The Forest (32 page)

There was silence. It was wise, if an old Forest man like Puckle said a thing like that, to pay attention.

Early the next morning Puckle talked to Luke. ‘Two pounds is a lot,’ he said sadly.

‘Your lot won’t talk, will they?’

‘Better not. But people are going to start looking now. They see you they’ll think: “Now which one of his nephews is that?” I reckon someone’ll put two and two together.’

‘I told Mary.’

‘That was stupid.’ Puckle shrugged. ‘Still, I don’t reckon she’ll talk.’

‘So what’ll I do?’

‘Don’t know.’ He looked thoughtful. Then suddenly his gnarled face broke into a grin. ‘I reckon I do, though.’ He nodded his shaggy head. ‘How’d you like to help me build another charcoal fire?’

Tom Furzey’s sister had always been puzzled about the pony, but now, she thought, as she walked across Beaulieu
Heath towards St Leonards, she probably had the answer.

And best of all, it was worth a fortune.

It had been chance that she should have been up so early the day before. Her husband had set two rabbit snares in the woods in the valley and she had decided to walk down that way to see if he’d caught anything. She’d been just about to go down the slope when she had caught sight of a muffled figure running, stooped over, from Tom’s place into the trees.

For some time she’d stood there, wondering who it could possibly be. Even when she had found a rabbit and brought it home, she had kept the thing to herself. Then, that very day, had come news of the prior’s reward and the suspicion had grown into a certainty. It was Luke. It had to be.

That probably explained the pony too. Luke Pride was hanging about at Tom’s place, sneaking in and out at night. He must have been the one who replaced the pony like that, then. Cheeky devil.

She smiled now, though. The Prides were going to get their come-uppance after all. She and Tom could enjoy it equally. ‘A pound for him and a pound for me,’ she muttered.

It was near the end of the working day when she reached St Leonards. She found Tom easily enough and took him to one side.

When she had finished her tale, his round face broke into a happy smile. ‘Got ’em,’ he said.

‘It’s Luke, isn’t it?’

‘’Course it is. Has to be.’

‘Two pounds, Tom. Equal shares. We can start watching tonight.’

He frowned. ‘Trouble is, I’m supposed to stay here tonight. We start at dawn, see?’ Brother Adam had come past only a short while before to ensure himself that everyone was accounted for.

‘You could slip away, couldn’t you? After dark?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I’ll be waiting, then. Two pounds, Tom. I’ll take it all if you don’t turn up.’

It was long past dark when Brother Adam quietly tethered his horse and began to creep towards the edge of the paddock. It was very black so that once or twice he even had to feel his way. At the edge he paused. Slowly he began to make his way towards the vague shape of the barn.

When something threw him to the ground.

It was like a huge double blow to his back. He had no idea what it was, but he hit the ground so hard he was winded. An instant later his two assailants had his arms and were trying to turn him over. He still couldn’t speak, but he kicked out violently. He heard a man’s voice curse. Then one of the two wrapped his arms round his legs while the other punched him, very effectively in the solar plexus. It seemed to Adam that neither of his assailants was very large, but both were strong.

Were they robbers? Here? His mind was just starting to work again when, with a sinking heart, he heard the voice of Tom Furzey.

‘Caught you.’

What in the world could he say? He could think of nothing. Was this peasant going to haul him back to the abbey for fornicating with his wife? What would become of him?

One of the two was fumbling with something. Then suddenly a lantern was being shone in his face.

‘Brother Adam!’

Thank the Lord he still had his wits about him. Tom Furzey’s voice expressed such total astonishment, such confusion: whatever it meant, it was not him they had expected. His legs were let go. Another sign that they felt at a disadvantage. He struggled and sat up. He must bluff. ‘Furzey? I know your voice. What’s the meaning of this? Why aren’t you at St Leonards?’

‘But … What are you doing here, Brother Adam?’

‘Never mind that. Why are you here and why have you attacked me?’

There was a pause. ‘Thought you might be someone else,’ Furzey’s voice replied sullenly.

‘He isn’t worth two pounds anyway.’ A woman’s voice, but not Mary’s.

And then, of course, he realized. ‘I see. You thought Luke might come this way.’

‘My sister reckons she seen him.’

‘Ah.’ Thank God. He knew what to say now. ‘Well, Furzey,’ he said slowly, ‘you should not have left the grange without permission, but that is why I am here too. I had an idea he might be coming here and if so he’ll be taken.’

‘Then we won’t get our two pounds but you will, I suppose,’ said Tom.

‘You forget, I have no use for two pounds. Monks have no worldly goods.’

‘You mean we can catch him?’

‘I suppose so,’ Adam said drily.

‘Oh.’ Furzey audibly brightened. ‘Maybe we can all watch for him then.’

What could he do? Adam gazed towards the barn. What if Mary, wondering what had become of him, were to come out looking for him? Worse still, call his name? Could he tell them he was going to inspect the barn and try to warn her? He decided that was too risky. They’d think his presence might alert Mary to the fact that they were watching for her brother.

Worse yet, what if Tom went in and Mary, seeing him, mistook him for her lover and called out the wrong name?

Fortunately, he soon realized, Tom was far more eager to catch Luke than to encounter his wife. But there was still the possibility that poor Luke would come to visit his sister at dawn. He wondered if there were some way he could head him off, but could not see how, in the dark.

So they waited. There was no sound from the barn, nor did Luke appear. When light came, they agreed to give up. Might he come and watch again? Furzey asked him.

‘I suppose so,’ Brother Adam replied. Then he rode away.

He had much to do.

The sun was well up when he reached the site where he had encountered the charcoal burner near Burley. It did not take him long to find Puckle, who had evidently seen him coming.

