‘What, then?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘We live off the land, do what we can to survive. We take things sometimes, when we have to, or when folk are foolish enough to leave them undefended. When they travel the roads without armed men for protection. Whose wise idea was that, anyway?’
I ignored his question, because he wasn’t answering mine. ‘These horses, these fine clothes, they aren’t yours.’
‘Of course they’re ours. And so they’ll remain until the day when someone else takes them from us. That’s the way it works.’
‘So you did steal them.’
He didn’t try to deny it, but merely laughed. ‘This from the man who once sold pieces of the consecrated Host! Sold it to foolish country folk who knew no better, who’d hand over coins they’d taken years to scrape together. Is what we do any worse?’
I hadn’t expected him to remember that. My cheeks burned hot. My students, sitting ten paces away, turned their heads but I refused to meet their eyes.
‘Master?’ one of them asked. Plegmund, I think it must have been. I could sense him judging me, as so often he seemed to be, from beneath his thick dark eyebrows.
‘That was a long time ago,’ I muttered to Wulfnoth, keeping my voice low. He didn’t know, of course, about all my other transgressions over the years. About all the penances I’d had to undertake for my sins. Selling the Host had just been the beginning.
He was right, though. I was no better than them.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘tell me about yourself. You must have some stories of your own.’
I replied that there wasn’t much to tell. Certainly there was nothing I was very proud of, although of course I didn’t say that.
‘I’d have thought you might be a bishop by now,’ he said with a smile.
At that I gave a bitter laugh. There was no point telling him that it was only ever the sons of nobles who secured such offices. A country priest – a miller’s son, no less – had as much chance of becoming a bishop as a fish did of growing legs and walking on land, although miracles were known to happen.
‘With all that cunning of yours, I’d have thought that if anyone was going to climb to the top of the Church, it would be you.’
At once I froze. Climb to the top of the church. I tell you: those were his exact words. Had he guessed, I wondered, that I was the one who had chalked those pictures on the tower? Did he know that I had got him cast out from the school?
My mouth was dry and I couldn’t speak as I stared at him. But he didn’t look angry, not at all.
‘I’m joking,’ he said and laid a reassuring hand upon my shoulder as he chuckled. ‘Don’t look so ashamed. You shouldn’t feel bad that you haven’t got your hands on a bishop’s pallium yet, even if it means you’re still one step behind me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I did get my hands on his cushion, didn’t I? Do you remember that?’
Somehow I forced a smile. So he didn’t know. I could breathe easily again. I’d no idea whether or not he might harbour a grudge after all this time, but I knew that I didn’t want to find out.
‘How little things have changed,’ he said. ‘Even after all these years, we talk and share jokes just like before. We had fun, didn’t we?’
When he said that, it did cross my mind that perhaps he had me confused with someone else. As I said, I never liked him from the beginning. I was forever trying to stop him from following me around. Certainly I didn’t recall having ever shared jokes with him.
‘Those were the days,’ he said wistfully. ‘I suppose I never realised how lucky I was to have such schooling until it was taken away from me. Not that I enjoyed it much at the time. I was glad to get away from the deacons and the masters. All those passages we had to memorise, all those saints and their feast days. I hated that. Grammar, rhetoric, poetry. I hated it all. I could barely put together a Latin sentence, let alone remember how to say the words for Mass. Can you imagine what a terrible priest I would have made?’
No worse than myself, I thought. For I had completely squandered the chances that had been given me. All those hours spent in the classroom learning my letters, copying out passages of the Bible. All that work, all that effort, and what for? What had I made of myself? What use had all that learning been? I was no good as a priest, no good as a teacher, no good to anyone.
‘Patience always was one of your virtues,’ he went on. ‘I wanted everything straight away. I would never have been content to do what you do. I would have been too eager for riches and rewards. The lure of gold and silver has always been too strong for me to resist. One way or another, I would have ended up where I am now.’
That was the moment, I think, when I realised what I had to do.
Ever since I was young I’d known that I was a sinner, a slave to temptation. I’d tried to be honest and pure in deeds and in spirit, had tried my best to resist errant urges, but it was no use. I’d tried to make up for everything I’d done. Again and again I’d admitted the error of my ways and sworn to be a better person in future, only to break those pledges.
For years I’d been fooling myself, drawing a veil over my eyes so that I didn’t have to face the truth. All I had to do was recognise who I really was, and I would be free.
Maybe, I thought, I was more like Wulfnoth than I’d ever wanted to admit.
Softly, so that my students wouldn’t hear, I said, ‘Let me join you.’
He almost choked on his ale. ‘What?’
‘Why not? We’re old friends, aren’t we?’
‘You’d join us? You, a priest?’
To his ears it must have sounded ridiculous. A man of God saying that he wanted to give up everything he knew and become an outlaw.
What I saw, though, was a way out. A way to escape the life I’d grown to despise. A way to save me from myself.
*
‘So you gave up the life you’d led for forty years, just like that?’ Oslac asks. ‘On a whim?’
