by Dan Davis
She shrugged. “I do not care what he thinks. I serve him because I know no other who would have me. Have me as a squire or in service as a man at arms.” She eyed me over the rim of her cup.
“I would,” I said. “I would have you serve me.” Of course, I did not have the income to support more men but I was somewhat drunk and her eyes were large, dark, and beautiful.
“You would?” she said, orange dancing over the black irises.
“Of course,” I said. “I saw how you defended Marian without a thought for yourself. You stood over her, ready to fight to protect her, though you barely knew her. You ride well, you have your own equipment and you care for it diligently. You would make a very fine man-at-arms. But my lord is the archbishop and he would never allow me to take you on.”
“I see,” she said. “I understand.”
“So we shall not ask him.”
We crashed our cups together and drank, smiling.
***
During the journey south, Eva was taciturn with all of us, except those nights when she and I would sit, drink and talk quietly. I enjoyed teasing words out of her, enjoyed her company very much. I suppose it was because I so favoured her with my presence that Jocelyn resented hers. He thought that her manner of dress was an absurd boast, an affectation that was offensive to any true man-at-arms. Jocelyn continued to hold her in contempt until the day he humoured her with a practice sword fight using a sturdy stick.
She rapped him on the head and the fingers before he realised what he was up against. She was like a willow and as fast as the strike of a night viper I had once seen in Acre. Jocelyn, with his sturdy bullock’s shoulders hunched low behind his shield, hammered her into submission. Eva was a fine fighter but Jocelyn was simply beyond her.
Still, she had more than proved her worth to him. What is more, because he was already infatuated with Marian and because Eva was illegitimate he had no lust for her. He accepted her as another squire.
Anselm seemed to be terrified of her. Presumably, he was either in love with her or saw her as competition. Possibly, it was both.
Swein mistrusted her and kept his distance, without ever explaining why.
For Marian, she was a great comfort, being both a woman and a person she could ask about practical matters such as where to pass water while on the road and other issues particular to ladies.
Marian proved herself stoical and strong willed. The first few days she was close to tears from the soreness of riding and the discomforts of the road. Even my old palfrey’s gait would make you sore if unused to riding. But she never complained, not once in my hearing. Jocelyn waited upon her, tended to her every whim, helping her on and off her palfrey, to and from buildings. He cut her meat and poured her ale. He laughed at her jokes and sang to her. He berated an innkeeper to heat gallons of water so that she might bathe and spent my money to pay for it. I had the bath next, though, and I did not begrudge him for his attempts to woo her. To what extent it was working, I had very little idea. Marian often behaved strangely around me, as if she were wary of being close to me. She was deeply disturbed by the writhing creature I carried with us.
All the while, Anselm taught Swein the practicalities of being a squire. We even allowed him to train with a sword, every now and then. The young man was not bad, although he was rather old at sixteen to be beginning his learning and we kept him to swinging a stout stick lest he hurt someone. Untrained swordsmen always want to swing their swords like axes, going for power over speed and control.
But Swein’s true talent was the bow.
One fine evening outside Devizes, we stopped to spend the night at the edge of a meadow under cover of a stand of oaks. Swein declared that he must shoot some arrows.
“You have duties,” Jocelyn said from a low log by the young fire, rubbing at a flake of rust on the hilt of his second-best sword. “See to them before you play.”
“If I don’t practise the bow then next time I shoot in anger I might miss,” Swein said, taut with contained anger. “You have to practise the bow, Sir Jocelyn, you just have to. What if you need me to protect you and I miss?”
“What did you say?” Jocelyn said, climbing to his feet, his blade flashing in the evening light. “Did you defy me, boy?”
“Jocelyn,” I said, tired of his nonsense. “You go ahead, Swein.”
Swein grinned in triumph while he strung his bow and bent it, pulling the cord back repeatedly without nocking an arrow.
“You have to warm the bow,” he said over his shoulder, aware of how I stared at him. Bows and arrows fascinated me.
