The Forest (13 page)

She told him she did. She talked about recent small events in the city, of people who had passed through – anything that might distract his mind from his worries for a while. And she could see that he was grateful. But she also saw, after a time, that he wanted to return to his thoughts and so she said no more and they continued in silence together round St Swithuns.

‘The child is due at the start of summer,’ he said suddenly. ‘We have waited so long.’

‘Yes.’

‘My wife is a wonderful woman,’ he added. ‘Brave, gentle, kind.’ Adela nodded quietly to this also. What could she say? That she knew his wife to be timid, small-minded and vicious? ‘She is devoted. She is loyal.’

The memory of the lady standing close to Tyrrell, the sight of his hand moving to her breast and remaining there, came into Adela’s mind with terrible vividness. ‘Of course.’ How good he was. A thousand times too good for the Lady Maud, she thought. Yet here she was, because she must, quietly acquiescing in his self-deception.

They said little more as they made their way back towards her lodgings and were getting near the city gate when they saw a party of horsemen ride in among whom, unmistakably, was the impressive figure of the Jew.

Martell started forward, checked himself and turned. ‘My dear Lady Adela.’ He took her two hands in his. ‘Thank you for keeping me company at such a time.’ He
looked into her eyes with real tenderness. ‘Your kindness means so much to me.’

‘It was nothing.’

‘Well …’ He hesitated. ‘I know you only a little, but I feel that I can talk to you.’

Talk to her – as she looked up into his manly, troubled face, how she wished she could respond truthfully. How she wished she could say: ‘You are grieving over a woman completely unworthy of you.’ Dear heaven, she thought, if I were in the Lady Maud’s place I should love you, I should honour you. She could have screamed it. ‘I should always be glad to be of help to you at any time,’ she said simply.

‘Thank you.’ He smiled, bowed his head respectfully and turned away, striding purposefully towards the horsemen.

She did not see him again in the days that followed. The Jewish doctor departed with him and returned a week later due to stay at Winchester, she learned, until Easter when the king was expected there. She made enquiries and learned that though the Lady Maud was still alive and, miraculously, had not lost the child so far, the Jew could not answer for whether she would survive or not.

More days passed. It grew a little warmer. Adela reflected. She pondered.

Then, early one morning, leaving only a message for her hostess, she rode out of Winchester alone. In the message, which was deliberately vague, she begged her friend to say nothing and promised to return by nightfall the following day. She did not say where she was going.

Godwin Pride, it was plain to see, felt rather pleased with himself. He was standing outside his cottage holding a rope. At the other end of the rope was a brown cow. His wife and three of his children were looking at it. A robin on the fence was also watching with interest.

Godwin Pride had come through the winter well enough.
At the end of the autumn he had killed most of the pigs he had turned out on the acorn mast and salted them. He had eggs from his chickens, milk from his few cows; there were preserves from his apple trees and dried vegetables. As a commoner of the Forest he also had his right of Turbary, which gave him turf fuel. He had stayed snug in his cottage, kept his small stock alive and emerged into the Forest’s spring in good humour.

He had also bought a new cow. ‘It was a bargain,’ he declared. He had walked with it from Brockenhurst.

‘Oh? What did you pay?’ asked his wife.

‘Never you mind. It was a bargain.’

‘We don’t need another cow.’

‘She’s a good milker.’

‘And I’m the one who’ll have to look after her. Where did you get the money, anyway?’

‘Never you mind about that.’

She looked suspicious. The children watched silently. The robin on the fence looked a bit quizzical too.

‘And where are we going to put her?’ By which she meant, in winter. Was he going to build another cow stall? There really wasn’t space for one more beast in the little cattle pen. Surely he wasn’t intending to try to enlarge that again after being caught out last year. ‘You can’t enlarge the pen,’ she said.

‘Don’t you worry. I’ve got something else in mind. It’s all planned, that is. All planned.’ And, although he refused to be drawn, he looked more pleased with himself than ever. Even the robin seemed impressed.

