The Bone Thief (35 page)

Eirik’s head swung round to find one of the men who had been guarding them. ‘Search their bags.’ It didn’t take him long, up-ending and stirring with his foot. He found the Bishop’s silver, and handed it to Eirik.

‘Glad now I didn’t bring my harp?’ Ronan muttered.

Wulfgar nodded, only too aware of the Bishop’s ring and his little gospel of St John, both lying warm and secret against his breast.

‘
See
,’ Wulfgar said, wishing someone else would join in his storytelling. How had he ended up being the only spokesman of their little party? ‘We haven’t got it. We’re telling you the truth.’

Eirik looked up from inspecting the two little bags of coins from Wulfgar’s saddle-bag.

‘You have not got it here. So? You might have hidden it.’ He looked at the floor. ‘And what was she doing? Whose silver is that?’

Wulfgar cleared his throat.

‘Um, well, we brought that silver, hoping to buy the treasure, but your wife was just telling us that unfortunately she can’t help us, because we’re too late.’ Hollow, hollow, hollow.

Eirik looked out at him from those deep eye-sockets.

‘Then why is she putting it in her own kist?’

‘Well, perhaps she was going to keep it,’ Wulfgar conceded. ‘But she’s innocent of anything else, and so are we. We’ve all been tricked, by those men – those thieves – on the road.’ Go
after
them, he thought desperately.

‘Who were those men?’ Eirik asked.

‘Wessex,’ Wulfgar said shortly. ‘Silkbeard’s enemies, and ours.’

Eirik was silent a moment. Then he said, ‘And this famous treasure? What is it?’

His wife began to laugh. The laughter went on and on, more like sobbing all the time.

Eirik looked around helplessly.

‘Make her stop. Stop her.’

But the woman brought herself back under control without help. Wiping her eyes and coughing, she said, ‘Bones. Old bones. That’s what all this is about.’

‘Bones?’

She nodded.

‘But what about the gold?’ Eirik’s eyes narrowed. ‘People in Lincoln have been saying gold.’

‘Just bones,’ his wife repeated. ‘Dry old bones you’d not insult a dog with. And these men here have offered me –
us
– silver for them. Who’s the fool now?’

‘How much silver is here?’

‘Thirty pounds. For old bones! Thirty pounds and—’ She pressed her lips tight.

And then one of the guards spoke very quietly to Eirik, in Danish. His tone was tentative, even apologetic, his eyes flickering constantly over to the Spider’s wife. Wulfgar strained to hear, a terrible cold fear growing in his belly, but the man’s voice was little more than a murmur in Eirik’s ear.

He finished, and stood back. Eirik nodded, his face a mask. His wife looked half-furious, half-terrified.

Ronan stirred then.

‘We’ve nothing of yours, Spider. You’ve got the silver, and lost nothing that you value.’

Nothing but your reeve, Wulfgar thought. He looked down at his hands. Thorvald’s blood was still clogged thick under his fingernails.

‘You’re lying to me,’ Eirik said again. ‘If what my man tells me is true, those riders on the road have your bones, but you did the digging. And he tells me this is
their
money. If you wanted to buy my treasure, then where is
your
money?’ He turned to Wulfgar. ‘And whose blood is that? He tells me, my reeve is dead. Have you killed him?’ Eirik sounded frustrated, almost peevish. ‘Enough. This has gone on long enough. Take off your ring.’

Wulfgar blinked, hand at his collar. How had the Spider known about the Bishop’s ring? But Eirik’s attention had moved on.

His wife had known exactly what he meant. Her hands had gone to her own throat, gripping the thick silver ring as though for protection. Earlier Wulfgar had thought he had seen the traces of beauty in her face, but there was none there now. Her skin had gone the colour of curdled milk and there were beads of sweat on
her
upper lip. Wulfgar felt a sudden, unexpected pang of pity for this woman, who had been a child once. Free once, too, he thought.

‘Take it off,’ Eirik repeated. Slowly, as though some external force were compelling her, his wife dragged at the ends of the metal, and, slowly, obedient to her white-knuckled grip, the silver wire bent apart. She pulled it from her neck, leaving a red mark behind.

