“But no quarrel?”
“No. The word in the camp was they had some scheme for getting the wealth of King Jatmund, whom you killed with the blood-eagle.”
“Nonsense,” snarled Ivar.
“You heard what they got from the raid on the minster at Beverley?” asked Halvdan Ragnarsson. “A hundred pounds of silver and the same again in gold. That’s more than we’ve taken anywhere. The boy is good at new schemes. You should have settled with him after the holmgang. He is a better friend than enemy.”
Ivar turned on his brother, eyes pale, face whitening in one of his celebrated rages. Halvdan stared back at him placidly. The Ragnarssons never fought each other. This was the secret of their power, even Ivar in his madness knew it. He would take his rage out on someone else in some other way. Another matter to keep secret. But they had done it before.
“Only now he is an enemy,” said Sigurth decisively. “We have to decide if he is our main one at this moment. And if he is… Messenger, you can go.”
The brothers put their heads together in the little room off the drafty hall of King Ella in Eoforwich, and began to reckon numbers, rations, distances, possibilities.
“The wisdom of the serpent, the cunning of the dove,” said Erkenbert the archdeacon with satisfaction. “Already our enemies destroy themselves and each other.”
“Indeed,” agreed Wulfhere. “The heathen make much ado and the kingdoms are moved. But God hath showed his voice and the earth shall melt away.”
They spoke over the clanging of the dies, as each of the lay brothers in the monastic mint put his silver blank in place, struck it firmly with his hammer to drive the embossed design into one side. Moved it to the other die, struck again. First the spread-winged raven for the Ragnarssons. Then the letters S.P.M.—Sancti Petri Moneta. Collared slaves shuffled by, carrying man-loads of charcoal, rolling out carts of rejected lead, copper, slag. Only choirmonks touched the silver. They shared in the wealth of the minster. And any who thought for a moment of his own advantage could reflect on the Rule of Saint Benedict and the archbishop’s power of chastisement written into it. It was long since a choirmonk had been flogged to death in chapter, or bricked alive into the vaults. But such cases had been known.
“They are in God’s hand,” concluded the archbishop. “Surely a divine vengeance will fall upon those who stole the goods of St. John’s at Beverley.”
“But God’s hand shows itself through the hands of others,” said Erkenbert. “And we must call for help from those.”
“The kings of the Mark and of Wessex?”
“A mightier power than they.”
Wulfhere looked down with surprise, doubt, comprehension. Erkenbert nodded.
“I have drafted a letter, for your seal. To Rome.”
Pleasure showed on Wulfhere’s face, perhaps anticipation of the much-rumored pleasures of the Holy City. “A vital matter,” he announced. “I shall take the letter to Rome myself. In person.”
Shef stared thoughtfully at the reverse side of his mappa, the map of England. Halfway through his work he had discovered the concept of scale, too late to apply consistently. Suffolk now bulked incongruously large, taking up a whole quadrant of the vellum. At one edge was his detailed drawing of all the information he had been able to wring out about the north bank of the Deben.
It fits, he thought. There is the town Woodbridge. That is in the first line of the poem, and the line must mean the town, because otherwise it would make no sense: all bridges are wood bridges. But more important is what the thrall says about the place, with no name, downstream of the bridge and the ford. That is where the barrows are, the resting place of the old kings. And who are the old kings? The slave knew no names, but the thane of Helmingham, who sold us mead, listed the ancestors of Raedwald the Great, and among them were Wiglaf and his father Weohstan: Wuffa, then, Wehha’s offspring.
If the slave had remembered well, then there were four barrows together in a line running roughly south to north. The northmost of those. That was the place of the hoard.