King of the Wood

by Valerie Anand

  ‘Unless I leave Little Dene one day. I hope to increase my holdings in time,’ said the young Brian, speaking up for the first time outside the formalities. His voice had partially broken. ‘Then my wife will come with me, of course.’

  ‘Just as we’ve been telling her,’ said Alice. ‘You do right to remind her.’ Had she, Ralph wondered, encouraged him to do so?

  Sybil was staring down at her hands. He thought that she hated being talked at in this manner and was longing to escape from the hall and the stiff ceremony. She had been kept in the house continuously since she came back from Withysham, baking, embroidering, making cheese and sweeping floors. He had noticed how miserable this restricted life made her. But Brian’s predictions for their future did not, he thought, appeal to her either.

  Out of experience, and in the hope of making her look happier, he said: ‘Getting a land grant may be harder than you think.’

  Alice, lightly, with a smile that turned it all into a joke, said: ‘Don’t look so grave, Sybil. You’re very lucky. Why, you’ll be mistress of your own home from the moment you set foot in it. You won’t even have a mother-in-law.’

  At the lower tables, several faces acquired broad grins. Wulfhild glowered. Richard turned sharply to Alice but she was looking so sweetly at him and Wulfhild that he decided to relax into laughter. Sybil raised her head and her gaze met Ralph’s. Her eyes were bright as though there were tears in them but there was a sparkle of pure wicked merriment as well. He wanted to wipe away the tears and share the amusement and did not think that the younger Brian would be any good at all, at either.

  The evenings were light. The two Brians rode off after dinner and Alice sent Sybil to change her clothes. ‘You’ve been the centre of attention all day but now there’s work to do, clearing up the hall.’ Ralph went out.

  He was intolerably restless. For once, thinking that he might find serenity in it, he went into the church. But Bruno was there before him, prostrate before the altar, lost in a passion of prayer. Ralph withdrew silently and went instead to the stable, to rub down his horse.

  Arrow had been turned out during his master’s illness and had grown fat. Frequent hard grooming helped to put back muscle. Ralph set about the task with a twisted hank of hay and was stroking the glossy hide, approving a new hardness under the skin, when the door opened and a small face peered round it. ‘Hello. I thought you were hard at work tidying the hall,’ Ralph said.

  ‘I escaped. I’m sick of working. Sometimes when I can get away I hide in the stable. I didn’t know anyone was here. You won’t give me away, will you?’

  She came in and sat down on a straw bale. The light was dim but good enough to show him how forlorn her face was. The day had certainly held out no promise of joy to her. ‘You can watch me if you like,’ he said doubtfully. ‘But if you’re found…’

  ‘You didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be here.’ Sybil smiled angelically at him. ‘You’re a guest; no one would expect you to know these things. You’re not part of the family; you’re just my brother’s friend. My mother says your father and her father were once friends.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘And you’re better from your illness now? If you’d been one of the family, I don’t expect you’d have caught it. I didn’t, or Richard or Mother or Aunt Edgiva at Withysham. Mother says we’re a strong family. Though Father Bruno didn’t get it, and my sister Blanche at Withysham did. Nearly all the nuns were ill as well. It was lovely. We did just as we liked.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘Oh don’t. Talk like that, I mean. Everyone talks to me like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘In that tone. Crushing me.’

  Her voice quavered. She looked so pathetic that he wanted to sit down beside her and hug her. He refrained. ‘How would you like me to talk instead?’

  ‘As if I were a person instead of a lot of faults that needed correcting. Tell me things!’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Oh, all sorts of things. What’s the sea like? I’ve never seen it but Richard says you and he have crossed it. I can’t ask Richard, he’s no good at describing things.’

  ‘Well, you’ve been to the top of the down and seen the land spread out below?’

  ‘Yes. From the north down you can look out over miles of forest.’

  ‘Imagine that instead of trees, that was all water, all of it, with huge ripples as big as small hills.’

