The Forest

  ‘You could slip away, couldn’t you? After dark?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting, then. Two pounds, Tom. I’ll take it all if you don’t turn up.’

  It was long past dark when Brother Adam quietly tethered his horse and began to creep towards the edge of the paddock. It was very black so that once or twice he even had to feel his way. At the edge he paused. Slowly he began to make his way towards the vague shape of the barn.

  When something threw him to the ground.

  It was like a huge double blow to his back. He had no idea what it was, but he hit the ground so hard he was winded. An instant later his two assailants had his arms and were trying to turn him over. He still couldn’t speak, but he kicked out violently. He heard a man’s voice curse. Then one of the two wrapped his arms round his legs while the other punched him, very effectively in the solar plexus. It seemed to Adam that neither of his assailants was very large, but both were strong.

  Were they robbers? Here? His mind was just starting to work again when, with a sinking heart, he heard the voice of Tom Furzey.

  ‘Caught you.’

  What in the world could he say? He could think of nothing. Was this peasant going to haul him back to the abbey for fornicating with his wife? What would become of him?

  One of the two was fumbling with something. Then suddenly a lantern was being shone in his face.

  ‘Brother Adam!’

  Thank the Lord he still had his wits about him. Tom Furzey’s voice expressed such total astonishment, such confusion: whatever it meant, it was not him they had expected. His legs were let go. Another sign that they felt at a disadvantage. He struggled and sat up. He must bluff. ‘Furzey? I know your voice. What’s the meaning of this? Why aren’t you at St Leonards?’

  ‘But … What are you doing here, Brother Adam?’

  ‘Never mind that. Why are you here and why have you attacked me?’

  There was a pause. ‘Thought you might be someone else,’ Furzey’s voice replied sullenly.

  ‘He isn’t worth two pounds anyway.’ A woman’s voice, but not Mary’s.

  And then, of course, he realized. ‘I see. You thought Luke might come this way.’

  ‘My sister reckons she seen him.’

  ‘Ah.’ Thank God. He knew what to say now. ‘Well, Furzey,’ he said slowly, ‘you should not have left the grange without permission, but that is why I am here too. I had an idea he might be coming here and if so he’ll be taken.’

  ‘Then we won’t get our two pounds but you will, I suppose,’ said Tom.

  ‘You forget, I have no use for two pounds. Monks have no worldly goods.’

  ‘You mean we can catch him?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Adam said drily.

  ‘Oh.’ Furzey audibly brightened. ‘Maybe we can all watch for him then.’

  What could he do? Adam gazed towards the barn. What if Mary, wondering what had become of him, were to come out looking for him? Worse still, call his name? Could he tell them he was going to inspect the barn and try to warn her? He decided that was too risky. They’d think his presence might alert Mary to the fact that they were watching for her brother.

  Worse yet, what if Tom went in and Mary, seeing him, mistook him for her lover and called out the wrong name?

  Fortunately, he soon realized, Tom was far more eager to catch Luke than to encounter his wife. But there was still the possibility that poor Luke would come to visit his sister at dawn. He wondered if there were some way he could head him off, but could not see how, in the dark.

  So they waited. There was no sound from the barn, nor did Luke appear. When light came, they agreed to give up. Might he come and watch again? Furzey asked him.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Brother Adam replied. Then he rode away.

  He had much to do.

  The sun was well up when he reached the site where he had encountered the charcoal burner near Burley. It did not take him long to find Puckle, who had evidently seen him coming.

  There were two great charcoal cones he was tending now. The burning process of one was almost completed, by the look of it; the other had just started. Puckle was alone. There was no sign of Luke.

  Brother Adam did not waste time. ‘I’ve a message for Luke.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘I know. You haven’t seen him. Just give him a message.’ He told Puckle briefly about Tom’s vigil. ‘He’d better not go there. Now.’ He took a deep breath – he’d thought about trying to give her the message himself but decided the risk was too great – ‘I need to ask a favour of you. Please tell Mary the house is being watched. You can tell her I told you. She’ll understand.’

