King of the Wood

by Valerie Anand

  ‘I will never go to the Wood again,’ she said. ‘All the children I have in time to come will be yours, or there will be no children. I promise.’

  ‘You can’t,’ he said, on a sob. ‘I can’t cheat Herne. Even in good times, it was never the custom for the King to claim his wife always. Herne’s laws must be kept.’

  ‘Is Herne so real, then?’ Sybil asked.

  ‘He’s real. When I wear the antlers, He enters into me. I become Him. There is no escape from the Wood.’

  ‘Very well. But it is a sacrifice for me as much as for you. Always remember that, Ralph.’ She was crying again, but without violence, the easy-flowing tears of relief which do not distort the face. He rose from his knees and sat beside her. ‘The Tun is a hard place for you to be,’ he said. ‘But it will get better in the end. It must. And one day I will take you back to visit Fallowdene.’

  ‘When we have our own children to show them,’ said Sybil.

  He wondered if the one she now carried was Cild’s. He knew that Cild had paired with her time and again. He had grown to dislike Cild intensely, a sensation which he fought. For he was Cild’s King, and hatred for such a reason was a betrayal of Herne.

  He wanted to ask Sybil if the man had been Cild. But he knew he never would.

  He was expected at the Brockenhurst hunting lodge the next day and he did not want to go, for it meant leaving Sybil. He arrived later than he should, to learn from an impatient Under Marshal that there was a boarhunt to organise immediately since the king was arriving tomorrow, and that he was to call at Malwood because there was trouble over the slates for the roof of the new kitchen – ‘not enough were delivered or some such thing,’ said the Under-Marshal disdainfully, bored by such trivialities.

  An Under-Marshal. Once he took his orders from the king in person and no Under-Marshal would have used such a tone to him. No one knew what this demotion felt like except those who had experienced it. Only Gilbert Clare of Tonbridge, never quite trusted since he fought on the wrong side in Odo’s rising, had ever commiserated with him and even that had been semi-spiteful. ‘Beastly, isn’t it, des Aix, going down in the world?’ He would have taken Sybil and gone, perhaps back to Maine and Helias, were it not for the Tun. The Tun belonged to him but he also belonged to the Tun and while he stayed there he was Rufus’ vassal. He also needed his Knight Huntsman’s pay.

  Next day, the weather turned close and leaden again as it had been at Beltane. He came in from searching the forest for boar sign, with his shirt stuck to his body and his tunic off. The king must have arrived meanwhile; the stable was full and there were people everywhere. But the atmosphere was odd; men stood about in knots with their heads together, excitedly talking. Count Henry and the king’s nephew Richie were the centre of a chattering group near the gate. Ralph rubbed his horse down and stabled it, and on emerging from the stable was accosted by a big tan-coloured hound which reared up to put immense paws on his chest and demand a pat.

  ‘Oh, will you never learn manners, Stagbane!’ said Richie, hastening up to grab the dog’s collar. ‘I’m still trying to make him keep to heel unless I say otherwise but he has only to see something that interests him…! I’ve been trying for years! Have you heard the news?’

  Ralph had come to know Richie since the boy’s arrival at court two and a half years before. Richie loved the hunt, and he and his dog tended to attach themselves to the hunt staff wherever they chanced to be. He was very much Rufus’ relative in his passion for sport and in other ways too. In full manhood he would be almost a replica of the king though he was better proportioned, with hazel eyes, and his light ginger hair actually came from his mother’s side. He was feeling the heat, for he had taken off his tunic and opened his shirt to the waist.

  ‘I’ve only just come in,’ Ralph said. ‘What’s afoot?’

  ‘The king’s been here and gone. A messenger came in from Belleme, in Maine. Helias has marched back into Le Mans. So the king,’ said Richie admiringly, ‘ordered a horse, scooped up half a dozen men and rode off to the rescue. Just like that. He said he’d raise men in Normandy. He wouldn’t take me with him.’ Richie became dejected. ‘I’m old enough for war but I never see any action,’ he added resentfully.

  ‘The king is responsible to your father for you.’ Henry strolled up. ‘Good evening, Sir Ralph.’

