Her cool tone and her obvious confidence in me were affecting me, as no doubt she knew they would. ‘But he’s
really
ill,’ I said, my voice a good deal closer to its usual tone. ‘Suppose he dies?’
‘If he does, then it will not be because you failed in your care but because you got to him too late, which would not be your fault,’ Edild said in that same voice of reason. ‘Otherwise, you know how to care for a man coming back from the brink of death. Keep him resting, help him sleep if necessary, keep him warm, make sure he drinks and, as soon as he’s ready, start him on a light diet.’
Yes, she was right. I did know all that, for with her help I had nursed more than one villager recovering from a serious or lengthy sickness.
I had one last objection. ‘What about Alvela?’ I whispered, as if the sound of her own name would wake her up. ‘Won’t she be cross if you send me instead of doing what she said and going yourself?’
Edild glanced at her sleeping twin. ‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘But I am not on this earth to do my sister’s bidding. I am fully occupied here in my accustomed place, and I neither wish nor am prepared to desert those who depend on me.’
She was right, as she usually is. There are several people in the village who, for one reason or another, Edild has reserved to care for by herself, without any help or interference from me. One is a frightened and very young woman about to bear her first child; my aunt and I both know that it will take all Edild’s skill to bring both mother and baby safely through the labour. There is a skinny old man with an ague so severe that the shakes are almost making his bones fall apart; I could treat him, but for some reason he has taken against me and will not let me near. There’s also a younger man who finds it a torment to discuss whatever serious condition ails him with my aunt, never mind a girl like me, as well as a crop of severe coughs, colds and putrid throats among the village children that are driving them and their families close to despair. And a small boy with an angel’s face has the quinsy, his poor little throat so constricted with swellings that it takes all Edild’s skill and patience to get as much as a drop of the soothing medicine into him.
No. If I stopped to think about it, I could see that now was no time for the village healer to absent herself on a mission to help one man. Not when she had an apprentice to send in her place.
I squared my shoulders, met my aunt’s eyes and said calmly, ‘Tell me very carefully what I must do.’
It was October, wet, the roads and the tracks were ankle-deep in mud and probably impassable in places, and there were reputedly robbers and bandits about. I was not allowed to go on my journey without an escort. Hearing what I was planning to do, my father at first said I couldn’t but then relented – thanks to my mother and Edild – and said he would go with me. It was a lovely thought – I get on so well with my father, and the idea of several days in his company was just wonderful – but we all knew that Lord Gilbert would be reluctant to spare a hard-working man unnecessarily. Then Edild suggested Sibert and, even as she spoke his name, I felt glad. Not quite as glad as I would have been if my father were to be my escort, but not far off. As I said, most of the time Sibert and I like each other.
I had to go up to Lakehall, Lord Gilbert’s manor house, to explain my mission and seek permission to leave the village. I was expecting to see his reeve, Bermund, who usually heads the lower orders off at the gates and takes messages inside to Lord Gilbert – as if Bermund alone out of all of us is deemed fit for the lord’s presence. That is probably quite true in Bermund’s estimation, if in nobody else’s. Bermund is not a bad man – we all know we could do a lot worse – but he is humourless, meticulous to the point of being fussy, solitary and withdrawn. He treats us with scrupulous fairness – again, we know that is more than can be said of many men in his position – but there is no true humanity in him. He is not a family man and has never once been seen in the company of a woman. It is said that on the few occasions he allows himself a tiny spell of relaxation he heads for neighbouring villages where he is not well known and seeks out youths in the scruffiest taverns. That, however, is gossip, and nobody should listen to gossip.
Today it was not Bermund to whom I had to address my request but Lord Gilbert himself, sitting on a bench by the fire in his great hall in the midst of his family: red-faced, bulging paunch pushing against the rich crimson cloth of his tunic, mouth stretched in a happy smile. After the usual courtesies – he struggled to remember who I was, and then immediately asked after my father, who supplies him with the finest eels – he told me to state my business, and I did so.
