Forbidden Forest Page 2

  John knew that each tree hid within its pith a sprite, a tree soul. He could not guess if this oak still carried its genius within its span, but the young man spoke in his heart, wordlessly, Help me. Spare this ferry, and I’ll do a deed in return.

  John wrestled the log along the length of the ferry, straining, grunting. The effort made his sinews burn and dimmed his vision.

  He cast the tree into the boiling current.

  “Heaven be praised!” said one of the travelers, his voice shaking.

  John fell to his knees. His rough-spun tunic was wet, and scales of bark clung to his sleeves. His breath came in ragged gasps.

  And now the promised gesture was required.

  He took Simon’s hand as he climbed to his feet, and pulled the ferryman to the ferry’s rail. “Give them back their silver,” whispered John.

  “What are you saying?” hissed Simon. Then, for the benefit of the merchants and the knight, he added, “I’ll buy a pitcher of the finest spring ale for you tonight, John, for your brave effort. And a pot of mead.”

  A spare pole, a flimsy length of wood, was strapped to the rail, and John could not speak for a moment, in a hurry to free the pole and dig it hard into the river bottom, driving the ferry ever closer to its destination.

  John levered the ferry hard, and said, keeping his voice low, “Give them back what you have taken.”

  A figure stiffened nearby, the knight just close enough to catch John’s words.

  “Quiet, John,” Simon hissed.

  Then he made a show of laughing, like a man at ease. But the knight turned and murmured something to his fellow travelers. The merchants began a hurried inventory of their purses and cloak fastenings, and more than one of them gave a bitter exclamation.

  The knight lifted a hand and let it fall on Simon’s shoulder, seized him, and lifted him, one foot dangling like a market-day puppet.

  Just then the ferry lurched, and the wharf assistant, a quiet man habitually half paralyzed with ale, tossed a loosely knotted rope in John’s general direction.

  The young man caught the rope and hauled the vessel close to the wharf. The ferry bumped the pilings hard, but the knight had thrown Simon onto the deck and planted a knee on the ferryman’s chest while he searched the pockets and hiding places of Simon’s loose-fitting tunic.

  The knight’s searching fingers brought out a dull silver pin and a sack fat with gold marks, the gold making its distinctive chuckle within the leather as the man-at-arms tossed it in his hand.

  Simon protested that these treasures were his own, but two outraged merchants identified their possessions, and the knight reached into his cloak and brought forth a long, slender blade—a finishing knife, the customary weapon for cutting the throats of the half-slain.

  John could not see far enough into the future to know if the knight was going to cut Simon’s throat. Surely the blade pressed Simon’s flesh, and the indented skin reddened, blood starting.

  John seized the knight by his bright hair and yanked his head back, hard.

  The man-at-arms rose halfway to his feet, his eyes round, hands reaching out into the air. The blade fell clattering to the deck as the rig-bone within the knight’s neck gave a snap. At the ugly sound, John released his hold on the man. The knight dropped to the deck, his eyes wide. The knight’s feet jerked and spasmed, and a pool of piss spread out around the body.

  John straightened. All his life he had heard firelight tales, heroes slaying ogres and errant knights. He had never committed such an act himself. John uttered a prayerful “Blessed Mary!” and gazed down at his own two hands. John’s horror kept him standing where he was, unable to make a further sound.

  Simon knelt beside the knight, feeling the body for pulse, for breath. The ferryman said, hoarsely, “He’ll be well—have no cares, good wool men. Disembark, and God speed you.”

  John could not swim, and he dreaded the thought of his body sinking down into the current. But he heard the low, promising voice of the river: Come away, come away.

  The ferryman looked up at John and said, for the benefit of the travelers, “The good knight needs room, please; stand back.”

  John could hear the voice in Simon’s soul, the urgent message, Run!

  The merchants had John in their arms before the young man could move. John accepted the justice of this. He had taken the life of a man of quality, and the blows fell on John’s shoulders and arms—fists and then sword butts, and then the flats of the swords as the merchants freshened to their task.

