Wild Wood

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To Frank Graeme-Evans

My father

You always loved history, Dad, and maybe fascination with the past is in the DNA you handed down to me.

And though you’re not around to see this book published, I hope you’re smiling.

THE BORDERLANDS, NOVEMBER 1068

I
HEAR THEM.”
The child huddles at the Mother’s feet. She claps her hands twice, imploring attention. But the shining face does not change. Why had she believed it would? Stone is not flesh.

The little girl has watched men on horses, many men, ride into the valley all day. Small as ants from this height, they boil among the trees, shouting to each other.
What are they doing?
The child wears a cape of rabbit fur and shoes of skin, but she shivers. They come from the direction of her village, and smoke is rising beside the river.

She must have faith. She’s been sent by her grandmother to offer holly berries at the pool outside the Red Door. She was proud to be chosen, but now she is frightened.

Below! A woman. Screaming.

Panicked, the child scrambles to the fissure that guards the entrance to the cave.

Outside is terror. Men swarm on the narrow path.

They will find the pool!
The child is shocked. Only women come here.

She hesitates, half in light.

A shout. A man in armor points and spurs his horse to the pool.

“Arrête!”
The animal is rammed through the troops, and men leap away. They might not understand the language, but they know the look.

The hard-faced rider has seen the child. He turns in his saddle. “The treasure is here?” The knight speaks the bastard Norman-Norse of all Duke William’s followers.

His captain, following behind, is tempted to shrug. But does not. “So they said in the village.” Night is close. They must make camp soon. The men are restless; there were women in the last village, and like dogs the men scent the captives.

A grunt, and the Norman jumps from his horse. A path clears to the fissure in the cliff face. They have all seen him fight, and he knows they call him the Wolf, or the Devil.

He tears cobwebs with his sword but must bend to find a way through the opening. It’s dark inside the cliff, but there’s something shining and . . .

He stops with a jerk.

And laughs out loud at his fear.

Perhaps, for a breath, he had thought a woman stood there. A silver woman. But it’s a statue, a tall, pagan idol, among pillars of the same glittering rock.

The Norman strides closer. The idol, unseemly in its nakedness, does look like a woman—arms, hips, breasts—though the face has holes for eyes and a mouth. She holds a child in one arm and seems to stare at him. Closer, and he sees she too was once a limestone pillar until someone released her shape from the stone.

“A treasure?” The Norman snorts. The peasants here must have the minds of children.

He stares around the cave. He cannot see the child, if child there was. The light was dropping outside. And where could she hide? This place is empty.

He turns to go and finds something curious. A thicket of red handprints is pressed on the rock around the entrance. More
pagan rubbish. Another reason to despise the hardly human creatures who live in the forest here. The priests will sort them out—save their souls. If they have souls.

“Did you find it?” The captain holds the stirrup for his leader.

“Treasure? No. They lied to you. That was foolish, as they will understand.”

“And the child?”

“There was no child.” The commander swings a leg over the saddle and has a first clear sight of the crag above, crowned with great oaks. “What do you see?”

His captain follows the Norman’s finger.

“There is the real treasure.” The commander waves at the stream falling from the pool to the river below. “Water. And a place to build my keep. And timber. Very good timber.” The Norman smiles. He actually smiles.

His captain does not know if this is good or bad.

The child hears the men ride away. She has been hiding, in a place that only women know.

The cave is dark now, but the Mother shines. She always shines. A light in the shadows of their lives.

And the little girl kneels. And claps her hands. The Mother will hear her. And she will help. She always helps.

1

LONDON, JUNE 1981

J
ESSE MARLEY
adopts a smile like it’s an orphan. Looked at from the outside, there’s confidence in that long stride as she pushes on through waves and flurries of strangers, anonymous in that happy crush.

In six weeks Prince Charles and Lady Diana will marry, and London is already full and swelling as tides of people glut the streets, the hotels, the theaters, and the pubs. Jesse might be one of them—just another tourist waiting for the wedding, loving all the excitement. But she’s not.

She’s dressed carefully today. There’s the skirt—summery, cut on the bias, floral—and a voile shirt with a Peter Pan collar. A cute denim jacket is slung over the top, and flat pink shoes tone with the skirt. Respectable. Feminine. A nice change, some would say, but are they good enough, are her clothes right?

Nerves.

And, yes, she’s overthinking again, but Jesse can’t escape the feeling that
they
might be looking for her, just as she’s looking for them. She’s tried not to think that thought ever since she arrived in this sweaty city three days ago; the idea that the two people she wants to meet most in all the world could be in London, could,
actually, be among those on this footpath today, is glorious. And strange.

Would it really be so weird to meet by chance? Everything else in these last weeks has been on the far side of odd—why not this too?

Play the game. Just pretend.

So Jesse stops, and the mass of hurrying people divides around her, as if she’s an island in a river. Eyes half closed, she filters faces looking for clues.

