by Susan King
Mothers called to their children in panicked voices. Aelric calmly shooed the children toward the trees and turned to face the riders.
The leader shoved back his mail hood. Emlyn recognized Hugh de Chavant, his dark eyes wobbling above his scruffy dark beard. She drew back under a shady tree, thankful for her wimple and the generous folds of Maisry’s brown kirtle.
Chavant walked his horse up to Aelric, alone in the center of the green, and leaned forward to scrutinize him. Aelric stared back with steady dignity in spite of his ridiculous costume.
“Why were we not invited to the May celebration? Surely you knew we were about in the dale,” Chavant said smoothly. He drew his sword and tilted the blade slowly toward Aelric until the sharp point rested against the leaves over his breastbone.
“We have spent months and more, searching for the Green Knight who haunts the borders of Lord Whitehawke’s land,” Chavant said. He pushed the sword point slowly up Aelric’s chest until the tip disappeared into his collar of flowers.
“Be he demon or merely a man, we are sworn to catch him,” Chavant continued casually, as the pressure of the sword tore through the flowery torque. Blood trickled from beneath the leaves and petals. Maisry gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. Beside her, Emlyn put an arm around her shoulder.
Chavant raised his voice slightly, not taking his gaze from Aelric’s flat, even stare. “We have lately searched for the Lady Emlyn de Ashbourne as well. But no one within miles knows aught of her.” He squinted his eyes at Aelric. “I spoke with you on this matter not a week hence.”
Spurring his horse forward a few steps, he forced Aelric to move back, keeping the sword leveled at Aelric’s neck, pressing until Aelric stumbled into the trunk of the deserted may tree. Red and yellow and purple ribbons spilled over his shoulders and caught on the leafy wickerwork of his costume.
“Tell me your name again,” drawled Chavant.
“Aelric of Shepherdsgate, my lord.”
“You are a farmer?”
“Aye, and a freeman. My house and land are leased from the abbey. I tend both my sheep, and some that belong to the abbey.”
“What division of the sheep are yours?”
“This season, about one-third of the flock, my lord.”
“So you have your own income?”
“A portion of what the wool brings is mine, aye.”
“Do you pay rent to Wistonbury, or to Bolton?”
“Wistonbury, my lord.” Aelric leaned against the slender beribboned tree, looking remarkably unruffled by his situation.
“My lord.” One of the village men approached, a stooped old man with a grizzled white beard, who touched his forelock respectfully and bowed two or three times. Chavant rolled his eye in exasperation.
“Who are you?” he snapped.
“John Tanner, my lord,” the man said. “Aelric here, he wears the leaves and such for the holy day, and for the little ’uns. I swear, as will we all, he is not the one you seek.”
“Oh?”
“The Green Man, my lord, the Hunter Thorne, some call the creature, well, that one’s a devil from hell’s own fire. He cannot be found, my lord. He is not of this earth. The legend says he’ll take yer head with his axe as soon as—”
“I know the legend!” Chavant shouted, and lifted the sword point from Aelric’s neck to swing the blade flatside at John Tanner, knocking him to the ground. The old man rose stiffly and backed away. “I know the legend,” Chavant grumbled.
He traced the sword point up Aelric’s cheek and lifted the conical hat, dangling it on the end of his blade. He watched it spin lazily.
“Aelric the shepherd, are you the Green Man?”
“My lord, I wear this for the children on the May day.”
“Liar.” Chavant cast the hat into the air and pressed the sword point under Aelric’s chin.
“Robert.” Chavant spoke over his shoulder.
“Aye, my lord,” answered one of the riders behind him. The three who had accompanied their leader had ridden over behind Chavant, watching the scene as quietly as did the villagers.
“Robert, we have found our Green Man. I saw him myself in the forest near this valley, on the day Lady Emlyn disappeared. Bind him hand and foot. I would hear what he has done with the lady.” Robert dismounted, and the other guards strolled their horses around the hushed village green, swords drawn, eyes wary.
Aelric stood motionless as the guard bent and tied his hands around behind him, securing his wrists, then his ankles, to the slender maypole trunk.
