Path of the She Wolf (2 page)

‘
Brig, Brig, bring us a bairn
.

Bonny as flowers
.

Bright as the day
.

Brave as a wolf
.’

Magda sat there for a while, watching the Biddy doll bounce up and down, and she sighed. Many a woman, both young and old, would be doing the same thing this night, warm by their hearths. But Magda felt that she must do it shamefully in secret. She could not explain to Marian the great wish she had for a child. The Forestwife would be full of sensible, practical objections.

‘You’re too young! We’re so busy! Haven’t you got enough to do, helping me with all the suffering folk that come here to the clearing? Anyway, wishes never do come true in the way you want them to!’

Magda pushed these nagging doubts away as she pulled her girdle carefully out of the bower and fastened it around her waist once more. However foolish Marian might think her still the young woman’s spirits rose, for the woods were full of sweet scents and magical mists. On Brig’s Night the year was young and fresh, and on such a night Magda could believe that her wish might be granted.

When Magda got back to the cottage Marian was outside, holding up a lantern and talking in a low urgent voice to two strangers. The chickens and geese fussed and honked at the interruption to their sleep. Cats circled about the newcomers, waving their tails, greeting them with curiosity and suspicion. The smoking lantern gave enough flickering light to show a poor woman, her face contorted
with pain, far gone in labour, a pale girl-child beside her, trembling with fear.

‘Ah Magda,’ Marian spoke with relief at her return. ‘I need you. These two met a giant of a man whilst wandering in the woods, so they say. They were very fearful, but instead of harming them, he sent them here.’

Magda laughed. ‘Aye. That would be John, my father,’ she said.

Marian smiled for a moment, but she was too concerned for the plight of the woman to spend more time teasing. ‘Here Magda, take this bairn will you and feed her. Take her through to the lean-to and find bedding.’

Magda nodded. She reached up to the shelf for the stone pitcher that they saved the goats milk in, and took a hunk of grainy bread from beside the hearth stone. This was a common enough situation and Magda was well used to sorting out frightened children.

She lit a rush-light from Marian’s lantern. ‘Follow me!’ she told the girl, then headed through to the lean-to. They were greeted by much friendly bleating from the few goats that had been spared for the winter and now slept warm in amongst the straw.

Though the girl’s hands still shook she ate hungrily, dipping sops of bread into the warm goat’s milk. Magda scraped together a pile of straw and made a sleeping place with the rugs that they kept there.

‘Now, settle down for the night,’ Magda told her when she’d finished eating. ‘Your mother will be well taken care of.’

The girl lay down obediently, but though exhausted, she lay on the bundled straw restless and wide-eyed.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ Magda asked, after a while.

The girl shook her head.

‘I’ll sleep here with you,’ Magda said, thinking practically that she might as well stay there for the night as her own pallet by the hearthstone must surely be taken by the labouring mother. She made another straw pile and sank down onto it with a sigh.

‘Don’t fear,’ she said to the girl. ‘All will be well.’ Magda lay back and smiled to herself. It seemed to her almost as though Brig had answered her prayer immediately, but as Marian always said not quite in the way that she’d hoped for. ‘Ah Brig,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I asked for a bairn and you sent me a strange little lass and a babe arriving soon.’ Then she spoke more loudly to the girl. ‘What do they call you, honey?’

The child stared up at her with large, dark, fearful eyes. Then suddenly she seemed to muster her courage and spoke with dignity. ‘My name is Brigit,’ she said.

‘Oh!’ Magda gasped, her heart thundering, for a moment. ‘How strange! You are Brigit, and you come here to us on Brig’s Night.’ Then she told herself not to be stupid. There were many young girls named Brigit for the popular Christian Saint who’d once lived in Ireland and whose feast day came at the beginning of February. But others whispered that Brig’s Night was much older than Christianity and brought a magic more ancient, belonging to the fierce goddess Brigantia whose people had lived here, long ago.

Magda blew out the rush-light but sensed that Brigit, though still now and silent beside her, lay wide awake. ‘What a strange lass,’ she told herself. ‘Why cannot I be content with things as they are? What have I brought here? What have I wished for now?’

The next morning found Magda hard at work in the clearing, bending and pegging down the tips of the lowest branches on one of the great yews. She hammered the pegs firmly into dry ground, making a meagre hut that would shelter the poor mother and her two children for a little while once the ordeal of birth was safely over.

Brigit dragged spindly willow branches towards her from the woods, while animal-like bellows came from the hut. The girl looked anxiously up at Magda but said nothing.

‘Don’t fear,’ Magda told her cheerfully. ‘The bairn will soon be born, and then you shall have a new brother or sister. Marian, the Forestwife is the best midwife in Barnsdale.’

Magda spoke with a confidence she did not quite feel. It was true that nobody knew more about birthing than Marian, but this labour was going on for a long time, far too long. The mother must be growing exhausted.

The girl’s eyes suddenly swam with tears. ‘Aye,’ she whispered at last. ‘But I think the bairn should have been born by now, and . . . my father should be here.’

‘Aye. So he should,’ Magda agreed. ‘Where is the man?’