  ‘Good evening, sir. Is the boarhunt cancelled?’ The humid air felt more like a woolly blanket than ever and Ralph opened his own damp shirt. Henry, watching him with a curious intentness, said with a trace of malice: ‘Helias beckons and Rufus runs, it seems. It’s as well Anselm isn’t here. He hasn’t managed to see the Pope as yet, I gather. The king has more or less bought Urban. The boarhunt can proceed. I’m still here and so is Messire Richie and a good many others that the king didn’t take either.’

  Low down in the sky, thunder rolled. ‘My uncle’s in for a difficult crossing,’ Richie said. ‘He seems to like them. He travelled in November last time he went across.’

  ‘He has other things on his mind,’ said Henry dryly. ‘Though this storm may make him notice it. I think it’s going to be heavy.’

  He spoke cheerfully. It occurred to Ralph to wonder how much Henry would mind if Rufus’ ship sank. If it did, Henry would have England and Normandy both in the palm of his hand.

  Henry did not however look as though he were brooding on future grandeur. He was in fact eyeing Ralph in a very curious way. It was embarrassing and inexplicable. Ralph took his leave.

  ***

  So now he knew. Henry stood in the cramped apartment which at Brockenhurst was his and thought it out. The husband of that bewitching, extraordinary girl of the firelit wood was Ralph des Aix of Chenna’s Tun. Ralph was the Stag King. Or was he mistaken?

  No. How many men had three moles in a slanting line, like the stars of Orion’s Belt, across their chests? And had he not, at the time, detected a French accent in the Stag King’s voice?

  The rain was falling in sheets now but when it eased he could if he liked go to the Tun and see her. He’d make sure that Ralph was kept busy here. He paced restlessly round the room.

  The encounter in the forest had been dreamlike, detached from the real world. If he saw her again it might only be a disastrous anti-climax. Would she still be beautiful or had it all been a spell cast by the firelight and the drums? He might find only an underfed peasant girl with dirt beneath her fingernails and a mind as blank as an unused slate.

  Besides, there was Edith.

  Where Edith was concerned, Henry had entered a new realm of experience. For the first time in his life he had found a woman who could not simply be replaced by another woman, whose hold on him was not merely that of the body. The girl in the forest had eased him physically but she did not, could not, take Edith’s place, any more than Saehild could have done. It was Edith whom he wanted and if he rode anywhere through the hock-deep mud and swollen streams of Hampshire in the next few days (had the climate changed since he was a boy? It seemed like it) it would be to Romsey.

  Where Rufus had forbidden him to go and although Rufus was now en route to Maine, he had told Abbess Christina of the prohibition and if Henry broke it she would no doubt let the king know. And he, Henry, was his brother’s pensioner, dependent on him for income and status, at risk of being dismissed if he offended, driven overseas again to the hopeless life of a robber lord. He dared not think too much about the power Rufus had over him; it made the black rage rise. Once or twice, in private, he had unwisely let that happen and ended up pounding clenched fists on the wall.

  Edith was still safe. He had not depended on the signal they had arranged, in case the abbess had locked her up again without warning. He had in fact sent Saehild to Romsey with orders to represent herself as a grateful recipient of alms from Edith in the past, anxious to thank the almsgiver in person. Saehild, once private with Edith, had found out that the abbess had so far left her niece alone, except for barbed comments. She knew, thought Henry grimly, that if
she touched Edith and he got to hear of it, fifty Rufuses brandishing axes wouldn’t keep him from carrying out his threat. It wasn’t in the best of taste to co-opt one’s ex-mistress as a messenger to one’s – he hoped – future wife, but Saehild had left him, not the other way about and she was very good natured. And she and her husband were hard up, like nearly everyone else these days. Money had talked and it had been worth it. His fear for Edith was relieved.

  But not his longing, and he did not want the girl in the wood. He would forget her.

  On a quayside in Southampton harbour, Rufus stood beside a moored ship and argued with her owner.

