‘I did,’ I replied.
I was expecting him to apologise, but he didn’t. There was no glimmer of remorse, no sign of gratitude in his eyes. Instead he merely nodded, his usual smile gone.
‘I owe you,’ he said simply, as if it were merely a mark on his tally stick, a weight needing to be balanced on his scales. And then he went without saying how he meant to repay his debt.
I wanted nothing more to do with him for a long time after that, and avoided him whenever I could. He’d brought me enough trouble as it was. Master ?thelbald returned a few days later, once the swelling and the pain had diminished. While the redness on his arm had gone, though, the redness in his face was deeper than ever. Every time I misremembered a passage or forgot my grammar he would instruct me to hold out both my hands and he’d strike me hard across the palms with his birch rod. Meanwhile Wulfnoth sat on the bench opposite me, his face impassive.
It was many weeks before he dared speak to me again. The leaves had fallen by then and the river mist hung over the church precinct as we made our way to our first lesson of the morning.
‘I have a favour to ask of you,’ he said as he scurried up alongside me.
He was mistaken if he thought he was getting any favours from me. I pretended not to hear him and quickened my pace, but he wasn’t about to give up so readily.
‘I know you don’t want to speak to me,’ he went on as he fell into step with me. ‘But find me after class, by the tree behind the bakehouse, and I’ll explain.’
There was an earnestness about him, a desire to please, that I found unnerving, and yet at the same time I was intrigued. And so as soon as the morning’s teaching was done I went to see what he had to say. I told myself that I was really going so that I could dissuade him from whatever folly he had in mind, but that was a lie.
He was waiting for me as he said he would be. He was clutching a leather pouch, which he thrust towards me as soon as I approached. I took it, more in surprise than anything. It felt like there were coins inside, and quite a number of them too, to judge by the heft.
‘I need you to get something for me,’ Wulfnoth said.
I asked him, ‘How did you come by this? Did you steal it?’
‘My father sent it to me.’
‘I thought your father hated you.’
That was why he’d sent him away to the cathedral school – to be rid of him. So Wulfnoth had told us when first he arrived.
‘My uncle, then,’ he replied flatly. ‘My uncle sent it to me.’
‘You took it, didn’t you?’
‘Listen,’ he said impatiently. ‘I haven’t told you yet what it is I want you to get.’
‘I don’t care.’
He gazed back at me, tight-lipped. He was hoping to appeal to my baser instincts, I knew, and I was sorely tempted, but his earnestness made me suspicious. Whatever he had planned, I wanted no part of it.
‘I’m paying my debt to you,’ he said. ‘But first I need you to do this one thing for me.’
‘Why can’t you do it yourself?’
‘Because you’re the one who has the keys.’
So it was something from the church that he was after. I reminded him they’d taken the keys from me after they found my hoard. Besides, if he reckoned I was going to risk punishment again on his behalf, he could think again.
He didn’t answer.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘what do you think will happen when they find me with this silver?’
They kept a close eye on me now, and I had little chance of being able to hide it from them. Besides, I wasn’t about to become a playing piece in his game. That’s what these things were to him. It was about seeing how clever he could be, and how much he could get away with, while making sure that others paid the penalty.
I thrust the pouch back at him. ‘Find someone else to do your work for you. Better yet, take that back to wherever you got it from.’