In a Dark Wood

by Michael Cadnum

  “He acts like you.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “What is the purpose?”

  “Humor, sire.”

  “Humor, humor, humor,” said Baldwin, closing his eyes. “To cause laughter.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have heard that humor is the fashion in Bologna. But laughter is generally conceded to be a sign of empty-headedness.”

  “I have always thought so,” agreed Geoffrey. “I have always detested open-mouthed laughter. Quiet, personal laughter—”

  “Is, of course, proper,” said Baldwin. “But this fellow—” Baldwin studied the thighbone of a pigeon.

  Geoffrey avoided looking at his wife. “It is fashionable to have a Fool,” he said.

  “Fashion,” said Baldwin slowly, in a tone like regret. “When, forgive me, Lady Eleanor, but when loud laughter becomes the fashion, where will it stop? When I was young, everyone was stern. Dogs were stern. Women would rather eat dung than laugh in the street.”

  “It’s a matter of taste,” said Geoffrey, sipping wine. “I, for example, prefer to wear green, which—”

  “—some people think is a symbol for lightness in love,” said his wife.

  “I have never heard that,” said Geoffrey.

  “Oh, I have, Lady Eleanor. I have. I have heard that degree of faithfulness can be told by the lover’s sleeve,” said Baldwin. “The heart chooses the color it prefers without thinking and betrays itself.”

  “This is established truth,” said Geoffrey’s wife, “widely known.”

  “I have never heard it.” The wine was tasteless, and the boar tough. Geoffrey fed a scrap of flesh to the whippet and said, “Laughter, of course, is now the fashion.”

  “Oh?” said Baldwin, wiping his chin.

  “Although God’s earth is replete with examples of His goodness.” Wine splashed out of Geoffrey’s cup. “To mock any part of it is to blaspheme.”

  The Fool scowled and squinted, a finger held forth into the candlelight.

  “He’s acting just like you,” said Baldwin.

  The Fool’s eyes shifted back and forth, bright with suspicion. He withdrew his finger and leaned forwards sullenly. Geoffrey crushed the napkin in his fist. In his chamber mirror, the glass with the single flaw, a wrinkle like the trailing edge of an angel’s wing, he was always dignified. A hard-eyed, handsome, bearded man. The Fool bunched a fist, trembling.

  Baldwin looked long at the Fool and then leaned back in his chair, studying Geoffrey. Baldwin nodded. “He has amazing talent.”

  Candlelight gleamed off the saltcellar, an earthenware boat as long as a bread loaf, on which perched a gilded swan. Eleanor had brought this, one of the many valuable objects he had married when he married her. A tapestry behind the Fool showed swans floating on a pool the color of blood. The swans intertwined their necks gracefully, in a manner never quite matched by nature.

  After dinner a pikeman stirred the water beneath the drawbridge. Grumpy white shapes shook themselves into the torchlight, smearing the water like mustard. “They are so beautiful,” cooed Lady Eleanor. “I think that in the entire world there is no more graceful creature.”

  “Except, perhaps, one or two of the king’s horses,” said Baldwin.

  “Oh, no,” said Eleanor. “Horses are loathsome by comparison.”

  Baldwin made one of his eloquent gestures. Despite his love for wine, his eyes recorded every detail, so he would be able to answer every question the king might ask.

  “But these birds are spotless.”

  There was nothing so prized as spotlessness, and nothing so undesirable as something spotted. This was why the toad was so abhorred; spots erupted on its surface like bubbles in a cauldron, and spots were not merely superficial blemishes. They betrayed the nature of a thing, testified to a creature’s inner baseness.

  “Perhaps,” said Baldwin, and Geoffrey was struck by the sophisticated tone of the word. “Perhaps,” Geoffrey murmured to himself. Not “percase” or “perchance.” “Perhaps.”

  Eleanor broke off a bit of simnel, fine white bread, celebrated for having not a single speck of bran, and tossed it into the water. Ripples flawed the water, and the torchlight shivered. “As you know,” said Eleanor in her prettiest voice, “animals exist to teach us moral lessons.”

  “There is no question,” agreed Baldwin.

