Out of the Dawn Light

TWELVE

In the morning I entertained my grumpy and by now all but immobile sister to a lively account of my week back in Aelf Fen. She didn’t seem particularly interested but all the same I elaborated and embroidered my tale, describing this person’s concussion, that person’s severe bruising and how I had helped Edild reduce a fracture. In the end Goda shouted at me to shut my mouth, get on with cleaning the house and then fetch her something to eat.

Meekly I did as I was told. The house certainly needed cleaning and it looked as if whoever had been keeping an eye on my sister during my absence — probably the village midwife — had contented herself with the briefest of visits and done no more than make sure Goda was still alive and not giving birth. As I worked I continued to volunteer further details about life back in Aelf Fen until Goda lost her temper and threw a wooden platter at me. Advanced pregnancy had, however, weakened her aim and the platter’s trajectory was feeble. I ducked it with the ease of long practice.

I decided it would do no harm to describe my fictitious stay in Aelf Fen to Cerdic, too. I wanted to make sure that if ever anyone accused me of having journeyed all the way to the coast south of Dunwich where I assisted in the theft of a gold crown, at least two people would protest that I couldn’t possibly have done because I was staying with and helping my aunt Edild. I reminded myself that if the day ever came when more verification was called for, I must enlist Edild’s help too so that she supported my story as well.

I was, however, quietly confident that no such day would ever come.

It came two days later.

I had been occupied in the mammoth and complicated task of changing the rough and worn sheets on Goda’s bed. The task was well overdue and exhausting right from the start, when I had to help her to get up and sit on the bench by the hearth. Immediately she began to harangue me for not working fast enough. The bed was horrible and I won’t describe exactly in what way. I stripped it, put the straw mattress outside the door and gave it a vigorous beating. Then I sponged down the sacking that covered it, opened one end and stuffed in some fresh sprigs of pennyroyal to discourage the fleas. I took the sheets down to the stream and plunged them into the water, then picked up Goda’s block of lye-and-tallow soap and began rubbing it into the worst of the stains.

I had the sheets washed, rinsed and spread out on gorse bushes to dry when I heard the sound of horses’ hooves. Looking up, my heart beating fast in alarm, I saw three of the lord’s men riding into the village. They were bareheaded — clearly not expecting the least sign of trouble in a small village full of humble people minding their own business — and their surcoats were maroon and bore a device in black. Even if they weren’t expecting trouble, all the same each of them had a sword at his side.

They went to my sister’s house and I knew they had come for me. They went inside, stayed for a short while, then one of them came hurrying out again, leapt on to his horse and rode away. Was he going to check on my story?

I cursed myself. Why hadn’t I gone on to Aelf Fen with Sibert that night and spoken to Edild? She would back me up, I knew it, but she could not if she didn’t know I needed her to! Oh, what an idiot I had been.

I waited, holding my breath.

I heard my sister screech, ‘Lassair! Come here!’

I went.

I had left her sitting on the bench in nothing but her shift, stretched impossibly tight across her swollen belly and none too clean. I had intended to see to her once the sheets were drying, and for now she was sweaty, smelly and greasy-faced, her hair hanging in sticky rats’ tails and so dulled by dirt that its bright carroty-red colour was totally hidden. I felt a stab of sympathy for her, as this was no condition in which any woman would wish to greet two well-dressed, important men.

The sympathy was short-lived. ‘What have you done?’ she yelled at me as I stepped through the door. ‘You’re in for a beating, my girl, bringing shame to an honest household, and I’ll-’

One of the men — the elder of the two — held up an imperious hand and my sister fell silent, her mouth left hanging open.

‘You are Lassair?’ he asked.

I tried to read his expression but his face was bland and gave nothing away.

‘I am.’

‘Your sister here tells us you have recently been at Aelf Fen.’

‘Yes, that’s right. I was staying with my aunt, her name’s Edild and she’s a healer, and we were-’

Again he held up his hand. ‘So I am given to understand. I have sent one of my company to verify the truth of what you say.’

I said nothing. Across the miles that separated us, I was concentrating on feverishly willing Edild to back me up.

‘You are required to come with us to Aelf Fen,’ he stated baldly.

To my own village? Why? I wondered frantically. If as I suspected all this flurry of activity was because they’d found the crown, then why did I have to go to Aelf Fen when the act of theft had been at Drakelow? But then I thought, ah, yes, but the crown is with Sibert, and he’s at Aelf Fen.

I almost blurted out the question that they must have known I was desperate to ask. But somehow I managed to hold it back. I was innocent, I reminded myself firmly. I had been nowhere near Drakelow but closeted with my aunt Edild, helping her in her healing work. Innocent people did not demand anxiously why they were wanted. Confident that it could be for no sinister purpose, they simply smiled and said, very well.

Which was exactly what I did.

