The Bone Thief (17 page)

The shadows were lengthening. Wulfgar, still humming the Alleluia, and a bleary Ednoth followed Father Ronan down a narrow muddy alleyway.

Father Ronan stopped abruptly in a small yard, two sides of which were closed in by a low building. The priest shouldered the door open and they followed in his wake. The Wave-Serpent proved to be a hive of little rooms, one leading from another, lit by torches and smoky braziers, the beams low enough for both Father Ronan and Ednoth to have to duck at times. The place was heaving, voices raised, and Wulfgar smelt the same tension that he had scented in the market-place earlier. They went on, following the priest, past knots of men jabbering at one another in Danish and English alike, until at last they came to a room where great barrels rested on their sides. A pot-boy crouched before one, filling a jug.

‘Wave-Serpent?’ Ednoth muttered in Wulfgar’s ear. ‘Beehive, more like.’

Father Ronan pushed his way through.

The ale-wife, a gaudily-dressed, tight-mouthed woman, was standing over the boy, her hands on her hips. ‘I can’t leave this place for a minute—’, they heard her saying but she looked round then, and Wulfgar saw her face soften as she spotted the priest. ‘Like a bad penny, you are, Father Ronan,’ she said. ‘The usual?’

It was the woman from the Watling Street crossroads.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HE WOULDN’T HAVE
known her by sight, not at once, but Wulfgar recognised her as soon as she spoke. No one could mistake that voice, throaty as a ring-dove’s, somehow clear and husky at once. When she looked beyond Father Ronan’s shoulder their eyes met and held. She nodded slowly, raising those swooping eyebrows. A flush crept up from Wulfgar’s neck, invisible, he hoped, in that warm dim light. He broke his gaze at last to turn to Ednoth. Perhaps the boy would not recognise her; perhaps he would remember no more than a blur of hood and cloak, veiled in rain.

Some hope. Ednoth’s hackles were rising even as Wulfgar turned, and, looking back to the woman, Wulfgar saw her mouth begin to twitch.

Then Father Ronan said, ‘Gunnvor, my soul, these lads have come a long, long way, from the deep south of the Angle-law, just to find you. Wulfgar, Ednoth, you said you were looking for Gunnvor, called Cat’s-Eyes, of the Wave-Serpent? Well, here she is.’

Gunnvor
, Wulfgar thought, shocked. Not Gunnar, but Gunnvor.

‘That can’t be right,’ Ednoth said loudly. ‘We’re looking for a man. Not her.’

‘Ah, so Heremod Straddler names
me
as his friend, does he? Well, that’s worth knowing.’ She laughed, low in her throat. ‘I did warn you he has some thirsty friends.’

Wulfgar, still startled, thought back to his parting with their host at Wappenbury, and Heremod standing at his stirrup leather, muttering a name. Both Gunnvor and Gunnar were so alien to an English ear; he could easily have misheard.

‘What are you all drinking?’ she asked. ‘Father Ronan, the heather ale for you?’

‘Tell them to bring a jug and a loaf, and come sit with us,’ he said. ‘Oh, and some of that sorrel cheese, lass.’

Wulfgar glanced at Ednoth again. His face had flushed dark red. Wulfgar touched his arm.

‘Come on.’

Father Ronan was already working his way back through the crowd to the main room, where, at his approach, a couple of men rose from one of the tables: ‘Just keeping it warm for you, Father!’

The priest laid his bag down and they all squeezed round. Wulfgar looked back to see Gunnvor Cat’s-Eyes coming towards their table followed by the pot-boy, who laboured with a brimming pitcher and four cups. The light was brighter in here, with a good hearth-fire in the middle of the room, and it was the first chance he’d had to see her properly. Still unveiled – not as much as a token triangle of linen to scarf her hair. Not too tall, but she carried herself like a queen, holding her small head high on a long neck that made Wulfgar think of the spike of a lily. Her face was
beautifully
modelled, with a small, firm chin and high cheekbones, giving her eyes a truly feline slant. But any impression of delicacy was countered by her high-bridged, eagle’s nose and those predatory brows, as well as her imperious manner.

