The Bone Thief (23 page)

The stall-holder shouted now.

Wulfgar heard ‘Help!’ and ‘Thief!’ behind him. He looked frantically up and down the rows of stalls, trying to remember the way back to the inn and that bag of redeeming silver. He had every intention of paying for his prize. But a crowd was already beginning to gather, blocking his view.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Get the port-reeve!’

‘Thief!’

And as he turned to run he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.

Fur Hat?

No.

‘What’s going on?’ asked a commanding voice, loud above the racket. Fifty people were trying to answer at once. The stall-holder and Fur Hat were both talking to the port-reeve, jabbering and pointing at Wulfgar.

‘What have you got there?’

Wulfgar looked down to see a corner of the book still poking out from the neck of his tunic.

‘Is that your property?’

Was there hope here? Wulfgar twisted, trying to see the face of the man who was holding him. Fifty winters or so, grey-haired with a greasy felt hat crammed on anyhow. Pouchy, tired eyes. English, by his voice. He didn’t look that strong but his hold was remorseless. And he had two watchmen at his back.

‘
Yes
! At least, I want to buy it – at a fair price—’

He found himself at the centre of a circle of faces, some excited, others hostile.

The port-reeve let go his grip and looked hard at Wulfgar’s face. The watchmen moved in.

‘I’ve not seen you before,’ the port-reeve said.

Fur Hat and the stall-holder both started talking again, expostulating in Danish so rapid that Wulfgar couldn’t understand a tenth of it, but he recognised some of the more appallingly obscene epithets his Danish pupils had thought it funny to teach him:
nithing
, Fur Hat was calling him, and
ragr
, jabbing an index finger in his direction. He felt his face growing hot, humiliation stoking his fury.

‘You wanted to
burn
it!’ he shouted. He was afraid he was going to start crying. ‘I won’t let you. I won’t!’ He cuddled the little book against his breast.

The port-reeve shook his head.

‘Let me see what you’ve got. A book, is it? Come on, hand it over.’ He held out a hand, coaxing, his tone of voice one you might use to a child. ‘Come on.’

Wulfgar looked wildly around him.

‘Come on, son. There’s nowhere to run to. Give the book to me.’

Deeply unwilling, slowly, using both hands, Wulfgar proffered the little gospel.

The port-reeve took it, respectful, in both hands.

‘I’ll have to hold on to this,’ he said, stowing it away in a pocket tied somewhere under his baggy tunic. Fur Hat and the stallholder both raised their voices in protest but he quelled them with a look. ‘Evidence.’ He turned back to Wulfgar. ‘And you’re under arrest.’

Wulfgar’s heart sank. What had he done now? This was a disaster.

‘That’s more like it!’ The stall-holder pushed his face into Wulfgar’s. ‘That’ll teach you, mucking me around like that.’

‘
Da
,’ said Fur Hat. ‘Take him to Toli. Teach him a lesson.’

‘I’m not wasting Toli’s time with a petty thief like this. He doesn’t quite look the full shilling, anyway. I’ll have him cool his heels in the watch-house for a few days.’

‘What about my property?’ said Fur Hat.

‘
Your
property?’ said the stall-holder.

‘You’ll get it back when I’ve had a look at it, and decided its value. Come on, you. Show’s over,’ he shouted to the crowd. ‘Nothing to see.’ He had Wulfgar’s arm twisted behind his back in that remorseless grip, one hand on his elbow, the other on his wrist. It was agonising. ‘You’re coming with me.’

Wulfgar was thinking frantically. He simply couldn’t be locked up for a few days, it was out of the question, but what were his alternatives? He didn’t know anything about the laws in Lincoln: in Winchester they could justifiably charge him with breach of the peace as well as theft. He started totting up the amount of the potential fine and groaned inwardly. This could eat a long way into Thorvald’s five pounds, never mind the travel expenses.

Damn
Fur Hat, he thought vindictively. God
damn
him. And that little book, still only inches from him, might as well have been a thousand miles away.

