by Alys Clare
I straightened up, stepped a deliberate pace away from Sibert and closed my eyes.
It was far, far worse with my eyes shut. The force lines that I had sensed whirling and spinning around us became visible behind my eyelids and they were harshly coloured, jagged and shocking. They touched on my bare arm and I felt as if I had been cut. I wanted to cry out, to scream, but I controlled myself. I wish you no harm, I tried to say silently to whatever it was that fought me, but it was a lie and the power out there must have known it; I did mean harm, for I intended to locate the hidden thing that the men of old had placed there so that Sibert could take it away.
I gathered my puny strength and fought back. Now they used different weapons, playing on my mind. My eyes were still tightly closed but yet I seemed to see the shore stretching away before me. The sea was out there; I could smell it and hear it and it was angry. Dawn was near and the sky in the east was lemon yellow, steadily filling with flame-coloured streaks. There was a ship on the horizon, sailing in out of the light. As yet she was just a black outline, but I could see by her profile that she was a longship and her proud prow was in the shape of a dragon. She was beautiful and graceful, but she brought horror.
I was so afraid, for I knew what her crew had come for.
Then I saw other men, behind me on the shore. One of them was a king, his high forehead bound with a narrow silver circlet. Beside him was a robed figure of dark aspect and I knew him to be a sorcerer, for magic hummed and thrummed around him and he glowed faintly as if lit from within. Lines of brilliant blue-white light ran across his body, down his arms and legs and out into the wild air of the shore, stretching away to link with other lines until they joined to make a vast web connecting everything and everyone on the earth.
The sorcerer carried something in his outstretched hands. Something in which he had captured his own power, for it shone brightly in the first rays of the rising sun.
Behind them a procession of figures slowly paced. On they came, on, on, until they reached the sea sanctuary. Still they came on, and the king and his sorcerer stopped beside the upturned stump. The king nodded and the sorcerer bent down, placing the object he held so reverently in his hands into the tree . . .
. . . where as if by magic it seemed to meld with the very wood and disappear.
The vision faded.
My downturned palms felt as if great jolts of power were shooting through them. It hurt – oh, it hurt! – but I gritted my teeth against the agony. I opened my eyes, and tears of pain ran down my face. I discovered that I was up against the tree stump, my hands close together hovering right above the strange line that Sibert had discovered.
I crouched down. The force stabbing into my hands changed, first fading and then, as I held my palms down below the etched line, suddenly coming back so strongly that at last I cried out.
‘There!’ I said, my voice not sounding like my own. ‘There! No, not where the line is, below it and to the right!’
It was as if the line had been carved into the wood as a pointer. Sibert, on his knees in the damp sand, was digging frantically like a dog after a rat, sending up showers of coarse grit. I stood at his shoulder, my hands still outstretched, enduring the pain because I had the strong sense that, if I stopped doing whatever it was I was doing – acting as a receiver, perhaps – the power would switch off and the thing would just not be there any more . . .
It was a long way beyond anything I had learned with Edild.
I did not dare ask him if he had found anything. I could not have spoken at all; the effort of holding in the scream I was so desperate to let go was such that I had clamped my jaws shut. He dug on, deeper, deeper, desperate now. I watched him, aching for him to say something, to cry out in triumph, to slump in disappointment. Above all I wanted him to stop, so that the pain I was enduring would go away.
He was still. Suddenly, after all that desperate digging, he was perfectly still.
Then, so slowly that at first I had to look closely to detect he was actually moving, he backed away from the hollow he had dug under the tree stump. He had something in his hands. It was an object, roughly circular, wrapped in an earth-stained, salt-stained, torn and ragged piece of coarse cloth.
He stood up, turning to face me.
He unwrapped the cloth.
The first rays of the new day’s sun blasted out of the dawn and found their reflection in the object in Sibert’s hands.
The object was solid gold.
