On a floor of damp leafmould, he passed noiselessly behind the line of archers. He saw Gilbert Clare shoot and miss and heard him swear. He saw Brian of Little Dene justify his choice of weapon by planting a bolt in the side of a buck, saw Rufus and Tirel simultaneously flatten their green-clad shoulders as they drew. It was dreamlike. He had come through the day so far on habit, performing familiar tasks automatically, just as when he had heard Mass that morning. Now all that was over and the real world in which men shot at deer and then went home to dinner must recede from him for ever.
Nothing was left now but the dull ache in his belly and the heavy thudding of his heart. He set one foot before the other with enormous care, renewing his choice at every step. He left the glade behind and went downhill, through oak and hornbeam, across a stream and then uphill, in among the great oaks of the Twelve Acre Wood which he had said the hunt must leave alone. There was another glade in the heart of the Twelve Acre, a very narrow secret one. He saw it through the trees, a glint of bright green with a straight swordblade of sunlight thrusting down into it.
The bitterness he felt against Rufus these days still fell short of desiring to kill him. That was monstrous. He couldn’t do that. Not even to save Cild or to propitiate Herne, let alone to salve his own insulted feelings.
Yet it seemed to him that a death, someone’s death on this Feast of May, had been demanded. When the call for it came so insistently, through the voices of Herne’s people, and from Count Henry alike, was a death not inevitable? So he must take it on himself.
For a knight to flee from danger was forbidden. He must not falter. He would walk through the glade to the far end. That was all he need do. It would be quick. He had thought first of managing alone, of simply running into the path of the shooting hunters. But he had seen in battle what happened to a man who was hit in the wrong place. To expose himself to random shots was more than he could contemplate. He had let Herne choose him an executioner and Herne had chosen well. Osmund was a fool yet he had this one talent, standing out from his general inadequacy like a tower on a plain: he could aim straight.
It was the best Ralph had been able to think of, to escape the trap of irreconcilables into which Henry had flung him, and to meet what he himself had begun to believe or fear were the commands of the Huntsman.
Strangely, he could understand Henry. He, Ralph, had known what it was to be a younger son, forced to fend for himself while his senior took the inheritance he would have handled better. He only wished Henry had not picked on him as a tool.
He had laid his plans before the Lodge, in a secret conclave at Easter. The women had not been there. Sybil knew nothing of it. He could not tell her this. The worst thing of all, the most weakening and unmanning, was knowing that he would not see Sybil again.
If there were truly magic in sacrificial blood, if Herne’s favour could truly be bought in that fashion, perhaps Cild might somehow be set free. But he hoped Cild would not be Sybil’s future. His own jealousy apart, it had occurred to him that Cild was probably the man whom Sybil had once tried to tell him she feared. Well, at least he would never have the pain of knowing.
The glade was peaceful, apparently deserted. A blackbird piped and a wood dove’s tranquil voice replied. Nothing could have seemed less alarming.
He had never done anything harder than walk forward into it.
He had left the trees behind. He was in the open. He felt alone but he was not. Other Kings of the Wood, though not in living memory, had done this. They were with him now, an unseen escort, their resolution supporting his frailty.
Herne, Lord, Skyfather, Huntsman and Quarry, trinity of which the Christian trinity is only a pallid reflection, receive the offering. The throne in the clearing, the antler crown, the genuflexions, the kissing of feet, are for this; not homage paid to any man unearned but given to him who will lay down his life for his followers.
For the Tun, for Cild if your power can reach into Rufus’ dungeons, take my life, freely given. I come to you, to Herne, the Holy Executioner. And I am myself Herne, the Stag and the Quarry. There is a rustling, high up in the branches that arch over this narrow glade. (In the branches?) Will I see the arrow coming? How much will I feel? When will it come? Oh God, oh Herne, when will it come…?
The rustling grew louder, became a splintering groan and Osmund, like an outsize windfall, tumbled out of an oak tree and landed at Ralph’s feet. A broken branch came with him and the bow he had been holding cracked in half beneath him. He sprawled there, winded.
