‘Bishop Brihtmær will hear about this,’ Æthelbald said as he seized the boy’s arm.
Wulfnoth yelped, but his protests were ignored. I made sure to avoid his gaze as he was led away, for I couldn’t afford to let him see the smile I could feel breaking out across my face. It wouldn’t take him long to realise what had happened; maybe he already had.
As it was, the rest of us didn’t escape unpunished. Æthelbald came back soon afterwards and sent four of us with ladders and rags and pails of water to scrub those disgraceful pictures from the stonework. It was supposed to be a market day in the town but there wasn’t much trading taking place. Instead men and women were gathering outside the church, pointing up at the tower, some laughing and others nudging one another knowingly, much to our master’s displeasure. At first he tried shouting at them to go away, and some did, but they only went and told others, and so he turned his anger upon us, yelling at us to scrub more vigorously, to remove the chalk marks all the sooner.
‘Harder, faster!’ he cried, which of course the crowds thought even funnier.
Poor Æthelbald. I didn’t feel all that sorry for him at the time, but I do now. I hope he managed to live the rest of his years in peace. He deserved that much, especially after everything he had to put up with.
As for Wulfnoth, once the bishop learned the nature of the images that had desecrated his church, there was no reprieve, no chance to make amends. That same day a letter was sent to his father by the fastest rider Brihtmær could find, informing him of what had taken place and that his son would be returning to him. Wulfnoth’s belongings and clothes were all cleared from the dormitory by midday, and by mid-afternoon he was on his way, escorted from the church precinct by two of the bishop’s retainers while my fellow students and I watched on. He didn’t say anything or even look at us, but kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead so that I couldn’t see if he was angry or upset or even relieved.
I’d done it, I thought, as I watched them disappear down the road. I’d finally rid myself of him.
Did I ever regret what I’d done? Not at all. After all the trouble he’d brought me? No, he deserved everything that came to him. And I would never have to suffer him again.
Or so I thought, until three months ago.
*
‘Why?’ Merewyn asks. ‘What happened three months ago?’
But Tova is one step ahead of her. ‘That was when you joined the reavers, wasn’t it?’
The priest nods. He presses his fingertips hard to his brow, as if the very act of remembering is painful.
‘You mean Wulfnoth was one of them?’ Merewyn says.
‘Not just one of them,’ Guthred replies. ‘He was their leader.’
‘Their leader?’
‘It was fate, I suppose. God’s will. It’s often said that he works in ways that are difficult for men to understand. But I understand now. This was another test, perhaps the greatest of them all. He wanted to see whether or not I was worthy of his grace. And I failed.’
Beorn is frowning. ‘So in all that time your paths never crossed, but then suddenly this Wulfnoth appeared again, from nowhere, for no reason at all?’
‘It was no coincidence, Beorn. This was the divine hand at work; I know it was.’
*
It happened like this.
It was about a month after Michaelmas, not long before the feast of All Saints. The first frost had just been and everywhere the leaves were falling. I was travelling from Rypum, which for seven years had been my home, out to the surrounding villages and manors to spread the Lord’s word among the country folk, just like my master, Æthelbald, used to do all those years ago. And, like him, I had with me students of my own: three wide-eyed youths, the sons of nobles all, who knew little of the world beyond Rypum’s minster school. Hedda with the spotty face. Wiglaf the fat one, whose nose was forever bleeding. Plegmund the abbot’s nephew, so God-fearing and self-righteous that he would make the saints themselves spew.
That’s what I thought. Imagine that. Me, a priest, despising a child for his piety. A child. God help me, but I did. I resented all of them.
Why? Because after all the years I’d spent serving God’s glory, traipsing from village to village, across hill and fen, saying Mass and listening to countless hundreds unburden themselves as they made confession, I thought I deserved better than looking after a crowd of snotty children and wasting my days in a dank schoolroom teaching them the rudiments of Latin grammar.
I understand now how Master Æthelbald must have felt.
I resented them, but not as much as I resented myself. Because the truth is I could have had more, if only I’d tried harder. I could have had a church of my own, if only I hadn’t strayed from the path, hadn’t succumbed so readily to temptation and sin.
I’ve said it already, but I’ll say it again. The Church was not the place for me. What I hated most was all the rules we had to follow. These days we’re supposed to live like monks. That’s what the bishops want. It started years ago, long before the Normans came to these shores, but things have only been growing worse since. These foreigners the new king has been bringing across from France, arriving with their instructions that they say come from the pope himself in Rome. We should all take the tonsure, they tell us, and must dress sombrely at all times and eat as plainly as possible, and only by doing these things can we hope to reach salvation.
So many rules, and so many different penances to be undertaken should you break any of them. And I was always breaking them. It used to be that priests could marry and take whoever they chose to their beds; now they tell us that if we even so much as glance at a woman in a certain way we’re entering into sin. They say we must be purer than pure. So when they found me with a whore, I was made to wear a hair shirt for a whole month in penitence. The second time, it was two months. When it got out that men and women had been coming to me, offering coin if I’d divine their future from swirls of wine in the baptismal font, I was accused of daring to determine the mind of God. They didn’t care that those folk had given their silver willingly, or that I’d correctly seen that the blacksmith’s child would be a girl, and that the harvest would be poor because it was going to rain all summer. They said what I was doing was sacrilege, and imposed a fast upon me, and for nine months made me recite the Paternoster in church fifty times each day.
