In a Dark Wood (16 page)

“What?”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry!”

“Terribly sorry.” The man shrank to the floor again.

“Get up. I don't like to see you crouching like a frog.”

Henry stood, but held himself like a man with a cramp.

“I will tell you what happened, and all you need to do is nod if I am correct. You had a bellyful of ale before you came for your instructions, and a bellyful afterwards, with our good friend the potter. When you woke late the next morning, swollen like a boil, you remembered nothing of my instructions. Am I right?”

Henry nodded, a kind of spasm. “Hugh woke me.”

“I can't hear you when you mumble like a dog.”

Again a spasm. “Hugh woke me.”

“Thank God for Hugh. At least I have someone about me I can depend on. And you should be thankful for him, too. If not for Hugh, you might still be asleep!”

Henry shivered.

“It's hard for me to recall when I have been more furious. You are, as a deputy, very nearly worthless. A man of straw would be more useful. At least from such a sack I would expect nothing. I wonder if you deserve the chance to redeem yourself.”

“Anything I could do,” mumbled Henry.

“Many sheriffs would have you hanged. Without discussion, without even a syllable, and without a breath of remorse. Your conduct was very nearly traitorous to the king's will. You know this all too well. You put up a show of duty, but you think about your own skin more than anything else, don't you, good Henry? There are those good men who would condemn me for talking to you at all. The king himself would probably flay you.” Geoffrey paced. “Well, you must have had mixed feelings when the messenger found you. He's alive! Wonderful news! Now I can hang!”

Henry slumped to the floor again.

“Oh, by the love of Jesus, stand up or I'll unman you with this apple knife, as surely as I'm a Christian!”

Henry said something anguished.

“What?”

“A terrible disgrace.”

“Ah, yes. Disgrace. Well, my dear deputy, I have been disgraced, too. And it's not entirely your fault. No doubt Robin Hood knew exactly what he was doing when he tilted the pitcher of new ale.” Geoffrey sighed. “I guessed who the potter was. I should have had a better plan.”

“I'll do everything in my power to bring you the head of Robin Hood.”

“No,” said Geoffrey thoughtfully. “I don't want his head, and I want any of them you catch brought to me alive. I think some special punishment would do them justice, something for Nottingham to discover, something that will make them regret the day of their birth.”

“We will make them suffer!” said Henry, climbing to his feet.

“They expect us,” said Geoffrey. “Even now, they are in the forest, listening. Waiting. They may even have spies in this city, watching to see what we do. But we will have no secrets. We will have nothing to hide. You, Henry, will eat, rest.” He did not say “drink.” “And then you will take your best men, not an army. Your best. And you will run them to the ground.”

27

Geoffrey put down his slice of simnel. “Why do we have to listen to that ugly noise?”

“It's a psalter,” said Lady Eleanor.

Lady Eleanor's maid-in-waiting plucked at strings with a quill. She hesitated.

“I know exactly what it is.”

“I'm sorry. I wanted music. Please,” she said to the young woman. “We have changed our mind.”

Since his return Lady Eleanor had been more gentle, and Geoffrey wondered if, in fact, she had been worried about him. She had dressed with great care for their first evening meal together since his reappearance, and the pearls round her neck were lustrous and made gentle clucking noises as they rubbed together, pleased with their own beauty.

Geoffrey did not like music, except for the music that preceded a disorderly person to prison. A minstrel usually led a miscreant through the streets. This called attention to the punishment and made it all the more shameful.

“No, you can stay,” said Geoffrey. “I am,” he said to his wife, “perhaps a little tired.”

“Of course you are. What a dreadful thing to spend a night out there.”

They were both silent, sensing the forest everywhere round them.

“How is Sir Roger?” she asked.

“He is asleep. He is happy in that cold place, surrounded by bucklers and axes and, by now, cursing men. I gave Henry orders. The men will have to curse quietly.”

Geoffrey became aware of a strange figure at the edge of the firelight. The figure wore a metal bowl over its head and held a long, crooked staff. The figure was evidently on guard, watching over the meal. Geoffrey asked the server, “Who is that?”

The server met Eleanor's eye. “That,” said Lady Eleanor, “is the Fool.”

“Why is he wearing that pot on his head?”

“It's not a pot.”

“Why, it is a pot! An insult in my own dining hall!”

“It's not a pot; it's a metal bowl. Please do sit down. I'll send him away.”

“No, don't send him away.”

“Geoffrey, you are behaving in a very strange manner.”

“Strange! Then at last I am in a mood to enjoy the Fool's company. Come forward, good Fool, and let me see you.”

The Fool marched to Geoffrey's side.

“Yes, just like a man-at-arms. A lance, or is it supposed to be a
langue de boeuf?
That would be a weapon for you, my dear Fool, a spear with a tongue at the end for the easy removal of your opponent's liver. And a helmet, missing, of course, the noseguard that keeps a point from reaching your brain by way of your face.”

The Fool knelt, so quickly and so quietly it seemed a genuine apology for upsetting the sheriff.

“Go!” said Lady Eleanor to the Fool. “Geoffrey, please have some more wine.”

“No, stay, Fool. You find helmets and lances something amusing, or perhaps it's me you find ridiculous, held like a stolen ewe in the greenwood, with a band of greasy thieves, waiting for my throat to be cut.”

“Geoffrey, please.”

“I'm ready to laugh! Ha-ha! See how I'm laughing!”

“Geoffrey,” his wife said, her voice a hard whisper. “I will not allow this!”

“Everyone finds the Fool amusing except me. I intend to be amused. I intend to be cheated out of my awareness of the world until I laugh, and why not? In my own household, a man in my castle among men.”

“You are amusing me,” said his wife shortly. “I laugh to see the lord high sheriff in such a good humor, such high spleen, such a dry and heavy-handed fool himself.”

Geoffrey gripped a silver goblet until it closed in on itself. He said softly, “I have long wanted to see if the Fool has a tongue. This is the night my wondering will cease!”

Lady Eleanor's eyes were fierce. “Geoffrey!” she said. “The Fool is your servant!”

Geoffrey strode across the hall and stormed down one corridor, and then another, through darkness and candlelight, until he stood at last at the top of the East Tower, the wind streaming through his hair. Where is there a capable servant for me! he thought. Where is there someone who can do my bidding, even if it's simply to talk!

Chain mail jingled, and Geoffrey was aware that he was not alone on the tower. “Good evening, my lord,” said the spearman.

“It's a cold night,” said Geoffrey.

“So it is, my lord,” said the guard, using the local
swa
for
so
. “And more to come.”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey, as if he knew.

“But tomorrow we'll catch Robin Hood that lives in greenwood and drag him hither.”

The burls and thorns of the man's speech calmed Geoffrey. “I am glad to hear it.”

“What is he but a man, and a mortal man at that? He'll not last, though the people say he'll hide until Judgment Day. Trust a man who's seen many a thief at the end of a lance, some breathing, some not. A smart rabbit, my lord, is nothing but a rabbit.”

Geoffrey felt his way down the steps of the tower. He bumped someone, and a body fell with a gasp.

“Hugh!”

“I was looking for you.”

“Why? What's wrong?”

“Nothing, my lord.”

They groped their way down a corridor. “Don't you want to hear what happened?”

“My lord?”

“Don't you want to hear what happened in the forest, with Robin Hood? Everyone wants to know, but everyone is afraid to ask.”

“What happened?”

Geoffrey laughed. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I ate king's venison and drank good wine. And then they let me go.” But as he said it, it sounded worse than torture, worse than injury. It made a mockery of hospitality and made mock of all hosts and all guests, everywhere.

Hugh's cheeks burned with gratification: the sheriff was confiding in him! But other emotions seethed within Hugh as well: embarrassment at the treatment the lord sheriff had received. Anger. And determination.

It was a heady thought, one Hugh would not have put into words. He was, after all, only a greaver's son.

But some sunny morning Hugh would make Robin pay for his crime against the sheriff.

28

“I fear the worst,” said Geoffrey as Hugh fastened his rowel spurs. “Sir Roger is too peaceful. His vital virtue has fled.”

Hugh was shocked at his own speech: “I want to ride with you.”

“This is not sport, Hugh.” And then the sheriff himself was surprised. “How can you learn if you stay in the castle today?” But your safety is a weight I carry, Geoffrey wanted to say. Your life is mine to protect. “Perhaps the two of us together can make Henry feel his duty.”

The blacksmith worked at his anvil, using the hammer with a long, tapering point and a blunt, squared face. This face flattened the red slug of iron. Red sparks kissed the leather apron. The smell of hot iron was the smell of power flowering into frailty. The definite and concrete were becoming fluid.

“We will ride with you,” said Geoffrey. “At least part of the way.”

Henry tugged at his belt and looked down.

“I mean no criticism. I thought I could help.”

“We will be proud to have your assistance, my lord.”

Henry had organized a dozen men, sturdy, helmeted, and doomed to fail. Geoffrey surveyed them with satisfaction. He must try to catch the highwayman. It was his duty. And perhaps, although he did not expect it, they might blunder into Robin Hood. It was not impossible.

Boys played in the marketplace, using sticks with strings attached to set tops spinning. The dark shapes like turnips wended between the stalls until they reached the feet of a haggler, rolled, and fell still. This seemed to be the point of the game, and the people in the market seemed not to mind it, as if boyhood were a nuisance that would pass on its own, like flies, and could be endured until time did its work.

The day was bright, and the wind cold. Oxen fed in the common land, the wetland reserved for grazing because it was too muddy for anything else. The beasts grazed, great four-legged outcrops of earth carved to resemble animals.

A few tufts of clouds dirtied the sky, and the horizon was a crisp line of earth and sky, like vellum newly torn, still shaggy where fiber had not worn. The High Way was wrinkled with cart tracks. Grass made the sound of men walking through the fields, although it was only the wind. The wild grain nodded and stood erect again.

“Here,” said Geoffrey at last. “This is where we left the High Way.”

“Horses will be a burden in there,” said one of the men, whose green tunic showed him to be one of the king's foresters.

“A horseman is by his nature more powerful than a footman,” said Henry.

“Not in a brake of brushwood,” said the forester.

Geoffrey made a gesture, and there was silence. “The men you are looking for are like no men you have ever seen. They are not knights, and yet they could unhorse one easily. They are not foresters, and yet they use the greenwood like a pantry. They are to us what men in a dream are to real men. They inhabit the woods like thoughts and flee the approach of light, like nightmares you try to remember but cannot. These men are insubstantial. Any one of us could batter any of them.

“You will not have the chance unless you hunt them as you hunt fish with your naked hands. Be still, and listen. Do not grasp what is not already giving itself over into your hand. Strength is no assistance. Woo Robin Hood, like a maiden. He wants to show himself, so he can taunt you. Rush him, and he will entertain the lot of you, as he entertained me. Seek him like knowledge, gently. If you hear him, don't turn to look at him, or he won't be there. Look away, and say, ‘Greetings to you and your band from the Sheriff of Nottingham.'”

They entered the greenwood. The horses broke branches, struggling, as though the path taken by Robin Hood and Geoffrey had closed, healed like a wound. The ripe, wet stink of forest was everywhere, and when Geoffrey put his hand to the side of a tree, a tree-colored moth broke into the air, fluttering at his eyes and lips.

They searched for hours before they discovered the Trysting Oak. It looked unimportant now, smaller. Brown leaves fluttered to the ground, and the massive roots wrestled the earth beneath a blanket of leaf mulch. The leaves dissolved as soon as they reached the ground into a kind of leaf silt, formless and dead.

Geoffrey's instructions on how to find Robin Hood could have been the instructions on how to obtain God's grace. It could not be obtained. It was only given. Uncalled, it came like an owl in the night, tawny and moon-gray, seeing everything by the light from a single star.

They led their horses over gigantic moss-rotten logs. At times the horses broke through the crust of humus, like horses struggling through black snow. Even the forester stumbled, and searched the ground for tracks, finding only mushrooms, shiny and domed, like the heads of babies buried upright in the ground.