Out of the Dawn Light

NINETEEN

I would be lying if I said that my mood of serene acceptance lasted until the moment I set my bare feet on to the coals. It didn’t. All the rest of that day I suffered dreadful, confidence-sapping periods of doubt, especially when my parents, quietly informed by Edild what I was planning to do, came rushing round to her cottage to dissuade me.

My mother’s sobs were hard enough to bear. When I saw tears in my strong, brave father’s eyes, I was all but undone.

Edild saw this — of course she would — and took them outside. I heard their voices — my mother’s shrill with fear and horror, my father’s a quiet background boom — and then Edild spoke, dousing their horrified protests like cool water on the fire.

Fire.

I couldn’t stop thinking about fire.

Shortly afterwards Edild came back into the cottage. Her face was set firm as if any leeway that she permitted herself would allow the threatening emotions to take over. She said shortly, ‘Your parents have gone home, Lassair. I have explained that you are resolved to do this test and told them why. I have also said that their presence here could distract you and they have agreed to keep away.’

Oh! She was right, I knew she was; I had to fix my thoughts — my whole being — on the trial and, under the instruction of Edild and Hrype, I was working hard on developing a picture in my mind of my feet encased in those imaginary shoes made of thick ice. It was hard enough without having to face my mother’s anguished face and my father’s desperate need to save me from hurt.

‘Will they — will they be there tomorrow?’ My voice was little more than a croak.

Edild looked at me dispassionately, almost coldly. She was just then wholly the teacher, and I could detect nothing in her of the affectionate, funny aunt. I knew it had to be that way, but all the same it was hard. ‘They will stay inside their cottage,’ she said.

Because, she could have added, if they are watching and you know that they are, your concentration will be broken. We were both all too aware of what that would lead to.

Hrype went to Lord Gilbert’s manor house and informed him that I was prepared to take the test. To my surprise — and Hrype and Edild’s too — in the early evening he came to Edild’s cottage.

His chubby face was quite pale and he looked at me out of worried eyes. ‘You do not have to do this,’ he said. ‘You are accused of no crime and neither your freedom nor your life is in the balance. It is not too late to change your mind.’

I wondered why he was doing this. ‘What does it matter to you?’ I demanded. I realized as soon as I had spoken that I sounded rude. ‘I am sorry,’ I added. ‘You have, it seems, my well-being at heart.’

‘I have!’ he agreed fervently. ‘Lassair’ — at least he remembered my name now — ‘this trial is a fearsome thing! They are constructing the pit as I speak and soon the fires will be lit. You will-’

I sensed Hrype casting round for a courteous but irrevocable way of telling him to be quiet. He knew, as did Edild, that this talk of pits, fires and fearsome things was not good for me.

I spoke first.

‘Lord Gilbert,’ I interrupted, ‘it is kind of you to take the trouble to explain my position to me.’ I knew it perfectly well already, but it was still kind of him. ‘However, there is really only one factor to be considered, which is that if I don’t do the test and prove that I’m telling the truth, then Sibert will hang.’ I tried to hold his eyes but he looked away. ‘Is that not so?’ I prompted.

‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘It has to be so,’ he added, ‘for Baudouin de la Flèche has a witness.’

And Baudouin himself, I thought, is a powerful Norman baron, even if just at present he’s a landless one. As Lord Gilbert said, it had to be so.

There was nothing more to be said and after a while he realized it. He gave me a sort of bow — just a slight nod of his head — and it was an extraordinary thing to see, given the huge void between our respective positions in the world. Then he turned and, flinging the door open as if he could not wait to get away from us, hurried away.

I did not think I would be able to sleep that night. The images were far too vivid in my head and the ice boots were having a tough time holding their own against the glowing coals. However, Edild made me an infusion in which I could taste dill and the bitterness of wood lettuce and she made me drink every last drop. Very soon after that, I curled up on the shakedown bed by the hearth that she had prepared for me, drew up the soft lambs’ wool blanket and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

In the guest chamber of Gilbert de Caudebec’s manor house, Baudouin de la Flèche looked out of the small window at the gathering darkness outside and told himself, one more night. Just one more night, and then all this will be over, the crown will be in my hands and I can be off, on my way to plead before the king.

