Out of the Dawn Light

ONE

The news of William the Conqueror’s death reached us when we were celebrating my sister’s wedding. My mother sniffed, drew in her lips and remarked that it was scarcely likely to affect us in our lonely corner of England, one ruthless Norman king undoubtedly being very much like another.

My mother was wrong.

When I said we celebrated Goda’s wedding, what I meant was we were rejoicing because we would no longer have to share a home with her. For all of us — my mother, my father, my granny, my dreamy sister Elfritha who wants to be a nun, my brother Haward who has a terrible stammer but the kindest eyes in the Fens, my little brother Squeak the trickster, the baby in his cradle and me — this long-awaited day was just too good to let anything spoil it, even the news that the mighty King William, called the Conqueror, had died far away somewhere in France.

Squeak had prepared a sackful of tricks to play on the bride but for once my parents were in agreement and they strictly forbade him to perform any sort of a tease until Goda was safely wed. Squeak pleaded and wheedled — he is very good at both — and begged to be allowed just one little jest. The grass snake slipped into the foot of Goda’s bed, he suggested craftily, would be good because it would make sure she did not snore away half the morning and then get into a state because she did not have enough time to get herself ready. My mother heard him out impassively. Then she said, ‘Do the trick if you must. But if you do, you will stay here in the house while the rest of us enjoy ourselves and I shall pack you off to bed early in the lean-to. You will miss not only the food and the drink but also the storytelling.’

You could see Squeak weighing up the options. Teasing Goda has been the mainstay of his existence for most of his eight years and he was clearly loath to give up this one last chance to make her lose her fearsome temper. But Squeak loves stories even more than he loves playing tricks. With a fierce scowl, he grabbed the grass snake — already slithering enquiringly towards the cot where Goda still slept and snored — and stuffed it back in the sack.

I felt sorry for Squeak. But as my mother pointed out, nobody wanted Goda throwing a tantrum, holding her breath till her lips went blue and then announcing that she’d changed her mind and wasn’t going to get married after all. She had worked her way through this familiar sequence of events all too often in the preceding months. Now her wedding day had come and her family were united in their determination that nothing should prevent the marriage going ahead.

Goda has been a burden to me all the thirteen years of my life. Her only natural gift — a pair of breasts the size and shape of cabbages — never made up, in my mind, for her bad-tempered expression, her constant, grumbling self-pity, her laziness, her cruelty and her long tongue that could scold without ceasing for days on end. She has always disliked me. Once when we were playing in the water meadow she slipped and sat down in a cow-flop and I laughed and laughed, until she struggled up to display a large shit-brown stain on the back of her new tunic and boxed my ears so hard that, for all it was five years ago and more, I am still a little deaf in the left one.

Outsiders are wary of the Fens and tell fearsome tales of wicked spirits who infest our crude hovels, squeezing huge heads on skinny little necks through gaps in the walls, their fiery eyes glaring and their wide mouths full of horses’ teeth gnashing and gaping at us. They are sarcastic about the people of the Fens, saying that we are primitive, scarcely above the animals in our squalid, desolate marshy homeland. However, not being the backward simpletons they take us for, we know better than to permit inbreeding. We do not need the Church’s list of proscribed pairings. We know without being told that close relatives produce damaged offspring. So, several times a year when we take our animals to and from the summer pastures in the water meadows that flood from autumn to spring, we take our young adults along to the markets that draw folk from all around and usually one thing leads to another and betrothals are soon announced.

Goda was now eighteen and, maturing early as she did, she had been on the marriage market for four years and went to twelve markets before someone asked for her. Cerdic had come with his father and his uncle from their home down in Icklingham and one look at Goda was enough. She was wearing her gown low-cut that day and had somehow contrived to push up her breasts so that their upper curves all but spilt out. Cerdic drooled as he stared at her, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, and he set about winning her hand there and then. Poor man, he thought he had to fight off competition from others — no doubt Goda told him so — and in a way I hoped he never found out that every man but him might have appreciated Goda’s two unmistakable assets but soon discovered that they were vastly outweighed by everything else about her.

