Out of the Dawn Light

by Alys Clare

  I fell into step beside him as we set off. I did not know where we were going and merely hoped that Romain had somewhere in mind where we could shelter overnight. Sibert, who claimed to know the area so well, was for the moment quite useless; I reckoned I would even have to take over his job of dishing out the food and drink. I felt so very sorry for him. I would have liked to take his hand but I held back, instead hoping to comfort him by my presence at his side.

  We walked in the woodland for a while, then emerged into the open. Sibert raised his head and stared around him. ‘I don’t understand,’ he muttered, frowning, ‘it all looks so very different. I can’t – can’t—’ He gave up, his frown deepening.

  ‘Perhaps it’s a while since you’ve been here,’ I said kindly. ‘Places do change, you know.’

  ‘I was last here a little under two years ago,’ he said.

  ‘Well, perhaps – perhaps—’ But I was at a loss to explain how a location with which someone had once been familiar could have altered so drastically in two years. Instead I said bracingly, ‘Come on. I’m hungry, and you must be too. Romain seems to be leading us somewhere, so let’s hope it’s dry, out of the wind and provides us with somewhere comfortable to sleep.’

  He glanced at me but it was as if his eyes slid over me as he continued his worried gazing around. I was about to start urging him again when all at once he jerked into action and staggered off after Romain.

  I hurried after them.

  EIGHT

  We were all tired after the long hours of walking and, after our unnatural pattern of being awake for the night and asleep in the daytime, the prospect of settling down to sleep at the appropriate time was surprisingly good. We ate reasonably well before we turned in. Romain had gone scavenging and returned with a dry heel of bread, a large onion squashed on one side, a piece of mouldy cheese and some spindly carrots. I didn’t ask him where he’d found the food; all the items looked suspiciously like the leftovers from a market, usually abandoned for the dogs and the starving to clear up. Still, we were grateful, and cheese savoured by the bite of onion – even a squishy onion – was welcome after a diet that consisted mainly of spice bread.

  I knew that Romain had money. I also knew why he could not stride up to some beautifully laid-out stall and purchase the best provender on offer: because around here his was a familiar face and we had come on a secret mission. For the time being, until we had succeeded in our aim, it looked as if we were going to have to go hungry.

  I went to sleep quickly and slept profoundly; I don’t think I even dreamed. Then all at once I was wide awake. I lay quite still in the darkness – the sky was cloudy and there really was barely any light at all – and used my ears and my nose. I could hear the sea; or I guessed it was the sea. It was how I imagined waves beating on the shore in the dead of night would sound. I could hear Romain, who lay over to my right. He was fast asleep, breathing deeply and evenly and with a little click in the middle of each in breath, as if something were caught in one nostril. The leaves of the trees above us were moving restlessly in the breeze off the sea. The wind must have changed, I thought absently. I couldn’t hear the sea when I went to sleep but now I could, so the wind must have gone round from west to east so that now it was carrying the sound of the waves.

  Then I heard stealthy footsteps. I stiffened in alarm and felt for the small knife I carry in a sheath on my belt. Not that it would have helped me much against an assailant, as it’s only as long as my hand and I would need a very lucky stab to reach a man’s vitals, but nevertheless holding its horn hilt gave me a tiny bit of confidence.

  The footfalls were coming nearer.

  Should I wake the men? Oh, but if I did and whoever was out there heard me, then he’d know where we were, whereas now there was a slim chance that he was out on his own business and not concerned with us.

  I lay in an agony of indecision, the sweat of fear breaking out all over my body.

  Moving very slowly, I turned my head to locate Sibert, asleep on my left. He wasn’t there. And as I realized who those terror-inducing footsteps belonged to, he crept into our little hideout and lay down under his cloak.

  I was furious with him for scaring me so badly, which was not entirely reasonable as he had probably got up to pass water and that was nothing to do with me. But it happens like that, I find; when something deeply frightens or disturbs us, we need someone to put the blame on.

  I was still fuming when Sibert spoke, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Lassair? Are you awake?’

