Forbidden Forest (5 page)

John rarely let himself imagine finding a red-cheeked wife, bedding down with her on long wintry nights, and living cozily in a cottage. But John suffocated every such hope in his breast. He knew that a criminal's life ended with a trudge up a ladder, a bowed head, and a hangman's yellow-rope noose.

The following afternoon, after an early supper of pottage and brown bread, and a pitcher of thick brown ale, John followed Tom into the shadows. He felt a tug at his sleeve, and turned to see Freda.

She waited until Tom was well out of earshot. Then she pressed an amulet into John's hand.

The amulet was a heavy base metal crudely smithed in the shape of a cross. John shook it and something sealed inside its hollow core made a rattling whisper.

“The finger of a man who killed his master,” she said. “Hanged and quartered, all without a murmur.” A good death was much admired, and the relics of a penitent criminal were considered powerful magic.

“Good Freda, I doubt that I need such great protection.”

Smelling of yeast and sweat, she put her lips to his ear, and kissed it, just as Hilda used to.

“What did our sweet Freda give you?” asked Tom Dee.

John showed him the amulet, then returned it to safekeeping around his neck.

“Do you admire our lord and master?” asked Tom.

“He must be cunning,” said John, after giving the question some thought.

A stone wall ran across the hill, and a flock of sheep, each beast with its head to the turf, grazed in the distant mist. Some stewards had burned out villages for the grazing land, and John could see the dark stumps of cottage walls. Wool was a more profitable crop than barley or peas, and only a few shepherds were required to work a flock.

“He unsnared me from a mantrap a year ago last Candlemas,” said Tom Dee. “I tried to live by poaching venison, and now I serve him as he desires.”

“You must feel grateful to him,” said John.

Tom did not respond for a while, the two men approaching a disused wellhead, the watering place timbered over, a flat, grassless place in the field.

At last he said, “Our Lord Roger has no warmth like other men.”

“But he is kind to you,” said John, feeling embarrassed as he spoke for his own lack of worldliness.

“And he beds Freda,” said Tom, “but this is not the same as love.”

“Whose land is this?” asked John, eyeing a cottage space reduced to char and ash. He was troubled by this insight into the passions of Lord Roger, and for the moment he did not want to hear any more.

“Our own Lord Red Roger's,” said Tom. “He drove his peasants off the land, and does well at sheep breeding. But he plays at dice.”

“So he is always hungry for coin,” said John.

“Always. And if we don't hurry,” said Tom, “the abbot will outrun us.”

Chapter 8

They waited in the long shadows.

A black bird, too solitary to be a rook but too quiet to be a crow, settled on a rut in the road before them and eyed the two men. John cast pebbles at the bird, but the winged creature took a few steps to one side, bounded across a rut ridge, and parted its beak in silence.

“They'll know we're here,” said John.

Tom Dee had to laugh. “The bird is going to warn them?”

“Birds are great traitors to a hunter,” said John. “As a seasoned poacher you should know that much. You go out with your snare or your fowling bow, and a crow is tattling to the hare and to the grouse.”

“It's a bird,” said Tom in friendly exasperation. “They don't wake up every morning with the need to worry us. Besides, I never told you I was skilled at poaching, only that I tried my hand at it.”

John crouched beside a large and healthy gray nettle bush, the largest he had ever seen. He folded his arms around his knees to avoid its touch.

The land here was sparsely forested, and shrubs and low plants, dock and spreading hawthorn bushes, were the only cover. When the sound of hooves reached them, it might have been a flaw in the wind—no horses appeared.

The High Way stretched north, watery ruts gleaming in the muted sunset. John crouched with Tom as he held one end of a rope running across the road, the other end knotted around a fence post. Again, the sound of trotting horses, but the road remained empty. The bird departed at last, circling high and vanishing.

When the riders appeared it was without warning, the horses nearly upon Tom and John.

The abbot and his armed companion rode hard through the sudden light rain. The clergyman must have guessed, or perhaps his companion. Or perhaps John gave them away, standing upright to pull on the rope. One of the men made a sound, an intake of breath.

