The Bone Thief (12 page)

Heremod – their host – ordered his slaves to take the horses round to the stables and bring water for the travellers to wash, and he sat them down on benches outside the west side of his hall, catching the late afternoon sun and out of the wind.

Wulfgar was glad beyond words to be off a horse, and to have the prospect of a comfortable night. Their host was right: the fickle April weather was turning against them. Dark-browed clouds were building up to the north east, and for all the sunlight the breeze had a sharp edge to it.

The old lady insisted on serving them herself, bringing out warm crumpets, new curd cheese, smoked fish, rose-hip pickle and garlic relish, shamelessly picking out the choicest morsels for Ednoth – ‘My lovely boy,’ she cooed – though she cosseted Wulfgar, too, with a cold camomile poultice for his brutally aching temple.

To his surprise he found his appetite returning and, Ednoth was quite right, he told himself: canon law did say that if they were
travelling
they were exempt from fasting. It wouldn’t help their mission if he fainted from lack of food, and the meal was far better than he would have expected from this comparatively modest household. They feasted and drank sweet mead, and Ednoth, shameless as their hostess, fell fast asleep with his back against the sun-warmed timber and his mouth falling open.

Heremod looked at Ednoth and rolled his eyes upwards.

‘Ah, youth! Have you eaten enough?’

Wulfgar nodded carefully, one hand on his poultice.

‘Tell me more about these raiders, then.’ Their host shook his head. ‘Things have been quiet across the borders of late. No real trouble for six, seven, years.’ He sighed. ‘Too good to last. So, men of Leicester, were they, Wulfgar?’

‘Those misbegotten louts?’ It was the old lady. ‘They were no Danes.’ She reached over his shoulder for an empty dish.

Heremod swivelled round. ‘
Not Danes
?’

‘Think I can’t tell a Danish voice by now, son? Or, if they were Danes, they had a renegade West Saxon leading them.’ She cackled with pleasure. ‘Ah, that’s made you sit up!’

‘Wulfgar, is my mother right?’ Heremod’s voice had taken on a peculiar urgency.

Wulfgar wondered what to say in reply. He looked into the cup of mead cradled in his hands, swirling the sticky liquid, absently noting the fine quality of the earthenware and the rich greeny-yellow depths of its sun-tinted glaze.

‘No.’ He closed his eyes, trying to banish the ache behind them. ‘I mean, yes. Your mother’s quite right. They were men of Wessex.’

‘Definitely not Leicester?’ There was no mistaking the note of relief. ‘Lordless men, then.’

Wulfgar shook his head carefully.

‘Well-dressed, well-armed, well-spoken, well-disciplined.’ He gave his fears voice. ‘I think they must have been the King’s men.’

Heremod hissed through his teeth.

‘That doesn’t bode well. War between Wessex and Mercia, then? With the Danes biding their moment to pick our bones? We’ve been there before.’ He thumped a heavy fist on his table, rattling the dishes and rocking the trestles with the sudden gust of his anger. ‘All I want is to be left alone. We trade now with the Danes, you know. Better for us than fighting them ever was. And this is where Mercia ends. Right here. Me.’ He banged himself on the chest.

His mother, clearing more dirty dishes, coughed and spat on the grass.

‘You, indeed,’ she said.

‘Now, mother …’ Heremod’s voice had a warning note.

She shook her head.

‘Mercia ends with me, boy,’ she told him.

Heremod turned back to Wulfgar, rolling his eyes, inviting sympathy.

Wulfgar noted he didn’t correct her, though.

‘I could show you a Dane called Thorleikr,’ Heremod said in a low voice, ‘straight off the boat, who’s bought land not five miles east from here, hard by Dunchurch. Oh yes,’ in response to Wulfgar’s curious look, ‘
bought it
. From a Mercian. No land-grab there. Well over on the English side of Watling Street. But Thorleikr looks across the line to Leicester for lordship. Leicester’s a damn sight closer than you might think, and it’s getting closer all the time.’

Heremod’s eyes flickered along the length of the hall and Wulfgar shifted to follow his gaze. While his host’s thatch was
new
enough still to be yellow, the massive earth-fast timbers, the mainstays of the wall, were singed black, even charred in places. ‘You see what I mean?’ his host asked.

Wulfgar nodded soberly.

