The Forest (49 page)

She did not at first realize that she was being watched herself. She had not noticed the woman leave the wagon; but there she was, sitting not far off by a tuft of marsh grass, gazing at Jane thoughtfully. Not wishing to seem unfriendly, Jane nodded to her. Unexpectedly, the woman moved across and sat down only a few feet away from her. For several moments they both watched the men at their work.

‘That’s my husband.’ The woman turned to look at her.

She was small and dark-haired – cat-like, Jane thought. She supposed the woman might be about thirty-five, like her husband. Her eyes were dark, almond-shaped; her face looked pale.

‘Is he one of the Puckles, from Burley?’ Jane ventured.

‘That’s right.’ It seemed to her that the woman’s eyes were measuring her in some way. ‘You married?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Considering it?’

‘I think so.’

‘Your man: he’s here?’

‘In there.’ Jane indicated the fort.

Puckle’s dark-haired wife did not say anything for a little while. She seemed to be staring across the water. Only when she spoke again did she transfer her gaze to her husband. ‘He’s a good man, John Puckle,’ she said.

‘I’m sure.’

‘Good worker.’

‘He looks it.’

‘Lusty. Keep any woman happy.’

‘Oh.’ Jane was not sure what to say.

‘Your man. He good? He knows how to halleck?’ A coarse word.

Jane blushed. ‘I expect so. But we are not yet married.’

The woman’s silence conveyed that she was not impressed with this information. ‘He made himself a bed.’ She nodded towards her husband. ‘All oak. Carved it, too. At the four corners. I never saw such carving.’ She smiled. ‘Carved his bed so he might lie in it. Once you lie in his oak bed with John Puckle, you’ll not want any other bed, nor other man.’

Jane stared. She had heard the village women talk at Minstead, but although they would joke quite crudely about the men sometimes, there was a directness about this strange person that both repelled yet fascinated her.

‘You like my husband?’

‘I …? I do not know him.’

‘You like to halleck with him?’

What did this mean? Was it some kind of trap? She had no idea but the woman was making her nervous. She rose. ‘He is your husband, not mine,’ she said and began to move away. But when, from a safe distance, she stole a glance back, her companion was still sitting quietly, apparently quite unperturbed, and gazing thoughtfully out towards the island.

Helena had suggested they walk along the beach together.
Beside them lay the broad open waters of the English Channel. The thrift and sea-campion were no longer in flower but their green shoots extended like a haze all along the strand. Their words as they conversed were accompanied by the quiet hiss and the deep-drawing rattle of sea on shingle, and the cries of the white gulls rising from the foam.

Clement Albion was very fond of Helena Gorges, even if she sometimes made him smile. She was Swedish by birth, very fair, beautiful. ‘You are as kind as you are beautiful,’ he would tell her with perfect truth. Although he could have added: ‘And not a little vain.’

It is a universal law that no woman, once she has acquired a title, is ever willing to give it up. Or so it seemed to Albion. When Helena the Swedish beauty had been brought to Queen Elizabeth’s English court it had not been long before she had been snapped up as a bride by no less a person than the Marquis of Northampton. She had also become a great favourite of the queen. Sadly, her noble husband had died after only a year, leaving her glamorous, lonely, but a marchioness.

There were very few peerages in Queen Elizabeth’s England. The Wars of the Roses had killed off many of the great titles and the Tudors had no wish to make more feudal lords. But one title they had brought into use in England was that of marquis. There were scarcely a handful of them. They ranked only below the haughty dukes. In the order of precedence, therefore, the young Marchioness of Northampton walked through the door before even countesses, let alone ladies and gentlewomen.

So when she had met and fallen in love with aristocratic Thomas Gorges, who was then not even a humble knight, she had married him, but still insisted on calling herself the Marchioness of Northampton.

‘And she’s still doing it,’ Albion would say to his wife with a laugh. ‘Thank God Thomas just thinks it’s funny.’