But it’s my own stupid fault. I castigated Ednoth for being foolish and headstrong, and now look at me. I should have just shut up and done what I was told to do. What I was told to do …

He swallowed.

‘Take me to Toli.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE PORT-REEVE SOUNDED
startled. ‘What?’

‘Take me to your Jarl, Toli Hrafnsson,’ Wulfgar repeated, in Danish this time and then in English. ‘I deserve a proper hearing. Take me to Toli.’

‘Are you mad?’ The port-reeve never paused in his steady pace, but Wulfgar did, dragging his heels and twisting against the hands that held his arm so firmly. The port-reeve pushed at him. ‘Come on, son, don’t make this hard for us. You don’t look like a troublemaker.’

‘Take me to Toli. You can’t call me a thief and lock me up just because –’ he jerked his head back in the direction of the stall ‘–
they
say so.’

‘You damn well look like a thief, running off with something you hadn’t paid for.’

‘It was a misunderstanding. Take me to Toli. I want a fair hearing. I know my rights.’ He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.

‘A
fair hearing
?’ The port-reeve cleared his throat. ‘Oh, you’re within your rights, but if it were me I’d rather have a couple of days peace and quiet in the lock-up than face Toli.’ He sighed then. ‘Much rather. Are you sure? This way then.’ His grip had never slackened.

They were changing direction, plunging into the muddle of streets behind the harbour. Wulfgar’s heart thumped, his thoughts a jumble. How, for Heaven’s sake, had he ended up here, begging to do the very last thing he wanted to do? But, no, he amended, not the very last thing. That would be going back to the Lady empty-handed. But in order to get the relics of St Oswald for her, he had to find a way out of the current trouble. The Atheling’s message was the one stake he had to play in this game.

But, he wondered, did he have to give Toli Silkbeard the Atheling’s real message? He had such dark suspicions now.

My Lord Seiriol, he thought, what are you planning? I’m so afraid it’s not in the Lady’s interests, even though she’s your cousin, and you claim to love her, too.

So, what to to do? Tell Toli Silkbeard something else, something anodyne, meaningless, misleading.

And then Wulfgar thought of the Atheling’s anger when he eventually found out. And he would find out, in the end, and Wulfgar the scholar could hardly claim to have forgotten those few, simple words. He didn’t want the Atheling as an enemy – about that, he had no doubts – and his heart quailed even further.

All the while, the port-reeve was shoving him through the mire of the streets, the watchmen in front of them forcing a way through the curious townsfolk. Wulfgar struggled to keep up with the pace, stumbling and getting splatters of mud up his leggings, red-faced, ragged of breath. It was not at all how he wanted to
present
himself in front of this unknown Jarl. They were fast approaching a big stockade with massive iron-bound gates and guards to right and left.

‘Wait here.’

The guards were very close, and armed with spears, standing under the bare branches of a towering ash-tree.

Wulfgar waited.

The port-reeve had a muttered word with one of the men, who nodded and turned to slip through the wicket gate, which stood ajar. The same guard came out again moments later and gave a brief nod.

The port-reeve turned back to Wulfgar, with a cheerless smile on his tired, pouchy face.

‘Your lucky day, son. He’s up and he’s broken his fast. Last chance to change your mind?’

Wulfgar shook his head.

‘Like I said,’ the port-reeve said to the guard, ‘more than a few pennies short of his full shilling. In we go, then.’

The smoke stung Wulfgar’s eyes. The Jarl of Lincoln’s hall was smaller than the Bishop of Worcester’s but he still had to squint deep into the reeky murk. Half a dozen dark figures were standing round the hearth-place where a fire was blazing. Wulfgar wondered which of them was Toli Silkbeard.

The guard behind him said something in Danish.

He caught, ‘
Englis-mathr
’ and ‘
Thjófr
’.

Englishman, he thought. Thief.

The port-reeve’s off-hand manner had evaporated. He bowed to the group of men, suddenly diffident, deferential, as he began to explain what had happened. One of them cut him off with an abrupt gesture.

