by Alys Clare
The man I was riding with deposited me – quite gently and carefully – on the ground, and then dismounted and went to join his two companions. They spoke briefly and one of them looked in my direction. There were another lord’s men there too, wearing a different device on their breasts. I counted half a dozen of them. Standing with them was a tall and burly man of perhaps thirty-five or forty, dark hair club-cut in a fringe, clean-shaven and dressed in clothes that must have been expensive but which now looked well-worn and travel-stained.
Nobody seemed particularly interested in me, although I had a feeling this state was not going to last. For now, I slipped in between two of my neighbours and tried to make myself invisible. I looked around for my family and saw my parents, my granny, my sister Elfritha and my brother Squeak. My mother held the baby. My brother Haward stood behind one of the lord’s men. He caught my eye and sent me a worried frown. I was wondering whether to slip through the crowd and go to speak to him when I saw Edild. She was standing with the rider who had been sent to question her and verify my tale of having spent the past week with her. She too caught my eye and I thought I saw her give a very small nod. Had I not been looking so anxiously for some such sign, I don’t think I would have seen it.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief and began praying fervently, saying over and over again, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
This must be the reason why the lord’s men seemed so unconcerned with me. The rider who hastened away from Goda’s house had sought out Edild and she, bless her, had backed me up without hesitation. I knew I had some explaining to do and I guessed she was none too pleased with me. But she had supported my story. At that terrifying moment, that was all I could think of.
The relief that coursed through me was short-lived for just then they brought forward Sibert. Tall though he may be, he is slim and lightly built and I could not think it really needed two heavy-handed guards to hold him. It seemed that the two different companies of manor officials had each provided their roughest, toughest guard and one stood on Sibert’s right and the other on his left. Sibert looked petrified.
The man who had questioned me in Goda’s house now stepped up on to a large wooden box that some helpful villager must have provided. He said in a loud voice, ‘An accusation of theft has been made against the young man Sibert of Aelf Fen, here before you. He has just been brought from the house of his mother and his uncle’ – I stared round frantically and there were Froya and Hrype at the back of the crowd, Froya tugging and twisting anxiously at her white linen apron, her face as pale as her light blonde hair, and Hrype scowling thunderously – ‘and he will now be searched.’
They must already have searched the cottage, I thought wildly, not that it would have taken long to rummage through the family’s few belongings in their one-roomed house. Clever Sibert, not to have hidden the crown in so obvious a place! I wondered where he had put it. Perhaps he had thought up a suitable place on our long march home – he’d passed enough time in silence to have come up with several likely spots, and—
They had dragged him out in the open where everyone could see and they were starting to pull off his clothes. He cried out in protest and started to struggle, and one of the guards hit him quite hard on the jaw. I heard a gasp and then a moan from Froya. His tunic was lifted over his head and two of the guards felt it carefully to see if anything was hidden in its folds. Someone made him lift his feet, one after the other, and they drew off his boots. Then one of the guards who had been holding him untied the drawstring around his narrow waist and his baggy breeches fell to the ground and bunched around his ankles.
Sibert stood there naked but for a leather bag that hung over his flat belly, fastened on a thin strap around his hips. In his shame he hung his head. I wished I had looked away sooner, for as I screwed my eyes shut I could still see him. His face, throat and lower arms were sunburned, dark against the pale flesh normally covered by his garments, and his body looked frail, the ribs and the collarbones very prominent. His legs were long, the sinews straight and wiry. His penis, shrivelled with his fear, hung limp beneath its thatch of fair hair.
I kept my eyes shut while silently I sent him the strongest support I could muster. If he looked up and saw me, I thought, he would see that at least one villager was not staring at him in his humiliation and—
Oh, but what was I thinking of!
I was almost weeping with sympathy for my friend because he stood stripped and shamed in front of the whole village. But that was nothing. For, obsessed and driven young man that I now knew him to be, he had not hidden the crown at all.
Perhaps he tried. Perhaps he got out to whatever place he had selected for its concealment and then when the moment came, discovered he was unable to tear himself away from it.
The little experience I had had of the crown told me that its power was such that it was more than capable of such a feat.
However it had happened, the fact remained that Sibert stood before those who had come looking for what he and I had stolen and he was carrying it – wearing it, almost – in its leather bag around his body.
I had to look.
One of the guards had unfastened the bag and was on the point of untying the thongs to see what was within. Then the burly man stepped forward and took it rather roughly from the guard’s hands. Only a man as big and powerful as he would risk that, I thought, for the guard was very broad and bore the signs of more than one fight on his coarse features. For an instant he stared at the burly man through narrowed slits of eyes, then he stepped back.
The burly man thrust his hand into the bag. He must have known full well what was in there, for the shape was unmistakable. He paused, and I saw a cruel smile twist his thin lips. Then he extracted his hand and held the crown high above his head.
There was no need for words and he said nothing. The guards closed in around Sibert as if they feared that, faced with incontrovertible truth of his guilt, he might think he had nothing to lose and try to make a run for it. I could have told them they were wrong; Sibert, I realized, was in a state that verged on total collapse and only the guards holding his arms stopped him from slumping to the ground.
