THE HUNT

1099

The deer started. She trembled for a moment, then listened.

A grey-black spring night still lay like a blanket over the sky. Along the edge of the wood, in the damp air, the peaty scent of the heath beyond mingled with the faint mustiness of last year’s fallen leaves. It was quiet, as if the whole island of Britain were waiting for something to happen in the silence before the dawn.

Then suddenly, a skylark started singing in the dark. Only he had seen the hint of paleness on the horizon.

The deer turned her head, not satisfied. Something was approaching.

Puckle made his way through the wood. There was no need to move silently. As his feet brushed the leaves or snapped a twig, he might have been mistaken for a badger, wild pig or some other denizen of the Forest.

Away on his left, the screech of a tawny owl careened through the dark tunnels and sweeping arches of the oaks.

Puckle: was it his father, or his grandfather, or someone further back who had been known by the name of Puckle? Puck: it was one of those strange old names that grew, mysteriously, out of the English landscape. Puck Hill: there were several along the southern shores. Perhaps the name came from that. Or perhaps it was a diminutive: little Puck. Nobody knew. But having got one name, the family had never seemed to bother with any more. Old Puckle, young Puckle, the other Puckle: there was always a certain vagueness about which was which. When he and his family had been kicked out of their hamlet by the servants of the new Norman king, they had wandered across the Forest and finally set up a ramshackle camp by one of the streams that ran down to the River Avon at the Forest’s western edge. Recently they had moved several miles south to another stream.

Puckle. The name suited him. Thickset, gnarled like an oak, his powerful shoulders stooped forward as though he was pulling some great weight, he often worked with the charcoal burners. Even to the Forest people his comings and goings were mysterious. Sometimes, when the firelight caught his oaken face in its reddish glow, he looked like a goblin. Yet the children would cluster round him when he came to the hamlets to make gates or wattle fences, which he did better than anyone else. They liked his quiet ways. Women found themselves strangely drawn to some deep inner heat they sensed in the woodsman. At his camp by the water, there were always pigeons hanging, and the skin of a hare or some other small creature neatly stretched on pegs; or perhaps the remains of one of the trout who ventured up the little brown streams. Yet the forest animals hardly troubled to avoid him, almost as if they sensed that he was one of them.

As he moved through the darkness now, a rough leather jerkin covering his torso, his bare legs thrust into stout leather boots, he might have been a figure from the very dawn of time.

The deer remained, head raised. She had wandered a little apart from the rest of the group who were still feeding peacefully in the new spring grasses near the woodland edge.

Though deer have good vision, and a highly developed sense of smell, it is on their hearing – their outer ears being very large in relation to the skull – that they often rely to detect danger, especially if it is downwind. Deer can pick up even the snap of a twig at huge distances. Already, she could tell that Puckle’s footsteps were moving away from her.

She was a fallow deer. There were three kinds of deer in the Forest. The great red deer with their russet-brown coats were the ancient princes of the place. Then, in certain corners there were the curious roe deer – delicate little creatures, hardly bigger than a dog. Recently, however, the Norman conquerors had introduced a new and lovely breed: the elegant fallow deer.

She was nearly two years old. Her coat was patchy, prior to changing from its winter mulberry colour to the summer camouflage – a pale, creamy brown with white spots. Like almost all fallow deer, she had a white rump and a black-fringed white tail. But for some reason nature had made her coat a little paler than was usual.

To another deer she would, almost certainly, have been identifiable without this peculiarity: the hindquarter markings of every deer are subtly different from those of every other. Each carries, as it were, a coded marking as individual as a human fingerprint – and far more visible. She was, therefore, already unique. But nature had added, perhaps for man’s pleasure, this paleness as well. She was a pretty animal. This year, at the autumn rutting season, she would find a mate. As long as the hunters did not kill her.

Her instincts warned her still to be cautious. She turned her head left and right, listening for other sounds. Then she stared. The dark trees turned into shadows in the distant gloom. A little way off a fallen branch, stripped of its bark, glimmered like a pair of antlers. Behind, a small hazel bush might have been an animal.

Things were not always what they seemed in the Forest. Long seconds passed before, satisfied at last, she slowly lowered her head.

And now the dawn chorus began. Out on the heather, a stonechat joined in with a whistling chatter from its perch on a gorse bush – a faint spike of yellow in the darkness. The light was breaking in the eastern sky. Now a warbler tried to interrupt, its chinking trills filling the air; then a blackbird started fluting from the leafy trees. From somewhere behind the blackbird came the sharp drilling of a woodpecker, in two short bursts on a bark drum; moments later, the gentle cooing of a turtle dove. And then, still in the darkness, followed the cuckoo, an echo floating down the woodland edge. Thus each proclaimed its little kingdom before the time of mating in the spring.

Over the heath, rising higher and higher, the lark sang louder still, above them all. For he had glimpsed the rising sun.

Horses snorted. Men stamped their feet. The hounds panted impatiently. The smell of horse and woodsmoke permeated the yard.

It was time to go hunting.

Adela watched them. A dozen men had already gathered: the huntsmen in green with feathers in their caps; several knights and squires from the area. She had pleaded hard to be allowed to ride with them, but her cousin Walter had only grudgingly agreed when she reminded him: ‘At least I shall be seen. You are supposed, you know, to be finding me a husband.’

It was not easy for a young woman in her position. Only a year had passed since that cold, blank time when her father had died. Her mother, pale, suddenly rather drawn, had entered a convent. ‘It preserves my dignity,’ she told Adela as she entrusted the girl to her relatives, thus leaving her with nothing but her good name and a few dozen poor acres in Normandy to recommend her. The relations had done their best for her; and it had not been long before their thoughts had turned to the kingdom of England where, since the Norman Duke William had conquered it, many sons of Norman families had found estates – sons who might be glad of a French-speaking wife from their native land. ‘Of all your kinsmen,’ she was told, ‘your cousin Walter Tyrrell is the best placed to help you. He made a brilliant marriage himself.’ Walter had married into the mighty family of Clare: their estates in England were huge. ‘Walter will find you a husband,’ they said. But he hadn’t so far. She was not sure she really trusted Walter.

The yard was typical of the Saxon manors in the region. Large timber, barn-like buildings with thatched roofs surrounded it on three sides. Their walls were made of great darkened planks. In the centre, the great hall was marked by an elaborately carved doorway and an outside staircase to reach the upper floor. The manor was sited only a short distance from the clear and quiet waters of the River Avon, as it flowed down from the chalk ridges by the castle of Sarum, fifteen miles to the north. A few miles upstream lay the village of Fordingbridge; downstream the little town of Ringwood and, eight miles beyond, the Avon entered the shallow harbour protected by its headland and thence out to the open sea.

‘Here they come!’ A shout went up as a movement of the door of the hall indicated that the leaders of the party were about to emerge. Walter came first, looking cheerful; then a squire; and behind them, the man they were waiting for: Cola.

Cola the Huntsman, lord of the manor, master of the Forest: he was silver-haired, now; his long, drooping moustache grey. But he was still a splendid figure. Tall, broad-chested, his athletic frame might not be lithe any longer, but he walked with the grace of an old lion. He was every inch a Saxon noble. And if, perhaps, there was something about him that suggested that, deep within, he felt some loss of dignity since the Normans came, Adela guessed that his old eyes could still flash fire.

It was not Cola, however, at whom she found herself staring. It was his sons who followed just behind him. There were two of them, both in their twenties but one, she estimated, three or four years older than the other. Tall and handsome, with their long blond hair, short beards and bright blue eyes, she supposed that each must be a replica of the man their father once had been. They walked lightly, athletically, with such an air of noble breeding that she instinctively felt glad that these Saxons, at least, had kept their manor, unlike the many others who had lost out to her own people. As her eyes continued to rest upon them she even had to check herself with an inward smile. Dear God, she realized what she had been thinking: in their natural state these young men must be … absolutely beautiful.

A few moments later, just as the sun was tipping over the oak trees on the horizon, the whole party, some twenty of them, moved off.

