Out of the Dawn Light

ELEVEN

It was a crown. A very simple one, really no more than a heavy circle of gold, unadorned with any stone. As the sun rose above the eastern sea and the light strengthened, Sibert and I, leaning over it, our fingers exploring it and quite unable to look away, noticed that there was a faintly etched pattern of leaves.

‘Laurel leaves,’ Sibert breathed.

I looked more closely. He was right, for the leaves had the distinctive shape of the bay laurel. Edild had warned me of the power of its berries, which could make a pregnant woman abort, and she told me that a bay tree by the door warded off the plague. Chewing on the leaves was dangerous, she had warned, as it brought on violent hallucinations.

I wondered why an ancient crown should have bay leaves carved on it. My fingertips still running over the vividly intertwining pattern of leaves, I noticed something else: the lines were made up of tiny, beautifully-worked runes. Whoever had crafted this crown, whoever had harnessed his power and put it into this incredible object, had sealed it inside with a rune spell.

I began to shake. For an instant it was as if a window in my mind opened and I saw the unbelievable potency of the thing I held in my hands. I saw light, so bright that it hurt my eyes. I sensed the incredible shock as mighty forces clashed together. I heard a loud humming sound echo and bounce inside my head, as if the aftermath of a cataclysmic thunderbolt.

Then with a sort of jolt — quite a violent one — I came back to myself. The bright early light was dimmed by a bank of cloud and the crown seemed to change — diminish, somehow — until it was merely a circle of metal.

I shook myself back into the here and now.

We had found a crown. Sibert and I had Romain’s treasure in our hands. But it wasn’t Romain’s treasure now.

‘We must get way from here,’ I said urgently. ‘Wrap it up again, Sibert. Quick!’

He glanced out to sea. ‘The tide’s turned,’ he observed, ‘but we have a while yet.’

But I hadn’t meant merely that we must get away from the sea sanctuary. I thought carefully — this was a crucial moment — and then said, ‘Sibert, we have to leave the area. We ought to be well away by the time Romain wakes up.’

His blue-green eyes met mine and I thought that he understood. In case he was not entirely sure of my meaning, I added, ‘There’s only one crown and it was undoubtedly put here by your forefathers.’ I did not tell him about my vision. ‘It’s been under the tree stump for far too long to have been placed there by Fulk de la Flèche.’

‘I know.’ He nodded slowly. Then he said, ‘Romain implied he’d make sure I got my share. But he’s not going to do anything of the sort, is he?’

‘I don’t think so.’ I didn’t know, to be honest; I was probably maligning Romain, who could well have been planning to treat both his accomplices honourably and fairly. But my overriding purpose was to stop Romain in a headlong pursuit that, as far as I could see, would only have one outcome: his death.

‘We’ll go and fetch our packs and set off immediately,’ Sibert said. I could feel the nervous energy building up in him. ‘It’s mine. This’ — he hugged the crown to his chest — ‘belongs to me. I will not let him have it. I found it’ — we found it, I corrected him silently — ‘and I intend to keep it.’

We turned our backs on the timber circle, whose power, I detected, had diminished noticeably now that we had violated it and robbed it of its treasure. We hurried across the damp sand, and I was very conscious of the sea at our backs. It felt threatening, and I had to keep turning round to make sure it hadn’t sneaked up on us. I pictured the water gathering itself into a mighty wave which would break over our heads, swirl us around like leaves in a mill race and then withdraw, taking our drowned bodies with it. We had made the sea very, very angry; I was quite sure of it.

We were running, racing each other in our urgency, by the time we reached the dry stream bed that led up the cliff face. We stopped to get our breath back and Sibert tucked the crown, securely wrapped once more, under his belt. Noticing my eyes on him, he said softly, ‘I have a leather bag rolled up in my pack. I’ll put the crown in it and buckle it to my belt, under my tunic. It’ll be safe there right next to my skin.’

I was worried by that. I knew very little about power objects but what I did know suggested it probably wasn’t wise to wear them right against the body for any length of time. .

