King of the Wood

by Valerie Anand

  Edith, sick to the stomach and aware that her head was now bare and had been for ten days, saw that she was about to resort to it now.

  And prayed secretly, within herself, for strength, not to be quite broken, not to plead. Or make promises which she could not, would not, keep. Or bring on to her Aunt Christina’s face that look, that taut, narrow-eyed, bright-eyed, wet-lipped look of atrocious satisfaction.

  She prayed. She tried her best. She failed. It was July before she summoned the courage to cross her Aunt Christina again.

  ‘…this is Oswin,’ said Father Ilger. Oswin, his antlered cap removed, was flaxen and weatherbeaten, with good teeth. He was quite young. Ralph thought he had seen him somewhere before. ‘And here’s his brother Osmund.’

  ‘Oswin can make almost anything,’ said Osmund, ‘and whatever he can make, I can break. They call me Osmund the Clumsy.’ He laughed heartily and so did all his companions. He was heavier in build than his brother and looked less intelligent.

  ‘But he’s got a good eye for throwing stones to scare rooks off the seed,’ said an older man, lean, grey-haired, wary. Though they were all wary of their new lord. ‘I’m Hunta,’ the older man said. ‘This is my son, Penna Cowherd…’

  Penna had small features and bulging grey eyes but a general facial resemblance to his fellows. The next to be presented, however, a boy of no more than thirteen, was quite unlike anyone else in the group. His name was Cild and he was not flaxen like most of them but ash fair, almost silver, and his eyes were a strong, cold, blue-green, almond shaped, in no way reminiscent of the round grey or blue eyes of the rest. His fine skin was lightly bronzed with no trace of ruddiness and where did that chiselled, patrician bone structure come from?

  ‘And this lad is my youngest brother, Ketel,’ said Oswin, yanking another lad forward.

  ‘He’s the one who wants to enter St. Peter’s,’ said Father Ilger in Ralph’s ear.

  The introductions continued, bewilderingly. He could absorb only a little. He shifted so that the horses he still held were between him and Ilger. He leant on Blue’s accommodating shoulder and as if idly, the Norman land-lord bored by his peasantry, he scored the ground with the spur on his left heel. He drew an X. The ground was trodden bare and wet; the mark showed plainly. He looked fixedly at Oswin and then glanced down, drawing his spur across the earth, joining the top points of the figure.

  ‘This is Blind Edric and here’s Cild’s brother Uffa…’ but Oswin’s voice had become mechanical. He had seen. So had the others and a stillness had fallen on them. The lightening sky grew lighter still and showed Ralph the mingled surprise and caution passing across their faces before, peasantlike, they smoothed it into a careful blankness. Several, he thought, were holding their breath.

  ‘Blind Edric’s from Minstead, not Chenna’s,’ Oswin said. ‘He’s what happens when the Forest Law gets broken. He always has to be… shown off, so to speak. Lord Roger’s orders.’ He stared down, as if awkward or sullen. The toe of his boot, on top of Ralph’s spurmarks, traced a V-shape over Ralph’s figure. The five-pointed star lay between Ralph and his tenants for a count of ten before Ralph’s bootsole casually wiped it out.

  ‘I’m sorry for what was done to Edric,’ said Ralph. ‘Will someone lead my horses? I’ll walk back with you to the Tun.’ He knew what he had implied by that. On the way back, he spoke to them openly of the plans for the night and Oswin startled him by holding out the antlered cap to him. ‘It was alius whoever lived in Chenna’s house as wore these,’ he said. ‘I was only standing in, like. Tonight I was going to fight a man from Truham for the antlers – the proper ones, not these daft things. These’re just to keep Ilger happy, make him think we’re just playing games. Truham’s alius had an eye to upsetting the custom,’ he added, ‘but no one ought to challenge you. You’re entitled.’

  He might have been one of them all his life. He had drawn a figure in the soil at their feet and suspicion had become acceptance, just like that. He turned the antlered cap over in his hands and on impulse put it on. And then looked at them, shaken, as the folk of Chenna’s Tun dropped to their knees amid the mud and last year’s leafmould. He thought it was the cowherd, Penna, who whispered: ‘Lord.’

