The Saxon Thief

"By hook or by bishop's crook, Ventianus will see him dead by nightfall." While Cuthbert and Eadmund pursue a thief through the deserted streets of an enemy city, others plot to turn their help into harm and their honour into shame. Outwitted and outnumbered, they stumble into a nest of conspiracies that may send Britain crashing back into the bloodshed and chaos from which it just emerged. But Eadmund has more in the game than Cuthbert knows, and deciding who to trust may become the most dangerous choice of all.Every treasure has a secret, every saint has a past.

Alfred the Great has been dead for a decade. His legacy: an uneasy alliance between the neighbouring kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia. Wulfgar, a young priest in training, more at home with his books than with a sword, has been tasked with an impossible mission. He must travel secretly to the badlands of the North and find the bones of a long lost saint. But the Northern territories are under the rule of Viking invaders. And if Wulfgar is discovered, they will have his head... A historical epic in the tradition of C.J.Sansom. V.M.Whitworth also writes as Victoria Whitworth and is the author of THE TRAITOR'S PIT and DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF.

A time of turmoil. A kingdom in dispute. An unlikely hero... Edward, son of Alfred the Great, has inherited the Kingdom of Wessex and achieved a precarious set of alliances through marriage and military conquest. But the alliance is uneasy and the kingdom of Mercia has more reason than most to fear the might of Wessex. Their Lord is elderly and perhaps mortally sick, and his wife fears that she does not have the power to withstand hostile takeover. She also knows too well what her neighbour is capable of - after all, King Edward is her brother. The chance to rescue St Oswald's bones, beloved patron saint, to consecrate her new church and unite the people behind her, is too good an opportunity to miss. But they are rumoured to be buried a long way north - outside Lincoln, deep in hostile territory. Her secretary, Wulfgar, groomed for the priesthood since he was a boy in the elegant cloisters of Winchester cathedral but a naïve in the ways of the wider world - is surprised to be sent on this mission. It will prove an incredibly dangerous journey, requiring resources and courage Wulfgar did not know he had, and support from surprising allies along the way including a maverick priest and a Viking princess whose loyalties are far from clear...