The Forest (10 page)

The buck’s antlers were splendid and he knew it. Their heavy, burnished blades spread out some two and a half feet from his head and they were fearsome to behold. They had been fully grown since August when their velvet covering had begun to peel off. For many days he had scraped and rubbed the new antlers against small trees and saplings, leaving scour marks on their bark. It had felt good when the strong saplings braced and bent against their weight; he had felt his growing power. This honing served a dual purpose: not only did it clean off the last vestiges of peeling velvet, but the bone of the antlers, creamy white when they emerged, became coated, polished, hardened to a gleaming brown.

By September he was getting restless. His neck swelled. His Adam’s apple enlarged; the tingling sensation of power seemed to be filling his whole body, from his hindquarters to his thickening shoulders. He began to strut and stamp the ground, he had an urge to exercise, to prove his power. He moved about the woods alone at night, wandering here and there like some knight in search of adventure. Gradually, however, he began to move towards that part of the Forest where the pale doe had seen him the year before – for bucks instinctively move away from their original home when they are going to mate, so that the genetic stock of the deer will be constantly mixed. By late September he was ready to mark out his rutting stand. But before that one other ancient ceremony had to begin.

Who knew when the red deer first came to the Forest? They had been there since time immemorial. Bigger than the fallow interlopers, men had designated them by different names: The male red was a stag, the female a hind; the young red was not a fawn, like the fallow, but a calf. While the fallow buck’s antlers rose in broad blades, the stag’s still larger crown rose in spiky branches. The red deer’s numbers were never large. Lacking the fleetness and cleverness of the fallow, they were easier to kill and already the fallow far outnumbered them. While the fallow liked the wooded glades, the red remained on the moor where, as they lay in the heather, they seemed, even in full daylight, to blend into the land itself. Primeval and Nordic, compared with the elegant French arrivals, it seemed appropriate, as the autumn rut approached, that even the fallow great bucks should yield precedence to these ancient figures who had endured in the empty silences of the heath since, very likely, the age of ice.

It is normally a few days after the autumn equinox, when he has taken charge of the group of hinds who will form his exclusive harem, that the red stag raises his mighty head and utters the haunting call, a few notes higher than the bellow
of cattle, which echoes over the heather at twilight and causes men to listen and say: ‘The stags have started to roar.’

And more days will pass before, in the woodland glades, the fallow bucks add their own, different call to the sounds of autumn.

The buck’s stand was not one of the most important – older and more powerful great bucks held those – for this was still his first rut. It was about sixty yards long and nearly forty wide. He had prepared it carefully for days. First, working his way around the perimeter of the stand, he had used his antlers to thrash the saplings and bushes. As he did so, a strong scent exuded from glands below his eyes, marking the bushes as his territory. He anointed the trees along the perimeter too. Then, as the moment came closer, he had made scrapes with his forefeet, which also contained glands, upon the ground, even tearing it up in places with his antlers. He urinated in the scrapes, then rolled in the wetted dirt. This created the pungent smell of the rutting buck, thrilling to does: for unlike the red deer, it is the females who come to the male in the fallow rut.

And so, as if for some magical knightly tournament that was to take place in the forest glade, the handsome young buck was ready to challenge all comers on his rutting stand. His rut would last many days, during which time he would not eat, living on the energy provided by a phenomenal production of testosterone. Gradually he would grow less alert; by the end he would be exhausted. The watching does would guard him, therefore, patrolling the outer edges of the stand, looking out and listening. And indeed, all nature participated: for the birds would call out at the approach of danger and even the forest ponies, usually silent, would whinny in warning if they saw human intruders come near the dappled forms in their secret ceremony.

The buck had been pacing the stand for hours. Trampled grass, crushed bracken and nutty brown acorns lay
underfoot. As well as the does, two prickets and a sore, who was trying to look as if he might step into the ring, were watching. A faint light was filtering through the trees. From time to time he would pause in his pacing to give the rutting call.