  ‘Daft things, are they?’ he said, and took the cap quickly off. ‘Get up. Not here. In the forest at the right time, keep it for that. Let’s get on. I want to unlock my house and eat.’ Speaking of his house brought a picture of it to mind and he remembered something. ‘I saw that I had a byre, but no oxen. Where are they?’

  ‘Dead,’ said Hunta. ‘We’ve had cattle sickness and yours were unlucky. We’ve had a lot of bad luck here over the last few years. But there are oxen you can borrow.'

  ‘Maybe the luck’ll change now,’ Penna said.

  ‘I learned my ritual in Normandy,’ Ralph said as they walked on. ‘You’d best tell me how you do it here. I want to do it as I should, as it’s always been done at Chenna’s Tun.’ Oswin nodded. And Ralph, with a surging in his blood, thought of the ripe-fruit breasts and the sleepy eyes of the girl in the green dress, who had ridden on the maypole. She was not here: evidently she did not come from the Tun. But she would surely be in the Wood tonight. Surely, she would be the Maiden.

  The cult of the Wood, as Elise had told him long ago, was never a unity, not even in the days when it was open, before Christianity and the condemnation of the priests drove it underground. From place to place, she said, the names of god and goddess varied, rituals varied, and so did some of the beliefs.

  But north to south, from the fjord country to the shores of the Mediterranean, and east to west ‘from what they call Russia to the coast of Wales and maybe beyond but that I don’t know’, certain elements were the same. There was a god who was lord of sky and forest, who was represented by a man in the rituals, who wore horns for a crown. In southern England, it appeared, he was Herne and he had antlers. In Normandy, as Ralph had said, he was also antlered, but was simply called The Horned One. In the south of Europe he was Pan and horned like a goat; far to the north he was Odin, or Woden, and horned like a bull. He was Skyfather and Huntsman of Souls and if times were hard he was the Sacrifice and his earthly representative might well be put to death, though it was a long time now since that had happened.

  His consort was the Goddess of Earth and Harvest and sometimes of the Moon, for she was Mother and Maiden alike. It had occurred to Ralph quite soon that to the Lady of the Wood, who was called Freya or Eostre or Diana, the Virgin that most people venerated owed more than they knew, or would care to admit if they did know.

  ‘When the Christian priests began to campaign against the Worship,’ Elise had said, ‘it took to the woods or – in some places – hilltops or heathland.’ Devotees had taken to recognising each other by means of signs. ‘We use the five-pointed star. Some places they use a cross with a loop for its topmost arm. And there’s others,’ Elise said.

  The sense of being under threat had drawn the Worship closer, eventually, than it had been when it was open. Lodges became more secret and then, to offset the sense of isolation and the fear of dwindling, sent out travellers to carry greetings to other Lodges and learn how the Worship fared elsewhere. ‘Frail as spider thread and no more visible to the outside work, but strong in their own fashion, we formed our links. That’s how I know so much,’ his stepmother told him. ‘We’re tighter-knit now than ever before. Not a unity, no. But still a…’

  ‘Still a federation,’ said Ralph, understanding.

  That night in the firelit clearing, seated on the log throne and feeling the weight of the genuine antlers on his head, Ralph was far away from Aix where Elise had initiated him, yet was utterly at home. He had not been able to accept the horse dealer’s invitation at Mont St. Michel, for Rufus’ army had left too soon. He had therefore not attended a Beltane since he was fourteen. But the ritual came back to him as if it had been yesterday.

  At Chenna’s Tun, it did not differ much from that at Aix. He had only to put the wor
ds into English and use the title of Herne.

  As if he had been doing it for years, he asked the ceremonious question: ‘Does anyone challenge the right of the King?’ He was less surprised than Oswin when the challenge was answered (‘Yes, it was the fellow I was to fight,’ Oswin said afterwards). In Normandy, there was always a fight when the kingship fell vacant for no one at Aix ever simply inherited it; in this respect the customs did diverge.

  Winning the contest was easy, however. He had been trained for battle and that meant more than learning how to handle a sword. They took off their masks and went to it with knives. In five minutes, he had his opponent, the Truham man, face down on the ground, left arm locked behind him, right arm pinned under Ralph’s knee, and Ralph’s own blade at his throat. The man yielded and was allowed to rise and swear his fealty to his conqueror. Oswin and Hunta between them then replaced the antlered mask upon Ralph’s head.

