Out of the Dawn Light Read Online Free PDF Page A

must do as my parents commanded and go to her.
    In desperation I turned to Granny. Whatever anyone else said, if Granny decreed I did not have to go – if, for instance, she insisted that it was far more important for me to get on with my studies than to tend my ingrate of a sister – then I would be saved.
    But Granny took me aside, put her thin arms round me in a sudden intense hug and said quietly, ‘It’ll be a sore trial and you’ll hate it. But you must go, child.’
    I had tears in my eyes and angrily I brushed them away. I made it a rule never to let anything Goda did make me cry, or at least not when anyone was watching. ‘ Why? ’ I wailed. To my shame I sounded like a three-year-old whining against sense and reason for its own way.
    Granny had broken away and now she gave me a little shake. She muttered something – it sounded like wait and see , but that did not seem to make any sense – and then she said brusquely, ‘We all have to do things we don’t like and it won’t be for ever.’
    Then she turned aside and hurried away.
     
    Even in the extremity of my despair, I did not suggest that Elfritha go in my place. Elfritha is a year and four months older than I am, as I have already said, and she wants to be a nun. She is also gentle, impractical – when she’s in the convent they’ll have to watch her to make sure she doesn’t spill swill buckets and absent-mindedly tear her clothing on brambles like she’s always doing with us because I’m sure people vowed to poverty aren’t allowed to be wasteful – and inclined to daydream. All of which qualities drive Goda to distraction so that she has always been even rougher with poor Elfritha than with me. Besides the fact that nobody in their right mind would ask Elfritha to look after a tetchy and uncomfortable pregnant woman, I love my second-eldest sister far too much to make her suffer as she undoubtedly would in Goda’s household.
    Elfritha may be dreamy and unworldly but she is not lacking in intelligence. She must have realized that I was being forced to take on an unpleasant task because she wasn’t suited to it, and just before I left for Icklingham and my new (and I hoped purely temporary) abode, she sought me out and gave me a present.
    ‘What is it?’ I asked. She had wrapped it in a piece of old linen and bound it with twine so I couldn’t tell, although whatever it was felt soft and squidgy.
    She smiled shyly. ‘It’s something to remind you of home and a sister who loves you.’ No possibility that I would have one of those where I was going, I thought. ‘Open it when you get there,’ Elfritha added quickly as I went to pull at the twine. ‘And’ – she leant in very close and spoke right into my ear – ‘ thank you .’
    I looked at her quickly and I saw that she had tears in her eyes.
     
    Would they miss me? I wondered as I trudged the six miles from Aelf Fen to Icklingham on a sharp, cold morning a week later. My parents would, I supposed, even if only as another pair of hands to get through the extraordinary amount of work there was to do each day. I was sure my brothers and sister would too, since, with Goda gone and no longer a selfish, bossy and malicious presence in our lives, we seemed to appreciate each other all the more. Granny and Edild would miss me, of course.
    Anyone else?
    I was thinking, naturally, of Sibert. Since the wedding, my memories of and crush on Romain had faded considerably and once again it was Sibert whom I imagined walking, talking and sometimes fighting by my side as I slid into sleep at night. Well, it was understandable, Sibert being on hand, as it were, and Romain long gone. Not that I had in truth seen very much of Sibert during the autumn and winter. Once I had come across him in earnest conversation with Granny, although what they were talking about I never discovered since they clammed up as soon as they saw me and neither would say a word. Once he had fallen into step with me as I