The Bone Thief (13 page)

But Ednoth seemed to have stopped listening several sentences earlier.

‘Did you say
pottery trading
?’

‘It’s very nice pottery.’

‘But I’m not a merchant.’ This seemed to have touched Ednoth on a tender spot.

‘No, of course not.’ Wulfgar tried to mollify him. ‘You’re a sheep farmer.’

‘I am not! I’m a warrior, or I will be. And I refuse to peddle pots and jugs.’

Wulfgar took a deep breath. Keep your temper, he thought, and I’ll keep mine. ‘But it gives us an excuse for being the far side of Watling Street.’

Ednoth exhaled in frustration.

‘We’re running from every fight, we’re not allowed to tell anyone what we’re doing, and now we’re pretending to be
pottery
—’

‘Ednoth, we’re a long way from home, and people are suspicious enough of strangers at the best of times.’ He winced at the pleading note in his own voice and tried to speak more firmly. ‘We need a reason to be this far east. That’s all. We don’t want to run any risks, or attract unwanted attention.’

‘I want to fight for the Lady.’

Wulfgar, his temper shortened by his headache and a troubled night, shifted round in his saddle to face the boy.

‘Ednoth, you are a penitent on a pilgrimage. Try behaving like one. You nearly got us into very serious trouble at Offchurch, not just me but everyone at the feast, including your pink-cheeked little shepherdess. What would have happened to
her
if things had turned nasty? Think of that for a moment.’ He turned to look ahead again, basking in the unfamiliar and satisfying pleasure of being in the right and having asserted himself.

Ednoth was silent.

The rain was getting heavier again, and colder, and the wind was rising. Wulfgar stole a glance at Ednoth.

The boy was huddled under his cloak, shoulders hunched and lips tight.

Wulfgar sighed, wrapping his own cloak more tightly around his shoulders, and stared between Fallow’s ears. The wind and chilly rain were full in their faces; the valiant little horses put their heads down and plodded on.

If the legions of Rome had ever laid their stone road along here, or Mercian lads on military service had hacked these brambles back within living memory, there was no sign of it. The going was sticky mud that sucked at the horses’ hooves, and Wulfgar found it hard work even to hold Fallow steady through the dense tangles of fresh green brambles and briars.

In stark contrast to yesterday they had encountered no other travellers for several miles now, nor passed any inhabited dwellings. This was abandoned land: pasture and plough-land gone back to scrub and weed; the coppices overgrown; the homesteads deserted, their roofs fallen. There were no children herding or
playing
, no women scrubbing clothes in the streams, no men toiling at the spring sowing. Wulfgar was no farmer, but he could feel the sadness of all this once-good grazing and arable, now inhabited by the brittle ghosts of last year’s docks and nettles. Holy Saturday, he thought. Hell is being harrowed. The infernal gates are being broken down, and the patriarchs, the virtuous pagans, the parents of us all, are being set free. But oh, Queen of Heaven, while your Son is liberating Hell, He is absent from this middle-earth of ours, and it feels very empty.

By the time evening had started to draw in, Wulfgar was chilled to the marrow, hands, feet and face numb. Earlier fears of another ambush by Garmund and his men had long been drowned by a more general misery. The greasy felt of his cloak was soaked and stinking like a wet hound. It would take days by a good fire to get it dry, and he could see no prospect of that. Despite their day of dogged riding, they hadn’t reached Leicester. They hadn’t even reached Watling Street yet.

The horses were exhausted, too; they had barely stopped all day and now they were mud-spattered up to their flanks, dragging their feet, heads down, pulling at the reins and trying to graze at every patch of grass. Wulfgar wondered if Fallow were picking up his own reluctance: the closer they got to the border, the sicker he felt.

Finally, he broke the sulky silence that had endured the whole day.

‘We won’t make Leicester tonight.’ His chilled lips could hardly frame the words.

Ednoth didn’t turn his head.

Wulfgar repeated himself, louder, and added ‘But, unless we’ve gone wrong, we can’t be far from the crossroads with Watling Street.’

