by Alys Clare
His ancestor. Of course. From all Sibert’s talk of sorcerers in the family, I had pretty much worked that out. I forced myself back to the perilous present; Romain was watching Sibert’s hands and I knew that he had guessed what Sibert was guarding.
As I stared at the crown in its leather bag beneath Sibert’s tunic, I had the strange thought that it was neither Romain nor Sibert who was controlling events. It was the crown, steadily sending out its power and driving both the man and the youth to madness. For a frightening moment as my eyes flashed from one to the other, I recognized neither of them. Romain’s handsome face was ugly with urgent greed and Sibert – oh, Sibert looked like a man of forty, thin, haggard, lined and grey.
I screamed in horror.
Romain lunged for Sibert, the knife in his right hand. I did not think for an instant that Sibert would stand his ground. For one thing, I had already seen he wasn’t much of a fighter and for another, only a fool faces up to a man with a knife when he himself is unarmed.
Sibert was unarmed but he was possessed. I watched, horrified, as the crown commanded his actions. He stood like stone and I sensed the power of the crown throb and thrum in the air. Romain leapt at him and even as the knife flashed in its descent, Sibert acted. He was considerably taller than Romain and this, together with the fact that Romain had jumped up and was now coming down again, gave Sibert the one advantage that he had.
I do not think to this day that Sibert would have realized this for himself. He was, as I have said, possessed, and the crown was thinking for him.
But there was no knowing precisely what the crown had in mind so, just to be on the safe side, I added some advice of my own. I cried out, ‘Now, Sibert! Get your leg up!’
As Romain descended on Sibert, the knife in one hand and the other stretched out to grab Sibert’s shoulder, Sibert calmly raised his knee. It caught Romain between the legs and I winced at the force of the impact. Romain gave a great cry of agony and fell on to his left side. The knife flew out of his hand and Sibert went over to pick it up. Staring down at Romain, he gave a curt nod. Then he looked at me and said, ‘Let’s go.’
I wanted so much to stay. Romain had failed and Sibert had the crown; at that moment all my sympathies were with Romain. Not only had he lost the treasure he had tried so hard to win but he’d also lost what he had hoped to acquire with it. He had, in short, lost his future.
But if I had not aided Sibert against him, I reasoned with myself, fighting back my tears, then he would have lost his life. He’d been in danger – Granny said so, and now I had seen it for myself. I couldn’t have let him die, for he meant far too much to me.
I stood over him, watching as he rolled to and fro in a futile attempt to ease the pain, settling on his back with his knees clutched to his chest. There was nothing I could do.
I turned away and set off after Sibert.
We did the journey in three marches. That night we slept deep in woodland just short of the road we’d been heading for and the next night we were on the fringe of the Thetford Forest. Early in the evening of the third day, we were approaching the place where our roads diverged.
‘I’m not coming all the way to Aelf Fen,’ I said wearily. The idea of the long miles I still had to cover before I reached Icklingham was daunting but it was even further to Aelf Fen. I’d been tempted to go on to the village with Sibert and knock on my aunt Edild’s door to beg a bed for the night – after all, I’d used her as my excuse for absenting myself from Goda’s house – but I thought I had better not involve her in any other way. If Goda ever checked up on me, that would be a different matter but otherwise, the less anybody knew about where I’d been and why, the better. As far as Edild and everyone else in Aelf Fen were aware, I was over in Icklingham looking after my sister.
Sibert and I stood eyeing each other. We had shared so much and we had done a momentous thing. Were we thieves, in the eyes of the law? I did not know. Romain would say that we were, and only a couple of weeks before he would have had some justification, in that what Sibert carried in his leather bag had been hidden on Romain’s land. But now the king had taken the manor and everything in it, so in truth, I supposed, we had stolen from him.
It was alarming, to say the least.
