The Bone Thief Read online

  ‘If you went to Wessex,’ he said gently, ‘you’d find it swarming with Mercians, you know. Doing very well, some of them. Why shouldn’t a few of us come here?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ the boy said miserably.

  Wulfgar could have provided an answer, but it would have been a long and complex one, a tale of lost lands and faded glories, and a deep mistrust of Mercia’s old enemy to the south. Another time, perhaps. He straightened up.

  ‘Oh, run along,’ he told the boy.

  The other clerics were already midway through the first hymn as he slipped into his place in the high, narrow choir. He took a deep breath of the numinous air and felt his pounding heart slow, his ragged breathing grow regular enough for him to join in towards the end. Unloose the bands of guilt within, he sang, Remove the burden of our sin, trying his best to sound as though he had been there all along.

  Why am I letting what those boys said get under my skin? he thought.

  He bowed his head to pray, noticing as he did so that the ink stain on his robe had now been augmented by smears of mud. Sorry, he thought, glancing up to the image of the Mother of God in her blue, starry cloak, her Son nestled on her lap, which adorned the wall above the high altar. Most Blessed Lady, I shouldn’t come before you like this, late and grubby and distracted. I’m such an ingrate. I should be counting my blessings, and being here in Worcester should be first on the list, he said to himself firmly, aware of her painted eyes on him. It was a beautiful cathedral, even if it was small. He looked at the glorious altar cross, with its gold, and rock crystal, and enamel. You can tell the Danes have never yet got this far, he observed. How many churches still have treasures like that? And look at you, Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea. So beautiful … I do know when I’m well off, he told that friendly, painted face. Really, I do.

  Queen of Heaven, help me get used to being here, he prayed. You don’t have to remind me Winchester will never be my home again. That door’s as closed as the gate of Paradise. He glanced up at the image on the south wall where Adam and Eve were turned away, weeping, by a stern-faced angel with a sword of fire.

  But, he told himself, that doesn’t matter. I’m at the heart of affairs in Mercia now. The Lady knows my worth, and I think the Lord’s learning to, as well. I’m doing what I’ve been trained for since I was younger than that child outside. I even have a desk of my own, at last.

  So why am I restless? Why isn’t this enough?

  The choir began singing the Magnificat, reminding him to augment his list of blessings: he was involved in the solemnities and the splendour and the singing of one of the few great churches left to the English …

  And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour, because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaiden …

  Singing. Humility. Queen of Heaven, he thought, I really am striving to be humble. His bad temper was tightening his throat and hampering his breathing, marring his own true tenor voice. But it was as nothing compared to the grating notes coming from the fair-haired young deacon standing next to him. Kenelm, that was his name. I don’t care if the Bishop is your uncle, Wulfgar thought impatiently, I was singing that phrase better when I was seven. He sneaked a glance at the precentor and the cantor and stifled a sigh. There was no chance those two would ever let him take charge of the choir, and doubtless they would live to be as old as Methuselah, just to spite him.

  Oh, Winchester …

  The old King’s funeral – now, that had been proper singing. It had been the last gift they could give him, even though Wulfgar had hardly been able to see through his tears.

  And that thought led to the equally bittersweet memory of the night before the funeral, at his dead Lord’s wake, when the Lady of the Mercians, red-eyed and solemn-faced, had tugged at his sleeve and drawn him away from the mass of mourners drinking deep and singing raucous songs around her father’s bier.

  ‘I know it’s customary,’ Wulfgar remembered saying to the late King’s daughter, ‘but I wish they’d pray for him instead.’ He had known she was one of the few souls present who would understand his squeamishness. He had looked back over his shoulder at the shrouded figure on the bier, surrounded by stands of guttering candles, the richly draped catafalque barely visible through the crowd. ‘Not that he needs our prayers. If ever a soul went straight to God’s embrace—’

  ‘Come to Mercia,’ she had interrupted, her grey eyes bright with tears.

  He had just gaped at her.

  ‘My Lord and I need a new secretary. We’d – I’d – like you.’

  ‘Leave Wessex?’ He had found an unstoppable tic tugging at his right eyelid. ‘But my life is here.’

  ‘Was,’ she’d said.

