Alys Clare - Out of the Dawn Light

‘What did this man look like?’ I asked. I could barely breathe.

‘He was older than your Sibert, but not much. He was broad-set, with thick, dark bobbed hair, and he wore a fine tunic, although it looked as if he’d been wearing it for days and sleeping in it.’ Romain. It had to be. I looked at Hrype and guessed he’d had the same thought. ‘We had a bit of a chat, and he — oh! ’

She looked aghast at me and then at Hrype. Clearly she had recalled something else.

‘Go on,’ Hrype said quietly.

‘I described you to him, you and the lad,’ she said, turning to me. ‘I’m very sorry, I’m sure, if I’ve done harm by it! Oh, dear me!’ She was close to tears.

‘You weren’t to know,’ I said. ‘If he was on this path then he had already picked up our trail and all you did was to confirm that he was right.’

‘Oh. Oh, I see.’ She did not sound very reassured. ‘And now that poor lad stands accused of murder! Who did he kill?’ she asked again.

‘He did not kill anyone,’ I repeated very firmly.

‘No, no, of course not, you said so!’ Now she was blushing furiously, the fat red face scarlet with embarrassment. ‘Who do they say he’s killed?’

I did not think I could bring myself to say it. Hrype gave the answer.

‘He is accused of murdering the other young man, the one who was following him and this girl.’

‘No!’

‘He didn’t do it!’ I said yet again. The murder had clearly come as a great shock to her so I knew, as Hrype must do too, that she was not Baudouin de la Flèche’s witness. She might know who was, however. ‘Do others live around here?’ I asked.

‘Round here? Some, in the little hamlet down the track, although we are very few,’ she replied.

‘Nevertheless, could one of them have been the witness?’ Hrype asked.

The fat woman shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I haven’t heard anyone speak of it and I dare say I’d have heard tell, by now, of such a thing. . ’ She frowned in concentration. ‘We do get passers-by too, although, like I said, not many and three in a day’s a rarity.’

We appeared to have come to a dead end. She had seen nobody but Sibert, me and then, a little later, Romain. Whoever it was who saw the murder must have waited around until Baudouin came along and then told him what he’d just seen.

Baudouin.

What was it Hrype had said when he came to our house that awful night? Baudouin was worried for Romain’s safety and he set out to look for him.

I said urgently to the fat woman, ‘You’re sure you saw nobody else that day?’

‘No, dear, no. Just the three of you, like I say.’

For a moment I’d thought I was on to something, but just as swiftly I realized that if Baudouin’s intention was to guard Romain because he was concerned for him, then he’d probably make quite sure he wasn’t seen, by either Romain or whoever it was that Baudouin feared might wish to harm him.

I remembered what else Hrype had reported that night. The witness said they saw Romain catch up with Sibert, who then doubled back and jumped Romain from behind, hitting him so hard on the back of the head that the bones of the skull shattered.

It made me feel queasy just thinking about it and my heart ached for poor dead Romain. I did not think I could retain my composure any longer and, not wanting to make a scene in front of the fat woman — who, to judge by her face, was quite upset already — I caught Hrype’s eye.

He dipped his head in a brief nod. ‘Thank you,’ he said to the fat woman. ‘We must go now and leave you to your water-carrying.’

She was still watching us, her expression sombre. ‘I hope your nephew gets off,’ she said to Hrype.

‘I hope so too,’ he replied gravely. ‘Farewell.’

‘God’s speed,’ she replied.

Then we loosened the horses’ reins and hurried away.

As soon as we were out of sight and sound of the clearing, he said, ‘Lassair, we must look closely at the place where the murder happened. It seems likely that it is the spot where Romain and Sibert fought, for you told me that you left Romain there, wounded, and it is very possible that the killer struck while he was down. I am sorry I had to remind you,’ he added.

I was sorry he had, too. But I knew he was right and we had to look. ‘The place where they fought must be back up this track that leads to the road,’ I said, ‘since the fight was after we’d stopped at the well.’

We rode on. We had missed the place as we went south towards the well but now I was sure we were on the same track that Sibert and I had followed.

In time, we came to the spot. The events of that day were vivid in my memory and I felt cold at the thought of what had happened after Sibert and I had gone.

Hrype had tossed his horse’s reins to me and he was on hands and knees, covering every inch of the ground. I suppose that I should have helped him but for one thing I didn’t know exactly what he was searching for and, for another, I was still feeling unwell.

I looped the horses’ reins around the branch of a young birch tree and leaned against it, sliding my back down its smooth silvery trunk until my backside rested on the ground. I closed my eyes and immediately saw Romain as he was when Sibert and I left him. Oh, I cried silently, oh, if I hadn’t yelled out to Sibert to lift his knee and Romain hadn’t been so hurt, perhaps his assailant wouldn’t have succeeded in killing him. On his feet and fully alert, Romain would at least have had a fighting chance.

I buried my face in my hands, fingers against my closed eyes in a futile attempt to stem the tears.

I don’t know how long the fragment of memory stayed in my mind before I realized its significance. One moment the picture of Romain lying with his knees clutched to his chest was just that, a vividly remembered image. Then the next moment I understood what it was trying to tell me.

‘ Hrype! ’ I hissed, in a sort of whispered shout; although it was very unlikely that there was anyone about, somehow I felt it was essential that what I believed I had just discovered should only be shared with Hrype.

He was grubbing about in the waist-high bracken on the far side of the clearing. He straightened up at my call and looked at me, eyebrows raised. I beckoned, getting to my feet as I did so, and in a few strides he was beside me.

‘What?’ he said softly. There was a light in his eyes; I think he already knew, somehow, that this was something important. I noticed, with a separate part of my mind, that his deep eyes sometimes seemed to shine as if they were lit from within. . ‘ What? ’ he repeated impatiently.

‘Tell me again how the witness described the murder,’ I said, my voice low.

He did not question my request but said, ‘Romain caught up with Sibert, who managed to double back and attack him from behind, crushing his skull with a branch.’

‘Did anyone see the body’ — I hated speaking of poor dead Romain in such detached terms but it was the only way I could begin to cope with this — ‘to verify what the witness said?’

‘No one that I know of,’ Hrype replied. ‘Except, of course, Baudouin.’

‘And nobody would think to question Baudouin’s word,’ I said slowly. Then: ‘Hrype, if it happened as we think it did, if the assailant attacked Romain when he was already on the ground, then the wound is in the wrong place. When we left him, Romain was curled up on his back, hugging his knees tight to his chest. It would have been impossible for anyone to hit him on the back of the head.’

Even as I spoke, my brief moment of certainty broke up and faded. There was no way of telling how long Romain had lain there; he could have rolled over on to his front, or managed to get to his feet, shortly after we had left him. My brilliant idea was nothing of the sort.