In a Dark Wood (11 page)

“I am at your service, my lord.”

“My nature has always been passionate,” Geoffrey began. “This passion has been a cause of grief to me. I am, to be brief, overly lustful. Although any lust at all is grievous.” Geoffrey faltered.

The physician closed his eyes and lifted a hand. “Have no fear, my lord. I understand perfectly. You are filled with an understandable desire for your wife's affections and yet do not want to trouble her during her illness.”

“Exactly.”

“I know of an excellent medicine for the damping of the desire for coitus. Furthermore, it sharpens the eyesight and dissipates flatulence.”

“What is it?”

“Rue. I have some of the optimum variety, that which was grown near a fig tree.”

Geoffrey shook the vial in his hand, studying the grainy brown surface of the clay. The cork worked free with a wet pop. “I can't see into it.”

“Two good, strong gulps would start the cure, and then just before sleep tonight you should finish the rest, because it is at night that desire is at its apex.”

Geoffrey swallowed, once, twice.

“Jesus' Face, that's the bitterest stuff I've ever tasted in my life!”

“No good is accomplished without travail,” said the physician.

18

“I am very pleased with the quality of these pots,” said Lady Eleanor that evening. “I am very sorry that you have only five left.”

“The sorrow is all mine, my lady. But when the people heard me calling ‘Pots, cheap!' they came running.”

Geoffrey eyed the potter without much interest, carving the rind off a green apple. The man was dressed in tatters, but his shoes were of good quality, the sort a footman might wear while accompanying a hunt, and the sword at his side was in a black scabbard tipped with brass.

“Why,” asked Geoffrey, “did you sell so cheap?”

“I wanted to enter into the spirit of the tournament. What better way than to sell everything as cheaply as possible? And now, my lord, I am so sorry to have sold all but five, I give these to you as a gift, from my heart.”

“Oh, no!” said Lady Eleanor, looking pink-cheeked and alert. “Allow us to compensate you for your skill and for your—”

“We are grateful, and we accept your gift,” said Geoffrey. The apple was now bare of skin. He cut the fruit in two and dug the pits out with the point of the paring knife. “You do not come from this shire, do you, potter?”

“No, my lord, and it's difficult to say where exactly I do come from. I travel so much plying my trade that I seem to be everywhere at once.”

“How marvelous it must be to be everywhere at once,” laughed Lady Eleanor. “Sometimes I feel that I am nowhere at all.”

“And that, my lady, must be a terrible sensation.”

“Oh, it is, my good potter, it is indeed. But you will allow us to provide you with a meal. You will dine with us, potter.”

“By all means,” said Geoffrey with no enthusiasm. “You will join us and tell us stories of the road.”

It was not unheard of for the sheriff to entertain a traveler, such as a minstrel or a wayfaring merchant. A potter was a lowly guest, but this potter did have a gentle, courteous voice and a way about him that was immediately appealing, an eagerness to have fellowship that inspired even Eleanor. Geoffrey chewed his apple and hoped, dimly, that the potter would provide diverting conversation. It was not a strong hope and faded as he realized that Eleanor was more interested in the man's leg, and in the man's quick eye and merry laugh, than in his conversation.

The potter wore a borrowed tunic to the table, a coarse wool equal to a wealthy miller or a traveling clerk from a distant shire come to give the compliments of his own sheriff. The potter drank deep of the slightly inferior white wine the sheriff served tonight, and the candlelight made the craftsman's face dance with shadows and made his eyes twinkle above his auburn beard.

Geoffrey sucked the flesh off a partridge's wing and leaned forwards. “You are from north of here, I gather.”

“True enough, my lord. From north of here, but not far.”

“From where, exactly, if you will forgive my being blunt?”

“My lord, you must be blunt. A sheriff has many duties and many worries on his mind. A humble potter can talk, chattering like a finch in the bush, all day, and no one will mark a single word.”

“My husband was born blunt. If he were a potter, he would sell every pot for as much as he could, walk all over the shire with a full cart as a consequence, and die of weariness.” She picked at the leg of a bird, but apparently the physician's potions had not yet helped her stomach.

“Where?” asked Geoffrey calmly, as if all intervening talk had been the merest rustling of leaves.

