The Bone Thief

by V. M. Whitworth

  Gunnvor, her skirts kilted around her knees, moved quickest and quietest, and the others caught up to find Thorvald exchanging urgent whispers with her at the gate.

  The moon sent his angled pale beams across the rough ground beyond. Wulfgar could see the remains of crosses, both stone and wood, the latter half-rotted, most of them slanting where grave-fill had slumped and no one had cared in thirty years to pull them straight again. Beyond loomed the dark bulk of the church.

  Leicester’s battered cathedral was still holy ground, thought Wulfgar.

  Lincoln’s church was gone beyond recall.

  And here, at Bardney?

  The great minster stood, walled and roofed yet, and the row of small arched windows along the north wall, just below the roof line, flickered with a deceptively friendly light. So it must have looked when the Mercians’ Lord came here as a boy; when St Oswald lay wrapped in damask and gold behind the high altar, the goal of pilgrims in their thousands; when Thorvald’s kin were honoured minster-men. Wulfgar half-thought to hear the strains of the Nunc dimittis from the windows, but instead the fitful wind brought the faint sound of men’s voices, punctuated by the odd burst of raucous laughter.

  His jaw tightened. It was all too easy to credit that Garmund’s men had overtaken them, somewhere on the road, when their attention had been elsewhere.

  St Oswald couldn’t choose Garmund and Edward over the Lady and me, could he? he wondered. What can the West Saxons offer him that we can’t?

  The answers came in on the wind. Security. Power. Peace.

  Oh Lord, he thought in desperation, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace …

  Ednoth tugged at his sleeve. The other two were already following Thorvald, picking their way gingerly between the dip and hummocks of the graves. Wulfgar followed, carefully treading between the crosses and stones. The grass grew wild and untended, but there were little worn paths through the grass, and at the foot of some of the crosses he saw little cups and pots, offerings to the dead, their liquid contents gleaming in the moonlight.

  He was very cautious where he put his feet.

  Thorvald led them to a spot in the angle where the wide nave abutted the narrower chancel. The little windows were a good twelve feet above their heads, but they hunched away from them all the same. Out in the churchyard the cheerful sounds from the hall could be clearly heard but here up against the wall they were muffled.

  Ronan took Wulfgar’s arm and pointed down the length of the nave wall.

  ‘No door on this side,’ he muttered. ‘Be thankful for small mercies.’

  Thorvald had hunkered down in the corner and the others gathered round him.

  ‘Here, my grandfa’ always said. No more nor two paces from the wall.’

  They looked down at the grass. If Thorvald was right, they were standing on the very spot. Wulfgar stepped back, nervous of sacrilege, and then smiled at his scruples. St Oswald was hardly going to mind an intruder, not now, not after thirty years of neglect. He felt a sudden thrill of confidence, hardly dampened by his awareness of so many enemies separated from them by only a couple of feet of rubble, lime and rough-cast.

  ‘Give me the lantern,’ Wulfgar whispered.

  Thorvald passed it across and he opened its door a crack, just enough to let a yellow sliver of light gutter out, hardly bright enough to match the moonlight. He let the glimmer of light play over the grass and thought he could indeed make out a hollow. The spring grass was still short: another couple of weeks and their task would have been much harder. He closed the lantern and looked up to see Ronan nodding.

  ‘Start at each end?’ Ronan asked. ‘He shouldn’t be down too deep. He was buried in a hurry, remember.’

  Wulfgar wasn’t likely to forget.

  Gunnvor was already squatting at one end and levering up squares of turf with her belt-knife, clearing the ground for Thorvald’s spade. Ednoth and Ronan were picking up the other spades.

  Wulfgar was left with a digging stick, and the middle. He tore the grass away with his hands before levering up clods of earth. Once they got down below the grass roots the earth was loose, soft, free of stones. They worked in silence, other than the scrape and thud of digging. The wind was picking up, and suddenly it gusted full in their faces, with a sharp scent of the far-distant sea. Wulfgar had a sudden vision of the same place, of standing sheltered as he was now by the comforting wall of the church, but instead of moonlight the grave-yard was lit by an orange glow that sent the shadows leaping. From somewhere near at hand there came the crackle of burning thatch, and screaming, and even nearer there was the same sound he could hear now, the urgent scrape of a spade … He blinked and shivered, breathed deeply, and brought himself back to the work in hand.