Things like that only made me hate them more, and soon enough I turned that anger upon myself. I drank more than I should, more than God would have wished. Many were the dawns when I woke with head aching and stomach churning, cursing the rising sun. I lost count of the number of times I missed morning Mass because I was insensible from too much mead the night before. The more I drank, the more I hated myself, and the more I hated myself, the more I drank. I’d swear at my students and shout at them and beat them whenever I thought they weren’t trying hard enough. They deserved better than me, they really did. Meanwhile I kept on stealing whenever I thought I could get away with it. A few coins from the alms box; a candle here; a loaf of bread there; an antler comb, a copper spoon, a jar of honey or spices from the storehouse. Not for the challenge, or because I sought to profit from it. No, I did it to keep myself amused. Each one was a trophy, a small victory in my struggle against the world, and against God.
For a long while I was convinced he hated me. In my darkest hours, to my shame, I wondered if anything of what we preached was true. If God existed at all, and if he did, whether or not he cared about what we did on this earth or who or what we worshipped. Or maybe, I sometimes wondered, just maybe the heathens had it right after all. Maybe ours was but one god among many, and had no control over the lives of men, and our fates instead were governed by the whims of the three spinners, sitting at the foot of the world tree, weaving the threads of our fates. Maybe I would do as well to pray to Odin and Thor and Frigg as to our Christian god.
It pains me to admit t
hese things, to confess such things to you, but it’s true. I regret all of it now. I see how selfish I’ve been. But at the time I didn’t. For years all I yearned for was simply to be free.
I suppose that’s why I joined them, really. To be free.
*
‘Why didn’t you just leave, if you hated it that much?’ Tova asks. At the start she felt sorry for him, but now she’s not so sure. ‘What was stopping you?’
‘I could have, it’s true,’ Guthred says. ‘I suppose it was fear that stopped me. Fear of the world outside the Church. You have to understand that I had no trade or craft, no skill with my hands that I could rely on, nothing except what I’d learned in books. What else what I supposed to do? So I was trapped. Realising that only made things worse, because I knew there was no escape, and that I was doomed to live the rest of my days in misery.’
*
Where was I?
Yes, that’s right. We’d been warned when leaving Rypum to take care on the roads. Word had reached us that the rebellion had failed, and there were all sorts of rumours about what might happen, and whether King Wilelm would come north and seek revenge. Armed men, and I don’t mean Frenchmen, were said to be roving the land; we heard tales of night raids, of pigs and sheep and cattle being stolen. Of robbers and bandits waylaying travellers, demanding payment and threatening with violence anyone who tried to resist them. Everywhere we went, folk were living in fear. The laws of the land were being forgotten; there was no justice to be found anywhere. Many thegns and reeves had failed to return from the fighting, and so there was no one to maintain order. Killings were going unpunished, we were told, while thievery was rife, and men who knew those parts well said we ought to hire warriors for protection, just in case.
Like a fool, though, I didn’t listen. I thought my robes and my cross would protect me. I thought that no one would dare attack a priest and his followers.
I was wrong.
It was still early in the afternoon when it happened. We were on the old Roman road, heading north. An icy wind was gusting in our faces and so we didn’t hear the hooves behind us until it was too late.
It was Hedda who noticed first. ‘Robbers!’ he shouted, and we all turned.
There were horsemen, a half-dozen of them, riding towards us with spears and clubs in hand, whooping and yelling.
My students fled, or tried to; they were pursued by some of the riders. I stood as if frozen, my knees shaking. I didn’t know what to do. We were helpless. Outnumbered. We had no weapons, and even if we had, none of us would have known what to do with them.
So I did the only thing I could. I fell to my knees, closed my eyes and started praying. I prayed to God, prayed that he would keep me safe from harm. Not that I expected him to hear my pleas.
The sound of hooves grew closer, and I looked up to find our attackers forming a circle around me and Whitefoot. They were a strange lot, of all ages: one or two youngsters, not much older than my students, but most of them in their middle years. Their faces were dirty, and almost every one of them had leaves and bits of twigs in his hair, but despite that they were dressed like kings: decked out in gold chains and silver arm rings; robed in ermine and otter fur, beaver pelts and wolfskins and good wool cloth. I confess I didn’t know what to make of them.
‘He’s just a priest,’ said one scornfully, and I blinked in surprise as I realised that it was in fact a woman, dressed in a man’s clothes, her fair hair cut short. ‘He won’t have anything worth stealing.’
‘We should search him anyway,’ one of the men said, a hulking fellow as big as an ox. He dismounted and strode towards me. Sihtric, I later learned his name was. He was missing his left hand, but with his other one he grabbed me by the collar and lifted me to my feet. ‘Show us your treasure, priest.’
