King of the Wood

by Valerie Anand

  But while it held, Rufus too was held, captive in the forest whose images of glade and stag had filled the scrying cup.

  Flambard’s mother had said Lammas and this was Lammas Eve.

  Rufus clattered into the forecourt of Malwood on the afternoon of August the First, Lammas Day, twenty-four hours later than he had intended, and in a temper so bad that it had infected his whole entourage and Henry, who as the king’s brother might by cheerful conversation have offset Rufus’ grim taciturnity, was himself silent.

  If the Lammas hunt brought forth what he hoped, he would need to send letters at short notice to bishops and barons throughout the land and he had the drafts in readiness in his saddlebag. He had prepared them personally last May Day, thanking the saints that although all the Conqueror’s sons had been taught to write, he was the one who had kept in practice. He felt as though the leather bag that bumped his horse’s flank was full of burning charcoal. When they reached Malwood, he was first off his horse, striding indoors ahead of the rest, carrying the bag himself.

  Rufus stayed in his saddle for a few moments, scowling at the staff who had come out to meet them. ‘Well, here we are! A day late but what about it? It rained half yesterday, anyway.

  Don’t all gape as if the lot of us had two heads each. Take the horses!’ He dismounted at last. Ralph, who had been coming over from the Tun each morning for two days, hurried forward and Rufus looked him up and down. ‘What are you looking so glum about? I’m the one who was held up in Winchester by a pack of fussy Aquitainians wanting to put footnotes to the footnotes on this treaty of theirs. In the end I brought ’em with me. We’re still not finished. When we are, if ever, I hope you’ll show us some good sport. They want to prove what good shots they are. They’re said to be marvels.’

  ‘I hope to please you and your guests, my lord.’ Ralph found that he was staring at Rufus, who was staring back in surprise. He dragged his gaze away.

  ‘Good. Well, what are we all standing about for? I want my dinner. And some good wine and plenty of it.’

  He stumped indoors. His chamberlain, Herbert, followed. Gilbert Clare, coming next, remarked: ‘I hope the wine’s potent. It might soothe his nerves. We don’t know what’s wrong with him. He keeps grumbling that the Aquitainians kept him in Winchester but they didn’t; he kept himself there, nit-picking over an agreement he’s making with them, and raising a lot of questions everyone thought were settled. The envoys have been dying to hunt. They’re getting restive.’

  ‘There’s some good Burgundian in the cellar,’ said Ralph, ‘or so I believe. That may get him into a better mood.’

  It didn’t.

  The quarrel which broke out between Rufus and Tirel during the after-dinner drinking started, absurdly, because Rufus announced that when he reached the province of Poitou, which he was leasing, he would keep Christmas in its capital of Poitiers and after that had further plans and Tirel, quite mildly, said: ‘Hadn’t we better get to Poitou first? It’s landlocked so we’ll have to go via Maine and Anjou. Maine’s quiet now but Helias is still unsubdued. He’s never given an oath of fealty and…’

  Rufus turned scarlet, lumbered to his feet, hammered a fist on the table and then shook it under Tirel’s nose. His other hand actually hovered near his knife hilt. Suddenly, they were all on their feet, Tirel blinking in disbelief.

  Then the effort of violent movement sent the wine fumes into Rufus’ head and he flopped back into his seat. The envoys from Aquitaine gazed tactfully into space. ‘Help me with him,’ said Tirel to FitzHamon and Ralph, who at the first sign of trouble had sprung to Rufus’ side.

  Tirel and FitzHamon lent a shoulder each to their sagging lord while Ralph held doors open and Herbert Chamberlain, who had dealt with this sort of thing before, kept pace armed with a basin. But they got the king into his chamber before he said: ‘Going to be sick,’ in slurred tones. When it was over, they put him to bed. He curled up at once and shut his eyes.

  ‘He’ll have a hell of a head in the morning,’ said FitzHamon. ‘What he got through would float all his ships for the Aquitaine enterprise!’

  ‘Poor devil,’ said Ralph, sounding as if he meant it.

  ‘But what’s the matter with him? What did I say?’ They all shook their heads and Tirel, with a shrug, glanced at the doorway beyond which the meal was still in progress and snapped: ‘I’m tired of this dinner. I’d like to get to bed myself.’

