Falconer's Prey

by April Hill

  When Alice seemed confused, Fletcher laughed, and explained. “Yes, it is a bit odd. Much, the boy’s father is called ‘Much, the Miller’s Son’ by us, because when he joined Robin, he was, indeed, the son of the local miller. Robin rescued him from the Foresters as he was about to lose a hand for shooting one of the king’s stags. Since that time, he has followed in his father’s steps and become a miller, as well. Thus, he is now simply ‘Much, the Miller.’ His own son, Bartholomew, has chosen NOT to be a miller, however, which may eventually lessen the confusion of names. Unfortunately, Bartholomew apparently aspires, instead, to be an outlaw, and to spend his life goading the King’s Foresters as his father once did.”

  Still confused, Alice gave up trying to understand. “And the boy… the son, is lost?”

  “Lost?” he repeated with a chuckle. “Young Bart knows these woods and fields better than any of us. No, he’s gone off to kill himself a deer and get us all hanged, if I’m to believe his dull–witted friends, who at least were not so foolish as to go off with him this time.”

  “You’re not worried for his well–being, then?”

  “Only if his luck is as poor as your own and he meets up with the King’s Foresters as you did, and as he did, himself, on the last occasion he went out alone like this. There is an echo in all this of the manner in which Robin and the boy’s own father came to meet. Perhaps the adage is true, ‘Like father, like son’? In any case, come, walk with me while I find the rascal and I’ll tell you something about the plans for the journey to Burden Manor. Stay close and should we encounter trouble, run into the woods as quickly as you can.”

  Alice was both startled and pleased by the offer to join him, made, it seemed, in genuine friendship. She left her half–done laundry on the rocks and hurried along beside him as they left the cover of the forest and strolled pleasantly across the open green fields. Here and there, the wide, rolling meadows were broken by low stone walls and dotted with an occasional copse of oak or ash.

  “Another part of the King’s Hunting Preserve,” Fletcher explained, sweeping his arm across the horizon to indicate the vast expanses of forest and field. “Once good farmland, but now just as forbidden as the rest of Sherwood – to commoners, that is. The wood itself is more than twenty miles long and half that in breadth, rich with good game that would fill the shrunken bellies of a great many starving peasant children, were their fathers able to hunt here, as they should be.”

  “Would the king not be touched by their plight, if he knew of it?” she asked.

  Fletcher sighed. “Richard is a great and noble warrior, but even when he is not off killing people, he prefers France to England. It is rumored that he speaks little English, preferring French, and with no trace of accent. Moreover, he apparently finds our English climate too cold and damp for his liking. He is the true king, though, and rightful heir to Henry’s throne. As such, I will honor and serve him, as does Robin, but that loyalty grows more difficult every day, as we see his blasted war taxes and the extravagances of his idiot brother John take bread from the mouths of their own people.”

  Suddenly, he pointed to a moving figure several hundred yards distant. “That flaming red head you see bobbing there in the distance could be none other than our own illegal prey – the foolhardy and about to be thrashed within an inch of his life Bartholomew. I see from here that the little scoundrel has brought down a stag, exactly as he vowed to do. I beg you not to repeat this, since the boy’s head is already far too large for his shoulders, but Bartholomew is an excellent shot with a longbow, the finest I’ve seen at his age – good enough to someday rival Robin himself, if the young fool isn’t hanged first.”

  By the time they reached the boy, Bartholomew, he had begun to stagger under the weight of the gutted deer, which carried a rack of impressive antlers on its head and weighed easily as much as Bartholomew, himself. Fletcher hauled the dead animal off the young archer’s slender shoulders and shook his head with amazement at the one clean shot that had obviously felled the beast. Alice could see that Will Fletcher was making an effort to hide his admiration at the cleanness and accuracy of the kill, showing only his anger to the nervous boy.

  “What possessed you to chance such a thing?” he shouted. “In broad daylight, with the king’s men likely to be roaming about? It’s apparent you didn’t learn the correct lesson from your last brush with the Foresters, or do you simply want to be a blind, one–handed cripple for your remaining days?”