ELEVEN
It was a crown. A very simple one, really no more than a heavy circle of gold, unadorned with any stone. As the sun rose above the eastern sea and the light strengthened, Sibert and I, leaning over it, our fingers exploring it and quite unable to look away, noticed that there was a faintly etched pattern of leaves.
‘Laurel leaves,’ Sibert breathed.
I looked more closely. He was right, for the leaves had the distinctive shape of the bay laurel. Edild had warned me of the power of its berries, which could make a pregnant woman abort, and she told me that a bay tree by the door warded off the plague. Chewing on the leaves was dangerous, she had warned, as it brought on violent hallucinations.
I wondered why an ancient crown should have bay leaves carved on it. My fingertips still running over the vividly intertwining pattern of leaves, I noticed something else: the lines were made up of tiny, beautifully-worked runes. Whoever had crafted this crown, whoever had harnessed his power and put it into this incredible object, had sealed it inside with a rune spell.
I began to shake. For an instant it was as if a window in my mind opened and I saw the unbelievable potency of the thing I held in my hands. I saw light, so bright that it hurt my eyes. I sensed the incredible shock as mighty forces clashed together. I heard a loud humming sound echo and bounce inside my head, as if the aftermath of a cataclysmic thunderbolt.
Then with a sort of jolt – quite a violent one – I came back to myself. The bright early light was dimmed by a bank of cloud and the crown seemed to change – diminish, somehow – until it was merely a circle of metal.
I shook myself back into the here and now.
We had found a crown. Sibert and I had Romain’s treasure in our hands. But it wasn’t Romain’s treasure now.
‘We must get way from here,’ I said urgently. ‘Wrap it up again, Sibert. Quick!’
He glanced out to sea. ‘The tide’s turned,’ he observed, ‘but we have a while yet.’
But I hadn’t meant merely that we must get away from the sea sanctuary. I thought carefully – this was a crucial moment – and then said, ‘Sibert, we have to leave the area. We ought to be well away by the time Romain wakes up.’
His blue-green eyes met mine and I thought that he understood. In case he was not entirely sure of my meaning, I added, ‘There’s only one crown and it was undoubtedly put here by your forefathers.’ I did not tell him about my vision. ‘It’s been under the tree stump for far too long to have been placed there by Fulk de la Flèche.’
‘I know.’ He nodded slowly. Then he said, ‘Romain implied he’d make sure I got my share. But he’s not going to do anything of the sort, is he?’
‘I don’t think so.’ I didn’t know, to be honest; I was probably maligning Romain, who could well have been planning to treat both his accomplices honourably and fairly. But my overriding purpose was to stop Romain in a headlong pursuit that, as far as I could see, would only have one outcome: his death.
‘We’ll go and fetch our packs and set off immediately,’ Sibert said. I could feel the nervous energy building up in him. ‘It’s mine. This’ – he hugged the crown to his chest – ‘belongs to me. I will not let him have it. I found it’ – we found it, I corrected him silently – ‘and I intend to keep it.’
We turned our backs on the timber circle, whose power, I detected, had diminished noticeably now that we had violated it and robbed it of its treasure. We hurried across the damp sand, and I was very conscious of the sea at our backs. It felt threatenin
g, and I had to keep turning round to make sure it hadn’t sneaked up on us. I pictured the water gathering itself into a mighty wave which would break over our heads, swirl us around like leaves in a mill race and then withdraw, taking our drowned bodies with it. We had made the sea very, very angry; I was quite sure of it.
We were running, racing each other in our urgency, by the time we reached the dry stream bed that led up the cliff face. We stopped to get our breath back and Sibert tucked the crown, securely wrapped once more, under his belt. Noticing my eyes on him, he said softly, ‘I have a leather bag rolled up in my pack. I’ll put the crown in it and buckle it to my belt, under my tunic. It’ll be safe there right next to my skin.’
I was worried by that. I knew very little about power objects but what I did know suggested it probably wasn’t wise to wear them right against the body for any length of time . . .
