The Bone Thief (8 page)

‘Wulfgar!’

Had the Atheling come to wish him farewell? It seemed unlikely, and yet he came straight over, without ceremony, leaving his escort at the gate, swinging out of the saddle in one fluid movement, the huge bird still gripping his glove. She gave a great beat of her powerful, silver-grey wings, more than a yard in span, and Wulfgar flinched despite himself.

‘I was afraid you might have gone already,’ the Atheling said. The stable-lad ran up to hold his gleaming mount, at which Ednoth gazed open-mouthed.

Wulfgar stepped back down from the mounting-block, one hand still on Fallow’s reins. He found the Atheling taking his other arm, drawing him aside, speaking fast and low.

‘Things are changing so fast, Wuffa, here and in Wessex. You’re right at the heart of things here. What do you think is going to happen?’

Wulfgar was taken aback by this friendliness. No one in Mercia called him by his boyhood pet-name of Wuffa,
little wolf-cub
. Not even the Lady – not anymore. What was going on?

‘I – I don’t know, my Lord. I’m only the secretary.’

‘Only! I’ll wager you hear everything. Go on. I want to know.’ The gyrfalcon gave a sudden shake of her head and another shiver
of
her wings, setting the bells on her jesses tinkling. The Atheling gazed fondly at her. ‘She’s eager to be flown.’

Wulfgar was finding it hard to refuse this intimate, smiling pressure. Hoping to deflect the conversation, he, too, stared at the beautiful, ferocious bird. He realised he recognised the hood, with its tuft of colourful feathers.

‘Is she yours?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t she belong to the Lord?’

The Atheling shrugged.

‘He has no need of her at the moment. Answer the question, Wuffa.’

Wulfgar swallowed.

‘The Lady will take over until the Lord recovers.’

‘Recovers? You really think …?’ The Atheling let his voice trail away delicately.

‘There is precedent. Even if –’ he crossed himself hastily ‘– even if the Lord dies. Mercian history is full of ruling queens.’ Astonishingly so, to someone from Wessex.

‘Queens regent, yes. But this one’s no Mercian, not by birth.’ The Atheling shook his head, his glossy dark hair glinting almost chestnut in the sun. ‘And it’s not as if she’s keeping the throne warm for an heir.’

‘She’s a Mercian now,’ Wulfgar said stubbornly.

The Atheling sighed.

‘Forget Fleda for a moment.’ His voice softened further. ‘Would you rather see me or my dear cousin Edward in the high seat of Mercia when you get back?’

Edward, rule Mercia? Wulfgar’s heart faltered. When he looked up again the Atheling was looking into his eyes intently.

‘I thought so,’ he said, smiling, ‘How long will you be away? A week? Think about it. Kingdoms have fallen in a day, you know.’

Wulfgar knew that only too well.

‘What is it that you want from me, my Lord?’ he asked carefully.

The Atheling’s dark eyes flickered.

‘I would be King of Wessex, if I had my rights. Failing that, I’ll have the Lordship of Mercia. And I want your support.’ The grip on Wulfgar’s elbow tightened. ‘I’ll need churchmen I can trust. Abbots. Bishops, even. There aren’t enough bishops in Mercia.’

An ox-cart laden with hay rumbled through the gateway. Its driver looked towards them and half-rose to bow in his seat.

The Atheling leaned in close enough for Wulfgar to feel the hot tickle of breath on his cheek.

‘I need someone to take a message,’ he said softly. ‘A private one, to friends across the border, in Leicester and Lincoln. You’re going there anyway. It’s no extra burden.’

Wulfgar looked at his shoes, conscious of a courtyard full of fascinated eyes. The gyrfalcon rustled her feathers and jingled her bells. Fallow snorted and shifted her weight to a different hoof.

‘Trust me, Wuffa.
She
does, you know.’

It was no more than the truth, Wulfgar knew that. But was the Lady right to do so? Did her cousin have her best interests at heart, any more than her brother Edward did? Wulfgar felt the world shifting beneath him.

‘I’m a good friend to my friends. You know that, Wuffa.’

