Scarlet (17 page)

CHAPTER 24

W
hat did she say?” demands Brother Odo as he bustles breathless into my cell. He is that much like an overgrown puppy—all feet and foolish fervour—it makes me smile.

It seems to me that my dull but amiable scribe is as much a prisoner of Abbot Hugo’s devices as Will Scarlet ever was. Here he sits most days, scribbling away in this dim, dank pit with its mud and mildew, the reek of piss and stagnant water in his nostrils, dutifully fulfilling his office, never complaining. What an odd friendship has grown between us. I wonder what it can hold, yes, and how much it can bear.

“God with you this morning, Odo,” I reply.

He settles himself in his place, the short plank balanced on his knees, and begins paring a new quill. “What did she say?”

“Who?”

“Mérian!” he shrieks, impatience making his soft voice shrill as an old fishwife’s. “You remember—do not pretend otherwise. We were talking about King Raven’s council.”

“Soup and sausages,” I sigh, shaking my head in weary dismay. “Are you certain that’s what we were talking about? I must have slept the memory right out of my head. I have no recollection of it at all.”

“I remember!” he cries. “Lord Bran called a council, and Mérian volunteered a plan she had devised.”

“Yes? Go on,” I urge him. “What next?”

“But that’s all I know,” he cries. He is that close to throwing his inkhorn at me. “That is where you stopped. You must remember what happened next.”

“Peace, Odo,” I say, trying to placate him. “All is not lost. Remind me of what you have written, and we’ll see soon enough if that stirs the pot.”

Odo busies himself with unrolling his scrap of parchment and unstopping his inkhorn.

“Read it out,” I say, as he smoothes the sheepskin beneath his podgy palms. “Perhaps that will help me remember.”

He begins, and I hear once again how he nips and crimps my words, giving them all a monkish cast. He bleeds them dry, and makes them all grey and damp like the greenwood in the grip of November. Still and all, he gets the gist of it, and renders my ramblings rather more agreeable than many would find them.

What his high-nosed infernal majesty Abbot Hugo makes of all this, I cannot say.

“. . . the captive Lady Mérian begged leave to reveal a plan she had made. The rebels fell silent to hear what she would say . . .” He stops here and looks up expectantly. “That is where we ended for the night.”

“If you say,” I tell him, shaking my head slowly. It is all I can do to keep from laughing. “But my head is a cup scoured clean this morning.”

Odo makes a face and grinds his teeth in frustration. “Well, then, what
do
you remember?”

“I remember something . . .” I pause and reflect a little. Ah, yes, how well I remember. “See now, monk, when the council finished I returned to Nóin’s hut,” I tell him, and we go on . . .

N
óin was not in her hut when I returned, nor was Nia. The council had taken the whole of the morning, and they had gone out to do some chores; so I went along to find them and lend a hand. The snow still lay deep over our ragtag little settlement, and the day, though bright, was cold. Many of King Raven’s rag-feathered flock were at work chopping and splitting wood for the many hearth fires needed to keep warm. I could hear their voices sharp in the crisp air, chirping like birds as they toiled to fill their baskets and drag bundles of cut wood back to their huts. I saw this now, as I had seen such work countless times since coming to Cél Craidd, but this time something had changed.

Maybe it was only ol’ Will Scarlet himself, but I did see the place in a different way, and did not much like what I saw. It put me in an edgy, uneasy mood, and I did not know why. Perhaps it was only to do with the bad news I had just now to deliver.

Oh, it was that, to be sure, but perhaps there was something else as well.

Even so, thinking to make the bitter draught a little easier to swallow, I put a big smile on my face and tried to take cheer in the sight of my beloved. But my heart was weighty and cold as a stone in a mountain stream. I saw Nóin bending low to pick up a split branch, and thought how I would love nothing more than to carry her away this instant to leave this place and its demands and duties, to flee far away from the bastard Normans and their overbearing ways. Alas, there was no longer such a place in all Britain. It made me sad and angry and disappointed and frustrated all at the same time, because I did not know what to do about it and feared nothing could be done.

I gathered my thoughts and, swallowing my disappointment, strode to where Nóin was working. “Here, my love,” I said, “let me carry that basket for you. Heap it high now, so you won’t have to fetch any more today.”

She stood and turned with a smile. “Ah, Will,” she began, then saw something in my face I was not able to hide. “What is it, love?”

She looked at me with such tender concern, how could I tell her?

