The Enchanter's Forest

by Alys Clare

  As evening approached, she saw ahead the line of hills which, growing up into a dome, formed a sort of crown right in the heart of the Brocéliande. Even though they were not approaching from exactly the same direction, she recognised its shape and knew for sure that she had not led them astray. Tomorrow, she thought, tomorrow I shall try to find a track that leads to the south-west, for over there lies Folle-Pensée.

  But that was for tomorrow. There was yet tonight.

  She and Josse lay together in the darkness a short distance away from Meggie, fast asleep in her blanket, for they had just made love again.

  She sensed that there was something on Josse’s mind. Reaching up her hand to stroke his hair away from his hot forehead, she said gently, ‘What is it, my love?’

  She saw his brown eyes turn to look into hers. The golden lights in his irises caught the faint glow from the fire. He said without preamble, ‘I have come looking for you in the forest, three times since you told me about Meggie. You said then that I might come to see you, yet each time I came, I could not find you.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Twice I couldn’t even find that hut of yours when I came looking.’

  She had known he would speak of it sooner or later. Such was their intimacy that she was glad it was sooner, so that – with any luck – they could discuss it and get it out of the way. She thought for a moment and then said, ‘I did warn you that I might not always be there to be found.’

  ‘Aye, but three times!’

  Oh, she thought, but I have hurt him. ‘I am sorry,’ she said gently. ‘It was never my wish to cause you pain. On two occasions I genuinely was not there.’ And these, she reflected, would be the times he had not been able to locate her hut, such was the power of the concealing force that she was now able to cast around the spot when she was absent.

  ‘What of the third time? Were you hiding inside, keeping Meggie quiet in case she heard me and called out?’

  There was bitterness in his voice and she ached for him. ‘No, Josse. It was not like that. I knew you had come, I will not deny it, for I was close by and could have emerged from my seclusion so that we might have spent some time together.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. She was thinking furiously, determined to find the right words to make him understand. ‘I was very deeply involved in what I was doing. Some things that I have been taught to do require a great deal of concentration – it’s almost as if I leave my own body and travel in my mind to some other place or some other reality.’

  ‘And that’s what you were doing when I came to find you?’ Despite himself, he sounded curious.

  ‘Yes. I was on what we call a soul journey, although perhaps spirit journey describes it better.’

  ‘Were you far away?’

  ‘In a way, yes I was. I had gone back to the land beyond the seas from which we believe that our ancestors originally came, and that was drowned beneath the waves.’

  She had his attention now; she sensed it. But she had not predicted what he would say next. With almost a reproof in the words, he said, ‘And what of Meggie when you are off on your spirit journeys? Who watches out for her and makes sure she does not wander off or fall in the stream or into the hearth?’

  Oh, Josse, she wanted to say, Meggie is a child of the wildwood and has far too much sense to do any of those things. But then he was the child’s father and he had a perfect right to make sure she was safe. Again weighing her words, she said calmly, ‘When it is a matter of merely a short period of intense concentration, I put Meggie in the hut and fasten the door if I am at all concerned for her. When I know that my attention will be elsewhere for a longer time, I ask one of the others to look after her for me.’ That was true, as far as it went, and indeed Joanna had asked Lora more than once to do just that service. What she kept to herself was that, when the Great Festivals came round, increasingly Meggie went with her and joined in the worship and the celebrations.

  Meggie, as so many of Joanna’s people had kept pointing out, was a very special child . . .

  Josse was silent. After a moment she said, ‘What are you thinking about?’

  He laughed, but she sensed behind the brief sound an underlying unease. ‘I think I just acted like a real father and I’m wondering whether I ought to apologise for even suggesting that you don’t know how to look after our daughter.’

  ‘Josse, you are a real father.’ She hugged him tightly, feeling his strong heartbeat pump against her bare chest. ‘And there’s no need to apologise for something you have every right to ask.’

  They lay close, breathing to the same rhythm, and she sensed that he was relaxing more with every breath. But then, tensing slightly again, he said, ‘Do they – your people – know Meggie’s mine?’

  ‘Of course! I’m very proud of the fact, and so will she be when she’s old enough to consider such things.’

  ‘They don’t object?’

  Now it was her turn to laugh. ‘No, why should they?’

  ‘Oh – I just wondered if they preferred children to be – er, to be fathered by men of the tribe.’

  I had forgotten, thought Joanna, how the world thinks. She realised how thoroughly she was becoming one of them, her people, that a reminder of the ways of the outside world should so pull her up short. ‘It is up to a woman to choose who fathers her child,’ she said. ‘We have a special ceremony wherein the male spirit of the people is put into a chosen woman’ – he went to say something, but stopped himself – ‘but, other than that, it’s our own decision. Sometimes children are conceived in the celebrations that follow one of our festivals, and those children are regarded as the Goddess’s particular gift.’

  ‘But – what about property? Land? How do you decide who owns what? I mean, normally a wife bears children for her husband and they inherit, if they’re sons, that is. But . . .’ He drifted to a confused stop.