  Several possible replies flashed through my head. In the end I just hissed back, ‘Yes.’

  He rolled closer. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he said, right in my ear and tickling me with his warm breath. I noticed that he smelt powerfully of onions, but then undoubtedly I did too. ‘Will you come out there with me’ – I sensed movement as he jerked his head – ‘so we don’t wake Romain?’

  It was rather nice to be needed. I nodded, but of course he couldn’t see, so I whispered, ‘All right.’

  He crawled away and, wrapping myself in my shawl, I followed. When we were out of our sleeping place we both stood up and on silent feet tiptoed fifty paces or so into the breeze. I was very aware of the sound of the sea. Sibert stopped and, taking my hand, led me to a shallow indentation in the ground where, as we sat down, we were sheltered from the wind.

  ‘Are we near the sea?’ I asked in a low voice.

  ‘Yes. I’ve been to look and it’s only a short walk away. There’s a cliff, then the shore and the sea.’

  ‘A cliff.’ The night was pitch black! ‘Sibert, wasn’t it foolhardy to go wandering along cliffs on a dark night?’ Then I remembered that he knew this area. ‘But I suppose you’re well aware how the land lies.’ He didn’t answer. ‘Aren’t you?’

  He turned to me. His head was a darker patch in the darkness but I caught the glint of his eyes. ‘That’s just it. I thought so, but— Oh, Lassair, it’s changed! What has happened here? What have they done?’

  I watched as he dropped his face in his hands. I felt his body shake and wondered if he were silently weeping.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What’s changed?’

  ‘Everything!’ he said in a suppressed wail. ‘The house is quite different, and the fields and the woods, and it’s as if some sorcerer has put an evil enchantment on it!’

  I was already feeling decidedly uneasy. There was no need to bring sorcerers and enchantments into it. ‘Well, of course the house has changed,’ I said in my no-nonsense tone. ‘The one we saw yesterday was built by the Normans, and they have a way of stamping their mark on a place, probably to make sure the rest of us know who’s in charge. So you—’

  ‘Lassair, listen!’ he interrupted. ‘Yes, I know all that! But the manor and castle we saw – the place Romain said was Drakelow – isn’t. When the de la Flèches were given the estate, of course they weren’t going to live in the hall my forefathers built, but they left it standing and built their new castle close beside it. They used my ancestral home as a grain store,’ he added bitterly.

  Yes, I reflected. That sounded like the incomers. They won, they invaded, they built their castles and, not content with that, rubbed the faces of the vanquished in the dirt by demeaning their former treasured homes.

  I brought myself back to the moment. ‘You said you were last here two years ago?’

  ‘Yes. A little more – I made the journey just before the Easter feast.’

  ‘And at that time Drakelow was as you remembered it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet now it’s changed.’ He did not even bother to reply to that, and I didn’t blame him. ‘Were you out there wandering about just now to try to make sense of it?’ I asked, filled with sympathy.

  ‘I wasn’t walking for the good of my health.’

  I could hear that he was smiling and I hoped it was an indication that his mood was lifting a little. ‘It’s a very dark night, Sibert,’ I said gently. ‘Wouldn
’t it be better if we waited till morning?’

  ‘Of course it would,’ he said, impatient suddenly. ‘But you forget, I think, what I shall be called on to do tomorrow.’

  ‘I – oh!’

  He was right. I had forgotten. Poor, poor Sibert. We had reached our destination and in the morning Romain would undoubtedly demand that he begin on his appointed task. Sibert must find the general location of the treasure we had come to find and then I must use my dowsing powers and pinpoint its hiding place.

  And Sibert had lost his bearings because an enchanter had broken up the familiar landscape into little pieces and set them down again in a new pattern.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I ventured when the silence became unbearable, ‘it’ll look better by daylight.’

  He actually laughed. ‘Good old Lassair, ever the optimist,’ he remarked.

  ‘I’m sure it will!’ I said urgently. ‘It must!’

  ‘Maybe.’ He didn’t sound at all confident.

