Out of the Dawn Light

FIFTEEN

I had told them at home that I was going back to Goda’s house and as I left Lord Gilbert’s manor, my face still burning from my humiliation, I thought I might as well do just that. I had nerved myself to do the one thing I could think of to save Sibert and I had failed, miserably and utterly. Lord Gilbert had all but patted me on the head and told me to go away and play. Baudouin de la Flèche had revealed himself to be a truly frightening man. But then, I reminded myself, trying to be fair, he had just lost his nephew and heir and perhaps was not in his right mind. Thinking of him in his lonely grief I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

I really didn’t want to go back to Goda’s house but I could not think of anywhere else to go. If I turned up at home I’d have to explain, and my failure still bit too deep for me to have any desire to talk about it. So, slowly, reluctantly, I plodded wearily off down the road to Icklingham, thinking as I did that never had the miles seemed so long.

The day had become hot and I stopped by a stream to splash my face with cool water. I was straightening up again, preparing to attack the last leg of my journey, when I heard a rustling sound in the bracken behind me.

For no apparent reason, I was afraid. I stood quite still, only my eyes moving as swiftly I looked round, both for the source of the sound and for a hiding place or escape route. There was nowhere to hide — I was standing on a low bank above a watercourse that wound between low bushes and skinny alders — and the only place to run was on down the track to Icklingham.

I listened, my ears straining, but the sound did not come again. It was probably an animal, I told myself. A bird pulling at a worm. A stoat whipping round into the safety of its hole.

I did not succeed in reassuring myself at all. I knew that the sound had somehow been too big for a small, innocent creature. I was all but sure it had been made by a human.

I thought suddenly, someone killed Romain. It wasn’t Sibert, no matter what this mysterious witness says, no matter how much Baudouin wants to believe that it was. I knew the truth and I realized with a cold shiver of horror that, other than Sibert, I was the only living soul who did. It was in this unknown somebody’s interests to ensure that my version of events did not gain credibility and one sure way of doing that was to silence me. Permanently.

I leapt across the stream and ran as fast as I could towards Icklingham.

Goda received me with slightly more animation than she usually managed. It was not, after all, every day that her sister managed to involve herself in a murder. After the initial questions, however, Goda’s attitude changed and soon she was screeching at me for bringing the family into disrepute. It was a relief to go outside into the warm sunshine to collect vegetables for our meal.

She found plenty of tasks of varying degrees of distastefulness for me to do for the remainder of the day. She was quite clearly making a point, that I had done something reckless and silly — she never specified what, exactly, since she didn’t know — and must be punished. I accepted it, doing whatever I was ordered efficiently and without complaint. I too felt I needed to be punished, and far more severely than anything my sister could come up with, for I had failed my friend and he would probably hang.

As the long day at last descended into evening, it was all I could do to keep back my tears.

I finally got Goda settled for the night. She had been complaining of aches and pains all afternoon, but then she always complained about something and I did not take a lot of notice. I knew she must be near her time but, other than making sure I knew where to go for the midwife when the moment came, there was little else I could do.

I went to sit outside on the narrow little bench in front of the house. Presently Cerdic came home; he had developed to a fine degree the knack of knowing when his wife was asleep and only creeping into their bed when she was snoring rhythmically and all but impossible to wake. Since he was up and out of the house in the morning before she woke, I wondered if these days they ever exchanged as much as a word. Certainly, it seemed highly unlikely they would exchange anything else.

He saw me on the bench and nodded a greeting.

‘She’s asleep,’ I whispered.

We both listened in silence for a moment to her snores. ‘So I hear,’ he whispered back with a grin.

On an impulse I patted the bench beside me and after a brief hesitation he sat down. We did not speak for some time — it really was a lovely night, clear skies and a glowing, golden moon — and then he said tentatively, ‘Do you think she’ll be better when the baby’s here?’

I did not know how to answer. What exactly did he mean by better? She’d be less immobile and useless, probably, and there was a slim chance she’d remember that she was a wife and it was her duty to keep the house clean and tidy and get a meal ready for her hard-working husband when he came home at night. Her temper might improve marginally once she was no longer fat, sweaty and uncomfortable. But she would still be Goda.

I thought very carefully and then said, for he was stuck with her and it would do no harm to give him some hope, ‘Lots of women feel quite differently about — er, about things once they have a baby to cherish. She’ll have a big, strong child,’ I went on, my confidence growing, ‘that’s for sure, and that’ll be a joy. She’ll nurse it and it’ll thrive, and she’ll be happy and I’m sure she’ll try to be a good mother.’ I was going too far and I knew it when I heard myself say she’ll be happy, for I’d never known my sister when she wasn’t discontented and moaning abut something.

