Wild Wood (8 page)

“That’s some vest he’s wearing.” The nurse smiles.

Jesse says nothing. She doesn’t protest as the nurse unbuttons the shirt, or when the hospital gown is eased over her shoulders and arranged around the sling. She even tolerates the moment when her jeans and knickers are pulled down, leaving her half naked.

There’s nothing to say.

She doesn’t remember drawing the man’s face, just like all
the other stuff. Is someone else making these sketches and leaving them to be found, just to mess with her head? But who? She doesn’t know anyone in London. And why would anyone bother?

Jesse stares at the drawing. The man’s eyes are filled with suffering. Abruptly, she drops it in the drawer. Closes it with a snap. Nothing explains why she knows he’s wearing a cuirass.
How
? And what’s a cuirass anyway?

Maybe it’s silly to complain about more tests. Maybe she needs them.

7

D
AWN WAS
rigid with frost, and morning crept over Hundredfield as if shamed to hold winter’s hand.

Fulk, the Norman who had built the keep, would have been offended by such unseasonable weather. Long summers and brief winters were part of the unshakable luck that lasted all his life, and he took such things, and much else, as his due.

Following William the Bastard to England, our ancestor had cut his way to fame at the side of the duke. For as the country drowned in a tide of blood, Fulk swam high, and understanding he had a servant of some worth—a man as brutal, as pragmatic as himself—Duke William sent him north. He was to assist in the conquest of the borderlands by slaughtering the lowland Scots, and for this service, Fulk was licensed to carve an estate and build a castle in that disputed territory. To hold what he grasped, Fulk picked out a defensible site for his first keep—a high crag that overlooked the land for leagues uncounted.

This crag had a river at its feet and a grove of oaks on its summit. These great and ancient trees Fulk cut down to build the keep and its palisade.

And when the Saxon nobles rebelled—in horror at the desecration—he
burned them from their homes and forced them to build his stronghold in the ashes of their own houses.

Throughout the north, and whatever their former station in life, those who survived the starvation of William’s second winter were reduced to slaves. But at Hundredfield the misery of its former lords was not complete.

Below the oak grove was a holy pool, and Fulk’s new captives were forced to dig it into a well, while the stream that fell from the lip was diverted into a moat for the castle he had begun to build. And when stone was quarried to replace those first oak walls, the Saxons built a tomb over their hopes. For the sacred wood was torn down again and burned under cooking pots and in braziers to warm the new stone keep.

In this way our house was founded—by blood and in misery and by the hand of God, for that is what our name, Dieudonné, means: “given of God.”

Now, standing on the battlements above the gatehouse, I remembered other dawns like this at the hinge of the year. Hundredfield had been a bleak place as we grew up. I was taken from my mother at six, as Maugris had been before me, and from that time he and I slept on the floor of the hall with the castle servants and the fighting men. Maugris said he was glad because at least we could curl together like hounds for extra warmth.

My brother became my protector then, and it was good we had each other, for I was not permitted to speak to my mother in that first year—except when I waited at table, and then only formal words. This was supposed to make us strong.

My father was the example, for he had been treated in the same manner by his own parents, and he was a formidable man. Our mother, though she cried, did not oppose her husband’s will, and perhaps he was right, for when we were sent away to the Percys at Alnwick, to learn the profession of arms and the behavior of gentlemen, I did not whimper. I was eight then, Maugris ten; later than was usual.

And if the hall of our keep had been cold so far from the fire, I thought I would die of frozen loneliness in that first winter at Alnwick, far, far away from all I knew.

Godefroi, as Hundredfield’s heir, was sent south to the court in London. He entered the service of Edward, the Prince of Wales—the boy so hated by his father, that pitiless king who, for all his life, harried Scotland like a hound with a wounded fox. One day, this same son would lead the English at Bannockburn—and lose all that his father had grasped and held. And for this failure, our young king Edward, Godefroi’s master and friend, would never again be trusted by those of us he tried to lead.

I was four when Godefroi left for the court at Westminster, and he was six years older. By his refurbished bedchamber and the luxuries of the hall, he made clear the royal court, and the royal prince too, had given him a taste for things he had never had at home. Restraint is not a virtue much found in London, or continence of any kind, but even at Hundredfield, out in the wilds of the borders, men talked of the vicious life of the new king and his court. Gossip about the great is a cruel wind—a thing you do not see but only hear as it torments dead leaves—but I would not be one of those leaves, wherever Godefroi’s loyalties lay. For I had played at dice with Death and won, and this sharp dawn reminded me of that luck, for as I watched, shadows rose like curtains to display the sleeping earth. Soon the sun would find gems in the white grass, and the sky would blush and flare, helpless, in the end, against the sun’s desire for a new day.

As a child, beauty haunted me, and this shining morning told me not to forget; glory, sometimes, is real before it dies.

“Bayard?” Maugris was wrapped to the eyes in a cloak as he joined me on the battlements over the great gate. Staring down at the houses on the far bank of the river, his expression changed. “Something is wrong in this place.”

Did I want this conversation? “No one likes change.”

My brother leaned out into the dizzy air. “The priest spent
God’s own time dripping poison in my ear last night. He does not accept this marriage. He believes Flore is a succubus.”