  ‘What?’ And he’d remembered his manners. ‘My Lady.’ It was as though she had thrown open the door of a dark room and let the sunlight flood in. He had been dreading the changes the new dispensation would bring, with all the promises the old King had made him rendered null and void. Now, suddenly, the chance to redeem his future and his dignity was being put within his grasp.

  She had offered him her hand, small and cool and hard. And he had taken it, his heart pounding. He had sworn his formal oath later, kneeling at her feet, her hands on his head, but the true vow had been made then, only yards from her father’s corpse and rendered even holier by that proximity. He could still feel that calm, confident pressure on the skin of his palm. He treasured it yet.

  ‘You know I’m right, Wulfgar,’ he remembered her saying. ‘There’s nothing for you here in Winchester now Edward’s taken the high seat of Wessex.’

  He had tried not to flinch at the direct brutality of her words.

  ‘Is that – are you sure it’s inevitable? It has to be your brother?’

  She’d nodded, her face sympathetic in the firelight.

  ‘You must have seen it coming,’ she had answered. He had heard her sigh. ‘Not one of my cousins has so much questioned his claim.’

  ‘Not even Seiriol—’

  ‘Ow!’

  Someone had kicked him. Hard. Right on the bone of the left ankle.

  And the only possible culprit was his neighbour, Kenelm, the fair-haired deacon, who was now staring at the altar with studied innocence.

  Wulfgar glared at him in speechless outrage, aware only of the shock and pain radiating from his ankle like cracks zigzagging through over-burdened ice. Belatedly, he realised every other man in the cathedral choir was falling to his knees.

  Somehow, while he had been indulging himself in reminiscence, the door in the north porch, only feet away from him, had opened, with a cool, wet gust of wind. A pair of men-at-arms had come in from the twilit yard, and they were now standing either side of the door. Whom could they be heralding? Not the Bishop, not with armed men, not in his own cathedral.

  It had to be the Lord of the Mercians. No one else would dare come bursting into the cathedral sanctuary.

  Just in time, he cascaded into a graceless genuflection.

  But it wasn’t the Lord of the Mercians.

  Queen of Heaven, it’s my Lady. Interrupting Vespers? It’s unheard of.

  At first glance, she looked as serene as ever, her oval face smooth, head high, grey eyes calm, her veils neatly pinned back from her temples. But Wulfgar noticed how her top teeth were worrying at her lower lip, a mannerism he remembered from their childhood back in Winchester. As she stepped further into the candlelight, he thought, yes, something’s terribly wrong. She’d been crying.

  The precentor was leaving his stall, hurrying forward, hand on heart, head bowed.

  ‘My Lady, to what do we owe the honour?’

  She nodded to him, a hand returning to push at her gold-embroidered veils, but her eyes were elsewhere, peering into the incense-heavy air, scanning the ranks of clerics.

  Wulfgar knew, somehow, that she was looking for him. He scrambled to his feet, hot and flustered, sensing twenty hostile pairs of eyes.

  ‘Wulfgar,’ she said. ‘Oh, thank goodness
.’ She stopped, took a deep breath, lifted her chin. ‘With your permission, precentor?’

  ‘My Lady?’

  She pointed an imperious finger at Wulfgar, who pulled himself up as tall as he could.

  ‘My secretary. I need him.’

  If the precentor was expecting an apology, or an explanation, he was disappointed.

  ‘Now, my Lady?’

  ‘At once.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE FIRST THING that struck him was a sharp metallic scent in the air – a scent he couldn’t place, cutting through the heady fragrance of the apple-wood fire and the beeswax candles. The Lord’s bower was dimly lit, and seemed crowded. Wulfgar’s eyes went at once, apprehensively, to the great carved chair, but it sat empty.

  The Lady had said nothing as she hurried him across the courtyard, the men-at-arms in close attendance, and he didn’t dare ask what he might have done wrong. Nonetheless his over-active conscience foraged frantically through the work he had done for the Lord and Lady over the last few days. He must have made some appalling error, he thought, frowning, to make her come for me in person. His recent work had all been connected to the court cases to be heard after Easter. Endless quarrels about cattle, and grazing rights, and who had moved the head-stakes of whose ploughland … He shook his head. Dry, and routine, and fascinating in their minutiae, and absolutely nothing that might merit being hauled out of Vespers like this.

