CHAPTER TWO

 

Orion’s Belt

June 1099

 

 

Rise at first light. Blow last night’s fire to life or wrestle with flint and tinder to start it again. Feed the poultry, milk the one remaining goat. If Ralph was away, feed the oxen and the horses too. Then take a breakfast of sorts; diluted ale and a chunk of bread smeared with honey. Only smeared. They sold most of their honey now.

Then hunt for eggs, bake, spin, weave, make cheese if the goat’s milk ran to enough curds. Or weed the vegetables or brew, or make candles or clothes… and always, always, with a daily main meal to prepare which brought the same nagging question: how much of our slender food supply dare we eat today?

The silver she had brought from home had long been spent but as a Senior Knight Huntsman, Ralph was not now ill-paid. They should have been reasonably well- found. But one harvest after another had failed, through wheat-rust, or flooding, or storms. At Fallowdene, Richard had rents from his villagers but at the Tun, Ralph considered himself his tenants’ leader rather than their lord, and half the time he supported them instead of the reverse. The King of the Wood played more part in his daily life than was ever openly admitted by him or by them.

He was home at present; he’d soon be in from the byre. Sybil poked a sluggish fire irritably, doing it no good, for miserable fingers were clumsy. She tried to be cheerful and not to think of Fallowdene, the Eden which she had lost, for to think of it much was to risk drowning in her own tears. Better to gossip with Elfgiva and laugh at Penna’s latest portent. He had foretold disaster from seeing a cloud shaped like a dragon. ‘More disaster?’ Cild had enquired caustically.

Better not think of Cild either though he thought of her. She had only to pass within a hundred feet of him and his head would turn. Outside the Wood, she was safe for he kept the Tun’s laws. But in the Wood, he had managed to have her again and again. He was a spiteful lover, taking pleasure in secret nastiness, like squeezing a doubled little finger or biting his partner’s tongue. Despite the masks, she knew him by these tokens as well as by the way he moved and the chill that seemed to emanate from him. But when she had tried to tell Ralph, he had silenced her with talk of the sacrifices due to Herne…

She hated Herne. The demon she had played games about as a child, had been excited and fascinated by, had proved to be a demon in good earnest, and would have been so even without Cild. It always gave her nightmares afterwards, to see her own husband, Ralph, normally kindly and human, turned into a creature half-beast and brandishing a sacrificial knife. The Wood had given her pleasure once and only once, last Beltane, when instead of Cild, the Stranger had come, who was skilled in his loving and had minded how it was for her.

He was gone but perhaps she could evade Cild for a while. She rose to greet Ralph as he came in. And then was overtaken, for the third morning running though for the first time in Ralph’s presence, by nausea. She dived past him into the open air.

When she came back, he was sitting meditatively by the fire, whittling yet another yew bow. It was not correct for knights to make money in such a way, but Ralph constructed bows and sent them to market with Oswin’s. ‘We need the silver,’ he said. His hands continued to be busy as he asked: ‘When?’

Sybil sank onto her heels beside him. ‘Elfgiva thinks near the end of January.’

He was silent, working it out. Then he laid down his work and looked at her. ‘Is it a Child of the Wood?’

She had been about to ask if he were glad, and then go on to ask about not going to the Wood. His tone startled her. She drew back. ‘It could be, I suppose.’

‘It must be. All through April and most of May, I was either at Winchester or at Malwood. I slept at Malwood as a guard, remember? And ran about the countryside looking for the charcoal burners. I saw you only once in all those weeks and that was in the Wood and even then we didn’t …He got suddenly to his feet. ‘After all this time. I’d almost given up hope. And then it happens in the Wood, with someone else.’ Without looking at her again, he went out. Sybil stared after him and then rose and followed. He was standing with his back to the door of the dwelling, gazing towards the forest. ‘Are you angry?’

‘No. Leave me alone. Leave me alone, Sybil. Go inside.’

‘You are angry,’ said Sybil flatly. ‘But why?’

‘Get away from me!’ He turned and made a half gesture as if to strike her. She recoiled but only by a step. She was frightened, but the injustice of it gave her courage. ‘That’s not fair. You took me to the Wood yourself. You gave up your right to lie with me. You said it was a sacrifice to make Heme relent so that our crops would grow…’

‘Be quiet.’

‘I won’t be quiet, why should I?’ Angry tears sprang into her eyes. ‘You told me that the Children of the Wood are a blessing. You told me very sternly how I must be prepared to go with anyone. You…’

‘Don’t throw my words in my face!’ This time he did strike out but Sybil dodged and darted back into the house. He came after her and found her facing him with a brand from the fire. ‘I won’t crawl and cringe and pretend I’ve done wrong! Hit me and I’ll hit you back, with this! You were willing to take in Bruno’s child. If this one isn’t yours either, whose fault is that?’

‘Put that torch down! Are you going to burn another house to the ground?’

‘Another house? I didn’t burn Fallowdene down! My mother was quarrelling with Alice.’ The branch in her hand crackled and sparked.

Ralph ground a clenched fist across his forehead. ‘Let me remind you that we came together in the first place, that you came to the Wood in the first place, because you were a wanton!’

‘You helped! Anyway, that was then! This is now! This is a Child of the Wood and I won’t apologise for it and I won’t be made to lose it this time, either!’

‘What do you mean? You weren’t made to lose the last one.’

‘No? Torn from my home, made to ride a pony for three days on end, what do you call that? Don’t come a step nearer!’

‘I was trying to save you. If I’d left you there, they’d have shut you in a nunnery for life!’

‘So you dragged me here instead, to work and starve and be forced to go to the Wood and then blamed for it…’ The tears spilled. The brand shook wildly in Sybil’s hand. She flung it onto the fire, stumbled back to the bed and sank down, crying desperately. ‘And now you turn on me. Would I go to that hateful Wood if you didn’t make me? I hate you! I wish I was dead. I hope I die when the baby comes so I don’t have to live here, hungry all the time and you blaming me, blaming me, for something you make me do!’

‘No, Sybil…!’ He went after her, meaning to pull her to her feet and shake some sense into her but her words dissolved into such weeping that his strength and all his anger were leached away and he found himself kneeling instead, his face in her lap. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. In the Wood I endure hell because I so hate giving you up. I can’t bear you to go with other people, I never expected it would be like this, it feels as if you choose to go, as if you’re deserting me…’

‘But I’m not! I don’t want the others. I don’t want them!’ She knew as she said it that it was the truth, that she would not even want the Stranger, although his must be the seed she carried, if only she could have Ralph and no other.

‘I know,’ Ralph said. ‘But that’s how it feels. Oh, why couldn’t you have conceived by me, at least, oh why couldn’t you?’

‘I can’t order such things.’

‘No, I know, I said, I’m sorry. Sybil, I love you, don’t you see, if I didn’t love you I wouldn’t be hurt like this, I wouldn’t be angry. It’s having to share you that hurts.’

Very gently, Sybil laid her hand upon his head.

The first time she had ever touched him, on the day he had become faint on the way back from the hayfield, he had noticed the gentleness of her hand. He looked up, moving his head with care so as not to disturb that soft hand, and saw that the gesture had been not only kindly but curiously royal, as though she were truly a queen. A compassionate queen.

In the stable at Fallowdene, he had yielded to her, given her power over him, but it had been a power only of the body. Now he had given her power over his spirit and although Sybil of the Fallowdene stable would not have known what to do with such a gift, this Sybil was older, no longer a child, could respond. She did move her hand, but only to take his face between her palms.

‘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?