  The sweating wool men shoved John up the riverbank, laboring at him with their swords, nicking a shoulder, drawing blood from a knee. Each bite of steel cut a little deeper into flesh. John stumbled over tree roots, treading through puddles.

  The riverside hamlet was called Stoneford, a place where men and pigs lived in neighborly contentment. Now the village stirred, men and women interrupted in their afternoon labors by the curses of the merchants. A woman with a wort paddle, in the midst of brewing beer, gaped at the sight of a young man accepting punishment without complaint.

  Suffering was best endured in silence. John knew this, as did every well-churched soul under the sky. Heaven sent us pain to let us experience what Our Lord knew, a spike through each blessed hand. Illness and injury: each buffet sent by Heaven was a gift. Especially in a case like this, when John knew that the punishment was entirely fair. A man-killer deserved the harshest justice.

  And yet John was growing angry.

  “Easy, good sirs,” said a nearby wife, portly in her apron. “Whatever the crime this giant lad has committed, let us fetch the sheriff’s men.”

  “No need,” said the stoutest of merchants, drawing back his blade. John wrapped his hand around the sword-wielding arm and gripped hard. The merchant grinned with effort, but his hand released the blade. John picked up the weapon, the hilt warm and moist with grip sweat. John was not accustomed to hefting a sword, but the weight of the weapon was pleasing.

  He broke free and began to run, splashing through pig soil, hens squawking, geese fleeing. Grass whipped his leggings, and a village dog, a yellow creature with a tight-curled tail, ran along with John, barking. John left the dog far behind.

  He stumbled, and caught himself from falling into the shadowy shaft of a water-well hidden in the grass. Many villages had such old wells, a constant source of accident. A stone dislodged by his step ticked the echoing interior, and long moments after John left it behind he could hear the splash.

  The cries of the merchants and their hurrying footsteps began to fade as John hurried into the thick saplings along the verge of the woods. He ran until the sounds of pursuit dimmed.

  The forest, came the elf cries around him.

  Into the forest, run.

  As John approached the woods, some peace-loving human part of him hesitated.

  Every honest man knew that the greenwood was the haunt of desperate men who were outlawed, declared beyond the protection of the law. The forest was also the refuge of the wood sprites, centuries old, who lived in the ground far from the eyes of men.

  John looked back. The merchants were pointing, indicating across the sodden meadow a track that anyone could see, the thick grass parted all the way to where John panted, sword in hand.

  Every woodland in the kingdom was forbidden to folk of common birth, and much of the forest was royal hunting land. To set foot in such a wood was to break the law.

  John turned and, lifting the branch of a young elm, entered the green dark.

  Chapter 3

  John ran hard, leaves tearing at his face, twigs slashing.

  Sheriff’s men on a manhunt often used wolfhounds bred to nose a criminal in a hayrick or a copse of beeches. John reckoned that he would be able to survive one night, or two, before the hounds found him and tore him to pieces.

  John drank from a stream that tasted of soil and green leaves, and followed the brook, simmering and powerful as all running water in the land this stormy season. John ho
ped the fast-running water would make it more difficult for the dogs to follow his scent.

  When the shadowy wood grew darker still and the air cold, he climbed into a tree. His gashes and bruises ached, and a runnel of blood tickled him as it seeped from a wound in his knee. He stayed there in the crotch of the spreading branches, the hint of silver daylight far to the west fading, vanishing.

  This was not the first time he was homesick for the walls of York. With his father dead, and his family’s servant Hilda mocked and more than once pilloried for trading in graveyard bones and other magic relics, John had grown restless for the world beyond the town. Now he would have accepted the lowliest station of stable lad in any town to get out of these wet woods alive.

  The weight of the sword in his belt was cold and foreign, and John felt the hard oak bark dig into his tunic and his rough wool leggings. He hated the unfamiliar whisper of the wind in the trees. Or was it the wind? Like any Christian, John knew that the devil was at home in any wild place, and here John could expect no watchman’s vigil or ale brewer’s fellowship.

  John slept, and as he slept he had a dream.

