The Bone Thief (19 page)

‘Really? No? But they tell me, Bolladottir, that you are any man’s now, for the asking.’

‘Not quite,
herra
. I’m not yours.’

No Danish was needed to interpret the sound that came next – the sharp
smack
of a blow. Wulfgar, appalled, saw her feet stagger at the impact. But she didn’t fall – she recovered her stance quickly while Ketil was still talking.

‘Who are these
utlendingar
I’ve had word of? Do you know anything?’

Outlanders?

Us?

There was a pause. Then Gunnvor spoke, clearly and deliberately.

‘Nothing,
herra
.’

‘You hear anything, you tell me. Understand? I want to talk to them.’

‘I understand,
herra
.’

‘Be sure you do.’

Wulfgar saw Ketil’s well-shod heels turn, his guards jostling to follow. He’d still not seen the man’s face.

The door closed.

There was a long moment of silence.

Gunnvor’s voice broke the spell: ‘What are you staring at, you fools? You, sweep that up.’ The pot-boy appeared with a besom and began clearing away fragments of pottery.

Wulfgar crawled out at last.

‘Comfortable, under my nice table?’

He turned. Gunnvor watched him, arms folded across her silk-swathed breasts. The right side of her face was marked with red, angry against the cream of her skin, and, in the centre a bleeding cut, right on the cheekbone.

‘I – are you all right?’ He stared, horrified.

She put the back of her wrist up to her face and wiped the trickle of blood away.

‘He’s a vain man, our Ketil. He likes his rings big.’

‘I – I was protecting Father Ronan’s harp.’

‘Better protect it then.’ She turned away.

He bent to retrieve it. When he straightened up he saw, to his surprise, that the big Dane had invited Ednoth over to his table. The two of them were acting out their battle: Ednoth miming the upthrust of a vicious elbow into the other man’s throat, and the Dane cheerfully following up with an exaggerated staggering fall into the arms of his friends – a whole rough easy mindless world of men from which Wulfgar felt profoundly shut out. And it was only then that he realised just how drunk they all were.

Father Ronan put a hand on his shoulder. He saw Wulfgar’s frown.

‘I have you to thank for looking after Uhtsang. The harp. It’s her name.’

Wulfgar nodded, thinking it over. It was a good name.
Uhtsang
. Matins. Or the dawn chorus, perhaps.

‘Did you name her?’ he asked, as he gave the harp into the priest’s arms.

‘Not I. I’ll give you the story some other time.’ He tucked the harp away safely, then turned back to Wulfgar. ‘Now,’ the priest murmured, ‘I want you to tell me the real reason you two have landed in Leicester.’

Wulfgar pulled back sharply and looked at him, startled.

The priest just grinned.

‘I’ve whittled down my list of possibilities.’ He ticked them off on his fingers: ‘Now, are you subdeacons, smugglers, slave-dealers, swords for hire or spies? Tell me, go on – then we can decide how much you need to tell Ketil Scar when you pay your respects to him tomorrow.’

Wulfgar, sick of a sudden at the prospect of facing Ketil, opened his lips to say
pottery merchants
but the lying syllables wouldn’t come out, not in the face of that knowing and patient gaze. He
glanced
across to Ednoth, but there would be no support coming from that newly cheerful quarter.

The priest’s eyes followed Wulfgar’s, and he smiled.

‘Boys,’ he said, shaking his head as he tucked the harp into her bag.

That sympathetic one word was enough. Wulfgar felt a great urge to unburden himself to this understanding man but he could not. A tidal wave of exhaustion washed over him. It must have shown in his face.

‘Later then,’ the priest said. ‘Let’s get you to bed. I’ll come back for yon lad.’

Wulfgar began to haul himself to his feet, muffling a yawn, looking at Gunnvor. He wanted to say goodbye, to thank her for her hospitality, to ask forgiveness on Ednoth’s behalf for the trouble they’d brought her.

I can’t approve of her, he thought wearily, but she’s been very kind. He half-wished he were really interested in dealing in pottery, so that they could have that later conversation she’d promised him.

