Some of the weary faces he remembered from the games and races on May Day. Most, he doubted he’d ever seen before. But all of them seemed to travel in family groups, multiple generations riding in the carts, gamboling about on the verge, or trudging beside the draft animal. One carter reached a hand to the woman walking beside him. They looked at each other for a moment with love and brief happiness. Their children came running up to them, gave each parent a quick hug and linked hands as well. They chattered brightly about the day’s adventures, then fell silent, intent upon the long steps home.
Abbott Mæson’s words, or rather Father Tuck’s, about ministering to the villagers, the Woodwose, and the Wild Folk tickled his mind. A fine calling, indeed. But was it enough to make a lifelong commitment to the Church, taking vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity? He didn’t remember his own family, didn’t know he missed having one until now.
When the time comes, you will know what is right for you. For now, I am your family, and your mates in the dormitory are your brothers. Enjoy us, love us, while you can.
“When I’m eighteen, I can choose to leave the abbey and start my own family, or . . . or wander the world as I choose until I find my proper mate. I can read and write. There are always people in need of a scribe, noble people with coins to pay for my skills.”
Or you can take your vows and wander the wild as you choose, ministering to those in need. You will know when the time comes.
Eleven
“Well, Elena, has the boy learned enough to tell him that he carries forest blood?” Tuck asked the goddess. He’d never given up the habit of talking to her, even when he outgrew the need for her answers.
Have you?
“What is that supposed to mean?” Leave it to the goddess of crossroads to answer a question with a question and leave him to figure out how the two connected.
Think back to the summer you turned fifteen.
“That was a long, long time ago. Only three years after I couldn’t bear to part with you long enough to let you open the door to the Faery Mound. Because of me, Little John could not rescue his love. He’s been a very lonely man since then.” A pang of guilt twisted his gut and pressed against his chest, making it difficult to breathe and keep up his strides through the forest.
He sat on the stump to rest a bit while he thought. No. He stood and began walking again. He always thought better when moving.
So long ago you do not remember that you considered giving up the Church to court a girl among the Woodwose?
Tuck stopped in his tracks, memories flittering ahead of him like a colorful butterfly. A smile brightened his blood, sending pleasant bubbles of excitement through him. How could he forget the long lazy days of that summer as he contemplated taking his novitiate vows to the Church. That was the first step toward becoming a priest. He could back away from those final vows any time up until the day he prostrated himself before the altar and promised his life, his honor, and his soul to Holy Mother Church.
“She was pretty, with auburn hair springing in curls around her face. A laugh twinkling behind her green eyes. Spritely steps that led me a merry chase.”
It is good that you remember her so well.
“I thought she had a touch of the Wild Folk in her heritage. And I loved her for what I found in her.”
More than a touch of forest blood in her.
He thought back to how easily she disappeared into the greenery when he chased her, always appearing farther ahead, leading him deeper and deeper into the shadows of the ancient forest, until she let him catch her.
The memory of them falling together into a thick nest of gathered grasses and moss that she had prepared for them heated his face and curled his toes.
He blushed at what had followed, young people thinking with their bodies rather than their minds.
You needed to know about that part of life before you took your vows.
“Yes, I think you are right. So how does this relate to Nick and his progress in learning about life?”
The girl was his great-grandmother.
Tuck choked on his own breath. “You mean . . .”
“Yes. The girl bore you a daughter.”
“But she never told me.”
You never saw her again.
“I was thinking of the best way to propose to her when I heard the abbey bells calling me home. Then I heard voices drifting on the wind, a plain chant extolling the beauty of the day as the sun set. I knew in that moment I couldn’t leave the Church. It was—and is—my home, the place where my heart dwells.”
He bowed his head as he reaffirmed his vows to himself and to God.
“My daughter must have thrived and borne children of her own.” That amazed and startled him into a new awareness of Nick and why the boy seemed so special to him.
Your daughter, Lily by name, the same as her mother, wed the son of a dryad.
Tuck gulped again. “Was that man one of the Green Man’s get?”
You must decide if Nicholas is ready to learn of his heritage. I do not know if he will ever be fully ready.
“Neither do I. I do not think he is ready yet. He is still getting used to you, my lady Elena. But I do know that it is time my good friend Little John learns of this. He spreads his seed far and wide as do the trees. Though he longs for a wife and lifelong companion, he must mate with dryads—women of the oaks—to continue the health of the forest. He monitors his children until they show some promise of succeeding him as king of the forest. If they drift to the human villages, then he turns them loose with love and understanding. He dismisses the descendants who are too human to understand his obligation to the forest.”
Let that bit of knowledge rest a while until you become easy with it.
* * *
Little John heaved the cut end of a middle-aged ash tree onto his shoulder. A late autumnal windstorm had taken it down. Now the wood had dried, and the Woodwose needed it as a center roof support for a new hut. Every day villagers fled their homes and serfdom to take refuge from the sheriff’s tax collectors here, deep in the forest. They needed shelter.
