Sworn Brother (18 page)

One of the notaries passed a sheet of parchment to the archbishop. ‘Your name, Thorgils, is a pagan one, is it not? You are an unbeliever?’ Wulfstan asked.

I nodded.

‘Would that be why you attended the banquet at the huscarls’ mess hall the other evening? I understand that certain gross ceremonies were conducted during the course of the meal.’

‘I attended only as a cup-bearer, my lord,’ I said, wondering who was the informer who had told the archbishop about the evening’s events. ‘I was a bystander.’

‘Not entirely, I think,’ said the archbishop consulting his notes. ‘It is reported that at times you participated in the debauchery. Apparently you also enthusiastically joined in the chorus of a blasphemous and scurrilous song, which might be said to be treasonable and is certainly seditious.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, my lord,’ I answered.

‘Let me give you an example. The song noted here apparently referred to our noble Queen Emma, and repeatedly, as a Bakrauf.’

I stayed silent.

‘You know what Bakrauf means?’ Still I said nothing,

‘You ought to be aware,’ the archbishop went on unrelentingly, ‘that for a number of years I served as Archbishop of York. In that city the majority of the citizens are Norse and speak their donsk tunga, as they call it. I made it my business to learn the langage fluently, so I do not need my staff to tell me that the word Bakrauf means the human fundament, or in a more civilised speech, an anus. Hardly a fitting description of the wife of the king of England, do you think? Sufficient cause for the culprit to suffer some sort of punishment — like having his tongue cut out, perhaps?’ The archbishop spoke in little more than a gentle whisper. Yet there was no mistaking that he meant his threat. I recalled that he was famous for the virulent sermons he delivered under the name of ‘the Wolf. I wondered where this line of questioning was leading.

‘Do you deny the charge? There are at least three witnesses to the fact that you participated in the chorus and with apparent relish.’

‘My lord,’ I answered, ‘I was fuddled at the time, having taken too much drink.’

‘Hardly an excuse.’

‘I mean I misunderstood the meaning of the word Bakrauf,’ I pleaded. ‘I know that Bakrauf means anus in the donsk tunga, but I was thinking in Latin, and those who taught me Latin told me that anus means “an old woman”. They never said that it might also mean part of the human body. Of course I humbly apologise for referring to the queen as an old woman.’

Wulfstan, who had begun to look bored, suddenly became more attentive. ‘So Thorgils knows his Latin, does he?’ he mumured. ‘And how is that?’

‘Monks in Ireland taught me, my lord,’ I said. I did not add that, judging from his conversation in Latin with the notaries when I came in, my command of the language was probably better than his own.

Wulfstan grimaced. ‘Those benighted Irish monks,’ he observed sourly. ‘A cluster of thorns in the flesh of the true Church.’ He noticed the lead amulet hanging round my neck. ‘If you studied with the Irish monks, how is it that you were not baptised? You should be wearing a Christian cross around your neck. Not a pagan sign.’

‘I never completed the necessary instruction, my lord.’

Wulfstan must have accepted that I was not easily intimidated, for he tried another approach, still in the same soft, menacing voice. ‘Whether Christian or not, you are subject to the king’s laws while you are in his realm. Did those Irish monks teach you also about the law?’

His enquiry was so barbed that I could not resist replying, ‘They taught me — “the more laws, the more offenders”.’

It was a stupid and provocative reply. I had no idea that Wulfstan and his staff had laboured for the past two years at drawing up a legal code for Knut and prided themselves on their diligence. Even if the archbishop had known that it was a quotation from Tacitus expounded to me in the classroom by the monks, he would have been annoyed.

‘Let me tell you the fifty-third clause in King Knut’s legal code,’ Wulfstan went on grimly. ‘It concerns the penalty for adultery. It states that any married woman who commits adultery will forfeit all the property she owns. Moreover she will lose her ears and nose.’

I knew that he had come to the point of our interview.

‘I understand, my lord. A married woman, you said. Do you mean a woman married according to the laws of the Church? Openly recognised as such?’

The ‘Wolf’ regarded me malevolently. He knew that I was referring to Aelfgifu’s status as ‘the concubine’ in the eyes of the Church, which refused to consider her as a legal wife.

‘Enough of this sophistry. You know exactly what I am talking about. I summoned you here to give you a choice. We are well informed of your behaviour with regard to a certain person close to the king. Either you agree to act as an agent for this office, informing this chancery of what goes on within the palace, or it will be arranged that you are brought before a court on a charge of adultery.’

‘I see that I have no choice in the matter, my lord,’ I answered.

‘He that steals honey should beware of the sting,’ said the archbishop with an air of smug finality. He rivalled Edgar in his love of proverbs. ‘Now you must live with the consequences. Return to your lodgings and think over how you may best serve this office. And you may rest assured that you are being watched, as you have been for the past month and more. It would be futile to try to flee the king’s justice.’