‘No, not on a whim. I knew what I was doing. It was what I wanted, or thought I did, anyway. I always was good at telling myself the very things I wanted to hear. At the time it seemed like a chance had been offered to me, and that if I didn’t take it, I would regret it.’
Tova just stares at him. She hears what he’s saying, but she still can’t believe he would turn his back so easily on God. He is nothing like kindly Thorvald, their priest at Heldeby. He’s nothing like she thought he would be.
‘And Wulfnoth agreed?’ Oslac asks.
*
Not at first. No, to begin with he just laughed at me, as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. When he realised I was serious, though, he changed his tone.
He said to me, ‘If you knew some of the things we’ve done, you wouldn’t be asking to join us.’
I’d done things too in my time, I replied. Things at which my confessors blushed when I told them. I wasn’t the saint he thought I was. And then I told him everything: the years of drinking, the stealing, the lies, the fornication, the swindling, my forswearing of God. And the strange thing was, I didn’t feel ashamed to be saying those things. I felt proud, as if each one were a mark of honour.
‘I don’t belong in the Church,’ I whispered and gestured towards my students. ‘I’m not like them. I never have been. For years I tried to deny it; for years I tried to be the person they wanted me to be, and I’m tired of it. Let me come with you.’
He shook his head, disbelieving. ‘You must know that what we do is more than the kind of petty theft you’re used to. You’re a good man, Guthred. Not like me. Believe me, you don’t want to become involved with us.’
That was when I grew angry. I knew what I was, I said, and what I wanted. This was what I wanted.
He shook his head. ‘We move around a lot; we have to. I have no room in my band for those wh
o can’t keep up, who can’t do their fair share.’
What he was saying was that he didn’t need someone like me slowing them down. I replied that I was used to spending long days in the saddle, and that Whitefoot and I had travelled countless leagues together.
‘There’s danger,’ he said.
These were uncertain times we lived in, I said.
He sat for a long time, chewing his lip, contemplating. ‘It’s been a long time since we had anyone new,’ he said eventually. ‘Let me speak to the others.’
He stood and then left me alone. At once my students came over to sit beside me.
‘What’s happening, Master?’ asked Wiglaf, wide-eyed. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, which came away smeared with blood and snot. It always bled when he was nervous. ‘What are they talking about? When are they going to let us go?’
‘Soon, I think,’ I said, but I wasn’t really paying him or the others any attention. I kept glancing towards Wulfnoth and his band. The one called Sihtric was shaking his head.
‘He’s old,’ I heard someone mutter.
The woman glanced up and saw me staring. She gave me an evil look and spat upon the ground, and I looked away.
Plegmund’s head was bowed, his eyes were closed and he was whispering a prayer that God might deliver us from our enemies. Hedda was trembling; his face was ashen. I think he still expected them to kill us at any moment.
‘Do you really know that man, Master?’ he asked, his voice small.
‘I used to. Many, many years ago. When I was as young as you.’
‘We heard you laughing. What were you talking about?’
I didn’t know how best to answer that, but fortunately I didn’t have to, for just then I looked over my shoulder and saw Wulfnoth marching towards us, and Gytha beside him, a stony look in her eyes. I rose to my feet hurriedly, not knowing what to expect. My palms were sweaty, and I could feel my heart thumping as I turned to face them.
All I saw was a fist hurtling towards my head, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground, with my face in a puddle. Pain blossomed in my cheek, and I could taste blood and mud and rainwater. Someone’s foot was pressed down on my back, and it felt like all the breath was being squeezed from my chest.
‘Master Guthred!’ one of my students was shouting, but I couldn’t tell which one. My cheek was throbbing; there was a ringing in my ears, and I still didn’t know what had happened.
‘The three of you can go,’ I heard Wulfnoth say. ‘You’re worth nothing to us. Your master is, though. He’s our hostage now.’
‘If you want to see him alive, come back here in a week’s time with one thousand shillings in silver,’ the woman added, and I reckoned it was her foot on my back, for her voice seemed closer. ‘Any less and you’ll be taking back a corpse.’
My mind was racing, my heart too, as I wondered what I’d got myself into.
‘Now, go,’ Wulfnoth said. ‘That is, unless you want him to suffer. Do you hear me?’
I’d made a terrible mistake, I thought. Now I was about to pay, probably with my life. Why had I thought I could trust such scoundrels? My breath came in starts, and I felt suddenly faint. I heard my students shouting to one another in alarm, followed by hoofbeats on the track, which gradually grew more distant. They were leaving me, I thought; they really were leaving me. I wanted to shout out to them, but fear kept the words from reaching my tongue.
The weight pressing upon my back suddenly lifted; Wulfnoth began laughing, and then the woman as well. I didn’t know if I dared move, but I looked up, and there he was, beaming at me, his hand outstretched.
‘I think they were convinced,’ he said. ‘You can get up now.’
I took his hand cautiously. I still wasn’t quite sure what was supposed to have happened. My cheek stung, and I winced as I put a hand to it.
‘You hit him too hard, Gytha,’ Wulfnoth admonished her.
‘I hit him like I hit everyone,’ she replied tartly.
