Alys Clare - Out of the Dawn Light

As I watched him let himself quietly into the house and close the door, I reflected that it was probably all the appreciation I was ever going to get.

I sat on for some time and I was only prompted to thinking that I too should go to bed when I realized I was growing cold. I wrapped my lovely shawl more tightly around me and stood up, heading for the jakes.

On my way back to my little lean-to an arm was thrown around my throat and before I could cry out a hand was pressed tightly over my mouth. My alarmed heart started banging against my ribs and, as in a flash I was transported back to the cliff above Drakelow where the same thing had happened, my instant thought was: Sibert! It’s Sibert!

Something about my assailant must have added to that impression — a smell, or the feel of the skin on the hand clamped to my lips — for, despite my fear when I had heard something in the undergrowth, now, as the initial shock faded, I was not scared at all.

The hand lessened its pressure and the arm around my throat fell away. I turned round and saw not Sibert but Hrype.

I stared at him. His dark blond hair gleamed in the moonlight and his eyes reflected its glow. He was dressed in a long black cloak, its deep hood thrown back. He said very quietly, ‘I must talk to you. Come.’

He led the way along the track that leads eastwards out of the village and when we were well past the last habitation, he turned off the path and in under the trees. We were not far from the place where I had waited for Romain and Sibert.

We settled on the bank beneath a beech tree. For a few moments we sat in silence. I was very aware of the night sounds all around me; even more aware of the unknown, unknowable man who was by my side. I shivered suddenly, wrapping my shawl more closely around me. Perceptive man that he is, Hrype noticed. ‘I am sorry to keep you from your bed,’ he said.

‘It’s all right.’ I thought briefly about the coincidence by which I had not retired at the usual time but stayed sitting outside the house on the very night that Hrype needed to speak to me. Perhaps it was no coincidence at all; Hrype is, as I have said, a strange man with many powers.

‘You tried to save Sibert,’ he said. He knew, then, of my abortive visit to Lord Gilbert.

‘Yes. I failed.’

‘Nevertheless, I am grateful. My sister-in-law,’ he added, ‘loves the boy dearly. I too am very fond of him.’

Fond was an odd word to use, I thought vaguely. But then Hrype had not really chosen to be a substitute father; he had had to look after Froya and the baby Sibert when his brother Edmer died and for all I or anyone knew, he might have preferred a solitary life and only forfeited it because of duty. .

‘You have to know,’ Hrype was saying, ‘what is at stake.’

‘Sibert’s life!’ I hissed.

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ He seemed to brush that aside; perhaps it was too painful to think about. ‘There is something else, Lassair. Something which, although it pains me to admit it, is far more important than one young man’s fate.’

What could he mean? The answer came in a flash. ‘The crown,’ I breathed.

‘The crown,’ he agreed. Then, after a pause, ‘You have sensed a little of what it can do, I think.’

‘Yes. It affects me and I am afraid of it.’

‘You are right to be afraid. It is an object of power and it is not something that a man like Baudouin de la Flèche, or indeed any man, should use for the base purpose he has in mind.’

‘You mean buying his manor back with it.’ I wanted to be quite clear.

‘Yes.’

I frowned. ‘Romain gave the impression that searching for the crown was his idea,’ I said slowly. ‘Yet now you say it’s Baudouin who wishes to use it to persuade the king.’

Hrype stared at me. ‘It seems he was aware of what his nephew was up to,’ he said. ‘He was, he says, anxious about the young man.’ He sighed faintly. ‘With good reason.’

I realized that Hrype knew far more than I had imagined. ‘I think Sibert believed that his involvement with Romain and the mission to Drakelow were secret,’ I said.

‘Not from me,’ Hrype said.

‘He only knew about the crown because he heard you chanting to it!’ I burst out. I needed someone to blame and if Sibert hadn’t overheard Hrype and learned about Drakelow and what was hidden in the sea sanctuary, all this would not have happened.

Hrype sighed. ‘I know. Because of that, Sibert was ready and eager to be involved when Romain approached him.’

‘So’ — I tried to piece it together — ‘Romain sought out Sibert, told him there was a treasure buried somewhere at Drakelow and the two of them should go and find it, and Sibert said he knew roughly where it was hidden, and so they-’

‘They sought the help of a girl who is a dowser,’ Hrype finished for me, ‘and the three of them set off on their foolhardy mission.’

‘If you knew it was foolhardy why didn’t you stop us?’ I demanded angrily.

‘I did not know what you were planning to do!’ His reply snapped through the air like a whip and with a shudder I felt the very edge of his power. It was enough to make my flesh contract into goose pimples. ‘I have only understood why this has happened afterwards,’ Hrype added more gently, ‘when it is far too late.’

I thought about that. ‘How did Romain know of the crown’s existence?’ I asked. ‘Sibert only knew that an object of power existed — because he overheard you communicating with it — and not where or what it was.’

Hrype said, ‘That is so. It was indeed Romain who enlightened him. As to how he knew, I do not know for sure but I believe I can guess the truth.’ He paused. ‘My forefathers built Drakelow when first they ventured out of their homelands and came across the whale routes to England,’ he said, his voice sounding distant. ‘They were the companions of kings and their hall had to be within reach of the royal dwelling place.’ Yes, I thought; Sibert told me. But I dared not break into Hrype’s narrative. ‘My ancestors were sorcerers and they were known as cunning men,’ he went on, ‘and their worth for the king was inestimable, for he depended on their skill to keep safe the new realm that he had taken for his own. Drakelow was given to us as our reward, to be our family home for ever.’ He sighed again. ‘Neither the kings of old nor their cunning men, however, predicted the Conquest that would rob not only us but all the aristocratic families of their estates. Ours went to Fulk de la Flèche and we were forced into the role of powerless witnesses as our birthright was spoiled and abused.’

He fell silent, as if that old loss still had the ability to render him mute with pain.

I said tentatively, ‘Could your father not have used the power of the crown? He had you as a son, you who understand that sort of-’

‘ No. ’ He breathed the word but with such force that abruptly I stopped what I was saying. ‘It is true that I have certain skills, more apparent to you than to others,’ — I stored that up to gloat over later — ‘but the power that is within the crown is not there for the gratification of one family’s wishes. Which, of course, is why Baudouin de la Flèche must not be allowed to use it in that way.’

I wanted to hear more about the crown but Hrype was obviously not prepared to tell me. Instead, he said, ‘After the Conquest, the remnants of my family were forced to flee. There were, indeed, few enough of us. My father had died vainly trying to fight off the Conqueror, and his body lies somewhere among the heaps of the slain, buried close by the battlefield. My brother Edmer and I took our mother into hiding in the Black Fens and from there Edmer set out to join the Wake in his rebellion, and they held Ely against the new king. Edmer received the wound that killed him and my mother succumbed to her long grief over all that had been lost to her and fell an easy victim to fever. I sent my dead brother’s wife to the safety of Aelf Fen, where in time she bore her posthumous child.’