“The council has decided . . . ,” I said, hearing my voice as from the bottom of a well. “We have come to a decision.”

Nóin’s smile faded; she grew sombre. “Well, what is it,Will? Speak it out.”

I bent my head. “I have to leave again.”

“Is that all?” She fairly shouted with relief. “Mother Mary, I was afraid it was serious.”

“I thought you would be unhappy.”

“Oh, I am right enough,” she replied, balling her fist on her hip. “But I would be more unhappy if I thought you had changed your mind about marrying.”

“But I do want to marry you, Nóin. I do.”

“Then all is well between us.” She turned as if to go back to her work, but paused. “When do you go?”

“As soon as all can be made ready,” I said.

“Go, then and help them see it through. We will fare as best we can while you are away,” she said, lifting a hand to my face, “and count the days until your return.”

“I will bring our friar back with me if I have to carry him on my back, and we will be wed the day I return.” This I told her, kissing the palm of her hand. We talked about our wedding day and the plans I had to build her a new house on my return—with a big bed, a table, and two chairs.

So it was, the five of us were set to leave the next morning: Friar Tuck and myself; Bran, of course; Iwan, because we could use another pair of hands and eyes on the road; Mérian because the plan was her idea entire, and she would in no wise stay behind in any event.

However, this notion was not without difficulties of its own and, though I was loath to do it, the chore fell to me to point this out. “Forgive me, my lord, if I speak above myself,” I began, “but is it wise for a hostage—begging your pardon, my lady—to . . . well, to be allowed to enter into affairs of such delicacy?”

“You doubt my loyalty?” challenged Mérian, dark eyes all akindle with quick anger. “I thought I knew you better, William Scatlocke.”

“I do heartily beg your pardon, Lady,” I said, raising my hands as if to fend off blows of her fists. “I only meant—”

“Here’s the pot calling the kettle black!” she fumed. “That is rich indeed, my friend!”

Siarles smiled to see me handed my head so skilfully. But Bran waded into the clash. “Mérian, peace. Will is right.”

“Right!” she snapped. “He is a fool, and so are you if you believe for even one heartbeat that I would ever do anything to endanger—”

“Peace, woman!” Bran said, shouting down her objection. “If you would listen for a moment, you would consider that Will has raised a fair point.”

“It is not,” she sniffed. “It is silly and insulting—I don’t know which the more.”

“No, it is neither.” Bran shook his head. “It goes to the heart of things between us. The time has come for you to decide, Mérian Fair.”

“Decide what?” she asked, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“Are you a hostage, or are you one of us?”

She frowned. “You tell me, Bran ap Brychan. What am I to you?”

“You know that right well. I would call you queen if you would but hear it.”

Her frown deepened, and a crease appeared between her brows. She was caught on the thorns this time, no mistake—and she knew it. “See here!” she snapped. “Do not think to make this about that.”

“Say what you will, my lady. It comes ’round to the same place in the end—either you stand with us, join us in heart and spirit or . . .”

“Or?” she replied, haughty in her indignation. “Or what will you do?”

“Or you must stay here like a good little hostage,” Bran replied, “while we enact your plan.”

“That I will not do,” she snipped.

“Then?”

Those of us who stood ’round about found other places to look just then, so as not to be drawn into what had become the latest clash in a royal battle of tempers and wills.

Mérian glared at Bran. She did not like having her loyalty questioned, but even she could see the problem now.

“What will you do?” Bran pressed. “We are waiting.”

“Oh, very well!” she fumed, giving in. “I will forswear my captivity and pledge fealty to you, Bran ap Brychan—but I’ll not marry you.” She smiled with sour sweetness at the rest of us. “There! Are we all happy now?”

“I accept your pledge,” replied Bran, “and release you from your captivity.”

“Then I can go with you?” inquired Mérian, just to make sure.

“My lady, you are a free woman,” granted Bran gently, and I could see how much the words cost him. “You can go with us, or you can simply go. Should you choose to stay, you will be in danger—as you already know.”

“I am not afraid,” she declared. “It is my plan, remember, and I will not have any clod-footed men mucking it up.”

She was not finished yet, for as we gathered to depart, Mérian spied a woman named Cinnia, a slender, dark-eyed young widow a few years older than herself, Mérian’s favourite amongst the forest dwellers—another of the Norman-widowed brides of which there were so many. My lady asked Cinnia to join us. She would serve as a companion for Mérian, who explained, “A woman of rank would never travel alone in the company of men. The Ffreinc understand this. Cinnia will be my handmaid.”