John heaved hard on the rope, stretching the heavy cord across the road. The abbot was a good horseman and did not saw at the reins. His horse careened, turning to one side. John set his feet, and it took all his strength to bear the weight of the steed as it stumbled and fell, spilling its rider to the ground just as the hemp rope broke.

The abbot's armed companion struck at Tom with a spear, but missed. Tom seized the fighting man's leg and dragged him from this horse. The man lashed at the yeoman with the length of his spear, and rammed the butt into Tom's midsection, but the yeoman tripped him without much effort and sat on his chest as the man bawled for the abbot to ride hard.

The abbot's tough but worn out with lechery
, Tom had promised.
It will be easy work
.

John straddled the churchman. He reached into the sweating abbot's tunic, found nothing, groped his cloak for hidden silver, felt nothing again, and finally worked at removing a carnelian-and-gold ring from the man's hand.

The flushed, fuming abbot glared as he lay flat on the ground, breathing hard. “So the robber hires giants, now, to cut throats,” he said.

“Your blood will stay in your body,” said John, grunting, as he tried to pry the ring over the knob of the abbot's knuckle. The abbot wore only a signet ring, used to seal documents and score contracts, and the pretty carnelian ring on his little finger.

Tom had pried the helmet off the gray-haired guard and was beating the armed man about the face with the butt of his knife.

“Here!” said the abbot, snatching the ring from his little finger and throwing it at John.

John caught it, and examined the blood-bright stone and the delicate work of the setting. It was a lady's ring. Tom was still hammering the guardsman's thick gray hair, and blood was flowing.

“That man's head is too thick,” called John. “Leave him.”

Tom looked hard at his companion, argument in his eyes.

John slipped the ring into his pocket. Tom rose to his feet, breathing hard. “I'll need to have a word with our good abbot, John. You may wait down the road.”

The knife in Tom's hand was blue and bright, fresh-whetted that morning.

“You will not spill his blood,” cautioned John, climbing to his feet and standing protectively over the abbot.

“Why would I so much as prick him?” said Tom. “I only want to give him a message from Lord Roger.” Tom smiled apologetically.

Tom was going to kill the abbot, John knew. Why else would he be so careless, uttering his lordship's name?

Tom shrugged. “Walk on down the road, John,” he said, almost kindly. “I'll join you soon.”

John's staff was on the muddy road two strides away. His knife was in its scabbard at his side, but a cross-belly reach to tug it free from the new leather scabbard would take a long moment.

The abbot said, “Heaven honors mercy.” His voice was gentle even now, although breathy and thin.

“Listen to the fat lecher begging for his life,” said Tom cheerfully. “Have you ever heard such a cowardly sinner?” He gave the churchman a kick, and the abbot's breath was ragged. The man rolled to one side, unable to utter the words that twisted his lips.

John seized Tom's tunic, gathered it in his fist, and half raised the yeoman to his toes.
Do not touch him again
.

John never said the words.

He saw it happen, as clearly as a story-play on market day, a pantomime acted out in deliberate step by step. The guard rose up on one knee, wincing with the effort. He gripped his spear and steadied the weapon. Such heavy spears were never thrown, to John's knowledge, but always used from horseback.

Before John could move, or speak a word, the iron-tipped spear was in the air.

Chapter 9

John carried Tom Dee across the hill in the growing darkness, the injured man's breath rattling in and out of his body. Blood streamed from the spear wound in Tom's back, soaking into John's tunic, and several times Tom tried to speak.

“We're almost home,” John said.

John knew his prayers well enough, and said them, and he trusted that with speed and the grace of Heaven there was still hope. But when he paused to give Tom water from a stream, the wounded man's lips were cold, and his legs and hands were icy. Everyone knew that death began with the toes and the fingers and marched inward, toward the lungs.

Tom gave a half smile, a hitch of one corner of his mouth, and spoke. The words were unmistakable, but John said, with a forced laugh, “We'll have plenty of time to talk over ale, Tom, around the fire.”