The valley of the River Avon, which they were about to leave, was a delightful region. Across the broad coastal plain, which lies below the bare chalk ridges of Sarum, past geological ages had left a swathe of gravel beds. Since then the descending river had carved a broad, shallow path southwards, its banks becoming low gravel ridges clothed with trees, into which, over countless centuries, it had gently deposited a rich alluvium. Between Fordingbridge and Ringwood the valley was about two miles wide; and if the placid river which now made its way through the lush fields was only a trickle compared with its former state, it would sometimes, after the spring rains, overflow its banks and cover all the surrounding meadows with a sheet of sparkling water as if to remind the world that it was still the ancient owner of the place.

Adela had never ridden out with a hunt like this and she felt excited. She was also curious. Their destination, she knew, lay just over the eastern ridge of the Avon valley; and part of the reason why she had begged to go that day was the chance to explore this wild region about which she had often heard. It was not long before they came to the foot of the ridge, passing a little stream and a huge old oak tree standing alone. They walked their horses up a winding track with oak and holly trees and scrub on either side. She noticed, as they got higher, that there were patches of exposed gravel on the track.

Yet it still caught her unawares and made her give a little gasp of surprise as, coming out over the top of the ridge, the wood abruptly ended and then, suddenly, the horizon and the sky burst open all around her and she entered another land entirely.

It was not what she had expected. Before her, as far as the eye could see, lay a vast tract of brown heath. The sun, still low on the horizon, was starting with a yellowish stare to disperse the trails of morning mist that stretched like strands of cobweb across the landscape. The bracken and heather-clad ridge on to which they had emerged swept down long slopes on each side into broad, shallow bottoms: a bog on the left; on the right, a gravelly stream with grass verges. All around, the heather was dotted with bushes and brakes of gorse in yellow flower. On another ridge, a mile away, a clump of holly trees stood out against the skyline. And, past that, the next ridge was covered by oak woodland, like the fringe behind her.

There was something else about the landscape too. As she glanced down at the peaty topsoil by her horse’s hoofs, noticed the gravel stones there, which were an almost luminous white, and then looked up again and sniffed the air, she had a curious sense that, even though she could not see it, she was somewhere near the sea.

Were there human habitations in this great wild waste? Were there hamlets, isolated farmsteads or cottages? There must be, she supposed; but there were none in sight. All was empty, quiet, primitive.

So this was King William the Conqueror’s New Forest.

Forest: a French term. It did not mean woodland, although huge woods lay within its borders, but rather an area set apart – a reservation – for the king’s hunting. Its deer, in particular, were protected by savage forest laws. Kill one of the king’s deer and you lost your hand, even your life. And since the Norman conqueror had only recently taken the region for his own, the New Forest – Nova Foresta, in the Latin of official documents – the place was now called.

Not that anything in the medieval world was supposed to be new. Ancient precedent was sought for every innovation. Certainly the Saxon kings had gone hunting in the area since time out of mind. So according to the Norman conqueror the place had already been under a stern forest law two generations earlier, in the good old days of King Canute, and he even produced a charter to prove it.

The area he took for his New Forest was a huge wedge: from west to east it stretched from the Avon valley almost twenty miles across to a great inlet that came in from the sea. From north to south it descended gently for over twenty miles in a series of gravelly shelves, from the chalk ridges east of Sarum all the way down to a tract of wild marshland on the coast of the English Channel. It was a mixed terrain, a great patchwork of heath and woodland, grassy lawn and bog, over which little bands of men had wandered, settled, made clearances and departed for so many thousands of years that it was no longer possible to decipher with certainty whether any patch of the landscape was fashioned by the design of God or the cruder hand of man. Most of the land was peaty and acidic, and therefore poor; but here and there were tracts of richer soil, which could be cultivated. The greatest oak woods lay in the southern basin, often by boggy ground, and had probably not been disturbed for over five thousand years.

And then there was the other feature of the New Forest that Adela had correctly sensed: the presence of the sea. Often the warm south-westerly breezes carried a faint hint of salt air even to the northern parts of the Forest. But the sea itself was nearly always hidden until one came out of the oak woods on to the coastal marshes. One visible sign there was, however. For opposite the eastern part of the Forest’s shore and divided from it by a three-mile channel known as the Solent water, rose the friendly hump of the chalky Isle of Wight. And from numerous vantage points, even from the high downs below Sarum, one could look right across the whole basin of the Forest to see the island beyond, misty and purple across the sea.

‘Stop daydreaming! You’ll get left behind.’

Walter was facing her, looking embarrassed, and she realized that, to take in the view, she had unconsciously pulled up and let the rest of the party draw ahead.

‘Sorry,’ she said and they went forward, Walter trotting officiously at her side.

She looked at him critically. With his small, curling moustache and slightly stupid pale-blue eyes, how did Walter manage to insinuate himself everywhere? Probably because, even though he had no special talent, it was clear that he was doggedly determined to make himself useful to the powers that be. Even his powerful in-laws might feel pleased that, if he was on their side, he must think they were winning. Not a bad fellow to have in the family in these uncertain times.

There were always political intrigues going on in the Norman world. When King William the Conqueror had died a dozen years before, his inheritance had been divided between his sons: red-haired William, known as Rufus, had got England; Normandy had gone to Robert; a third son, Henry, received only an income. But as even Adela knew, the situation was always uneasy. Many of the great nobles had estates in both England and Normandy; but while Rufus was a competent ruler, Robert was not and it was often said that Rufus would take over Normandy one day. Yet Robert had his admirers. One great Norman family who held some of the lands along the New Forest coast was said to like him. And what of young Henry? He seemed contented with his lot, but was he? The situation was further complicated by the fact that so far, neither Rufus nor Robert had married and produced an heir. But when she had innocently asked Walter when the King of England would marry, he had only shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ he had answered. ‘He prefers young men.’

Adela sighed to herself. Whatever turn events might take in the future, she supposed Walter would be sure to know which was the winning side.

The party was making swift progress across the heath. Here and there she noticed small groups of sturdy ponies eating grass or gorse. ‘They’re all over the Forest,’ Walter explained. ‘They look wild but many of them belong to the peasants in the hamlets.’ They were pretty little creatures and, judging by the numbers she could see, there must be thousands of them in the Forest.

Cola and his sons led the way. If the king had reserved the New Forest for his deer, this was not only for his amusement. Of course, the sport was excellent. Not only deer, but wild boar could be hunted. There were a few wolves to be killed, too. When the king went hunting with his friends they normally used bows. But the underlying need for the Forest was much more practical. The king and his court, his men at arms, sometimes even his sailors, had to be fed. They needed meat. Deer breed and grow rapidly. The venison meat they produce is delicious and very lean. It could be salted – there were salt beds by the coast – and sent all over the kingdom. The New Forest was a deer farm.

It was a very professional one. Run by several foresters – some of them Saxons like Cola, left in place because of their intimate knowledge of the area – the Forest kept a stock of about seven thousand deer. When one of the royal huntsmen led a party out to kill deer for the king, as Cola was doing today, they would not rely on bows, but on a far more efficient method. Today would be a great drive, or drift, with this and other parties fanning out over a wide area and expertly driving the game before them towards a huge trap. The trap, which was being set up at the royal manor of Lyndhurst in the centre of the Forest, consisted of a long curving fence, which would funnel the deer down towards an inclosure where they could be shot with bows or caught in nets in large numbers. ‘It’s like a spiral seashell in the middle of the Forest,’ Walter had told her. ‘There’s no escape.’

Though cruelly efficient, it conjured up an image in her mind that was magical and strangely mysterious.

They began to descend a slope towards a wood. On her right, she heard a skylark singing and looked up at the pale-blue sky to find it. As she did so, she realized Walter was speaking to her. ‘The trouble with you,’ she heard him start, before she closed her mind to the sound of his voice.

There was always so much the matter with her, according to Walter. ‘You should try to walk more elegantly,’ he would say. Or smile more. Or wear another gown. ‘You’re not bad looking,’ he had been good enough to tell her the week before. ‘Even if some people would say you should be slimmer.’

This was a new fault. ‘Do they say that?’ she had gently asked.

‘No,’ he had replied after consideration. ‘But I should think that they might.’

Underlying all these criticisms, though, and the faint embarrassment her presence clearly caused him, was the one great shortcoming she was powerless to correct. I’m sure, she thought wryly, that if I had a huge dowry, he would think me beautiful.

She could see the lark now: a tiny speck high over the ridge, its voice descending, full-throated, clear as a bell. She smiled, then turned, as something else caught her eye.

