But if he did, it would be only on the field of war. He knew now, finally, that even if they lived until the stars grew old, they would never be lovers. But for the despair of that discovery, made manifest to him through the innocent medium of William Sans Sang – who was somewhere out of sight down the glade now – they would none of them be in this glade at all. He would not have changed his mind at dinner. This hunt would not have happened and Serlo’s monk could not have trapped him into it.
But it didn’t matter. There was no danger. He had only imagined there was danger, nothing more. Hadn’t he?
Over the forest, the afternoon was wearing away. The shadow of the oak ran out behind him across green-gold grass. The setting sun slanted through the wood in shafts of luminous, hard-edged haze, with a red fire behind it. The noise of the beaters was louder.
The first startled birds had gone up from the covert, wings whirring, giving out alarm calls. The first stag was there and gone so quickly that they missed him for he had vanished into the sun-haze before anyone could take aim. In the distance, Walter Tirel made a gesture that meant a rude word, and Rufus laughed.
Another stag broke, a smaller animal behind him. They bounded across the open ground, antlered heads thrown back. Rags of velvet still draped the crown of the bigger stag. Rufus brought up his bow to aim at him, but both of them, like the first, plunged into the bright haze. He swung round, trying to follow his target with his arrow-point, trying to get the sun out of his eyes.
He had just time to see Ralph’s bow trained on him, just time to know that all his imaginings were after all the truth, before the shaft struck home.
It was not like Richie’s death. Ralph had promised that and Ralph could keep his word because like Tirel he was a magnificent shot. The arrow took Rufus in the heart, spinning him round, tumbling him to the ground. It was not instantaneous and there was pain but not like Richie’s. There was shock and loathing and disbelief, and then a swiftly-growing numbness and a sense of being borne away on a fast and swirling river.
He was still conscious when they all ran up. He had both hands clutched round the arrow in his chest. He saw them point at it. He heard Ralph say, in exactly the right tone of startled indignation: ‘But that’s surely one of the shafts my lord king gave to Sir Walter Tirel!’ He heard someone answer bewilderedly: ‘But did Tirel aim for a stag and hit the king by mistake then?’ He heard Tirel’s voice, appalled, exclaiming: ‘No, all our arrows look alike. It wasn’t mine!’
Rufus tried to say that it wasn’t true, that Tirel was a victim too, that Tirel was his friend who had cheered him when he was miserable and would never harm him, that the man they wanted was Ralph, Ralph des Aix.
But Ralph was stooping over him, blocking out the others. The sun through the branches cast peculiar patterns on Ralph’s face. He looked as though he was wearing antlers. This seemed so very extraordinary that Rufus found himself attempting to comment on it.
But he had already drifted too far and only a whisper came out and no one heard but Ralph himself. After that, it was too late.
And with that, it was all over. The composite dream in which Herne was real and Ralph and Rufus both his representatives, in which the king’s death was a quest to be achieved no matter what the cost, to which all else in the world was subordinate, was broken.
There was only the body of a middle-aged man with thick pale ginger hair and a blunt-featured face which in life had been pugnacious and in death looked merely astonished.
It was difficult to think that he had ever been a king, still less the surrogate for a god.
And Ralph des Aix, gazing down at him while the hushed, shocked hunting party gathered round and Tirel, step by stealthy step, drew back to confer rapidly with his brother-in-law Gilbert Clare and then sprint for his horse and flee: had Ralph ever been King of the Wood, drawing Herne Huntsman’s bow?
He could not now believe it. It was no longer real. The Wood was not real. He would never go to the Wood again, neither he nor Sybil. They would take the Oath of Quittance and be free of it. Let Oswin wear the antlers, or Cild, if he came back. The weight of the antler crown had gone from Ralph’s brow and he would never feel it upon him again.
EPILOGUE
August 1100
‘... we’re almost done. A few lesser matters to deal with, that’s all,’ said King Henry to the clerk who was his secretary. The August evening was dimming but the new king, as his staff had found, was a glutton for work. ‘I want an amnesty drawn up for some prisoners at present held in this city of Winchester. We’re prepared to release them as a goodwill gesture, to celebrate our recent coronation. It is a unique gesture, naturally. The Forest Law will be pursued in all its rigour in the future. Draw up a proclamation about that, if you please.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the secretary, who had been taking notes for hours and was getting tired.
‘One of the men who will be released comes from a place in the New Forest called Chenna’s Tun. He will no doubt go back there. He can act as guide to a courier we wish to send there. Take another note. The courier is to go to Sir Ralph des Aix, tenant of Chenna’s Tun in Hampshire, taking the first instalment of an annual payment of fifteen pounds in silver. Draw up a document making that official and put it for services rendered as the reason. We don’t propose to state the reason in the document.’ Henry raised his eyes to the clerk and there appeared on his face a fleeting, naughty grin which reminded the secretary strongly and startlingly of the king’s dead brother King William Rufus, who had died before his time, no doubt by the hand of God as retribution for his godless life, and been brought back to Winchester in such un-kingly fashion, on a donkey cart belonging to a charcoal-burner named Purkiss. ‘It would be tactless to put any details,’ said Henry blandly. ‘Sir Ralph has a son. Only he’s my son, if you follow. I can’t allow a child of mine to be reared in poverty and the family is poor. Add to the document an undertaking that if Sir Ralph dies – he has a recurrent chest complaint – we shall provide for the child and find a good marriage for the widow.’
The clerk scratched busily with his quill. Henry looked at the unexpressive tonsure thus presented to him and said: ‘I propose soon to present the court with a most royal and lovely lady as my queen and in due course I hope to have a lawful prince to follow me. But one must pay one’s debts.’
Certainly a man like Henry of England must. The two personalities within him, the Henry whom Edith loved and who had pitied Sybil, and the other, the relentless Henry who had thrust Conan and Rufus alike into oblivion, both acknowledged it. Their debts were very heavy and they would in time, no doubt, incur still more.
Henry had seized power, leaving his brother’s body to others while he himself galloped to Winchester to wrest the keys of treasury from its staggered custodians, send out his prudently drafted letters and get himself to London and crowned within four days. He had ruthlessly overturned Rufus’ will, snatching the crown from tardy Curthose. And soon he would have Edith.
To Edith he would give a position that would last all her life, and happiness, which would last for a while – until his roving nature took control of him again and Edith, living as a queen must amid a crowd of watching eyes, would keep a calm face all day and grieve at night, alone in her ornately-hung bed, wondering with whom he slept instead. He loved her and at the thought of her, his body stirred, but he knew himself.
‘We’ve shocked you,’ he said suddenly to the clerk. ‘You think all this immoral?’
‘My lord!’ The clerk did not know how to answer. He took a deep breath. ‘My lord, we all welcome your accession. Er .…immoral is the word one might use of…of your predecessor’s way of life.’
‘King Rufus?’
‘ Yes. My lord, ’ said the secretary nervously.
Rufus, before his death, had dreamed of his own blood, spouting to darken the sky. Then Serlo’s monk had come. And at the last moment, in the forest, Henry had heard his brother say to Ralph: That’s a bad way to die, with a bolt through the
guts.’
Had Rufus guessed? Or even known?
Had he walked, knowing, ahead of Ralph into the wood, because he was too gallant to withdraw because of dreams or suspicions? Had he stood there, beneath that oak, knowing that death was coming for him?
‘My brother,’ said Henry coldly, ‘was as knightly, as royal, as a man can be and far braver than most. I am aware of the Church’s opinion of him. But in my presence, never speak of him like that again. He died a king and if I can do as much, I shall be thankful.’
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