In a Dark Wood Read online

  The man left, and Geoffrey watched the Fool balance a chair on his chin, his nimble feet moving constantly. Geoffrey touched the arm of a servant and ordered that the miller’s son be sent for. And then he sat back, at peace for the first time in days. It was the peace that rises within a man in the midst of danger, like water welling from a spring.

  Geoffrey closed his eyes. The Fool’s feet whispered on the stone floor. The whippet scratched itself, the nails of its foot making rhythmic strokes against its hide. Eleanor clapped her hands at yet another of the Fool’s stunts.

  19

  Hugh looked on, aware of the sputter of each candle, the hiss of the man-sized logs in the fireplace. The potter held a special fascination for Hugh, as he did for the sheriff. The sheriff’s eyes followed the potter, every movement he made, ignoring Thurstin.

  The great hall was too dark, and torches were brought, spitting and smoking, gilding the men with half-light.

  “This,” said the potter, “is the bow given to me by Robin Hood himself.”

  “Robin Hood!” breathed Thurstin, holding forth his hand to touch the blond span of wood.

  “Its length suits you well,” said the sheriff.

  “It’s a good bow,” said the potter easily, as if such things did not matter much to him.

  High above them windows creaked in a gust of wind, and needles of water glinted in the torchlight. “I am glad the skies were blue for today’s contest,” said the sheriff. “Like so much in life, weather can change suddenly for the worse.”

  “Or for the better,” said the potter.

  “This is true,” said Geoffrey. “Although pleasant surprises do not usually concern us.”

  Thurstin said nothing, his eyes alight.

  The potter gestured towards the cross-beam, high above them in the shifting torchlight. “My lord sheriff, plant an arrow in that beam as a target.”

  “The bow is not one of my skills,” said Geoffrey.

  “Nor should it be,” said the potter. “A gentleman’s weapon is his sword.”

  “Or his tongue,” said the sheriff.

  Quickly, with a fluid motion so sudden as to be nearly invisible, the potter strung his bow, selected a pale shaft, planted a foot, and sent an arrow into the beam above them. The arrow shivered, deep into the wood, and the sound of it echoed in the hall like the bite of an axe.

  Thurstin whistled softly.

  “So,” said Geoffrey, recovering himself. “Thurstin, try to split this arrow prick with ten shots. I will back this good miller’s son with a wager of my own.”

  The potter’s smile gleamed in the torchlight.

  Thurstin strung his bow with a grunt and sorted through the arrows on the table.

  “My arrows, I think, are better,” said the potter.

  “Much,” said Thurstin. The young man flexed his bow, nocked the arrow, and drew it to his ear.

  The arrow missed by a hand’s breadth and bounded off the hard wood of the beam, clattering to the floor.

  “The light here is very bad,” said the sheriff.

  “The light is good enough,” said Thurstin disgustedly. He plucked another arrow and took a deep breath.

  Another miss, although by less than a hand, and the arrow stuck.

  “A good shot,” said the potter.

  Thurstin made a thin-lipped smile and selected another arrow. This arrow trembled in the beam no closer to the target arrow, but deeper into the wood.

  “Good!” said Geoffrey, and it was good, shooting upwards like that, in the shivering torch shadows. The miller’s son was a credit to the city.

  Again and again, until ten arrows had been sent, all of them missing the target arrow, but the last quivering in the beam so close to the target arrow the two looked intertwined.

  “Excellent!” said the sheriff.

  “A good eye and a steady hand,” said the potter.

  Thurstin shrugged and unstrung his bow. “I could do worse,” he said.

  “Indeed much worse,” said the sheriff. “And now, our guest.”

  The potter inclined his head in a brief bow.

  “Plant another target arrow,” said the sheriff. “Off to one side.

  As if planted in the beam by thought alone, another arrow buried itself into the roof beam, and this arrow did not quiver, sunk so far into the wood that it was like a part of the timber, a straight black twig out of the heart of the wood itself.