  The tree he embraced transformed, in this dream, into a woman. This beautiful tree dame held John, and he coupled with her the way husband mates with wife.

  Some holy men were said to have divine visions, saints with fiery swords. Hilda, rolling out the crust for squab pie, had said that a dream of a skylark’s song, high above, foretold wealth. John had known an innkeeper’s daughter, one rainy night, and a hayward’s widow, once, under the blue sky. Perhaps there was a woman waiting somewhere for him, a kind, beautiful forester’s daughter.

  John woke sweating, clinging to the branch of the tree. His cuts throbbed. The dark was perfect. He climbed upward, even higher into the tree, and clung, wide awake until dawn.

  Birdsong celebrated sunlight, high above—especially the jaunty, throaty notes of the woodcock, and the brazen cackle of rooks. John’s father had loved birds, often stopping his work, loading a cart with stiff hides, to listen to a distant cuckoo. John had made his father laugh by imitating the blackbird’s song. But now even this bird chatter made John cautious. Hilda used to slice parsnips in the kitchen and tell John that elves put on the voices of crows and such creatures when they wanted to caution humans, or to laugh at them.

  John inched downward, stiff, the fresh scabs on his cuts worried by the rough bark of the oak. But something prompted him to breathe thanks to the tree, and to whatever spirits of the wood might be nearby.

  He was nearly all the way to the ground when a sound stilled him, and he crouched in an elbow of the oak.

  For a long moment he heard only birds, and the great silence of daylight lifting the night mist upward, through the green canopy above. But then John heard it again, the jeering alarm—rooks taking flight, complaining.

  A whispered step.

  A silent wake through the chitter of birds.

  Two figures slipped into view. One was dressed in the worn brown leggings and leather cap of a country yeoman, a man of property who had to sweat for his daily bread. But this sun-bronzed man was following a trail, and it did not take John more than a heartbeat to recognize the weathered stranger with the scarred neck, the last passenger to join the ferry the day before.

  The yeoman had a companion now, a man in a gray traveler’s cloak and hood, red silk gleaming at the sleeves. The silent figure walked well behind the careful yeoman.

  John found his hand on the hilt of his newly possessed weapon. The yeoman had a staff, and wore a sword in his belt. John crept down from his tree, and he realized, with deep unease, how chilled and sweaty his hands were, and how rapidly his breath came and went.

  He stepped away from the protective oak and took a stand in a clearing. The yeoman straightened from a crouch on the root-scored earth, and put out a hand to catch the cloaked man’s eye.

  “Good morning, outlaw,” said the man of quality. His red silk sleeves were brilliant in the forks of sunlight that fell from above.

  Each man had an apportioned place in life, and this place was more essential to a man’s value upon earth than his Christian name. It was polite to address a stranger by his calling—chandler, silversmith—but it was strange to hear outlaw used in this formal way.

  John gave a short bow, as was polite and wise when meeting a man of worth, but he offered no spoken courtesy. Although he had long envied men of guile and cunning, John knew his own skills were more straightforward. He had a strong back and a hard fist. Smart men stole the world away, while men like John could only dream.

  “I am the lord of Kirkslee,” said the gray-cloaked traveler. He had a soft voice and the pale, lined face of a seneschal or Exchequer’s man, someone accustomed to taxes and expenditures. “I am called Red Roger. This is my man, Tom Dee.”

  Tom Dee made a leg, thrusting one foot forward and bowing, a show of castle manners. He was sun-browned, with cheerful features, but his eyes measured John and he took a half step back, setting his staff across his body. Despite his show of caution, John liked him at once.

  There were famous outlaws of the forest. Red Roger, a legendary nobleman-robber, was one. Another was a shadowy, much-rumored figure, a man who reputedly mocked his victims more energetically than he robbed them. This mysterious robber of legend was known as Robin Wood, or Hood. John did not believe such a man really lived at all, outside the world of ballads.

  But he would not have imagined Red Roger was a real man, either. “Good morning to you,” said John, resting his hand on his sword hilt. He did not add “my lord,” although he did offer his own name.