That got the boy’s attention.

‘So close?’

‘Yes,’ Wulfgar said, relieved to get a reply. ‘We must be. But I thought we’d find a busy highway. Instead, it looks as though no one’s been along here for years.’

Ednoth pushed his cloak back and looked around him.

‘No, it doesn’t. This is just the new spring growth. We’ve been going due north east all day.’

He still sounds grumpy, Wulfgar thought, but at least he’s talking to me again.

‘Well, that’s a relief.’ Wulfgar said pacifically, ‘I’m glad you’re here, Ednoth. I’m sure I’d get lost on my own.’

‘Do you want to hear a riddle?’ Ednoth asked in a more cheerful voice.

No, Wulfgar thought, and this is hardly the moment, but I don’t want to rub you up the wrong way again.

‘Go on, then.’

Ednoth chuckled.

‘I am the creature without a bone, and when the cunning maiden strokes me under the cloth, I rise – who am I?’

‘Bread dough.’ Wulfgar replied wearily. He peered ahead through the mist and thickening dusk, eager to forestall any further jocularity. ‘What’s that?’

A massive fallen tree lay across their path.

His heart plummeted further.

‘We
must
have lost our way. No one would leave that lying across a main road.’

Ednoth jumped down from his saddle and handed Starlight’s reins to Wulfgar while he loped along to look.

‘But this hasn’t just fallen,’ he called back after a moment. ‘The
branches
have been trimmed.’ He made his way to the other end, and Wulfgar could just make out the words he called back. ‘Yes, it’s been felled and brought here, not long ago. Look, the axe marks are still fresh, and it’s not lying next to a stump.’ He sounded puzzled. ‘Do you see, the road is much clearer beyond here? We’ll probably have to hack a way around this to get past it, though.’

Wulfgar looped Starlight’s reins over his saddlebow and walked both horses forward. The boy was quite right. He scuffed his foot against the mud and the moss, and the old stone of the road gleamed wet beneath.

‘Why would anybody do that?’ He raised his eyes ahead. ‘Ednoth, look. That must be Watling Street, there.’

Beyond the fallen tree, the road ran on up the ridge in a tangle of greenery, but only a little way ahead a space that he had taken at first for a small clearing could now be seen to open up left and right. Ragged-winged rooks rose in a sudden flurry of cawing from their nest-building in a stand of elms.

‘Come on, let’s get going.’ He found himself eager to see the legendary boundary-road for himself, now that they were there and they had no choice.

But Ednoth wasn’t listening. He had his face lifted to the damp breeze.

‘Can you smell woodsmoke?’

Wulfgar shook his head.

The boy still sniffled, pulling a face.

‘Woodsmoke, and a dung heap. First sign of life all day! Perhaps there’s someone we could find shelter with?’ He swung himself back into the saddle.

A horse whinnied, but not one of theirs. There was a trampling
in
the bushes. And then a clear, carrying voice, shouted: ‘State your business.’

They were surrounded by riders, cloaked and hooded. The horses had come out of nowhere, out of mist and shadows, blocking the road ahead and behind.

Garmund
.

Wulfgar’s mind blanked with terror. He dropped his reins and held up his hands, anxious to appease whatever threat was coming.

No.

It wasn’t Garmund.

The riders only numbered half a dozen, and the speaker was a slight, straight-backed figure on a rain-darkened mount.

But it was far too soon to breathe again.

‘You heard. State your business.’ A gruffer voice this time.

‘We’re travelling, to Leicester,’ Wulfgar stammered. ‘Are we on the right road?’

One of the men laughed.

‘You’re still half a day’s ride from Leicester,’ the first speaker said. ‘This is the High Cross, and we are collecting the tolls.’ It was a clear voice, perfect English but with something unfamiliar and musical about the vowels.

‘Tolls?’ Ednoth said.

Wulfgar tensed, hearing the bluster in his voice.

‘Whose tolls? By whose authority?’ Ednoth asked.