  Enthroned once more, with the thrill of conflict singing through him, he asked for declarations and a figure rose and asked permission to leave the Worship and enter a Christian Monastery, and to take the Oath of Quittance.

  This must be Ketel. No one wanted to hold people in the Worship who did not want to stay there: they were unlucky. Provided they swore never to speak of its doings to those outside, they were free to depart. Ralph gave his consent and administered the oath. Ketel, kneeling before the log throne, promised never by word or deed or look to reveal knowledge of the Worship to anyone who was not part of it, or even to admit to its existence, and was set free of it. He left at once, before the dancing began.

  Presently, Ralph lay with the Maiden.

  As he had supposed, she was the girl he had seen riding on the maypole. He learned later that she belonged to Minstead. She was not genuinely a maiden (far from it, he suspected) but perhaps because of this, she made him very welcome. She was all smooth soft curves and moist warm crevices and though she smelt rank and he concluded from the few words that they exchanged that she was stupid, she was unarguably female and she released him from a secret fear which he had harboured for some time now, that he could no longer respond to a woman. Afterwards, it was the thought of Rufus’ embraces which were repulsive, and when he caught himself, unthinkingly, making one of the feminine gestures he had picked up at court, he checked himself with loathing.

  Thinking of his return to court, he was pulled two ways. He had land now, not very much of it and not very good land but his, and in need of looking after, and for that very reason extraordinarily satisfactory to him. He had seen within two days how much the Tun needed him to bully and reorganise it. There was a field that needed draining; he must invent a system and chivvy people into digging it. It would be worth the expense to the community to buy two piglets from Minstead instead of one, and rear one for the Christmas feast as usual but kill the other in November and salt it down. To think about these plans, and realise that they depended on him, created a warmth within him.

  But there was still a part of him which wanted Rufus’ company and the privilege of being in the inner circle. He wanted these things enough to be prepared, still, to make love with a man though not enough to be able to pretend to himself that the idea did not repel him. Well, he had leave of absence till the end of August. He need not face the question yet.

  Meanwhile, he set about learning the ins and outs of his new home. He learned the names and boundaries of the surrounding woods, Brook Wood and the Hoar Woods.

  He made friends with the dogs of the Tun and grew used to the pungent body odour of their owners. He learned who belonged to the Cult of the Wood and which were the few – very few in the district as a whole and none in the Tun – who did not. He discovered that his own Lodge was not the only Cult Lodge within the New Forest, and that the charcoal burners who sometimes used his Lodge’s clearing belonged to another.

  They were a semi-itinerant family or tribe and no one knew for sure how many of them there were, for the smoke-seamed faces in which the whites of the eyes always seemed so luminous all looked alike to outsiders and the women wore hose and jerkin like the men. They all answered to the name of Purkiss.

  The identities of his own Tun people were easier to sort out. The strange, ash-fair Cild turned out on his mother’s side to be the son – incredibly – of the crone Elfgiva, who was not quite as ancient as she looked. But Ralph learned without surprise that on his father’s side, the boy was foreign. He was a Child of the Wood and was believed to be the offspring of a Norwegian visitor who had shared one of their feasts fourteen years before.

  He found that Oswin was indeed exceptionally gifted at all manual skills, and made beautiful arrows of distinctive craftsmanship. He used birchwood, with flight feathers of goose pinions, and wickedly barbed arrowheads which he got made to his own pattern at the Minstead forge.

  He had a trade at Brockenhurst where he sold his wares when the court was there, which explained why Ralph had thought he had seen Oswin before. He was a recognised local bowmaker and the presence of such goods in his house was accepted by the Foresters. The people of the Tun were reticent about this matter, but Ralph gradually gathered that at times this had come in useful and that Old Chenna had once been foolish in allowing a bow (‘and other things,’ said Penna darkly) to be kept in his own house.

  He learned too that Oswin’s brother Osmund, though an excellent shot with stone or arrow, was in other respects more than deserving of the name Clumsy. He learned that the pop-eyed Penna was given to seeing signs, to an extent which amused even his superstitious fellow-villagers. ‘If he sees a magpie in the morning, he looks over his shoulder for bad luck all day,’ said Elfgiva caustically. ‘And mostly gets it. You do, if you keep glancing behind you while you walk straight towards a tree.’