And the fact that he had bought the cow on impulse, that there was no plan, that he hadn’t the faintest idea how he was going to accommodate it next winter, did not unduly trouble him. There was the whole long Forest spring and summer to think about that. Sometimes, as his wife knew so well, he could be like a little boy. But if she was thinking of arguing any more she never got the chance.

For it was at this moment that Adela appeared, walking her horse towards them.

‘Now what the devil can she want?’ Godwin Pride exclaimed.

It was late afternoon when the two figures came down from the plateau of Wilverley Plain – a huge level heath almost two miles in extent where the Forest ponies grazed with nothing around them but the open sky. Adela was walking her horse; just ahead of her, on a sturdy pony, Godwin Pride led the way. He did so very unwillingly.

The clouds were clearing from the sky to reveal, against the blue, the silver crescent of a waxing moon. There was a hint of spring warmth in the air. Adela was glad to be back in the Forest, even if she was a little afraid of what she was doing.

They had taken the track westwards from the central section of the Forest, up across the heathland of Wilverley, and were now about four miles west of Brockenhurst. Ahead of them lay a stretch of oak wood. To continue straight would lead down into the large dell where the dark little village of Burley lay. Instead, therefore, they cut right, through some woods and down a slope known as Burley Rocks. Crossing a big empty area of marshy lawn, they took a little track that led along the edge of some moorland. ‘That’s Burley moor on our right,’ Pride told her. ‘White Moor lies ahead. And that’ – he indicated a tummock on top of which a single tree seemed to be waving its arms distractedly – ‘is Black Hill.’ The track suddenly turned left, leading down to a stream, running swiftly as it made a sharp turn, like a crook in a man’s arm. ‘Narrow Water,’ he said. On the right, along the stream was a boggy area infested with stunted oaks, holly, birch and a tangled mass of saplings and bushes. And just past this, quite alone, stood an untidy collection of huts and a mud cabin with a roof made of branches, twigs and moss through which wisps of smoke were seeping.

They had come to Puckle’s place.

Pride had not wanted to take her, but she had insisted. ‘I don’t know where he lives and I don’t want to ask. People mustn’t know I went there. I think’, she added, looking at him hard, ‘that you owe me a favour.’ The deer. He couldn’t deny it. ‘Besides,’ she continued with a smile, ‘if you ask her, she’s more likely to agree to talk to me.’

And there was the rub, the real reason why he had been unwilling to take her. For it was not Puckle she wanted to see, but his wife. The witch.

Adela waited by the stream while Pride rode up to the cabin and went in. After a while she saw Puckle and various children and grandchildren emerge and busy themselves outside.

Then Pride appeared and made his way over to her. ‘She’s waiting for you,’ he said briefly. ‘You’d best go in.’ A few moments later Adela found herself stooping her head as she went through the small doorway into the witch’s little house.

It was rather shadowy inside. The cabin consisted of a single room, such light as there was coming from a window whose shutters were only partly open. In the centre of the floor a circle of stones served as a hearth in which a small turf fire was glowing. On the other side of the fire sat a figure in a low wooden chair. By her feet, warming itself, was a grey cat. There was a three-legged stool, also by the fire, to which the other woman motioned.

‘Sit down, my dear.’

Although Adela had not formed any precise image in her mind, Puckle’s wife was not what she had expected. Before her, as she got used to the light, she saw a comfortable middle-aged woman with a broad face, a rather snub nose and grey eyes spaced wide apart.

She was observing Adela with mild curiosity. ‘A fine young lady,’ she now continued quietly. ‘And you’ve come all the way from Winchester?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fancy that. And what can I do for you?’

‘I understand’, Adela said bluntly, ‘that you’re a witch.’

‘Oh?’

‘They say you are.’

‘They do, do they?’ The older woman seemed to receive this information with quiet amusement. Not that the accusation was so shocking: although witchcraft was certainly frowned upon by the Church, systematic persecution was rare in Norman England, especially in the depths of the country where ancient folk magic had always persisted. ‘And what if I were?’ she went on. ‘What would a fine young lady like you be looking for? A cure for a sickness? A love potion perhaps?’