But then miracles did sometimes happen.

I had said enough; more than enough.

Cerdic seemed content, however. After a time he said, ‘Ah well, better get to bed, I suppose.’ He stood up, looking down at me with a wry smile. ‘Thanks for coming back,’ he added. ‘She’d never say so but she needs you.’

As I watched him let himself quietly into the house and close the door, I reflected that it was probably all the appreciation I was ever going to get.

I sat on for some time and I was only prompted to thinking that I too should go to bed when I realized I was growing cold. I wrapped my lovely shawl more tightly around me and stood up, heading for the jakes.

On my way back to my little lean-to an arm was thrown around my throat and before I could cry out a hand was pressed tightly over my mouth. My alarmed heart started banging against my ribs and, as in a flash I was transported back to the cliff above Drakelow where the same thing had happened, my instant thought was: Sibert! It’s Sibert!

Something about my assailant must have added to that impression — a smell, or the feel of the skin on the hand clamped to my lips — for, despite my fear when I had heard something in the undergrowth, now, as the initial shock faded, I was not scared at all.

The hand lessened its pressure and the arm around my throat fell away. I turned round and saw not Sibert but Hrype.

I stared at him. His dark blond hair gleamed in the moonlight and his eyes reflected its glow. He was dressed in a long black cloak, its deep hood thrown back. He said very quietly, ‘I must talk to you. Come.’

He led the way along the track that leads eastwards out of the village and when we were well past the last habitation, he turned off the path and in under the trees. We were not far from the place where I had waited for Romain and Sibert.

We settled on the bank beneath a beech tree. For a few moments we sat in silence. I was very aware of the night sounds all around me; even more aware of the unknown, unknowable man who was by my side. I shivered suddenly, wrapping my shawl more closely around me. Perceptive man that he is, Hrype noticed. ‘I am sorry to keep you from your bed,’ he said.

‘It’s all right.’ I thought briefly about the coincidence by which I had not retired at the usual time but stayed sitting outside the house on the very night that Hrype needed to speak to me. Perhaps it was no coincidence at all; Hrype is, as I have said, a strange man with many powers.

‘You tried to save Sibert,’ he said. He knew, then, of my abortive visit to Lord Gilbert.

‘Yes. I failed.’

‘Nevertheless, I am grateful. My sister-in-law,’ he added, ‘loves the boy dearly. I too am very fond of him.’

Fond was an odd word to use, I thought vaguely. But then Hrype had not really chosen to be a substitute father; he had had to look after Froya and the baby Sibert when his brother Edmer died and for all I or anyone knew, he might have preferred a solitary life and only forfeited it because of duty. .

‘You have to know,’ Hrype was saying, ‘what is at stake.’

‘Sibert’s life!’ I hissed.

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ He seemed to brush that aside; perhaps it was too painful to think about. ‘There is something else, Lassair. Something which, although it pains me to admit it, is far more important than one young man’s fate.’

What could he mean? The answer came in a flash. ‘The crown,’ I breathed.

‘The crown,’ he agreed. Then, after a pause, ‘You have sensed a little of what it can do, I think.’

‘Yes. It affects me and I am afraid of it.’

‘You are right to be afraid. It is an object of power and it is not something that a man like Baudouin de la Flèche, or indeed any man, should use for the base purpose he has in mind.’

‘You mean buying his manor back with it.’ I wanted to be quite clear.

‘Yes.’

I frowned. ‘Romain gave the impression that searching for the crown was his idea,’ I said slowly. ‘Yet now you say it’s Baudouin who wishes to use it to persuade the king.’

Hrype stared at me. ‘It seems he was aware of what his nephew was up to,’ he said. ‘He was, he says, anxious about the young man.’ He sighed faintly. ‘With good reason.’

I realized that Hrype knew far more than I had imagined. ‘I think Sibert believed that his involvement with Romain and the mission to Drakelow were secret,’ I said.

‘Not from me,’ Hrype said.

‘He only knew about the crown because he heard you chanting to it!’ I burst out. I needed someone to blame and if Sibert hadn’t overheard Hrype and learned about Drakelow and what was hidden in the sea sanctuary, all this would not have happened.

Hrype sighed. ‘I know. Because of that, Sibert was ready and eager to be involved when Romain approached him.’

