King of the Wood

by Valerie Anand

  ‘Yes, I did, and I do know what I’m doing.’ Richard stopped, eyes focused on distance, visibly thinking. ‘We’ll have to buy more cattle, of course…’

  ‘What with?’ enquired Wulfhild. ‘All the coin we’ve got is for tax money.’

  ‘We’ve the mares we used Hammerfoot with, and two batches of colts, two- and three-year-olds. We can sell them off. The trees we felled last year can be sold now. I’d meant to let them season a little longer but again, never mind. Ufi can ride to Chichester and look for buyers for both horses and timber. He can try shipyards for the timber. We’ll dispose of half of it and hold the rest. What a good thing, Mother,’ said Richard with a grin, ‘that I didn’t let you cut it at the time of my marriage. It’s there to rescue us now.’

  ‘You throw that in my face?’ Wulfhild shouted. She had lost a number of teeth and spittle appeared at the corners of her mouth when she was upset. It appeared now.

  ‘I’m not throwing it at you,’ said Richard serenely. ‘Just pointing out that it’s worth trusting my judgement on occasion.’ Wulfhild scowled. On his pallet, Ralph found himself inclined to laugh. Alice was gazing at her husband in admiration. ‘You’re so resourceful,’ she said. And then put it into French and for the first time gave Richard the name that in years to come was always to be his. ‘De-brouillard!’

  The dispute passed although Wulfhild remained sullen for two days. Ralph, the onlooker, watched with interest. He had sensed very quickly that Wulfhild was a dragon because she had a treasure to guard and that its name was Fallowdene, and he understood that, for the Tun was a treasure to him, in the same way. Wulfhild quite evidently still disliked him, but he did not reciprocate this. He admired her.

  He graduated to joining the household at table and took to observing his surroundings, more keenly than he had on his previous visit. Chenna’s Tun was a poor place compared with this, he knew, but in time he might improve it and if so Fallowdene would be his standard. But much better harvests would have to come before he could buy tapestries or carved furniture like Richard’s.

  Presently, with Richard, he went shakily out into the sun to look at the weed-grown place where the hemlock had sprung up to kill the cattle. The weedy stretch occupied about half of a patch fifty yards wide and a hundred yards long, along the lower edge and round the corner of the ryefield. The other half contained the strange crocus-like growths of which Wulfhild had spoken so disparagingly. ‘What are they, Richard?’

  Richard told him. Ralph shook a puzzled head, ‘We had it in food sometimes at court when I first came there. At La Fleche too. But I believe it can’t be got now. If you’re looking for markets, I can tell you who to contact at Westminster.’

  ‘Can you? That would be useful.’

  ‘Anything I can do to repay what you’ve done for me! I wouldn’t have lived through this but for you. You’ll be getting that hay in any day, won’t you? I’ll give you a hand there too.’

  ‘You’re not strong enough yet.’

  ‘I can try.’

  Richard said: ‘We actually did very little for you. We kept you warm and gave you things to drink. You did the rest. It was more than just the illness, wasn’t it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He heard his voice turn defensive. Richard heard it too. ‘I don’t mean to pry,’ he said pacifically. ‘Forgive me. But…’

  ‘Me and the king? That’s what you meant, isn’t it? You’ve known all along, I suppose. Well, of course. Everyone did. When did you first find out?’

  ‘Very shortly after you joined the hunt staff. There was gossip, you know. I was still at court with de Warenne’s men and we didn’t keep apart; we mixed with the house-hold knights attached to the king. But I’ve never commented, have I? I’ve never felt entitled to. I always assumed that you hadn’t much choice, not with Rufus. And it would all have got mixed up with the kind of admiration that most men feel for him anyway.’ Ralph, recognising the perceptiveness of this, blinked and the angry blood subsided from his face. ‘Only now,’ said Richard, ‘…am I wrong? ... I think you’ve been grieving.’

  Ralph let out his breath in a long sigh. ‘I’m sorry too. I had no right to use that tone to you, after all you’ve done. But the whole court knows how things are now, the whole bloody army knows and now there’s you as well and can you imagine how it feels to stand here and… and talk about it? It’s over. He’s got someone else – that Frenchman who was with the envoys from Normandy. Tirel. They were all laughing at me at Hastings.’

