‘What was all that about?’ Meulan said to FitzHamon as they waited, mounted, to leave for the hunt. ‘When Flambard sent his clerk round the table to whisper, and the king said you and he were ahead?’
‘Oh, that. It was to do with what Helias of Maine probably means by coming to an arrangement. What Flambard said was: He’ll want you to buy his allegiance.
Agree to nothing till we have discussed it. But the king had guessed what Helias was up to, already, and he won’t buy Maine if he can get it by force of arms, believe me.’
Meulan laughed. ‘I should hope not!’
De Warenne nudged his horse over to them. ‘Politically speaking, we’ve a lively future ahead of us, wouldn’t you say? It’s an odd coincidence, but I’ve a young huntsman in my employ, half-Norman and half-English, who trained in this Helias’ household at La Fleche in Maine. I must have a word with him and ask him what Helias is like. As well to know one’s foe.’
‘Is he with your men here?’ asked FitzHamon.
‘Yes. He’s good at his trade,’ said de Warenne. ‘I thought it would be useful experience for him to work with the king’s huntsmen so I put him in my entourage on this tour of duty. The king’s Chief Huntsman’s given permission for him to tag along. There he is, on the blue roan horse.’
‘Quite a good horse for a junior huntsman,’ Meulan said, not altogether approvingly.
‘He’s quite a good horseman,’ said Ralph des Aix’s current employer, with a grin.
They rode out of Winchester, a massed party of horsemen with the hounds and their handlers in the vanguard. The leashed pairs of lymers, who would put up the game, strained forward, all but dragging their handlers off their feet. Behind them, tongues lolling and sterns waving, came the pack of harriers who would follow the roused game by scent and run it to a standstill.
As the Old One in the forests of La Fleche had well understood, there was more than one way to hunt deer. One was static, the hunters taking up positions on foot to shoot deer which were driven towards them. The other was fast-moving with the hounds pursuing the quarry and the hunters following on horseback, to shoot whenever the chance presented itself, or else to bring the deer to bay, when the lord whose hounds they were, or one of his guests, would have the privilege of loosing the arrow for the kill.
The fast-moving hunt was not feasible in close forest but there was enough open land round Winchester for the purpose and it was more exciting and warmer than standing about in the wind. On a February day, it was the natural choice.
The harbourer, who was short, taciturn and English, stumped ahead on foot. He knew on any given day where to find the deer and what they were: red deer or roe, hind, fawn, pricket stag with antlers not yet branched, runnable stag with twelve points to his crown. He was allowed to carry a bow for culling sick or injured animals.
He knew more about the forest than any of his masters, even his immediate superior, the Keeper of the Walk. He was one of the Children of the Wood, for he had been conceived in a fire lit clearing on May Eve and he considered his parentage honourable.
He had a stag for them, he had said to the Keeper and the Chief Huntsman, in the terse Anglo-Norman pidgin which was their common language. It carried ten points, a good head. He showed them where to position the riders, downwind of the wood where the beast was lying. The lymers went in, long grey or fawn bodies sliding purposefully out of sight through a leafless hazel brake. The hunt waited.
A cold, brisk wind blew the horses’ manes about. A jay went noisily up. For a long time, nothing else happened.
When the stag appeared it was undramatic. One moment there was just the brake, and then the stag was there, head up, frozen into stillness at the sight of the mounted men in front of him. Then he was swerving away and the harriers were yelping in pursuit. It was the season when the hinds were growing heavy with their young and horns were not therefore sounded; the young must come safely into the world to be hunted when they were grown. But there was a series of audible clicks as a number of elegant young men who had been showing off with expensively shod toes barely in their stirrup irons thrust their feet home ready for hard riding, and Rufus, eyes sparkling, stood in his own stirrups, cupping his hands round his mouth and let out a shout.
‘He’s anyone’s who can shoot him! Permission for the lot of you, huntsmen included! If you can get him before I do! Catch me if you can!’