Well, it was too late now for him to turn back, or so we all fervently hoped. The morning went by in a flash — Goda reminded us constantly that this was her day and we all had to help her, so we were kept busy — and at last she was ready. There was no money for a new gown but she had restored last year’s, carefully unpicking the seams and turning it so that the faded outside was now inside and the outside was so bright that it almost looked new. She was clever with her needle and she had done a good job, although all the time she stitched my poor father had to endure her constant whining voice complaining that it was so unfair that nobody — by which she meant my father — had managed to stump up for her and here she was, reduced to turning a worn old gown, and wasn’t it just so sad for her? Then she would sniff and pretend to mop at her eyes. Father would usually get up from his place by the hearth and quietly leave the house.

Haward and Elfritha made a garland of flowers for Goda to wear in her freshly washed hair. Like me she has red hair, although hers is like carrots whereas mine, according to my father, is like new, untarnished copper. The garland was so pretty — Elfritha is very artistic — but, of course, it wasn’t good enough for Goda, who complained that the pink bindweed flowers clashed with her hair, and made Haward unwind every one.

At last we got her to the church door, where Cerdic was waiting. The priest prompted their vows and with our own ears we heard Goda state that she took Cerdic there present to be her husband. We all gave quiet but heartfelt sighs of relief.

When the vows and the praying were finished, we trooped back to our house and everyone milled about in the yard outside waiting to see what they were going to be offered by way of refreshment. Their feet made clouds of dust, only nobody seemed to mind. It was September, quite late in the month, but the weather was warm and sunny. Helped by my sister and my little brother, I had done my best to make the house look festive — it’s surprising what you can do with wild flowers, bunches of leaves and ears of dry corn — and there were several appreciative glances. At least, that’s what I told myself.

The one person whom I had really hoped to impress with my artistry, however, did not notice the decorations at all. He had found a place on one end of a straw bale and there he sat down, hunched his shoulders and then gave every appearance of someone trying to pretend they’re not there at all. Presently he was joined on his bale by a very old man whose spreading rump and widely splayed legs took up far more than his share. Serve you right! I said with silent venom to the youth beside him. Serve you right for sitting there looking as miserable as a wet summer and ignoring me all day!

The youth was called Sibert. He is quite a close neighbour of ours which, in a settlement as small as Aelf Fen, means that we see quite a lot of each other. He is fifteen, tall and slim, with fair hair that bleaches to white under the sun and light, bright eyes which sometimes look blue and sometimes green. I like him a lot and sometimes he likes me too.

Not today, though.

I tried one last time to catch his attention. By now my mother was sending out food and drink and I grabbed a mug of beer from the four that my father was holding in his large hands and, before he could protest and insist that elders must be served first, I dashed over and offered it to Sibert. Unfortunately, in my haste I tripped over my own feet and spilt most of the beer down my gown.

Sibert looked up and stared at me. If you laugh, I thought, feeling the hot blood flush up into my cheeks, I’ll. . I’ll. .

He didn’t laugh. With a faint sigh, as if I were nothing but a nuisance, he took the half-full mug and gave it to the old man beside him. Then he turned away.

I felt as if I’d been slapped. I would not let him see; I spun round and hurried away.

Why was he being like this? Had I offended him, or was it some private concern of his own that was making him so offhand with me? He had his troubles, I well knew. We all knew, in fact; as I said, it’s a small village. Sibert lives with his widowed mother, Froya, and his uncle Hrype, who is Froya’s brother. Hrype is a strange man — they whisper that he’s a sorcerer, a spell-weaver, a cunning man even, although nobody dares say so to his face — and Froya is one of those women who looks as if she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. Admittedly, she’s had bad luck. Sibert’s father Edmer, who must have been considerably older than his wife, fought against William the Bastard (as he then was known) at Battle and later he joined the Ely uprising of 1071, where he took the wound that killed him. There was a price on his head, as was the case with all the rebels, and Froya brought him secretly to Aelf Fen to die. Sibert was a posthumous child and he never knew his father. I often give myself shudders of dread, trying to imagine Froya with Sibert swelling in her belly half-carrying and half-dragging a dying man through the lonely and treacherous terrain of the Fens. .

