The Forest

by Edward Rutherfurd

  He went over to them at once, therefore.

  She was sitting beside Furzey on the floor. As he approached, they both got up respectfully. The woman had a shawl of some kind over her head and as she was looking down modestly he could not see her face very well.

  ‘This is my wife,’ the peasant said. ‘She brought me some cakes.’

  ‘I see.’ He did not want to offend Furzey, but he thought it best to be firm. ‘I’m afraid she must leave before dusk, you know, and it’s already getting dark.’ The fellow looked sulky, but although she did not look up, it seemed to him that the woman did not mind. ‘Your husband’s cart will be magnificent,’ he said in a friendly tone, before turning back to the others.

  He spent some time in conversation while he went round the barn, so he was not surprised to see, when he finished, that the woman had left. Intending to trudge back to the abbey himself, now, he went to the small door in the huge barn entrance and opened it.

  The blizzard hit him like a blow. He could scarcely believe it. The thick walls of the barn had completely muffled the sound of the wind as it had grown: in the little while that he had been inside the flurries had turned into gusts and the gusts into a howling storm. Even by the shelter of the barn the snowflakes lashed his face. Turning into the wind, he had to blink to see. To go even the three miles to the abbey seemed a foolish idea. He’d better remain at the grange.

  Then he remembered the woman. Dear heaven, he’d sent her out in this. And how far did she have to go? Five miles? Nearer six. Across the open heath into the mouth of the blizzard. It was outrageous; he felt a sense of shame. What would her husband think of him and of the abbey? Ducking back into the barn, he summoned Tom and two of the lay brothers. ‘Wrap yourselves quickly. Bring a leather blanket.’ Only pausing long enough to find out which path she would have taken, he dashed out into the snow, leaving them to catch up with him.

  According to the hour, it was still afternoon. Somewhere above, the darkness had not fallen. But here below the light had been expunged. Before him, as he plunged forward, there was nothing but a blinding whitish fury, attacking his face as though God had summoned up some new plague of locusts for the northern lands. The snow came almost horizontally, enveloping everything so that, only yards ahead, the world seemed to vanish into a grey opacity.

  Dear Lord, how was he to find her? Would she die? Would she join the deer and ponies who, several dozen to be sure, would be found, stiff on the ground, after a night like this?

  He was quite astonished, therefore, having left the last hedgerow behind, to see just in front of him a dark shape, like a bundle of clothing, struggling forward into the blizzard. He cried out, taking a dozen snowflakes into his mouth; but she did not hear him. Only when he came up with her and put his arm protectively round her shoulders did she realize his presence as, feeling her start with fright, he turned her away from the driving fury of the storm.

  ‘Come.’

  ‘I can’t. I must go home.’ She was even trying to push him gently away and resume her impossible journey.

  Almost surprised at himself, however, he held her firmly. ‘Your husband is here,’ he said, although they could not see him. And guiding her path, he led her back.

  The blizzard that night was the worst that anyone in the Forest could remember. Down by the coast the snowstorm seemed to have become one with the churning sea. Around St Leonards Grange huge snowdrifts piled up along the hedgerows, covering them right over. The wind over Beaulieu Heath was either a searing whistle or a great white moan. And even when a faint greying in the darkness indicated that morning must have come, the blizzard continued, blocking out the light.

  To Brother Adam his duty was clear. He wasn’t returning to the abbey; he must stay in the grange and give what spiritual leadership he could.

  On the way back to the barn he had recognized the woman as the one he had spoken to about Brother Matthew. He was glad it should turn out to be such a good soul that he had saved from the storm.

  The arrangements were simple enough. He had them set up a brazier filled with charcoal in the barn. Furzey and his wife could spend the night there well enough, while he and the others remained in the dwelling house. And in order that there should be no misunderstanding of the situation he called everyone together in the barn after the evening meal and, having said some prayers, he made them a little sermon.

