But she made no remark about the youth and herself being better walkers than he. Instead she reached in the pouch at her waist and soon he smelt lavender.
‘Pull your hose off the raw skin and press this on to it,’ she commanded, handing him a pad of some soft fabric that was damp to the touch.
He did as he was told, expecting it to hurt like fire. It didn’t. ‘Oh!’ he exclaimed.
‘It’s lavender oil, both soothing and cleansing,’ she said. ‘Before you put your boots on tomorrow, I’ll give you some alcohol to rub into your feet. I carry a small bottle of it in my pack,’ she added with a touch of pride. ‘It’ll harden the skin.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
He hoped she would now go back to her sleeping place. He was grateful, very grateful, but now he felt embarrassed by her nearness.
She said, ‘You must have taken the journey over to the Fens in easy stages.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘How did you know?’
‘Your feet are not used to long marches.’ He could tell from her voice that she was smiling. ‘Still, if you keep this up, they soon will be. Good night.’
She crept away and he lay down in the darkness. There was now only a gentle throbbing from his blister and he sent her his silent but profound gratitude.
When we woke up after the second night of our journey, I had the feeling that we were close to the sea. I could not have said how I knew, never having experienced the coast before, but there was a new quality in the light over in the east. I got up, stretched and, hearing in the utter silence the sound of running water, went to find its source.
We had crossed a river last night — fortunately there was a little wooden bridge — but this was much smaller, nothing more than a stream. Still, the water looked clean, running bright and fast over pebbles, and I could see fish in it. I bent down and drank greedily, splashing my face to wake myself up, then washing my hands and feet. The water was cool but not cold and very refreshing.
I was thinking about Romain’s blister. The best thing, I decided, was not to disturb the dressing I had placed over it in the night but instead bandage it to his foot, to make sure the raw flesh was protected from the rubbing of his boot. Yes. That would be best.
I was deliberately forcing myself to think about the practicalities of how to make a man with a huge blister comfortable enough to walk another ten miles. I did not want to go on thinking about how I had held his naked foot between my hands and gently, so gently, touched his soft skin. The remembered sensations had kept me awake long after he and Sibert were asleep. They had disturbed me in the night and they threatened to the same now in the day.
There was something different about our little company this morning and I detected it as soon as I rejoined them. The men were awake and already busy, Sibert with setting out food and drink, Romain with getting his boots back on. Before he attended to his right foot, I rushed forward to fix the dressing over his blister.
When I had finished I packed up my small bag and wound Elfritha’s shawl around my waist. The day was already too hot for me to wear it. I watched the two men, trying to work out what had changed.
Romain was pale; perhaps from nerves, for we were surely now close to the climax of our mission. He stood a few paces out from the shade of the fir trees staring out towards the east, where we would shortly be going. He was frowning and chewing at the inside of his cheek. But nervousness was not the main emotion I sensed in him: what I felt emanating from him in powerful waves was a restless, barely contained excitement.
Sibert’s mood was very different. I know him well — or I thought I did — and he had always been subject to steeper ups and downs than most of us. This morning he was clearly uneasy, and I could hear him muttering to himself. His frown made a crease like a knife cut between his eyes. Out of nowhere I felt a stab of sympathy for him, so sharp that I almost gasped.
What was the matter? Why was he not as excited as Romain? This mission concerned them both, or so I had been told. Why was Sibert not as thrilled as Romain at the thought of nearing its completion?
I stilled my thoughts and, relaxing, opened my mind to him as Edild had taught me. Straight away his distress flooded into me and I knew why he looked as he did.
He was afraid. He had assured Romain — older, tougher, more important, influential and powerful and infinitely wealthier — that he could lead him to the general location of this thing that we had come so far to find. Now the moment would soon be at hand when he would have to substantiate his boast and he did not know that he could.
I’ll help you, Sibert, I said silently to him. All you have to do is tell me where to look. I can’t scour the entire coast but if you narrow it down, I’ll find your treasure.
My urgent reassurance could not have reached him. As we set off shortly afterwards, he looked like a man on his way to the gallows.
Around noon, to judge by the height of the sun, we passed through a broad band of forest. I was surprised, for what I had been told of the coast (by Edild, of course, my best and favourite teacher) suggested shingle or sandy shores and short, wiry vegetation tough enough to withstand off-sea breezes and salt in the air. Yet here we were, walking in woodland.
The trees thinned out and as we emerged into the sunshine, for the first time in my life I saw the sea. I stopped dead — just then I couldn’t have moved to save my life — and stared. I heard myself go ‘Oh!’, but it was quite inadequate. There were no words to describe what I was feeling.
We were on a low sandy buff and I could see a large town in the distance below us. That in itself was quite awe-inspiring for someone who had lived her whole life in a small Fenland village. The greater wonder lay beyond.
The sea, restless under a light breeze that blew from the east, was like a huge sheet of beaten silver. It stretched from as far as I could see to my left to equally far to my right, and I had the sudden sense that we were nothing but a small outcrop in a vast watery world. Something in the sea called out to me, so that there and then, as I absorbed the effects of my first glimpse of it, I wanted to run towards it, give myself to it. It was just so big. Endlessly big, and the long line of the coast, stretching almost due north-south, seemed a feeble and inadequate defence against its might.
It will eat up the land, I thought. I didn’t know where the image came from — I still don’t — but I saw in my mind an image of low cliffs crumbling before the constant, effortless attack of the waves. Mighty buildings cracked and the lines that webbed out across them, tiny and insignificant at first, swiftly and inexorably grew into huge fissures, and then enormous chunks of masonry fell away and disappeared with vast splashes into the hungry sea. People cried out in panic, the church bells sounded their urgent alarm, and from out of the turmoil I thought I heard a sudden clear note ringing out, as if someone had struck a ring of metal with an iron hammer.
Then the image faded.
I was shaking, my knees suddenly weak. I would have liked to sit down but Romain, impatient now, was already striding on.
‘Come on!’ he urged, and Sibert and I hurried to join him. ‘We’ll look down on the town, then we’ll proceed on to — to our destination.’
Had we further to go? I did not know, for Romain had only said vaguely that we were going to the coast and now we had reached it. I looked at Sibert, raising my eyebrows in enquiry.
‘The port’s down there,’ he said quietly, jerking his head in the direction of the town. ‘Romain’s land’ — a sardonic smile briefly crossed his face — ‘is on the coast a few miles to the south.’ He added, half to himself, ‘Drakelow.’
Drakelow? Was that the name of Romain’s manor? If it was, I didn’t much like it. A drake is another name for a dragon, and it was surely inauspicious to call one’s dwelling place after such a fearsome and aggressive creature. To compound the folly by adding low — our word for the roar of a wild beast — seemed to be just asking for trouble. .