It was the truth. But he was also known to be a bitter foe to those who opposed him. Wulfgar tightened his grip on the bridle. He felt a sudden overwhelming desire to know what the Lady would think, but there was no time to consult her.

Fate had indeed been very cruel to the Atheling, there was no contesting that point. And he had always been very kind to Wulfgar, even when there had been nothing obvious to gain by
that
kindness. There was a debt there which Wulfgar would never be able fully to repay.

‘
We light the fire at All Hallows
.’ The Atheling sounded on the verge of exasperation. ‘That is the message you need to deliver. Can you remember that? Find the Jarls. Hakon Grimsson in Leicester, and Toli Hrafnsson in Lincoln.’

Danish names.

‘Tell no one else. No one, do you hear me?’ He gave Wulfgar’s elbow a little shake. ‘Only Hakon Grimsson and Toli Hrafnsson.
We light
–’

‘–
the fire at All Hallows
.’ All Hallows, he thought, that’s the first of November. It was more than half the year away. Or did he mean a church dedicated to All Saints, All Hallows? Wulfgar frowned.

The Atheling prompted him: ‘The names?’

‘Hakon Grimsson in Leicester. Toli …’

‘Toli Hrafnsson.’

He repeated it without stumbling this time. Hrafnsson. Raven’s son, he thought. Something about it chilled him.

Leicester and Lincoln.

Mercian cities, once upon a time … with Mercian cathedrals, and Mercian bishops.

Not anymore.

Not for thirty years.

The Atheling smiled at him.

‘Good man! I knew I could rely on you.’ He turned to go, saluting Ednoth with a friendly clap on the shoulder, wishing them Godspeed as he went. The hooded falcon screamed, a wild, harsh sound that made the hairs rise on Wulfgar’s nape.

He noticed Kenelm, still loitering outside the Bishop’s bower,
watching
them shamelessly. Wulfgar, doing his best to ignore the Deacon’s curious gaze, climbed back up onto the mounting block. He grabbed his reins and a fistful of Fallow’s coarse mane, and heaved himself onto her back, scrabbling with his right foot for the other stirrup. The cobbles looked very far away but at least he had scrambled up without overly embarrassing himself.

‘That was the Atheling!’ Ednoth said, excitement infusing his words.

‘I know,’ Wulfgar said absently, still groping for his right stirrup with his foot.

‘Athelwald Seiriol!’ Ednoth was glowing. ‘He should be king in Wessex instead of Edward, my father says. Because he’s the son of the old King’s elder brother, the one who was king before him.’ He turned to look at Wulfgar. ‘Do you know him, then?’

Wulfgar nodded, still deep in thought.

‘Of course. He’s the Lady’s cousin. We all grew up together in Winchester, the cathedral oblates like me, and the royal children, and the thanes’ sons at the King’s school.’ So much older than me, away so often, first at weapon-training, then making his name in battle. But always someone to hero-worship. Always someone you wanted to trot along after, even after the old King named Edward as his heir.

Ednoth was bright-eyed, his hangover and his bad temper apparently forgotten.

‘Wait till I tell my little brothers!’ he exclaimed. ‘We saw him before, once, in Bristol. He’s famous, you know. In the battle of Farnham, when he was younger than me …’

But, as they walked their horses under the gateway and out of the Bishop’s courts, Wulfgar wasn’t paying heed to Ednoth’s cheerful babble. I never said yes, he thought, I never agreed to
carry
his message.
Light the fire at All Hallows
. What’s that supposed to mean? He chewed his underlip. It didn’t matter whether he had acquiesced or not, he realised. The Atheling took it for granted that he had: he was stuck with it.

The streets of Worcester were thronging with carts and barrows, flocks of ewes with their lambs, dairywomen with the first cheeses of the season, salt-wagons coming in from Droitwich. The market-day crowd made for slow going, but at last they came out by the east gate. The circuit of the walls was mostly in timber but here along the river-front – so potentially vulnerable to Danish attack – they were reinforcing the revetment in stone. The gate guards recognised Wulfgar, holding the carts back to let them ride through and greeting him in the Lady’s name. Despite everything, he was beginning to feel at home in Worcester. He had a role to uphold. People knew him in Worcester, and they respected him, even if respect seemed all too often to ride pillion with resentment.

