The Bone Thief Page 7

  Chester and Bristol were the only surviving Mercian ports, and even they were being slowly strangled by the Danish pirates in the Irish Sea.

  For all the spring sunshine around him, Wulfgar found his mind’s eye overtaken by darkness. Foes on all fronts, and the Lord on his deathbed. Soon, perhaps, the light of the ancient kingdom of Mercia would be extinguished altogether.

  Not if he could help it.

  Not if St Oswald came back in triumph to Mercia. Not if the Lady’s new church in Gloucester became a great node of pilgrimage. Not if the shield-wall of Mercia could march into battle with St Oswald’s reliquary in the vanguard. He squared his shoulders, tightened his abdominal muscles, and sat taller in the saddle.

  ‘Oof!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cramp! It’s my thighs – ow – Ednoth, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to walk for a bit.’

  He bit his lip, clutching his reins in one hand as he frantically massaged the muscles of his left thigh with the other.

  ‘Could you help me down?’

  Ednoth looked at him with what Wulfgar read as contempt but, saying nothing, he swung himself easily to the ground and came to lend him his arm.

  Wulfgar bent over for a moment, waiting for the deep muscular torment to subside.

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘All right.’

  They walked side by side for a while, Ednoth leading both horses, with Wulfgar, suffering in pride as much as in body, flinching at every step and trying to keep to the soft turf rather than the unforgiving stone.

  The Fosse Way is proving my via dolorosa, he thought. My via crucis. A feeble imitation of the real blood-stained path to Calvary and the Cross, to be sure, but it felt right to be on this penitential journey, to be fasting and in pain, this day of all days. He plodded on, trying not to let Ednoth see him wince.

  The great road was busy. When his cramp had eased enough for Wulfgar to look around he realised that the traffic had a festive air to it which left him baffled: enormous flocks of sheep herded by cheerful shepherds; plodding ox-carts laden with chattering folk; the odd smiling horseman; bands of barefoot girls with wreaths of blackthorn and violets in their hair, carrying beribboned lambs – and all heading in the same north-easterly direction that he and Ednoth were going. Eventually, indignation tempered with curiosity got the better of him, and he hailed one of the passers-by, a stout, friendly-looking woman clinging onto the side of a crowded cart.

  She stared down at him, gape-mouthed.

  ‘Don’t you know? St Modwenna? At Offchurch? It’s her feast today.’

  Shock rendered Wulfgar speechless.

  ‘Are you coming?’ she went on blithely. ‘Everybody’s welcome.’

  He found his voice at last.

  ‘But it’s Good Friday!’

  ‘Aye, to be sure, and the priests will keep that. But we can’t slight our St Modwenna, just because another holy day falls along with hers.’ She stared at him as though he were simple. ‘She hallows the flocks.’ She shook her head now. ‘It’s the great day for us, young man. Where do you come from, that you don’t honour St Modwenna?’

  ‘But, but—’ But nothing was more important than Good Friday. All other feasts were shunted ahead a few days in the kalendar, or abandoned altogether, if they fell foul of Easter. Nothing but nothing outranked Easter.

  Especially not some petty little saint of whom he had never even heard.

  Was this what the Bishop had meant, when he had said the upland minsters needed sorting out? Wulfgar hadn’t understood at the time. Now he was beginning to. In his bafflement and unhappiness, it was a moment before he realised Ednoth was talking to him.

  ‘Oh, Wulfgar, you must know about St Modwenna’s milk. My sisters will all be drinking milk tonight and dreaming of the men they’re going to marry.’

  ‘That’s it,’ the woman in the ox-cart called over the rumbling of the solid wheels. ‘The lads, too, up this way. Nice, warm dreams.’ She gave Ednoth a complicit smile.

  Ednoth reached over and prodded his ribs.

  ‘Come on, Wulfgar! Don’t look so furtive. Who’s the girl you’re dreaming about?’

  Wulfgar looked fixedly at the road and tightened his grip on Fallow’s reins.

  ‘I don’t know any girls. Of course I don’t. I’m going to be a priest.’

