Out of the Dawn Light

by Alys Clare

  I knew that voice. I spun round and there was Granny, leaning on the gatepost with a smile like the midday sun on her round face. I was so pleased to see her, so relieved that she had come back to us, that I did not stop to think but rushed at her and wrapped my arms around her. Too forcefully – she gasped and instantly I loosened my hold.

  ‘That’s better!’ she said with a grin. ‘You may be only thirteen, child, but you’re growing fast, you’re well-made and strong as a boy.’

  I basked in her praise. I like it when people say I’m like a boy. I wish I had been born a boy and I dread the day when my courses start and I have to start prinking and fussing and behaving like a woman, as my mother says. I suppose I’ll grow great big breasts like Goda’s too, although Elfritha is still quite flat-chested and she’s more than a year older than me.

  I was still hugging my granny. ‘I thought you might not come back,’ I whispered.

  She patted my cheek. ‘Well, I do like it over at Alvela’s,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Morcar’s making good money now and they have meat at least once a week. They provided me with a feather pillow, too.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She must have picked up my dejection and she stopped teasing me. ‘But this is my home, child,’ she added softly. ‘How many times must I tell you? I was born here in Aelf Fen and so were all my ancestors, right back into the ancient times. This is where I belong and I won’t leave till I make my final journey.’

  I did not want to think about that. ‘We’re having a feast tonight,’ I said, taking her hand and leading her inside the house. ‘Mother got together a bit of a bite for Cerdic’s kin after the wedding but she’s saving the best for later.’ I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. ‘We were hoping that you might accept the best place by the fire and tell us a story.’

  She sighed. ‘Oh, Lassair, child, I really don’t think I’m up to it,’ she said mournfully. ‘I’m very tired – it’s a long way from Breckland and the carter dropped me off at the fen edge, so I had to walk the last few miles – and I think I might turn in early.’

  ‘But—’ I began. But she was my grandmother, my revered elder, and out of the respect that was her due I knew I was not allowed to protest at anything she decided. ‘Very well,’ I said meekly.

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Granny chuckled. ‘Silly girl. Don’t you know your old Granny at all? What, miss a feast, with my daughter-in-law’s excellent grub and my son’s mead? Oh, no. Dear Lassair, child, I’ll be telling stories all night.’

  Although I was sorry that Romain did not return and almost but not quite as sorry that Sibert had evidently slumped off home, I had to admit that the evening was wonderful and it was lovely to be just the family. We had all held such high hopes of what life in our little house would be like after Goda had gone and if that first night were to prove typical, then not one of us was going to be disappointed.

  Granny sat by the fire in the traditional storyteller’s place. Even had she not been so uniquely gifted, the seat was hers because she was the eldest, although that had never stopped Goda from trying to usurp her. Not that Granny had let her. My father sat opposite, my mother beside him on the bench. He reached out and took her hand and she gave him a loving glance. He nodded and raised his bushy eyebrows, as if to say, this is good, isn’t it, and she put up her free hand and gently touched his cheek. It looked as if my siblings and I were going to have to do our we’ve-all-suddenly-gone-deaf act later on.

  Haward, Elfritha, Squeak and I sat on the floor in a semicircle round the hearth and Leir lay asleep in his cradle. Then Granny began.

  She did not go on all night but, all the same, nobody could have complained. She recounted some of the favourite tales – Lassair the Sorceress, child of the Fire and the Air, had her moment, as she so often does when I am there to listen – and so did Sigbehrt the Mighty Oak. Granny’s voice always breaks when she speaks of him and his great valour, how he risked and lost his own life defending his king and trying to save his kindred, but then he was her best-loved brother so she is entitled to a tear or two.

