One Must Hide

Lament

The rain rapped insistent knuckles on the glass, and Robin came awake, groping to hold on to the last fleeing fragments of a dream.

She sat up, clawing tangles of hair out of her eyes, disoriented. The clock read 10:58. Early for a Wednesday morning, by her standards. Robin contemplated the not unattractive idea of burrowing deeper into the duvet and going back to sleep, but then a fresh squall rattled against her window, and she conceded defeat. She levered herself out of bed with a groan, reaching for the dressing gown hanging on the wardrobe door.

The curtains she had neglected to close admitted a slice of greyish light that nonetheless made her flinch. The weather had forced her indoors last night, or else Robin thought she would probably still have been out there. Time had been playing its normal tricks, and she'd been too tired to do more than strip out of most of her clothes and collapse into bed.

She squinted out at the lake, sluggishly reviewing her priorities. Essay to be handed in. Lecture at twelve, seminar at three. She glanced at the overloaded laundry basket in the corner. Washing. The normal business of her life expanded to fill the day with the guarantee of tedium. But then the memory of David's invitation cut through lethargy and lassitude like the keenest of knives, and something Robin couldn't quite define welled up in her breast: warmth with a fine edge of ice.

Robin went through the motions of her routine dogged by that strange feeling, as though it were following behind her, and would be visible if she could just turn fast enough. It troubled her as she sat listlessly in James' laundry room waiting for her clothes to wash. It distracted her during the driest of lectures on Shakespearean villains. It trailed her home and preoccupied her while James' Provost delivered the anticipated lecture about the state of the quad. And it was still bothering her when she left to drive down to the King's Manor for her Old English seminar.

The skinny guy waiting by Robin's Orion in the car park greeted her with a nervous grin. Robin nodded back, unlocked the driver's door with her key, and leaned across to open the passenger door. Then she had to clear several books and a fleece off the seat before Christopher could get in.

“Thanks,” he said, as Robin threw the offending items onto the back seat.

Robin checked the time. “Running a bit late today,” she commented, mostly to herself. The engine started first time and she put on her seatbelt, noticing that the rain had stopped.

“So how've you been finding the translation Bradley set us last week?” Chris asked.

Robin concentrated on backing out of her space before answering. “I spent a couple of hours on it in the library.”

Chris held up a sheaf of papers, grinning almost too broad for his narrow face. “Got this off my housemate's boyfriend. He did Anglo-Saxon last year. All five hundred lines that we have to know.”

“Oh.” It was a significant coup that would ease the difficulty of translating a sizable amount of Beowulf from the original Anglo-Saxon, but Robin couldn't feel enthusiastic. “That's great, Chris.”

He rustled his papers around, and asked, “Are you all right? You seem a bit distracted.”

That passed Robin by, too. “Oh,” she said again, after a moment. “No, I'm fine. I've just got a….”

She stopped, unable to explain, and Chris suggested, “A date?”

A date. Was it a date? Come out with me, David had said, more dare then proposition, without so much as a trace of uncertainty that she would accept. An invitation, yes, but to what?

“I'm…no,” she said at last. “I'm meeting someone tonight.”

“Anything on the day after tomorrow?” Chris asked. He shuffled through his papers and came up with a leaflet. “Cult SOC's doing an Eighties movie night every Friday until Christmas. Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Labyrinth….”

“I remember that,” Robin said, more to be polite than anything.

Chris nodded, obviously pleased. “I'll leave you a flyer, then.”

He didn't try to initiate any further conversation on the way into town, which Robin guiltily considered a boon. Chris, her translation partner, was the most bearable of her Old English group. He teetered on the very edge of geekdom, but if anything the sci-fi fixation that had won him an early place on the Cult SOC board increased Robin's tolerance. Star Trek marathons didn't usually make anyone throw up on the stairs.

The seminar dragged. Bradley Atkins, the English department's Anglo-Saxon expert, set them to transcribing largely incomplete passages of Old English poetry. Robin caught herself watching the daylight dim as the minutes crawled towards five o'clock . She forced her eyes back to her notes. The cramped lines of her own handwriting filled most of a page, punctuated by scribbles and crossings out and question marks where she couldn't decide on a word.

At length, as the last fingers of sunlight slipped from the window ledge, Bradley called for the attention of the dozen or so students of the group. “Let's see what you've all made of The Wife's Lament. Don't worry if you've missed a few words. Christopher, would you like to read from the text?”

Chris cleared his throat, squaring off his notes, and though he read awkwardly at first, the words sounded rich and lyrical. “Ic þis giedd wrece bi me ful geomorre, minre sylfre sið.”