  ‘I’ll double the usual passage money. It’s only me you’ve got to carry. I didn’t set out alone but I outdistanced the others. One man won’t overload you! ’

  ‘No, sir. Not for ten times the usual rate. It’s too risky. This storm…’

  ‘What storm? said Rufus. His cloak was black with rain and flattened to his body by the wind. ‘It’s passing. Call yourself a mariner? I’ve urgent business over there and the wind’s fair…’

  ‘The wind’s a gale, sir. And out there beyond the harbour, the sea…’

  ‘You think we’ll drown? Where’s your spirit of adventure? I’m the King of England and whoever heard of a king getting drowned? Treble the usual rate! Oh, come on, man! That vessel of yours is built like a longship. The Vikings could ride out anything.’

  ‘No,’ said the captain, but with less conviction and some annoyance.

  ‘Four times the rate!’

  Mammon and pride could be seen struggling with natural caution. ‘It’ud be at your own risk. If we all end up swimming for it, I’m not to blame.’

  ‘Done!’

  Two hours later, at sea, Rufus stood triumphantly beside the mast. He was drenched to the skin with spray and rain but the persistent downpour had flattened out the water and the thunder had gone. The ship rode easily on a slow, rain-pitted swell and the north-westerly wind had slackened to a breeze which merely filled the square sail and drove them forward. ‘What did I tell you?’ he shouted to the captain.

  The dusk was falling but he gazed ahead as though willing the coast of Normandy to appear. He was throwing his heart in front of the ship. He was bound for Normandy and after that for Maine. He was drawing near to Helias. He would see Helias again. Wouldn’t he?

  CHAPTER THREE

  I Have Sinned

  August – October 1099

  Onions, cabbage, some cheese, a piece of bread and a bit of honeycake that Elfgiva, who looked after the bees, had given her, and that, by present standards, would be a lavish supper. The corn was ripening but the crop was thin and if anything went wrong, such as a storm at the wrong moment, they would be desperate.

  In June, while on duty, Ralph had come across her brother Richard and she knew that Fallowdene, supported by saffron, was doing well. Richard had found buyers in Cornwall where apparently the stuff had never gone out of use. He had also bought a ship of his own to replace the lost vessel in which he had had a share. The first voyage of the St. Edith had been a financial success.

  But Ralph would not ask Richard for help and she did not press him, strangely enough, because he might have given in. She knew that she now had power over him and had lately found in her maturing self a fear of abusing that power.

  But oh, if they could be at Fallowdene now! Well, if the harvest were enough to feed them next year, and if only, after this baby, she could conceive one by Ralph, then they might visit Fallowdene with pride. She longed to see the soaring downs again, instead of this narrow horizon bounded by the trees which hemmed the Tun round. But she wanted to go back in triumph or not at all, not as a frightened child but as a wife with children, and a husband who appreciated her ...

  If she still had a husband. She had been trying to keep that thought at bay but suddenly it took her by storm and dropping the knife with which she had been prodding the vegetables, she sat down with her hands to her face. And prayed, not to Herne of the hateful Wood, but to the God of Father Ilger and Archbishop Anselm, that the horrible thing which Penna, against all custom, had first in his high excitable voice mentioned at Beltane, and had at Lammas proposed more loudly, would never come to pass.

  Then, because whatever happened she must protect the child she carried, which meant eating when possible and trying to sleep at night, she made herself swallow her supper. She hoped that Ralph, who was on duty with the court, was getting better fare. She went to bed.

  She was roused at dawn not by a cockerel as usual but by shouts and barking. Someone banged at the door and then ran on. She pulled on some clothes and hurried out. Across the cornfield, where the forest came close to its edge, she glimpsed shadowy animal shapes bounding, fleeing, backs rippling above the grain. In the midst of the field, human figures leapt and waved their arms. She ran clumsily round the edge and they came to meet her: Cild and Oswin, swearing; Penna swearing even louder, shrieking high-pitched imprecations, indeed, and shaking his fist; Elfgiva, long skirts soaked with dew, flourishing a broom; Osmund, red in the face and gesticulating with a hoe. The dogs, which could not run because their foreclaws had been cut in accordance with the Forest Law, trotted about whimpering in frustration.

  ‘Deer!’ Elfgiva gasped.

  ‘Like the locust plague of Egypt!’ Penna shrilled.

  Sybil stared at the swathe of catastrophe in the wheat. ‘But…there must have been hundreds!’

  ‘Reckon there were,’ said Cild grimly.