There were two great charcoal cones he was tending now. The burning process of one was almost completed, by the look of it; the other had just started. Puckle was alone. There was no sign of Luke.

Brother Adam did not waste time. ‘I’ve a message for Luke.’

‘For who?’

‘I know. You haven’t seen him. Just give him a message.’ He told Puckle briefly about Tom’s vigil. ‘He’d better not go there. Now.’ He took a deep breath – he’d thought about trying to give her the message himself but decided the risk was too great – ‘I need to ask a favour of you. Please tell Mary the house is being watched. You can tell her I told you. She’ll understand.’

And how much, he wondered, would Puckle understand? Might he wonder why he was doing Mary and Luke a favour or might he guess the whole truth? Staring at that oaken face it was impossible to know. He looked Puckle in the eye. ‘Silence buys silence, I hope.’

Puckle just looked at him, then gazed down at his fire. Only as the monk rode away did he mutter: ‘Always has done in the Forest.’

Dear God, thought Adam, as he went back towards the abbey lands, I’m even in league, criminally, with Puckle now. Yet, as he listened to the morning birdsong, he
found only a strange sense of exhilaration at his fall from grace.

He would have been most surprised, once he was out of sight, to see what happened to the second charcoal fire. A small door opened in its turf side from which, not at all burned or even heated, Luke emerged.

The hiding place Puckle had contrived was the neatest thing imaginable. The top half of the huge cone was constructed internally more or less as an ordinary charcoal fire, except that by using damp materials Puckle could produce a great deal of smoke with very little heat. But below this, with a thick turf inner roof, was a hollow space in which Luke could remain, quite comfortably, with air holes providing ventilation, for as long as he liked. Each day at dawn Puckle intended to remake the fire at the top and no one passing by, even the sharpest-eyed, would ever guess its secret.

The next week was a busy one in the Forest.

On two successive days, because of the insistence of the prior, the foresters had the hounds out. The steward was so bored by the business that he gave the whole responsibility to young Alban. The first day they drew in the woods near Pride’s and went all the way across almost to Burley. But there the scent became so confused that they did nothing but go round in circles. The next day they tried over towards Minstead. But mysteriously the scent seemed to lead straight to the house of the forester, who was not at all amused.

Half the Forest, either openly or secretly, was on the lookout. The foresters and their stewards rode about in groups. Cottages were visited, every woodsman stopped. It all came to nothing, but as Puckle remarked sadly to Luke one night: ‘It’s going to be difficult for you to come out.’

Mary waited for ten days before she set off to her appointment. During this time she did not see Brother Adam once. But he was seldom out of her thoughts.

What does a woman feel when she seduces a monk? She smiled now, a little, to think that even on that first afternoon, although she had been distressed and he protective, he was still unaware that it was she, really, who had seduced him. It was his innocence that she instinctively wanted, this strong, manly man who had never known a woman. And she, the peasant wife of a humble labourer, had it in her power to teach him to know life. He had taken a step, even half a step towards her. He had asked without even knowing he was asking – or certainly for what he was asking.

I have taken a man of God, a man forbidden, and I have made him blaze like the sun: at moments she had been almost heady with the sense of her womanly triumph. Not that she had let him see it. Not at first, anyway. She had brought him along, she thought with a smile, very nicely.

Was that all, then? Just a seduction? Oh, no. There was the reason that she had been drawn to him in the first place: his fineness, his intelligence; her sense that he had what she did not; her certainty that, even if she wasn’t quite sure what these things were, she wanted to have them.

At first, when they talked in the night, she would ask him: ‘What are you thinking?’ And he would reply something that he thought she would understand. But soon, when she made clear she wanted more, he would make an effort and try to explain his nightly musings. ‘There was a great philosopher, you see, called Abelard, and he thought …’ he might explain. Or he would speak of far-off lands, or great events, a world that was far beyond anything she had known, yet which, dimly, as though seeing light coming through a church window, she could discern. And he was in that other world. She knew it. ‘Your mind is in the stars,’ she once whispered, but not in mockery. And when another time, after he had told her some wonderful idea, she laughed – ‘And being inside me made you think of that?’ – she was, in truth, more pleased than she had ever been in her life.

But recently there had been more to worry about.

Her appointment with Luke, made when Puckle brought her the message, was in a quiet place in the woods north of Brockenhurst. She took care she was not followed.

He was already waiting for her there, by a huge old oak tree, thick with moss and ivy. She was glad to see he was looking well and he seemed quite cheerful. Yet the news he had was less so. ‘Puckle thinks I ought to leave the Forest. The prior’s never going to give up.’

‘After the Michaelmas court he might.’

‘No.’ Luke sighed. ‘You don’t know him.’

‘I still think you should turn yourself in. They aren’t going to hang you.’

‘Probably not. But you can’t trust them.’

‘Where’d you go?’

‘On pilgrimage, maybe. Compostella. Thousands of people go there.’

Compostella. Spain. You could beg along the way, they said. She doubted it. She shook her head. ‘You’ve never been out of the Forest.’

‘I like walking, though.’

For a while they were silent.

‘What’s happening with Brother Adam, then?’ he asked.

Now it was her turn to announce worrying news. ‘I think I’m pregnant.’

‘Oh. You sure?’

‘Almost. I think so. It feels like it.’

‘Couldn’t be Tom?’ She shook her head. ‘What’ll you do?’ She only shrugged. Luke was thoughtful. ‘Reckon you and Tom … You’d better give him a chance to think it’s his, hadn’t you?’

She took a long breath. ‘I know.’ Her voice was flat. He’d never heard it quite like that before.

‘You’ve been with him a lot of years. Can’t be so bad.’

‘You don’t understand.’ He didn’t. They were all just forest creatures to him.

‘You going to tell Brother Adam?’