  “The transformation of the silkworm from larva to butterfly teaches us the Resurrection. And the vulture, which breeds without copulation, teaches us of the virgin birth of our Savior.” She let a fragment of simnel drift from her fingers.

  “And what lesson do we learn from the swan?” Baldwin said with a smile.

  “Oh, many many lessons can be learned from the swan,” said Eleanor.

  Geoffrey plucked simnel from her hands and tossed a chunk of it to the orange-beaked birds. “We learn that what appears beautiful is not always kind.”

  “What on earth sort of lesson is that?” snapped Eleanor.

  “Look at them snuffling and lunging over the bread,” said Geoffrey.

  “They’re hungry,” said Eleanor.

  “They are greedy,” Geoffrey responded. “Since creatures exist only to teach us a moral lesson, we must conclude that the beautiful can be greedy.”

  “Oh, they most certainly can,” droned Baldwin.

  “And why are there bees?” Eleanor asked, torchlight gleaming on her teeth.

  The lesson of the bee was a commonplace. Bees were obedient to their king, who in turn did not sting them, although he could, if he wanted to. The bee lived in a society of mutual obligation, just as men did. But Geoffrey knew this was not the lesson Eleanor referred to. Since she had not been trained to have original thoughts, he searched his memory for the lessons children were taught when they were learning the natures of the four winds and the shape of the firmament that lay behind the stars. “Why?” he asked.

  “To teach us that spite kills, just as the act of stinging kills the bee, dragging out its heart.”

  “An admirable lesson,” said Baldwin.

  8

  Geoffrey frowned over the paper in his hands. All his servants were entitled to eat in the “house,” and the upper servants received candles—not beeswax, but gray tubes that smelled of fat—and candle ends, and wine. They also received a wage. All this in addition to the actual food, and nothing was cheap. The dinner the night before had gone considerably over budget, but times were good, and he could afford it, especially if the result of such hospitality could be the good favor of the king.

  Geoffrey felt at home with lists of numbers, with calculations like the ones in his hand, a long line of black numbers reporting from the larder and the buttery. He could imagine the activities of the world round him from lists of figures; just as ice crystallizes round a single pine needle, a vision of the world composed itself round a line of black numbers.

  He knew all the taxes owed on every grazing ox, and every sheep, and all the money already collected. He hung at the center of the shire’s economy like a benign spider. He knew how many war-horses there were, how many palfreys, and how many carucates of land lay side by side, tawny with barley. He was the king’s tax collector, the king’s purse strings, and he paid the money he collected into the Royal Treasury, a process that satisfied him just as flattening a slug of white iron must satisfy the blacksmith. He was good at what he did. It was what he had neglected that had risen against him like a viper.

  Henry shrugged his shoulders to ease the weight of leather and mail. He breathed the sweet stink of ale and had the cheerful confidence of a man who might well be a drunkard. He swayed slightly as he spoke. Men had ridden forth last night, he was saying. Turned out beds. Demanding the whereabouts of the prankster. No idea yet, but they’d find him. They’d find him if they had to roast a few swineherds over coals.

  We should raise the taxes on silk, thought Geoffrey. Too many millers thought themselves worthy of a bolt or two of the elegant stuff, and it gave them an i
nflated idea of their value to God. Because in a time of prosperity the miller was as crude as ever but had money. He looked up dimly. “What?”

  “We’ll find him, sire. Rest your mind on that.”

  Geoffrey fell back in his chair. “You did what to peasants?”

  Henry straightened his leather armor, which seemed to fight him as he spoke. “We just made an impression, sire.”

  “I want you to find him, not breed animosity in every hut under the sun.”

  But Henry was inexperienced at finding outlaws in the forest, Geoffrey knew. Henry swore the miscreant’s head would be on a pike within two days, but it was bluster. Geoffrey put his finger to his lips, and Henry fell silent.

  “My men are used to city crimes,” said Geoffrey. “Their method is to go about pounding doors and racking the truth out of the wretches who won’t talk.”

  “We’ll catch him—”

  “We need someone who is experienced in the chase. And in the attack. Someone war-hardened.”

  Henry put his hand to his hilt to demonstrate the way he would slaughter the highwayman.

