The King’s Arrow (6 page)

If Simon had misjudged Walter's character, this was when his mistake would be clear. The man's manner had suddenly reassured Simon—but it was not too late for the Norman lord to take fresh offense and demand blood or coin.

“You mock me,” said Walter.

So there it is
, thought Simon.
Here is sure proof that I have talked my way into trouble
.

And yet Simon would not allow himself to apologize at that moment, or to offer so much as a smile. If there was going to be violence here in his own home, surrounded by the walls of his ancestors, he would not take a single step back.

Although, in his heart, he might wish to. Simon gave a hopeful glance at the young herald, and then met the eyes of the man-at-arms. The herald was admiring the square of tapestry on a far wall, precious needlework Christina had sewn in the early years of her marriage, a silken dove with its wings outspread. Bertram was smiling with his eyes, sending Simon a silent reassurance.

Walter smiled.

“I have been a fool,” he said with a laugh. “And you have offered me your patience.”

Simon smiled, too, the tension in the hall lifting, rising upward with the lingering hearth smoke.

Walter did something then that surprised Simon and melted the last of his anxiety.

The nobleman took Simon's arm, in a gesture of friendship. It was not simply a sign of warmheartedness, Simon knew, but an act for servant and companion to see.

Walter said, “Simon, I'll enjoy hunting with you.”

8

Simon waited under the enormous chestnut tree.

Foldre
came from an old word meaning thunderbolt Simon had sometimes wondered what forefather on what Frankish heath or tideland had earned this forceful name. He had to imagine a rattling storm, sheep panicked, pigs all a-tumble, and brave or drunken Fore-
foldre
hurrying out in the flash and rumble to tie up the livestock gate.

Simon knew enough to be able to imagine that whatever courage his remote ancestor might have stumbled into, it was at least half accident. Just as today's changing fortunes were all the result of a horse with more spirit than sense, and a Norman visitor with more good humor than pride.

It was all because of Providence, or, perhaps, the design of Heaven—otherwise known as luck. He paced a rapid circuit around the giant chestnut tree, their usual meeting place. He paced around again, impatient, but with the sort of simmering impatience that must be mastered.

There was no sign of Gilda.

Gilda's cheerful, mild-mannered father Peter Shipman had been killed by the Norman knight Guy Turpin eight winters ago for not running the
Saint Bride
aground during a storm.

Guy Turpin had been a quarrelsome knight, difficult even for his cantankerous, castle-building fellow Normans. Some said that one reason William had invaded England from his dukedom in Normandy was because he had too many bristling, swaggering warriors on his hands and not enough for them to kill.

Guy Turpin in turn had drowned in a ferry accident far off, on the river Ept. Some said that a sword wound was found under the knight's ribs. Simon believed that a hunger for revenge remained in Oswulf's breast to this day, coiled and dangerous, and that Gilda shared some of her brother's sentiment.

What a noisy countryside it was, swine and cows, sheep and Swein's horses all bickering, agreeing, bedding down slowly in the long summer twilight. Hens, bereft of Sangster, clucked and scolded, and a woodcock in the chestnut high above broke into its far-carrying, liquid song,
You're lucky, yes you are
.

An ox was stuck, bellowing for help, one of Plegmund's brutes. The poor beast's call went out into the lingering twilight, a mindless but understandable bawl. Even this repeated bellowing made Simon realize how much he loved this place, this splendid tree, these green, muddy acres all around.

And how much he longed to see Gilda.

Simon wished that he could create a song like the one he had heard one market day, the verses of the riverbank, forgiving the doe for cutting its silt with her hoof.

Red sun, white moon
,

What pain to me if the lady

Thus escapes the hound?

Simon always lingered when he heard a minstrel perform, and he had a good memory for the ballads he heard, including both the high-minded lover's tunes and the earthy drinking songs.

The trouble with waiting for someone under a well-known landmark was that people passing by could see Simon easily, guess why he was there, and offer their best wishes.