I didn’t know what to say. We didn’t have any treasure and we weren’t carrying any coin either. There was no need, when every village and manor we came to would gladly feed and shelter us for as long as we needed.
‘Speak,’ he said, his breath foul upon my face, but I was too frightened and couldn’t find my voice. Some way away, I could hear Hedda and Plegmund and Wiglaf. Had they been caught?
The fiend shoved me hard. I landed on my backside, and they all laughed.
That’s when he arrived, shouldering his way past the others: this grey-haired man with sharp eyes. He walked with a limp and yet with purpose. From the way the others moved aside to let him pass I guessed he must be their leader. Belted around his waist was a sheath for a long knife or short sword. He stared at me for a long time, and I wondered if he planned to kill me. But he didn’t draw his blade. Instead he stood still as stone. A quizzical look came across his face.
He said, ‘Guthred?’
*
‘It was him, wasn’t it?’ Merewyn says.
‘Yes, it was him. Not that I recognised him. Not at first, anyway. But then it had been nearly forty years. We were little more than children when we last knew one another. I’d forgotten he even existed. After his expulsion, that was it. I never heard any more about him, and I didn’t care.’
‘He recognised you, though,’ Oslac says.
*
Yes, he did. How he did, I don’t know. For the longest time I said nothing but gawped at him. I still had no idea who this stranger was.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ he asked. He was grinning by then. ‘After all these years, who would have believed it?’
Eventually I found my voice, and asked him how he knew my name.
‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Wulfnoth.’
I hadn’t heard that name in so long. It took me a moment to remember where I knew it from. My memory isn’t what it used to be, you see. But I quickly saw the resemblance.
The years had changed him, of course. His hair was thinner, longer, greyer; half his teeth were either missing or broken, and there was a bearing about him that was different. But then I noticed those ears sticking out, those thick brows, that pockmarked face overlaid with scars small and large.
It was him.
He turned to the others, laughing. ‘It’s all right. He’s an old friend of mine.’
‘What do you mean, a friend?’ the woman asked as Wulfnoth extended a hand.
Still numb with surprise, I took it as he helped me to my feet. He was as short as I remembered, which was to say about half a head shorter than me, although he was no longer the scrawny soul he’d been back then. His hand was rough, his grip crushingly strong.
He grinned, gap-toothed, at me and threw an arm around my shoulder. ‘We know each other from long ago. A different life, eh?’
I nodded but didn’t answer. I was still so confused. I saw Plegmund and Wiglaf, and spotty-faced Hedda being held firm by the others, and I met their fear-filled eyes.
He looked me up and down. ‘After all this time, who’d have thought our paths would cross again? And you a priest! What brings you here? Who are these others?’
I could have asked him the same things, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers. Whoever these people were, they were dangerous.
I replied that these were my students, and that we had left Rypum that morning, and that we didn’t have any treasure to give them. I was babbling, I realised, but I still didn’t know what to make of these people and whether or not we could trust them, or what they planned to do with us.
He laughed again, told me not to worry and that he had no intention of robbing an old friend.
‘If we’re not going to rob them,’ said the foul-smelling one who’d threatened me, ‘then what are we going to do with them?’
‘We’re going to let them go,’ Wulfnoth said to a chorus of groans and protests from the others. ‘Yes, that’s what we’re going to do. But first Guthred and I have much catching-up to do. Isn’t that right?’
He tossed me a leather flask from
his pack and asked me how it was I came to be in these parts. I didn’t know what to say. I still couldn’t quite believe somehow that this was the same Wulfnoth I’d known all those years ago. I knew he was almost the same age as me, yet whereas a few hours in the saddle these days often leaves me stiff and creaking, he moved with the ease of someone half as old.
He introduced me to his companions, all five of them. To Sihtric the One-Handed, he of the bad breath, and to the fierce woman, whose name was Gytha. She was Wulfnoth’s lover. Then there was Halfdan, whose life he’d apparently saved many years before, though I never learned how, and also two dark-haired brothers: Cudda, short and round; and Cuffa, tall and thin. I got to know them well over the following weeks.
Of course Wulfnoth had much he wanted to tell me about what had happened in the nearly forty years since we’d last seen one another. It was as if we were children again: the way he spoke, it was like he wanted to impress me, wanted my approval just as before. Not that I was really listening; I was still a little bit in shock. My nerves aren’t what they once were. Wulfnoth bade us all sit and had the two brothers fetch some wine and bread from their packs for us all to share. I remember wondering whether we were their guests now or their prisoners. My students were just as fearful as I was. Their faces were white and they exchanged anxious glances.
They deserved better than me as their teacher. That’s no excuse for what I did, you understand, but it’s the truth. I was ill tempered and impatient, and often spoke harshly. I was no good for them.
I suppose Wulfnoth must have sensed my mind was elsewhere, for he gave me a nudge and then assaulted me with all manner of questions about how the years had treated me, and what had happened to the other boys with whom we’d shared lessons.
‘What are you?’ I asked him back. ‘Thieves?’
He frowned as if hurt. ‘Is that any way to speak to an old friend?’
Old friend. He kept saying that, as if doing so it would make it true. Obviously he remembered things very differently.
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