“Fly, John,” Tom said without sound.

Flee Lord Roger
.

The wounded man was a heavy load, and sometimes he gripped John's sleeve in pain or as he tried to communicate some urgent further word. Tom seized the amulet around John's neck, and held it the way an infant holds a paternal finger, or a sick man his crucifix.

Help me, Heaven, prayed John silently.

And to the grass and hawthorn, the stones and tree stumps, he added in a low voice, as Hilda had taught him, “Help me, creatures of the hill.” But Tom's limbs went slack, and his mouth gaped, opening and closing with every stride, although he still breathed.

John burst into the great house and stretched Tom, still bleeding, on the rush-strewn floor. “You can't lay him here,” spat Albert. “Blood from here to the road, and every sheriff's dog on your trail.”

“No one followed,” said John.

Albert was not servile, and he did not smile. His voice was hard. “Get that bleeding man out of here.”

John carried Tom to the injured man's cottage. Lord Roger arrived just after Tom stopped breathing. John let his friend's body lie flat, now that the wound would cause no pain. He folded the yeoman's hands over his breast, the broad hands and square fingers gentle now, and still. He pressed the amulet into the peaceful hands of his friend, the cross with the single knucklebone. Tom had died unshriven, unable to breathe his sins into the ear of a priest.

His lordship's leather leggings were wet from riding, and he carried red kid gloves in one hand. “Have you ever run down a stoat, John?” he asked.

John was in deep sorrow, and he expected the nobleman to share his grief.

“Of course you have not,” said his lordship, answering his own question. “Devilish creature, smart as a ferret, and stronger.”

John waited while the nobleman raised the blanket and gazed down at Tom's peaceful, pale features, so unlike the ruddy, alert expression he had worn in life.

“Is the abbot still alive?” asked Lord Roger after a long silence.

“When I left him he was sitting in the mud,” said John.
Putting the carnelian ring back on his finger
, he did not add.

“Did Tom not understand my instructions?”

“Tom Dee,” said John, “was not the only man on the High Way this evening.”

Lord Roger let the blanket fall and did not speak at once.

“I'm thirsty,” he said at last.

John stayed where he was, settling the rough wool blanket over the face of Tom Dee.

“Have some pigeon pie and a pitcher of wine with me,” said Lord Roger. “I'll find better men than Tom, and richer quarry than the abbot.”

John had heard that many lords had less feeling than peasants, and that some men of quality never wept. He had not believed it, until now.

“My lord, I'm leaving your service,” said John. The speech was simple, but it had a deliberate legal character, the formal parting of a serving man with his master. He rose to his feet.

“You can't, John.”

A man could be bound to his lord for a period of service, perhaps an entire lifetime. “You found me free, my lord, and I joined you willingly,” said John.

Lord Roger gave a dry laugh. “Carrion crows would have eaten your eyes by now, John, after some royal forester's crossbow brought you down.”

John knew the truth of this. But perhaps, he considered, such a death was not the worst fate after all.

“You'll stay with me,” said the nobleman. “And have a life of pleasure, John. Silver you cannot imagine, with your poor life.”
Pauvre lyf
.

John made an open-handed gesture—what did silver matter? A man was dead, and John had done too little to prevent it.

“You and I can rule the High Way,” said Lord Roger. “No proud, wealthy man will be safe from us. No traveler with a fat purse will arrive home with one coin kissing another in his sack. You've always wanted to serve a master of cunning.”

John began to grow angry.

“I am a man of my word,” continued Red Roger, “and I do not lie to myself. You wanted to be deceived. You're young enough to not know your own nature, but I see it in your eyes—that skill waiting to be trained. I'll make you a master robber, John, a man after my heart. My word on it. You'll be a legend.”

John stepped out into the dusk.

“If you flee me, John, I'll have every peasant with an ax putting an edge on it for you,” said the nobleman, staying right behind him, stride for stride across the grass. “And every dog with a tooth in his jaw catching your scent.”

John kept walking.