Out of the Dawn Light (25 page)

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Authors: Alys Clare

BOOK: Out of the Dawn Light
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‘Better that you don’t know any more.’ Hrype’s words had a distinct finality about them and I did not dare pursue the matter.
I hoped it was going to be all right. The penalty for horse theft – if we were caught, would anyone believe that the horses had really been lent to us and we were fully intending to return them? – was hanging.
I realized then, if I had not done so before, just how far Hrype was prepared to go to save his nephew’s life.
 
We rode our purloined mounts as hard as we dared. Fortunately they were fresh and frisky, fat on summer grass and, it seemed, more than ready for an outing. We stopped for a couple of brief rests to refresh ourselves and water the horses, and late in the evening of the following day we were on the road east of Diss and I was straining my eyes to find the place where the track up from Dunwich joined it.
I found it at last, but by now it was too late to go on and approach the fat woman we had met by the well. She would doubtless have returned to her tiny hamlet and turned in for the night and we would not increase our chances of success by scaring her in the middle of the night.
Early the next day we were on our way.
We must have missed the place where Romain attacked Sibert and subsequently met his death, for before I knew it we were entering the clearing with the well. There was no one about. We dismounted and tethered the horses, then began searching down the faint tracks leading out of the clearing.
She found us before either Hrype or I managed to locate her cottage. We never did find it and for all I knew she could have been some spirit of the woods, only taking mortal form when people had need of her. That’s the sort of fanciful thought you tend to have when you travel with a sorcerer.
She looked at me with a smile of recognition. ‘It’s the little runaway!’ she exclaimed, dumping her empty vessel and reaching out to the chain that held the bucket, deep down inside the well. ‘Did you and your young man escape all right?’
I looked at Hrype. He nodded. Taking this as a sign to tell her, I did. ‘We reached the safety of our home, yes, but Sibert – that’s his name and he’s not really my young man – has been arrested for murder.’
Her eyes rounded in horrified fascination. ‘
Murder!
Who did he murder, then?’
‘Nobody,’ I said emphatically. ‘But someone says he did. This someone says there’s a witness to the killing and since it happened not far up the track that leads to the coast road, I – we – wondered if you might have been that witness.’
She was already shaking her head and I knew we had wasted our time. ‘I’m sorry, my lass,’ she said kindly, ‘but I saw nothing. I certainly saw no murder, and I thank the good Lord above for it.’ She was still shaking her head, from time to time repeating ‘Murder!’ softly under her breath, as if she scarcely believed it.
Hrype moved a few paces closer to her and, with a polite bow, said, ‘I am Sibert’s uncle. His mother is desperate. Is there anything you can tell us that might help?’
She looked at him, her face clenched in sympathy, and after a pause she said, ‘I saw this girl here and the young man. Sibert?’
‘Yes,’ Hrype and I said together.
‘Sibert. Yes, the two of them passed through the clearing and they both took a drink, although the young man seemed very nervous, very keen to be on his way. Yes.’ She put her hand up to her mouth, frowning in concentration. ‘Then a little later another young man came along and I remember I remarked to him that sometimes I don’t see a soul from one week’s end to another and here we were with three visitors in one day.’
‘What did this man look like?’ I asked. I could barely breathe.
‘He was older than your Sibert, but not much. He was broad-set, with thick, dark bobbed hair, and he wore a fine tunic, although it looked as if he’d been wearing it for days
and
sleeping in it.’ Romain. It had to be. I looked at Hrype and guessed he’d had the same thought. ‘We had a bit of a chat, and he –
oh!
’
She looked aghast at me and then at Hrype. Clearly she had recalled something else.
‘Go on,’ Hrype said quietly.
‘I described you to him, you and the lad,’ she said, turning to me. ‘I’m very sorry, I’m sure, if I’ve done harm by it! Oh, dear me!’ She was close to tears.
‘You weren’t to know,’ I said. ‘If he was on this path then he had already picked up our trail and all you did was to confirm that he was right.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see.’ She did not sound very reassured. ‘And now that poor lad stands accused of murder! Who did he kill?’ she asked again.
‘He did not kill anyone,’ I repeated very firmly.
‘No, no, of course not, you said so!’ Now she was blushing furiously, the fat red face scarlet with embarrassment. ‘Who do they say he’s killed?’
I did not think I could bring myself to say it. Hrype gave the answer.
‘He is accused of murdering the other young man, the one who was following him and this girl.’
‘No!’
‘He didn’t do it!’ I said yet again. The murder had clearly come as a great shock to her so I knew, as Hrype must do too, that she was not Baudouin de la Flèche’s witness. She might know who was, however. ‘Do others live around here?’ I asked.
‘Round here? Some, in the little hamlet down the track, although we are very few,’ she replied.
‘Nevertheless, could one of them have been the witness?’ Hrype asked.
The fat woman shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I haven’t heard anyone speak of it and I dare say I’d have heard tell, by now, of such a thing . . . ’ She frowned in concentration. ‘We do get passers-by too, although, like I said, not many and three in a day’s a rarity.’
We appeared to have come to a dead end. She had seen nobody but Sibert, me and then, a little later, Romain. Whoever it was who saw the murder must have waited around until Baudouin came along and then told him what he’d just seen.
Baudouin.
What was it Hrype had said when he came to our house that awful night?
Baudouin was worried for Romain’s safety and he set out to look for him.
I said urgently to the fat woman, ‘You’re sure you saw nobody else that day?’
‘No, dear, no. Just the three of you, like I say.’
For a moment I’d thought I was on to something, but just as swiftly I realized that if Baudouin’s intention was to guard Romain because he was concerned for him, then he’d probably make quite sure he wasn’t seen, by either Romain or whoever it was that Baudouin feared might wish to harm him.