His arrows were precious to him and he looked after them as if they were newborn babies, always checking on them, keeping them dry and protected in their arrow bag. He twisted up a big bundle of shoots, wildflower stems, and long grass and laid it in front of a tussock at the edge of the meadow.
He stood fifty yards away and shot a few arrows into it. Every shot was on target.
“Good thing too,” Swein said when he came to collect them. “I can make a new bow from a stave, if I have to. And I can make a cord out of almost anything. But I can’t make an arrow. Just can’t do it. Every single one of them is precious. If I miss the target then chances are I ain’t ever going to find that arrow. Not in woods like these.”
“So will you let me have a shot with it?” I asked. His face fell and I laughed. “I am only pulling your leg, Swein. But can I try the bow? I always loved shooting a crossbow. Is it much different?”
Swein handed it over and I tested the pull. It resisted. Pulling it back to my cheek was an enormous effort. “Good God,” I said. “Jocelyn. Jocelyn, quickly come and try this bow.”
I will never forget the look of wonder and blossoming respect upon Jocelyn’s face when he attempted to draw Swein’s huge bow back to his cheek.
“How can you pull this thing?” Jocelyn asked Swein. “Over and over again? You are as scrawny as a baby bird.”
Swein scowled and disrobed for us, taking his undershirt down to his waist. He turned his back and flexed the thick muscles across his back and shoulders.
“Good God,” I said, poking at his flesh like I was at a market. “You have shoulders like a destrier.”
“A lifetime of using a heavy bow,” Swein said over his shoulder. “Every year when I was a boy, my dad used to make me a bigger bow. Took me all summer to get strong enough to pull it with ease. Then next year he’d do it again. It’s the only way to get strong enough to pull these big war bows.”
Eva cheered from by the fire, asking Swein to remove the rest of his clothes. Marian laughed, clapping her hands and gave voice to her agreement. Swein covered himself up again, his fair-skinned face glowing red. Jocelyn was surprised by Marian’s somewhat lewd outburst but there was lust in his eyes, for what man does not want his lady to be a secret harlot?
From the shadows under the trees, the writhing form of Tuck groaned. I sighed and motioned for Swein to follow me.
Brother Tuck had to be fed every couple of days with a few drops of blood. Swein, driven by his desire for revenge — whatever it was he was revenging —gave up his blood gladly. Anselm dutifully contributed when Swein’s arm began looking like a ploughed village field.
We removed the sacking wrapped around the rancid smelling figure. He was growing thinner every day, which was good because he was easier to move and contain. I kept his eyes bound but undid his gag. His mouth was fouler than a city gutter.
“Hurry,” I said, holding Tuck down.
Swein slit his own arm, held it high and squeezed a trickle into Tuck’s gaping maw. Tuck groaned and slurped it down, making noises like an animal.
I bound him up again, looping him to the branched trunk of a solitary yew so he could not get away unseen in the night. Or worse, worm his way into our camp.
Jocelyn scowled at me as we returned to eat. “Why do you keep him? How long has it been? Ten days? It is madness. Either take the monk for trial or, at least, drag him away and slaughter
him yourself.”
“I will,” I said.
“When, Richard?” Jocelyn said. “What are you waiting for?”
“He is the only one who knows where William is,” I argued.
“So question him and be done with it,” Jocelyn said. “Carrying him with us is absurd.”
“Tuck is raving mad most of the time,” I said. “I keep him on the verge of starvation lest he causes trouble when at full strength. Keeping him bound, gagged and covered up drives his wits further from his mind. I cannot question him upon the road. But when we reach the Weald, I will find a secluded place. I will bind him and I will give him a pint or two of blood. That should bring him back to himself so I question him fully. But we cannot do that here. What if he gets loose out here?”
Jocelyn looked unconvinced. Everyone else refused to meet my eye.
“Alright, listen. When we reach the Weald, I will question Tuck and then I will fulfil my promise to that poor old Prior,” I said to everyone. “Will that suit you all?”
