In a Dark Wood (15 page)

“Only myself, and it pleases Your Lordship, leading you through the greenwood, since a man can scarcely ride when he can't see.”

“You don't have to live here anymore,” said the sheriff. “Why don't you come back to the city? Robin Hood and his men are doomed.”

“Every man alive is doomed, good Lord Sheriff,” said Will Scathlock. “Every man breathing is only waiting for the thread to break, and that's certain. Besides, forgive me, you'll never find us.”

“Never?”

“Can you find fleas, Lord Sheriff, except they find you first?”

“Leave them, Will. Your head will end up on a pike if you don't.”

“My head is little more than a turnip, at best, Lord Sheriff, and that's the truth.”

“My men were unjust to you. I understand this. But that's no reason to abandon the world.”

“And who's abandoned the world? The greenwood is as real as any tapestry, forgive me, and a deer is as tasty as a ram. Don't worry about me, my lord sheriff, and don't worry for a moment about Robin Hood. You might as well spend your worry on a cat.”

“I wasn't worried,” said the sheriff. “I don't like to see unnecessary death.”

Until the end he knew an arrow could stop his breath. Until the end he half expected the sound of a sword singing through his ribs. But after what seemed a day of riding blind his bonds were cut.

“Take it off now. You're free,” said the toothless mouth. “And a good day to you.”

Geoffrey blinked, wadding the round dark cloth in his fist. He was alone. The High Way opened ahead of him to stubbled fields. A crow glinted like black glass, and a rut was filled with a long, slender puddle the color of steel, a lance of water that reflected the gray sky.

25

All day Hugh labored with the wooden sword, making Ivo sweat, lunge, parry until at last the old swordsman had to resort to a a hip throw to knock Hugh down to the straw-littered floor.

Later Hugh helped Ivo with an inventory of caltrops, large balls with spikes of iron. The spikes were rusty, never used, and Hugh helped Ivo chip away at the red glaze, long into candlelight. The spiked instruments were used in battle, scattered in streets to discourage war-horses. Hugh was glad to help Ivo, but the young man could not help thinking of the forest, the nightmare forest, and the real one, the one that had swallowed the sheriff.

Geoffrey did not return by the time the beeswax candles were stubs. Lady Eleanor paced the halls, glancing from window to window. Hugh stared at the dying fire in the great chamber and at last crept off to his pallet, to lie sleepless.

Every rustle of nesting pigeons, every sneeze of stabled steed, was surely the sheriff returning. Hugh prayed to Our Lady, asking that her mercy guide the sheriff and keep him from all harm.

By dawn the castle stirred, servants-in-waiting whispering, distant roosters cheering the sun.

But the familiar voice, the familiar step never came.

The cream-colored walls of cottages were bright across the gray ground. The brown thatch of roofs matched the just-harvested fields. The wicker hives trickled bees into the cool noon, and the well cast no shadow, its handle chuckling as Geoffrey cranked. He drank deep from the water scoop.

A peasant dog wagged its tail, and Geoffrey massaged its head through its tangled hair and worked a spear of wild rye out of its ear. The peasant himself shuffled to the well, hat in hand. “Day to yer'dship,” said the peasant.

The peasant stared after Geoffrey as Geoffrey turned to look back, surveying the dark wall the forest made, pressing up against the peaceful fields. The cut the High Way made in the dark cloth was a tiny opening, barely a slit, and all round the fields, and all round the city in the distance, bright with its windows and chimneys, the forest was waiting.

The thief was still hanging from the gibbet, but the clothes hung loose now, and a carrion crow folded itself over the skull like a great black book of prayers.

The drizzle began again, the gray wool lowering over the city. Drops of water small as dust fell over the palfrey's mane. Geoffrey's sleeves looked floured for a moment and then darkened as the water soaked in. The walls of the city were grimy with damp, like the sides of a sweating horse. The market was strangely empty, except for an orange cat that stared and fled.

Geoffrey tickled his spurs into the palfrey, and she eagerly leaped into a gallop. A duck fled in a burst of white feathers.

The gatesman called, “He's here!”