He realised Ednoth had been asking him something.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The Bishop said you spoke Danish?’

Wulfgar nodded.

‘There are a couple of Danish hostages in Winchester. Handed over as part of a peace treaty when they were still little boys. Baptised, of course.’ Young devils, he thought. ‘I was teaching them to read and picking up some Danish in exchange. It was the old King’s idea.’ The boys had seen it as a punishment; he hadn’t learned as much as he would have liked. And they had thought it funny to teach him obscenities, without telling him the real meaning, until their sniggers had betrayed them. He felt his cheeks grow warm, remembering.

‘Go on, then. Say something in Danish.’

Nasty, spiky language. What can I remember?

‘They taught me some songs,’ he said at last. He cleared his throat, hummed a note: ‘
Skegg-old, skálm-old, skildir ro klofnir, Vindold, varg-old
—’ He saw the look on Ednoth’s face then, and had to laugh.

‘Is it rude?’ Ednoth sounded hopeful.

You and those Danish ruffians, Wulfgar thought, you’d have had a lovely time together.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s religious.
Axe-age, sword-age, shields are cloven. Wind-age, wolf-age
… About the end of the world. The Last Judgment, though I don’t think the Danes call it that.’

‘What do they call it, then?’

He frowned, trying to remember.

‘The sunset of the gods. Their gods, I mean. False gods. Who will die and not come back.’ And we’re going into the lands where those unholy powers hold sway, he thought with a shiver. It hadn’t really sunk in yet.

‘And did they tell you about their sacrifices?’ Ednoth asked. ‘Do they really hang people to their gods?’

‘I’m told they do.’

As chance would have it, they were reaching the edge of the Bishop’s jurisdiction. At the crossroads, workmen were busy on ladders, refurbishing the gallows for the new crop of sinners the shire-court would no doubt be reaping after Easter.

‘But so do we.’

He gestured at the gallows, that gateway to assured perdition, and his thoughts turned at once to his Lady, thrust so precipitately into Mercia’s judgment seat. She had never held the court before – never sent a man to his death. Could she bring herself to do it?

‘But that’s different.’ Ednoth sounded very confident. ‘They’re criminals.’

‘Is it different? Really?’ Wulfgar found himself genuinely unsure. ‘I suppose so.’

‘And do they – the Danes, I mean – do they really do that blood-eagle thing to your ribs? And lungs?’ Ednoth sounded enthusiastic. ‘You know, what men say they did to King Edmund of the East Angles? Flaying, and then—’

‘St Edmund,’ Wulfgar said reflexively, longing to change the subject. Wasn’t the boy worried? Didn’t he care about the risks they would be running? Did he really see this journey as no more than his prescribed penance, irksome rather than dangerous?

‘Ednoth,’ he asked suddenly, ‘why did you decide to come?’ Better not to imply that the fists of the Bishop’s men were reason enough.

Ednoth was quiet for a moment, an uncharacteristically pensive look on his face.

‘You’ve never been to Sodbury, have you?’ Ednoth asked.

Wulfgar shook his head, puzzled.

‘My father’s a two-hundred-shilling man, you know.’ Ednoth’s voice was full of pride. ‘Our hall stands on the western slope of the Cotswolds. It’s the southern tail end of Mercia. You look down over the pasture – those water-meadows your damn Bishop’s after – and you can see the River Severn, and the Welsh hills beyond. Wessex is only a couple of miles behind us, and Wales in front. We have to watch ourselves, front and back. But we’ve held that land from the Kings of the Mercians for five lives of men.’

Only half as long as we’ve been at Meon, Wulfgar thought, and my father’s wergild was twelve hundred shillings. He bit his
tongue
, though. He didn’t want to sound boastful, even if his father had been a king’s thane, valued second only to the King himself, and from one of the oldest of the West Saxon noble families.

‘This is us fighting back, isn’t it?’ Ednoth went on. ‘This is the start of the new Mercia, rescuing St Oswald? Making us supreme again. I want to be part of it.’ His young face had briefly lost its puppyish quality; he looked fierce and proud. ‘I’m a true Mercian. And the Lady’s my Lady.’