Scarlet

CHAPTER 5

The trail went on and on. My guides maintained a curious wolf-trot pace: three steps quick walk alternating with four steps slow running. It took a bit of getting used to, but, once I got the knack, I soon understood that it allowed a body to move quickly over long distances and still have breath enough and strength to do what you came to do when you reached your destination. I had never seen this neat trick before, and was glad to add it to my own tidy store of forest craft… You should try it, Odo," I tell my bleary-eyed scribe. He raises his pudding face to see if I jest. "It would do you good."

"I will take you at your word," he says, stifling a yawn. He dips his quill in the horn, and the wet nib hovers over the parchment. "Where did they take you, these hooded strangers?"

"Where did they take me? Pay attention, and you'll learn soon enough. Now then, where was I?"

"Running through the greenwood to meet the Raven King."

"Not the Raven King," I tell him. "It is King Raven-there is a difference, monk. Get it right."

Odo gives an indifferent shrug, and I resume my tale… Well, we ran miles that morning, and I am firmly persuaded most of it was just to confuse me so as to prevent me leading anyone else to their forest hideaway.

For the most part, it worked well enough. On a fella less firmly rooted in woodland lore, it would have been well-nigh confounding. As for myself, it produced only mild befuddlement, as Iwan probably guessed after a while. For we came to a place where a little clear water stream issued from beneath a natural rock wall, and after we'd got a few good mouthfuls, the big man produced a scrap of cloth from his quiver. "Sorry, William," he said, handing me the cloth. "You must bind your eyes now."

"If it makes you and yours feel better, I'm happy to do it," I said. "I'll even let Siarles here tie the knot."

"Right, you will," said Siarles, stepping behind me as I wound the cloth around my head. He tied the loose ends, gave them a sharp tug, and then we were away again, more slowly-this time Iwan leading, and me stumbling along with my hand on his shoulder, tripping over roots and stones and trying to keep up with his long-legged strides. It was more difficult than I would have thought-try it yourself in rough wood and see how you go. After a time I sensed the ground beginning to rise. The slope was gradual at first, but grew steeper as we went along. I heard birdsong high up, scattered and far off-the trees were getting bigger and farther apart.

Gaining the top of the ridge, we came to a stony ledge and stopped again. "Here now," said Iwan, taking me by the shoulders and turning me around a few times, "not far to go. A few more steps is all."

He spun me around some more, and then Siarles spun me the other way for good measure. "Mind your step," said Siarles, his mouth close to my ear. "Keep your head low, or you'll get a knock." He pressed my head down until I was bent double, and then led me through a gap between two trees and, almost immediately, down a steep incline.

"Cel Craidd," said Iwan. "I pray it goes well with you here."

"You better pray so, too," added Siarles in tone far less friendly. He had taken against me, I don't know why-maybe it was that jibe about his name. Or maybe it was the cut of my cloth, but whatever it was, he gave me to know that he held me of small regard. "Play us false, and it will be the last place you ever see."

"Now, now," I replied, "no need to be nasty. I've sworn to abide, and abide I will, come what may."

Siarles untied the binding cloth, and I opened my eyes on the strangest place I have ever seen: a village made of skins and bones, branches and stones. There were low hovels roofed with ferns and moss, and others properly thatched with rushes; some had wattle-and-daub walls, and some were made of woven willow withies so that the hut seemed to have been knitted whole out of twigs, and the chinks stuffed with dried grass, giving the place an odd, fuzzy appearance as if it wore a pelt in moulting. If a few of the hovels in the centre of the settlement were larger and constructed of more substantial stuff-split timber and the like-they also had roofs of grassy turf, and wore antlers or skull bones of deer or oxen at the corners and above their hide-covered doorways, which gave them the look of something grown up out of the forest floor.

If a tribe of Greenmen had bodged together a settlement out of bark and brake and cast-off woodland ruck, it would look exactly like this, I thought. Indeed, it was a fit roost for King Raven-just the sort of place the Lord of the Forest might choose.

Nested in a shallow bowl of a glade snugged about by the stout timbers of oak and lime and ash and elm, Cel Craidd was not only protected, but well hidden. The circling arm of the ridge formed a wall of sorts on three sides which rose above the low huts. A fella would have to be standing on the ridgetop and looking down into the bowl of the glade to see it. But this concealment came at a price, and the people there were paying the toll with their lives.

Our arrival was noticed by a few of the small fry, who ran to fetch a welcome party. They were-beneath the soot and dirt and ragged clothes-ordinary children, and not the offspring of a Greenwife. They skittered away with the swift grace of creatures birthed and brought up in the wildwood. Chirping and whooping, they flew to an antler-decked hut in the centre of the settlement, and pounded on the doorpost. In a few moments, there emerged what is possibly the ugliest old woman I ever set eyes to. Mother Mary, but she was a sight, with her skin wrinkled like a dried plum and blackened by years of sitting in the smoke of a cooking fire, and a wiry, wayward grizzled fringe of dark hair-dark where it should have been bleached white by age, she was that old. She hobbled up to look me over, and though her step might have been shambling there was nothing wrong with the eyes in her head. People talk of eyes that pierce flesh and bone for brightness, and I always thought it mere fancy. Not so! She looked me over, and I felt my skin flayed back and my soul laid bare before a gaze keen as a fresh-stropped razor.

"This is Angharad, Banfaith of Britain," Iwan declared, pride swelling his voice.

At this the old woman bent her head. "I give thee good greeting, friend. Peace and joy be thine this day," she said in a voice that creaked like a dry bellows. "May thy sojourn here well become thee."

She spoke in an old-fashioned way that, oddly enough, suited her so well I soon forgot to remark on it at all.

