They came at him out of the impenetrable darkness of the shadows beneath the walls, and he had no warning of their presence. One of them took his gleeve out of his hand, and without its support he fell heavily, into the arms of the other one. He tried to wriggle free, tried to leap away, but his foot would not let him — and, anyway, they were too strong. One went on holding him and the other backed off. But only for an instant; then something hit Morcar with the force of a charging bull and suddenly he was in the air, flying in a smooth arc out over the bank. Then he fell into the filthy ditch and foul, black water closed over his head.
TWO
When I started work this morning, I had not the tiniest inkling that today was going to be the start of something so extraordinary. So much for the skill at reading the future on which I pride myself. I can do piddling little things like saying when it’s going to rain (easy when someone’s taught you how), when a ewe is going to deliver her lambs (again, relatively easy, and pretty much a matter of observation and experience) and reading the sex of an unborn baby (quite tricky, that one, but then I don’t always get it right). But if something really big is looming, I’m as blissfully oblivious as everyone else.
I live with my aunt Edild, who is a herbalist and a healer. I’ve been living with her since my sixteenth birthday back in the summer, mainly because I’m now officially her assistant and there’s so much work to do that it would waste time having to go home to my parents’ house late at night and then return early in the morning. Living with Edild means I get a little extra time in my bed in the morning, and that’s reason enough for me. In fact I love sharing the house with her, anyway, and it’s certainly not because I was unhappy under my parents’ roof. Far from it; I love my family dearly and, once my elder sister Goda had married and left home three years ago, I have nothing but happy memories of life with my clever and efficient mother Essa, my dreamy, precious father Wymond, my stammering brother Haward, my mischievous younger brother Squeak, my baby brother Leir and my Granny Cordeilla, who is a bard and the most wonderful story teller. I love my sister Elfritha, too, although like Goda and me she no longer lives at home. Ever since she was a small child she has wanted to be a nun and last year she got her wish. Now she’s a novice with the Benedictine nuns at Chatteris and, as far as any of us can tell from the few short visits any of us have made, she’s as blissfully happy as if she were already in heaven. The last time I saw her was just after I’d moved in permanently with Edild and we shared a big, silent and slightly self-congratulatory hug because both of us were living the life we wanted.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a nun. It is a hard road, I know. I have looked into my sister’s face, pale, thin and tense inside the unfamiliar white wimple that covers her throat and her bright hair, framing her forehead, temples and chin. I have seen the haunted look in her wide eyes and taken in the dark grey circles around them. I have seen her bite her lip and mutter as she strives to commit to memory the words of new and unfamiliar prayers. I am in no doubt that learning to be a nun is not easy. I had expected all that, and when first I saw my sister in her new life I tried not to let it dismay me. What I had not expected was the laughter. Despite the rigours of the life, despite the huge challenge of living up to vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and of spending all your waking hours either praying or working as hard as the lowliest slave, Chatteris rang with laughter. Whatever else they may be, I have had to accept that, in the main, nuns have a light-heartedness and an endearing jollity that make them laugh like children.
I don’t think anyone at home misses me. If they do, I’m only a short walk away. I go back to see them all at least once every week but already they seem to have expanded to fill up the space I left. It makes me sad if I think about it so I try not to.
Life with Edild is hard work but I enjoy it very much. Well, most of the time I do, although it’s only fair to say that there are moments of extreme discomfort. The worst thing is when I have to perform intimate examinations; when, in order to determine what’s wrong with a patient, I have to inspect bits of the human body — male as well as female — that decent folk normally keep well hidden. Edild is relentless, however, and deaf to my protests.
‘There is nothing to be ashamed of in a human body,’ she tells me sternly, ‘and you will never be a healer until you can control yourself sufficiently to look without embarrassment or false modesty at the most secret and private of its parts.’
So I am compelled to take my turn with my aunt when someone comes creeping in, red in the face and trying to pretend they are anywhere but in a healer’s house. In fact it is the shame and the distress of the patient that usually helps me get over my diffidence. This poor soul is in pain, I tell myself, and the nature of the complaint means they probably haven’t had even the small comfort of talking it over with someone else. Then the compassion takes over and I just want to help them feel better.
When I managed to tell Edild this, blushing and stammering as badly as my poor brother Haward, she looked at me coolly and said, ‘You may have the makings of a healer after all, Lassair.’
Edild is not one to overly praise her apprentice.
The other uncomfortable moments are when my aunt takes me down the strange, dark pathways that lead to the mysteries that lie at the heart of our calling. Only a little way down, for I am still fearful and she respects the fact that I’m doing my best. She builds up a good fire in the circle of hearth stones in the middle of her floor, and we sit cross-legged either side of the leaping flames. She mutters her incantations, inviting the guardian spirits to be present, and I listen intently, forming the words in my mind and trying to commit them to memory, for one day when Edild has gone to the ancestors I shall have to do this alone. Then she puts certain herbs on the fire — I’m only beginning to understand why she uses this herb or that for the immediate purpose — and we sit and breathe in the new aromas that twist and spiral up into the air. Sometimes she asks for guidance; when, for example, she is uncertain how best to help a patient. Sometimes she asks for strength, for herself or for me, if we have been drained by a difficult case. Sometimes she just wants to say thank you, for we both know full well that we could not do our work without help.
‘We are but instruments, Lassair,’ she tells me often. ‘The healing gift is bestowed by the spirits and they use us to do their work.’
If I were ever inclined to get swollen-headed because I’m a healer, Edild is very good at knocking me down to size.
The scariest times are when Hrype comes to sit around the fire with us. Hrype is my friend Sibert’s uncle, and he lives with Sibert and Sibert’s mother Froya, who was married to Hrype’s dead brother, Edmer. Sibert is a little older than me, and usually we are good friends. Two years ago I saved his life and he saved mine. It has forged a bond between us. Sometimes we like each other, sometimes not. We are not and, I think, could never be indifferent to each other.
Sibert is a little odd; Hrype is very odd. He has dark blond hair that he wears rather long and his silvery eyes sometimes look as if they’re lit from within. He has high cheekbones and he looks like a king. When the three of us sit around the fire I look from him to Edild and when the light from the flames turns her red-blonde hair to liquid gold, she, too, seems to be alight. I feel very ordinary by comparison. I don’t think even the fiercest firelight could make me glow like that. People say I resemble my aunt. I wish I could believe them.
Hrype is a sorcerer. I realized that some time ago but I only began to understand what it really meant once he started joining Edild and me around the magical fire. He has frightened me several times but, despite the way my heart thumps in terror and the fact that for several nights after he’s done something really spectacular I’m suddenly scared of the dark, I keep coming back for more. If for nothing else, I can never pass up the opportunity to watch him cast the runes. He keeps them in a small leather pouch that always hangs at his waist. It’s smooth and soft as if it is very old — as indeed it probably is, for Hrype comes from a long line of cunning men. Before he even opens the bag he closes his eyes and descends into a trance. It’s so strange — you can almost see him withdrawing. He goes on sitting there, still as a stone and hardly breathing, but you just know that the essence of him has gone somewhere else. He opens the bag and takes from it a square of linen, its hems neatly sewn. He spreads it on the ground before him, carefully smoothing it out. It is always immaculately clean. Then he picks up the leather bag and holds it in both hands, his long fingers wrapping protectively around it but with a touch so light that it might be full of quail’s eggs. He chants for a very long time and then — and it always makes me jump — suddenly he casts the rune stones on to the cloth.