by Alys Clare
Yet again I reminded myself that if we were caught we would find ourselves in very serious trouble. For one thing, people just didn’t set off across the country unless they really had to and even then, as Romain had implied and I very well knew, people of our lowly status could not go anywhere unless the lord of the manor said they could. There was also the ticklish question of theft, a crime which carried the most severe penalty of death by hanging if you were lucky or by some longer drawn-out and, invariably, extremely painful alternative process if you were not.
I forced my mind away from that dreadful thought and made myself try to be more positive. We might not be caught. And how often did a girl like me get the chance to do something risky and exciting?
Then, my spirits rising as excitement once again coursed through me, I reflected that I had been recruited because I had a particular talent for finding what was lost or hidden. Therefore this object, whatever it was, could hardly be in some great lord’s manor house, because that surely did not count as lost. No; it seemed far more likely that the object was something Romain and Sibert knew about but of whose precise location they were unaware. What had Romain said, exactly? I strained my memory to bring his words to mind. I know the rough location where the search must be carried out and Sibert knows about the object of the search. Yes. It appeared I was right. It also sounded, I thought optimistically, as if this object were hidden out in the wilds, where the possibility of being apprehended and accused of theft would be unlikely.
In this way I persuaded myself that I had made the right decision.
Thinking about what Romain had said had brought his face vividly to mind. I saw the wide smile, the well-cut, glossy hair, the expensive clothes under the worn and shabby travelling cloak which had certainly seen better days and which, I realized, he must be wearing to disguise the fact that he came from a stratum of society that could afford to spend a lot of money on good clothes.
He was a rich man. By my standards and those of my family, he was incredibly rich. He had talked at length to me on our first meeting. Now he had sought me out, danced with me, been on the point of kissing me (my fertile imagination had already taken a firm hold on that scene at the feast) and he had asked for my help. A man like him had appealed to a girl like me, so very far beneath him, because I had a unique talent (silently I spared a moment to bless Sibert, for surely it had been he who had told Romain of my gift). I was virtually certain that I could bend this promising situation to my own advantage and have Romain falling in love with me before our week in close proximity was out. How grateful he would be when I found his treasure for him! In my mind’s eye I saw him fall on his knees at my feet, take my hands in his and cover them with sweet little kisses. ‘Lassair,’ he would say, ‘my clever, precious girl, you have made one dream come true and now I beg that you will indulge my second wish by agreeing to become my wife.’
Yes, I knew I had been rash in agreeing to be a part of Romain’s mission. But I also knew that, given how I felt about him, there had never been the slightest chance whatsoever that I would refuse.
I made a soft pillow out of Elfritha’s shawl, put it on top of my small pack and, my fatigue catching up with me despite my tense excitement, went to sleep.
As darkness fell, Romain and Sibert made their careful way to the place where they had arranged to meet the girl. Romain was rigid with tension and the long wait for the relative safety of night had all but undone him. He and Sibert had slept in the clearing on the fringe of Icklingham – not that Romain had managed more than a light doze, and that had been interrupted by frightening, anxious dreams – and in the morning Sibert had gone foraging, returning with a pail of milk, rye bread and a large linen-wrapped package that turned out to be a spice loaf. Sibert admitted he had filched it from the remains of last night’s feast. Someone, Romain thought wryly, would be missing a carefully set-aside treat.
He had passed the daylight hours in obsessively checking through his plans. On occasions he came very close to panic. What did he think he was doing? Not only had he embarked on this brash, foolish errand but he had compounded the folly by involving two other people, one little more than a child and the other a youth whose introspective silences seemed, to the increasingly nervous Romain, nothing short of ominous.
But I cannot do this without them! he reasoned with himself. Sibert knew more than any living man concerning this thing they sought and Romain needed his instinctive awareness of both its nature and that of the man who made it. In addition, Sibert was familiar with the area that they must search and, equally important, the long and potentially hazardous journey across the higher ground to the coast. Sibert, as Romain well knew, had made the trip several times, although not recently. It was unlikely that anyone in Aelf Fen was aware just how often, since he had grown towards manhood, Sibert had managed to slip away and brood over what he had lost. Or, to be strictly accurate, what had been lost to him, since he had had no more of a hand in his own dispossession than Romain had in his.
It is indeed as I have insisted to him, Romain thought. We are natural allies, both of us heirs robbed of our inheritance.
But he did not allow himself to pursue that thought. It would only serve to increase his apprehension.
Instead he thought about the girl. What was her name? Lassair. He must try to remember it. He was well aware she liked him. He had deliberately flirted with her, although in a far more innocent manner than he would have adopted had she been a few years older and his intention had been serious. But it would do no harm to foster in her the belief that there might be a happy future for the two of them together once she had performed the service which, according to Sibert, she was uniquely qualified to provide.
Oh dear God, he prayed with sudden fervour, please let Sibert be right.
The long day had at last come to its end. Trust me, Romain thought ruefully as he and Sibert had at last left the clearing, to select Midsummer Day to embark on my great enterprise. But then, of course, the selection had not been up to him. It had been determined by events far away to the south where a castle in Kent had endured a horrible siege and in the end fallen to the king. Even Romain had not expected that retribution would have followed with such amazing speed. But the king, so they said, was very, very angry.