  And how much, he wondered, would Puckle understand? Might he wonder why he was doing Mary and Luke a favour or might he guess the whole truth? Staring at that oaken face it was impossible to know. He looked Puckle in the eye. ‘Silence buys silence, I hope.’

  Puckle just looked at him, then gazed down at his fire. Only as the monk rode away did he mutter: ‘Always has done in the Forest.’

  Dear God, thought Adam, as he went back towards the abbey lands, I’m even in league, criminally, with Puckle now. Yet, as he listened to the morning birdsong, he found only a strange sense of exhilaration at his fall from grace.

  He would have been most surprised, once he was out of sight, to see what happened to the second charcoal fire. A small door opened in its turf side from which, not at all burned or even heated, Luke emerged.

  The hiding place Puckle had contrived was the neatest thing imaginable. The top half of the huge cone was constructed internally more or less as an ordinary charcoal fire, except that by using damp materials Puckle could produce a great deal of smoke with very little heat. But below this, with a thick turf inner roof, was a hollow space in which Luke could remain, quite comfortably, with air holes providing ventilation, for as long as he liked. Each day at dawn Puckle intended to remake the fire at the top and no one passing by, even the sharpest-eyed, would ever guess its secret.

  The next week was a busy one in the Forest.

  On two successive days, because of the insistence of the prior, the foresters had the hounds out. The steward was so bored by the business that he gave the whole responsibility to young Alban. The first day they drew in the woods near Pride’s and went all the way across almost to Burley. But there the scent became so confused that they did nothing but go round in circles. The next day they tried over towards Minstead. But mysteriously the scent seemed to lead straight to the house of the forester, who was not at all amused.

  Half the Forest, either openly or secretly, was on the lookout. The foresters and their stewards rode about in groups. Cottages were visited, every woodsman stopped. It all came to nothing, but as Puckle remarked sadly to Luke one night: ‘It’s going to be difficult for you to come out.’

  Mary waited for ten days before she set off to her appointment. During this time she did not see Brother Adam once. But he was seldom out of her thoughts.

  What does a woman feel when she seduces a monk? She smiled now, a little, to think that even on that first afternoon, although she had been distressed and he protective, he was still unaware that it was she, really, who had seduced him. It was his innocence that she instinctively wanted, this strong, manly man who had never known a woman. And she, the peasant wife of a humble labourer, had it in her power to teach him to know life. He had taken a step, even half a step towards her. He had asked without even knowing he was asking – or certainly for what he was asking.

  I have taken a man of God, a man forbidden, and I have made him blaze like the sun: at moments she had been almost heady with the sense of her womanly triumph. Not that she had let him see it. Not at first, anyway. She had brought him along, she thought with a smile, very nicely.

  Was that all, then? Just a seduction? Oh, no. There was the reason that she had been drawn to him in the first place: his fineness, his intelligence; her sense that he had what she did not; her c
ertainty that, even if she wasn’t quite sure what these things were, she wanted to have them.

  At first, when they talked in the night, she would ask him: ‘What are you thinking?’ And he would reply something that he thought she would understand. But soon, when she made clear she wanted more, he would make an effort and try to explain his nightly musings. ‘There was a great philosopher, you see, called Abelard, and he thought …’ he might explain. Or he would speak of far-off lands, or great events, a world that was far beyond anything she had known, yet which, dimly, as though seeing light coming through a church window, she could discern. And he was in that other world. She knew it. ‘Your mind is in the stars,’ she once whispered, but not in mockery. And when another time, after he had told her some wonderful idea, she laughed – ‘And being inside me made you think of that?’ – she was, in truth, more pleased than she had ever been in her life.

  But recently there had been more to worry about.

  Her appointment with Luke, made when Puckle brought her the message, was in a quiet place in the woods north of Brockenhurst. She took care she was not followed.