We crept up to the place where we had left Romain. He was still fast asleep and he did not stir as, very carefully and cautiously, we collected our belongings and edged away. We walked on light feet for perhaps fifty or sixty paces, keeping to the shadow of the trees in case he woke and spotted us. Then the track rounded a shallow bend and we were out of sight of our camp. Without saying a word, we broke into a run and our speed barely eased until we were almost level with Dunwich, below us on our right.

‘When we came here we emerged from that path over there,’ I gasped, panting and leaning forward, my hands on my knees, trying to get my breath back. I nodded to where a sandy track wound its way off through the thin woodland.

‘Yes,’ Sibert agreed. He was looking around, a frown on his face. ‘We should go back another way. He’ll follow us, and he’ll expect us to return via the same route we took on the way out.’

It made good sense. ‘Do you know an alternative road?’ I asked hopefully. He had been in the habit of coming here quite often, I reminded myself, and so it was quite possible.

He looked around again. Then he said, ‘Yes, I think so. We’ll go on past Dunwich and turn inland further to the north. There’s a good road that runs from Lowestoft to Diss and we can pick that up, if I can remember the way. We’ll journey westwards and cut across Thetford Forest, approaching Aelf Fen from the north-east.’

‘I have to get back to Icklingham,’ I reminded him.

‘Yes,’ he said vaguely. He sounded as if that was no concern of his. He glanced up at the sun. ‘It’s still very early. If we keep up a good speed we can be on the good road by sunset.’

I picked up his sense of haste. I could see as well as he could that if Romain picked up our trail we would be in a much safer position on a well-used road, with the presence, or at least the reasonable expectation, of fellow travellers and passers-by, than all by ourselves in the wilds.

We set off. We were not quite running but our pace was not far short of it.

Romain knew he was on the right track when he came to a place on the narrow path where some moisture remained in what had been a shallow puddle. Either they hadn’t seen it — he knew from the speed at which he had been covering the ground that they must have been hurrying — or else they believed themselves safe from pursuit. He did not much care. What was important — so very important — was that he could see two clear footprints in the mud, one of a man-sized boot, the other of a girl’s coarse, stout shoe. He could easily picture what the two of them had been wearing on their feet, having watched the footwear of all three of them slowly drying out by yesterday’s fire.

Where were they going? Romain wished he had a better knowledge of the geography of the region and the layout of its tracks and roads. The narrow, ill-defined path along which he was now pursuing Sibert and the girl — and his treasure, although he tried not to dwell on that as it made him apoplectic with rage — ran roughly north-west. Romain could make little sense of that, since Aelf Fen, where Sibert lived, and Icklingham, where the girl was lodging, were surely due west. If they are trying to put me off the scent, he thought grimly, then they have failed. And as for that simpleton’s trick of going back via a different route, what did they think he was?

He set off after them.

After the muddy footprints he had found no more signs of them and he was beginning to think he was wrong and they had returned some other way. The sun was high in the sky and, driven by thirst, for he had been running for much of the way and sweating copiously, he knew he must find water.

He came upon a tiny settlement in a clearing among the trees; one or two hovels, hens and a pig scratching in the dirt; a small child with trails of snot from nostrils to mouth sitting bare-arsed in the dirt. There was a ripe stench of ordure, either animal or human or both. The hamlet had a well, thankfully positioned a good distance away from all the shit, and as Romain approached, a fat woman was drawing water in a bucket. Holding out his cup, he asked if she would give him a drink and, after staring at him suspiciously for several moments, she nodded.

The water tasted like cool white wine in his parched mouth. He thanked her briefly, hoping she would retreat back to her hovel, but to his dismay she was disposed to chat. She perched her ample rump on the wall that ran around the well and, refilling his cup, urged him to drink some more.

‘Now there’s a thing,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I can be out here tending my little bit of land every day for a week and never see a soul, and here you are, filling your mug from my old bucket there, and you’re the third person today to do so!’

He managed to contain the flare of excitement. ‘Really?’ he replied.

‘Oh, yes,’ she assured him, nodding to emphasize her words. Leaning closer — he caught a waft of warm air and smelt unwashed flesh — she dropped her voice and said, ‘There were two of them, a youth and a girl, and the lass was quite a bit younger than the lad. I think they were runaways. Looked ever so anxious, they did. The lad kept staring back down the path as if he feared the devil was on his heels.’ She folded her arms and nodded, as if to say, What do you think of that?

