The Bone Thief (38 page)

‘Nonna!’ Her old house-keeper emerged from behind the curtain, and Gunnvor rattled off a string of orders in Danish,
a feather-bed, a warm stone, lambskins
, before turning back to her new purchases. ‘You sleep here. It’s plenty warm enough.’

‘Keeping the creature-comforts for yourself, eh, lass?’ Ronan raised an eyebrow.

‘I’ll let my old Nonna share my bed. She earns her keep, unlike some of my other thralls.’ She wrapped her arms around her ribs and gave a little shiver, though the room was stifling. ‘How any of you could think I’d bed Toli…’ Her voice brisker, she went on, ‘If you boys can’t sleep, then you can spend the night working out how to pay me back.’

‘And what to do tomorrow,’ Ronan said.

‘Ah, tomorrow.’

Wulfgar said, ‘We’ve got to ride to Leicester and find the saint.’ His eyes widened in realisation. ‘But we’ve no horses. We must find horses. We must get the relics back at once.’

‘Nonna, find me a tally-stick,’ Gunnvor said. ‘I’ll sort out horses, Wuffa. Just add it to your bill.’

Ronan put his hand on Wulfgar’s shoulder.

‘Easy, lad. With any luck we’ll overtake Leoba on the road. They’ll not be going fast, her and the bairns. And if not on the road we’ll find her safe at the Wave-Serpent.’ He looked hard at Wulfgar’s face. ‘Don’t let your dreams bother you. We’re on the homeward run now.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

‘COME ON, LAD.’
The priest was sitting himself down on the end of the sleeping platform where Ednoth was still snoring, and he gestured to the floorboards before him. Gunnvor had not yet emerged from her curtained alcove but old Nonna was bustling around, readying their bags and cooking their breakfast bannocks. ‘It’s hardly hallowed ground, but it will have to serve.’

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.’ Wulfgar stopped, his tongue of a sudden too big for his mouth.

The priest had to prompt him.

‘What are your sins, my son?’

He took a deep breath.

‘I have – I have – Father, I killed a man. I stabbed him in the back.’ His lips were quivering of a sudden. ‘I murdered him.’

‘Was this for personal gain, my son? Or for hatred of the man?’ Ronan’s voice was gentle, the measured, impersonal tones of the worldly-wise confessor who has heard it all before.

‘Oh, no, Father. I didn’t even know his name.’ He clenched his
hands
together to stop them shaking. Those killer’s hands. Putting it all into words was making it so present to him again.

‘And the man you killed, would he have done you the same favour?’

Wulfgar thought back to that dark, muddy nightmare at Bardney.

‘Yes, Father. I think he would.’

The priest cleared his throat.

‘My son,’ he said, ‘the secular law would call your actions justified. Not murder. Not even manslaughter. But I am not the secular law. You have done a most serious thing in the eyes of God. Every man is His handiwork; no man is to be thrown away.’

Wulfgar nodded. The floorboards swam before his eyes.

‘Father, what is my penance?’

‘Is there nothing else on your conscience, my child?’

Wulfgar closed his eyes. Wasn’t that enough? But the silence grew, and grew. Outside he could hear an early blackbird piping up. He opened his eyes again and focused on the worn, well-dubbined leather of Father Ronan’s shoes. The familiar rhythm of the confessional began to reassert itself. What are my sins? Anger, yes. Pride, sloth, envy, yes. Lust, yes. A yoke of guilt and sorrow began to press down on his shoulders.

‘I have lost my temper several times.’ The next admission was harder. ‘I have been thinking about a woman. With bodily desire.’

‘Indeed,’ Father Ronan said dryly.

Wulfgar didn’t dare look up.

‘Pride,’ he said next, with relief. ‘The relics. I’ve been thinking about bringing them to the Lady. How she’ll praise me. The songs men will make about it. Me carrying St Oswald through the streets of Gloucester, both of us in purple and gold …’ It was
such
a beautiful vision, so hard to relinquish. ‘I keep thinking it’s all about me.’

‘And it’s not, my son.’ Father Ronan’s voice was very gentle.

