Alys Clare - Out of the Dawn Light

Then I realized something strange. The burly man was not the only one who was suddenly mute; nobody else was speaking either. And Sibert’s guards were ashen-faced.

The little group made up of Sibert, his guards, the lord’s men and the burly man formed the centre of the crowd and they were closest to the crown. But as the burly man continued to hold it high in the air, it was as if a wave of its power broke over the rest of us. Some seemed impervious, continuing to stare blankly at the drama unfolding before them. Some — Hrype, Edild, my sister Elfritha — went so white that they looked deadly sick and I knew I must look the same. My knees shook and it was all that I could do to keep standing. There was a rushing sound in my ears and my skin felt as if it had been blasted by hot air. I wanted very much to throw up.

The invisible wave passed.

The burly man must have recovered for suddenly he was shouting in a loud, confident voice, ‘Here is the object that was stolen from me and that I now reclaim!’

Stolen from me.

I knew then who he was.

I fixed my eyes on him, using all my puny, fledgling power in an attempt to make him look at me. He did, and for the first time I stared into the glittering black eyes of the man I knew to be Baudouin de la Flèche.

It is not yours , I said silently as our gazes met. It was hidden centuries ago by men who were not of your blood. Even the feeble excuse that it lay hidden on what for a time was your land no longer applies for Drakelow is no longer yours.

I don’t know if he knew what I was thinking. Probably not, but it made me feel better to be doing something.

He stared at me blank-eyed for a moment. Then he gave a very horrible smile.

He held up his hand and at once the agitated hiss of muttered comments that had broken out among the villagers ceased. ‘Sibert of Aelf Fen here is guilty of theft,’ he stated forcefully. I saw one of the lord’s men step forward as if to protest, to say, perhaps, that Sibert would have to be put on trial to determine his guilt, but Baudouin de la Flèche ignored him. ‘The proof of his theft was found on his body and all here present saw it!’ He looked round as if daring us to challenge him. Nobody did.

‘There is more,’ he said, still staring round and now speaking in a low, dramatic tone that carried right to the back of the crowd. He spun round to face Sibert. Then, his face working with the violent emotion that tore through him, he shouted, ‘This young man is a murderer! He killed my nephew and he will hang!’

The horrified mutterings of the villagers rose to a crescendo and with it, blending like two lines of melody, I heard a ferocious humming like a skep of angry bees. It came from the crown, but whether it was jubilant or protesting I did not know.

The sounds climaxed inside my head to a roar. I felt dizzy with sudden violent vertigo and my knees gave way. I was vaguely aware of the ground rushing up to meet me and then everything went black.

When I came to I was lying on the floor in my own home and my mother and my aunt were bending over me. My granny sat beside the hearth, watching me very closely. I could see her deep eyes glittering. Ignoring both her and my poor mother, who had clearly been crying and was red-eyed and puffy-nosed, I grabbed Edild’s hand and said, ‘I’m so sorry! I’ll explain, I promise!’

She knew, of course, what I referred to. ‘Don’t worry about that now,’ she replied. My mother looked mystified and Edild turned to her. ‘Essa, could you find a blanket, please? Lassair’s shivering. I think it’s the shock.’

‘Of course!’ My mother leapt up. She has a lot of respect for her sister-in-law and would never dream of challenging her in her healing role. Besides, they are very fond of each other.

‘Quickly, now,’ my aunt hissed, bending low over me. ‘You’ve been with me for the past week or so, is that what you’ve said? I’ve already told them you were but we’d better agree on the details.’

‘Yes,’ I hissed back. ‘I told Goda I had to come back to the village to help you with the injured from an accident with a hay cart.’

‘The accident that happened rather longer ago than a week.’ Edild nodded. ‘Any specific injuries?’

‘I helped you with a fractured leg,’ I whispered. ‘A nasty injury, with bits of bone sticking out. I had to hold the man’s shoulders while you pulled on his leg, but you gave him something to numb the pain.’

She nodded again. ‘Otherwise, mainly cuts and bruises?’

‘Yes.’

‘Clever girl,’ she muttered. ‘Except for the fractured leg, exactly what we did do. We’ll just have to hope,’ she added, speaking swiftly because my mother was coming over to us, ‘that nobody thinks to check the time of this accident and its aftermath with the victims.’

With that awkward little conversation out of the way, I relaxed for a moment. Then, of course, I remembered about Sibert. Even worse, if anything could be worse, I remembered about Romain, whose uncle, his face distorted with grief, had said he was dead. I felt two large tears roll out of my eyes and slide sideways on to the pillow. My mother bent down and hugged me wordlessly. It was, as it always has been, a great comfort. Edild offered to make a soothing drink for me and hurried away, leaving my mother by my side holding my hand.

I needed, however, comfort of a different sort. I needed to know what was happening to Sibert and — for no matter how badly someone we’re fond of is suffering, we still put our own safety first, or at least I did then — I had to know why they had come looking for me.

How had they possibly known I was involved?

I had to think. I had to try to piece together what might have happened, and for that I needed quiet. In case my mother felt she ought to talk to me to take my mind off the morning’s awful events, I closed my eyes and made my breathing deep and steady. Presently I sensed her get up and tiptoe away. Please don’t think she was being callous; it’s just that she always has so much to do that she couldn’t afford to spend time at the side of her distraught daughter if that daughter had just fallen asleep.

I had imagined at first that it was Romain who had organized the lord’s men to come searching for Sibert, me and the crown, but it could not have been because he was dead. He could, I supposed, have told his uncle about what we had done before he died, so that it was Baudouin and not Romain who tracked us down. I thought about that for a while and it seemed to make sense. Romain had somehow got word to his uncle, then, that I had helped Sibert steal the crown, yet I had told a different story, one verified by my aunt and, to a lesser extent, by Goda and Cerdic. It was my word against Baudouin’s and although he was a Norman lord and I a village girl, for one thing I had someone to verify my story and for another he had rebelled against the king and lost everything. My position was beginning to look more secure.

Then I thought, aghast, but Romain is dead!

Romain was dead . I could still barely believe it. Baudouin claimed that Sibert had murdered him, but that wasn’t possible. Was it? He certainly hadn’t murdered him in the time it took us to walk home from Drakelow because we had been together every minute. He could, I supposed, have got up while I was asleep, found Romain and killed him, but I didn’t think it at all likely. Sibert and I had both been very scared on that journey home and we had barely slept. Even when I did manage to drift off, the slightest sound had brought me back to full consciousness. I didn’t think Sibert could have left my side without my noticing, since to comfort ourselves we had slept with our backs pressed tightly together. Besides, was it possible that a slim youth like Sibert could have attacked and killed a much broader, stronger man like Romain without a considerable amount of noise? And then returned and calmly gone back to sleep as if nothing had happened? That presupposed that Romain had recovered sufficiently from Sibert’s knee in his testicles to get up and follow us, and I was not at all sure he could have done.