Alys Clare: Out of the Dawn Light

‘Well done,’ I said, pushing a way through the chattering women to get to her. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here for the birth and to help you afterwards. Was it. .? Did you. .?’ I felt embarrassed suddenly at the thought of my sister giving birth and I was angry with myself for my foolish prudery. Fine healer I was going to make.

Goda confounded me totally by smiling back. ‘It was all right,’ she said quietly. ‘It hurt but it didn’t take too long.’ Then — for this was the woman who only a short while ago had routinely cursed her husband and thrown clogs at him — she gave the man beside her a loving glance and added, ‘I didn’t need you afterwards. Cerdic’s been looking after me.’

Just at that moment I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Cerdic, perhaps understanding better than anyone, said gently, ‘Go and have a look.’ He pointed.

I stood up, walked to the far corner of the little room and found my mother, pink in the face with delight, nursing her first grandchild.

I looked down into the beautiful little face — the baby was a girl — and her eyes opened and stared back. She did not resemble Cerdic — which wouldn’t have been too bad as he’s a nice-looking man — but, more to the point, she was nothing like Goda.

She looked like Edild.

My mother, watching me study her, smiled. ‘Can you see it too?’ she asked softly, her finger clutched in the baby’s tiny fist.

‘Yes. She looks like Edild.’

My mother laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But she looks far more like someone else. Someone I nursed as a tiny baby, just as I’m nursing Gelges here.’

Gelges. It meant white swan. What a lovely name. .

My mother was still watching me, waiting for me to say something.

I didn’t.

Just then Gelges gave a small sound rather like a tired sigh and it was so sweet, so endearing, that involuntarily I held out my arms and my mother put the soft, solid little bundle into them.

Gelges and I considered each other.

My mother said, ‘She looks just like you.’

My mother and I stayed with Goda and her little family for another couple of days and then we went home to Aelf Fen. As my mother wisely said, before long Goda was going to have to get used to looking after her house, her husband and her baby by herself, just like any other woman, and the sooner she started, the better.

Life settled down again and resumed its usual pattern. Straight away I went back to my regular sessions with Edild and the joy with which I took up her steadily more challenging lessons was an indication of how much I’d missed them — and her — all the time I was looking after Goda.

I waited, at first nervously, to see if anything would happen. I’m not sure what I was expecting: retribution, I suppose, for Sibert and I had stolen the crown and killed a man. Because of us, Romain de la Flèche as well as his uncle both were dead. We had put the crown back, it seemed successfully, and as time went by and no one came to accuse us, I started to wonder if the crown might be protecting us, just as its long-ago maker made it to protect this land. We had stolen it in the first place, but we had returned it, at considerable risk to ourselves — I still had nightmares about Sibert’s drowned body and that awful moment when I tried to gulp air and sniffed in sea water instead — and surely that must count for something.

I kept my eyes and my ears open and in time I learned that many of the great East Anglian lords who had risen against King William had had their lands and their manors restored. I wondered if any one of them had bought his way back into royal favour with anything as extraordinary as the Drakelow crown. I suspected not.

I had no idea what would happen to Drakelow. Baudouin and his heir were both dead and, although he had claimed to be betrothed to his comely heiress, he had not yet wed her or, as far as I knew, impregnated her. No de la Flèche would ever live at Drakelow again.

I pictured the brash, coarse Norman buildings. I made an image in my mind of the long hall that Sibert’s ancestors built. Then I saw the cliff fall away into the sea, taking the hall with it. It did not look as if any of Sibert’s clan would live there again either.

I supposed that, lacking any other claimant, Drakelow remained the property of the king. Well, all of England belonged to him; that was the Norman way. We just had to accept it.

I have found it a fact of life that if something you really dread goes on not happening, in the end it loses its hold over you and finally you forget about it. I threw myself heart and soul into my work with Edild — she seemed to think that now I had risked death and handled a magical crown I was ready to go up a level in my studies — and I loved almost every moment of my time with her in her fragrant little cottage. Quite often Hrype came to join us and I learned from him, too, as he revealed just a very little of the mysterious heart, soul and spirit that made him what he was.

I grieved for Romain. I knew there had never been any chance of my sweet fantasies ever turning into reality, but all the same he was very often in my mind and I recognized that I truly had loved him, a little.

I thought about what Edild had told me of my web of destiny, in particular what she had said concerning my relationship with my lovers (the thought still made me blush, even when I was quite alone). She’d been right about my being fire and air, and my triumph in the fire pit supported her. Was she also right when she said my friends and my lovers would never feel close to me?

Time would tell.

In the absence of lovers I worked hard on my friendships and especially hard on my closeness to my family. Goda’s sunny mood on the day I first went to see her after she had borne her child did not last, I’m sorry to say, although we all agreed that her temperament had improved very slightly with motherhood and I tried to convince myself that the improvement would continue. For now, she tended little Gelges with haphazard but effective care — her vast breasts could have fed five babies and Gelges thrived — and on rare occasions even managed a pleasant word for Cerdic.

My little niece and I saw as much of each other as my busy life allowed. Until she was weaned she had to stay close to her mother, but already I looked forward to the day when I might be allowed to take her off with me while I went about my daily round. If Goda had another child, I thought, then she might well ask — no, demand — that I help her by taking Gelges off her hands. It was something to look forward to.

I discovered an unexpected side-effect from my fire-walking: people had started to whisper about me and it seemed that quite a few believed I was a sorceress. I had imagined, if I’d thought about it at all, that they would accept the official verdict, which was that my unburned feet meant that God had protected me in my innocence. I had reckoned without village superstition; we were, after all, very close to our pagan origins and many secretly prayed to the Old Gods. I rather liked this new image of myself.

I saw Sibert often. What we had gone through together had forged a link between us and although he could not compete with the shadowy memory of Romain as far as my romantic interest went, nevertheless he was my friend. I had saved his life and he had saved mine. It’s not something you share with many people.

I never heard anyone mention the Drakelow crown.

I thought afterwards that, just before Sibert and I stole it, it had performed the task for which its maker had designed it, for Duke Robert of Normandy had not invaded but stayed safely on the other side of the narrow seas. It had not had the same success twenty-two years earlier, when the Conqueror had come, but perhaps he had been a truly unstoppable force, beyond even the power of a magic crown.