In a Dark Wood (10 page)

“The miller? He is a man who is afraid of the law inside himself. And to prove otherwise to himself, he acts as obnoxious as possible in the face of it. Why do we have to worry ourselves over men like him when we have the power to do this to a thief?”

Hugh had seen many men hanged, and he gazed at the bare feet of the figure on the gibbet. A carrion crow soared over the cross-beam, fluttered, and landed at the rope wound round the span of wood.

Sheep crowded the hillside, the color of maggots, and the stink of them perfumed the wind. Not one lifted its head. A shepherd leaned on his staff, staring at the backs of the sheep that surrounded him. He wore a cloak that wrapped him and a cap that gave his head the shape of a thumb.

They rode until they reached the High Way. Baldwin's men had destroyed the rain-smoothed surface of the mud. Many of the hoofprints were gray with rainwater, but it was not raining now. Faint blue shifted across the sky, and the clouds yellowed where the sun broke overhead.

The High Way was a simple stretch of mud. The King's Forest crowded either side, saplings along the edge where the older trees had been cleared. The green-black trees were a physical manifestation of the majesty of the law. Birds fluttered from branch to ground, unaware they were supported by justice just as a man's hand is stayed or freed by the hand of God. Geoffrey did not know why, but he was at peace. At peace, in the midst of these terrible burdens.

But just as an outlaw was freed by being condemned, so a man of law was freed by having so much responsibility he had no freedom at all. He need not decide what to do next. He had no choice but to do exactly what was required of him.

16

The market was rich with food, some still struggling. Chickens in wooden cages fluttered and stared. A feather floated like a star in the air. A goose, tied by a rope to a pole, had collapsed. It lunged feebly at a laughing boy and was too tired to do more than hiss. Pickerel and carp glittered in baskets, and there were bunches of watercress. A pile of cabbages hulked beside wheels of white cheeses. A basket shivered, and a bird worked its head through the lid and beheld the market with a copper-bright eye. A broad hand shoved the bird back where it belonged, and a voice called, “Pee-jons!”

Bunches of parsnips gleamed under the mud that smeared them. Great domes of black bread glistened in the sun. Turnips with purple markings like bruises tumbled onto a blanket. Everywhere the air was noisy with haggling, and laughter, and gossip. Respectful heads bowed as Geoffrey passed, and he declined offers of an apple, a wedge of bread, and a slab of cheese mottled and gleaming like a cornerstone.

But summer was over. The last of the fat harvest was in, and already the carrots were huge bulbs, distended with too much growth, like goiters, or thin and overlong, tapering to long white hairs. Barley had been transformed to barrels of ale, and the lambs that bleated and tugged against ropes were already too leggy to fetch the highest price. Even the cabbage was tinged with brown, the slowest-selling or slowest-growing heads already turning their outer leaves into skulls within which the brains were shrinking.

“What did you do with this sword, sire?” asked Ivo. “What caused it to be like this, if I may ask?”

“I attacked a plant. I believe it was a holly bush.”

Ivo squinted along the blade, letting his eye slowly open when it met Geoffrey's gaze. “A holly bush?”

“I was very angry.”

“But you don't want to do that sort of thing, now do you, my lord?”

“Not as a rule.”

“Ever,” Ivo snapped. “Forgive me, I value steel above everything. My father was a furbisher, as was my grandfather, and we all loved steel more than meat, more than women, nearly.”

“I understand,” said Geoffrey.

Ivo laid the sword gently on a bench that was hacked and scarred. He ran a finger along the flat of another blade. “To see a blemish in a perfect thing pains me. A blemish implies fragility, as in a man it implies sin.”

“Naturally.”

“Sin in a sword snaps it. Now, you can fight with a snapped sword. Sir Roger gutted a Saracen with a sword like a shard of glass. I was there—surrounded by Damascus steel, our English blade irons dragging our arms weak. Sir Roger's blade rang sour, like a piss-pot struck with a spoon, and the thing shattered. Upright, like a finger of glass, and the infidel, with his victory in his teeth, before he could grin, was fed his own bowels. Quick Sir Roger! Such a sight! He took that broken steel as you'd take a finger into butter and slipped it from cock to breast before you'd blink.”