  Oh, but the gap between how he saw the world and how she now did was just so vast! ‘We don’t really have property like that,’ she said kindly. ‘Our life is very different. And as for a woman’s children inheriting their father’s name and wealth, our system is not like that at all.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘No. Josse, we trace our descent solely through the female line.’

  He thought about that. Then he broke his rather shocked silence with one word: ‘Why?’

  She wanted to laugh, it was so obvious. But she didn’t; in the same kind tone she said, ‘Because only a woman knows with absolute certainty who fathered the child she bears.’ Even she, she wanted to add, will not know for sure if she has made love with more than one man at the time of conception. But she didn’t speak the thought aloud. Poor Josse was looking quite sufficiently aghast already. ‘Therefore,’ she concluded, ‘it is far more reliable to record our families through the women than through the men.’

  His silence was far longer this time. Then he said wonderingly, ‘God’s boots, but you’re quite right. I never thought of it quite that way.’ Raising himself up on one elbow, he looked down at her, grinned and said, ‘Aren’t your people wise?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed. She was both touched and pleased that he had made the remark; he was going to meet some of her people tomorrow at Folle-Pensée – and probably powerful ones, at that – and for him to be able to put aside his perfectly natural prejudices and admit to being impressed by their wisdom even before encountering them was surely a good omen.

  Tomorrow.

  One way or the other, she thought sleepily, it promised to be quite a day. Turning away from him, nestling her bare bottom into the angle of his belly and his thighs, she drew the blankets around them both and, smiling as she felt his arm creep around her to pull her close, shut her eyes.

  The next day was as warm and sunny as its predecessors. Joanna and Josse broke camp early – he had copied her ways the first morning and now could leave a patch of forest innocent of the marks of their presence almost as well as she could – and by mi
d-morning were well on the way. Meggie was riding with her father; intrepid child that she was, she expressed a preference for the big horse and appeared to take a real delight in sitting up there in front of Josse, securely held but with the height above the ground giving the illusion of danger.

  Josse loved to have her there with him. The two of them chattered away incessantly and had developed a series of favourite games of which Meggie never tired.

  ‘Josse?’ Meggie said.

  ‘Yes, Meggie?’ He pitched his voice low, as if the matter was of seriously grave import.

  She allowed a small tension-creating pause. Then, ecstatic as yet again her trick succeeded, she shouted, ‘Nothing!’

  He tried to do it too but somehow she knew what was coming; ‘Meggie?’ he ventured.

  And his daughter, shrieking with delight, answered, ‘Nothing, Josse!’

  So their unhurried progress through the sunlit glades and the heather-covered open spaces was accompanied by the sound of laughter. There was birdsong on the air; to Josse, the sound of his child’s merriment sounded like the fluting of some particularly melodious warbler.

  They stopped for lunch – the day was now very hot and they had ridden for a while out in the full sunshine – and when they had eaten, sitting relaxed in the shade of a stand of beech trees, Joanna made Meggie lie down on the cool, mossy grass where, despite her protests that she wasn’t a bit tired, she promptly fell asleep.

  ‘Are we almost at this place, whatever it’s called?’ Josse asked in a low voice.

  ‘Yes. I’m fairly sure it’s over the next small rise, then about another couple of miles,’ Joanna replied. ‘And it’s called Folle-Pensée.’

  ‘Foolish thought? Mad thought?’ Josse suggested.

  ‘Yes, I suppose just that.’ She paused, then said, ‘We have among our people healers of both body and mind, and they say that the waters issuing from the spring at Folle-Pensée can help when patients are troubled by strange thoughts. Me, I think it’s the skill and the patience of our healers that makes them well.’

  ‘Aye.’ Josse was sure she was right. He was thinking of something similar that he had once observed and presently he said, ‘I once met a young mother who believed she was unfit to care for her child. There was no reason for this belief, for she was intelligent and competent and in fact her little boy was thriving. Sister Euphemia – she’s the Hawkenlye infirmarer’ – Joanna nodded – ‘said she’d seen such conditions before in new mothers and that it was often just a matter of listening to their fears and not dismissing them out of hand, then treating them with kindness and patience until they began to feel better.’

  Joanna was looking at him with interest. ‘I have met the infirmarer,’ she said, ‘and what you say merely enhances the impression of her that I have already formed.’ She dropped her eyes, frowned and then, looking straight at him again, said, ‘Josse, doesn’t it strike you that fundamentally we are all striving for the same thing?’

  He had an idea what she was trying to say. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, your nuns and monks are good people who look after the sick and the troubled and who don’t spare themselves in trying to help others. Hawkenlye Abbey is not so very different in essence from Folle-Pensée, nor from other special centres that I’ve seen and been told about where my own people strive to drive out the demons of mental and bodily sickness so that their patients can resume happy and healthy lives. Yet were I to say as much to someone such as the terrible old priest whose stinking and unwholesome presence bedevilled my days when I was wed to Thorald, he would have accused me of possession at best and heresy at worst.’

