by Dan Davis
Swein gleefully told me that the men called me rook master. No man was stupid enough to say such things to my face, no matter how drunk he was. Though I gladly took up their name of the Crow’s Nest for my woodland home. It was perfect and their name for it, created by them from fear and spite, made me care for the place even more.
The cabin itself was full of little mice and enormous spiders, who all came out to creep around in the darkness as I lay alone with my thoughts.
Scattered throughout the oak wood were wide flat clearings dotted with a collection of blackened stones, many shattered by the long heating from whatever it was charcoal burners did. They made excellent areas for practising the sword, once I had stamped down the bracken, stitchwort, dying foxgloves and saplings.
The cabin was damp and took weeks to dry through, burning through great mounds of fuel. I stuffed up the windy cracks with moss and clumps of wool.
I built a stable, of sorts, for my horse. It looked awful but I was mightily proud of it and I prayed it would not only survive the winter but also keep my dear horse safe and warm too. I would have happily brought him into the cabin, had it been warm enough.
Mostly, I chopped wood and brought food up from Cassingham’s village.
As well as preparing for a lonely winter, I had other plans. I intended to ride north to the nearest French occupied town that remained unfortified. And I would bring myself back a Frenchman to feed on. I could keep him bound and gagged, much as I had done with Sir Geoffrey for Tuck. I would feed off him, taking a little at a time. And if the man died, I could bury him in the wood, unseen and I could take another man and another.
When the winter was over, I would be stronger than I ever had been. Strong enough, perhaps, to take on William by myself.
***
After Christmas was well over, I rode north and spent many days exploring the tracks and routes that I could use to bring a man back to my cabin unobserved.
There was a village a dozen miles away. French knights had been there, they told me, and forced rent from the villagers. Their English lord had run away and left them to their fate a year before and they had no one but Cassingham to protect them. But even he and his men could not be everywhere. The French were due to return to collect further payments in kind, the villagers told me, begging me for help. All I could do was advise them to pay what was demanded and then I rode away.
But not far. There was a wood nearby. A mixed wood of elm, hazel, ash, oak, and elder throughout. Elms stood together in circular thickets where goldcrests and chaffinches sang.
There I hid and waited for the French to return. I lay shivering in the bare branches of a wych elm, watching a family cutting back a portion of their ash trees. Wych elm trunks often branch near to the ground, which makes them perfect for easy climbing. When I was a boy, I used to try to get girls to climb up them with me so we could be secluded in the wide boughs.
That day, though the branches were bare, I lay high up and well-hidden. I kept one eye on the family at work below me and one eye on the distant road, praying for a visit by a Frenchman full of warm French blood.
Coppicing must be done in winter, or at least before the sap rises in spring. I watched that family collecting every piece of the wood they cut down. The poles had a thousand uses. Thatched roofs required rods to secure the stacked bundles of thatch. Poles were used for making and setting eel and fish traps. Even the brushwood trimmed off the sides of the poles was gathered up by the children into tight bundles, bound together from twisted lengths of bark or from nettle twine. Those bundles would be used to get a young fire burning quick and hot. They piled fallen leaves over the cut stumps to protect the hazel shoots in spring from the browsing of deer. Moss showed everywhere, vividly green and shining around the stumps. The children chatted incessantly while they worked, recounting old scores and battles won by them against their enemies, the children of another family nearby.
Two days, I waited, shivering in the trees, hoping that the French would come raiding or raping so that I might prey upon them. My poor horse was miserable, though I covered her with a thick blanket and walked her about when it was quiet.
The French did not come. On the third morning, angry, hungry and eager for the taste of hot blood in my mouth I returned to my cabin.
On the way back, in the afternoon and almost at my oak wood, Eva found me.
She was beside the track, hacking at a fall of deadwood with an old, bent practice sword. Her black courser stood behind her, dozing, a thick blanket over him.
“Eva,” I said, totally surprised. “How did you know where I was?”
“You can’t do anything in the Weald without someone seeing,” she said. She was wrapped up in a cloak with her hood up over her cap but her cheeks were flushed pink with the winter’s chill.
It was an awkward, wild part of the wood with the hill rising steeply above, too steep to harvest the wood. Dead trees up there had fallen down over one another in tangled jumbles, slumped like piles of corpses after a siege. Leaning trees, partly-felled by great storms or the toppling of their elderly fellows, are called widow makers. When felling an already-leaning tree the immense forces on the trunk can cause it to suddenly twist and spring out at you, knocking you flat and sending your axe spinning into your face. A half-fallen tree though providing a haul of dried, seasoned wood, is dangerous. It is neither alive nor dead. It has no future but destruction and yet it will fight it all the way down. And it will betray the unwary.
Did Eva suspect what I was up to, I wondered. Was she ambushing me? Was she going to try to kill me?
“Why are you here?” I asked, fingering the hilt of my dagger.
She could not meet my eye. “You have not been seen for many days now. Not since Christmas. Some of us were wondering if you were well. Perhaps the French had come up here to raid.”
“No one is travelling,” I said. “And if they did I would kill them. This strikes me as strange?”