We crept up to the place where we had left Romain. He was still fast asleep and he did not stir as, very carefully and cautiously, we collected our belongings and edged away. We walked on light feet for perhaps fifty or sixty paces, keeping to the shadow of the trees in case he woke and spotted us. Then the track rounded a shallow bend and we were out of sight of our camp. Without saying a word, we broke into a run and our speed barely eased until we were almost level with Dunwich, below us on our right.
‘When we came here we emerged from that path over there,’ I gasped, panting and leaning forward, my hands on my knees, trying to get my breath back. I nodded to where a sandy track wound its way off through the thin woodland.
‘Yes,’ Sibert agreed. He was looking around, a frown on his face. ‘We should go back another way. He’ll follow us, and he’ll expect us to return via the same route we took on the way out.’
It made good sense. ‘Do you know an alternative road?’ I asked hopefully. He had been in the habit of coming here quite often, I reminded myself, and so it was quite possible.
He looked around again. Then he said, ‘Yes, I think so. We’ll go on past Dunwich and turn inland further to the north. There’s a good road that runs from Lowestoft to Diss and we can pick that up, if I can remember the way. We’ll journey westwards and cut across Thetford Forest, approaching Aelf Fen from the north-east.’
‘I have to get back to Icklingham,’ I reminded him.
‘Yes,’ he said vaguely. He sounded as if that was no concern of his. He glanced up at the sun. ‘It’s still very early. If we keep up a good speed we can be on the good road by sunset.’
I picked up his sense of haste. I could see as well as he could that if Romain picked up our trail we would be in a much safer position on a well-used road, with the presence, or at least the reasonable expectation, of fellow travellers and passers-by, than all by ourselves in the wilds.
We set off. We were not quite running but our pace was not far short of it.
Romain knew he was on the right track when he came to a place on the narrow path where some moisture remained in what had been a shallow puddle. Either they hadn’t seen it – he knew from the speed at which he had been covering the ground that they must have been hurrying – or else they believed themselves safe from pursuit. He did not much care. What was important – so very important – was that he could see two clear footprints in the mud, one of a man-sized boot, the other of a girl’s coarse, stout shoe. He could easily picture what the two of them had been wearing on their feet, having watched the footwear of all three of them slowly drying out by yesterday’s fire.
Where were they going? Romain wished he had a better knowledge of the geography of the region and the layout of its tracks and roads. The narrow, ill-defined path along which he was now pursuing Sibert and the girl – and his treasure, although he tried not to dwell on that as it made him apoplectic with rage – ran roughly north-west. Romain could make little sense of that, since Aelf Fen, where Sibert lived, and Icklingham, where the girl was lodging, were surely due west. If they are trying to put me off the scent, he thought grimly, then they have failed. And as for that simpleton’s trick of going back via a different route, what did they think he was?
He set off after them.
After the muddy footprints he had found no more signs of them and he was beginning to think he was wrong and they had returned some other way. The sun was high in the sky and, driven by thirst, for he had been running for much of the way and sweating copiously, he knew he must find water.
He came upon a tiny settlement in a clearing among the trees; one or two hovels, hens and a pig scratching in the dirt; a small child with trails of snot from nostrils to mouth sitting bare-arsed in the dirt. There was a ripe stench of ordure, either animal or human or both. The hamlet had a well, thankfully positioned a good distance away from all the shit, and as Romain approached, a fat woman was drawing water in a bucket. Holding out his cup, he asked if she would give him a drink and, after staring at him suspiciously for several moments, she nodded.
The water tasted like cool white wine in his parched mouth. He thanked her briefly, hoping she would retreat back to her hovel, but to his dismay she was disposed to chat. She perched her ample rump on the wall that ran around the well and, refilling his cup, urged him to drink some more.
‘Now there’s a thing,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I can be out here tending my little bit of land every day for a week and never see a soul, and here you are, filling your mug from my old bucket there, and you’re the third person today to do so!’
He managed to contain the flare of excitement. ‘Really?’ he replied.
