The Forest (6 page)

Through the trees on the right now, she got a glimpse of the royal hunting lodge. She could hardly believe that they were at Lyndhurst already. The riders had been unable to prevent the herd from splitting and a group of does, including her pale one, had peeled left into a glade. Martell and some of the others galloped off to outflank them.

Just then, glancing to her left, she noticed Walter.

She must have got ahead of him without realizing it. He was galloping hard, to be in front of her when they emerged into view by the trap. As he drew level she was granted a perfect view of his profile and, despite all her excitement, she suddenly experienced an inward shudder.

He was flushed and concentrated. Somehow – even now – his pug face still managed to look pompous and self-satisfied. But it was something else that really struck her. His cruelty. It was not the hardness that Edgar’s face had suddenly acquired; it was more like lust – lust for death. He looked gorged. For a strange moment it almost seemed to her as if his face in its keen desire, little moustache and all, had floated forward and was hanging, gloating, over the deer.

Oh, it was cruel – necessity or not. You couldn’t get away from the truth of what was to come; Cola’s perfectly organized drive, the huge trap ahead, the bleak wooden machinery of the walls in the woods, the nets, the culling – not one, not even ten, but deer after deer until they had a hundred. It was cruel to kill so many.

It was too late to think of that now. The trees opened out. She saw the high mound where Cola waited ahead. Just before it, a line of men were shouting and waving their arms, to make sure the deer turned right towards the entrance of the trap. The foremost deer were already up to
them, with galloping riders only yards behind. From her left, now, came the does that had split off, driven by Martell. They streamed by her. She saw the pale doe. It was the last of them. Already they were all wheeling, coming past Cola’s mound. Just after the mound, she noticed, on the grassy lawn between it and the start of the ridge there were only a few people standing. The deer, already turned, with the riders along their left flank, were streaming past them, oblivious. The pale doe had fallen a little behind. Having made the turn, she seemed, for just an instant, to hesitate before being drawn in to her death.

Then Adela did a strange thing.

She did not know why; she hardly even realized she was doing it. Putting spurs to her horse, she suddenly raced ahead of Walter, pulled her horse’s head, cut clean across him and made straight towards the pale doe. She heard Walter shout a curse but she took no notice. Half a dozen strides and she was almost up with the deer; another second and she was between the pale doe and the herd. Voices were crying out behind her. She did not look. The doe, startled, tried to veer away from her. She urged her horse forward, pushing, willing the doe away from the great trap ahead. The park pale was only a hundred yards away. She must keep the deer to the left of it.

And then, with a single, frantic leap, the pale deer did what she wanted. A second later, to the astonishment of all the bystanders, they were racing together across the lawn between the mound and the ridge, and out on to the open heath.

‘Go,’ she muttered, ‘go,’ as the pale doe fled out into the heather. ‘Go!’ she cried, as she raced after her. ‘Get away!’ For all she knew one of the hunters was already following with a bow. Too frightened and embarrassed to look back, she urged the little deer forward until at last it darted straight across the open ground and made for the nearest piece of woodland opposite. She cantered
forward, watching the doe, until she finally saw her make the trees.

But what to do now? She was alone in the middle of the open heath. Looking back at last, she saw that no one had followed her. The line of the ridge and the park pale seemed deserted. All the people were on the other side. She could not even hear the cries of the huntsmen any more, only the faint hiss of the breeze. She turned her horse’s head. Hardly knowing what she wanted, she began to ride down the heath with the park pale away on her right. When it curved westwards she started to do the same, walking her horse into the woods about a quarter of a mile below the wall. She entered a long glade. The ground was soft with grass and moss. She was still alone.

Or nearly. He was standing by the uprooted stump of a fallen tree. There was surely no mistaking him – the forward stoop, the bushy eyebrows. Unless these gnarled men grew identically in the Forest, it was the same strange figure she had seen earlier. But how had he got there? It was a mystery. He was quietly watching her as she went down the glade, although whether with approval or disapproval she could not guess.