  Malwood, standing on the scooped-out top of its mound, was cramped and Ralph’s efforts had made little difference to that for there was no room for much extension.

  The place was therefore crowded, even though most of the court’s usual ornamental hangers-on had been left behind. Henry and Rufus had the only separate chambers, which opened off the hall. The rest dumped themselves that night on pallets strewn haphazard about the hall itself, even Tirel and Herbert, since the king had not asked either for company. When the time came, they all slept quickly, except for Ralph. Although he had been up the previous night at the Lammas festival, Ralph could not sleep.

  Like the Old One in Helias’ forest, Ralph found himself glad of a substitute victim. It was not doubt which troubled him as he watched the stars move across an unshuttered window. He had felt no doubt since that moment in the clearing where Richie died. After all, he was demanding nothing of Rufus that he had not been willing to give too. He was instrument, not user. He would slay the sacrifice, but Herne had chosen it.

  What troubled him were the details. He now desired to survive, to go back safely to Sybil and the child, the infant boy who was so blessedly unlike Cild, in fact so unlike the flaxen Tun folk altogether that he sometimes thought that the child was truly his, born early or a little late. The boy would have dark eyes like his own…

  But if he were to see that child grow, were to hold Sybil in his arms again, were not to be killed or spend the rest of his life in sanctuary in a monastery as Brian of Little Dene looked like doing, the fatal arrow must not seem to come from him. He knew who he wanted as a scapegoat but that individual had, most inconveniently, failed this evening to buy any of the shafts Oswin had brought to sell at Malwood.

  He had told the folk of his Lodge, at another hasty special conclave: ‘Lammas will see a sacrifice. Ask no more questions.’ Trusting him, they had obeyed. But Oswin understood that the arrows he had been asked for were part of the Lammas scheme. And those arrows, some of which he had also given to Ralph, were beautiful, and fit for the highest purpose, and distinctive as Oswin’s work always was.

  This was important. It was essential, firstly, that both slayer and scapegoat should use arrows which Ralph himself had demonstrably not made. They must also use identical arrows. The scapegoat therefore must be one of Oswin’s customers but since the right man hadn’t co-operated, then – who?

  He gnawed his lip. It was all proving so difficult. First Malwood was nearly cancelled altogether and hardly had that anxiety passed before the courier came to say that Rufus, though bound for Malwood, was delaying his arrival. Would it matter, that the perfect date, the First of August, had slipped by? Would Herne have expected him to do something about it and if so, what? And why the delay when according to Gilbert Clare there was no reason? Had Rufus somehow been warned…?

  The hoarse yell from the king’s chamber shot him and all the others off their beds as though the pallets had caught fire. They milled in the darkness, grabbing for weapons, lunging for the king’s door. ‘What is it? What’s wrong? My lord…!’

  ‘Lights!’ Rufus was shouting on a note of panic. Herbert kindled one. It showed Rufus upright on his bed. The open door joined forces with an open window to make a draught and the hangings billowed in the gloom. FitzHamon, stark naked and brandishing a sword, rushed round the room, banging them with the flat of the blade. ‘More lights, more, more!’ Rufus ordered. Flints were struck. Someone came with a branched candelabra in each hand. Rufus gasped audibly with relief as the shadows withdrew before it. FitzHamon, having found nothing beh
ind the tapestries but plain timber walls, became aware of his unprotected condition and demanded a robe. A page, observing that they were all in much the same state, sensibly came running with an armful. Outside, somebody was reassuring the envoys that no one had been murdered. ‘But what happened.! ' Tirel reiterated loudly.

  ‘I was riding the night mare.’ Rufus’ eyes were still searching the corners of the room as if he expected to find spectres there. ‘But I never had a dream like that before.’

  ‘If you tell it, it may disperse,’ said Tirel helpfully.

  They wrapped their robes round themselves and stood by the couch. The air was chill. In well-conducted monasteries, at this hour, monks were chanting Matins. But in the forest, the mist was coiling in and out of the trees, hinting at shape and form and then dissolving. What shapes of impending menace had crept from the woods to enter Rufus’ sleeping brain?