But she wasn’t looking at him.

He followed her gaze.

The fox-haired man he’d noticed in the congregation at St Margaret’s was making his way towards them.

‘Orm Ormsson, as I live and breathe,’ he heard her saying. She sounded none too pleased.

‘Gunnvor Cat’s-Eyes.’ He lifted her hand to his lips and paused, looking at the smear of blood on the back and then the gash on her cheekbone. ‘Did you meet someone with sharper claws, little cat?’

She ignored his question.

‘May I join you?’ His accent came from the same stable as
Gunnvor’s
but much stronger, a sing-song that sounded to Wulfgar as disarmingly comic as the man’s name.

‘Can I stop you?’

He crowded in on the end of the bench, blocking Wulfgar in, reaching for the jug. His smell was sweet, musky, foreign. He rattled with more gold than Wulfgar had ever seen on a single human being: several rings in each ear, numerous chains and beads and pendants at his throat, chunky braids of solid silver at each wrist. A toy-like axe, its blade no longer than a handspan and inlaid with exotic gold curlicues, hung from his studded belt.

‘You’re a stranger in Leicester, these days,’ Gunnvor said, sitting down and snapping her fingers for another jug.

Father Ronan caught Wulfgar’s eye: ‘
Soon
,’ he mouthed.

Orm Ormsson grinned, toothy but no warmth.

‘The Miklagard run. Over-wintered there.’

‘
Constantinople
,’ Father Ronan muttered.

Wulfgar nodded, impressed despite himself. He had thought Worcester to Bardney was a long journey. Another yawn overtook him. Whatever this Orm person wants, he thought, I hope it isn’t going to take too long. I can hear that pile of pallets in the corner of the presbytery calling my name.

‘Grikkland, is it?’ Gunnvor said. ‘Don’t I remember you bragging about some palace-quality silk you could get me? Something about a
friendship
with one of the imperial officials?’

He shrugged.

‘He proved less friendly than I had hoped.’ He looked across the table at Father Ronan. ‘You might say a prayer for his soul – he was a Christian.’

‘Did I see you in church this afternoon?’ the priest asked.

‘You did. Surprised, were you?’ Another grin from Orm Ormsson, revealing small, sharp teeth.

‘Nothing much surprises me nowadays,’ Father Ronan said.

‘Well, I hoped I might learn something.’

‘And were your hopes fulfilled?’

‘Not by what I heard from you.’ Orm Ormsson frowned, leaning forward on his elbows, his foxy hair falling forward. ‘There’s a lot of things about the Christians I don’t understand.’

‘I know that feeling,’ Father Ronan said, unsmiling. ‘What were you after learning?’

Orm Ormsson fingered the largest of the gold hoops through his right ear.

‘Saints. Shiny, shiny boxes, full of dead bones. What’s all that about?’

Wulfgar froze, his cup halfway to his mouth. Orm Ormsson wasn’t sounding remotely comic now.

Gunnvor took a long pull of her beer.

Father Ronan looked thoughtful, his grizzled eyebrows furrowing.

‘Well, Orm, unlike you – and me – the saints are folk of heroic virtue. When they die, their souls go straight home to God—’

Orm looked sceptical.

‘
Já
,
já
, if you say so. I’m not so bothered with their souls. What about their bones?’

‘I was coming to their bones,’ Father Ronan said mildly. ‘The soul is only half what makes a person. Soul and body come back together, transfigured, at the end of time. And so that power resides in saints’ bodies, as well.’

Orm leaned back, eyebrows raised.

‘Hear me out,’ the priest said. ‘And anything which has been
part
of a saint, owned by a saint, even touched by a saint, can invoke that virtue. A relic is like a – a bell you can ring, to get the saint’s ear. And the saints plead for us to God, if they choose.’

Orm had already started shaking his head while the priest was still speaking. ‘But what is so special about their bones? What do they
look
like, out of their boxes?’

‘I’ve told you.’

