Out of the Dawn Light

by Alys Clare

  The dying king had probably hoped that his carefully thought-out solution – Normandy to the first-born, England to the younger brother – would be appreciated as fair and therefore accepted meekly by all concerned. He ought to have known better. Apart from the main protagonists, every other Norman lord with a plot to call his own seemed to have a loud and forceful opinion. Particularly vociferous were that multitude of men whose fathers had fought with the Conqueror in 1066 and been awarded manors in the newly acquired kingdom as their reward. Since to a man they already possessed estates in Normandy, they now must decide whether to put their wealth and strength at the disposal of Duke Robert, their Norman overlord, or King William, their English one.

  That the two sons of the Conqueror would sooner or later come to blows did not seem to be in any doubt at all.

  Romain’s musings on the perils that the brand-new reign would bring were brought to a halt; it was dawn, he had just rounded a bend in the track and a small settlement rose up out of the mists ahead of him. If he had remembered the directions correctly, it must be Aelf Fen.

  He crept into a stand of willows, made himself a comfortable nest in the dry grass and, wrapping his cloak around him, settled down to sleep.

  He was woken much later by the sound of laughter and excited chatter. Of all things, the village appeared to be celebrating a wedding. At first dismayed, he quickly realized that there could be no better cover for a stranger on a secret mission. Everyone would be too busy enjoying themselves to pay him much mind and if relatives from the bride’s or the groom’s family did not know who he was – which of course they wouldn’t – they would simply assume that he was connected with the other side.

  He spruced himself up, buffed up his boots and rubbed the mud from the hem of his cloak. He ran a nervous hand over his hair and then, waiting while a gaggle of laughing girls hurried past his hiding place, slipped out behind them and followed them into the village.

  Then it was just a matter of listening carefully until he heard the name of the person he had come to find. People smiled at him. A skinny girl with copper-coloured hair brought him something to eat. The cheese was tasteless and rather acid, the sweet cake bland and dry. They were poor people here, he thought. The girl insisted on talking to him and, impatient to get away from her and set about running down his quarry, he barely listened, instead beaming at her and nodding, occasionally throwing in an ‘Is that so?’ and a ‘How very interesting!’ But then she began telling him about her fellow villagers and, disguising his sudden interest behind his wide, vacant smile, he gave her his full attention. Quite soon she identified the person he had come to find and, after that, it was easy.

  April came and Easter was celebrated. Romain had at long last persuaded his reluctant accomplice to join him in the awesome task ahead, although he was well aware that he would have to work hard to prevent the younger man from changing his mind. But events in the wider world had already begun on their inevitable progress to the disaster he saw ahead. Now his fellow conspirator would surely have to admit that Romain’s grim predictions had been accurate.

  The rebellion broke out just after Easter. It was rumoured that the great lords who celebrated the feast with the king had put the final details to their plotting and planning while they were under his very roof. The king’s half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was the instigator; loyal adviser to Duke Robert of Normandy, he had hurried across the Channel on William’s accession hoping to win the same influential position in England that he enjoyed with Duke Robert in Normandy. But William had already appointed his chief adviser. The ambitious and devious Odo, however, was ever power-hungry. He was once more Earl of Kent, the honour having been awarded and later withdrawn by the Conqueror and reinstated by the new king, but it seemed that was not enough. If his status in England were to improve, it was going to have to be at Duke Robert’s side, where his position was already assured. So the way ahead was clear: Odo would help Duke Robert add England to the sum of his possessions and he, as Robert’s most trusted man, would thereby gain his reward.

  Odo first appealed to the lords who held lands in both England and Normandy. Romain knew all about them. Hidden and forgotten in his corner of the great hall, he had listened avidly as Odo’s representative set out on his master’s behalf the situation that the lords now faced. If they supported King William and he lost, then Duke Robert would seize their Normandy estates. If King William defeated Duke Robert, their English lands would be forfeit. In summary, the man concluded after what seemed to Romain hours of talk, it amounted to a simple question: would you prefer to lose your Normandy estates or your English ones?

  Another question rose urgently in Romain’s mind, which was: who is going to win?

  The men whose lengthy conversation he was listening to so carefully did not discuss that. Was this because Duke Robert’s victory was certain? If so, Romain thought, then the assumption that Robert would easily overcome William was surely wishful thinking. The lords might well mutter that Robert was a preferable monarch to the fiery and obstinate William, but that must be because he was known to be easy-going and pliable. What important lord with his eyes set on advancement would not prefer a sociable, jovial, approachable and malleable king?

  Persevering with his espionage, Romain managed to follow the progress of the rebellion. He had always had the sense that he knew very well what was going to happen; that he had foreseen the catastrophe that would overtake him and his kin. Experiencing the painfully diverse emotions of pride at having been right and terror at what he saw happening, he had just one tiny sliver of hope. His plan, his careful, deeply secret plan . . .

