Almost.
I really didn’t want to go back to Goda’s house but I could not think of anywhere else to go. If I turned up at home I’d have to explain, and my failure still bit too deep for me to have any desire to talk about it. So, slowly, reluctantly, I plodded wearily off down the road to Icklingham, thinking as I did that never had the miles seemed so long.
The day had become hot and I stopped by a stream to splash my face with cool water. I was straightening up again, preparing to attack the last leg of my journey, when I heard a rustling sound in the bracken behind me.
For no apparent reason, I was afraid. I stood quite still, only my eyes moving as swiftly I looked round, both for the source of the sound and for a hiding place or escape route. There was nowhere to hide — I was standing on a low bank above a watercourse that wound between low bushes and skinny alders — and the only place to run was on down the track to Icklingham.
I listened, my ears straining, but the sound did not come again. It was probably an animal, I told myself. A bird pulling at a worm. A stoat whipping round into the safety of its hole.
I did not succeed in reassuring myself at all. I knew that the sound had somehow been too big for a small, innocent creature. I was all but sure it had been made by a human.
I thought suddenly, someone killed Romain. It wasn’t Sibert, no matter what this mysterious witness says, no matter how much Baudouin wants to believe that it was. I knew the truth and I realized with a cold shiver of horror that, other than Sibert, I was the only living soul who did. It was in this unknown somebody’s interests to ensure that my version of events did not gain credibility and one sure way of doing that was to silence me. Permanently.
I leapt across the stream and ran as fast as I could towards Icklingham.
Goda received me with slightly more animation than she usually managed. It was not, after all, every day that her sister managed to involve herself in a murder. After the initial questions, however, Goda’s attitude changed and soon she was screeching at me for bringing the family into disrepute. It was a relief to go outside into the warm sunshine to collect vegetables for our meal.
She found plenty of tasks of varying degrees of distastefulness for me to do for the remainder of the day. She was quite clearly making a point, that I had done something reckless and silly — she never specified what, exactly, since she didn’t know — and must be punished. I accepted it, doing whatever I was ordered efficiently and without complaint. I too felt I needed to be punished, and far more severely than anything my sister could come up with, for I had failed my friend and he would probably hang.
As the long day at last descended into evening, it was all I could do to keep back my tears.
I finally got Goda settled for the night. She had been complaining of aches and pains all afternoon, but then she always complained about something and I did not take a lot of notice. I knew she must be near her time but, other than making sure I knew where to go for the midwife when the moment came, there was little else I could do.
I went to sit outside on the narrow little bench in front of the house. Presently Cerdic came home; he had developed to a fine degree the knack of knowing when his wife was asleep and only creeping into their bed when she was snoring rhythmically and all but impossible to wake. Since he was up and out of the house in the morning before she woke, I wondered if these days they ever exchanged as much as a word. Certainly, it seemed highly unlikely they would exchange anything else.
He saw me on the bench and nodded a greeting.
‘She’s asleep,’ I whispered.
We both listened in silence for a moment to her snores. ‘So I hear,’ he whispered back with a grin.
On an impulse I patted the bench beside me and after a brief hesitation he sat down. We did not speak for some time — it really was a lovely night, clear skies and a glowing, golden moon — and then he said tentatively, ‘Do you think she’ll be better when the baby’s here?’
I did not know how to answer. What exactly did he mean by better? She’d be less immobile and useless, probably, and there was a slim chance she’d remember that she was a wife and it was her duty to keep the house clean and tidy and get a meal ready for her hard-working husband when he came home at night. Her temper might improve marginally once she was no longer fat, sweaty and uncomfortable. But she would still be Goda.
I thought very carefully and then said, for he was stuck with her and it would do no harm to give him some hope, ‘Lots of women feel quite differently about — er, about things once they have a baby to cherish. She’ll have a big, strong child,’ I went on, my confidence growing, ‘that’s for sure, and that’ll be a joy. She’ll nurse it and it’ll thrive, and she’ll be happy and I’m sure she’ll try to be a good mother.’ I was going too far and I knew it when I heard myself say she’ll be happy, for I’d never known my sister when she wasn’t discontented and moaning abut something.
But then miracles did sometimes happen.
I had said enough; more than enough.
Cerdic seemed content, however. After a time he said, ‘Ah well, better get to bed, I suppose.’ He stood up, looking down at me with a wry smile. ‘Thanks for coming back,’ he added. ‘She’d never say so but she needs you.’
As I watched him let himself quietly into the house and close the door, I reflected that it was probably all the appreciation I was ever going to get.
I sat on for some time and I was only prompted to thinking that I too should go to bed when I realized I was growing cold. I wrapped my lovely shawl more tightly around me and stood up, heading for the jakes.
On my way back to my little lean-to an arm was thrown around my throat and before I could cry out a hand was pressed tightly over my mouth. My alarmed heart started banging against my ribs and, as in a flash I was transported back to the cliff above Drakelow where the same thing had happened, my instant thought was: Sibert! It’s Sibert!
Something about my assailant must have added to that impression — a smell, or the feel of the skin on the hand clamped to my lips — for, despite my fear when I had heard something in the undergrowth, now, as the initial shock faded, I was not scared at all.
The hand lessened its pressure and the arm around my throat fell away. I turned round and saw not Sibert but Hrype.
I stared at him. His dark blond hair gleamed in the moonlight and his eyes reflected its glow. He was dressed in a long black cloak, its deep hood thrown back. He said very quietly, ‘I must talk to you. Come.’
He led the way along the track that leads eastwards out of the village and when we were well past the last habitation, he turned off the path and in under the trees. We were not far from the place where I had waited for Romain and Sibert.
We settled on the bank beneath a beech tree. For a few moments we sat in silence. I was very aware of the night sounds all around me; even more aware of the unknown, unknowable man who was by my side. I shivered suddenly, wrapping my shawl more closely around me. Perceptive man that he is, Hrype noticed. ‘I am sorry to keep you from your bed,’ he said.
‘It’s all right.’ I thought briefly about the coincidence by which I had not retired at the usual time but stayed sitting outside the house on the very night that Hrype needed to speak to me. Perhaps it was no coincidence at all; Hrype is, as I have said, a strange man with many powers.