I shook myself back into the here and now.
We had found a crown. Sibert and I had Romain’s treasure in our hands. But it wasn’t Romain’s treasure now.
‘We must get way from here,’ I said urgently. ‘Wrap it up again, Sibert. Quick!’
He glanced out to sea. ‘The tide’s turned,’ he observed, ‘but we have a while yet.’
But I hadn’t meant merely that we must get away from the sea sanctuary. I thought carefully — this was a crucial moment — and then said, ‘Sibert, we have to leave the area. We ought to be well away by the time Romain wakes up.’
His blue-green eyes met mine and I thought that he understood. In case he was not entirely sure of my meaning, I added, ‘There’s only one crown and it was undoubtedly put here by your forefathers.’ I did not tell him about my vision. ‘It’s been under the tree stump for far too long to have been placed there by Fulk de la Flèche.’
‘I know.’ He nodded slowly. Then he said, ‘Romain implied he’d make sure I got my share. But he’s not going to do anything of the sort, is he?’
‘I don’t think so.’ I didn’t know, to be honest; I was probably maligning Romain, who could well have been planning to treat both his accomplices honourably and fairly. But my overriding purpose was to stop Romain in a headlong pursuit that, as far as I could see, would only have one outcome: his death.
‘We’ll go and fetch our packs and set off immediately,’ Sibert said. I could feel the nervous energy building up in him. ‘It’s mine. This’ — he hugged the crown to his chest — ‘belongs to me. I will not let him have it. I found it’ — we found it, I corrected him silently — ‘and I intend to keep it.’
We turned our backs on the timber circle, whose power, I detected, had diminished noticeably now that we had violated it and robbed it of its treasure. We hurried across the damp sand, and I was very conscious of the sea at our backs. It felt threatening, and I had to keep turning round to make sure it hadn’t sneaked up on us. I pictured the water gathering itself into a mighty wave which would break over our heads, swirl us around like leaves in a mill race and then withdraw, taking our drowned bodies with it. We had made the sea very, very angry; I was quite sure of it.
We were running, racing each other in our urgency, by the time we reached the dry stream bed that led up the cliff face. We stopped to get our breath back and Sibert tucked the crown, securely wrapped once more, under his belt. Noticing my eyes on him, he said softly, ‘I have a leather bag rolled up in my pack. I’ll put the crown in it and buckle it to my belt, under my tunic. It’ll be safe there right next to my skin.’
I was worried by that. I knew very little about power objects but what I did know suggested it probably wasn’t wise to wear them right against the body for any length of time. .
We crept up to the place where we had left Romain. He was still fast asleep and he did not stir as, very carefully and cautiously, we collected our belongings and edged away. We walked on light feet for perhaps fifty or sixty paces, keeping to the shadow of the trees in case he woke and spotted us. Then the track rounded a shallow bend and we were out of sight of our camp. Without saying a word, we broke into a run and our speed barely eased until we were almost level with Dunwich, below us on our right.
‘When we came here we emerged from that path over there,’ I gasped, panting and leaning forward, my hands on my knees, trying to get my breath back. I nodded to where a sandy track wound its way off through the thin woodland.
‘Yes,’ Sibert agreed. He was looking around, a frown on his face. ‘We should go back another way. He’ll follow us, and he’ll expect us to return via the same route we took on the way out.’
It made good sense. ‘Do you know an alternative road?’ I asked hopefully. He had been in the habit of coming here quite often, I reminded myself, and so it was quite possible.
He looked around again. Then he said, ‘Yes, I think so. We’ll go on past Dunwich and turn inland further to the north. There’s a good road that runs from Lowestoft to Diss and we can pick that up, if I can remember the way. We’ll journey westwards and cut across Thetford Forest, approaching Aelf Fen from the north-east.’
‘I have to get back to Icklingham,’ I reminded him.
‘Yes,’ he said vaguely. He sounded as if that was no concern of his. He glanced up at the sun. ‘It’s still very early. If we keep up a good speed we can be on the good road by sunset.’
I picked up his sense of haste. I could see as well as he could that if Romain picked up our trail we would be in a much safer position on a well-used road, with the presence, or at least the reasonable expectation, of fellow travellers and passers-by, than all by ourselves in the wilds.
We set off. We were not quite running but our pace was not far short of it.
Romain knew he was on the right track when he came to a place on the narrow path where some moisture remained in what had been a shallow puddle. Either they hadn’t seen it — he knew from the speed at which he had been covering the ground that they must have been hurrying — or else they believed themselves safe from pursuit. He did not much care. What was important — so very important — was that he could see two clear footprints in the mud, one of a man-sized boot, the other of a girl’s coarse, stout shoe. He could easily picture what the two of them had been wearing on their feet, having watched the footwear of all three of them slowly drying out by yesterday’s fire.
Where were they going? Romain wished he had a better knowledge of the geography of the region and the layout of its tracks and roads. The narrow, ill-defined path along which he was now pursuing Sibert and the girl — and his treasure, although he tried not to dwell on that as it made him apoplectic with rage — ran roughly north-west. Romain could make little sense of that, since Aelf Fen, where Sibert lived, and Icklingham, where the girl was lodging, were surely due west. If they are trying to put me off the scent, he thought grimly, then they have failed. And as for that simpleton’s trick of going back via a different route, what did they think he was?
He set off after them.
After the muddy footprints he had found no more signs of them and he was beginning to think he was wrong and they had returned some other way. The sun was high in the sky and, driven by thirst, for he had been running for much of the way and sweating copiously, he knew he must find water.
He came upon a tiny settlement in a clearing among the trees; one or two hovels, hens and a pig scratching in the dirt; a small child with trails of snot from nostrils to mouth sitting bare-arsed in the dirt. There was a ripe stench of ordure, either animal or human or both. The hamlet had a well, thankfully positioned a good distance away from all the shit, and as Romain approached, a fat woman was drawing water in a bucket. Holding out his cup, he asked if she would give him a drink and, after staring at him suspiciously for several moments, she nodded.
The water tasted like cool white wine in his parched mouth. He thanked her briefly, hoping she would retreat back to her hovel, but to his dismay she was disposed to chat. She perched her ample rump on the wall that ran around the well and, refilling his cup, urged him to drink some more.
‘Now there’s a thing,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I can be out here tending my little bit of land every day for a week and never see a soul, and here you are, filling your mug from my old bucket there, and you’re the third person today to do so!’
He managed to contain the flare of excitement. ‘Really?’ he replied.
‘Oh, yes,’ she assured him, nodding to emphasize her words. Leaning closer — he caught a waft of warm air and smelt unwashed flesh — she dropped her voice and said, ‘There were two of them, a youth and a girl, and the lass was quite a bit younger than the lad. I think they were runaways. Looked ever so anxious, they did. The lad kept staring back down the path as if he feared the devil was on his heels.’ She folded her arms and nodded, as if to say, What do you think of that?