  The rebellion raged on. Across the southern half of England the fighting flared up as, in Duke Robert’s name, Odo’s rebels attacked the estates of the king and those loyal to him. Bristol. Bath. Hereford. Shropshire. Leicester. The names of towns and counties of which Romain knew little or nothing cropped up in the anxious discussions that he overheard. Pevensey. Rochester, Odo’s own stronghold. And then, all at once terrifyingly close, Norwich.

  From his castle in the city, the great lord Roger Bigod and his followers had set out to loot and burn right across East Anglia, concentrating their might on the royal lands. Once destroyed, these lands could produce nothing to help the king’s cause and, with the battle won, they would quietly pass into the rebels’ hands. The moment of truth was upon them and Romain could do nothing but watch helplessly as the rebel lords of the region gathered up their forces, locked up their estates and marched off to join Lord Roger.

  Romain made quite sure that he did not go with them.

  The rebellion did not go on for long; by midsummer it was all over. It had become clear that the focus of the fighting would be Kent, and King William led his army against Tonbridge Castle. He sent out an appeal to Englishmen, making rash and exciting promises to entice them into supporting him, and the force thus amassed won the day. The king then marched on Rochester where, rumour said, the garrison had been greatly strengthened by the arrival of a contingent of soldiers sent over by Duke Robert from Normandy. The rumours were wrong; the Englishmen guarding the coast had bravely faced up to the would-be invaders and the majority had been captured or drowned.

  Nevertheless, Rochester held out. Desperate for news, the anxiety almost more than he could bear, Romain waited. Could he have been wrong? Would Odo prevail after all, ushering in a new monarch and a different order? Please, please let it happen! Romain prayed as hard as he knew how for a last-minute victory.

  It did not come. As the June weather grew hotter, besieged and overcrowded Rochester succumbed to the heat, the rubbish, the dead and the swarms of eager flies. Clean water and wholesome food became mere memories and, inevitably, sickness spread. It was said that a man could not cram a morsel of meat into his hungry mouth unless someone else was on hand to swat the flies away.

  Rochester surrendered. The rebellion had failed.

  Without waiting to hear more, Romain swung into action.<
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  FOUR

  I ought to have realized that Goda would become steadily more intolerable as her pregnancy went on. She was my sister after all and I’d known her my entire life. Had she ever shown the tiniest amount of courage in adversity? Had she just once endured discomfort of any kind with a saintly silence and a brave little smile on her lips? Of course she hadn’t. She was Goda and she always found something or someone to blame for her own suffering, even when that suffering had been brought about by nobody other than herself.

  Well, she was suffering now because, either before or immediately after she married Cerdic, on at least one occasion she had made love with him. Unless he had taken her by force – unlikely because she’s a well-muscled woman with a fierce temper and a heavy right fist and he’s a gentle sort of a man – then she must have wanted the lovemaking and, not being an idiot, known that it could lead to conception. So, she’d brought it on herself. Nevertheless, she had to blame someone and that someone was me.

  She made a hell of my life such as I had never experienced before (and not since, either; I don’t make mistakes like letting myself be used by people such as my sister anymore). The odd thing was that if just for a moment she’d stopped being so horrible to me, my sympathy would have come rushing back and I’d have looked after her willingly. You see, she really was in a bad way. As she entered the last couple of months of her pregnancy, she swelled up like a leather bag slowly and steadily being filled with water. The skin of her vast belly stretched and something in its structure must have broken, for long, dark-red lines began to snake across her white flesh as if there was something living in there. Well, of course there was – a baby, and a pretty large one at that – but that’s not what I mean. Goda has always been lazy and now that she had got so big she barely left her seat by the hearth. As June came, often she would not even get out of bed.

  She was pale and, despite my ministrations with the wash cloth and the bowl of water, she was dirty and she stank. Her filthy hair was tangled and I could not get the comb through it, or rather, I could but she pinched my arm so viciously when I pulled at the tangles that I stopped trying.

  Her favourite punishment was to box my ears. I usually tried to dodge so that she hit the left one, which she had already damaged. That way I might emerge from my time with her still with one good ear.

  I don’t know what poor Cerdic made of it, although I can make an accurate guess. He was, as I’ve said, a good worker and there was always plenty for him to do. Goda was demanding, forever wanting to be brought something new for her house or some little personal present, and in a way that made it easier for him because to acquire the things she wanted he had to earn more money. She was quite capable of working that out for herself and so could not complain if her husband was out far more often than he was in. As far as she knew, he was off on a job somewhere.

  If I knew different – and I had my ways of keeping an eye on what was happening around me – then I kept it to myself. Goda did not really deserve a man like Cerdic and in her present state she offered no inducement whatsoever for him to come home in the evening until after she was in her bed and snoring (with advanced pregnancy she had to sleep on her back and made a noise like a boar being throttled). No, I didn’t blame Cerdic for avoiding his wife. I only envied him from the bottom of my heart because that option was not available for me.

  I fought self-pity all the time, and never more so than when Midsummer’s Eve was approaching. I remembered how, earlier in the year, I had calculated that the baby could have been born round about now and I would be released from my servitude with my sister and sent home to Aelf Fen. But nothing happened, other than that Goda tried to punch my face when I asked if I might go out to join the people of Icklingham in their midsummer celebrations.

