In a Dark Wood (17 page)

“They filled in the tracks,” said the forester at last.

“Even so, there will be traces,” said Henry. Henry was at home here, searching and sweating. He was most comfortable when he was sweating. “They are men, not birds.”

The forest was dim and silent. They were aphids shut into the pages of a vast dark book. At last Henry lifted a finger and knelt.

A branch had been lopped off, leaving a stump ending in midair. “Axe,” said Henry simply. “Not long ago. Two weeks, maybe less.”

Geoffrey fought a smile. “So we are only two weeks behind them.”

Henry sulked.

“Still, it is strong evidence that they do, after all, exist,” said Geoffrey.

“We'll find your camp, and then the next one, and the one after that until very gradually the noose tightens,” said Henry.

A branch poked into Geoffrey's tunic, a long, skeletal finger. “I can't help thinking they are watching us even now,” he said.

“Let them watch,” snorted Henry. “They'll see what a band of stout men looks like.”

The horses splashed a stream. Geoffrey touched the water and nearly slipped. “Yes!” he whispered. “Yes, this is the right way.”

The pine needles were russet, and the pine trunks as stark as trees that had been charred. Only high overhead were there any leaves. The ground fell into gentle culverts, and Geoffrey pulled his horse ahead of the men, studying the ground, searching, trying to sense the path.

He hurried ahead, past one tree so much like another he had to turn back to see his men following, with Henry ahead of them, stout Henry, reading the ground as he could never read a book.

“I've been here before,” Geoffrey breathed. “But it was so different. It was like years ago, like something I saw when I was a child. Where was the fire?” He turned to Hugh. “They had a fire. Perhaps here, among these big trees. And a deer was hung up somewhere. And there were tents.”

Henry and his men held back. Finally Henry suggested, “Maybe another place, farther on.”

“Perhaps. I can't tell.”

Henry knelt beside the forester. “I don't see how twenty people could have camped here. Not even a year ago.”

Geoffrey searched forwards, and he was there. The deep shadow, the scoop of land—all changed. There was no trace of a fire, not even a speck of charcoal. Geoffrey spun, doubting and then reaffirming. “This is the place,” he said. “But it looks so different.”

Henry knelt and sniffed the ground. “Are you sure?”

The forester dug into the earth with his fingers and brought forth a piece of charcoal like a coal-black arrowhead.

“I'll leave you here,” said Geoffrey. Henry had to regain his pride, and searching without the sheriff would be medicine to his self-assurance. And Geoffrey could do no more. Every tree was a shaft of darkness.

29

Geoffrey huddled, shivering in the privy in a tower over the moat. He wiped himself with a handful of hay and let the hay fall down the dank shaft on the tower. What a pity you can't build a fire in the privy, he thought, although you could send for a brazier of coals. A starling had worked its way into the roof of the castle and chattered, imitating the laugh of the carrion crow, the low of a cow, and the sound of a distant horn, a steer horn blown by a huntsman announcing that he was killing one deer for his own use only and should not be arrested. It also sounded strangely like that other, sonorous note that had brought the figures into the shadow of the Trysting Oak.

Hugh helped Geoffrey out of his nightgown. Geoffrey stepped into his linen underpants and let the gown of soft wool fall over him, to the floor. He wore a tunic of coarser wool over that and a belt of ox leather. He pulled on a cap of black wool and tied it under his chin against the chill.

Hugh brought a pan of steaming water, and Geoffrey let his hands steep in it, a brass dish nearly overflowing with summer, or with the heat of those distant places where men had no heads but had eyes and mouths in their torsos, and were thereby so much more difficult to kill.

Geoffrey had one case before him today: a freedman, who made a living catching bream in the river, had blackened the eye of the bailiff when that officer had arrived to collect taxes. Geoffrey sat as judge for such cases and prepared himself carefully, always. He wanted to know who the accused was, who his father was, and how the accused got along with his wife. A bitter wife made a bitter man.

