Free Out of the Dawn Light by Alys Clare Page B

he had lain down beside me and we had slept side by side – but instantly he had looked away. I tried to excuse him – he’d probably been embarrassed because I’d caught him watching me. He was that sort of man – courteous, mannerly – and it was probably against some code of manners that existed among his kind to make approaches to young girls when you happened to be camped out with them in the wilderness.
    All the same, I wished he had been bolder. I would not have turned him away.
    Sibert woke and sat up, stretching. He smiled at me – the first time he had done so for I couldn’t remember how long – and said, ‘Hello, Lassair. Did you manage to sleep?’
    ‘Yes. Very well,’ I replied.
    Our voices woke Romain. He came up to consciousness more slowly – probably he was used to a gentle awaking, perhaps with some manservant bringing him a reviving drink and a bowl of water to wash his face and hands – and for a moment or two he looked puzzled. Then his face cleared and he too smiled. There was an air of excited happiness among the three of us; any fears we might have had last night had gone. The sunshine and a good long sleep had thoroughly revived us and after a bite to eat and a drink, we were ready to resume our march.
     
    Romain knew that he was the weak one out of the three of them but, as the eldest, the instigator and the leader in every other respect, he could not allow his fallibility to show. As afternoon turned to evening and the total of the miles steadily augmented, he watched the slowly lowering sun and reflected that so far on this journey, at least they had not had to bed down to sleep in the Fens.
    Romain’s mistrust of that mysterious marshland region was profound and he had only gone there out of desperate need; the Fens were where Sibert was to be found. As far as Romain was concerned, once this business was over he never intended to set foot there again.
    He had once been told by an elderly family retainer who came from the Fens that once, long ago, an ancient horse-loving people had risen up against the invading armies from the hot south. They had fought ferociously under their red-haired queen and burned the towns of the newcomers to the ground. But the military might of the incomers proved too strong and the people were defeated, their proud queen taking her own life by poison before she could suffer the humiliation of capture. The remnants of that once-great people, leaderless, disorganized, had scattered and fled. Many of them, according to the old servant, had sought refuge in the one area where the newcomers barely troubled to venture: the Fens. And their ghosts – perhaps even their descendants – were still there . . .
    Romain had believed he was too mature and sensible to go on being scared by a tale told by an old man to entertain a little boy. Reality proved different. But then, Romain reminded himself as he trudged on, buoyed up by the happy thought that tonight he was far from that dread region, that original childhood impression had been fed and kept alive by what he learned of the Fens as he grew to adolescence and manhood. Raised as he had been on the coast, where the wind blew fresh off the wide grey sea to the east, he had been all too ready to accept the horror stories of that dark, unknown inland place. Malign creatures inhabited the pools and the bogs, and they would entice a traveller along what seemed to be a safe path, only to create a strange white mist that swirled and billowed so that a man could not see where he was placing his feet. Then he would find himself tumbling into the stinking black mud, clouds of stinging insects round his head, leeches and eels sucking and biting at his legs. If the threatening water did not get you then sickness would, for ague and quinsy were rife and if you risked eating the bread, then the poisonous mould that grew on the crust would drive you to terrible visions that drove you out of your mind. Frightful, abominable