Alys Clare - Whiter than the Lily

Looking frantically around, Josse sought out the best place. There, where a tall pile of stones stands alone? No, not wise. There, in that shallow dell? No, not enough shelter.

Then he saw it. Aye, over there, he thought, where two massive walls meet and there are the vestiges of a roof. Pulling at Horace’s reins, he ran to the shelter. Cold hands fumbling with buckles and straps, he got the saddle and bridle off the horse and stowed them under the walls. He put on Horace’s rope head collar and fastened the end around the corner of a very heavy stone lying on the ground. Horace was still sweating and hastily Josse rubbed him down, covering him with the piece of sacking that had held Sister Martha’s greased cloth. Then, blessing the sister for her weather lore, he stretched out the cloth and, using stones to weigh it down, fastened it across the angle between the two walls of his shelter so that it was supported by the struts that had once held up the roof. He set it so as to form a slight downward slope that led out and away from the walls; with any luck, the rain ought to run off it and drip harmlessly at the perimeter of Josse’s inadequate camp.

That was his hope. For there could no longer be any doubt at all that there was going to be rain, a great deal of it; the first drops had already begun to fall and they were as heavy as if it were their intention to compensate for several months of drought in a matter of hours.

He wrapped himself up in his blankets. Then, with Horace beside him, his head hung in misery, Josse settled down to watch the storm.

The thunder came with a ferocious opening salvo that took Josse entirely by surprise and set his heart pounding. Then there was a sudden flash of lightning that seemed to plunge a trident of brilliance down into the marshland below and, a little later, another crash of thunder. Despite the discomfort and his increasing sense of unease, for a time Josse lost himself in wonder at the spectacle. Peering out for a brief instant from his shelter, he saw that the black clouds now covered the entire sky, as if some sorcerer’s cauldron had made smoke enough to plunge the whole world into premature night. And the cloud seemed to be lying low, just over his head, as if, with only a small effort, he could reach up and grasp some of that deep darkness and hold it in his hand.

Shivering, he withdrew his head inside the shelter, shook the worst of the water from his hair and sat down again. Horace, a shadowy bulk beside him, lowered his head and blew soft, warm breath against Josse’s neck; it was very comforting.

The storm was getting closer. Now the gap between lightning and thunder was steadily lessening and soon the two were virtually synonymous: the fury of the heavens was right overhead.

It was the moment of greatest danger, or so Josse believed at the time. Into his mind poured images of tall towers made by proud men being struck by vivid forks of light and tumbling to ruins. He saw again a scene he had once witnessed, where a fellow soldier standing on guard on an elevation had been thrown twice his own height into the air by a lightning strike. He remembered, against his will, the smell of singeing hair and flesh.

I am safe here, he told himself firmly. I deliberately chose to shelter beneath stonework that was well down the slope and that did not stand up in relief on the top of the high ground. These old walls have stood here solidly for a thousand years and they are not going to tumble down tonight.

He almost believed himself.

He fell into a light doze. The storm had eased and, in the calm that followed, his sleep deepened. He began to dream.

He saw a figure in white holding a tall staff, from the head of which gleamed a mighty jewel that caught the light and magnified it, sending back brighter flashes to the black sky from which the lightning came. A deep voice called on the ancient gods and the dreaming Josse knew that Thor the Mighty walked the earth. Then the scene changed and fair-haired men dragged a long ship down the foreshore towards the waiting sea. But there were cries and screams of agonising pain and terror, for the ship’s keel ran over human flesh.

Moaning in his sleep, Josse twisted his head as if to turn his eyes away from what he was seeing. But the screams went on, accompanied by the sound of the rasping shingle as the hungry waves reached out for the new ship.

Then there was the smell of burning and, on another shore — or perhaps the same one under a different light — a long ship set out across the smooth water with smoke pouring from its deck. Josse was in the water helping the craft on her way and then, with the magical, all-seeing vision given to dreamers, he was high above, looking down on to the ship. He saw the tall, broad-shouldered body of a king, pale hair bound beneath a helmet with cheek pieces and nose guard, deep eyes closed in death. His belt was fastened with a great buckle, decorated with interlaced running lines in which were twined the graceful, stylised shapes of snakes, birds, bears and wolves. The warrior’s spear and battleaxe lay beside him and his shield was at his head. To his left was a giant whetstone, the mask of the god and strange runic inscriptions etched into the stone and the delicate figure of a stag standing proudly on the circle of bronze that topped the stone. Laid on his body, his long hands clasped on its hilt, was his broadsword, decorated with garnet-studded gold. From the shore came chanting as the king’s people honoured his passing.

And, in time, there came the stench of burning flesh.

Josse woke with horror in his mind. Sweating, breathing as hard as if he had just run up the slope again, he sat up, eyes wide, trying to see into the night.

Behind him Horace gave an uneasy nicker. Josse reached out a hand and gave the horse a pat. It was meant to reassure but Josse was not sure he had reassurance to give.

The darkness was so total that he could not see a thing. He sat quite still, listening. There was scarcely a sound except for the steady drip as rainwater fell from the eaves of his shelter. Drip, drip, drip.

But then there was another sound: somewhere out there a stone had been disturbed.

He listened.

Nothing.

But there had been a sound, he thought, feeling the goose bumps of fear start on his flesh. And stones do not move by themselves …

Some small animal, he told himself. Now that the rain has eased, the little creatures of the night will be about their business. The concept was quite comforting and he began to imagine some stoat or weasel nosing around in the wet grass.

Then he heard breathing.

He shot backwards until he was pressed up into the corner formed by the walls of his shelter. He eased his dagger out of its sheath on his belt and, with his other hand, felt across to where he had placed his sword. Then, quite still again, he listened.

Nothing.

His heartbeat gradually slowed down. He took a steadying breath, then another. The ears play tricks, he thought. Just as fear can make a man see things that are not there, so the same can happen to the sense of hearing. There was no breathing, he told himself firmly. It would be quite impossible.

After quite a long time, he wrapped himself up in his blankets again and lay down.

The rain had stopped. But in the distance, from the south-west out across the marsh, thunder growled menacingly over the sea.

Josse lay, eyes staring out blindly into the blackness, waiting.

He had not been asleep. He knew he hadn’t, afterwards; despite the suggestions that it had been a dream, that the very real dangers of his situation had sent him a fear-induced nightmare, he knew it was not so. He had been wide awake.

His senses alert, he sat listening, skin prickling with apprehension. The disturbed stone and the breathing he thought he had heard earlier had not recurred; the night was silent and, for the moment, the sky gods were resting and even the thunder had abated.