Walk the Wild With Me

by Rachel Atwood

  Copyright © 2019 by Rachel Atwood.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Jacket design by Leo Nickolls.

  Edited by Sheila E. Gilbert.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1841.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780756414856

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  Version_1

  This book is dedicated to the original cast of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1955-1960), who gave me my first glorious introduction to the British folklore in its highly romanticized form.

  Richard Greene: Robin

  Alexander Gauge: Friar Tuck

  Alan Wheatley: Sheriff of Nottingham

  Paul Eddington: Will Scarlett

  Bernadette O’Farrell: Maid Marian

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Where do I begin to acknowledge all the people who helped me write the book that has simmered in my lizard brain and sizzled in my blood since I first became aware that I wanted to write all the other stories in my head?

  First off, much love and thanks have to go to my beloved husband Tim who wanders the wild with me and first introduced me to the wonder of camping. He also puts up with a lot of my fanciful meanderings in the mind where I carry on conversations in other worlds and times.

  Then there is Big Brother Ed who introduced me to the struggle and the joy of archery. Under his guidance I actually hit the target. Once.

  I can’t forget my other brother Jim, the poli sci professor. When I asked his interpretation of the Magna Carta he told me to “Read the damn thing and form your own opinion.” I did.

  My beta readers, Leah, Joyce, Lizzy, Sara, Gregg, and Bob. But mostly to Sara for prodding me to write more in “my period,” because I knew so much about it.

  Over the years I have found and explored more books than I can count on British history and folklore. They have all contributed to this book. All through public school and college I have had wonderful teachers who encouraged me to find my own path of study as far away from the curriculum as I needed to go. And so I dug further and deeper into folklore and present to you characters of the wildwood in close to their original form.

  Prologue

  Anno Domini 1158, the fourth year in the reign of King Henry II

  “Time runs different ’neath the Faery Mound than it does here in Sherwood Forest.” Little John whispered the words so softly they had little more sound than the soft rustling of leaves from a spring breeze. Beside him, the boy Tuck crouched, peering with him through the bushes at the low Faery Mound. In his youth and innocence, the boy could find wonder as he looked at the round hill isolated on a flat plain, the patterned stones around the base and the poisonous toadstools that marked it for what it was.

  Deep despair ran through Little John as his body sought to return to its natural form, to be able to feel the solidity of a branched trunk, his toes becoming roots digging into the nourishing soil, and experience the air dancing among his leaves. It was times like this, so close to the old ways that he had difficulty holding his human form when his heart so longed to return to his tree, a three-hundred-year–old oak. A tree has patience, marking seasons but not years or decades.

  “Aye,” the boy replied. Only twelve and he had already experienced tragedy, disaster, and loss. The loss of his family to disease—one of the wasting fevers that periodically swept through a village—had led to his displacement from the forest to a human home. Even though his body, once only a shadow of his current self, thrived under the care he received in the Dominican monastery of Locksley Abbey, his soul sought more, driving him incessantly to seek the Wild Folk. He came by these needs honestly; his great-grandfather, Herne the Huntsman, cherished his mostly human offspring, teaching him the wisdom of the forest.

  Little John rested a big hand on Tuck’s head, not yet tonsured. He wondered briefly if any but the Wild Folk could see or feel the tiny horn buds beneath his thick bark-brown hair.

  Tuck huddled in on himself, cradling the tiny silver cup hidden in the deep sleeves of his student robe. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “So, so sorry.”

  Little John heaved a sigh that ran all the way from the rootlets his toes wanted to dig deep, up to his mossy beard and hair.

  “I love her, you know. Jane. My Jane,” Little John said, as much to reassure himself as to inform the boy. “And she loves me, too. She was running away from her village to come to me. We are meant to be together.”

  The boy sniffed and nodded. He clenched his fist around the cup so fiercely that Little John feared he’d bend the metal that was the home of the gentle goddess Elena.

  Little John felt her roll over and bask in the closeness between herself and the boy.

  “But Elena’s so new to me, I’m afraid if I let her go, she’ll never come back.”

  Fear. Fear drove them all.

  “Come, Tuck, the sun rises. The night of Midsummer has passed,” Little John said sadly. “The portal to the Faery Mound will not open to us again for another fifty years when the moon phase of our time matches the moon of Faery on Midsummer Night’s Eve. There is nothing we can do for poor Jane until then.” He wiped away a tear. “She’s not like the dryads who tempt me. Jane wants permanence. She wants only me. Not a mating and then stalking away to the next tree with pollen to spread.”

