The Enchanter's Forest

Prologue

Spring Equinox 1195

In the forest the new season was flourishing. The air was loud with birdsong as male chaffinch, blackbird, thrush and warbler each proclaimed their territory and advertised for a mate. A recent heavy shower had increased both the intensity of the light and the sweet spring smells of tender young grass and unfolding leaf. Nature’s power was all but tangible and the very trees seemed to rejoice.

In stark contrast, the young man who was slowly and dejectedly making his way from the deep heart of the forest back out to its fringes could not have been more miserable. Today was his fifth trip to the interior of the Great Wealden Forest and he had been on the same hopeless mission that had taken him there the previous times. He’d heard that, a few years back now, some men out poaching had come across a treasure trove of coins and, despite the fact that he knew full well what had become of them — those who related the tale dwelled with fascinated ghoulishness on that part of the story — his greed and his need had overcome his fear. Five times now he had managed to master his terror as he had scrabbled and dug in what had seemed to be likely places; five times he had failed.

The trouble was that he never really stayed in there long enough. He guessed that if there was treasure to be found, it would be in the secret, dark areas that lay hidden miles away from the outside world, where they said mysterious beings lived who shunned mankind, preferring to keep to their own sort, their own ways, even their own religion. They also said that these strange people did not take kindly to outsiders poking their noses in where they were not wanted. Most certainly they would not approve of someone scratching about beneath the roots of those vast and majestic oaks of incredible antiquity searching for loot. Look at what had happened to those wretched poachers. .

Each time he had found a likely spot and taken up his mattock to break the soil and start digging, initially the hope of finding what he was so frantically looking for would carry him for a while, fuelling him with nervous energy and desperate optimism. This time, he would think to himself, this time I’m going to strike lucky, and he would try so hard to make himself believe it that he could almost see his eager hands gathering up piles of glittering gold coins, feeling their wonderful weight in his palms and watching with fascinated eyes as they fell through his fingers.

Each time, sooner or later, the moment would come when he could no longer ignore the dread feeling that someone — perhaps something, for there was no sense at all of a human presence — was watching him. It would begin with a chill down his spine; a chill that, given that he was working hard enough to bring him out in a sweat, really should not have been there. Then he would think he heard some small noise, only when he stopped his digging to listen, there was no sound other than those that were natural to the forest. When he resumed his work, slowly, steadily the conviction would grow that something was creeping up on him, stealthily, silently, poised to pounce on him as he bent to his digging. He would try to ignore his fear, command himself not to let his imagination run away with him, but always, sooner or later, he would fling aside his mattock, draw his dagger and spin round to face his attacker.

There would never be anything there.

And the only sound would be one that nobody but he could hear, for it was the silent scream of terror that echoed inside his head.

But he had to go on trying, for if he did not find himself a source of ready wealth, he would be left with no option but to kill himself.

It was all because of his wife.

As he stumped along, against his volition his thoughts turned to her. She was young and clever, with an arrogant tilt to the chin that she had inherited from her French mother, along with the withering glance from those dark and captivating eyes that seemed to say, You? What on earth have you got to offer someone like me? She was also utterly lovely, with a neat little figure and round, high-set breasts that felt surprisingly heavy in his eager hands. Her power over him was absolute for if he did not do as she wished she withheld herself. Now, because she was so angry with him about the money he had given to the ransom fund, she had refused him admittance to her bed and her body for more than six months, and that last time he had caught her unawares and all but raped her. It was going to be a long time before she let him forget about that, even though at the time he would have sworn she enjoyed it as much as he did.

What she could not — or probably would not — understand was that, over the matter of the ransom, he had had no choice. Great merciful heavens, did she think he had wanted to give away a quarter of his income purely to recover a king fool enough to go haring off to Outremer and allow himself to be captured on the long road home? She had accused him of hurrying to give his contribution when a wiser man might have held back hoping to be overlooked, but he had told her roughly that there was no point putting any hope in that naive idea since everyone knew him and his very conspicuous wealth and his was one of the first doors on which they would come knocking. It had been better by far to appear a loyal subject who just could not wait to offer his contribution to the fund while he prayed earnestly day and night for his sovereign’s safe return.

The real trouble was that, in his desperation to prove to her that he was a very rich man and thus the best choice as husband out of all of those who offered for her hand, he had exaggerated his wealth. Once having convinced her and her mother that his means were far more than their true value, he had been forced to go on living the lie. For the two years of their marriage he had consistently spent more than his income and, devastatingly, the ransom contribution demanded from him appeared to have been based on what he boasted of possessing rather than what he really owned.

