Alys Clare: Out of the Dawn Light

The youth was called Sibert. He is quite a close neighbour of ours which, in a settlement as small as Aelf Fen, means that we see quite a lot of each other. He is fifteen, tall and slim, with fair hair that bleaches to white under the sun and light, bright eyes which sometimes look blue and sometimes green. I like him a lot and sometimes he likes me too.

Not today, though.

I tried one last time to catch his attention. By now my mother was sending out food and drink and I grabbed a mug of beer from the four that my father was holding in his large hands and, before he could protest and insist that elders must be served first, I dashed over and offered it to Sibert. Unfortunately, in my haste I tripped over my own feet and spilt most of the beer down my gown.

Sibert looked up and stared at me. If you laugh, I thought, feeling the hot blood flush up into my cheeks, I’ll. . I’ll. .

He didn’t laugh. With a faint sigh, as if I were nothing but a nuisance, he took the half-full mug and gave it to the old man beside him. Then he turned away.

I felt as if I’d been slapped. I would not let him see; I spun round and hurried away.

Why was he being like this? Had I offended him, or was it some private concern of his own that was making him so offhand with me? He had his troubles, I well knew. We all knew, in fact; as I said, it’s a small village. Sibert lives with his widowed mother, Froya, and his uncle Hrype, who is Froya’s brother. Hrype is a strange man — they whisper that he’s a sorcerer, a spell-weaver, a cunning man even, although nobody dares say so to his face — and Froya is one of those women who looks as if she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. Admittedly, she’s had bad luck. Sibert’s father Edmer, who must have been considerably older than his wife, fought against William the Bastard (as he then was known) at Battle and later he joined the Ely uprising of 1071, where he took the wound that killed him. There was a price on his head, as was the case with all the rebels, and Froya brought him secretly to Aelf Fen to die. Sibert was a posthumous child and he never knew his father. I often give myself shudders of dread, trying to imagine Froya with Sibert swelling in her belly half-carrying and half-dragging a dying man through the lonely and treacherous terrain of the Fens. .

So, Sibert has a hard life, but then so do we all. He’s not the only one to have lost close kin in the vicious, desperate and terrible fighting against the Normans, nor to have suffered in the new and very different life that followed. People of our lowly status have no choice but to accept our lot and most of the time that amounts to being hungry, cold, worried about the health of our loved ones and our livestock and racked with uncertainty as to whether the food will last through the winter. We don’t all go around with long faces, though.

As I hurried away from where Sibert sat sulking, I felt eyes on me and, turning, saw a sight that drove my unapproachable neighbour right out of my mind.

A man stood watching me. He was dark, the glossy hair cut in the new style, and his brown eyes were sort of crinkled round the corners, as if he laughed a lot. Although not tall like Sibert, he was broad-shouldered and had, as Goda might say, a manly figure. He was perhaps five or six years older than me, clad in a flowing cloak of rich chestnut brown over a tunic of dark red and his boots shone as if he’d spent all morning buffing them up.

None of that would have impressed me, thought, except for two things: he was extremely handsome and he was smiling at me.

Boldly and unhesitatingly — I was still hurt by Sibert’s rebuff — I went over to him. ‘I’m Lassair,’ I said. ‘I’m the bride’s sister. Have you had enough to eat?’

His smile widened. ‘I haven’t had anything yet.’

‘Wait there!’

I hurried inside, elbowed about a dozen people out of the way — our little house seemed to be bursting at the seams — and found my mother with her sleeves rolled up and her forehead damp with sweat. The day was warm anyway but she’d been stoking the fire all morning and the hot coals were crammed with clay pots, many borrowed from our neighbours, in which the bread was baking. Now my mother was busy setting out bread, cheese, tartlets and spiced cakes. I grabbed what I could reach and before she could issue any orders — she’d had me in mind as serving lass for the elders — dashed out again.

I heard her yell, ‘ Lassair! ’

I ignored her.

My handsome man accepted my offering — a chunk of rather sweaty cheese and a piece of gingerbread — with what I thought was a pleasing grace. He chewed thoughtfully for some time — I realized I ought to have brought something to drink to help the food down — and then he said, ‘Lassair. What a pretty name.’

Again I felt myself blush, although this time for a different reason. ‘Thank you,’ I mumbled.

‘I am called Romain.’

Romain. Oh, it suited him, I thought wildly, although I had no idea why I should think so. I risked a quick glance up at his face; he might not have been all that tall but he was head and shoulders over me. He was smiling again.

The day had just improved and it was about to get even better. He was full of charm and soon I was chatting away about my life, my village and my neighbours, as easy with him as if I’d known him for years. He seemed to be fascinated by all that I said, glancing around at the company as I spoke of this person or that as if making sure he identified the right subject. Of course it couldn’t last; my mother’s voice called again, urgently this time — ‘ LASSAIR! ’ — and I had to go.

He was kind enough to look regretful as I reluctantly left him and went inside the house.

Apart from getting rid of my elder sister and meeting and talking to a handsome man, the other wonderful thing about Goda’s wedding day was that my granny came home. She can’t stand Goda — she has quite a penetrating voice and could frequently be overheard commenting that Goda needed a good spanking — and, since wedding nerves caused my sister’s temper to go from bad to unendurable in the weeks leading up to her wedding, my granny moved out and went to live with her widowed daughter over in the Breckland. I was afraid she wouldn’t come back. My aunt Alvela is my father’s younger sister and she’s a real sweetheart. She lost her equally nice husband about five years ago — I hate it that so often the good people die when, if the rest of us were given the choice, we’d rather it had been someone nobody liked — and she lives in a tiny cottage with her son, Morcar, who is a man of few words and also a flint-knapper. It must have been so peaceful there for my granny after the noisy, overcrowded conditions in our house and for some time I waited anxiously for the inevitable news that my grandmother had decided to stay with Alvela. It was a deeply depressing thought, for I love her dearly and would miss her so much.

My paternal grandmother’s name is Cordeilla and she can trace her — our — ancestry right back to the ancient gods of Britain. She can reel off a vast list of names and if she is allowed to do so uninterrupted, it takes from noon to midwinter sunset. But she never is uninterrupted, for as soon as she gets to the most interesting names people always clamour to be told the old legends and tales of their miraculous deeds. There’s Lir the Magical, Ordic the Blessed Child (the only son out of seven children to grow to adulthood), Alaimna the Lovely who married, bore a child and died all in a year, Livilda the One-Legged Heiress, Sigbehrt the Mighty Oak who fell at Battle and — my favourites — Luanmaisi and her strange, sorceress daughter Lassair (my namesake), long ago lost in the wilderness to some unknown fate.