  Despite his soothing words, Little John’s heart raged at the boy. He forced himself to remain calm and patient in demeanor. Elena was the key to opening that enchanted doorway. But now that she had found a companion to teach and share her wisdom with, she would only leave her cup upon the boy’s request.

  John could not ask him to free the goddess. He had to volunteer willingly
. And the boy was afraid to be abandoned. Again.

  “You and Robin Goodfellow should share a long tankard of beer,” Tuck said, rousing from his shame that he’d let his fear govern his actions rather than the wisdom of the little goddess. “If you spend the next fifty years searching for the Cave Outside of Time where the Wizard of Locksley secreted the body of Robin’s lady love, you won’t hurt so much for your own lost sweetheart. That curse must be broken, and the dead wizard’s spirit banished from the castle environs.”

  Little John snarled at the boy. He didn’t want to share a drink with anyone. He wanted to crawl into his tree and sleep through the next fifty years.

  Would his Jane notice the passage of years locked away beneath that hill? Fifty years at the beck and call of Queen Mab of the faeries would be vile. No one deserved that kind of enslavement. None of them. Especially not the girl he loved and had courted these many months. No dryad or water sprite or sylph tugged at his heart as did the sweet girl who sang as she gleaned nuts and berries from his forest. None of the others trusted him with their safety as Jane did. None of the others wanted to stay with him, talk to him, share their lives with him.

  Next time, the goddess within the cup promised him, I will make certain I am available when next you can free your lady love.

  One

  Anno Domini 1199, the tenth year of King Richard’s reign, late winter

  Father Tuck threw back his cowl, baring his tonsured head to the morning breeze, and stretched his legs into long, mile-eating strides. With each new step he breathed deeply of the fresh air. For a moment, he wished he’d worn his wool shirt beneath his robe instead of spring linen. He’d huddled near the fire too often over the winter; he needed to stretch all his senses again, including bringing fresh cool air into his lungs instead of warm but stale interiors.

  The sun peeked through thin clouds in a rare effort to bring spring life to the land. He sniffed and found traces of new greenery trying to burst forth on the roadside verge. The equinox was not far away.

  Very soon the landowners would direct their freeholders and serfs to begin plowing.

  In the meantime, he could escape the musty and crowded Benedictine abbey near Locksley Downs, outside Nottingham. The abbot had been ill and dying for months, leaving Tuck to handle the details of keeping the abbey running and following the Order as laid down by their patron saint.

  The twenty monks, three priests, and ten orphan boys demanded his attention continuously. He had grown weary of tiny details and confinement. Escape to the land was finally his to claim. Outlying villages needed him to say funeral masses for those who had died over the winter and perform marriages for couples who could not wait for spring to wed as their first child would pop out before then. Perhaps he could also share the joy of baptizing babies born a bit early. He loved performing that sacrament more than any other.

  But he feared he’d have to send more spirits beyond the grave than welcome new souls into the Church. The winter had not been overly harsh, but outlaws roamed at will. If only King Richard would come home and set this kingdom in order before finding another war to fight on the continent.

  A nearly forgotten sensation tickled the back of his neck.

  “Elena?” he whispered. “I put you back into your niche decades ago, on the night before I took my novitiate vows.”

  You are needed in Withybeck. Now. One of ours is in peril.

  And then his head grew numb as the little goddess withdrew.

  Withybeck. The village had grown up beside the Withy, a stream barely big enough to be classified as a river. Its importance lay in the drop in elevation, marked by a half mile of rapids. A century ago an enterprising builder had erected a mill; the wheel turned the grinding stones by the force of the flowing water. Even in high summer when the water levels lessened, the wheel turned raw grain into flour.

  Tuck turned his steps south by southwest, cutting across fallow fields and jumping creeks and downed trees with the agility of a much younger man.

  One of our own. Elena meant a child of mixed-blood from human and forest creature. Not many such children had been born in the last forty years. Elena must be getting desperate to find one to carry her when the moons of human time and faery time aligned once more on Midsummer’s Night Eve.

  At the crossroad, he turned his steps due south. Shadows from overhanging trees made the way look forgotten and ill-used. But the green hump in the center of the narrow road showed signs of recent trampling by many heavy feet.

  Within a few steps the stink of wet smoke gagged him.

  He choked back tears of despair while panic pumped speed into his limbs.

  The reek grew stronger. His eyes burned from the pall that overlay his path.

  “Heavenly Father, bless those who are innocent victims of whatever tragedy has visited them,” he murmured. He didn’t have time to pull his prayer beads from his inside sleeve pocket, so he called up the image of his green glass beads with silver filigree decade pieces and ran the texture of them through his memory.