I remembered what else Hrype had reported that night. The witness said they saw Romain catch up with Sibert, who then doubled back and jumped Romain from behind, hitting him so hard on the back of the head that the bones of the skull shattered.
It made me feel queasy just thinking about it and my heart ached for poor dead Romain. I did not think I could retain my composure any longer and, not wanting to make a scene in front of the fat woman – who, to judge by her face, was quite upset already – I caught Hrype’s eye.
He dipped his head in a brief nod. ‘Thank you,’ he said to the fat woman. ‘We must go now and leave you to your water-carrying.’
She was still watching us, her expression sombre. ‘I hope your nephew gets off,’ she said to Hrype.
‘I hope so too,’ he replied gravely. ‘Farewell.’
‘God’s speed,’ she replied.
Then we loosened the horses’ reins and hurried away.
As soon as we were out of sight and sound of the clearing, he said, ‘Lassair, we must look closely at the place where the murder happened. It seems likely that it is the spot where Romain and Sibert fought, for you told me that you left Romain there, wounded, and it is very possible that the killer struck while he was down. I am sorry I had to remind you,’ he added.
I was sorry he had, too. But I knew he was right and we had to look. ‘The place where they fought must be back up this track that leads to the road,’ I said, ‘since the fight was after we’d stopped at the well.’
We rode on. We had missed the place as we went south towards the well but now I was sure we were on the same track that Sibert and I had followed.
In time, we came to the spot. The events of that day were vivid in my memory and I felt cold at the thought of what had happened after Sibert and I had gone.
Hrype had tossed his horse’s reins to me and he was on hands and knees, covering every inch of the ground. I suppose that I should have helped him but for one thing I didn’t know exactly what he was searching for and, for another, I was still feeling unwell.
I looped the horses’ reins around the branch of a young birch tree and leaned against it, sliding my back down its smooth silvery trunk until my backside rested on the ground. I closed my eyes and immediately saw Romain as he was when Sibert and I left him. Oh, I cried silently, oh, if I hadn’t yelled out to Sibert to lift his knee and Romain hadn’t been so hurt, perhaps his assailant wouldn’t have succeeded in killing him. On his feet and fully alert, Romain would at least have had a fighting chance.
I buried my face in my hands, fingers against my closed eyes in a futile attempt to stem the tears.
I don’t know how long the fragment of memory stayed in my mind before I realized its significance. One moment the picture of Romain lying with his knees clutched to his chest was just that, a vividly remembered image. Then the next moment I understood what it was trying to tell me.
‘
Hrype!
’ I hissed, in a sort of whispered shout; although it was very unlikely that there was anyone about, somehow I felt it was essential that what I believed I had just discovered should only be shared with Hrype.
He was grubbing about in the waist-high bracken on the far side of the clearing. He straightened up at my call and looked at me, eyebrows raised. I beckoned, getting to my feet as I did so, and in a few strides he was beside me.
‘What?’ he said softly. There was a light in his eyes; I think he already knew, somehow, that this was something important. I noticed, with a separate part of my mind, that his deep eyes sometimes seemed to shine as if they were lit from within . . . ‘
What?
’ he repeated impatiently.
‘Tell me again how the witness described the murder,’ I said, my voice low.
He did not question my request but said, ‘Romain caught up with Sibert, who managed to double back and attack him from behind, crushing his skull with a branch.’
‘Did anyone see the body’ – I hated speaking of poor dead Romain in such detached terms but it was the only way I could begin to cope with this – ‘to verify what the witness said?’
‘No one that I know of,’ Hrype replied. ‘Except, of course, Baudouin.’
‘And nobody would think to question Baudouin’s word,’ I said slowly. Then: ‘Hrype, if it happened as we think it did, if the assailant attacked Romain when he was already on the ground, then the wound is in the wrong place. When we left him, Romain was curled up on his back, hugging his knees tight to his chest. It would have been impossible for anyone to hit him on the
back
of the head.’
Even as I spoke, my brief moment of certainty broke up and faded. There was no way of telling how long Romain had lain there; he could have rolled over on to his front, or managed to get to his feet, shortly after we had left him. My brilliant idea was nothing of the sort.
Then why, I wondered, was Hrype nodding, smiling even, for all that it was a grim smile?
‘It did happen as we envisage,’ he said, ‘and Romain was not struck on the back of the head.’ He hurried back to where he had been searching and held up a piece of branch, jagged at one end where it had been torn off the tree. I prayed that he would not bring it over to me, for I knew what it was, but he did.
He held it up. I could see dried blood on it, as well as some pale matter which I had spotted before I had the sense to look away.
‘I am sorry, Lassair,’ Hrype said gently. There was a swishing sound. ‘There; I’ve thrown it back in the bracken. It’s gone.’
I swallowed back the threatening nausea and said shakily, ‘What were you going to show me?’
‘When you poleaxe a beast,’ he said, still in those soothing, gentle tones, ‘the weapon may be stained with blood and sometimes, if the blow breaks the skull, with brains.’
Oh!
‘There are invariably a few hairs, and I would expect to find hairs also on a weapon that struck down a man on the back or the top of his head with sufficient force to shatter bone.’
‘Romain had thick hair,’ I murmured faintly. ‘Thick and glossy . . . ’
‘There is not a single hair on that branch,’ Hrype said. ‘If it was what the killer used to murder Romain, then the poor man was hit on the brow, on the front of the face, where hair does not grow.’
‘The witness must have been mistaken, then,’ I whispered. ‘Perhaps he did not get as good a view of the murder as he claims.’ I realized something. I said excitedly, ‘So how can he be so sure that Sibert was the murderer?’
‘How indeed,’ muttered Hrype. He was frowning, staring absently out across the clearing.

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