He sat down and used his spurs. His horse sprang from a stand into a gallop. In a drumming phalanx, the field set off after him, but as they swept round the eastern verge of the wood in the wake of the pack, Rufus was ten horse-lengths ahead and gaining, leading the way flat out among scattered silver birch.
He was happy. He was glad to be out under the sky instead of incarcerated in a council chamber where the fire billowed smoke at you whenever the wind blew, but never seemed to keep the place warm. He was glad to be on horseback. On a horse, he was always at home. His strong thighs and powerful forearms could control any mount. The hound music ahead faded and he drew rein, slowing to a trot. He found the harriers questing back and forth in a dip where trees drew close, with boggy ground between them.
The Chief Knight Huntsman, coming up, said: ‘He’s using the stream down there. But we’ll pick him up,’ and cantered on, whip cracking, collecting the hounds to try them where he guessed the quarry might have left the water. A moment later, a hound voice spoke and another joined it and in a few more seconds they were in full cry again. The field had caught up as well. Rufus waved an arm to show them their direction and spurred ahead once more.
Ten hard-riding minutes later, still ahead and now bent double to avoid low branches, he tore through a beechwood and emerged on to a grassy downhill slope. The hound music, somewhere below him, had changed note, which meant a change of direction. The stag was probably trying to swing in a circle and get back to its herd. He pulled up again, shielding his eyes with his hand, gazing out over a wide, shallow vale. Two or three miles away, on the far side, the ground rose again, clothed with leafless woodland, dimly brown with distance. Clouds were rolling swiftly across the sky; light and shade flowed over the landscape with them. An intermittent sun lit up the vale.
And there was the stag, a brown speck fleeing along the vale at right angles to him. Behind him, he could hear approaching riders. He drove his black horse forwards. It took the slope with a scramble and a slither, forelegs braced, hindquarters all but tobogganing. He gathered it at the foot, urging it on a path which closed with the stag’s. Once in a while you got a chance for a shot like this, right in the open, no trees in the way. But he must first get into position; one must shoot from a standstill. Few men could manage bow, shaft and the reins of a galloping horse simultaneously.
The sun went in and a rainstorm swept down. Vale and stag vanished in a grey haze and the coldness drove through his clothes to his skin. Then the squall thinned and the stag, still running, was there again, coming into range. He reined back, unslung his bow, fitted the shaft in a single smooth movement, loosed and missed. He swore. The stag, which had seen him, was receding with redoubled leaps.
And then, out of the rain, which hid the top of the rise down which he had ridden so furiously, there appeared a marvel.
It lasted perhaps thirty seconds but it was a vision to endure in memory as long as life itself endured. The grey rain-curtain obliterating the wood at the top of the slope. The blue roan horse descending out of it, taking off from the foot of the slope, reaching for the good flat going, ears flat, nostrils wide. The zig-zag crest of its windborne mane. The reins knotted, in defiance of all custom and sanity, round the saddle pommel and the young horseman doing the impossible, controlling his steed with his knees, while he drew a bow and nocked a shaft at full and hurtling gallop. His aquiline profile. The strong, gathered movement of his shoulders as his right arm drew back. The taut gaiety of him, startling from Rufus’ mind, as a buck is startled from covert, the memory of that other vision, that blithe, insouciant, nameless yo
ung man in the courtyard of St. Gervais. Then, the springing shaft and the calm olive-skinned face that watched it take the stag in mid-leap and fling it over into a tangle of antlers and kicking legs. The certainty, before the stag fell, that fall it must. The godlike certainty.
They met, horse’s nose to horse’s nose, across the stag’s body. The Chief Knight Huntsman had come up and was whipping the hounds back, too busy to attend to the humans. ‘Who taught you to ride and shoot like that? What’s your name? By the Face, I never saw anyone shoot like that before!’
‘I’m Ralph des Aix, my lord. I’m a huntsman in Messire de Warenne’s household. I had permission to go with your huntsmen. I’m sorry I took your stag. I didn’t see you. I know you gave leave to anyone to shoot, but…’
‘I’d already missed, and I did indeed give leave.’ This was not the young man of the St. Gervais courtyard. This was a younger man, dark of hair like the other, yes, but browner of skin and humbler of mien. But the other was gone, unnamed, lost for ever. This boy Ralph des Aix was here in the present.