We loaded our supplies and weapons—longbows and sheaves of arrows rolled in deer hides—onto two packhorses. When we were at last ready to depart, Tuck said a prayer for the success of our journey, although he could have no idea what he was praying. Thus blessed, we took our leave. Angharad was still gone, so Tomas and Rhoddi were charged with keeping watch over Cél Craidd and Elfael while Lord Bran was away, and to reach us with a warning if the sheriff got up to anything nasty.

Thus, on a splendid winter’s day, we rode out to beard the sleeping lion in his den.

W
hat is that, Odo? I have not told what we planned to do?” My weak-eyed scribe thinks I have skipped too lightly over this important detail. “All in good time,” I tell him. “Patience is also a virtue, impetuous monk. You should try it.”

He moans and sighs, rolls his eyes and dips his pen, and we go on . . .

CHAPTER 25

Coed Cadw

R
ichard de Glanville watched the forest rising before him like the rampart of a vast green fortress, the colours muted and misty in the pale winter light. Just ahead lay the stream that ran along the valley floor at the foot of the rise leading to the forest. He raised his hand and summoned the man riding behind him to his side. “We will stop to water the horses, Bailiff,” he said. “Tell the men to remain alert.”

“Of course,” replied the bailiff in a voice that suggested he had heard the command a thousand times and it did not bear repeating.

The man’s tone of dry irritation piqued his superior’s attention. “Tell me, Antoin,” said the sheriff, “do you think we will catch the phantom today?”

“No, Sheriff,” replied the bailiff. “I do not think it likely.”

“Then why did you come on this sortie?”

“I came because I was ordered thus, my lord.”

“But of course,” allowed Sheriff de Glanville. “Even so, you think it a fool’s errand. Is that so?”

“I did not say that,” replied the soldier. He was used to the sheriff ’s dark and unpredictable moods, and rightly cautious of them. “I say merely that the Forest of the March is a very big place. I expect the phantom has moved on.”

The sheriff considered this suggestion. “There is no phantom, Bailiff. There are only a devil’s clutch of Welsh rebels.”

“However that may be,” replied Antoin blandly, “I have no doubt your persistence and vigilance has driven them away.”

De Glanville regarded his bailiff with benign disdain. “As always, Antoin, your insights are invaluable.”

“King Raven will be caught one day, God willing.”

“But not today—is that what you think?”

“No, Sheriff, not today,” confessed the soldier. “Still, it is a good day for a ride in the greenwood.”

“To be sure,” agreed the sheriff, reining up as they reached the fording place. The water was low, and ice coated the stones and banks of the slow-moving stream. Sir Richard did not dismount, but remained in the saddle, swathed in his riding cloak and leather gauntlets, his eyes on the natural wall of bare timber rising on the slope of the ridge before him. Coed Cadw, the locals called it; the name meant “Guardian Wood,” or “Sheltering Forest,” or some such thing he had never really discovered for certain. Whatever it was called, the forest was a stronghold, a bastion as mighty and impenetrable as any made of stone. Perhaps Antoin was right. Perhaps King Raven had flown to better pickings elsewhere.

When the horses had finished drinking and his soldiers had taken their saddles once more, the sheriff lifted the reins and urged his mount across the ford and up the long slope. In a little while, he and the four knights with him passed beneath the bare, snow-covered boughs of elm trees on either side of the road and entered the greenwood as through an arched doorway.

The quiet hush of the snowbound forest fell upon him, and the winter light dimmed. As he proceeded along the deep-shadowed track into the wood, the sheriff ’s senses pricked, wary to a presence unseen; his sight became keen, his hearing more acute. He could smell the faint whiff of sour earth that told him a red deer stag had passed a short while earlier, or was lying in a hidden den somewhere nearby.

After a fair distance, they came to a place where a narrow animal trail crossed their own. Here the sheriff paused. He sat for a moment, looking both ways along the ground. The tracks of pigs and deer lay intertwined in the snow and, here and there, the spoor of wolves—and all were old. Just as he was about to move along, his eye caught the sign that had no doubt caused him to stop in the first place: the slender double hoofprint of a deer and, behind and a little to one side, a slight half-moon depression. Without a word, he climbed down from the saddle and knelt for a better look. The half-moon print was followed by another a short stride length away.

“You have found something, Sire?” asked Bailiff Antoin after a moment.

“It seems our ride is to be rewarded today,” replied de Glanville.