  ‘Ooh! You do know things. Can you tell me,’ said Sybil, ‘what this means?’ The floor of the stable was of earth, and the soil of Fallowdene was chalk. There were always loose pieces about. She dug one out of the floor with her fingernails. ‘You told me a story about Herne once,’ she said. ‘And this is to do with him, I think, but what is it really?’ And on the planks of the stable wall, with an X and a line and a V, she drew the five-pointed figure, the pentagram of the Wood.

  ‘Where did you see this?’ Ralph asked quietly.

  ‘A girl at Withysham showed me. One of the orphans they adopt.’

  ‘And what did she say about it?’

  ‘That it was something to do with Herne, the god with horns, that you told me about. And that it was something to do, as well, with people going into a wood and doing that…. you know. I asked Sister Ermengarde at Withysham if that was what grown-up people did in church – I thought perhaps when children weren’t there – but she was so angry!’

  ‘I’m not surprised!’ Ralph was inclined to laugh and also to sweat. Priests, and possibly nuns, knew that the worship of the Wood existed but they were its enemies. It must be hidden from them or they would destroy it. Even the children of the devotees were guarded from knowledge until they were ten years old or so, old enough to understood the meaning of secrecy. He had been stupid even to tell Sybil a story of Herne as though it were just a legend, stupid to as much as mention Herne’s name. And someone else had been equally indiscreet within earshot of a little orphan girl with sharp ears. ‘Listen to me, Sybil. The Sign is secret. You must never draw it or even speak of it again. Forget it exists. Here, take this cloth and get it off that wall. Use spit. And never think of it again, from this day on, or Herne either.’

  ‘Why not? What does that sign mean? Why won’t you tell me?’

  ‘Shhh.’

  ‘I won’t shhh! I want to know!’

  Her voice shot up. Arrow moved restlessly. ‘You’re upsetting my horse. Behave yourself.’

  ‘I won’t behave! I want to know what the sign means. I already know half of it so tell me the rest, tell me the rest!’ She was jumping up and down. ‘Tell me!’ she said, changing to a coaxing note. She flung herself at him and into his arms. Ralph, knocked off balance, almost fell under Arrow’s stamping feet. The horse reared and squealed. Ralph rolled himself and Sybil clear just in time. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ He had hold of her arms, thrusting her back to safety. He attempted to shake her. She lurched back and forth in his hands like a straw doll and wailed: ‘Don’t, don’t! Everything’s so horrible! Why must you be unkind too?’ He desisted and she threw herself against him once more, snuggling.

  It was the smell of her that did the damage, the heady warm smell of willing femaleness. The smell that after so many years he had known again in the Wood.

  It rose into his brain and it was as though the Wood were all about them, dark and rustling and huge with power. There was power in the Worship; few men faltered at May Eve or Lammas, women climaxed who never did at other times, and now and then the barren quickened.

  He shut his eyes as Sybil’s mouth met his in a long and astonishingly expert kiss, and on the inside of his eyelids he saw again the leaping flames, the tree limbs lit orange and red, stretched out over the lovers in the attitude of blessing and permission. Drums throbbed. For one moment the power failed and he remembered where he was and who Sybil was. But Sybil whispered: ‘It’s all right, it doesn’t matter, I know what to do,’ and her hands were on him, gentle, teasing,
shockingly knowledgeable.

  There was another moment in which she drew back and he reached for her in agony, and she said: ‘But you must let me know what the sign means. I won’t let you if you don’t.’ He moaned and pleaded but she pulled herself away and stood above him and small as she was, when he was lying in the straw at her feet, she towered like a goddess. Her blue eyes no longer sparkled, nor were they childlike any more, but detached and calm. He told her, all the essentials of the Worship, in a few gabbled sentences. What did it matter, when as she said, she knew half of it already and she was in any case, yes, surely this female creature that was Sybil was in any case born to be Maiden and Mother… for tonight .…yes, it had slipped from his mind but it was true, tonight was Lammas.

  Then she stooped to him and his arms, enchanted into vigour out of the last remaining weakness of the pestilence, closed about her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Flames

  August 1094

  He knew he should leave Fallowdene at once. He made no excuses for himself. He had gone mad, outraged every tenet of hospitality, behaved in a fashion so unknightly that he could not himself believe it. He had abused his host and his friend and the fact that Sybil had almost certainly not been a virgin made no difference.

