‘Do either you or Hrype resemble your father?’ I asked.
Sibert looked surprised. ‘I am told not,’ he replied. ‘My father was broad and heavily built where Hrype is tall and slender, and my mother once referred to his dark eyes. I look like my mother.’
He did a little, being lightly built and quite tall, with fair hair and a naturally pale complexion, although a child can have attributes of both parents, and, for all I knew, Sibert might have his father’s mouth or his laugh. Not that I imagined there was much laughter in that particular home. ‘Oh.’
‘Why do you ask?’ Briefly, I explained my theory. ‘Hmm. It’s possible, I suppose, although my very existence must remind her of my father, irrespective of whether I look like him.’ His frown deepened, and all at once he looked very sad.
‘Sibert, that’s a good thing!’ I said quickly. ‘Just imagine how much worse it would be for your mother if she didn’t have you!’ Vividly, I saw an image of Froya’s face two summers back, when it had looked as if Sibert would be hanged. Hastily, I pushed the memory away. The intensity of Froya’s expression, with the terrible hunger of her love and the black despair turning her living face to a skull, had been frightening.
Sibert looked a little encouraged. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘I know so,’ I said unhesitatingly.
Then I realized something I ought to have worked out before. Sibert’s father had died as a result of the wound he had received at Ely. Now, because of me, Sibert was being forced to go to the very place. ‘I’m sorry that you’re going there,’ I said quietly.
I’m not sure he understood. ‘What? To Ely, you mean?’
‘Yes. I realize it must hold bad memories for you.’
‘How can it?’ he said roughly. ‘I never knew my father, either at Aelf Fen or Ely. Going to the place where he received his fatal wound is hardly going to bring back memories of any sort, bad or otherwise.’
‘No, I can see that.’ Typically, I hadn’t really thought it through, and I accepted the implied rebuke.
‘Besides,’ he began. Then he stopped.
‘What?’
‘Oh. . I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t bother you with it.’
‘Well, you’ve mentioned it now, whatever it is, so you’d better go on or I’ll drive myself silly imagining things.’
He smiled faintly. ‘Very well. It’s just that I’ve always wanted to go to the island.’
I nodded. I could understand that. ‘As a sort of pilgrimage, I suppose.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘nothing like that.’ Again he paused. Then he said in a rush, ‘There’s something strange about the story of what happened to my father, something that I can’t really get straight in my mind. I’m saying no more than that — ’ I had opened my mouth to ask at least four questions — ‘but, believe me, Lassair, I’d have gone to Ely sooner or later so it may as well be now.’
We walked on. After a while he said, ‘What should I do about my mother?’
I did not know. I’m all right with cuts, sprains and everyday maladies — or for Morcar’s sake I hoped so — but whatever was wrong with Froya was beyond me. ‘Let her know you love her,’ I said. No harm in that, whatever Froya’s problem was. ‘Encourage her to get out of the house,’ I went on. ‘You and Hrype are out all day so she must spend a lot of time on her own, and that probably gives her too much occasion to brood over what she had lost instead of be glad for what she has.’
‘Ye-es,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes, I do see the sense of that.’
‘She needs grandchildren,’ I plunged on thoughtlessly. ‘Unlike yours, it wasn’t as if my mother was sad to begin with, but having Gelges, and now little Cerdic too, has brought her so much joy, and she’s always busy with something concerning them, either making a little garment for them, or going over to help Goda with some minor difficulty, or-’
Sibert was laughing. Far too late I remembered that he was an only child and that any grandchildren Froya might have would be engendered by him. The nearest thing to a girl on whom he might be sweet enough to wish to marry was walking right beside him.
The flush began on my cheeks and spread up over my forehead and right down my throat. Anything I could possibly think of to say would only make matters worse. I folded my lips together and strode on down the track.
We made our slow but steady way in a wide semicircle around the south-east and south of the Fens, stopping at the edge of the hard ground opposite Ely in the late afternoon. The sun was low in the sky as we stood looking out towards the isle of the eels, rising in a low, dark hump before us like some huge creature from the deeps. I did not know how it would be normally, when the island was not experiencing such a vast and important new build, but just then the shoreline was crowded and busy, with craft of all sorts and sizes lined up along the quay. We were on the bank of a wide river, no doubt made wider by the recent rains; stretching away into the distance, I could make out the rough line of the waterway. The great expanse of marshy, sodden ground on either side looked as if it could bear the weight of nothing heavier than a duck. Here and there stands of alder and willow rose up, the trunks of the trees knee-high in the dark water.
Beyond us were drawn up a number of barges laden with huge slabs of stone. Beyond them was a line of similar barges, only these were empty. Presumably, this was a holding place for the transportation of the stone for the new cathedral; the empty barges would no doubt set off in the morning for another load.
Work seemed to be winding down for the day, but it was still light and we had no problem in finding a boatman to take us across. He helped me down into his small craft and Sibert jumped in after me. We settled ourselves as comfortably as we could, and the boatman pushed off from the quay and then dipped his oars in the black water.
He was probably after a tip because quite soon he began to entertain us with a lively description of the horrors that lay beneath us.
‘Water’s high,’ he said, glancing from me to Sibert and back again. ‘There are deep, dark dikes and ditches down below, and you’d be able to see in them if it hadn’t been so wet lately. Not as how you’d want to,’ he added, leering at me. ‘Full of dead things, they are,’ he hissed. ‘Horrible, foul, rotten things. Things as would give you nightmares if you ever caught so much as a glimpse of them.’ His eyes seemed to bore into me and it was quite clear he was enjoying himself. ‘Bits of bodies, skeletons in rusty armour, black, empty eye sockets staring up at you, bony hands reaching out for help-’
I wasn’t going to put up with someone trying to scare me out of my wits. ‘I suppose it must have been near here that the Conqueror built his causeway,’ I interrupted, trying to make my tone nonchalant.
The boatman looked surprised that I should know that but quickly he rallied. ‘This here were Hereward’s stronghold, see,’ he said proudly, ‘the place he chose to set up his standard when he came home to find his lands forfeited and his own brother’s head on a spike over the door.’ I had heard the tale many times but it was still shocking. I imagined returning to my own home and finding my dear Haward’s head on a pole. Quickly, I turned my attention back to the boatman.
‘The Conqueror made many attempts to get over the fen but each time he was thwarted,’ the man was saying, puffing slightly as he pulled on the oars, ‘and finally he gave orders for a fleet of wooden rafts to be built and formed up into a causeway. Right here.’ He nodded at the water beneath the keel. ‘Not content with that, he got hold of a local witch and set her up in a high tower, from where she hurled down terrible curses on everyone on the island. Seemingly, he thought she’d undermine our resolve, but she fell and broke her neck and that was the end of that.’ He cackled, coughed, then leaned over the side and spat. I had noted our resolve. Intentionally or not, the boatman had just told us plainly on which side his loyalties lay. It was as well for him that Sibert and I were not Norman spies.