  Kenelm and the others would be speculating wildly, he realised. Let them.

  As they entered the bower, the Lady moved away from him abruptly, going straight over to the bed with its crimson canopy. Wulfgar hovered, unsure whether she would want him to follow.

  That smell …

  Then he knew it for what it was.

  Blood.

  Even as he recognised it, a waiting woman brushed by him with a bowl covered with a stained linen towel. He peered further into the gloom, and realised there was a figure in the bed. A fragile-looking, motionless figure, whose arm was being bandaged by a healer, to whom the Lady was speaking in low, urgent tones. Wulfgar saw the man gesture at the supine figure and shake his head, and the Lady sagged suddenly, shoulders dropping, neck bowed. Wulfgar, baffled, squinted harder into the gloom. The figure in the bed appeared to be an old man. Where had he come from? What was he doing, in the Lord’s bed?

  Understanding followed, a heartbeat later.

  The Lady was at his side again.

  ‘Wulfgar, what have you heard?’

  He could hear the strain in her voice, like a over-tightened harp-string. He shook his head at her, distressed beyond words.

  ‘There’s been no gossip among the cathedral clerics?’ she persisted.

  He found his voice at last.

  ‘None that I’ve heard, my Lady. Though they don’t tell me everything.’ They tell me nothing, that would be a better way of putting it. But he pushed the bitterness aside. Now was hardly the time. ‘I’ve been at my work in the muniments room all day. I haven’t seen many people.’

  She was still wilting, her face tense and weary even in the kindly light of the candles.

  ‘Wulfgar, he woke up like this.’ She put her hand on the sleeve of his tunic. ‘Come and see.’

  The old man – and Wulfgar realised that, somehow, in the space of a few hours, the Lord of the Mercians had become a truly aged man – lay inert against the pillows, under the weight of lambswool blankets. His face was grey, his eyes filmy and elsewhere.

  The Lady approached tentatively, as though he might launch himself at her, growling and biting.

  ‘My Lord,’ she asked, ‘has the bleeding helped?’

  She came up to the bedhead and bent over him. Even exhausted as she was, her smooth skin and bright eyes made a painful contrast with the haggard figure under the blankets.

  ‘My Lord?’

  The Lord of the Mercians opened his mouth to answer, and a stream of gibberish gushed forth. As he spoke, he became more and more agitated, struggling to sit up, waving an arm but so little in control that he threatened to hit both himself and his wife in the face.

  The healer stepped forward and grasped the thick, bony wrists.

  ‘Hush, my Lord. Drink this. It’s only milk and honey,’ he said in a softer aside to the Lady, ‘but it may calm him.’

  Wulfgar watched, open-mouthed, silent and appalled, as the Lord of the Mercians choked his way through the glass of sweet milk.

  The Lady had her hand to her mouth. Wulfgar could see her swallowing painfully, almost gagging, in sympathy with her husband. She turned away at last.

  ‘Wulfgar, what should I do?’

  ‘My Lady? I’m no leech!’ He glanced at the healer.

  ‘He’s been like this all day. I’ve been waiting – hoping.’ She, too, turned to the healer. ‘He’s not going to get better, is he?’

  ‘Not yet, my Lady. Given time—’

  ‘Time!’

  The healer ducked, although the Lady hadn’t raised a hand.

  ‘We don’t have time. He’s hearing the first case in the court this evening. And how many – Wulfgar? Over the next week?’

  ‘It must be at least thirty, my Lady.’

  ‘Not to mention hosting the Easter feast on Sunday, with the Bishop.’ She put her hands to her temples. ‘Oh, my dear God, Wulfgar. The Bishop.’

  He nodded, frowning, trying to understand, and wanting to help.

  In a low, urgent voice, she said, ‘He’ll take over. He’ll start by holding the court alone, against all precedent. Then he’ll find his own candidate for the throne of Mercia. I can see it all.’ She flexed her fingers in front of her like claws, as if she were trying to find something to which she could cling. ‘I’ll be all on my own. No one to watch my back.’ She sounded ragged, on the verge of hysteria. ‘Wulfgar, they hate us here, you know that.’

