Out of the Dawn Light Read online

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must have—’ I stopped. Something in his tone made it clear that he did not wish to dwell on that, and I understood. I cannot imagine what it must be like not only not to know and love your own father but never even to have had the chance to meet him.

  ‘Now,’ I said, for a change of subject seemed to be necessary, ‘now you have to face what the Normans have done to your home.’

  ‘I do,’ he agreed. I sensed a different mood in him suddenly and I felt him straighten up, as if he were lifting his head and squaring his shoulders. ‘This is my people’s home,’ he said slowly, ‘and a knowledge of it is in my blood.’ He turned to look at me. ‘I will succeed,’ he whispered. ‘For all that I cannot see my way, tomorrow it will be better.’

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ I said encouragingly. I got up and, reaching for his hand, pulled him to his feet. The sudden note of optimism seemed to be a good time to turn in. ‘We should sleep,’ I added. ‘Then you’ll be fresh for the morning.’

  ‘Lassair,’ he began, ‘I—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Side by side, we crept back to our sleeping place and, each going to our separate corners, settled for what remained of the night.

  Romain awoke with the same sense of foreboding that had been with him when he went to sleep. The boy, Sibert, was behaving so oddly and, although Romain suspected that he knew why, all the same it was very worrying. Sibert had to achieve his task; this whole mission would fail otherwise and Romain’s future would be—

  No. Don’t think about that.

  I must tell him what I probably should have warned him of before, Romain decided. It would help, once the boy was over the shock. It had to help, otherwise . . .

  Again, he reined in his panicky thoughts.

  There was little to eat for breakfast. I will purchase good, fresh food today, Romain vowed, whatever it takes. His stomach was grumbling with hunger and he felt light-headed if he got up too quickly.

  They packed up their few belongings and the little that remained of the food and drink. Romain looked at the girl and then the boy. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  They both nodded.

  ‘Very well. We shall go to the sea.’

  He led the way back on to the path that wound through the springy grass between the band of woodland and the distant sea. He heard their footsteps behind him but neither spoke. He went on, and the line of the cliff top steadily drew nearer.

  Any moment now, he thought.

  Suddenly the girl called out to him, ‘Romain, Sibert has stopped!’ There was urgency, perhaps fear, in her voice.

  Romain turned round. Sibert’s face was ashen and, as he stared with wide eyes at the scene before him, he was slowly shaking his head. Romain took a few steps towards him. ‘What is it, Sibert?’ he asked quietly. ‘What do you see?’

  Sibert raised his arm and, with a hand that shook as if with the ague, pointed. ‘That’s my tree,’ he said in a horrified whisper. ‘When I came here first I used to climb it so that I could watch the comings and goings at Drakelow and not be seen by those within. But – but—’

  ‘What?’ cried the girl, anxious eyes fixed on Sibert.

  Romain watched in deep apprehension as Sibert stared out at the scene before him, the expression on his face like that of a man who has wakened to find himself in a world he does not recognize.

  After what seemed like an agony of waiting, Sibert whispered simply, ‘It’s moved.’ Then, power filling his voice, he cried in anguish, ‘It’s moved!’ He was almost sobbing. ‘I don’t understand, but my tree is in a different place – it used to be much further from the sea, and the hall was perhaps fifty paces away on the shore side . . .’

  Very slowly, as if reluctant to look, he turned all the way around in a circle. Then, pathetically, he looked at Romain. ‘What have they done? Have they moved the cliff?’

  ‘They have done nothing,’ Romain said gently.

  For, indeed, what had happened here was far beyond the power of any human agency and could not have been brought about even by the full might of the powerful, aggressive, ruthless and violent Normans.

  A large strip of land on the coast at Dunwich and to the north and south of the town was no longer here. The cliffs that had so puzzled Sibert had moved some distance to the west.

  Almost half of the manor of Drakelow had fallen into the sea and it had taken the ancestral hall of Sibert’s ancestors with it.

