The Bone Thief (27 page)

The track wound slowly but steadily downwards; Wulfgar was surprised when he looked back briefly and realised how steeply the heathland rose behind them. Darkness was drawing in more quickly here in its eastern lee. His skin prickled in a chill and rising wind that came to meet them face on, and he took one hand off Fallow’s reins to tug his cloak more closely about him.

Ronan had stopped.

Wulfgar caught up with him, and asked, ‘Do you know where you’re going?’

‘Following my nose,’ Ronan said thoughtfully. ‘There isn’t that much room to farm along this edge of the fen, and we’ve done as Thorvald said. We should be close.’

They were; a few more twists of the track, the trees thinning, and Ronan reined in again, holding up his hand.

Ednoth nodded.

‘What?’ Wulfgar asked.

‘Barnyard fowl,’ Father Ronan said.

‘Lambs,’ Ednoth added.

The yard was fenced with a high ring of bundles of dead thorn, with a single entrance. Ducks and chickens scattered, raucous in their displeasure, from under the horses’ hooves. There was one low building, reed-thatched, with smoke trickling out where it could, a dung heap to the left and a lambing pen to the right. A mule was tied to a stump. There was a young woman coming out of the hut, a child of three or four clinging to her skirts. She saw the men riding through the gap in the thorn-hedge and stopped dead, then glanced wildly to left and right. There was nowhere to run. She fell to her knees. The little girl at her side began to scream.

Ronan reined in sharply and gestured to the other two to do the same. He handed his reins to Ednoth and swung down out of the saddle. He raised his empty hands. Without taking a step towards the woman, he said, softly, ‘Leoba. Your husband sent us. Thorvald. Your husband. It’s all right. I’m a priest. No one here is going to hurt you or yours.’

Slowly she got back to her feet, hushing the child.

‘Who are you?’ Her voice trembled.

‘We’ve come from the Bishop of Worcester,’ Ronan said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

She looked at him long and hard, and then did the same for Ednoth and for Wulfgar. Her little girl was still crying, clinging to her legs.

‘Thank God,’ she said. And again, ‘Thank God.’

She was shaking uncontrollably now, her arms cupped about her body, and Wulfgar realised she was holding another child in there, a very young one, pouched against her breast in a fold of cloth.

Thorvald’s son.

Father Ronan looked up at the sky. ‘Why do we have to live in a world where strangers mean trouble?’ he asked.

Wulfgar didn’t think he expected an answer.

There was nothing to do then but wait.

Leoba had some pottage simmering over the hearth: more oats and much less meat than Wulfgar was used to, but warm and welcome all the same. There was just the one wooden bowl, which they passed around, squatting on their haunches to keep their heads below the blue smoke that hung in loops and skeins below the thatch.

Their hostess said little, but Wulfgar found himself watching her every move. She thrummed like a plucked harp-string. Much younger than Thorvald, closer to Ednoth’s age. A dark girl with fine eyes, but her looks were marred by her thinness and the same harried air as her husband. She was like some marsh-wading bird, all drab plumage and bright eyes, dunlin or sandpiper. Both children stayed almost invisible, the little girl hiding in the folds of Leoba’s skirts and the baby tucked into her bodice, suckling, its fingers toying with a twisted silver ring that hung from a loop of blue yarn around her neck. Wulfgar caught a glimpse of blue-veined breast and moist, pink nipple as the baby quested, eyes closed and open-mouthed, and he looked away. An orphan lamb lay crying faintly in a basket.

After they’d eaten, Wulfgar got up and stretched and went outside to a late evening full of birdsong and the robust bleating
of
those new lambs who still had their mothers. He was finding the waiting hard. The lambing pens were right on the edge of the dry land. Beyond the thorn-hedge, hazel scrub quickly gave way to swampy-looking meadow thick with pink cuckoo-flower, and beyond that the reed-beds began. The wind was bitter, carrying the smell of damp and decay. The marsh looked mild enough in the afterglow of the sunset, but his flesh prickled at the thought of going down there in darkness. Three cormorants sat on a dead tree drying their inky wings, and a noisy arrow of greylags went over, low enough for Wulfgar to hear the beat and whistle of the wind in their flight-feathers. His eyes followed them flying high towards the fen, but even as he watched the geese banked and turned and flew over his head, circling the enclosure and crying as they flew, their wings catching the last of the light.