Now they were approaching the meeting place. Romain had the sudden conviction that the skinny girl would not be there; she too, he reasoned, had had the whole day to reflect on what she had agreed to do and surely, surely, she would have seen how stupidly risky it was and would now be safely tucked up inside her fat sister’s house, quite out of his reach.
She was not. She was sitting huddled under the hedge, a small pack beside her, a very pretty woollen shawl wrapped tightly around her arms and crossed over her flat chest.
Romain put what he hoped was a captivating and vaguely suggestive smile on his face. ‘Lassair,’ he said softly, pleased with himself for having brought her name to mind when he needed it, ‘how pleased I am to see you. I hope you have not grown chilly, sitting there?’
He sensed Sibert, just behind him, draw breath as if to say something; apparently he changed his mind. Lassair looked up and Romain saw the bright moonlight reflected in her wide eyes. Pretty eyes, he thought absently, of some light colour that he could not determine. Blue, probably, or perhaps green, to go with that copper-coloured hair. She might, he allowed, be attractive one day. For now she was just a child, and a boyish one at that.
But he must not let her know his opinion of her. Reaching out a hand, he helped her to her feet. ‘We must get going,’ he said. ‘Sibert will lead us, for of us all he is most familiar with the route.’
‘But—’ she began, surprise evident in her face. She stared at Sibert. ‘He lives in Aelf Fen,’ she whispered, puzzled. ‘How does he come by such knowledge?’
Sibert looked at her for a moment. Then he said, ‘There’s a great deal that neither you nor anyone else in the village knows about me.’
He turned and strode
away. After a short pause, first Lassair and then Romain fell into step behind him.
Romain made them march for all of the dark hours. Not that there was any need of coercion, for if anything they were better walkers than he and, despite the fact that both were slim and lightly built, it soon became obvious that their stamina exceeded his. He had contemplated bringing his horse on this mission but there hadn’t appeared to be much point; he would have been the only one mounted and they would have had to proceed at a human walking pace. However, as the night went on and his feet in their smart boots began to ache and grow hot with the prickle of incipient blisters, he wished fervently that he had ridden after all. Well, it was too late now.
The short night came to an end and in the east, over where the still-distant sea must lie, the sky lightened from the first shoots of brightness to a glorious rosy-pink dawn. They went on for perhaps another mile, looking for a suitable place to rest and sleep. Romain went to walk beside Sibert and asked in a quiet voice, ‘We seem to have covered quite a distance. Do you know where we are?’
Sibert shot him a glance. His face was pale and set although whether from fatigue or fear, Romain did not like to ask. ‘We’ve not done badly,’ the youth said. ‘We were following the Lark River south-eastwards for several miles out of Icklingham, then we turned due east and went round St Edmundsbury to the north.’
‘Yes,’ Romain said. They had agreed beforehand that it was wise to avoid towns and settlements wherever possible.
‘We’d climbed a good bit by then, up out of the valley, and we struck out over the heathland. We gave Ixworth Abbey a wide berth – that’s where we stopped for a wet and a bite to eat – and since then we’ve done maybe another five miles, going due east.’ He pointed ahead to the dawn light as if to verify what he had just said.
‘Sixteen miles,’ said Romain slowly. ‘How much further?’
‘Thirty miles, maybe.’ Sibert shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘How long does the journey usually take you?’
Sibert glanced at him, his expression hard to read. ‘I can do from Aelf Fen to the coast in three marches,’ he said neutrally. ‘But I’m well used to walking.’
‘Of course you are,’ Romain said, putting a careful note of admiration in his tone. ‘But for the three of us, how soon can we reach our destination?’
Sibert looked at Lassair, who was standing on the track behind them staring from one to the other. ‘Two more marches,’ he said. ‘We should eat and rest now, sleep up for the heat of the day. If it’s as quiet around here as it appears to be’ – Romain, staring round, could see no sign of any habitation amid the heathland, and the narrow path was rough and showed little signs of heavy use – ‘then I reckon we’d be safe to set out again in the early afternoon. Another rest soon after dark, then we’ll proceed to the coast.’
It sounded an ambitious plan but Romain, driven hard by his desperate impatience to get on with the mission, thought it was not impossible. He turned to Lassair and said courteously, ‘Could you manage that, do you think?’
‘Of course,’ she said, raising her chin and staring levelly at him.
Ah, a burst of pride, he thought. Well, that’s all to the good as it means she’ll be reluctant to moan when she gets tired.
‘Very well.’ He unslung the leather satchel he wore over his shoulder and gratefully dropped it to the ground. ‘We’ll stop and refresh ourselves.’
They found a dell among the heather that offered protection from curious eyes and also from any wind that might spring up. Sibert unpacked the food and handed round a flask of small beer, from which they all drank deeply. The beer was good, sweetened with honey and lightly spiced with rosemary and mint. Romain hoped Sibert had more of it in his pack. They each ate a slice of the spice bread and Sibert gave out apples, small and wrinkled with long storage but still sweet. Then one by one they made themselves comfortable and Romain watched as the other two went to sleep. Sibert lay quite still on his back, his head on his pack and his hands folded on his chest. Had it not been for the rise and fall of his belly, he might have been dead.
