I was, however, quietly confident that no such day would ever come.
It came two days later.
I had been occupied in the mammoth and complicated task of changing the rough and worn sheets on Goda’s bed. The task was well overdue and exhausting right from the start, when I had to help her to get up and sit on the bench by the hearth. Immediately she began to harangue me for not working fast enough. The bed was horrible and I won’t describe exactly in what way. I stripped it, put the straw mattress outside the door and gave it a vigorous beating. Then I sponged down the sacking that covered it, opened one end and stuffed in some fresh sprigs of pennyroyal to discourage the fleas. I took the sheets down to the stream and plunged them into the water, then picked up Goda’s block of lye-and-tallow soap and began rubbing it into the worst of the stains.
I had the sheets washed, rinsed and spread out on gorse bushes to dry when I heard the sound of horses’ hooves. Looking up, my heart beating fast in alarm, I saw three of the lord’s men riding into the village. They were bareheaded — clearly not expecting the least sign of trouble in a small village full of humble people minding their own business — and their surcoats were maroon and bore a device in black. Even if they weren’t expecting trouble, all the same each of them had a sword at his side.
They went to my sister’s house and I knew they had come for me. They went inside, stayed for a short while, then one of them came hurrying out again, leapt on to his horse and rode away. Was he going to check on my story?
I cursed myself. Why hadn’t I gone on to Aelf Fen with Sibert that night and spoken to Edild? She would back me up, I knew it, but she could not if she didn’t know I needed her to! Oh, what an idiot I had been.
I waited, holding my breath.
I heard my sister screech, ‘Lassair! Come here!’
I went.
I had left her sitting on the bench in nothing but her shift, stretched impossibly tight across her swollen belly and none too clean. I had intended to see to her once the sheets were drying, and for now she was sweaty, smelly and greasy-faced, her hair hanging in sticky rats’ tails and so dulled by dirt that its bright carroty-red colour was totally hidden. I felt a stab of sympathy for her, as this was no condition in which any woman would wish to greet two well-dressed, important men.
The sympathy was short-lived. ‘What have you done?’ she yelled at me as I stepped through the door. ‘You’re in for a beating, my girl, bringing shame to an honest household, and I’ll-’
One of the men — the elder of the two — held up an imperious hand and my sister fell silent, her mouth left hanging open.
‘You are Lassair?’ he asked.
I tried to read his expression but his face was bland and gave nothing away.
‘I am.’
‘Your sister here tells us you have recently been at Aelf Fen.’
‘Yes, that’s right. I was staying with my aunt, her name’s Edild and she’s a healer, and we were-’
Again he held up his hand. ‘So I am given to understand. I have sent one of my company to verify the truth of what you say.’
I said nothing. Across the miles that separated us, I was concentrating on feverishly willing Edild to back me up.
‘You are required to come with us to Aelf Fen,’ he stated baldly.
To my own village? Why? I wondered frantically. If as I suspected all this flurry of activity was because they’d found the crown, then why did I have to go to Aelf Fen when the act of theft had been at Drakelow? But then I thought, ah, yes, but the crown is with Sibert, and he’s at Aelf Fen.
I almost blurted out the question that they must have known I was desperate to ask. But somehow I managed to hold it back. I was innocent, I reminded myself firmly. I had been nowhere near Drakelow but closeted with my aunt Edild, helping her in her healing work. Innocent people did not demand anxiously why they were wanted. Confident that it could be for no sinister purpose, they simply smiled and said, very well.
Which was exactly what I did.
They were obviously in a hurry because they were not content to go at my walking pace. Instead the younger man swung up into the saddle of his great chestnut horse and, bending down and catching me under the arms, lifted me up and sat me down in front of him. Then both men put spurs to their mounts and we were off, cantering smartly in the direction of Aelf Fen.
All the way there I was thinking about Sibert.
How could I help him? If they suspected what he — we — had done, how could I defend him? Perhaps he, like me, had prepared a good story and, if what I dreaded had happened and they had accused him of stealing the crown, he would be able to hold his head high and offer proof that he had been nowhere near Dunwich.
Then it would be Romain’s word — for surely it could only be he who had brought the accusations — against Sibert’s and mine. Two against one, but the trouble was that the one was a rich Norman lord’s son. A rich lord, however, I reminded myself, who had just fallen so far out of favour with the king that his manor, his lands and his property had been seized.
Perhaps it did not look quite so bad after all.
I concentrated very hard on making my expression sweet and innocent. A decent girl, hard-working, caught in the act of helping her pregnant sister and only lately returned from a stint of dedicated nursing and healing with her aunt; that was the way they must see me.
Trying like fury to send a mental message to Edild — When they ask, support me! Oh, please, Edild, say I’ve been with you the whole time! — all too soon we were riding into Aelf Fen.
I had never seen so many people gathered together in my village. We do not have a central meeting point such as I had seen the villagers enjoy at Icklingham, for Aelf Fen is, as the name implies, a Fenland village and grew up, I suppose, from a series of dwellings constructed over time above the upper line of the tidal wash. There have always been dwellings there, we know that, and sometimes when people dig over a new piece of ground they find evidence of ancient houses, circular where ours are rectangular, huddled close together as if in fear of the great world beyond. The track sweeps through the village in a sort of wiggle, with the little houses situated on one side and the wetter ground leading down to the water in the other. Such was the avid curiosity of the villagers this morning that some of them, standing at the rear of the crowd, were ankle-deep in black, muddy water.
The man I was riding with deposited me — quite gently and carefully — on the ground, and then dismounted and went to join his two companions. They spoke briefly and one of them looked in my direction. There were another lord’s men there too, wearing a different device on their breasts. I counted half a dozen of them. Standing with them was a tall and burly man of perhaps thirty-five or forty, dark hair club-cut in a fringe, clean-shaven and dressed in clothes that must have been expensive but which now looked well-worn and travel-stained.
Nobody seemed particularly interested in me, although I had a feeling this state was not going to last. For now, I slipped in between two of my neighbours and tried to make myself invisible. I looked around for my family and saw my parents, my granny, my sister Elfritha and my brother Squeak. My mother held the baby. My brother Haward stood behind one of the lord’s men. He caught my eye and sent me a worried frown. I was wondering whether to slip through the crowd and go to speak to him when I saw Edild. She was standing with the rider who had been sent to question her and verify my tale of having spent the past week with her. She too caught my eye and I thought I saw her give a very small nod. Had I not been looking so anxiously for some such sign, I don’t think I would have seen it.