Alys Clare: Out of the Dawn Light

I studied Goda subtly, trying to work out how far along she was in her pregnancy. When I had asked when the baby was due she was at first vague and then, when I protested that surely she must have some idea, violent. ‘Mind your own business!’ she screamed, only there was another word between own and business , one that I would have been thrashed for using. I could have pointed out that, since I had to look after her during her pregnancy, it was my business, but the bruise on Cerdic’s temple was still in evidence and I kept my mouth shut.

But I reckoned that, armed as I was with Edild’s instruction in the mystery of how women have babies, I could work it out for myself. The vastly swollen breasts and the sickness were, I believed, symptoms of the first three months, but I thought Goda was further along than that. Edild had demonstrated, using little drawings, how the baby in the womb gradually pushes upwards, so that a good midwife could judge from the height of the bulge how many months had passed since conception. I had to help my sister with her weekly wash — she complained, among many other things, that her condition caused her to sweat copiously — and, since she appeared to have left all modesty far behind her, she was in the habit of flinging off her clothes, lying back and ordering me to sponge her all over. Thus I was able not only to look at the big bump of baby but also run my hand over it and I calculated that she could be as much as six months pregnant.

It was now the end of March and she had wed Cerdic in late September. This baby must have been conceived virtually on their wedding night.

If not before.

I did not waste much time on the fact that my sister might have anticipated her wedding vows. If she had, she was far from being the only one. Possibly she had feared a last-minute defection in her husband-to-be, and letting him make love to her — perhaps encouraging him to — had been a way of ensuring he made an honest woman of her. Who knew? Who cared? No — what concerned me was when I might expect to be released from her household. If I was right and she was six months gone, my deliverance could come as early as June or the beginning of July. I could be home — and back at my lessons with Edild — soon after midsummer, with the rest of that bright, happy, outdoor season still ahead.

It was a lovely, heartening thought and it kept me going through the spring and early summer as inevitably, as Goda grew bigger, more cumbersome and more uncomfortable, matters went from bad to worse.

Romain de la Flèche’s well-dressed appearance, level gaze and ready smile gave the impression that he was an amiable young man with plenty of money and not a great deal to concern him beyond the cut of his cloak and keeping a shine on his boots. The impression, however, was, like much about Romain, carefully calculated. He maintained it because it was in his own best interests to disguise his true personality and the pressing concern that drove him, relentlessly now, and held him so tightly in its grasp.

As the days lengthened and it seemed that at long last spring was turning to summer, he watched in impotent rage and growing fear as the situation he most dreaded — and whose coming to pass he had at first only entertained in the most anxious of sleepless nights — unfolded before him. There was nothing he could do. His protests, had he dared to express them, would at best have been ignored and at worst earned him a hard cuff round the ear. He was eighteen now. It was not fair that he was still treated like a wayward child.

There was a way in which he might escape the potentially fateful consequences of what was inevitably going to happen. By pure chance he had learned something amazing. It was so amazing that, when as so often happened it slipped quietly into his mind, he found himself wondering if he was investing far too much hope on what must surely be no more than an old tale whispered in the dark. He forced himself to ignore his misgivings. There was, when all said and done, nothing else. .

He had been so excited when he first heard about the amazing thing. To begin with, it had stirred his blood simply for its own sake and it was only later, when he realized that the bright future he had envisioned for himself was going to be blasted apart, that it had occurred to him how he might use his discovery to his own advantage.

He needed help, for if this thing in truth had substance and was not just a wonderful myth, he had to track it down. Disguising the growing urgency of his need with his usual charming smile and the mild, slightly puzzled manner which, as he well knew, made people believe he was slow-witted if not actually simple, he had asked some very careful questions. And, eventually, he found out where he must go and to whom he must speak.

He had made the journey — of some fifty miles across East Anglia, over farm land, scrubland and, on occasion, through the wild, desolate and dangerous parts of the region — the previous September. He had been at pains not to be observed, travelling under cover of darkness. For one thing, he had not sought permission for his pilgrimage. He could not have done, for when the inevitable questions as to the purpose of his journey had been asked he would have had no creditable answer other than the truthful one, and that was secret. For another thing, the Conqueror had just died and the whole country was uneasy. It was really no time to go off on a clandestine mission but, with the king’s death, time was running out and he no longer had a choice.

As he trudged through the darkness, thankful that at least the weather appeared to be on his side, he tried to take his mind off his many anxieties by speculating on what sort of a king the Conqueror’s son would be.

Normandy had gone to the eldest brother, Robert, and the second, Richard, was dead, killed while hunting in the New Forest. Henry, the fourth son, had, or so they said, been left a huge sum of money. With some difficulty, Romain turned his mind from the thrilling, tantalizing prospect of what he could have done with a huge sum of money. Life was so unfair . .

England had been left to William, the third son.

So, William was to be king and not Robert. Well, it was what Romain had been led to expect. He moved in circles where such matters were a frequent topic of conversation and he was well aware that the Conqueror’s relationship with his plump and lazy eldest son had been tempestuous. The king had used a variety of nicknames for the boy, his favourites being Short-Boots and Fat-Legs, and this disparaging attitude had, as Robert frequently complained, robbed him of the respect that he felt was his due. His resentment of his powerful parent broke out into open rebellion. On one occasion bitter fighting ensued, in the course of which Robert personally inflicted a wound on the great Conqueror’s hand. Father and son were later reconciled but it seemed unlikely that, given his ruthless nature, the king either forgot or forgave. William the Conqueror had died from an injury sustained as he fought the French in the Vexin, that troubled and perpetually strife-torn area between Normandy and neighbouring France to the south-east. On his deathbed he dictated the necessary letter that nominated his namesake as his heir and, together with the royal seal, dispatched it to England.

The dying king had probably hoped that his carefully thought-out solution — Normandy to the first-born, England to the younger brother — would be appreciated as fair and therefore accepted meekly by all concerned. He ought to have known better. Apart from the main protagonists, every other Norman lord with a plot to call his own seemed to have a loud and forceful opinion. Particularly vociferous were that multitude of men whose fathers had fought with the Conqueror in 1066 and been awarded manors in the newly acquired kingdom as their reward. Since to a man they already possessed estates in Normandy, they now must decide whether to put their wealth and strength at the disposal of Duke Robert, their Norman overlord, or King William, their English one.