The Forest (44 page)

And bodies.

Jonathan had been inspecting the remains of a sea chest, wondering what it had contained, when he saw the corpse. It was about ten yards out and the waves were bringing it
gradually towards him. The body was drifting face downwards in the water. He stared at it, a little frightened, yet curious.

He would probably have edged away from it if he had not noticed one thing: the tunic the man wore was of a rich brocade, threaded with gold. His shirt was bordered with the finest lace. This was a rich man: a merchant or perhaps even an aristocrat accompanying the ship on its northern voyage. Gingerly he went towards it.

Jonathan had never seen a drowned man before, but he had heard what they looked like: the bluish skin, the swollen face. He waded out until the corpse was beside him. The water was up to his waist. He touched it. It felt heavy, waterlogged. He did not look at the head but felt around the waist. The corpse was wearing a belt. It was not made of leather but gold thread. His fingers worked round it. He had to pull the body close to him to steady it.

Suddenly the dead man’s arm floated round with a bump, as if, in return, he was trying to grab the boy round the waist. For a terrifying moment Jonathan imagined the corpse might wrap its arm around him, press him close and pull him down under the surface to join his watery death. In a panic he threw himself backwards, lost his balance and rolled under. For a second, under the water, he caught sight of the corpse’s ghastly face, staring down, fish-like, at the bottom.

He stood up, steeled himself and went back. He pushed the dead man’s arm firmly away, got hold of the belt, took a deep breath and searched with his fingers under water until he found what he was looking for.

The leather pouch was fastened to the belt with thongs, but they were tied in a simple knot. It took him a little time, moving beside the corpse as the waves brought it in, but the water was still up to his knees when he got it loose. The purse was heavy. He did not trouble to open it, but glanced about to see if he was observed. He wasn’t. Willie was still
by the boat in the creek. The thongs were just long enough to tie round his waist under his clothing. He did so, adjusted his sodden shirt and tunic over the purse and went back.

‘You’re wet,’ said Willie. ‘D’you find anything?’

‘There’s a body,’ he replied. ‘I’m afraid to touch him.’

‘Oh,’ said Willie and ran off. A short while later he returned. ‘He was washed up on the beach. I got this.’ He was holding the belt. ‘Must be worth something.’

Jonathan nodded and said nothing.

They waited some time, until Seagull returned. He gave them a glance, saw the belt but made no comment.

‘Anyone out there, Dad?’ Willie asked.

‘No, son. There’s no one. The bodies’ll be coming in on the beach now, I reckon.’ He thought for a moment. ‘We’ll be taking the boat out. See what we can find. Be out all day, I shouldn’t wonder.’ If there was anything of value on the beaches or in the Channel waters for miles around, Alan Seagull would be sure to find it. ‘You boys cut home. Tell your mother where we are,’ he instructed his son. ‘Your father’ll be worried about you,’ he remarked to Jonathan. ‘You make sure you go straight home. All right?’

So the two boys obediently set off. It was only a five-mile walk back if they crossed directly above Pennington Marshes. They went along at a good pace.

There was a break in the clouds and pale sunlight was filtering on to Lymington as the two boys came down the High Street from the little church towards Totton’s house. They realized that people were looking at them. One woman ran out and seized Jonathan’s arm and started to bless God that he was alive, but he managed to shake her off politely and, not wanting to be further delayed, he broke into a trot.

When he reached his house he went to the street door that gave into his father’s counting house thinking, if his father was at home, to surprise him. But the room was
empty, so he went through it into the galleried hall, which was silent also.

For a moment he assumed that it, too, was empty. None of the servants was there. The light came in through the high window and fell into its pale, vacant spaces; it seemed like a yard that had been swept clean before its owners had departed for another place. Only when he had taken a couple of steps into the hall did he realize that the upright wooden chair under the gallery passage was occupied.