The figure riding over the heath was catching up with them rapidly. He rode alone. He was wearing a hunting cap and was dressed in dark-green; but even before she could see more of him, it was clear from the magnificent bay he rode that this was no ordinary squire. With what an easy, powerful stride the big horse cantered towards them. It made her heart thrill to watch. And the rider, in a quiet way, seemed as impressive as his mount. As he drew closer she saw a tall, dark-haired man. His face was aquiline, Norman and somewhat stern. She guessed he might be thirty and he was obviously born to authority. As he passed them he lightly touched his cap in polite acknowledgement, but since he did not turn his head it was impossible to tell whether he had actually seen her. She saw him canter straight to the head of the party and salute Cola, who returned the greeting with evident respect. She wondered who this latecomer might be and rather unwillingly turned to Walter, who she found was watching her already.

‘That’s Hugh de Martell,’ he said. ‘Holds large estates west of the Forest.’ And then, just as she had started to remark that he looked a rather cold, disagreeable character, Walter gave an irritating laugh. ‘You can’t have him, little cousin.’ He grinned. ‘He’s already taken. Martell’s married.’

The morning sun was well up in the sky and, although everything was quiet, it still seemed to his wife that Godwin Pride was taking a bit of a chance. Normally he finished soon after dawn. ‘You know the law,’ she reminded him.

But Pride said nothing and went on. ‘They won’t come down this way,’ he finally said. ‘Not today.’

There was a scent of sweet grass in the air. A fly nearly settled on Pride’s neck, but then thought better of it. After another minute or two, a small boy came and stood beside her to watch his father.

‘I can hear something,’ she suggested.

Pride paused, listened, gave her a quiet look. ‘No, you can’t,’ he said.

The hamlet of Oakley consisted of a small scattering of thatched huts and homesteads by a green of close-cropped moorland grass. Across the green was a shallow pond whose surface at present was covered by a straggling carpet of little white flowers. Two small oaks, an ash and several bushes of bramble and yellow gorse overhung the water at various points. Although the grass was short and coarse, three cows and a couple of ponies were grazing on the green. Just behind the hamlet, a gravel track led into woodland where it soon descended, between high banks, to a small river. At the eastern end of the hamlet, set a little apart, was the homestead of Godwin Pride.

Godwin Pride: the two names could hardly have been more Saxon; yet a glance at their owner suggested a different ancestry. He was stooping over his work again now, but when he had straightened up to answer his wife, what a fine figure he had presented. Built long, with a straight back, hair falling in rich chestnut curls to his shoulders, a full matching beard and moustache, a beak of a nose, lustrous brown eyes – all these indicated that, like many of the people living in the Forest, he was, at least in part, a Celt.

Romans had come; Saxons had come. In particular that branch of the Saxon peoples known as Jutes had settled in the Isle of Wight and the eastern part of the Forest, which was known as Ytene – the land of the Jutes. But in that isolated region, whose deep woods, poor heaths and marshland did not invite much attention, a remnant of the old Celtic population had quietly lived on. Indeed, their life on their homesteads, modest but well adapted to their forest environment, had probably changed very little since the ancient and pleasant peace of the Bronze Age.

It was unusual in the reign of Rufus for a man, especially a peasant, to have a family name. But there were several cousins bearing the name of Pride in the Forest – Pryde in Old English signifying not so much arrogance, although there was some of that, as a sense of personal worth, an independence of spirit, a knowledge that the ancient Forest was theirs to live in as they pleased. As Cola the Saxon noble would still advise visiting Normans: ‘It’s easier to coax these people than try to give them orders. They won’t be told.’

Perhaps it was for this reason that even the mighty Conqueror, when he had created the New Forest, allowed some compromises. As far as the land was concerned, many of the Forest estates were already royal manors, so there was no need to kick anybody out. Some others he did take over; but many estates around the Forest edge lost only their woodland and heathland to the king’s hunting. As for the people, several Saxon aristocrats like Cola found themselves left in place, so long as they made themselves useful: and whatever it may have cost his soul, Cola had played safe. Other lords did lose their land, as Saxon nobles had all over England; so did some of the peasants, either moving to new hamlets or, like Puckle, living off the Forest. Yet for all those remaining in the area there were compensations.

True, the Norman forest laws were harsh. There were two overall categories of offence: those called vert and those termed venison. The vert concerned vegetation – forbidding the chopping down of trees, the making of inclosures, anything that could damage the habitat of the king’s deer. These were the lesser offences. The venison crimes concerned the poaching of game and, most especially, deer. The Conqueror’s penalty for killing a deer had been blinding. Rufus had gone even further: a peasant who killed a stag must suffer death. The forest laws were hated.

But there were still the ancient common rights of the Forest folk; and these the Conqueror left largely intact and even, in places, extended. In Pride’s hamlet, for instance, though a piece of land beside his homestead had been taken under forest law – which Pride regarded as an imposition – except during certain prohibited periods of the year, he could turn out as many ponies and cattle as he pleased to graze all over the king’s Forest; in the autumn his pigs could forage on the rich crop of fresh acorns; he also had the right to cut turves for his peat fire, gather fallen wood, of which there was always plenty, and to carry home bracken as bedding for his animals.

Technically, Godwin Pride was termed a copyholder. The local noble who now held Oakley hamlet was his feudal lord. Did this mean that he had to go out and plough the lord’s land three days a week and bow his head if his lord passed? Not at all. There were no great manorial fields; this was the Forest. True, he put marl on the lord’s small field, paid some modest feudal dues, such as a few pence for the pigs he kept, and helped if there was wood to be carted. But these were more like rents for his smallholding. He lived, in practice, just as his ancestors had done, minding his holding, and earning useful extra money in occasional labour connected with the king’s hunting and the maintenance of his forest. He was practically a free man.

The forest smallholders did not live so badly. Were they grateful? Of course not. Godwin Pride, faced with this foreign interference, had done what people in such circumstances have done through the ages. First he had raged; then grumbled; finally he had come to a resentful compromise laced with contempt. And then he had settled down, quietly and methodically, to beat the system. This, watched nervously by his wife, was what he was doing this morning.

He had been a child when the land by his family’s homestead had been taken into the king’s New Forest. Just beside their little barn, however, a small strip of about a quarter-acre had been left for them. This was used as a pen where the family’s livestock could be kept and fed in the months when they were not allowed on the Forest. Around it was a fence. But the pen was really not big enough.

Every year, therefore, in the spring when the animals were back on the Forest, Godwin Pride enlarged it.

Not by much. He was very careful. Just a few feet at a time. First, during the night, he would move the fence. That was the easy part. Then, as the light came up, he would go over the ground minutely, filling in and masking the place where the fence had been before, and using turves he had secretly cut in advance, where necessary, returfing the area he had taken over. By early morning it was very hard to see what he had done. But, to be safe, he would immediately put the pigs on that section. A few weeks of the pigs using it and the ground would be too messy to see anything. The next year the same thing again: imperceptibly the pen was growing.

It was illegal, of course. Chopping down trees or stealing a piece of the king’s land was a crime of vert. A tiny encroachment like this, termed a purpresture, was not a serious offence, but a punishable crime all the same. It was also, to Pride, a secret blow for freedom.

Normally he would have finished long before this time and the pigs would already have been moved in with as much general mess as possible. But today, because of the big deer drive, he saw no need to hurry. The king’s servants would all be up at Lyndhurst where the deer would be caught.

There were several woodland settlements in the middle section of the Forest. First there was Lyndhurst with its deer trap. Since hurst in Anglo-Saxon meant ‘wood’, the name probably signified that a grove of lime trees had once grown there. From Lyndhurst a track led south through ancient woodland until, after four miles, it reached the village in a break in the woods known as Brockenhurst, where there was a hunting lodge in which the king liked to stay. From there the track continued south beside a small river running down in a tiny, steep valley, past the village of Boldre, where there was a small church, towards the coast. The little hamlet containing Pride’s homestead lay over a mile to the east of this river and nearly four miles south of Brockenhurst, at a point where the belt of ancient woodland gave on to a large heath. Even as the crow flies, the hamlet was nearly seven miles away from Lyndhurst.

The huntsmen, he knew, were going to drift the deer down from the north into the trap. Every one of the king’s Forest servants would be up there; none of them would be coming down his way that morning.