  I couldn’t speak for him but I felt wide awake and I was sure I would not sleep if we returned to our shelter. ‘Tell me about Drakelow,’ I said. ‘It was your father’s house, I know, but obviously, from what you say, he didn’t build it, did he?’

  ‘Oh, no. It’s been in my family for – oh, generations.’

  ‘Will you tell me?’

  ‘Yes.’ He settled himself more comfortably and, I noticed, closer to me so that our arms and shoulders touched. It was probably just for warmth. ‘My ancestors came from the Baltic, where the lands of the Swedish homeland were threatened by a series of years that brought flooding to the coastal plain. There wasn’t room any more for everyone and they needed a new place to live, so they joined in the movement westwards, to Britain, where many of their people were going.’

  ‘How many generations back?’ I asked. ‘Your grandfather? His father?’

  ‘Oh, long before that. It was five hundred years ago.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I demanded.

  ‘You have your grandmother Cordeilla to memorize and guard your family history. Well, we have our bards too.’

  ‘Yes, but who told you?’

  He hesitated. Then he said, ‘Hrype.’

  ‘Your uncle the cunning man,’ I said without thinking; Hrype is a bit scary and people in Aelf Fen usually refrain from voicing their suspicions concerning exactly what he is.

  ‘Yes,’ Sibert agreed. ‘He’s my father’s brother.’

  ‘Your father’s brother!’ I was very surprised. Although I couldn’t recall that anyone had ever actually said so, I – and everyone else in Aelf Fen – had assumed that Hrype was Froya’s brother, and had come to support his sister when she lost her husband.

  ‘You think you know the story, I’m sure,’ Sibert said dryly, ‘but since we’re here in the lands of my forefathers, concerning ourselves deeply with their deeds, perhaps I ought to tell you the true version.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  He hesitated, as if gathering his thoughts. Then he began to speak. ‘They came from the coast that borders the Baltic Sea on its eastern side, near a place where the great funeral mounds of the early kings rise up. They were important people, for they knew how to make the things that the kings craved. Hrype is not the first magician in my line, and his forebears had the skill of transferring their power into metal, so that the finished artefact was an object of power.’ Awestruck, I murmured an assent; I had heard tell of such things. ‘The men who led the people into the new lands had need of such aids, for the migration was perilous and they knew they would not only have to fight others who also coveted the lands but, in addition, there would be resistance from those who already inhabited the places they were intent on taking over.’

  My people, I thought, for the incomers sailing ashore out of the dawn landed in the east of England. They landed in my East Anglia. Perhaps Sibert was thinking the same thing, for quickly he went on, ‘They settled on the coast, for they loved the sea and did not wish to live away from it. The king and his line went south and built their great halls at Rendlesham. My ancestors settled at Drakelow and they prospered and grew wealthy.’

  I expect they did, I thought, if they and their strange powers remained so crucial to the king. ‘Were they not commanded to live nearer to Rendlesham?’ I asked. ‘Surely, if the king depended on them, wouldn’t he want them close at hand?’

  ‘You don’t know where Rendlesham is, do you?’ He laughed softly.

  ‘Well, no, but you said the king went south and so I thought—’

  ‘I meant south of where they landed, which we are told was to the north of Dunwich. Rendlesham is only some fifteen miles from here. It lies at the mouth of a river, to the south-west.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘They were close enough to reach the king’s side within a day when summoned,’ he went on, ‘and they preferred to keep a little distance between themselves and the king. They worked their land and looked after their people, and by the time of my grandfather Beorn, they felt as if Drakelow had always been their home.’ After five hundred years, I reflected, I should think they would.

  ‘My grandfather had two sons, my uncle Hrype and my father Edmer,’ Sibert continued. ‘Hrype was very strange and my grandfather was wary of his power, so that when the threat from the Normans came, it was Edmer whom he commanded to fight with him. Hrype,’ he added, ‘would not make a good soldier.’