Soon he expected this nearly invisible settlement would become permanent rather than mobile. The sheriff and local barons became more and more fearful of straying from the Royal Road through the forest. Robin Goodfellow and his companions had made travel expensive, if not hazardous, in order to protect the Woodwose.
Little John was happy to assist in building these new homes. He needed to do something to fill his time before the summer solstice when the door to Faery, the only one humans and Wild Folk could access, would be opened again.
Step by careful step, he backed up toward the path where a cart awaited the ridge pole.
“I could just as easily drag this twig all the way to the village,” he muttered at sight of the sagging two-wheeled wagon on the path and a placid ox in the yoke.
“You have to allow these people to do some of their own work, Little John,” Tuck said. “They need to invest part of themselves in their new home in order to retain their self-respect.” He rubbed his fingers where the joint disease plagued him.
“I could do it by myself in half the time,” Little John muttered. He paused to adjust his position under the tree and his leverage.
“Easy now, sir. I don’t like the feel of the axle,” Dom, one of the abbey lads, said. He stroked the ox’s nose and hummed a soothing tune, keeping the animal calm. He’d spent more of the last few weeks in the village than at his studies. He’d come once with Nick and returned on his own.
John expected him to take up residence here any day now. He had a way with animals. Any of the families would welcome him, either as a friend or a new son.
Sure enough, a quick glance behind Dom revealed Betsy, the dairymaid who had joined them after May Day, watching the work. A boy just reaching toward manhood seemed more to her liking in
the illegal village than the sheriff’s attentions at her lawful home.
Sir Philip Marc thought the serfs his own personal property that he could use and abuse at will. With no one else to enforce the laws upon him, he could ignore that a serf was bound to the land, not the landlord.
John eased the tree onto the bed of the cart. The ox shifted its feet. The cart swayed.
Before John could get his shoulder back under the tree trunk, Dom ran from the ox’s nose to the side of the cart. He put his back against the solid wheel. It stood taller than he and weighed thrice what he did. At least.
The cart creaked and wobbled.
Little John dropped the tree, letting the top of it fall to the ground, relieving the axle of much of its weight. Not enough. Too late.
With an explosive sound, the axle snapped in half.
“Noooooo!” Little John wailed, grasping fruitlessly for the listing wheel.
Dom dug in his heels, pressing his back against the massive conveyance.
And slid downward on the muddy slope into the ditch below the road.
The wheel followed him, tilting dangerously for one long moment before succumbing to the pull of the earth.
A pale-faced boy lay beneath the wheel.
“Dom!” Betsy screamed as she knelt beside him.
Tuck grabbed his own chest and dropped to his knees on a gasp.
Quickly, Little John got his hands under the wheel and heaved upward, not caring how many ferns and ground cover plants it landed upon as long as it no longer pinned Dom beneath its weight.
He heaved the wheel aside and knew instantly he could do nothing to help the boy. He took one step toward his old friend.
Tuck waved him back toward the cart. “I’ll live,” he panted.
But his face was pale, and blue tinged his lips.
Little John hesitated.
“Do as I say, please,” Tuck gasped once more. He made no move to stand.
Little John knelt beside Dom. The boy still breathed. Barely. His face had taken on the color of sun-bleached linen. The weight of the wheel had crushed something inside him. Only the tightness of his skin around his closed eyes suggested that life remained within.
But the boy did not draw a breath. His eyes shot open and he exhaled one last time.
“Dom, no. Dom, wake up. Dom, breathe!” Betsy pleaded. She lay herself across him, wailing. Her tears flowed freely as her body convulsed in grieving sobs.
Tuck crawled over to her and held her hand as he crossed himself and whispered prayers.
“Save your prayers!” Betsy snarled. She slapped Tuck’s hand away from making the sign of the cross. “He never wanted the Church. He was never happy in your monastery. He wanted to live life, not hide from it.”
“I’m sorry. So, so sorry. He didn’t deserve to die. But what other chance at life did he have other than the Church?” Tuck moaned.
“He could have stayed with us. We loved him. Your eunuchs never loved anything but themselves.”
“Is being an outlaw better than safety behind stout walls?” Tuck replied. “King John’s dismissed mercenaries still maraud unhindered. Is a horrible and painful torture and death at their hands better than the safety the Church offers?”
“Sometimes.”
“But he died here, with the outlaws,” the Green Man muttered, as always confused by the arguments for where, when, and how mortals lived.
Sadness twisted Little John’s heart. He lifted his head toward the sky and gulped back his own tears. These mortals were so vulnerable. So frail. And he could do nothing to save them. A tree or a bush would sprout new leaves from only a bit of root left alive. He could breathe new life into anything green except those totally uprooted. Not so with mortals. Only their God could bring the dead back to life.
He loved all his human friends fiercely, ever knowing they’d die too soon. But for one so young and so ready to embrace life, and love, to go so suddenly shocked him to his hardwood core.
“We’d best carry him back to Locksley Abbey,” Tuck said sadly. “He has no place in the stone circle. He hadn’t been among us enough to learn of their existence. At the abbey we can ensure he is buried in sacred ground. And I’ll arrange for someone to tell his mum. She gave him up, knowing she couldn’t feed him. But I know she still loved him.”