The girl will fail, he thought. He had seen the fire pit and it was good and long. It would take her many paces to get from one end to the other. The coals had been set ready, on top of a bed of kindling and firewood which would be set ablaze at first light. As soon as the coals were red-hot, the girl would be summoned.

She must fail, Baudouin thought. Her feet will suffer terrible burns and no power on earth or in heaven will come to her aid and help her to heal, for she is a well-known liar. This tale she tells will be disproved once and for all and, with nobody left to speak for him, Sibert will hang.

She must fail, he repeated with silent vehemence. She has to!

Lord Gilbert’s guest bed lay ready to welcome him but his nerves were tight as a snare wire and he could not bear the thought of trying to rest. He paced, leaned against the wall looking down at the fire pit, clearly visible some twenty paces down the track which led from the manor house to the village, then paced some more. Slowly the night passed.

Hrype left Edild and Lassair in the little cottage on the edge of the village, promising to be back early in the morning. He crossed the village on swift and silent feet to the house he shared with Froya and Sibert. Sibert! he thought, anguish searing through him. So much depended on the girl. He and her aunt had worked as hard as they knew how and even greater demands would be made on them in the morning, for he knew, as he was sure Edild did, that they would not leave Lassair’s side until it was over. One way or another. .

‘She will do it,’ he said quietly but very firmly.

He opened the door and let himself in, closing and barring it behind him. Froya had gone home some time ago and now was sitting hunched on the floor before the hearth. She was cradling a small square of woollen blanket, smoothing it, stroking it with those restless fingers. He recognized it as the comforter Sibert had treasured as a small child. He’d had no idea she had kept it.

He crouched down beside her and wordlessly she leaned against him. He put his arms round her, reaching up a hand to gently and rhythmically stroke the fair hair away from her high, broad forehead.

‘I cannot bear it if he dies,’ she said.

Neither can I, he wanted to agree. But instead he said firmly, ‘Lassair is strong and brave, Froya. She is full of courage, for she is convinced she can pass the test.’

‘And can she?’ Froya asked bleakly.

‘She can.’ He reinforced the words by briefly squeezing her shoulder. ‘Her aunt and I will be with her. We will not let her falter.’

She nodded and he thought she was reassured, but then her body convulsed in a great sob and she said despairingly, ‘He is not strong! I think of him in some horrible, stinking cell, knowing that he may hang in the morning, and I feel that my heart is being torn apart within my breast!’

‘I know, I know,’ he murmured. He too had been fighting images of Sibert imprisoned, shaking with fear, weeping in the cold darkness.

Would Lassair do it? Or would she burn like a tallow candle and watch from agonized eyes as Sibert was strung up and hanged?

She will succeed, he told himself.

In time Froya’s weeping came to an end, although the storm had left her shaky. Gently he got her to her feet and over to her bed on the far side of the cottage, where tenderly he helped her off with her tunic and settled her beneath the covers. He resumed the slow, steady stroking motion across her head. ‘Sleep,’ he murmured. ‘Sleep, dear Froya, and sleep deep.’ He spoke more words, incomprehensible syllables, and his low, hypnotic voice seemed to fill the small room, echoing with a forceful, muted boom like the sea in a cave.

The spell worked. Froya slept.

Hrype waited for some time, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest. He tucked the covers more closely around her and then, moving without a sound, let himself out of the cottage.

He made his way to a spot on the fen edge where alders stood close, their trunks wading in the bracken and the low, scrubby bushes. There was a cleared space within the undergrowth where a small circle of hearth stones, carefully chosen and even in size and shape, had been set out. Firewood and kindling lay at hand, protected from the elements by strips of turf. Hrype set a small fire and lit it with his flint, his hands moving with swift efficiency for he had performed these actions many times. It was his secret place, and a mild enchantment lay over it that prevented others from going too close.