Ivo patted the sword and found a purple-stained rag. “Not, however, the best way to slit a man, Christian or not. So, and forgive me, when you bring me a weapon of fine steel, smooth as cream, not even the tiniest of flaws, all gory with tree sap, I am”—Ivo cranked his vise, a noise like a bird's chirp—“I am angry.” He made the word long: “ang-gry.”

He rubbed the blade with a tincture that smelled like vinegar. “Although, forgive me. No doubt the holly bush offended the king's man in some manner not understood by a lowly furbisher.”

Geoffrey's fondness for Ivo was insufficient antidote for his irritation. “I have many worries, Ivo. Sometimes I can't control my anger.”

“It's balance you need, not control, and forgive my brazen mouth. Too much spleen, and you need soak it up! Spleen-stone! Ask the surgeon—he has cured my foul humors many times with a little rock, a little greenish serpentine, my lord.”

The furbisher squinted along the blade, then sat and pedaled his wheel. The whetstone sang, and the sword spit sparks. “The finest edge can be made crooked by hacking the most common wood. Just the way the smartest man can be made a little stupid by the commonest wine.”

“Will your son be in the tournament?”

“Or lose both arms!”

“He must be practicing now.”

“That's why he's not here. He's bending a bow out with dozens of the same mind.”

“Good luck to him.”

Ivo cradled the sword in his hands. “And good luck to you with this sword, my lord. And thank you for your patience with a simpleton's chatter.”

The sun in the courtyard was warm, and the shadow too cool. Icy hands of darkness closed round Geoffrey in the chapel as he waited for his eyes to adjust.

A segment of glass had fallen from a chapel window, a section of sky above an angel. Geoffrey picked up the triangle of sky, brittle as a wafer and miraculously unbroken.

The colored glass of this chapel was perhaps the most beautiful thing in the shire. It showed residents of Heaven, angels dressed in gowns that flowed to their ankles. They wore simple belts round their waists, except for the Archangel Michael, who was armored and carried a sword. The other angels carried trumpets or staffs and seemed ready to drop even those simple objects and take flight. When they gestured, the sleeves of their gowns fell back to expose graceful forearms. Their halos set off their heads not only from their bodies but from everything else in the window, from the chapel, even from the other angels. Each angel was complete in his own bubble, circumscribed by his own holiness.

Geoffrey held the segment of glass Heaven in his hand as he prayed to the Queen of Courtesy, who knew every flaw that made him fragile. On his way out he stopped to gaze upwards through the wound in the window, through which actual day, bright and colorless, was shining. Through that hole in the perfection the sounds of the world outside were bleeding: the chime of the blacksmith's hammer, the rumble of a wagon. The angels, surrounded by their own magnificence, noticed neither the profane murmur from outside nor the uplifted eyes of the sinner before them.

Hugh stood in the soft, multicolored light. Waiting, a young man with the frame and steady eye of a warrior but with a youth's shyness. “Sometimes our own character is imperfect,” Geoffrey heard himself say.

“Indeed, my lord,” said Hugh.

Why, Geoffrey wondered, does this brief response make me feel so desolate?

“But like a gap in a window, perhaps a man's character can be healed.” Hugh pressed his lips tight, perhaps embarrassed by this flower of speech.

An ill feeling that had flourished in Geoffrey died, a weed of self-hatred. He almost confided in Hugh at that moment. He almost said, Do you think we can outwit Robin Hood?

17

Too many archers thought they were superior to any man who had ever drawn a bow, and too many men failed to split the prick, a small black wand in the center of the target. At one hundred paces it was difficult but by no means impossible, as Geoffrey explained to Sir Roger, who squinted across the green towards the butts with an expression of disgust.

The weak ones would be weeded out, Geoffrey explained, by this series of eliminations, until by the time the last four faced the targets they would see the sort of shooting a man could imagine taking place only in Heaven.

Lady Eleanor kept well under the canopy, whispering to her lady-in-waiting, the same furtive creature who acted as her chambermaid, and they both giggled. No doubt the sight of so many well-stockinged men exhilarated them.

“Who is that?” Geoffrey whispered to Hugh, who stood beside him.