  “But we needed venison, Will,” the boy piped, his voice at that age where it cracked readily. “When I spied this fine stag, I knew what a feast we’d make of him.”

  Will scowled. “Feast, my ass! I expected to find you hanging by your scrawny neck from that tree, there, gutted like this bloody beast!”

  “I don’t fear those fools,” the boy said cheerfully. “I could have bested them if you hadn’t happened by, I swear it.”

  Fletcher exploded with wrath. “God’s blood, idiot! I didn’t ‘happen by’, but came looking for your blasted ass when you didn’t return with the sack of potatoes Fanny sent you for some six hours past! Have you nothing in that red head of yours but sawdust?”

  Bartholomew ignored the outburst, beaming with pride as he stroked the velvet back of his kill. “Tell me now, honestly, will this fine stag not make a better meal than a stupid sack of potatoes?”

  “Be that as it may, you’ll not be feasting on it,” Will said firmly. “You will be in the branches of an oak tree all night as sentry, and trying to find an unblistered inch of your foolish rump to rest easy on.” He took the boy’s arm, and pointed to the stone wall. “Bend over the wall, and make it quick. We’re in the open, here.”

  “Will, no!” Bartholomew yelped as Will Fletcher encouraged compliance with a resounding smack to the boy’s backside. “Not before the lady!”

  “If she is a lady, she will avert her gaze,” Fletcher said grimly. “If not, she’ll no doubt have seen a bare ass before today. Now, get those breeches down, and cup your balls if you value them!” When Alice had turned her back to them, the boy lowered his ragged trousers, trying hard not to burst into tears at this glum turn of events after his day of triumph. He bent across the wall, shivering in the cool air and fidgeting while Will pulled a branch from an overhanging tree and broke off two or three stout, flexible switches. He tested them against his own thigh, and winced visibly at the sting. Bartholomew jumped at the sound and gritted his teeth.

  When the first blow landed across young Bart’s shaking backside, he cried out just once, despite an obvious hope not to do so in front of the lady. The switches flew through the air again and again, making an unpleasant thwacking noise each time they struck and Alice flinched in empathy at each thwack. To his credit, the lad held his place and though he quivered with each painful stroke, he made no other sound after that first shocked yelp.

  After perhaps fifteen hard stripes up and down the boy’s hindquarters, Will tossed the destroyed switches aside and picked up the dead stag, throwing it over his own broad shoulders.

  “Your vexed father will no doubt finish what I’ve hardly begun when he gets hold of you,” Will said. “But now, we’ve been away too long, already. We’ll be late for Fanny’s fine supper.”

  The sniffling Bartholomew moved away from the wall, but kept his eyes down, humiliated at having been punished in front of a woman. Alice reached to touch his arm in sympathy, but he had already fallen into long strides alongside Will Fletcher, carrying his own bow and quiver and Will’s as well. Within a few minutes, man and boy were talking amiably and laughing, as though the whipping had never occurred.

  Alice fell in behind, trying to keep up and watching the two in wonderment.

  “Why is it he doesn’t hate you?” she inquired later of Fletcher, having found herself both amazed and annoyed by Bartholomew’s curious reaction to what had certainly been a most unpleasant experience.

  “And why would he?” Fletcher laughed. “He’d well earned it a
nd it’s over. Today, he’ll no doubt find sitting down disagreeable, but by tomorrow night, he’ll be the hero of the hunt, stuffing his face with roast venison and the sting in his young rump will be only faintly felt.”

  “Men may well be more forgiving then, than we women,” she observed, surreptitiously touching her own very sore bottom. “A thrashing such as that would never be so easily forgotten by one of us.”

  “Forgotten!” he repeated. “I should hope it certainly would not be forgotten. A whipping forgotten is a whipping wasted, Mistress. The pain may well subside, but not the remembrance of it –– nor the meaning of it, if it’s done well.”

  “Done well!” she cried. “You make it sound an art… an achievement of which to be proud.”

  “Not proud, Mistress, but perhaps satisfied – the satisfaction of knowing that the culprit will be disinclined to commit again the offense for which he… or she, was punished. When the whipping is done both well and thoroughly, it assures a lasting memory. If I am not being too forward in asking, do you not still….”

