The Forest (47 page)

‘She did?’

‘At Hurst Castle. September last. You were delivering charcoal.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is she here?’ Jane asked, not certain whether she would care to see the strange woman or not.

‘She’s dead. Died this winter.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ She hardly knew what to say. She stared at Jack and the counterpane. He had made an awful mess of it. She scooped him up now, and turned. ‘Let me take the counterpane and wash it.’

‘It’ll brush off,’ he pointed out.

But somehow her trespass made her feel so guilty that she wanted to do more to make amends. ‘Let me take it,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring it back.’

‘As you like.’

So she took the counterpane off the bed, gave the pillows a good shake, smoothed everything down and departed with Jack, feeling a little less guilty now than she had before.

The oak tree put on its leaves slowly in the spring. After its miraculous midwinter greening it had drawn its systems down again like any other oak; the Christmas leaves had frozen and fallen; and there it had remained through the rest of the winter, grey and bare. By March, however, the sap was rising. The oak trees in the wood did not all break into leaf at the same time but over a period of about a month, so that the canopy in early spring varied greatly, from bare brown buds, or the palest leaves, to a fresh green rustling crown.

Colour came to the oak, however, in many forms. Ivy fruits in spring, providing pleasant feeding for the blackbirds; but on its lower part the deer in winter had eaten away the ivy leaves up to the browse line, leaving the space clear for the lichen to grow. Oaks carry more lichens than other trees. Some were already yellow but, since they contain algae with green chlorophyll, others were growing grey-green beards. Most dramatic were the big, furry lichens sprouting out from the trunk and known as ‘lungs of oak’.

Scarcely had the oak’s buds begun to open into leaf when the green woodpecker, flashing green, gold and scarlet, came through the woods with its undulating flight and found a cavity, high up in a dying branch, in which to make its nest. Chaffinches with grey heads and pink breasts began trilling in the branches. By April, with fresh leaves coming out all over and the birds of summer beginning to return from southern climes, the cuckoo’s call was echoing through the woods; the bracken, everywhere, was springing up in stiff stalks and its tightly curled ferns beginning to unfurl; the gorse was in luminous yellow flower and hawthorn bushes breaking out into thick white blossom. Only one feature of oak woods was notably missing. For in the open Forest, although there are wood sorrel, yellow pimpernel, primrose and dog violet to add their pretty colours to the ground, there are no carpets of bluebells – because the deer and grazing livestock eat up any they can find.

And now, as its leaves unfolded, it was time for the oak to begin the huge process of spreading its seed. Each mighty oak brings forth both male and female seed when, in the spring, it breaks into flower. The male pollen, which must be carried down the wind, is in the form of hanging strings, like golden catkins, with tiny flowers. As spring progresses, the oak becomes so thickly bearded that it is as if it has grown a golden fleece.

The female flowers – it is these, when pollinated, which will grow into acorns – are as yet less visible. Like little opening buds, close inspection reveals that they have three tiny red styles which will collect the pollen as it is blown by.

By late April, therefore, the oak, green-leaved, bearded with golden strings, like some hoary old figure from the days of the classical myths when the gods played games with men by the oak groves, was ready to spread its seed. The pollen could be carried great distances across the thick woodland canopy, encountering and intermingling with the pollen of a hundred other trees along the way. It would be hard to say, therefore, which oak was the father of any single acorn grown; for the female buds of any oak tree might receive the passing pollen of dozens of other oaks so that an acorn on a single branch might have been fathered by one oak while the acorn next to it could be the result of pollination from another. So the oak tree would fructify, communally, with perhaps a hundred brother and sister oaks, and children too, who made its old community.

They had set up a maypole at Minstead on May Day. The vicar, who wisely allowed such harmless pagan practices, had organized a modest feast on the village green. The people from Brook had come down, too.

The children had danced round the maypole very prettily; there had been some drinking; and in the evening when it was all over, Nick Pride had walked Jane Furzey home.

They walked up the rise above Minstead and then, drifting idly together, took the path that led past the Rufus oak.

