‘The Lord never cared anything for us,’ he said bitterly. ‘He’s never looked after us, so we’ve had to look after ourselves.’
As I listened I couldn’t help but think that all his misfortunes, all his troubles, had begun when I got him thrown out of the cathedral school.
It was my fault, all of it.
My face must have turned as pale as snow, and it was a good thing that it was dark and he was drunk, for otherwise he would surely have noticed.
Anyway, I don’t want you to think that I’m making excuses for what they did . . . what I did—
*
‘It sounds like you are,’ Oslac says, interrupting.
‘Well, I’m not. Yes, they could be cold-hearted and pitiless, but they were also in their way a sorry lot, who felt they deserved better. That’s all. As I told you, they weren’t warriors. Doubtless they could handle themselves in a scrap, but they rarely went looking for one. They carried weapons to intimidate, not for killing. If danger threatened they would rather run than fight.’
Beorn says, ‘And yet they attacked you, didn’t they?’
‘Because we were easy prey, as I’ve said. All the time I was with them, we only attacked anyone if we thought they were unlikely to fight back, and even then only if we thought they might be carrying something valuable. There was no sense in taking risks if we didn’t have to. Most of the time we didn’t even go that far. We’d lurk on the edges of manors and steadings, taking a pig here, a few chickens or ducks there; we’d raid a storehouse for cheese and eggs and salted fish and fresh bread, or cloaks and blankets and firewood and pots and pans that we could use. If we could get away with it, we might try stealing a horse to take to market and sell on. It was wrong, I know, but the things we took were rarely worth that much and so it wasn’t harming anyone. That’s what I told myself, anyway.
‘Yes, I did make excuses then. But not now.’
*
From those pickings we were able to live. Not well, I should say, but we survived. We had enough to keep ourselves warm and our stomachs full, and we always had dry clothes and were never short of shoes. We were comfortable, but I don’t want you to imagine that we dined every night like kings, or that we had a great hoard of gold buried in the woods, like the robber lords you sometimes hear stories about. It wasn’t like that.
Christmas came and went. We heard the bells ringing out from some faraway church and so we knew folk were celebrating Our Lord’s birth, but we didn’t mark it, except to share out some bottles of mead that we’d pilfered on one of our recent raids. We needed it to warm us, for it was a particularly bitter day, and the frost lay thick that morning, I remember giving a thought to Rypum and the festivities that would be happening there. They’d be laying out the feast and lighting a great fire in the dean’s hall; there’d be wine aplenty, and sweetmeats spiced with pepper and ginger and cinnamon. I felt a pang of regret for having left all that behind, but I pushed it away quickly, before it could grow.
It was after Christmas that things changed. For several weeks we’d been hearing rumours that the king was sending bands into the marshes of Heldernesse and the wolds around Eoferwic to stamp out the final embers of the rebellion. Then for a while things went quiet. About two weeks after the holy day was when we realised that something was wrong. We always kept a lookout over the road, in case any easy targets came our way. It was Halfdan who was on watch that morning; towards midday he came running back to camp, flustered and red-faced and waving his arms. It was some while before he calmed down and Wulfnoth could get any sense out of him. Using his signs, which the others translated for my benefit, Halfdan told us that there were dozens of travellers on the road: many, many more than there would normally be on a cold winter’s morning. And all of them, every single one, going north. One group he’d seen numbered more than thirty: it looked like an entire village, he said.
It sounded unlikely, but he was right. We followed him to where he’d been keeping watch, on a ridge overlooking the road, and we saw for ourselves. Scores of men, women and children of all ages, lords and common folk, on horse and on foot, swathed in thick winter clothes. Some with crooks in hand and dogs running at their feet were driving sheep. Others were leading oxen and carts laden with goods along the bumpy track.
I’d never seen anything like it. I had such a feeling in the pit of my stomach, a pang of dread; I knew something had to be wrong for all those people to be on the move all at once.
Straight away Wulfnoth sent the brothers to see what they could learn. They came back with the news that a great army was on the march from Eoferwic; the Normans were riding in their hundreds and thousands, with steel and fire and fury. All sensible folk were leaving their homes without delay, gathering what possessions they could and abandoning the rest to the enemy. Some of them were making for the hills, where they hoped to find protection within the great ringworks that the old ones had built in ages long gone, while others were just trying to get as far away as they could.
‘What do we do?’ asked Cuffa, while Sihtric made hand signals for Halfdan’s benefit, so that he knew what we were all talking about.
‘I don’t see that we have any choice,’ Gytha said. ‘We go north, like everyone else.’
‘No,’ Wulfnoth said. ‘We do have a choice.’
We all turned to look at him, surprised, but he was quite serious. Gytha spoke for the rest of us, I think, when she asked what he meant.
‘I mean we go south. Think about all those halls left empty. Spoils for the taking, and no one to guard them. Spoils that could be ours.’
‘If the foreigners haven’t seized them first,’ Gytha pointed out. ‘And who’s to say those folk will have left anything valuable behind, anyway?’
‘There’s always something. They can’t have taken everything. What they couldn’t carry they’ll have hidden, or buried. We just have to find it.’
