Out of the Dawn Light (17 page)

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Authors: Alys Clare

BOOK: Out of the Dawn Light
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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!’
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.

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