The Forest (14 page)

And there, in deep green shadow, in the great warm silence of June, she gave birth to her fawn – a little, sticky, bony mass in the grass – and licked it clean and lay beside it. The fawn was a male; it would be coloured like its father. They lay together and the pale doe hoped that the huge Forest would be kind to them.

Towards the end of June two developments took place. Neither was unexpected.

Cola announced the first. ‘Rufus is going to invade Normandy.’

His brother Robert was now expected to reach his duchy in September. Rufus intended to be waiting for him.

‘Will it be a big invasion?’ Edgar asked.

‘Yes. Huge.’ Edgar’s brother had sent word from London of the preparations there. Large sums were being raised to pay mercenaries. Cartloads of bullion were being withdrawn from the treasury at Winchester. Knights were being summoned from all over the country. ‘And he’s demanding transport vessels from most of the harbours along the southern coasts,’ Cola explained. ‘Robert will arrive to pay off his mortgage and find himself locked out of his house. Rufus has all the resources. If Robert gives battle he’ll lose. It’s a bad business.’

‘But didn’t everyone expect it?’ Adela asked.

‘Yes. I think they did. But it’s one thing to foresee an event, to say it’s likely, and another when it actually starts to happen.’ He sighed. ‘In a way, of course, Rufus is right. Robert really isn’t fit to govern. But to act like this …’

‘I don’t think the Normans will all welcome this,’ said Adela.

‘No, my dear lady, they won’t. Robert’s friends, in particular, are …’ He paused before choosing the word, ‘perturbed’. The old man shook his head. ‘And if he does this to his own brother in Normandy, what do you imagine he’ll do to Aquitaine? It will be just the same. The Duke of Aquitaine goes on crusade. Rufus lends him the money and waves him God speed. Then steals his lands while he’s gone. How do you think people feel about that? How do you suppose the Church feels about it? I can tell you,’ he growled, ‘the tension in Christendom is rising.’

‘Thank heaven these things don’t affect us down in the Forest,’ Edgar remarked.

His father only stared at him grimly. ‘This is a royal forest,’ he muttered. ‘Everything affects us.’ Then he left them.

A week after this a man dressed in black, whom Adela had never seen before rode up and spent some time alone with Cola. After he had gone, the old man looked furious. She had never seen him like this before. Nor, in the days that followed, did he look any less angry. She could see that Edgar was concerned about him too, but when she asked him if he knew what the matter was he only shook his head.

‘He won’t say.’

The second development came a few days later while they were out riding. Edgar asked her if she would marry him.

On the western edge of the dark dell of Burley the ground rises to a substantial wooded ridge, which achieves its highest point about a mile northwards of the village on a promontory known as Castle Hill. Not that there was any Norman castle there, but only the outline, under the scattered ash and holly trees, and the clusters of bracken, of a modest earthwork inclosure – although whether these low earth walls and ditches were the remains of a stock pen, a lookout post or a small fort, and whether the folk who had used it were distant ancestors of the Forest people or some other dwellers from unrecorded time, nobody could say. But whatever spirits might be resting there, it was a pleasant, peaceful place from which, looking westwards, one was granted a panorama that began with the brownish heather sweep down the Forest’s edge to the Avon valley and, over that, to the blue-green ridges of Dorset in the distance.

It was a charming spot to choose, on a sparkling summer morning. The sun was catching his golden hair. He asked her quietly, yet almost gaily and he looked so noble. What woman could have wanted to refuse? She wished she could have been transformed into someone else.

And indeed, why should she refuse? Did it make any sense? It was not as if the conquering Normans never married members of the defeated Saxon noble class. They still did. She would lose a little face, but not too much. He was delightful. She was charmed.

But in front of her, out in that western distance, lay the manor of Hugh de Martell. It was down in one of the valleys between the ridges over which she was looking. And behind her, only a mile or so away, she realized, was the narrow stream where Puckle’s wife had seen what was to come.