  They were well hidden by the north-east angle of the nave, and slowly they began to relax. The piles of earth grew, with Ednoth and Gunnvor wielding their tools most vigorously.

  ‘Slow down,’ Wulfgar hissed. ‘We don’t want to do any damage.’

  Thorvald had stopped digging; he was standing upright a few feet away, looking this way and that. Wulfgar caught the repeated silver glint of moonlight in his eyes as his head moved.

  Gunnvor snorted.

  Wulfgar could almost hear her rolling her eyes, but she did as he had asked.

  He put his digging stick to one side and started using his hands. His soft hands.

  Worms wriggled away from his probing fingers. He was elbow deep now, and he wriggled round to lie on his belly, the easier to reach into the hole. But a clink from the iron edging of one of the spades had him scrambling to his feet and grabbing for the lantern.

  ‘It might be just a stone,’ Ednoth said.

  ‘Not many stones in this soil.’ Ronan, on his knees, reached down and pulled out a massive, earth-encrusted lump. He gave it a shake, and then began pulling the clods of soil away with his fingers.

  Wulfgar angled the lantern, breathing down the priest’s neck. His ribs felt painfully tight. Beneath the dirt, patches of smooth surface began to appear, brown in the candlelight.

  A skull.

  And Wulfgar sagged with disappointment, turning away to find Gunnvor frowning at him.

  ‘Not the saint,’ he said. ‘Not his head, it can’t be. His head shouldn’t be here. It ought to be in Chester-le-Street.’

  ‘Christians. You’re all crazy,’ Gunnvor said.

  ‘But St Oswald was buried in a grave, wasn’t he?’ Ednoth asked.

  Wulfgar just stared at him.

  ‘I mean, there was somebody already in it,’ Ednoth continued. ‘It was somebody’s grave. Perhaps we’ve found the somebody?’ And he turned back to the pit.

  Wulfgar set the lantern down and followed.

  Ednoth was right. The saint had not been alone and forsaken, the last thirty years. He had been given refuge by this nameless brother of Bardney. For all he knew their bones were irretrievably mixed together, but better surely to take this unknown man too rather than to leave a toe-bone of the saint behind.

  A surge of gratitude to St Oswald’s unknown host drove out Wulfgar’s disappointment and he began to scrabble in the dirt again with greater zeal. There were more bones coming up now. Thorvald had brought a couple of sacks and Wulfgar scooped up hands full of dirt and ran his fingers through them, feeling for the smallest bones, before putting all his discoveries into the sack.

  Then, leaning back into the hole and reaching for the next wormy handful, his fingertips encountered a new sensation. Something flat and softish, but with a different softness from the soil. Friable, damp, yet splintery. A surface rough and smooth at once.

  ‘Give me the lantern,’ he said again. He tilted its feeble light into the hole, but there was nothing to see. He reached in again, head and shoulders in the hole, stretching his arms to their limits.

  The surface extended to left and right. He groped for an edge. The others had stopped digging. He could feel that they were watching him, although he must have been all but invisible. He
tried to ignore them, closed his ears to the sounds of the night and let his fingers make sense of what he was feeling.

  St Oswald, are you there? Speak to me.

  ‘It’s wood. I think it’s a box. It feels rotten. We won’t get it out in one piece.’ He struggled back out of the hole and let Ronan and Ednoth move in.

  ‘Be careful,’ he said in agony. They were clearing the earth of the top of the box, then digging down either side of it. There were still more bones coming up and Wulfgar gathered what he could.

  ‘Get your spade underneath,’ Ronan said to Ednoth.

  Wulfgar stood up again, keeping out of the way of their spades, and held the lantern high.

  ‘Lever,’ he went on. ‘Gently!’ But too late. With a crack that split the night, the box shattered in a fountain of mud and splinters. They froze.

  ‘Close the light,’ Thorvald hissed. Wulfgar swung the little door shut. Was it his imagination, or had the hubbub from the hall fallen quiet? It was a while since he’d remembered to listen for it. His heart clattered in his chest, loud enough to alert the dead around them. They waited a long, long time.

