Wulfnoth just laughed, and then the others were laughing too, and I shrank back as deep as I could into the shadows because I realised that the truth was about to come out.
‘Killed him?’ he asked Plegmund, and he was still laughing, as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. ‘You think that’s what we did? Do you?’
‘But the ransom. They said that we couldn’t, that we mustn’t—’
‘We didn’t kill him. Look. He’s one of us now.’
‘What?’
‘He’s right there,’ Wulfnoth said. He pointed at me, his outstretched finger like an arrow, nocked and drawn and directed at my head. ‘See for yourself.’
Would you believe that I tried to duck behind the altar? Still holding the candlestick and the sack, I bent over like some wretched half-man, as if that way I’d escape his notice.
Of course it was no use. He could see it was me, and he could see exactly what I’d been doing.
Plegmund’s eyes met mine. ‘M-Master?’
I didn’t know what to say. I saw the confusion in his expression, and how quickly it turned to hurt and feelings of betrayal, as he looked me up and down. I can only imagine what he must have thought when he saw me. How the last months had changed me. My hair was unkempt, my clothes were ragged, my face was smeared with dirt, and those were only the visible signs.
Plegmund didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. Neither did Hedda and Wiglaf, who’d stopped in the doorway, caught halfway between curiosity and fear. Judging me.
And they were right to. This time they were right. For finally I saw myself for what I was. I saw myself as they saw me.
And I realised what I’d been reduced to. What a base creature I’d become. Looting the Church, which for forty years had sheltered me and schooled me and fed me and clothed me, which had tolerated and forgiven my transgressions. My many, many transgressions.
‘Alas,’ said Wulfnoth, ‘as touching as this reunion is, we have more important things at hand.’
Hedda stepped forward. ‘You can’t take these things,’ he said. ‘They belong to—’
He broke off as Sihtric with his one hand seized him by the collar and lifted him off his feet.
‘They belong to us, whelp,’ he said as the boy gave a yell and kicked his feet and struggled against the big man’s grasp. He had to be twice the size of the poor lad.
‘Let him go,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t mean you any harm.’
Sihtric grunted but, to my surprise, did as I instructed, dropping Hedda to the floor, where he fell in a heap.
‘You should go,’ I said to the three boys as Hedda, his teeth clenched, rubbing his elbow, got to his feet. ‘All of you. Now.’
They didn’t move.
‘Didn’t you hear your master?’ Wulfnoth asked as he tossed a bronze censer into his sack. ‘Get gone!’
That’s when Father Osbert appeared in the doorway. I recognised him at once. A frowning, studious type who looked older than his years, he walked with a stoop due to the hours he spent hunched copying out passages from his books, and he had trouble seeing very far.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked the boys, blinking rapidly. ‘Why are you just standing here? We don’t have much time. They’ll be here soon!’
He peered into the darkness towards us. When he saw me his mouth fell wide open.
‘You?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
After that everything happened so quickly that it’s all a haze in my memory. I’m not even sure in what order it took place. I remember Wulfnoth nodding to Sihtric, who slid his seax from its sheath and advanced upon Osbert and the students. I let go of the sack I was carrying and started forward in protest. I thought he was going to hurt them, and maybe he had every mind to. Meanwhile Gytha and Halfdan and the others were snatching up what they could of the rest of the treasure and stuffing it into their belt loops, into their packs, up their sleeves, wherever it would go.
Then Hedda hurled himself at Sihtric. I’m not sure why he did it or what he was thinking, but he did, fists flailing, yelling something I couldn’t make out.
Sihtric was faster. He lashed out with his seax, catching Hedda below the shoulder, ripping through his tunic, carving a gash down his arm. Blood spilt in God’s house, defiling what was supposed to be a place of sanctuary. The boy screamed in pain and Sihtric gave a savage grin, but not for long. Plegmund rushed at his flank, thrusting the torch towards his head before the big man could turn. The flames caught Sihtric full in the face. He yelled, dropped his weapon and stumbled back, blinded by the heat and the light, knocking over the lantern, which Halfdan had set down in the middle of the tiled floor. His hair was on fire and he was waving his hands like a madman, and still Plegmund came at him.
