The Bone Thief (37 page)

Gunnvor nodded then, all wide-eyed acquiescence, soft-faced, smiling up at him and pulling away at the same time.

‘I’ll do as you say, Toli my Jarl, though it cuts me to the quick.’ She waved a lordly hand at one of her horsemen, who dismounted and brought a bag of silver over. ‘It’s hack-silver,’ she said.

‘Scales,’ Toli commanded. ‘And torches.’

And then it was all a twilight blur of bonds being cut and Toli weighing out fragments of shining metal from Gunnvor’s bag, with Eirik hanging over the pans of the scales and sucking his teeth, and Gunnvor holding Toli’s arm and fluttering her eyelashes and vowing that his scales were out of true.

One of Eirik’s men tied the bags of silver to the saddle-bow of Eirik’s horse. Eirik turned back to where Wulfgar stood watching. His long-fingered hand came out and grabbed Wulfgar by the chin again, and he leaned in close, with a carrion gust of breath, and said, ‘I do not know why, friend of Toli, but you are the one who makes me angry.’

Wulfgar tried to pull away but Eirik’s grip was remorseless as winter.

‘I am letting you go now, to please the Jarl of Lincoln. But if I catch you again, be warned. I will kill you.’ Only then did he let go.

‘You’ll have to learn to run faster,
Ulfgeir
!’ Toli called.

‘Kill another’s thrall, Spider?’ Gunnvor said. ‘What kind of law is that? If you want a bit of fun, go kill your own.’

Wulfgar’s heart hammered. It was all he could do not be sick at the man’s proximity. Only when Eirik, and his three men, and their mule-train, had all ridden out through Toli’s gates into the dusk of Silver Street did he find that he could breathe anything like evenly.

Toli put out a hand and caught Gunnvor’s arm though her cloak.

‘Stay and drink with me, Bolladottir.’

‘Another day, my Jarl.’ She stroked Toli’s cheek with the back of her hand and smiled tenderly. Wulfgar had to look away.
She’s never yet smiled at me
. ‘I want to take my new purchases home and wash them.’

‘I’ve made you happy, Bolladottir. Now it’s my turn.’

She gave the Jarl a long, steady look. His face was unsmiling now and he held her gaze for a long time. In the end she bowed her head.

‘As my Jarl commands.’

‘Before dinner?’ Ronan muttered. ‘And with a hangover? Oh, what I would give to be young again.’

Wulfgar turned away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE THREE MEN
were settling themselves around the hearth in Gunnvor’s Lincoln house, adjoining her locked and barred warehouse by the river. Her old housekeeper brought fresh barley-cakes and new butter, and ladled out helpings of a rich, peppery broth. Wulfgar was dizzy with hunger, but for all that he found the food sticking in his throat.
Drink with me
, Toli Silkbeard had said, but that wasn’t what he had meant, was it? Not at all, not the way he had been looking at her.

‘Well?’

Wulfgar looked up from his pit of misery to find Ednoth glaring at him from a few inches away, his face still pale and set.

‘Yes?’

‘You gave away our saint.’

Wulfgar, caught unawares and with his mouth full, shook his head furiously, and tried to swallow.

‘What do you mean, shaking your head like that?’ Ednoth got to his feet. ‘I saw you. You gave him to that man.
Your brother
.’

Still gulping, Wulfgar said, ‘No, Ednoth, I didn’t. I gave Garmund the other one, the monk of Bardney.’

Ednoth stared for a moment.

‘I don’t believe you. Where’s our saint then?’

Wulfgar swallowed the last few morsels, and then said, ‘He’s with Leoba.’ How, he wondered, could this possibly be the evening of the same day? A dozen lifetimes had come and gone, surely, since he had thrust that little bundle of bones into her arms at dawn.

‘Oh, well done,’ Ronan said softly. ‘Well done, Wuffa.’

‘But where’s Leoba?’ Ednoth still sounded aggrieved.

A voice said, ‘I gave her some silver and sent her and the brats on to Leicester, to the Wave-Serpent.’

Their heads turned. Gunnvor stood in the dark doorway. None of them had noticed her pull the door-curtain aside. She showed her teeth.