  Elfgiva had baked Old Chenna’s bread and washed his clothes and she now took over these tasks for Ralph. He saw to the rest himself. Of such fripperies as wallhangings and cushions he had no need. After the court luxury he even found timber walls and a swept earthen floor a refreshing change, and recognised the leather curtains which created rough rooms inside the barnlike house for what they were; a minor pretension on Old Chenna’s part. The other houses had no dividing curtains.

  He was not indoors much, anyway. There was work and to spare outside and jobs like mending horse-tackle or making arrows were best done outside for the sake of the daylight. He was fashioning an arrow, sitting outside his door in the July sun, hoping that the spell of good weather would hold till the corn began to ripen, when Ranulf Flambard rode up, alone.

  ‘My lord!’ Ralph shot to his feet. ‘I didn’t expect…’

  ‘I bet you didn’t,’ Flambard grinned. Then he said sharply: ‘Go indoors. I’ll see you there,’ and rode his horse straight into the byre. He entered the house a few moments later, ducking under the low door. He was dressed more quietly than usual but in Old Chenna’s house amid bare walls and plain benches, he still looked as out of place as a popinjay in a sparrow’s nest. He had a hawk on his arm, which Ralph bemusedly took from him and established on a low beam. He looked round for refreshments to offer this improbable visitor, found nothing but earthenware goblets and thin ale, and a very commonplace stew bubbling in its cauldron, and did not know what to say.

  Flambard, not in the least disconcerted, sat down on a bench. ‘Can I have something to drink? I’m hot. I’ve ridden miles, very fast. Oh, come on, Ralph, what are you all in a dither for? Anything will do, milk or well water if there’s nothing else.’

  ‘There’s ale, sir, but it’s not fit for you. This place isn’t fit for you.’

  ‘Rubbish. I was born in a hovel far worse than this and grew up in it, too. Did you suppose I was wrapped in velvet and fed from a silver spoon from infancy? Good God, I believe you did! Well, I wasn’t. That’s why I appreciate the velvet and the silver now. But I can do without them if I must. I’m here on business and I’m in a hurry and it’s secret. I was hawking and I got separated from my companions, that’s to be my story
. I had to see you in private. I’ve an errand for you. It would be as well if it isn’t traced to either of us but it’s to our mutual advantage. Which is why I picked on you, though I’ll pay you for your trouble. What’s in the cauldron? It smells good whatever it is.’ Flambard leaned forward, picked up the poker and expertly livened up the fire. Ralph, still bewildered, handed him a beaker of ale. ‘Now then, Ralph, as I said I’m in a hurry. So listen.’

  ‘…I’ve heard about this before,’ Ralph said. ‘I was there at Gloucester when Anselm walked up to the king’s bedside and told him to get married. In fact, I think it was raised even before that and in respect of the same lady. Anselm and King Malcolm both wrote to Rufus last year if I remember aright. Was that to do with this? Because whatever it was, it made Rufus angry.’

  ‘You’re right. It was to do with this. And…’

  ‘It could be necessary,’ said Ralph slowly. ‘If there’s no heir…’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Ralph? You’ve as much to lose as anyone. What do you mean, no heir? He’s got two brothers. All he has to do is make a definite will in favour of one of them and make his barons swear to uphold his choice. We’d all be better off that way than if he were to die leaving a baby to inherit. That’s always trouble. Children take time to grow, remember, and this girl herself is only twelve. It could be years before she has a baby. All this chatter about heirs is only Anselm’s excuse. What he really means is, if the king insists on going to bed with somebody, it ought to be a woman and preferably his wife. Anselm wants to save Rufus’ soul, not his kingdom. He’d let the whole kingdom slide into the sea without a second thought if he imagined he could preserve the king from damnation thereby. I’d like a mouthful of that stew.’

  ‘It’s only chicken and herbs.’

  ‘My mother used to make stews like that. Thank you.’ Flambard watched Ralph spoon stew into a bowl, and then sat with it steaming on his knees, eating with the wooden spoon Ralph had handed him and intermittently gesticulating with the spoon. ‘See here, Ralph. If the king goes through with this it means disaster. Don’t you realise that? For you, for me, for him and for her.'