It was turned slightly away from him so that the first thing he noticed was his father’s ear. But the merchant had not heard him. He was sitting in his usual posture, but staring so straight ahead that it seemed as if he were in a trance. Saying nothing, the boy tiptoed forward, watching his father’s face.

He had not seen grief before. When his wife had died, believing he was protecting the boy, Totton had hidden his distress beneath a calm exterior. But now, thinking himself alone, he was staring in silent misery at the images his mind presented before him: the baby he had loved, but left, as was proper, to be cared for by his mother; the toddler he had watched and for whom he had done nothing but make plans; the child he did not know how to comfort; the boy who only wanted to sail away from him; the son he had lost.

Jonathan had never witnessed anguish, but he did now. ‘Father.’

Totton turned.

‘It’s all right. We’re all safe.’ The boy took a step forward. ‘We were blown down the coast.’ Totton was still staring at him as though he were a ghost. ‘There was a shipwreck in the storm. Alan Seagull is still out there.’

‘Jonathan?’

‘I’m quite all right, Father.’

‘Jonathan?’

‘Did your boat get home?’

His father was still in a daze. ‘Oh. Yes.’

‘So you won your bet.’

‘My bet?’ The merchant stared. ‘My bet?’ He blinked. ‘Dear God, what’s that when I have you?’

So Jonathan ran to him.

And then Henry Totton suddenly burst into tears.

It was some minutes, as he lay in his father’s arms, before Jonathan gently disengaged himself and reached for the purse around his waist. ‘I brought you something, Father,’ he said. ‘Look.’ And he opened it and took out the contents. They were golden coins. ‘Ducats,’ he said.

‘So they are, Jonathan.’

‘Do you know what they’re worth, Father?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘So do I.’ And, to his father’s astonishment, he repeated, entirely correctly, the values the merchant had told him in their lesson three weeks before.

‘That’s exactly right,’ said Totton with delight.

‘You see, Father,’ the boy said happily. ‘I remember some of what you tell me.’

‘The ducats are yours, Jonathan.’ He smiled.

‘I got them for you,’ said his son. He paused a moment. ‘Can we share them?’

‘Why not?’ said Henry Totton.

‘You will go with me, a little way, upon my journey?’

The moment she had spoken he had felt his heart sinking. It was an order, of course. ‘Willingly,’ he had lied, feeling almost like a schoolboy.

He was forty and she was his mother.

The road from Sarum towards the south-east – it was a wide, grassy track, really – made a gentle progress across the broad meadows in which the city lay and then rose slowly, in stages, on to the higher ground. The cathedral was more than three miles behind them before they started the long drag up and over the high ridge, which was the south-eastern lip of the broad basin where Sarum’s five rivers met. Although there was a hint of sharpness in the breeze, that September morning, the weather was fine.

It was no light matter when Albion’s mother took to the road. Only upon the bridegroom’s thrice repeated promise of the best room in the house of Salisbury’s richest merchant had she consented to come to the wedding festivities without bringing her own furniture. Even so, as well as the carriage in which she travelled with coachman, groom and outrider, there was the wagon behind, groaning under the weight of two manservants, two maids and such a prodigious quantity of chests containing her dresses, gowns, shoes and formidable collection of toiletries – the coachman swore that one of the chests had a Roman priest in it, too – that one could only thank God the autumn weather was still dry for otherwise it must surely have stuck
in the mud. But then his mother had firm views about how things should be done and, Albion reflected a little sadly as he rode beside the carriage, she did not stint herself. So the horses, at least, were glad when, cresting the ridge, the lady abruptly called a halt and ordered her litter.

The groom and the manservants silently assembled it, slotted in the poles and brought it to the carriage door. As his mother stepped out, Albion observed that she was already wearing wooden pattens on her feet to protect them from the mud. She had planned this halt, therefore. He should have guessed. She pointed, now, to the path along the ridge. Evidently she wished to go up there and expected him to accompany her. Dismounting, he walked up behind as the four men carried the litter and so, a curious little procession silhouetted against the sky, they made their way along the chalk rim as the small white clouds hurried over them.

