Alys Clare - Whiter than the Lily

Time passed.

There was another whom he yearned to watch over but he knew he had forfeited the right. He would try to resist the temptation. Getting up, he went to the branch and bracken shelter that he had made and selected food for his evening meal. Having something to do with his hands might act as a distraction.

He ate his simple food and thought about the place he had left. They had been numbed by Aelle’s dreadful death and finding themselves suddenly leaderless had unhinged them. It was Aelle’s fault; he should have made better provision for his succession. There was only the witless son of his cousin and, in truth, the lad was not much of an heir. But, had he been given the proper schooling and training that was his right, the youth would have done. He would have been no Aelle but then, despite his charisma and his undoubted strength, Aella had been far from perfect. As it was, the youth had reacted badly to his suddenly elevated status and he had wept and pleaded for pity, support, for another’s shoulders to help him to bear the heavy burden of leadership.

It was my shoulders he wanted, the man thought. And, by the gods, I have had enough!

The silver eyes glittered in the firelight and, against his will, he saw again in his mind the scenes he had despaired over when he had first sat watching them flitting to and fro in the black scrying water. The Saltwych community was doomed, of that he was sure. They would live on there in their isolation and their increasing squalor for another generation, perhaps more, but already others were encroaching on the marshland. The incomers were beginning to live there all the year round now that the land was drying out. They were planting trees and hedges, these new marshmen, building their churches, turning the salt wilderness into a pattern of small, neat fields, careful cultivation and tidy little dwellings. The Saltwych people would face strong and resolute competition for the marsh that they regarded as their own. It would be a case of adapt or die and, because the Saltwych folk had for so long looked inward and kept themselves to themselves, they did not know how to adapt.

They would die.

He knew because he had seen it.

Oh, they would not go dramatically, all together in some final battle! No, they would become demoralised, interbred, desperately poor, weak, helpless and, in time, sink down into starvation. And Saltwych, that place that had been so wonderful, the haunt of kings descended from the very gods, would fall, forgotten, in the dust.

It had begun so proudly, thought the silver-eyed man. The men from over the water had been fine people, strong, healthy, with the courage to seek out a new place for their people when the villages of their homeland were threatened by the rising seas. They had flooded in to fill the rootless, leaderless land that was left behind when the Southerners departed and, for generations, they had ruled in triumph. Their leaders had been great men and the greatest of them had been cast adrift on the seas in his flaming longboat; the people still sang of him around the fireside.

Then the new order had come, ruthless, powerful, relentless. And those who did not — could not — bend their proud necks became outlawed, marginalised, a people dwelling on the fringes where nobody else wanted to live.

It could have been so different, the man mused. In a sense, Aelle had the right idea in wedding our young women to outsiders, although he did it for the wrong reasons. We should never have expected our women to render to us the extremes of love and faithfulness that Aelle demanded. He did not understand how a woman gives her loyalty to her husband and her children when she marries, leaving her family — her kin — to take second place. He did not understand women at all and that failing played a large part in his doom.

Ah, well, Aelle would not listen to the voice of moderation and in the end it killed him.

His thoughts did not want to go down that path. Instead he contemplated the happy prospect of Galiena’s baby. It will be a son, he thought, and ironically he will become the man of influence that Aelle wanted. Not with this warrior king who now rules us, not even with this king’s errant brother but with the brother’s son who will rule after him. This man will be a weak king and his very weakness will allow stronger men to seize power. With them, of them, shall be Raelf de Ryemarsh.

The blood would not die out. Aelle’s line, the line of the Old Kings, would continue …

Exhausted by the Sight, he lay back, sipping from the drink he had prepared.

He dozed for a while, then woke. He would not be able to rest, he realised, until he had followed his heart and looked where he knew he should not look.

Resignedly he got up and, kneeling once more over the iron pot, stared into the still water.

There she was, his Elfgifu, waiting as she always was on the edge of sight. She too was happy, as happy as Galiena, and in part for the same reason for, although she did not yet know it, she too was pregnant.

And so she should be happy; she deserved it. She had known hardship — an upbringing such as hers was demanding for a woman — and she had known grief. He wondered if she had yet discovered her gift. He had known of it since her birth, for he had cast her natal chart and it had been foretold in the stars. He guessed she must have begun to suspect.

He went on staring into the water. Now there was someone with her — ah, it was her little girl! Not so little now, for she must be almost eight years old. She was so pretty, he thought fondly, and she had those strange eyes that, in his experience, had always exerted such power over people. Those who had the eyes — and he should know — were awesome in their very appearance, even before they had uttered any words of prophecy. Would this girl too inherit the gift?

It seemed likely.

He returned to the woman. Oh, Elfgifu, child, I am sorry! he said silently. Forgive me, now that you have found happiness, for my sin against you, for it was I who chose Nicholas and hence it was I who brought you such pain. But I acted for the best, my love, for, although I knew full well he was not the man of power and position that Aelle wanted for you, I also knew that he was kind and good. These qualities were not, however, enough for Aelle and so your man was killed.

You will have joy now, my daughter. I have looked and I know it is true. Forgive me.

He bowed his head as the tears came. She would forgive him. He knew it and it was not that which caused his pain.

It was the loss of her, for he would never see her again.

He lay down on the grass, his head thrumming with the deep, dark ache that always followed a long session of Seeing. I loved you, Elfgifu, he thought, as I loved your mother. He smiled grimly. Only once did I break my lifelong celibacy, my daughter. Your mother, Aelle’s kinswoman Wilfra, was a woman in a thousand and I could not resist her, for she loved me even as I loved her. To lose her as she gave life to you was an ending for me too, for never again would I look at a woman and seek to make her mine.

Then I watched you grow, my dearest, and my joy in your beauty and your intelligence was marred only by the fact that I could not claim you as mine. I was the clan’s sage, their magician, the chieftain’s seer, and for me to lie with a mortal woman was forbidden. Wilfra died with my secret untold and, when my time at last comes, I must do the same.

He began to grow drowsy. He saw her again, Wilfra, his dead love. Then he saw Elfgifu, although the man who now spoke softly to her in the night with such love in his voice called her by another name.

He saw her children. He saw the ones that would come; he saw the son and daughter that she had borne Nicholas, the brave boy and the quick, silver-eyed girl.