The Bone Thief

by V. M. Whitworth

  ‘I thought so,’ he said, smiling, ‘How long will you be away? A week? Think about it. Kingdoms have fallen in a day, you know.’

  Wulfgar knew that only too well.

  ‘What is it that you want from me, my Lord?’ he asked carefully.

  The Atheling’s dark eyes flickered.

  ‘I would be King of Wessex, if I had my rights. Failing that, I’ll have the Lordship of Mercia. And I want your support.’ The grip on Wulfgar’s elbow tightened. ‘I’ll need churchmen I can trust. Abbots. Bishops, even. There aren’t enough bishops in Mercia.’

  An ox-cart laden with hay rumbled through the gateway. Its driver looked towards them and half-rose to bow in his seat.

  The Atheling leaned in close enough for Wulfgar to feel the hot tickle of breath on his cheek.

  ‘I need someone to take a message,’ he said softly. ‘A private one, to friends across the border, in Leicester and Lincoln. You’re going there anyway. It’s no extra burden.’

  Wulfgar looked at his shoes, conscious of a courtyard full of fascinated eyes. The gyrfalcon rustled her feathers and jingled her bells. Fallow snorted and shifted her weight to a different hoof.

  ‘Trust me, Wuffa. She does, you know.’

  It was no more than the truth, Wulfgar knew that. But was the Lady right to do so? Did her cousin have her best interests at heart, any more than her brother Edward did? Wulfgar felt the world shifting beneath him.

  ‘I’m a good friend to my friends. You know that, Wuffa.’

  It was the truth. But he was also known to be a bitter foe to those who opposed him. Wulfgar tightened his grip on the bridle. He felt a sudden overwhelming desire to know what the Lady would think, but there was no time to consult her.

  Fate had indeed been very cruel to the Atheling, there was no contesting that point. And he had always been very kind to Wulfgar, even when there had been nothing obvious to gain by that kindness. There was a debt there which Wulfgar would never be able fully to repay.

  ‘We light the fire at All Hallows.’ The Atheling sounded on the verge of exasperation. ‘That is the message you need to deliver. Can you remember that? Find the Jarls. Hakon Grimsson in Leicester, and Toli Hrafnsson in Lincoln.’

  Danish names.

  ‘Tell no one else. No one, do you hear me?’ He gave Wulfgar’s elbow a little shake. ‘Only Hakon Grimsson and Toli Hrafnsson. We light –’

  ‘– the fire at All Hallows.’ All Hallows, he thought, that’s the first of November. It was more than half the year away. Or did he mean a church dedicated to All Saints, All Hallows? Wulfgar frowned.

  The Atheling prompted him: ‘The names?’

  ‘Hakon Grimsson in Leicester. Toli …’

  ‘Toli Hrafnsson.’

  He repeated it without stumbling this time. Hrafnsson. Raven’s son, he thought. Something about it chilled him.

  Leicester and Lincoln.

  Mercian cities, once upon a time … with Mercian cathedrals, and Mercian bishops.

  Not anymore.

  Not for thirty years.

  The Atheling smiled at him.

  ‘Good man! I knew I could rely on you.’ He turned to go, saluting Ednoth with a friendly clap on the shoulder, wishing them Godspeed as he went. The hooded falcon screamed, a wild, harsh sound that made the hairs rise on Wulfgar’s nape.

  He noticed Kenelm, still loitering outside the Bishop’s bower, watching them shamelessly. Wulfgar, doing his best to ignore the Deacon’s curious gaze, climbed back up onto the mounting block. He grabbed his reins and a fistful of Fallow’s coarse mane, and heaved himself onto her back, scrabbling with his right foot for the other stirrup. The cobbles looked very far away but at least he had scrambled up without overly embarrassing himself.

  ‘That was the Atheling!’ Ednoth said, excitement infusing his words.

  ‘I know,’ Wulfgar said absently, still groping for his right stirrup with his foot.

  ‘Athelwald Seiriol!’ Ednoth was glowing. ‘He should be king in Wessex instead of Edward, my father says. Because he’s the son of the old King’s elder brother, the one who was king before him.’ He turned to look at Wulfgar. ‘Do you know him, then?’

  Wulfgar nodded, still deep in thought.

