Alys Clare - Out of the Dawn Light

Sibert looked at Lassair, who was standing on the track behind them staring from one to the other. ‘Two more marches,’ he said. ‘We should eat and rest now, sleep up for the heat of the day. If it’s as quiet around here as it appears to be’ — Romain, staring round, could see no sign of any habitation amid the heathland, and the narrow path was rough and showed little signs of heavy use — ‘then I reckon we’d be safe to set out again in the early afternoon. Another rest soon after dark, then we’ll proceed to the coast.’

It sounded an ambitious plan but Romain, driven hard by his desperate impatience to get on with the mission, thought it was not impossible. He turned to Lassair and said courteously, ‘Could you manage that, do you think?’

‘Of course,’ she said, raising her chin and staring levelly at him.

Ah, a burst of pride, he thought. Well, that’s all to the good as it means she’ll be reluctant to moan when she gets tired.

‘Very well.’ He unslung the leather satchel he wore over his shoulder and gratefully dropped it to the ground. ‘We’ll stop and refresh ourselves.’

They found a dell among the heather that offered protection from curious eyes and also from any wind that might spring up. Sibert unpacked the food and handed round a flask of small beer, from which they all drank deeply. The beer was good, sweetened with honey and lightly spiced with rosemary and mint. Romain hoped Sibert had more of it in his pack. They each ate a slice of the spice bread and Sibert gave out apples, small and wrinkled with long storage but still sweet. Then one by one they made themselves comfortable and Romain watched as the other two went to sleep. Sibert lay quite still on his back, his head on his pack and his hands folded on his chest. Had it not been for the rise and fall of his belly, he might have been dead.

Romain, wondering where that morbid thought had come from, dismissed it. He looked over at the girl, curled up in a ball like a young animal and wrapped snugly in her shawl. Her copper hair reflected the light of the waxing sun and he noticed the fine texture of her pale skin. Suddenly her eyes shot open — they were grey-green, he noticed, with very clear whites and an indigo ring around the iris — and he felt guilty for having been caught staring at her.

She gave him a small and tentative smile which, in an older woman, might have been read as invitation.

He turned away.

I woke stiff and uncomfortable, with sharp bits of heather sticking in my back. I think the heat had woken me, for I was lying in full sunshine and I was tangled up in Elfritha’s shawl. Romain and Sibert were still asleep, so I crept out of the dell and, behind the meagre cover of some hazel bushes, passed water. I had been worrying about how I was going to manage my bodily functions; it was not proving to be easy, on the road with two men, so I was glad that, for the moment at any rate, I had solved the problem.

I returned to the dell, sat down and looked around me. We were on a sort of heath, bracken and heather mostly, and there were no more signs of life up here now than there had been at first light. I stared up the track, first one way, then the other. There was nobody about.

Sibert was asleep, on his back. Romain had turned away. With a small stab of pain, I remembered how I’d opened my eyes soon after we had settled down last night to see him looking at me. I had risked a smile — how lovely it would have been if he had lain down beside me and we had slept side by side — but instantly he had looked away. I tried to excuse him — he’d probably been embarrassed because I’d caught him watching me. He was that sort of man — courteous, mannerly — and it was probably against some code of manners that existed among his kind to make approaches to young girls when you happened to be camped out with them in the wilderness.

All the same, I wished he had been bolder. I would not have turned him away.

Sibert woke and sat up, stretching. He smiled at me — the first time he had done so for I couldn’t remember how long — and said, ‘Hello, Lassair. Did you manage to sleep?’

‘Yes. Very well,’ I replied.

Our voices woke Romain. He came up to consciousness more slowly — probably he was used to a gentle awaking, perhaps with some manservant bringing him a reviving drink and a bowl of water to wash his face and hands — and for a moment or two he looked puzzled. Then his face cleared and he too smiled. There was an air of excited happiness among the three of us; any fears we might have had last night had gone. The sunshine and a good long sleep had thoroughly revived us and after a bite to eat and a drink, we were ready to resume our march.

Romain knew that he was the weak one out of the three of them but, as the eldest, the instigator and the leader in every other respect, he could not allow his fallibility to show. As afternoon turned to evening and the total of the miles steadily augmented, he watched the slowly lowering sun and reflected that so far on this journey, at least they had not had to bed down to sleep in the Fens.

Romain’s mistrust of that mysterious marshland region was profound and he had only gone there out of desperate need; the Fens were where Sibert was to be found. As far as Romain was concerned, once this business was over he never intended to set foot there again.

He had once been told by an elderly family retainer who came from the Fens that once, long ago, an ancient horse-loving people had risen up against the invading armies from the hot south. They had fought ferociously under their red-haired queen and burned the towns of the newcomers to the ground. But the military might of the incomers proved too strong and the people were defeated, their proud queen taking her own life by poison before she could suffer the humiliation of capture. The remnants of that once-great people, leaderless, disorganized, had scattered and fled. Many of them, according to the old servant, had sought refuge in the one area where the newcomers barely troubled to venture: the Fens. And their ghosts — perhaps even their descendants — were still there. .

Romain had believed he was too mature and sensible to go on being scared by a tale told by an old man to entertain a little boy. Reality proved different. But then, Romain reminded himself as he trudged on, buoyed up by the happy thought that tonight he was far from that dread region, that original childhood impression had been fed and kept alive by what he learned of the Fens as he grew to adolescence and manhood. Raised as he had been on the coast, where the wind blew fresh off the wide grey sea to the east, he had been all too ready to accept the horror stories of that dark, unknown inland place. Malign creatures inhabited the pools and the bogs, and they would entice a traveller along what seemed to be a safe path, only to create a strange white mist that swirled and billowed so that a man could not see where he was placing his feet. Then he would find himself tumbling into the stinking black mud, clouds of stinging insects round his head, leeches and eels sucking and biting at his legs. If the threatening water did not get you then sickness would, for ague and quinsy were rife and if you risked eating the bread, then the poisonous mould that grew on the crust would drive you to terrible visions that drove you out of your mind. Frightful, abominable creatures lived hidden in the Fens, from the terrible monsters that swam in the deepest, most secret waterways and lived on human blood to the nimble elves who were so successful at hiding themselves that a man only knew they were near when he felt their elf-shot pierce his skin. It was said that there were dragons, too, living in their barrows deep underground where they guarded their treasure hoards with their fearsome weapons of claws, spiked tails, vicious jaws and deadly fire.