Out of the Dawn Light

THIRTEEN

When I came to I was lying on the floor in my own home and my mother and my aunt were bending over me. My granny sat beside the hearth, watching me very closely. I could see her deep eyes glittering. Ignoring both her and my poor mother, who had clearly been crying and was red-eyed and puffy-nosed, I grabbed Edild’s hand and said, ‘I’m so sorry! I’ll explain, I promise!’

She knew, of course, what I referred to. ‘Don’t worry about that now,’ she replied. My mother looked mystified and Edild turned to her. ‘Essa, could you find a blanket, please? Lassair’s shivering. I think it’s the shock.’

‘Of course!’ My mother leapt up. She has a lot of respect for her sister-in-law and would never dream of challenging her in her healing role. Besides, they are very fond of each other.

‘Quickly, now,’ my aunt hissed, bending low over me. ‘You’ve been with me for the past week or so, is that what you’ve said? I’ve already told them you were but we’d better agree on the details.’

‘Yes,’ I hissed back. ‘I told Goda I had to come back to the village to help you with the injured from an accident with a hay cart.’

‘The accident that happened rather longer ago than a week.’ Edild nodded. ‘Any specific injuries?’

‘I helped you with a fractured leg,’ I whispered. ‘A nasty injury, with bits of bone sticking out. I had to hold the man’s shoulders while you pulled on his leg, but you gave him something to numb the pain.’

She nodded again. ‘Otherwise, mainly cuts and bruises?’

‘Yes.’

‘Clever girl,’ she muttered. ‘Except for the fractured leg, exactly what we did do. We’ll just have to hope,’ she added, speaking swiftly because my mother was coming over to us, ‘that nobody thinks to check the time of this accident and its aftermath with the victims.’

With that awkward little conversation out of the way, I relaxed for a moment. Then, of course, I remembered about Sibert. Even worse, if anything could be worse, I remembered about Romain, whose uncle, his face distorted with grief, had said he was dead. I felt two large tears roll out of my eyes and slide sideways on to the pillow. My mother bent down and hugged me wordlessly. It was, as it always has been, a great comfort. Edild offered to make a soothing drink for me and hurried away, leaving my mother by my side holding my hand.

I needed, however, comfort of a different sort. I needed to know what was happening to Sibert and — for no matter how badly someone we’re fond of is suffering, we still put our own safety first, or at least I did then — I had to know why they had come looking for me.

How had they possibly known I was involved?

I had to think. I had to try to piece together what might have happened, and for that I needed quiet. In case my mother felt she ought to talk to me to take my mind off the morning’s awful events, I closed my eyes and made my breathing deep and steady. Presently I sensed her get up and tiptoe away. Please don’t think she was being callous; it’s just that she always has so much to do that she couldn’t afford to spend time at the side of her distraught daughter if that daughter had just fallen asleep.

I had imagined at first that it was Romain who had organized the lord’s men to come searching for Sibert, me and the crown, but it could not have been because he was dead. He could, I supposed, have told his uncle about what we had done before he died, so that it was Baudouin and not Romain who tracked us down. I thought about that for a while and it seemed to make sense. Romain had somehow got word to his uncle, then, that I had helped Sibert steal the crown, yet I had told a different story, one verified by my aunt and, to a lesser extent, by Goda and Cerdic. It was my word against Baudouin’s and although he was a Norman lord and I a village girl, for one thing I had someone to verify my story and for another he had rebelled against the king and lost everything. My position was beginning to look more secure.

Then I thought, aghast, but Romain is dead!

Romain was dead. I could still barely believe it. Baudouin claimed that Sibert had murdered him, but that wasn’t possible. Was it? He certainly hadn’t murdered him in the time it took us to walk home from Drakelow because we had been together every minute. He could, I supposed, have got up while I was asleep, found Romain and killed him, but I didn’t think it at all likely. Sibert and I had both been very scared on that journey home and we had barely slept. Even when I did manage to drift off, the slightest sound had brought me back to full consciousness. I didn’t think Sibert could have left my side without my noticing, since to comfort ourselves we had slept with our backs pressed tightly together. Besides, was it possible that a slim youth like Sibert could have attacked and killed a much broader, stronger man like Romain without a considerable amount of noise? And then returned and calmly gone back to sleep as if nothing had happened? That presupposed that Romain had recovered sufficiently from Sibert’s knee in his testicles to get up and follow us, and I was not at all sure he could have done.