“As did his twin sister,” Betsy said on a sob. “I’ll walk the league to the nunnery where she shelters and tell her. We can cry together.”
“The sisters will not receive you.” Tuck patted the girl’s hand. “I hope they still respect my priestly status. That sorrowful chore belongs to me.”
“I’ll carry him to the abbey,” John said, drawing a deep breath.
“Not your duty,” Tuck protested.
“If not mine, then whose? You can’t arrive on the doorstep with a . . . with a dead child. Too many there know you well even in your Woodwose guise.”
Reverently, John bent to lift young Dom into his arms, cradling him as he would a newborn babe.
Betsy tucked Dom’s abbey robes around him, neatly covering his legs and pulling the cowl over his head. Then she kissed his brow and backed away, tears sliding down her cheeks.
Tuck put his arm around her shoulders, a solid comfort to ease some of the pain.
They watched as, one by one, the Woodwose crept out of the forest shadows and placed a violet, a jonquil, a Johnny-jump-up, a daffy-down-dilly, and even a fern frond at the place where Dom had died. Tonight, while they slept, Little John knew he must return to the spot and breathe on these simple, heartfelt offerings to make certain they took root and remained as tribute to the boy’s life.
Twelve
Nick wondered how to hide a cat face within the trailing ivy vines he’d drawn to enhance a large C at the beginning of a text. The alarm bell startled him out of his deep contemplation. He looked up and around, listening. Five other scribes pushed back their benches and scurried out of the scriptorium at the first clang of the big bronze bell high up in the church tower.
Nick decided that he should join them. With three quick flicks of his pen, he anchored the cat face behind three leaves. Then he carefully set down the quill so the nib wouldn’t break against something if jostled and scurried toward the big courtyard by the main gate.
Three paces beyond the smaller gate to the inner cloister he stopped short, mouth agape.
“What?” he asked one of the monks. The usually silent, middle-aged man shrugged his shoulders and pointed. Then he resumed his stately pace, hands clasped together within the voluminous folds of his sleeves, lips reciting silent prayers, and his head bowed deep within his cowl.
He might as well be a ghost.
Nick scuttled past him to the gathering throng of men and boys. One tall figure, clad in mottled moss green and bark brown, stood out among them. Nick picked out the afterimage of leaves woven into his hair and beard, twigs growing from his face. Little John.
The Green Man dipped his head as he gently placed his burden at the feet of Prefect Andrew. Then he backed out the main gate and disappeared from Nick’s line of sight.
Nick ran to the gate and peered out, trying to pick out the man on the road or amongst the greenery on either side of the dirt cart track. Nothing. No movement, not even a rustle of a breeze along the crown of leaves.
There was one shadow out of place. The stooped figure of a wiry old man clung to the wall beneath the overhanging branches of yew tree. Nick squinted, and Elena let him see Father Tuck, slumped in grief. The old man touched his forehead, acknowledging Nick’s presence and shuffled off, his steps unsteady and his back bent.
Nick gulped back his questions and turned back to the bundle on the ground. He froze in place, mouth twisting in sorrow.
Not an offering from the forest. A body. The corpse of his friend, Dom.
Not a single breath moved w
ithin his chest. No one could have skin so white and live, nor did his eyelids flutter in sleep.
A sharp pain pierced his chest.
Henry burst through the crowd. “No! Not Dom. He can’t be dead. He can’t.”
Brother Theo grabbed him about the waist before Henry could fling himself across the body of his friend.
“How?” Nick asked around a dry throat and thick tongue. He struggled to accept the evidence before his eyes. “How did this happen?” He made his way over to Henry, needing to hold him close to keep himself from splitting in two.
“The . . . the villager said Dom was helping move a roof tree for a new hut. The cart axle broke, and the wheel fell upon Dominic and crushed him,” Prefect Andrew said quietly, almost disbelieving. He crossed himself and whispered a prayer.
“Let this be a lesson to you all that life outside these walls is dangerous,” Father Blaine intoned.
All of the gaping brothers and boys whispered “Amen,” as they crossed themselves as well. Except Henry. He just stood there, shaking his head and mouthing “No, no, no, no,” over and over.
Without thinking, Nick hugged his friend tightly. They weren’t supposed to cry. Father Blaine said so. Death was God’s will. They must thank Him for taking the boy to heaven.
Hot tears burned Nick’s eyes, and he let them flow. He couldn’t remember if he’d cried when his parents died. Didn’t remember if he even realized they were dead until much later. He mourned for them now. He mourned for Dom’s father, trampled by unthinking nobles. He mourned for everyone they’d lost over the years. And he mourned for himself and the family he never knew.
He cried until his knees sagged with weakness, and his breath came in racking sobs and his chest hurt with the effort to breathe. Henry was the one who had to lead him to the infirmary where the duty of washing the body and preparing it for burial fell to them.
Walk the Wild With Me Page 9
