Out of the Dawn Light (27 page)

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Authors: Alys Clare

BOOK: Out of the Dawn Light
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‘Sibert was with me at the time Romain was killed,’ I said. My voice was shaking in time with my trembling knees. ‘I know I said at first that I didn’t go to Drakelow with Sibert and Romain but that was a lie, and I only said it because I’d gone without permission and I was afraid I’d get into trouble, which was why my aunt supported my story that I’d been with her. She was trying to
help
.’ The thought of Edild undermined me and I had to bite the insides of my cheeks quite hard to stop myself sobbing.
Baudouin stepped forward. ‘How are we to judge which story is the lie and which the truth?’ he cried. ‘This girl is a well-known liar and nothing she says can be trusted!’
Lord Gilbert was staring hard at me. ‘Answer the question,’ he ordered.
I was thrown into panic. What question? Mutely I shook my head.
Lord Gilbert shot a glance at Baudouin and then said to me, ‘How are we to tell when you are lying and when you are telling the truth?’
‘I’m telling the truth
now
!’ I cried. ‘Oh, you must believe me!’
Again Lord Gilbert turned to the man on his right and I heard them muttering. My aunt’s name was mentioned. If I could, I must save Edild from the ignominy of standing in Lord Gilbert’s hall and admitting she had lied for me. I said, ‘There is something more!’
Lord Gilbert turned his head and stared at me again. So, I am sure, did everyone else in the hall. ‘Well?’ he said coldly.
Out of all of them, I was most aware – most afraid – of Baudouin and his witness. I made myself turn slightly so that I could not see them. Then I steadied myself and said, ‘Sibert and Romain had a fight. That much is true, for Sibert and I had taken – er, Sibert and I had something that Romain badly wanted. Sibert and I left Drakelow – that’s on the coast south of Dunwich – ahead of Romain, but very soon he followed after us. He caught up with us in a clearing just south of the road that leads due west from the coast and he attacked Sibert. He had a knife and Sibert was unarmed and he’s not much of a fighter at the best of times – sorry, Sibert, but you’re not – and so I sort of sided with him – Sibert, I mean – because I thought Romain was going to kill him and I yelled, “Sibert, get your knee up,” and he did and he caught Romain between the legs and he went down and that’s how we left him, writhing in agony, but you see he was lying on his
back
!’ I finished triumphantly, talking a much needed breath.
There was a deadly hush. Then Lord Gilbert said, ‘So?’
‘Don’t you understand?’ How could he be so stupid! ‘Romain was lying on his back yet that man’ – it was my turn to point and I swung my arm round and aimed my forefinger at Baudouin’s witness – ‘that man claims he saw Sibert strike Romain on the back of his head! Well, he can’t have done, because the back of Romain’s head was on the ground, so if he says that’s what happened then he was too far away to see clearly and so how can he be so sure it was Sibert?’
Now I had their attention. Lord Gilbert was no longer looking at me as if I were something smelly on his shoe and the man on his right was whispering urgently in his ear, his eyes on me. Several of the other men were also murmuring amongst themselves.
Eventually Lord Gilbert held up a hand for silence. ‘You have made a valid point,’ he began, ‘and we—’