  He was already waiting for her there, by a huge old oak tree, thick with moss and ivy. She was glad to see he was looking well and he seemed quite cheerful. Yet the news he had was less so. ‘Puckle thinks I ought to leave the Forest. The prior’s never going to give up.’

  ‘After the Michaelmas court he might.’

  ‘No.’ Luke sighed. ‘You don’t know him.’

  ‘I still think you should turn yourself in. They aren’t going to hang you.’

  ‘Probably not. But you can’t trust them.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘On pilgrimage, maybe. Compostella. Thousands of people go there.’

  Compostella. Spain. You could beg along the way, they said. She doubted it. She shook her head. ‘You’ve never been out of the Forest.’

  ‘I like walking, though.’

  For a while they were silent.

  ‘What’s happening with Brother Adam, then?’ he asked.

  Now it was her turn to announce worrying news. ‘I think I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Oh. You sure?’

  ‘Almost. I think so. It feels like it.’

  ‘Couldn’t be Tom?’ She shook her head. ‘What’ll you do?’ She only shrugged. Luke was thoughtful. ‘Reckon you and Tom … You’d better give him a chance to think it’s his, hadn’t you?’

  She took a long breath. ‘I know.’ Her voice was flat. He’d never heard it quite like that before.

  ‘You’ve been with him a lot of years. Can’t be so bad.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ He didn’t. They were all just forest creatures to him.

  ‘You going to tell Brother Adam?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You know, Mary, this can’t go on. I mean, it’ll be winter. Tom’ll be home. You’ve a family and Brother Adam’s a monk.’

  ‘There’ll be next spring and summer, Luke.’

  ‘But Mary …’

  How could he understand? He was a simple boy. She might lie with Tom. She’d have to. There was no way out of that, really. But Adam was there too. She’d heard women talk about lovers. Such things occurred in some villages, especially around harvest time. Perhaps when she’d started with Brother Adam she’d thought that, being a monk, he’d be safe: back in Beaulieu Abbey where he belonged when it was over. The trouble was, she had known a finer kind of man now. The fact of Brother Adam could never be taken from her. She could not step back into the same stream. The landscape had subtly changed.

  ‘Beaulieu’s not far, Luke. I’m not going back to only Tom.’

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘No.’

  Luke and Puckle talked for a long time that night.

  In the end Puckle said: ‘I think you’ve got to do it.’

  ‘Will you help me?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  If one walked along the eastern side of the cloister at Beaulieu from the church one came first to the big locked cupboard – for that was all it was – known as the bookcase, where the abbey’s stock of books was mostly kept. Then came the vestry; after that the larger chapter house where every Monday morning, while the abbot was away, Grockleton would read out the abbey’s rules to the assembled monks. Then the scriptorium where Brother Adam liked to spend his time studying, then the monks’ dormitory and just round the corner, next to the big frater, was the warming house, a spacious room with a fire.

  John of Grockleton had just emerged from the warming house when the message came and he hurried to the gate.

  The messenger was a servant, from Alban, who desired to speak with him privately. His message caused the prior’s face to crease into a smile: ‘We think we have Brother Luke, Prior.’

  The problem was that he wasn’t talking. Alban, it seemed, was reluctant to turn up at the abbey with him unless he was quite sure who he was. Otherwise, he felt, they’d all be made to look like fools again. So he was holding the fellow secretly at his house. Would the prior come, discreetly, and identify the lay brother? ‘I am to conduct you, if you are willing,’ the servant explained.

  ‘I shall come at once,’ Grockleton said and sent to the stables for his horse.

  It was all the prior could do, as they rode across the heath, to contain his enthusiasm. They proceeded at a trot or a canter. He would happily have galloped. At the far edge of the heath, they entered the woods west of Brockenhurst and started to canter along a track. The prior was smiling. He had hardly been happier in his life.