Fool of a woman, Romain thought. Did it not occur to her that he could be that devil? Apparently not, for she was still chattering. ‘Pretty little thing she was, what was with him,’ she said. ‘She had lovely hair, coppery, like, but she was scrawny, not a lot of flesh on her.’ She glanced down fondly at her own large bosom. ‘But then she were young still,’ she acknowledged charitably, ‘no more than a girl.’

‘Really?’ he said again. Careful to keep a disinterested tone, he said, ‘Which way were they heading?’

She pointed. ‘Up there. Going to pick up the Diss road, I reckon.’

‘Hmm.’ He made himself drink several more slow mouthfuls. Then he wiped his cup and tucked it back inside his pack. He stretched, looked at the fat woman and said, ‘Well, I must be on my way.’

‘You’ve far to go, my lord?’ she asked.

He gave her a lazy smile. ‘Only another few miles, then I shall be home in my own hall.’

‘God’s speed,’ she said.

He sensed her eyes on his back as, forcing himself to saunter when he wanted to run, he returned to the track.

I must catch them before they reach the road. He repeated it to himself over and over, trying to dull his fatigue, his growing sense of hopelessness and the sharp, hot, constant pain of his blistered foot. He did not dare risk a look at it. He had the fearful suspicion that it was beginning to smell; did that mean infection? He did not know.

He made himself hurry on.

He heard them before he saw them. The path ran through a belt of trees and, welcoming the shade, he had been very tempted to stop and rest. He had resisted the temptation. Now, as he stared ahead to the sunshine beyond the trees, he heard voices. A young man’s voice and a girl’s.

He turned off the path and slipped through the trees, hiding behind each trunk, spying ahead to make sure he saw them before they saw him. They were moving quite slowly now and as Romain drew near he heard Sibert say, ‘It can only be a few miles now till we get on to the road, and then we’ll-’

Romain pounced.

I picked up no warning signs and the first I knew of his presence was when he flew through the air and landed on Sibert’s back. He was making a terrible noise — a snarling, ferocious, wild-animal noise — and he was raining down such powerful blows on Sibert’s head and shoulders that I was amazed Sibert could still stand. He was taller than Romain, but Romain was broader and had a man’s muscles where Sibert had those of a boy.

Sibert, however, seemed to be possessed. Spinning round very fast, he released himself from Romain’s grip on his tunic and for a moment turned defence into attack. He got in a hard punch to Romain’s jaw that jerked his head back; I heard his teeth snap together and I think he must have bitten his tongue, for blood started to spurt from his mouth. He took a pace backwards and tripped, and Sibert was on him like a hound on a deer, knees on Romain’s chest and fists flying in the general direction of his face.

Romain was gathering himself. I could see it and I yelled, ‘Sibert, watch out, he’s up to something!’ Sibert shot me a look and then, bunching his right hand, swung it in a wide arc towards Romain’s head. Romain saw it coming — anyone would have done, Sibert didn’t seem to know much about fist-fighting — and caught it easily in his left fist. With his right, he hit Sibert very hard on the side of his head and Sibert slumped over to his right.

If he fell he would be done for. I sprang forward and got my arms under his shoulders, then using all my strength humped him first to a sitting position and then to his feet. He was very unsteady, rocking to and fro, his face white except for the vivid scarlet mark on his temple. Beyond him, I watched in horror as Romain leapt up and drew a knife.

‘I want my crown!’ he screamed.

‘It’s not yours!’ Sibert yelled back. His hands were on the leather bag concealed under his tunic. ‘You were going to rob me of it, but it’s mine, it was made by my ancestor!’

His ancestor. Of course. From all Sibert’s talk of sorcerers in the family, I had pretty much worked that out. I forced myself back to the perilous present; Romain was watching Sibert’s hands and I knew that he had guessed what Sibert was guarding.

As I stared at the crown in its leather bag beneath Sibert’s tunic, I had the strange thought that it was neither Romain nor Sibert who was controlling events. It was the crown, steadily sending out its power and driving both the man and the youth to madness. For a frightening moment as my eyes flashed from one to the other, I recognized neither of them. Romain’s handsome face was ugly with urgent greed and Sibert — oh, Sibert looked like a man of forty, thin, haggard, lined and grey.

