Wild Wood (36 page)

In the ancient past, a crack had fissured the massive girth of an oak.

Half hunched, Rauf ran and was swallowed by the tree. I followed. Pressed together like lovers, we breathed each other’s sweat. And listened.

Like thunder that moves close, closer, until, at last, it bursts in light and fury overhead, we heard them come, a galloping mass; but there were no hounds. Who hunts without dogs?

Rauf whispered, “They will know. They will smell us out.”

“We are hidden. They are only men.”

“They are not.” He was terrified.

Something crashed past. A single animal. Large. A stag? And then the hunt was on us. It flowed like a river in pursuit of the prey,
but on the other side of the tree.

And then the sound faded, washed on and away.

We stayed inside the fissure until there was nothing but the play of wind and branches. They creaked like old bones.

We squeezed from our hiding place. The trees were empty of life. “Where have they gone?”

Rauf shook his head. Rounding the oak, our boots were the only prints we saw. And then I understood his fear. This was the hunt that men must never see.

“But we are safe, lord.”

“From the forest hunters.” I would give them no other name. It was unlucky. “Our men. Where are they?”

Rauf shook his head. Blood was on his hauberk, and loss and fury in his eyes.

“Then they will die, Rauf, the ones who did this. I promise you.”

“And I will be there.”

Easing around the oak, we saw the crossway on the track. Red pools, black mud.

“Where are the bodies?”

Rauf stared. “I do not know.”

“Go to Hundredfield. Tell Maugris.”

“You will die for nothing.”

“Do as we agreed, old friend. The path will be marked.”

I took the right-hand fork in the track and did not look back. I snapped the first of many branches for him to find. In time, I heard footsteps as he ran back the way we had come. Then I heard nothing at all.

Notching my belt tighter, I thought about the monk’s camp. It could not be far if the villagers had gone there for a feast.

And I thought about Hundredfield’s forest. Broad avenues had been cut through the trees in Fulk’s time and maintained so that a full hunt, with dogs and servants, could ride out in pursuit of game. To find such a chase might help me find my way deeper through the trees, and I was less likely to get lost. I stepped out cautiously. The leaves of last autumn were melted into earth or skeletons beneath my boots. Yet naked trees brought in more light. I thought this luck.

But I looked up and around, not down, and so my boot found the rabbit hole, not my eyes. And I fell, the air driven from my chest as I ate wet earth.

A branch snapped. And another. Then came the shuffle of feet.

I could only sip air, and that was meager, not enough for breath. Yet I rolled, and I spat. I would not die on my face, dirt in my mouth.

A man’s shape blocked the light. He leaned down as I rose up, and something was in his hand.

31

I
DREAMED OF
the wild hunt, the silver riders with pitiless eyes. I ran from them, but they chased me down. I tried to wake before they took me under the hill.

And I thought I had, for the air now rejoiced in the scent of roasting mutton. And there was not just the smell; my mouth filled up with the taste of it, and I bit down to savor . . . but that was the last, kind, part of the dream. True, the ghost of lamb fat
was
still in the air when I opened my eyes, but the hearth I saw was unlit, and only a pile of ashes remained.

I lay in a windowless hut. Above, stone had been piled up, circle on circle, like a skep woven for bees. I had seen ruins of buildings like this before. The people of Hundredfield had abandoned them for huts of mud and wattle in Fulk’s time.

I rolled to my side and levered to my knees. And stood. I was dizzy, and my head—I touched my scalp with bound hands, which came away wet—yes, there was a wound, and a nest of pain. But I could see and I could hear. And if weapons had been taken from me, also boots and armor, stones in the hearth would fit my hands. I was not defenseless.

I walked my cell to find its extent and heard nothing but the scuff of naked feet on earth. Could I burrow beneath the walls?

“Dog!” Stone muffled the shout.

Then came a howl and the slide and clash of steel. And a roar from many voices.

“Mourrez!”

Godefroi! I groped to the door and banged, kicked, yelled.

No one came.

The scream of the crowd grew louder, but louder still was his voice. If he sold his life today, good coin was being paid.

I shook my head to clear it and kicked the door until it splintered.

The howling stopped. Then came groaning and a sound I did not understand.

I kicked the door again, and light bled through the gaps in the planks.

“Stand away.” A voice I did not know.

“And if I will not?” Bravado. But they would expect attack now, when the door opened.

“Then you are a dead man.”

“What, you will risk another fight?” I forced a laugh.

“You have no weapons.”

I did not answer.

The light under the door wavered.

“It takes a long time to starve to death. And you will. Yet we eat well in the forest. Hundredfield’s sheep. And deer.” The man was taunting me. He had his mouth pressed close to the wood.

“You need me to live.”

“Why?”

“Guess.”

I heard breathing. Two men, no more. Unless others were standing behind.

“Only the rich have time for games.” Another voice. The sneer was too obvious.

I said, “A girl may have come this way with children. She has value to my family; you may profit from that. If I live. There was another woman also. My brother’s wife.” I did not speak Godefroi’s name.

“If she comes to the forest, she’ll be no one’s wife.” A coarse guffaw. The light withdrew, and at a distance I heard voices but not words; it was a dialogue—one man angrier than the other.

I felt myself settle—that alert silence of the soul before time shatters into violent fragments.

The light returned and the lock bar outside scraped as it was lifted from its keepers.

I had a stone in each hand, and stepping back—one pace, another, a third—my back brushed the wall.

Each sense stretched out in the dark. What did I hear? Breath. What did I smell? Sweat. Perhaps it was mine.