  ‘But priests have women,’ Ednoth said. ‘Our chaplain at Sodbury has got seven children.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Wulfgar said, cheeks burning. ‘Village priests. Not bishops.’

  ‘And you’re going to be a bishop?’ Ednoth sounded incredulous. ‘What would you want to do that for?’

  It was true, though, Wulfgar thought defensively. All his life, he had been told he was destined for the highest ranks of the Church. And senior clerics were married to their minsters, his uncle, the canon of Winchester, had always told him. His elder brother Wystan had been destined for the land, and the wife and the son. You can do better than that, Wuffa, his uncle used to say. And Wulfgar would look at his father, his libidinous, foul-mouthed father, and thank the Queen of Heaven he didn’t have to grow up to be like that. Two wives, and a field-slave for a mistress, and Wulfgar was sure there had been other little by-blows running around in the slaves’ quarters, even though Garmund was the only one their father had ever acknowledged.

  Ednoth and the woman on the cart were still looking at him.

  What was the right answer? I’d rather dream of a nice, warm cathedral … He didn’t want them to laugh at him.

  The woman appeared to have given up on him. She leaned precariously over the side of the cart towards Ednoth, her voice cheerful and inquisitive.

  ‘You’re coming to the feast, then?’ she asked him. ‘Have you come far?’

  ‘We’re on our way north. We’re servants of the Lady.’

  ‘Ednoth!’

  But the boy went on regardless, in answer to something else the woman had said.

  ‘Oh, no, we answer to her directly! We’re on an important mission—’

  ‘Ednoth!’

  But he was too late.

  ‘Servants of the Lady? Heading north?’ Turning to the old lady sitting on her other side, she bellowed, ‘Auntie, these boys can take you home!’ She swung back. ‘She came down to visit us and the children a few days ago, never misses the chance to see our saint and get some holy milk, but she should get home after the procession, really. It’s only as far as Wappenbury.’

  She looked from Ednoth to Wulfgar and back again.

  ‘One of you can put her up on your crupper. Look at her. You’ll hardly know she’s there. Now then, Auntie? These nice young men will see you safe back to Wappenbury after you’ve had your milk.’

  ‘I want to ride with him.’ A twig-like finger emerged from the shroud of finely woven wool to stab at Ednoth. ‘Broad shoulders. I do like broad shoulders.’

  Ednoth bowed.

  ‘My pleasure, lady.’

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ Wulfgar was furious. ‘Ednoth, we simply haven’t got time—’

  ‘We can ride hard this afternoon. You need to rest, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘But what?’ Ednoth’s smile was wide and knowing. ‘Isn’t this Christian charity? Doing good deeds. Paying our respects to the saints. Isn’t that your job?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘I’VE HAD AN idea.’ Ednoth was loosening Starlight’s girth, having looped his reins round a tree stump just outside the minster yard, within reach of a patch of new grass.

  ‘Yes?’

  The boy straightened up.

  ‘Let’s grab St Modwenna instead of going hunting for St Oswald.’

  ‘What?’

  But Wulfgar wasn’t listening. Through the open minster-gates he could see and hear the celebrations getting under way, along with the babble of excited voices, the bleating of hundreds of sheep, and snatches of song. The yard between the gates and the little wooden church was packed with shepherds and their dogs as
well as the teeming flocks.

  He hadn’t really believed that woman on the ox-cart. They weren’t very far yet from the Mercian heartlands. Surely Easter would be properly kept by the mass-priests, if not by the people.

  But, looking through the gates, Wulfgar saw no fewer than four gaily clad priests, each with his attendant deacon holding a basin of holy water. They were wading thigh-deep through a sea of grey and brown and black fleece, sprinkling the woolly backs with flicks of their rosemary branches. Those sheep that had already been blessed were being herded briskly into holding pens, and the women were hard at work milking. The roasting pits had been dug and the merchants were setting out the trestles for their stalls: cinnamon and silk ribbons, gilt brooches and pepper. Somewhere out of sight for now, the musicians were tuning up.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Come on! I could run in, wave my sword, knock the priests down, grab the saint’s bones! We’ll be back on our horses and a mile down the road before anyone’s even noticed.’ Ednoth looked at Wulfgar’s face, shrugged, and grinned. ‘I was joking, Wulfgar. Don’t be so serious. The sun’s shining! Come on, let’s go and get our milk.’