  On this cold night close to Christmas, he told them, as they found shelter, like the Holy Family, in a humble barn, he wished to remind them that everyone had a proper and honourable place in God’s plan. The two categories of monks in the abbey, he told them, were like Mary and Martha. Mary, the prayerful, had perhaps the better part, like the choir monks. But Martha, the loyal worker, was necessary too. For how would the abbey keep up its life of prayer without the hard work of the lay brothers? And did not they, too, need help, from the good peasants who lived outside the religious order? Of course they did. And last of all, did not the good peasant Tom need the support of his wife, humbler still but equally beloved of God?

  ‘You may wonder’, he said, ‘why this woman is allowed to remain here this night. For the abbot’s rule is not to be ignored. No women in the Great Close.’ He looked at them severely. ‘But’, he went on, ‘Our Lord also enjoins us to show mercy. Did not he himself save the woman taken in adultery from being stoned? And so it is, on my authority given me by the abbot, that we allow this good woman to remain here this terrible night and seek shelter from the storm.’ Then he blessed them and retired.

  When the next day the blizzard continued unabated – at times it almost knocked him off his feet when he opened the door – the poor woman grew very agitated about her children. But Furzey assured him that his sister and the other villagers would be taking care of them, so he forbade the woman to leave. And thus, with the brazier providing heat and Tom at work on his cart, she remained while, three times during the day, Brother Adam led them all in simple prayers.

  How she longed to go back. She didn’t really want to be with Tom. Her eldest girl would see the younger children were safe, but they would all be frightened that something had happened to her. Above all, there was Luke.

  What would he do? He’d have wondered where she was when she failed to appear in the evening. Would he try to investigate the cottage? What if the children saw him? All day she waited anxiously for the blizzard to abate.

  There was nothing much to do. Now and then Brother Adam would appear and she found herself watching him with interest. The lay brothers, she could see, found him distant. Tom just remarked, with a shrug: ‘He’s a cold fish.’ But then Tom never thought much about people if they didn’t belong to the Forest.

  The monk came from another world, certainly. Yet, as she thought of the way he had brought her in from the blizzard, she didn’t think he was cold. She said nothing, though. When he led them in prayer, in the half-light of the great barn, his soft voice carried such quiet conviction that she was impressed. She supposed he must be so much more intelligent than simple folk like her; yet perhaps, deep inside her, a small voice might have suggested: you, also, could read and write, and know what he knows too. If so, however, she could only answer with a sigh: in another life. Until then, the monk had something she did not. She did not say it to Tom, but she thought Brother Adam, in his way of course, was rather fine.

  She was entirely caught off guard late in the afternoon, when the small door of the barn opened with a brief moan from the wind and closed fast again behind the monk who, advancing to within a few feet of the brazier, beckoned to her. She went to him obediently. There was nothing else she could do.

  For a moment he stood there, looking at her curiously. He was stoutly built, like Tom, she realized, but a little taller. In the glow from the brazier behind them that warmed her back, his eyes looked strangely dark. Tom, working a few yards away by the lamplight, seemed separated from them, in another world.

  ‘I did not realize, when you spoke to me at the abbey gate
…’ He remembered her then. ‘I have just been told that Luke, the runaway, is your brother.’ She noticed that he spoke quietly, so that Tom could not hear them.

  A stab of fear went through her. She could not meet his eye. Her relationship was common knowledge, of course, but in the hands of this clever man it seemed more dangerous. She hung her head. ‘Yes, Brother. Poor Luke.’

  ‘Poor Luke? Perhaps.’ A pause. Then, very quietly: ‘Do you know where he is?’

  Now she looked him straight in the eye. ‘If we knew that, Brother, you’d already know. You see, I think he shouldn’t have run away, being innocent. And my husband would turn him in anyway.’ She could look him in the eye because, technically, she had just told the truth. She had said ‘we’.

  ‘You might know, though, mightn’t you?’