  “The sheriff’s men will be hunting you, John Little,” said Roger, reaching within his cloak to withdraw a wedge of bread loaf. “You are famous in taverns and inns overnight: John Little, the Killer Giant.”

  “As Heaven’s Queen wills it,” said John, a phrase that came to him without effort, one of his father’s heartfelt half-prayers when a shipment of green hides arrived rotten, or well chewed by rats.

  “They hunt with dogs,” said Tom Dee. He was not much younger than his master, but looked weather-hardened, the old scar along the side of his neck the result of a knife that had just missed what every butcher knew was the life vein.

  John seized the bread from the nobleman’s hand and ate eagerly. The loaf was made of beans and bran, not the fine white flour John had expected.

  “Come with us and we will save you from a noose of new rope,” said Red Roger. He had the easy, straightforward gaze of a man too jaded to be any danger in combat. Although not frail, he had a priest’s manner of half smiling before he spoke, as though to make the inevitable fall gently.

  “Indeed,” said John, “my father raised a son who stands straight.” This was a marketplace phrase for an able-bodied worker, and John realized as he uttered it how out of place such a remark sounded in this wild wood.

  Tom Dee laughed. “They’ll loose the wolfhounds on your hams and you’ll stand like a snake.” Stonde lyk an snaca.

  John gave the two of them what he hoped was a manly smile. He would be grateful to become a part of such a legendary outlaw’s band, but John sensed that a man so famous for breaking the law could not be trusted.

  Red Roger raised a hand and listened.

  “We are too late,” said Tom Dee with a sharp little laugh, like a man about to enjoy a cockfight.

  John was thankful that dogs were not falcons. With a hunting fowl, death falls silently, a gauntlet from Heaven. These hunting dogs approached fast, giving tongue to their discovery of John’s scent, and while it gripped him to his heart to know they brought death, he prepared his soul with a prayer, his sword in his hand.

  The first dog to burst through the trees was a shaggy, long-bodied beast, a smaller hunting dog at his flank. Tom Dee strode into the dogs with his short sword, and the two dogs soon kicked, shivering. One by one the others broke stride, biting at the air, scratching with a hind foot, or reaching back with a peeled muzzle to
pluck at a gash in the flank as Tom slipped among them. Even the ones that reared, growling, soon coughed red as Tom lunged and slashed, making quick work.

  Only one dog, a deerhound, managed to avoid Tom’s blade, and as this beast approached, Lord Roger drew a sword from under his cloak. Like a trick the nobleman and the dog had practiced for months, the sword blade plunged all the way into the animal’s ribs.

  The deerhound’s jaws snapped, the animal lunging and kicking. Red Roger did nothing to ease the hound’s agony, and it was Tom who stepped in and finished the dying animal, a quick stroke with his blade.

  The deerhound bled from a cut that exactly matched the scar in Tom’s throat, and John had the uneasy sense that Tom Dee was a dead man given life by some unknown power.

  But the look Tom Dee gave him was that of a living man, and a friendly one at that. “Hurry, John Little, or their swords will make you smaller yet.”

  Chapter 4

  The three men slipped from root to root across the forest floor. Then they doubled back, so close to the hunters that the voices of men still lively from breakfast wine reached them through the trees. The searchers were angry, beating the brush, calling in coarse language.

  The three approached the hamlet of Stoneford, but kept to the shade of the young elms. A cache of equipment rested in a grove of saplings, and Red Roger sorted through old, well-worn armor. He placed a brass and leather helmet on John’s head, and fastened a ragged skirt of mail around the youth’s middle. Then he murmured a word into Tom Dee’s ear, and the yeoman slipped through the meadow grass and was gone.

  Sometimes the sound of hunters’ voices reached them, and Red Roger lifted a finger to his lips. Sometimes the leather armor of a sheriff’s man gleamed darkly at the edge of the wood, the man eyeing the too badly trampled earth or letting his horse crop meadow grass. Then Red Roger would go down on one knee and grow very still, and John likewise would crouch in the grass and wait for their solitude to grow perfect again.