I returned to Brithmaer’s mint just long enough to change out of my court clothes, pack them into my satchel and put on my travelling garments. I had come to a decision even as the archbishop set out his ultimatum. I knew that I could not betray Aelfgifu by becoming a spy for Wulfstan, nor could I stay in London. My position would be intolerable if I did. When Knut returned to England, Wulfstan would not need to bring an accusation of adultery against me, only to hint to the king that Aelfgifu had been unfaithful. Then I would be the cause of the disgrace of the woman I adored. Better I fled the kingdom than ruin her life.

My first step was to take the two little wax moulds pressed from the striking irons of Brithmaer’s elderly workmen, and bring them to the huscarls’ barracks. There I asked to see Kjartan. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ I told him, ‘and to ask a favour. If you hear that some accident has befallen me, or if I fail to contact you with a message before the spring, I want you to take these two pieces of wax and give them to Thorkel the Tall. Tell him that they came from the workshop of Brithmaer the moneyer while Knut was the king of England. Thorkel will know what to do.’

Kjartan took the two small discs of wax in his single hand, and looked at me steadily. There was neither surprise nor question in his eyes. ‘You have my word on it,’ he said. ‘I have the feeling that it would be tactless of me to ask why your departure from London is so sudden. Doubtless you have your reasons, and anyhow I have a strong feeling that one day
I
will be hearing more about you. In the meantime, may Odinn Farmognudr, the journey empowerer’, protect you.’

Within the hour I was back at Brithmaer’s exchange office on the waterfront and I asked if I could speak to him in private. He was standing at the window of the room where he met his private clients, looking out on the wintry grey river, when
I
made my request.

‘I
need to leave England without the knowledge of the authorities and you can help me,’ I said.

‘Beally. What makes you think that?’ he answered blandly.

‘Because new-minted coins bear a dead king’s mark.’

Slowly and deliberately Brithmaer turned his head and looked straight at me. For the second time that day an old man regarded me with strong dislike.

‘I always thought you were a spy,’ he said coldly.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘I did not come to you as a spy. I was sent in good faith by the queen. What I learned has nothing to do with Aelfgifu.’

‘So what is it that you have learned?’

‘I know that you are forging the king’s coinage. And that you are not alone in this felony, though
I
would not be wrong in believing you are the prime agent.’

Brithmaer was calm. ‘And how do you think that this felony, as you call it, is enacted? Everyone knows that the coinage of England is the most strictly controlled in all Europe and the penalties for forgery are severe. Counterfeit coins would be noticed immediately by the king’s officers and traced back to the forger. He would be lucky only to lose a hand, more likely it would be his life. Only a fool or a knave would seek to forge the coins of the king of England.’

‘Of the present king of England, yes,’ I replied, ‘but not the coins of a previous king.’

‘Go on,’ said Brithmaer. There was an edge to his voice now.

‘I discovered quite by accident that the two elderly workers who strike coins at night in your workshop are not producing coins with the head of Knut. They make coins which carry the head and markings of King Ethelred. At first it made no sense, but then I saw coins which had arrived from the northern lands, from Sweden and Norway. Many of them had the test marks, the nicks and scratches. Most of them were old, from Ethelred’s times, when the English paid vast amounts of Danegeld to buy off the raiders. It seems that huge numbers of Ethelred’s coins are in circulation in the north lands, and now they are coming back in trade. Thurulf spends a great deal of time counting them in the storerooms.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ Brithmaer murmured.

‘No, but Thurulf remarked to me how the numbers of the old coins never seemed to diminish, but kept piling up. That made me think about something else which was not quite right. I had noticed that here in the exchange you accept large amounts of inferior jewellery made with base metals and cheap alloys. You say it is for the jewellery business, yet your so-called jeweller is nothing more than a workaday craftsman. He is an engraver, familiar with the cutting and maintenance of striking irons and he knows nothing about jewellery. Yet I found very little of the broken jewellery. It had disappeared. Then I realised that the engraver had the skill and equipment in his workshop to melt down the low-grade metals, and turn out blanks for stamping into coins.’

‘You seem to have done a great deal of imagining,’ said Brithmaer. ‘Your story is a fantasy. Who would want low-grade coins from a dead king?’

‘That is the clever part,’ I replied. ‘It would be reckless to issue forged coins in England. They would be quickly identified. But forge coins which you then issue in the north lands, where the coins of England are regarded as honest, and few people would detect that the coins were counterfeit. Cutting or nicking the coins would not reveal the purity of the metal. And if it did, and the coins are revealed as fakes, then the coins carry the markings of long-dead moneyers, and could never be traced back to their maker. However, there has to be one more link in the chain.’

‘And that is?’

‘The link that interests me now. You can obtain the base metals from the cheap jewellery, make low-grade coins, forge the marks of other moneyers, but you still need to distribute the coins in the north lands. And for that you need the cooperation of dishonest merchants and ship owners who make regular trading voyages there and put the coins into general circulation. These, I suspect, are the people who visit your private office, even in winter. So my request to you now is that you will arrange with one of these men for me to be smuggled aboard ship, no questions asked. It is in your interests. Once I am out of England, I would no longer be in a position to report you to the authorities.’