  She was conscious of the smell of his habit. There was a scent of wax candles in the damp wool. She could smell him, too. A nice smell.

  ‘He could be the other end of England by now.’ She sighed. This, too, was true. He could have been.

  Adam looked thoughtful. When he asked a question the lines on his broad forehead wrinkled. But when he was thinking he tilted his head slightly back and the lines smoothed in a way that was pleasing.

  ‘You said to me that morning at the abbey’, he said carefully, ‘that it might have been an accident – that he might not have meant to strike Brother Matthew.’ She was silent. ‘If so, I think he should come and say so.’

  ‘He’ll never return here, I think,’ she answered sadly. ‘He’ll have to walk to the ends of the earth.’ She wasn’t sure this satisfied the monk.

  And then she did something she had never done before.

  How does a woman let a man know that she desires him? It can be done with a smile, a look, a gesture. But these outward and visible signs would have been off-putting to a monk like Brother Adam. So she just stood in front of him and sent out that simple, primitive signal: the heat from her body. And Brother Adam felt it – how could he not? – that invisible, unmistakable, radiating, warmth that came from her stomach to his. Then she smiled and he turned away, confused.

  Why did she do it? She was an honest woman. She didn’t flirt. She acted from a primordial instinct. She wanted to suggest an intimacy and attraction that, even if it shocked him, would divert the monk’s attention. She had to lay a false trail to protect her little brother.

  Moments later, Brother Adam left the barn.

  The storm did not abate. They put charcoal on the brazier for a second night. Once again, after the evening meal, Brother Adam led them all in prayer. But some hours later, alone with her husband and only the glow from the charcoal showing in the great barn’s cavernous dark, she allowed herself a faintly ironic smile when, as Tom raised his stocky haunches over her, she closed her eyes and thought secretly of Brother Adam.

  It was deep in the night, about the time of the night office, when Brother Adam awoke from a fitful sleep and became aware that the moaning of the wind outside had ceased and that all around the grange was quiet.

  Rising from the bench on which he had been sleeping, he went through the psalm and prayers by himself in a whisper. Then, still not satisfied, he whispered a Pater Noster. Pater Noster, qui es in coelis: Our Father, who art in Heaven …

  Amen. The night. The time when the silent voice of God’s universe descended upon him. Why, then, should he feel so disquieted? He got up, wanted to pace about but could hardly do so without waking the lay brothers. He lay down again.

  The woman. She was asleep, no doubt, with her husband in the barn. A good woman, probably, in her way. Like all the peasant women, she had slightly red cheeks and smelled of the farm. He closed his eyes. Her warmth. He had never felt such a thing before. He tried to sleep. The Furzey fellow. Had he made love to her in the barn this night? Might they, possibly, be doing so now, even as he lay there in the silence? Was the cart maker enveloped in that warmth?

  He opened his eyes. Dear God, what was he thinking? And why? Why should his mind be dwelling on her? Then he sighed. He should have known better. It was just the devil, up to his usual tricks: a little test of faith; a new one.

  Was the devil in this woman, then? Of course. The devil had been in all women from the first. When she had stood in front of him like that this afternoon he should perhaps have spoken severely to her. But it was the devil who was using her, really; just as he was using her image now to distract him. He closed his eyes again.

  He did not sleep.

  The morning was sparkling. The wind had passed away. It was utterly still. The sky was blue. Beaulieu, its abbey, its fields, its granges were all carpeted and coated by a soft white mantle.

  When he came out of the grange, Brother Adam saw by the footprints from the barn door that the woman had already left. And for several moments, before he corrected himself, he thought of her, walking alone across the dazzling white heath.

  In late February Luke disappeared and Mary hardly knew whether she was relieved or sad.

  As soon as the snow had melted in late January he had started going out before dawn, returning only after dusk. Her terror had been that he might make tell-tale tracks in the frost, but somehow he didn’t, and every day she would leave a little food hidden in the loft where he slept.