  Alice blushed and redirected the conversation elsewhere. “Well, I am absolutely certain that poor young Bartholomew will remember this day very well!”

  Fletcher chuckled. “Ah,” he sighed, “were I only as confident of that as you, I would rest a far happier man. Boys have a curious way of making a lie of everything I have just said here. I’m afraid they often require frequent repetitions of the lesson – as do certain young women, or so I’ve been told. Some appear to need the lesson applied in gradual steps – well–timed escalations in both length and severity, until that perfect wedding of duration and discomfort is achieved.

  “Young Bartholomew, for instance,” he continued. “Despite your disapproval, a hard lesson was in order for him today. Not that long ago, Robin rescued him from the wrath of a King’s Forester under similar circumstances. The pigs who had apprehended him were preparing to cut off the boy’s hand, or pluck out an eye – the Crown’s accustomed penalty for poaching. Robin has a soft spot for the little fool and chose on that day not to see him thrashed as he so richly deserved for taking such a risk. Had the boy’s foolhardy ass been dragged home and strapped ’til it was on fire that day, I very much doubt that today’s whipping would have been necessary.”

  “You have an educated way of describing a monstrous act, Mr. Fletcher,” Alice observed caustically.

  “Monstrous?” Fletcher repeated. “A simple whipping? Do I seem a monster to you?”

  Alice squinted as she looked at him. “You? May I speak honestly, without fear of reprisal?”

  “Of course.”

  She hesitated. “And your word is to be trusted? I have your promise that I’ll suffer no penalty for simply speaking my mind?”

  He laughed. “Perhaps it would be better to drop this subject. I could easily make such a promise now in perfect honesty and forget my pledge in the future – when I’ve had too little sleep and too much ale, perhaps, and when you’ve done something outrageous – again. In such an instance, I might well be unable to stop myself from taking you across my knee and spanking your bare, rosy bottom until you shriek for mercy. I advise you to say no more on this subject, but simply take to heart what I’ve said.”

  “You wish me to fear you, then?” she cried.

  He nodded. “That might be an excellent idea, Mistress. From what I know of you, thus far, I think it unlikely that you are afraid of anything. Being at least somewhat afraid of me while you remain in this camp would probably be the wisest course.”

  “Well, then, you will be disappointed, sir! I have absolutely no fear of you, or your threats!”

  Fletcher gave a deep sigh. “Yes, I was afraid of that.”

  Alice stood up to her full height and crossed her arms defiantly as he walked away, shaking his head. “This is a young lady with whom I will have to try a great deal harder,” he muttered under his breath. “A lady who will require a firm hand – a very firm hand!”

  * * * * *

  The next morning in preparation for their evening departure, Alice packed what few possessions she owned into a small bundle. It was no more than twenty miles to her uncle’s estate, but most of the distance must be covered at night, so they would finally reach Burden Manor after a full two days’ journey. Under normal conditions – in good weather and with no concerns about being watched or followed – their journey would have been a pleasant one, crossing some of the loveliest countryside in all of England. Their journey might even be punctuated by an evening stop at a small, cozy inn, where they could dine and sleep in comfort.

  Between Sherwood and Henry Burden’s large estate, though, Alice knew that they would be traveling along open roads with little cover – roads frequented by Prince John’s spies, and by roving bands of the Sheriff of Nottingham’s men.

  So, instead of a night’s lodging at a cozy inn, they would travel in the chilly darkness, and sleep – when they could – in the woods.

  Once they had reached the safety of Burden manor, Alice knew that Uncle Henry, as well as the curious Will Fletcher, would be asking questions of her that she would prefer not to answer –questions about her escape, and about the identity of the mysterious friends who had arranged her escape. Even Alice did not have answers to all these questions and were she honest with herself, there were several issues that troubled her deeply. In her desire to put behind her the long years of waiting and the nervous planning which had preceded her final escape and in her need to see an end to the hopeless and sorrowful years she had wasted at St. Mary’s, Alice had chosen to ignore her misgivings.