‘Oh, yes,’ she assured him, nodding to emphasize her words. Leaning closer – he caught a waft of warm air and smelt unwashed flesh – she dropped her voice and said, ‘There were two of them, a youth and a girl, and the lass was quite a bit younger than the lad. I think they were runaways. Looked ever so anxious, they did. The lad kept staring back down the path as if he feared the devil was on his heels.’ She folded her arms and nodded, as if to say, What do you think of that?
Fool of a woman, Romain thought. Did it not occur to her that he could be that devil? Apparently not, for she was still chattering. ‘Pretty little thing she was, what was with him,’ she said. ‘She had lovely hair, coppery, like, but she was scrawny, not a lot of flesh on her.’ She glanced down fondly at her own large bosom. ‘But then she were young still,’ she acknowledged charitably, ‘no more than a girl.’
‘Really?’ he said again. Careful to keep a disinterested tone, he said, ‘Which way were they heading?’
She pointed. ‘Up there. Going to pick up the Diss road, I reckon.’
‘Hmm.’ He made himself drink several more slow mouthfuls. Then he wiped his cup and tucked it back inside his pack. He stretched, looked at the fat woman and said, ‘Well, I must be on my way.’
‘You’ve far to go, my lord?’ she asked.
He gave her a lazy smile. ‘Only another few miles, then I shall be home in my own hall.’
‘God’s speed,’ she said.
He sensed her eyes on his back as, forcing himself to saunter when he wanted to run, he returned to the track.
I must catch them before they reach the road. He repeated it to himself over and over, trying to dull his fatigue, his growing sense of hopelessness and the sharp, hot, constant pain of his blistered foot. He did not dare risk a look at it. He had the fearful suspicion that it was beginning to smell; did that mean infection? He did not know.
He made himself hurry on.
He heard them before he saw them. The path ran through a belt of trees and, welcoming the shade, he had been very tempted to stop and rest. He had resisted the temptation. Now, as he stared ahead to the sunshine beyond the trees, he heard voices. A young man’s voice and a girl’s.
He turned off the path and slipped through the trees, hiding behind each trunk, spying ahead to make sure he saw them before they saw him. They were moving quite slowly now and as Romain drew near he heard Sibert say, ‘It can only be a few miles now till we get on to the road, and then
we’ll—’
Romain pounced.
I picked up no warning signs and the first I knew of his presence was when he flew through the air and landed on Sibert’s back. He was making a terrible noise – a snarling, ferocious, wild-animal noise – and he was raining down such powerful blows on Sibert’s head and shoulders that I was amazed Sibert could still stand. He was taller than Romain, but Romain was broader and had a man’s muscles where Sibert had those of a boy.
Sibert, however, seemed to be possessed. Spinning round very fast, he released himself from Romain’s grip on his tunic and for a moment turned defence into attack. He got in a hard punch to Romain’s jaw that jerked his head back; I heard his teeth snap together and I think he must have bitten his tongue, for blood started to spurt from his mouth. He took a pace backwards and tripped, and Sibert was on him like a hound on a deer, knees on Romain’s chest and fists flying in the general direction of his face.
Romain was gathering himself. I could see it and I yelled, ‘Sibert, watch out, he’s up to something!’ Sibert shot me a look and then, bunching his right hand, swung it in a wide arc towards Romain’s head. Romain saw it coming – anyone would have done, Sibert didn’t seem to know much about fist-fighting – and caught it easily in his left fist. With his right, he hit Sibert very hard on the side of his head and Sibert slumped over to his right.
If he fell he would be done for. I sprang forward and got my arms under his shoulders, then using all my strength humped him first to a sitting position and then to his feet. He was very unsteady, rocking to and fro, his face white except for the vivid scarlet mark on his temple. Beyond him, I watched in horror as Romain leapt up and drew a knife.
‘I want my crown!’ he screamed.
‘It’s not yours!’ Sibert yelled back. His hands were on the leather bag concealed under his tunic. ‘You were going to rob me of it, but it’s mine, it was made by my ancestor!’