Romain, wondering where that morbid thought had come from, dismissed it. He looked over at the girl, curled up in a ball like a young animal and wrapped snugly in her shawl. Her copper hair reflected the light of the waxing sun and he noticed the fine texture of her pale skin. Suddenly her eyes shot open – they were grey-green, he noticed, with very clear whites and an indigo ring around the iris – and he felt guilty for having been caught staring at her.
She gave him a small and tentative smile which, in an older woman, might have been read as invitation.
He turned away.
SIX
I woke stiff and uncomfortable, with sharp bits of heather sticking in my back. I think the heat had woken me, for I was lying in full sunshine and I was tangled up in Elfritha’s shawl. Romain and Sibert were still asleep, so I crept out of the dell and, behind the meagre cover of some hazel bushes, passed water. I had been worrying about how I was going to manage my bodily functions; it was not proving to be easy, on the road with two men, so I was glad that, for the moment at any rate, I had solved the problem.
I returned to the dell, sat down and looked around me. We were on a sort of heath, bracken and heather mostly, and there were no more signs of life up here now than there had been at first light. I stared up the track, first one way, then the other. There was nobody about.
Sibert was asleep, on his back. Romain had turned away. With a small stab of pain, I remembered how I’d opened my eyes soon after we had settled down last night to see him looking at me. I had risked a smile – how lovely it would have been if he had lain down beside me and we had slept side by side – but instantly he had looked away. I tried to excuse him – he’d probably been embarrassed because I’d caught him watching me. He was that sort of man – courteous, mannerly – and it was probably against some code of manners that existed among his kind to make approaches to young girls when you happened to be camped out with them in the wilderness.
All the same, I wished he had been bolder. I would not have turned him away.
Sibert woke and sat up, stretching. He smiled at me – the first time he had done so for I couldn’t remember how long – and said, ‘Hello, Lassair. Did you manage to sleep?’
‘Yes. Very well,’ I replied.
Our voices woke Romain. He came up to consciousness more slowly – probably he was used to a gentle awaking, perhaps with some manservant bringing him a reviving drink and a bowl of water to wash his face and hands – and for a moment or two he looked puzzled. Then his face cleared and he too smiled. There was an air of excited happiness among the three of us; any fears we might have had last night had gone. The sunshine and a good long sleep had thoroughly revived us and after a bite to eat and a drink, we were ready to resume our march.
Romain knew that he was the weak one out of the three of them but, as the eldest, the instigator and the leader in every other respect, he could not allow his fallibility to show. As afternoon turned to evening and the total of the miles steadily augmented, he watched the slowly lowering sun and reflected that so far on this journey, at least they had not had to bed down to sleep in the Fens.
Romain’s mistrust of that mysterious marshland region was profound and he had only gone there out of desperate need; the Fens were where Sibert was to be found. As far as Romain was concerned, once this business was over he never intended to set foot there again.
He had once been told by an elderly family retainer who came from the Fens that once, long ago, an ancient horse-loving people had risen up against the invading armies from the hot south. They had fought ferociously under their red-haired queen and burned the towns of the newcomers to the ground. But the military might of the incomers proved too strong and the people were defeated, their proud queen taking her own life by poison before she could suffer the humiliation of capture. The remnants of that once-great people, leaderless, disorganized, had scattered
and fled. Many of them, according to the old servant, had sought refuge in the one area where the newcomers barely troubled to venture: the Fens. And their ghosts – perhaps even their descendants – were still there . . .
Romain had believed he was too mature and sensible to go on being scared by a tale told by an old man to entertain a little boy. Reality proved different. But then, Romain reminded himself as he trudged on, buoyed up by the happy thought that tonight he was far from that dread region, that original childhood impression had been fed and kept alive by what he learned of the Fens as he grew to adolescence and manhood. Raised as he had been on the coast, where the wind blew fresh off the wide grey sea to the east, he had been all too ready to accept the horror stories of that dark, unknown inland place. Malign creatures inhabited the pools and the bogs, and they would entice a traveller along what seemed to be a safe path, only to create a strange white mist that swirled and billowed so that a man could not see where he was placing his feet. Then he would find himself tumbling into the stinking black mud, clouds of stinging insects round his head, leeches and eels sucking and biting at his legs. If the threatening water did not get you then sickness would, for ague and quinsy were rife and if you risked eating the bread, then the poisonous mould that grew on the crust would drive you to terrible visions that drove you out of your mind. Frightful, abominable creatures lived hidden in the Fens, from the terrible monsters that swam in the deepest, most secret waterways and lived on human blood to the nimble elves who were so successful at hiding themselves that a man only knew they were near when he felt their elf-shot pierce his skin. It was said that there were dragons, too, living in their barrows deep underground where they guarded their treasure hoards with their fearsome weapons of claws, spiked tails, vicious jaws and deadly fire.