  ‘I’m not laughing. I said, I think you’ve been grieving. But you’re coming out of it now, aren’t you? Making the crossing?’

  Ralph stared at him, astonished and relieved by the quality of this friendship he had formed. He was not aware that it closely resembled the friendship which had been between his father and Richard’s grandfather. They had neither of them been overly critical of other men’s behaviour. As a result, Brand of Fallowdene had found himself in exile, and Peter Longshanks had unhesitatingly followed him.

  ‘How did you know?’ he asked Richard now. ‘It is like that. I have to change from Ralph des Aix the king’s friend, into Ralph of Chenna’s Tun. Change back in a way. I’m not by nature ... I mean, I don’t dislike girls. I hope in due course to marry and have children for the Tun. Only Rufus is such a man that…’he lost his thread and started again. ‘The illness – yes, it’s as though it’s burned something out of me. Did I babble when I was feverish?’

  ‘Only once and it wouldn’t have meant much except to someone who knew already, like me.’

  ‘About the haymaking…’ said Ralph.

  The malady had attacked the throat and chest and those who died had mostly choked through lung congestion. Physical effort, forcing one to draw air deep into the lungs, found whatever phlegm still lingered, and induced coughing. It was good to be using one’s muscles again, and to feel the sun on one’s back. But at his first attempt, half an hour was enough to make Ralph pause from scything in order to cough, and Richard said: ‘I told you so. Forget the hay. Go back to the hall.’

  He shouldered his scythe and made his way slowly down the hill, marvelling at the way in which short distances grew longer when you were unwell. The hay meadow was all at once as big as a sea, the downs a mighty wave of chalk and grass about to break over him. Suddenly, fields and downs and the palisade ahead began to whirl and he sat down heavily on the grass beside the path.

  He rested his forehead on his knees and closed his eyes. When he opened them again it was because something was snuffling at his hair. The something was an amiable-looking skewbald horse and standing beside it, holding the bridle, was the priest, Bruno, who was looking down at Ralph with an anxious air. Behind Bruno, someone else was dismounting from the back of a pony. ‘We saw you stop and sit down,’ Bruno said. ‘You’ve been trying to scythe hay, I suppose. It’s too soon. We’ve had others relapse through trying to work before they’re ready.’

  ‘Is he ill?’ The priest’s companion came forward. It was a girl, wrapped in a light cloak and hood. ‘Oh, it’s someone I don’t know. Are you one of Richard’s friends?’ Her questions were inquisitive but her voice was kind and the small hand she laid on his arm was gentle. Bruno, with astonishing violence, struck it aside.

  ‘Let him alone. The abbey was full of ailing nuns and did you trouble yourself with them? Take the horses to the stable!’ The child’s face quivered. She was little more than a child, Ralph saw. She was studying him with a candid curiosity and her eyes were amazing, set on a trace of a slant like those of a hawk but in colour an intense azure blue. They reminded him of something. He searched his memory for it and then realised that they were like Wulfhild’s eyes. This was how Wulfhild had looked, perhaps, when she was young. Only this child surely had a beauty that old Wulfhild had never had. Those fine brows, the delicacy of the cheekbone and nose and that taut bud of a mouth had never been hers.

  Then who…?

  Then he knew. ‘You don’t think you’ve ever seen me
before but I believe you have,’ he said. ‘You’re Sybil, aren’t you? Sir Richard’s sister. You were here the last time I came.’ And had been whisked away shortly afterwards, sent to Withysham Abbey for misbehaviour. He had been sorry for her, he recalled.

  ‘I’ve just fetched her back from Withysham,’ said Bruno shortly. ‘There’s sickness there and no one’s capable of looking after her. She’s been getting into mischief. Did you hear me, Sybil? Take the horses. Messire Ralph, take my arm.’ He could walk only slowly and by the time Bruno had steered him into the hall, Sybil was already there. She was being simultaneously folded in Wulfhild’s arms (astounding, that the ageing Wulfhild could be this young thing’s mother), and berated by Alice who in shrill tones was demanding to know what Sybil was doing back in Fallowdene. Quite clearly, neither Bruno nor Alice was pleased to see her.