  She finished with a tale that I had not heard before and at the time I did not know what had prompted her. ‘Now it was our ancestor Aelfbryga who first led her people here to Aelf Fen,’ she began in a sing-song, chanting tone that for some reason sent a delicious shiver through me. ‘Her daughter Aelfburga took as her husband Aedelac the Spearsman, and they had many children. Their two eldest sons were Berie and Beofor, who were very close in age and fierce rivals from their cradle days. As they grew through boyhood to manhood, their violent quarrels reached such a pitch that the Elders drew together in council and, with the blessing of the boys’ parents, made the difficult decision to send one of the young men away. A series of five tests of strength was devised and the victor was to be allowed to choose whether to stay at Aelf Fen or, with a bag of gold in his hand, be sent to make his fortune elsewhere. The boys were similar in strength and stature but Berie, the elder son, was cunning and clever and not above subterfuge. He it was who bested his brother by three challenges to two and he elected to remain at Aelf Fen, and out of his loins sprang a great line of wise women and cunning men, as well as herbalists, healers, and rune casters. The brothers and sisters of these rarefied beings, content with a more earthly lot, were farmers, fishermen, fowlers and shepherds, who husbanded the land in much the same way as we their descendants still do today.’

  ‘What happened to Beofor?’ Haward demanded, eyes wide in the firelight and his stammer quite forgotten as he sat entranced.

  Granny smiled down at him. ‘He wandered for many moons and had many adventures, and finally he settled on the coast, in a very special place that called out to him in a magical voice that sounded like the deep murmuring roar of a dragon. There he took two wives and fathered many children and’ – the transition was so smooth and so unexpected that I for one did not suspect a thing – ‘that is quite enough for one night and now I am going to bed.’

  We all went about our little rituals for the end of the day. Just before I lay down on my cot, I slipped outside to sniff the night air and look at the stars. I could not resist a quick glance up the track – it was just possible that Romain, perhaps unable to find a bed for the night, might return and beg our hospitality. But the path was empty, the settlement silent and still.

  I sensed someone beside me.

  ‘He won’t come back here,’ Granny said softly.

  I was about to pretend I didn’t know who she was talking about but there really was no point. ‘Oh.’ Then: ‘How did you know?’

  She took my hand and gave it a little shake. ‘I saw you earlier. I was just coming back to the village and I stood watching you from over there.’ She nodded towards where the path went through a stand of willows.

  ‘Oh,’ I said again.

  She hesitated, then said, ‘Don’t waste your hopes on him, Lassair child.’

  ‘But he’s so handsome!’ The foolish words had burst out of me before I could check them.

  Granny sighed. ‘Handsome he may be, but he is not a man to whom my beloved granddaughter should go giving her heart.’

  ‘But—’ I began.

  She did not register my interruption. Dreamily, as if she spoke out of a trance, she murmured, ‘Nor indeed should any young woman, for he walks in shadow.’

  ‘In shadow?’ I repeated, my words a terrified whisper. ‘Wh–what sort of shadow, Granny?’

  At last she turned to meet my eyes. ‘The shadow of death.’

  TWO

  The autumn went on and the days got steadily colder and shorter. We all worked hard, none more so than my poor father. The demands of our ruthless Norman overlord were diluted down through several tiers before they reached our lowly level, and indeed our local master, Lord Gilbert de Caudebec, was not too hard on us, being a chubby, indolent man who relied heavily on his reeve – who was chilly, self-contained but basically fair – and tended to leave us alone. Nevertheless we were left in no
doubt as to what our fate would be if the rigid rules were not obeyed. The few elders who could remember what life had been like before the Conquest spoke wistfully (and very quietly) of the good old days. Most of us had known nothing but the Norman rule and could only take their word for it.

  My parents, however, succeeded in shutting out the cruel world every evening when my father closed and fastened the door. The seven of us (eight if you counted the baby) settled down to life without Goda as contentedly and as cheerfully as we had anticipated and, in due course, I forgot Granny’s awful warning about my handsome man.

  I did not, however, forget about him.