The rutting call of the fallow buck is known as a groan. Stretching his head slightly downwards, he then raises his swollen throat to emit this call. Its sound can hardly be described – a strange, grunting, belching trumpet. Once heard, it can never be forgotten.

Three times he groaned, handsome, powerful, from the centre of the stand.

But now a new figure was approaching through the trees. There was a rustle as the does scampered out of his path. He emerged and crossed the line quietly into the stand, walking calmly towards the buck as though he had not a care in the world.

It was another buck and, judging by his antlers, the two were perfectly matched.

The pale doe trembled. Her buck was going to fight.

The interloper moved slowly across the stand. He was darker than her buck. She could smell his scent, pungent, sour, like the mud from brackish water. He looked strong. He walked past her buck who fell into step – this was the ritual of the fight – just behind. The two males kept walking, almost casually; she saw the muscles flexing in their powerful shoulders, their antlers waving slowly up and down as they went along. She noticed that one of the two little curved horns just in front of the base of the antler blades on the dark buck’s head was broken, leaving a jagged spike. A sudden twist of the head and he could gouge out her buck’s eye. The other does were watching silently. Even the birds in the trees seemed to have quietened. She was aware only of the slow swish of the feet of the two males on the fallen leaves and bracken.

All nature knew her buck’s fate was about to be decided. A buck might challenge one of the mighty great bucks and lose with honour. Perhaps the interloper had broken his horn that way. But when two matched bucks come head to head, one must be defeated. He may be wounded, sometimes killed; but most important he has lost, his pride is shattered. The does know it, the whole forest has seen. He slinks away, and the stand and the does belong to the victor.

The pale doe watched as the two males reached the end of the stand, turned and started back again. Was it, after all her waiting, to be the darker, sour-smelling buck with the vicious spike who destroyed her chosen mate and then possessed her? She had come to the rutting stand. She belonged to the winner by right. That was the way of it. Then she saw her buck give the sign.

A nudge. That was the signal. Her buck moved forward just a little so that his shoulder nudged the hindquarter of the interloper.

The dark buck wheeled. For just a second there was a pause as the two bucks braced back on their hind legs; then, with a crack that echoed through the woods, the two huge antlers crashed together.

Two full-grown bucks fighting is a fearsome thing to behold. As the powerful bodies with their swollen necks strained, grunting, against each other, the pale doe involuntarily backed away. They suddenly seemed so huge, so dangerous. If one of them broke loose, if they came charging towards her … They were evenly matched. For long seconds they inched back and forth, their antlers locked low, their hind legs digging into the ground, muscles bulging as if they might snap. Her buck seemed to be gaining.

Then she saw his hind legs slip. The interloper pushed forward, a foot, a yard. Her buck was clawing the ground, but slipping in the damp leaves. He was about to go down. She saw him lock his legs. He was sliding back, his body
rigid, locked in position. The interloper gave a final shove; he seemed about to lunge forward and grind her buck down.

But something had changed. Her buck had hit firmer ground. His feet suddenly got their purchase on grass. His hindquarters shivering, he dug in. She saw his shoulders rise and his neck bear down. And now the interloper was slipping on the wet leaves. Slowly, cautiously, their antlers locked, the two straining bucks began to turn. Now they were both on grass. Suddenly the interloper disengaged. He gave his head a twist. The jagged spike was aiming at her buck’s eye. He lunged. She saw her buck rock back, then smash forward. His whole weight came down on the interloper’s antlers. There was a rasping crackle. The interloper, because of his vicious manoeuvre, was not quite straight. His neck was twisting. He was giving ground.

And then, in a rush, it was all over. Her buck was shoving him back, foot after foot. The interloper was off balance; he struggled, turned and was caught on the flank. Her buck was in full spate now, butting, tossing his head, driving his opponent before him. There was blood on the interloper’s side. Her buck’s head rammed again into his antlers with a tremendous blow. The interloper cried out, turned, stumbling, and limped off the stand. He had lost.