  Nothing.

  Wulfgar dropped to his knees and started reaching in after the bits of wood from the grave. No one else moved. There were four or five large fragments, flat pieces of plank. Glancing around, he opened the lantern again. The candle had guttered down almost to nothing but it flared again then, enough for him to make out that, scored into the rotten mud-clotted boards, there had been runes and haloed faces. He couldn’t read the words or name the saints; the wood crumbled away even as he held it, but he had seen enough.

  ‘It’s him,’ he said, his breath tight. He was sure of it, as sure as though the saint had reached up and grasped him by the hand.

  The lantern died.

  ‘Come on,’ Thorvald said, ‘let’s get out of here.’

  Wulfgar scooped up a precious armful of bone, wood and soil and shovelled them all together into the sack. Ronan and Gunnvor joined in his trawling through the dirt, searching for more bones.

  They were all working frantically now, even Thorvald, who had overcome his anxiety enough at least to get down on his knees and help.

  Then Wulfgar froze.

  As Ednoth reached past him, Thorvald grabbed his arm.

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  They all stopped then. Thorvald flattened himself into the grass. Wulfgar found himself immobilised by terror, and Gunnvor had to drag him back against the wall, into the corner made by the nave meeting the chancel. The long, swinging yellow light of a lantern, not theirs, was coming from beyond the west end of the church, sending predatory shadows across the grass. Suddenly the corners of the churchyard were full of threatening movement.

  They’ve got us surrounded, he thought, but then realised he could only hear two voices, dim over the rushing of the blood in his ears.

  The first voice said something, but he missed what.

  ‘We’ll come back in daylight,’ said the second voice.

  Garmund.

  As at Offchurch, Wulfgar would have known him anywhere. He was no more than thirty feet away and voices carried on the cool night air.

  ‘But I just want to get an idea of the lie of the land. Are you sure he’s here?’

  ‘Here, if anywhere,’ came the answer.

  To Wulfgar’s surprise, the other voice, clear now, was female. She had the flat, deliberate vowels of north of Humber. She gave a little barking cough, like a sheep’s cough.

  ‘You can’t give me a better idea?’ Garmund asked. ‘It’s a big area, a lot of graves.’

  ‘It’s here Bardney folk say is haunted.’ Wulfgar could hear the shrug in her voice. ‘I know nowt about all this myself. And I still don’t see why you need a particular set of old bones. One dead man’s much like another, surely. If they’re not your kin.’

  ‘Not this one.’ Garmund’s voice was smooth, soothing. ‘My masters will pay well, very well, if I can bring them the bones, and proof. Without proof, I don’t know how much more I can promise you.’

  ‘Well, you’re welcome to look. You’ll have to pay me for the looking, mind. And I want it done and filled in before any word gets back to my man. I’ll not have him knowing about this.’

  It’s the Spider’s wife, thought Wulfgar. It has to be.

  The light started moving again. They were coming around the north-west corner of the church, into the burial ground. They must have been looking around them; the light flung this way and that. Suddenly it darted up along the side of the nave. Wulfgar could see Father Ronan crouched in the grave, back-lit. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

  Her voice came again, pettish of a sudden.

  ‘It’s damp out here.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ Garmund said ‘What’s that?’

  ‘No. No good you making my fortune if I catch my death first.’

  ‘Let me take you back inside, then.’

  Wulfgar opened his eyes again. But the light was still there, sending the shadows fleeing. Garmund wasn’t to be distracted so easily. At last, though, it dwindled and vanished.

  A pig snuffled and grunted from somewhere on the far side of the churchyard.

  ‘May I have my hand back?’ Gunnvor’s whisper was amused. Wulfgar hadn’t even realised he had grabbed it. The reflection of two tiny moons danced in her eyes.

  ‘Sorry.’

  He got back down on his knees.

  ‘Have we got everything?’ Father Ronan asked.

  ‘I think so,’ Wulfgar said, breathing deeply. ‘Should we back-fill the grave?’ He reached after a spade.

  ‘No!’ Thorvald sounded in agony. ‘Don’t you understand? That was her. She’ll kill us out of hand. She’s as bad as he is.’