She was dressed like an empress, too: thick black braids piled up the back of her head; silver trinkets tucked in among the braids and glinting at her ears; gold embroidered at the neck and wrists of her green tunic; more silver in the brooches of looped wire pinned to her shoulders; bright keys jingling at her waist; and a sleeveless overdress of some lush red fabric that shimmered as she waved at the pot-boy to put his burden down.

He’d thought her gaudy at first sight. But gaudy implied cheap. In the better light of the fire he realised that sumptuous was a better word. Even his Lady rarely dressed with such splendour. What was this woman doing presiding over a common ale-house?

Father Ronan beamed with delight.

‘Cat’s-Eyes, my love, this is Wulfgar, a subdeacon of the true Kirk and trained at Winchester Cathedral, no less. What a treat for me, on this Easter Sunday. And Ednoth, of Sodbury.’

Ednoth looked fixedly at the table.

Gunnvor glanced at him and raised her eyebrows, then caught Wulfgar’s stare and returned it, unsmiling, giving nothing away. He was the first to blink.

‘Any room for me on this end of the bench?’ she said.

He realised in a sudden panic that she meant to squeeze in next to him, and shuffled up as far away from her as he could. She sat down in a rustle of skirts and put her elbows on the table, pushing her green linen sleeves back, showing the smooth skin of her forearms.

‘Let’s have our drink, then.’ She raised her eyebrows at Wulfgar.
‘Welcome
to Leicester, Wulfgar of Winchester. And what might a subdeacon be, anyway?’

He had opened his mouth to stammer something when Father Ronan cut in.

‘Gunnvor, my soul, it’s an honourable and noble stage on the journey to the priesthood. Now, enough babble.’ He raised his cup, ‘
Christ is risen
!’

‘
Indeed, He is risen
,’ Wulfgar answered happily, and drank deeply, but he couldn’t help noticing that Gunnvor Cat’s-Eyes didn’t join in the toasts until they drank to long life, health and happiness. She was the first to slam her cup down again on the table and lean back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Firelight shimmered over the crisp red fabric she wore tight across her breasts and swathed around her hips, and Wulfgar realised, now that he could examine it at such close quarters, that it was
silk
.

Yards of it.

And not just any silk.

He took a quick, shocked breath. A red as deep as wine, thick-woven with peacocks and eagles. And such a
breadth
of silk – he’d only ever seen the like in the richest West Saxon minsters, for altar-hangings, vestments, palls for reliquaries … In Mercia, no woman but the Lady sported more silk than would trim a tunic. He stared; he couldn’t help himself. Where had she got it from, this ale-wife, this toll-collector, this – whatever she was? From some Greek merchant? Or, his jaw tightening, had it indeed once formed part of a church’s dowry? Plundered … He realised then that he had been scanning her up and down with fascination and he dragged his gaze away, face hot.

‘What’s the news?’ Father Ronan asked.

She quirked her eyebrows at that.

‘I should be asking you. It was past midday when I got home from my crossroads.’

Father Ronan frowned.

‘So that’s where you’ve been. Ketil noticed you weren’t at the wake, you know.’

‘You know how I feel about Ketil.’ Gunnvor shrugged elaborately. ‘I couldn’t stand seeing him peacocking about like that before Hakon was cold, that’s all.’

‘Really, lass? That’s really all?’

She nodded, tight-lipped. Father Ronan gave her a long look before sighing and turning to Wulfgar.

‘You two must have come along the Great Road. Did you meet any trouble?’

‘Trouble?’ he stammered, thinking of Garmund.

Gunnvor chuckled.

‘No trouble they couldn’t handle.’ She raised her eyebrows at Wulfgar again. ‘Though I did need to assert myself at times.’

The encounter at the crossroads came vividly back to him as he blushed yet again: his sense of the shifts and eddies of power, of Gunnvor wresting control, retrieving Ednoth’s sword, from her sullen and reluctant men by sheer effort of will. She reminded Wulfgar of his Lady, facing down the Bishop, trying to break in Mercia’s stubborn thanes, although the comparison felt almost blasphemous.

‘We’re very ignorant about Leicester and your ways,’ he said diffidently. ‘We gather Jarl Hakon has just died?’

Gunnvor and Father Ronan glanced at each other.