Then I realized something strange. The burly man was not the only one who was suddenly mute; nobody else was speaking either. And Sibert’s guards were ashen-faced.
The little group made up of Sibert, his guards, the lord’s men and the burly man formed the centre of the crowd and they were closest to the crown. But as the burly man continued to hold it high in the air, it was as if a wave of its power broke over the rest of us. Some seemed impervious, continuing to stare blankly at the drama unfolding before them. Some – Hrype, Edild, my sister Elfritha – went so white that they looked deadly sick and I knew I must look the same. My knees shook and it was all that I could do to keep standing. There was a rushing sound in my ears and my skin felt as if it had been blasted by hot air. I wanted very much to throw up.
The invisible wave passed.
The burly man must have recovered for suddenly he was shouting in a loud, confident voice, ‘Here is the object that was stolen from me and that I now reclaim!’
Stolen from me.
I knew then who he was.
I fixed my eyes on him, using all my puny, fledgling power in an attempt to make him look at me. He did, and for the first time I stared into the glittering black eyes of the man I knew to be Baudouin de la Flèche.
It is not yours, I said silently as our gazes met. It was hidden centuries ago by men who were not of your blood. Even the feeble excuse that it lay hidden on what for a time was your land no longer applies for Drakelow is no longer yours.
I don’t know if he knew what I was thinking. Probably not, but it made me feel better to be doing something.
He stared at me blank-eyed for a moment. Then he gave a very horrible smile.
He held up his hand and at once the agitated hiss of muttered comments that had broken out among the villagers ceased. ‘Sibert of Aelf Fen he
re is guilty of theft,’ he stated forcefully. I saw one of the lord’s men step forward as if to protest, to say, perhaps, that Sibert would have to be put on trial to determine his guilt, but Baudouin de la Flèche ignored him. ‘The proof of his theft was found on his body and all here present saw it!’ He looked round as if daring us to challenge him. Nobody did.
‘There is more,’ he said, still staring round and now speaking in a low, dramatic tone that carried right to the back of the crowd. He spun round to face Sibert. Then, his face working with the violent emotion that tore through him, he shouted, ‘This young man is a murderer! He killed my nephew and he will hang!’
The horrified mutterings of the villagers rose to a crescendo and with it, blending like two lines of melody, I heard a ferocious humming like a skep of angry bees. It came from the crown, but whether it was jubilant or protesting I did not know.
The sounds climaxed inside my head to a roar. I felt dizzy with sudden violent vertigo and my knees gave way. I was vaguely aware of the ground rushing up to meet me and then everything went black.
THIRTEEN
When I came to I was lying on the floor in my own home and my mother and my aunt were bending over me. My granny sat beside the hearth, watching me very closely. I could see her deep eyes glittering. Ignoring both her and my poor mother, who had clearly been crying and was red-eyed and puffy-nosed, I grabbed Edild’s hand and said, ‘I’m so sorry! I’ll explain, I promise!’
She knew, of course, what I referred to. ‘Don’t worry about that now,’ she replied. My mother looked mystified and Edild turned to her. ‘Essa, could you find a blanket, please? Lassair’s shivering. I think it’s the shock.’
‘Of course!’ My mother leapt up. She has a lot of respect for her sister-in-law and would never dream of challenging her in her healing role. Besides, they are very fond of each other.
‘Quickly, now,’ my aunt hissed, bending low over me. ‘You’ve been with me for the past week or so, is that what you’ve said? I’ve already told them you were but we’d better agree on the details.’
‘Yes,’ I hissed back. ‘I told Goda I had to come back to the village to help you with the injured from an accident with a hay cart.’
‘The accident that happened rather longer ago than a week.’ Edild nodded. ‘Any specific injuries?’
‘I helped you with a fractured leg,’ I whispered. ‘A nasty injury, with bits of bone sticking out. I had to hold the man’s shoulders while you pulled on his leg, but you gave him something to numb the pain.’
She nodded again. ‘Otherwise, mainly cuts and bruises?’
‘Yes.’
‘Clever girl,’ she muttered. ‘Except for the fractured leg, exactly what we did do. We’ll just have to hope,’ she added, speaking swiftly because my mother was coming over to us, ‘that nobody thinks to check the time of this accident and its aftermath with the victims.’
With that awkward little conversation out of the way, I relaxed for a moment. Then, of course, I remembered about Sibert. Even worse, if anything could be worse, I remembered about Romain, whose uncle, his face distorted with grief, had said he was dead. I felt two large tears roll out of my eyes and slide sideways on to the pillow. My mother bent down and hugged me wordlessly. It was, as it always has been, a great comfort. Edild offered to make a soothing drink for me and hurried away, leaving my mother by my side holding my hand.
I needed, however, comfort of a different sort. I needed to know what was happening to Sibert and – for no matter how badly someone we’re fond of is suffering, we still put our own safety first, or at least I did then – I had to know why they had come looking for me.
How had they possibly known I was involved?