  NINE

  Standing beside Sibert, Romain could almost feel the boy’s horror prickling against his skin. He waited. Instinct told him that anything he might try to say now, either in sympathy or in explanation, would either go unheard or else release the fury that was so evidently building up.

  After an initial moan of distress, quickly suppressed, the girl, too, was silent.

  Finally Sibert turned to him. The blue-green eyes burned with fire and he said, ‘Why did you not tell me? A word of warning about this – this catastrophe’ – he swept an arm in the direction of the sea, now deceptively calm as if for some reason wishing to disguise its furious, destructive potential – ‘would have prepared me!’

  Trying to speak soothingly and reasonably, Romain said, ‘I did not think you would agree to come if I had spoken.’ He hesitated. Was it better to say what he had in mind, for it had to be said some time, or wait a while until Sibert was less emotional? He decided to speak. ‘Also, I feared that if I told you what has happened at Drakelow, you might have said you would no longer be able to locate the – the thing we seek.’

  ‘You feared right!’ Sibert shouted. Now both arms waved in the air, making great windmilling gestures expressive of his pain, his frustration and his despair. ‘How am I to begin to look, when half of the place I knew and loved has vanished beneath the sea?’

  Romain made himself take several steadying breaths. Then he said, ‘The landfall is alarming, I admit, at first sight, but—’

  ‘Alarming!’ Sibert’s echo was harsh with sarcasm.

  ‘—but, if you give yourself time to consider what has been happening here, you will understand that it’s just another step in a process that has been going on for a very long time. The sea comes in hard out of the east, forced on by the winds, and—’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Sibert said coldly.

  Romain cursed himself. Now was no time for wordy explanations. In a flash of memory he recalled his own reaction when he had first seen the apocalyptic damage. I must move the boy on from this, he thought. Putting some iron in his tone, he said firmly. ‘We have come here for a specific purpose. Yes, I admit that your role in our mission will be far more demanding now that the landscape has changed so drastically, but it is my belief that you can still perform it. I would not have brought you here otherwise.’

  On Sibert’s other side, the girl moved closer to him and Romain heard her mutter something; it sounded like, I’ll help you all I can. Sibert turned and gave her a brief, absent smile.

  ‘We shall go up to the cliff edge – don’t worry, the drop is neither very far nor very steep – and we shall make ourselves comfortable in the sunshine,’ he went on, now subtly changing his tone so that it sounded as if he were a commander and the young people his troops. ‘You, Sibert, will look all around you and establish where you are in relation to how the lie of the land used to be. Then you will be able to work out the location of the spot you seek.’

  There was a long pause. Then Sibert said, ‘Very well,’ and the three of them made their cautious way to the cliff edge.

  Romain left Sibert and the girl sitting in the sunshine at the top of the low cliff. He had an idea that the boy would do better without him there. Also they were now in grave need of food and drink. Romain had resolved to trudge a mile or so inland to a small settlement that he knew of and see what he could purchase. He wrapped his stained old cloak around him, covering the rich fabric of his tunic. There was no need to dirty his face for he guessed it was already
filthy, and he had several days’ growth of beard. It was highly unlikely that anyone would recognize Romain de la Flèche beneath the grime.

  In any case, he had no option. The alternative was to collapse from exhaustion and dehydration.

  I sat beside Sibert for what seemed ages after Romain set off. I wanted to comfort him, to help him, but he had shut me out and I could do neither. I hated sitting doing nothing; everything in me always seems to rebel at enforced idleness. I stared north, towards the town, then south, at the long coastline stretching into the far distance. I counted seabirds whose names I did not know. I wondered how long Romain was going to be finding food and drink; my stomach was hollow with hunger. Finally I counted the waves breaking with soft, hypnotic regularity on the shore below.

  When eventually Sibert spoke, it made me jump.

  ‘The hall used to be there.’ He pointed.

  I waited. When he did not elaborate, I prompted him. ‘And the treasure was kept in the hall?’