There had been several days of rain recently. Indeed, although nearly a week had passed since Jane’s strange encounter in Burley, she had still not found a good day to return Puckle’s counterpane. But today the sun had shone with scarcely a cloud to interrupt it and the evening was still deliciously warm. She walked beside Nick contentedly.

It was only natural, it seemed to Nick, that they should have paused by the Rufus tree and kissed.

Nick had never kissed for as long as this before. As the minutes went by, his lips and tongue exploring, time seemed to cease in the womb-like space under the spreading tree. The turquoise sky at the end of the glade was turning to orange. Somewhere in the wood behind, a faint rustling told him that a deer was making its delicate way between the trees. He clasped Jane tightly, his hands searching, trying to draw her evermore completely to him. With slowly mounting excitement he wanted to possess her entirely. He must. It was time.

‘Now,’ he murmured. They were betrothed. They would be married. There was no prohibition any more. All nature told his body this was the moment. ‘Now.’

She pulled back. ‘No. Not now.’

He moved forward, took her in his arms again. ‘Jane. Now.’

‘No.’ She pushed him gently but firmly back and shook her head. ‘I cannot, now.’

He was trembling with passion. ‘Jane.’ But she turned away from him, staring down the glade. He stood there, breathing rapidly. Just for a moment, it occurred to him to take her, there and then, by force. But he knew that would not do. Was she really so determined that she would not give herself to him until they were married? Or perhaps she had only meant that her monthly curse was upon her. He did not know. ‘As you like,’ he said with a sigh and, gently putting his arm round her, began to walk her home.

She said little on the way back. Indeed, it was all she could do to hide her feelings. For how could she tell him what was really in her mind? How could she admit that her refusal came from another cause entirely? She did not understand it herself. All she knew, that warm May evening, was that something had come between them: that despite her intentions, her feelings for him, despite everything, as she had felt him holding her fast, pressing against her, some invisible barrier had suddenly interposed itself, so that she could not let him possess her. Was it her fear, because she was a virgin? Was it panic at the thought she was about to lose her freedom? She did not know. It was mystifying, troubling. He was the man she was to marry and suddenly she did not want him. What did it mean?

Three miles away, when Nick and Jane were leaving the maypole on the green, Clement Albion had been engaged in that exercise so necessary to busy men. He had been assuring himself that his conscience was clear. He even muttered aloud: ‘I have done all I can. God knows.’

The trained bands he had mustered were as ready as they were ever likely to be. The beacons were prepared. For all the fearsome reputation of the council’s spy system, nobody knew exactly when or how the great Spanish invasion fleet was coming; but those like Gorges with any pretence to information assured him that it would, and soon. Had he, then, anything with which to reproach himself? If the council were to summon him tomorrow and demand whether he were a loyal servant of his queen, could he look Cecil in the eye and declare fearlessly that he was?

‘My conscience is clear.’ Nobody was listening. He tried it again. ‘Her Majesty has no cause for complaint against me. I have deceived her about nothing. Nothing.’

Well, almost nothing.

The position of woodward was a profitable one. In return for acting as guardian of the trees in Her Majesty’s forest he received a salary and valuable perquisites. The bark, for instance, from felled or fallen oaks was his; and he would arrange for cartloads to be taken across to Fordingbridge, to the tanning pits there, where the tanners would pay well for this useful ingredient in the preparation of leather. Then there were the leases to see to.

The coppice in front of him was a well-made thirty-acre inclosure, near a track that ran west from Lyndhurst. It had an earth bank and a stout fence in good repair. It was the woodward’s responsibility to let this coppice on the usual thirty-one-year lease and this he had done. To be precise, he had let it to himself. By the terms of the lease, he had the right to sell off the underwood, which was mostly thorn and hazel; but at the same time he was obliged to conserve the more valuable timber wood, keeping at least twelve untouched standards, as the young timber trees were called, to the acre. Albion’s coppices, therefore, should have contained not less than three hundred and sixty standards of timber and, when the lease had begun, so it had. But somehow a hundred and fifty of them had disappeared, leaving two hundred and ten. The profits from these timber sales had been a useful addition to his income.

