hear their silence, and smell their fear.

  When Ketil spoke it was in Danish, his tone quiet, conversational.

  ‘Gunnvor Bolladottir? Far thú hingath til mín.’ A harsh, slow, guttural voice, with a thickness about the tongue. Wulfgar had to strain his ears, and all his knowledge of Danish, to make any sense of it.

  A rustle of silk. Gunnvor’s voice. ‘Herra.’ My Lord. He could see her feet, neat in silver-buttoned leather, as she curtsied.

  ‘Look at you, dressed for a bridal, not an arval. Angling for another man already, and my brother but three days in the ground?’ An ostentatious sigh. ‘Fighting over you, were they? I should have known you would forget him so soon.’

  ‘I have not forgotten, herra.’ Gunnvor’s voice, low as it was, was bell-clear in comparison.

  ‘Really? No? But they tell me, Bolladottir, that you are any man’s now, for the asking.’

  ‘Not quite, herra. I’m not yours.’

  No Danish was needed to interpret the sound that came next – the sharp smack of a blow. Wulfgar, appalled, saw her feet stagger at the impact. But she didn’t fall – she recovered her stance quickly while Ketil was still talking.

  ‘Who are these utlendingar I’ve had word of? Do you know anything?’

  Outlanders?

  Us?

  There was a pause. Then Gunnvor spoke, clearly and deliberately.

  ‘Nothing, herra.’

  ‘You hear anything, you tell me. Understand? I want to talk to them.’

  ‘I understand, herra.’

  ‘Be sure you do.’

  Wulfgar saw Ketil’s well-shod heels turn, his guards jostling to follow. He’d still not seen the man’s face.

  The door closed.

  There was a long moment of silence.

  Gunnvor’s voice broke the spell: ‘What are you staring at, you fools? You, sweep that up.’ The pot-boy appeared with a besom and began clearing away fragments of pottery.

  Wulfgar crawled out at last.

  ‘Comfortable, under my nice table?’

  He turned. Gunnvor watched him, arms folded across her silk-swathed breasts. The right side of her face was marked with red, angry against the cream of her skin, and, in the centre a bleeding cut, right on the cheekbone.

  ‘I – are you all right?’ He stared, horrified.

  She put the back of her wrist up to her face and wiped the trickle of blood away.

  ‘He’s a vain man, our Ketil. He likes his rings big.
’

  ‘I – I was protecting Father Ronan’s harp.’

  ‘Better protect it then.’ She turned away.

  He bent to retrieve it. When he straightened up he saw, to his surprise, that the big Dane had invited Ednoth over to his table. The two of them were acting out their battle: Ednoth miming the upthrust of a vicious elbow into the other man’s throat, and the Dane cheerfully following up with an exaggerated staggering fall into the arms of his friends – a whole rough easy mindless world of men from which Wulfgar felt profoundly shut out. And it was only then that he realised just how drunk they all were.

  Father Ronan put a hand on his shoulder. He saw Wulfgar’s frown.

  ‘I have you to thank for looking after Uhtsang. The harp. It’s her name.’

  Wulfgar nodded, thinking it over. It was a good name. Uhtsang. Matins. Or the dawn chorus, perhaps.

  ‘Did you name her?’ he asked, as he gave the harp into the priest’s arms.

  ‘Not I. I’ll give you the story some other time.’ He tucked the harp away safely, then turned back to Wulfgar. ‘Now,’ the priest murmured, ‘I want you to tell me the real reason you two have landed in Leicester.’

  Wulfgar pulled back sharply and looked at him, startled.

  The priest just grinned.

  ‘I’ve whittled down my list of possibilities.’ He ticked them off on his fingers: ‘Now, are you subdeacons, smugglers, slave-dealers, swords for hire or spies? Tell me, go on – then we can decide how much you need to tell Ketil Scar when you pay your respects to him tomorrow.’

  Wulfgar, sick of a sudden at the prospect of facing Ketil, opened his lips to say pottery merchants but the lying syllables wouldn’t come out, not in the face of that knowing and patient gaze. He glanced across to Ednoth, but there would be no support coming from that newly cheerful quarter.

  The priest’s eyes followed Wulfgar’s, and he smiled.

  ‘Boys,’ he said, shaking his head as he tucked the harp into her bag.

  That sympathetic one word was enough. Wulfgar felt a great urge to unburden himself to this understanding man but he could not. A tidal wave of exhaustion washed over him. It must have shown in his face.