They were obviously in a hurry because they were not content to go at my walking pace. Instead the younger man swung up into the saddle of his great chestnut horse and, bending down and catching me under the arms, lifted me up and sat me down in front of him. Then both men put spurs to their mounts and we were off, cantering smartly in the direction of Aelf Fen.

All the way there I was thinking about Sibert.

How could I help him? If they suspected what he — we — had done, how could I defend him? Perhaps he, like me, had prepared a good story and, if what I dreaded had happened and they had accused him of stealing the crown, he would be able to hold his head high and offer proof that he had been nowhere near Dunwich.

Then it would be Romain’s word — for surely it could only be he who had brought the accusations — against Sibert’s and mine. Two against one, but the trouble was that the one was a rich Norman lord’s son. A rich lord, however, I reminded myself, who had just fallen so far out of favour with the king that his manor, his lands and his property had been seized.

Perhaps it did not look quite so bad after all.

I concentrated very hard on making my expression sweet and innocent. A decent girl, hard-working, caught in the act of helping her pregnant sister and only lately returned from a stint of dedicated nursing and healing with her aunt; that was the way they must see me.

Trying like fury to send a mental message to Edild — When they ask, support me! Oh, please, Edild, say I’ve been with you the whole time! — all too soon we were riding into Aelf Fen.

I had never seen so many people gathered together in my village. We do not have a central meeting point such as I had seen the villagers enjoy at Icklingham, for Aelf Fen is, as the name implies, a Fenland village and grew up, I suppose, from a series of dwellings constructed over time above the upper line of the tidal wash. There have always been dwellings there, we know that, and sometimes when people dig over a new piece of ground they find evidence of ancient houses, circular where ours are rectangular, huddled close together as if in fear of the great world beyond. The track sweeps through the village in a sort of wiggle, with the little houses situated on one side and the wetter ground leading down to the water in the other. Such was the avid curiosity of the villagers this morning that some of them, standing at the rear of the crowd, were ankle-deep in black, muddy water.

The man I was riding with deposited me — quite gently and carefully — on the ground, and then dismounted and went to join his two companions. They spoke briefly and one of them looked in my direction. There were another lord’s men there too, wearing a different device on their breasts. I counted half a dozen of them. Standing with them was a tall and burly man of perhaps thirty-five or forty, dark hair club-cut in a fringe, clean-shaven and dressed in clothes that must have been expensive but which now looked well-worn and travel-stained.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in me, although I had a feeling this state was not going to last. For now, I slipped in between two of my neighbours and tried to make myself invisible. I looked around for my family and saw my parents, my granny, my sister Elfritha and my brother Squeak. My mother held the baby. My brother Haward stood behind one of the lord’s men. He caught my eye and sent me a worried frown. I was wondering whether to slip through the crowd and go to speak to him when I saw Edild. She was standing with the rider who had been sent to question her and verify my tale of having spent the past week with her. She too caught my eye and I thought I saw her give a very small nod. Had I not been looking so anxiously for some such sign, I don’t think I would have seen it.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief and began praying fervently, saying over and over again, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

This must be the reason why the lord’s men seemed so unconcerned with me. The rider who hastened away from Goda’s house had sought out Edild and she, bless her, had backed me up without hesitation. I knew I had some explaining to do and I guessed she was none too pleased with me. But she had supported my story. At that terrifying moment, that was all I could think of.

The relief that coursed through me was short-lived for just then they brought forward Sibert. Tall though he may be, he is slim and lightly built and I could not think it really needed two heavy-handed guards to hold him. It seemed that the two different companies of manor officials had each provided their roughest, toughest guard and one stood on Sibert’s right and the other on his left. Sibert looked petrified.

The man who had questioned me in Goda’s house now stepped up on to a large wooden box that some helpful villager must have provided. He said in a loud voice, ‘An accusation of theft has been made against the young man Sibert of Aelf Fen, here before you. He has just been brought from the house of his mother and his uncle’ — I stared round frantically and there were Froya and Hrype at the back of the crowd, Froya tugging and twisting anxiously at her white linen apron, her face as pale as her light blonde hair, and Hrype scowling thunderously — ‘and he will now be searched.’

They must already have searched the cottage, I thought wildly, not that it would have taken long to rummage through the family’s few belongings in their one-roomed house. Clever Sibert, not to have hidden the crown in so obvious a place! I wondered where he had put it. Perhaps he had thought up a suitable place on our long march home — he’d passed enough time in silence to have come up with several likely spots, and-

They had dragged him out in the open where everyone could see and they were starting to pull off his clothes. He cried out in protest and started to struggle, and one of the guards hit him quite hard on the jaw. I heard a gasp and then a moan from Froya. His tunic was lifted over his head and two of the guards felt it carefully to see if anything was hidden in its folds. Someone made him lift his feet, one after the other, and they drew off his boots. Then one of the guards who had been holding him untied the drawstring around his narrow waist and his baggy breeches fell to the ground and bunched around his ankles.

