He introduced me to his companions, all five of them. To Sihtric the One-Handed, he of the bad breath, and to the fierce woman, whose name was Gytha. She was Wulfnoth’s lover. Then there was Halfdan, whose life he’d apparently saved many years before, though I never learned how, and also two dark-haired brothers: Cudda, short and round; and Cuffa, tall and thin. I got to know them well over the following weeks.
Of course Wulfnoth had much he wanted to tell me about what had happened in the nearly forty years since we’d last seen one another. It was as if we were children again: the way he spoke, it was like he wanted to impress me, wanted my approval just as before. Not that I was really listening; I was still a little bit in shock. My nerves aren’t what they once were. Wulfnoth bade us all sit and had the two brothers fetch some wine and bread from their packs for us all to share. I remember wondering whether we were their guests now or their prisoners. My students were just as fearful as I was. Their faces were white and they exchanged anxious glances.
They deserved better than me as their teacher. That’s no excuse for what I did, you understand, but it’s the truth. I was ill tempered and impatient, and often spoke harshly. I was no good for them.
I suppose Wulfnoth must have sensed my mind was elsewhere, for he gave me a nudge and then assaulted me with all manner of questions about how the years had treated me, and what had happened to the other boys with whom we’d shared lessons.
‘What are you?’ I asked him back. ‘Thieves?’
He frowned as if hurt. ‘Is that any way to speak to an old friend?’
Old friend. He kept saying that, as if doing so it would make it true. Obviously he remembered things very differently.
‘What, then?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘We live off the land, do what we can to survive. We take things sometimes, when we have to, or when folk are foolish enough to leave them undefended. When they travel the roads without armed men for protection. Whose wise idea was that, anyway?’
I ignored his question, because he wasn’t answering mine. ‘These horses, these fine clothes, they aren’t yours.’
‘Of course they’re ours. And so they’ll remain until the day when someone else takes them from us. That’s the way it works.’
‘So you did steal them.’
He didn’t try to deny it, but merely laughed. ‘This from the man who once sold pieces of the consecrated Host! Sold it to foolish country folk who knew no better, who’d hand over coins they’d taken years to scrape together. Is what we do any worse?’
I hadn’t expected him to remember that. My cheeks burned hot. My students, sitting ten paces away, turned their heads but I refused to meet their eyes.
‘Master?’ one of them asked. Plegmund, I think it must have been. I could sense him judging me, as so often he seemed to be, from beneath his thick dark eyebrows.
‘That was a long time ago,’ I muttered to Wulfnoth, keeping my voice low. He didn’t know, of course, about all my other transgressions over the years. About all the penances I’d had to undertake for my sins. Selling the Host had just been the beginning.
He was right, though. I was no better than them.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘tell me about yourself. You must have some stories of your own.’
I replied that there wasn’t much to tell. Certainly there was nothing I was very proud of, although of course I didn’t say that.
‘I’d have thought you might be a bishop by now,’ he said with a smile.
At that I gave a bitter laugh. There was no point telling him that it was only ever the sons of nobles who secured such offices. A country priest – a miller’s son, no less – had as much chance of becoming a bishop as a fish did of growing legs and walking on land, although miracles were known to happen.
‘With all that cunning of yours, I’d have thought that if anyone was going to climb to the top of the Church, it would be you.’
At once I froze. Climb to the top of the church. I tell you: those were his exact words. Had he guessed, I wondered, that I was the one who had chalked those pictures on the tower? Did he know that I had got him cast out from the school?
My mouth was dry and I couldn’t speak as I stared at him. But he didn’t look angry, not at all.
‘I’m joking,’ he said and laid a reassuring hand upon my shoulder as he chuckled. ‘Don’t look so ashamed. You shouldn’t feel bad that you haven’t got your hands on a bishop’s pallium yet, even if it means you’re still one step behind me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I did get my hands on his cushion, didn’t I? Do you remember that?’
Somehow I forced a smile. So he didn’t know. I could breathe easily again. I’d no idea whether or not he might harbour a grudge after all this time, but I knew that I didn’t want to find out.
‘How little things have changed,’ he said. ‘Even after all these years, we talk and share jokes just like before. We had fun, didn’t we?’