  ‘No, oh, no, it can’t have been.’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘Our halls were always built for communal living and nobody in their right mind would hide a valuable object where there were constant comings and goings. The hiding place must surely have been in some secret location, Lassair. I did not even know there was need of such a hiding place until Romain told me about the – about the treasure. I’d never even heard of any treasure. I imagine that nobody was meant to know about it and no doubt the penalty for speaking of it was severe.’ He frowned, as if by keeping something so important so very secret his people had somehow let him down.

  ‘Did you really know nothing at all of this until Romain sought you out?’ I asked, although I felt that I already knew. If Sibert had discovered that there was a hidden treasure, undoubtedly he would have gone to hunt for it alone. Although there were those mysterious trips he admitted to have made to spy on his ancestral home . . .

  He smiled bleakly. ‘No, not really.’ He glanced at me briefly and, as if he read my mind, added, ‘It wasn’t why I kept coming here. I had heard whispers,’ he went on, ‘but the little I overheard made no sense. I’m not supposed to know anything at all. Hrype would kill me if he found out.’

  ‘I won’t tell him,’ I said fervently. I spat on my finger and drew it dramatically across my throat. ‘On my life.’

  I don’t think he heard. He was far away, lost in memory. ‘I’ve always spied on Hrype,’ he said dreamily. ‘You would too, if you had to live with him. He’s just – weird, and he’s so secretive all the time that sometimes I— Well, once I woke in the night and he was in some sort of a trance. He was sitting cross-legged by the hearth, where a small fire burned. There was something smouldering on top of one of the logs and it gave off a really pungent smell. It gave me a headache, and I started to feel dizzy. Anyway, Hrype had his eyes almost closed, just slits showing between the lids, and he was muttering. Sort of chanting. I kept back in the shadows and tried to make out what he was saying and I realized with a shock that he was talking about Drakelow. Of course, I had to go on listening then because although I didn’t know a lot about it, I knew where and what it was and what it meant to my family.’

  ‘And he was speaking about the treasure?’ I butted in. I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘He must have been, although I didn’t realize it at the time. He was chanting to it, I think, as if the object was there before him and he was communicating with it. Sensing its power, perhaps.’ He shook his head impatiently. ‘I don’t know, I don’t have Hrype’s knowledge or his gifts. But he spoke of something he referred to as the sea sanctuary. He talked to the thing, telling it that it was safe there in this sanctuary place because its location was a secret and quite soon it would be hidden for ever, and – oh!’

  His gasp of realization came an instant after mine.

  Sibert turned to me, wide eyed with awe. ‘He knew!’ he whispered. ‘He predicted this landfall!’

  ‘He did,’ I agreed. I was struck by a further thought. ‘Sibert, they must have known that this was going to happen, all those hundreds of years ago at the time the thing was put there in this sea-sanctuary place.’ I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as a shiver of atavistic dread went through me. To foresee the future with such clarity was quite alarming. But then a more prosaic explanation occurred to me. It was surely more likely that this eating away of the land by the sea had already been under way five hundred years ago. The men who had hidden their precious treasure had simply taken advantage of a natural phenomenon.

  Edild once said to me that the best magicians maintain their scepticism and always keep one foot on the ground. My web of destiny might well show me to be earth-poor and not firmly grounded, but it didn’t mean I was totally lacking in common sense and logic.

  I glanced at Sibert. He was shaking his head in wonder, his expression distant and dreamy.

  Oh, dear. I was not at all sure he was open to common sense or logic just then.

  ‘So,’ I said brightly, ‘where and what was this sea sanctuary?’ He must have some idea, I thought. Not only that, he must have believed he could find it. Why else had he come along on this mission?

  ‘I think I know where it used to be,’ he said slowly. ‘When Romain approached me, my first thought was that the – the thing he was after must be whatever it was I overheard Hrype chanting about. I had no idea what it was but I had already worked out where and what the sea sanctuary must be. When Romain told me about the— When Romain explained, it – er, seemed as if everything suddenly fitted together,’ he finished lamely.

  He was being deliberately vague. I was sure, however, what it was he was trying not to say: somehow Romain had discovered what Sibert had not. He might not know where this magical treasure was but he knew precisely what it was.

  I thought about that. Romain knew what it was and Sibert knew roughly where it was, and they both needed me to pinpoint it for them. The thought gave me a warm glow of satisfaction.

  ‘Very well,’ I said, deliberately keeping my emotions out of my voice. ‘Where was it, this sea sanctuary, and what sort of a building was it?’

  ‘It was not a building. It was a circle of wooden posts, in the centre of which there was the stump of an oak tree, its trunk buried in the ground and its roots open to the air. It used to be some distance inland. Now’ – slowly he shook his head, as if he still could not absorb the vast change in the landscape – ‘now it’s out there somewhere.’ He waved an arm in a sweeping gesture towards the smooth sea, where no structure of any size or shape broke the surface for as far as the eye could see.

  But I hardly registered his last words. I was almost in shock; I could not have been more amazed. What he had just described was a replica of one of the places Edild had told me about. It was up on the coast to the north of the Fens and one of the most sacred locations of our ancient ancestors. It was one of the deep mysteries – that much I knew. The upturned tree stump was a symbol of the link between the living and the dead; between us and the world of our ancestors, which was a mirror image of our own that co-existed beneath the earth, so that they walked the same ground as we did but upside down. It sounded quite bizarre to me and I was confused because I thought it was something to do with Yggdrasil, the world tree, but that, Edild said, was because I did not yet understand. How right she was. She had promised to take me to the sanctuary in the north one day when I was further advanced in my studies and, at my present lowly stage of learning, the prospect was more frightening than exciting.

  Now it appeared that there was another such structure here at Drakelow. Well, I knew from my granny Cordeilla’s tales that the forefathers had lived on the coast at Dunwich, so it was possible. Did Edild know about this one? Had she seen it? If not, it was too late now because it had gone.

  I realized suddenly what I should have appreciated straight away: Sibert’s people had not built their sea sanctuary. They had utilized a place of power that already existed, and had done so for thousands of years. Some
thing about it had called out to them in their urgent need and they had responded.

  I felt shaky with the impact of what I had just learned. I wished fervently that Edild were with me; she would have calmed me, helped me to understand and, I was quite sure, told me what I ought to do next. For I was – we were – faced with a problem. The place that Sibert must locate and where I must use my special skill was under the water and, for the present, I had no idea what we were going to do about it.

  Then Sibert said matter-of-factly, ‘We’ll have to wait till low tide.’

  I have already said that this was my first sight of the sea. I was an eel fisherman’s daughter and I knew how the water washed in and out of the creeks and the best time to hunt for eels. I knew about the sea – of course I did – but I did not know much about it. I certainly wasn’t relating this huge, gently moving expanse stretched before me with the tricky, treacherous, ever-changing waterways of the Fens.

  I said, and I must have sounded so stupid, ‘What do you mean?’

  And he told me.

  Romain’s apprehension had grown to an alarming level by the time he got back to the cliff top. He tried to judge by the two figures sitting there so still, in surely exactly the positions they had occupied when he left, what the prevailing mood might be. Had Sibert recovered from the shock of seeing the landfall? Had he got his bearings, and could he lead the girl to the place where the thing was hidden?

  Unable to contain himself, he broke into a run. Hearing him approach, Sibert turned round. ‘Oh, good,’ he said, ‘you’ve brought us our meal. Hurry up, Lassair and I are ravenous.’

  Slowly Romain knelt down and, unfolding the linen wrapping, revealed bread, cuts of cold meat, a knuckle of ham, pickles, cheese, some tiny, wrinkled apples and a large sweet cake. He stared intently at Sibert and thought – hoped – he detected a smile. ‘Well?’ he demanded.