  By the time he saw the remnants of burned thatch through the thinning trees, he feared the worst. Wattle-and-daub house walls leaned inward, doors sagging upon broken or burned leather hinges. Chickens, goats, and sheep lay senselessly slaughtered in random clusters upon the green. Mutilated bodies of men, women, and children sprawled in awkward attitudes of flight cut off by arrows and axes.

  The odor of spilled blood grabbed at his throat.

  He had to stop and clutch his knees as he dragged in tainted air to replenish his laboring lungs. Before he’d managed to control his ragged breathing, he crossed himself and spoke prayers for the dead by rote, his mind too paralyzed by the horror of the massacre to remember what he said.

  “NO!” A primal scream ripped from his body, pulling all of his strength with it. His knees wobbled, and he dropped to the ground, not in prayer. Not in awe or gratitude.

  You need to hurry!

  In that moment a whimper of distress overcame the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. Such a faint sound. He wasn’t certain it hadn’t come from his own throat.

  One of ours.

  There! It came again. Not a moan of pain, but an anguished sob. He followed the sound to his left, the north end of the little village, away from the ransacked storehouse and the burned cottages.

  Tuck crawled to the edge of the fouled well and used it as a brace to haul himself to his feet. His knees held, and his back uncramped. Stiff and uncertain, careful not to step on any of the dead bodies, he followed the sound.

  “Mama!” A toddler’s cry for the first person it could think of for help.

  “I’m coming,” Tuck said quietly, careful not to alarm the only survivor. “Easy, child. I’m coming.”

  A heap of rubble blocked the path out of the village. The sodden thatch smoked. An overhanging oak tree had kept the soaking winter rains from drying out the bundled sheaves. And so the roof had been saved.

  “Mama!” the toddler insisted.

  Tuck threw off the mat of the house wall, the crumbling clay held together by woven wicker, split and disintegrated where it landed. There, in a pocket of space beside the fire ring sat a naked child. Tear streaks amongst the smoke and dirt that smudged its face told a story of its own.

  The dead body of a woman stretched out beside the child, one arm reaching toward him. An ax protruded from her back. Bone and blood and guts lay exposed along her spine.

  “Oh, you poor baby,” Tuck knelt beside the boy, heedless of the broken bits of house that tore at his thick woolen robe. Without giving the child a chance to shy away from a stranger, he gathered him into his arms, rose to his feet, and backed away. Instinctively, he rubbed the boy child’s back as he pressed the sorrowful face against his shoulder.

  His gut clenched in sorrow and wonder. Tuck clutched the boy, digging his fingers into soft flesh.

&n
bsp; “There, there, baby. Let’s get you some clothes, and food, and water.”

  “No baby. Nick!” the child insisted, pounding his fist into Tuck, then with a trembling chin he buried his face into Tuck’s shoulder again. His back rippled in a convulsive sob. “Mama?”

  “Nick you be, then.” Tuck fished a bit of bread from the scrip at his waist.

  The boy gnawed at it hungrily. “Mama.” Nick reached back toward the crumbling remnants of his home. His big leaf-green eyes spilled tears.

  “Your mama can’t come, Nick.” Tuck choked back his own tears. “You’ll have to come with me now. I’ll take care of you. You’re safe with me.” He stroked the filthy hair which might be blond, maybe light brown.

  “Mama,” the boy sobbed again, as if he understood. “Mama.”

  In the back of his head, Tuck heard a sigh of relief from Elena.

  Anno Domini 1208, the ninth year of King John’s reign. Spring.

  “Nicholas Withybeck, where be you, you miserable good-for-nothing-blasphemous nameless orphan?” Father Blaine shouted along the cloister of Locksley Abbey.

  Nick winced at the tirade. He wasn’t nameless. He’d known his name was Nicholas when Father Tuck had brought him to the abbey. He’d been but three at the time, perhaps as old as four, but undersized. Cold, hungry, missing his mum and da, he’d known his name but little else. Abbot Mæson had blessed him with the surname Withybeck because that was the village where he’d been found, digging through the burned-out ruins of his home, looking for his dead parents and something to eat.

  Later he learned that soldiers returning to their lord after besieging the castle of another lord had roamed free, looting and pillaging at will, because King Richard had stayed in France and did nothing to stop his barons from warring against each other.

  Now King John ruled. He hired mercenaries from all over Europe to fight his wars, turning them loose without paying them, and they roamed throughout England looting and pillaging as well.