‘No, Father. And that’s not all.’ He braced himself to confront the hardest admission of all. ‘I have failed to tell the truth.’
Tell no one
, the Atheling had said.
Tell no one else
. But telling a priest was like telling no one. The confessional was sacred and sealed, and his soul was at stake. He licked his lips nervously. ‘No, I mean, I
lied
. I lied to you, Father. The Atheling gave me more than greetings. For Toli Silkbeard, and for Hakon Grimsson.’

‘Just Hakon? Not Ketil, then?’ There was a new edge to Ronan’s voice.

Wulfgar shook his head.

‘And it’s heavy on your conscience?’ the priest went on.

‘I don’t know what it means,’ Wulfgar cried. Ednoth lifted his head sleepily. He lowered his voice. ‘He wants the high-seat of Mercia. But I can’t believe he would do anything that might hurt the Lady.’

‘What is the message?’ Ronan asked.

Wulfgar’s whisper was almost too faint to be heard: ‘
We light the fire at All Hallows
.’

‘Riddle upon riddle. Would yon hungry Atheling’s belly be satisfied with Mercia, think you?’

‘I don’t know.’ He thought back to the Atheling’s dark, vivid, contained face. ‘I doubt it, somehow.’ He looked up at Ronan. The priest frowned, preoccupied. ‘Father, my confession?’ Their talk seemed to have travelled a long way from his sins. Ednoth sat up and yawned loudly, and Wulfgar wanted to get to the end.

Ronan blinked, and cleared his throat.

‘When you get home, dedicate three masses to Thorvald’s
memory
. For the man you slew, a year of bread and water every Friday. For the other sins, three Paternosters every day for a month.’ He got to his feet.

‘But what about my absolution?’ Wulfgar asked, baffled.

Ronan sighed.

‘It’s the poor priest you must be thinking me.’ He sketched a cross. ‘
Ego te absolvo
. Go and sin no more. Try not to stab anyone, at least.’

What was the likelihood of that? I’m going home, Wulfgar thought, where I’m safe. He’d never need or want to kill a man again, of that much he was certain. High time he said his goodbyes to Lincoln. Back to Leicester, meet Leoba and the children, and then ride hard as they could for home. He couldn’t wait.

Gunnvor had lent Ednoth one of her own horses – ‘I trust you, I’ve seen you ride’ – and had borrowed others of lesser breeding. Wulfgar found himself on an old slug, who proved impossible to goad into more than a trot, shuffling his hooves and for ever drifting back to plod in the others’ wake.

After ten miles or so he woke from a half-doze to find the other three far down the road ahead of him, and his own horse at a standstill, tearing up mouthfuls of grass. Yanking on the reins and belabouring the beast’s ribs with his heels achieved nothing. In the end he slid down from the saddle, meaning to grab the halter and see if dragging might work where riding had failed.

He staggered slightly as his feet hit the ground, and as he was righting himself he heard a faint sound. He thought at first it was the cry of an unfamiliar bird, or perhaps an owl by day, and he crossed himself against ill-luck.

But then the sound came again.

There was no house in sight, not so much a shieling, but the sound was unmistakably that of a baby’s cry, coming from somewhere close at hand. The others had ridden out of sight, and he was frozen by indecision – perhaps it was just some travelling woman and her child, and she had understandably made herself scarce when she had seen men on horseback riding towards her. He tugged again on the old hack’s bridle and succeeded this time in getting it to relinquish the succulent grass.

Then the cry came again, a dull, tired grizzle. Wulfgar didn’t know much about babies, but this one sounded very young and very unhappy. Surely it wouldn’t make that appalling sound if it was with its mother? The crying seemed to be coming from a tangled stand of hawthorn and hazel.

No harm in going to see.

He hauled on the bridle again and the sulky horse fell in behind him as they walked through the grass, starred with white and yellow flowers. Celandines, he thought. Daisies. The swallows will be back soon. Somewhere invisible above him a lark was pouring out its praise-song at Heaven’s threshold. But it was the crying that drew him on.

He was so intent on the sound that he failed to notice where he put his feet, and he stumbled heavily over something that tangled his feet, only just saving himself from falling on the damp grass.