I screamed in horror.

Romain lunged for Sibert, the knife in his right hand. I did not think for an instant that Sibert would stand his ground. For one thing, I had already seen he wasn’t much of a fighter and for another, only a fool faces up to a man with a knife when he himself is unarmed.

Sibert was unarmed but he was possessed. I watched, horrified, as the crown commanded his actions. He stood like stone and I sensed the power of the crown throb and thrum in the air. Romain leapt at him and even as the knife flashed in its descent, Sibert acted. He was considerably taller than Romain and this, together with the fact that Romain had jumped up and was now coming down again, gave Sibert the one advantage that he had.

I do not think to this day that Sibert would have realized this for himself. He was, as I have said, possessed, and the crown was thinking for him.

But there was no knowing precisely what the crown had in mind so, just to be on the safe side, I added some advice of my own. I cried out, ‘Now, Sibert! Get your leg up!’

As Romain descended on Sibert, the knife in one hand and the other stretched out to grab Sibert’s shoulder, Sibert calmly raised his knee. It caught Romain between the legs and I winced at the force of the impact. Romain gave a great cry of agony and fell on to his left side. The knife flew out of his hand and Sibert went over to pick it up. Staring down at Romain, he gave a curt nod. Then he looked at me and said, ‘Let’s go.’

I wanted so much to stay. Romain had failed and Sibert had the crown; at that moment all my sympathies were with Romain. Not only had he lost the treasure he had tried so hard to win but he’d also lost what he had hoped to acquire with it. He had, in short, lost his future.

But if I had not aided Sibert against him, I reasoned with myself, fighting back my tears, then he would have lost his life. He’d been in danger — Granny said so, and now I had seen it for myself. I couldn’t have let him die, for he meant far too much to me.

I stood over him, watching as he rolled to and fro in a futile attempt to ease the pain, settling on his back with his knees clutched to his chest. There was nothing I could do.

I turned away and set off after Sibert.

We did the journey in three marches. That night we slept deep in woodland just short of the road we’d been heading for and the next night we were on the fringe of the Thetford Forest. Early in the evening of the third day, we were approaching the place where our roads diverged.

‘I’m not coming all the way to Aelf Fen,’ I said wearily. The idea of the long miles I still had to cover before I reached Icklingham was daunting but it was even further to Aelf Fen. I’d been tempted to go on to the village with Sibert and knock on my aunt Edild’s door to beg a bed for the night — after all, I’d used her as my excuse for absenting myself from Goda’s house — but I thought I had better not involve her in any other way. If Goda ever checked up on me, that would be a different matter but otherwise, the less anybody knew about where I’d been and why, the better. As far as Edild and everyone else in Aelf Fen were aware, I was over in Icklingham looking after my sister.

Sibert and I stood eyeing each other. We had shared so much and we had done a momentous thing. Were we thieves, in the eyes of the law? I did not know. Romain would say that we were, and only a couple of weeks before he would have had some justification, in that what Sibert carried in his leather bag had been hidden on Romain’s land. But now the king had taken the manor and everything in it, so in truth, I supposed, we had stolen from him.

It was alarming, to say the least.

I reassured myself with the thought that morally, if in no other way, the crown belonged to Sibert as the descendant of the man who had made it. I had longed to ask him about this all the long miles of our journey home but he had changed. The Sibert who possessed the crown — or, more likely, it was the crown that possessed him — was not a man of whom you could ask unwelcome questions, and every sense told me that this was not a matter he wished to discuss with me.

I turned away, leaving him standing at the crossroads, and headed off down the track to Icklingham. I was dog tired, my feet ached, I was hungry, thirsty, filthy dirty and my face was hot and prickly with sunburn. I had done what I had been asked, and what had I got for my troubles? Nothing.

I trudged on, deep in self-pity.

But then as I drew near to my destination and at last a proper bed to sleep in, I realized that I was wrong. I had got something, and its value far outweighed money or treasure.

Romain — who, I admitted to myself, I liked so much that it felt like love — had been in deadly peril. Death had shadowed him and I had seen its black cloud over his handsome head as we stood by the sea sanctuary. Somehow the crown had endangered him; that was where the threat lay. By my actions I had seen to it that Romain and the crown were kept apart.