‘So’ — I tried to piece it together — ‘Romain sought out Sibert, told him there was a treasure buried somewhere at Drakelow and the two of them should go and find it, and Sibert said he knew roughly where it was hidden, and so they-’

‘They sought the help of a girl who is a dowser,’ Hrype finished for me, ‘and the three of them set off on their foolhardy mission.’

‘If you knew it was foolhardy why didn’t you stop us?’ I demanded angrily.

‘I did not know what you were planning to do!’ His reply snapped through the air like a whip and with a shudder I felt the very edge of his power. It was enough to make my flesh contract into goose pimples. ‘I have only understood why this has happened afterwards,’ Hrype added more gently, ‘when it is far too late.’

I thought about that. ‘How did Romain know of the crown’s existence?’ I asked. ‘Sibert only knew that an object of power existed — because he overheard you communicating with it — and not where or what it was.’

Hrype said, ‘That is so. It was indeed Romain who enlightened him. As to how he knew, I do not know for sure but I believe I can guess the truth.’ He paused. ‘My forefathers built Drakelow when first they ventured out of their homelands and came across the whale routes to England,’ he said, his voice sounding distant. ‘They were the companions of kings and their hall had to be within reach of the royal dwelling place.’ Yes, I thought; Sibert told me. But I dared not break into Hrype’s narrative. ‘My ancestors were sorcerers and they were known as cunning men,’ he went on, ‘and their worth for the king was inestimable, for he depended on their skill to keep safe the new realm that he had taken for his own. Drakelow was given to us as our reward, to be our family home for ever.’ He sighed again. ‘Neither the kings of old nor their cunning men, however, predicted the Conquest that would rob not only us but all the aristocratic families of their estates. Ours went to Fulk de la Flèche and we were forced into the role of powerless witnesses as our birthright was spoiled and abused.’

He fell silent, as if that old loss still had the ability to render him mute with pain.

I said tentatively, ‘Could your father not have used the power of the crown? He had you as a son, you who understand that sort of-’

‘No.’ He breathed the word but with such force that abruptly I stopped what I was saying. ‘It is true that I have certain skills, more apparent to you than to others,’ — I stored that up to gloat over later — ‘but the power that is within the crown is not there for the gratification of one family’s wishes. Which, of course, is why Baudouin de la Flèche must not be allowed to use it in that way.’

I wanted to hear more about the crown but Hrype was obviously not prepared to tell me. Instead, he said, ‘After the Conquest, the remnants of my family were forced to flee. There were, indeed, few enough of us. My father had died vainly trying to fight off the Conqueror, and his body lies somewhere among the heaps of the slain, buried close by the battlefield. My brother Edmer and I took our mother into hiding in the Black Fens and from there Edmer set out to join the Wake in his rebellion, and they held Ely against the new king. Edmer received the wound that killed him and my mother succumbed to her long grief over all that had been lost to her and fell an easy victim to fever. I sent my dead brother’s wife to the safety of Aelf Fen, where in time she bore her posthumous child.’

‘Sibert,’ I said softly.

‘Sibert. Yes.’ Briefly he bowed his head. Then he went on, ‘We were in exile but we kept our pride. We who had quit our hall and our homelands carried our heads high; not so those despised ones of our blood who remained and sold their souls to the new Norman lord. One such, I confess, was my cousin, the son of my mother’s sister. He was weak, greedy and, reluctant to give up the good things of life, he abased himself before Fulk de la Flèche, offered him his loyalty and his service and so betrayed his forefathers and his living kin.’ I could hear the fury and the scorn in Hrype’s voice. ‘His name is Roger — it is not his given name but that he has left behind him in his bid to become as the Normans — and he it was who dropped tantalizing hints about the crown and its power. He knew far less than he claimed, for the crown was ever deeply secret among my people and none of us would willingly have shared the smallest, least significant detail with one such as my cousin.’ The anger had built again and I sensed it like a flame on the bare skin of my face. ‘In time, rumour of our treasure must have reached the ears of Romain,’ he said, clearly mastering his fury, ‘so that when Baudouin joined the rebels and, with Drakelow lost to the de la Flèches, the means to buy back the king’s favour were so urgently required, immediately Romain thought of what lay hidden somewhere within the manor. He learned — from Roger, I would guess — the identity of the former masters of Drakelow; somehow he succeeded in discovering our whereabouts. He did not approach me, for he must have known what my reaction would be. He sought out Sibert, dreamy, hopeless Sibert, so full of anger and resentment that when a stranger offered him the chance of recovering a treasured family object, he barely paused for thought before leaping at it.’