She sighed. “Life in the village has become somewhat tedious,” she said. “I have no conversation and no man will train with me.”
I relaxed, slightly. “You do not converse with Marian? Have you fought over something?”
“No, no,” Eva said, irritated with my misunderstanding. “She only has time for Jocelyn, Cassingham, and Swein. And I knew you would be hungry. I brought you bread and cheese and wine.”
“I suppose you better stay with me tonight,” I said, ungratefully cursing that God’s will had confounded my search for blood. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“What a generous, gracious knight you are, Sir Richard,” she said and we rode single file back to my home.
“Where were you going to stay if I had not come along?” I asked her.
“Do not think me some helpless maiden,” she said. “Finding a sheltered spot and starting a fire is simple enough.”
“If you say so,” I said. A part of me wondered if I could murder her and drink her blood. Although she was a stranger and not well liked, she was far more popular than I was. If she disappeared, then men would know who to blame. Of course, it would also have been completely immoral and I would never have done anything like that. The very thought was unworthy. Shameful, even. But I felt empty and weak and I wanted instead to be filled with power.
“I am stiff,” I said when we had stabled our horses. “And there is daylight yet remaining. I will stretch my limbs and warm myself with some sword practice before eating.”
“I will join you,” she said, shrugging off her cloak.
We sparred in the open space between the stable and the cabin before going inside. She had improved and I was impressed by her ability. I had trained with dozens, possibly hundreds of squires and knights in my time. Eva was skilful. She was as strong as a young man was and had a long reach.
Her greatest attribute was her quick mind. She anticipated attacks. Her footwork was superb.
We sparred and clashed shields and I let her rap me upon the helm. Somehow, when we
were breathing heavily, our breath misting the air, I made her laugh.
Twilight came. The gradual softening of the bleakness of the day turned into the still blackness of night. We had no candles outside and no lamps to fight by, but even while the western sky was a deep blue we could see by the light of stars in the crow-black blanket of night right above. When we became two shadows fighting each other, we could put it off no longer and went inside.
It was cold. I built up the fire while she sat on a stool at my rough table, not speaking but drinking down ale. I felt her eyes on me. The silence stretched out.
While the fire grew, I poured out a little of the water I had drawn that morning into the washbowl by the hearth. We had trained together, as men did so I decided to honour her by continuing as if she was a man. At least, that was what I told myself. With my back to her, I shook off my hauberk and continued to disrobe until I was naked and I washed the sweat off my body.
She moved behind me, rustling as she stood but I did not turn. I heard her shrug and shake herself out of her mail, which swished and thumped as she dumped it on the table. Even though my heart thudded in my chest, I admired that she had kept her steel off the damp floor. Then her doublet dropped and I wondered how far she would go.
Still not looking, I dropped to a knee to lay thicker sticks upon the fire. They caught as one and the flames lit up the room as bright as a yellow sunrise.
I stood. Her skin glistening and beaded with the cold water, she unwrapped the final circuit of the linen strip that enclosed her torso. As it came clear, her breasts spilled out, full and heavy and round. They bounced a little as they came to rest, freed from the binding.
She took the cloth from the bowl, bending at the waist, her back and flanks catching the firelight and shining along the hard muscles. There was not an ounce of spare flesh upon her, nothing but the whipcord of ridges and pits that came from hard training and never enough food. She was muscled like a knight and with her long limbs and square shoulders could have passed for a young man. But underneath that frame hung her huge breasts. She stood and washed them, wiping the cloth about them so they lifted and fell. She wiped her ridged flanks and under her arms, sighing and tossed the cloth into the bowl.
Fixing me with a stare of defiance, she thrust her hands on her narrow hips and stuck out her chin. She was shining like a statue of bronze, her belly flatter and harder than mine was, running into the shadowed triangle beneath. Her eyes began searching my own body. She smiled.
“Good God,” I said, bewitched by her beauty.
She shook her head, laughing but not probably not with joy. I was unsure what to read from her eyes, dark and flashing.
“Good God, I said again, praying for words or thoughts to enter my mind. I knew what was going to happen and I welcomed it but I wanted to preserve the moment for eternity.
She sighed. “You are utterly witless.”
Thankfully, she was not.
Making love to her was perfectly wonderful but a somewhat strange experience. Her body was hard. Her backside was small and all muscle. And she was strong. Strong of body and strong willed.
After pushing me down and sitting astride me, she issued curt commands throughout, telling me where to place my hands. I found it difficult to keep them from her voluptuous breasts, they being the only pliable part of her and also a sight in themselves that would have made St Paul spill his seed under his bishop’s robes. She pushed my hands from them and into the moistness of her body and she made me grasp her by the neck. My own pleasure in the act appeared to be of secondary importance to her own. I can only suspect that my face wore an aspect of ecstatic bewilderment throughout.
At the end, she ground herself down against me, throwing her hips back and forth, flinging her black hair, and arching her back. I held tight to her as she gasped and lay against me, hard but for the giving softness of her chest.
“You may plough me until you are yourself finished,” she whispered and rolled onto her back.