Gytha was rushing to her companion’s aid, trying to wrest the torch from the boy’s hands. Wiglaf had picked up the fallen seax and was swinging it wildly to fend off Cuffa and Cudda. Father Osbert had fled.
I should have done something. I don’t know what, but I should have done something. Instead I just stood there. Coward that I am, I just stood there.
Hedda and Sihtric were both writhing on the floor, one clutching at his arm and the other at his face, and I did nothing but gawp. Then Wulfnoth was clutching at my arm and saying we had to go quickly, and the brothers were trying to drag the big man outside, and that’s when I noticed that Wiglaf and Plegmund were no longer there. Were they dead? If they were, I didn’t see their bodies. Had they run away? I didn’t know.
Wulfnoth thrust a sack into my hands and told me to hold on to it, while he snatched up the torch from where it lay, guttering dimly, on the floor. He led us out into the cold of dusk, where Gytha was waiting for us. There was blood all across her cheek, and somewhere people were shouting and she was shouting too, screaming in my face, except that I couldn’t work out what she was saying, but she seemed to be angry, and I felt a tug on my arm and then I was running as best I could, still clutching the loot that Wulfnoth had given me, because I wasn’t thinking properly, and because I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do.
Smoke was billowing around us; the roofs of the dean’s hall and the surrounding buildings were all burning, and I couldn’t work out why, until I heard the horns blaring out close by, and war cries and hooves thundering. Through the swirling blackness, I caught a glimpse of men in helmets and byrnies, with fire and steel in hand.
Choking, fighting the smoke and the falling ashes, we managed to find the horses, still tethered to the post where we’d left them behind the church. They were panicking, the whites of their eyes bright in the fireglow. I made my way to Whitefoot, climbed quickly into the saddle and then fled, following the others’ shadows as they galloped away.
I don’t tell it very well, I know. Forgive me. It doesn’t make much sense, but then it didn’t at the time, either. I’m sure if you’d been there, Oslac, if you’d seen what I saw, you’d be able to give a better account of it than I have. But the way I’ve described it, that’s how it felt.
Shock must have numbed me after that, because that’s the last I remember, until after many miles’ hard riding we stopped. I realised then that Sihtric wasn’t with us, and neither was Cudda. We’d left them behind.
I wished I’d been left behind. That’s where I deserved to be.
Gytha’s bruised eye had closed up and blood was crusted across half her face. Wulfnoth was hurt too, his hand and wrist burned, the skin white and tender, and he hobbled when he moved. Tall, bony Cuffa wasn’t wounded, but he kept wailing like a child for his brother, begging Wulfnoth to let us go back to look for him, until Gytha struck him across the face and told him to shut up or else she would keep on hitting him until he did. Halfdan as always was quiet; he lay on the ground and stared up at the sky for the longest time. He didn’t use his signs to try to talk to us. Sihtric had been his closest friend, and now he was pr
obably dead.
The plunder? We had one sackful. That was all we had to show for it. The one Wulfnoth had thrust upon me, which somehow I’d held on to through everything. And it wasn’t even full, either; all there was is what you see here. As for the rest, I don’t know what happened to it. Maybe in the rush to get away it got left behind. Maybe my students and Osbert and the other canons managed to recover it in the end, before they fled.
If they still live, that is.
*
‘So now you know everything,’ Guthred says, wringing his hands, his head bowed. ‘Now that you do, I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to leave me here and go your own way. It would probably be for the best. Everyone I’ve ever crossed paths with, I’ve only ended up failing, disappointing, hurting in some way. Yes, better that you just go. Leave me. Let me do what I have to do. Let me go to Lindisfarena alone.’
For a few moments everyone is silent. No one wants to be the first to speak, Tova realises.