  All through January, while Tom was working at St Leonards, she would sneak out after the children were asleep and then, sitting together just as they had when they were children themselves, they would talk. Several times they had discussed what he should do. The full Forest Court was not meeting until April. The verderer’s court had only forwarded the case to them, so until then it wouldn’t be clear how serious a view they took of the Beaulieu matter. They discussed Brother Adam’s suggestion that Luke should give himself up, but Luke always shook his head.

  ‘That’s easy for him to say. But with the abbot and the prior disowning me, you don’t know what’s going to happen. At least this way I’m free.’

  For her, it was a joy to have one of her family to talk to. And what talks they had had. He would describe the abbey, the prior with his stooping walk and claw-like hands, every lay brother and monk, until she laughed so hard she was afraid of waking the children. Yet there was something so gentle and simple about Luke that he never seemed to hate anyone, even Grockleton. She asked him about Brother Adam.

  ‘The lay brothers don’t quite know what to make of him. The monks all love him, though.’

  In a way, because of his dreamy, gentle nature, Mary had never been surprised when Luke joined the lay brothers; but she couldn’t resist asking him once: ‘Didn’t you ever want a woman, Luke?’

  ‘I don’t know, really,’ he said easily. ‘I’ve never had one.’

  ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’

  ‘No.’ He laughed quite contentedly. ‘There’s always so much else to do in the Forest, isn’t there?’

  She smiled, but didn’t bring up the subject again. With him in hiding, there wasn’t much point.

  They also discussed the quarrel between Furzey and Pride over the pony. He sympathized with her, of course, but here he showed the irresponsible, rather childish side of his nature, she thought. ‘Poor old Tom’ll never get his pony back. That’s for sure.’

  ‘So how long will this quarrel last?’

  ‘A year or two, I should think.’

  When Tom returned at the end of January, their meetings had to be curtailed – a snatched conversation now and then. And since there was certainly no sign of the quarrel ending she felt almost like a prisoner herself. Luke would be gone before dawn and come back after dark, with only the empty wooden bowl of food to show that he’d been there.

  Then he had told her he was going.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Can’t say. Better you don’t know.’

  ‘Are you leaving the Forest?’

  ‘Maybe. Probably best.’

  So she kissed him and let him go. What else could she do? So long as he was safe, that was all that mattered
. But she felt very much alone.

  On the Thursday after the feast of St Mark the Evangelist, in the twenty-third year of the reign of King Edward – that is, on a wet April day in the Year of Our Lord 1295 – in the great hall of the royal manor of Lyndhurst, the court of the New Forest met in solemn session.

  It was an impressive scene. From the walls of the hall, alternating with splendid hangings, hung the antlers of great bucks and stags. Presiding over all, in a blackened oak chair set on a dais at the front, the Forest justice was resplendent in a green tunic and crimson cloak. Assisting him, also in oak chairs, were the four gentlemen verderers, who acted as magistrates and coroners and ran the lower Court of Attachments. The foresters and the agisters, who were responsible for all the stock pastured on the Forest, were also present. From each of the villages, or vills as they were called, came representatives to render account for any crimes committed there. The court was also assisted by a jury of twelve gentlemen of standing in the region. Any man accused of a serious offence could, if he chose, ask that this jury should decide his innocence or guilt. The king liked juries and encouraged their use. Though not obligatory, many chose a jury trial.

  Today the prior of Beaulieu had also appeared, the abbot being still away on the king’s business. Two sheriffs from neighbouring counties had come with young Martell and his friends. It was a long time since there had been such a gathering and the hall was packed with spectators.

  ‘Oyez, Oyez, Oyez,’ the clerk called out. ‘All manner of persons who have any presentments to make, this court is now in session.’

  There were a number of cases to be heard, concerning the usual matters. Some were forest offences. All venison cases automatically went to the Forest court. So did crimes against the king’s peace. Civil cases between parties often came up too.