It was difficult to hide his presence when we rode through towns. He had befouled himself so many times that we submerged him in a river and rubbed his disgusting body against pebbles and sand to clean at least the outside of his clothes.
His presence greatly disturbed Marian. It was many days before she accepted that he could only be kept alive by blood. I explained everything to her. She found a kind of comfort in the fact that her father had been slain by immortal, powerful monsters rather than mere men. Marian had heard the rumours of a darkness in the greenwood, everyone in Nottingham had. It was a nameless evil far worse than the normal outlaw bands. But no one would tell her anything. The sheriff had kept her ignorant and isolated and only ever repeated the lie that he expected her father to be ransomed any day now.
None of them understood why I kept Tuck. Why I refused to question him until we got to the Weald. In truth, I did not clearly understand it myself at the time. But Tuck was the single strand that might lead me to William. And he had been made into what he was by my brother’s blood.
My blood.
The roads were infrequently travelled, especially in the south. Everyone loyal to the king had fled or was locked away in one of the many castles that John controlled. We met many men fleeing from the French forces but no one had any useful information, merely rumour and fear. Some men said the king was coming, others that he was in London and others that he had fled for Scotland.
Still, we met no French. Nor did we meet English forces other than the occasional group of men scouting about for their lords. Few men loyal to King John were brave enough to travel deep into Kent.
We asked for directions and arrived in the Weald at the beginning of June.
Kent was a beautiful place. Rolling green hills and rich villages. It was perfect land for farming. It lay between London and the ports of Dover and Sandwich and the routes to France and the rest of Europe. It was the richest land in England, as well as the key to the entire country.
The Weald, however, was a semi-wild land in the centre of that most civilised part of England. It was heavily wooded and hilly, where the rest of the shire around the coast was cleared and heavily farmed. The soil in the Weald was thin and difficult to grow crops on. It was grazed by sheep and cattle in pastures dotted between acre after acre of dense woodland. The ash and oak and beech woods were cut and provided fuel for the towns of Kent, for London to the north and the many charcoal makers working throughout the deep wood.
When we reached that land, we asked for the village of Cassingham and learned that was on the far side of the wood, halfway to Dover. We came from the west and would have to travel miles from one side of the wooded Weald to the other.
We never got that far.
Within the first few miles, walking slowly through that tangled, remote woodland we were surrounded by men armed with bows.
***
The road was completely deserted, twisting through the dense tangle of old wood, coppiced ash and thick layer of green summer growth. There should have been people around. There were villages, farms, shepherds, swineherds and charcoal burners all over the Weald but I assumed that the Wealden folk had fled or gone to ground after the French invasion. It was approaching the middle of June 1216
“Do you feel as though you are being observed?” Jocelyn asked me as we rode, our horses’ hooves thudding softly on the dry ground.
“I do,” I said, peering into the gloom, glad that we were all armoured. All of us that had it to wear. I looked back to Anselm and nodded to him that he was to watch Marian. The lad sat up straighter in his saddle and placed his horse beside hers.
“But is it Englishmen,” Jocelyn said. “Or is it the French?”
I fingered the hilt of my sword.
“It’s just the Green Man,” Swein said, brightly, from behind us. He sat awkwardly on top of his stocky packhorse, like a dog riding a cow. He was an appalling horseman but he loved being in the woods.
“What in God’s name are you blathering about?” Jocelyn said, still looking sideways, trying to see further than a half dozen yards away.
“The Green Man, isn’t it,” Swein said. “That feeling you always get when you’re in the woods. That feeling of being watched? That’s the Green Man. He lurks, watching. Up to no good.”
“A peasant superstition,” Jocelyn said, lowering his voice. “It is more likely a man of the usual colour. Perhaps we should ride hard, leave him behind.”
I knew he meant Swein, not the watching man.
“It’s not superstition,” Swein said. “You can see where he’s been, all the time. He leaves his mark.”