No. I was willing to swear that Sibert had not murdered Romain on the course of that journey. It was possible that Romain had followed him back to Aelf Fen and Sibert had slain him then, but surely Froya and Hrype would be able to prove that he didn’t because he lived with them and they would know his movements.

Unless, of course, he had actually managed to evade them and he had gone out and killed Romain. .

Romain was dead.

I had been so busy rushing in my mind to Sibert’s defence that I had barely taken in that stark, horrible, heartbreaking fact.

Romain was dead. With him went my happy daydream of him discovering how I had helped Sibert take the crown and so saved Romain from its deadly threat, and coming to Aelf Fen to rescue me from my village life and marry me, turning me at a stroke from peasant into lady. Drakelow would, of course, have been restored to him (how this would be achieved without the crown I had not quite worked out) and we would live in blissful happiness for the rest of our days.

But he was dead.

Despite what I had done, that shadow had still found him and death had claimed him, just as my granny had predicted. I risked a quick peep to see if she was still sitting there watching me. She was. Knowing Granny, even if she hadn’t seen the quick flutter of my eyelids she would still be well aware that I wasn’t really asleep. I didn’t think I could bear to talk to her just then. She had warned me, months ago, and I ought to have taken more notice. Instead I had thought I knew better. I had believed in my overconfident faith in myself that I could outwit death when it had put its mark on someone. What a fool I had been, for now I had lost him.

Soundlessly, secretly, I wept.

When I finished weeping, I had a thought. If Sibert did not kill Romain — and I was quite sure he did not — then who did?

I was not allowed to get up. Had it not been for my grief over Romain and my gnawing, constant anxiety over Sibert, I would have relished the chance to lie there in comfort while my family ministered to me. While I needed to be looked after — and clearly they all thought I did — Edild had taken up temporary residence and, because there was so little room, my brother Haward was going to sleep in her house, taking Squeak with him. He’s a kind man, my brother, and he did not complain at all about being cast out of his home for my sake.

Later that day, when darkness was falling and all was quiet, Hrype came to our house. I was sitting up by then, propped up on a pillow and regularly sipping the concoctions that Edild prepared. They had tried to make me eat but my stomach was tying itself in knots and I knew I would be sick if I did.

Hrype accepted a place beside Granny on the bench by the hearth and as he sat down he stared at me. I made myself stare back. He is, I suppose you would say, quite a handsome man, always giving the impression that he takes care of himself. His hair is long, dark blond, parted in the middle and hanging glossy and smooth down to his shoulders. His eyes are light — grey, I would say — and the bones of his face are graceful, almost kingly — he has high cheekbones and a proud nose. He rarely smiles. He was for sure not smiling now.

I tried to read what was in his eyes but his skills are so far above mine that he knew I was searching and blocked himself off. Edild might have penetrated him a little way but she did not even appear to be trying, instead looking after him solicitously as if he had been taken ill. In a way, he had; he looked grief-stricken and he was white with shock.

He did not waste any time. As soon as we were settled, my parents opposite Hrype, Edild and Elfritha on low stools and the baby asleep in his cradle, he said, ‘They have taken Sibert away and he is in prison. They say he will face trial but Baudouin de la Flèche speaks of dragging him out and hanging him.’

There was a horrified silence. Then my father said, ‘What happened? I mean,’ he corrected himself hurriedly, ‘what does Baudouin claim happened?’

Hrype was watching me. It made me feel very uncomfortable. He said, ‘He claims that Sibert stole the crown from its hiding place at his manor of Drakelow.’ I almost protested that it wasn’t his manor any longer but then I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to know that. I wasn’t supposed to have been anywhere near the place, never mind knowing who it did or did not belong to. ‘Then he set off to make his way secretly home to Aelf Fen.’ He paused. ‘Baudouin suspects that Sibert was not alone.’ Again those strange silvery eyes with their unreadable expression glanced against me. ‘He claims that his nephew Romain knew of the theft and pursued Sibert with the intention of reclaiming the stolen crown. He says that, worried for his nephew’s safety, he set out to look for him. He encountered men searching for him, bringing the awful news that Romain was dead and offering to take him to the place where he had been slain. He says that he has a witness to the moment when Romain caught up with Sibert and this person saw with his own eyes how Sibert doubled back on his tracks and so came upon Romain from behind.’ Then Baudouin’s witness has identified the wrong man, I thought fiercely, for Sibert did no such thing. ‘It is claimed that Sibert leapt out on Romain, taking him by surprise, and hit him very hard on the back of the head with a heavy branch. The witness heard the crunch of the shattering bones and Romain fell dead to the ground. Sibert ran away.’ He stopped abruptly, wiping his hands over his face several times.