The freedman was lean, the coarse cloth of his trade hanging on him like flags. Bream hunting was apparently not a way to get fat. The man's eyes were downcast, and the manacle on his wrists jingled as he fell to his knees.

“Stand before the law,” said the clerk.

“Your father was a huntsman. Charles was his name …” Geoffrey began.

The mention of a man's father made him either stand taller or shrink. This man shrank. “Indeed, my lord, he was a master of snare.”

“Yes, I remember seeing your father's snares at work. A rabbit, running in midair, going nowhere because a thong gripped his hind leg. And they call you Tom.”

“Yes, Lord Sheriff.”

“Your father was killed by poachers.”

The man did not move. “Stabbed through the skull, my lord,” he said quietly.

“These men were caught, and drawn, and quartered.”

“I remember it well, my lord,” said the man without raising his voice, a thin figure whose past and future collided to crush him.

Geoffrey, too, remembered, the smell of blood as the writhing men were shown their own entrails, the smell of blood and the stink of offal in the early-morning air.

“This household,” the sheriff continued, “is a steady contributor to your income. Last Friday we spent seven pence on salt flounders, fifteen pence on mullet and bar, and the Monday before that we spent twelve pence on bream. So that when our bailiff goes forth to collect his tax, we expect him, if respect for law is not sufficient, to be accepted courteously out of respect for us. Every seller in the market pays us a tithe; you are not the only taxpayer.”

The freedman was pale, a thin carving in bone.

“The customary punishment is the cropping of the ears. Such punishment makes you a spokesman for the rest of your life on the power of the law. A punishment does two things: it cures the criminal, and it advertises the cure to the world, as a warning.”

The manacled man said nothing.

“But we understand that you and the bailiff were old adversaries. We understand that your defiance was not of the law but of this bailiff's person. This is still an ugly matter, but not as ugly as rebellion against the king's tax. Therefore, your tax will be tripled and paid at once, or your body held in chains until your friends and family can pay it for you.”

Geoffrey waved the man away.

“A perfect justice, as always,” said the clerk, showing his teeth.

“There is perfection only in Heaven.”

“There is one other matter, although it does not really concern you.”

Geoffrey waited.

“The miller was nearly killed yesterday. Knocked flat, and still as a dead man for two hours, although now he is awake and cursing, as always.”

Geoffrey covered a smile. “Whatever happened?”

“A bear he had bought for bear-baiting, an old, piebald beast waiting to die like an honest animal, was tied to a stake while the dogs were brought.” The clerk beamed. “And the rope broke.”

“The rope broke!”

“Snapped! As much to the surprise of the bear as anyone, from what I hear. The bear looked this way and that way, and then, seeing that he was no longer tethered, ran straight into the miller.”

“A wonder he wasn't killed!”

“A miracle.”

“And what happened to the bear?”

“The miller's son shot sheaves of arrows into it and chased it as far as the forest. I doubt that bear will bother anyone but—” The clerk had been about to say, Robin Hood.

“You said you wanted to see me, and then you were nothing but busy.” Lady Eleanor drifted into the room, her blue silk gown making the sound of wind in a pine.

“The fact is,” said Geoffrey, “I have been reluctant to talk with you.”

She lifted her hands to adjust her wimple, a frame for her eyes and mouth, and her pale cheeks were brightened with just a touch of Parisian powder. “Whyever should you be reluctant to talk with me?”

“The falconer must go.”

“He is nothing to me—”

“Then I will get you another.”

Her eyes were downcast. She turned away. “I am having a pendant made,” she said. “It will depict the death of Saint Thomas à Becket. I think it's important to remember that the saints were human and that they suffered.”

“The world is a brutal place,” said Geoffrey.

“And the abbess?” said Eleanor lightly.

“What does that mean?”

“A garden,” said Eleanor, “shut off from the rude world is not safe.”

“What garden?”

“We try to concentrate peace into portions of the world because we cannot have it everywhere. And the world intrudes on this peace, rushing it, like a flood.”

“Whatever are you talking about?”

“Pigs! I am talking about pigs! They invade the abbey garden.”