Chavant leaned over to rest the tip of heavy blade at the base of Aelric’s throat. Another trickle of blood ran onto the leaves. “Where is the lady we seek? Tell me, or I shall burn your carcass at this tree!”
Beside Emlyn, Maisry pressed Elvi’s face into her skirts and held tightly to Dirk’s hand, her bosom heaving, her face flushed.
“There must be no more of this cruelty on my account,” Emlyn hissed to Maisry. “I will show myself.” She stepped forward.
“Nay!” Maisry whispered emphatically, pulling her back. “He will come to no harm. Wait. We will be delivered from this.” Maisry squeezed Emlyn’s arm to hold her.
Looking at her in bewilderment, Emlyn stayed still.
“Where is the girl?” Chavant was shrieking by now. Aelric was silent, his gaze like stone.
“ ’Tis possible, shepherd,” Chavant mused, “that my lord Whitehawke will spare your hide if the lady is safe, and has been shown proper respect.”
Aelric tilted his head slightly to one side and leaned back against the tree, sliding his gaze off into the distance calmly.
Unable to watch more, Emlyn resolved to reveal herself. Watching Aelric’s steadfast resistance, she realized that she could not allow the precious trust and friendship that she had found with Maisry and Aelric to be betrayed by her own cowardice. She stepped forward, her gaze riveted to Aelric.
But a subtle flicker in his flat expression halted her step, and she noticed that his posture straightened slightly. Intrigued, wondering what he had noticed, she waited.
“Tell me where the girl is, or by the rood, I will cleave your head like an apple!” Chavant raised his sword high.
Something zipped past Chavant’s ear, droning like a bee, and grazed past his lifted hand. He dropped his sword with a sudden clatter. Splitting the tender bark of the young tree well above Aelric’s head, a wooden arrowshaft quivered in the tree trunk, feathered delicately in green and black.
Chavant turned his head, and the others followed his gaze. Emlyn did, too, and sucked in her breath sharply.
At the crest of the long slope, a rider sat a horse draped in a fluttering green caparison. The horseman wore chain mail that gleamed like links of brilliant emeralds in the sunlight, and his leaf-woven surcoat, with its trailing mossy web, put Aelric’s simple costume to petty shame. The rider’s hair, beard, and skin glowed greenish beneath the emerald dazzle of his mail hood.
A longbow, clearly silhouetted against the light blue sky, appeared to be held by thick, heavily leafed branches rather than arms. The Green Knight pulled the string taut and aimed again, holding the arrow steady.
With a roar, Chavant wheeled his horse and waved for his men to follow. They raced across the village green, heedless of the villagers who dove out of the way. Within seconds the horses’ hooves gained fast purchase in the soft green turf and rapidly climbed the steep slope.
The green rider lowered his bow. Then he urged his horse forward and shot along the ridge of the hill, away from the forest and the tall black crags, toward the upper part of the river that flowed down into the valley.
Slate floored the shallows like broad slick stair steps at a fast and dangerous curve in the course of the river. The green rider reached the bank and splashed rapidly through the swirling water, but Chavant and his men halted uncertainly. Once they saw how easily the creature’s horse crossed, they entered the cold rushing waters slowly. The Green Knight was far a
head, a bright speck on the moors, when they came out on the opposite bank.
The Green Man rode full and fast across the moorland, past sparse boulders and straggling clumps of trees, up and over the gentle roll of countless hills. The guards followed, and the chase soon reached a brutal crescendo of speed, horses lathered and sweating profusely, their powerful sides working like bellows, their strong legs chewing up the heathery moor. Chavant and his men could not gain on the rider, who seemed to fly across the ground, a verdant blur smoothly clearing stones and bracken.
Just visible at the crest of a far hill, a group of standing stones leaned like the heavy bones of giants, pale in the sun. Heading straight for these, varying neither speed nor direction, the green rider disappeared over the swell of a hill. When Chavant and his men saw him next, he had reached the center of the henge, a stout, weathered skeleton of vertical posts and gigantic lintels.
