The horrified mutterings of the villagers rose to a crescendo and with it, blending like two lines of melody, I heard a ferocious humming like a skep of angry bees. It came from the crown, but whether it was jubilant or protesting I did not know.
The sounds climaxed inside my head to a roar. I felt dizzy with sudden violent vertigo and my knees gave way. I was vaguely aware of the ground rushing up to meet me and then everything went black.
THIRTEEN
When I came to I was lying on the floor in my own home and my mother and my aunt were bending over me. My granny sat beside the hearth, watching me very closely. I could see her deep eyes glittering. Ignoring both her and my poor mother, who had clearly been crying and was red-eyed and puffy-nosed, I grabbed Edild’s hand and said, ‘I’m so sorry! I’ll explain, I promise!’
She knew, of course, what I referred to. ‘Don’t worry about that now,’ she replied. My mother looked mystified and Edild turned to her. ‘Essa, could you find a blanket, please? Lassair’s shivering. I think it’s the shock.’
‘Of course!’ My mother leapt up. She has a lot of respect for her sister-in-law and would never dream of challenging her in her healing role. Besides, they are very fond of each other.
‘Quickly, now,’ my aunt hissed, bending low over me. ‘You’ve been with me for the past week or so, is that what you’ve said? I’ve already told them you were but we’d better agree on the details.’
‘Yes,’ I hissed back. ‘I told Goda I had to come back to the village to help you with the injured from an accident with a hay cart.’
‘The accident that happened rather longer ago than a week.’ Edild nodded. ‘Any specific injuries?’
‘I helped you with a fractured leg,’ I whispered. ‘A nasty injury, with bits of bone sticking out. I had to hold the man’s shoulders while you pulled on his leg, but you gave him something to numb the pain.’
She nodded again. ‘Otherwise, mainly cuts and bruises?’
‘Yes.’
‘Clever girl,’ she muttered. ‘Except for the fractured leg, exactly what we did do. We’ll just have to hope,’ she added, speaking swiftly because my mother was coming over to us, ‘that nobody thinks to check the time of this accident and its aftermath with the victims.’
With that awkward little conversation out of the way, I relaxed for a moment. Then, of course, I remembered about Sibert. Even worse, if anything could be worse, I remembered about Romain, whose uncle, his face distorted with grief, had said he was dead. I felt two large tears roll out of my eyes and slide sideways on to the pillow. My mother bent down and hugged me wordlessly. It was, as it always has been, a great comfort. Edild offered to make a soothing drink for me and hurried away, leaving my mother by my side holding my hand.
I needed, however, comfort of a different sort. I needed to know what was happening to Sibert and — for no matter how badly someone we’re fond of is suffering, we still put our own safety first, or at least I did then — I had to know why they had come looking for me.
How had they possibly known I was involved?
I had to think. I had to try to piece together what might have happened, and for that I needed quiet. In case my mother felt she ought to talk to me to take my mind off the morning’s awful events, I closed my eyes and made my breathing deep and steady. Presently I sensed her get up and tiptoe away. Please don’t think she was being callous; it’s just that she always has so much to do that she couldn’t afford to spend time at the side of her distraught daughter if that daughter had just fallen asleep.
I had imagined at first that it was Romain who had organized the lord’s men to come searching for Sibert, me and the crown, but it could not have been because he was dead. He could, I supposed, have told his uncle about what we had done before he died, so that it was Baudouin and not Romain who tracked us down. I thought about that for a while and it seemed to make sense. Romain had somehow got word to his uncle, then, that I had helped Sibert steal the crown, yet I had told a different story, one verified by my aunt and, to a lesser extent, by Goda and Cerdic. It was my word against Baudouin’s and although he was a Norman lord and I a village girl, for one thing I had someone to verify my story and for another he had rebelled against the king and lost everything. My position was beginning to look more secure.
Then I thought, aghast, but Romain is dead!
Romain was dead. I could still barely believe it. Baudouin claimed that Sibert had murdered him, but that wasn’t possible. Was it? He certainly hadn’t murdered him in the time it took us to walk home from Drakelow because we had been together every minute. He could, I supposed, have got up while I was asleep, found Romain and killed him, but I didn’t think it at all likely. Sibert and I had both been very scared on that journey home and we had barely slept. Even when I did manage to drift off, the slightest sound had brought me back to full consciousness. I didn’t think Sibert could have left my side without my noticing, since to comfort ourselves we had slept with our backs pressed tightly together. Besides, was it possible that a slim youth like Sibert could have attacked and killed a much broader, stronger man like Romain without a considerable amount of noise? And then returned and calmly gone back to sleep as if nothing had happened? That presupposed that Romain had recovered sufficiently from Sibert’s knee in his testicles to get up and follow us, and I was not at all sure he could have done.
No. I was willing to swear that Sibert had not murdered Romain on the course of that journey. It was possible that Romain had followed him back to Aelf Fen and Sibert had slain him then, but surely Froya and Hrype would be able to prove that he didn’t because he lived with them and they would know his movements.
Unless, of course, he had actually managed to evade them and he had gone out and killed Romain. .
Romain was dead.
I had been so busy rushing in my mind to Sibert’s defence that I had barely taken in that stark, horrible, heartbreaking fact.
Romain was dead. With him went my happy daydream of him discovering how I had helped Sibert take the crown and so saved Romain from its deadly threat, and coming to Aelf Fen to rescue me from my village life and marry me, turning me at a stroke from peasant into lady. Drakelow would, of course, have been restored to him (how this would be achieved without the crown I had not quite worked out) and we would live in blissful happiness for the rest of our days.
But he was dead.
Despite what I had done, that shadow had still found him and death had claimed him, just as my granny had predicted. I risked a quick peep to see if she was still sitting there watching me. She was. Knowing Granny, even if she hadn’t seen the quick flutter of my eyelids she would still be well aware that I wasn’t really asleep. I didn’t think I could bear to talk to her just then. She had warned me, months ago, and I ought to have taken more notice. Instead I had thought I knew better. I had believed in my overconfident faith in myself that I could outwit death when it had put its mark on someone. What a fool I had been, for now I had lost him.
Soundlessly, secretly, I wept.
When I finished weeping, I had a thought. If Sibert did not kill Romain — and I was quite sure he did not — then who did?
I was not allowed to get up. Had it not been for my grief over Romain and my gnawing, constant anxiety over Sibert, I would have relished the chance to lie there in comfort while my family ministered to me. While I needed to be looked after — and clearly they all thought I did — Edild had taken up temporary residence and, because there was so little room, my brother Haward was going to sleep in her house, taking Squeak with him. He’s a kind man, my brother, and he did not complain at all about being cast out of his home for my sake.