So, Sibert has a hard life, but then so do we all. He’s not the only one to have lost close kin in the vicious, desperate and terrible fighting against the Normans, nor to have suffered in the new and very different life that followed. People of our lowly status have no choice but to accept our lot and most of the time that amounts to being hungry, cold, worried about the health of our loved ones and our livestock and racked with uncertainty as to whether the food will last through the winter. We don’t all go around with long faces, though.

As I hurried away from where Sibert sat sulking, I felt eyes on me and, turning, saw a sight that drove my unapproachable neighbour right out of my mind.

A man stood watching me. He was dark, the glossy hair cut in the new style, and his brown eyes were sort of crinkled round the corners, as if he laughed a lot. Although not tall like Sibert, he was broad-shouldered and had, as Goda might say, a manly figure. He was perhaps five or six years older than me, clad in a flowing cloak of rich chestnut brown over a tunic of dark red and his boots shone as if he’d spent all morning buffing them up.

None of that would have impressed me, thought, except for two things: he was extremely handsome and he was smiling at me.

Boldly and unhesitatingly — I was still hurt by Sibert’s rebuff — I went over to him. ‘I’m Lassair,’ I said. ‘I’m the bride’s sister. Have you had enough to eat?’

His smile widened. ‘I haven’t had anything yet.’

‘Wait there!’

I hurried inside, elbowed about a dozen people out of the way — our little house seemed to be bursting at the seams — and found my mother with her sleeves rolled up and her forehead damp with sweat. The day was warm anyway but she’d been stoking the fire all morning and the hot coals were crammed with clay pots, many borrowed from our neighbours, in which the bread was baking. Now my mother was busy setting out bread, cheese, tartlets and spiced cakes. I grabbed what I could reach and before she could issue any orders — she’d had me in mind as serving lass for the elders — dashed out again.

I heard her yell, ‘Lassair!’

I ignored her.

My handsome man accepted my offering — a chunk of rather sweaty cheese and a piece of gingerbread — with what I thought was a pleasing grace. He chewed thoughtfully for some time — I realized I ought to have brought something to drink to help the food down — and then he said, ‘Lassair. What a pretty name.’

Again I felt myself blush, although this time for a different reason. ‘Thank you,’ I mumbled.

‘I am called Romain.’

Romain. Oh, it suited him, I thought wildly, although I had no idea why I should think so. I risked a quick glance up at his face; he might not have been all that tall but he was head and shoulders over me. He was smiling again.

The day had just improved and it was about to get even better. He was full of charm and soon I was chatting away about my life, my village and my neighbours, as easy with him as if I’d known him for years. He seemed to be fascinated by all that I said, glancing around at the company as I spoke of this person or that as if making sure he identified the right subject. Of course it couldn’t last; my mother’s voice called again, urgently this time — ‘LASSAIR!’ — and I had to go.

He was kind enough to look regretful as I reluctantly left him and went inside the house.

Apart from getting rid of my elder sister and meeting and talking to a handsome man, the other wonderful thing about Goda’s wedding day was that my granny came home. She can’t stand Goda — she has quite a penetrating voice and could frequently be overheard commenting that Goda needed a good spanking — and, since wedding nerves caused my sister’s temper to go from bad to unendurable in the weeks leading up to her wedding, my granny moved out and went to live with her widowed daughter over in the Breckland. I was afraid she wouldn’t come back. My aunt Alvela is my father’s younger sister and she’s a real sweetheart. She lost her equally nice husband about five years ago — I hate it that so often the good people die when, if the rest of us were given the choice, we’d rather it had been someone nobody liked — and she lives in a tiny cottage with her son, Morcar, who is a man of few words and also a flint-knapper. It must have been so peaceful there for my granny after the noisy, overcrowded conditions in our house and for some time I waited anxiously for the inevitable news that my grandmother had decided to stay with Alvela. It was a deeply depressing thought, for I love her dearly and would miss her so much.