The others were riding up. In the distance, the sky threatened another approaching downpour. The Chief blue roan horse descending out of it, taking off from the foot of the slope, reaching for the good flat going, ears flat, nostrils wide. The zig-zag crest of its windborne mane. The reins knotted, in defiance of all custom and sanity, round the saddle pommel and the young horseman doing the impossible, controlling his steed with his knees, while he drew a bow and nocked a shaft at full and hurtling gallop. His aquiline profile. The strong, gathered movement of his shoulders as his right arm drew back. The taut gaiety of him, startling from Rufus’ mind, as a buck is startled from covert, the memory of that other vision, that blithe, insouciant, nameless young man in the courtyard of St. Gervais. Then, the springing shaft and the calm olive-skinned face that watched it take the stag in mid-leap and fling it over into a tangle of antlers and kicking legs. The certainty, before the stag fell, that fall it must. The godlike certainty.
They met, horse’s nose to horse’s nose, across the stag’s body. The Chief Knight Huntsman had come up and was whipping the hounds back, too busy to attend to the humans. ‘Who taught you to ride and shoot like that? What’s your name? By the Face, I never saw anyone shoot like that before!’
‘I’m Ralph des Aix, my lord. I’m a huntsman in Messire de Warenne’s household. I had permission to go with your huntsmen. I’m sorry I took your stag. I didn’t see you. I know you gave leave to anyone to shoot, but…’
‘I’d already missed, and I did indeed give leave.’ This was not the young man of the St. Gervais courtyard. This was a younger man, dark of hair like the other, yes, but browner of skin and humbler of mien. But the other was gone, unnamed, lost for ever. This boy Ralph des Aix was here in the present.
The others were riding up. In the distance, the sky threatened another approaching downpour. The Chief Huntsman, his hounds now under control, had recognised the fortunate marksman as the junior hunt servant who was supposed to be tagging along and was regarding him with suspicion. ‘Hunting’s over for the day,’ said Rufus. ‘We’ll be drowned in our saddles otherwise. Ride back with me, Ralph. I want to learn more of you.’
He was in his thirtieth year and since that shattering moment at St. Gervais, this experience had never, till now, repeated itself.
It might have done so with Ranulf Flambard, but Flambard had held him off and the impulse had died away into camaraderie, partnership, leaving no scar because no words had been said that could wound. It had left a warning. He had been careful not to lay himself open to rejection and as he had no shortage of money and could buy love when he needed it, he had not suffered too much. He might not be wholly content, but he had not wasted time and energy in yearning after the unattainable.
And then this young man with the olive skin and the aquiline profile came riding out of a rainstorm like a myth come into the daylight and overset for the second time in his life, here was Rufus of England riding shyly at the wondrous being’s side, stammering in hope and fear, heart banging with desire. In love.
And scarcely able to think of anything to say beyond the most mundane questions about his companion’s history. He had established in the first half mile that Ralph had been born in Normandy, had an English father, had been only a short time in England, had been trained at La Fleche. He had felt bound to ask a few questions about Helias of La Fleche but had hardly listened to the answers. In Helias of La Fleche, Rufus could not at that moment have been less interested. And already the journey was ebbing under their brisk hoofbeats. Once back in Winchester, he could of course summon Ralph whenever he wished. But he wanted to woo, not give orders.
It was a hailstorm that saved him.
The sky, as he had seen, was darkening again. There was a new chill in the wind. The riders turned off the path to seek shelter in the trees on either side. Rufus shepherded his companion rapidly between the' trunks of oak and chestnut and halted them out of sight and earshot of anyone else. There was a sudden rattle as the storm descended and a shower of hailstones swished down through a gap in the foliage to bounce on the damp earth. The horses started. Ralph slipped from his saddle to hold the roan’s bridle and soothe it. Rufus followed his example and stood holding his own mount. ‘Wild weather, eh?’