Certainly she and Thomas were very happy together. She was a good wife. With her striking looks, her golden hair, her dazzling eyes, she would come on foot along the spit to the fort – she had a wonderful, elegant stride – and charm the garrison. If she was at court she never lost a chance to advance her husband’s career. At present, Albion knew, she had a particular project in hand and so, after they had asked the usual tender questions about each other’s families, he gently enquired: ‘And what of your house?’

The fact was, he knew very well, that his friend Gorges for once in his life had overreached himself. He had recently acquired a fine estate just south of Sarum – indeed, Albion had looked over the land the day before, during the interview with his mother. On this estate, known as Longford, Gorges had intended to build a great house. But some time had passed and not a stone had been laid.

‘Oh, Clement.’ She had a charming way of taking your arm to share a confidence. ‘Do not tell Thomas I have told you, but we are’ – she made a little grimace – ‘in difficulty.’

‘Can you not build a smaller house?’

‘
Very
small, Clement.’ She smiled conspiratorially.

‘A cottage?’ He meant it as a jest, but she shook her head and looked serious.

‘A small cottage, Clement. Perhaps not even that.’

Could things really be so bad? Thomas must have overspent more than he had guessed. ‘Thomas’s fortunes have always risen,’ he offered. He had no doubt his friend’s career would continue to be brilliant.

‘Let us hope they rise further, then, Clement.’ She smiled again, but ruefully this time. ‘No new dresses for me this year, I fear.’

‘Perhaps the queen …’

‘I’ve been at court.’ She shrugged. ‘The queen hasn’t a penny herself. This Spanish business’ – she waved towards the horizon – ‘has emptied the treasury.’

Albion nodded thoughtfully.

‘Speaking of this Spanish business.’ He hesitated a moment, but decided to go on. ‘I brought some of my men down, as you know. Thomas wanted to see them.’ He gave her a sidelong glance. It was as he had suspected. He could see that she knew something. ‘Then Thomas insisted he see them alone, without me. Why did he do that, Helena?’

They had both stopped.

Helena was looking down at the shingle at her feet. A wave broke up the beach towards them, then ebbed away. When she answered, she did not look at him. ‘Thomas is only following his orders, Clement,’ she said quietly. ‘That is all.’

‘It is thought that I …?’

‘There are many Catholics in the county, Clement. Everyone knows it. Why, even the Carews …’ Thomas Carew had been the previous captain of Hurst Castle. His family, good Catholics all of them, still lived at the village of Hordle at the Forest’s edge, only a few miles away.

‘One can be a Catholic without being a traitor, Helena.’

‘Of course. And you are still left in command of part of the muster, Clement, are you not? Consider that.’

‘But your husband nonetheless has to make sure that I and my men are loyal.’

‘The council is watching everyone, Clement. They have no choice.’

‘The council? Cecil? They distrust me?’

‘Your mother, Clement. Remember, even Cecil has heard of your mother.’

‘My mother.’ A wave of panic suddenly seized him. He thought of their interview the day before, and felt himself blushing. ‘What’ – he tried to sound unconcerned – ‘has my foolish mother been saying now?’

‘Who knows, Clement? I am not privy to all these things, but I told the queen …’

‘The queen? The queen knows of my mother? Dear God!’

‘I told her – forgive me, Clement – that she was a foolish woman. Her opinions are not yours.’

‘God forbid!’

‘So, dear Clement, you should not be alarmed. Concern yourself with my house instead. Find me a way to build more than a cowshed at Longford.’

He laughed, relieved, and they turned to go back towards the fort. The sea was edging a little higher up the shingle. Ahead, across the water, the four chalk Needles of the Isle of Wight were gleaming. To Albion, at that moment, they seemed phantom-like, unreal. Some gulls rose, ghostly white, cried, then flew away, out to sea.

‘Clement.’ She had stopped. She was facing him. ‘You know we love you. You’re not a traitor, are you?’

‘I …?’