The girl hiccuped, and swallowed hard. ‘In Nottingham Jail. He’s sent there for breaking the Forest Laws. We fear
he’ll die before they try him.’ Once released, tears now flowed fast down her cheeks, as she sobbed out her worst fears. ‘And . . . and when they do try him, well, we cannot pay the fine. There is nowt for him but to lose fingers, or maybe an eye, and I cannot bear to think of my father blinded.’

Magda dropped the branch that she held and went to fling her arms about the child. She spoke through gritted teeth, with quiet anger. ‘There’s not many that can pay the Forest Court’s high fines! This new Sheriff puts them up every month.’

‘All Father did was take a hare!’ Brigit cried.

‘Damn this evil king and his Forest Laws,’ Magda growled. ‘We hear now that he’s taken another stretch of waste, north of Langden, and turned it into Royal Hunting Forest. He gets rid of the old Sheriff, who was nought but a buffoon and brings in this new man, de Rue, who’s utterly ruthless in his duty and carries not a drop of compassion in his blood.’

‘Aye, they all fear him,’ Brigit agreed.

‘The fines go to pay for great gangs of mercenaries.’ Now Magda was in full spate there was no stopping her. ‘We call them his wolfpacks. The king turns the very food in our mouths and the earth beneath our feet to money for his wars!’ She spat on the ground, then spoke more gently seeing that her anger did nought to help the child’s misery. ‘But we are your friends Brigit, and we will not let you or your mother starve. Your father is not the only one to go hunting in Sherwood. If my father had a pound for every hare he’d taken, he’d be a rich man.’

‘Your father breaks the Forest Laws too?’ Brigit gasped.

‘Every day of his life, honey,’ Magda laughed.

Despite her fears, the girl could not hold back her curiosity about these strange woodland folk. ‘Is the Forestwife your mother?’ she asked.

Brigit and her mother had struggled fearfully through the wastes, knowing only the frightening stories that they’d heard of a witchlike woman called the Forestwife, who lived hidden magically away in the deepest part of Barnsdale with the wild Hooded One, the wolf-man, who was her companion.

Magda smiled at the question. ‘The Forestwife is not the mother I was born to,’ she said. ‘My mother died when I was a babe. Marian has mothered me ever since, but my father is that giant fellow John. The one who sent you here from Sherwood.’

Brigit’s eyes opened wide. ‘They say that he walks with the Hooded One, along with the rebel monk whose fierce hound catches arrows and snaps them in its mouth!’

Magda laughed. ‘Aye, all that is true, but believe me, you’ve nowt to fear from them. Now you forget about those wicked outlaw fellows for a while, for we must get this shelter made. We’ll weave the willow in and out of the yew branches and lay turfs of grass on the top. Then there’ll be a dry, sweet-smelling hut, all ready when your mother comes from the Forestwife’s cottage with a fine new babe in her arms.’

More grunts and moans could be heard, but Magda ignored the sounds of pain and made Brigit work even harder. They were almost finished and laying rushes on
the floor of the makeshift shelter when the sound of a galloping horse frightened the girl.

Magda stopped for a moment to listen, a warning finger to her lips. The thundering of the hooves ceased and a peculiar stamping rhythm followed. Magda’s stern face broke into a smile.

‘Don’t fear,’ she shook her head. ‘It’s my sweetheart Tom on his fine horse Rambler. I swear he loves that horse as much as me! He’s slowed up now and he’s finding his way through the secret maze of paths that keeps our clearing safe and hidden.’

They came out from the new shelter as a grey stallion entered the clearing. Tom was a tall fair-haired man, older than Magda, who rode as though he’d been born on horseback. Hanging over the horse’s rump was a large, dead stag, a fallow deer from the Royal Hunting Forest of Sherwood.

‘You see,’ Magda told Brigit, pointing to the beast. ‘I told you your father was not alone in breaking the laws.’

Tom swung down from the saddle and hugged Magda. Brigit smiled shyly while they kissed passionately. As Tom led his horse towards the Forestwife’s cottage, she saw that his left leg dragged a little.

‘What is it? Why do you look so pleased?’ Magda asked.

‘His Grace the Bishop of Hereford comes visiting!’

‘What here? Visiting us?’

‘Aye. Robert and John are bringing him, and his men. They follow close behind with Brother James.’

Magda was shocked. ‘Here to our secret place?’

Tom laughed. ‘That’s why I fetch this beast. We shall dine on roast venison.’

‘You must be mad to feed a bishop on the King’s deer?’

Tom shook his head. ‘This bishop will not blink at it. He will delight in it.’

Suddenly Magda remembered the birthing. She grabbed Tom’s arm and pulled him back, away from the cottage. ‘Stop! We must wait! Marian will not thank us for bothering her just now. There’s a child coming into its life.’ She nodded at the watchful girl behind her.

Tom stopped obediently but the eager look would not leave his face. ‘This is the Bishop of Hereford,’ he began. ‘He’s no supporter of the king.’

But Magda would not listen.

‘Since when do we feast with bishops?’ she cried. ‘What does Robert think he’s doing?’

Tom laughed and kissed her nose. ‘We meant to rob him; you know how Robert teases these rich travellers. He found great bags of gold on the pack-mules in the bishop’s train, and swore he’d invite the bishop to dine, then make him pay for it. But then we discovered the man’s name, and reason he rides south with such a great store of gold!’