‘I must say, you boys are running up quite a tab. And, what’s more, I’ve sent one of my thralls to the lambing pens at Hanworth to collect your horses.’ She came into the firelight, shrugging her hood back and unpinning her cloak as she came.

Wulfgar found himself scrutinising her face for evidence of what she had been doing, but she still retained her cool, creamy air, every silver pin and trinket in its proper place as far as he could make out.

‘Another of your thralls, you mean.’ Ronan’s tone had an acerbic edge to it.

‘No, just the one.’ She pulled the white fox fur from around her throat and came to sit down next to the priest on the edge of the sleeping platform heaped with lambskins. ‘This is cosy. Give me some of that bread, Wuffa.’

‘Another thrall besides
us
,’ the priest said, and a snatch of conversation drifted back into Wulfgar’s mind: the shadowy, scorched splendour of Leicester’s cathedral, and Father Ronan saying,
And my mother was one of his slaves
…

Small wonder then that Ronan had seemed so attuned to Leoba’s fears about thraldom and the risk of her children being sold.

Ednoth was still looking for something to do with his anger. He stood up abruptly.

‘But what was your brother doing at Bardney, hey, if you didn’t tell him? And how in the name of Hell do you know Silkbeard? Because he knew you.’ He loomed over Wulfgar now, balling his fists. ‘You’ve been lying to us.’

Wulfgar put his head in his hands and stared at the black mounds and orange caves of charcoal glowing in the hearth. ‘Oh, Ednoth. Think about it. If that had been your father’s son, at Offchurch, would you have confessed it to the world?’ He glanced up at the lad then but Ednoth wasn’t ready to help him, not yet. ‘Garmund’s my father’s son, yes, and King Edward’s man. I have no idea how they learned about St Oswald in Winchester, but it was nothing to do with me.’ He sighed. ‘Rumours must have been flying for months.’ He passed a hand over his eyes, gritty and stinging with hearth-smoke and weariness. ‘Maybe it was Thorvald’s fault, blabbing to all and sundry.’

‘We can hardly ask him the truth of it now,’ Ronan said, ‘but Leoba might tell us, if we ask her gently.’

Wulfgar gave him a grateful smile.

‘As for Toli Silkbeard –’ the name was sticking fast in Wulfgar’s craw and he had to swallow hard ‘– it was the Atheling. You remember, Ednoth, when we were leaving Worcester?’

Ednoth nodded, his eyes still narrowed with suspicion.

‘He asked me to take Silkbeard his regards. That’s all.’ Wulfgar crossed his arms over his breast and hugged his half-truths behind them.

‘This Atheling you talk about – who is he, exactly?’ Ronan was looking troubled.

‘
The
Atheling!’ Ednoth said. ‘Athelwald Seiriol – everyone knows him! Oh, well, if he asked you, you couldn’t say no.’ He sat down again.

Wulfgar remembered how dazzled the lad had been by the Atheling’s attention, back in the Bishop’s yard in Worcester. How long ago it seemed.

‘Ach, so that’s the man you mean,’ Ronan said thoughtfully. ‘Athelwald the Hungry, they call him up here. He’s been seen in Leicester. Friendly with the Grimssons. And now you tell me he’s on nodding terms with little Silkbeard, too.’ Ronan drew his grizzled brows together. ‘Would he have had greetings for anyone else east of Watling Street, now?’

Wulfgar could hear the Atheling’s voice:
We light the fire at All Hallows … Tell no one else
. The air in Gunnvor’s little hall was warm and close, but the words went through his mind like winter wind hissing through a dry thorn-hedge. He shook his head, painfully conscious of his duplicity. He leaned forward, and said softly, ‘Father, when we have a moment, would you shrive me?’

Ronan nodded.

Gunnvor rubbed her hands together, brisk and cheerful.

‘Now I’ve bought you all,’ she said, ‘what am I going to do with you?’

Ronan turned to her, a new heartiness in his voice that didn’t quite ring true.

‘Free us, Bolladottir, if you know what’s good for you.’

‘
Já, prestr
? I was minded to mark you with my thrall-brand.’

‘That’s not funny, Bolladottir.’

‘Why, you think I’m joking?’ She looked amused. ‘I’ve paid Eirik very good money for you three.’

‘You didn’t pay good money for me,’ Wulfgar said, trying to make light of it. ‘I was quite cheap.’
Five øre
. It still rankled.