  ‘You go.’

  On almost any other day of the year, Wulfgar would have been impressed by the show this remote little minster was mustering. Today, every note of the bells grated on his ears. It was all wrong, the colour, the music, the mouth-watering smell of roasting lamb. He looked up at the sky, inanely blue. There should be darkness over the face of the earth. An earthquake. The veil of the Temple rent in twain. All the world wept: Christ was on the Cross …

  He had never felt so alone as he did just then, carping and miserable in the midst of this happy throng.

  And Ednoth was still laughing at him.

  ‘Ask St Modwenna for her blessing on our journey, if you really don’t want a bride. Maybe she could have a word with St Oswald for us.’

  ‘Don’t you tell me—’

  But the boy was already hurrying through the timber gates to the churchyard, lined with wattle sheep pens to make a temporary arena. As each noisy flock was hallowed, it came through into the pens where the girls were milking industriously. Their mothers were staggering back and forth from pen to table with the pails of milk, and ladling frothing spoonfuls into cups which they then passed out to the crowd.

  Wulfgar fumed.

  I must speak to the abbot, he thought. I may not be here in an official capacity, but even so I can’t believe he lets all this carry on.

  Why couldn’t they have put it off for a week?

  And where had that stupid boy got to?

  There Ednoth was, shouldering his way through the throng to a pen hard against the south wall of the nave. He was rewarded by a horn beaker of the pungent milk and a brilliant smile from the pretty girl whose flock he’d chosen.

  Wulfgar made his way slowly towards him, thinking, I’ll just tell him I’m going to find the abbot.

  The great bell of the minster had begun to toll; he could see it swinging dizzily back and forth in its little belfry. The priests and their attendants had disappeared back into the darkness of the church and now they were ready to re-emerge in procession with their saint from the west door. Ednoth was saying something to the girl, begging a kiss, it looked like, but her smiling reply was drowned by the sudden joyful ringing of lesser bells.

  The crowd fell back.

  A subdeacon came first, upholding a processional cross some eight feet high that shone red-gold as his hair in the sunlight. Then came the boys with their hand-bells, keeping admirable time with the great bell, and the acolytes with their great beeswax candles, flames invisible in the sunlight. Next came the deacons, and then the priests, in matching sets of martyr-red dalmatics and chasubles, followed by the old abbot, beaming with pleasure as he blessed the bystanders. And at last, carried by four laymen, their faces glistening with pride and the warmth of the day, came the little saint.

  Her reliquary was wrapped in thickly embroidered silks. There were two young thurifers flanking her, clanking their little bronze incense-burners in time with the bells and scattering puffs of smoke. The bitter sweetness of the incense added another layer to air already ripe with woodsmoke, roasting lamb, milk and sheep-dung; the metallic ringing of the incense-burners chiming with the notes of the minster-bells and sheep-bells, the singing of the clerics and the bleating of a thousand sheep.

  On any other day, Wulfgar thought, I’d have to give Offchurch credit for this display, but not today.

  He pushed his way towards Ednoth, still absorbed in his misery and rancour. Ednoth looked up, smirking unbearably.

  ‘Where’s your milk, Mousegar?’

  He wasn’t given time to answer.

  A single shriek sounded, cut off at once.

  A drumming of hooves followed, with wild shouts and a cacophony of screaming.

  The crowd went scattering this way and that as a band of riders, metal glinting, came thundering through the gates, two and three abreast.

  Wulfgar flung himself back against a pile of wicker hurdles. The horsemen galloped past and wheeled to form a circle around the crowd, hemming in merchants, shepherds and priests alike. A man tried to dodge between two of them only to be felled by a vicious thwack from the butt-end of a spear. Another rider leant low from his saddle to overturn a stall with a crash. They were in a ring around the crowd now, three lined up in the gateway blocking escape, spears bristling.

