Alys Clare - Mist Over the Water

King William had quickly realized that he had beside him, in Rollo, a man to value. He began to look out for a suitably testing opportunity, and it was not long before one arose.

The business at Ely was a worry. Not yet a grave worry, for King William knew where his quarry was and who guarded him. However, the anxiety never quite faded away. Attempts had been made in the past, as the king well knew. In these uncertain times, when he had occupied his throne for less than three turbulent years and already put down one major rebellion, might not others come up with the same idea? Was this not why the young man had been spirited away and walled up with the monks of Ely? Ely , thought the king. The location in itself was a matter for concern, for the monks on their island in the desolate fens had always had a reputation for independent thought. .

The king deliberated for some time. Then in the late autumn of 1090 he summoned Rollo Guiscard, provided him with all the details of the situation and told him what he wanted him to do.

Rollo set out for Ely the next day.

Now, back in his lodging in a row of houses — well-built, but with a quality too subtle to make them stand out and therefore attract unwelcome attention — Rollo sat in a wooden chair before the fire and thought about what had happened that evening. He reached out for the goblet of fine wine — the king was generous to those whose services he valued, even when they were of a clandestine nature — and took a sip, letting the smooth liquid slip down his throat.

The lad was in the abbey; Rollo had seen him. It had appeared that the boy had been making for the site where the ancient Saxon church had stood. Rollo knew where this was because, typical of his thoroughness, he had gone to great pains to find out all that there was to know about the abbey of Ely, as it had once been and as it was now in the transition from Saxon to Norman. He smiled slightly. So the boy knew, too, what had lain buried in the ancient wall. It was a surprise, considering he had been brought up as a poor carpenter’s son in some obscure fenland village, but perhaps someone had taken the trouble to tell him. Either that or the past had stretched out a silent hand and beckoned the lad. .

Rollo knew he should not entertain such fancies. His Norman kinsmen would laugh him to scorn if they knew. But then, he thought, he was not pure Norman, for his mother was a woman of the south and she came from a long line of stregha . His smile deepened for it had been many years since he had heard the old dialect name for a witch. Then a thoughtful expression crossed his face as he recalled something he had heard regarding King William: that he had little time for the church and its ministers and his sympathies lay with the pagan religion.

Rollo neither believed nor disbelieved the rumour. He had merely stored it away for future reference.

He turned his mind back to the events of the evening. The pale boy was closeted away in Ely abbey and, although Rollo had not seen them, there would undoubtedly be very efficient and capable men posted to guard over him. Tomorrow he would find out how many men formed this guard and what sort of threat they posed. They would, however, be mere henchmen, engaged for their strength and their ability to carry out orders without question. The driving force behind this affair would lie elsewhere. The king had told Rollo where he thought this force originated; part of Rollo’s commission was to ascertain whether he was right.

He drained the goblet and set it down on the small table beside him. The he sat quite still, formulating in his mind what he would do in the morning. He was aware as he did so of a troubling, turbulent and insistent image that battered against the place where he had penned it. Deliberately, he fortified his defence against it. He sat for some time, making the careful, painstaking plans that were typical of him. Then, when he was satisfied, he left his chair by the fire and went into the next room, where a bed with a feather mattress and fine wool covers awaited him.

It was only with the relaxation of sleep that the image broke out of its prison. Rollo lay dreaming, and his dreams were full of a boy who turned into a girl, whom his dreaming mind seemed to recognize as if he had known her all his life and whom he had kissed with a passion that had exploded like a new sun.

Gewis was very afraid. He sensed that something was about to happen and, although he did not know exactly what, instinctively he sensed danger.

His four guardians had moved him from his bed in the dormitory, and now he occupied a tiny cell, furnished with a hard, narrow cot, a low wooden stool and with nothing to relieve the bare stone walls except a stark wooden crucifix. Food and small beer were brought regularly — whatever his fate might turn out to be, it did not appear that they were going to starve him — and several times a day he was taken out to pray with the brethren. On those occasions he was escorted by no less than two and sometimes all four of his guards.

He had heard them muttering among themselves. They spoke of someone called Lord Edmund the Exile; they spoke of him with respect and awe, and it appeared that this Lord Edmund was coming out of hiding somewhere abroad and returning to England. He was making for Ely. Gewis had no idea who this great lord was, but the fact that he inspired something quite close to fear in Gewis’s tough, brawny guardians was quite alarming.

He did not think there would be many more chances to evade the eyes always on him and slip away to the site of the old Saxon church. He was both drawn to and repelled by it, and in a way it was a relief to have the option taken from him. He thought back to the visit he had tried to make a few hours ago. It had called out to him as it so often did, and he had crept along the dark passageways until he’d emerged in the vast space where the new cathedral was going up. He had been about to cross over to the ancient wall when he saw a figure. At first glance it had appeared to be a boy, but he’d caught a glimpse of the face and had recognized the young woman whom he had seen before dressed as a nun. He was about to hurry over to her — if nothing else, he was curious to know why she was back again and why she was now disguised as a boy — but he lost sight of her for a moment, and when he looked again she had gone.

He had seen something else. In the place where she had just been standing, right next to what remained of the old wall, the air was. . shimmering , was the only way he could describe it. He had approached the spot, already very afraid and suspecting what might be there, but it had felt as if he’d walked into a wall of ice and he had stopped.

It is here , he’d thought, his mind numb with panic.

For the length of a heartbeat it had materialized before him. He would have screamed but his throat had frozen, and he’d thought he was about to die.

Then the enchantment released him. He’d turned and run.

He could remember little of his terrified flight through the abbey. He’d become aware that one of his guardians was pounding along behind him, and it had taken all his self-control not to stop, turn and fling himself into the man’s brawny embrace. The narrow corridor that led to his new quarters had never seemed so welcome and he’d thrown himself through the low door with a sob of relief.

Now, he lay face down on his hard bed. He had the palms of his hands pressed tightly against his closed eyes, but all the same he still saw flashes of the horror in the old church. Amid all the other ghastly aspects of its destroyed face and mutilated body, one thing stood out and, try as he might, he could not stop the image sliding again and again into his mind. It is nothing , he told himself. Nothing but the effects of age and long interment.