‘No.’

‘You want your future told. A lot of young girls want to know the future.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘What is it then, my dear?’

‘I need to kill someone,’ said Adela.

It was a moment or two before the other woman spoke after that. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ she replied.

‘Have you ever?’

‘No.’

‘Could you?’

‘I wouldn’t even try.’ She shook her head. ‘These things only happen if they’re meant to be.’ She looked at Adela severely. ‘You should be careful. Wish someone good or wish someone evil, it will return to you three times.’

‘Is that what the witches say?’

‘Yes.’ After waiting for that to sink in, the older woman continued more kindly, ‘I can see you are troubled, though. Would you like to tell me about it?’

So Adela did. She explained about Martell and the Lady Maud. She told the woman all she had seen, the lady’s
terrible faults of character, her unfaithfulness, the way Hugh de Martell was being misled.

‘And you think you’d make him a much better wife?’

‘Oh, yes. So you see, if his wife, who’s very sick anyway, were to die, it would really only be for the best.’

‘So you say, my dear. I see you’ve thought about it.’

‘I’m sure I’m right, you see,’ she said.

Puckle’s wife sighed, but she made no comment. Instead, she rocked to and fro in her chair while her cat raised its head enough to give Adela a long stare before apparently going to sleep again. ‘I think’, she said at last, ‘I can help you.’

‘You could make something happen? You could foretell?’

‘Perhaps.’ She paused. ‘But it may not be what you want.’

‘I’ve nothing to lose,’ Adela said simply.

After nodding her head thoughtfully, Puckle’s wife rose and went outside. She was gone for a few moments, then returned, although not to sit down. ‘Witchcraft, as you call it,’ she said quietly, ‘is not about casting spells. It’s not just that. So’ – she nodded to the chair where she had been sitting – ‘you go and sit down in that chair and relax.’ With that, she went over to a chest in one corner of the little room and busied herself with certain articles inside it, humming to herself as she did so. Her cat, meanwhile, moved away from its former position, settling down near the chest where, after one more meaningful look at Adela, it went back to sleep.

After a while, Puckle’s wife began to place some objects on the floor near the chair. Adela noticed a little chalice, a tiny bowl of salt, another of water, a dish containing, by the look of it, some oatcakes, a wand, a small dagger and one or two other items she did not recognize. While she was doing this, Puckle appeared in the doorway for a moment and handed her a sprig from an oak tree, which she took with a nod and placed beside the other articles. When all was ready she came and sat quietly on the stool for a time, apparently thinking to herself. The room became very quiet.

Reaching forward, she picked up the dish of oatcakes and offered them to Adela. ‘Take one.’

‘Are they special? Is there a magic ingredient in them?’ Adela asked with a smile.

‘Ergot,’ the witch replied simply. ‘It comes from grain. Some use an extract from mushrooms, or from toads. They all make the same sort of potion. But ergot is the best.’

Adela ate the little cake, which tasted of nothing very special. She felt both nervous and rather excited.

‘Now my dear,’ Puckle’s wife said at last, ‘I want you to sit quite still and rest your feet flat on the floor. Put your hands in your lap, push your back straight against the back of the chair.’ Adela did so. ‘Now,’ the witch continued gently, ‘I want you to take three breaths, very slowly, and when you let them out, taking your time, I want you to relax as completely as you can. Will you do that for me?’

Adela did so. The feeling of relaxation, coupled with her nervousness made her give a little laugh. ‘Are you going to take me away to a magic kingdom – another world?’ she asked.

The witch only looked down quietly at the floor. ‘As above, so below,’ she said quietly. ‘The magical kingdom is the world between the worlds.’ Looking up again she continued: ‘Now I want you to imagine you’re like a tree. There are roots growing down from your feet into the earth. Can you imagine that?’