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.’