  He let Bruno guide him to his pallet and lay down, closing his eyes. There was, however, no hope of falling asleep. For the second time since he came here, family dispute sizzled through the air around him like forked lightning. Bruno, having seen his patient comfortable, had plunged headfirst into the storm and was now declaring loudly that Sybil was a naughty and mischievous child and that the Withysham nuns had begged him to remove her because she did nothing but ‘lead the others into trouble and even out of the abbey grounds. Instead of caring for the sick as you should, Sybil. Old enough to marry and as thoughtless as when you were seven. It’s disgraceful!’

  ‘You and Alice are always against the child. Not a good word to say for her but what harm’s she ever done? She likes to play and what’s wrong with that?’ That was Wulfhild, bristling in defence of her lastbom.

  Alice and Bruno, in duet, cut across her. ‘…irreverent and irresponsible…’

  ‘…Withysham’s no place for her any longer; they’ve no idea how to manage her…’

  ‘…a changeling, in my opinion. She just isn’t like other children…’

  ‘…and she’s a bad influence on other children, the nuns say…’

  ‘I’m not, I’m not!’ That was Sybil herself, raising her voice in a wail. ‘I’m not a changeling, I’m not a bad influence, it isn’t fair! Why are you so unkind?’ The last phrase was directed at Bruno. Ralph, opening his eyes, saw Sybil, sobbing within the curve of her mother’s arm, make a gesture of appeal towards Bruno. It was rewarded with an expression of extreme disgust. What in the world had the poor child done at Withysham to warrant that, Ralph wondered?

  Someone must have sent for Richard, for he now strode in, still carrying his scythe. ‘What’s this? Sybil back again? Why, may I ask, Bruno?’

  Bruno once more launched into a recital of Sybil’s misdoings, the nuns’ inability to control her, and her lamentable failure to make herself useful when useful hands were needed.

  ‘Well, there’s one thing,’ said Wulfhild, with a glance of mingled spite and triumph at Alice, ‘they won’t have her back from what Father Bruno says, so she’ll have to stop here, where she ought to have been all the time. You can’t live happily away from Fallowdene, can you, poppet? Nor could I, and I couldn’t put up with being shut in an abbey, either. If she’d been allowed to stay here in the first place, under my eye…’

  ‘She’d have run even wilder than she has already,’ said Alice, ‘and all this talk about she can’t live happily away from home is utter nonsense. You encourage her in it just to annoy me, Mother, but you never think what harm you might do to her, making her believe such a thing. Tch. What if one day she has to live somewhere else? What if young Brian gets on in the world? Fie may want to take her anywhere! You never know. If he marries her at all, considering how ill-behaved she is,’ Alice added grimly.

  ‘Alice is right,’ said Richard firmly. ‘Sybil is still in need of training. She must be better prepared for marriage than she is now, that’s certain.’

  ‘If I may offer an opinion…?’ said Bruno. ‘By all means,’ said Richard.

  ‘I think you should get that marriage made,’ said Bruno. ‘She will then be the responsibility of Little Dene instead of Fallowdene and I think marriage could steady her. Sir Brian and his son have both recovered from the sickness; it would be possible to proceed.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Alice with vigour.

  ‘She’s very young,’ said Richard doubtfully.

  His mother, unexpectedly, supported Bruno and Alice. ‘No, it might be best. She’s grown-up enough. So was I at her age. It would get her away from you two,’ she added venomously to Bruno and Alice, ‘and without sending her out of the valley.’

  ‘Very well,’ Richard nodded. ‘So be it. Meanwhile, she’s to be kept busy. Alice, set Sybil to baking this minute. Mother, if I find Sybil anywhere but in this hall and occupied when I come back from the hayfield, she’ll be sorry. And it’s to be the same, all day and every day, till the wedding. You hear, Sybil? And now I’m getting back to the hay.’

  ‘I’ll help,’ said Bruno, and picking up Ralph’s discarded scythe, went out with Richard. Clamour immediately broke out again.

  ‘Richard’s her brother and even he won’t stand up for her. And I know who is to blame for that, my lady, oh yes!’

  ‘He has her interests at heart if only you’d see it,’ retorted Alice, and pulling Sybil away from her mother, hustled her towards the kitchen.