With an almost deliberate slowness, therefore, he was taking his time, inwardly chuckling to himself at his wife’s anxiety and annoyance.

So he was more than surprised, a moment later, when he heard his wife give a little cry of alarm and looked up to see two riders approaching.

The morning had gone by quietly for the pale deer. For several hours her little herd had remained feeding in the open as the sun rose higher.

They were all does or fawns, since the adult males had mostly begun by this season to dwell apart. A slight swelling of their flanks indicated that a number of the does were pregnant; in another two months they would give birth. The fawns who still accompanied them were weaned now. The male fawns exhibited the bumps which later in the year would grow into their first horns – the little spikes which, when they are yearlings, give them the name of prickets. Very soon, now, the prickets would forsake their mothers and move away.

Time passed. The birds’ chorus subsided to a tuneful twittering, which was joined, in the increasing warmth, by the quiet whirr, drone and buzz of the countless forest insects. It was mid-morning before the senior doe who was the leader indicated by stalking into the trees that it was time to go to the day rest.

Deer are creatures of habit. True, in spring, they might wander away in search of choice feeding – visiting the fields of grain by the forest edge or, leaping his fences like silent shadows in the night, raiding the smallholdings of men like Pride. But the old doe was a cautious leader. Only twice that spring had she left the square mile that the herd usually inhabited; and if some of the younger does, like the pale deer, had felt restless, she had showed no sign that she meant to satisfy them. They followed the same path, therefore, that they always used to reach the day rest – a pleasant and sheltered glade in the oak woods – where the does obediently sank down to their usual position, lying with legs tucked in and head erect, their backs to the faint breeze. Only some of the prickets, unable to contain themselves, moved about, playing in the glade under the old doe’s watchful eye.

The pale deer had just lain down when she thought about her buck.

He was a handsome young fellow. She had noticed him at the time of the last rut in the autumn. She had been too young to take part then, although she had seen the fully grown does being serviced. He had been watching with the other junior bucks beside one of the lesser rutting stands; she had guessed from the size of his antlers that the next year he would be ready to claim a stand of his own.

The male fallow went through a series of growth stages, marked by the size of their antlers, which they cast each spring in order to grow a new and finer set for the next rutting season. After the spikes of the yearling pricket came the little antlers of the two-year-old, the sorel. The next year he became a sore, then a bare buck and then, at five, the proper antlers of the buck appeared. Even now, another two or three years would pass before he was fully grown and his antlers developed into the magnificent crowning set of the great buck.

Her buck was still young. She did not know where he had come from: for the bucks usually made their way to their rutting stands from home bases in other parts of the Forest. Would he be at the same stand this coming autumn, or would he perhaps be large and strong enough to dislodge the occupant of some more important stand? Why had she especially noticed him? She did not know. She had seen the great bucks with their mighty antlers, their powerful shoulders and swollen necks. Crowds of does clustered eagerly around their stands where the air was thick with the pungent odour they exuded and which made the pale deer almost dizzy. But when she had seen the young buck waiting modestly by the stand, she felt something else. This year his antlers would be bigger, his body thicker. But his scent would be the same: the sharp but, to her, sweet smell of him. It was to him, when the rutting season came, that she would go. She stared at the treetops in the morning sun and thought of him.

The terror began suddenly.

The sound of the hunters came from the west. They were travelling faster than the breeze, which might have carried their scent. They made no attempt to be quiet; they came loudly through the Forest, straight towards the glade.

The leading doe got up; the others followed her. She began to spring towards the trees. The prickets were still playing at the other side of the glade. For a moment they did not heed the calls of their mothers, but in another instant they, too, realized that something was amiss and began to spring.

The spring of the fallow deer is an extraordinary sight. It is known as a pronk. All four feet leave the ground while the legs appear to be hanging down straight. They seem to bounce, hover and fly forward through the air as if by magic. Normally they make several of these gravity-defying springs before running only at intervals, to spring again. With a beautiful, magical motion the whole group fled towards the covert. In seconds they had melted from the glade and were strung out in a line behind the senior doe who was leading them north towards the deepest part of the wood.

They had gone a quarter-mile when she abruptly halted. They did the same. She listened, ears flicking nervously. There was no mistaking it. There were horsemen in front of them. The leader turned, headed south-eastwards, away from both dangers.

The pale deer was frightened. There was something deliberate, sinister about this double approach. The leader obviously thought so too. They were at full gallop now, leaping over fallen trees, bushes, anything in their path. The dappled light through the leaves above seemed to flicker and flash with menace. Half a mile they went, came to a larger light, broke cover into a long grassy glade. And stopped dead.

There were about twenty riders, waiting only yards away. The pale deer had just time to notice them before the leading doe turned and made back towards the trees.

But she only made two springs before realizing that there were more hunters in the trees too. Checked, she turned again and started to run down the glade, darting this way and that, looking for a chance of safety. The rest of the deer, sensing that the leader had no idea what to do, followed her in an increasing state of panic. The hunters were racing behind them now, with whoops and cries. The doe veered right into a belt of trees.

The pale deer had gone about a hundred yards into the trees when she caught sight of yet more hunters – on their right flank this time, a little way ahead. She uttered a warning cry, which the others, in their panic, did not notice. She paused in her run. And then she saw the strangest thing.

From ahead of them a small party of bucks, half a dozen of them, suddenly ran into view from a thicket. Presumably there was a danger behind them. Seeing the does in panic, however, and the hunters on their flank, the bucks did not join the does but, after only a flicker of hesitation, dashed, leaping splendidly, straight towards the horsemen, flashing clean through their line and away through the trees before the startled hunters could even raise their bows. It was as quick and magical as it was unexpected.

And most astonishing of all, to her, was that her buck was one of them. There was no mistaking him. She spotted his antlers and his markings at once, as he passed like a leaping shadow in the trees. For a moment, just before their daring dash, he turned his face fully in her direction and she saw his large brown eyes staring straight towards her.

The leading doe had seen the bucks and their brave dash through the hunters, but she did not attempt to follow them. Instead, blindly, no longer knowing what to do, she led them in headlong flight; so that the pale deer found herself streaming eastwards; the only way left open, the way the hunters wanted.

Adela had watched the gathering at Lyndhurst with excitement. Parties from several estates had arrived, although they were all under the general direction of Cola. The royal manor was a small collection of wooden buildings with a fenced paddock sitting on a small rise in the oak forest. But a short distance away, on its south-eastern side, the trees were broken by a series of glades, before giving on to a large, long expanse of lawn, beyond which lay open moor. It was to this lawn that Cola had led them to inspect the great trap.

Adela had never seen anything like it. The thing was huge. At the entrance, surrounded by green lawn, was a small round knoll, like a mound for a miniature castle or lookout post. Two hundred yards south-east of the knoll a natural ridge rose and ran for half a mile in a straight line, with the green lawn on one side and the brown heath on the other. All this was impressive enough. But as the ridge slowly dipped at its south-eastern end, man had taken over and built a lower extension to the ridge. First, on the inner lawn side, was a deep ditch; then a large earthwork bank and, surmounting the bank, a stout fence. For a short distance this barrier stretched in a straight line. Then it began, very gently to curve inwards, crossing the lawn where a rise in the ground made a natural line, then continuing on its way round towards the west, through wooded ground and glade, until it curved right round and ran back up towards the manor. This was the park pale of Lyndhurst.

‘It’s like a fortress in the Forest,’ she exclaimed. Once in this inclosure, the deer had no hope of leaping the pale as they were turned and driven, infallibly, towards the hunters’ nets.

‘We shall take about a hundred deer today.’ Cola’s younger son, Edgar, had placed himself at her side during this inspection. The business within the park pale was always carefully managed, he explained. Of the huge number of game driven into the great trap, the pregnant does would not be killed, but the bucks and other does would be culled. When Cola had his hundred the rest would be released.

She was glad to have the handsome Saxon for company. Walter, as usual, had left her alone and as she saw him now, walking his horse beside Hugh de Martell and talking to him, she wondered if he would introduce the Norman to her and decided he probably would not. ‘Do you know the man my cousin is talking to?’ she asked Edgar.

‘Yes. Not well. He’s from Dorset. Not the Forest.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘My father has a high opinion of him.’

‘And you?’ Her eyes were still on Martell.