"Peace, Banfaith," I replied. I'd heard and seen my mother's folk greeting the old ones from time to time, using a gesture of respect. This I did for her, touching the back of my hand to my forehead and hoping the sight of an ungainly half-Saxon offering this honour would not offend overmuch.

I was rewarded with a broad and cheerful smile that creased her wrinkled face anew, albeit pleasantly enough. "You have the learning, I ween," she said. "How came you by it?"

"My blessed mother taught her son the manners of the Cymry," I replied. "Though it is seldom enough I've had the chance to employ them these last many years. I fear my plough has grown rusty from neglect."

She chuckled at this. "Then we will burnish it up bright as new soon enough," she said. Turning to Iwan, she said, "How came you to find him?"

"He dropped out of a tree not ten steps from us," he answered. "Fell onto the road like an overgrown apple."

"Did he now?" she wondered. To me, she said, "Pray, why would you be hiding in the branches?"

"I saw the sign of a wolf on the road the night before and thought better to sleep with the birds."

"Prudent," she allowed. "Know you the wolves?"

"Enough to know it is best to stay out of reach of those long-legged rascals."

"He says he is searching for our Bran," put in Siarles. Impatient, he did not care to wait for the pleasant talk to come round to its destination as is the way with the Cymry. "He says he wants to offer his services."

"Does he now?" said Angharad. "Well, then, summon our lord and let us see how this cast falls out."

Siarles hurried away to one of the larger huts in the centre of the holding. By this time, the children had been spreading the word that a stranger had come, and folk were starting to gather. They were not, I observed, an altogether comely group: thin, frayed and worn, smudged around the edges as might be expected of people eking out a precarious life in deep forest. Few had shoes, and none had clothes that were not patched and patched again. At least two fellas in the crowd had lost a hand to Norman justice; one had lost his eyes.

A more hungry, haunted lot I never saw, nor hope to see-like the beggars that clot the doorways of the churches in the towns. But where beggars are hopeless in their desperation, these folk exuded the grim defiance of a people who exist on determination alone. And all of them had the look I'd already noticed on the young ones: an aspect of wary, almost skittish curiosity, as if, drawn to the sight of the stranger in their midst, they nevertheless were ready to flee at a word. One quick move on my part, and they'd bolt like deer, or take wing like a flock of sparrows.

"If your search be true," the old woman told me, "you have naught to fear."

I thanked her for her reassurance and stood to my fate. Presently, Siarles returned from the house accompanied by a young man, tall and slender as a rod, but with a fair span of shoulders and good strong arms. He wore a simple tunic of dark cloth, trousers of the same stuff, and long black riding boots. His hair was so black the sun glinted blue in his wayward locks. A cruel scar puckered the skin on the left side of his face, lifting his lip in what first appeared to be a haughty sneer-an impression only, belied by the ready wit that darted from eyes black as the bottom of a well on a moonless night.

There was no doubt that he was their leader, Bran-the man I had come to find. If the right and ready homage of the ragged forest folk failed to make that clear, you had only to take in the regal ease with which he surveyed all around him to know that here was a man well used to command. His very presence demanded attention, and he claimed mine without effort to the extent that at first I failed to see the young woman trailing behind him: a fine, dark-haired lady of such elegance and grace that, though she was dressed in the same humble drab as the starvelings around her, she held herself with such an imperious bearing that I took her to be the queen.

"I present Rhi Bran, Lord of Elfael," said Iwan, speaking loud enough for all gathered round to hear.

"Pax vobiscum," said the tall young man, looking me up and down with a sweep of a quick, intelligent eye.

"God's peace, my lord," I replied in Cymric, offering him the courtesy of a bow. "I am William Scatlocke, former forester to Thane Aelred of Nottingham."

"He's come to offer his services," Siarles informed his lordship with a mocking tone to let his master know what he thought of the idea.

Bran looked me over once again and finding no fault, I think, replied, "What kind of services do you propose, William Scatlocke?"

"Anything you require," I said. "From slaughtering hogs to thatching roofs, sawing timber to pollarding hazel, there's not much I haven't done."

"You said you were a forester," mused Bran, and I saw the glint of interest in his glance.

"Aye, I was-and a good one, if I say it myself."

"Why did you quit?"

"Thane Aelred, God bless him, lost his lands in the succession dispute and was banished to Daneland. All his vassals were turned out by Red William to fend for themselves, most like to starve, it was that grim."

The dark-haired young woman, who had been peering from behind Bran's shoulder, spoke up just then. "No wife, or children?"

"Nay, my lady," I replied. "As you see, I'm a young man yet, and hope burns bright. Still, young or old, a man needs a bit of wherewithal to keep even one small wife." I smiled and gave her a wink to let her know I meant it lightly. Unamused, she pressed her lips together primly. "Ah, well, I was just scraping some of that wherewithal together when the troubles began. Most lost more than I did, to be sure, but I lost all the little I had."

"I am sorry to hear it," said Bran. "But we are hard-pressed here, too, what with the care of ourselves and the folk of Elfael as well. Any man who would join us must earn his way and then some if he wants to stay." Then, as if he'd just thought of it, he said, "A good forester would know how to use a longbow. Do you draw, William?"

"I know which end of the arrow goes where," I replied.

"Splendid! We will draw against one another," he declared. "Win and you stay."

"If I should lose?"

His grin was sly and dark and full of mischief. "If you would stay, then I advise you not to lose," he said. "Well? What is it to be? Will you draw against me?"

There seemed to be no way around it, so I agreed. "That I will," I said, and found myself carried along in the sudden rush-the people to the contest, and myself to my fate.