‘Drop it.’

It clanged on the flag-stones.

‘Nobody cheats me,’ Eirik said, almost lightly, ‘but especially not my wife.’ He nodded to the men in the doorway, and said something in Danish.

Wulfgar blinked. Had he understood Eirik properly?

The Spider’s wife had been standing as if frozen, but now she looked wildly from one side to the other.

‘
Nei!
I—’

But they were bundling her out of the door as if she were a ewe brought unwilling to her shearing. The sunlight sent long, thrashing shadows across the threshold, and then the doorway was empty and still. There was a brief silence, and then a wild, frantic scream, agony on the ears, ending in a splutter and choke, and silence again.

Eirik walked to the doorway and paused, looking out, blocking any view from inside. He stood there for a long time. Eventually he said something in Danish.

Wulfgar didn’t understand, and wasn’t sure he wanted to. But Ronan stirred at the words.

‘
No
. Give her a clean burial. The marsh is for unfaithful wives.’

Eirik turned.

‘And what is this called?
Faith
?’ His gesture took in their little party, the rug, the spilled silver. He sucked his teeth again. ‘Better she had been bedding another man.’

Wulfgar was finding it impossible to breathe. The casual way in which this man had given his orders, the readiness with which his servants had committed the horror, somehow all the worse for happening out of sight. Over and over his imagination painted in the missing details, too easy after the violence he had witnessed – no, be honest – the violence he had partaken of, last night. He closed his eyes. That long white throat bared in the evening light, the head dragged back, the knife … and the life-blood, soaking into her ill-kept cobblestones.

He blinked, and swallowed, and tried to pray for her. The Spider’s wife. She must have done something in her life that merited redemption. She must have suffered …

He’d never even learnt her name.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

ONE OF EIRIK’S
men hovered in the doorway.

‘
Já
?’

Wulfgar tried to follow, but could make nothing of it. He looked in hope at Ronan, who had drawn his breath in sharply.

‘What?’

‘They’ve gone to bury her. In the bone-garth. In the hole we dug last night.’ He crossed himself, and Wulfgar followed suit. ‘Dear Christ, Wulfgar, I hope our saint is worth it. There’s a mort of blood been shed over this.’

It was all supposed to have been so easy. Go to Bardney. Get the relics. Go home.

‘Is this Toli’s law, Spider?’ Ronan asked. ‘You can kill your own wife without cause, without trial?’

Eirik spat into the rushes.

‘You can kill your own thrall, priest. Any law allows that.’

Wulfgar found a ghost of a voice.

‘Not in Wessex,’ he said. ‘And not in Mercia.’

‘And you can kill the thief found with your goods in his hand.’ Eirik nodded at them, his face almost happy. ‘That’s good Army-law. And we still have Army-law in Lincoln.’ He turned to the four men in the doorway. ‘Them, now.’ He jerked his head at Wulfgar. ‘Him first.’

‘I told Toli where we were going,’ Ronan said evenly. ‘He’ll want to know if you’ve seen us.’

Eirik bared his teeth in a parody of a smile.

‘I haven’t seen you. Nobody has seen you.’

Ronan smiled. ‘But we have a meeting planned, Silkbeard and I.’

‘Now I know you’re lying,
prestr
,’ Eirik said again. ‘I was there when you left Toli. You said nothing to him. What would Toli plan with
you
?’

‘Can you be sure? Would he tell you all his plans?’

‘Toli doesn’t know you came here,’ Eirik said, but he sounded less happy.

‘You’ve profited by thirty pounds of best Wessex silver,’ Ronan said. ‘We’ve got nothing of yours, not
in our hand
or anywhere else. What kind of thieves does that make us?’

‘What about me?’ Wulfgar said, ‘I’m Toli’s
friend
. You saw us swear friendship, you just said as much!’

Eirik shrugged.

‘Toli swears and forswears as it suits him.’ He walked over to Wulfgar and looked into his eyes. ‘You want to risk it? You want to go back to Toli and see how he values you, compared to me?’

