Æthelflæd as depict­ed in the car­tu­lary of Abing­don Abbey

V. M. Whitworth’s The Bone Thief (Ebury, 2012), and it’s sequel The Traitor’s Pit (Ebury, 2013) are exem­plary his­tor­i­cal nov­els. The author is known, by anoth­er name, as a medieval his­to­ri­an. I read the first book mere­ly out of curios­i­ty, because I knew her schol­ar­ly work. But, after a few pages, I was hooked. The set­ting is Eng­land Before Eng­land Was, the reigns of Æthelred, King of Mer­cia and Edward of Wes­sex, who was soon to uni­fy the two king­doms and make con­sid­er­able inroads on the Danelaw. The future Eng­land has long been split between Pagan and Chris­t­ian kings, but the Norse Gods are fad­ing as the Scan­di­na­vian con­querors are adopt­ing Chris­tian­i­ty (with vary­ing degrees of sin­cer­i­ty), and the two cul­tures are merg­ing. The action of the first book is inspired by an inci­dent record­ed in the Anglo-Sax­on Chron­i­cle as occur­ring in the year 909. The fic­tion­al hero is Wulf­gar, a young cler­ic in the ser­vice of his­tor­i­cal Æthelflæd, who is one of the more inter­est­ing women known from the peri­od. For years, Æthelred has been too ill to rule, and The Lady of the Mer­cians rules in his stead. In The Bone Thief, she sends Wulf­gar on a secret mis­sion into the Viking-con­trolled Five Bur­roughs, to obtain the bones of St. Oswald, which she hopes will ral­ly peo­ple to the Mer­cian cause. The bones have been lost, but are buried anony­mous­ly behind Bard­ney Abbey (which in 2014 is noth­ing more than a few stony lumps in a field north­west of the vil­lage of Bard­ney — see image below). Wulf­gar is a timid soul, and is soon over­whelmed by the con­spir­a­cies, treach­eries, and bru­tal­i­ty of roy­al pow­er pol­i­tics. He has been cho­sen for the task pri­mar­i­ly because he speaks some Dan­ish. No adven­ture-seek­er, he has a naïve belief in most of the things he was taught, which oth­ers around him regard as use­ful fic­tions or dis­pos­able for­mal­i­ties. In the sequel, he is assigned yet anoth­er mis­sion, while at the same time try­ing to prove the inno­cence of his elder broth­er, who has been charged with par­tic­i­pat­ing in an attempt on the life of Edward. This leads into even more con­vo­lut­ed pol­i­tics, vio­lence, and tragedy. In both books, Wulf­gar is con­stant­ly men­aced by his neme­sis, a bul­ly­ing and bru­tal half-broth­er, and con­stant­ly aid­ed by a fierce and rogu­ish Dano-Eng­lish female adven­tur­er. Read more »