She toyed with the blue silk. “When you were gone, all that night. When I sent to find out if you had come in, and word was always ‘Not yet,' I realized something. Something about the way I felt. You are my husband, and in that estate of being your wife I do not have to love you.”

“No. You do not.”

She said, after a pause, “But I do.”

Hugh helped Ivo wrap the sword pommels with kid leather, holding the blades firm while the swordsman worked.

“What of smaller swords?” Hugh asked. It was a question he had been saving, unsure when to ask.

“No need to worry yourself about the fisher blade or the poacher's steel,” said Ivo absentmindedly. “A Christian broadsword is fit for you.”

“But don't some warriors dagger their enemies?” asked Hugh, slipping the ox-hide gloves from his hands.

“What do you want with a dagger?” asked Ivo, looking up, his fingers stained with tannin, his eyes bloodshot from working by cow tallow candles.

“I should know how to use a shortsword. Like that dagger above your bench,” said Hugh, indicating a black blade gleaming on the wall.

Hugh had been afraid to ask, sure the swordsman would disapprove of such a secretive, ignoble weapon.

“I want you to learn to fight,” said Ivo, “not to murder.”

But what if there was someone in particular who should die? thought Hugh. An outlaw whose continued existence was vile.

30

The falconer attached the jess the bird already wore a long, black leash, talking all the while in a voice like the speech of a dove, a low voice that the falcon turned to hear better. “Night Hand, we call her, and Night Hand she is to rabbit. No one sees her come.” He interrupted his human speech to speak like a dove again, and the falcon shook itself, lifting the feathers round its head into a mane.

The falcon saw Geoffrey again, its eyes so intense Geoffrey stepped back. This bird could love nothing. For it, there could be only killing and not-killing. The killer-bird looked away from Geoffrey, cocked an eye, and looked back at Geoffrey again, its talons finding a new place on the glove.

And the falconer smiled, the sly smile of a man who has great skill. “She obeys only me, and she will do whatever I tell her.”

“A proud creature,” said Geoffrey, feigning boredom.

“The best,” said the falconer. “She will attack anything at my command. Anything at all.”

“I am amazed at her, I must admit.”

“She will attack even a man.”

Geoffrey forced himself to smile. “Such a bird could blind a man easily.”

“Easily, my lord.”

The bird tightened its feathers again, reducing its size by a third, its head turning to view Geoffrey like a knife with eyes. The falconer spoke to it in his bird language, and Geoffrey could not breathe. The creature was like a crossbow, loaded and cocked, held in the falconer's hands, and Geoffrey felt for his sword, knowing that if the bird leaped, there would be nothing he could do.

“We will sell the falcons and offer your services with them. I will have no trouble. The birds are magnificent, and you are highly skilled.”

The man continued to purr into the ear of the falcon, and the bird cocked its head, listening as to long instructions. The gentle voice spoke of only one thing to the bird: killing and the taste of killing and the feel of flesh in the beak. “You will regret your loss,” said the falconer.

“Undoubtedly.”

“Night Hand!” whispered the falconer, and the bird stood erect and still. “Night Hand!”

“But my wife tires of these birds.”

“She is always so merry out under the sky.”

Geoffrey stepped to the bird and spoke to it himself. “Night Hand will fly as beautifully for another master.”

The bird ruffled its feathers again. The bird had accepted Geoffrey's voice, the sound of its name in Geoffrey's mouth unlocking something in it, as a key unlocks a chest. The bird lifted the talon that was not encumbered with a jess and scratched its head.

“Night Hand trusts you,” said the falconer, with a tone very much like disappointment.

The physician picked up his basket. “Does the rue still affect you?”

“I have not thought of any woman for quite some time.”

“When again you feel passionate thoughts, begin taking more of the rue. The body becomes accustomed to our treatments, just as we become accustomed to cold in winter.”

“Just as our bodies become accustomed to death,” offered Geoffrey.

The doctor smiled, but it was a tired smile, and Geoffrey realized that the doctor was not a young man, far from it. The man's eyes were red, and his gray hair fell over his forehead.