Remembering what she had seen before, she raised her hand and saluted him as Edgar had done. But he did not answer with a nod this time and she remembered being told that the Forest people did not always care for strangers.

She had ridden, after that, for almost an hour. She still wouldn’t go back to Lyndhurst. She could imagine her reception: Walter’s furious face; the huntsmen – contemptuous she supposed. Hugh de Martell – who knew what he thought? It was all too much; she wasn’t going back there.

She kept to the woods. She did not know exactly where she was although, judging by the sun, she was heading south. She guessed, after a while, that the hamlet of Brockenhurst must be somewhere on her right, but she did
not particularly wish to be seen and kept to the woodland tracks. Later on, she thought, I’ll head back towards Cola’s manor. With luck she could sneak in before the hunters returned, without attracting too much attention.

So she hardly knew whether to be annoyed or relieved when, just as she was wondering which of two tracks to take, she heard a cheerful cry behind her and turned to see the handsome form and friendly face of Edgar, cantering towards her.

‘Didn’t they tell you’, he said laughingly as he came up, ‘that you’re not supposed to deer-hunt on your own?’ And she realized she was glad that he had come.

His French was not very good, but passable. Thanks to a Saxon nurse in her childhood and a natural ear for languages, she had already discovered that she could make herself understood by these English. They could communicate well enough, therefore. Nor was it long before he had put her at her ease. ‘It was Puckle,’ he explained, when she asked how he had found her. ‘He told me you’d ridden south and no one saw you at Brockenhurst so I thought you’d be somewhere this way.’

So Puckle was the name of the gnarled figure.

‘He seems mysterious,’ she remarked.

‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘He is.’

Next, when she confessed her fear of going back he assured her: ‘We pick and choose the deer. You’d only have had to ask my father and he’d gladly have spared your pretty deer.’ He grinned. ‘You are supposed to ask him, though.’ She smiled ruefully as she tried to imagine herself asking for a deer’s life in front of the hunters, but, reading her thoughts, he gently added: ‘The deer have to be killed, of course, but even now, I hate doing it.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘It’s the way they fall, so full of grace. You see their spirits leave them. Everyone who’s ever killed a deer knows that.’ He said it so simply and honestly that she was touched. ‘It’s sacred,’ he concluded, as if there were nothing to argue about.

‘I wonder’, she said, after a pause, ‘if Hugh de Martell feels the same.’

‘Who knows.’ He shrugged. ‘He doesn’t think like that.’

No. His way, she imagined, was more blunt. A proud Norman landholder had no time for such thoughts.

‘He didn’t think I should be hunting. I expect your father agrees.’

‘My mother and my father used to ride out hunting together,’ he said softly, ‘when she was alive.’ And instantly she had a vision of that handsome couple, sweeping beautifully through the forest glades. ‘One day,’ Edgar added gently, ‘I hope to do the same.’ And then with a laugh: ‘Come on. We’ll ride back along the heath.’

So it was, a little time afterwards, that the two riders cantering along the short turf at the heath’s edge approached the hamlet of Oakley and came upon Godwin Pride, moving his fence, illegally, in broad daylight.

‘Damn,’ muttered Edgar under his breath. But it was too late to avoid the fellow now. He had caught him in the act.

Godwin Pride drew himself up to his full height: with his broad chest and splendid beard, he looked like a Celtic chief facing a tax collector. And, like a good Celtic chief, he knew that when the game was up, the only thing to do was bluff. To Edgar’s enquiry – ‘What are you doing, Godwin?’ – he therefore replied imperturbably: ‘Repairing this fence, as you see.’

It was so quietly outrageous that, for a moment, Edgar almost burst out laughing; but unfortunately this was not a laughing matter. ‘You’ve moved the fence.’

Pride considered thoughtfully. ‘It used to be further out,’ he said coolly, ‘but we pulled it back years ago. Didn’t need so much space.’

The cheek of the man was breathtaking.

