What should have made us wary was the fact that the minster’s great door wasn’t locked. Instead we just took it for a piece of good fortune and assumed the canons must have forgotten to secure it in their haste to get away.
Although they’d only recently established themselves at Rypum, the church there belonged to an earlier time. The plaster was crumbling away from its cracked walls; its roof was missing several tiles. And, because it was old, it was dark, with a row of narrow scraped-horn slits high up along each side that even on a sunny day failed to let in much light. Halfdan dug out the oil lantern from his pack and set about lighting it. He always had one, since he needed light to be able to talk to the rest of us, reliant on his signs as he was.
He went first. Barely had he taken three paces inside when he stopped. We soon saw why. The light the lantern gave was feeble, but it was enough. In front of us, laid out on a sheet on the floor, were gilded candlesticks and serving platters, silver chalices, pyxes, spoons and knives all engraved with the christogram. By the wall stood a great ironbound chest upon which rested a bundle of embroidered vestments and wall hangings and altar cloths, some woven with threads of gold. On the altar was a jewel-studded relic house like the one Bishop Leofgar had brought with him on his visit to our manor all those years ago, only not quite as large.
And a great golden-panelled book. Yes, this one, here.
It was so much treasure that I knew at a glance we would struggle to carry it all. But all laid out, there for the taking – it was that easy. We were so astounded we just stood there for long moments, not saying anything; we didn’t know even where to begin. Even I’d never seen more than a fraction of it, and I’d been inside that church so many times. I could only guess the dean, sanctimonious miser that he was, had kept it locked up somewhere out of sight, but that didn’t explain what it was all doing here.
To be frank I didn’t care. All I could think was that it must be God’s wish that we should have all this, so that we might save it from the Normans. After all my doubts, here was proof that he existed and was watching over us. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Why would he leave it to us? To me? But that’s the first thing that came to my mind.
Sihtric whooped with delight. Gytha’s eyes were wide, her mouth agape. Wulfnoth was grinning from ear to ear, his teeth flashing in the lantern light. He told Cuffa and Cudda to find something to put it all in, and they went out to our horses at the back of the church where it nearly abutted the dean’s hall. They came back shortly with four large sacks and straight away we started filling them, armfuls at a time, clattering and clinking and making a din loud enough to wake the dead.
We were so busy and so noisy that we didn’t hear the voices approaching. Not until it was too late, until they were right outside the church door.
At once we froze.
‘Is someone there?’ we heard one of them say, and I thought I recognised his voice. ‘Father Osbert? We brought the cart, just like you asked—’
The door swung open. A boy holding a torch entered, solemn-looking, as he always was. Plegmund the Pious. Behind him was another boy, short and round, and behind him another with a square face that even in the flickering light I could see was a mass of blotches. Hedda. Wiglaf.
They couldn’t have recognised me; I was near the back of the church, in the shadows by the altar, with a candlestick in one hand and a sack in the other. The boys stood as still as stone, staring at us, and we stared back.
Wiglaf was the first to find his voice. ‘It’s you,’ he said, almost breathless. ‘You’re the ones who attacked us. You’re the ones who took our master hostage.’
At once he began backing away. So did Hedda.
Plegmund, though, stood his ground. He fixed his gaze on Wulfnoth. ‘You killed him. You killed Master Guthred.’
The other two were calling to him, but he ignored them. Even I was silently willing him to leave. And this was Plegmund. The one I’d despised for so long.
Don’t stand up to them, you fool, I was thinking. Run, just run. You don’t know what they’ll do.
Wulfnoth just laughed, and then the others were laughing too, and I shrank back as deep as I could into the shadows because I realised that the truth was about to come out.
‘Killed him?’ he asked Plegmund, and he was still laughing, as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. ‘You think that’s what we did? Do you?’
‘But the ransom. They said that we couldn’t, that we mustn’t—’
‘We didn’t kill him. Look. He’s one of us now.’
‘What?’
‘He’s right there,’ Wulfnoth said. He pointed at me, his outstretched finger like an arrow, nocked and drawn and directed at my head. ‘See for yourself.’
Would you believe that I tried to duck behind the altar? Still holding the candlestick and the sack, I bent over like some wretched half-man, as if that way I’d escape his notice.
Of course it was no use. He could see it was me, and he could see exactly what I’d been doing.