  ‘Of course. He’s the Lady’s cousin. We all grew up together in Winchester, the cathedral oblates like me, and the royal children, and the thanes’ sons at the King’s school.’ So much older than me, away so often, first at weapon-training, then making his name in battle. But always someone to hero-worship. Always someone you wanted to trot along after, even after the old King named Edward as his heir.

  Ednoth was bright-eyed, his hangover and his bad temper apparently forgotten.

  ‘Wait till I tell my little brothers!’ he exclaimed. ‘We saw him before, once, in Bristol. He’s famous, you know. In the battle of Farnham, when he was younger than me …’

  But, as they walked their horses under the gateway and out of the Bishop’s courts, Wulfgar wasn’t paying heed to Ednoth’s cheerful babble. I never said yes, he thought, I never agreed to carry his message. Light the fire at All Hallows. What’s that supposed to mean? He chewed his underlip. It didn’t matter whether he had acquiesced or not, he realised. The Atheling took it for granted that he had: he was stuck with it.

  The streets of Worcester were thronging with carts and barrows, flocks of ewes with their lambs, dairywomen with the first cheeses of the season, salt-wagons coming in from Droitwich. The market-day crowd made for slow going, but at last they came out by the east gate. The circuit of the walls was mostly in timber but here along the river-front – so potentially vulnerable to Danish attack – they were reinforcing the revetment in stone. The gate guards recognised Wulfgar, holding the carts back to let them ride through and greeting him in the Lady’s name. Despite everything, he was beginning to feel at home in Worcester. He had a role to uphold. People knew him in Worcester, and they respected him, even if respect seemed all too often to ride pillion with resentment.

  He realised Ednoth had been asking him something.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The Bishop said you spoke Danish?’

  Wulfgar nodded.

  ‘There are a couple of Danish hostages in Winchester. Handed over as part of a peace treaty when they were still little boys. Baptised, of course.’ Young devils, he thought. ‘I was teaching them to read and picking up some Danish in exchange. It was the old King’s idea.’ The boys had seen it as a punishment; he hadn’t learned as much as he would have liked. And they had thought it funny to teach him obscenities, without telling him the real meaning, until their sniggers had betrayed them. He felt his cheeks grow warm, remembering.

  ‘Go on, then. Say something in Danish.’

  Nasty, spiky language. What can I remember?

  ‘They taught me some songs,’ he said at last. He cleared his throat, hummed a note: ‘Skegg-old, skálm-old, skildir ro klofnir, Vindold, varg-old—’ He saw the look on Ednoth’s face then, and had to laugh.

  ‘Is it rude?’ Ednoth sounded hopeful.

  You and those Danish ruffians, Wulfgar thought, you’d have had a lovely time together.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s religious. Axe-age, sword-age, shields are cloven. Wind-age, wolf-age … About the end of the world. The Last Judgment, though I don’t think the Danes call it that.’

  ‘What do they call it, then?’

  He frowned, trying to remember.

  ‘The sunset of the gods. Their gods, I mean. False gods. Who will die and not come back.’ And we’re going into the lands where those unholy powers hold sway, he thought with a shiver. It hadn’t really sunk in yet.

  ‘And did they tell you about their sacrifices?’ Ednoth asked. ‘Do they really hang people to their gods?’

  ‘I’m told they do.’

  As chance would have it, they were reaching the edge of the Bishop’s jurisdiction. At the crossroads, workmen were busy on ladders, refurbishing the gallows for the new crop of sinners
the shire-court would no doubt be reaping after Easter.

  ‘But so do we.’

  He gestured at the gallows, that gateway to assured perdition, and his thoughts turned at once to his Lady, thrust so precipitately into Mercia’s judgment seat. She had never held the court before – never sent a man to his death. Could she bring herself to do it?

  ‘But that’s different.’ Ednoth sounded very confident. ‘They’re criminals.’

  ‘Is it different? Really?’ Wulfgar found himself genuinely unsure. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And do they – the Danes, I mean – do they really do that blood-eagle thing to your ribs? And lungs?’ Ednoth sounded enthusiastic. ‘You know, what men say they did to King Edmund of the East Angles? Flaying, and then—’

  ‘St Edmund,’ Wulfgar said reflexively, longing to change the subject. Wasn’t the boy worried? Didn’t he care about the risks they would be running? Did he really see this journey as no more than his prescribed penance, irksome rather than dangerous?