She knows what she’d like to say. She’d like to tell him to his face that he is a bad man, but he already knows that. She’d like to tell him that he’ll get no sympathy from them, but he’s made it clear that he isn’t looking for any.
Maybe we should just do what he says, she thinks. After what he’s done, he deserves nothing less.
But then another part of her says, at least he’s trying. He’s doing what he can to make amends, though it may be too late. Is what he’s done so bad that it can’t be forgiven? Doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance?
What Merewyn did was far, far worse. And Tova hasn’t forsaken her.
‘We’re not going to abandon you,’ she says and glances around at the others. ‘Are we?’
Beorn says, ‘You heard what he said. He doesn’t want our help.’
‘We can’t just leave him. We can’t.’
‘I’ve made it this far by myself,’ Guthred says. ‘I can go the rest of the way on my own if I have to. I’d understand.’
‘No,’ says Merewyn firmly. ‘We stay together, like we agreed. We made that decision together, and we’re going to keep to it. Isn’t that right, Beorn? What matters is that we trust one another. We have to, if we’re to survive.’
‘Trust has nothing to do with it,’ Beorn retorts.
He stands abruptly and marches over towards Guthred, who looks up at the warrior towering over him.
‘Listen, priest. I couldn’t care less about the things that you’ve done. I’m not interested in whatever guilt burdens you, or in your search for redemption. As I said before, I’m not going to Lindisfarena. I’m going to Hagustaldesham, and nothing is going to make me change my mind. Not you. Not anyone. Understand?’
Guthred nods, carefully. His eyes are dark and hollow. How hard it must have been, Tova realises, for him to say all these things, and in front of strangers besides.
Except that he hasn’t told them everything yet. He hasn’t said how the story ends.
She clears her throat to get his and everyone else’s attention. ‘After Rypum, what happened? Where did you go? How did you escape?’
‘I’d been wondering that myself,’ says Oslac.
Guthred rubs at his eyes, trying to stave off sleep or possibly tears. ‘I suppose it’s only right that you should hear the rest. It’s about the only part of it that gives me any pride, after all.’
*
You ask how I got away. Well, this is how.
We sheltered that night in an old hall on a deserted manor – so recently deserted, in fact, that the rushes were still fresh, still dry. There was a frost that night and I wondered if it might even snow. I tried to settle underneath my many blankets, but they weren’t enough; my teeth wouldn’t stop chattering and I couldn’t sleep. None of us could. Not far away I could hear Cuffa whimpering softly, still worried for his brother, while Wulfnoth groaned as he turned. His hand was paining him. Gytha refused to be near him; she was sitting in one corner of the barn by herself, her knees drawn up in front of her chest, mumbling curses and from time to time sniffing back tears.
None of that, though, was what kept me awake. It was that every time I shut my eyes and tried to give myself up to sleep I kept seeing Plegmund’s plaintive, questioning face. The disbelief in his eyes. The inability to comprehend. What he was asking me with that look was the simple question: why?
And even all those hours later I had no answer. There was nothing I could have said, no reason or explanation or excuse I could have given that would possibly have been enough.
I’d failed him. I’d failed all of them. My students, my fellow priests. The masters who taught me all those years ago. Saintly old Bishop Leofgar, who had first chosen me for the holy life. God himself. I felt him looking down upon me, and I felt the crushing weight of his disappointment.
My whole life serving God, and yet it took all of that to happen before I finally found him. Before I finally sought out his grace. Before I finally believed, and saw clearly for the first time.
I’d sinned worse than I’d ever imagined possible. I’d long realised that I was no paragon of virtue, nor had I ever been, nor was I going to be. But what I’d done that night – what I’d been a part of – was far worse than any misdeed I’d ever committed before. My soul would surely be condemned to the fiery depths, I knew, unless I did something. This was my last chance.
You might think I would have been too afraid, too cowardly, to run away from Wulfnoth and his band, just like I’d been too scared to act back in the minster at Rypum. But I tell you it was fear that drove me to it. Fear of ending up in Hell.