Her eyes were searching his face. ‘Clement? Tell me?’

‘Dear God, no.’

‘Swear it.’

‘I swear. Upon my honour. Upon all that is sacred.’ Their eyes met. Hers were troubled. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Of course I do.’ She smiled. ‘Come on.’ She linked her arm in his. ‘Let’s go back.’

But she was lying. He knew it. She wasn’t sure. And if she and Thomas Gorges didn’t trust him, then neither did the council nor the queen herself. The months ahead suddenly looked bleaker than ever.

And wasn’t it ironic when, whatever his mother might demand, he had just told Helena the truth.

Hadn’t he?

When winter came, it was icy cold. But the tree was used to that. For even as the tree had reached middle age, a century before, England had been entering the period, which lasted through the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, known to history as the little Ice Age. Temperatures throughout the year, on
average, were several degrees cooler. In summer the difference was not so noticeable. But winters were often cruel. Rivers froze. In great trees cut during this time the yearly growth rings are close together.

By early December the oak tree was sealed off for the winter. Its branches were bare and grey; the tight little buds on their twigs were protected from the frosts by waxy brown scales. Deep underground the sugar in the sap would ensure that the moisture in the tree did not freeze.

On St Lucy’s Day, the thirteenth, the traditional day of the winter solstice, sleet fell at dawn, then froze by noon so that when a pale sun shone during the brief hours before the grey day’s ending, the oak tree’s crown was all hung with icicles as though some ancient silver-haired dweller of the forests had stopped there and become rooted to the spot. And even as the faint sun lent a shining to the greyness, the wind hissed through the icicles to freeze them further still.

Some way up, in a fork in the tree, where once a pigeon had made her nest, a large owl perched silently. A visitor from the deep-frozen forests of Scandinavia, it had come for the winter months to the more temperate island. Its eyes gazed blankly at the snow, but when dusk fell its astonishing asymetric ears would guide it, on soundless wings, infallibly down upon any little creature that ventured out into the darkness. Had anyone looked carefully at the ground by the oak tree’s base the remains of a thrush would have told them of the owl’s last meal. Slowly the silent bird turned its head. It could do so, if it chose, through more than three hundred and sixty degrees.

Above the owl’s perch, in a blackened fissure, a little colony of bats hung, like webbed pellets, in their winter hibernation. All over the tree, on branch and twig, tiny larvae, like that of the winter moth, were tight-wrapped in their cocoons. Down the tree’s great trunk spiders crouched in crevices behind windows of ice. Around its foot the
brown bracken, bent and broken, lay flattened in the fallen leaves, ice-frosted.

Below the ground worms and slugs, and all manner of earth creatures, were insulated by the frozen leaves above from the bitter cold. But in the bushes, although the robin, like a puffball in its downy winter feathers, would probably survive, the song thrushes and blackbirds were ragged and gaunt. Two weeks of deep frost or snow, and many would reach a point of weight-loss and weakness from which there would be no return.

But if these little creatures dwelt always perilously at the brink of life and death during their few brief seasons of consciousness the tree, with its massively larger system, was also massively stronger. It was still less than three hundred years old. Yet nature imposed limitations upon the mighty oak as well. For of its vast fall of acorns that autumn thousands had been eaten by the pigs and other grazers; others trampled; others stored by squirrels or birds, others yet destined, as saplings, to be eaten by the deer. Of all that inundation of acorns, not a single new oak tree would result; nor would one for another five or ten or even twenty years.

She was feeling very weak now. She had sensed that something was wrong back at summer’s end, been sure of it before she had gone with Puckle, that autumn day, to deliver the charcoal to Hurst. She had been thinking of the future by then.

She had used all the remedies she knew. She had tried to shield herself. Each month, as the moon waxed from maiden to mother and waned back to crone, she secretly prayed. Three times she drew down the moon. But as winter came she knew: nothing can change the wheel of life; there would be no healing and she must pass from this life to another.