I had saved his life.

Happy, smug in this secret knowledge of my own power and skill that could outwit death, finally I got to Goda’s house. It was fully dark now and I could hear my sister’s snores. I didn’t look to see if Cerdic was home — it didn’t really matter — and, being as quiet as I could, I let myself into the lean-to and fell on to my bed.

It had taken Romain some time before he felt able to straighten out his curled body. Whenever he risked movement, the pain ripped up from his groin with such ferocity that it was as if Sibert’s knee was driving into him all over again. Slowly, agonizingly, he rolled on to his side, then up on to hands and knees. Then he tried to stand up.

Besides the injury, however, he was suffering from dehydration and he had not eaten anything of any substance for hours. He had raced along the track in pursuit of Sibert and the crown; he had been in a fight that had left him badly hurt. His blistered foot was a constant agony, throbbing in repeated waves of pain in time with his fast heartbeat. It was little wonder, then, that the moment he was upright, his head began to swim and he fainted.

When he came back to himself he was lying on his left side, knees drawn up, his face pressed into the soft ground. He tried to remember how he had got there. He felt dizzy, sick and disoriented and his memory would not oblige him.

When eventually he recalled the events of the recent past, he groaned aloud. They had deceived him, that crafty youth and the skinny girl who looked so young and scared but whose true nature was so very different. They had crept out of the sleeping place in the night, gone back to the sanctuary and stolen his crown. He had tried to fight the lad to regain it but he had failed and they had escaped him. Now they were somewhere on the road ahead and, injured and sick as he was, there was little chance that he could overtake them.

Little chance? he thought. There was no chance at all, for by now they would be deep in those pestilential, haunted Fens and he knew he would be hard put to follow and find them.

Very cautiously he sat up. The swimming sensation flooded back but he gritted his teeth and endured it. When it faded a little, he tried once again to stand up. This time he succeeded.

‘What should I do?’ he said aloud. ‘I must have my crown’ — it was the one thought that was in his mind, banging insistently against his skull until he thought he would go mad — ‘and so I have no choice but to follow them.’

His footsteps dragged as he made his slow way over to where the path emerged from beneath the dark shadow of the trees. It was then that he knew he was no longer alone.

He could not identify the sound that had set his nerves tingling and jangling with fear. Was it a footstep? A soft intake of breath? He stood quite still, heart hammering, sweat breaking out on his body, and listened.

The silence ached around him.

His control broke and he yelled, ‘Where are you? Come out and show yourself!’

Not a sound.

I am being stupid, he tried to tell himself. There’s no one there or, if there is, it’s some poacher up to no good and probably far more frightened of me than I am of him.

But in his heart he knew that this was no poacher.

He believed he knew who it was and the thought terrified him.

‘I haven’t got it!’ he cried, a sob in his voice. ‘The boy and the girl took it and now they are far away!’

He stared around him, eyes wide and wild. He thought he saw movement and spun his head so swiftly to look more closely that the threatening faintness came rushing back.

He fought down the nausea and went on staring.

It seemed to him that there was something black creeping out from under the trees. He blinked and it vanished.

‘Where are you?’ he sobbed again. ‘Show yourself!’ Whatever horror lurked there out of the deep past, it would be better to face it, to see what it was.

Wouldn’t it?

He thought he smelt the sea. Oh, dear God, what was it? Some dread magic conjured up by the sorcerers of old? Some projection of their vast, unearthly power, disguised as the terrible dragon whose roar gave Drakelow its name?

‘Help me,’ he whimpered. ‘Oh, God, help me!’

They — it — had come for the stolen treasure. He knew it. He was the thief, for all that he did not have the crown. Dark, frightful and all-knowing powers such as these, whatever they were, knew who was to blame.

They blamed him.

And they had come for him. They had followed him stealthily all the way from the sea and now they would take him.

With a moan of pure terror, Romain sank to his knees. Holding up his clasped hands as if in prayer, he wept. ‘Spare me!’ he begged. ‘Oh, spare me!’

There was a whistling noise, as if something heavy was flying through the air. The pain burst with unbelievable, agonizing force inside Romain’s head and then the dark took him.