At the high point she ordered the litter put down and stepped out of it. The men were told to wait at a distance. Then she turned towards her son, and beckoned. ‘Now, Clement,’ she said with a smile – the name had been her particular choice, not his father’s – ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Gladly, Mother,’ he said.

At least she had chosen a fine place to do it. The view from the ridge below Sarum was one of the finest in southern England. Looking back the way they had come, the long slope now appeared as a beautiful sweep down into the lush green basin from which, four miles away, Salisbury Cathedral rose like a grey swan from the Avon valley floor, its graceful spire soaring so high that you might have supposed the surrounding ridges had been spun out from it, like clay on a lathe, driven by an ancient spirit. To the north lay the bump of Old Sarum’s castle mound and the sea of chalk ridges beyond. Eastwards, the rich, undulating countryside of Wessex rolled away into the distance.

But it was turning south, in the direction of their journey,
that one saw the longest sweep of all. For there, shelving gradually down, mile after mile, lay the whole vast expanse of the New Forest – wild oak wood, gravel ridges, sweeping gorse and heather heath, all the way to Southampton and the misty blue slopes of the Isle of Wight, plainly visible, twenty miles away in the sea.

Clement Albion stood before his mother on the bare ridge and wondered what she wanted.

Her opening words were not encouraging. ‘We should not fear death, Clement.’ She smiled at him in quite a friendly way. ‘I have never been afraid to die.’

The Lady Albion – for although her husband had not been a knight, so she was always called – was a tall, slim woman. Her face was powdered white; her lips were, as God had graciously made them, red. Her eyes were dark and tragic unless she was annoyed, when they became adamantine. Her teeth were very fine – for she despised all things sweet – and long, and the colour of ancient ivory.

To the casual observer it might have seemed that she had continued to dress in the fashion of her heyday because, being neither at court nor in London, and proud no doubt of the finery of her best years, she had quietly slid, as older women often did, a decade or two behind the times. Instead of the large ruff now in fashion, she maintained a simple high, open collar; her long heavy gown had large slit puffs on the shoulders and her arms were encased in the close-fitting sleeves of an earlier time. She wore a richly embroidered underskirt. On her head she usually carried a heavy veil held with a linen hood; but today, for her journey, she had put on a jaunty man’s cap with a plume. From a chain around her waist hung a fur-lined muff. To the casual observer it might have seemed a picture of dated charm. But her son was not deceived. He knew better.

Her clothes were all black: black cap, black gown, black underskirt. She had dressed in this way ever since the death of Queen Mary Tudor, thirty years before; there being, she
would say, no reason to leave off mourning. Yet what made this attire so truly startling was the fact that the embroidery of the underskirt and the whole inside of her stiff, high collar were bright crimson: red as the blood of the martyrs. She had trimmed her widow’s black with crimson, now, for half a year. She was a walking emblem.

He looked at her cautiously. ‘Why do you speak of death, Mother? I hope you are in good health.’

‘I am, by God’s grace. But I was speaking of yours.’

‘Mine? I am well, I think.’

‘Before you, Clement, may lie great earthly glory. I pray it may be so. But if not, we should equally rejoice to wear the martyr’s crown.’

‘I have done nothing, Mother, to cause me to be martyred,’ he said uneasily.

‘I know.’ She smiled at him almost gaily. ‘So I have done it for you.’

When the Wars of the Roses had ended, a century before, with a final royal bloodletting, the new Tudor dynasty had picked up England’s crown. Descended only from an obscure branch of the royal Plantagenets, and on the female side, the Tudors had been anxious to prove their right to rule and, with this in mind, had been the most pious supporters of the Holy Roman Church. But when the second Tudor had needed a marriage annulled to get a male heir and secure the dynasty, politics had taken pride of place over religion.