Alys Clare: Out of the Dawn Light

The next time the movement ceased it did not start again.

After what seemed a very long time, Sibert said, ‘He’s dead.’

I nodded. ‘Yes.’ I felt strangely unreal, as if this were a dream.

‘He would have killed you,’ Sibert went on. ‘I had to stop him.’

‘Yes,’ I said again. Then, belatedly, ‘Thank you.’

‘That’s all right. You saved me, now I’ve saved you.’

‘Yes.’ I was puzzled. For one thing, I’d thought Sibert was dead. For another, how had he managed to overcome a fierce, strong man like Baudouin? ‘What happened, Sibert?’

‘I took him by surprise,’ Sibert said proudly. ‘He wasn’t expecting an attack.’

‘No, you were dead,’ I agreed.

‘I was lucky,’ he went on modestly. ‘When I leapt on him he fell against the buried tree bole and, as you’ll no doubt have noticed, there are several places on it where branches were once cut off, leaving downward-pointing stumps. I managed to hook his belt on to one of them and after that I just had to push down on him to make sure he didn’t manage to release himself.’

‘What are we going to do?’ I whispered. Shock was affecting me badly. I was shivering so hard that my teeth rattled and I very much wanted to cry.

Sibert took one last look at the dark shape under the water and then left it. He came over to me and put his arm round me. ‘We’re going ashore to dry off and rest. We’ll wait till the tide turns and then we’ll come back here, unhook Baudouin’s body and let the sea take it. Then we’ll go home.’

It sounded wonderful. But we had come here to do a job and if we didn’t succeed, Hrype would send us straight back again. The very idea made me weep. ‘What about the crown?’

He hugged me. Reaching out for my hand, he put it against the bag that was once more hanging at his waist. ‘The crown is safe,’ he said. ‘When we’ve dealt with Baudouin, we’ll put it back.’

I hardly recognized this new and masterful Sibert. Perhaps saving my life and killing my would-be murderer had at long last changed him from a boy into a man. It was going to take some getting used to but, I thought as, cold and weary, we waded ashore, I thought I might grow to like it.

It was a strange ceremony that Sibert and I performed soon after dawn the next morning. Looking back, it seems more like a dream than reality, although I am pretty sure that it did happen. .

We were soaked to the skin when we came ashore. Sibert lit a small fire and insisted that we both take off our clothes and dry ourselves. It was very odd, sitting here naked before the welcoming heat, and I don’t think I could have done it if it hadn’t been for the concealing darkness. Well, and the fact that I’d probably have died of cold otherwise. Sibert made me eat some dried meat and bread, then he held a mug to my mouth and forced me to take all of the hot drink he had prepared. I tasted honey in it and soon I was feeling better.

We slept, or at least I did, curled up in my still-damp clothes but warm in the heat from the fire, which Sibert must have tended all night. I had a very vivid dream in which I opened my eyes to see him, standing on the other side of the fire, with the light of the flames reflecting off something that lay on the ground between us. Something that was circular and made of gold. Sibert looked different — taller, stronger — and the naked man I saw in my dream was utterly different from the pale, cowed and shrivelled boy who had stood in Aelf Fen before his accusers. I thought I saw a sheen of power rising up from the crown, surrounding Sibert in its aura as if bestowing a blessing, and my dreaming self said, ‘Your ancestor made it, Sibert. He wants you to have some of its strength. He’s trying to help you because he’s proud of you for what you’ve done.’

Sibert did not answer.

He woke me at dawn. The memory of my dream was still too fresh to allow me to look him in the eye and, to my surprise, he seemed similarly affected. I did wonder briefly if it had really been a dream.

He had already kicked out the fire. Now we stood up, left our boots in the sleeping place, descended the low cliff and walked across the foreshore to the sea sanctuary.

The sea was receding but still, as we approached the sanctuary, we were ankle-deep in water. I carefully twisted up my skirt and tied it round my waist; it was so good to be in dry clothes again that I did not want to risk another soaking. Sibert paused to roll up his breeches. Then we went into the sanctuary.

Baudouin was on his side, his stout leather belt still hooked over the stump of branch. Sibert bent down to release him. Together we pushed and dragged the body to the far side of the sanctuary. Soon we were wading in deeper water and the corpse was floating. With a shove, Sibert gave it up to the tide.

We returned to the sanctuary.

We waited until the water had cleared the sands and then, as we had tried to do the previous night, we buried the crown. I found the right place; it was easy, for in my heightened emotional state it seemed to me that a soft purplish-blue light was guiding me, as if the crown were sending out a message to let us know without doubt where it wanted to be. Even after five hundred years, some of the magic of Creoda, greatest of all sorcerers, still lingered.

We dug deep, for, without either of us saying so, it seemed that we both felt the need to do the job really well. It took a long time.

At last we were ready.

Sibert took the crown out of its bag one last time. We both stared at it, wanting to imprint its beauty on our eyes for ever. Then Sibert wrapped it up again and, each of us holding one side, we put it in the deep, dark space beneath the tree stump. Painstakingly we filled in the hole, piling on the sand and tamping it down. We left signs of our activity — we couldn’t help it — but we knew we were safe; they would be gone with the next tide, washed clean again so that the crown’s location was secure.

Then for the last time we turned our backs on the sea sanctuary and its precious secret and headed for the shore. I looked up into the soft blue sky of very early morning. There was scarcely a breeze and not a cloud to be seen.

It was going to be a lovely day.

Our return to Aelf Fen went without incident except that I developed a blister on the ball of my foot. What irony, I thought; I walked across red-hot coals without taking hurt and yet a long walk, which was really nothing out of the ordinary for someone like me, gives me a blister that burns like hellfire.

We were both apprehensive as we neared our home; Sibert because he would have to confess to Hrype that he had killed Baudouin and I because I knew that, despite whatever Hrype had cooked up to explain my absence, my parents would have been beside themselves with worry.

As it turned out, neither of us need have been so anxious. Hrype accepted Sibert’s account of how he had slain a man with a brief nod, the suspicion of a proud smile and the calm words, ‘You had no choice, Sibert.’ Sibert told me later that Hrype had also seemed satisfied with how we’d reburied the crown. He had said little, according to Sibert, except a brief and mystifying, ‘Time will tell.’ Nobody I know is nearly as enigmatic as Hrype.

My parents had barely listened to Hrype explaining that I’d gone off with Edild because the morning after Sibert and I slipped out of Aelf Fen on our way to Drakelow, my sister had her baby.

I hurried over to Icklingham as soon as I could to find Goda sitting on the bench by the hearth, Cerdic beside her, with several of her neighbours circling around and satisfying her whims as if she were a queen and they her handmaidens. Honestly, you’d think no woman had ever given birth before! All the same, I had to admire my sister for her sheer cheek and, catching her eye, I gave her a smile that came from the heart.