We were holding hands. I don’t know which of us made the move, but all at once Sibert’s strong, warm hand was clutching mine and I was so glad. The mist had crept up to our feet now. It was as if some element of the sea were stealthily extending its reach to draw us in, grasping for us with thin, silver fingers. I glanced down at the strange sight of my legs appearing to end just above my ankles.
All at once the wrecked posts of the sea sanctuary rose up right in front of us.
We stopped. Then Sibert squared his shoulders and said, ‘We must put it back exactly where we found it. Can you recall the place?’
I could. Even in the growing darkness, with the mist blotting out all firm outlines, my instincts were leading me right to the spot. It was as if the crown’s power had left a trace of itself down there in the sand beneath the ancient wood. For someone like me it was as easy to read as a candle in a window on a moonless night.
‘This way.’
Confidently I stepped forward into the circle. Then, crouching down, my skirt flapping into a pool of sea water, I started to scoop out the sand. Sibert placed the crown carefully down beside one of the timbers and then began to help me and quite soon we had made a significant hollow. Sibert sat back on his heels, brushed his hair off his sweaty forehead — it was hot work digging the hard, wet sand — and said, ‘It’s not deep enough yet. I think we ought to-’
Something big and black rushed up out of the darkness and buffeted into him, knocking him over. I screamed, for in that first horrified shock I thought it was some nightmare creature out of the sea. Then I heard the sound of fists on flesh. Someone grunted. Someone cried out in pain.
Struggling, locked together, the two shadowy shapes were now out on the far side of the sanctuary and I could hear their feet splashing about in the water. I rushed after them, panicking, trying to make out which one was Sibert, and as I watched, my thoughts flying wildly from one rescue plan to the next, each of them equally futile, I saw the shorter, stockier shadow raise its arm and with a sickening crack, land a heavy punch right on the point of the tall, slim shadow’s chin.
Sibert went down.
He stayed down, for the other shadow was sitting on his head and his head was under the water.
I leapt on to the man’s back, pummelling at him with both hands, then when that failed, trying to reach round to stick my fingers in his eyes, up his nostrils or into the corners of his mouth. His broad shoulders felt like iron and he brushed me off, taking no more notice of me than a bull does of a gnat. He was gasping, groaning with effort, for Sibert must have sensed death coming for him and he was thrashing about like a landed fish.
I gathered myself and leapt on him again, punching harder, screaming, shouting. Sibert was dying right before my eyes and I had to save him.
Then two things happened. Sibert stopped struggling, then the man threw himself backwards and I was flung off him into the deepening water.
I leapt up again, hampered by my soaking-wet skirts, and flew at the inert shape that was Sibert. I tried to raise his head up out of the waves that were now running powerfully up the shore, but savagely the man kicked me away. I fell again, and this time I hit my forehead very hard on one of the timbers of the sanctuary. I shook my head, stunned, and bursts of brilliant light exploded behind my eyes.
The man pushed Sibert deep under the water and held him there. Then he splashed across the sea sanctuary until he stood over the crown, still lying on the sand where Sibert had put it.
Even as he spun round to face me, triumph written all over him, I knew who he was. Baudouin de la Flèche cried out in a voice that was hardly human, ‘This treasure is not going back under the waves! I claim it, and with it I shall win back Drakelow!’
‘You’ve killed Sibert!’ I sobbed. ‘You’ve taken a young man’s life, purely for your own selfish reason!’
He laughed. ‘His life means nothing! I have killed before and I shall do so again.’
In an instant of shock and horror I thought I knew what he meant. No. No. I shook my head in denial, for if I was right it was a dreadful, abnormal act. I must be wrong — I must be. .
Now Sibert was dead too — I dared not think about that — and I knew I was going have to fight his killer.
He stood quite still and I heard him laugh again. It was as if he were daring me to speak, to tell him what I was thinking. He actually said, ‘Go on, then!’ and I knew my horrified conclusion was the right one.
I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge.
‘You killed Romain,’ I said. ‘There was no murderer other than you, and you bribed Sagar to say it was Sibert.’ I shook my head. ‘Romain was your nephew and your heir. Why?’
‘Romain was a hot-headed fool.’ He spat out the words. ‘I went to such trouble to make him think he had found out about the crown by himself, when all along it was I who had arranged it so that he just happened to meet the one man who had the necessary information.’
‘Why didn’t you take it yourself?’ I cried. ‘Were you scared of it?’ I knew it was foolhardy but I could not resist the jibe.
He made a sort of growling sound and raised his fist, so that for a moment I thought he was going to hit me. I flinched.
He regained control. He said very coldly, ‘You forget, girl. That madman Roger might have been able to provide a rough location for the crown but nobody was going to find it without help. Sibert’s help, and yours.’
‘Then why did you not seek us out as Romain did?’ I flashed back.
Something in him seemed to snap. ‘Because I could not approach it!’ he screamed. Then, his struggle for calm very evident, ‘Even if you and Sibert had led me right up to it, I could not have taken it from its hiding place.’ He glanced down at the crown, lying at his feet, and I thought I saw a long shudder go through him. ‘It all but overwhelms me when I am close to it,’ he added, half to himself, ‘and here, where its power is far, far stronger and when, before you came, no human hand had touched it for centuries, I knew it would be reluctant to let me near.’ He breathed deeply for a few moments. Watching him intently, I saw some fierce struggle within him, as if even now, with his prize at his feet, a part of him was desperate simply to run away.
With a visible effort, he stood his ground.
‘I let Romain think he was acting alone but I was watching him all along,’ he said. ‘I saw the three of you, splashing around out here and letting yourselves get caught by the incoming tide. I saw you fail, curse you. Then I slipped away.’ He spat into the small waves running over his feet.
‘When I returned in the early morning, you and the boy had gone and you had taken the crown, and Romain had set off after you. I followed him. He had let you get away and I had to find him. But both of us failed. He managed to catch you up and he attacked that pale, spindly boy, but somehow you and he managed to fight back and you laid Romain on his back, writhing in agony.’ I shut my eyes tightly for a moment. It was an image I could not bear to dwell on. ‘Sibert still had the crown,’ Baudouin said bitterly. ‘I had to think of another way of getting it back.’
‘So you killed your nephew and made out that Sibert was a thief and a murderer.’ How callous and cold-hearted he was!
‘I did,’ he agreed. ‘Nobody was meant to doubt my word, and when that fat fool Gilbert insisted on hearing what my witness had to say, I had to pay Sagar to provide the information.’
I was still having trouble accepting that Baudouin had killed his own nephew. ‘But Romain was your heir!’ I said. ‘You were going to all this trouble to win back Drakelow, but what was the point if nobody would come after you to inherit it?’
‘Oh, don’t you worry, somebody will,’ he said roughly. ‘Congratulate me, girl, for I am to be married. For some time I have my eye on the plump and comely daughter of my neighbouring lord, and she has consented to be my wife. She comes from a line of wide-hipped and fertile sisters who all have families of their own, so she will undoubtedly start filling Drakelow’s nursery within nine months of our wedding.’