‘Oh.’ His voice sounded uncomfortable. ‘He’s a big Norman lord.’

She glanced across at him. What did that mean? That Edgar was a Saxon with no love for Normans? That he thought Martell arrogant? That he was even a little jealous of the knight, perhaps?

There was quite a crowd assembled on the lawn by the knoll. Besides the riders there were men with spare horses, others with carts for removing the carcasses and others who had simply come to watch. One figure particularly caught her attention. He was making his way across to a cart piled with sections of wattle fencing: a thickset man who, with his bushy eyebrows and forward stoop, seemed to Adela more like some stunted but sturdy old forest tree than a human being. She noticed, however, that Edgar saluted him as he passed and that the peasant returned the greeting by a slight nod. She wondered who he was.

There had been no time to think about this, however, for just then Cola had sounded his hunting horn and the great deer drive had begun.

It was actually a series of drives. The area around Lyndhurst was split into sectors; the hunters, organized into parties, were carefully co-ordinated to draw over a wide area in each sector, drifting as many deer as possible towards the centre. It was skilful work: the deer could prove elusive or, on the outer fringes, escape. When one sector had been drifted, the riders would be sent out on to the next and might go out several times until Cola decided they had enough.

Though deer might be missed out in the woods, as they approached the great trap their chances soon faded to nothing. Looking around, Adela observed that other, smaller earthworks and fences radiated out from the entrance so that as the deer from each sector approached they would find themselves in a kind of funnel that narrowed down towards the trap. It was hard not to admire the cleverness of the thing.

Having sounded the horn, Cola went up to the knoll from which vantage point, like a general, he could watch the whole proceedings. The riders all had their instructions. To her disappointment, Edgar left them before, with only Walter and four others for company, she rode out.

Their station was not an exciting one. The first drift was in the south-eastern sector. Here the heath beyond the park pale extended in a broad swathe about two miles across to the south-east, with long fingers of woodland pointing into it from the darker forest on the other side. While the riders drove the deer in from these various woods, their job was to fan out in a line from the pale to make sure that none of the animals made a dash down that way at the last minute. In all probability, she realized, there would be nothing to do at all. As the parties of riders disappeared into the distant woods, she prepared for a long wait.

It was more for the sake of having something to say that she asked Walter what he had been talking to Martell about. He made a face. ‘Nothing much.’ A long silence ensued before he added, ‘If you really want to know, he asked me why I’d brought a woman out on the hunt.’

‘He didn’t approve?’

‘Not much.’

Was it true or was Walter making it up to annoy her? She allowed her eyes to rest calmly on his face for a moment or two and concluded that he might be telling the truth. A flash of resentment at the arrogant Norman went through her. He had noticed her then, damn him!

Time passed, but they did not speak any more. Once or twice she heard faint whoops and cries from the woods, then nothing. Until, at last, she saw something appear on the edge of the heath far away on her right.

A little group of deer had broken cover. There were eight of them. Even at that distance one could count them clearly. They advanced on to the heath and began to zigzag. A second later three riders came out behind them, then two more, at full gallop, moving to the right to outflank them; then another pair of riders, dashing down the other flank. Sensing both movements, the deer ran across the heath towards them.

It was astonishing how fast they came: the running deer, despite their pauses and sideways darts, covered the intervening ground, it seemed, in only a minute or two, with the riders behind them. Across the heath they raced, and swerved and ran in past the knoll so neatly that it was hard not to applaud. Minutes later a further group came, with a herd of two dozen this time; then another, and another. Only once did her own party have to shout and wave their arms to divert some deer that had peeled away. The hunt could not have been more perfectly managed. By the time they were called in there were over seventy deer in the great inclosure.

Soon after this, Cola had announced that they would draw the woods above Lyndhurst next, and Adela was delighted when a few moments later Edgar came up and, with a grin at her, remarked: ‘You and Walter are riding with my party this time.’

She did not know for how long they had walked their horses through the woods until they came to the glade where Edgar had said they would wait. She had heard other parties making sounds somewhere in the trees; she had noticed Edgar tense in his saddle, but even so she had been completely taken aback when suddenly, with a crashing sound, not thirty yards in front of her, the small herd of does burst out from the trees into the glade. For a second she was almost as startled as they were. As they veered away she had just had time to notice that one of the young does was paler than the rest. Then, with whoops and cries, they were off in pursuit, driving the deer before them, and moments later they had passed into a grove of trees.

It was because she had fallen a little behind that she had such a perfect view of what happened next. A group of bucks had abruptly appeared on the right, followed by another party of hunters – in the forefront of whom, she saw, rode Hugh de Martell. The bucks were young. They had hesitated.

But who in the world could have anticipated their next move? How astonished the huntsmen looked as the bucks wheeled round and dashed back straight through their line. Even Martell was completely taken by surprise and stared, open-mouthed. The proud Norman had been humbled by some young bucks: she reined her horse and laughed aloud.

‘Come on!’ Walter, calling crossly, had brought her back to her duty and she had quickly caught up. The two groups had joined into a single party now; Edgar, Walter and Hugh de Martell all riding together. They certainly managed everything with wonderful precision. Though the deer tried to veer this way and that, there was no hope of escape. Indeed, other groups of deer driven by lines of huntsmen twice joined them as they cantered and galloped towards Lyndhurst, so that in a while she could only identify her own little herd by seeing where the pale deer ran among the dozens of leaping forms. She was a pretty little doe, Adela thought. Perhaps it was just her imagination, but to her this deer seemed somehow different from the rest. And although she knew it made no sense, she couldn’t help feeling sorry that such a lovely creature was about to be killed.

Several times she saw Edgar glance in her direction and once, she was pretty sure, Hugh de Martell looked at her too. Had he done so with disapproval, she wondered? But although she kept an eye on him when she could, he did not seem to be taking any further notice of her. Meanwhile the chase was gathering speed. The riders were breaking into a gallop. ‘You’re doing well,’ Edgar called to her in encouragement.

The next few minutes were some of the most exciting of her life. Everything seemed to flash past. Hunters were crying out: she wasn’t sure if she had joined in or not. She was scarcely conscious of time, or even where they were, as they dashed after the fleet-footed deer. Once or twice she caught sight of Edgar and Hugh de Martell, their faces tense, alert. Despite the loss of the bucks they must be pleased with themselves. This would surely be the biggest single group of deer brought in that day. How hard they looked, how suddenly fierce.

And she, too, shared in their glory. It might be harsh, this killing of deer, but it had to be. It was nature. Men must be fed. God had granted them animals for the purpose. It could be no other way.

Through the trees on the right now, she got a glimpse of the royal hunting lodge. She could hardly believe that they were at Lyndhurst already. The riders had been unable to prevent the herd from splitting and a group of does, including her pale one, had peeled left into a glade. Martell and some of the others galloped off to outflank them.

Just then, glancing to her left, she noticed Walter.

She must have got ahead of him without realizing it. He was galloping hard, to be in front of her when they emerged into view by the trap. As he drew level she was granted a perfect view of his profile and, despite all her excitement, she suddenly experienced an inward shudder.

He was flushed and concentrated. Somehow – even now – his pug face still managed to look pompous and self-satisfied. But it was something else that really struck her. His cruelty. It was not the hardness that Edgar’s face had suddenly acquired; it was more like lust – lust for death. He looked gorged. For a strange moment it almost seemed to her as if his face in its keen desire, little moustache and all, had floated forward and was hanging, gloating, over the deer.

Oh, it was cruel – necessity or not. You couldn’t get away from the truth of what was to come; Cola’s perfectly organized drive, the huge trap ahead, the bleak wooden machinery of the walls in the woods, the nets, the culling – not one, not even ten, but deer after deer until they had a hundred. It was cruel to kill so many.

It was too late to think of that now. The trees opened out. She saw the high mound where Cola waited ahead. Just before it, a line of men were shouting and waving their arms, to make sure the deer turned right towards the entrance of the trap. The foremost deer were already up to them, with galloping riders only yards behind. From her left, now, came the does that had split off, driven by Martell. They streamed by her. She saw the pale doe. It was the last of them. Already they were all wheeling, coming past Cola’s mound. Just after the mound, she noticed, on the grassy lawn between it and the start of the ridge there were only a few people standing. The deer, already turned, with the riders along their left flank, were streaming past them, oblivious. The pale doe had fallen a little behind. Having made the turn, she seemed, for just an instant, to hesitate before being drawn in to her death.