I reassured myself with the thought that morally, if in no other way, the crown belonged to Sibert as the descendant of the man who had made it. I had longed to ask him about this all the long miles of our journey home but he had changed. The Sibert who possessed the crown – or, more likely, it was the crown that possessed him – was not a man of whom you could ask unwelcome questions, and every sense told me that this was not a matter he wished to discuss with me.
I turned away, leaving him standing at the crossroads, and headed off down the track to Icklingham. I was dog tired, my feet ached, I was hungry, thirsty, filthy dirty and my face was hot and prickly with sunburn. I had done what I had been asked, and what had I got for my troubles? Nothing.
I trudged on, deep in self-pity.
But then as I drew near to my destination and at last a proper bed to sleep in, I realized that I was wrong. I had got something, and its value far outweighed money or treasure.
Romain – who, I admitted to myself, I liked so much that it felt like love – had been in deadly peril. Death had shadowed him and I had seen its black cloud over his handsome head as we stood by the sea sanctuary. Somehow the crown had endangered him; that was where the threat lay. By my actions I had seen to it that Romain and the crown were kept apart.
I had saved his life.
Happy, smug in this secret knowledge of my own power and skill that could outwit death, finally I got to Goda’s house. It was fully dark now and I could hear my sister’s snores. I didn’t look to see if Cerdic was home – it didn’t really matter – and, being as quiet as I could, I let myself into the lean-to and fell on to my bed.
It had taken Romain some time before he felt able to straighten out his curled body. Whenever he risked movement, the pain ripped up from his groin with such ferocity that it was as if Sibert’s knee was driving into him all over again. Slowly, agonizingly, he rolled on to his side, then up on to hands and knees. Then he tried to stand up.
Besides the injury, however, he was suffering from dehydration and he had not eaten anything of any substance for hours. He had raced along the track in pursuit of Sibert and the crown; he had been in a fight that had left him badly hurt. His blistered foot was a constant agony, throbbing in repeated waves of pain in time with his fast heartbeat. It was little wonder, then, that the moment he was upright, his head began to swim and he fainted.
When he came back to himself he was lying on his left side, knees drawn up, his face pressed into the soft ground. He tried to remember how he had got there. He felt dizzy, sick and disoriented and his memory would not oblige him.
When eventually he recalled the events of the recent past, he groaned aloud. They had deceived him, that crafty youth and the skinny girl who looked so young and scared but whose true nature was so very different. They had crept out of the sleeping place in the night, gone back to the sanctuary and stolen his crown. He had tried to fight the lad to regain it but he had failed and they had escaped him. Now they were somewhere on the road ahead and, injured and sick as he was, there was little chance that he could overtake them.
Little chance? he thought. There was no chance at all, for by now they would be deep in those pestilential, haunted Fens and he knew he would be hard put to follow and find them.
Very cautiously he sat up. The swimming sensation flooded back but he gritted his teeth and endured it. When it faded a little, he tried once again to stand up. This time he succeeded.
‘What should I do?’ he said aloud. ‘I must have my crown’ – it was the one thought that was in his mind, banging insistently against his skull until he thought he would go mad – ‘and so I have no choice but to follow them.’
His footsteps dragged as he made his slow way over to where the path emerg
ed from beneath the dark shadow of the trees. It was then that he knew he was no longer alone.
He could not identify the sound that had set his nerves tingling and jangling with fear. Was it a footstep? A soft intake of breath? He stood quite still, heart hammering, sweat breaking out on his body, and listened.
The silence ached around him.
His control broke and he yelled, ‘Where are you? Come out and show yourself!’
Not a sound.
I am being stupid, he tried to tell himself. There’s no one there or, if there is, it’s some poacher up to no good and probably far more frightened of me than I am of him.
But in his heart he knew that this was no poacher.
He believed he knew who it was and the thought terrified him.
‘I haven’t got it!’ he cried, a sob in his voice. ‘The boy and the girl took it and now they are far away!’
He stared around him, eyes wide and wild. He thought he saw movement and spun his head so swiftly to look more closely that the threatening faintness came rushing back.
He fought down the nausea and went on staring.
It seemed to him that there was something black creeping out from under the trees. He blinked and it vanished.
‘Where are you?’ he sobbed again. ‘Show yourself!’ Whatever horror lurked there out of the deep past, it would be better to face it, to see what it was.
Wouldn’t it?
He thought he smelt the sea. Oh, dear God, what was it? Some dread magic conjured up by the sorcerers of old? Some projection of their vast, unearthly power, disguised as the terrible dragon whose roar gave Drakelow its name?
‘Help me,’ he whimpered. ‘Oh, God, help me!’
They – it – had come for the stolen treasure. He knew it. He was the thief, for all that he did not have the crown. Dark, frightful and all-knowing powers such as these, whatever they were, knew who was to blame.
They blamed him.
And they had come for him. They had followed him stealthily all the way from the sea and now they would take him.
With a moan of pure terror, Romain sank to his knees. Holding up his clasped hands as if in prayer, he wept. ‘Spare me!’ he begged. ‘Oh, spare me!’
There was a whistling noise, as if something heavy was flying through the air. The pain burst with unbelievable, agonizing force inside Romain’s head and then the dark took him.
TWELVE
In the morning I entertained my grumpy and by now all but immobile sister to a lively account of my week back in Aelf Fen. She didn’t seem particularly interested but all the same I elaborated and embroidered my tale, describing this person’s concussion, that person’s severe bruising and how I had helped Edild reduce a fracture. In the end Goda shouted at me to shut my mouth, get on with cleaning the house and then fetch her something to eat.
Meekly I did as I was told. The house certainly needed cleaning and it looked as if whoever had been keeping an eye on my sister during my absence – probably the village midwife – had contented herself with the briefest of visits and done no more than make sure Goda was still alive and not giving birth. As I worked I continued to volunteer further details about life back in Aelf Fen until Goda lost her temper and threw a wooden platter at me. Advanced pregnancy had, however, weakened her aim and the platter’s trajectory was feeble. I ducked it with the ease of long practice.
I decided it would do no harm to describe my fictitious stay in Aelf Fen to Cerdic, too. I wanted to make sure that if ever anyone accused me of having journeyed all the way to the coast south of Dunwich where I assisted in the theft of a gold crown, at least two people would protest that I couldn’t possibly have done because I was staying with and helping my aunt Edild. I reminded myself that if the day ever came when more verification was called for, I must enlist Edild’s help too so that she supported my story as well.
I was, however, quietly confident that no such day would ever come.
It came two days later.
I had been occupied in the mammoth and complicated task of changing the rough and worn sheets on Goda’s bed. The task was well overdue and exhausting right from the start, when I had to help her to get up and sit on the bench by the hearth. Immediately she began to harangue me for not working fast enough. The bed was horrible and I won’t describe exactly in what way. I stripped it, put the straw mattress outside the door and gave it a vigorous beating. Then I sponged down the sacking that covered it, opened one end and stuffed in some fresh sprigs of pennyroyal to discourage the fleas. I took the sheets down to the stream and plunged them into the water, then picked up Goda’s block of lye-and-tallow soap and began rubbing it into the worst of the stains.
I had the sheets washed, rinsed and spread out on gorse bushes to dry when I heard the sound of horses’ hooves. Looking up, my heart beating fast in alarm, I saw three of the lord’s men riding into the village. They were bareheaded – clearly not expecting the least sign of trouble in a small village full of humble people minding their own business – and their surcoats were maroon and bore a device in black. Even if they weren’t expecting trouble, all the same each of them had a sword at his side.
They went to my sister’s house and I knew they had come for me. They went inside, stayed for a short while, then one of them came hurrying out again, leapt on to his horse and rode away. Was he going to check on my story?
I cursed myself. Why hadn’t I gone on to Aelf Fen with Sibert that night and spoken to Edild? She would back me up, I knew it, but she could not if she didn’t know I needed her to! Oh, what an idiot I had been.
I waited, holding my breath.
