I was not helpless, I told myself. The drowned men could frighten me — they did; they terrified me to my bones — but they could not harm me. Or so I hoped.
I pushed on.
The wood circle was off the northern shore. I realized I must be close now, although I could make out nothing but the blueish-silver of the safe path, glinting before me. Edild had said the circle was not as I had seen it in my dream vision. It was no more than a ruin, more likely as not obscured by the sands or the sea. Even if it had stood as tall and proud as I had seen it, I doubted whether I would have found it.
I pressed ahead on the safe path. The spirits had brought me here, and they must have had a good reason. I knew I would simply have to put myself in their hands and let them lead me.
We were close to the sea now, for I could hear the broiling waves crashing and tearing against the shingle. I kept a watchful eye on the sky, and all at once a minute break in the thick black clouds allowed me a glimpse of the sun. The silver path had changed direction; we were now going due north.
Straight towards the furious sea.
I was quaking with fear and so cold that my shivering was making my teeth clatter together. Without Fox, I think I might have turned back, but he would not let me. Coming from the spirit world as he does, no doubt he understood why I had been called and why it was imperative that I went on.
My steps were slower now. It felt as if I had to drag each foot out of sticky, tacky mud that only released me after a struggle. The muscles in my legs ached constantly with a fierce pain that felt like hot needles.
I was on the point of giving up. I was exhausted, and I was so close to the sea now that the spray from the biggest waves was catching me. I was wet to the thighs. Lonely, in pain and more afraid than I had ever been, I sobbed aloud.
There was an echo. The sob came right back to me.
Then it came again, a hoarse, deep cry that I could never have made. .
I was racing down the shining path, my fears forgotten, my pain gone. The cry came again, and I shouted back, ‘I’m here! I’m coming!’
I flew on, my feet barely touching the ground, and Fox was a russet streak beside me. The fog still obscured everything but the safe path, but it did not matter, as it became clear the path was leading me in the right direction.
I came to a place where the path gave out. Just like that, with no warning at all. I jerked to a halt, staring down at the salt-crusted, sandy mud at my feet. No shining light shone out ahead; this was the end of the safe way, and to go on would mean death.
I did not know what to do.
I sensed movement, just over to my left. Spinning round, I saw the faint glimmer of a sort of loop that had formed, as if the safe path had curled round in a circle to mark its terminal.
There was someone there; I could make out a vague dark shape huddled on the wet ground.
I knew who it was. My heart recognized him even while my head was still thinking about it.
I ran down the short length of path that separated us. I flung myself down and took him in my arms. He was lying on his side on a thin patch of firm ground, as icy as death, soaked through and shaking with cold. For some time he simply clung to me. I was soaked too, but I had just been moving fast and my body was hot from the effort. He must have felt it, even through my wet clothes, and, desperate for warmth, he tried to absorb some of mine. I gave it gladly, putting my hands on his face, his neck, finding his own hands and squeezing life back into them.
After a while he raised his head from where he had burrowed it against my breasts. I looked down into his face, and my heart gave a lurch of pity. He looked terrible. He was thin, white-faced, he had several days’ growth of beard and someone — perhaps he himself — had cut his hair, very badly. His clothes were torn and filthy with sandy mud, clots of which stuck all over his arms and shoulders.
He stared at me in silence for a moment. Then he said, ‘I knew you would come.’
‘I should have been with you before!’ I cried. ‘I heard you calling, but I didn’t know where you were until it was too late, and when you stopped I thought you were dead!’
He gave a smile, very brief, no more than a stretching of his blue lips. ‘You’re here now,’ he murmured.
Then, as I watched, his face fell. He was grieving; I knew it. There is no emotion that wrenches and stabs at you like grief, both your own and that of someone you love.
‘What is it?’ I asked softly.
He raised his dark, deeply troubled eyes to mine. ‘My horse is gone,’ he said, his voice breaking on the words. ‘She went into the quicksand, and I couldn’t get her out.’
Oh, no! I wanted to cry out aloud, send my protest shrieking up into the sky. I knew about death in the sands. I knew how the pressure builds up and makes the eyes and tongue stand out stark in the head. I knew how the mouth stretches open for the last desperate breath, how it fills not with life-giving air but with deadly, cloying, heavy, wet, muddy sand.
And this beloved man of mine had been forced to watch, powerless, as his horse had gone under.
He gave one sob, a harsh bark of sound that seemed to epitomize his loss, his longing and his pain. I closed my arms around him and pressed him against me. After a while I laid my cheek down on the top of his head. And there we stayed.
I don’t know how long we would have remained like that. Although I was deeply affected by his grief for his horse, at the same time I was filled with joy because I had found him, he was alive, and now we were together.
Perhaps it was this potent mix of emotions that made me careless. Perhaps the force curled up ready to strike against me was too powerful and made sure I did not perceive its presence until it was too late. Either way, I did not sense the approaching danger.
There was a sudden sound, right above us, so startlingly loud that my ears rang. It could have been thunder, but if it was, it cracked at the command of something other than the forces of nature. The lowering sky went totally black, and I could see nothing, not even the comforting glow of the safe path. Whatever was out there, it had power even over that. Rain lashed down, vicious as a whip, forming itself into icy droplets. I saw small cuts open up on Rollo’s and my exposed flesh. The wind wound up to a screaming crescendo, in which I thought I could detect a terrible voice.
I tried to raise my head to look up, but I could not move.
What was assailing us out on that lonely shore was the most powerful force I had ever felt.
And it did not like us at all. .
FOURTEEN
Hrype, too, had managed to find an early-rising boatman, in his case to ferry him over the short stretch of water between Chatteris island and the mainland to the south. The ferryman was inclined to talk, but Hrype was deep inside his own thoughts and did not respond. With a shrug, the boatman bent to his oars, muttering under his breath about miserable sods who wouldn’t brighten up a cold, dark morning with a bit of a chat.
Once on the far side, Hrype drew up his hood against the moist morning air and trudged on as fast as he could. There were few other people about. Presently, the path met the major road that swept round to the south-west of the fens. The traffic increased, and quite soon Hrype got a ride with a man heading into Cambridge with a load of mushrooms. The final ten miles of his journey passed swiftly, for the farmer’s horse was fresh and kept up a lively pace.
It was late in the morning when Hrype hurried along the maze of passages leading off the market square. He mounted the steps up to the familiar wooden door and rapped his knuckles against it. For quite a long time nothing happened, so he knocked harder. Finally, the door creaked open, and Gurdyman’s bright-blue eyes looked out at him.