Alys Clare - Out of the Dawn Light

For some time I just lay there and after a while I sensed that the sheer solidity of the ground beneath me was giving me reassurance. I breathed deeply several times, then I faced the frightful challenge that Baudouin had laid down.

I blanked everything else out and called to mind everything I knew about trial by ordeal. Normally it was used to sort the innocent from the guilty, because if you were innocent then God came to your aid and protected you from lasting harm. He would make sure that the boiling water in the cauldron did not burn your hand and your arm as you reached down for the pebble on the bottom. He would guard your tender flesh as you carried the red-hot metal in your bare hands. When after three days they removed the bandages and inspected your wounds, if you were innocent then God would already have instigated the healing process and everyone would know you had been wrongly accused.

I had not been accused of any crime but I desperately needed to prove I was telling the truth — difficult, for a habitual liar — and Baudouin had cleverly turned my protestations against me, in effect saying, Prove it.

Oh, but what a terrible method he had chosen. Red-hot coals under my bare feet and-

No. Don’t think about that.

There was a story about Queen Emma, King Cnut’s wife and mother of the brutal Hartacnut. She had another son, Edward, by her marriage to Ethelred and when she became too powerful he plotted against her, accusing her of adultery with her bishop. People whispered behind their hands that to prove her innocence she was made to walk nine feet over red-hot ploughshares, but God must have known the accusations were false and malicious because Queen Emma skipped over the glowing metal, turned to her tormentors and demanded to know when the trial would begin.

It was a good tale. My granny Cordeilla sometimes tells it when she is particularly sad that the days under the Old Kings have gone for ever.

We do not have much land under the plough around Aelf Fen. It’s too wet and marshy. I doubt if there are enough ploughshares to cover nine feet of ground, which is presumably why Baudouin opted for a pit of red-hot coals instead.

I took off my shoes and looked at my feet. They are small and narrow, the toes straight and the nails like little shells. I twisted my leg so that I could inspect the sole of my right foot. The skin was hard — unless I was planning on going any distance, I usually went barefoot through the summer — and when I poked it with my fingernail, it felt tough and resilient.

Red-hot coals. .

Queen Emma survived unscathed, I reminded myself. Surely I would too? I was, after all, telling the truth. .

Supposing I didn’t, what then? Frightful, suppurating burns. Infection. Pus and stinking, blackening flesh. The loss, perhaps, of both feet. Life as a cripple, all my dreams of being as fine a healer as Edild come to naught. Could you be a healer sitting down? I did not really see how.

I made myself think about that for some time. So, I thought eventually, I might lose my feet.

Sibert is about to lose his life.

If I lost my feet, I realized, Sibert would lose his life anyway because if I failed to heal, they would judge that God was rejecting me because I was guilty and an evil, worthless liar. I would not be believed when I insisted Sibert had not murdered Romain and my huge sacrifice would have been in vain.

But what if I did heal? What if, knowing that for once I was as innocent of lying as Queen Emma had been of adultery, God and all the good spirits put their protection around me and my desperate, hurrying feet and kept me from harm?

I sat there quite a lot longer. Then slowly I stood up. I desperately wanted to go home. I wanted to curl up in my safe little bed and turn my back on the hostile, frightening world. I needed my mother’s loving arms, her soothing voice. I wanted my strong, wise father. But both of them would forbid me to take this appalling test. I was their daughter, they cherished me, they did not want to see me suffer ghastly pain. Their reaction would be quite understandable.

They had not been there in the clearing when I yelled out to Sibert to knee Romain in the crotch so that, immobilized by pain, he had been unable to defend himself when his killer came for him.

They did not know that if Sibert was hanged it would be my fault.

If I failed, lost my feet to the fire and Sibert died, at least I would be able to console myself with the fact that I had tried.

I imagined life knowing that I had sat back while they had sent an innocent young man to his death. Then I imagined life without my feet.

I reckoned I knew which would be the harder to bear.

I went to my aunt’s house. She loved me too, or I was pretty sure she did, but she was not my parent and I thought she might be better able to distance herself and advise me dispassionately than either my father or my mother.

I nipped round behind the village and approached her neat, tidy and sweet-smelling little cottage from the far side. As I’ve said, she lives on the very edge of the village, preferring her own company and not being one to gossip at the pump. The bees were busy in the herb beds either side of her door as I hurried up and from the rear of the house I heard the tonk of the bell that hangs round her nanny goat’s neck and the soft clucking of her hens.

I tapped perfunctorily on the door and burst in. Edild was sitting on her wooden chair and she looked up and coolly met my eyes. On the low bench on the opposite side of the hearth sat Hrype and Froya.

I guessed, then, that she already knew.

She went on looking at me for a few moments and I had the odd feeling I sometimes get with her, that she’s creeping inside my mind to see what’s there. Then she said, ‘This is not good, Lassair.’

Froya went to say something, but Hrype put a gentle hand on her arm and she subsided. I glanced at her. She is very like Sibert, both of them tall, lightly built and very fair. Her bright sea-green eyes were not as lovely as usual, being red-rimmed and puffy with weeping. She had a dainty linen handkerchief in her hands, surely deeply inadequate for its present purpose, and her fingers worried at it ceaselessly, twisting it this way and that. Also like her son, Froya is one of those people who are just a bit too fragile for life and need looking after. I look after Sibert — or not, in fact, seeing the pass we had come to — and Hrype, I suppose, looks after Froya, as indeed a good man should, especially if his sister-in-law is a widow with a child to bring up.

I could not bear to look into Froya’s eyes for very long. There was an expression of anguished hope in them and I knew exactly what it was she was hoping for.

I turned back to Edild. ‘Queen Emma managed it!’ I burst out. ‘She didn’t even notice she’d walked over the red-hot metal!’

Edild gave a tut of impatience. ‘That’s just a story, child,’ she said. ‘Do you really think anyone would have had the temerity to make someone like Queen Emma do something like that?’

‘It was her son that made her,’ I mumbled, as if this made it more likely.

Edild did not even bother to answer that.

Then silence extended and they all looked at me. When I could stand it no longer I said, ‘I’m going to do it. I’ve got to, because it’s my fault Sibert’s in this position and I can’t live with my guilt if he’s — ’ I glanced at his poor suffering mother, who had emitted an anguished gasp — ‘er, if anything happens to him.’ Edild started to protest but I overrode her, briefly explaining my guilt. ‘So you see,’ I finished, ‘really I have no choice. If this is the only way to prove I’m telling the truth and Sibert is no murderer, then I’ll have to do what Baudouin demands.’