‘That’s bad luck.’ Ronan had come out to join him. ‘Or so my mother would have said.’

Wulfgar glimpsed a flurry of movement from the corner of his eye. Leoba, standing just behind them with the baby in the crook of her arm, had crossed herself at Ronan’s words.

‘Are you really taking us from here?’ she asked quietly.

Wulfgar nodded.

‘The Spider’s a bad master. He and his, they can’t tell a freeman from a thrall.’ She lifted her eyes to Wulfgar’s. ‘Thorvald and me, we’re old Bardney folk. Our kin served the monks before Eirik and his like ever came. But they don’t see we’re here along of the place. Eirik thinks we’re his. He thinks our bairns will be his to do as he wants with, when they’re old enough.’

She had all their attention.

‘And what would he do with them, when they’re old enough?’ Ronan said lightly.

‘What he’s done with others. Sell over the western sea.’

‘Dublin?’

‘Aye, happen.’

Ronan was silent a moment. Then he said, ‘We’ll get you away.’

‘You’re a priest,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Margaret-kirk, in Leicester.’

‘Would you christen my bairns? And me?’

‘Now?’

She shook her head. ‘In your kirk. Done right, not here.’

‘Done right,’ he said. ‘We might even find you some godparents.’

Ednoth had been busy unsaddling all three horses and rubbing them down with wisps of grass, and now he ran his hand up and down their legs. He got to his feet and came over.

‘I think Fallow’s got a splint, Father.’ He was speaking to Ronan but his tone was accusing and Wulfgar knew the words were intended for him. He didn’t know what to say; he wasn’t even sure what Ednoth meant, or how he could have prevented it.

Father Ronan sighed.

‘Let’s have a look.’

When he had felt Fallow’s front legs he nodded.

‘All this way on hard roads, no great surprise there.’

Now Ednoth did look at Wulfgar.

‘She must have been lame all day. But you’re such a rotten horseman, you wouldn’t notice, would you,
Ulfgeir
?’

Wulfgar found himself wishing Ednoth would just shout at him. He could deal with that. He thought, oh, damn it. I
like
that horse. She’s looked after me better than I’ve looked after her.

‘
Steady
,’ said Ronan. ‘It could have happened to either of your two nags, neither in the best condition, ridden day after day.’

‘Cold poultices,’ Leoba said. ‘I’ll see to them. She should rest but there’s little we can do there.’

‘You know about horses?’ Ednoth asked.

‘I know mules,’ she said, thrusting the baby at Wulfgar. ‘Take this, he likes to play with it.’ She pulled the loop of wool with its silver ring over her head and pushed it into his hand.

He’d never held such a young child before. It – no,
he
– was astonishingly light. Not knowing where to put the baby, he tried to copy Leoba’s stance, holding the swathed bundle against his shoulder. It felt as though there were a conspiracy against him, to make him look a fool. He wanted to explain everything to Ednoth but he didn’t know where to start.

‘Can I help?’ he asked Ronan.

The priest looked down at the baby and raised his eyebrows.

‘I think you’ve got your hands full.’

Leoba had found rags and comfrey and water, and she and Ednoth occupied themselves with Fallow’s legs, followed everywhere by the solemn, thumb-sucking little girl.

Ronan brought out his sword and began to sharpen it with long, slow strokes of a little whetstone, which he took from a leather pocket that hung at his belt.

Wulfgar was left with the baby, who looked at him with bright, round eyes, small pink hands clutching at his tunic, the swaddling-cloth stale with old milk. Wulfgar remembered again the son born last autumn to his brother’s house, and he dangled the silver ring in front of the baby to see if he liked it. He did, reaching out and gurgling. Wulfgar hunkered down over the little thing in the lee of the hedge, dangling the ring, careful that the baby didn’t scratch himself on the sharp, protruding end of the silver wire.

Ronan looked across and smiled.

‘Have you children?’ he asked Wulfgar.

He shook his head.

‘Little brothers?’

Wulfgar flinched involuntarily. Ronan doesn’t know about Garmund, he reminded himself. ‘All my siblings are older than me,’ he said carefully. ‘Wystan’s the eldest. He’s inherited our father’s estates near Winchester. He’s got a new son, but I haven’t seen the child yet. And my sister – she’s older than me, too.’ No need to go into further detail.