  ‘This way, sir,’ called the servant again, taking a track to the left. ‘Short cut.’ The track was narrower. Once or twice he was smacked in the face by overhanging branches, but he didn’t care. ‘This way, sir,’ called the servant, veering right. He followed eagerly, then frowned. Where the devil had the fellow gone? He pulled up. Called out.

  And was greatly astonished when a pair of hands seized him from behind, pulling him off his horse and, before he even had time to struggle, slipped a rope round him which, a second later was made fast to a tree.

  He was about to cry out ‘Murder! Thieves!’ when another figure appeared miraculously in front of him. A shaggy, forest figure whom he recognized, after only a moment, Brother Luke.

  ‘You!’ His natural posture was to lean forward. Now the prior strained towards him so hard it seemed as if he meant to bite him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ the insolent fellow replied. ‘I only wanted a talk. I’d have come to the abbey, but …’ He smiled and shrugged.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To return to the abbey.’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘No, Prior. I hope not.’ He sat down on the ground in front of Grockleton. ‘Can I talk?’

  It was not, Grockleton had to admit, what he would have expected. Firstly, Luke spoke of the abbey and its granges and his years there. He did so quite simply and with such feeling that, like it or not, Grockleton could see that he genuinely loved the place. Then he explained what had happened that day at the grange. He made no excuses about letting the poachers in, but explained how he had tried to stop Brother Matthew striking Martell and how he had panicked and fled. Little as he liked this either, the prior secretly guessed that it was true.

  ‘You should have returned then.’

  ‘I was afraid. Afraid of you.’

  It did not wholly displease Grockleton that this peasant should be afraid of him. ‘And why should I do anything for you now?’ he demanded.

  ‘If I told you something important, for the good of the abbey, something nobody knows, might you see your way …?’

  ‘It’s possible.’ Grockleton considered.

  ‘It would be bad for one of the monks, though.’

  Grockleton frowned. ‘Which monk?’

  ‘Brother Adam. It’d be very bad for him.’

  ‘What is it?’ The prior could not conceal the glint in his eye.

  Luke saw it. This
was what he needed. ‘You’ve got to send him away. No scandal. That’d be bad for the abbey anyway. He’s got to go away. And I’ve got to come back, with no more Forest court or anything. You can arrange that. I need your word.’

  Grockleton hesitated. He understood deals and his word was his word. But there was an obvious difficulty. ‘Priors don’t bargain with lay brothers,’ he said frankly.

  ‘You’ll never hear another sound from me afterwards. That’s my word.’

  Grockleton pondered. He put it all in the balance. He thought also of the reaction of the court and the foresters, who he knew very well were sick of him, if they heard this honest fellow speak as eloquently in court as he had just done now. He might be better off with Luke on his side. And then … Luke said he had something on Brother Adam. ‘If it’s good, you have my word,’ he heard himself saying.

  So Luke betrayed Brother Adam and his sister Mary.

  Except, Grockleton thought as he listened to the peasant, that it was not really a betrayal. Seen from Luke’s point of view there was something profoundly natural about it. He saw his sister’s family about to be blasted by a storm; so he was protecting them. A sudden blow, the shedding of blood; it was just nature.

  Nor did the perfect balance of the thing escape the prior. Once Adam was gone, Mary would have no choice but to live in peace with her husband. The child would be treated as Tom’s. It was in nobody’s interest to say a word. Except his own, of course, if he wanted entirely to destroy Brother Adam. But even that made no sense. For if he exposed Adam, he’d damage the abbey’s reputation. And what would the abbot say about that? No, the peasant’s judgement was good. Besides. He thought of something else, something in the secret book, known only to the abbot. He had to be a little careful himself.

  What of Luke, though? Could he be trusted to behave himself? Probably. He had no wish to hurt his sister by making trouble, though he continued to hold the threat of his knowledge about the monk as a sort of protection. In any case, I’m better off with him safely inside the abbey than outside, the prior considered.

  And so, for the first time in his life, Grockleton started to think like an abbot.