  The potter counted ten arrows and tucked them into his belt. He moved in an unhurried manner. When the arrows were tucked through his belt, and he stood in the same place Thurstin had stood, the potter took a long moment to listen, it seemed, to the rain.

  The potter took a step to the side and held his bow loosely in his fingers, the way the angels in the window held their trumpets, ready to play or to abandon their instruments and fly.

  Geoffrey jumped at the noise. The chunk of the arrow, and the high, splintered shower of arrow on the stone floor. A single shaft stood out from the timber, casting a black shadow.

  It seemed a mistake, and by the time Geoffrey understood what had happened, nine more arrows had buried themselves into the cross-beam with a sound like axe-heads buried into wood, and all but the last arrow had showered, splintered, to the floor.

  Torches whispered. Silently the potter unstrung his bow. “I am sorry,” he said softly, “that I was late for the tournament.”

  “And I, too,” said Geoffrey, when he could speak, “am sorry.” He felt into his tunic. “But you have won this gold honorably.”

  The coins disappeared as the potter’s hand closed round them. “You shot well,” said the potter.

  Thurstin threw his bow to the table. “Well!”

  “I have had practice.”

  “You got this bow from Robin Hood?” asked the sheriff.

  The potter stirred himself, as if from deep thought. “Yes, from the man himself.”

  “I have long wanted to meet this man Robin Hood.”

  “A thing easily done. He meets many people and without their even asking. I am sure that if a man asks to see him, it will be all the more easy.”

  The amazing feat seemed to have taken the fire out of the potter. He sat and said softly, “Come with me tomorrow—alone. I will take you to Robin Hood.”

  “Where does he live?” asked Geoffrey lightly, although inside he was trembling.

  “In the greenwood.”

  “The greenwood surrounds us.”

  “He will meet you there.”

  “You seem certain of this.”

  The potter met the sheriff’s gaze, and the torchlight glittered in the potter’s smile and in his eyes, and the man said, “There can be no doubt.”

  Geoffrey could not think, calmed strangely by the man’s smile. “Spend the night here, then, and we will leave tomorrow to see Robin Hood.”

  Hugh stood beside the newel-post of the stairs, holding his breath. There was the slightest hope that the sheriff would turn with a smile and say, Hugh, you can come, too.

  Hugh, I can’t ride into the forest without you.

  But he didn’t.

  20

  Hugh dreamed that he was alone in the forest, screeching ravens overhead. Each shadow of each tree fell across his running body, a shaft of cold. Hugh woke shivering, thankful that he was on his duck-feather pallet, within the walls of the castle.

  A worthy plan was in place: Henry was to follow secretly, trailing the sheriff. But Hugh was uneasy.

  As he fastened the sheriff’s iron spurs the following morning, Hugh heard himself wish the sheriff well. “Saint Christopher protect you, my lord,” he said. These were not mere house spurs. These were black iron vises, ending with a star-shaped rowel, not the usual arrowpoint, an innovation that would permit a stroke instead of a stab; the Alsatians had invented them.

  Don’t go, Hugh wanted to warn the sheriff. Stay here.

  The potter climbed onto the back of a gray gelding like a man who knew horses but who had not ridden in
a long while. His feet found the simple iron stirrups with difficulty, and he reined too hard, working the iron bit into the horse’s mouth. But he calmed the horse easily, with a touch and a low word, and smiled into the morning sun. “I thank you for loaning me this mount,” he said. “It is another example of your generosity to a stranger.”

  Geoffrey kept the bright sun behind his left shoulder as he studied the potter. The man was as tanned as a peasant, and muscular, and the sun glinted off his russet beard. He wore his bow across his back, the string across the front of his loose, ragged tunic. The two men studied each other, but Geoffrey allowed his shadow to fall across the potter’s face, so that to the potter the sheriff looked like little more than a head eclipsing the sun. “It’s a fine morning for a ride,” said Geoffrey.

  “Such a ride is a gentleman’s sport,” said the potter. “A lowly craftsman has little time for such a thing.”