  ‘Ednoth,’ he asked suddenly, ‘why did you decide to come?’ Better not to imply that the fists of the Bishop’s men were reason enough.

  Ednoth was quiet for a moment, an uncharacteristically pensive look on his face.

  ‘You’ve never been to Sodbury, have you?’ Ednoth asked.

  Wulfgar shook his head, puzzled.

  ‘My father’s a two-hundred-shilling man, you know.’ Ednoth’s voice was full of pride. ‘Our hall stands on the western slope of the Cotswolds. It’s the southern tail end of Mercia. You look down over the pasture – those water-meadows your damn Bishop’s after – and you can see the River Severn, and the Welsh hills beyond. Wessex is only a couple of miles behind us, and Wales in front. We have to watch ourselves, front and back. But we’ve held that land from the Kings of the Mercians for five lives of men.’

  Only half as long as we’ve been at Meon, Wulfgar thought, and my father’s wergild was twelve hundred shillings. He bit his tongue, though. He didn’t want to sound boastful, even if his father had been a king’s thane, valued second only to the King himself, and from one of the oldest of the West Saxon noble families.

  ‘This is us fighting back, isn’t it?’ Ednoth went on. ‘This is the start of the new Mercia, rescuing St Oswald? Making us supreme again. I want to be part of it.’ His young face had briefly lost its puppyish quality; he looked fierce and proud. ‘I’m a true Mercian. And the Lady’s my Lady.’

  Wulfgar nodded, thoughtful. In some ways, then, they weren’t so different, he and Ednoth.

  Jolt, jolt. Jolt, jolt. Jolt, jolt. At every lurch, Wulfgar felt the thud of his bones against the wooden frame of his saddle. The layers of woollen padding might as well not have been there. He wasn’t looking forward to a week in this saddle. The least St Oswald could do in return was to be waiting for them at the end of the road. St Oswald … His thoughts were questing this way and that, hounds on the scent, trying to remember everything he had ever learned about the saint.

  ‘What are you singing?’ Ednoth asked.

  Wulfgar was startled back into the moment.

  ‘Singing? I wasn’t singing, was I? What have I got to sing about?’

  ‘You were. Humming, if you like. Under your breath.’

  ‘Was I?’ Wulfgar had to stop and think. ‘Oh! Oh …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was that song about St Oswald’s niece,’ he said slowly. ‘She finds his body on the battlefield and reburies it at Bardney. You must know it.’

  But Ednoth shook his head.

  ‘If I do, I’ve forgotten it. What happens next?’

  Wulfgar swallowed.

  ‘She’s that Queen of the Mercians who …’

  ‘Who what?’

  ‘Who’s murdered by her own thanes, when – after her husband dies.’

  After that, they rode in silence.

  Wulfgar had been trying to ward off his darker fears by keeping pace with the Maundy Thursday liturgy in his head, measuring the time by the angles of sun and shadow. The chrism mass at the cathedral should be over by now, and the Bishop would be washing the feet of the twelve paupers. They’d be celebrating the institution of the Eucharist now, and now they would be ringing the bells for the last time until Sunday. He rubbed the top of his head absently, feeling for the palm-sized shaven circle that should be newly there, and wasn’t. He was just imagining the sombre ritual of veiling the crosses, snuffing all the lamps and stripping the altars, preparatory to the great and mournful solemnities of Good Friday when Ednoth broke into his reverie.

  ‘Do you want to hear a riddle?’

  He jumped violently.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You’ll never guess.’ Ednoth grinned. ‘I’m long and hard and hairy at one end, and I make maidens weep – who am I?’

  Wulfgar remembered this sort of thing all too well from his schooldays.

  ‘An onion?’ he hazarded, with ill-concealed distaste.

  ‘What? No …’ Ednoth made a suggestive gesture. ‘Oh, Wulfgar, you’re such an innocent.’

