20

The greenwood was lofty, its foliage so thick that the blue sky was covered over. Ivy cloaked many of the trees and mantled the fallen patriarchs. Holly bushes, as large as trees, flourished in the sun breaks between the oaks.

Wild apples blushed among briars in the open spaces, and a dragonfly teased the shade, seeking, hiding, and seeking as the woodland closed in around the hunting party once more. Human voices were muted by the verdure, and amplified by it, whispers echoing, careful footsteps crashing unexpectedly among the leaf meal underfoot.

Walter and Simon were directed to a place by Oin the chief huntsman, and now that they were in the woods, Simon was aware of a further change in the temper of the day.

Walter was quiet now, his lips pressed together, his eyes downcast with some private resolve. For his part, Simon, who had always loved hearing Oin tell the legends of the hart—an animal who could grow younger with the passing years—now felt how life-giving farmland was, by contrast, with its tranquil cows and friendly herders.

The scant shafts of sunlight illuminated tangles of tiny flies. Fairy flocks, folk sometimes called these knots of insects; they believed that gnats foretold bad weather. Simon wondered whether a rain would wash out their hopes for a successful hunt. And he wondered, too, if that would be such a bad thing.

The boisineor—the horn blower—waited ahead of them, a silver-chased ox horn gleaming at his side. His duty would be to alert man and beast to the chase, when it was under way at last.

Oin fitzBigot handed Simon a quiver of arrows. The shafts rattled, the feathers gently brushing together. Simon withdrew an arrow and gazed upon it as though he had never looked at such a potentially deadly shaft before now.

“Your obligation,” said the huntsman, “is to be as quiet as the horses yonder. When Lord Walter puts out his glove, hand him an arrow, feathered end foremost.” The arrows had iron points, the metal smelling slightly of sulfur from the smith’s coals. Some of the arrows were barbed; most were not.

“Simon will have no trouble,” said Walter, giving his varlet a quick smile.

But the royal huntsman was nervous, many months of culling sick deer, clearing away fallen branches, and chasing off poachers culminating in this day. “I’ve seen barons cut by their own arrowheads, my lord,” Oin replied, “and deer spooked by a footman’s snicker.”

“I shall not laugh,” agreed Walter with mock solemnity. “And Simon will be as quiet as a wooden angel.”

Walter held a bow, strung and waxed, the tall weapon graceful in his grasp. In warfare, the crossbow was the preferred weapon, but the yew bow was in fashion among aristocratic hunters.

The mounts were tethered and followed the example of the royal horse, the big bay evidently well trained at meditative grazing. Wreathes and screens of woven elm leaves encircled the horses’ necks and half shielded their flanks. Bertram and Nicolas were obscure figures, and Certig, too, all in earthen brown and forest green.

To a deer, the horses would appear to be a welcoming herd. To reach the decoy horses, the approaching quarry would pass the ambush—Walter flanked by Simon on one side of the deer path, and far opposite, perhaps ninety paces away, the king and Roland. The king swept his hood back as Simon looked on, the shadow-splashed sunlight brilliant in his hair.

Simon likewise tugged off his hood, and heard a hiss from behind a nearby tree. Oin gestured, and Simon pulled the hood back over his head. It was hard to hear very well, and the hood also constricted his view.

Simon was sweaty, and too excited to make a further sound as he peered at his surroundings. Vexin of Tours and his own varlet had found a position between the king and the decoy horses. The handsome lover of many women fussed with his bow, a silver-tipped arcus of such splendor that Oin must have positioned him last so that the approaching stag would not be startled.

Oin now made his way north, taking quiet steps through the leaf mold, until the huntsman could be seen no more. Simon tugged the hood away from his head, just enough so that he could hear something more than his own excited breath.

Walter lifted an exultant fist. The sound of a hunting pack could not be mistaken. Far off, their barking distorted by the undulations of the forest floor, the dogs had found their quarry.