  ‘Much you care about her one way or another. You just want to prove you can make my son dance to your music!’ Wulfhild shrieked after her.

  ‘I could say the same of you, only he doesn’t dance to yours,’ replied Alice over her shoulder.

  It was a great pity, Ralph thought. That lovely child could not possibly be as bad as Alice and Bruno appeared to think. The recital of her misdeeds at Withysham sounded as trivial as the peccadilloes which had sent her there in the first place. Some nonsense about telling tales of Herne Huntsman, to other children in the church, wasn’t it? Repeating a tale that he himself had told her, in fact. She had been a taking little girl, then as now, and he had enjoyed, one lazy summer afternoon, sitting beside her while they watched sheep being sheared, and telling her stories to amuse her.

  He thought that it was true, that Wulfhild and Alice were using her now in a private feud, turning her into a symbol of domination like a sceptre or a chain of office. Whoever controlled Sybil’s treatment, controlled this hall.

  Poor little thing. Better for her if she were married soon and out of this house.

  It took him by surprise, when his stomach suddenly twisted in tenderness and rage on her behalf and an unspeakable spasm of jealousy for the boy who would be her husband.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Lammas Marriage 1094

  It was not a betrothal feast, precisely, for Sybil had been promised to Brian the Younger for years. But the marriage date was set and dowry details finally settled to the accompaniment of a whole roasted sheep, herb-stuffed capons, river trout, elderberry wine and some exotically flavoured yellow cakes, in a hall draped with flowery garlands.

  It was indeed something other than a feast for Sybil. The pestilence had passed and the survivors, almost formally, were giving thanks, and even grief for the dead did not stop them. Most of Fallowdene was there. ‘Sybil embroidered her gown herself,’ Alice informed Sybil’s future husband and father-in-law as Sybil came slowly and ceremoniously up the hall, a cup between her palms, towards the two solid russet-clad figures to pledge them. ‘She has been well-taught with the needle and she made the bread you’re eating, too. She learned a great deal at Withysham. We’re so proud of her,’ said Alice mendaciously.

  The mendacity lay in the allegation of pride, not in the statement that Sybil was skilled in household arts, for this was true enough although she needed energetic chivvying to make her demonstrate her knowledge. Her manners too were irreproachable as she offered the cup graciously to the two Brians, the elder first. He, as the cup passed to his son, turned politely to say to Ralph, the outsider guest: ‘Will you be here for the nuptials? September the first is only four weeks o
ff.’

  ‘No reason why you shouldn’t stay, is there?’ Richard asked. ‘After all, you’d expected to be in Normandy now.’

  ‘I want to be home for the harvest, but I can wait till the start of September if you wish,’ Ralph said. He did not want to stay but it would be discourteous to refuse and worse, might require explaining. He could hardly tell Richard that he wanted to seize the chance to be home for the Lammas Feast, to sit on the log throne himself and not be represented by Oswin. And he could scarcely say, either, that he could not bear the thought of seeing Sybil allied to a boy who was nothing but a stodgy yokel who would be the better for a few years’ training with Helias of La Fleche or Rufus, though even they would be hard put to it to get a polish on him.

  When he thought about it, he was amazed at himself. He had recognised his true nature for what it was in the Wood. But that was a physical matter. Devotion, loyalty, the bonding of the heart, these things still pertained to Rufus. To let another person, above all a woman, call them out of him was like a betrayal. He had said to Richard: I hope to marry. But he had meant some calm, practical arrangement. Not this unlicensed surge of feeling…

  After the wedding, when he had done his duty as a guest and drunk to the future happiness of the pair (however improbable this might seem) he would go back to the Tun and in time, to court. Perhaps even now Rufus might forgive him. Perhaps even now their friendship, if nothing more, might be restored. He would find a suitable girl to give him an heir for the Tun – and the log throne too – and he would forget Sybil. He would have to.

  Her pledging done, Sybil took her place beside her betrothed. She and young Brian took little notice of each other. There were no sly glances or claspings of hands. Ralph wondered if they had ever spoken to each other at all today beyond the formal words of greeting and pledging. The older Brian was addressing Sybil bluffly, as though not quite at ease with the prospect of this elfin girl-child in his house. ‘We hope you’ll settle down with us, my girl. You’ll not be too far from your home and your mam.’