He helped me to my feet, apologising on her behalf, and said that of course I wasn’t their captive. I didn’t see why the pretence was necessary, but he seemed to think it was and I didn’t feel like arguing.
‘No need to look so scared,’ Wulfnoth said. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and grinned. ‘You’re one of us now.’
And so it was that things came full circle, and the priest became a thief.
*
He won’t even look at them as he speaks, Tova notices. That’s how ashamed he is. And so he should be. She tries to imagine Thorvald doing the things Guthred says he has done, but she can’t. How can they both wear the cross and yet be so different?
She wishes Thorvald were here with them now. He’d know what to say, how to give them comfort, how to assure them that things would be all right. Of everyone at Heldeby, he’s the one she misses most. Kindly, patient, white-haired Thorvald, who hardly raised his voice nor uttered a harsh word nor spoke ill of anyone, who was always willing to give his time to listen and offer his wisdom and advice to anyone who asked it, even though, as he often said, his own time was growing short.
He’d never have consorted with robbers. The mere thought would have sickened him. He’d never have lied to and cheated humble country folk, full knowing what he was doing, for the sake of a few coins. He’d never have drunk so much that he couldn’t rise the next morning. Even at Christmas, when there was barrel upon barrel of mead and wine – enough for every cottar and slave to drink his fill – barely half a cup passed his lips. A delicate stomach was the reason, he said, though she always suspected it was more than that.
But then there are few in the world like Thorvald. And who is she to be passing judgement, anyway? It’s not like she is a model of virtue, given some of the things she has done. Things she would rather forget. Is she any better than Guthred, really? Will God see her any differently, when the time comes?
He’s supposed to be better than that, though. He’s supposed to be an example to others.
But he hasn’t finished yet, and she senses there’s worse to come.
*
Would it have made any difference if they’d come back with my ransom? Would I have changed my mind? Maybe. I don’t know.
But the fact is they didn’t. Was I surprised? Not really. I think my students were probably almost as glad to see the back of me as I was of them. Who knows what they told the dean and his canons when they arrived back at Rypum? Maybe they decided it would be easier to say we’d been ambushed and I’d been killed. Or maybe they told the dean exactly what happened, but he simply didn’t think my life was worth wasting any silver on.
Either way, it was clear they didn’t want me back. They didn’t care what happened to me. They would rather I was martyred than see my safe return. They’d washed their hands of me, and so I washed my hands of them in return. I burned my robes, broke the arms off my wooden cross and snapped the shaft in two and tossed the pieces in a river.
This one? Stolen. Like almost everything else, it doesn’t belong to me. But I’m coming to that.
God have mercy on me. I turned my back on him completely, renounced everything I’d ever been taught, everything I was supposed to uphold. It was like a madness had come over me, a thick fog that descended over my mind, darkening my thoughts and making it impossible to see the light.
It seems now like some terrible dream. I only wish it were.
Why they ever accepted me into their band, I’ll never know. I think Wulfnoth came to some agreement with them that, provided I dirtied my hands like everyone else, they’d tolerate me, but that if I ever caused any problems they’d get rid of me the first chance they got. That wouldn’t surprise me. My only ally at first was Wulfnoth himself; it wasn’t until a couple of weeks had passed that the others started speaking to me. Like you, they found it hard to believe that a churchman would abandon
his faith so readily. They didn’t understand, and because they didn’t understand they didn’t trust me. Eventually they did, but it took some time.
We moved around a lot in those first few weeks, as winter set in. We had to, for there were other bands like us prowling the hills, most of them more numerous and better armed than us, Wulfnoth said, which meant we had to be always on our guard. The others, they all slept with one hand on their knife hilts, although I hardly ever saw them use their blades. They weren’t warriors, you understand, only wretched folk whom life had ill treated. There was Sihtric, whose lord had thrown him off his land when he lost his hand and could no longer work as hard. There was the she-wolf, Gytha, who had fled the beatings and worse delivered by her husband. There were the brothers Cudda and Cuffa, former slaves who had run away, and Halfdan, who was deaf and dumb and communicated with the others by way of complicated hand signals that I never did understand.
And there was Wulfnoth. I wondered how a man of thegnly birth like him had ended up as a brigand and a common thief. One evening after a successful day’s scavenging he told me. We’d brought back ale, lots of it, so his tongue was loose and the story came spilling out. His father was so disappointed in him for being expelled from the school that he all but disowned him. When the old man died of a fever the following winter, he left nothing in his will for Wulfnoth. All the land the boy should have received was divided up instead between his two elder half-brothers. They let him stay because he had nowhere else to go, and gave him a house and a scrap of pasture, but made him pay rent as if he were a lowly ceorl – rent that only grew more onerous when, years later, they in their turn died and their sons inherited the land, until it was more than he could pay and they threw him out.
That was ten years ago, he told me. After that he became an outcast, wandering from place to place, living on what he could scrounge and steal, all the while cursing God for having failed him. Eventually his path crossed with others to whom fate had been similarly unkind: Halfdan and Sihtric and a couple more who had since perished. They banded together, with Wulfnoth as their leader, and that was that.
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