King of the Wood

by Valerie Anand

  There was silence.

  Then the King said: ‘Let us hope. Perhaps this year we’ll have a harvest fit to call one. Let us proceed. Who comes to the Beltane Fire as the Maiden?’

  A female figure was led forward. It was not the girl Henry had seen. That girl’s new goat mask had a patch of white hair between its small horns and he could still see her. The Stag King rose as the nominated Maiden was brought to him. He took her hand. The swift fire- shadows which patterned the wide oak trunks behind them patterned the couple also, uniting them with their forest background. The king’s antlers, springing graciously curved from his brow, were branched like the trees. He raised the Maiden’s hand aloft and what had a moment before been frightening and grotesque slipped over an unseen boundary and took on an extraordinary nobility. It was as though the nature of the forest, the aliveness which Henry had sensed when he found himself alone at nightfall, had entered into them.

  Henry, pressed behind his tree, was also changed, was no longer a count and the brother of a king, but was an intruder at a stranger’s court, less than nobody, with neither the right nor the duty to do other than run from his hiding place and kneel at the Stag King’s feet. He dug his fingers into the rough bark and leant his face against it, trying to shut out the compulsion of that terrible, calm, animal mask between the man’s body and the ivory-pronged crown. And went on seeing the King inside his closed eyelids, in detail, even to the tiny point of an embryo thirteenth point on one antler and the three moles that made a slanting line across the gleaming chest.

  The Stag King’s voice came again. ‘We have shed blood to make the earth kind. May our union cause the seed to spring. Begin the dance!’

  The drums had started up again. A flute joined in. They made an intertwined rhythm as troublesome to the human soul as certain caresses to the human body. The King and the Maiden still stood hand in hand before the throne but the others were forming into a double circle, women on the inside, holding hands and facing out; men outside and facing in. The two circles were moving, dancing, in opposite directions. The tempo quickened.

  The dancers released each other’s hands, began to whirl and stamp, each now dancing alone.

  The clearing was full of danger. Those within it were detached from the daylight world where they were humble and afraid. Ancient violences were barely below the surface. Henry remembered other tales, of Foresters found mysteriously dead, seemingly thrown headfirst against a tree by a plunging horse, a common enough accident (it had almost happened to him a few hours ago), but in the New Forest at least, it was commoner than it ought to be. But he could see the white-patched mask and below it the body of that beautiful, worn girl, swaying from the hips, visible between two spinning, leaping male dancers. Her hipbones jutted and her breasts were like small apples. His palms burned for them.

  The drums were beating in his blood and even fear could be an aphrodisiac. He was already wrenching at his clothing. He shed it, haphazard, and ran, crouching. He caught up a mask from the pile and crammed it on. It seemed to fasten at the back. He secured it as he started to dance. The weight of the horns made it feel queer, un-balanced; it restricted vision and he lost his bearings for a moment. But a knight’s helm had a similar effect; he adjusted quickly. He mingled with the others, melting easily in among them in the wavering mix of light and shadow, working his way towards the white-patched mask, giving himself up, like the rest, to the insistence of the drums. No one heeded him.

  The moment came and he did not know how he knew it. The drums knew, his body knew, all their bodies understood as though they were linked into one mind. Hands outstretched, he made for the girl. Someone almost cut in on him but his aching flesh wouldn’t be denied three times in two days; he shouldered the opposition aside. He caught the girl’s hands. He found that the masks were designed to allow kissing. She smelt of wildness and fresh herbs and female animal. He was hot and huge, crying for relief. He swept her away from the light, into the blackness at the clearing’s edge, and together they slid to the damp soft leafmould. He had thought she would yield at once but although she did not hold him off, he sensed through his own urgency a hesitation in her. He coaxed, crooning and stroking where he knew response should be, until it began. She softened and drew him to her, guiding him home.

  She took time to climb. It was anguish but he held himself back to wait for her, anxious not to disappoint her, as though it would somehow invalidate a rite. Then he heard her gasp: ‘Yes! Now!’ and he let go. They lay collapsed, the mould clinging to their sweating skin. He felt belatedly how very very thin she was, thinner even than she had seemed in the firelight. Her knees were sharp and her wrists unbearably fragile. He stroked them. Suddenly, she whispered: ‘Who are you? You’re not one of us! No one said a visitor was with us tonight! How did you get here?’

  He clutched her hard because as long as they lay embracing, no one would interrupt them. For the moment, she was his shield. But they were out of the world where earthly titles mattered and he knew that if she shouted her discovery to the meeting, he would be found in the morning with his brains knocked out, against a tree. No doubt someone would think of the theory that lightning had frightened his horse. There might well be little enquiry. ‘How do you know?’ he whispered back.

  ‘You’re not thin! And you spoke in French just now when we were near the top. Only the King knows French and you’re not him.’ Her hands stroked his back but he felt them trembling. ‘They’ll kill you if they find out. Where did you come from?’

  ‘I missed my way in the woods. I meant to introduce myself to your – er – elders, earlier but I didn’t arrive in time.

  ’ Henry invented details at a speed born out of the urge to survive. ‘Then I saw the fight of your fire. I stood and watched and then your mask slipped and I saw you. I couldn’t keep aloof after that. Forgive me?’ He made his voice sound pleading. ‘I am one of you, you know,’ he said untruthfully, ‘though I haven’t been officially introduced.’

  ‘But it’s forbidden to take part unless you’re announced!’ He could hear the terror in her voice. ‘You must go away, quickly, quickly! Your clothes, where are they?’

  ‘Behind a tree somewhere. Over there.’ He hadn’t marked that tree and hoped to God he could find it again.

  ‘You’re nice. It was… there’s one who almost always manages to catch me and I hate him, he does little, cruel things. I complained once to my husband but he said that in the Wood, what happens… must happen; it’s the sacrifice we make to Herne. They’d all be cruel if they caught you. I don’t want you to be hurt. Go now, quickly!’

  ‘I know I’m well fed compared to you,’ said Henry meekly. ‘But I was lost for hours. I’m starving and I can smell food.’

  ‘You’re mad, why don’t you go? You could slip off while they’re all still thinking of other things. There won’t be much to eat, we can’t spare much. These feasts are a burden to us. It’ll be a mouthful of goatmeat and a piece of bread all round. Oh, very well!’ She yielded, sensing that he would not. People were drifting back into the clearing, their frenzy spent, and food was being handed out. She darted out into the clearing and in a few minutes slipped back with the victuals. The bread was black and coarse, the meat half-burnt and half-raw, but he wolfed it thankfully. ‘Which way do I go?’ he muttered with his mouth full. ‘I was lost; I told you.’

  ‘There’s a path. It crosses the road from Winchester to the coast, near a place called Malwood. Hide till it’s light enough to see. Then go. We’ll be gone before dawn.’

  ‘Blessings on you. What’s your name?’

  She drew back. ‘I can’t tell you, you know that! We leave our names behind when we come here. Is that not the custom where you come from?’

  He had made an error. He retrieved it quickly. ‘Not so strictly, no.’ She was still trembling and he stroked her as one might a nervous dog. ‘Listen, you hate this business. You must, if someone you detest keeps grabbing you. Why do you do it?’

 
‘Because I must! I have to. I’m the wife of the King.’

  ‘I knew I had good taste. Out of you all, I pick the queen. But your husband makes you go with this man you’re afraid of! Come away with me now and I’ll see that nothing like that ever happens to you again. I’ll protect you.’

  ‘I can’t. I’d be afraid. You could be anyone. Anyone could say that. Don’t, please.’

  ‘All right. But take off your mask again and let me see your face just once more.’

  ‘No, it’s forbidden!’

  ‘I’ve seen your face already tonight, even though it was by chance,’ he said, and removed her mask himself, sheltering her with his body so that no one else should see. Her beauty astounded him all over again when he turned her face into the light. She smiled timidly and said: ‘Now you.’

  He took off his own mask and they looked at each other and kissed once, bareface. ‘The path is over there,’ she whispered, pointing. ‘Hide well away from it till we’re gone.’ He did as she said, crawling away from her into the thicket and then prowling warily round the clearing edge until, to his relief, he had found his clothes again. Lying in a bush-fringed hollow, he heard the gathering depart and when they had gone, he found his horse easily in the first light of daybreak. By sheer good luck, it seemed, he and the horse had halted well away from the path and no one had fallen over them as they assembled.

  He might have thought it was all a dream, except that when he returned to the clearing to get his bearings in order to find the path, the bleached log throne was there, and the ashes of a fire, still warm.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Orion’s Belt

  June 1099

  Rise at first light. Blow last night’s fire to life or wrestle with flint and tinder to start it again. Feed the poultry, milk the one remaining goat. If Ralph was away, feed the oxen and the horses too. Then take a breakfast of sorts; diluted ale and a chunk of bread smeared with honey. Only smeared. They sold most of their honey now.

  Then hunt for eggs, bake, spin, weave, make cheese if the goat’s milk ran to enough curds. Or weed the vegetables or brew, or make candles or clothes… and always, always, with a daily main meal to prepare which brought the same nagging question: how much of our slender food supply dare we eat today?

  The silver she had brought from home had long been spent but as a Senior Knight Huntsman, Ralph was not now ill-paid. They should have been reasonably well- found. But one harvest after another had failed, through wheat-rust, or flooding, or storms. At Fallowdene, Richard had rents from his villagers but at the Tun, Ralph considered himself his tenants’ leader rather than their lord, and half the time he supported them instead of the reverse. The King of the Wood played more part in his daily life than was ever openly admitted by him or by them.

  He was home at present; he’d soon be in from the byre. Sybil poked a sluggish fire irritably, doing it no good, for miserable fingers were clumsy. She tried to be cheerful and not to think of Fallowdene, the Eden which she had lost, for to think of it much was to risk drowning in her own tears. Better to gossip with Elfgiva and laugh at Penna’s latest portent. He had foretold disaster from seeing a cloud shaped like a dragon. ‘More disaster?’ Cild had enquired caustically.

  Better not think of Cild either though he thought of her. She had only to pass within a hundred feet of him and his head would turn. Outside the Wood, she was safe for he kept the Tun’s laws. But in the Wood, he had managed to have her again and again. He was a spiteful lover, taking pleasure in secret nastiness, like squeezing a doubled little finger or biting his partner’s tongue. Despite the masks, she knew him by these tokens as well as by the way he moved and the chill that seemed to emanate from him. But when she had tried to tell Ralph, he had silenced her with talk of the sacrifices due to Herne…

  She hated Herne. The demon she had played games about as a child, had been excited and fascinated by, had proved to be a demon in good earnest, and would have been so even without Cild. It always gave her nightmares afterwards, to see her own husband, Ralph, normally kindly and human, turned into a creature half-beast and brandishing a sacrificial knife. The Wood had given her pleasure once and only once, last Beltane, when instead of Cild, the Stranger had come, who was skilled in his loving and had minded how it was for her.

  He was gone but perhaps she could evade Cild for a while. She rose to greet Ralph as he came in. And then was overtaken, for the third morning running though for the first time in Ralph’s presence, by nausea. She dived past him into the open air.

  When she came back, he was sitting meditatively by the fire, whittling yet another yew bow. It was not correct for knights to make money in such a way, but Ralph constructed bows and sent them to market with Oswin’s. ‘We need the silver,’ he said. His hands continued to be busy as he asked: ‘When?’

  Sybil sank onto her heels beside him. ‘Elfgiva thinks near the end of January.’

  He was silent, working it out. Then he laid down his work and looked at her. ‘Is it a Child of the Wood?’

  She had been about to ask if he were glad, and then go on to ask about not going to the Wood. His tone startled her. She drew back. ‘It could be, I suppose.’

  ‘It must be. All through April and most of May, I was either at Winchester or at Malwood. I slept at Malwood as a guard, remember? And ran about the countryside looking for the charcoal burners. I saw you only once in all those weeks and that was in the Wood and even then we didn’t …He got suddenly to his feet. ‘After all this time. I’d almost given up hope. And then it happens in the Wood, with someone else.’ Without looking at her again, he went out. Sybil stared after him and then rose and followed. He was standing with his back to the door of the dwelling, gazing towards the forest. ‘Are you angry?’