Wulfgar found himself flinching at the proximity of that gaunt, greyish face. Yes, it was easy to believe that Eirik was telling the truth.

But it had worked last time –
Take me to Toli
, he’d said, and escaped scot-free – and what alternative did they have?

‘You want good law?’ Ronan said. ‘Then respect Toli’s law, Eirik. You need to take us to Toli. Charge us in public.’

Eirik turned. ‘I should have had you killed twenty years ago in Dublin.’

Ronan grinned. ‘As you found then, I don’t kill so easy.’

Eirik jerked his head. ‘Tie them up. They want to go to Toli. Let them. I want to see them regret it.’

The three of them had their hands tied behind their back and were shoved up onto scrawny, dull-eyed mules, a rope tying ankle to ankle under the girth. Wulfgar thought with a sudden pang of his Fallow, abandoned at the lambing pens all day. She’d been tethered near plenty of grass, hadn’t she? Would she need water? How long before someone found her, and Starlight, and Ronan’s black Dub? One of Eirik’s men had a massive coil of rope in his hands, and Wulfgar watched him lash it behind his saddle. There was a dark puddle on the cobblestones at the horse’s feet, and Wulfgar suddenly recognised it for what was. The flies helped him to understand. He flinched, and looked away.

They made a strange cavalcade, Eirik riding in front with a couple of armed men and a third bringing up the rear. Wulfgar thought – prayed – that Lincoln could be no more than an hour’s ride, because this was agony. Although the mules went at no more than a shambling plod, he was lurched from side to side at every pace, his thighs clenched around the mule’s ribs, the knobs of its backbone digging into his groin. His bound hands scrabbled behind his back but there was not so much as the hem of a saddle-cloth to cling to. If I do fall, I’ll get tangled up with the mule’s hooves, and it’ll tread on me. I mustn’t fall. Think of something else. The coil of rope tied to the guard’s saddle caught his eye again, and the thought flashed across his mind:
that’s for hanging
us
. And, if Lincoln’s no more than an hour away, then does that mean my death is only an hour away? Toli wouldn’t hang a man he’d sworn friendship with, surely? He wouldn’t hang a
priest
…

He glanced across at Ednoth: stiff and furious and, it seemed to Wulfgar, terribly vulnerable.

‘Ronan,’ he hissed.

‘Eh?’

‘What’s Army-law?’

‘For outlanders like us? No court. No right to plead. We live or die on Toli’s say-so.’

‘No
court
?’

And then, Wulfgar thought, why am I surprised?

‘Shut up, there.’

They were splashing across the Bray ford by early evening. Heads turned, and a few people jeered. Boys picked up handfuls of muck to throw, with results that clearly satisfied them. Tied as they were, there was no chance of ducking the shower of filth without risking falling off.

‘And that would make the brats even happier,’ Ronan muttered.

Eirik did nothing to discourage the whoops and catcalls. Ednoth’s cheeks were fiery, but Wulfgar found he was past caring. It was only mud and dung. No stones. Or not yet.

Eirik and his men made them dismount outside the stockade in Silver Street and they staggered, still tied and hobbled, through the gate, encouraged by spear-butts and kicks. The gate closed behind them, shutting out the jeering urchins.

‘
Jarl Toli
?’

‘
Já, herra
.’

The guard turned to go inside, not to the hall as Wulfgar had expected but a small private bower set to one side.

‘
Herra
, the Jarl is not well. Can it wait?’

But a tousled, fair-haired figure stood in the doorway, rubbing his eyes, wearing only his fine linen shirt and woollen leggings.

‘I’m nursing my hangover, that’s all. What is it, my Eirik?’

Eirik jerked his head.

‘These,’ he said in English. ‘Thieves. Murderers. Found in my hall. I want you to give them to me, Jarl of Lincoln.’

Toli half-turned and called something over his shoulder. Moments later a sleepy-looking girl emerged from the bower with a basin of water and a linen towel. Toli splashed his face and dried himself vigorously enough to raise red marks on his fair skin.