  Wulfgar was numb with terror. He pressed himself further back against the hurdles, his hand feeling for the Bishop’s ring on its thong round his neck, making sure no flicker of gold was visible, pleading desperately to the anonymous saint whom it contained.

  The sheep were bleating hysterically.

  No axes.

  From some clearer, cooler part of his mind, the observation came again.

  Swords, but no axes.

  Who had ever heard of Danes without axes?

  ‘We don’t want to hurt anybody, but we will if we have to.’ The voice of their leader was cultivated, reasonable, and accustomed to command. A very English voice. A very West Saxon one, in fact.

  Wulfgar’s hands and feet were growing icy. I’m wrong, he thought frantically.

  ‘Let’s start with that, shall we?’

  Their leader was the only one in a helmet, with nose-guard and cheek-pieces that shadowed his face and dark beard. He was pointing at the red-headed subdeacon with the gold processional cross, and he sounded as though he was enjoying himself.

  The young subdeacon glanced in a panic behind him at one of the priests, who was gesturing Go on. The lad shook his head. Wulfgar could see his knuckles whitening as his hands tightened around his treasure.

  ‘Come on,’ the helmeted man said. ‘Don’t try my patience.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  WULFGAR KNEW THAT accent, and those vowels, which sounded so long and lazy and superior to a Mercian ear. It was the cadence of the West Saxon heartlands. To be precise, the chalk valleys east and south of Winchester.

  Close to home.

  Much, much too close.

  And it wasn’t only the accent Wulfgar recognised. He knew that voice.

  But it couldn’t be. The man he was thinking of was Edward’s man. What would he be doing here, at an obscure Mercian minster in the wilds of the Leam valley?

  Ednoth stirred restlessly at his side.

  Wulfgar had completely forgotten his existence for those few minutes of frantic terror. Now, his gaze flickering sideways, he saw Ednoth had his sword at his hip in full view, and his hand had shifted to the hilt.

  No, you fool, Wulfgar thought. What did the boy imagine he could gain by forcing a confrontation?

  As soon as Ednoth moved, the helmeted man’s eyes were fastened on him. He jerked his head at one of the other horsemen. There was the sickening rasp of metal, of sword from sheath.

  It was that gesture – not the accent, not the voice, but that arrogant flick of the head – that told Wulfgar h
is fears were grounded in truth. That helmet masked the man he least wanted to see. The man whom he had been forced all his life to acknowledge as his half-brother. The son of one of his father’s field-slaves on the Meon estate. The charity-child who had shared his schooling. Edward’s trusted second-in-command.

  Garmund Polecat.

  Wulfgar’s first instinct was to turn away, to shield his appalled gaze with his arm.

  But instead he found himself lifting that same arm, a strangely awkward movement, caught halfway between greeting and flinch. Simultaneously, and to his utter horror, his feet took him half a pace forward.

  Every eye was on him. He felt dizzy, a strange ringing in his ears.

  The helmeted man kicked his horse’s flanks and the beast walked obediently forward. Those massive hooves stopped no more than three feet in front of Wulfgar. He had to crane his neck and squint past the horse’s head to see the mounted figure outlined against the sun. He felt rather than saw the man’s shadowed eyes look him up and down.

  ‘You here, Litter-runt? You, of all people? Well, well.’

  Wulfgar’s heart plummeted. It was Garmund all right.

  ‘You’ll keep your mouth shut if you know what’s healthy.’

  Wulfgar wondered, in a strangely detached way, whether Garmund really hated him enough to kill him with all Offchurch watching. His voice, when he found it at last, was a croak. ‘What are you doing? Are you here at Edward’s command?’

  A shout from one of the mounted men: ‘Cut him down, Garmund!’ Another yelling, ‘Come on, Polecat!’

  And Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him …

  Fratricide. The primal sin.

  ‘Come on,’ Wulfgar said, trying to find a little more voice, a little more courage. ‘Tell us. Or are you ashamed?’

  Garmund lifted his arm, fist clenched.

  Wulfgar closed his eyes, bracing himself for the blow. He could feel his shoulders hunching and he tried to pull them down, to keep his breathing slow.

  A blackbird singing.