  She had been just twelve when her stepmother Isobel persuaded Alice’s father to place her in the care of the Abbess at St. Mary’s.

  “The child is too much like her mother,” Isobel said bitterly, (in what Alice saw as a traitorous remark about her own mother, dead these two years, now.) “She is wild and undisciplined, and if she is to grow into the proper young woman we both wish her to be, she must learn restraint and decorum. That ‘free spirit’ you so admire is not sufficient to make her a dutiful daughter or wife. The good sisters at St. Mary’s will instill discipline, as well as a good education, so that she can assume these duties, as all we women must.”

  If Edgar Johnstone, Alice’s devoted father, had feelings of his own on the subject, he made no mention of them and offered no objection to his daughter being sent away. The two years he had been married to Isobel, the widow of a London merchant, had been difficult, with frequent quarrels and his previously robust health was failing. His son Andrew, being older, had seemed to grudgingly accept Isobel, but Alice had set her mind against her new mother, there was little doubt about that. Not a day passed that Isobel did not come to her husband with another tale of the girl’s disrespect or disobedience. In the end, the convent seemed a good thing. Alice was bright and inquisitive, and would profit from an excellent education.

  Less than a full year after his only daughter was admitted to St. Mary’s, Squire Edgar Johnstone was dead, his body wasted away by an unknown illness that baffled his physicians. A year and a half after her initial admittance, it was decided that Alice’s irreverent nature and constant requests to leave the convent school masked a deep need for further spiritual reflection and discipline. Isobel quietly instructed the Abbess to see that Alice enter the convent itself, as a novice, at the earliest possible date.

  A week after she was informed of her approaching vocation as a nun, and in one of her less imaginative escape attempts, Alice was discovered to have dug a short tunnel under the outer wall, and provisioned it with a small bag of turnips for her flight. Taken before the enraged Abbess covered in dirt, she had been bent across the desk to receive twenty blows on her bared buttocks with the Abbess’s large wooden paddle. The punishment was repeated each day thereafter, for a full week, to leave the culprit in no condition to attempt any further immediate escape attempts.

  Eventually, when all else failed, the girl’s stepmother, the long–suffering
Widow Johnstone persuaded the Abbess that her step–daughter was mad, and possibly possessed of demons. At this point, Alice had begun to despair of ever escaping her cruel captivity at St. Mary’s. A determined Isobel made available to the Abbess and the Bishop two (very handsomely paid) physicians who swore that Alice’s repeated efforts to escape the loving community of God that had taken her in as an orphan were not merely misguided, but evidence of a dangerous obsession. (The girl had leapt twice from her window into the river below, once hidden inside a barrel of ale and nearly drowned, and at sixteen, already showing signs of incipient madness, had sewn herself into a shroud in order to be removed to the paupers’ cemetery, outside the abbey’s walls.) Her continual mockery of the good Bishop’s attempts to save her eternal soul only confirmed the diagnosis of lunacy.

  During all this time, her blasphemous and depraved accusations – that the holy Bishop of Hereford was forcing young women to appease his carnal and degenerate appetites had only added to the perception that the young woman was possessed. Having failed in her calling to the sisterhood, it was decided, she had instead taken up the cause of Satan. Indeed, it was only the girl’s manifest and longstanding madness that had saved her from being named a witch and sent to the stake.

  Having been spared the prospect of being burned alive, Alice was locked in her cell and submerged in baths of ice water for a period of weeks, to aid in either her exorcism or as a cure for insanity. It was never quite clear which. She spent several years confined to a locked attic room at night after she had finished her daily duties in the library, and although these years were difficult, Alice found that they were at least peaceful. No one was insisting that she become a nun. At twenty–two years old, Alice Johnstone might just as well have been buried alive.

  Finally, Alice’s new confessor, an elderly priest from the village of Wickham, interceded on her behalf by insisting vehemently to the outraged Abbess that Alice had been wrongly committed, and that she was neither insane, nor a witch. When he further announced his intention to testify to the young woman’s sanity before a liturgical tribunal, her step–mother was quickly summoned to the Abbey. Another method must be found to contain Isobel’s ‘problem.’