The guards rode down an incline, losing sight of him until they came up again and headed for the stone cluster. Slowing, they finally hauled up on their reins altogether and stopped to look at one another in confusion.
The rider had vanished. He had ridden into the stone circle, but had not come out that they had seen. The surrounding moor, rolling but open in every direction, was deserted.
Chavant cursed loudly and walked his horse to a huge scarred stone slab, tilted at an angle against another stone. “Look here,” he growled, gesturing toward the ground. Hoofprints were clearly marked in the center of the henge, where the inner circle was pocked with broken stones and low, scrubby undergrowth. No prints led outside again.
“He’s melted away into the stones,” muttered Robert.
Chavant cursed again, a guttural sound, and spat down onto the ground. He urged his horse forward to step slowly through the ancient rubble. Many of the huge slabs rested askew, some precariously tilted. The original design was obscured by collapse, the stones overgrown with ivy and furred with moss.
One huge menhir angled into the side of a grassy hill, deeply embedded at the top and sides; it must have fallen generations ago. Chavant stared at it for a moment, then shook his head and returned to the others.
“Damn him! ’Tis as if he’s gone into the ground, or more likely, around the henge somehow,” he said to Robert.
“Mayhap what they say is true, sire,” Robert replied.
“What do you mean?”
“Mayhap the Green Man who haunts this moor is truly a demon, not a man.”
Chavant snorted and looked around the circle of stones. “Whitehawke is a foolish man who has trained his garrison to his cowardice,” he sneered. “He leaps in terror at the mention of a demon, like a woman who sees a mouse. But I believe the Green Man is a man, just that and no more. Though a clever bastard.” Pulling at the reins to turn his horse’s head, he stopped suddenly. “The old man in the village had another name for this green knave—Etienne, what was it?”
“He called him the Hunter Thorne, my lord,” Etienne said. “ ’Tis an ancient name for the Green Man.”
“The Hunter Thorne.” He smiled. “Aye, to be sure, this fiend is risen from the ranks of the dead. He has been hunted and lost before, but not again. Mark me, Whitehawke shall be interested in this news. ’Twill be a most agreeable counter to the disappearance of his betrothed. Come on.” Spurring his horse, he galloped away from the henge, followed by the others. Soon they were far across the moor, heading back to the village.
Behind the enormous monolith that canted into the hillside, Thorne stood jammed against the horse’s shoulder in the black musty hollow between the stone and the earthen slope. He had remained still, hardly breathing in the cramped space as he listened and watched through a crack, softly stroking the horse’s muzzle. Long after the guards’ hoofbeats had faded and the ground had ceased to vibrate, he stood motionless.
Finally, reaching down until his fingers found an indentation in the stone, he pushed against it. The huge stone swung silently upward to balance again, as it had for centuries, on two vertical pivot stones. Ducking his head down to clear the heavy canopy, pulling the reins slightly to lower the horse’s head, Thorne stepped out. Touching a corner of the stone, he moved away as it canted down to thud once more into the grassy mound.
A merlin glided in a graceful arc over the standing stones and landed on a high post with a soft flutter of wings, turning its unblinking stare toward Thorne. Pulling off the long gauntlets that were scaled with bits of bark and twigs glued to the leather, Thorne tucked them in front of the high saddle.
He adjusted the bulky surcoat he wore, every inch of the cloth tightly sewn with fresh and dried leaves and flowers, Maisry’s careful work. He pushed back his mesh hood, the old armor tinted brilliant green, and ran his fingers through his dark, sweat-matted hair smearing a little of the green ointment that liberally coated his face. Tossing his cloak, an open web of torn green wool woven with greenery, back over his shoulders, he thrust his booted foot into the slender iron stirrup.
As the horse and rider moved at a leisurely pace over the rise and fall of the moors, the merlin soared, winging over the trees to disappear within seconds. A few minutes later, the rider crossed the river, and turned his horse toward the forest.
Though the image of the Green Knight had burned in her mind all day, Emlyn had found no chance to ask Maisry about him. The May Day celebration had ended in a grim, quick meal, and everyone had gone somberly to their homes. Emlyn had accompanied Maisry and the children the mile or so back to their cottage.