Then I was shoved out of the way – so violently that I fell – and Baudouin shouted furiously, ‘She cannot possibly know how Romain was positioned, whether he was standing, sitting, lying on his back or his front,
because she wasn’t there
! This is another of her fluent, convincing lies, my lord, gentlemen, and you must open your eyes and see it for what it is!’
Several of the men, Lord Gilbert included, clearly did not care for Baudouin’s tone, and indeed he had stopped only just short of insulting them. There was more muttering – a great deal more – then at last Lord Gilbert straightened up and addressed the hall.
‘We have here a simple case of two conflicting accounts and it is our duty to decide which describes the true version,’ he declared. ‘Either Baudouin de la Flèche’s man is telling the truth, and I must here remind you all that Baudouin himself vouches for the man, or else this girl’s account is the true one. What
is
your name?’ he demanded impatiently, leaning down towards me.
‘Lassair,’ I said.
‘Lassair,’ he repeated. ‘So, who are we to believe, the witness Sagar or the girl Lassair? We must now—’
Baudouin spoke up, his voice loud and confident. ‘Forgive me, my lord,’ he said, ‘but there is a method by which this can be decided once and for all.’ He shot a glance at me and I felt as if a lump of ice was being run down my back. I knew then that this was what I had foreseen in that awful moment when I had recognized him as my enemy. I did not know what he was about to say but I knew it was going to be terrible.
‘What is this method you refer to?’ Lord Gilbert asked. ‘Speak up, let’s hear it!’
I waited, trembling, my heart thumping so high up in my chest that it felt as if it was stopping me from breathing.
Baudouin smiled at me, a cold smile full of malice. Then, turning back to Lord Gilbert, he said smoothly, ‘We are faced, as you so eloquently say, my lord, with a choice: which of two people is telling the truth. We are all, I believe, inclined to believe Sagar here, who saw with his own eyes the murder of my poor nephew, a boy I have nurtured and cared for most of his young life and who was to inherit my manor of Drakelow. We have been told the frightful details – I will not repeat them – and Sagar presented himself as witness to this foul deed of his own free will. Against him we have this girl, this
liar
’ – he spat the word with sudden fierce venom – ‘who would have us believe her falsehoods.’
There was a pause, so full of drama that the air hummed. Then Baudouin cried, ‘Let her be tested, my lord! Let the truth of what she says be tried in the old, reliable way!’
Nobody spoke for a moment. Then Lord Gilbert cleared his throat and said, ‘By – er, by what means would you have us test her, Baudouin?’
‘Let her face trial by ordeal,’ he answered instantly. He shot me a fierce look. ‘If she persists against all reason in making us believe this tale of hers, put her to the test! Build a fire pit, my lord, and challenge her to walk barefoot across the red-hot coals.’ He laughed. He actually laughed. ‘
Then
we shall see who speaks the truth!’
I heard the words – fire pit . . . red-hot coals . . . barefoot – and at first they made no sense. I shook my head in perplexity.
Then the blessed incomprehension cleared and I knew what he was going to make me do.
The nausea rose up uncontrollably and I threw up my breakfast on the floor of Lord Gilbert’s hall.
EIGHTEEN
 