“Deer?”

“Poacher.”

Antoin raised his eyes and peered down the tunnel formed by the overhanging branches. “Better still,” he replied.

The sheriff resumed his saddle and, with a gesture to silence the chattering soldiers, turned onto the narrow trail and began following his quarry. The trail led up a low rise and then down into a dell with a little rock-bound rill trickling along the bottom. There in the soft mud were a half dozen depressions—including the mark of a knee where a man had knelt to drink.

De Glanville raised a gauntlet to halt those coming from behind. He caught the sheen of a damp glimmer where water had splashed onto a rock. “He was here not long ago,” observed the sheriff. Turning in the saddle, he singled out two of his men. “Stay here and be ready should he double back before we catch him.”

He lifted the reins and urged his mount across the brook, up the opposite bank, and into a thicket of elder that formed a rough hedge along the streambed. Once beyond the hedge, the trail opened slightly, allowing the sun to penetrate the dense tangle overhead. Shafts of weak winter light slanted down through the naked branches above. A few hundred paces further along, the sheriff could see that the track entered a snow-covered glade. He reined up and, pointing to the clearing ahead, motioned Antoin and the remaining knights to dismount and circle around on foot. When they had gone from sight, Sir Richard proceeded on alone, pausing again as he entered the clearing. There, across the snowy space, kneeling beside the sleek, ruddy stag he had just brought down, was a swarthy Welshman. Knife in hand, he stooped to begin butchering his kill. In a glance the sheriff saw the hunter, the knife, and the longbow leaning against the trunk of a fallen birch a few paces from the crouching man.

Drawing his sword silently from its sheath with his left hand, de Glanville unslung his shield with his right. Tightening his grip on the pommel of his sword, he drew a deep breath and called across the glade, “In the name of the king!”

The shout rang clear in the chilly air, shattering the quiet of the glade.

The startled Welshman lurched and spun. “Throw down your weapons!” shouted de Glanville. The hunter dived for his bow. In the time it took the sheriff to swing his shield into place, the hunter had an arrow on the string. “Halt!” cried the sheriff as the poacher drew and loosed.

The arrow struck home with a jolt that rocked the sheriff in his high-cantled saddle. The arrow point pierced the solid ashwood planking that formed the body of the shield, the iron point protruding a finger’s width below the sheriff ’s eye.

The man’s quickness was impressive, but ultimately futile. Before he could nock another arrow, two knights rushed into the clearing from either side. The hunter whirled and loosed at the nearest of the two, but the arrow merely grazed the top of the soldier’s shield and careered away. Desperate, the Welshman swung the bow at the second knight and turned to flee. The two soldiers captured him in a bound, subduing him with a few skull-crushing blows before dragging him to where Sheriff de Glanville sat watching from his horse.

“Poaching deer in the king’s forest,” the sheriff said, his voice loud in the sanctuary of the glade, “is an offence punishable by death. Do you have anything to say before you are hanged?”

The hunter, who clearly did not understand the language of the Ffreinc, nevertheless knew the fate he faced just then. He gave out a cry and, with a mighty heave, tried to shake off the two soldiers clinging to him. They hung on, however, and showered blows upon his head until he subsided once more.

“Bailiff Antoin,” said the sheriff, “you profess some proficiency in the tongue of these brutes. Ask him if he has anything to say.”

The bailiff, clinging to the man’s right arm, informed him of the charge against him. The Welshman struggled and shouted, pleading and cursing as he flailed helplessly in the grasp of his captors until he was silenced with blows to the head and stomach. “It appears he has no defence,” Bailiff Antoin declared.

“No, I wouldn’t think so,” remarked the sheriff. The three remaining knights burst into the glade just then. “The rope, Bailiff,” de Glanville ordered, and Antoin reached into the bag behind the sheriff ’s saddle and drew out a coiled length of braided leather.

The Welshman saw the rope and began shouting and struggling again. The sheriff ordered his knights to haul the man to the nearest tree. The rope was lofted over a stout bough and the quickly fashioned noose pulled tight around the wretch’s neck.

“By order of His Majesty, King William of England, in whose authority I am sworn, I sentence you to death for the crime of poaching the king’s deer,” said the sheriff, his voice low and languid, as if pronouncing such judgement was a dreary commonplace of his occupation. He directed Bailiff Antoin to repeat his words in Welsh. The bailiff struggled, lapsing now and again into French, and finished with a shrug of indifference.