My paternal grandmother’s name is Cordeilla and she can trace her — our — ancestry right back to the ancient gods of Britain. She can reel off a vast list of names and if she is allowed to do so uninterrupted, it takes from noon to midwinter sunset. But she never is uninterrupted, for as soon as she gets to the most interesting names people always clamour to be told the old legends and tales of their miraculous deeds. There’s Lir the Magical, Ordic the Blessed Child (the only son out of seven children to grow to adulthood), Alaimna the Lovely who married, bore a child and died all in a year, Livilda the One-Legged Heiress, Sigbehrt the Mighty Oak who fell at Battle and — my favourites — Luanmaisi and her strange, sorceress daughter Lassair (my namesake), long ago lost in the wilderness to some unknown fate.

Cordeilla is a bard. One of the very best, and she is my grandmother!

I did not see my handsome man again and Sibert too seemed to have slunk away, although I was kept so busy that I did not get much of a chance to look for either of them. When everyone had had something to eat and drink — my father, well into his cups by now, kept muttering that we had to show Cerdic’s kin that his new wife came from substantial people, whatever that meant — Goda and Cerdic were escorted by a very rowdy, bawdy crowd off to Cerdic’s village, where their wedding bed was no doubt waiting for them. I didn’t want to think about that and I got acutely embarrassed over the jokes, many of which made very rude references to Goda’s breasts. Some of them went so far as to speak of her hips and belly and hint at the deep, dark cavern between her legs, which I thought was going much too far. I was actually very relieved that neither Romain nor Sibert could see me since I could feel that my face had gone red-hot and I had to keep making excuses to run round to the bucket by the well and splash my cheeks with cold water. Anyway, off went the newly-weds at last, and as the crowd ran off down the track after them, I ducked back into the yard and set about tidying up the mess. I had almost finished when I heard a voice say, ‘Not gone with the revellers then, young Lassair?’

I knew that voice. I spun round and there was Granny, leaning on the gatepost with a smile like the midday sun on her round face. I was so pleased to see her, so relieved that she had come back to us, that I did not stop to think but rushed at her and wrapped my arms around her. Too forcefully — she gasped and instantly I loosened my hold.

‘That’s better!’ she said with a grin. ‘You may be only thirteen, child, but you’re growing fast, you’re well-made and strong as a boy.’

I basked in her praise. I like it when people say I’m like a boy. I wish I had been born a boy and I dread the day when my courses start and I have to start prinking and fussing and behaving like a woman, as my mother says. I suppose I’ll grow great big breasts like Goda’s too, although Elfritha is still quite flat-chested and she’s more than a year older than me.

I was still hugging my granny. ‘I thought you might not come back,’ I whispered.

She patted my cheek. ‘Well, I do like it over at Alvela’s,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Morcar’s making good money now and they have meat at least once a week. They provided me with a feather pillow, too.’

‘Oh.’

She must have picked up my dejection and she stopped teasing me. ‘But this is my home, child,’ she added softly. ‘How many times must I tell you? I was born here in Aelf Fen and so were all my ancestors, right back into the ancient times. This is where I belong and I won’t leave till I make my final journey.’

I did not want to think about that. ‘We’re having a feast tonight,’ I said, taking her hand and leading her inside the house. ‘Mother got together a bit of a bite for Cerdic’s kin after the wedding but she’s saving the best for later.’ I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. ‘We were hoping that you might accept the best place by the fire and tell us a story.’

She sighed. ‘Oh, Lassair, child, I really don’t think I’m up to it,’ she said mournfully. ‘I’m very tired — it’s a long way from Breckland and the carter dropped me off at the fen edge, so I had to walk the last few miles — and I think I might turn in early.’

‘But-’ I began. But she was my grandmother, my revered elder, and out of the respect that was her due I knew I was not allowed to protest at anything she decided. ‘Very well,’ I said meekly.

There was a moment’s silence. Then Granny chuckled. ‘Silly girl. Don’t you know your old Granny at all? What, miss a feast, with my daughter-in-law’s excellent grub and my son’s mead? Oh, no. Dear Lassair, child, I’ll be telling stories all night.’

Although I was sorry that Romain did not return and almost but not quite as sorry that Sibert had evidently slumped off home, I had to admit that the evening was wonderful and it was lovely to be just the family. We had all held such high hopes of what life in our little house would be like after Goda had gone and if that first night were to prove typical, then not one of us was going to be disappointed.