It was the sort of thing Her Majesty’s woodward was supposed to notice and report, to ensure that the leaseholder was fined. But as he was the leaseholder too, this dereliction had miraculously escaped his notice.

More serious, perhaps, had been the sale of a much larger coppice, not long ago, for the benefit of the crown. He had arranged the sale efficiently enough and fowarded the money to Her Majesty’s treasury. A large quantity of underwood had been sold and was fully accounted for with a written record. What the record did not show, however, was that much of this underwood was actually timber, of far higher value. The difference between the real and the recorded sale had gone into Albion’s purse.

This error still might be found out by the regarders when they next made their inspection of the Forest, as they did every few years. But then, as he was also one of Her Majesty’s regarders, Albion thought it unlikely that the issue would be raised.

Yet again, the crown had been known to set up a commission of inquiry to investigate even the regarders as well, and the woodwards and the gentleman leaseholders of the Forest. But so serious a matter was this, that the last time such a thing had been done, the said regarders, woodwards and gentlemen had found it necessary to arrange that the members of the said commission should consist entirely of – themselves.

For a time, during the months after his conversation with Helena Gorges at Hurst Castle, Albion had lived in some discomfort. To be an undisturbed woodward was one thing; but if the council ever started to take steps against him; if neighbours should understand he was a marked man; if Cecil’s servants came down to the Forest seeking crimes with which to charge him, who knew what might come to the surface? Even if no treason was found, the prospect of disgrace and ruin grew uncomfortably large.

But winter and spring had passed, and now it was May. The cuckoo was sounding in the woods. In the manner of every good man who thinks it unlikely he will be found out, Albion’s conscience was clear. Although the sun was sinking in the west, the huge canopy of sky over the Forest was still azure, with thin ribs of high cloud gleaming pink and silver overhead, as Albion rode southwards. Having passed Brockenhurst and gone south another mile, he then turned east to cross the Forest’s modest central river by the quiet ford below which his house lay.

He was rather surprised, therefore, as he came in sight of the ford, to see two wagons, one richly curtained, the other groaning under a stupendous load of boxes and furniture of every kind, crossing the river just ahead of him. Across the ford, one either continued up to Beaulieu Heath or turned south along a track that led to Boldre. The Albion house, a timber gabled manor, lay in a wooded clearing about half a mile down the track that led to Boldre.

They turned south. He rode after them. But the second wagon took up so much of the path that he had to wait behind it; and so, a little while later, he saw with astonishment that the first was turning up the track that led to his house. It had already rumbled up to his door, and the servants were coming out and a groom was holding back the wagon’s curtains to allow its occupant to descend, before he could ride up to the door himself.

The figure descending was dressed all in black, except for the inside and trimming of her gown, which was crimson. Her face was powdered a thick, ghostly white.

‘Dear God!’ he cried, scarcely thinking. ‘Mother, why have you come?’

She gave him a brilliant smile in return, although her eyes were as keen as those of a bird after a worm. ‘I have news, Clement,’ she said. And a moment later, finding his ear close to her red mouth as he entered her unavoidable embrace, he heard her whisper as to a fellow conspirator: ‘A letter from your sister. The Spanish are coming. I have come here so that we may welcome them, my dearest son, together.’

May passed and most of June, and still the Spanish fleet – the Armada, they called it – did not come. The weather was unusual. One day there would be blue sky and summer sun over the Forest; but time and again, the dark, lowering clouds had returned, sweeping up from the south-west with gales of rain or hail; few could remember a summer like it in years. Late in June, news came that a storm had dispersed the preparing Spanish fleet to several ports. ‘Drake will be up and at them,’ people said. But although Sir Francis was urging the council to let him go, the Queen was hesitant. The trouble with England’s favourite pirate was that as soon as he attacked the enemy successfully, he’d go running off trying to capture prizes instead of attending to duty. For the great explorer and patriot still loved money, she well knew, more than anything.