‘Let me see him.’

Could this blond stripling really be the terrible Toli Silkbeard? He looked even younger than Ednoth, but from the way the port-reeve was twisting his hat in his hands, it had to be him.

Father Ronan had said he was young, Wulfgar remembered. I thought he’d be dark, Hrafnsson, the Raven’s son, but he’s fair as thistledown, fresh as a girl but for that shimmer of beard. He remembered Ronan’s explanation of the lad’s eke-name.
Never call him
Silkiskegg,
not to his face
… He realised that none of the Lincoln men had used it when speaking of their Jarl.

One of the guards shoved Wulfgar in the small of his back, and he staggered forward almost to Toli’s feet.

‘On your knees, thief,’ the guard said.

‘So, who is this little thief?’ Toli spoke over his head. ‘And what has he stolen, so early in the morning? Shall I hang him?’

‘You’re the law,
herra
.’

Toli preened.

Wulfgar swallowed. He looked up to left and right, and saw only amused faces.

‘My Lord—’ he began.

The port-reeve turned on him.

‘Who said you could speak, thief?’ He shoved his hat under one arm and foraged for the pocket under his tunic, eventually bringing out the little gospel-book. ‘This, my Lord, is what he stole.’

Wulfgar watched the little book pass into Toli’s hands with a despairing pang. The Holy Word in the hands of a heathen. He longed to speak but he didn’t dare interrupt again, not yet.

Toli turned it over, frowning.

‘Ah,
silver
.’ He looked up at Wulfgar. ‘Is this what you wanted, thief? Do you still want it? Here.’ He held it out, smiling.

Wulfgar, hardly believing his luck, reached out. His fingertips had just brushed the calfskin binding when Toli snatched it away, still smiling.

‘Come and get it, then!’

And, with no other warning, he tossed it at one of his companions.

Wulfgar stumbled to his feet. The man caught it in one hand as Wulfgar lunged, and threw it back-handed to another. They were laughing now, surrounding him, shoving him with one hand, throwing the book with the other. Faster and faster the little book flew, with Wulfgar, dizzy and distracted, turning on the spot to follow its path, always too late to reach out for it as it winged past him. It was the sort of game he was familiar with from his childhood, but now the stakes were all too high. Toli’s men feinted left then right, jeering and cat-calling, tossed it back and forth over the fire, skimming it lower and lower through the flames.

Wulfgar, heart-sick, stopped trying in the end. He stood, head bowed, at the centre of their merriment, waiting until they tired of their sport and dreading the prospect of their next game. He thought instead of Pilate’s soldiers mocking the Saviour, a crown of thorns, a purple robe, a reed. Queen of Heaven, get me out of this alive, he prayed. Why had he come here? The port-reeve had been right: Wulfgar should have gone with him quietly to the watch-house.

At long last, Toli, too, tired of the game. He reached out a lazy hand and plucked the little gospel-book from the air.

‘Silver,’ he said again. ‘I suppose someone should weigh it and find out how much it’s worth before I hang you, thief.’ He tugged a little knife from his belt and, holding the book in his left hand, began prising at the fittings.

‘I am no thief, my Lord!’ Wulfgar’s voice came out high, ragged, on the edge of breaking. ‘But an errand-bearer, from Wessex.’

And Toli stopped, the absolute stillness of a hunting cat, the moment before it pounces. The background hum of voices fell silent.

‘What errand?’

‘I need to speak with you in private, my Lord.’

And Toli Silkbeard laughed.

‘Very well, little thief. This had better be good.’ He put his knife away again. ‘Come with me.’

He sat down at the high table, gesturing his men to the other end of the hall. A waiting woman approached but she, too, was dismissed.

Wulfgar stood with his back to the hall. He could feel the whispers and giggles as prickles on his nape. The little gospel sat on the table between them.

‘Well?’ Toli tapped his fingers on the board, glanced at Wulfgar, and then looked down the length of the hall. ‘I’m waiting. Show me you’re telling the truth.’