  ‘We’ve got all we can,’ Gunnvor said, very definite.

  ‘How do you know?’ Wulfgar said.

  White teeth flashed in the moonlight.

  ‘See in the dark, can’t I? They don’t call me Cat’s-Eyes for nothing. Let’s pack it up and go.’

  When they had sorted out their booty, it came to three loads of heavy damp sacking, full of soil, and flaking wood, and bones. Wulfgar took one, and Father Ronan and Ednoth shouldered the others. Wulfgar worried aloud about the tools and lantern but Thorvald hissed to leave them.

  He was halfway across the graveyard. Wulfgar was sick and dizzy with relief; he still couldn’t believe they’d got away with it.

  Fast-moving clouds were running like wolf-packs over the face of the waning moon. It took them what felt like a long time to stumble over the graves and through the wildly tilting crosses of the churchyard, and then the densely growing apple trees. Shadows moved in corners. All the tales Wulfgar had ever heard of the creatures, dead and alive, that haunted barrow-fields and bone-yards were coming back to haunt him now. He tripped and stumbled half a dozen times before they achieved the outer bank, but he held on to his share of the saint somehow. Ronan and Ednoth were a dozen paces ahead of him, muttering about something in anxious voices. In an effort to drive away his fears, Wulfgar forced himself to think about the reception he would get in Gloucester, of the joy on the Lady’s face, of the songs that could be made to celebrate this moment.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THERE WAS NO warning. The onslaught seemed to come from all sides at once.

  In the dark, Wulfgar couldn’t see how many they were. He stood there on the causeway like a stock of wood, dumb and panicking. Father Ronan and Ednoth had let their bundles fall: he could see they had their swords out and were fighting back to back. Wulfgar couldn’t see Thorvald anywhere. Someone barged into him and he caught the glint of moonlight on a knife blade, but he lost his footing and, still hugging his precious sack, he half-slid, half-fell six feet down the side of the causeway to land rump-first in mud and shallow water. He looked up to see shadows and grappling figures above him. Who were they? It was all still strangely silent apart from the clash of blades, the thump of blows, the odd grunt and
gasp for breath.

  Then there was someone slithering down next to him, hissing, ‘Stand up and put that sack down.’

  He clutched his bundle to him for dear life.

  ‘Drop it!’

  Strong hands were pulling at it.

  He fought for a frantic moment, before he realised they belonged to Gunnvor. Far too slowly, he did as he was told. As he stood again, he felt her move close to him, almost within the folds of his cloak. Was she afraid? Did she expect him to protect her? He could smell that aura of spices she always seemed to carry with her. He felt a sudden tugging at his waist, and then her warm, dry hand grabbed his and pushed something into it. His nerveless fingers recognised the hilt of his own belt-knife.

  ‘Follow me. Climb. Now.’

  He hauled himself after her up the muddy slope. Now he could see Ronan, further along the causeway, black against the moon-bright clouds, fighting two knife-wielding men at once – fighting far too competently for a priest, and Wulfgar, distracted, wondered where and how he had come by his sword-skills.

  Then he turned, jumping at a grunt, and realised Ednoth was only feet from them, hard-pressed, being driven back towards them by a half-glimpsed assailant with a long knife in each hand. The lad swung his sword with great force, but even Wulfgar could see there was more power than finesse in his use of it, and he was gasping for breath, great ragged gulps of air. Ednoth had finally got the adventure he craved, and it looked as though it might well kill him.

  Oh, Queen of Heaven, Wulfgar thought desperately, what do I do now? I’ve a knife in my hand and a friend in desperate need.

  But, even as Wulfgar dithered at his prayers, Gunnvor launched herself at Ednoth’s assailant from behind, her blade in her right hand. Wulfgar saw her twine her fingers in his hair and yank his head back. He turned away in horror.

  As he turned he stumbled over another body hunched at his feet. Numb, he bent to heave it over, convinced it would be Thorvald. Or Garmund, heaven help him. But it was a face Wulfgar had never seen before, thin, long-nosed, clean-shaven. There was dark blood everywhere, sticky and strong-smelling, on the man’s chest, on Wulfgar’s hands now. Who had killed him?