The simple outcome was that he was now flat broke and heavily in debt. Ruin and utter humiliation were staring him in the face, not to mention the loss of his glorious wife, who would no doubt take pleasure in kicking him good and hard when he was down. If, out of the last vestiges of love for him, she managed to hold back, then for certain her mother would show no such restraint. Her mother’s sneering, disdainful expression haunted him; there was no need for her to say My daughter is far too good for you because it was written all over her face. Sometimes he would hardly dare to go home in case the old tyrant had spirited her daughter back to France. .

Oh, dear God, if only he had some money! What wouldn’t he do!

His wife could have the solar she’d been demanding for the last God knew how long, and some good jewellery and a few lengths of the most costly silk for her summer gowns. He could put in an offer for that pretty bay palfrey she had her eye on. He could buy her all those things and more, then she would slide naked into their wide marriage bed, open her arms and her legs to him and, with that seductress’s smile on her beautiful face making the bewitching dimple dance in her cheek, invite him to join her.

Aaah!

He was swamped by lascivious thoughts of what he would do to his wife — and what she would do to him, for she had tricks that he had never come across before and that drove him wild with lust — once he had earned her favour once more.

Then abruptly he came out of his fantasy world and returned with a painful jolt to reality. None of it was going to happen because he was broke.

Today he had really believed he was on to something, for he was all but sure he had stumbled across the very place where the poachers had found their coins; there were undoubtedly signs that someone had dug there in the fairly recent past. But if they had, then whatever hoard they had stolen from had now been removed; he had found nothing but earth, roots and stones.

Sick, overcome with a sudden urgent need for daylight that was not filtered through a million young green leaves, he had turned and fled from the place. Now, almost weeping with despair and disappointment, he was trudging along, head down, too miserable to care very much where he was going.

He was jerked to attention by the abrupt shock of coming up against a barrier. His heart began to race and he stared around him, skin tingling. But he couldn’t see anything: no fence, no hedge, nothing. Angry suddenly — it was strange how his emotions seemed so volatile — he pushed against whatever was holding him back and after a moment it yielded. With the sense that he had thrust himself through some sort of mystical portal, he plunged on and found himself in a clearing that he was quite sure he had never been in before.

He stopped, let the head of the mattock rest on the springy grass and looked around him. It was a strange sort of a clearing; unnaturally quiet, very regular in shape and encircled by oak trees that were placed at such equal intervals that they might almost have been planted. But that was silly — he smiled grimly at his own folly — for this was a forest and the oak trees just grew wherever the acorns happened to fall. And, he reassured himself — for the sense of unease was quickly growing — wasn’t it often the case that an old oak left to its own devices became circled by its own offspring so that, when the ancient father oak eventually died, a natural circle would have formed around the place where it had once stood?

Yes. Even though the smooth grass in the clearing was uninterrupted by any vast old tree stump, that must be what had happened here.

Mustn’t it?

He was afraid. Shouldering the mattock, he decided to set out across the clearing and head for the faint boar track that led off through the trees. He would follow it and, sooner or later, he would find himself on a familiar path and then he would make his escape.

Or so he fervently hoped.

He knew he must get going but for an appalling moment his body seemed petrified and his legs would not obey his will. There was dead silence in the clearing and then suddenly it was broken by a profoundly deep, indescribably strange sound like a single huge heartbeat.

There was enchantment in the air.

He took a deep breath, tensed his muscles and threw himself forward. The spell was broken.

He began to run, needing more than anything in the world to get away, out from that still, silent, spellbound spot and back into the open air beyond the last of the trees where he would be able to breathe freely again and where there was not this dreadful, constant sense of being watched. He had an idea that the forest fringes were not far away now; he just had to control himself, try to bite down on the panic and just keep running till he was free, then he could-

It was at that moment that he fell.

He was right in the centre of the circle at a place where the ground dipped into a long, shallow depression about an arm’s length across. He had noticed it when looking around the clearing but, since it was plain and quite featureless, had paid it little heed. Now he cursed it, for it had interrupted his flight to safety; perhaps even his flight for his life. I might want to die, he thought grimly, but if I make the decision to end my life it’ll be at a time of my method and choosing and for sure I don’t want to be terrified to death by some malignant forest ghoul.

He sat up, rubbing at his shoulder; he had fallen headlong and hard.

Still slightly dazed, he patted the ground around him. He was sitting in the depression and it seemed to him that some insistent thought was knocking at his mind, something that he should have noticed but hadn’t.

A depression. Right in the middle of the clearing. Where once a great oak tree might well have stood.

And where had those poachers found their treasure?

In the hole left by an uprooted oak.

Hope flared up in him, searing through him and raising his spirits like the rising sun on a morning after a night’s rain.

Filled with sudden energy, he leapt up, raised his mattock and began to dig.