Then Adela did a strange thing.

She did not know why; she hardly even realized she was doing it. Putting spurs to her horse, she suddenly raced ahead of Walter, pulled her horse’s head, cut clean across him and made straight towards the pale doe. She heard Walter shout a curse but she took no notice. Half a dozen strides and she was almost up with the deer; another second and she was between the pale doe and the herd. Voices were crying out behind her. She did not look. The doe, startled, tried to veer away from her. She urged her horse forward, pushing, willing the doe away from the great trap ahead. The park pale was only a hundred yards away. She must keep the deer to the left of it.

And then, with a single, frantic leap, the pale deer did what she wanted. A second later, to the astonishment of all the bystanders, they were racing together across the lawn between the mound and the ridge, and out on to the open heath.

‘Go,’ she muttered, ‘go,’ as the pale doe fled out into the heather. ‘Go!’ she cried, as she raced after her. ‘Get away!’ For all she knew one of the hunters was already following with a bow. Too frightened and embarrassed to look back, she urged the little deer forward until at last it darted straight across the open ground and made for the nearest piece of woodland opposite. She cantered forward, watching the doe, until she finally saw her make the trees.

But what to do now? She was alone in the middle of the open heath. Looking back at last, she saw that no one had followed her. The line of the ridge and the park pale seemed deserted. All the people were on the other side. She could not even hear the cries of the huntsmen any more, only the faint hiss of the breeze. She turned her horse’s head. Hardly knowing what she wanted, she began to ride down the heath with the park pale away on her right. When it curved westwards she started to do the same, walking her horse into the woods about a quarter of a mile below the wall. She entered a long glade. The ground was soft with grass and moss. She was still alone.

Or nearly. He was standing by the uprooted stump of a fallen tree. There was surely no mistaking him – the forward stoop, the bushy eyebrows. Unless these gnarled men grew identically in the Forest, it was the same strange figure she had seen earlier. But how had he got there? It was a mystery. He was quietly watching her as she went down the glade, although whether with approval or disapproval she could not guess.

Remembering what she had seen before, she raised her hand and saluted him as Edgar had done. But he did not answer with a nod this time and she remembered being told that the Forest people did not always care for strangers.

She had ridden, after that, for almost an hour. She still wouldn’t go back to Lyndhurst. She could imagine her reception: Walter’s furious face; the huntsmen – contemptuous she supposed. Hugh de Martell – who knew what he thought? It was all too much; she wasn’t going back there.

She kept to the woods. She did not know exactly where she was although, judging by the sun, she was heading south. She guessed, after a while, that the hamlet of Brockenhurst must be somewhere on her right, but she did not particularly wish to be seen and kept to the woodland tracks. Later on, she thought, I’ll head back towards Cola’s manor. With luck she could sneak in before the hunters returned, without attracting too much attention.

So she hardly knew whether to be annoyed or relieved when, just as she was wondering which of two tracks to take, she heard a cheerful cry behind her and turned to see the handsome form and friendly face of Edgar, cantering towards her.

‘Didn’t they tell you’, he said laughingly as he came up, ‘that you’re not supposed to deer-hunt on your own?’ And she realized she was glad that he had come.

His French was not very good, but passable. Thanks to a Saxon nurse in her childhood and a natural ear for languages, she had already discovered that she could make herself understood by these English. They could communicate well enough, therefore. Nor was it long before he had put her at her ease. ‘It was Puckle,’ he explained, when she asked how he had found her. ‘He told me you’d ridden south and no one saw you at Brockenhurst so I thought you’d be somewhere this way.’

So Puckle was the name of the gnarled figure.

‘He seems mysterious,’ she remarked.

‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘He is.’

Next, when she confessed her fear of going back he assured her: ‘We pick and choose the deer. You’d only have had to ask my father and he’d gladly have spared your pretty deer.’ He grinned. ‘You are supposed to ask him, though.’ She smiled ruefully as she tried to imagine herself asking for a deer’s life in front of the hunters, but, reading her thoughts, he gently added: ‘The deer have to be killed, of course, but even now, I hate doing it.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘It’s the way they fall, so full of grace. You see their spirits leave them. Everyone who’s ever killed a deer knows that.’ He said it so simply and honestly that she was touched. ‘It’s sacred,’ he concluded, as if there were nothing to argue about.

‘I wonder’, she said, after a pause, ‘if Hugh de Martell feels the same.’

‘Who knows.’ He shrugged. ‘He doesn’t think like that.’

No. His way, she imagined, was more blunt. A proud Norman landholder had no time for such thoughts.

‘He didn’t think I should be hunting. I expect your father agrees.’

‘My mother and my father used to ride out hunting together,’ he said softly, ‘when she was alive.’ And instantly she had a vision of that handsome couple, sweeping beautifully through the forest glades. ‘One day,’ Edgar added gently, ‘I hope to do the same.’ And then with a laugh: ‘Come on. We’ll ride back along the heath.’

So it was, a little time afterwards, that the two riders cantering along the short turf at the heath’s edge approached the hamlet of Oakley and came upon Godwin Pride, moving his fence, illegally, in broad daylight.

‘Damn,’ muttered Edgar under his breath. But it was too late to avoid the fellow now. He had caught him in the act.

Godwin Pride drew himself up to his full height: with his broad chest and splendid beard, he looked like a Celtic chief facing a tax collector. And, like a good Celtic chief, he knew that when the game was up, the only thing to do was bluff. To Edgar’s enquiry – ‘What are you doing, Godwin?’ – he therefore replied imperturbably: ‘Repairing this fence, as you see.’

It was so quietly outrageous that, for a moment, Edgar almost burst out laughing; but unfortunately this was not a laughing matter. ‘You’ve moved the fence.’

Pride considered thoughtfully. ‘It used to be further out,’ he said coolly, ‘but we pulled it back years ago. Didn’t need so much space.’

The cheek of the man was breathtaking.

‘Nonsense,’ Edgar said sharply. ‘You know the law. It’s a purpresture. This can land you in court.’

Pride gazed at him as he might have looked at a fly before swatting it. ‘Those are Norman words. I wouldn’t know what they mean. I expect you would, though,’ he added.

The thrust went home. Edgar coloured. ‘It’s the law,’ he said sadly.

Godwin Pride continued to stare him down. He didn’t dislike Edgar personally, but the Saxon noble’s co-operation with the Normans seemed to him proof that Edgar was an outsider.

Not that Cola’s family were strangers. But when had they come to the Forest? Two hundred, three hundred years ago? The Forest folk could not remember. However long they had been there, anyway, it was not long enough. And Pride was reminding himself of this fact when, to his surprise, the Norman girl spoke.

‘But it wasn’t the Normans who started it. This land was under forest law back in the days of King Canute.’

Adela’s Anglo-Saxon had been good enough to follow most of the conversation. She had not liked the surly way in which this fellow had treated Edgar and, as she was a Norman noblewoman, she decided to put him in his place. Brutal though he could be, William the Conqueror had been clever enough always to show that he was following ancient customs in his troublesome new kingdom. So it was no use this peasant complaining. She started at him defiantly.

To her surprise, however, he only nodded grimly. ‘You believe that?’

‘There’s a charter, fellow.’ She spoke with some importance.

‘Oh. Written, is it?’

How dare the man use this tone of irony? ‘Yes, it is.’ She was rather proud that she could read quite well and had a little learning. If a clerk had taken her through a charter, she would have been able to follow.

‘Don’t read, myself,’ he replied with an impertinent smile. ‘No point.’ He was right, of course. A man could farm, operate a mill, run a great estate – why, even be a king – and have no need to read and write. There were always poor clerks to keep records. This intelligent smallholder had not the slightest reason to read. But Pride had not finished. ‘I believe there’s a lot of thieves who do, though,’ he calmly added.

By God the man was insulting. She looked to Edgar, expecting him to defend her, but he seemed embarrassed.

It was Pride who now addressed him. ‘I don’t remember hearing of any charter, do you, Edgar?’ He stared straight at his head.

‘Before my time,’ the Saxon answered quietly.

‘Yes. You’d better ask your father. He’d know about that, I should think.’

There was a pause.