That tall woman in the blazer with the shoulder pads? She’s got a good face and the age is right. The man striding beside her is well dressed too. If she’s her, maybe that’s him.

A surge of people sweeps the couple past. They stare at Jesse because she’s smiling at them, but there’s no flicker of recognition—she’s just a face in this place of far too many faces.

Jesse’s disappointed, but she isn’t crushed. There’d be recognition on both sides, so they can’t be the ones.

Ah, London. Too many cars, too many people—scrums marching in lockstep push her to the curb too often—
and
there’s the smog. She’d thought Sydney was bad, but this? The air has substance.

Jesse doesn’t have a handkerchief, so she wipes sweat from her face with one hand as a woman pushes past. She gets it when the stranger looks through her. She’s been judged. It’s not just what she wears or how she walks; so often it’s as soon as she opens her mouth and they hear the accent.

“Hah!” She hadn’t meant to shout.

Pin-striped, bowler-hatted, a man stares.

A bowler
? Things like that belong in black-and-white movies. But Jesse so longs to stop him and say, “It’s okay. I don’t bite. I’m lost, you see, and . . .” Lost? In many more ways than one.

Jesse clutches the strap of her shoulder bag as if it’s a rope thrown to the drowning, something that can save her from herself. Maybe that’s the literal truth, because inside the bag is the envelope.
She wants to open it, but to think she soon will makes her heart fill her chest.

Washed by fear, strafed by yearning, Jesse ignores the traffic; she just wants to get to the other side of the road.

Bad idea.

Good, though, that the guy on the Norton was just idling past. Well, almost good, because that instant the motorcycle sweeps her away doesn’t actually hurt. Not then.

Heads swivel. Someone screams. Three strangers, two men, one girl, rush to help. Even the guy who’s knocked her down gets up and limps over, leaving all that vintage machinery splayed on the road without a glance.

This is all surreal.

Swatting kind hands away, Jesse levers to her knees, stands, and wobbles as she smooths her skirt,

“No, I’m fine. Really. This?” Her pretty blouse is a bit ripped at the front. Well, a lot ripped. She pulls the jacket closed, but moving her right arm hurts. “No, really, it’s nothing. Thanks. Truthfully, all’s well. I just didn’t see.”

The bag!
Panicked, she tries to find it. Gutter. Footpath. “My shoulder bag? Has anyone seen my—”

The guy who took her down looks even more embarrassed. He almost points, but clears his throat instead.

There it is, still on the
other
shoulder. “I just need to be—that is . . .”
Somewhere
, anywhere, out of this.

Jesse takes the piece of paper he offers. The guy’s scribbled an address and his name on the back of, what? A butcher’s bill.

“George, is it? Thanks. I mean, that is, you’re very kind. It was my fault.” She can feel her face hitch up in a grin.

That confuses the poor man, but Jesse doesn’t offer him her name. And she doesn’t have an address; just the hostel, and she’s only staying there for one more night.

“That’s my bus.” It isn’t, but it’s stopping and at least she knows the name on the front: Smithfield. Jesse half runs, to the
extent she can. And lurches up the steps as the front door sighs open.

“Ticket?”

“What?”

“Where’s your ticket, love?” The black driver is a patient man but it’s lunchtime.

Her right shoulder hurts now, as well as her arm, so Jesse scrabbles with her left hand in the bag. “It’s here somewhere.” She’s so close to crying when she hands it over.

The man clips her pass, and Jesse stumbles along the deck as the bus takes off. There’s an empty seat by the back door and, wincing, she swings herself into it, left hand on the pole.

Where is she going, really?

Away. That’s all. Away from this place to another one.

But the old bus bumps over a broken road near Smithfield Market, more pothole and rut than street, and Jesse pings the bell. Enough!

She stands alone among another crowd as the bus growls away from the curb.

And starts to walk. There’s a hospital around here; maybe she should get her arm checked. Or, not so much her arm but her shoulder, though it’ll cost money she doesn’t have.

No. Can’t be done.

There’s a secret in this busy street, and Jesse finds it though she doesn’t know she’s looking. Maybe the entrance is deliberately hard to spot and that’s why she almost walks past. Almost. But she stops when she sees the sign to St. Bartholomew the Great. A garden is on the other side of an open, ancient door, a place of green leaves and soft light. And there’s an empty bench to sit on. Maybe she’ll just catch her breath, only for a moment.

Nearly a thousand years old, this church: that’s what the sign says. That’s around how old Jesse feels. Her head’s aching and her right shoulder—well, it doesn’t feel much like a shoulder. It feels like a thing that’s all about misery.

Like an old woman, she walks the path between the graves, makes it to the seat, and sits. She’s not Zen enough to ignore her shoulder; it hit the ground first and the throb in the joint is a half-heard drum.

Can she will the pain away? She tries.