  “And yet you sit well.”

  “I have an easy understanding of animals, and they have always understood me. Let me return your graciousness, and the graciousness of your wife, with this gift.” The potter reached into his tunic and brought forth a brilliant ring.

  The circle of gold was warm from its closeness to the potter’s body, and the ring was heavy. Geoffrey was well accustomed to guessing the worth of objects, as he was accustomed to judging the station of a stranger. He hefted the golden circlet in his palm and tried to guess what else this stranger had inside his tunic. “My wife has a special fondness for objects of price. She will be grateful, and I thank you.”

  Geoffrey slipped the ring to a house steward. “I was careful to choose a horse that would give you little trouble.”

  “You are admired everywhere for your thoughtfulness.”

  “It’s early for flattery, isn’t it? Or is it a constant habit with you?”

  “A man of your position does not have to be reminded of his worth,” said the potter, squinting and then giving up trying to see his host. The potter leaned to pat the neck of the gray horse, running a finger along a black scar shaped like the mark a wet cup leaves on a table.

  “Even a wooden sword can do harm,” said Geoffrey. “We use that horse in practice. He has been hurt just enough to make him wise.”

  They rode silently through the streets of the city, and as they left the sight of the castle, Geoffrey turned to look back, hoping to see the watching faces he expected from the slits or from the turrets.

  But they had already gone too far.

  A half hour was not a precise amount of time. It was a wedge of time, a handful of morning, like saying “a glass of wine” or “a piece of bread.” Geoffrey relied on his sense that armed men riding to battle would urge their horses forwards and overtake two casual riders shortly after their entrance into the forest. Geoffrey was satisfied with their easy pace, past chickens and white geese, whose orange webbed feet tracked water from puddles across the paving stones.

  A blue-gray surface, the earth rose and fell. Puddles gleamed. Small figures, like clothed fleas, worked in the distance. The sky seemed scraped by a knife, uneven and rough. The horizon was bright, the color of skin. The sun dissolved the clouds as heat dissolves fat. The shadows of the two mounted men spilled ahead of them as they rode, rippling over the ruts and the puddles. A puddle scummed suddenly, like milk, with a sudden breath of warm wind.

  A wagon was sunk into mud, and a peasant pushed from behind to help the ox, which rolled a brown eye at the two men as they passed. The peasant stood respectfully, eyes to the ground, and the sheriff wished him good morning.

  Beekeepers worked near a field of barley stubble. Their heads were protected by wicker baskets. The flat faces of the wicker made them appear not human as they carried the straw hives. Bees sprinkled the air round them, vanishing and reappearing as the insects danced in and out of shadow.

  A bee soared, in the heavy, uncertain flight bees perform, before Geoffrey’s eyes, and dodged the potter’s head. The fleck of amber continued into the trees, until they could not see it.

  “The bee teaches us an important lesson, of course,” said Geoffrey, breaking their silence.

  “That particular bee or bees in general?”

  “Individuals are never important. Only the group they belong to, the kind of thing, not the specific creature itself.”

  The potter laughed. “Is that right?”

  Geoffrey was mystified. “Of course it is.”

  “What sort of lesson does the bee teach?”

  “Mutual obligation,” said Geoffrey, but he had no interest in bee lessons. He was struggling to understand the background of his companion. “We all know why there are so many different creatures.” This was the idlest of conversation, standard talk to demonstrate one’s literacy, and yet the potter said nothing, proving, thought Geoffrey, that he had no background at all. “It’s unusual for a potter to draw a bow as well as you do.”

  “Yes, it is unusual.”

  “Like most people, I have a great mistrust of the unusual.”

  “Mistrust?”

  “A great mistrust. Very nearly a fear of it. We all feel this way. The only reason you could peddle your pots, cheap or not, was that it was a tournament day. On an ordinary day a stranger like yourself would have been turned away, and with a curse.”