  He told himself that he was staying because he could not think of an excuse to change his mind and leave before the wedding; because Richard, faced with the task of breaking and training four colts ready for market had quite naturally turned for help to the friend who was such a good horseman, and now that he was fit again, he could not refuse. He also knew that like a man caught with a poached deer over his shoulder, telling the Foresters he’d merely found the carcase, he was lying.

  He was staying because he could not leave Sybil. It was not possible that he could be engrossed with the mind, the spirit, of a thirteen-year-old girl as once he had been engrossed with those of Rufus but it was true. This went far beyond her body or her beauty. It was terrifying.

  It was real.

  For three days he busied himself with Richard’s colts, avoiding Sybil and simultaneously inventing complicated excuses to be where he might glimpse her in the distance.

  He was breaking his fast on the fourth morning, hurriedly, meaning to get to the stable before Sybil came into the hall, when Alice rushed in, shouting for Wulfhild so urgently that Wulfhild, despite her lameness, came out of the kitchen at something approaching a run. ‘What is it, Alice?’

  ‘This!’ gasped Alice, and thrust an armful of what appeared to be white linen at her mother-in-law. ‘I put these in Sybil’s chest when she came back. She didn’t bring any with her but when I asked her, she said yes, she’d been needing them for a year now. Mother, she’s been here six weeks and she hasn’t touched them, they’re all stacked and folded just as I left them!’

  ‘So? The child’s only thirteen. She’s not settled down yet.’

  ‘At the moment,’ retorted Alice, ‘she’s being sick. Very sick. That’s why I searched the chest. I know all about that

  kind of sickness.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Wulfhild and then, as if there were no contradiction, ‘find Richard.’

  Gunnor had come from the kitchen behind Wulfhild. ‘I know where he is,’ she said. While she was fetching him, Ralph sat down on a bench in a corner, feeling shaky. His first thought had been: it’s mine. This is my fault.

  His second thought was: no, it can’t be, not if she’s been here six weeks and there was nothing… she wasn’t a virgin, I was right.

  His third was: but it could have been. I’m as guilty as though it was.

  And his fourth: poor, poor child, what will happen to her now?

  No one took any notice of him. He might have been invisible. He was still sitting there when Richard hurried in. ‘Gunnor said something terrible had happened, but wouldn’t tell me what. Is somebody ill again?’

  ‘Sybil,’ said Alice starkly, ‘is with child.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, Sybil is pregnant.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. She’s only a child herself and she’s never been alone with him in her life.’

  ‘Alone with who?’

  ‘Brian the Younger, of course.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with Brian the Younger,’ said Alice. ‘I fancy it happened before she left Withysham.’ She began to explain. Richard also collapsed on to a bench, where he sat staring at her. ‘I can’t believe this. It’s a mistake of some kind.’

  Alice shook her head.

  ‘But the marriage date is settled. We can’t go back on it.’

  ‘We can’t go through with it either. They’d never forgive us or her, when they found out.’

  ‘But what are we to do?’ Richard shouted. ‘If it’s true, we can’t keep her here and where can she go?’

  ‘What a fuss,’ remarked Wulfhild. She too had sat down, straight-backed, hands folded on the head of her stick. ‘My mother stayed where she was and had me, and no one thought anything of it.’

  ‘Your mother wasn’t the daughter of a knightly house-hold,’ said Richard, harassed. He looked ten years older than his age.

  ‘No,’ Wulfhild agreed. ‘She was just a thrall. Thrall folk don’t make a to-do over what’s just natural.’ She cast a malevolent look at Alice. ‘She was still my mother and Sybil’s my daughter. I lost my virtue, as you’d put it in your pompous way, when I was Sybil’s age. Thought nothing of it. There’s no need for all these hysterics.’

  ‘I’m not hysterical,’ said Alice angrily. ‘You didn’t have a baby, anyway.’

