Alys Clare: Out of the Dawn Light

Well, she was suffering now because, either before or immediately after she married Cerdic, on at least one occasion she had made love with him. Unless he had taken her by force — unlikely because she’s a well-muscled woman with a fierce temper and a heavy right fist and he’s a gentle sort of a man — then she must have wanted the lovemaking and, not being an idiot, known that it could lead to conception. So, she’d brought it on herself. Nevertheless, she had to blame someone and that someone was me.

She made a hell of my life such as I had never experienced before (and not since, either; I don’t make mistakes like letting myself be used by people such as my sister anymore). The odd thing was that if just for a moment she’d stopped being so horrible to me, my sympathy would have come rushing back and I’d have looked after her willingly. You see, she really was in a bad way. As she entered the last couple of months of her pregnancy, she swelled up like a leather bag slowly and steadily being filled with water. The skin of her vast belly stretched and something in its structure must have broken, for long, dark-red lines began to snake across her white flesh as if there was something living in there. Well, of course there was — a baby, and a pretty large one at that — but that’s not what I mean. Goda has always been lazy and now that she had got so big she barely left her seat by the hearth. As June came, often she would not even get out of bed.

She was pale and, despite my ministrations with the wash cloth and the bowl of water, she was dirty and she stank. Her filthy hair was tangled and I could not get the comb through it, or rather, I could but she pinched my arm so viciously when I pulled at the tangles that I stopped trying.

Her favourite punishment was to box my ears. I usually tried to dodge so that she hit the left one, which she had already damaged. That way I might emerge from my time with her still with one good ear.

I don’t know what poor Cerdic made of it, although I can make an accurate guess. He was, as I’ve said, a good worker and there was always plenty for him to do. Goda was demanding, forever wanting to be brought something new for her house or some little personal present, and in a way that made it easier for him because to acquire the things she wanted he had to earn more money. She was quite capable of working that out for herself and so could not complain if her husband was out far more often than he was in. As far as she knew, he was off on a job somewhere.

If I knew different — and I had my ways of keeping an eye on what was happening around me — then I kept it to myself. Goda did not really deserve a man like Cerdic and in her present state she offered no inducement whatsoever for him to come home in the evening until after she was in her bed and snoring (with advanced pregnancy she had to sleep on her back and made a noise like a boar being throttled). No, I didn’t blame Cerdic for avoiding his wife. I only envied him from the bottom of my heart because that option was not available for me.

I fought self-pity all the time, and never more so than when Midsummer’s Eve was approaching. I remembered how, earlier in the year, I had calculated that the baby could have been born round about now and I would be released from my servitude with my sister and sent home to Aelf Fen. But nothing happened, other than that Goda tried to punch my face when I asked if I might go out to join the people of Icklingham in their midsummer celebrations.

I skipped out of the way and her angry, frustrated fist swung on empty air. And I went out anyway. As part of my instruction with Edild she had shown me how to brew up a mild sedative and it was now summer, a time when the plants, fresh, green and vibrant with life, are at their most potent. Perhaps I ought to have taken this into account more than I did, for the drink that I carefully prepared and fed to my red-faced, sweaty and heaving sister knocked her out as if she’d been poleaxed. For quite a long time I stood there staring down at her, all sorts of questions running through my mind. I’d used cowslips as my main ingredient but I’d added dill and just a tiny amount of hemlock, which Edild had frequently warned me was poisonous. And what about the incantation I had murmured as I worked? I thought I’d remembered the words correctly and in the right order, but I could have made a mistake. . But it was all right, Goda was still breathing, and I muttered a prayer of gratitude. I might not like her but I’ve never actually wanted to kill her, especially when she carried an innocent new life inside her.

It was twilight on Midsummer’s Eve. Goda was sound asleep and I had sufficient faith in my skills to know that she was very unlikely to wake before morning. Cerdic had not yet returned; I guessed he had gone straight from his work to his regular retreat in his cousin’s house on the other side of the village, where he’d probably stay till he thought it was safe to come home.

I slipped into the lean-to and hastily set about making myself as neat and tidy as time and circumstance allowed. I took off my gown and beat it hard with the flat of my hand until the dust came out of it in clouds. The woven fabric was soft and floppy with long wear and it had gone into holes in various places, but I was deft with a needle and the darns were all but invisible unless you looked really closely. My under-tunic was only two days on and still looked crisp and fresh where it showed in the neck of my gown. I fastened the laces down the sides of my gown, pulling them tight in an attempt to give myself some shape. I unwound my hair from its plait and brushed and brushed it till its smooth texture under my hand suggested it might be shining. Then I pinched my cheeks to put some colour in them, took Elfritha’s beautiful shawl from its hiding place under my bed and, having arranged it decoratively around my shoulders, went out into the softly falling darkness.

Midsummer is my favourite festival of all. Granny says I’m a midsummer person, born on the eve of the solstice, and that’s why I have an affinity with the season. I’m not entirely sure what she means but I think I agree. I wished, as I hurried through the gathering darkness, that I was home in Aelf Fen, because in our village we certainly know how to celebrate the Sun’s position high above us in the sky and the presence of the light in all its glory. But I wasn’t. I was in Icklingham, among people I hadn’t even known four months ago.

I need not have worried. They might not know me very well either but they knew who I was and what I was doing in their village. From the kindness and sympathy I received in such full measure that lovely night, I gathered the impression that they didn’t think much of my sister, and that was putting it mildly.

They had prepared a huge bonfire in a clearing on the edge of the village and they lit it as the first stars appeared in the sky. The clearing had been decorated with foliage, chiefly branches of oak since this was the supreme night of the Oak King and tomorrow he must begin to lose way before the coming of the dark and the Holly King, ruler of the winter solstice. For that reason, midsummer is always tinged with sadness for me, since from then on the light fades.

The sadness, however, was in abeyance for the moment. It was so wonderful to be out of Goda’s house and away from the sight, smell and even the sound of her — if she was awake she was nagging and sniping at me; if asleep, she snored and farted — that I would have enjoyed even the most modest celebration. There was nothing modest about Icklingham’s festivities, however. Soon I had a mug of ale in my hand, a garland of flowers on my head and a boy was shouting above the cheerful laughing, singing voices that the music would soon begin and who was going to dance with him?