  ‘I dreamed I was ill,’ he said huskily. He was still half under the influence of the dream and, Ralph suspected, of last night’s Burgundian. ‘Just as I w… was seven years back, in Gloucester ... a physician came to bleed me b… but he .…he…’

  ‘Better tell it,’ said Tirel in practical tones.

  ‘I knew him,’ said Rufus. ‘It was Brother Philip from St. Stephen’s; I knew him as a boy. He had no scalpel. He plunged a crossbow bolt into my belly! And the blood came out of me all right, Holy Face, how it came out! You’ve seen men beheaded in battle? How the blood gushes? It plumed out of me like that and went up and put out the sun. I was inside a room but the sun was shining above me just the same. I… it…’

  ‘You dreamed of your nephew,’ said FitzHamon calmly. ‘You saw him die, my lord. The wine made you dream.’

  ‘I shan’t sleep again tonight, nonetheless.’ Rufus’s face was still haunted. ‘My head aches. Herbert, brew me something for it. All of you stay here. Tirel, you play chess with me. Fetch a board, someone.’

  Chess was hardly a game for a half-drunk man with a headache to play in the small hours. But it served a purpose. Rufus grew slow and bored after a while and said impatiently: ‘Oh, leave it. We’ll finish the game tomorrow. I might sleep after all. But leave the lights and bring in your pallets.’

  Herbert said, as the king fell asleep: ‘I put a soothing potion in the headache brew.’ He added uneasily: ‘I once dreamed I was at a burying and my father died suddenly the week after. I hope this wasn’t a portent.’

  ‘Well, don’t suggest that to him! said FitzHamon. ‘No,’ Ralph agreed sharply. ‘Don’t!’

  He was certain now that the king, by some means or other, knew that danger was close. All his anger against Rufus had gone. What must be must be but there was no longer any hatred in it. He did not want Rufus to believe in his danger, not only because it would put him on his guard, but also because it would make him suffer.

  If he died in terror, Ralph would pity him and carry that pity like a barbed arrow in his own flesh, for the rest of his life.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A Day in the Death of

  King Rufus

  2nd August 1100

  Ralph afterwards remembered the last day of King Rufus’ life as the most frightening day of his own, its burden of dread greater even than on the morning when he thought he was himself to die.

  It was also the strangest day of his life. As he moved step by step towards its terrifying conclusion, he felt himself surrounded by forces he could not see. The task was there and he was powerless to refuse it, but nor had he power to overcome the succession of obstacles which weirdly interposed themselves between him and his intent. As when it was rumoured that Rufus would not come to Malwood at all, as when he came after all but one day late, Ralph could only wait, a passive instrument, for the outcome of an unseen struggle.

  ‘Do you believe in Herne?’ Sybil had once asked him, curiously.

  ‘Believe?’ he said. ‘I have believed enough, for long enough, to make Herne real. Things do become real if you believe in them enough. Then they take hold of you.’

  Herne had hold of him now, as strongly as the divinity of Christ and the love of God had hold of such men as Father Ilger and Archbishop Anselm. And was as real.

  He rose, noiselessly, at the first lightening in the east, dressed and went quietly down the stairs, through the lower hall where the lesser guests and the indoor servants still snored, and out. The outbuildings were just emerging, colourless shapes, from the darkness. The last stars were fading and ground mist still drifted up from the forest. The air smelt sharp and cold but there was a milky feel beneath the tang; a fine, clear day lay ahead. The recent rain had cleared. An omen?

  He made his way to the outer enclosure where the Keeper’s cottage stood. The Keeper of the Malwood Walk came out, together with his son, to whom he was teaching the business. They offered Ralph some food but his knotted stomach couldn’t imagine ever accepting food again. He refused with thanks and led the two of them down to the wicket in the outer palisade. Beyond was a moveable wooden bridge which they pushed across the ditch. They went over, into the forest.

  For two hours they moved quietly along the rides, seeking fresh deer slots. They paced along a wide glade in the Hoar Woods where, Ralph said, he would place the royal hunters. That tree, said Ralph to himself, marking a stout oak which stood alone. He would recommend the king to stand beneath it. And there, under that tall ash, he would place himself. His stomach clenched again.