Fear and acceptance were drowned immediately in rage. He might have known. He should have known, since the moment Osmund drew that straw. ‘Good,’ everyone had said, ‘Herne is wise, Osmund is the best shot among us.’ Osmund was in all other respects also the clumsiest one among them. Trust him to break the branch he was crouched on, and his bow as well. Osmund always broke everything: pots, pans, ploughshares, everything. Through Ralph’s head shot a thought as cynical and irreverent as any remark he had ever heard Rufus made, that the Horned One had buggered it right up and no mistake.
‘You wantwit!’ he snarled, yanking Osmund to his feet ‘The branch broke!’ gasped Osmund unnecessarily. He leaned on Ralph, waggling his left foot uneasily to and fro. ‘What the devil were you doing up a tree in the first place?’
‘He said he felt safer with the hunt so near.’ Penna had stepped out of cover. Faintly, in the distance, they could hear the baying and shouting of the hunt. ‘He was afraid they’d come this way after all.’
‘Take my bow!’ Ralph snapped at Osmund. ‘Here! Go on! You’ve got to do it. There’s no way out.’
They gazed at him in admiration. They did not know about Henry, only that their King had made himself an offering to save the Tun’s harvests. He could only hope that when he was dead, Henry would leave the Tun alone. ‘What are you waiting for, Osmund?’
‘My ankle’s hurt.’
‘In the name of the Horned One and Herne Hunter, I command you. Dear Christ,’ said Ralph, relapsing into everyday language, ‘I’ve been counting off the days of my life like beads on a bloody rosary for weeks and you’re complaining of a twisted ankle? Take the bow, take it! Stand where you are. I’ll position myself.’ He shoved the weapon roughly into Osmund’s reluctant hands and walked off quickly, hurrying towards death to keep himself from fleeing from it. He marked a clump of grass at the right distance from Osmund, reached it and spun round. ‘Now!
Osmund drew. Don’t look at the shaft. Don’t think of shock and pain and darkness. Look for the last time at the bright grass, the woodpecker drilling bark high above. Osmund, what are you waiting for now?
From the woods to the east, from the midst of the hunt’s dull hubbub, there rose up a scream.
It did not come to them as loud, but to travel so far so clearly it must really have been very loud indeed and they knew it. It went on and on, unbroken except for the whooping punctuation of air indrawn by someone too overwhelmed by terror and agony to pause for breath. Osmund dropped his weapon. ‘What’s that?
‘Pick that bow up!’ shouted Ralph.
‘I can’t, sir, I can’t!’ Osmund was distracted, flapping his large hands, jerking towards the sound every time the distant screams crescendoed. ‘I can’t shoot you anyhow, it isn’t right, it isn’t real, I didn’t know it ’ud be like this and oh dear God what’s that noise?
Ralph ran to him and snatched the bow up himself. ‘You’ve ruined it all…!’ The screams were making demands on him too, dragging him towards them. He left Penna and Osmund where they were, found himself running back to the hunt. The hideous noise was dying down, losing itself beneath a distant chorus of shouts. He dodged through the trees, jumping the stream, and arrived breathless in the Long Glade. A knot of men were huddled round something that lay in the middle, that kicked spasmodically and whimpered and frothed blood. Other men stood in groups, whitefaced and whispering. Half a dozen houndsmen, with leashed dogs, came hurrying through the trees and discovered Ral
ph without surprise. No one had apparently noticed his absence. ‘Lost him!’ one of them said. ‘He got to his horse and got away, and his squire with him.’
‘Who?’ demanded Ralph. From the corner of his eye he saw that he had been followed; Penna was peering timidly from the bushes.
‘The fool that did it, of course! That Brian of Little Dene or wherever it is.’
The thing in the midst of the glade had ceased to jerk. The men round it were moving back. One could see the tawny hair tumbled in the grass. Penna came right out of the bushes, stared wide-eyed and said fearfully: ‘It’s the king, ain’t it? I’ve seen him out hunting afore. It’s the king!’
‘It’s not the king, there’s the king,’ Ralph snapped Rufus had been one of those crouched round the victim He was standing up now, bulky and unmistakeable, with Tirel at his side.
