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worried? Didn’t he care about the risks they would be running? Did he really see this journey as no more than his prescribed penance, irksome rather than dangerous?
    ‘Ednoth,’ he asked suddenly, ‘why did you decide to come?’ Better not to imply that the fists of the Bishop’s men were reason enough.
    Ednoth was quiet for a moment, an uncharacteristically pensive look on his face.
    ‘You’ve never been to Sodbury, have you?’ Ednoth asked.
    Wulfgar shook his head, puzzled.
    ‘My father’s a two-hundred-shilling man, you know.’ Ednoth’s voice was full of pride. ‘Our hall stands on the western slope of the Cotswolds. It’s the southern tail end of Mercia. You look down over the pasture – those water-meadows your damn Bishop’s after – and you can see the River Severn, and the Welsh hills beyond. Wessex is only a couple of miles behind us, and Wales in front. We have to watch ourselves, front and back. But we’ve held that land from the Kings of the Mercians for five lives of men.’
    Only half as long as we’ve been at Meon, Wulfgar thought, and my father’s wergild was twelve hundred shillings. He bit his tongue , though. He didn’t want to sound boastful, even if his father had been a king’s thane, valued second only to the King himself, and from one of the oldest of the West Saxon noble families.
    ‘This is us fighting back, isn’t it?’ Ednoth went on. ‘This is the start of the new Mercia, rescuing St Oswald? Making us supreme again. I want to be part of it.’ His young face had briefly lost its puppyish quality; he looked fierce and proud. ‘I’m a true Mercian. And the Lady’s my Lady.’
    Wulfgar nodded, thoughtful. In some ways, then, they weren’t so different, he and Ednoth.
    Jolt,
jolt
. Jolt,
jolt
. Jolt,
jolt
. At every lurch, Wulfgar felt the thud of his bones against the wooden frame of his saddle. The layers of woollen padding might as well not have been there. He wasn’t looking forward to a week in this saddle. The least St Oswald could do in return was to be waiting for them at the end of the road. St Oswald … His thoughts were questing this way and that, hounds on the scent, trying to remember everything he had ever learned about the saint.
    ‘What are you singing?’ Ednoth asked.
    Wulfgar was startled back into the moment.
    ‘Singing? I wasn’t singing, was I? What have I got to sing about?’
    ‘You were. Humming, if you like. Under your breath.’
    ‘Was I?’ Wulfgar had to stop and think. ‘Oh! Oh …’
    ‘What?’
    ‘It was that song about St Oswald’s niece,’ he said slowly. ‘She finds his body on the battlefield and reburies it at Bardney. You must know it.’
    But Ednoth shook his head.
    ‘If I do, I’ve forgotten it. What happens next?’
    Wulfgar swallowed.
    ‘She’s that Queen of the Mercians who …’
    ‘Who what?’
    ‘Who’s murdered by her own thanes, when – after her husband dies.’
    After that, they rode in silence.
    Wulfgar had been trying to ward off his darker fears by keeping pace with the Maundy Thursday liturgy in his head, measuring the time by the angles of sun and shadow. The chrism mass at the cathedral should be over by now, and the Bishop would be washing the feet of the twelve paupers. They’d be celebrating the institution of the Eucharist now, and now they would be ringing the bells for the last time until Sunday. He rubbed the top of his head absently, feeling for the palm-sized shaven circle that should be newly there, and wasn’t. He was just imagining the sombre ritual of veiling the crosses, snuffing all the lamps and stripping the altars, preparatory to the great and mournful solemnities of Good Friday when Ednoth broke into his reverie.
    ‘Do you want to hear a riddle?’
    He jumped violently.
    ‘What did you say?’
    ‘You’ll never guess.’ Ednoth grinned. ‘I’m long and hard and hairy at one end, and I make maidens weep – who am I?’
    Wulfgar remembered this sort of thing all too