Abbot Denis of the nearby Saint Bartholomew Abbey hurried by, his four greyhounds straining at their leashes. They caught scent of Simon and each leaped or halted, like individual statues, stone-carved dogs instantly captured at a moment of attention, and then just as quickly loose and alive again.

“Give our best to Gilda,” called the abbot with a smile.

Simon thanked him.

Wilfred the reeve, as farm managers were called, strode past with a wave. His family had worked for Simon's for generations. He carried a coil of new rope to help the drovers pull out the ox stuck in the local pond. Wilfred was an energetic, innovative man, down to instituting new foot markings for Aldham geese, so that wandering fowl might be returned. Wilfred even strode along like a man with substantial plans: new tools for the hemp beaters who made the rope, and—soon to come—new sacks for Plegmund's oats.

“A very good evening, my lord Simon,” called Wilfred in his usual vigorous manner.

Simon wished him a good evening in return. He admired Wilfred. His plans cost silver and effort, creating a drain on the manor's resources, but they promised prosperity.

And Simon considered how contentedly the land around him thrived, and how little any of the creatures or human beings really needed Simon's oversight. If Simon's life was a poem, it had reached the verse in which the expectant hero rode toward a looming gate, knocked resoundingly, and met some adventure.

It was time for Simon to take on some grand undertaking. Perhaps—was it so unlikely?—he might find an enduring place in the royal court.

He prayed,
Let Gilda come quickly. So I can tell her that tomorrow I go hunting with the king
.

TWO

Kingdom of Fire

9

The royal Marshal Roland Montfort was happy.

He was not in this humor often, and he knew the sentiment was always fleeting. But an attractive woman sometimes made him feel this way.

“I told you I had something to show you,” she said when she and Roland were safely off into the forest.

Her name was Emma, and she was a freedman's daughter—her family made charcoal for the smiths and royal chamberlains of New Forest. Her hair was tied up just so and her homespun mended and her goatskin boots newly sewn with yellow thread, all more than enough to make her look like a morsel in the eyes of the royal marshal. Her fingernails were enduringly grimed with hardwood soot, but Roland thought her a beauty, and he had an eye for women.

She kept her hand in his, leading him onward. She had reported that she had seen something, and so she had, far out in the woods during the long summer twilight.

It was a hare caught in the nearly invisible loop of a poacher's snare. The long-eared creature struggled in the lingering light, kicking hard enough to break his neck if he kept struggling, nearly a man's height off the ground, plunging away in terror as the two human beings approached.

“You said you wanted me to watch and listen,” said Emma. She spoke the Norman tongue, but her New Forest accent made the familiar words sound like a new language. “For signs of poaching,” she added. “And for other things, as well.”

Roland watched as a pair of wings felt the seam of air just above the greenwood, a night bird on its first hunt of the early twilight. Roland did not envy the predator, required to kill to stifle hunger. What lord prince of the forest, Roland wondered, did the white-feathered owl serve? Nagged by his conscience, Roland had been unable to shake free of the memory of the dying poacher.

It was a joyless recollection indeed. Roland believed that God allowed a lawman to kill a wide number of criminals in the pursuit of his duty, but that Heaven's Lord grew displeased if the number became too great.

The Montfort family was a long line of careful men—chandlers to lords and kings, chamberlains and advisers of judgment. Roland's background contrasted starkly with the vainglorious Tirel clan, men who would chop off a head with more facility than they could use the one God had given them. Roland would do anything to embarrass and deplete the Tirel family—and to keep their kind far from the king.

Emma kept her hand in Roland's and gave a sound like a purr, resting her head against his shoulder. The English criminal was a fearless wight, Roland would grant him that. It took nerve to set a snare so close to the king's lodge. This was an old snare, set days ago, the hare half dead from terror and starvation. The animal was bleeding between the ears where an owl had injured him moments before. How the long-eared creature had survived so long without becoming some owl's or raven's dinner was testimony to his good luck. Roland used a hunting dagger to saw at the sinew of the trap.