The sheriff, satisfied that all had been done in proper order, said, “Carry out the sentence.”

The knight holding the end of the rope was joined by two others and the three began pulling. The leather stretched and creaked as the victim’s weight was lifted from the ground. The poor Welshman scrabbled with his hands as the noose tightened around his neck and his dancing feet swung free, toes kicking up clods of snow.

Then, as the suffocated choking began, the sheriff seemed to reconsider. “Hold!” he said. “Let him down.”

Instantly the rope slackened, and the man’s feet touched ground once more. The wretch collapsed onto his knees, and his hands tore at the constricting leather band around his neck, his breath coming in great, grunting gasps.

When the colour had returned to the Welshman’s face, the sheriff said, “Inform the prisoner that I will give him one more chance to live.”

Antoin, standing over the gasping man, relayed the sheriff ’s words. The unfortunate looked up, eyes full of hope, and grasped the bailiff ’s leg as might a beggar beseeching a would-be benefactor.

“Tell him,” continued de Glanville, “that I will let him go if he will but tell me where King Raven can be found.”

The bailiff duly repeated the offer, whereupon the Welshman rose to his feet. Speaking slowly and with care, aware of the dire consequence of his reply, the hunter folded his hands in supplication to the sheriff and delivered himself of an impassioned speech.

“What did he say?” asked the sheriff when the hunter finished.

“I cannot be certain,” began the bailiff, “but it seems that he is a poor man with hungry children—five in number. His wife is dead—no, ill, she is ill. He says his cattle were killed by soldiers of the marshal. They have nothing.”

“That is no excuse,” replied de Glanville. “Does he know that? Ask him.”

The bailiff repeated the sheriff ’s observation, and the Welshman retorted with an impassioned plea.

“He says,” offered Antoin, “that they are starving. The loss of his cattle has driven him to take the deer. This, he grieves, ah, no, regrets—but always when hunger drove him to the wood, he could take a deer with his lord’s blessing.”

The sheriff considered this, and then said, “The law is the law. What about King Raven? Make him understand that he can walk free, and take the deer with him, if he tells me where to find that rebel and thief.”

This was told to the prisoner, who replied in the same impassioned voice. The bailiff listened, then answered, “The poacher says, if it is a crime to be hungry, then a guilty man stands before you. But if there be a thing such as mercy under heaven, then he pleads to you before God to let him go for the sake of mercy. He calls upon Christ to be his witness, for he knows nothing of King Raven or where he might be found.”

The sheriff listened to this, impressed as he occasionally was with the Welsh facility with expression. If talking could save them, they had nothing to fear. Alas, words were but empty things, devoid of power and all too easily broken, discarded, and forgotten. “I will ask one last time,” said the sheriff. “Tell me what I want to know.”

When the sheriff ’s words had been translated, the captive Briton drew himself up full height and gave his answer, saying, “Release me, for the sake of Christ before whom we all must stand one day. But know this, if it lay in my power to know the wiles and ways of the creature you call King Raven, I would not spare so much as a breath to tell you.”

“Then save your breath for dying,” replied the sheriff when the captive’s reply had been relayed. “Hang him!”

The three knights began hauling on the end of the rope. The Welshman’s feet were soon kicking and his hands clawing at the noose once more. His strangled cries were swiftly choked off, and his face, now purple and swollen, glared his dying hatred for the sheriff and all Ffreinc invaders.

In a few moments, the victim’s struggles ceased and his hands fell limp to his sides, first one and then the other. The sheriff leaned on the pommel of his saddle, watching the poacher’s body as it swung, twisting gently from side to side. After a time, the bailiff said, “He is dead, Sire. What do you want us to do with the body?”

“Let it swing,” said the sheriff. “It will be a warning to others of his kind.”

With that, he turned his mount and started from the clearing, mildly satisfied with the day’s work. True, he was no closer to finding King Raven, but hanging a poacher was always a good way to demonstrate his authority and power over the local serfs. A small thing, perhaps, as some would reckon, but it was, after all, in the exercise of vigilance and attention to such small details that power was maintained and multiplied.

Richard de Glanville, Sheriff of the March, knew very well the ways and uses of power. He would find the rebel known as King Raven one day, and on that day all Elfael would see how traitors to the crown were punished. Justice might be delayed, but it could not be escaped. King Raven would be caught, and his death would make that of the hanged poacher seem like a child’s game. He would not merely punish the rebel, he would destroy him and snuff out his name forever. That, he considered, would be a delight to savour.