  She couldn’t take it in. Last night the com had been thin but intact. Now there were great flattened patches where full-fed animals… like bloated succubi spawned by the Wood .…had lain down to doze; rank on rank of stalks from which every ear had gone. Eyes distended with earnestness, Penna said: ‘Reckon the Homed One’s got it in for us proper. Like I said at Lammas.’

  ‘You had no right to say what you did at Lammas, or Beltane either!’ said Sybil angrily. ‘That was for the King to say. No one else.’ She looked at the com again and tried to brace herself. ‘It’s not complete min. There’s a lot left.’

  ‘We’ve lost a third part,’ said Osmund. ‘It’ll mean hunting again this autumn, never mind the Forest Laws.’

  He banged the hoe handle on the ground and the head of it fell off. For once, no one laughed.

  ‘I was only saying what we’re all thinking,’ Penna said resentfully to Sybil and walked sullenly away.

  The great wind came at Martinmas, on the 11th of November, blowing up from the south-west, sweeping torn dark clouds before it. It was stronger even than the gale of 1093 which had wrought such havoc. It whipped up the sea and sent the breakers crashing in spume along the coasts of Cornwall, up the Bristol Channel and along the shores of Wales. It scoured the Devon moorlands. It rushed on across the forests of the south; no hawk was aloft in such weather but if any had been, it would have seen the treetops once more like a sea in turmoil, with blown leaves for spray. Across open ground, it roared; in hollow trees and round the towers of the castle at Winchester, it wailed. It was like a damned and houseless soul crying in despair and fury. After dark, it was terrifying.

  Flambard, fetched to the king by the brisk but uncommunicative chamberlain Herbert, said against the banging of the shutters and the undulating howl of the wind: ‘I see no difficulty about either paying off the debts of the last campaign or getting in the money for another. There are possibilities still unexplored. The detailed report will be ready in two days.’

  ‘Oh, not now,’ said Rufus testily. ‘I didn’t call you to talk business.’ Flambard raised his black eyebrows. ‘I simply want,’ said Rufus, ‘to talk.’

  Flambard already knew that. But the king’s silence after he entered the tower chamber in Winchester Palace had needed breaking. Rufus pointed to a seat and Flambard, gathering his long robe round him, took it. ‘What shall I talk about?’

  ‘What you like as long as it isn’t business. They call you Passe-Flamme. Well, pass a flame to me! In
terest me! Or discuss the weather, if you can’t think of anything better.’

  ‘The gale’s getting worse,’ said Flambard obediently and also loudly, against a particularly malevolent aerial howl.

  ‘If it gets any stronger, it’ll blow the tower away,’ Rufus agreed. He cocked his head to listen and suddenly began himself to talk. ‘It sounds to me like a thousand hounds all baying at once. I can almost see them, can’t you? A great pack of black mastiffs pouring through the sky. We had a gale coming back from Normandy – not this bad but bad enough. The noise in the rigging was like crazy laughter. You don’t often see experienced captains white with fright but this one thought he’d be feeding the fish before the day was out. But we all survived. Well, we would. I was on board.’

  Flambard sat up straighter. He knew the king well but he had now detected a mood he had not seen before, and he didn’t like it.

  ‘You’ve heard the stories, haven’t you?’ Rufus said. ‘Which ones, my lord?’

  ‘How the storm abated to let me cross, when I rushed off from Brockenhurst. How I bullied a captain into taking me and told him that kings never got drowned, and lo and behold, the wind dropped for us. And then I borrowed a priest’s mare in Normandy and how she ran like a deer with me on her back, so that I got to my nearest castle before anyone would have thought it possible, and how when the men I’d left plodding after me in England arrived, I already had a muster well under way. Or there’s the one about how I chased Helias out of Le Mans and stood between the citizens and Belleme’s men and kept Belleme from burning the place right out – the world is full of stories all of a sudden, about what a remarkable king I am.’

  ‘And are the stories true?’

  Rufus snorted. ‘True enough. Winds do drop sometimes. It didn’t damn well drop when I was coming back. It just didn’t sink us, that’s all. As for the old mare, she went fast because I stuck my spurs into her. She was lazy, nothing more.’