  Wulfgar sighed. That was the worst thing about those riddles, he remembered belatedly. You couldn’t win. If he had given the obvious, shameless answer, Ednoth would only have hooted with laughter and accused him of having a filthy mind. It’s the sort of joke my father used to love, he thought. God rest his soul.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Good Friday

  THEY SPENT THE night in a verminous inn at the little hamlet of Stratford, which did little to cheer Wulfgar. He woke at his usual early hour in a small hall, pitch-dark and full of snoring, farting strangers, aching in every muscle and with new flea bites in a band across his ribs from the musty straw. No one else was stirring. He huddled himself into his cloak to contemplate the banked embers of the hearth and pass the time till dawn by saying the prayers and psalms appropriate to Tenebrae, the heart-breaking service of the shadows, dedicated to darkness and loss. And then he had perforce to watch Ednoth break his fast with roasted eggs and fresh wheaten bread.

  ‘Have some,’ the ale-wife said cheerily, offering him the treen platter.

  ‘I’m fasting.’

  ‘But you’re a traveller, like everyone else,’ Ednoth joined in, gesturing round the hall. ‘Surely you don’t have to fast?’

  He could see the steam rising from the bread as Ednoth broke the crust apart with his fingers. The moist, white interior smelled deliciously yeasty.

  Tight-lipped, Wulfgar said, ‘But it’s Good Friday.’

  ‘And I’m excommunicated, so I’m doubly exempt.’ Ednoth grinned and reached for another small loaf from the heaped platter.

  Wulfgar got up and walked out of the inn. Penance, he thought furiously. Penance and fasting and alms-giving. That’s what excommunication means. It’s not a charter of liberties.

  Even another bright day couldn’t cure his bad temper. Getting back into the saddle had been agony on his already aching limbs. I should be at home in the cathedral, he thought bitterly. Holding up the cross for the people to venerate. The royal banners forward go, he chanted under his breath, The cross shines forth in mystic glow …

  Ednoth had been riding a length or two ahead. Now Wulfgar saw him stiffen. The road dipped here to cross a small stream, and he was reining Starlight in to peer down at the mud of the churned-up track-way.

  ‘What is it?’

  Ednoth didn’t answer. He had jumped down from the saddle and now he squinted at the soil.

  ‘There’s been a large party of horsemen along this way. They joined the road a hundred yards back or so. Not long ago, either.’

  ‘Well, we’re drawing close to the Fosse Way,’ Wulfgar said, not understanding Ednoth’s concern. ‘We can expect to meet farmers, and merchants.’

  Ednoth snorted.

  ‘Wulfgar. Look at the hoof prints.’

  Wulfgar slid gingerly out of his saddle. The mess of half-moons meant nothing to him.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Look at the size
! And do you see the depth to them? We’re not talking pack-ponies here, or farm nags like these beasts we’re riding. Those were good horses – really good horses. More than a dozen. Ridden hard, too. Look how they’ve thrown the mud up.’ He gestured with his free hand.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Ednoth gave him a long-suffering look.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. I wonder who they might be. It looks like they’ve come up from the south. Wessex, maybe?’

  ‘Do we want to stay on this track, then?’

  ‘Do we have a choice?’

  ‘I just thought we might be better …’ Wulfgar tailed off, unwilling to give his fears a name.

  Ednoth yelped with laughter.

  ‘But that’s why I’m here! I’ll look after you.’

  Wulfgar shied away from his pitying look.

  ‘Wulfgar really isn’t a very good name for you, is it? You’re more like a mouse, really. I think I’ll call you Wulfgar Mouse.’ He snorted at his own wit. ‘Mousegar.’

  ‘You will not call me Mousegar.’

  ‘Give me a reason not to, then.’

  Their grassy track joined the Fosse Way soon after that. The famous high-road stretched ahead, straight and true, as far as the eye could see, a hundred feet across. It led them due north east, all the way to its terminus at Lincoln, the lines of old square stones still breaking the soil in places.

  Wulfgar found his mind running after the ancient Mercian estate records he had been archiving all Lent, trying to transpose their dry-as-dust legal phrases onto the lush April landscape unfolding around him. When those tattered leaves of vellum had been issued by long-dead kings of Mercia, the Fosse Way on which they were now riding and Watling Street had formed a great saltire cross, carrying Mercia’s lifeblood in the form of merchants and warbands and missionaries. Mercia, the Middle Kingdom, had reached east to the Humber, the Wash, the Thames.

  But now only the south-western reaches of the Fosse Way belonged to Mercia, and every frontier was menaced.

  Watling Street was the frontier with the Danes.

  Wessex was laying claim to both Oxford and London.

  The border with Wales was endlessly disputed.