Having strutted magnificently down the stand of which he was now the undisputed master, her buck turned his face towards her.

Why did he suddenly look strange? His huge antlers, his triangle of a face, the two eyes like black holes, staring blankly towards her: it was as if her buck had vanished, been transmogrified into some other entity named only ‘deer’ – an image, a spirit, swift and terrible. He bounded towards her.

She turned. It was expected of her; it was instinctive; but she was also afraid. All year she had waited. Now it was her turn. She began to run, away from the stand, through the trees, the bushes brushing against her. All year she had
waited, yet now, knowing him so large, so powerful, so strange and terrible, she was trembling with fear. Would he hurt her? Yes. Surely. Yet it must be so. She knew it must. She had a strange sensation, as though all the warmth, all the blood in her body was rushing backwards, into the base of her spine and her hindquarters, which were trembling as she ran. He was coming. He was just behind, she could hear him, sense him. Suddenly she could smell him. Hardly knowing what she did, she stopped abruptly.

He was there. He was upon her. She felt him mount her; her body staggered under the weight. She had to fight to stand up. His scent was all over her like a cloud. Her head involuntarily snapped back. His antlers appeared, hovering above, terrible, absolute. And then she felt him enter. A searing red pain and then, something full, urgent, tremendous, filling her like a flood.

Adela liked Winchester. Lying in the chalk downs, due north of the great Solent inlet, it had once been a Roman provincial town. For centuries after it had been the chief seat of the West Saxon kings, who had finally become kings of all England. And though, during the last few decades, it was London that had become the effective capital of the kingdom, the old royal treasury remained at Winchester and the king would still from time to time hold court at his royal palace there.

It was not far from the New Forest. A road led southwest for eight miles to the small town of Romsey, where there was a religious house for nuns. Four miles more and one was in the Forest. Yet, as Adela quickly found, it seemed a world away.

Set on a slope, overlooking a river and surrounded by sweeping ridges topped with woods of oak and beech, Winchester was essentially a walled city of about a hundred and forty acres, with four ancient gates. The southern end contained a fine new Norman cathedral, the bishop’s palace,
St Swithun’s priory, the treasure house and William the Conqueror’s royal residence, together with several other handsome buildings of stone. The rest of the town was on a fitting scale, with a market place, several merchant halls, houses with gardens and dovecotes, and busy streets of craftsmen and tradesmen. By one of the gates there was a hospice for poor folk. The views over the downs were broad, the air bracing.

The city had retained much of its ancient character. The streets all had their Saxon names, from Gold Street and Tanners Street even to the Germanic-sounding Flesh-mongers Street. But the court of Wessex had been an educated place. Even before the Norman Conquest, the city had bustled with priests, monks, royal officials, rich merchants and gentlemen, and one would have heard Latin and even French spoken, as well as Saxon, in Winchester’s halls.

The arrangements Walter had made for her were certainly an improvement upon the merchant at Christchurch. Adela’s hostess was a widow in her fifties, the daughter of a Saxon noble by birth, who had been married to one of the Norman keepers of the Winchester treasury and who now lived in pleasant stone-built lodgings beside the western gate. Walter had been closeted with her for a long time when they first arrived and after he had gone the lady had given Adela an encouraging smile and told her: ‘I’m sure we can do something for you.’

Certainly, she hadn’t lacked company. The first day they walked through the streets, to St Swithuns and back through the market, her hostess was greeted by priests, royal officials and merchants alike. ‘My husband had many friends and they remember me for his sake,’ the lady remarked; but after a day or two’s experience of the other woman’s kindness and common sense, Adela concluded that they liked the widow for herself.

Her own position was made easy.

‘This is a cousin of Walter Tyrrell’s, from Normandy,’ her hostess would explain; and Adela could see from their respectful reaction that this immediately placed her as a young noblewoman with powerful connections. Within a day, the prior of St Swithuns had requested that the two women would dine with him.