‘We’ve built it up again,’ Heremod said. ‘Once the carrion crows find your flock they’ll never quite give up.’ He sighed. ‘But I must admit there’s law in Leicester now. Good law.’

Wulfgar found himself sitting up.

‘You mean, you go to Leicester? Often?’ He could hear the echo of the Atheling’s voice:
Find Hakon Grimsson in Leicester
…

His host offered him a sideways glance.

‘How much do I admit to a servant of the Lady’s?’

‘I’ve eaten your bread,’ Wulfgar protested.

‘And, clarnet that I am, I already told you we trade across Watling Street. With what’s left to us after we’ve paid our taxes south. In good English coin that gets harder to find every year.’ His eyes flared with anger then. ‘I’m as loyal as the next man, mind on. But you tell them south that squeezing us dry here on the border and never letting us have sight of them is no way to wield men’s loyalties. What do they expect me to do next time raiders come? Run to
Gloucester
, with mother on my back?’ His tone had curdled. ‘How much longer do I keep faith with a Lord I never see? You tell him that.’ He pushed the mead jug across the table to his guest and sat back, arms folded.

‘I’ll tell him,’ Wulfgar said, sorry for the way the talk had gone, his head hurting more than ever now. He wondered if he would ever have the chance to speak with the Lord of the Mercians again. ‘Taxes are even higher in Wessex, you know.’ Oh, this headache. He reached unthinking for the mead-jug and his elbow jogged his cup off the table to smash on the cobbles. ‘Oh, no!’

It lay under the bench in half a dozen pieces.

‘Heremod, I’m so sorry.’ He bent to pick up the larger fragments. Far beyond mending. ‘I’d just been thinking how lovely it was, and what an honour that you should bring these out for us.’ He held the biggest shard up to the last long rays of sunlight, looking at the way the light penetrated the glaze. ‘We’ve nothing so fine at court. The Lady has a fondness for Frankish glass, but—’

However, to Wulfgar’s astonishment, Heremod dismissed his apology with a wave of his hand.

‘We trade for them in Leicester. We’ve enough and to spare.’ As though to prove the truth of his words, a slave-girl had already come forward with a replacement, just as prettily glazed, and Heremod’s mother then filled it with mead that Wulfgar didn’t really want, not now. Heremod leaned forward, a light in his eyes. ‘Do you think folk in Worcester, or Gloucester, would take a fancy to them?’ he asked. ‘I can get you plenty. I’ll show you.’ He dismissed the girl to fetch some more cups with a pat to her rump.

‘Winchester, even,’ Wulfgar said, nodding. ‘My mother would have loved these.’ An idea was beginning to glimmer through the fog of his headache. ‘Do you know a man in Leicester called Hakon Grimsson?’

Heremod whistled softly.

‘Hakon
Toad
? Our – their jarl, you mean? You don’t mess about, do you?’ His face was shuttered, cautious, now. ‘If you want a share of the pottery trade, or anything else in Leicester, you’ll have to deal with the Grimssons sooner rather than later. But a bit lower down the ladder might be a happier place to start.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Wulfgar said. ‘I’d heard the name, that’s all.’ He tried to settle his aching rump more comfortably but the bench was too hard.

Heremod looked down at his fingernails, and then up at Wulfgar.

‘The Grimssons are old Great Army men. Brothers. Hakon Toad – he’s the elder, the Jarl. Ketil Scar, he’s the little brother, and a much nastier piece of work. The last I heard from Leicester, a fortnight back, is that Hakon had taken sick. But he runs as tight a ship in Leicester as he ever did.’

Toad? Scar? Hardly reassuring eke-names.

‘Are they heathens?’

Heremod had the grace to turn his laugh into a cough.

‘Hakon’s been baptised. Rumour has it Ketil, too. And Hakon shows his ugly face at church from time to time. Or so I hear. But I wouldn’t count on them keeping those promises, or any others.’

Drops of mead were drying, sticky, sunlit, on the cobbles among the shattered fragments of the yellow cup, but the wind had sharp teeth.

Wulfgar had an unsettling vision of a little snarling animal, nipping at his nape. A stoat, maybe. A polecat … He pulled his cloak more snugly around his shoulders. It kept the chill wind at bay but not the fears which were racking him.