  “Find me Sir Roger,” said Geoffrey. “There’s a man who fought the Saracen. A man who is notched with battle. He’ll have a trick or two for us. Go find him.”

  Henry hurried away with a jingle of mail.

  “That’s the way to do it,” Geoffrey said to the remainder of his breakfast, bread sopped with white wine. “Use craft, not force.”

  Hugh offered a dark blue cloak as a way of reminding Geoffrey, but Geoffrey nodded that he did not need to be reminded. For an official duty like this he dressed like a man ready for battle, although lightly armored. A skirt of leather plate hung to his knees, and his sleeves were tight. He worked his fingers into heavy war gloves, although there would be only symbolic battle this morning.

  Hugh buckled a sword round him, the weapon of a nobleman but more than decoration. The jet-handled sword had been keen. This was keen and heavy, so even the flat of it could break a skull. It was tedious that a sheriff had to be dressed like a man ready to kill.

  The courtyard was a pattern of sunlight, and men stepped from shadow into light like angels growing from spiritual to concrete beings, arms and legs brilliant, suddenly, mail and armor studs glittering in the sun. A dog yapped. A horse looked out from the stable, sun touching its nostrils. Every peaked roof had a chimney, and a cluster of chimneys, although only the kitchen chimneys exhaled smoke into the blue sky. One dove nudged another out of the dome-shaped openings of the dovecot, and the chapel stood in its own shadow like a building of ice in the puddle of its own making.

  Like all the buildings, the prison was built against the wall, its black, rectangular windows looking out over the courtyard like all the buildings, the stones of many different sizes and shapes, and all the various shades of gray, all adding up to hard, strong edges. It could be a dining hall, or a great hall, or a lord’s chamber, like the buildings across the courtyard.

  Baldwin was dressed like a man ready to ride, a blue tunic, a red riding cape, a cap in his hands. A torch sizzled on the wall, and Baldwin paced to warm himself. “I am indeed curious,” he said, his brass spurs tinkling as he paced. “Although I hope the method is a quick one.”

  “We don’t know. It could be quick, or it could be slow,” said Geoffrey, looking round for Nottingham, the executioner.

  A step whispered in the corridor, and a figure’s breath steamed in the torchlight. A soft voice offered courteous greetings, and a lean face came towards them, shadows spreading across it like black fingers. “This should be a very interesting procedure,” said Nottingham.

  “Quick, I hope,” said Baldwin.

  “Ah.” Regret. Sadness, even. “It may not be so quick.”

  Baldwin gathered his cape. “Then let’s begin.”

  “The newness of the method is its prime advantage,” said Nottingham, his voice so soft it was barely audible. He led the way as they stepped from hissing torchlight to darkness to torchlight, and then their steps echoed down spiral stairs. “The prisoner will not know what to expect.”

  “That is usually a disadvantage,” said Baldwin.

  “Anticipation is everything,” offered Geoffrey.

  “Usually,” said Nottingham. “But this prisoner is very stubborn.”

  He used the word thro for “stubborn,” a word that Baldwin might not understand, so Geoffrey said, “Stiborn,” a word so often applied to farm animals. “Like a beast, and as stupid.”

  “Yes,” said Nottingham. “If he anticipates the agony, he will harden himself against it. Of course, hardening against agony is a waste of time. We know that. They don’t.”

  An executioner was always named after the city in which he worked. Nottingham had another name, given to him by his father, but because he inherited the position from his father, no one ever called him anything else. He did the city’s bidding, he acted on its behalf, and whenever he lifted an axe or built a gallows, he acted as the city, a man who gave the city arms, legs, and a rope.

  A dark cloak whispered, the color of water under a drawbridge, black tinged with green. Manacles rattled. A slack face, with dark eyes, like the eyes of a mouse. The dark cloak the prisoner wore made him blend with the darkness. His face and hands floated like bread on water.

  A hiss of cloth, and the cloak pooled on the floor. The naked prisoner was pale as tallow, his pubic hair black, a pinch of night. He did not struggle against the black leather gloves of the guards, but his eyes searched the floor. He was trying to find the place in himself that would feel no pain, like a man searching for a forgotten word.

