Alys Clare - Out of the Dawn Light

Perhaps it did not look quite so bad after all.

I concentrated very hard on making my expression sweet and innocent. A decent girl, hard-working, caught in the act of helping her pregnant sister and only lately returned from a stint of dedicated nursing and healing with her aunt; that was the way they must see me.

Trying like fury to send a mental message to Edild — When they ask, support me! Oh, please, Edild, say I’ve been with you the whole time! — all too soon we were riding into Aelf Fen.

I had never seen so many people gathered together in my village. We do not have a central meeting point such as I had seen the villagers enjoy at Icklingham, for Aelf Fen is, as the name implies, a Fenland village and grew up, I suppose, from a series of dwellings constructed over time above the upper line of the tidal wash. There have always been dwellings there, we know that, and sometimes when people dig over a new piece of ground they find evidence of ancient houses, circular where ours are rectangular, huddled close together as if in fear of the great world beyond. The track sweeps through the village in a sort of wiggle, with the little houses situated on one side and the wetter ground leading down to the water in the other. Such was the avid curiosity of the villagers this morning that some of them, standing at the rear of the crowd, were ankle-deep in black, muddy water.

The man I was riding with deposited me — quite gently and carefully — on the ground, and then dismounted and went to join his two companions. They spoke briefly and one of them looked in my direction. There were another lord’s men there too, wearing a different device on their breasts. I counted half a dozen of them. Standing with them was a tall and burly man of perhaps thirty-five or forty, dark hair club-cut in a fringe, clean-shaven and dressed in clothes that must have been expensive but which now looked well-worn and travel-stained.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in me, although I had a feeling this state was not going to last. For now, I slipped in between two of my neighbours and tried to make myself invisible. I looked around for my family and saw my parents, my granny, my sister Elfritha and my brother Squeak. My mother held the baby. My brother Haward stood behind one of the lord’s men. He caught my eye and sent me a worried frown. I was wondering whether to slip through the crowd and go to speak to him when I saw Edild. She was standing with the rider who had been sent to question her and verify my tale of having spent the past week with her. She too caught my eye and I thought I saw her give a very small nod. Had I not been looking so anxiously for some such sign, I don’t think I would have seen it.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief and began praying fervently, saying over and over again, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

This must be the reason why the lord’s men seemed so unconcerned with me. The rider who hastened away from Goda’s house had sought out Edild and she, bless her, had backed me up without hesitation. I knew I had some explaining to do and I guessed she was none too pleased with me. But she had supported my story. At that terrifying moment, that was all I could think of.

The relief that coursed through me was short-lived for just then they brought forward Sibert. Tall though he may be, he is slim and lightly built and I could not think it really needed two heavy-handed guards to hold him. It seemed that the two different companies of manor officials had each provided their roughest, toughest guard and one stood on Sibert’s right and the other on his left. Sibert looked petrified.

The man who had questioned me in Goda’s house now stepped up on to a large wooden box that some helpful villager must have provided. He said in a loud voice, ‘An accusation of theft has been made against the young man Sibert of Aelf Fen, here before you. He has just been brought from the house of his mother and his uncle’ — I stared round frantically and there were Froya and Hrype at the back of the crowd, Froya tugging and twisting anxiously at her white linen apron, her face as pale as her light blonde hair, and Hrype scowling thunderously — ‘and he will now be searched.’

They must already have searched the cottage, I thought wildly, not that it would have taken long to rummage through the family’s few belongings in their one-roomed house. Clever Sibert, not to have hidden the crown in so obvious a place! I wondered where he had put it. Perhaps he had thought up a suitable place on our long march home — he’d passed enough time in silence to have come up with several likely spots, and-

They had dragged him out in the open where everyone could see and they were starting to pull off his clothes. He cried out in protest and started to struggle, and one of the guards hit him quite hard on the jaw. I heard a gasp and then a moan from Froya. His tunic was lifted over his head and two of the guards felt it carefully to see if anything was hidden in its folds. Someone made him lift his feet, one after the other, and they drew off his boots. Then one of the guards who had been holding him untied the drawstring around his narrow waist and his baggy breeches fell to the ground and bunched around his ankles.

Sibert stood there naked but for a leather bag that hung over his flat belly, fastened on a thin strap around his hips. In his shame he hung his head. I wished I had looked away sooner, for as I screwed my eyes shut I could still see him. His face, throat and lower arms were sunburned, dark against the pale flesh normally covered by his garments, and his body looked frail, the ribs and the collarbones very prominent. His legs were long, the sinews straight and wiry. His penis, shrivelled with his fear, hung limp beneath its thatch of fair hair.

I kept my eyes shut while silently I sent him the strongest support I could muster. If he looked up and saw me, I thought, he would see that at least one villager was not staring at him in his humiliation and-

Oh, but what was I thinking of!

I was almost weeping with sympathy for my friend because he stood stripped and shamed in front of the whole village. But that was nothing. For, obsessed and driven young man that I now knew him to be, he had not hidden the crown at all.

Perhaps he tried. Perhaps he got out to whatever place he had selected for its concealment and then when the moment came, discovered he was unable to tear himself away from it.

The little experience I had had of the crown told me that its power was such that it was more than capable of such a feat.

However it had happened, the fact remained that Sibert stood before those who had come looking for what he and I had stolen and he was carrying it — wearing it, almost — in its leather bag around his body.

I had to look.

One of the guards had unfastened the bag and was on the point of untying the thongs to see what was within. Then the burly man stepped forward and took it rather roughly from the guard’s hands. Only a man as big and powerful as he would risk that, I thought, for the guard was very broad and bore the signs of more than one fight on his coarse features. For an instant he stared at the burly man through narrowed slits of eyes, then he stepped back.

The burly man thrust his hand into the bag. He must have known full well what was in there, for the shape was unmistakable. He paused, and I saw a cruel smile twist his thin lips. Then he extracted his hand and held the crown high above his head.

There was no need for words and he said nothing. The guards closed in around Sibert as if they feared that, faced with incontrovertible truth of his guilt, he might think he had nothing to lose and try to make a run for it. I could have told them they were wrong; Sibert, I realized, was in a state that verged on total collapse and only the guards holding his arms stopped him from slumping to the ground.