  The forest closed round them as they reached the High Way. Birds like chips of steel scattered and hid, and puddles reflected the dark, shaggy silhouettes of trees. A single butterfly, a toss of yellow, struggled at the lip of a puddle of brown water, and the forest made a sound like a long intake of breath.

  Great avenues of night clawed holes in sunlight, and ferns stroked darkness as profound as the inside of a lung. Geoffrey watched this side, and then that, each rotted trunk, each glistening mushroom seeming to shift closer as he passed.

  “Why do you keep turning to look back?” asked the potter. “I can’t hear anyone following us.”

  “I thought I heard someone.”

  “There is no one.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I am never mistaken about such things.”

  “Is this the way you came with your cart?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I am curious.”

  “You know this can’t be the way. I came from the north, passing the miller as I came.”

  “Ah, yes. I had forgotten.”

  “I had been told that you never forget.”

  “It seems that you have heard a great deal about me.”

  “You are well known.”

  “Where are you going?” Geoffrey pulled his horse aside.

  The potter gestured. “This is the way.”

  Ferns nodded in a gust of wind. Branches scraped each other, and the spears of sunlight dimmed and vanished. Geoffrey’s horse followed the one ahead of it through a tangle of fallen trees and naked branches.

  There were so many creatures because God wanted there to be many ways man could learn about His power and many ways a man could study the ways to his own resurrection. But why, Geoffrey wondered, were there such cold, dark caverns of wilderness? Why were there tangled branches the color of a serpent’s cast-off skin, and leaf mulch blackened with age so thick upon the ground a horse sank into it and had to struggle ahead as through a windfall of dead flesh?

  The horses left great hoofprints in the mulch, however, and this meant that the trail would be easy to follow. Geoffrey snapped a branch, trying to be quiet, so that there could be no question which way they had passed. The crack of the branch was a slap in the silence, and Geoffrey’s horse shied.

  Geoffrey shivered. Surely the men who were following had reached the place where the two horses had left the High Way. He reined in his horse, which tossed its head, more than happy to stop. Geoffrey listened. Wind inhaled through the branches, and a bird the color of mud scurried up the side of a tree.

  The forest thickened the ordinary silence, and the thud and crackle of hoof resounded among the scaly trunks. The p
otter slid to the ground and led his horse into a clearing.

  “Where are we?” asked Geoffrey.

  “We are here.”

  A great gray oak sent thick roots across the leaf-red ground. The huge tree had shaped a space in the sky, and the steel-bright sunlight surrounded the tree like a deformed halo.

  “The Trysting Oak,” said Geoffrey.

  “That’s right. I knew you didn’t forget easily. You understood more than you wanted to admit. Get off your horse. It will be no use to you.”

  Silence. The thunder of horse breath. The kiss of stiff golden leaf to the ground.

  Saint Catherine had been tied to a spiked wheel, which shattered when they tried to tear her body apart, a spike here, a spoke there, all scattered everywhere by divine grace. God chooses to make things known, but He uses events, even the suffering of mortals, to enunciate His truths. Geoffrey was transfixed with the understanding that something was being made known through him, but he did not know what.

  The potter pulled a horn, the horn of a beef, gray and luminous, from his tunic. He licked his lips and blew. The note strangled at first and then was clear and hard, and when the note was finished, the sound of slowly drifting leaves was loud, and acorns punched the ground as they fell.

  The note echoed among the trees, at once repeated and changed, muffled and furred, like a boulder whose subsequent outlines are disguised with moss, or a coin whose mates are blurred and worn.

  And then another far, clear note, perfect as an eyelash.

  “Get off your horse, my lord sheriff,” repeated the potter gently. “It will be no use to you now.”

  The sheriff did not move. Not because he intended to flee, but because as long as he did nothing, he would make no mistake. He cleared his throat and swung himself to the ground, ready not to speak so much as to have his throat cut.

  The two men looked at each other.

  “Who are you?” asked the sheriff.

  “Surely you must know who I am.”

  “I find myself knowing very little.”

  “I am the same man I was last night and this morning.”

  “And what do men call you?”