Robin let her eyes follow the translation she had puzzled out. In this sad story of myself speak I of my tale of woe.

“Ic þæt secgan mæg, hwæt ic yrmþa gebad, siþþan ic up weox, niwes oþþe ealdes, no ma þonne nu.”

I can say this, that I endured miseries since growing up, never before, none more than now.

“A ic wite wonn minra wræcsiþa.”

My burden I bear, this torment.

The margin showed two alternatives. Robin considered the words as Chris' recitation continued, then crossed out torment and wrote balefulness.

“… ahte ic leofra lyt on þissum londstede, holdra freonda.”

No confidants in this land-steading had I, few friends.

“Forþon is min hyge geomor, ða ic me ful gemæcne, monnan funde, heardsæligne, hygegeomorne, mod miþendne, morþor hycgendne.”

Therefore my heart laments, as I found the man so suited to me: hard-fortuned, sad-spirited, hiding his mind, considering murder.

Robin stared at the words she had written down, wondering how she could have translated the verse without taking in its meaning. And then her gaze moved of its own accord to the final lines, written there boldly, as though in a different hand.

“Wa bið þam þe sceal of langoþe leofes abidan.”

Woeful is the one who must wait for love through longing.

“…Robin?”

The hand on her arm, rather than the voicing of her name, started Robin from her abstraction. Bradley Atkins looked bemusedly down at her. The rest of the class was dispersing. “I'm sorry,” she said automatically. She didn't dare look down at her translation again, still feeling the disconcerting resonance of the thousand-year-old elegy.

Bradley looked for permission and then turned Robin's pad to read her notes. “This is good,” he said, scanning down the page. “That's an interesting translation of wræcsiþa.”

Robin closed the book on the troubling verse. “I don't know if it's right,” she said lamely.”It's just…vivid. The sense of loneliness; the knowledge of what's missing.”

“The theme of exile comes up frequently in Old English texts,” Bradley said, nodding. “Community was central: to be excluded from the company of one's kind, one's clan, was an unimaginable anguish.”

Robin slowly piled her books back into her bag. “Thank you,” she said, although she wasn't sure why.

Chris was waiting outside the seminar room with a couple of the other students from the group. “Oh, hiya, there you are,” he said, with something like relief. “Any chance you'd give Jen and Harry a lift back to uni?”

It would be no hardship, since Robin was heading back to campus anyway. “Yeah, that's fine.”

“Cheers,” Harry said warmly. “It's chucking it down.”

They all got wet anyway in the short dash to Robin's car. Harry and Jen piled into the back. Robin used her fleece to wipe off the condensation that obscured the inside of the windscreen and counted herself lucky when the wipers deigned to work. They sometimes didn't. Driving past the rest of the Anglo-Saxon class, struggling through the downpour, made Robin pat the dashboard thankfully. She could only afford to run her car at the expense of most other luxuries, and days like this made the sacrifice worthwhile.

But dusk had fallen, and the petty concerns of the day faded with the light. Robin dropped off her passengers and drove back to James College , determined to snap out of her disquiet. An afternoon of Old English was enough to make anyone feel a bit odd. Besides, she had other things to think about.

The rain cleared as Robin pulled into her usual space in the car park, though she could see another front coming in from the west, blue-black as a fresh bruise against the expectantly darkening sky. The storm would hit before morning, she predicted, and wondered if she would get wet.

Pacing was no fun.

Two strides: bed. One and a half to her desk. Another two to the wardrobe. One and a half and the door stared back at her. Robin walked around and around the confines of her room, more than restless, more than frustrated. She felt like a caged animal.

I knew I should have got a time out of him. But David had only smiled, and on some level Robin had known perfectly well that a smile like that wasn't to be taken at face value. Was this a wind-up, then? Some sort of joke on the friendless first-year? If so, Robin wasn't laughing, but she wouldn't let it get to her, either. She wasn't interested in popularity for its own sake, and her solitary ways were of her own choosing.

Then on instinct she turned to look out of her window, and there he was on the bridge, leaning complacently against the railings as though he had no pressing business at all.

Robin controlled the urge to bolt downstairs. She looked in the mirror first and almost didn't recognise the knowing grey eyes that stared back from the glass. She shrugged her shoulders a few times to settle the shabby-chic leather coat, emphasis on the shabby, that she'd put on over her best black jeans and the emerald satin shirt she'd once borrowed from Lauren and never given back. Then she shook the fine gold chain clasping her left wrist back down her arm so it wouldn't snag on her cuff. Finally she shook her head at her reflection, wondering at her own vanity. She turned off the light as she left the room, and locked the door.

