Out of the Dawn Light Page 25

  Such mysteries were not for me; I was far too green an apprentice in my craft to understand them. All the same, it was a comforting thought, as I went tiredly to my bed at the end of a long, hard day, to think of the Drakelow crown deep beneath the sea sanctuary. Others would come roaring up in the dawn light with the aim of taking our land, of that there was no doubt. It was good to think that there was something there to stand in their path.

  The fact that I had played a part in ensuring that it was there in its special place, where it was meant to be, felt even better.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  The Norman Conquest of 1066 changed England drastically, although the mass of ordinary people living at subsistence level in the countryside would have been less affected than the men of power and their rich tenants. The reign of William the Conqueror, the first of the Norman kings, was marked by a phase of fortification as the new king made sure of hanging on to his hard-won territory; where before the Anglo-Saxon lords had lived in their long houses in sympathy with their surroundings, now the new men of power built and inhabited military strongholds designed with only one purpose: to remind a conquered people who was now in charge.

  The Norman lords and lawmakers brought a new and harsher way of thinking and with them, marching in step, came the priests, the monks and the cathedral-builders. England had long been nominally Christian but now, under the tough new regime, the country entered into the long twilight of the old ways. History was in the main written by men of the Church, the least likely people to describe how the old customs, superstitions, spells and magic lingered on. Their enduring existence can only be guessed at from the other side of the coin: the laws which, in what was meant to be a totally Christian country, went on being passed to suppress the old ways.