‘Nonsense,’ Edgar said sharply. ‘You know the law. It’s a
purpresture
. This can land you in court.’

Pride gazed at him as he might have looked at a fly before swatting it. ‘Those are Norman words. I wouldn’t know what they mean. I expect you would, though,’ he added.

The thrust went home. Edgar coloured. ‘It’s the law,’ he said sadly.

Godwin Pride continued to stare him down. He didn’t dislike Edgar personally, but the Saxon noble’s co-operation with the Normans seemed to him proof that Edgar was an outsider.

Not that Cola’s family were strangers. But when had they come to the Forest? Two hundred, three hundred years ago? The Forest folk could not remember. However long they had been there, anyway, it was not long enough. And Pride was reminding himself of this fact when, to his surprise, the Norman girl spoke.

‘But it wasn’t the Normans who started it. This land was under forest law back in the days of King Canute.’

Adela’s Anglo-Saxon had been good enough to follow most of the conversation. She had not liked the surly way in which this fellow had treated Edgar and, as she was a Norman noblewoman, she decided to put him in his place. Brutal though he could be, William the Conqueror had been clever enough always to show that he was following ancient customs in his troublesome new kingdom. So it was no use this peasant complaining. She started at him defiantly.

To her surprise, however, he only nodded grimly. ‘You believe that?’

‘There’s a charter, fellow.’ She spoke with some importance.

‘Oh. Written, is it?’

How dare the man use this tone of irony? ‘Yes, it is.’ She was rather proud that she could read quite well and had a little learning. If a clerk had taken her through a charter, she would have been able to follow.

‘Don’t read, myself,’ he replied with an impertinent
smile. ‘No point.’ He was right, of course. A man could farm, operate a mill, run a great estate – why, even be a king – and have no need to read and write. There were always poor clerks to keep records. This intelligent smallholder had not the slightest reason to read. But Pride had not finished. ‘I believe there’s a lot of thieves who do, though,’ he calmly added.

By God the man was insulting. She looked to Edgar, expecting him to defend her, but he seemed embarrassed.

It was Pride who now addressed him. ‘I don’t remember hearing of any charter, do you, Edgar?’ He stared straight at his head.

‘Before my time,’ the Saxon answered quietly.

‘Yes. You’d better ask your father. He’d know about that, I should think.’

There was a pause.

Adela began to get the point. ‘Are you saying’, she asked slowly, ‘that King William lied about Canute’s forest law? That the charter’s a fake?’

Pride pretended surprise. ‘Really? They can do that, can they?’

She was silent herself, now. Then she nodded slowly. ‘I’m, sorry,’ she said simply. ‘I didn’t know.’ She looked away from him and her eyes rested upon the strip of ground he had just appropriated. She understood now. No wonder he was surly when they had caught him trying, legally or not, to claw back a few feet of the inheritance he considered had been stolen from him.

She turned to Edgar. Then she grinned. ‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’ She spoke in French, but she suspected that Pride, observing them, had guessed what she had said.

Edgar looked awkward. Pride was watching him. Then Edgar shook his head. ‘I can’t,’ he muttered in French. And to Pride, in his native tongue: ‘Put it back, Godwin. Today. I’ll be looking out for you.’ He motioned to her that they must leave.

She would have liked to say something to Pride, but realized she must not. A few minutes later, as the smallholder and his family were lost to sight, she spoke. ‘I can’t go back to Lyndhurst, Edgar. I can’t face all those huntsmen. Can we return to your father’s house?’

‘There’s a quiet track,’ he said with a nod. And after a couple of miles he led her down through a wood to a little ford, quite soon after which they came up to heathland over which they walked their horses, picking up a track that led westwards until, late in the afternoon, they descended from the Forest into the lush quiet of the Avon valley.

It was some time before they reached the forest edge that Puckle, on some errand of his own, had happened to pass by Pride’s hamlet and hear his tale.

‘Who’s the Norman girl?’ the smallholder asked. Puckle was able to tell him and to relate the incident of the pale deer.