  He had come to Goda and Cerdic’s wedding, I reasoned, and so surely he must be acquainted with one or other family. He didn’t know us, so therefore his attendance must have been on Cerdic’s behalf. There was little point in asking around in the village to see if anyone knew more about him than I did, although this didn’t stop me. The only person who even appeared to know who I was talking about was the old man who had shared Sibert’s straw bale – he’s my mother’s friend Ella’s father-in-law’s brother – who muttered something to the effect that the ‘shiny well-dressed little cockerel’ had talked with him and Sibert for some time.

  I found his attitude disrespectful so I went off in a huff and didn’t ask him any more.

  I saw little of Sibert. For some reason he seemed to be keeping himself to himself and when we did happen to meet, he did his best to pretend I wasn’t there. Well, I don’t care, I wanted to shout into his frowning face with its preoccupied expression, these days it’s a better man than you that I see when I close my eyes at night!

  In any case, life was becoming too full and too exciting for me to spare either man all that many moments. I was newly apprenticed to my fascinating aunt Edild, and Edild is a herbalist and a healer.

  She lives in a little house on the fringes of Aelf Fen, by herself apart from a cat, some hens and a nanny goat and quite content with life. Her living space is even smaller than ours but, despite the lack of space, I really love it because Edild has a talent for making a place seem welcoming, homely and secure. Her low door opens into a little room whose beaten-earth floor is always immaculately swept, and the central hearth in its ring of evenly sized stones either contains a fire, burning merrily, or else is laid with logs and kindling and all ready to be lit. Edild sets bunches of herbs to smoulder in among the firewood and I would know her little house blindfold for its sweet scent; in addition to the burning bunches of herbs, the shelves in her house are laden with her remedies and she stores the ingredients in sacks kept in a special wooden box. She has fashioned a narrow platform to the rear of her house and up there, reached by a little ladder, she sleeps in a nest of regularly washed linen and soft woollen covers.

  Her garden was always tidily kept and even now, as October gave way to November, you just knew there were bulbs and seeds safely tucked up beneath the smooth brown soil just waiting for spring to bring them back to life. Her reputation had spread beyond the settlement and not many days passed without someone tapping on her door to ask advice, on anything from piles to the suspicion that a neighbour was doing some ill-wishing. Strictly speaking, I was not meant to be privy to Edild’s consultations with her visitors but the cottage was small and sometimes I just couldn’t help overhearing.

  It was Granny who had suggested my apprenticeship with my aunt. Granny, as well as knowing all about the ancestors, is very knowledgeable about the living, in particular her three sons (Ordic and Alwyn, fishermen and fowlers, and my father, whose name is Wymond and who is an eel catcher) and her two daughters Alvela (the one who’s the widow of nice Matthew and mother to my taciturn cousin Morcar) and Edild. She knows their strengths and their weaknesses; she also has an uncanny way of appreciating who is likely to get on with whom. She knows, for example, that my uncle Ordic puts a deep, dark fear into my brother Haward so that his stutter gags him to silence when Ordic is about.

  I often wonder if Granny suggested my vocation because she knows about the dowsing. Not that I knew it was called that, not till she spoke of it to me. As far as I was concerned, it was just something I could do, in the way other children could wiggle their ears, raise one eyebrow or turn a line of handsprings. My talent is being able to find things. I knew where my mother’s pewter brooch was when it fell off her tunic into the woodpile. Out in the pasture I found a coin with a woman’s face on it. I know where water is, not that there’s any great skill in that when you live in the Fens, but actually I can find water sources that are hidden deep in the earth. All I have to do is focus my mind, hold out my hands and sort of feel the ground before me. When I approach the object of the search, whether it’s water or a lost object, my palms begin to tingle and after that it’s easy. Granny saw me mucking about with my friends one day and asked me quite sharply what I thought I was doing. When I told her, there was a sudden bright light in her eyes and she gave me a wide smile. Then she grabbed my hand and hurried me away to the hazel grove, where, after a bit of muttering to the tree and some funny movements with her hand, she broke off a little branch, stripped off the twigs and the leaves and then split one end. She pushed the split ends in my hands, turned me round, gave me a shove and said, ‘Now, walk. Tell me if anything happens.’

