Hamnet wondered whether the three robbers had friends who would aim to avenge them. His hand tightened on the leather-wrapped hilt of his sword. But the men seemed to have been on their own.
He and his comrades passed through another block that had burned. The Bizogots muttered among themselves. They’d seen grass fires before, no doubt. Maybe they’d seen a tent or two burn. But, as with doors, big fires, fires that chewed up lots of buildings, were new to them since they’d come to Raumsdalia. They didn’t like them. Well, Hamnet didn’t, either. And, to his sorrow, he’d seen a lot more of them than they had.
“We’ll look foolish if Eyvind’s house is nothing but charcoal,” he said.
“Yes, we’ll have made ashes of ourselves, sure enough,” Ulric agreed. Count Hamnet winced.
“Let’s go find out.” Maybe Per Anders didn’t notice the atrocious pun. Maybe he just didn’t care. If he didn’t, Hamnet admired his detachment.
Earl Eyvind’s house still stood. But the front door hung open. Hamnet didn’t think that was a good sign. Ulric said, “Don’t worry about it. Can you see some Ruler or local thief staggering out of here with his arms full of books?” He laughed the idea to scorn.
Hamnet’s hand tightened again on the hilt of his sword. “I keep thinking that, if I go in there, the first thing I’ll do is run into Gudrid.”
“Well, you bloody well won’t,” Ulric Skakki said impatiently. “She isn’t here, and good riddance to her.”
Or did he say Gudriddance? Count Hamnet eyed him, but Ulric’s cheery smile was proof against his scrutiny. They went inside. The adventurer proved right: Gudrid wasn’t there.
Someone had looted the house. Hamnet had no idea whether it was the Rulers or Raumsdalian robbers. Whoever it was seemed to have done a good, thorough job. All the rich ornaments that had adorned the place were gone. So were most of the paintings and woven wall hangings. The rest were slashed, or else thrown on the floor and trampled.
When Hamnet Thyssen saw them, he got a bad feeling about Earl Eyvind’s books. And sure enough, the scrolls and codices Eyvind had spent a lifetime accumulating lay torn and despoiled on the floor of his bedchamber. Hamnet sadly shook his head, knowing how much labor a scribe needed to copy a book.
“Sometimes people are no cursed good,” he growled.
Ulric raised one eyebrow. “You only noticed just now?”
“As a matter of fact-no,” Hamnet answered.
“Is anything here worth salvaging?” Per Anders asked.
“Sure doesn’t look like it.” Ulric started to turn away and head back toward the entrance.
But Count Hamnet said, “Wait.” Ulric Skakki did, this time with both eyebrows high. Hamnet went on, “When I knew Gudrid, she’d always have secret hiding places for . . . things. They’d be clever ones, too, places where most people wouldn’t think to look. Somewhere in this house, she’ll have more hidey-holes.”
“Yes, but will they hold anything we want?” Ulric asked.
“How do we know ahead of time?” Hamnet replied with a shrug.
“How do we know where to look for these, ah, hidey-holes?” Per Anders said. “Do we tear the whole place to pieces?”
“A lot of that’s taken care of,” Ulric pointed out.
“Look at things out of the corner of your eye,” Hamnet said. “I make no promises, but I think it’s worth trying. Gudrid’s . . . sly. She’s not too smart-even if she’d say the same thing about me-but she has her own kind of cleverness.”
He looked around the bedchamber. Whoever’d ruined Eyvind Torfinn’s books had also slashed the featherbed Eyvind and Gudrid once shared. Feathers floated in the air as Raumsdalians and Bizogots stirred them up. Hamnet didn’t think Gudrid would have secreted anything inside the mattress-too easy, too obvious. The bedframe, on the other hand . . .
Which side would she have slept on? The right, if she’d kept the same arrangement she’d had with him. He poked and prodded at the bedposts on that side, and rapped them with his knuckles.
“By God, that’s as hollow as Sigvat’s head!” Ulric exclaimed when the sound suddenly changed. Per Anders let out an irate cough.
Both Ulric and Hamnet ignored him. “It is, isn’t it?” Hamnet said. Per coughed again. Hamnet went right on ignoring him.
Gudrid doubtless had some tricky spring or catch set into the post. Hamnet felt for it, but couldn’t find it. “Here, let me try,” Ulric said. “I’ve had practice getting into places where I don’t belong.”
His hands were smaller and slimmer than Hamnet Thyssen’s. By the way they prodded the bedpost, they were also much more knowledgeable. Well, he’d said he was practiced at the burglar’s trade.
Something clicked. “Ha!” Ulric said. He reached for the top of the bedpost again. This time, the top three inches or so came off in his hand. “Ha!” he said again. He reached into the hollow and pulled out a rolled sheet of parchment. “Well, well. What have we here?”
“Open it,” Per Anders said.
Ulric did. He read a little of it, then grimaced and shook his head. “Letter from an old lover,” he said.
Hamnet only shrugged. “Why am I not surprised?” He went over to the other side of the bed, stirring up more feathers as he did, and started rapping at the bedposts there. One sneeze later, he found another hollow. “Come here, Ulric. Does this one work the same way?”
“If it doesn’t, she had to pay extra-you can count on that.” Ulric felt the bedpost. He nodded. “Uh-huh. Now we do this, and. . . .” A click rewarded him. “There you go.”
“What’s in it?” Per Anders sounded intrigued in spite of himself.
“Don’t know yet.” Ulric turned to Hamnet. “Want to do the honors this time?”
Plainly, he expected Hamnet to say no. Because that was so plain, Hamnet nodded and said, “All right.” Ulric had already started to reach into the concealed hollow. He drew back and bowed to Hamnet, as if to say it was all his.
Now that Hamnet had the honor, he wondered if he wanted it. It would be just like Gudrid to put something sharp and perhaps poisoned in a hole like this, to surprise any stranger who chanced on it. But, having asked for the privilege, he couldn’t very well change his mind.
He’d already noticed that his hand was bigger than Ulric’s. He had to squeeze it painfully tight to reach down into the hollowed-out bedpost. Gudrid wouldn’t have had any trouble here-he was sure of that.
Just when he started to think this hollowed-out space was empty, his fingertips grazed something at the bottom. He did some more twisting, and managed to get it between his index and middle fingers. It wasn’t a parchment; it felt hard and cool and metallic.
Count Hamnet drew it up. “What have you got?” Ulric asked.
“I don’t know yet. . . . It’s jewelry.” Hamnet could hardly hide his disappointment. He held the thing in the palm of his hand: a small gold replica of a building with a domed roof. “Do you recognize it?”
“Not me,” Ulric Skakki replied. “It’s not modeled after any place in Nidaros-I’d lay money on that. What about you, Per? Every seen any real building like it?”
“No,” the courier said. “If I had to guess, I’d say it came straight out of a jeweler’s imagination.”