“What mark?” Jocelyn said, attempting to scoff.
“The knots in tree trunks,” Swein said. I turned but his face was completely serious. “Knots in tree trunks is where the Green Man has just pulled his face back inside the trunk, after watching you. The tree bark flows like water but the moment you look at it, it turns to solid bark again, only the ripples are marked upon the tree. And he loves the yew most of all.”
“The yew?” I said. The trees are massive but squat things with dense, very dark green leaves that are like flatted needles. There was one or more yew outside every church in England.
“The yew is the archer’s favourite tree making bow staves,” Swein said, stating the obvious. “Because it is the tree of death. The Green Man lives inside every yew, in the darkness under the leaves, between the trunks. Why else would they be green all year round? You know the leaves are deadly, right? You have to keep cattle away from yews or they’ll eat them and die. The berries are the colour of bright pink blood and anyone that eats them, man, dog, cattle, dies coughing up bright pink froth. The Green Man is death, he lives in the yew and his magic, his sight, his murder goes into your bow. That’s the truth. Every archer knows.”
Jocelyn was silent. We looked out. I listened hard, sure I could hear footsteps and sure I could smell bodies on the air. But perhaps, I thought, it was my imagination. It was difficult to smell anything over the stench of Tuck.
“Do not be absurd,” Jocelyn said eventually but his heart was not in it.
Marian laughed from behind us, breaking the spell. “The Green Man is a story,” she said. “The songs say the Green Man when they mean to say birth or death and rebirth. You know the poems, do you not? Where the leaves burst from his face and eyes, as though he is spring itself, come to life only to be so full of vitality that he dies, that he cannot breathe. Like he is himself a form of folksong. Like a wood in summer. Suffocating in its own abundance. That is all. He is no more a true man than is the sound of a river or the wind in the trees.”
Jocelyn whispered to me, “Do you know what she is saying?”
“Of course,” I lied.
“Fascinating,” Jocelyn said over his shoulder. “Just fascinating, my lady.”
“Halt!” A man in the centre of the road said.
I yanked on my horse’s reins so hard I hurt the animal. Jocelyn drew his
sword.
“Hold it there,” the young fellow in the road before us said, looking at Jocelyn.
The man was not tall but he had somewhat of a commanding presence.
I opened my arms wide. “We will not harm you,” I said and leaned over to pat my horse’s neck.
“Calm yourself,” I whispered to Jocelyn. “Watch the trees. Be ready.”
“Harm me?” the young man on the road said, grinning. “I am not afraid.”
I looked closely at him. The man was strongly built, with a large face. He was dressed in rough country clothes and no armour but he wore a sword at his hip.
“Fine, fine,” I said, allowing him his swagger. “We are simply passing through. I am travelling through this land, heading toward Dover. On the road there I believe I will find a village called Cassingham.”
“What you want in Cassingham?” the young man said.
“I am looking for a squire named William of the village called Cassingham,” I bellowed at him.
“What do you want him for?” the man said, eyeing me warily. “You for King John? Or for the French?”
Leaves rustled and twigs snapped in the trees to either side and there were shadows moving amongst the dark green. Whispers, too, perhaps and definitely the wood smoke and sweat smell of men.
“Who are you for?” I asked the young man.
“I asked you first,” he shot back, knowing that I had spotted his men surrounding us. If they were archers then we had no chance.
I stuck out my chin and slipped my hand around the hilt of my sword. It felt good in my hand. I glanced round at Eva behind me. She nodded, her own hand at her hip, reins held ready, her horse high and sensing the tension of the rider. Swein slid his hand toward his bow staff. Jocelyn had his fine horse under masterful control but the beast was quivering, expecting to be charged at any moment.
“I am a loyal and proud servant of the rightful king of England,” I said, watching the man closely. “King John.”
“Thank God,” the man said, relaxing and then he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. “They are loyal to the king. Show yourselves.”