After a while my father spoke, very hesitantly expressing what I was thinking. ‘Er — if this is true,’ he said, ‘if we are meant to believe that there is a fragment of truth in it, then, as soon as Baudouin learned from the witness what had just happened, why did he not immediately set off after Sibert — er, after the assailant, and catch him? He had just been told that his nephew had been brutally slain, yet he would have us believe he did nothing to apprehend the killer? He is a big, strong man,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘and surely he could have outrun a slight youth like Sibert.’ He thought some more. ‘He’d surely have had a horse,’ he added.

Hrype looked at him intently and then said neutrally, ‘He says he was preoccupied with looking after Romain.’

‘But he’d been told that Romain was dead when he fell! If Baudouin knew that, surely he realized there was nothing he could do and much the better course of action was to catch the killer!’ My father sounded quite cross, as if such irrational behaviour were more than any decent man should be asked to believe.

My mother gave a quiet sound of distress. Putting a hand on my father’s arm, she murmured, ‘He was grieving and surely not himself, Wymond. The poor man had just been led to where his nephew lay dead and was that very moment bending over the body.’

My father grunted something.

Hrype was still looking at him. I saw him give a very small smile of approval. ‘I thought precisely the same thing as you,’ he said. ‘It is what, indeed, I tried to say to the men who are holding Sibert.’

‘How is he?’ my mother asked softly. Now it was she to whom I was grateful, for I longed to ask the same question.

‘He — has suffered a profound humiliation and a severe shock,’ Hrype said. ‘He does not believe, however, that he is guilty of theft and he knows he is not guilty of murder. I hope,’ he said with a sigh, ‘that these firm beliefs may sustain him in his time of trial.’

‘He’s going to be tried?’ I asked. I had not really wanted to draw Hrype’s attention to me — any more than it was already there, for all the time he was engaged in talking to my parents I sensed that a part of him was probing me — but I could not hold back the question.

Hrype gave me a wry smile. ‘I did not speak literally,’ he said. ‘As to whether he will be tried, I cannot say. I hope so, for it is better than summary execution, but then the trial will be performed by Normans and we are not of their kind.’

We all knew what he meant by that.

‘If there is a trial,’ he said, ‘then Sibert will have to prove that he could not have done the deeds of which he is accused. Somehow it will have to be demonstrated that the object he stole did not belong to Baudouin de la Flèche.’ He did not elaborate but I thought I knew what he meant; Sibert had said the crown had been made by his own ancestor and placed beneath the tree stump by men of his family. This surely made the crown his, and you can’t be convicted of stealing from yourself. ‘It will also have to be proved,’ Hrype went on, ‘that Sibert did not leap on Romain and batter him to death. For that to happen, it will have to be shown that he was elsewhere.’ I knew that his full attention was on me now, for all that he was staring down into the hearth, and it was a frightening feeling. ‘Someone,’ he concluded, ‘will have to speak for him.’

Silence fell, the echo of Hrype’s words slowly dying. My mind was whirling and I felt the vertigo returning. I shut my eyes, but that was worse. Someone will have to speak for him. Hrype can only have meant me, and it appeared he knew much more about Sibert’s and my escapade than I had thought.

My father, who must have been thinking as hard as I was, said, ‘Does Baudouin say where and when his nephew was killed?’

Hrype looked at him. ‘He does. He says the attack happened a few miles short of the road that goes from Lowestoft to Diss, and that it was five days ago.’

I counted. I had been back with Goda for two days and for the three days before that Sibert and I had been making our way home following the fight with Romain. This meant, I realized, that whoever had killed Romain must have caught up with him shortly after Sibert had laid him low with a knee in the crotch.

We had left Romain alive and fairly well, other than the bruised testicles. And from then on I had been with Sibert all the way home.

Despite everything, I felt a cry of triumph inside my head. Sibert was innocent, and I knew it.

Whether I could prove it — whether I even had the courage to try — was a very different matter.