Outside the wind blew in fitful gusts that choked off as abruptly as they arose. The campus lights bled dull orange into the sky, and the oppression of the heavens bore down on Robin like a physical weight. The night felt threatening as she had never known it before. And David approached, walking unhurriedly across the bridge towards her, dark in the darkness.

“Nice night,” he said.

Robin held her ground as he walked around her in a tight circle, apparently studying her clothes. “And here was I thinking you weren't going to turn up.”

“I said I'd pick you up.” David paused, smiling that ambiguous smile. “And here I am. Coming?”

There was no good answer to that. Robin fell into step beside him, her curiosity afire, but all the questions she thought of to ask seemed small and inappropriate.

“You're not a student here, are you?” she asked finally, determined to start somewhere.

“Here? No.” David linked his hands behind his back. He was wearing gloves, black leather gloves. Black coat, black boots, black everything.

“At Leeds?” she ventured doubtfully. It was hard to say how old he was. Early twenties? Maybe he was a mature student.

David walked on towards the car park as though he hadn't heard. Then he turned to her. “Where're you from, Robin?”

The question seemed idly put, but Robin sensed something behind it. “Down south. Near Exeter .”

“That's a long way.”

Loquaciousness wasn't a trait Robin would ever have assigned herself, but something in David's voice invited her to elaborate. “I wanted some distance,” she heard herself reply. “Some separation. Bristol accepted me, but it would have been too close to home. I needed….”

“Space?” David suggested.

“Yes,” Robin said. “At least, partly.” She stopped. How could she explain to this virtual stranger that she had come looking for something she couldn't even define herself?

“What good are wings,” David said, “if you have no one to spread them with?”

What a strange thing to say. “I get by,” she said, and realised too late how forlorn it sounded.

David stopped in his tracks, facing her squarely. His eyes were more green than blue, Robin noticed, and they challenged her. “It doesn't have to be that way, Robin.”

He turned away before Robin could think of an answer, and in doing so revealed why he had halted. The gleaming motorcycle leaning on its kickstand oozed class. The blue and white BMW badge on the tank probably had something to do with it, and the shining chrome, and the spotless gloss black paint. “Is it yours?” Robin asked, impressed despite herself.

“For now,” was all he said, but the casual grace with which he straddled the bike gave him away. He smiled at her. “Climb on.”

Robin hesitated. She couldn't see any helmets. It was illegal to ride a motorcycle without. Not to mention foolish. “Where are we going?”

“For a ride.” David raised his eyebrows. “Don't you trust me?”

“Is it safe?” she asked.

He laughed. “You won't fall off.”

That's not what I asked, Robin thought, but she climbed on behind him.

The seductive growl when David started up the bike was a more sophisticated sound than Robin would have expected. He gunned the engine and the noise reverberated across campus. Then he let it go.

The BMW bike shot forward like an arrow from a bow. Robin grabbed reflexively and got a fistful of David's coat. He turned his head for an instant, his teeth flashing in a wolfish grin that could have meant anything, and opened up the throttle.

It was past midnight, the roads were empty, and the big BMW cruiser made a mockery of the speed limits. David changed up rapidly, second to third, fourth, fifth, with barely a pause, and the familiar environs of campus flashed by in sketchy smears of light. The speed was exhilarating beyond anything Robin could have imagined, the wind in her face brought tears to her eyes, and the throaty voice of the engine filled her with an indefinable elation.

Then Robin realised that the roar wasn't just coming from David's bike. She could hear other motorcycles, near, and getting nearer. She chanced a look over her shoulder. Headlights, three of them, punched through the darkness.

She saw David look back, and then felt the jolt as he shifted down a gear. The engine howled as it picked up, but the other headlamps were gaining. Robin made herself small behind David even as he leaned low over the handlebars to cut down their wind resistance. And then the other bikes were past in snarling blurs, and Robin barely caught a glimpse of polished chrome and red taillights that quickly vanished out of sight. She shivered suddenly with an electric chill. Someone just walked on my grave.

David finally eased off the gas, braking to a halt at the top of the long hill that led away from the university, and put one foot down on the road. “Ready to go home yet?”

Robin knew he was showing off. She knew she shouldn't be falling for it. She even knew she'd probably regret her recklessness later.

Wa bið þam þe sceal of langoþe leofes abidan.

“You'll have to do a lot better than that, David,” she said.

He laughed, revving the engine, and for all his mystery he couldn't quite hide the eagerness. “Then you'd better hold on.”

So she did, and when the rain came, she didn't care.