I heard my sister screech, ‘Lassair! Come here!’
I went.
I had left her sitting on the bench in nothing but her shift, stretched impossibly tight across her swollen belly and none too clean. I had intended to see to her once the sheets were drying, and for now she was sweaty, smelly and greasy-faced, her hair hanging in sticky rats’ tails and so dulled by dirt that its bright carroty-red colour was totally hidden. I felt a stab of sympathy for her, as this was no condition in which any woman would wish to greet two well-dressed, important men.
The sympathy was short-lived. ‘What have you done?’ she yelled at me as I stepped through the door. ‘You’re in for a beating, my girl, bringing shame to an honest household, and I’ll—’
One of the men – the elder of the two – held up an imperious hand and my sister fell silent, her mouth left hanging open.
‘You are Lassair?’ he asked.
I tried to read his expression but his face was bland and gave nothing away.
‘I am.’
‘Your sister here tells us you have recently been at Aelf Fen.’
‘Yes, that’s right. I was staying with my aunt, her name’s Edild and she’s a healer, and we were—’
Again he held up his hand. ‘So I am given to understand. I have sent one of my company to verify the truth of what you say.’
I said nothing. Across the miles that separated us, I was concentrating on feverishly willing Edild to back me up.
‘You are required to come with us to Aelf Fen,’ he stated baldly.
To my own village? Why? I wondered frantically. If as I suspected all this flurry of activity was because they’d found the crown, then why did I have to go to Aelf Fen when the act of theft had been at Drakelow? But then I thought, ah, yes, but the crown is with Sibert, and he’s at Aelf Fen.
I almost blurted out the question that they must have known I was desperate to ask. But somehow I managed to hold it back. I was innocent, I reminded myself firmly. I had been nowhere near Drakelow but closeted with my aunt Edild, helping her in her healing work. Innocent people did not demand anxiously why they were wanted. Confident that it could be for no sinister purpose, they simply smiled and said, very well.
Which was exactly what I did.
They were obviously in a hurry because they were not content to go at my walking pace. Instead the younger man s
wung up into the saddle of his great chestnut horse and, bending down and catching me under the arms, lifted me up and sat me down in front of him. Then both men put spurs to their mounts and we were off, cantering smartly in the direction of Aelf Fen.
All the way there I was thinking about Sibert.
How could I help him? If they suspected what he – we – had done, how could I defend him? Perhaps he, like me, had prepared a good story and, if what I dreaded had happened and they had accused him of stealing the crown, he would be able to hold his head high and offer proof that he had been nowhere near Dunwich.
Then it would be Romain’s word – for surely it could only be he who had brought the accusations – against Sibert’s and mine. Two against one, but the trouble was that the one was a rich Norman lord’s son. A rich lord, however, I reminded myself, who had just fallen so far out of favour with the king that his manor, his lands and his property had been seized.
Perhaps it did not look quite so bad after all.
I concentrated very hard on making my expression sweet and innocent. A decent girl, hard-working, caught in the act of helping her pregnant sister and only lately returned from a stint of dedicated nursing and healing with her aunt; that was the way they must see me.
Trying like fury to send a mental message to Edild – When they ask, support me! Oh, please, Edild, say I’ve been with you the whole time! – all too soon we were riding into Aelf Fen.
I had never seen so many people gathered together in my village. We do not have a central meeting point such as I had seen the villagers enjoy at Icklingham, for Aelf Fen is, as the name implies, a Fenland village and grew up, I suppose, from a series of dwellings constructed over time above the upper line of the tidal wash. There have always been dwellings there, we know that, and sometimes when people dig over a new piece of ground they find evidence of ancient houses, circular where ours are rectangular, huddled close together as if in fear of the great world beyond. The track sweeps through the village in a sort of wiggle, with the little houses situated on one side and the wetter ground leading down to the water in the other. Such was the avid curiosity of the villagers this morning that some of them, standing at the rear of the crowd, were ankle-deep in black, muddy water.