by Alys Clare
Was this true? Or was it the product of a mind slowly being pressured to implosion? I did not know.
The sea was sucking and pushing at my feet and I was very cold. I was cold on the inside, too, for I kept hearing the echo of his words: I have killed before and I shall do so again.
He had just confessed to me that he was a murderer. He had killed Romain and I had just seen him drown Sibert. Oh, Sibert!
I knew that he would not allow me to live.
Without thinking I flung myself sideways out of the circle of crumbling timber posts. I had some idea of running around the perimeter and turning for the shore, where if I outran Baudouin I might be able to hide. I was small and light on my feet and I really thought I had a chance. It was better, anyway, than standing there dumbly and waiting for him to kill me.
I flew round the circle. One post, two posts, then a big wave came galloping in behind me and launched itself at my legs. I stumbled and almost fell, but recovered and ran on, my lungs on fire and the muscles in my legs crying out their pain as I forced a way through the water swirling around the sanctuary. I could see the shore line ahead of me – it looked so far away – and I leapt forward towards it.
He caught me around the knees, launching himself at me so that we both fell into the water. Then he was on top of me, his boot or his fist on the back of my head. My face was under the water and I summoned what was left of my strength to try to jerk it up.
I twisted and wriggled and managed to get my nose above the surface. I sniffed in air but the waves were stronger now, sending up a lot of spray, and I felt the cold bite of sea water as it invaded my nostrils and slid down the back of my throat. I choked and coughed but I was under the water again and it was not the life-saving air that I took in but the swirling, savage water.
I held my breath. I could feel my desperate heart hammering in my chest and blackness was gathering on the edge of my vision. I’m dying, I thought. My mother and father will be so sad . . .
Suddenly the murderous pressure was off me.
My head shot up out of the water and I took in a huge gulp of air. There was water in my nose, my mouth, my throat, and I coughed, gagged and coughed some more, then I vomited up a great gout of frothy brine. I was on fire. I had never known that salt water burns like flame.
I was on hands and knees, the tide now racing up the shore and threatening to push me back under the water. You have to stand up, I told myself.
Very shakily and unsteadily I did.
Sibert was standing beside the upturned tree stump. Well, he wasn’t exactly standing, he was sort of hunched over it.
I splashed over to him.
‘Are you alive?’ I asked. It was a stupid question, but then I had just seen him drowned.
He neither answered nor turned. He was, I noticed, peculiarly intent and the muscles of his slim back bulged out under his soaking wet tunic . . .
The water around his knees thrashed and boiled. Then it was still, then it splashed up again.
The next time the movement ceased it did not start again.
After what seemed a very long time, Sibert said, ‘He’s dead.’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’ I felt strangely unreal, as if this were a dream.
‘He would have killed you,’ Sibert went on. ‘I had to stop him.’
‘Yes,’ I said again. Then, belatedly, ‘Thank you.’
‘That’s all right. You saved me, now I’ve saved you.’
‘Yes.’ I was puzzled. For one thing, I’d thought Sibert was dead. For another, how had he managed to overcome a fierce, strong man like Baudouin? ‘What happened, Sibert?’
‘I took him by surprise,’ Sibert said proudly. ‘He wasn’t expecting an attack.’
‘No, you were dead,’ I agreed.
‘I was lucky,’ he went on modestly. ‘When I leapt on him he fell against the buried tree bole and, as you’ll no doubt have noticed, there are several places on it where branches were once cut off, leaving downward-pointing stumps. I managed to hook his belt on to one of them and after that I just had to push down on him to make sure he didn’t manage to release himself.’
‘What are we going to do?’ I whispered. Shock was affecting me badly. I was shivering so hard that my teeth rattled and I very much wanted to cry.
Sibert took one last look at the dark shape under the water and then left it. He came over to me and put his arm round me. ‘We’re going ashore to dry off and rest. We’ll wait till the tide turns and then we’ll come back here, unhook Baudouin’s body and let the sea take it. Then we’ll go home.’
