In a Dark Wood (3 page)

He struck the hilt of his sword with his palm and glanced in the mirror one last time. He turned smartly. “So.”

He hesitated in the corridor, adjusting the sword chain, and was aware of a shadow behind him. He turned, and the shape slipped back behind an arch.

Geoffrey stifled a curse, marched down the corridor to the head of the stairs, and spun.

A figure marched stiffly, threw itself back on its heels, and gawked up the hall just as Geoffrey knew he must be gawking, and Geoffrey drew his sword in fury.

The figure leaped into the air at the hiss of the sword and cowered in a caricature of terror.

Eleanor had insisted. She had said that all the noble families in France had a Fool. She said it would make the castle merrier. For six months the Fool had caricatured Geoffrey, always Geoffrey, no one else. It was apparently his avowed duty to ridicule his employer. Furthermore, he never spoke. Dressed in stockings and a motley tunic, he pranced—never walked—and initiated raucous laughter wherever he went, frowning and thrusting his head forwards.

Geoffrey sheathed his sword. Immediately the Fool was on his feet, at mock attention, eyes screwed shut in an effort of obedience. “You're not funny!” spit Geoffrey.

The Fool nodded in eager agreement.

“You're not good at what you do! You fail to be an effective Fool!”

More eager nods, body quivering with attention.

Growling, Geoffrey turned and suffered the Fool to follow him with God knew what exaggerated gestures and twitches down the spiral stairs.

A jangle of mail and squeak of leather. A youthful messenger began to speak, squeaked, and cleared his throat. “The abbess to see you, my lord.”

Geoffrey fumbled his way up a step. “The abbess!” he whispered. Then, sternly: “Explain that I have a meeting, and ask her to wait—” Where? Where could such a woman wait? And more important, where did he want to see her? “Have her wait in the East Tower.” There were books there, breviaries foxed with yellow stars, and a Book of Hours, a modest library, but it had a certain dignity. No one would gossip about her meeting him there. An abbess belonged with manuscripts. And the room was private.

She should not have come here. He gazed through the window slit. A hay cart creaked across the stones. The smith's elbow gleamed in shadow, working the bellows. Not here, to this hive.

The chief huntsman gestured before the miller beside the grain kiln. He raised his arms to show the size of the boar's head, or perhaps the size of another boar, or another creature altogether. Doves dodged in and out of the holes in the small tower built for them, the white and pale gray birds looking, at this distance, no more beautiful than lice.

4

“A good iron point will take a boar out of his life quick enough,” said Ivo.

Hugh was disappointed. He wanted more praise for Geoffrey, his master, the man who was, rightfully, the purpose of Hugh's life. “The lord sheriff never blinked or even twitched, even when the beast blew blood.”

“It's best to get them that way—into the heart and lungs, so their blood flows into their wind.” Ivo hefted a wooden sword and balanced it in his hand. Then he stabbed with it, into the darkness of his shed. Ivo knew all about swords. He tempered them, repaired them, and knew all that they could do. The old man was strong; his muscles were lively in his forearm as he smiled at the practice sword.

“I've seen my share of blood,” said Ivo. “Here's your sword.”

Hugh took the blade, a wooden weapon heavy enough to hurt and even kill, but intended to develop the arm and the eye in swordplay. “You could use a sword like this against a boar,” said Hugh, cutting the air with a vicious half-circle.

“And get stretched out in a blink. Don't think too highly of a sword, wooden or steel, Hugh. It is a gentleman's weapon, and a pig is no gentleman, now, is he?”

Ivo braced himself on what were plainly strong legs and lifted a battered wooden sword. He made a fierce cry, a cry like a legendary berserker, although the people in the courtyard did not bother to glance in his direction. There was tension in the air—the sheriff was meeting with Baldwin, the king's man.

Ivo's sword fell, and Hugh forced it away. Again, the two-handed blow fell, and Hugh danced to one side, his feet whispering through scattered straw. Ivo did not hesitate. Using all his strength, he tried to pound the weapon from Hugh's hand. The sound of their swords made bright, satisfying cracks.