Only the swans ignored him, grousing among the greasy weeds of the moat. Ivo, the furbisher, ran across the courtyard in his leather apron, and Hugh clutched Geoffrey's leg. “I prayed for you, my lord,” said Hugh with a fervor that brought tears to Geoffrey's eyes.

“I'm glad to see you, Hugh. Where's my good deputy?”

“Henry's gone forth with a crowd,” said Ivo.

Geoffrey allowed himself a thin smile. “Has he? But not you two, the best of the castle.”

There was something canny in Ivo's expression. “I recognized a fool's errand even as I fastened on my sword, my lord.”

“Ivo and Hugh are the only men I can count on not to be fools,” said Geoffrey.

He gave the reins to a horse steward, an old man who was nearly weeping. “Take good care of her,” said Geoffrey.

Lady Eleanor held out her hand and did not let Geoffrey's go. “I thought the worst. Indeed I couldn't sleep.”

Geoffrey took each step slowly. “I have a gift for you,” he said.

“I can't imagine—”

“It's a white palfrey, very dainty but strong in her way.”

“You seem so strange.”

“Do I?”

“So—so strange.”

“I have spent a very pleasant night. Whyever should I seem strange?”

“For God's sake, you haven't disgraced me—”

“Ah. I can see now why you were worried.”

“Forgive me, Geoffrey. I know you have more discretion. I just—I was very worried.”

“You can stop worrying,” said Geoffrey. “I am quite safe.” He paused at the doorway to his chamber. “Hugh, please send Sir Roger to me at once.”

“He's gone, too.”

“What!”

“He said that Henry was too much an idiot to lead men in battle, and he put on his breastplate and helmet and rode out ahead of them all.”

“But the saints help us—he's not well.” He meant: he was too old.

“He looked,” said Hugh, “magnificent. I saw him as he must have looked outside Jerusalem, standing in his stirrups to count his men.”

“I hear good news from all sides.” Geoffrey smiled. “I come home in triumph to hear that everything is well organized and that not a trace of panic has touched the castle.”

“Please don't look so terrible,” said Lady Eleanor.

“Terrible! My dear, I am the picture of calm.”

“Too calm. Hugh, leave us.”

“Hugh, stay. I will need new clothes. My study gown. I don't think I will be going forth today.”

She took his hand. “Please tell me what's happened,” she whispered.

It was a long time before Geoffrey would allow himself to answer. “What has happened is that Henry, the man of my right hand, is a virtual traitor.”

“No!” The word
traitor
had an ugly sound. Traitors were disemboweled and made to look upon their own intestines before losing their limbs and eventually their lives.

“Not, of course, quite literally. Although I am by proxy the king, he escaped actual traitorhood in all but intent.”

Lady Eleanor was pale. Geoffrey sat, and Hugh unfastened the spurs. “But,” said Geoffrey, “as you can see, I am quite calm.”

Geoffrey stayed in his chambers, wearing the soft green gown he liked to wear when he studied. He had a large book of tax numbers before him, but he was actually studying a second, much smaller book, which he had sent Hugh into the tower library to find. In this manuscript the Archangel Michael poised in the air over a city. His white wings were spread against the blue sky, and a beast of gold had just been stabbed by the sword the angel brandished. Blood ran in an alternating pattern in twin lines of drops, but the blood did not reach the city; it seemed to evaporate in the air.

Horses clattered into the courtyard. Geoffrey stood and paced and then forced himself to sit. He could not sit! He was up again. “Who is it?” he called to Hugh.

Hugh left to find out. By now messengers must have reached the search party. Certainly an army of mounted men would not be hard to track. Geoffrey marched round the room. Certainly his men had not lost themselves in the forest. That was quite impossible. But they should be here by now. Not just a few horses clattering into the castle, but dozens of them.

He stared at a wedge of cheese and a green apple, both untasted. He picked up the paring knife once again. Even with this little knife, he thought. Even a knife so small could gouge out the tongue of Henry, Henry the faithful, Henry the loyal tanner's son. Or perhaps Nottingham the executioner would devise some supreme punishment for a man who slept away his duty like a gorged sow.

Hugh waited at the door and would not come in.

“What is it?” Geoffrey said.

“It's Sir Roger.”