“Barnsdale, my lord.”

“You carry a sword.”

“These days even millers carry swords, and bucklers, too. I have to protect myself from envious potters, who lack skill and business sense.”

“You pushed your cart through Sherwood Forest?”

“With these stout arms.”

The potter held up one arm, letting the sleeve of the coarse tunic fall, and displayed a muscular arm, and brown, too, from the sun.

“And no one troubled you along the way?”

“No one. Save a surly miller who swore that traveling craftsmen should be strung from a gibbet.”

“One of our local gentlefolk,” Geoffrey said. “He is worse than the sourest of women when it comes to saying the exact words a man doesn't want to hear. And yet I understand that his son, Thurstin, won the gold mark today.”

“A worthy accomplishment.”

“Especially when you consider that we have, here in Nottingham, the finest archers in the kingdom.”

“I see you have a Fool, my lord.”

“Yes.”

“Isn't he the wittiest creature? See! He chews exactly like my husband.”

Geoffrey spoke with more lightness than he felt. “My wife enjoys him, and guests find him amusing.”

“But the credit is yours, my lord.”

“How mine?”

“For allowing yourself to be mocked in your own household. This is a mark of greatness and subtlety. You allow others their laugh and attain thereby a greater stature.”

Geoffrey nodded in acknowledgment of the flattery, but he was struck by the potter's vocabulary.
Subtlety
was the sort of word Baldwin understood, a word that itself required subtlety, if not a court background. And yet the potter planted his elbows on the table and chewed with the unconcern of a wandering craftsman. “I am not as pleased as you think me to be,” said Geoffrey. “I tolerate him.”

“Just as you tolerate flattery from your inferiors, my lord.”

“I am told that you are a skilled potter.”

“I have studied my craft.”

“Was your father a potter?”

“And his father, off into the past. All of us potters, clay between our fingers spun by the kicking wheel.”

“And have you always plied your wares on the road?”

“No, I have only recently begun to travel. I heard of the great prosperity of Nottingham under the guidance of the sheriff, and I knew I had to travel here, pushing my wares ahead of me. A dull way to travel. You see constantly exactly what is ahead of you, exactly what you saw at home: rows of pots.”

“Your hands are not callused in the places a cart pusher's hands are callused, and you are too light of step to be a man who has done it long.”

“They told me, and I did not believe it. They said, and I did not hear. The sheriff of Nottingham is canny. That's what they said. He sees and he knows. Sees and knows. That's what they said.”

Geoffrey wiped his mouth. “If you wanted to make money, why did you stand calling out that you were practically giving your pots away and proceed to do exactly that?”

“A cartload of pots is a heavy thing, my lord.”

Geoffrey regretted the cheap wine. A servingman in drab gray livery poured Geoffrey some more, and Geoffrey sat back to watch the Fool, who was juggling four red wooden balls, to the delight of Lady Eleanor.

“What brought you to Nottingham today, potter?”

“The tournament, my lord.”

“It was a wonderful sight, and you missed it by selling your pots.”

“I came not to watch it, my lord, but to participate.”

“And you came too late.”

“To my great sorrow, my lord. And yet not too late to challenge the winner.”

Geoffrey sipped the wine. “You love games, potter?”

“They are my passion.”

Geoffrey crooked a finger and said to a servant, “Bring us some bows.” For a moment the sheriff said nothing. “What sort of contest do you suggest?” he asked at last, as if he cared little.

“Nothing unusual. A simple feat of archery. Say, an arrow sunk into a roof beam in the great hall, and that arrow split, and that one split, until a last, tenth arrow stands where the others stood. And I put this ounce of gold down as a wager that I can best the miller's son.”

The servant brought bows, and the potter stood and selected one. He flexed it, then, with one fluid motion, strung the bow and held it at arm's length. “This,” said the potter, “is right weak gear.”

Geoffrey made a gesture of apology.

“But I have in my cart outside another bow, a bow that Robin Hood gave me.”

Geoffrey gently put down his wine cup and leaned forwards. “You know Robin Hood?” he asked softly.

“Know him! Many times Robin Hood and I have shot under the Trysting Oak.”

“Go and get your bow,” said the sheriff.

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.