Hugh began to attack on his own, trying to drive Ivo backwards with great sweeping cuts. Ivo waved Hugh's blade aside each time, sweat beginning to shine on his forehead. The wooden broadswords were heavy enough and, like their steel counterparts, not made for continual work.

Hugh made no progress against Ivo. Hugh's defense was skilled enough, but Ivo was stronger. At last Hugh let his sword arm drop and shook his head. “I need to rest,” he said, panting.

Ivo mussed Hugh's hair. “A Mussulman wouldn't let you rest. He'd cut you into dog snippets, wouldn't he? But you're getting better. Much better. Even an old crust like myself would have a few minutes' trouble with you.”

“A few minutes,” said Hugh. This was hardly enough. He wanted to be knightly, capable of great deeds.

“Let's go again,” said Ivo after a few moments. Again, their wooden blades flashed. Hugh smiled with the effort and with pleasure. He enjoyed this! Anyone would. Rough play, with an old swordsman like Ivo, after a day of such tremendous hunting.

This time Hugh fought better. Ivo smiled his encouragement, backing against the stone wall and flicking aside Hugh's blows, with an occasional lunge of his own.

Hugh's life before coming to the castle had been gray and without laughter. His mother had died at Hugh's birth, and his father, an expert greaver, had worked late every night on leg armor for gentlemen until the dust of metal and the cold nights began to hammer at his lungs. He took to his bed with an icy sweat, and he died blessing his only son.

The priest had squinted at Hugh and taken him into the home for those children who had been provided by God—an all too common burden. There were dozens of orphans, waiting to be apprenticed to dyers or glaziers or to tradesmen who needed another human back to heft sacks of meal. When Hugh showed a steady temperament and a good memory for prayer, the priest's squint became thoughtful, and one day when Hugh was already tall and broad-shouldered, he stood before the lord sheriff, hearing himself praised as unusually quick to learn, “with an uncommon sense of when not to speak, and well versed in his praise of Our Lady.”

“The need for copyists here is really not so great,” said the sheriff, a man with thoughtful eyes and a short dark beard.

Hugh was weak with disappointment.

“We have quite enough ink-fingered clerks,” the sheriff continued, as Hugh felt his last hope wither.

“What I need is a squire,” said the sheriff.

It was very unlikely that a lord sheriff would choose the son of a greaver to be a squire. Squires were nearly always the sons of knights, young men with futures who needed training in arms and responsibility.

“What is the lad's name?”

“Hugh,” said the priest, in the same way one answers with the age of an already too-leggy lamb.

“Hugh,” said the lord sheriff. It was the first time Hugh had heard his name spoken in the castle. It sounded like a strange word, not worthy of the sheriff's tongue. Why, he wondered, could I have not had a more graceful name? Hugh was a quick, plain name. Surely the sound of his name itself was against him.

Now, hacking with wooden swords with Ivo, Hugh felt that he was the luckiest young man in God's world. He could not be happier. This time it was Ivo who laughed, panting, and let his arm fall.

“Enough!” said Ivo.

They sat, wiping their brows with woolen sleeves.

“Remember,” said Ivo at last, “the stab is always more effective than the hack. But it's not half the fun, is it?”

That evening Hugh ate his brown bread in the corner of the servants' hall. He was hungry, and the dark beer tasted good. He was so hungry he did not notice the slim figure beside him, and he bumped a slender hand as he reached for the cheese.

“I do hope you are finding quite enough to eat, squire,” said the young woman beside him.

He never knew what to say to Bess. She was the personal servant to Lady Eleanor and had an accent very much like a Parisian accent, at least as far as Hugh could guess. He had heard one or two Parisian tradesmen visiting with the sheriff, but their accents sounded, to Hugh's ear, more authentic. He guessed that Bess had been no closer to Paris than he had, but everything else about her was very real. She was dainty, soft-spoken, and cool. And beautiful, in a way that stupefied Hugh.

“Yes, quite enough, and I thank you for your concern,” Hugh answered, attempting a dash of court talk.

She did not bother to respond. Men and women of the castle spoke in a stylized way, not at all straightforward like the draymen and foresters of the world beyond. Talk was a game. Hugh was not very good at it.

“You missed a fine day's hunting,” said Hugh, hearing his own thorny accent and hating every syllable.