‘My tolls, my rights, my crossroads. Granted to me by authority of Hakon Grimsson Toad, Jarl of Leicester. Are you arguing with me?’

Was it amusement colouring that voice now?

They were clearly outnumbered, and Wulfgar didn’t think they were being threatened with violence – or not yet, anyway. He
prayed
Ednoth wouldn’t betray them again with that reckless streak of his.

‘We don’t contest your right to the tolls,’ Wulfgar said, calmer now that he knew he wasn’t facing his old enemy. ‘Please, let us know how much we owe you,’ he said with what he hoped was an appeasing smile.

The leader turned to look at him. A little toss of the head and shrug of the shoulders and the hood fell obediently back. It revealed what Wulfgar had begun to suspect – the leader of this band of brigands was a woman. No more than his own age, Wulfgar guessed. She had been bare-headed beneath the hood, her dark hair tightly braided and coiled. The details of her face were blurred in the dusk, but he was struck by her eyebrows, flaring up and out to left and right, giving her the look of some imperious predator.

And he and Ednoth seemed to be her prey.

She didn’t return his smile.

‘A man of sense. Good. A shilling from each of you.’

One of the men muttered something below his breath, subsiding into silence when his leader’s head snapped round.

‘
How
much?’ The woman’s self-possession seemed only to be feeding Ednoth’s outrage. ‘We’re exempt from tolls. We’re on the Lady’s business—’

‘Ednoth, be quiet.’

But the woman was laughing now.

‘No ladies round here but me, little one. Now, where’s my money?’

It was a hefty sum, but Wulfgar wasn’t about to argue. The coin the Bishop had given them was tucked away deep in his saddlebag, out of reach. He started to dismount. There was an instant
response
from the horsemen, a stir and a rustle that sounded ominously like the scrape of knives in their sheaths.

He stopped and, unbidden, raised his arms above his head again.

One of the men came forward, urging his horse with his knees and gestured for him to remove his cloak. He unfastened the pin and shrugged it off, letting it slump in a sodden grey mass across the back of his saddle. The horseman ran his hands over Wulfgar’s torso front and back, and nodded. Wulfgar swung his right leg wearily over Fallow’s rump.

And as he slithered down Ednoth came to the end of his tether.

‘Wulfgar, how can you let these people walk all over you? We’re still in Mercia, for God’s sake—’ but he wasn’t given the time to finish.

The dark-haired woman jerked her head, and said something fast that Wulfgar didn’t catch – something in Danish.

The man who had checked Wulfgar for weapons urged his horse sideways while a second man came up fast from the rear. Ednoth was still looking from one to the other when the first man pushed his horse hard up against Starlight’s right flank and got Ednoth’s arms pinioned behind his back. The other came in from the left and unbuttoned Ednoth’s scabbard from his sword belt, ignoring his outraged yells. It was swiftly done, by expert hands.

He tossed it across to the woman, who caught it neatly, half-drew the sword from its scabbard and examined both blade and hilt critically.

‘Good enough.’ She handed it back to the man, hilt first.

‘That’s my grandfather’s sword!’ Ednoth twisted frantically, slipping in the saddle. Starlight, ears pinned back, looked about to buck. ‘Give me back my sword!’

She shook her head.

‘Give it to me!’ His voice broke with anger.

‘I have the right to exact my tolls as I see fit.’ She nodded to her man. ‘Let him go.’

He looked across: ‘Wulfgar?
Wuffa!
’

But Wulfgar hid behind Fallow, busying himself with finding the money. His cold hands fumbled with the knotted strings. A sword could always be replaced. It wasn’t worth dying for.

He straightened up just in time to see Ednoth clap his heels to Starlight’s flanks and put him at the fallen tree. They cleared it from an almost standing start and vanished up the track. One of the horsemen applauded. Wulfgar thought he was mocking, but the woman nodded in approval.

‘
Já
, he can ride, your little friend.’ She turned back to her men and said something in Danish.