  They returned to find a bustle of saddling-up in progress. There were curious glances towards Ralph. There were cult men from Truham and Minstead here. He had not said much at the Lodge, but he had said enough and the air was full of a secret waiting. One of the Purkisses, arriving with a donkey- cart full of charcoal for the ever- hungry kitchens, gave him in passing a long hard look from blue eyes ringed in brilliant white.

  He must not fail.

  ‘We only need the king to come out,’ he said with studied lightness to Oswin, who was still at Malwood, as he tethered his horse outside the stable. He glanced towards the hall. There was no sign of Rufus yet and the morning was beginning to pass.

  ‘Where’s he got to, then?’ said Oswin. ‘I wish I knew,’ said Ralph uneasily.

  Rufus woke in the sane daylight, to the positively friendly – because familiar – greeting of a still-lingering drinker’s headache. Well, movement and open air would shake that out of him. He felt better, free from the fermenting shadows of the night. Ahead of him lay a day’s hunting and…

  And at that, his mind balked like a bad-tempered mule. It had been Ranulf Flambard, the most normal man he knew, who in the commonplace suroundings of the main courtyard at Winchester Palace, with a sparrow taking a bath in a puddle and a cat hopefully stalking it, had said: ‘My lord, don’t hunt at Lammas. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ve heard a rumour.’

  ‘What rumour?’

  ‘The source isn’t important. But I think…’

  ‘What rumour? Come on, Flambard, the truth!’

  ‘My mother,’ said Flambard reluctantly, because he knew Rufus would have it out of him in the end, ‘has had a vision.’

  ‘Your mother?’ Rufus could still hear his own gruff amusement. ‘The witch?’

  ‘She’s not a witch. She’s a good Christian woman…’

  ‘She can be a Christian or a paynim for all I care. I’m still not interested in her visions.’

  ‘.…who happens,’ said Flambard, ‘to have a gift, of a sort well-attested in the Bible.’ Rufus started to walk away but Flambard kept pace with him. ‘She saw a hunt, in a forest. She said the time was Lammas, don’t ask me how she knows. But you were the quarry and a shaft was trained on your heart. And there have been other rumours; you know there have.’

  ‘Yes, yes, tavern talk about some mad secret society trying to avert the end of the world. Stirred up by a lot of mad priests and their sermons. No doubt your mother has heard all that too. The priests haven’t tr
ied to kill the rumours, I notice. Most of them don’t like me and quite earnestly believe that one day I’ll incur the wrath of God in some more or less unmistakeable form. But I didn’t expect this sort of talk from you. Bishop of Durham you may be, but must you go right over to the enemy and wallow in priestly superstition?’

  ‘I haven’t and I’m not. I think the threat is real – though I’m not sure what quarter it’s actually coming from.’ Rufus snorted.

  ‘I also think,’ said Flambard with determination, ‘that if there is a threat, from God or man, Lammas is a likely moment for it. The date, I believe, has a significance to certain – er – groups of people. And your Lammas hunt would provide an excellent opportunity, in any case, for an accident by virtue of being a hunt, never mind about the date. Your brother and your nephew both died while hunting, remember.’

  ‘So what do you suggest I do, Flambard?’

  ‘Don’t hunt at Lammas. Don’t go to Malwood. You’ve almost cancelled it once. Cancel it in good earnest. Aren’t there some details of the Aquitaine treaty which could bear further discussion, even if the wind doesn’t change to let you sail?’

  ‘You should have mentioned the treaty first. I might have listened then.’

  ‘Perhaps I should. I was clumsy. Men become clumsy when worry bedevils their judgement.’

  Rufus looked at him. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. I do.’

  ‘Very well.’ Rufus made a brisk, irritated decision. ‘Tomorrow is Lammas Day. We’ll stay here, spend it in conference, and go to Malwood the next day, unless the wind lets up. Does that content you?’

  It was in fact true that the treaty could still warrant discussion. He could not make a show as temporary ruler of Poitou let alone crunch through Maine and Anjou to get there without spending a good deal of money and laying some complicated plans.