It sounded wonderful. But we had come here to do a job and if we didn’t succeed, Hrype would send us straight back again. The very idea made me weep. ‘What about the crown?’
He hugged me. Reaching out for my hand, he put it against the bag that was once more hanging at his waist. ‘The crown is safe,’ he said. ‘When we’ve dealt with Baudouin, we’ll put it back.’
I hardly recognized this new and masterful Sibert. Perhaps saving my life and killing my would-be murderer had at long last changed him from a boy into a man. It was going to take some getting used to but, I thought as, cold and weary, we waded ashore, I thought I might grow to like it.
TWENTY-TWO
It was a strange ceremony that Sibert and I performed soon after dawn the next morning. Looking back, it seems more like a dream than reality, although I am pretty sure that it did happen . . .
We were soaked to the skin when we came ashore. Sibert lit a small fire and insisted that we both take off our clothes and dry ourselves. It was very odd, sitting here naked before the welcoming heat, and I don’t think I could have done it if it hadn’t been for the concealing darkness. Well, and the fact that I’d probably have died of cold otherwise. Sibert made me eat some dried meat and bread, then he held a mug to my mouth and forced me to take all of the hot drink he had prepared. I tasted honey in it and soon I was feeling better.
We slept, or at least I did, curled up in my still-damp clothes but warm in the heat from the fire, which Sibert must have tended all night. I had a very vivid dream in which I opened my eyes to see him, standing on the other side of the fire, with the light of the flames reflecting off something that lay on the ground between us. Something that was circular and made of gold. Sibert looked different – taller, stronger – and the naked man I saw in my dream was utterly different from the pale, cowed and shrivelled boy who had stood in Aelf Fen before his accusers. I thought I saw a sheen of power rising up from the crown, surrounding Sibert in its aura as if bestowing a blessing, and my dreaming self said, ‘Your ancestor made it, Sibert. He wants you to have some of its strength. He’s trying to help you because he’s proud of you for what you’ve done.’
Sibert did not answer.
He woke me at dawn. The memory of my dream was still too fresh to allow me to look him in the eye and, to my surprise, he seemed similarly affected. I did wonder briefly if it had really been a dream.
He had already kicked out the fire. Now we stood up, left our boots in the sleeping place, descended the low cliff and walked across the foreshore to the sea sanctuary.
The sea was receding but still, as we approached the sanctuary, we were ankle-deep in water. I carefully twisted up my skirt and tied it round my waist; it was so good to be in dry clothes again that I did not want to risk another soaking. Sibert paused to roll up his breeches. Then we went into the sanctuary.
Baudouin was on his side, his stout leather belt still hooked over the stump of branch. Sibert bent down to release him. Together we pushed and dragged the body to the far side of the sanctuary. Soon we were wading in deeper water and the corpse was floating. With a shove, Sibert gave it up to the tide.
We returned to the sanctuary.
We waited until the water had cleared the sands and then, as we had tried to do the previous night, we buried the crown. I found the right place; it was easy, for in my heightened emotional state it seemed to me that a soft purplish-blue light was
guiding me, as if the crown were sending out a message to let us know without doubt where it wanted to be. Even after five hundred years, some of the magic of Creoda, greatest of all sorcerers, still lingered.
We dug deep, for, without either of us saying so, it seemed that we both felt the need to do the job really well. It took a long time.
At last we were ready.
Sibert took the crown out of its bag one last time. We both stared at it, wanting to imprint its beauty on our eyes for ever. Then Sibert wrapped it up again and, each of us holding one side, we put it in the deep, dark space beneath the tree stump. Painstakingly we filled in the hole, piling on the sand and tamping it down. We left signs of our activity – we couldn’t help it – but we knew we were safe; they would be gone with the next tide, washed clean again so that the crown’s location was secure.