It was mere moments until I hurriedly withdrew and spilled my seed upon her belly. I collapsed beside her in a state of exquisite surprise.
I was cleansed. Complete. Whole, for just a moment.
It was dark but for the light from a smoky candle on the table. The fire I had started had died into nothing.
She wiped her stomach with the corner of a blanket and rolled over and leaned her hot skin against mine. “Build the fire.”
She took a blanket and went outside to piss while I built the fire. When she came back, she cut bread, sprinkled it with salt and brought it back to the bed with the cheese and a skin of wine. The bed was narrow and she pressed herself against me after passing me the platter.
The fire grew and threw light on us. It all felt rather domestic. I was not sure what was happening or why it was happening now but I was contented enough to live with it. We ate in silence. I could smell her body and I waited for her to begin to talk, to tell me about herself. I knew well that women loved to speak in the darkness. I was ever happy to listen and even to join in on occasion but rarely could I speak much myself. They always wanted more than I could give. I was never good at that sort of thing.
“May I sleep here?” she asked after we had eaten.
“Of course,” I said. “I would be happy with the company. It has been a long time since I had the pleasure of—”
“Good,” she said and lay down, stretching out alongside me. In just a few moments, she was snoring.
Not knowing what else to do, I lay beside her and wrapped her in my arms. In her sleep, she pushed her sinewy body against mine while I held her magnificent breasts. Somehow, I slept too.
And slept late. She woke me at dawn by whispering what she wanted and then doing it to me until I woke enough to return her passion. She wrapped her legs around me and sighed when I rolled on top of her.
A voice called from outside. “Richard?”
It was Marian. I froze. She was calling through the door and her voice carried through the thin walls.
“Richard, Eva did not return last night. Jocelyn said not to worry about her and also that I should check with you. Have you seen her?”
Eva lay under me, her hand across her mouth, eyes filled with mirth.
“Yes,” I shouted back. I hesitated, wondering what else to say. The silence stretched out.
“I see,” Marian said and she stomped off without another word. Hooves pounded on the hard earth as she cantered away.
I lay down to Eva’s laughter. “You’ve done it now,” she said.
“Done what?” I said.
“Broken her heart.”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?”
“Did you not know?” Eva seemed genuinely surprised. “You really can be witless, Richard. For some time now, Marian has had her heart set on marrying you.”
I leapt from the bed, pulled on my shirt and flung open the door into the frosty morning. I called her back. Her horse was already gone and she did not return.
The sun shone over the hilltop and shone through the wood, catching the crisp bare blackthorn branches, dark holly leaves and skeletal oaks standing their guard around my cabin. The winter sun throwing flashes of silver frost and outlining every twig and leaf, illuminating every blade of grass, existing in its own right even when attached to the whole plant and tree.
As I called Marian, the rooks in the wood erupted with the most raucous of choruses. The great black birds swooped in the dawn light and cawed on the wing, as if they were mocking me. Crows take flight before the dawn, swooping through the dark like spirits. Is it the crows’ duty to wake all the other bids? If all the crows were to die, would all the other birds wake later, after sunrise?
“Richard?” Eva called me from the doorway of the cabin, blankets wrapped around her. “Come back to bed.”
While the raw chorus of dark birds in the canopy sounded above, I noticed the warbling, sweet, delicate trilling of robins, chiffchaffs and blackbirds in the underst
orey and bushes.
***
I gave up my hunt for blood. I did not take a Frenchman and feast upon him. Instead, I exhausted myself with chopping wood, practising the sword, caring for our horses and ploughing Eva.
It was a long winter. When the snows came, I chopped wood for fully half of every short day just to keep us from freezing overnight.
A tawny owl would cry from a favourite tree nearby. On still nights, his fellows could be heard calling back from far away through the wood, keeping in contact like archers waiting to spring an ambush.
Those nights I spent with Eva were long and pleasant, huddling under blankets by the fire. I cannot say I grew to know her but we grew comfortable around each other.
By the time of Lent, I was sure she had no secret motive, that she was not working for the archbishop. As sure as I could be, at least.
We rarely spoke of the past. Never of the future. For a while, I wondered if she would bring up marriage but she never did so I said nothing of it. Whether it was her intention to get with child or not, she did not do so. I could not tell if I was relieved or disappointed but I think she was a little sad.
Of the others, we saw very little, although Eva forced me to visit them as often as the weather allowed when we went down to collect more salted pork and flour.
Jocelyn courted Marian, without success. At least, they did not marry and it seemed to me that he grew impatient and angry, driving her further from him. What advice could I offer him, me who knew so little of women? Nevertheless, I tried. One night before Easter, we sat drinking together by Cassingham’s hearth fire after mostly everyone else had fallen asleep.
“These stupid moths,” Jocelyn said, giving me a significant look. “Waking from their winter slumber only to plunge straight to their deaths. Why would they do this, do you think?”
I had the feeling his comments were somehow aimed at me. No doubt, a part of him was hoping to stay in the Weald and keep trying with Marian rather than attacking Sherwood. And I knew what part.