Granny sat by the fire in the traditional storyteller’s place. Even had she not been so uniquely gifted, the seat was hers because she was the eldest, although that had never stopped Goda from trying to usurp her. Not that Granny had let her. My father sat opposite, my mother beside him on the bench. He reached out and took her hand and she gave him a loving glance. He nodded and raised his bushy eyebrows, as if to say, this is good, isn’t it, and she put up her free hand and gently touched his cheek. It looked as if my siblings and I were going to have to do our we’ve-all-suddenly-gone-deaf act later on.

Haward, Elfritha, Squeak and I sat on the floor in a semicircle round the hearth and Leir lay asleep in his cradle. Then Granny began.

She did not go on all night but, all the same, nobody could have complained. She recounted some of the favourite tales — Lassair the Sorceress, child of the Fire and the Air, had her moment, as she so often does when I am there to listen — and so did Sigbehrt the Mighty Oak. Granny’s voice always breaks when she speaks of him and his great valour, how he risked and lost his own life defending his king and trying to save his kindred, but then he was her best-loved brother so she is entitled to a tear or two.

She finished with a tale that I had not heard before and at the time I did not know what had prompted her. ‘Now it was our ancestor Aelfbryga who first led her people here to Aelf Fen,’ she began in a sing-song, chanting tone that for some reason sent a delicious shiver through me. ‘Her daughter Aelfburga took as her husband Aedelac the Spearsman, and they had many children. Their two eldest sons were Berie and Beofor, who were very close in age and fierce rivals from their cradle days. As they grew through boyhood to manhood, their violent quarrels reached such a pitch that the Elders drew together in council and, with the blessing of the boys’ parents, made the difficult decision to send one of the young men away. A series of five tests of strength was devised and the victor was to be allowed to choose whether to stay at Aelf Fen or, with a bag of gold in his hand, be sent to make his fortune elsewhere. The boys were similar in strength and stature but Berie, the elder son, was cunning and clever and not above subterfuge. He it was who bested his brother by three challenges to two and he elected to remain at Aelf Fen, and out of his loins sprang a great line of wise women and cunning men, as well as herbalists, healers, and rune casters. The brothers and sisters of these rarefied beings, content with a more earthly lot, were farmers, fishermen, fowlers and shepherds, who husbanded the land in much the same way as we their descendants still do today.’

‘What happened to Beofor?’ Haward demanded, eyes wide in the firelight and his stammer quite forgotten as he sat entranced.

Granny smiled down at him. ‘He wandered for many moons and had many adventures, and finally he settled on the coast, in a very special place that called out to him in a magical voice that sounded like the deep murmuring roar of a dragon. There he took two wives and fathered many children and’ — the transition was so smooth and so unexpected that I for one did not suspect a thing — ‘that is quite enough for one night and now I am going to bed.’

We all went about our little rituals for the end of the day. Just before I lay down on my cot, I slipped outside to sniff the night air and look at the stars. I could not resist a quick glance up the track — it was just possible that Romain, perhaps unable to find a bed for the night, might return and beg our hospitality. But the path was empty, the settlement silent and still.

I sensed someone beside me.

‘He won’t come back here,’ Granny said softly.

I was about to pretend I didn’t know who she was talking about but there really was no point. ‘Oh.’ Then: ‘How did you know?’

She took my hand and gave it a little shake. ‘I saw you earlier. I was just coming back to the village and I stood watching you from over there.’ She nodded towards where the path went through a stand of willows.

‘Oh,’ I said again.

She hesitated, then said, ‘Don’t waste your hopes on him, Lassair child.’

‘But he’s so handsome!’ The foolish words had burst out of me before I could check them.

Granny sighed. ‘Handsome he may be, but he is not a man to whom my beloved granddaughter should go giving her heart.’

‘But-’ I began.

She did not register my interruption. Dreamily, as if she spoke out of a trance, she murmured, ‘Nor indeed should any young woman, for he walks in shadow.’

‘In shadow?’ I repeated, my words a terrified whisper. ‘Wh-what sort of shadow, Granny?’

At last she turned to meet my eyes. ‘The shadow of death.’