  He would if he could blast a few of the enemy out of their saddles with a bit of magic, I reflected, but I kept the thought to myself. ‘So your father and your grandfather rode away to the great battle?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Nobody thought that they would lose, for King Harold had already won an impressive victory against the Viking Hardrada and everyone was saying that he was invincible. My grandfather and my father joined the king’s army as they marched south to Hastings.’ He sighed. ‘But, of course, King Harold lost.’

  ‘And Drakelow was given to Fulk de la Flèche.’ For the first time, I was beginning to understand just a little of what a devastating, life-changing blow that had been.

  ‘My grandfather died on the battlefield,’ Sibert said, ‘so he was saved the ignominy of seeing his enemy in his own hall. My father escaped both death and capture, and he sent urgent word to my grandmother Fritha, telling her what was going to happen. She and Hrype made their escape, taking with them everything they could carry, and fled westwards inland to the Black Fens.’

  I nodded. ‘As many have done before them,’ I observed. It takes a very determined enemy to chase his quarry into the heart of the Fenland. Many who have tried found only their own deaths. You really have to have been born there to be confident of finding the safe ways, and even then we have been known to make mistakes.

  ‘My grandmother and Hrype were not caught,’ he went on. ‘In time my father found them, and they made their way to Ely, where they had been told that resistance was gathering. My father fought with Hereward, as you know, although Hrype counselled him against it, saying it would end in death. Not Hereward’s death; my father’s.’

  ‘Hrype was right,’ I whispered.

  ‘Yes. He usually is. My father was shot in the thigh and the wound became infected. Hrype did his best for him, even to the extent of amputating the leg. He—’

  ‘He must be very skilled,’ I interrupted, ‘to attempt such surgery.’

  ‘He is. He knows how to render his patient insensate, and by so doing he can take his time over the cutting.’

  I knew that such powerful magic existed, for I had picked up occasional hints that Edild had let drop. Not that she had elaborated, for quite clearly she deemed that as yet I was far too young to be instructed in this surely most dangerous of skills. To render a man insensate, so that he did not feel the agony of amputation! How would anybody dare to do that and be sure of being able to wake the patient up again when it was all over? I thought that were I not so in awe of him – oh, all right, downright scared – I would have given much to talk with Hrype.
Maybe when I was older and had begun to earn myself a reputation as a healer . . .

  ‘He did not work alone,’ Sibert was saying, ‘for by now my father was married to my mother, and at one time she was Hrype’s pupil. Together they patched my father up and prepared him for travel.’

  ‘It was very risky to move him,’ I protested. Edild had taught me about life-threatening wounds and how a patient must above all else have rest; complete immobility, if at all possible. If the amputation of a limb was not a life-threatening wound, I did not know what was.

  ‘They had no choice,’ Sibert said grimly. ‘The rebellion had failed and there was a price on the heads of each of the main protagonists, my father included. Hrype had to choose between staying where they were and seeing his brother arrested and probably hanged or else taking him on a difficult journey over uncertain terrain and perhaps watching him bleed to death.’

  ‘What did the others say? Your mother, your grandmother?’ I did not suppose that poor Edmer would have been up to making a contribution to the discussion.

  ‘My grandmother was dead. She was never the same woman after the flight from Drakelow to the Fens. According to Hrype, she suffered some sort of a seizure that left her partly paralysed. She gave up on life after Edmer received his wound.’ He paused. ‘She lay down, turned her face to the wall and she died, and there was nothing Hrype could do to save her.’ Poor Hrype. What sorrow his family had endured, I thought, my sympathy making tears form in my eyes. ‘My mother was terrified of moving my father,’ Sibert went on, ‘but she saw the sense of what Hrype was saying and in the end she agreed that flight was better than arrest. Hrype volunteered to remain at Ely, doing all he could to give the impression that he was still tending my father there, and my mother slipped away in the dead of night, leading a docile old mare that bore my father.’

  ‘She brought him to Aelf Fen,’ I said wonderingly. ‘And then he died.’

  ‘He did.’ The two curt syllables fell like hard drops of cold rain.

  ‘Your mother was already pregnant with you,’ I went on, recalling what I had been told, ‘and you were born after your father’s death.’