‘Before the Normans do,’ Gytha muttered.
‘Better we claim it than they do, don’t you think?’
‘For all we know they could already be overrunning the countryside.’
‘Then we’ll just have to keep our eyes open and our wits about us, won’t we?’ Wulfnoth said, with that same cheeky grin that I remembered.
Gytha didn’t look sure, but the mere thought of so much easy plunder had got the others excited, I could see.
‘What do you think, Guthred?’ Wulfnoth asked. ‘You haven’t said anything.’
If I’m honest I thought Gytha was right. It seemed far too reckless for my liking; a risk we didn’t need to take. But it was clear we were going to be outvoted, and I didn’t want to dampen the others’ enthusiasm, so I agreed.
And so we rode south. While everyone else was fleeing, we ventured into what for all we knew was the very heart of the storm. It almost sounds noble, doesn’t it? If only it had been.
It wasn’t long before we came across our first deserted vill, although that’s probably too grand a word for three crumbling cottages and a cattle byre that had seen better days. It didn’t look as though we’d find much there and so we ignored it. After another hour we spied a hall in the distance, which we thought more promising, but as we got closer we saw there were still lots of panicked folk running to and fro, loading carts and wagons, while a man on horseback who I guessed was their reeve shouted orders and pointed. We kept our distance, lying low and watching for a while, but there was no telling how long we might have to wait until they left, so we decided not to waste any more time there.
We rode on, through dales that with every mile looked more and more familiar. After another hour or so, it seemed to me that I must have travelled some of these paths before. I recognised, or thought I did, the way an oak overhung the track where it dipped, and how a certain hill formed a sharp ridge against the sky, how particular trees appeared to huddle together in a hollow. That’s when I realised that of c
ourse we couldn’t be far from Rypum.
Wulfnoth, who was riding ahead of me, called back to ask what was wrong, and I became aware that I’d stopped. I said that if memory served me well, we could follow this track for another few miles, ford the river and climb the next rise, and then we would see the minster in the valley below.
‘The minster,’ he said, and began laughing. ‘Of course.’
At first I didn’t know what was so funny; I thought maybe he was having some kind of jest at my expense. He glanced at the others, and they all grinned back at him. All except Gytha, whose lips were set firm. That’s when I understood.
He meant to raid it.
I know. That should have been the moment when I paused to question what in the Lord’s name I was doing. But it wasn’t, and I didn’t. That was how far I’d fallen from God’s grace.
‘The Normans could be here by day’s end,’ Gytha said. ‘We’d do better to turn back and see if those folk have left that manor yet. There’ll be spoils enough for the taking there. More than we can carry. Why risk our skins?’
‘Not as much as there’ll be at Rypum,’ Sihtric pointed out, which was probably true. I knew how much the canons loved their silver platters, their bejewelled wine cups, their gold brooches.
But I knew this wasn’t about plunder for Wulfnoth. This was about revenge. Raiding the minster was his way of getting back at the Church for the wrong it had done him all those years ago. My eyes met his, and I glimpsed in them that same glint, that same hunger for mischief that I remembered from all those years ago. Except it wasn’t quite the same. Behind those eyes of his there was a coldness, a festering hatred that I hadn’t seen before.
Until then I hadn’t appreciated just how deeply those wounds ran within him, or how powerful was the grudge he held. Right then I felt afraid like never before. Afraid for my safety in this little band of his. Afraid for my life.
What would he do, I wondered, if he ever found out that all the hardships he’d suffered in his life had begun with me?
‘It’s settled, then,’ he said, even though it wasn’t. He often did that: challenging anyone to defy him. And it worked, because none of us would.
The deeper we travelled into those debatable lands, though, the more I began to think that Gytha was right. The enemy were close, I could feel it somehow, and must surely be growing closer with each hour that passed. I was as eager to lay my hands on silver as the rest of them, and moreover I felt something of what Wulfnoth felt: that the Church owed me something for all those years of service I’d given it, patiently, without reward. But not if it cost me my life.
I voiced none of those concerns, though, gutless as I was. I could have. I should have. Maybe the others would have sided with me. But he had such a look of determination about him that I knew nothing would sway him. Now that he’d got the idea in his head, he wasn’t about to give it up.
If I’d only known what was going to happen . . . If I’d had even the faintest inkling, I swear I’d never have . . .
But the fact is I didn’t know.
It’s because of what happened that I have to keep this book and these treasures from him. That’s why I have to get to Lindisfarena.
That’s why, in the end, I fled.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
We arrived at Rypum late that afternoon, just as the sun was setting. I hadn’t been there in, well, three months. With everything that had happened, though, it seemed like longer. Much longer. The minster church, in the shadow of which I’d spent many a winter, rose from the valley as if from some half-remembered dream. Familiar and yet unfamiliar.