When the flames took hold he quickly controlled them so that they rose no higher than was necessary for his purpose. Then he untied the thongs of a small leather pouch that hung from his belt, the leather soft and smooth from long handling, for it had belonged to Hrype’s forefathers before it had been his and each successive owner had used it frequently.

He opened the bag and took from it a neatly folded square of fine linen, hemmed with tiny stitches. This object was Hrype’s own; it was the first magic tool that he had made and even now he could readily recall the day he had cut the cloth and sewn those careful stitches. He had been eight years old.

He spread the linen square on the earth, smoothing it until there were no bumps or wrinkles. Then, holding the leather bag in both hands, he closed his eyes and murmured a long incantation, calling on the spirits of the place, on the ancestors, on his personal guardians and, pleading and supplication in his chant, on the gods themselves. When he sensed that they were with him, he upended the bag and, as its contents rattled down on to the linen square, opened his eyes.

The rune stones were made of jade, so fine that, held up to the fire, the light of the flame could be seen through them. The jade came from the east; from the vast lands beyond the great inland seas where his ancestors had travelled and traded, pushing onwards, always onwards along the rivers that penetrated the huge, unknown interior. Hrype did not know which of his sorcerer ancestors had cut the raw material and made the rune stones; whoever he was, he — or perhaps she, for women too were sorcerers — had done a skilful job and the rune stones were very beautiful.

They also held prodigious power.

Hrype gazed down at them, lying there in the pattern in which they had fallen. The gold-filled incised marks on their surfaces glittered in the firelight, giving the stones the illusion of movement. Of life. Quickly he read them, his agile mind making connections and forming pictures as he had long ago been taught. He breathed a sigh of relief. Then he looked again, for something had caught his eye.

He stared for a long time then finally sat back, his eyes closed as he pondered. The runes were almost always ambiguous and it took a well-trained mind to penetrate the smokescreen that frequently they threw up. The way in which they had fallen tonight gave one message — the first aspect that Hrype had read — but underlying that there was something else.

Something that both puzzled and, he had to admit, worried him. He was puzzled because, although the question he had framed in his mind had to do with fire and air, the underlying aspect warned of danger from water.

He sat for so long that anyone observing him would have thought he was some stone figure, left from a bygone age. Eventually, barely aware that he was stiff and very cold, he collected up the rune stones, clutched them for a moment in his hands as he uttered his thanks, then put them away in their pouch and fastened it to his belt. He trod out the dying remains of his fire and scuffed at the earth until its small scar barely showed. Then he went home.

I smelt the fire the moment I woke up. I raced to open the door and peered out. Just visible far along the track, at the point where it curved round to approach Lord Gilbert’s manor house, I saw a long pit from which flames rose so high that they would have burned off my hair.

I made a whimpering sound in my throat.

Instantly Edild was at my side. ‘The flames will have died down before you walk,’ she said calmly. ‘Now, come and eat your breakfast. You will need your strength today, for deep concentration is draining.’

She might have been referring to a day spent doing nothing more alarming than learning new remedies. Her serenity pulled me back from the brink of hysteria and, to my amazement, I found myself munching a slab of buttered bread spread thickly with honey — Edild was spoiling me — and drinking a sweet and pungent brew which, I was quite sure, was mildly alcoholic.

When I had finished eating she marched me outside to the small, enclosed yard behind her cottage and ordered me to strip. Then she helped me wash all over, from my hair to my toes, rinsing me with fresh, cool water in which rose petals floated. She wrapped me in a length of linen and proceeded to comb the tangles out of my hair. When it was almost dry, she deftly plaited it and coiled it round my head. I struggled into a clean under shift and then she fetched one of her own gowns and helped me put it on over the top, fastening a pretty girdle around my waist.