Father Ronan nodded.

‘Wife?’

‘No.’

The baby let a dribble of milk emerge from a corner of its mouth. Wulfgar found himself profoundly moved by the child’s smallness, his trusting way of clutching a finger in his tiny fist. Why did everyone keep asking him about getting married? He tried to find an honest answer.

‘I serve the Lady now. Maybe, if I found a woman to match
her
, one day …’ This conversation was making him uncomfortable. ‘You?’

Ronan snorted. ‘Kevin. My altar-boy, remember? At least, his mother’s always claimed he’s my getting, and I’ve no reason to doubt her. He’s a good boy. I’m happy to train him up to fill my shoes.’ He shrugged. ‘Wife? Not for a long time.’

Wulfgar ruminated on this. It seemed an over-casual arrangement, even for a priest without ambition. I’m in this man’s debt, he thought, I’m in no position to judge him. He forced himself to voice the nagging thought at the back of his mind. ‘I thought, perhaps, you and Gunnvor … You seem so easy with each other.’

‘Our lovely Gunnvor.’ Ronan shook his head.

Wulfgar frowned at him, concerned at the edge of bitterness in the priest’s voice.

Ronan cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘You feel it too, don’t you? Ach, she’s got the elf-sheen on her, all right. And she likes men to acknowledge it. And – be warned, subdeacon – she likes a challenge. But—’ Father Ronan pressed his lips together as though preventing his thought from becoming speech. At last he said, ‘She’s a law to herself, our Gunnvor. I did suggest I could look after her, a few years back when her father died, but she’s not such a fool as I am.’ He pulled out a bit of well-worn leather and started polishing the sword-blade. ‘Her father was one of Hakon Toad’s house-carls. Came over from Norway to join the Summer Army as a stripling, thirty years since. Hoarded a fair fortune.’ He paused. Wulfgar waited, his hands gripping each other. At last the priest went on, ‘Hard man, Bolli was, with just the one soft spot. She was his only child. He adored her. So did Hakon. His pearl of great price, our old Jarl called her.’

‘No,’ Wulfgar said.

‘No?’

‘She’s not a pearl. She’s more like – oh, I don’t know, carnelian. Or jasper. Something streaked with dark red, with fire—’

Father Ronan gave him a sharp look. ‘Easy, lad. That’s as may be. Anyway, Bolli died, oh, five, six, years ago?’ He eased his blade back into the fleece of its scabbard. ‘So how does a lass that age, with not a soul to call kin this side of the North Sea, hang on to her father’s fortune?’

Wulfgar’s mind blanked.

‘She doesn’t,’ he said.

The baby mewed and squawked, and he shifted it to the other arm.

‘
She
did. You might have thought she looked like a doe-faun among wolves back there in the ale-house, but don’t be fooled. Sharpest teeth in the pack.’ There was a note of sadness there that Wulfgar had not heard from him before. ‘Her father bequeathed her into Hakon’s protection, and the Toad was only too happy to oblige. He may be in his grave, too, now but he throws a long shadow. And Ketil would like to pick up what his brother had to let drop, but she’s not so sure. Not so sure at all. You’ve seen his temper.’

‘You’re saying Hakon never married her?’ Wulfgar felt as though the earth had shuddered beneath him. That exquisite, fastidious woman had been kept by a man known as the Toad?

Father Ronan snorted. ‘She didn’t marry him, you mean.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘Cold out here, isn’t it? Don’t mind me. Cat’s-Eyes has the right to use all the weapons God gives her, God knows. But these things have a way of turning in the hand, to bite the wielder, not the foe. That’s all.’ He cocked his head and frowned eastwards. ‘I hope that’s Thorvald. I’ve had enough surprises for one day.’

It was. Punctual to his time, the moon in the east just beginning to lift free of the reeds, he was leading a mule, burdened by what turned out to be three spades and a couple of digging sticks bundled up in sacking, and a lantern. As he came through the gap in the thorn-hedge, the little girl left her mother’s skirts for the first time and hurtled towards him with shouts of ‘Dadda! Dadda!’ He dropped the bridle and scooped her up just as she was about to go headlong – and then he pivoted on his heel, nearly overbalancing in his turn, to stare up the slope.