Adela began to get the point. ‘Are you saying’, she asked slowly, ‘that King William lied about Canute’s forest law? That the charter’s a fake?’

Pride pretended surprise. ‘Really? They can do that, can they?’

She was silent herself, now. Then she nodded slowly. ‘I’m, sorry,’ she said simply. ‘I didn’t know.’ She looked away from him and her eyes rested upon the strip of ground he had just appropriated. She understood now. No wonder he was surly when they had caught him trying, legally or not, to claw back a few feet of the inheritance he considered had been stolen from him.

She turned to Edgar. Then she grinned. ‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’ She spoke in French, but she suspected that Pride, observing them, had guessed what she had said.

Edgar looked awkward. Pride was watching him. Then Edgar shook his head. ‘I can’t,’ he muttered in French. And to Pride, in his native tongue: ‘Put it back, Godwin. Today. I’ll be looking out for you.’ He motioned to her that they must leave.

She would have liked to say something to Pride, but realized she must not. A few minutes later, as the smallholder and his family were lost to sight, she spoke. ‘I can’t go back to Lyndhurst, Edgar. I can’t face all those huntsmen. Can we return to your father’s house?’

‘There’s a quiet track,’ he said with a nod. And after a couple of miles he led her down through a wood to a little ford, quite soon after which they came up to heathland over which they walked their horses, picking up a track that led westwards until, late in the afternoon, they descended from the Forest into the lush quiet of the Avon valley.

It was some time before they reached the forest edge that Puckle, on some errand of his own, had happened to pass by Pride’s hamlet and hear his tale.

‘Who’s the Norman girl?’ the smallholder asked. Puckle was able to tell him and to relate the incident of the pale deer.

‘Saved a deer?’ Pride grinned ruefully. ‘She could have brought it to me.’ He sighed to himself. ‘Are we going to see her again, do you think?’ he asked Puckle.

‘Maybe.’

Pride shrugged. ‘She’s not bad, I suppose,’ he said without much feeling, ‘for a Norman.’

Adela’s fate, however, was to be decided by a much harsher court than that of Pride and Puckle, as she discovered when dusk fell that day.

‘A disgrace. There’s no other word for you,’ Walter stormed. In the light from the evening sky there seemed to be purple shadows under his slightly bulging eyes. ‘You’ve made a fool of yourself in front of the whole hunt. You’ve ruined your reputation. You’ve embarrassed me! If you think I can find you a husband when you behave like this …’

For a moment words apparently failed him.

She felt herself go pale, both with shock and with anger. ‘Perhaps’, she said icily, ‘you do not feel you can find me a husband.’

‘Let’s just say that your presence will not help.’ His little moustache and his dark eyebrows seemed clenched, now, in quiet rage, menacing. ‘I think you’d better stay out of sight for a while,’ he went on, ‘until we’re ready to try again somewhere else. I feel that would be best, don’t you? In the meantime, might I suggest that you think rather carefully about how you conduct yourself.’

‘Out of sight?’ She felt alarmed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ll see,’ he promised. ‘Tomorrow.’

The great, sunbathed silence of a midsummer afternoon: it was the season known as the ‘fence’ month when, to ensure that the deer could give birth in peace, all the peasants’ grazing livestock were removed from the Forest; after which, more than ever, the area seemed to return to those ancient days when only scattered bands of hunters had roamed the wastes. It was a season of quiet, of huge light on the open heaths and of shade, deep green as river weed, under the oaks.

The buck moved stealthily, keeping to the dappled shadows, his head held carefully back. His summer coat, a creamy beige with white spots, made a perfect camouflage. It was also handsome. But he did not feel handsome. He felt awkward and ashamed.

The change in the psychology of the male deer in summer has been observed down the ages. In spring, first the red deer and then, about a month later, the fallow males cast their antlers. First one antler, then the other breaks off, leaving a raw and usually bleeding stump, or pedicel. In the days after this, the fallow buck is a sickly fellow and may even be bullied by other bucks, such is the nature of animals. Like new teeth, his next antlers are already growing, but it will be three months before they are complete again. And so, though his fine new summer coat is on him, he is robbed of his adornment, as the antlers are known, naked, defenceless, ashamed.

No wonder he wanders alone in the woods.

Not that he is inactive. The first thing nature silently instructs him to do is to find the chemicals he will need to manufacture his new antlers. That means calcium. And the obvious place to find that is in the old antlers he has cast. Using his corner incisor teeth, the buck gnaws at them, therefore. Then, feeding on the rich summer vegetation and living in seclusion, he has to wait patiently as new bone tissue, drawing nutrients up through blood vessels from the pedicels, slowly grows, branches out and spreads. The growing antlers, however, are delicate; to supply blood they also grow a covering of soft veined skin, which has a velvety texture, so that during these months the buck is said to be ‘in velvet’. Supremely conscious that he must not allow the precious antlers to get damaged, the reclusive deer will walk through the woods with his head raised and held back, the velvet antlers on his shoulders, lest they should get caught in branches – a magical attitude in which he has often been depicted, from cave paintings to medieval tapestries, down the centuries.

The buck paused. Though still shy of being seen, he knew that the worst of his yearly humiliation was over. His velvet antlers were already half grown and he was conscious of the first faint stirrings, the beginning of the chemical and hormonal changes that, in another two months, would transform him into the magnificent, swollen-necked hero of the rut.

He paused because he saw something. From the tree line where he was walking, a stretch of heath extended, about half a mile across to a gentle slope scattered with silver birch where the violet heather gave way to green lawn backed by a line of woodland. On the lawn he could see several does, resting in the sun. One of them was paler than the others.

He had noticed the pale doe at the last rutting season. He had caught sight of her again that spring when he had escaped from the hunters. He had supposed they might have killed her, then he had glimpsed her in the distance once more, not long afterwards, and the knowledge that she was alive had pleased him strangely. Now, therefore, he paused and watched.

She would come to him at the rut. He knew it as surely as he could feel the sun in the huge open sky; he knew it with the same instinct by which he knew that his antlers would grow and his body change in readiness. It was inevitable. For several long moments he watched the little pale shape on the distant green. Then he moved on.

He did not know that other eyes were watching her also.

When Godwin Pride had set off that morning his wife, seeing his face, had tried to stop him. She had used several excuses – the roof of the cow stall needed repairing, she thought she had seen a fox near the chicken coop – but it was no good. By mid-morning he was gone, without even taking his dog with him. Not that he had told her what he was up to. Had she known that, she would probably have called the neighbours to restrain him. Nor did she see that, a few moments after leaving, he took a bow from a hiding place in a tree.

He had been waiting two months for this. Ever since his encounter with Edgar he had been careful to be a model of good behaviour. He had retracted his fence to its proper place. His cows were brought in from the Forest two days before the fence month. When Cola only glanced suspiciously at his dog, he had turned up at the royal hunting lodge at Lyndhurst the very next day. This was where they kept the metal hoop known as the stirrup – if a dog was not small enough to crawl through it, then his front claws were ‘lawed’, cut off, so that he could not be a threat to the king’s deer. Pride had insisted they took his dog to the stirrup, ‘Just to make sure he’s all legal, like,’ he assured them with a charming smile as the dog wriggled safely through. He had been careful. He had also had to wait for the right weather conditions; and those had come today when the faint breeze had blown from an unusual quarter.

He might not be able to get his field, but he was going to get something back from those Norman thieves. He would strike a little personal blow for freedom: or for his own obstinacy, as his wife would have said. As secretly pleased with himself as a boy on some forbidden adventure, the tall man with the swinging gait had made his way through the woods. If he was caught the consequences would be terrible: the loss of a limb, even his life. But he wouldn’t be caught. He chuckled to himself. He had thought it all out.

It had been noon when he had taken up his position. This had been carefully chosen – a little vantage point by the edge of some trees with a hidden depression where he could easily lie concealed while watching out to see if anyone was approaching. He had studied the habits of his quarry carefully.

Soon after noon, as he had expected, they had appeared and, thanks to the change in the direction of the breeze, he was downwind of them.

He had made no move. For over an hour he had patiently watched. Then, as he had expected, he had seen one of Cola’s men walk his horse silently across the open ground about half a mile away. He had let another hour pass. No one had come.