She stood back and inspected me. Then, at last, she smiled. ‘You look fine, Lassair,’ she said. She had something in her hand and now she stepped forward and held it out. On a length of leather hung a round disc of fine, smooth wood, into which was etched the sigil for protection. The sigil showed up deep, dark, brownish-red and I knew that it had been coloured with her blood.

She put the leather thong over my head and tucked the amulet inside my under tunic. Then she gave a nod of satisfaction. ‘You’ll be all right,’ she said.

I believed her.

They came for me in the middle of the morning.

There was a sharp rap at the door and as Edild opened it I saw four of Lord Gilbert’s men. They did not say anything — they did not need to — and I stepped outside and took my place between them, two in front of me and two behind. I saw Edild walking beyond the guards on my right and Hrype appeared out of nowhere and took up the same place on my left.

Their silent presence was immeasurably reassuring.

Protected by my escorts, we set off up the track. I kept saying under my breath, Boots of ice. I will not be harmed. Once or twice I put up a hand and touched the amulet hanging on its thong between my breasts.

So many villagers had gathered, lining the track on either side and milling over it, that I felt the fire pit before I actually saw it. Its heat came at me in waves, beating against my face. Then the people parted and I saw what lay ahead of me.

Edild did not give me any time for the fear to race in. She bent down and, sweeping up the skirts of my gown, twisted them deftly and tucked the end in my belt. I almost laughed then because, amid the vast presence of the fire pit and what I must now do there, I was more worried in that instant that everyone could see my bare legs. Well, I told myself, at least they’re not fat and hairy with thick chunky ankles like Goda’s. .

Lord Gilbert stepped forward, flanked by more of his men. Behind him stood Baudouin de la Flèche, his black eyes fixed on me. Lord Gilbert squared his shoulders and, after one anxious glance at me, stared over my head and said in a booming voice, ‘I call on those here present to witness the trial by ordeal of Lassair of Aelf Fen, here before you. She claims that Sibert, accused of the murder of Romain de la Flèche, is innocent of the charge because she was with him at the time of the murder. Baudouin de la Flèche, the dead man’s uncle, has brought forth a witness who says he saw Sibert commit the act of murder. Lassair agrees to walk the glowing coals and avows that God will prove that her word is true by protecting her from harm, and the priest here present’ — for the first time I noticed the black-clad figure, frowning his disapproval as if he would have liked to stop proceedings there and then — ‘will inspect her wounds after three days.’

Her wounds. .

I quailed. Beside me Hrype hissed, ‘Boots of ice! You will suffer no harm!’

There was no more time. Lord Gilbert nodded to the guards and their captain shouted, ‘Proceed!’

I stepped forward. Edild walked on my right, Hrype on my left, although they were too far away for me to touch them even with my outstretched fingers.

I do not need to touch them, I told myself. They are with me, their strength and their will supports me.

I closed my eyes for an instant, fiercely bolstering my energy until I sensed it flare up bright-hot, white-hot within me. I am made of fire, I told myself. Fire is my element.

Fire will not harm me.

Then I stepped on to the red-hot coals.

Walk quickly but do not run, Hrype had instructed. Keep up a steady pace. Look ahead.

His words echoed loud and strong in my ears. One pace, two, three. The coals were very, very hot and I could feel their threat. But my ice boots protected me. Your feet are pleasantly cool, I heard Edild say calmly inside my head. Take your time for you will not be hurt.

Four steps. Five.

I was still staring straight ahead but out of the corners of my eyes I could see Hrype and Edild. It was odd because although of course I recognized them, sometimes they did not look like themselves. Or, rather, they did but at the same time they looked quite different and I could have sworn that a silver fox paced on my right and a great brown bear padded on silent paws to my left.

I felt so safe, so secure, that I knew it was going to be all right.

Six steps, seven, eight, then, quickly now, nine, ten, eleven and twelve, then one foot was out of the pit and then the other, the fresh grass cool and welcome.