At first I thought he was going to refuse; to his credit, he seemed well aware that quite a few were sick in Aelf Fen just then. Happily for me, his wife, Lady Emma, sat beside him, her little boy playing with a wooden sheep at her feet and her baby girl in her arms. Lady Emma smiled at me in a conspiratorial way and then, turning to her husband, said softly, ‘My dear, we are blessed in that we have not one but two healers here in our village. The younger, Lassair here –’ her dimples deepened as she smiled at me again – ‘is already skilled, but she has much to learn.’ How right she was. ‘To me it would appear that it can only serve to increase both her experience and her confidence to go on this pilgrimage of mercy to aid her kinsman, and the consequential augmentation of her skills can only be of benefit to all of us here in the manor. Do you not agree, my love?’ She has a dainty way of putting things, even if it does take a few moments to understand exactly what she is saying.
Lord Gilbert had been staring at me indecisively but, at his wife’s appeal, his face cleared and he said, ‘Yes, yes, quite right, my dear wife, quite right!’ Wise man to agree, especially when it was so very clear that she was far more intelligent than he was. Still, that applied to most people. ‘Off you go, er—’
‘Lassair,’ supplied his wife.
‘Lassair, yes, yes, Lassair!’ Lord Gilbert beamed at me. ‘You and the young man—?’ He looked hopefully at his wife and she supplied the name. ‘Sibert, yes. You and Sibert have my permission. Go safely, treat your brother-in-law—’
‘Cousin,’ said his wife.
‘—Your cousin, and come back to us when you can,’ he finished. Then, with a wave of his fleshy hand, he dismissed me.
I was ready, or as ready as I was going to be. I don’t know how I appeared to others, but inside I was nervous and fearful, my confidence and my courage right down in my boots. Morcar was my cousin, my kinsman, and, although I did not know him very well, he was of my blood. His mother, my aunt, thought the sun rose and set in him. The weight of responsibility sat so heavily on my shoulders that it was all I could do to keep upright.
The heavy, leather bag of remedies that Edild and I had prepared stood, its straps neatly fastened, by the door. Sibert was going to carry it. Now I was fussing over my own small pack, stowing clean underlinen, a washcloth, the bone comb my brother Haward had made for me, the beautiful shawl Elfritha had given me, a spare hood . . .
I sensed Edild’s presence behind me and turned.
‘Lassair, step outside for a moment, please,’ she said in a low voice.
My eyes flashed to Alvela, who was now sitting propped against the wall, her head on my pillow. She looked dazed, but she was awake. Sort of. I stood up and followed Edild outside into the sunshine of early afternoon.
‘You will have to leave very soon,’ Edild said, ‘for you must reach Ely before dusk or the gates will be locked. But there is something I must say to you before you go.’ She paused, gathering her thoughts, and I guessed she was going to impart some final advice as to how I should treat my patient.
I certainly did not expect what she actually said.
‘My mother – your Granny Cordeilla – tells the tale of our ancestress Aelfbeort the Shining One, who spoke with the spirits and learned from them. You remember?’
‘Yes!’ I said, almost indignantly. I remember all Granny’s marvellous tales, but I couldn’t help wondering why Edild was speaking of them just now, in this crisis where speed was so vital.
‘Good. You will recall, too, then that Aelfbeort bore a daughter, Aelfburga, who—’
‘She found Aelf Fen and led the people here,’ I interrupted eagerly. ‘It was a time of terrible peril and the people needed a safe refuge. Aelfburga’s mother Aelfbeort was beloved by the spirits and they taught her much concerning the deep, dark matters beyond the understanding of mortal kind. Because of that love they helped her daughter by showing her how to find the secret, hidden safe ways to Aelf Fen, where with their aid she constructed an artificial island in the black waters of the mere and—’
‘
They showed her how to find the safe ways
,’ Edild repeated softly, cutting off my river of words. I looked at her blankly. She gave a small tut of impatience. ‘Come on, Lassair, it’s not like you to be so slow.’