Then for the last time we turned our backs on the sea sanctuary and its precious secret and headed for the shore. I looked up into the soft blue sky of very early morning. There was scarcely a breeze and not a cloud to be seen.
It was going to be a lovely day.
Our return to Aelf Fen went without incident except that I developed a blister on the ball of my foot. What irony, I thought; I walked across red-hot coals without taking hurt and yet a long walk, which was really nothing out of the ordinary for someone like me, gives me a blister that burns like hellfire.
We were both apprehensive as we neared our home; Sibert because he would have to confess to Hrype that he had killed Baudouin and I because I knew that, despite whatever Hrype had cooked up to explain my absence, my parents would have been beside themselves with worry.
As it turned out, neither of us need have been so anxious. Hrype accepted Sibert’s account of how he had slain a man with a brief nod, the suspicion of a proud smile and the calm words, ‘You had no choice, Sibert.’ Sibert told me later that Hrype had also seemed satisfied with how we’d reburied the crown. He had said little, according to Sibert, except a brief and mystifying, ‘Time will tell.’ Nobody I know is nearly as enigmatic as Hrype.
My parents had barely listened to Hrype explaining that I’d gone off with Edild because the morning after Sibert and I slipped out of Aelf Fen on our way to Drakelow, my sister had her baby.
I hurried over to Icklingham as soon as I could to find Goda sitting on the bench by the hearth, Cerdic beside her, with several of her neighbours circling around and satisfying her whims as if she were a queen and they her handmaidens. Honestly, you’d think no woman had ever given birth before! All the same, I had to admire my sister for her sheer cheek and, catching her eye, I gave her a smile that came from the heart.
‘Well done,’ I said, pushing a way through the chattering women to get to her. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here for the birth and to help you afterwards. Was it . . .? Did you . . .?’ I felt embarrassed suddenly at the thought of my sister giving birth and I was angry with myself for my foolish prudery. Fine healer I was going to make.
Goda confounded me totally by smiling back. ‘It was all right,’ she said quietly. ‘It hurt but it didn’t take too long.’ Then – for this was the woman who only a short while ago had routinely cursed her husband and thrown clogs at him – she gave the man beside her a loving glance and added, ‘I didn’t need you afterwards. Cerdic’s been looking after me.’
Just at that moment I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Cerdic, perhaps understanding better than anyone, said gently, ‘Go and have a look.’ He pointed.
I stood up, walked to the far corner of the little room and found my mother, pink in the face with delight, nursing her first grandchild.
I looked down into the beautiful little face – the baby was a girl – and her eyes opened and stared back. She did not resemble Cerdic – which wouldn’t have been too bad as he’s a nice-looking man – but, more to the point, she was nothing like Goda.
She looked like Edild.
My mother, watching me study her, smiled. ‘Can you see it too?’ she asked softly, her finger clutched in the baby’s tiny fist.
‘Yes. She looks like Edild.’
My mother laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But she looks far more like someone else. Someone I nursed as a tiny baby, just as I’m nursing Gelges here.’
Gelges. It meant white swan. What a lovely name . . .
My mother was still watching me, waiting for me to say something.
I didn’t.
Just then Gelges gave a small sound rather like a tired sigh and it was so sweet, so endearing, that involuntarily I held out my arms and my mother put the soft, solid little bundle into them.
Gelges and I considered each other.
My mother said, ‘She looks just like you.’
My mother and I stayed with Goda and her little family for another couple of days and then we went home to Aelf Fen. As my mother wisely said, before long Goda was going to have to get used to looking after her house, her husband and her baby by herself, just like any other woman, and the sooner she started, the better.
Life settled down again and resumed its usual pattern. Straight away I went back to my regular sessions with Edild and the joy with which I took up her steadily more challenging lessons was an indication of how much I’d missed them – and her – all the time I was looking after Goda.