  Josse waited a moment before speaking. Then he said, ‘Joanna my sweet, as I’m sure I must have said to you before, it’s unwise to judge the whole church by one foul-minded and frustrated man. You’ve met men and women from Hawkenlye; I don’t suggest that you take them as the norm, for in their way I believe that they are as unusual as your stinky old priest, but I would venture to say that maybe you could try to see them as the good face of the church, and that as such they can perhaps do a little to redress the balance for you who have experienced the most evil one.’

  She opened her mouth to say something but apparently changed her mind. Giving him a very sweet smile, she said, ‘I’ll try, Josse.’

  They sat for some time longer in the deep shade. Josse closed his eyes and dozed. Then he sensed Joanna getting to her feet; as he opened his eyes and looked up at her, she met his gaze and said, ‘Time to go. Will you wake Meggie, please?’

  They packed up, mounted and rode out into the sunshine. As before, Joanna was in the lead; watching her, Josse thought the set of her shoulders suggested a certain tension. It’s important to her, he reflected, this meeting between her man from the world of the outsiders and her new people. Well, I shall strive not to let her down.

  Meggie, slumped against him, had her thumb in her mouth and was still sleepy. Just when I would have welcomed her chatter as a distraction to my increasing sense of apprehension, Josse thought with a grin, she decides to lose herself in her dreams. Hugging her close, he squared his shoulders and tried to still the increasingly wild pictures that his mind was throwing up.

  Reality was quite different from imagination. The tiny settlement of Folle-Pensée lay hidden away at the end of a track that twisted and turned through the trees, among which outcrops of the local stone – reddish-pink granite – stood out starkly. The path opened out into a wide clearing, in which were set several simple dwellings made of wooden stakes and brushwood as well as a collection of squat, ground-hugging little cottages made of the local granite. On the far side of the settlement there was a path whose edges were marked with stones; this led off into a particularly dense area of forest, where tall trees – pine, birch – overshadowed holly, broom and gorse. Watching Joanna closely, Josse saw her turn to the entrance to the secret path and give a low bow of reverence.

  Then she slid off Honey’s back; he wondered whether to do the same – wasn’t it good manners to wait to be asked? – but then she looked at him and gave a quick nod, so he dismounted as well, reaching up and taking Meggie in his arms. Joanna was walking slowly up to the largest of the stone cottages and just as she put out her hand to tap on the partly opened door, it was flung wide and a man appeared in the entrance.

  Josse’s first impression was of vigour and glowing health; it was only at the second glance that he noticed the man had to be all of sixty, for the leathery skin of his beaming face was deeply lined and his long, smooth hair and neatly groomed beard were perfectly white. He was dressed in a flowing robe the colour of a clear evening sky.

  He threw open his arms and had enveloped Joanna in a warm embrace; ‘Beith,’ Josse heard him mutter, ‘Beith, how good to see you returned to us!’ Then he added something in a low voice that Josse did not catch.

  With the old man’s arm still around her shoulders, Joanna turned to indicate Josse. ‘Huathe, this is Josse. And Meggie of course you already know.’

  The white-haired man put out a hand and gently touched Meggie’s round cheek; she gave him a coy smile. ‘Yes, indeed. You, little one, are growing well.’ Then, turning intent blue eyes on to Josse, he said, ‘Josse. I am very glad to meet you.’

  There was quite a long pause, during which Josse felt as if various bits of him were being inspected individually. It was a weird sensation, as if careful probes were being sent through his head and chest. He made himself stand quite still and tried hard not to resist the gentle inspection. His response must have been the right one for, after a few more moments, the white-haired man nodded, stepped forward and embraced both Josse and Meggie, still held firmly in her father’s arms. Then, standing a little away, the man said, ‘I will let it be known that you are to be given every courtesy while you are here with us. Welcome to Folle-Pensée.’

  Feeling that he ought to make a reply, Josse said, ‘Thank you – er – Huathe.’ Was it all right to call him by that name? Then he held out his
hand which, after a pause and a quick smile, Huathe took in both of his own. The old man’s skin was firm and cool – Josse was put in mind of Sister Euphemia’s touch when she tested a hot forehead for fever – and somehow the sensation was instantly reassuring.

  ‘I will show you to your accommodation,’ Huathe said. He led them to one of the shelters that stood on the far side of the clearing, a short distance away from its nearest neighbour. Opening the door, he ushered them inside.

  ‘We eat our evening meal when the sun goes down,’ he said. ‘Until then, make yourselves comfortable; feel free to walk in the forest if you wish, although I would suggest that you do not stray too far.’

  With no explanation as to why they should not, Huathe gave them both a nod, then, pulling the door to behind him, left them alone.

  Josse put Meggie down on the clean-swept, beaten-earth floor, then turned slowly round as he looked about him. The hut was simply furnished: a wooden-framed bed topped with a straw mattress and some blankets; a long, low table; a bench; a stone circle in which firewood and kindling had been laid ready; a shelf on which were some pottery mugs, a jug and a pair of horn-handled knives.

  And that was all.

  Josse noticed that Joanna appeared to be waiting for him to comment. With a smile he said, ‘It’s delightful. It reminds me of your little hut in the forest. It smells the same – your people are so clean, I imagine that all their dwellings are full of the scent of herbs and growing things.’