  Nottingham tested the straps, then knelt beside the prisoner. He whispered into his ear the words that implored him to divulge his secrets to the mercy of the king.

  “There is no treasure,” said the prisoner.

  Nottingham rose slowly. A torch behind them made a long, slow sigh, like a sleeping dog. Nottingham ran a forefinger along the white flesh of the prisoner’s thigh.

  Geoffrey nodded his permission to proceed. Any treasure found buried would be returned to its rightful owner, if such an owner could be found. But most of it would slip into the king’s purse. Geoffrey wanted the entry in his books: “tresoure founden.”

  A gate clanked, and a rope snaked into the light, followed by two horns. The rope slumped to the floor for a moment as four legs struggled to stand on the cold stone. The prisoner closed his eyes as a knife no longer than a finger, and graceful, like a feather, made a slice in the sole of his foot.

  The rope was wrestled into a hard knot, and the goat’s snout pressed against the blood. The goat shivered with the effort of pulling away and failing. Then a sound like a dog lapping milk.

  The goat lapped the cut on the prisoner’s foot.

  “The king holds forth his hand to you, his beloved son,” whispered Nottingham.

  The prisoner grimaced.

  “He begs you to tell what you have hidden from his sight, so that you may obtain mercy.”

  The prisoner whipped his head back and forth, with a flash of teeth.

  “He waits in sorrow for the words of one of his children.”

  Baldwin ran his fingers through his hair and crossed his arms. The steady lapping of the goat was like dripping water, ceaseless and strangely comforting, like rain.

  A cry. Scalding. Geoffrey stepped back and covered his ears. Such noises could damage the ears, he believed. It was best to preserve the senses. Deafness was a blight.

  Baldwin said something, and Geoffrey uncovered his ears. Baldwin spoke again, but still Geoffrey could not hear. “Very impressive!” shouted Baldwin.

  As always, weeping. Howls. Words that made no sense. The lapping of the goat inaudible now, the gray tongue working deep into the sole.

  Baldwin nodded. Geoffrey knew that the king would hear good reports from this city and was thankful. Mary had been merciful, and he had been spared total humiliation.

  The straps squeaked at the prisoner’s wri
sts. Nottingham knelt beside him, whispering. Then screams again, enough to make Geoffrey blink and gesture the suggestion that they go upstairs. Baldwin shrugged and followed Geoffrey, looking back again at the white body, which glistened now with sweat.

  The mind was nothing. Thoughts were illusions, knowledge so much smoke over a courtyard. The body was all that mattered. The court of the Kingdom of God was a part of Christ’s body, the head, the arms, and legs, and nails, joined to Him. And so a man’s soul was joined to his body, and to reach the soul, the body had to be shoveled aside, like so much earth, by fasting, by self-imposed discomfort, or, in this case, by the lawful ministrations of the king’s servants.

  A smile, a courteous expression of thanks, and Baldwin and his red-caped retinue clip-clopped across the drawbridge. Geoffrey stood, hand on hilt, as if his hand had found comfort in the knowledge that he could butcher a man on the spot, and then, as soon as Baldwin was out of sight, Geoffrey hurried to the prison.

  “Stop it!” shouted Geoffrey.

  Nottingham’s lean face gaped upwards.

  “That’s enough!”

  The goat’s tongue lapped air, and then the beast was dragged kicking into the darkness.

  “There is no treasure,” said Geoffrey.

  “Can we be sure?” whispered Nottingham.

  Executioners enjoyed a special status. They were shunned, ignored, loathed even, and yet they, too, were agents of the king. They could even question the sheriff, and the sheriff had to suffer their impertinence. There was treasure somewhere. Geoffrey was certain of it.

  “Yes. We can be certain that there is no treasure. This wretch would have told us by now.”

  Nottingham’s face turned into the torchlight, stiff with an expression so much like contempt that Geoffrey looked away. “I’ll have this man returned to his cell,” said Nottingham.

  “Do so.”

  “I will interrupt the interrogation and have him taken to his cell.”

  “Yes.”

  “He will be hanged tomorrow, and we will never know where the treasure is.”

  “That is correct,” said Geoffrey.

  “Very well, sire,” whispered Nottingham, as he stepped into the darkness like a figure dissolving.