That same fear is what drives me now.
One by one I think the others must have fallen asleep; after a while I realised the whimpering and the groaning and the cursing were no longer to be heard. I was still lying there, wrapped in my grubby blankets. There was a gale blowing, but I could barely hear it for all the thoughts clamouring like a thousand voices in my ear. I tried to shut them out, to fix my mind on other things so that they would go away, but every time I tried to settle they kept coming back, stronger and louder than before, until I could bear it no longer.
I threw off the blankets covering me and got to my feet. Our packs were in a pile in the middle of the barn. As silently as I could, I crept towards them, limping a little as I went. My ankle was paining me; I vaguely remember stumbling and twisting it when we were fleeing Rypum. Anyway, I found my own tattered pack and threw it over my shoulder. That’s when I saw the sack containing the plunder from the church.
I couldn’t let them have it. It wasn’t theirs. It wasn’t mine either, but I was the one who’d led them to it, and so it was up to me to do the right thing. I had to take it. Somehow I had to return it, to make sure it went back to its rightful owners.
Yet I couldn’t go back to Rypum. There was only one place I could think of where I could take the treasures so that they would be safe, and that was the Holy Isle. What I also knew was that it was up to me. I, Guthred the liar, the robber, the sinner. I had a chance to redeem myself in the eyes of the Lord, and I couldn’t afford not to take it.
A voice behind me said, ‘What are you doing?’
I turned. It was Wulfnoth. All I could see of him was the fox-like gleam of his eyes. His breath was laboured and he sounded in pain as he hobbled towards me, his injured foot disturbing the rushes as he dragged it along the ground.
‘I’m leaving,’ I told him as I backed away, gripping the sack tightly in one hand while keeping the other free, just in case. ‘And I’m taking the treasure. Everything we stole from the church, I’m taking it. And you’re not going to stop me.’
He snorted. ‘Listen to yourself.’
I said that’s exactly what I was doing, and he asked me what in the world I was babbling about. All the while he kept coming closer, and I was edging towards the door, still holding on to the sack. At any moment I expected the
others to wake, and then that would be it. But they didn’t.
Still keeping my voice low, I said, ‘I’m going to return all this to its rightful owners. I’m taking it to Lindisfarena, where it’ll be safe.’
‘You pious fool,’ he hissed. ‘I thought you’d put all that behind you. I thought you’d finally seen their lies for what they were.’
I told him I’d been wrong, and that this was wrong: everything they – we – had been doing. The raiding, stealing, extortion, blackmail. I should never have succumbed to temptation. I’d given in to my own selfish desires, and now I would pay the price, unless I redeemed myself, and that’s why I was going.
He said, ‘You can’t leave.’
I asked him why not, and that’s when I saw the soft glimmer of steel appear in front of him. Too small to be a seax. A knife.
He said, ‘Because I’m going to kill you first.’
I’d never seen him take anyone’s life before. I’d hardly ever seen him spill blood. As I said, that wasn’t his way. That was how he defended what he did. It allowed him to pretend that they weren’t so bad really. It made him feel better.
And yet despite all that, at that moment I had no doubt that he meant what he said.
‘Aren’t you going to run?’ he asked me.
I wanted to, but I couldn’t feel my feet; they were numb with fear, and I thought if I tried to run, I would only stumble and he would plunge that knife into my heart. Before I could answer, he lunged at me, thrusting me back against the wall with one hand around my throat, the other holding the tip of his blade up towards my eye.
‘I hate them,’ he said. ‘I hate them all. Men of God, they make me sick. But I thought you were different. I thought you were like me.’
And then suddenly I was in that place beyond fear. It didn’t matter now what I said, it seemed; in my mind I was about to die and so it all came flooding out.
I replied that I was nothing like him. That I never had been and never would be.
‘I took pity on you because I thought you were my friend,’ he said, ‘and this is how you repay me?’
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