She would marry Martell. She still believed it. After the shock of hearing that the Lady Maud had safely given birth she had wondered for a while what it could mean. But the witch’s cautious words had come back to her: ‘Things are not always what they seem.’ She had been promised happiness and she had faith. Something would happen. She knew it would. It seemed clear to her that in some unforeseen way the Lady Maud would depart.

If so, she would be a mother to his son. An excellent one. That would be her good deed, her justification for what must happen.

So what should she say to Edgar? She certainly did not want to be unkind. ‘I am grateful,’ she said slowly. ‘I think I could be happy as your wife. But I am not sure. I cannot say yes at present.’

‘I shall ask you again at the end of summer,’ he said with a smile. ‘Shall we ride on?’

Hugh de Martell gazed at his wife and child. They were in the sunny solar chamber. His son was sleeping peacefully in a wicker cradle on the floor. With his wisp of dark hair, everyone said he looked like his father already. Martell looked at the baby with satisfaction. Then he transferred his eyes to the Lady Maud.

She was propped up, almost in sitting position, on a small bed they had set up for her. She liked to sit in there with her baby, which she did for hours each day. She was rather pale but now she managed a small wan smile for her husband. ‘How is the proud father today?’

‘Well, I think,’ he replied.

The pause turned into a little silence in the sunlit room.

‘I think I shall be better soon.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

‘I’m sorry. It must be difficult for you that I have been sick so long. I’m not much of a wife for you.’

‘Nonsense. We must get you well again. That’s the main thing.’

‘I want to be a good wife to you.’

He smiled rather automatically, then looked away to the open window, staring out thoughtfully.

He no longer loved her. He did not altogether blame himself. No one could reproach him for his behaviour during the months of her sickness. He had been solicitous, loving, nursed her himself. He had been with her, held her hand, given all the comfort a husband can, on the two occasions when she thought she was dying. In all this, his conscience was clear.

But he did not love her any more. He did not desire her intimacy. It was not even her fault, he thought. He knew her too well. The mouth he had kissed, which had even breathed words of passion, was still, in repose, small and mean. He could not share the petty confines of her affections, the neatly tidied chamber of her imagination. She was so timid. Yet she was not weak. Had she been so, the need to protect her, however irksome, might have held him. But she was astonishingly strong. She might be sick, but if she lived, her will would remain unchanged, as constant as ever. Sometimes her will seemed to him like a little thread that ran through the innermost recesses of her soul – thin enough to pass through the eye of a needle, yet as strong as steel and quite unbreakable.

In what did her love for him consist? Necessity, pure and simple. Understandable, of course. She had determined how her life was to be, and had the means to make it so. The modest fortress of her proprieties was complete. And for this she needed him. Could marriage be any other way?

It was hardly surprising, therefore, that his thoughts at such a time should have turned to Adela.

They had done so quite often in the last year. The lone girl, the free spirit: she had intrigued him from the first. More than that. Why else should he have sought her out in Winchester? And since then, quite often, almost as though some influence was working on his mind, she had made her appearance or seemed invisibly to be beside him in his thoughts. He had met Cola a little while ago, and the huntsman had told him where she was and that she had asked after him and his family. At the last full moon he had experienced a sudden yearning for her. Three nights ago she had come to him in his dreams.

He gazed for some time, now, out of the window, then abruptly announced: ‘I’m going for a ride.’

It was early afternoon when he arrived at Cola’s manor. The old man was out, but his son Edgar was there. So was Adela.

He left his horse with Edgar, and he and Adela walked down the lane towards the Avon where the swans glided and the long, green river weeds waved gently in the current. They talked – they scarcely knew of what – and after a time he suggested that, if he sent word, they should meet again, in private.

She assented.

On their return to Edgar he was careful to thank her, rather formally, for her interest in his family during their time of trouble and then, with a courteous nod to the young man, he rode away.

As he did so he felt a tingling excitement he had not known for a long time. He had no doubt that he would be successful in this romantic adventure. It was not as if he had never done such a thing before.