The simple rectangular house, built of fieldstone with a fat thatched roof and thick wattle and daub walls, was clean and well kept, the whitewashed walls of the main room glowing with smoky firelight from a large angled hearth. The boys slept now in the loft above the sleeping chamber, separated from the main chamber by a curtain.
Emlyn and Maisry sat in silent exhaustion on a bench by the hearth and awaited news of Aelric. Returning from his futile pursuit of the archer, Chavant had taken Aelric and some of the village men for questioning. That had been hours ago. Emlyn ran her fingers wearily through her hair, free of its constraining wimple. The dirt floor beneath their feet was carpeted with rushes, and she pushed at a few dried grasses with her toe.
“Maisry,” she said softly, “ ’twas Thorne on the hill today, was it not?”
Maisry leaned her head back against the whitewashed wall. Dark circles purpled and dulled her eyes. Sighing, she rubbed a hand across her brow. “Aye, my lady, ’twas he.”
“What goes on in this dale, Maisry?”
Maisry sighed again. “Three years ago, Lord Whitehawke began to demand fines from the people who live in this dale, though we owe him naught. We are tenants of the monasteries. The monks have sued against the earl, but the courts have been mickle slow in proving or disproving the claim.”
“Have you paid fines to the earl?” Emlyn asked.
“Nay, and those of us who resisted have been harassed by his guards. Over the years, barns have been burned and homes lost. We have been luckier than some. One year we lost a byre and a few chickens. Some have decided to go elsewhere, leaving their farms and sheep untended. That makes extra work for the rest.”
“Has the sheriff done naught, or the king? How can the earl do this without check?”
Maisry shrugged wearily. “The king nurses some resentment toward the monks. Several years ago, King John and his sheriffs tried to drive the Cistercians from York, but the Pope ordered the persecution to stop. The king is not one to forgive, and so he and his sheriffs have turned a blind eye in this struggle between Whitehawke and the monks.” Maisry left the bench to feed a few sticks to the fire. “For well over a year now, the matter has eased. ’Tis because of the protection of the Green Man.”
“Protection? But he frightens everyone.”
“Aye, just so. Thorne and Aelric, and lately a few others, have shared the task of playing the Green Knight. That way, they can appear in many places, and be seen often by Whitehawke’s men. The
earl believes tales told to children, I vow. The Green Man disguise has fooled Whitehawke and his men into believing that the land—the valley, the forests, the moors around here—are haunted.”
“Truly, I cannot believe that this has kept them away.”
“Men who have done evil will fear evil, my lady. Whitehawke has frightened many of his garrison, I hear, into accepting the haunt as real.” Maisry used an iron poker to jab at the glowing embers. “Whitehawke must have a heart filled with guilt. He fears for the state of his soul, I think.” She turned to look at Emlyn. “ ’Tis said that he killed his own wife, many years ago. Did ye know that when ye ran from him?”
“I have heard such a rumor,” Emlyn murmured.
“Aye, well, no one knows but the man himself. He has been the cause of much sadness because of his tyranny, in his own lands and now in ours. And many deaths, I have heard, in the French wars, and then his lady wife. Mayhap those deeds torment him, and he fears the consequences. He must believe this demon means to take him to hell.”
“He eats no flesh food, only fish, as a penance.”
Maisry glanced at her curiously. “Truth to tell, my lady? ’Tis no surprise to me that he tries to make amends.”
“Why does he not relinquish this land to the Church in payment for his soul, I wonder, and ease his soul that way?”
“Because he is greedy, even if guilt eats like a worm in his heart. ’Tis too great and rich a parcel, and too sore a temptation to have it in his grasp.”
“Dear Lord. I must escape this family of de Hawkwoods,” Emlyn said, shaking her head. “But I will not truly be free of them as long as the children are hostages at Hawksmoor.”
Maisry placed a hand over Emlyn’s fingers and squeezed gently. “God will guide ye in righteous action, my lady. I believe that He will take care of ye.”