I waited, at first nervously, to see if anything would happen. I’m not sure what I was expecting: retribution, I suppose, for Sibert and I had stolen the crown and killed a man. Because of us, Romain de la Flèche as well as his uncle both were dead. We had put the crown back, it seemed successfully, and as time went by and no one came to accuse us, I started to wonder if the crown might be protecting us, just as its long-ago maker made it to protect this land. We had stolen it in the first place, but we had returned it, at considerable risk to ourselves – I still had nightmares about Sibert’s drowned body and that awful moment when I tried to gulp air and sniffed in sea water instead – and surely that must count for something.
I kept my eyes and my ears open and in time I learned that many of the great East Anglian lords who had risen against King William had had their lands and their manors restored. I wondered if any one of them had bought his way back into royal favour with anything as extraordinary as the Drakelow crown. I suspected not.
I had no idea what would happen to Drakelow. Baudouin and his heir were both dead and, although he had claimed to be betrothed to his comely heiress, he had not yet wed her or, as far as I knew, impregnated her. No de la Flèche would ever live at Drakelow again.
I pictured the brash, coarse Norman buildings. I made an image in my mind of the long hall that Sibert’s ancestors built. Then I saw the cliff fall away into the sea, taking the hall with it. It did not look as if any of Sibert’s clan would live there again either.
I supposed that, lacking any other claimant, Drakelow remained the property of the king. Well, all of England belonged to him; that was the Norman way. We just had to accept it.
I have found it a fact of life that if something you really dread goes on not happening, in the end it loses its hold over you and finally you forget about it. I threw myself heart and soul into my work with Edild – she seemed to think that now I had risked death and handled a magical crown I was ready to go up a level in my studies – and I loved almost every moment of my time with her in her fragrant little cottage. Quite often Hrype came to join us and I learned from him, too, as he revealed just a very little of the mysterious heart, soul and spirit that made him what he was.
I grieved for Romain. I knew there had never been any chance of my sweet fantasies ever turning into reality, but all the same he was very often in my mind and I recognized that I truly had loved him, a little.
I thought about what Edild had told me of my web of destiny, in particular what she had said concerning my relationship with my lovers (the thought still made me blush, even when I was quite alone). She’d been right about my being fire and air, and my triumph in the fire pit supported her. Was she also right
when she said my friends and my lovers would never feel close to me?
Time would tell.
In the absence of lovers I worked hard on my friendships and especially hard on my closeness to my family. Goda’s sunny mood on the day I first went to see her after she had borne her child did not last, I’m sorry to say, although we all agreed that her temperament had improved very slightly with motherhood and I tried to convince myself that the improvement would continue. For now, she tended little Gelges with haphazard but effective care – her vast breasts could have fed five babies and Gelges thrived – and on rare occasions even managed a pleasant word for Cerdic.
My little niece and I saw as much of each other as my busy life allowed. Until she was weaned she had to stay close to her mother, but already I looked forward to the day when I might be allowed to take her off with me while I went about my daily round. If Goda had another child, I thought, then she might well ask – no, demand – that I help her by taking Gelges off her hands. It was something to look forward to.
I discovered an unexpected side-effect from my fire-walking: people had started to whisper about me and it seemed that quite a few believed I was a sorceress. I had imagined, if I’d thought about it at all, that they would accept the official verdict, which was that my unburned feet meant that God had protected me in my innocence. I had reckoned without village superstition; we were, after all, very close to our pagan origins and many secretly prayed to the Old Gods. I rather liked this new image of myself.
I saw Sibert often. What we had gone through together had forged a link between us and although he could not compete with the shadowy memory of Romain as far as my romantic interest went, nevertheless he was my friend. I had saved his life and he had saved mine. It’s not something you share with many people.
I never heard anyone mention the Drakelow crown.
I thought afterwards that, just before Sibert and I stole it, it had performed the task for which its maker had designed it, for Duke Robert of Normandy had not invaded but stayed safely on the other side of the narrow seas. It had not had the same success twenty-two years earlier, when the Conqueror had come, but perhaps he had been a truly unstoppable force, beyond even the power of a magic crown.