The letter from Walter arrived one week later. It was brief and to the point. He was on his way to England. He was to meet some of his wife’s family, then join the king. By early August he expected to be free to come and collect her. The letter ended with one other item of information:

By the way, I have found you a husband.

Three weeks had passed. No message had come from Martell. Although she tried to conceal her agitation, Adela was pale and tense. What did it mean?

Why had he not come? Had the Lady Maud fallen ill again? She tried to find out. The only report she could obtain said that the lady was getting stronger every day.

She was not sure what would come of it when she and Martell met. Would she give herself to him? She did not know, she hardly cared. She wanted, only, to see him. She longed to ride over to his manor, but knew she could not. She wanted to write, but did not dare.

The news from Walter made the situation even more urgent. He would take her away and marry her off. Could she refuse to go with him? Could she turn down another suitor? Nothing seemed to make sense.

Meanwhile, the king had arrived in Winchester. The army and fleet would soon be ready. More money, it was said, was coming into the Winchester treasury. Rufus was so occupied that he had not even had time to hunt.

Whether Walter had reached Winchester yet she did not know. Nor had she any wish to communicate with him if he had.

In the last week of July she went to see Puckle’s wife. She found her in her little cabin, just as she had been before; but when she asked for help and advice the witch refused to give it.

‘Couldn’t we cast a spell again?’ she asked.

The woman only shook her head calmly. ‘Wait. Be patient. What will be, will be,’ she answered.

So Adela went back, discouraged.

The atmosphere at Cola’s manor was not made easier by the fact that Edgar seemed moody. No further word had been spoken about his proposal – and she could not imagine that he had any inkling of her secret feelings for Martell – but the news that Walter was coming to take her away could hardly have pleased him. Superficially their relationship continued the same, but there was distress in his eyes.

Cola, too, continued to be darkly silent. She did not know whether Edgar had told his father of his proposal or not. If he did know, did he approve or disapprove? She had no wish to ask, or bring up the subject at all. But she wondered if his sombre mood was connected with this, or with the dangerous events of the outside world.

In the closing days of July the tension in the household seemed to grow. Walter’s visit could not be far away. Cola looked black and Edgar was becoming visibly agitated. Once or twice he seemed on the point of raising the subject of their marriage again, but he held back. The tension, Adela sensed, could not continue much longer.

Matters were finally brought to a head on the last day of July when Cola called them together. ‘I’ve received word that the king and a party of companions are arriving at Brockenhurst tomorrow,’ he announced. ‘He wishes to hunt in the Forest the following day. I am to attend on him.’ He glanced at Adela. ‘Your cousin Walter is one of the party. So no doubt we shall see him here soon.’ Then he went out to see to some business, leaving her alone with Edgar.

The silence did not last long.

‘You will be leaving with Tyrrell,’ Edgar said quietly.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh? Does that mean that I may hope?’

‘I don’t know.’ It was a stupid answer, but she was too flustered at that moment to make much sense.

‘Then what does it mean?’ he suddenly burst out. ‘Has Walter found a suitor? Have you accepted him?’

‘No. No, I haven’t.’

‘Then what? Is there someone else?’

‘Someone else? Whom do you mean?’

‘I don’t know.’ He seemed to hesitate. Then he said in a tone of exasperation: ‘The man in the moon, for all I know.’ Turning on his heel furiously, he strode away. And Adela, knowing she was treating him badly, could only comfort herself that her own exasperation and suffering were probably worse than even his. She avoided him for the rest of the day.

The following morning she was left to herself. Cola was busy making arrangements. He went to see Puckle for some reason; there were spare horses to be ready at Brockenhurst where the local forester was preparing to receive the king. Edgar was sent on several errands and she was glad he was not there.

In the afternoon, having nothing better to do, she went for a walk down the lane by the river. She had just turned back towards the manor when a fellow dressed like a servant stepped out in front of her and held out something in his hand. ‘You are the Lady Adela? I am to give you this.’ She felt something slipped into her hand, but before she could say another word to him, he had run off.