A voice behind me said, ‘What are you doing?’
I turned. It was Wulfnoth. All I could see of him was the fox-like gleam of his eyes. His breath was laboured and he sounded in pain as he hobbled towards me, his injured foot disturbing the rushes as he dragged it along the ground.
‘I’m leaving,’ I told him as I backed away, gripping the sack tightly in one hand while keeping the other free, just in case. ‘And I’m taking the treasure. Everything we stole from the church, I’m taking it. And you’re not going to stop me.’
He snorted. ‘Listen to yourself.’
I said that’s exactly what I was doing, and he asked me what in the world I was babbling about. All the while he kept coming closer, and I was edging towards the door, still holding on to the sack. At any moment I expected the others to wake, and then that would be it. But they didn’t.
Still keeping my voice low, I said, ‘I’m going to return all this to its rightful owners. I’m taking it to Lindisfarena, where it’ll be safe.’
‘You pious fool,’ he hissed. ‘I thought you’d put all that behind you. I thought you’d finally seen their lies for what they were.’
I told him I’d been wrong, and that this was wrong: everything they – we – had been doing. The raiding, stealing, extortion, blackmail. I should never have succumbed to temptation. I’d given in to my own selfish desires, and now I would pay the price, unless I redeemed myself, and that’s why I was going.
He said, ‘You can’t leave.’
I asked him why not, and that’s when I saw the soft glimmer of steel appear in front of him. Too small to be a seax. A knife.
He said, ‘Because I’m going to kill you first.’
I’d never seen him take anyone’s life before. I’d hardly ever seen him spill blood. As I said, that wasn’t his way. That was how he defended what he did. It allowed him to pretend that they weren’t so bad really. It made him feel better.
And yet despite all that, at that moment I had no doubt that he meant what he said.
‘Aren’t you going to run?’ he asked me.
I wanted to, but I couldn’t feel my feet; they were numb with fear, and I thought if I tried to run, I would only stumble and he would plunge that knife into my heart. Before I could answer, he lunged at me, thrusting me back against the wall with one hand around my throat, the other holding the tip of his blade up towards my eye.
‘I hate them,’ he said. ‘I hate them all. Men of God, they make me sick. But I thought you were different. I thought you were like me.’
And then suddenly I was in that place beyond fear. It didn’t matter now what I said, it seemed; in my mind I was about to die and so it all came flooding out.
I replied that I was nothing like him. That I never had been and never would be.
‘I took pity on you because I thought you were my friend,’ he said, ‘and this is how you repay me?’
We’d never been friends, I said. He was wrong. Maybe something was broken inside that head of his, I suggested. Maybe all those years of being trampled underfoot by his own kin, then cast out to fend for himself, had caused him to remember things differently to how they really had been.
To speak like that while he had a knife to my face was foolish beyond imagination, I know, but until the moment when he silenced me I thought that I might as well keep going.
I said, ‘You always thought you were so clever. Then, as now. But you weren’t clever at all. You remember, don’t you, that day when they sent you away from the school, back to your father?’
He said that of course he did, that it had destroyed his life, and that things had never been the same since then.
‘It was me. Your friend, Guthred. I was the one who drew those pictures on the church tower, who put the chalk in your chest so that they would find it. I did it. Me.’
He stared at me, wide-eyed. The knife point trembled.
‘What’s going on?’ came a tired voice from out of the darkness. Gytha’s voice. She stood and started towards us. ‘Wulfnoth?’
He gave a quick glance behind him, and I saw my chance. I ducked low and barrelled shoulder first into his chest. I wasn’t as strong as he was, not by a long way, but with his injured foot it didn’t take much to send him sprawling.
I heard him fall and shout out, but I didn’t stop to look behind me. The treasure still in hand, I made for the door, threw it open and ran outside. Whitefoot was with the rest of the horses in a larger barn across the yard. I didn’t have time to saddle him; I just heaved myself up on to his back and started riding. As I galloped away, I heard Gytha and Cuffa shouting as they emerged from the hall, and I think Halfdan was with them too. As soon as they saw me they ran in my direction, but I was already gone, tearing down the track, disappearing into the night.
If they followed me, I never knew of it. I didn’t see them or hear them, but I didn’t stop until I was sure I’d left them long behind me.
And that’s how it happened.
And now you know.