A basket. No, a straw pannier. He’d caught his foot in one of the handles. The sort of capacious, saggy old thing that would sit very well on a mule’s flank, full of apples, or leeks, or carrots, to take to market. But this one was empty, apart from a crumpled length of dirty, ragged sack-cloth that trailed from its mouth. Without even noticing he let the horse’s bridle and reins slip from
his
fingers as he bent to pick the sack-cloth up. But it too was quite empty – except – what was this?

Wedged into a corner.

His fingers scrabbled at the tiny object and brought it before his eyes.

Smooth, brown bone.

The back of his neck and shoulders crawled with a spidery sensation. He longed to doubt the evidence of his eyes and fingers, but he couldn’t. This was the sacking that had held St Oswald’s bones, the very bundle that he had thrust into Leoba’s arms.

So, where was Leoba?

And where were the relics?

Had she stopped – to feed the children, or to clean them, or whatever you did with children – and dropped the bundle? Let the pannier fall off, without noticing? Where were the other bones, then?

What a fool he had been, to expect an unbaptised girl to know their value.

That crying was getting on his nerves. Why didn’t she come out of the bushes? She must have recognised him by now.

He held the one little toe-bone tight in his left fist as he searched, turning the pannier over with his foot, but there were no more bones underneath it, none lying in the grass round about. He searched in circles, moving further and further away from the pannier.

‘Wuffa?’ It was Ronan, calling to him from the road. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

He couldn’t find his voice, his distress was so great; he just stood there, his lips quivering, a terrible cold seeping through his body.

Ronan was riding towards him now.

‘I told the others I’d come back and round you up, lad. Do you need a sheepdog, lad? Hey? What’s wrong?’ He swung out of the saddle, leaving his mount to fend for itself, and ran towards Wulfgar. ‘Christ and all His angels, lad, what are you doing? What’s happened?’

Wulfgar, still voiceless, held out his hand. Ronan took him by the wrist and pried his fingers away from the little bone in his palm. He stared and crossed himself. ‘Is this what I think it is?’

Wulfgar nodded, and pointed wordlessly towards the thicket.

Ronan frowned at him, and then he, too, heard that faltering grizzle.

‘Oh, dearest God, what’s that? Come on, Wuffa!’

Wulfgar let the priest run ahead, and had to force himself to go stumbling in his wake. Whatever there was to see, he wanted Ronan to see it first.

When he rounded the thicket, frothy with blossom, he found Ronan on his knees. There was a bundle of cloth, which the priest first tugged at, and then leaned forward to turn it over.

‘Oh, no,’ Wulfgar said. ‘No.’ He tried to look away but he had already seen. It was the little girl. Thorvald’s little girl. He crossed himself in despair.

Ronan stood up, shaking his head, and walked a few more paces into the thicket.

Blinded by sudden tears, turning the little bone over and over in his fingers, Wulfgar followed him.

The cry was loud now. Leoba lay on her side. Wulfgar had seen her sleeping like that, only yesterday morning, curled around her children, keeping them warm and safe. He didn’t think she was sleeping now – the side of her head was a great clotted mass of blood – but she was still curled around the baby. Ronan bent down
and
drew the furious, red-faced bundle out of the pouched front of her dress.

Wulfgar held out his arms and Ronan passed him the bundled child. It was damp and it stank, but he held it close.

‘Hush,’ he said. What did mothers say? ‘Husha husha husha.’ He walked up and down. The baby went on screaming.

Ronan stood up, looking around the little hollow where Leoba lay; now bending over her again, lifting her body with great care and looking underneath. He said something.

‘Sorry?’

Ronan raised his voice over the baby’s cries.

‘She’s not been here that long. Her hands are cold, but there’s no dew on her for all the grass is so wet.’ He knelt again. ‘Forgive me, lass,’ as he insinuated his hand into the folds of her dress. ‘Aye, her belly’s warm yet.’

Wulfgar didn’t want to hear any of this. He looked back to the road to see Ednoth and Gunnvor riding towards them. Ronan walked back and forth, searching around the pannier.