Light cut an edge to a man’s shape as he stepped inside. His companion stood close, a torch of pitch pine in one hand; he was taller than the first, and as the flame dipped and flared, it kindled his eyes. I had never seen an angrier face.

Blocking the exit, the first stopped a pace away. “Why did you ask about the girl?”

Behind, the other man moved. An ear had been hacked off, the blood still running. He stared at me, a focused glare.

“I told you. She has value to my family.” I leaned back, my shoulders against the stone. If I had to run, the wall would launch me.

“Value? As if she were coin?” The other man waved the torch and agitated shadows fled as a knife flashed in his hand and . . .

. . . his head hit the floor. Winded, he gasped at my feet like a fish. The shorter man had tripped him as he sprang.

I scooped the torch from the floor. Holding it above my head, I stared at the smaller man. “I know you.”

“Then you have the advantage.” A pleasant tone.

“I am Bayard de Dieudonné. You are Alois, the son of our reeve. You almost killed me once.”

Alois stared at me. I could not read his face. Blood was on his clothes.

“I heard the fight.”

Lips peeled back from his teeth, like a hound. “Your brother knows how to defend himself, even if you do not.”

Knows
. Godefroi was not dead.

The earless man stood. Close up, his head seemed butchered. “He did this to me.” Gathering phlegm, he went to spit.

“And what did you do to him?”

“Dog!”

Alois wheeled and kicked, a hit to the ribs with his weight behind it. “Enough!” He snatched the knife and shoved the man ahead.

I stepped out into a clearing lit by fire. Flame showed me ranks of men, some I knew. Badly clothed, their faces thin, they clutched well-honed blades in their hands, even billhooks. There were too many to count. They watched as Alois prodded me forward, the sting of the knife in my back.

“Bring the other one.”

At first I thought they had a flayed buck, for something like an animal was dragged from the shadows and dumped into the light.

I have seen much in my time, living men hacked open, split, or beheaded, but those were strangers. This was my brother. Snatching the torch from the earless man, I ran to Godefroi, the flame my only weapon.

Kneeling, I cradled my brother’s head. Godefroi’s blood soaked my jerkin to the skin. He was dying, life escaping from a dozen wounds; night turns red to black, and I could not dam that dark flow.

“Ask me why.” Alois was standing at my shoulder.

Godefroi opened his eyes and stared at me; words were not words, only sounds. He had no tongue.

“Ask!”

I stared at Alois. “I will remember each thing that you have done.” In the end, a man can only die once.

“Your brother has been tried. And sentenced.”

Oh, I should not have laughed.

Godefroi’s mouth bubbled blood as Alois kicked him in the back—he could not scream. “Murder.” Another kick. “Dispossession.” I lunged, but could not deflect the blow. “Rape. Many rapes. My sister among them.”

Godefroi’s breath rattled as I scrabbled to hold him. His eyes opened, the whites like raw flesh. He tried to move his hand and I grasped it. He sighed and blood puddled in his mouth.

Alois called out, “Now!”

Something moved, flashed in the flame light. When the blade sliced down and wide, iron cut to the spine, and Godefroi’s neck yawned open as the earless man jumped back.

And I was hauled away, death-red, howling, and thrown into the hut.

Godefroi’s blood dried on my clothes and on my skin, and for the first time I, a man, cried like a child.

32

R
ORY LEANS
back in his chair and rubs his eyes. He’s nearly finished transcribing the first Hundredfield tape. Flexing his shoulders, he clicks the spools into action.

“It is dark and cold where I am. Monstrous cold.”

He winds back. Replays.
“It is dark and cold where I am. Monstrous cold.”

There it is again.

The voice he’s hearing does not sound like Jesse’s. The cadence of her speech has altered, and did she really say “monstrous”? He doesn’t remember that, but this tape is the only true record he has.

He writes a careful note of what he’s heard, and what he thinks she said. Clicks the
PLAY
button again.

“I do not like this place. It is unhappy. And something lies here. It has the form of a woman but she has the wrong color and she shines! Aaaah. How she shines.”

Rory flicks
STOP
. Jesse definitely said “man” before. He’s certain she did.

She has the wrong color.

Who says
has
for
is
? He stares at the spools, utterly perplexed. These are not all Jesse’s words; it does not sound like her voice and at least some of the phrases are archaic.

“Remember the movie, this is your movie.”
Rory jumps at his own voice. He’s pressed
PLAY
without thinking.

Then that other woman, the possible un-Jesse, says,
“Oh, I do not like this.”

“No need to worry, no need to feel anxious. Maybe you’d like to draw what you see?”
His voice again; the struggle for calm.

“Yes. That will be easier for me.”
She seems relieved, almost grateful.

He flicks
STOP
as his eyes stray to the other side of the table. There are the sketches, the woman’s face framed by a wimple.

You aren’t a nun, are you?

Here are his notes in an ordered pile, the writing even and legible just as it always is. And the recorder—metal and plastic and chrome, powered by electricity—is man-made. Something that does what it is supposed to do; not something that—what?

Records the voice of an unseen, unknown woman?

That’s ridiculous.

So, what does he do now?

Look for the logic, note what is known, highlight what is not.

Very well.

He will go back to the beginning, the very beginning of this case, and search for explanations of the symptoms manifested by his patient. Scientific explanations, not subjective interpretations. That’s his job.

Rory pulls the notebook closer and puts the sketch of the woman’s face beside it. He begins to write, reviewing what he knows.

Following injury, Jesse displayed the traits of a savant.

Yes. What he said to Alicia is true in his professional judgment.

Savantism seemed to be expressed in three ways in this case—if there is no other explanation: