The Forest (48 page)

As Jane Furzey came on to the long stretch of Mill Lawn she felt rather guilty. Had she really let two months pass before returning to Burley? What with the weather and so much going on, she told herself, she really hadn’t had time to return Puckle’s counterpane. With luck, she thought, he won’t be there. Then she could leave it and hurry away.

Today the weather was fine. Across the big Forest lawn the gorse was all green now, but the short turf was brightly spangled with daisies and white clover, yellow buttercup and hawkweed. Pressing close to the turf, tiny sprigs of self-heal added purple tints to the green; and on the banks of the little gravel streamlet that ran down the lawn, blue forget-me-not grew out of the weeds.

Jane reached the thatched cottage just before noon. Puckle was not at home, but his children were. There were three of them. The eldest was a girl of about ten; obviously going through a skinny stage, she was thin as a spindle, dark-haired, rather solemn and had clearly been left in charge of the other two. A younger girl, also dark, was playing on the patch of grass in front of the cottage door.

But it was the youngest child who really caught her attention. He was a chubby, cheerful little boy of three. He had evidently been playing with a toy horse his father must have made for him; but the moment he saw Jane he toddled happily up to her, his round face wearing a big smile, his bright eyes full of trust and apparently sure that she would amuse him. He was wearing a nicely embroidered smock and not much else and, taking her hand he asked: ‘I’m Tom. Would you like to play?’

‘I’m sure I should,’ she said. But first she explained her errand to the older girl.

The child was naturally a little suspicious at first, but when she inspected the counterpane she nodded. ‘My father said a person would come with it,’ she remarked, ‘but that was a long time ago.’ It seemed that Puckle was not expected back for a while and so Jane talked with the girl. It was soon clear from her manner and the things she said that she had had to take on the role of mother to the family, and Jane began to feel rather sorry for her. She needs a mother herself, she thought.

As for Tom, the toddler was enchanting. He produced a ball and demanded that she kick it to him, which she did, to his great delight, for some time. He is such a pretty little boy, she considered, I wish he could be mine. Finally, however, if she was not to run the risk of meeting Puckle, she thought she had better go.

‘I had best put this back on your father’s bed,’ she said to the girl, picking up the counterpane. The child assured her there was no need, but she insisted and went alone up the stairs to the little room where Puckle’s oak bed stood.

There it was: dark, almost black, and gleaming. It was certainly curious, every bit as strange as she remembered it from her encounter before. The oaken faces, like gargoyles in a church, stared out at her as though she were a friend they were welcoming back. Hardly meaning to, she ran her hand over some of the carved figures – the squirrel, the snake. They were so perfect it was as if they were alive, about to move under her hand at any instant. She even felt a trace of fright and, as if to reassure herself, tightened her grip, squeezing the gnarled oak wood under her hand to prove to herself that that was all it was. For an instant she felt almost giddy.

Carefully she spread the counterpane, made sure that everything was tidy, then stood back to survey her handiwork. This was where Puckle had lain with his wife. ‘Keep any woman happy.’ The strange woman’s words came back to her. ‘Once you lie in his oak bed with John Puckle, you’ll not want any other bed.’ Jane’s eyes went round the room. There was a linen shirt of Puckle’s on the chest where the cat had been lying the first time she came in there. Glancing behind her to make sure she was not observed, she went over and picked it up. He had worn it, but not much, she thought. It smelled only a little of sweat, more of woodsmoke. A good smell. A little salty. She laid it carefully down again.

She looked once more at the bed. It was so strange: the bed seemed to look back at her, as though it and Puckle were one and the same. As in a way they were, she realized, given how much of himself he had put into the carving. Puckle turned into oak, she thought with a smile, and laughed to herself. If all this carving, this astonishing strength and richness were within the soul and body of the man too, no wonder his wife had had good things to say of him. But why to her? Perhaps she had said such things to everybody. But then again, perhaps not.

She turned and, with a last look at the gleaming four-poster, went down the stairs and out of the cottage door into the bright sunlight. Just before she reached it she heard the little boy cry out in pleasure and, blinking for a moment in the sudden light, she looked at the figure now scooping the toddler up in his arms.

Puckle was black – as black as one of the oaken faces on his bed. He turned, catching sight of her, looked straight at her, and she felt herself give an involuntary shudder. She understood, of course. He had been out at one of his charcoal fires and was covered with black dust. But he looked so like one of the strange, almost devilish faces on the bed that she couldn’t help herself.

‘Bring me water,’ he said to the girl, who reappeared in a moment with a wooden pail. He stooped, scooping the water quickly on to his face and head, then washed his arms. He stood up straight again, his face now clean, while from his head the water was dripping down, and laughed.

‘Do you recognize me now?’ he asked Jane, who nodded and laughed as well. ‘You have met Tom?’ he enquired.

‘I played ball with him.’ She smiled.

‘Will you stay a while?’ he asked, cheerfully.

‘No. No, I must go.’ She started to turn, and was astonished to discover that she wanted to stay. ‘I must go,’ she repeated, disconcerted with herself.

‘Ah.’ He came over to her now. His hand reached out and took her elbow. She was aware, suddenly, of the muscles on his thick, powerful forearm. ‘The children like you,’ he said quietly.

‘Oh. How do you know?’

‘I know.’ He smiled. ‘I am glad you came,’ he said gently.

She nodded. She hardly knew what to say. It was as if, as soon as he had touched her, they had shared something. She felt a flood of strength coming from him, while her own knees went weak. ‘I must go,’ she stammered.

His hand was still on her arm. She did not want him to take it away.

‘Come, sit.’ He indicated a bench near the door.

So she sat in the sun with him, and talked and played with the children until, after an hour, she left.

‘You must come again, for the children,’ he said. And she promised that, when she could, she would.

By July, Albion often rode out into the Forest simply to be alone. The last two months had not been easy.

Perhaps his wife had summed it up best. ‘I can’t see the Spanish invasion will make any difference to us, Clement,’ she had said at the end of May. ‘This house has already been occupied.’

His mother and her occupying forces appeared to be everywhere. There never seemed to be less than three of her servants crowding into the kitchen. Within two weeks her groom had seduced his wife’s young maid. At meals, at family prayers, morning, noon and night, his mother’s brooding presence seemed to fill the house.

Why was she there? Albion had no doubt. She was going to make sure he fulfilled his obligations when the Armada came.

For three weeks his wife had suffered. She understood very well that his mother had a large fortune to leave, and she was a good daughter-in-law; but she was a mother first and she wanted a quiet life for her family. He had not dared tell her about his mother’s insane offer of his services to the King of Spain and had begged his mother not to, for fear of frightening her. Meekly therefore, his wife had done her family duty. But finally even she could take no more. ‘This occupation has gone on too long,’ she told him. ‘My house is no longer my own. I don’t care if your mother has ten fortunes to leave. We can live without. They must all go.’

It was with no small fear that he went to his mother to explain the problem. Her reaction astonished him.

‘Of course, Clement. She is quite right. Your household is not large. My poor manservant has been sleeping in the barn. Leave everything to me.’

And the very next morning, to his astonishment, the whole cortège – the wagons piled high, the servants all on board – had been ready to depart. He and his family had stood and watched in wonder as the order was given to move off. There had been only one puzzling feature.

‘Shouldn’t you be in your carriage now, Mother?’ he asked. ‘It is about to move.’

‘I?’ His mother looked surprised. ‘I, Clement? I am not going.’ She raised her hand and waved as the two wagons began to rumble past them. ‘Do not worry, Clement.’ She gave him a brilliant smile. ‘I shall be quiet as a mouse.’

And from that day, with just a few chests of clothes and her prayer book, she had kept to herself in her chamber. ‘Like a good nun,’ as she put it. That is, when she was not sitting in the parlour, or instructing the children in their prayers, or giving the servants little commissions to do, or letting his wife know that the roast beef could have been cooked a little less. ‘You see,’ she would observe, every day at dinner, ‘how I live like a hermit in your house. You must scarcely know I am here.’