I
fled. I was aware of shouting. Some of the men were outraged and I heard one of them cry out, ‘But she’s only a child!’ Another protested vehemently, ‘He has no right to ask this!’ As I raced down the length of the hall Lord Gilbert’s voice rose loud above the hubbub, declaring that I had until tomorrow to consider Baudouin’s challenge.
He started to say that if I refused, Sibert would be taken out and hanged from the gibbet at the crossroads but I could not bear to listen. Instinctively my hands flew up to cover my ears and I did not hear any more.
There was a small crowd outside the big doors that opened into the hall and suddenly Hrype’s face was right in front of me, so taut with tension that I barely recognized him. He too was talking, hurling urgent words at me, but I did not stay to hear them. I shook my head, elbowed the avidly curious villagers out of the way and raced down the steps, across the courtyard and out on to the track.
I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew that I had to get away and be quite alone. I had to think. I had to look deep into myself to see if I had the courage to attempt this frightful, ghastly thing that might just possibly save Sibert’s life.
I ran and ran until my heaving chest and the crippling stitch in my side caused me at last to stop. I bent over, hands on my knees, panting and gasping for breath. As I began to recover, I straightened up, looked around and saw that I was right out on the far side of the villagers’ strips of land, on the edge of a ridge of slightly higher ground where the soil is dryer. There was a band of willows and gratefully I sank down in their welcome shade on to the warm, friendly earth.
For some time I just lay there and after a while I sensed that the sheer solidity of the ground beneath me was giving me reassurance. I breathed deeply several times, then I faced the frightful challenge that Baudouin had laid down.
I blanked everything else out and called to mind everything I knew about trial by ordeal. Normally it was used to sort the innocent from the guilty, because if you were innocent then God came to your aid and protected you from lasting harm. He would make sure that the boiling water in the cauldron did not burn your hand and your arm as you reached down for the pebble on the bottom. He would guard your tender flesh as you carried the red-hot metal in your bare hands. When after three days they removed the bandages and inspected your wounds, if you were innocent then God would already have instigated the healing process and everyone would know you had been wrongly accused.
I had not been accused of any crime but I desperately needed to prove I was telling the truth – difficult, for a habitual liar – and Baudouin had cleverly turned my protestations against me, in effect saying,
Prove it.
Oh, but what a terrible method he had chosen. Red-hot coals under my bare feet and—
No.
Don’t think about that.
There was a story about Queen Emma, King Cnut’s wife and mother of the brutal Hartacnut. She had another son, Edward, by her marriage to Ethelred and when she became too powerful he plotted against her, accusing her of adultery with her bishop. People whispered behind their hands that to prove her innocence she was made to walk nine feet over red-hot ploughshares, but God must have known the accusations were false and malicious because Queen Emma skipped over the glowing metal, turned to her tormentors and demanded to know when the trial would begin.
It was a good tale. My granny Cordeilla sometimes tells it when she is particularly sad that the days under the Old Kings have gone for ever.
We do not have much land under the plough around Aelf Fen. It’s too wet and marshy. I doubt if there are enough ploughshares to cover nine feet of ground, which is presumably why Baudouin opted for a pit of red-hot coals instead.
I took off my shoes and looked at my feet. They are small and narrow, the toes straight and the nails like little shells. I twisted my leg so that I could inspect the sole of my right foot. The skin was hard – unless I was planning on going any distance, I usually went barefoot through the summer – and when I poked it with my fingernail, it felt tough and resilient.
Red-hot coals . . .
Queen Emma survived unscathed, I reminded myself. Surely I would too? I was, after all, telling the truth . . .
Supposing I didn’t, what then? Frightful, suppurating burns. Infection. Pus and stinking, blackening flesh. The loss, perhaps, of both feet. Life as a cripple, all my dreams of being as fine a healer as Edild come to naught. Could you be a healer sitting down? I did not really see how.
I made myself think about that for some time. So, I thought eventually, I might lose my feet.
Sibert is about to lose his life.
If I lost my feet, I realized, Sibert would lose his life anyway because if I failed to heal, they would judge that God was rejecting me because I was guilty and an evil, worthless liar. I would not be believed when I insisted Sibert had not murdered Romain and my huge sacrifice would have been in vain.
But what if I
did
heal? What if, knowing that for once I was as innocent of lying as Queen Emma had been of adultery, God and all the good spirits put their protection around me and my desperate, hurrying feet and kept me from harm?
I sat there quite a lot longer. Then slowly I stood up. I desperately wanted to go home. I wanted to curl up in my safe little bed and turn my back on the hostile, frightening world. I needed my mother’s loving arms, her soothing voice. I wanted my strong, wise father. But both of them would forbid me to take this appalling test. I was their daughter, they cherished me, they did not want to see me suffer ghastly pain. Their reaction would be quite understandable.
They had not been there in the clearing when I yelled out to Sibert to knee Romain in the crotch so that, immobilized by pain, he had been unable to defend himself when his killer came for him.
They did not know that if Sibert was hanged it would be my fault.
If I failed, lost my feet to the fire and Sibert died, at least I would be able to console myself with the fact that I had tried.
I imagined life knowing that I had sat back while they had sent an innocent young man to his death. Then I imagined life without my feet.
I reckoned I knew which would be the harder to bear.
 
I went to my aunt’s house. She loved me too, or I was pretty sure she did, but she was not my parent and I thought she might be better able to distance herself and advise me dispassionately than either my father or my mother.

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