Alys Clare - Out of the Dawn Light

Side by side, we crept back to our sleeping place and, each going to our separate corners, settled for what remained of the night.

Romain awoke with the same sense of foreboding that had been with him when he went to sleep. The boy, Sibert, was behaving so oddly and, although Romain suspected that he knew why, all the same it was very worrying. Sibert had to achieve his task; this whole mission would fail otherwise and Romain’s future would be-

No. Don’t think about that.

I must tell him what I probably should have warned him of before, Romain decided. It would help, once the boy was over the shock. It had to help, otherwise. .

Again, he reined in his panicky thoughts.

There was little to eat for breakfast. I will purchase good, fresh food today, Romain vowed, whatever it takes. His stomach was grumbling with hunger and he felt light-headed if he got up too quickly.

They packed up their few belongings and the little that remained of the food and drink. Romain looked at the girl and then the boy. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

They both nodded.

‘Very well. We shall go to the sea.’

He led the way back on to the path that wound through the springy grass between the band of woodland and the distant sea. He heard their footsteps behind him but neither spoke. He went on, and the line of the cliff top steadily drew nearer.

Any moment now, he thought.

Suddenly the girl called out to him, ‘Romain, Sibert has stopped!’ There was urgency, perhaps fear, in her voice.

Romain turned round. Sibert’s face was ashen and, as he stared with wide eyes at the scene before him, he was slowly shaking his head. Romain took a few steps towards him. ‘What is it, Sibert?’ he asked quietly. ‘What do you see?’

Sibert raised his arm and, with a hand that shook as if with the ague, pointed. ‘That’s my tree,’ he said in a horrified whisper. ‘When I came here first I used to climb it so that I could watch the comings and goings at Drakelow and not be seen by those within. But — but-’

‘What?’ cried the girl, anxious eyes fixed on Sibert.

Romain watched in deep apprehension as Sibert stared out at the scene before him, the expression on his face like that of a man who has wakened to find himself in a world he does not recognize.

After what seemed like an agony of waiting, Sibert whispered simply, ‘It’s moved.’ Then, power filling his voice, he cried in anguish, ‘ It’s moved! ’ He was almost sobbing. ‘I don’t understand, but my tree is in a different place — it used to be much further from the sea, and the hall was perhaps fifty paces away on the shore side. .’

Very slowly, as if reluctant to look, he turned all the way around in a circle. Then, pathetically, he looked at Romain. ‘What have they done? Have they moved the cliff?’

‘ They have done nothing,’ Romain said gently.

For, indeed, what had happened here was far beyond the power of any human agency and could not have been brought about even by the full might of the powerful, aggressive, ruthless and violent Normans.

A large strip of land on the coast at Dunwich and to the north and south of the town was no longer here. The cliffs that had so puzzled Sibert had moved some distance to the west.

Almost half of the manor of Drakelow had fallen into the sea and it had taken the ancestral hall of Sibert’s ancestors with it.

Standing beside Sibert, Romain could almost feel the boy’s horror prickling against his skin. He waited. Instinct told him that anything he might try to say now, either in sympathy or in explanation, would either go unheard or else release the fury that was so evidently building up.

After an initial moan of distress, quickly suppressed, the girl, too, was silent.

Finally Sibert turned to him. The blue-green eyes burned with fire and he said, ‘Why did you not tell me? A word of warning about this — this catastrophe ’ — he swept an arm in the direction of the sea, now deceptively calm as if for some reason wishing to disguise its furious, destructive potential — ‘would have prepared me!’

Trying to speak soothingly and reasonably, Romain said, ‘I did not think you would agree to come if I had spoken.’ He hesitated. Was it better to say what he had in mind, for it had to be said some time, or wait a while until Sibert was less emotional? He decided to speak. ‘Also, I feared that if I told you what has happened at Drakelow, you might have said you would no longer be able to locate the — the thing we seek.’

‘You feared right!’ Sibert shouted. Now both arms waved in the air, making great windmilling gestures expressive of his pain, his frustration and his despair. ‘How am I to begin to look, when half of the place I knew and loved has vanished beneath the sea?’

Romain made himself take several steadying breaths. Then he said, ‘The landfall is alarming, I admit, at first sight, but-’

‘ Alarming! ’ Sibert’s echo was harsh with sarcasm.

‘-but, if you give yourself time to consider what has been happening here, you will understand that it’s just another step in a process that has been going on for a very long time. The sea comes in hard out of the east, forced on by the winds, and-’

‘I don’t care,’ Sibert said coldly.

Romain cursed himself. Now was no time for wordy explanations. In a flash of memory he recalled his own reaction when he had first seen the apocalyptic damage. I must move the boy on from this, he thought. Putting some iron in his tone, he said firmly. ‘We have come here for a specific purpose. Yes, I admit that your role in our mission will be far more demanding now that the landscape has changed so drastically, but it is my belief that you can still perform it. I would not have brought you here otherwise.’

On Sibert’s other side, the girl moved closer to him and Romain heard her mutter something; it sounded like, I’ll help you all I can. Sibert turned and gave her a brief, absent smile.

‘We shall go up to the cliff edge — don’t worry, the drop is neither very far nor very steep — and we shall make ourselves comfortable in the sunshine,’ he went on, now subtly changing his tone so that it sounded as if he were a commander and the young people his troops. ‘You, Sibert, will look all around you and establish where you are in relation to how the lie of the land used to be. Then you will be able to work out the location of the spot you seek.’

There was a long pause. Then Sibert said, ‘Very well,’ and the three of them made their cautious way to the cliff edge.

Romain left Sibert and the girl sitting in the sunshine at the top of the low cliff. He had an idea that the boy would do better without him there. Also they were now in grave need of food and drink. Romain had resolved to trudge a mile or so inland to a small settlement that he knew of and see what he could purchase. He wrapped his stained old cloak around him, covering the rich fabric of his tunic. There was no need to dirty his face for he guessed it was already filthy, and he had several days’ growth of beard. It was highly unlikely that anyone would recognize Romain de la Flèche beneath the grime.

In any case, he had no option. The alternative was to collapse from exhaustion and dehydration.

I sat beside Sibert for what seemed ages after Romain set off. I wanted to comfort him, to help him, but he had shut me out and I could do neither. I hated sitting doing nothing; everything in me always seems to rebel at enforced idleness. I stared north, towards the town, then south, at the long coastline stretching into the far distance. I counted seabirds whose names I did not know. I wondered how long Romain was going to be finding food and drink; my stomach was hollow with hunger. Finally I counted the waves breaking with soft, hypnotic regularity on the shore below.