If her continued presence was a nuisance for his wife, to Albion himself it grew daily more alarming. Her private conversations with him left no room for doubt: the Spanish were going to triumph. ‘I wrote to your sister long ago about the strength of the musters,’ she declared. ‘The Spanish troops will smash them easily. As for our ships, they are all rotten.’ The first statement was true, the second false. But she had entirely made up her mind about it.

The problem was, how could he deal with the suspicions that must attach to him from her presence in his house? He decided that the best defence was attack.

‘My mother is now completely out of her wits,’ he told one or two gentlemen who he knew would repeat the information, ‘and there’s an end of it.’ When a number of recusants were interned by the council in case they proved dangerous, he remarked wryly to Gorges: ‘I have interned my mother myself. I am now her gaoler.’ When Gorges reminded him that he personally had had charge of Mary Queen of Scots, Albion riposted: ‘My mother is the more dangerous.’ And when Helena asked if he actually kept her under lock and key, he replied morosely: ‘I wish I had a dungeon.’

Were they convinced? He hoped so. But two incidents soon told him better. The first occurred just after news came that Drake had been refused permission to attack the Spanish in their ports again. The orders that the queen had wanted to give had caused some wry amusement among her commanders. Albion had been down at Hurst Castle just afterwards.

‘Do you know, Clement,’ Helena had remarked, ‘the queen wanted the fleet to go back and forth like men on sentry duty?’ She laughed. ‘It seems that Her Majesty, although she sends her buccaneers across the seas, did not know that their ships cannot change directions just as they please, ignoring the wind. Now the fleet is going to …’ But she suddenly checked herself and added sheepishly: ‘To do something else. I do not know what.’ And Albion had turned and seen Gorges standing behind him, quickly removing a warning finger from his lips.

The second incident came early in July.

The fact was that, despite its fearsome reputation at home, the royal spy system in England had been unable, with the Spanish Armada almost daily expected, to discover anything about its plan of action. There were, in fact, two threats to consider. One came from the great fleet itself; the other from the Spanish forces already just across the sea in the Netherlands, where they had been busy putting down the Protestant revolts against Catholic Spanish rule. The Spanish troops in the Netherlands numbered tens of thousands, they were battle hardened and their commander, the Duke of Parma, was a fine general. It was assumed that they would attack England’s eastern coast, probably near the Thames estuary, at the same time as the Armada arrived. If so, that would stretch England’s defences in two directions. But was this correct? Was one attack a diversion? Did the Armada mean to destroy the English fleet at sea, take the first English port it came to, Plymouth probably, and use that as a base; or would it sail up the English Channel to capture Southampton, the Isle of Wight, or Portsmouth? Nobody knew.

‘I have had another letter from Spain,’ his mother said quite calmly, one evening, when he returned from a visit to Southampton.

‘Today? How?’ Who could possibly have brought such a thing to his house in that quiet corner of the Forest?

She waved the question aside as if it were irrelevant. ‘You must be ready, now, Clement. The time is close.’

‘When? When are they coming?’

‘I have told you. Very soon. No doubt the beacons will be lit. You will know. Then you must do your duty.’

‘What other news did you receive? What is their intention? Do they make for the Isle of Wight? For Portsmouth?’

‘I cannot say, Clement.’

‘Let me see the letter, Mother.’

‘No, Clement. I have told you all you need to know.’

He stared at her. Did she not trust him? Of course she didn’t. She suspects, he thought, that if I learn anything more about the Spanish movements, I might tell Gorges or the lord-lieutenant. And she is right. I probably would. He wondered where the letter was. Should he search her chamber? Was there any way – during her sleep, maybe – that he could search her clothing? No hope, he considered.

And then another thought came to him. Could this be a ruse, a cunning contrivance? Was it possible that there was no letter, that she had invented it to test him, to see what he would do? Was she as devious as that? Perhaps.

‘I am sorry you keep secrets from me, Mother,’ he said stiffly; but this had no effect upon her at all.

It was the sequel the next day, however, that was truly frightening. He had chanced to meet Thomas Gorges in Lymington and Gorges, after they had talked a few moments, had given him a keen look and remarked: ‘We are still trying to discover the Spanish intentions, Clement. We suspect that letters may be coming to recusants in England which might contain information of value.’