Sibert and I stood eyeing each other. We had shared so much and we had done a momentous thing. Were we thieves, in the eyes of the law? I did not know. Romain would say that we were, and only a couple of weeks before he would have had some justification, in that what Sibert carried in his leather bag had been hidden on Romain’s land. But now the king had taken the manor and everything in it, so in truth, I supposed, we had stolen from him.
It was alarming, to say the least.
I reassured myself with the thought that morally, if in no other way, the crown belonged to Sibert as the descendant of the man who had made it. I had longed to ask him about this all the long miles of our journey home but he had changed. The Sibert who possessed the crown — or, more likely, it was the crown that possessed him — was not a man of whom you could ask unwelcome questions, and every sense told me that this was not a matter he wished to discuss with me.
I turned away, leaving him standing at the crossroads, and headed off down the track to Icklingham. I was dog tired, my feet ached, I was hungry, thirsty, filthy dirty and my face was hot and prickly with sunburn. I had done what I had been asked, and what had I got for my troubles? Nothing.
I trudged on, deep in self-pity.
But then as I drew near to my destination and at last a proper bed to sleep in, I realized that I was wrong. I had got something, and its value far outweighed money or treasure.
Romain — who, I admitted to myself, I liked so much that it felt like love — had been in deadly peril. Death had shadowed him and I had seen its black cloud over his handsome head as we stood by the sea sanctuary. Somehow the crown had endangered him; that was where the threat lay. By my actions I had seen to it that Romain and the crown were kept apart.
I had saved his life.
Happy, smug in this secret knowledge of my own power and skill that could outwit death, finally I got to Goda’s house. It was fully dark now and I could hear my sister’s snores. I didn’t look to see if Cerdic was home — it didn’t really matter — and, being as quiet as I could, I let myself into the lean-to and fell on to my bed.
It had taken Romain some time before he felt able to straighten out his curled body. Whenever he risked movement, the pain ripped up from his groin with such ferocity that it was as if Sibert’s knee was driving into him all over again. Slowly, agonizingly, he rolled on to his side, then up on to hands and knees. Then he tried to stand up.
Besides the injury, however, he was suffering from dehydration and he had not eaten anything of any substance for hours. He had raced along the track in pursuit of Sibert and the crown; he had been in a fight that had left him badly hurt. His blistered foot was a constant agony, throbbing in repeated waves of pain in time with his fast heartbeat. It was little wonder, then, that the moment he was upright, his head began to swim and he fainted.
When he came back to himself he was lying on his left side, knees drawn up, his face pressed into the soft ground. He tried to remember how he had got there. He felt dizzy, sick and disoriented and his memory would not oblige him.
When eventually he recalled the events of the recent past, he groaned aloud. They had deceived him, that crafty youth and the skinny girl who looked so young and scared but whose true nature was so very different. They had crept out of the sleeping place in the night, gone back to the sanctuary and stolen his crown. He had tried to fight the lad to regain it but he had failed and they had escaped him. Now they were somewhere on the road ahead and, injured and sick as he was, there was little chance that he could overtake them.
Little chance? he thought. There was no chance at all, for by now they would be deep in those pestilential, haunted Fens and he knew he would be hard put to follow and find them.
Very cautiously he sat up. The swimming sensation flooded back but he gritted his teeth and endured it. When it faded a little, he tried once again to stand up. This time he succeeded.
‘What should I do?’ he said aloud. ‘I must have my crown’ — it was the one thought that was in his mind, banging insistently against his skull until he thought he would go mad — ‘and so I have no choice but to follow them.’
His footsteps dragged as he made his slow way over to where the path emerged from beneath the dark shadow of the trees. It was then that he knew he was no longer alone.
He could not identify the sound that had set his nerves tingling and jangling with fear. Was it a footstep? A soft intake of breath? He stood quite still, heart hammering, sweat breaking out on his body, and listened.
The silence ached around him.
His control broke and he yelled, ‘Where are you? Come out and show yourself!’
Not a sound.
I am being stupid, he tried to tell himself. There’s no one there or, if there is, it’s some poacher up to no good and probably far more frightened of me than I am of him.
But in his heart he knew that this was no poacher.
He believed he knew who it was and the thought terrified him.
‘I haven’t got it!’ he cried, a sob in his voice. ‘The boy and the girl took it and now they are far away!’
He stared around him, eyes wide and wild. He thought he saw movement and spun his head so swiftly to look more closely that the threatening faintness came rushing back.
He fought down the nausea and went on staring.
It seemed to him that there was something black creeping out from under the trees. He blinked and it vanished.
‘Where are you?’ he sobbed again. ‘Show yourself!’ Whatever horror lurked there out of the deep past, it would be better to face it, to see what it was.
Wouldn’t it?
He thought he smelt the sea. Oh, dear God, what was it? Some dread magic conjured up by the sorcerers of old? Some projection of their vast, unearthly power, disguised as the terrible dragon whose roar gave Drakelow its name?
‘Help me,’ he whimpered. ‘Oh, God, help me!’
They — it — had come for the stolen treasure. He knew it. He was the thief, for all that he did not have the crown. Dark, frightful and all-knowing powers such as these, whatever they were, knew who was to blame.
They blamed him.
And they had come for him. They had followed him stealthily all the way from the sea and now they would take him.
With a moan of pure terror, Romain sank to his knees. Holding up his clasped hands as if in prayer, he wept. ‘Spare me!’ he begged. ‘Oh, spare me!’
There was a whistling noise, as if something heavy was flying through the air. The pain burst with unbelievable, agonizing force inside Romain’s head and then the dark took him.
TWELVE
In the morning I entertained my grumpy and by now all but immobile sister to a lively account of my week back in Aelf Fen. She didn’t seem particularly interested but all the same I elaborated and embroidered my tale, describing this person’s concussion, that person’s severe bruising and how I had helped Edild reduce a fracture. In the end Goda shouted at me to shut my mouth, get on with cleaning the house and then fetch her something to eat.
Meekly I did as I was told. The house certainly needed cleaning and it looked as if whoever had been keeping an eye on my sister during my absence — probably the village midwife — had contented herself with the briefest of visits and done no more than make sure Goda was still alive and not giving birth. As I worked I continued to volunteer further details about life back in Aelf Fen until Goda lost her temper and threw a wooden platter at me. Advanced pregnancy had, however, weakened her aim and the platter’s trajectory was feeble. I ducked it with the ease of long practice.
I decided it would do no harm to describe my fictitious stay in Aelf Fen to Cerdic, too. I wanted to make sure that if ever anyone accused me of having journeyed all the way to the coast south of Dunwich where I assisted in the theft of a gold crown, at least two people would protest that I couldn’t possibly have done because I was staying with and helping my aunt Edild. I reminded myself that if the day ever came when more verification was called for, I must enlist Edild’s help too so that she supported my story as well.