‘Ah, I’ve got me the best bargain with you,
Ulfgeir
,’ she said, her voice still mocking. She sat opposite him, and he squinted at her through the hearth-smoke. ‘An oaf like Eirik doesn’t appreciate the finer things in life the way I do. I think I’ll keep you to sit at my feet and teach me English love-songs of a winter evening.’

Stay here? he thought. With her? Surely she was teasing him. Memories rose unbidden: the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips, defined by her damp linen shift. The dawn light. The song of the wren. Her strong, capable hands, sorting the bones. Some memories, he thought, will stay with me for ever, whether I want them to or not.

There was a subdued knock at the door. Gunnvor rose and had a muttered conversation.

‘The horses were gone,’ she said, turning back to the room.

‘All of them? Dub, too?’ Ronan asked.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Damnation,’ the priest said. ‘I love that beast.’

‘But I’ve got these for you.’ She nodded at her man, who came in and showed them what he held: two swords.

‘That’s mine!’ Ednoth’s delight was unabashed, the last of his bad mood put to flight. ‘How did you get my sword?’

She showed her teeth.

‘Eirik still wants to keep Toli sweet.’

Wulfgar had a worrying thought about the vanished horses.

‘Gunnvor, could anyone have followed you and Leoba, when you rode away? On our horses, I mean.’

‘I didn’t see anybody.’ She sat down again, next to Wulfgar this time, looking thoughtful. ‘We came back here. I gave her some food and a little silver and sent her down the Fosse, with my name as a surety. And then –’ she glanced at him with amusement ‘– I heard a rumour that you might be needing me in Silver Street.’ She gazed into the fire for a moment. ‘
Nej
, no one came after us. Maybe your horses have been taken to Bardney.’ She gave him another sideways glance, her eyes sparkling. ‘Shall I go back to Toli and wheedle for the horses, too?’

‘
No
,’ he said and stood up, stumbling away from her, his back to the room, appalled by the violence of his response.

‘Don’t you understand, Bolladottir?’ Ronan said, his voice savage. ‘He thinks you’ve been tumbling Toli.’

There was a long silence. Wulfgar stared unseeing at a row of bags of dried herbs hanging from a beam.

He heard a rustling behind him, but he didn’t turn. A hand rested on his arm, and he jerked it away.

‘Wuffa,’ she said. ‘Listen to me, will you?’ His shoulders tensed, as though in anticipation of a blow. ‘Little Toli might want to bed me,
já
? But that’s nothing compared to his lust for my father’s silver. Only I know where Bolli buried it, you see.’ She pulled at his arm. ‘Look at me.’ This time, still reluctant and angry, he obeyed her. Her beautifully modelled face was stern and proud, and as serious as he had ever seen it. ‘I may not be your idea of a noble and virtuous lady—’ He opened his mouth to interrupt, but she stopped him, pressing his mouth closed with her fingertips. Her eyes were
fierce
. ‘Do me the courtesy of listening, for once. My father earned his fortune on the whale-roads, sure, going a-viking up and down your coasts, and fighting your kings, and I’m proud of him, do you hear?’ She lifted her chin, the hearth-light sparking fiery flashes from her silver hairpins, and took her hand away. ‘No, Wulfgar, I’ve no ancient English, Christian lineage behind me. I wasn’t brought up to weave and spin and bake and brew and run a great household.’ He blinked at her, rubbing his own fingers over his lips, dazed. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I still will not throw myself away on trash like little Toli Silkbeard. Do you hear me?’

Wulfgar felt furious shame, hot and cold in turn, flushing through his veins. It might have been less agonising if Ednoth and Ronan hadn’t been there as witnesses. He felt as though his world was tumbling around him. He fell to his knees.

‘My lady,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry.’

He felt her fingertips on his head, stroking his hair.

‘Stand up,’ she said.

He obeyed slowly. When he was on his feet, she clasped her face in his hands and held his gaze. He felt as though she were surveying every last murky corner of his soul; it was a struggle not to turn his head away.

‘What beautiful eyes you have,’ she said at last. She leant forward and kissed him lightly on the forehead, between the brows.

‘Gunnvor, I—’

She was already turning away from him and clapping her hands.