  I skipped out of the way and her angry, frustrated fist swung on empty air. And I went out anyway. As part of my instruction with Edild she had shown me how to brew up a mild sedative and it was now summer, a time when the plants, fresh, green and vibrant with life, are at their most potent. Perhaps I ought to have taken this into account more than I did, for the drink that I carefully prepared and fed to my red-faced, sweaty and heaving sister knocked her out as if she’d been poleaxed. For quite a long time I stood there staring down at her, all sorts of questions running through my mind. I’d used cowslips as my main ingredient but I’d added dill and just a tiny amount of hemlock, which Edild had frequently warned me was poisonous. And what about the incantation I had murmured as I worked? I thought I’d remembered the words correctly and in the right order, but I could have made a mistake . . . But it was all right, Goda was still breathing, and I muttered a prayer of gratitude. I might not like her but I’ve never actually wanted to kill her, especially when she carried an innocent new life inside her.

  It was twilight on Midsummer’s Eve. Goda was sound asleep and I had sufficient faith in my skills to know that she was very unlikely to wake before morning. Cerdic had not yet returned; I guessed he had gone straight from his work to his regular retreat in his cousin’s house on the other side of the village, where he’d probably stay till he thought it was safe to come home.

  I slipped into the lean-to and hastily set about making myself as neat and tidy as time and circumstance allowed. I took off my gown and beat it hard with the flat of my hand until the dust came out of it in clouds. The woven fabric was soft and floppy with long wear and it had gone into holes in various places, but I was deft with a needle and the darns were all but invisible unless you looked really closely. My under-tunic was only two days on and still looked crisp and fresh where it showed in the neck of my gown. I fastened the laces down the sides of my gown, pulling them tight in an attempt to give myself some shape. I unwound my hair from its plait and brushed and brushed it till its smooth texture under my hand suggested it might be shining. Then I pinched my cheeks to put some colour in them, took Elfritha’s beautiful shawl from its hiding place under my bed and, having arranged it decoratively around my shoulders, went out into the softly falling darkness.

  Midsummer is my favourite festival of all. Granny says I’m a midsummer person, born on the eve of the solstice, and that’s why I have an affinity with the season. I’m not entirely sure what she means but I think I agree. I wished, as I hurried through the gathering darkness, that I was home in Aelf Fen, because in our village we certainly know how to celebrate the Sun’s position high above us in the sky and the presence of the light in all its glory. But I wasn’t. I was in Icklingham, among people I hadn’t even known four months ago.

  I need not have worried. They might not know me very well either but they knew who I was and what I was doing in their village. From the kindness and sympathy I received in such full measure that lovely night, I gathered the impression that they didn’t think much of my sister, and that was putting it mildly.

  They had prepared a huge bonfire in a clearing on the edge of the village and they lit it as the first stars appeared in the sky. The clearing had been decorated with foliage, chiefly branches of oak since this was the supreme night of the Oak King and tomorrow he must begin to lose way before the coming of the dark and the Holly King, ruler of the winter solstice. For that reason, midsummer is always tinged with sadness for me, since from then on the light fades.

  The sadness, however, was in abeyance for the moment. It was so wonderful to be out of Goda’s house and away from the sight, smell and even the sound of her – if she was awake she was nagging and sniping at me; if asleep, she snored and farted – that I would have enjoyed even the most modest celebration. There was nothing modest about Icklingham’s festivities, however. Soon I had a mug of ale in my hand, a garland of flowers on my head and a boy was shouting above the cheerful laughing, singing voices that the music would soon begin and who was going to dance with him?

  I did. I danced with him, with several others – boys, girls, women, men – and then with the first boy again. He was spinning me round in a vigorous circle and I was just think
ing that he wasn’t bad looking if you ignored the pimples on his forehead and the distinct lack of a chin when someone broke us apart, said, ‘My turn, I think,’ and I looked up into the handsome, smiling face of Romain.

  I stared at him with my mouth open. His hair shone just as I remembered and his expensive garments, tonight covered by a worn cloak of indeterminate colour, stood out in this company of the lowly like a ruby on a midden.

  ‘You don’t live here!’ I gasped, totally lost for any more intelligent comment.

  ‘No,’ he agreed, dancing along with the rest, his hand tightly clutching mine and pumping it up and down as if he were drawing water. ‘But I’m sure you’re glad to see me, all the same!’

  ‘I am, oh, I am!’ I agreed fervently. ‘I’ve been looking after my sister – you know, the one whose wedding you came to.’

  ‘Oh – er, yes.’

  Of course, I reminded myself, he didn’t know Goda, he was from Cerdic’s side. He was a friend of my brother-in-law, which, naturally, must be why he was here now. This put me in an awkward position. I hadn’t seen Cerdic at the feast and, as I’ve said, I had a pretty good idea where he was. But if I told Romain, for one thing it might reveal more about the state of my sister’s marriage than ought to be revealed to an outsider and for another, Romain might well go off to find Cerdic and therefore stop dancing with me.