When the hare was released he fell to the ground. Roland had to laugh. The creature believed he was dead! The animal lay, convinced that this muted, forest dusk was the color of eternity. The marshal clapped his hands once, and the jack hare was off, bounding crazily, pausing midair, and then vanishing, only to reappear far off, frozen in flight.

“He'll tell all the other hares,” said Emma with a laugh, “what an adventure he's had.”

“Is that what you English believe?” asked Roland.

“Believe about what?”

“Do you think that woodland animals speak to each other?” His question was serious—he had no idea what the English thought about anything, aside from always overestimating the power of their own flesh to withstand the ax.

“He's going to tell his hare bride how kind the royal marshal is,” she said, “how handsomely he smiles, and how his eyes sparkle.”

This was rank flirtation, purest flattery, but Roland did not mind.

“Why aren't the local yeomen,” asked Roland, “as pleasant as their women?”

“There are women enough,” said Emma, “who would lie with you just to stick a knife between your ribs.”

If Roland had a characteristic that won him any affection, it was that women—smart, quick-eyed women—sometimes found him agreeable company. But the love life of the royal court was complicated, and it was difficult to woo, seduce, and take pleasure in a creature like Emma under the king's roof.

The royal court on procession from one hunting lodge to another across the woodlands of England was a festival of drunkenness and feasting. Once it arrived at a hunting lodge, it filled the location with wine-loving, dice-playing clerks and pitcher bearers, dispensers of the larder and masters of one office or another. The king's retinue included dressers to arrange the royal clothing, scribes to write up his instructions, and even a dwarf named Frocin who recited ballads and amused the king and his companions with witless hilarity.

“I heard the miller say that you ate a human heart once,” Emma was saying, “in Ely Green. Cut the pulsing organ right out of a rebel, and ate it on the spot.”

How could folk believe such a thing? Roland marveled. How would a respectable marshal even begin to go about eating such a still-trembling human heart? A large, bloody organ, as any hunter knew well, anyone who had field-dressed a stag?

That was the problem with the English—as soon as you started to like one of them, they said or did something that stopped you. “Is that what you believe, Emma?”

“You mean, it isn't true?”

She was teasing, Roland thought. “Oh, yes,” he said, “and I bit the entire head off a hayward last May Day.”

Emma had the most enticing laugh. She was intrigued by her own good luck at catching the eye of the marshal, and was dazzled at her own daring at coupling with him—this would have been the third time in a fortnight. Roland had first come upon her as she planed the bark off a tree in Fulford Reach—a long, half-boggy meadow—curls of wood in her hair. She'd knife him as merrily as love him, Roland knew that. It was not a contradiction—women sometimes relished a dangerous partner, and at times men felt the same way.

A sound reached them through the forest—the sharp rhythm of horses' hooves, three or four men on horses they must have picked up south of Winchester, mounts with plenty of vigor left, spurred on by their riders.

“King's men approaching, approaching king's men,” was the lodge guards' singsong reassurance, the same stalwarts who secured the castles in Winchester and London, although far less sober here.

“Undermarshal Climenze,” cried a cheerful voice in the distance. “My lord, did you drink the Thames dry again?”

Dogs set up a round of barking, both the scent hounds and the running hounds giving welcoming voice to the men returning from London. A larger dog joined in barking, the fearsome Golias—Goliath—an animal whose continuing existence in the kingdom was an annoying mystery to Roland. The marshal knew that duty required him to return at once.

But he had reason to linger. The sound of distant merriment made the forest seem all the more alive with a bracing, challenging unfriendliness—leaves shifting, unseen wings hunting, and Emma's willing, teasing companionship enticing him to stay in this perilous darkness.

And he would have stayed there—if only it were possible.

“Aren't you going to give me a reward, then?” she was asking. “For showing you that New Forest poachers aren't afraid, even this close to where the king sleeps at night?”

“You'll meet me here tomorrow evening?”

She did not respond.