“I did not miss the hunt. My lady and I rode forth on a hunt of our own, as you saw, and we had no interest in that monster carcass, although I am not surprised such rough sport amuses you.”

Hugh hid behind his silence. Even imaginary responses sounded inept in his mind. He was happy to leave the hall and happier to leave the cool stone of the castle and slip into the streets of the town.

He would never learn to banter with a young woman like that. And it was banter that won a woman. Talk. Unless you could talk well, you were worthless. Hugh felt thin and futile.

“It's the lord sheriff's squire,” said a voice.

The streets were empty and only slightly colored with faint candlelight from the dwellings. In the doorway of The Vixen was a knot of men. Hugh smiled at the faces as he grew close enough to recognize them. But the faces had smiles that were not quite kind.

“The lord sheriff,” said the voice, and Hugh recognized Thurstin, the miller's son, a very large yellow-haired young man. Thurstin's father had beaten him when he came home drunk, until lately. Thurstin had reached his full height and strength, and his father had given up. The beatings had done nothing to Thurstin except amuse him and make him impervious to pain of any sort. He had bragged that the horns of a bull would break off before they so much as scratched him.

Since he had begun using the bow and arrow with the belief that he could find service with the king someday, Thurstin did not drink as much. Now he was the only man without a tankard and the only man who spoke to Hugh. “The lord sheriff,” he repeated. “Our lord sheriff is the man who spends so much time in the garden. Studying religious matters.”

There was laughter. Hugh knew he was being taunted but did not understand, exactly, the nature of the taunts. He shouldered his way past Thurstin's bulk and regretted being in a room where all faces seemed too amused.

When Hugh had a tankard of ale, he turned and found Thurstin watching him with a mocking grin. “The lord sheriff attends his business, on his knees in the abbey garden, while his squire, son of a bootmaker, holds his horse.”

There was more laughter. Hugh was hot. He understood enough: the lord sheriff was being, in some obscure way, insulted, as was Hugh himself. But Thurstin was a great blond bullock—the biggest man in the room.

The ale tasted of sour milk. Sour goat's milk. Hugh shouldered his way, carefully, deliberately, into the street. Hugh knew these men, every one. They were good men, and not cruel. What did they know that Hugh did not?

Thurstin's laugh was loudest as Hugh made his way up the winding street towards the castle gates.

5

The steward to the king ran a broad pink hand through his white hair. “Geoffrey, Geoffrey, I'm afraid. I am truly afraid.” Baldwin FitzGilbert stopped, taking pleasure in his silences, as well as in his voice. “I'm afraid I have bad news.”

“Please sit down,” said Geoffrey, careful to keep his accent clean of any of the northern lichen that had grown on it.

Baldwin lifted a hand and closed his eyes as a way of saying, “Thank you, I am more handsome when I stand.” He did place his hands on the back of a chair and moved it slightly, so that it groaned on the stone tiles. This act claimed sovereignty over the objects in the room, and as he acted as agent of the king, it indicated that the king himself had moved the chair, and would move it again, and any other object in the room, as he so desired. Geoffrey had been raised to see what was being displayed at once. The king's will stood upright in the light of late afternoon and leaned against the chair.

“The king,” said Baldwin at last, “is displeased.”

This was the worst thing that could be said. Geoffrey leaned against the table, when he could move, and studied the fine grain of the oak.

“The king is unhappy with what he learns from this city.”

Geoffrey blinked. “I am his eyes here, and his ears.” He stopped himself. The king could pluck these eyes, trim these ears, and grow others. Geoffrey took a deep breath.

“He is unhappy with what he learns about his High Way.”

The High Way ran south, all the way to London. It belonged to the king as a man's arm belongs to the man. The road was an expression of the king's will, as this man was an expression of his will. The king's agency traveled like a vine over the land and peopled itself in men like Baldwin, as the flesh of Christ multiplied itself in the Blessed Sacrament.

Baldwin waited to see if Geoffrey would display remorse, or incompetence. Geoffrey returned his gaze.

“He is concerned about what he hears about travelers on his road.”

Geoffrey groped for a memory.

“About travelers not having free passage along the road.”