  He didn’t know what to do. He took a step closer to her. It still surprised him, to find that he was now more than a head the taller.

  ‘My Lady, they don’t hate you. You’ve been the Mercians’ Lady since you were a girl.’

  She had closed her eyes, and to his horror he saw her lips quiver.

  ‘Girl? I was a child. Sixteen years I’ve been in Mercia,’ she said, her voice a brittle whisper. ‘And nothing to show for it. “Barren”. It’s almost as bad as “West Saxon”, don’t you think?’

  His throat was tight with sorrow for her. The Vespers psalm she had just interrupted came forcefully to mind: Behold the inheritance of the Lord are children: the reward, the fruit of the womb. But if there were no children? What inheritance then? The significance of her words came seeping slowly through to him.

  ‘My Lady,’ he said, his shock audible, ‘do you mean the Bishop doesn’t know about this?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve been turning people away all day. They’ll be talking, though. Only the healer and I have seen him, and my women – though they’ll be blabbing it up and down the streets of Worcester as soon as I give them leave to go. I don’t trust them. I don’t trust anyone.’ She looked up suddenly, and reached for his hand. ‘Except you.’

  ‘Me, my Lady?’

  Her grip crushed his fingers. She looked up at him then, her sea-grey gaze suddenly steady and focused. Queen of Heaven, he thought, but you look like your father. So slight, and so beautiful, but you’ve inherited his unyielding gaze. He blinked, and tried to make sense of what she was saying.

  ‘Wulfgar, I’ve known you since you were that funny little boy who used to sort my embroidery silks. You are oath-sworn to me, as you were to my father before me.’ He nodded, trying to keep pace with her rapid words. ‘You would never betray me.’

  Was it a question?

  He nodded again, swallowing.

  ‘What do you hold most precious?’ she asked, still clinging to his hand.

  ‘My soul, my Lady. And – and you.’ I’ll swear on my soul and my hopes of Heaven, he thought, if you ask it of me. Let me help. Let me look after you. The words trembl
ed unspoken on his lips.

  She squeezed his hand again, and let go.

  ‘I believe you. And I trust you.’ She managed a faint smile. ‘If only because you’re a stranger here, as well.’

  Did she have to add that if only? Wulfgar rubbed his hand, still feeling the pressure of her fingers.

  ‘My Lady,’ he said firmly, ‘you are not alone. And you are loved. Very much loved.’

  ‘And I’d forgotten that my cousin Seiriol is coming.’ She closed her eyes briefly. ‘Deo gratias, I am not alone after all. He will protect me.’

  She looked at him then, grey eyes calmer, her mouth pursed.

  I’ve lost her, he thought. That moment of connection had vanished as though it had never been.

  ‘The first case this evening. Bring us—’ She stopped, and corrected herself. ‘Bring me the documents.’

  ‘For the shire-court, my Lady? Here, to the bower? Now?’

  ‘Yes.’ But she turned then, and looked at her husband, prostrate again in the great carved bed. ‘No. To the great hall – to the little antechamber next to it, I mean.’

  ‘What are you going to do, my Lady?’

  Her eyes were still on her husband.

  ‘Do? I’m going to pray, Wulfgar. You should, too. Mercia needs a miracle.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘WULFGAR, MY UNCLE wants you. Now.’ Kenelm put out an arm to intercept him as he hurried by, but Wulfgar pulled away, his leather-soled indoor shoes threatening to skid on the rain-slick cobbles. It was already dusk, and the court would be in session soon.

  ‘I have no time,’ he said over his shoulder.

  Kenelm refused to be so easily dissuaded from the task in hand, however. His long legs caught up with Wulfgar as the other hurried across the courtyard towards the muniments room, and he grabbed Wulfgar’s arm again. ‘I don’t think you heard me, subdeacon. Your Bishop wants to see you.’

  Wulfgar struggled, but Kenelm had him surprisingly tightly by the wrist, and he didn’t want to make a scene. Enough curious eyes would be watching, as things were.

  ‘Please, Kenelm, let me go. I’m on an errand for the Lady.’ He made the mistake of adding, ‘And my duty is to her, not the Bishop.’