Sibert stood there naked but for a leather bag that hung over his flat belly, fastened on a thin strap around his hips. In his shame he hung his head. I wished I had looked away sooner, for as I screwed my eyes shut I could still see him. His face, throat and lower arms were sunburned, dark against the pale flesh normally covered by his garments, and his body looked frail, the ribs and the collarbones very prominent. His legs were long, the sinews straight and wiry. His penis, shrivelled with his fear, hung limp beneath its thatch of fair hair.

I kept my eyes shut while silently I sent him the strongest support I could muster. If he looked up and saw me, I thought, he would see that at least one villager was not staring at him in his humiliation and-

Oh, but what was I thinking of!

I was almost weeping with sympathy for my friend because he stood stripped and shamed in front of the whole village. But that was nothing. For, obsessed and driven young man that I now knew him to be, he had not hidden the crown at all.

Perhaps he tried. Perhaps he got out to whatever place he had selected for its concealment and then when the moment came, discovered he was unable to tear himself away from it.

The little experience I had had of the crown told me that its power was such that it was more than capable of such a feat.

However it had happened, the fact remained that Sibert stood before those who had come looking for what he and I had stolen and he was carrying it — wearing it, almost — in its leather bag around his body.

I had to look.

One of the guards had unfastened the bag and was on the point of untying the thongs to see what was within. Then the burly man stepped forward and took it rather roughly from the guard’s hands. Only a man as big and powerful as he would risk that, I thought, for the guard was very broad and bore the signs of more than one fight on his coarse features. For an instant he stared at the burly man through narrowed slits of eyes, then he stepped back.

The burly man thrust his hand into the bag. He must have known full well what was in there, for the shape was unmistakable. He paused, and I saw a cruel smile twist his thin lips. Then he extracted his hand and held the crown high above his head.

There was no need for words and he said nothing. The guards closed in around Sibert as if they feared that, faced with incontrovertible truth of his guilt, he might think he had nothing to lose and try to make a run for it. I could have told them they were wrong; Sibert, I realized, was in a state that verged on total collapse and only the guards holding his arms stopped him from slumping to the ground.

Then I realized something strange. The burly man was not the only one who was suddenly mute; nobody else was speaking either. And Sibert’s guards were ashen-faced.

The little group made up of Sibert, his guards, the lord’s men and the burly man formed the centre of the crowd and they were closest to the crown. But as the burly man continued to hold it high in the air, it was as if a wave of its power broke over the rest of us. Some seemed impervious, continuing to stare blankly at the drama unfolding before them. Some — Hrype, Edild, my sister Elfritha — went so white that they looked deadly sick and I knew I must look the same. My knees shook and it was all that I could do to keep standing. There was a rushing sound in my ears and my skin felt as if it had been blasted by hot air. I wanted very much to throw up.

The invisible wave passed.

The burly man must have recovered for suddenly he was shouting in a loud, confident voice, ‘Here is the object that was stolen from me and that I now reclaim!’

Stolen from me.

I knew then who he was.

I fixed my eyes on him, using all my puny, fledgling power in an attempt to make him look at me. He did, and for the first time I stared into the glittering black eyes of the man I knew to be Baudouin de la Flèche.

It is not yours, I said silently as our gazes met. It was hidden centuries ago by men who were not of your blood. Even the feeble excuse that it lay hidden on what for a time was your land no longer applies for Drakelow is no longer yours.

I don’t know if he knew what I was thinking. Probably not, but it made me feel better to be doing something.

He stared at me blank-eyed for a moment. Then he gave a very horrible smile.

He held up his hand and at once the agitated hiss of muttered comments that had broken out among the villagers ceased. ‘Sibert of Aelf Fen here is guilty of theft,’ he stated forcefully. I saw one of the lord’s men step forward as if to protest, to say, perhaps, that Sibert would have to be put on trial to determine his guilt, but Baudouin de la Flèche ignored him. ‘The proof of his theft was found on his body and all here present saw it!’ He looked round as if daring us to challenge him. Nobody did.

‘There is more,’ he said, still staring round and now speaking in a low, dramatic tone that carried right to the back of the crowd. He spun round to face Sibert. Then, his face working with the violent emotion that tore through him, he shouted, ‘This young man is a murderer! He killed my nephew and he will hang!’

The horrified mutterings of the villagers rose to a crescendo and with it, blending like two lines of melody, I heard a ferocious humming like a skep of angry bees. It came from the crown, but whether it was jubilant or protesting I did not know.

The sounds climaxed inside my head to a roar. I felt dizzy with sudden violent vertigo and my knees gave way. I was vaguely aware of the ground rushing up to meet me and then everything went black.