I had to think. I had to try to piece together what might have happened, and for that I needed quiet. In case my mother felt she ought to talk to me to take my mind off the morning’s awful events, I closed my eyes and made my breathing deep and steady. Presently I sensed her get up and tiptoe away. Please don’t think she was being callous; it’s just that she always has so much to do that she couldn’t afford to spend time at the side of her distraught daughter if that daughter had just fallen asleep.
I had imagined at first that it was Romain who had organized the lord’s men to come searching for Sibert, me and the crown, but it could not have been because he was dead. He could, I supposed, have told his uncle about what we had done before he died, so that it was Baudouin and not Romain who tracked us down. I thought about that for a while and it seemed to make sense. Romain had somehow got word to his uncle, then, that I had helped Sibert steal the crown, yet I had told a different story, one verified by my aunt and, to a lesser extent, by Goda and Cerdic. It was my word against Baudouin’s and although he was a Norman lord and I a village girl, for one thing I had someone to verify my story and for another he had rebelled against the king and lost everything. My position was beginning to look more secure.
Then I thought, aghast, but Romain is dead!
Romain was dead. I could still barely believe it. Baudouin claimed that Sibert had murdered him, but that wasn’t possible. Was it? He certainly hadn’t murdered him in the time it took us to walk home from Drakelow because we had been together every minute. He could, I supposed, have got up while I was asleep, found Romain and killed him, but I didn’t think it at all likely. Sibert and I had both been very scared on that journey home and we had barely slept. Even when I did manage to drift off, the slightest sound had brought me back to full consciousness. I didn’t think Sibert could have left my side without my noticing, since to comfort ourselves we had slept with our backs pressed tightly together. Besides, was it possible that a slim youth like Sibert could have attacked and killed a much broader, stronger man like Romain without a considerable amount of noise? And then returned and calmly gone back to sleep as if nothing had happened? That presupposed that Romain had recovered sufficiently from Sibert’s knee in his testicles to get up and follow us, and I was not at all sure he could have done.
No. I was willing to swear that Sibert had not murdered Romain on the course of that journey. It was possible that Romain had followed him back to Aelf Fen and Sibert had slain him then, but surely Froya and Hrype would be able to prove that he didn’t because he lived with them and they would know his movements.
Unless, of course, he had actually managed to evade them and he had gone out and killed Romain . . .
Romain was dead.
I had been so busy rushing in my mind to Sibert’s defence that I had barely taken in that stark, horrible, heartbreaking fact.
Romain was dead. With him went my happy daydream of him discovering how I had helped Sibert take the crown and so saved Romain from its deadly threat, and coming to Aelf Fen to rescue me from my village life and marry me, turning me at a stroke from peasant into lady. Drakelow would, of course, have been restored to him (how this would be achieved without the crown I had not quite worked out) and we would live in blissful happiness for the rest of our days.
But he was dead.
Despite what I had done, that shadow had still found him and death had claimed him, just as my granny had predicted. I risked a quick peep to see if she was still sitting there watching me. She was. Knowing Granny, even if she hadn’t seen the quick flutter of my eyelids she would still be well aware that I wasn’t really asleep. I didn’t think I could bear to talk to her just then. She had warned me, months ago, and I ought to have taken more notice. Instead I had thought I knew better. I had believed in my overconfident faith in myself that I could outwit death when it had put its mark on someone. What a fool I had been, for now I had lost him.
Soundlessly, secretly, I wept.
When I finished weeping, I had a thought. If Sibert did not kill Romain – and I was quite sure he did not – then who did?
I was not allowed to get up. Had it not been for my grief over Romain and my gnawing, constant anxiety over Sibert, I would have relished the chance to lie there in comfort while my family min
istered to me. While I needed to be looked after – and clearly they all thought I did – Edild had taken up temporary residence and, because there was so little room, my brother Haward was going to sleep in her house, taking Squeak with him. He’s a kind man, my brother, and he did not complain at all about being cast out of his home for my sake.
Later that day, when darkness was falling and all was quiet, Hrype came to our house. I was sitting up by then, propped up on a pillow and regularly sipping the concoctions that Edild prepared. They had tried to make me eat but my stomach was tying itself in knots and I knew I would be sick if I did.
Hrype accepted a place beside Granny on the bench by the hearth and as he sat down he stared at me. I made myself stare back. He is, I suppose you would say, quite a handsome man, always giving the impression that he takes care of himself. His hair is long, dark blond, parted in the middle and hanging glossy and smooth down to his shoulders. His eyes are light – grey, I would say – and the bones of his face are graceful, almost kingly – he has high cheekbones and a proud nose. He rarely smiles. He was for sure not smiling now.
I tried to read what was in his eyes but his skills are so far above mine that he knew I was searching and blocked himself off. Edild might have penetrated him a little way but she did not even appear to be trying, instead looking after him solicitously as if he had been taken ill. In a way, he had; he looked grief-stricken and he was white with shock.
He did not waste any time. As soon as we were settled, my parents opposite Hrype, Edild and Elfritha on low stools and the baby asleep in his cradle, he said, ‘They have taken Sibert away and he is in prison. They say he will face trial but Baudouin de la Flèche speaks of dragging him out and hanging him.’