I suppose you’d call it a town, although it isn’t a big place, or rather it wasn’t. I doubt there’s anyone left there now. Then, it was home to some forty cottager families who paid rent to the Church, and to twelve priests known as canons, who lived in a closed community a bit like a monastery, with the church at its centre. I wasn’t one of them; I was just the humble travelling preacher who did the hard work of spreading the Lord’s word across dale and moor, in all weathers, while they lived comfortably in their new houses, discussing matters of theology. I was already there before they came, at the archbishop’s behest, with their quills and their books and their servants. It was they who decided I should be in charge of the students in the school they established. The canons foisted those duties upon me, so that they could spend more time speculating on the nature of the dog-headed men and the monopods and the blemmyae and other creatures that supposedly inhabit the distant east, and because they had the support of the archbishop, there was nothing I could do about it.
I hated the canons and their dean more than anyone.
I mention this only because all these thoughts were running through my mind as we approached Rypum. It was quiet. That far south, it seemed that everyone had already left their homes; not a single thread of smoke wove skywards from any of those houses and halls. The light was fading, shadows were falling, the wind was sweeping along the valley, gusting in our faces, but Wulfnoth didn’t seem to care. He spurred his horse headlong down the rutted road, making straight for the church, which was where I’d told him the best treasures were likely to be found, and we followed.
*
‘It was strange to see that place again after so long,’ Guthred says. His face takes on a troubled expression. ‘To see it so empty as well. That was the strangest thing. All those houses, simply abandoned. Everything as still as death. Not a soul around. Or so we thought.’
‘What about the Normans?’ Tova asks. ‘Had you seen any sign of them?’
‘No, and that only made Wulfnoth even more confident. We didn’t spy a soul anywhere in the gathering gloom as we approached. We weren’t expecting to find anyone, either. Probably that’s why we failed to realise that we weren’t the only people there.’
*
What should have made us wary was the fact that the minster’s great door wasn’t locked. Instead we just took it for a piece of good fortune and assumed the canons must have forgotten to secure it in their haste to get away.
Although they’d only recently established themselves at Rypum, the church there belonged to an earlier time. The plaster was crumbling away from its cracked walls; its roof was missing several tiles. And, because it was old, it was dark, with a row of narrow scraped-horn slits high up along each side that even on a sunny day failed to let in much light. Halfdan dug out the oil lantern from his pack and set about lighting it. He always had one, since he needed light to be able to talk to the rest of us, reliant on his signs as he was.
He went first. Barely had he taken three paces inside when he stopped. We soon saw why. The light the lantern gave was feeble, but it was enough. In front of us, laid out on a sheet on the floor, were gilded candlesticks and serving platters, silver chalices, pyxes, spoons and knives all engraved with the christogram. By the wall stood a great ironbound chest upon which rested a bundle of embroidered vestments and wall hangings and altar cloths, some woven with threads of gold. On the altar was a jewel-studded relic house like the one Bishop Leofgar had brought with him on his visit to our manor all those years ago, only not quite as large.
And a great golden-panelled book. Yes, this one, here.
It was so much treasure that I knew at a glance we would struggle to carry it all. But all laid out, there for the taking – it was that easy. We were so astounded we just stood there for long moments, not saying anything; we didn’t know even where to begin. Even I’d never seen more than a fraction of it, and I’d been inside that church so many times. I could only guess the dean, sanctimonious miser that he was, had kept it locked up somewhere out of sight, but that didn’t explain what it was all doing here.
To be frank I didn’t care. All I could think was that it must be God’s wish that we should have all this, so that we might save it from the Normans. After all my doubts, here was proof that he exis
ted and was watching over us. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Why would he leave it to us? To me? But that’s the first thing that came to my mind.
Sihtric whooped with delight. Gytha’s eyes were wide, her mouth agape. Wulfnoth was grinning from ear to ear, his teeth flashing in the lantern light. He told Cuffa and Cudda to find something to put it all in, and they went out to our horses at the back of the church where it nearly abutted the dean’s hall. They came back shortly with four large sacks and straight away we started filling them, armfuls at a time, clattering and clinking and making a din loud enough to wake the dead.
We were so busy and so noisy that we didn’t hear the voices approaching. Not until it was too late, until they were right outside the church door.
At once we froze.
‘Is someone there?’ we heard one of them say, and I thought I recognised his voice. ‘Father Osbert? We brought the cart, just like you asked—’
The door swung open. A boy holding a torch entered, solemn-looking, as he always was. Plegmund the Pious. Behind him was another boy, short and round, and behind him another with a square face that even in the flickering light I could see was a mass of blotches. Hedda. Wiglaf.
They couldn’t have recognised me; I was near the back of the church, in the shadows by the altar, with a candlestick in one hand and a sack in the other. The boys stood as still as stone, staring at us, and we stared back.
Wiglaf was the first to find his voice. ‘It’s you,’ he said, almost breathless. ‘You’re the ones who attacked us. You’re the ones who took our master hostage.’
At once he began backing away. So did Hedda.
Plegmund, though, stood his ground. He fixed his gaze on Wulfnoth. ‘You killed him. You killed Master Guthred.’
The other two were calling to him, but he ignored them. Even I was silently willing him to leave. And this was Plegmund. The one I’d despised for so long.
Don’t stand up to them, you fool, I was thinking. Run, just run. You don’t know what they’ll do.
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