There was a stunned silence — I had been aware as I walked the fire pit that nobody was making a sound — and then a great roar rose up. Edild and Hrype stood panting either side of me, both of them drenched in sweat; Hrype had bluish cords standing out on his temple and neck. I spun my head this way and that, trying to see what was happening, trying to look in every direction at once, but then suddenly I was dumped down on my bottom on the grass and Edild was plunging my feet into very, very cold water that smelt of lavender.

She must have only recently fetched the water from the well, for the chill bit as the fire had not done and I cried, ‘Ouch! That’s cold!’

She did not hear, or if she did she gave no sign. One by one she raised my feet out of the icy water, closely inspecting each one before plunging it back again. She did this three times and I saw a slow smile of satisfaction spread over her face. I was the only one who could see, however, since she was bent over me, her face hidden. Then Hrype was there too, and wordlessly she lifted up my feet once more and showed him.

His smile was wide and triumphant. They looked at each other for a long moment and almost imperceptibly she nodded.

He stood up.

Lord Gilbert was elbowing his way through the throng, pushing open-mouthed, avid-faced villages out of the way in his fervour. ‘Well?’ he cried. ‘Well? Is she all right? Is she burned? What has happened?’

He saw Edild’s tranquil face and a grin twitched at his mouth.

‘See for yourself,’ Edild said. She lifted my feet up to show him and I was tipped over inelegantly on to my back, struggling to hold down my skirt to preserve what was left of my modesty.

He stared, shook his head in disbelief and stared again. The grin now splitting his face like a slice out of an apple, he called out, ‘There is no need for bandages or priestly inspection after the prescribed three days, for Lassair has taken no injury!’ The last words were delivered at the top of his voice. Then, in a far more controlled tone, he said, ‘I declare that, by virtue of the trial by ordeal, Lassair of Aelf Fen has proved that she tells the truth. God has protected her,’ he pronounced gravely.

I felt like throwing back my head and crowing. I felt like getting to my cold but unblemished feet and dancing. I turned to look for Baudouin de la Flèche, already edging his way quickly to the rear of the crowd, and I screamed, ‘Yaaaaa!’

It was pretty meaningless but it seemed to sum up what I was feeling. I saw him scowl at me with furious malice, then he spun round and hurried away.

Lord Gilbert, as if he had suddenly recalled the reason why we were all gathered there, was looking grave. He glanced after Baudouin de la Flèche, a frown creasing the puffy flesh of his forehead, then looked back at me. ‘It has indeed been demonstrated without doubt that you have God’s protection, and therefore we know that you speak true when you say Sibert is no murderer,’ he said. Then, with a sigh, he added, ‘The man Sagar, produced by Baudouin de la Flèche as witness, must be mistaken.’ His frown deepened; clearly he was thinking hard. Then he turned to the captain of his guard and said simply, ‘Go and release Sibert. The charge against him is dropped.’

The guard hurried away. I looked around for Hrype, a happy smile on my face, for surely he would hasten to go with the guards to welcome Sibert back into the world and I wanted to share the moment with him. He wasn’t there; I guessed he had foreseen Sibert’s release and had already gone.

The men who had led me out to the pit had all stepped back as if, out of embarrassment, they were distancing themselves from someone who had been treated like a criminal and had just proved, in quite spectacular fashion, that she was nothing of the sort.

I stood alone, for Edild too had melted away. There was no time to wonder where she’d gone because all at once my mother was pushing her way through the awestruck, chattering villagers, my father, my granny and my siblings hard on her heels, and I leapt up and threw myself into her arms.

‘I’m all right!’ I cried, laughing and crying at the same time. ‘I’m all right! I proved I was telling the truth and Sibert’s going to be freed!’

‘I know!’ she sobbed, her hug fierce and strong. Then, shaking me so hard that my teeth clattered together, she cried, ‘Oh, Lassair, Lassair, don’t you ever do anything like that again!’