I laughed. “A succubus. And you agree? Matthias is jealous. Godefroi listens to her now.”

Maugris hunched defensively. “While you were ill, I saw much. Now that woman carries his child—
if
it is his—she winds around Godefroi like ivy. She drains our brother, and the estate. The cost of her gowns—”

I spoke over Maugris. “The Lady Flore is a pretty woman and he is a fond husband. Why would he not wish to adorn such beauty?”
Bewitched.
I refused to hear the word in my head.

“Ah. The
Lady
Flore. What happened to
harlot
?”

I shook my head. “Has she spoken to you?”

“She cannot speak.” His expression was puzzled.

I hesitated. In the sharp light, life seemed simpler, less clotted with unspoken meanings. As the glow from last night faded, perhaps it was harder to believe what I had heard. And felt. I leaned forward, pointing. “The houses need work.”

“That is just what I was saying. Godefroi spends money on his wife’s back as Hundredfield falls down.”

Below, a boy yelled as a fight began. A woman ran from a cottage and hauled him from the melee of tumbling children. She cuffed one or two and dragged her child inside. The door slammed on his howling.

I turned to walk away, but Maugris called after me, “We must speak to Godefroi, Bayard. He cannot ignore what is happening. The peasants did not like his wife. And they like him less for marrying her and dressing her like the noblewoman she is not. Their sweat paid for those pretty clothes, and the bedstead, and all the folderols we see. Pushed too hard, they will kill us all one day if they can. Her too. And the heir.”

I could not say he was wrong. I raised a hand and turned away.

“Where are you going?”

“The stables.”

“If you want to ride, go beyond the village.”

“Why?”

His tone was grim. “Because you need to.”

Hundredfield’s estate stretched wide on both sides of the river and away deep into the forest. Oak, ash, and beech—this was good chase country, and for more than two centuries our family had preserved the red deer for our family to hunt.

I did not seek the splendors of the forest that day. I had come to see our champion lands, the fertile meadows where Hundredfield’s serfs grew barley and corn for the castle, and turnips and beets to feed the estate cattle; close by they had their own strips in the commons on which to grow food for their families. But as I rode the track past the straggled houses, I saw that many buildings were empty, the doors agape, the thatch of the roofs half gone. And people stood behind their shutters, watching as I passed.

I knew they were there; small sounds, little shifts of light, told me of their presence, but they did not show themselves. The place was quiet. Where were all the children? I had seen them this morning. They could not all have been hiding.

Beyond the village was a more shocking change. The common land was gone. Where the food gardens had been and the ancient rabbit warren—the wild chicken so prized in lean times—were fields divided by walls of gray stone. Sheep were grazing where before families had toiled to grow onions and cabbages, leeks and beans and apples.

I pulled Helios to a stop. A shepherd with two black dogs was driving his flock along the track beside the river. The bleating mass moved slowly and it was not hard to catch up.

“Good day to you.” I knew the boy minding the sheep. He had been the smith’s lad in the village. “Your name is John?”

The youth half bowed, but his eyes were anxious. “Yes,
lord.” Perhaps, like the others, he thought I would like to be flattered.

I slowed Helios to the boy’s pace. The stallion, not liking sheep around his hocks, snorted and danced.

“So”—I gestured at the walls that bordered the fields—“do you like being a shepherd, John?”

“Well enough.” He did not look at me.

“Did I see you in the smithy when I was last here? That would have been a year or two ago.”

The boy shouted at the dogs, “There! Bring them back. Back!”

Arrows of fur and bone, the dogs flew after the wanderers. Weighted with fleece, the ewes were no match for the hounds and returned to the flock at a panicked stumble, bleating loudly. “You were saying, lord?”

I dropped the reins to amble beside the boy. “Did you like working with the smith?”

“Oh, yes.” John’s tone was fervent, but he went quiet, throwing a stone at a lamb that had fallen behind.

“And?”

Reduced to an orderly tribe, the sheep filled the lane, calling out to one another. But now the boy had had time to think and he said carefully, “The smith moved away.”

I thought about that remark. What smith moves from his home village?

“As you see, we have no need for plows anymore.” The boy’s voice was bitter. “Welyn thought that wrong, and he told the reeve.”

“Swinson?”

The boy tipped his head toward the keep, looming high on its hill. “They took his cottage and his tools. Turned him out on the road with his family. Three little ones and a sick wife.” The boy’s face worked. “There’s another smith, but he is at the castle now. He does not help the people of the village because he works for—” He gulped and swallowed. His eyes were terrified, for he had remembered who I was.

Why the people in the hall had been so sullen, and why the village houses stood like teeth broken in a mouth, was now clear.

The boy continued, half speaking to himself. “But I am lucky.” He was staring at the flock. “My mother still eats, and my sisters. And we have a roof.” His eyes were hopeless.

I dipped into a saddlebag and pulled out a piece of cheese and a hunk of bread. “Perhaps you will help me, John. I have been ill and am not hungry.” That was true. My appetite had been sated at the feast last night.

When I offered the food, the boy took it, but only after a worried pause.

“I cannot take it back to the keep. The cook would think I do not like his bread.”

John was thin, and the speed with which he ate, as if I might change my mind, spoke of real hunger.