  ‘No. Leave me alone. Leave me alone, Sybil. Go inside.’

  ‘You are angry,’ said Sybil flatly. ‘But why?’

  ‘Get away from me!’ He turned and made a half gesture as if to strike her. She recoiled but only by a step. She was frightened, but the injustice of it gave her courage. ‘That’s not fair. You took me to the Wood yourself. You gave up your right to lie with me. You said it was a sacrifice to make Heme relent so that our crops would grow…’

  ‘Be quiet.’

  ‘I won’t be quiet, why should I?’ Angry tears sprang into her eyes. ‘You told me that the Children of the Wood are a blessing. You told me very sternly how I must be prepared to go with anyone. You…’

  ‘Don’t throw my words in my face!’ This time he did strike out but Sybil dodged and darted back into the house. He came after her and found her facing him with a brand from the fire. ‘I won’t crawl and cringe and pretend I’ve done wrong! Hit me and I’ll hit you back, with this! You were willing to take in Bruno’s child. If this one isn’t yours either, whose fault is that?’

  ‘Put that torch down! Are you going to burn another house to the ground?’

  ‘Another house? I didn’t burn Fallowdene down! My mother was quarrelling with Alice.’ The branch in her hand crackled and sparked.

  Ralph ground a clenched fist across his forehead. ‘Let me remind you that we came together in the first place, that you came to the Wood in the first place, because you were a wanton!’

  ‘You helped! Anyway, that was then! This is now! This is a Child of the Wood and I won’t apologise for it and I won’t be made to lose it this time, either!’

  ‘What do you mean? You weren’t made to lose the last one.’

  ‘No? Torn from my home, made to ride a pony for three days on end, what do you call that? Don’t come a step nearer!’

  ‘I was trying to save you. If I’d left you there, they’d have shut you in a nunnery for life!’

  ‘So you dragged me here instead, to work and starve and be forced to go to the Wood and then blamed for it…’ The tears spilled. The brand shook wildly in Sybil’s hand. She flung it onto the fire, stumbled back to the bed and sank down, crying desperately. ‘And now you turn on me. Would I go to that ha
teful Wood if you didn’t make me? I hate you! I wish I was dead. I hope I die when the baby comes so I don’t have to live here, hungry all the time and you blaming me, blaming me, for something you make me do!’

  ‘No, Sybil…!’ He went after her, meaning to pull her to her feet and shake some sense into her but her words dissolved into such weeping that his strength and all his anger were leached away and he found himself kneeling instead, his face in her lap. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. In the Wood I endure hell because I so hate giving you up. I can’t bear you to go with other people, I never expected it would be like this, it feels as if you choose to go, as if you’re deserting me…’

  ‘But I’m not! I don’t want the others. I don’t want them!’ She knew as she said it that it was the truth, that she would not even want the Stranger, although his must be the seed she carried, if only she could have Ralph and no other.

  ‘I know,’ Ralph said. ‘But that’s how it feels. Oh, why couldn’t you have conceived by me, at least, oh why couldn’t you?’

  ‘I can’t order such things.’

  ‘No, I know, I said, I’m sorry. Sybil, I love you, don’t you see, if I didn’t love you I wouldn’t be hurt like this, I wouldn’t be angry. It’s having to share you that hurts.’

  Very gently, Sybil laid her hand upon his head.

  The first time she had ever touched him, on the day he had become faint on the way back from the hayfield, he had noticed the gentleness of her hand. He looked up, moving his head with care so as not to disturb that soft hand, and saw that the gesture had been not only kindly but curiously royal, as though she were truly a queen. A compassionate queen.

  In the stable at Fallowdene, he had yielded to her, given her power over him, but it had been a power only of the body. Now he had given her power over his spirit and although Sybil of the Fallowdene stable would not have known what to do with such a gift, this Sybil was older, no longer a child, could respond. She did move her hand, but only to take his face between her palms.