  Excited, strangely fearful, I walked. After a few moments the hazel rod started trembling. Then it bucked and spun in my hands, so violently that I dropped it. I turned to Granny, aghast.

  I didn’t know it, but she had made me walk across the line of a stream that runs deep underground beneath the path that leads out of the village.

  I hurried to pick up the stick, holding it out to her in the full expectation of a scolding. But instead she came to stand beside me, gave me a hard hug and said, ‘Child, you’re a dowser.’

  Even apart from my peculiar skill, Granny knew that Edild and I would get on and we do. We have similar colouring and we look alike – sometimes people take us for mother and daughter – and we laugh at the same things, finding amusement in the incongruous and sometimes, it has to be said, in the vulgar and the frivolous. Not that Edild ever shows this light-hearted, laughing side to those who come seeking her help; it is an indication of how well we understand one another that she has never had occasion to tell me not to appear in the presence of a patient with anything but a serious face and a studious, intent manner.

  Since the late summer Edild had been instructing me in an overview of her craft. I have learned about the main healing herbs and how to prepare and use them, the making of amulets and talismans and the composition and reciting of charms. She also explained to me the workings of the human body, male as well as female, which I must admit caused me to blush more than once despite the fact that, like all country children who grow up cheek by jowl with their family’s animals, I first witnessed the mystery of procreation when I was still learning to walk. Still, animals mating is one thing; people, quite another. Now, as the winter days grew short and the darkness waxed, Edild began teaching me about the stars and their influence on everything – people, animals, plants – that lives under the great bowl of the sky.

  ‘I have cast your web of destiny, Lassair,’ she said to me one bright morning. ‘We shall use the knowledge that it provides as a basis for our discussion on how the planets guard us, guide us and, indeed, make us what we are.’ I like that about Edild; even when the lesson consisted of her talking and me silently listening, she still calls it a discussion. ‘You are air and fire,’ she went on, ‘and you live in your mind and not your body. You are restless, drawing on a great well of energy, and in time you will perceive and penetrate the web that connects all of life. You will brim over with creativity and new ideas and you will be brave, uncompromising and direct, yet possess the ability to conceal your true self with a plausible false skin.’ Yes, that bit sounded like me; I had always been a good liar. ‘You are essentially a private person, and your friends and your lovers’ – I blushed violently – ‘will sense that
they are never truly close to you. You must learn to distinguish between independence, which is admirable, especially in a woman, and its darker face, isolation.’

  ‘But I’m not isolated!’ I protested. I felt the urgent need to lighten the mood. ‘I live in a tiny cottage with seven other people!’

  Edild regarded me, her green eyes solemn. Then, ignoring my foolish comment and my nervous little laugh, she went on, ‘At the time of your birth, the Sun, the Moon and the planets were all in signs of air and fire. You are water-lacking, so that the turmoil of emotions experienced by others will be incomprehensible to you, and you are also earth-lacking, and will thus have little sense of being grounded firmly in the good Earth.’

  I was never going to achieve closeness with people, even my lovers. I would never understand emotion, presumably not even my own. Oh, it sounded bitter. My dismay must have shown in my face for Edild reached out and took my hand, squeezing it in her own.

  ‘Look,’ she said brightly after a moment. ‘Look at your chart, Lassair.’ She spread out a large square of vellum, beautifully marked with a big circle divided into segments and dotted with intriguing little signs and symbols. ‘This is the moment of your birth, in the early pre-dawn light of the twentieth of June, in the year 1074, and this is where the planets were positioned.’ I followed the long finger with its short, clean nail as she pointed. There were the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, marked on my web of destiny as if for that instant of my birth, their sole purpose had been to make me what I was. It was an awesome thought.