‘You trying to hide something from me?’ Orm asked, raising his eyebrows.

‘Why are you, of all people, worrying about the Christians’ little gods?’ Gunnvor asked.

‘She only does it to annoy us,’ Father Ronan muttered. ‘She knows perfectly well that the saints aren’t gods.’

Wulfgar was concentrating so hard on Orm that he barely heard him.

Now the trader was shrugging and rolling his eyes. ‘What do you think, Cat’s-Eyes? There’s money in it. You want to hear a riddle I heard in Lincoln?’

‘Go on,’ Father Ronan said.

‘When is a dead man a better bargain than a live one?’

‘And the answer?’ Wulfgar asked, his throat tight, not sure he wanted to hear it.

Orm turned and looked at him for the first time.

‘Hello, Englishman,’ he said. ‘I saw you in church, too. Very pretty, all in red and gold. The answer, Englishman, is “when he’s a saint”. A dead saint is worth more than a live slave, they say. Than ten live slaves, even pretty ones, if it’s a good saint. Even a little tiny bit of him.’ He crooked his little finger and waggled it. ‘Even without his shiny box.’ He took another long swig of beer.

Wulfgar felt sick. He forced himself to ask, ‘Do you mean there’s a market for relics among the Danes?’

‘Why does he call us Danes, this little
Englis-mathr
?’ Orm asked, addressing Gunnvor.

She shrugged.

‘They all do, in England. Perhaps they’ve never heard of Norway.’

Father Ronan was stroking his beard, looking thoughtful.

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that from your point of view, relics are the perfect article of trade. All their worth is in the eye of the beholder.’

‘
Exactly
.’ Orm rubbed his hands. ‘To me, nasty old bones – pick them up anywhere. To you, a saint. Play my counters right, flog bits of St Ásvald north of Tees and south of Watling Street. Sit back and tally my profit and watch the minsters squabble.’ He finished his drink and stood up, axe swinging, strings of pendants jingling.

Ásvald
, Wulfgar thought, frowning. It sounded familiar. Too familiar …

‘Orm …’ It was Gunnvor, her voice holding a note of genuine menace.

‘
Já
, Cat’s-Eyes. I know. The silk.’

‘Palace-quality?’

‘Palace-quality, but of course. For you, only the best. Straight from the emperor’s
ergasteri
and dyed with the purple.’

Gunnvor snorted at his departing figure.

‘He better keep his word. He owes me so much money, I’m going to have to do something about it one of these days.’

Father Ronan and Wulfgar were silent.

She looked from face to face.

‘Nothing too nasty, you understand. Nothing that a few weeks’ bed rest won’t cure. He’s had it coming for a long time, and my boys are gentler than some.’

But Wulfgar could barely hear her. Some dark angel had him in a stranglehold, one arm crushing his windpipe, the other gripping his ribs, great black wings blocking his eyes and thrashing his ears, breathing out cold. He had no power to resist. Only dimly did he become aware of the priest’s hand on his arm.

‘Wulfgar, are you all right?’

He couldn’t find an answer.

‘What is it? Come on, man, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

He still felt as though he were being choked. Somewhere the voice of reason was still urging caution, but something else – something stronger than reason – prompted him to tell the truth. He stuttered, ‘
St Oswald
.’

The priest shook his arm gently.

‘What about St Oswald? Something Ormsson said? Come on, Wulfgar.’

Slowly the dark angel was letting go. The red-tinged blackness began to fade from his eyes and he saw the fire-lit room again, the table, the priest’s concerned face. I’ve been wasting time, he thought desperately. Far too much time. He took a deep breath. If he had to trust someone, then why not this straightforward priest? He seemed an honest man enough, for all his crowd-pleasing bawdy. Closing his ears to the little voice of doubt still nagging at him, Wulfgar said softly, ‘Bardney. We’re going to Bardney. We’re looking for St Oswald.’

It was Gunnvor who spoke first – Wulfgar had almost forgotten she was there and he looked at her in shock.