  ‘I think I almost did, once,’ said Wulfhild with a regrettable chuckle, ‘but I brought myself on with a pennyroyal brew. I’ll make one for Sybil if you like. Then no one’ll be the wiser.’

  ‘The bridegroom’ll be the wiser,’ said Alice ominously. ‘I hope he’ll have more sense. Too many good girls have had their reputations spoiled by that beldame’s tale. I didn’t bleed the first time. Plenty of girls don’t, my lass. I’ll deal with that, if anything’s said.’

  ‘But she’s not a good girl!’ Richard exploded. ‘We’ll be foisting a wanton onto them however many brews she drinks and whatever stories you tell, Mother. If it’s true. See here, Alice, she is only thirteen and anyone can eat something that upsets them…’

  ‘She tried to run out of the room just before she was sick,’ said Alice shortly. ‘I called her back. I asked what was the matter. She was trying to hide it. And when I taxed her with the cause, she didn’t deny it; she just cried.’ With his head in his hands, Richard said: ‘One thing I’d like to know then is, if it isn’t Young Brian’s, who the devil’s is it?’

  ‘Probably the devil’s,’ said Alice.

  He sat up again. ‘I doubt that but I think we’d better find out. Fetch Sybil here.’

  From the doorway, Father Bruno said: ‘There’s no need.’ He must have been there, unnoticed, for some moments.

  ‘No doubt you’ll wish to talk to her but you needn’t ask her who the man was,’ he said. His face was skull-white. Bewildered, they watched as he came forward into the hall. Gunnor followed. ‘Gunnor fetched me. She thought you might need a priest’s help. So you do, though not for the reasons she supposed. I am the father of the child.’

  Every succeeding revelation weakened another pair of knees, knocking people off their feet like skittles. This time it was Alice who staggered and sat down, on a handy stool. They were all speechless until Richard, staring at Bruno in fascinated horror as though, riding through an ordinary forest, he had come face to face with antlered Herne, said: ‘How? And when?’

  ‘Coming back from Withysham.’ Bruno’s voice was steady but sweat stood out in droplets on his smooth, high forehead. ‘On the way I tried to speak to her about her bad behaviour there. She laughed at me at first and then became sulky. She jumped off her pony and ran away from me. I called her but she didn’t come back so I tied the horses to a bush and went into the trees after her, on foot. The unde
rgrowth was thick; I couldn’t ride through it. She ran away again so I chased her. I caught her and she fell and I went down with her and…

  God forgive me,’ said Bruno in a low voice. ‘She’s a devil’s snare, as Eve was to Adam, but I have never exonerated Adam. He did not have to eat the apple. I need not have… it just happened. She fought me but as if she only half meant it and then she clung to me and…’

  Ralph, the unheeded audience, could have said: ‘I know.’

  ‘I shall leave Fallowdene, of course,’ Bruno said. Ralph, studying his blanched face, thought that Bruno, like himself, could hardly believe in his own misdoing. The only person in the hall who was not registering shock and disbelief, in fact, was old Wulfhild, who kept nodding to herself as though she were saying I told you so. Had she sensed this potentiality in Bruno – or in Ralph? She certainly detested them both. ‘I shall go to my bishop,’ Bruno was saying, ‘and tell him everything. What comes then must come. But I am still a priest. I can’t offer…’

  ‘I should think not,’ said Alice. She gave him a long stare of sheer revulsion and turned her head away.

  ‘There’s always a way to manage,’ declared Wulfhild. ‘You’re good enough at conjuring up ways to make money for cattle, Richard. Now do some conjuring for your sister. I’ll make a brew but if that fails she can go to Withysham and we’ll say she’s ill and being nursed there. When the baby’s born they can look after it for a while till the marriage is made. Later, maybe, we’ll give a home to an orphaned relative.’

  ‘When a girl has a child, that leaves signs,’ said Alice flatly. ‘We might have got away with the other but not that.’

  ‘The Brians may not be as well-informed as all that,’ said Wulfhild optimistically. ‘If Sybil rubs oil into her skin…’

  ‘But it’s wrong!’ Alice shrieked, jumping up again. ‘It’s deception! Richard!’