“Send him here at once. I want to see him.”

“He can't come.” Hugh's voice was peculiar.

“What's the matter?”

“Sir Roger is dying!”

26

Geoffrey hurried with Hugh into the barracks.

“It's his heart,” said the physician.

“Sir Roger deserves more comfortable quarters than these,” said Geoffrey.

“He asked to be carried here,” said the physician.

“Then build a fire,” said the sheriff evenly.

“We—we don't want him too warm,” said the physician. “He is too hot and dry as it is.”

Hugh was struck by the trace of nervousness in the doctor's manner. The physician was rarely startled or caught without some supple, easy answer.

Sir Roger put out a hand that was pale and mottled. “God struck me down,” said the old knight. The stricken man's blouse was spattered with dried peat.

The sheriff knelt and stroked the old warrior's brow. “God could feel nothing but love for a warrior like you, good Sir Roger.”

“Did you catch the jack-in-the-woods, that robber?” asked Sir Roger.

Geoffrey stood and met Hugh's eyes. “Not yet,” he said.

A soul in Purgatory could be released when thirty trentals had been sung. Those who sung these masses were almost always paid for their labor, and it was marvelous that Heaven and Purgatory and even Hell were anchored to this world, as weft and warp are anchored to the frames of the loom. The living souls were the ones that seemed most trapped of all, although perhaps this was a sinful thought.

The candle flames were like golden eyes, watching him. He closed his eyes and let them watch. He was empty of all deception. He was empty of everything, a man ready to begin his life again, to take orders or be hanged.

Even as a boy he had felt responsible for things that went wrong. There had been the usual boyhood games, of course, including Geoffrey's least favorite, Dun's in the Mire, in which boys grappled a log, trying to pull it from the outer chamber into the sunny courtyard. It was a game that always ended in scrapes and, among the younger boys, tears. Geoffrey had learned not to cry, but he had never been convinced that all that wrestling was anything but a waste of effort. He had enjoyed then what he enjoyed now: being left to look at manuscripts in his father's library.

He left the chapel. The drizzle had stained the paving stones, and his footsteps left dry kisses across the courtyard. The castle smelled cold and stony, like a quarry. A fire crackled in his bedchamber, and he gathered the gown round himself, studying the tax numbers idly, the vellum whispering in his fingers.

Horses thundered into the courtyard.

“Hugh?”

As always, the quick response, like a speaking shadow. “My lord?”

“Have Henry come to me at once.”

Hugh's feet made almost no sound on the floor, only the smallest hint of someone passing, the sort of sound a thought makes when the mind turns away from it.

Geoffrey sliced the apple not because he was hungry but because he wanted to cut something. The seeds were dark, the color of old blood, like the dried blood of Christ Geoffrey had seen once, red-black silt in a silver vial. The scent of apple was in the air.

Henry knelt.

Geoffrey set down the paring knife very carefully. It made a metallic chime on the brass plate, a tiny peck of music. Geoffrey stood and walked round Henry as he knelt, unmoving. The man smelled of wet leather and pine needles, a combination like a field during rain. Geoffrey circled Henry once, then returned to his seat.

Already the apple was losing its whiteness. Brown touched the edges of the white mouth in the fruit, and one of the seeds had slipped from its place, leaving an empty socket, a seed sheath.

“Not long ago I wanted to have your tongue fed to dogs.”

Henry did not move, his head bowed.

“I could think of no punishment harsh enough.”

Geoffrey picked up the apple and put it down. He waited for his deputy to speak, but the man remained silent, crouched like a man unable to move, doubled like a fist.

“Stand up so I can see you.”

Henry rose slowly but would not meet Geoffrey's eyes.

“I know what happened,” said Geoffrey. “Robin Hood told me.”

The very name was magic. Henry cringed and put a hand out to the wall. He shook his head and tried to speak. His voice made a dry croak, like the grunt of a swan.

“I want to hear your voice.”

The man shook his head and groped along the wall.

“Speak to me!” Geoffrey hurled the apple, and the fruit exploded on the opposite wall. The sheriff paced. “I command you to use language.”

Henry swallowed. He made a noise like a cow lowing in a distant pasture.