“Thurstin, son of the miller. Strong-looking, but I doubt a miller's son can compete with the foresters.”

The arrows struck the target with a smack, like the flat of a sword striking wood. A cry signaled a good shot, then a groan indicated a miss, as the archers stepped up and took their turns, reacting or remaining calm, as fitted their temperaments. The sky was clear blue, and the grass perfect green. Peddlers offered hens on skewers, and beggars, driven off by the sheriff's men with black pikes, worked the edge of the crowd, shuffling and stooping as their state required.

Geoffrey could speak lightly, but it was obvious that the highwayman had not come to the tournament, and a terrible taste rose within him: the realization that this trap had failed. The sight of his wife leaving the tournament did nothing to cheer him. “The sight of your beauty would encourage many a fine archer,” Geoffrey said.

“I am afraid that I am not well,” she said. “I have a headache, and now, furthermore, I have a heaviness in my stomach.” She said this with a soft voice and a sideways glance that implied that Geoffrey had caused her to be ill.

“I wonder why there is a crowd of people around that potter's cart,” Geoffrey said idly.

“Perhaps the pots are of unusual quality.”

“How can a pot be of unusual quality?”

“There are excellent pots, and not excellent ones, too.”

“I have never given it much thought.”

“I have, and I shall send my maid to see what excites these people,” said Eleanor tartly.

Geoffrey smiled and nodded to a passing franklin. “You do this simply to annoy me. You have no more interest in pots than you do in oxtails.”

“Most marvelous pots,” the maid panted upon her return. “And a most witty potter, who says that my lady could have the entire cart for three pennies.”

“The man is a simpleton,” said Geoffrey.

The doctor waited with a great show of patience, a careful smile on his lips, his hands clasped, demonstrating that wisdom gave a man peace and that the more he was forced to endure the outrageousness of the world, the more patient he would become. He was dressed in blue, with a blue cap that flowed down his back and blue inner sleeves, to show that Heaven itself had charged him with wisdom.

“What is wrong with my wife?” asked Geoffrey. It was late afternoon, the castle quiet after the pageantry of the tournament.

“She has a phlegmatic stomach,” said the doctor with a smile.

“Can it be cured?”

The doctor smiled as if delighted. “It can be cured, with time and with the proper ministrations of the correct foods and herbs.”

“What have you done for her anxiety?”

“Anxiety is easily cured. The nerves are the simplest aspect of the body to act upon. I have given her a potion made from sage.”

“And what is that?” asked Geoffrey.

“An herb that grows in the sun in countries of the south and, since it absorbs the sun, delivers its influence into the body. It does have one danger, which is—my lord, don't worry; I have never seen such a solicitous husband—that it removes the dark color from the hair. But it is simple to add to the potion a tincture of myrtle and garden crocus, and then there is no danger whatsoever.”

“I am glad I talked with you, Doctor. I am much reassured.”

“You seem much disturbed yourself, my lord.”

“I have concerns, but I am well enough.”

“Allow me to prescribe a mash of rye. It breaks down the concentration of humors.”

Geoffrey started. “You think there's something wrong?”

“A precaution, my lord. Simply a precaution. And yet—” The doctor reached forth his slender hands, and Geoffrey cringed before he managed to hold himself still. The physician peered into Geoffrey's eyes, pulling the lower lids down. “And yet I do see some cause for concern. Your blood may be too cold.”

“Too cold?”

“Mmm. Yes, I fear so. Easily remedied, however, my lord.”

“Is it serious?”

“Unchecked, yes, it could well be. Any imbalance, my lord, is undesirable. What we seek is a balance between the four humors, between warmth and coolness, between passion and wisdom, a perfect harmony. Not too much passion, not too much thought, not too much wind, not too much staleness of air. In short, we desire that the elaborate ship of the body be entirely well balanced so that it tips not too much in one direction or another.”

“What can I do?”

“I will prescribe wheat soup. It irritates the respiratory passages, but that effect is neutralized by mixing it with warm water.”

“This will cure me?”

“There can be no doubt, my lord.”

Geoffrey stepped close and murmured, “There is one further trouble, my dear doctor, which I am reluctant to confess.”