‘I buried him two days ago,’ said Father Ronan, ‘in my little boneyard at St Margaret’s. If you’d told me thirty years ago that
that
was going to happen!’ He coughed with what might have
been
laughter and took a long pull at his cup. ‘Him receiving the last rites, meek as a mouse – confession, viaticum, unction and all – and me, the Grimssons’ tame priest, to provide them.’ He shook his head. ‘Well, never mind that. Hakon Toad and his gang from Hordaland snapped Leicester up when Mercia fell apart, thirty years ago, and he’d been sitting on it ever since. Not a sparrow fell but he knew about it.’ Father Ronan raised his cup in tribute. ‘And now he’s dead, God rest him.’

‘His gods won’t,’ Gunnvor said.

Father Ronan shot her a glance, refilling his brightly-glazed cup.

‘You shouldn’t say that. He was very good to you,’ he said mildly, ‘and he made a good death.’

‘Straw death.’ She saw the puzzled frown on Wulfgar’s face. ‘What warrior cares to die in his bed? He can’t go home to the hall of the Spear.’

‘Hakon died a good Christian,’ Father Ronan said firmly.

‘That’s what you think.’

This time the priest ignored her retort.

‘And his little brother’s taken over,’ he said, ‘and straight away he’s stirring up the mud at the bottom of the pond.’

‘What kind of a man is Ketil?’ Wulfgar asked. ‘Is he a good Christian, too?’

Again, that wary glance. Father Ronan pursed his lips.

‘Ambitious. Wants to call himself King in Leicester, as that old war-wolf Knut is wanting to do in York.’

Wulfgar didn’t like the sound of that. He tilted his cup for more ale. It was good, strong, flavoured with an unfamiliar mix of herbs. He wondered what the Lady would need to know.

‘Should the Mercian levies be putting a new edge on their weapons? Is it that kind of ambition?’

Gunnvor shook her head.

‘It would be a good time, now, with your Lord bedridden. But Ketil needs to make his own grip strong, first. There are a lot of people here who don’t like him. If he succeeds, then,
já
, go home and tell them to get the whetstones out.’ She set her cup down on the scarred wood. ‘Now, why were you looking for me? We could have saved time, back there on the Great Road.’

How did she know about the Old Boar’s illness?
News runs fast; ill news fastest
. But, he supposed, she must hear everything, if she held the right to the crossroads.

‘Heremod showed us the pottery that’s brought in from these parts. Lovely stuff, bright glazes, like this.’ He held out his cup. ‘I said I could find a market for it in the south, and he said we should talk to you.’

‘And Gunnvor’s the one to talk to,’ Father Ronan agreed, ‘for a broad-minded subdeacon who wants to branch out into ceramics.’ The priest met Wulfgar’s eyes then, and smiled, his head lightly to one side, looking curious, inviting confidences.

Wulfgar wanted to change the subject.

‘Is it difficult being the only priest in this part of the world?’

Father Ronan caught his eye, seemed about to say something, and then shrugged.

‘Is it easy anywhere?’ He ran his hand through his wiry grizzled hair, leaving it standing up in a crest like a lapwing’s. ‘I baptise the babies, say the Mass, and hold the hands of the dying.’ His voice had taken on a resigned tinge. ‘I can’t get books, I have to bumble through half the liturgy from memory. I did have a grand gilt chalice and paten, once, but they were stolen. So I consecrate the blood of Our Lord in that old mead-horn – and I saw you raise your eyebrows! This isn’t Winchester, you know.’

Wulfgar nodded, slowly assimilating everything the priest had said. No, this wasn’t Winchester. It wasn’t even Worcester. He remembered the parlous state of affairs at Offchurch and – where was it the Bishop had showed him that letter from? Diddlebury, that was it. Just be grateful there’s a priest here at all, he told himself, and all the more so for one with a real sense of vocation.

‘What’s it like once you get north of here?’ he asked.

The priest eyed him sideways.

‘I can answer that one better if you tell me where you’re headed.’

How much did he need to know? Wulfgar wondered.

‘Lincoln, for example,’ he said, a sudden catch in his throat. He glanced at Ednoth to see whether the boy had heard, but he showed no sign of listening, still scowling at the table, picking with his nail at a loose splinter.