‘I’m quite sure he thought he was helping,’ I said gently.

Hrype grunted an acknowledgement. ‘I’m quite sure you are right,’ he said wryly. ‘But he did not know what he was meddling with. The crown is no bartering tool and will not permit itself to be used as such. Now as a result Sibert lies imprisoned and will hang’ — his voice broke with emotion but quickly he regained control — ‘and that will break his mother’s heart.’

And perhaps yours too, I thought, compassion bringing tears to my eyes as I watched Hrype hunch in pain.

‘Sibert is no murderer,’ I said shakily. ‘Whatever Baudouin’s witness may say, he is wrong when he says he saw Sibert kill Romain. Sibert was with me, and I will swear it before the highest authority in the land.’ I spoke grandly but I spoke true. Or so I believed.

Slowly Hrype straightened up and turned to look at me. His eyes held mine and I found I could not look away. It was as if he were searching my mind, testing me, assessing my courage.

I don’t know what he concluded but I fear that I disappointed him, for he turned away and I thought he slumped a little.

‘I will!’ I repeated recklessly. ‘If there’s a way I can prove I’m telling the truth’ — yet again I cursed my fluent lying, which had convinced those who counted that I’d been with Edild all along — ‘then explain it to me and I’ll do it!’

He stared at me for what seemed a very long time. Then eventually he said, ‘We are told of this witness who claims to have seen Sibert’s attack on Romain. You were on the road at the time. Did you see anybody? I am thinking,’ he explained, ‘that if you have the courage, you might retrace your footsteps, find this man and ask him to reconsider. If you were to say that you know Sibert is innocent because you were with him all the time, possibly this witness will realize he is mistaken.’

Once I was over the initial shock, I tried to calm my mind and think carefully. Had I seen anyone? Had there been someone on the track? Sibert and I had encountered fellow travellers in plenty once we were on the road leading inland from the coast, but on that journey across wild, empty country, there had been nobody and, indeed, few signs of human habitation at all.

Then I remembered.

‘There was a woman by a well!’ I shouted. Hrype instantly hushed me. ‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘Sibert and I were so hot and thirsty. We’d kept up such a pace all the way from Drakelow — we were both scared that Romain would catch up with us and Sibert wanted to get out on to the road, where he thought we’d be safer because there would be other people about. But I couldn’t go on any further without water and when we saw her with that bucket, dipping in her drinking cup and pouring the lovely cool water down her throat, I wouldn’t go on until we’d begged her to give us some too.’

Hrype stared at me. ‘This was close to where Baudouin claims Sibert killed Romain?’

‘Yes. Very close.’

‘Could she have witnessed the murder?’

‘I suppose so, yes. Since we passed right by her, Romain probably did too, and she might have followed him for some reason.’ I hesitated, but only for a moment. It was better if Hrype knew the whole story. ‘We did see Romain that day,’ I said. ‘But it was he who attacked Sibert, not the other way round. He was after the crown, of course. He jumped on Sibert’s back, taking him completely by surprise, and they fought and Sibert managed to get his knee into Romain’s — er, up between his legs. But Romain had a knife and he would have killed Sibert if he hadn’t fought dirty!’ I was trying not to cry. The memory was still far too fresh, caustic in my mind. ‘And besides, Romain was so much bigger and stronger, and although I really liked him and I had no idea it’d lead to him being killed and I’m so sorry that he’s dead, it wasn’t fair on Sibert — ’ I was crying in earnest now, tears soaking my face and my nose bunged up — ‘and anyway it was what the crown wanted. Sibert had it and it wanted to stay with him.’

I sensed Hrype nod and he murmured, ‘Yes. It would.’ Then very gently he asked, ‘What did you do, Lassair?’

‘I warned him,’ I said between sobs. ‘I saw that Romain was about to attack with the knife and I said, Now, Sibert, get your leg up! and he did and it hurt Romain so much and that’s when he stopped fighting and fell, but he was alive when we left him, I swear on all the gods that he was!’

Hrype had his arms round me and it was very comforting because he smelled like Sibert. I relaxed against him and cried out all the pain, anxiety and grief of the past few days. For quite a long time he simply held me and waited — really, I hadn’t realized he could be so kind — and finally, when I sniffed, wiped my sleeve across my face and sat up away from him, he just said, ‘Better now?’

I nodded. It was very restrained of him, I thought, when he must be dying to ask if I’d agree to his suggestion. It was the one tiny chance we had of saving Sibert; of course I would agree.

When I told him so, for the first time I saw him really smile.