Why would an Atheling of Wessex call a man like Hakon Grimsson his friend? How
could
he? He can hardly have forgotten what the Great Army did to Wessex. I don’t remember, Wulfgar thought, as it was around the time I was born. But the Atheling was – what – seven when Wareham was sacked? And then Exeter, and Chippenham a couple of years later. Rochester, too, I think. And I know he fought in the battle of Farnham, everyone knows that.

Heremod leaned forward suddenly, elbows on the table, and looked him hard in the eye.

‘Wulfgar, you tell your Lady and her Lord this. I’m as loyal a Mercian as I can be. But I won’t look to Wessex for lordship. And I’m not alone.’

‘You mean …’

Heremod shook his head, but Wulfgar could hear his unspoken words.
If Wessex takes Mercia, men like me will turn to the Danes for protection
. He closed his eyes. And where is that going to leave the Lady? Unsupported. Defenceless. Unwanted. An embarrassment to her brother.

He knew the most likely outcome.

The nunnery in Winchester.

Or the knife in the dark.

It’s happened often enough before, Heaven knows. Men are ruthless to superfluous queens. He pressed the damp linen pad against his temple. St Oswald, dear St Oswald, come to her aid, he prayed silently. You’re in this with us. You need her alive and well and on your side. Pray for her. For me. For all of us.

The girl had brought out half a dozen more cups for him to look at – orange, and pale, creamy yellow, sage green and smoky blue – and was now engaged in sweeping up the broken shards.

‘I need to think about it,’ Heremod said, defensively. ‘Giving you a name in Leicester, I mean. I’ve got to look after my own interests, after all.’ His sweeping gesture took in the scorched timbers of his handsome hall, the raw wood of his fortifications, the outbuildings, the bustling slaves’ quarters, the stables and chicken house where a girl scattered grain, and the sheep-dotted fields beyond, noisy with the call and response of lambs and their mothers, all yellow where the long evening light was still slanting in under the gathering slate clouds. ‘I don’t go looking for trouble, you know. When I was a lad our land was smack in the middle
of
Mercia. Now we live on the edge.’

Later that night, huddled in his cloak by the banked fire in the hall, Wulfgar, on the brink of sleep, mulled over Heremod’s bitter words. Loyalty, he thought. Loyalty is everything. But loyalty to what? Why should men like Heremod stay loyal, pay their taxes and renders, send men to the army, keep the roads and bridges in good repair, if they get nothing in return? He shifted restlessly. Especially if this Hakon has been baptised, and gives fair judgments in his court. He may be just as good a lord, in his way. Perhaps, he told himself, it’s not so strange that the Atheling should be reconciled with a Great Army warlord. The old King made peace with some of them, after all. Stood godfather to one, even. He yawned, and tried to settle himself on his other side. The headache was almost gone.

His last conscious thought was, if Hakon’s been baptised, there must still be a priest in Leicester. And, if there’s a priest, perhaps I can go to Mass on Easter Sunday after all.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Holy Saturday

A STEADY DRIZZLE
of rain was coming down from the north east when they set off. Heremod had said nothing more about Leicester while they were breaking their fast around the fire, and Wulfgar had been wondering whether to ask again. But at the last moment, after the formal leave-taking, he came up to Wulfgar’s stirrup and spoke in a rapid mutter.

‘You should go to the Wave-Serpent. Ask for Gunnar, that folk call Cat’s-Eyes.’

Wulfgar could hardly hear him for his old mother, waving and beaming from the doorway of the hall. ‘Come back this way, my lovely boy!’ she screeched at Ednoth. ‘We’ll kill a pig for you!’

Heremod backed away, slapping Fallow on her shaggy rump to get her going.

‘Yes, come back this way,’ he said, not meeting Wulfgar’s eyes. ‘Always welcome under my roof.’

‘What was that about?’ Ednoth asked, as they rode out through the gates. ‘Your black eye’s coming up nicely, by the way.’

Wulfgar stroked the puffy skin around his eye, wincing as he did so. ‘It is a little tender,’ he admitted. What had Ednoth asked? ‘Oh, Heremod suggested someone to whom we could speak in Leicester. I thought we could plausibly claim to be interested in buying pottery to trade south, like the ware Heremod had on his table. He recommended a man called Gunnar, at the Wave-Serpent – that sounds like an ale-house. And the man’s a Dane, by his name.’