That hurt.
Think
, I commanded myself. Safe ways. The island of the eels. Helpful spirits. My ancestress. ‘You think the spirits will show me how to get to Ely?’ I demanded, my voice high with terrified excitement.
Edild smiled. ‘They might, but I don’t imagine their aid will be necessary since there are plenty of boatmen to row you over. No, Lassair. That is not what is in my mind.’ She looked at me gravely.
‘What is it?’ I whispered.
‘We already know that you are a dowser, able to find both water and also hidden objects through the medium of the willow wand,’ she said. She was right. It is a strange gift and, although I have used it from time to time, once in a matter of very great danger, I do not yet understand much about it. If I’m truthful, it scares me a little and I try not to think about it. ‘I have long wondered,’ Edild was saying, ‘if you may also have inherited the gift that the aelven folk gave to Aelfburga.’ She waited, her eyes alight.
‘You mean I might be able to find the safe ways across the fens?’ I demanded. She nodded. ‘Oh, Edild, but that secret is only known to a handful of the Ely monks, and they only reveal it when they have no choice!’ We had all heard the tale of William the Conqueror’s furious frustration when he could not get his great army across the treacherous marshes to put down the revolt that Hereward had led from Ely. The king had tried to build a causeway but it had collapsed, taking vast numbers of William’s men fully-armed to their watery graves. One of his knights then managed to slip across, and he bribed the monks to tell him the secret way. The more generous version said that the monks were not unanimously in favour of the rebel Hereward in their midst and revealed their precious secret in order to get rid of him. Either way, the Conqueror finally stormed across and took Ely, although Hereward got away.
Edild was regarding me steadily, and again I sensed that she was waiting for me to work it out for myself. ‘You want me to test out your theory.’ I hesitated. It seemed so extraordinary, but then my aunt Edild is an extraordinary woman. I smiled, for suddenly I knew what she was thinking as clearly as if she had spoken aloud. ‘You do, don’t you?’ She returned my smile. ‘You’ve been itching for an opportunity for me to test myself and now, when pure chance has summoned me to the very place, the moment has arrived.’ Another thought struck me. ‘But why didn’t you suggest that I have a go around here? There’s plenty of dangerous marsh and fenland all around the village – no need to go to Ely to look for safe routes over perilous ground!’
Her expression turned enigmatic. ‘Too easy, Lassair,’ she murmured. ‘You’ve lived here all your life, and I would wager a silver penny that you could skip over the tussocks all around Aelf Fen without even getting your toes wet.’
‘I’m sure I couldn’t!’ I protested. ‘I—’
Edild held up her hand. ‘Enough,’ she said, but she was still smiling. ‘Do not take unnecessary risks, Lassair, but keep your eyes wide open for the chance that will present itself. You will not fail.’
It sounded horribly like a prediction. ‘But—’
I was talking to empty air. My aunt had spun gracefully around and was gliding back inside her little house.
I stood out there in the sunshine for a few moments, waiting until I felt calm enough to face Alvela. Edild has always pressed on me the importance of a serene demeanour when dealing with the sick and the disturbed; even in the face of the highest fever and the deepest wound, she says, the healer must give the impression that this is all in a day’s work. People can be killed by shock, she tells me, and someone already gravely ill could suffer a seizure if the person who has come to heal them were to throw up her hands in horror and go
aaaagh, I can’t deal with that!
I breathed in deeply and slowly let the air out, repeating the process several times. I was admittedly quite thrilled at what Edild had just said, and part of me was just longing to test myself to see if I could do it. The more sensible part, however, was moaning that too much was being asked of me. As if it were not enough to be sent alone to deal with a gravely ill man suffering from a high fever and a deep wound in his foot, now somehow I must also find the time to slip away and try out my skill at marsh-hopping. I felt my stiff shoulders relax.
If
the opportunity arose – and it was only
if
, I reminded myself, even Edild had said
if
– then I would cope with it. For now, there were other things to perplex and worry me.