‘It was the king’s nephew,’ said the Keeper, coming up ‘Who are you?’ He looked Penna up and down. He was English but considered himself a royal servant and a cut above the peasantry. ‘Heard the noise and came to see the fun, did you? Amazing, the number of people there always are skulking in the woods. Why aren’t you at you ditching?’ But he spoke without malice, his mind full of more shocking images than mere villein idleness. ‘He got a crossbow bolt in the guts,’ he said to Ralph.
It was the thing he himself had feared. ‘How did it happen?’ Ralph whispered.
‘His dog ran out of control, came dashing into the clearing after a buck, right into the path of the shooting. The boy was shouting and whistling but the damn dog wouldn’t come so the lad just ran out after him, tried to grab him. Just as that fool Sir Brian let fly.’
‘Christ!’ Ralph walked across the clearing. Richie lay twisted, shoulders this way, hips the other, hands clutched round the short bolt stub that protruded from his navel. The grass all round was spattered with blood and vomit and excreta. But it was over now. The hazel eyes, staring at the sky, were glazed.
Nearby, Rufus stood crossing himself. Tirel had a hand on his shoulder. Ralph turned away. Returning to Penna, he found Osmund there too, having caught up despite his limp. ‘He’s dead,’ Ralph said bleakly. It was difficult to believe. Richie, that slightly feckless, but good- humoured, courteous boy, who had loved his dog and loved hunting, dead on a May morning. When it ought to have been Ralph…
‘He looks so like the king, so like,’ Penna whispered. ‘So that’s what’s wanted.’
‘What?’ said Ralph.
‘That’s what’s wanted!’ Penna’s voice rose and Ralph shook a warning head. ‘That’s why Osmund couldn’t do it,’ Penna persisted softly but with force, his eyes distended with a dreadful and contagious knowingness. Involuntarily, Ralph and Osmund drew close to him. ‘Don’t you see?’ Penna whispered. ‘It wasn’t meant it should be you, sir. The Horned One don’t take what He don’t want. I see it now. It’s the king of the land must die for the land, not the king of one wood. The Horned One knows what he’s about right enough, and He’ll have what He wants, mark my words, He’ll have it!’
They stared at each other, enclosed in a bubble of sickly excitement. Ralph’s knees had begun to tremble un-controllably. For more than a month, he had been awaiting death. Now it had withdrawn from him and he felt weak, as if half his blood had gone with it. Behind him, Richie’s body was being lifted up, carried away. In front of Ralph, the ancient colonnades of the forest led the eye from trunk to trunk into the green shadows and bird-haunted fastnesses where lives went on which had nothing to do with humankind and cared less for human loves or hates, guilts or terrors, than for a broken twig.
But he, Ralph, was part of the forest. He had sat upon the log throne and worn the antlers. He had offered himself as the Quarry. And been passed over. In favour of what other?
For someone’s life was forfeit. It did not even occur to him now to think otherwise. And the someone must be a consecrated king, whether his crown were of horn or gold. Only a king could make the offering. Richie was not eligible. Richie could be no more than the finger of Herne, pointing at the chosen one. ‘No,’ he said wordlessly inside his head, to the wide eyes of Osmund and Penna, to the sweet, unpitying woods of May. ‘No, not that. Not me. I will not. I will not wield the knife of sacrifice. He has used me badly but we were lovers once.’
Leaves rustled. He was not even thinking of Henry’s threats when the woods whispered to him: You are Herne.
When he entered the hall it was hushed. The May Day feast was cancelled. Henry came out of a side chamber. He had apparently been writing. There was ink on his fingers.
‘An unfortunate accident,’ he said. No one was near enough to overhear them. ‘What went wrong? I find it hard to imagine, but clearly something did. You have till Lammas. So has Cild.’
Ralph had heard enough legal Latin in his time with Rufus to be familiar with its common terms and Henry of course would be used to them.
‘Fiat,’ said Ralph, and walked on.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rumour
Summer 1100
It was a summer of rumour, of tales drifting pollen-like through the air until by mid-July they had spread from end to end of England and beyond.
