‘But-’ I began.
She did not register my interruption. Dreamily, as if she spoke out of a trance, she murmured, ‘Nor indeed should any young woman, for he walks in shadow.’
‘In shadow?’ I repeated, my words a terrified whisper. ‘Wh-what sort of shadow, Granny?’
At last she turned to meet my eyes. ‘The shadow of death.’
TWO
The autumn went on and the days got steadily colder and shorter. We all worked hard, none more so than my poor father. The demands of our ruthless Norman overlord were diluted down through several tiers before they reached our lowly level, and indeed our local master, Lord Gilbert de Caudebec, was not too hard on us, being a chubby, indolent man who relied heavily on his reeve — who was chilly, self-contained but basically fair — and tended to leave us alone. Nevertheless we were left in no doubt as to what our fate would be if the rigid rules were not obeyed. The few elders who could remember what life had been like before the Conquest spoke wistfully (and very quietly) of the good old days. Most of us had known nothing but the Norman rule and could only take their word for it.
My parents, however, succeeded in shutting out the cruel world every evening when my father closed and fastened the door. The seven of us (eight if you counted the baby) settled down to life without Goda as contentedly and as cheerfully as we had anticipated and, in due course, I forgot Granny’s awful warning about my handsome man.
I did not, however, forget about him.
He had come to Goda and Cerdic’s wedding, I reasoned, and so surely he must be acquainted with one or other family. He didn’t know us, so therefore his attendance must have been on Cerdic’s behalf. There was little point in asking around in the village to see if anyone knew more about him than I did, although this didn’t stop me. The only person who even appeared to know who I was talking about was the old man who had shared Sibert’s straw bale — he’s my mother’s friend Ella’s father-in-law’s brother — who muttered something to the effect that the ‘shiny well-dressed little cockerel’ had talked with him and Sibert for some time.
I found his attitude disrespectful so I went off in a huff and didn’t ask him any more.
I saw little of Sibert. For some reason he seemed to be keeping himself to himself and when we did happen to meet, he did his best to pretend I wasn’t there. Well, I don’t care, I wanted to shout into his frowning face with its preoccupied expression, these days it’s a better man than you that I see when I close my eyes at night!
In any case, life was becoming too full and too exciting for me to spare either man all that many moments. I was newly apprenticed to my fascinating aunt Edild, and Edild is a herbalist and a healer.
She lives in a little house on the fringes of Aelf Fen, by herself apart from a cat, some hens and a nanny goat and quite content with life. Her living space is even smaller than ours but, despite the lack of space, I really love it because Edild has a talent for making a place seem welcoming, homely and secure. Her low door opens into a little room whose beaten-earth floor is always immaculately swept, and the central hearth in its ring of evenly sized stones either contains a fire, burning merrily, or else is laid with logs and kindling and all ready to be lit. Edild sets bunches of herbs to smoulder in among the firewood and I would know her little house blindfold for its sweet scent; in addition to the burning bunches of herbs, the shelves in her house are laden with her remedies and she stores the ingredients in sacks kept in a special wooden box. She has fashioned a narrow platform to the rear of her house and up there, reached by a little ladder, she sleeps in a nest of regularly washed linen and soft woollen covers.
Her garden was always tidily kept and even now, as October gave way to November, you just knew there were bulbs and seeds safely tucked up beneath the smooth brown soil just waiting for spring to bring them back to life. Her reputation had spread beyond the settlement and not many days passed without someone tapping on her door to ask advice, on anything from piles to the suspicion that a neighbour was doing some ill-wishing. Strictly speaking, I was not meant to be privy to Edild’s consultations with her visitors but the cottage was small and sometimes I just couldn’t help overhearing.
It was Granny who had suggested my apprenticeship with my aunt. Granny, as well as knowing all about the ancestors, is very knowledgeable about the living, in particular her three sons (Ordic and Alwyn, fishermen and fowlers, and my father, whose name is Wymond and who is an eel catcher) and her two daughters Alvela (the one who’s the widow of nice Matthew and mother to my taciturn cousin Morcar) and Edild. She knows their strengths and their weaknesses; she also has an uncanny way of appreciating who is likely to get on with whom. She knows, for example, that my uncle Ordic puts a deep, dark fear into my brother Haward so that his stutter gags him to silence when Ordic is about.
I often wonder if Granny suggested my vocation because she knows about the dowsing. Not that I knew it was called that, not till she spoke of it to me. As far as I was concerned, it was just something I could do, in the way other children could wiggle their ears, raise one eyebrow or turn a line of handsprings. My talent is being able to find things. I knew where my mother’s pewter brooch was when it fell off her tunic into the woodpile. Out in the pasture I found a coin with a woman’s face on it. I know where water is, not that there’s any great skill in that when you live in the Fens, but actually I can find water sources that are hidden deep in the earth. All I have to do is focus my mind, hold out my hands and sort of feel the ground before me. When I approach the object of the search, whether it’s water or a lost object, my palms begin to tingle and after that it’s easy. Granny saw me mucking about with my friends one day and asked me quite sharply what I thought I was doing. When I told her, there was a sudden bright light in her eyes and she gave me a wide smile. Then she grabbed my hand and hurried me away to the hazel grove, where, after a bit of muttering to the tree and some funny movements with her hand, she broke off a little branch, stripped off the twigs and the leaves and then split one end. She pushed the split ends in my hands, turned me round, gave me a shove and said, ‘Now, walk. Tell me if anything happens.’
Excited, strangely fearful, I walked. After a few moments the hazel rod started trembling. Then it bucked and spun in my hands, so violently that I dropped it. I turned to Granny, aghast.
I didn’t know it, but she had made me walk across the line of a stream that runs deep underground beneath the path that leads out of the village.
I hurried to pick up the stick, holding it out to her in the full expectation of a scolding. But instead she came to stand beside me, gave me a hard hug and said, ‘Child, you’re a dowser.’
Even apart from my peculiar skill, Granny knew that Edild and I would get on and we do. We have similar colouring and we look alike — sometimes people take us for mother and daughter — and we laugh at the same things, finding amusement in the incongruous and sometimes, it has to be said, in the vulgar and the frivolous. Not that Edild ever shows this light-hearted, laughing side to those who come seeking her help; it is an indication of how well we understand one another that she has never had occasion to tell me not to appear in the presence of a patient with anything but a serious face and a studious, intent manner.
Since the late summer Edild had been instructing me in an overview of her craft. I have learned about the main healing herbs and how to prepare and use them, the making of amulets and talismans and the composition and reciting of charms. She also explained to me the workings of the human body, male as well as female, which I must admit caused me to blush more than once despite the fact that, like all country children who grow up cheek by jowl with their family’s animals, I first witnessed the mystery of procreation when I was still learning to walk. Still, animals mating is one thing; people, quite another. Now, as the winter days grew short and the darkness waxed, Edild began teaching me about the stars and their influence on everything — people, animals, plants — that lives under the great bowl of the sky.