‘Yes, sir. Wilder than I thought English weather would be, somehow.’
Above them, the wind tore through the branches with a sound like the roar of the sea. The gloom became livid. He could hardly see Ralph’s face. But his presence was there, felt if not visible. The longing to reach out with his own square red paw and touch the other’s slender, olive- tinged fingers was all but irresistible, a continuous twitch of unrealised movement. ‘Do you like England? Will you stay here?’ he heard himself enquiring inanely.
‘Yes sir, I think so.’ The boy was awkward, shy of being alone like this with a king. He probably imagined that Rufus was talking to put him at his ease. Much he knows, thought Rufus in agony. ‘My father missed England, I think,’ Ralph said nervously.
The gloom began to lighten. He could see the boy’s profile again, turned aside as he gentled his restless horse. It was a beautiful and well cared for animal; probably the centre of Ralph’s life. Ralph’s pulses weren’t hammering with longing. Perhaps they never would. He must go carefully. What did he know of this boy? Nothing beyond a few plain details of birth and training, a glimpse of a wonder riding out of a rain-haze. He must stalk the quarry with care, not frighten him. What would win him? What was he like? What kind of things interested him? What did he know?
‘You come from Maine,’ said Rufus suddenly. ‘And no doubt you’ve heard all the gossip about this present deputation; I suppose you know what it’s about. What do you think of it all? Should England intervene in Normandy?’
‘My lord, that’s not for me to say!’
‘You’re part of the household of an English lord now. Your allegiance is to me, just as his is. Are you able to think as an Englishman yet? From all I’ve heard, an honest Norman might not think so differently, anyway. What if we took a hand? We’d look for supporters in Normandy. Who would be the likely men to approach?’
‘My lord, my opinions can’t possibly have any weight.’ Ralph was distressed. The storm was passing; Rufus could see the boy’s expression of earnest embarrassment and the reluctance to forget his position. Rufus yearned simultaneously to embrace him for his modesty and hit him for his obtuseness. Did he not understand that Rufus desired only to hear his voice, and to search out a way into his mind?
Ralph seemed at last to grasp that a reply was required. ‘I used to hear hall gossip in Maine,’ he said, ‘and I saw who got the most respectful treatment among the guests, and those who had high places at table weren’t great lords every time. I heard my lord Helias talking sometimes, too. I once heard him say that the most influential men in Normandy were the burghers of Rouen.’
‘That’s a good answer. Any particular burghers?’
‘There’s a man called Conan who’s wealthy enough to hire mercenaries to guard his shipments. He deals in gemstones and bullion,’ said Ralph unexpectedly. ‘My lord Helias had dealings with him. I’ve been on escort duty when deliveries were brought in. I did other things besides act as huntsman, sometimes, you see. But I know so little of political matters. I understand horses and deer and archery. I oughtn’t…’
‘If I ask you a question, I, the King of England in my own country, you do no wrong in answering. And if I gave you an order, you would do no wrong in obeying it.’ He watched Ralph’s face but saw no sign that the boy had understood any double meaning. He was pensively engaged in drawing a pattern in the leafmould with the toe of his boot. ‘I’d like the chance of giving you orders frequently.’ Still no sign of comprehension. Rufus gambled. ‘One of the huntsmen on my court staff will retire soon. His second will take over. That will leave a vacancy below. Sixpence a day and all found and a land grant before too long if you please me…’ With pleasure, he saw the boy raise his head at that, saw the dark eyes flash. ‘You would have the chance of acquiring knight status, even,’ he said. ‘You’ll be called to war as well as to the hunting field. Acquit yourself properly and you could win your spurs from me. You’d live at Winchester part of the time but travel with the court for the rest of it. Quite often, in fact.’
All the time, if things go well, my beautiful one, my love. He waited, looking casual, looking bored, and not daring actually to look at Ralph.
‘My present lord, Messire de Warenne, did a great kindness in taking me on,’ said Ralph slowly. ‘I wouldn’t like…’
King of the Wood Page 17