The whispers began among Herne’s followers. The Purkisses, the charcoal-burners who roamed the New Forest, also talked to a northward-bound minstrel, and to an itinerant pedlar, whose beat then took him on through Dorsetshire to. Devon. A Breton horse-dealer, visiting Winchester to buy English brood-mares, exchanged the Sign of the Five-Pointed Star with the mares’ owner and took interesting gossip home with him. It was in Brittany that the first whisper began on the Continent, that the Horned One had decreed that King William Rufus of England, that least Christian of rulers, should not outlive Lammas.
For the worshippers of Heme to speak of it except among themselves was forbidden, but mmour began to spread beyond them all the same. A few knowing words dropped in an alehouse by a customer who had overindulged in its wares; an unwise sentence or two exchanged in a street where unauthorised ears could hear; it needed no more.
Garbled versions eventually reached the ears of a number of parish priests, including Father Ilger of Minstead, who duly climbed into their pulpits and delivered sermons declaring that if that mighty sinner King Rufus did not mend his evil ways, the devil would assuredly carry off his soul to hell. Rufus did nothing to hinder the process, since he held a truly disgraceful midsummer banquet in Winchester to which every whore in the town, of either sex, was apparently invited.
A monk from Gloucester, visiting the Bishop of Winchester to deliver a treatise on medicine which had been commissioned from Abbot Serlo, heard gossip which do horrified him that he used his knowledge of the Five-Pointed Star to learn more. And then went back to Winchester in an agony of guilt. His name was Brother Mark but he had been bom Ketel of Chenna’s Tun. He had taken the Oath of Quittance and might not speak of the Wood. But he now began to suffer from nightmares and shouted in his sleep so wildly that the Infirmarian was called to prescribe and Abbot Serlo asked to see the patient.
The abbot enquired the substance of the nightmares. The Oath of Quittance did not stop a man from repeating his dreams. Listening, Abbot Serlo became alarmed. God had many ways of speaking to men. Dreams were one of them.
The king expects to pass Lammas at Malwood, hunting,’ Ralph said to Oswin. ‘You must bring arrows to sell, plenty, all sizes, your very best workmanship.' But this time don’t give them barbed tips. Just clean sharp points.’
‘No barbs?’ Oswin repeated. A barbed arrow would stay in the wound, hampering the flight of an injured animal, making it easier to bring down.
‘No barbs,’ said Ralph firmly. This kill must be clean. If he failed to kill at once, then let the victim heal. A barbed arrow dragged from a wound did monstrous damage; men injured thus often died in the end, but horribly.
Oswin’s eyes had widened. He had understood.
Flambard had now bought his mother a fine house in Winchester as well as the one i
n London but he had never managed to dissuade her from telling fortunes on the side. The girl who visited her at the end of July wished to know if she would ever marry her sweetheart. Flambard’s mother poured a drop of oil into a silver cup of water and sat, warming the cup between her palms, and watching the rainbow swirls of the oil upon the water. Then she said she was sorry but the power was not working today, and she could not take money for a pretence.
The girl went away disappointed and Flambard’s mother sent for her son. Rufus had after all advanced Flambard to greatness. She owed her houses and her servants in the first place to the king. She had a debt to pay. If she could. If Flambard would co-operate.
‘…it may be too late anyhow,’ she said frankly to her son. ‘I told you, you should have let him marry when he had it in mind. A married man, a family man, the hounds couldn’t touch. Don’t know why. Maybe you do. But that’s how it is. The dangerous time is Lammas. You’ve got to try to save him, whatever. You owe him that.’
Flambard opened his mouth to say: ‘Nonsense!’ but did not say it because he had after all known his mother and her oil-patterned water, for a long time.
In one hour from now, Rufus was to set out for Malwood, where Ralph des Aix had finished the refurbishments. The arrangement had almost been changed, for he was shortly to leave for Aquitaine. The embassy had done its work. Their duke, inspired by Curthose’s example, wished to go on crusade and raise the money by mortgaging one of his provinces to Rufus. Rufus would have cancelled Malwood and been on his way already, except that a steady south wind was preventing him. He had decreed therefore that the Malwood hunt would go ahead as had been planned before the deal was closed. The Aquitainians could come with him, along with his brother Count Henry, and his friends Walter Tirel, FitzHamon, Gilbert Clare and a number of others. They would kill deer, and wait for the wind.
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