He had already selected his target. He needed a small doe – one that he could carry swiftly on his broad back up to his place of concealment. He would return for it that night with a handcart. There would be just enough moon tonight to allow him to see his way through the dark forest tracks. There were several small does in this little herd. One was paler than the rest.

He took aim.

For the first few days Adela could not believe that Walter had done it to her.

If the villages of Fordingbridge and Ringwood, that lay on the River Avon as it flowed down the Forest’s western edge, were scarcely more than hamlets, the settlement at the river’s southern estuary was more substantial. Here the Avon, joined by another river from the west, ran into a large, sheltered harbour – an ancient place where men had fished and traded for more than a thousand years. Twyneham, the Saxons had first called the settlement and the great sweep of meadow, marsh, woodland and heath that extended for miles along the south-western edge of the Forest from there, had long been a royal manor. In the last two centuries, thanks to a series of modest religious foundations endowed there by the Saxon kings, the village was more often referred to as Christchurch. It had grown into a small town and been fortified with a rampart. Five years ago, Christchurch had been given a further boost when the king’s chancellor decided to rebuild the priory church there on a grander scale and work on the riverside site had already begun.

But that was all it was: a quiet little borough by the sea, with a building site for a church.

And he had left her there. Not with a knight – there was no castle nor even a manor house. Not even with a person of the slightest consequence – only four of the most decrepit priory canons had remained in residence while the building went on. He had left her with a common merchant whose son made flour at the priory mill.

‘I had to pay him, you know,’ Walter had explained crossly.

‘But how long am I to stay here?’ she had cried.

‘Until I come for you. A month or two, I should think.’

Then he had ridden away.

Her quarters could have been worse. The merchant’s household consisted of several wooden buildings around a small yard, and she was given a chamber of her own over a store room beside the stable. It was perfectly clean and she had to admit that she would not have been any better housed in a manor.

Her host was not a bad man. Nicholas of Totton – he had come from a village of that name that lay fifteen miles away on the eastern edge of the Forest – was a burgess of the borough, where he owned three houses, some fields, an orchard, and a salmon fishery. Though he must have been over fifty, he retained a slim, almost youthful build. His mild grey eyes only looked disapproving if he thought someone had said something cruel or boastful. He spoke sparingly, yet Adela noticed that, with his younger children, he seemed to have a quiet, even playful sense of humour. There were seven or eight of these. Adela supposed that it must be dull to be married to such a man, but his busy wife seemed to be perfectly contented. Either way, the Totton family were hardly relevant to her.

There was no one to talk to and nothing to do. The site where the new priory church was to be built, beautifully set by the river, was a mess. The old church had been pulled down and soon dozens of masons would be hard at work there, she was told. But at present it was deserted. One day she rode around to the headland, which protected the harbour. It was very peaceful. Swans glided on the waters; wild horses grazed in the marshes beyond. On the other side of the headland a huge bay swept round to the west, while to the east the low gravel cliffs of the New Forest shore extended for miles until they receded up the Solent channel from which there interposed the high chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight. It was a lovely sight but it did not please her. On other days she walked about, or sat by the river. There was nothing to do. Nothing. A week passed.

Then Edgar came. She was surprised he had known she was there.

‘Walter told my father you were staying here,’ he said. He did not tell her that already, all the way up the Avon valley as far as Fordingbridge, people were calling her ‘the deserted lady’.

Things got better after that. He would come to see her at least once a week and they would ride out together. The first time they rode up the Avon valley a couple of miles to where a modest gravel ridge known as St Catherine’s Hill gave a splendid view over the valley and the southern part of the Forest.

‘They nearly built the new priory up here,’ he told her. ‘Next time I come,’ he pointed to one area of the Forest, ‘I’ll take you there. And the time after that, over there.’

He was as good as his word. Sometimes they rode up the Avon valley; or they might wander along the Forest’s coastline with its numerous tiny inlets, as far as the village of Hordle, where there were salt beds. Wherever they went he would tell her things: stopping by some tiny dark stream, hardly more than a trickle: ‘The sea-trout come to spawn up here. You’d never think it, would you, but they do. Right into the Forest.’

On their third trip she had met him near Ringwood and he had conducted her across the heath to a dark little hamlet in a woodland dell called Burley.

‘There’s something strange about this place,’ she had remarked.

‘They say there’s witchcraft in the area,’ he observed. ‘But then people always say that about a forest.’

‘Why, do you know any witches?’ she had asked with a laugh.

‘They say Puckle’s wife is a witch of some kind,’ he replied. She glanced at him to see if he was joking, but he didn’t seem to be. Then he grinned. ‘A very good rule in the Forest is: if in doubt, don’t ask.’ And he had nudged his horse into a trot.

Often on these rides he would question her about herself, whether she meant to stay in England, what sort of man she expected Walter to find for her. She was guarded in her replies. Her position, after all, was a difficult one. But once she did allow herself, with a trace of condescension to confess: ‘My main attraction for a Norman knight, you see, is that I am a Norman too.’ She was sorry if he looked a little crestfallen, but she wanted to maintain her status.

Two months had passed and still no word from Walter.

If she had not felt confident after all these excursions into the Forest, Adela might not have gone so far by herself that midsummer day. Having ridden into the central section of the Forest, she had let her mind wander and for some time her horse had taken his own course along the woodland tracks, at a gentle walk. Then she had dismounted and rested for a little while in a tiny glade while the animal cropped the grass. The sound of a herd of deer suddenly crashing through the undergrowth somewhere ahead had woken her from her reverie. Curious, she had quickly mounted and trotted forward to see what had disturbed them. Coming out abruptly on to open ground, and seeing a figure she thought she recognized ahead, she cantered towards him, hardly thinking what she was doing. He turned. She saw. And it was already too late.

‘Good day, Godwin Pride,’ she said.

Pride stared. Just for once, he lost his usual composure. His mouth sagged open. He couldn’t believe it: how could he have failed to hear her coming? It had only taken him a few moments to run across the open ground and a few more to hoist the fallen doe on to his shoulders. Obviously it had been long enough. The bad luck of the thing was past belief.

And, of all people, this girl. A Norman. Worse still, all the Forest knew she had been riding out with Edgar.

Worst of all, he was caught, as the forest law termed it, ‘red-handed’: the deer and its blood on his hands. There was no escape. He was for it. Mutilation: they’d cut off one of his limbs. They might even hang him. You couldn’t be sure.

He glanced about. They were alone. Just for a moment he wondered if he should kill her. But he put the thought out of his mind. The doe slipped from his back as he stood up straight, brave as a lion before her. If he was frightened at facing death he wasn’t going to show it.

And then he thought of his family. What were they going to do if he swung? Suddenly they came before his mind’s eye: the four children, his daughter only three, his wife, and the bitter words she would say. She’d be right. How could he explain it to his children? He could hear his own voice. ‘I did a foolish thing.’ Without even realizing he was doing it, he gave a short gasp.

But what could he do? Plead with this Norman girl? Why should she help him? She’d be bound to tell Edgar.

‘A fine day, isn’t it?’

He blinked. What was she saying?

‘I rode out early this morning,’ she went on calmly. ‘I hadn’t meant to come so far, but the weather was so good. I suppose if I go that way’ – she pointed – ‘I should get to Brockenhurst.’

He nodded, slightly bemused. She was talking on, as though there were nothing the matter in the world. What the devil was she at?

And then he got the message. She had not looked at the deer.

She was looking straight at his face. Dear God, she was asking after his children. He tried to mumble some reply. She had not seen the deer. Now he comprehended: she was chattering quietly on so that he would understand clearly. There was to be no complicity, no shared guilt, no embarrassment, no favours owed – she was too clever for that. She was better than that. The deer did not exist.

She went on a little more, asked him the best route by which she should return and, still without a single glance at the deer on the ground in front of her, she announced: ‘Well, Godwin Pride, I must be on my way.’ Then she turned the horse’s head and with a wave of her hand she was gone.

Pride took a deep breath.

Now that, he considered, was style.

Moments later, the deer was safely hidden and he was ready to go home. As he started off one further thought occurred to him and he smiled a little grimly.

Just as well, he mused, it wasn’t the pale doe he had shot.

Adela was surprised, returning in the evening to Christchurch, to find Walter Tyrrell crossly awaiting her.

‘If you hadn’t come back so late, we could have left today,’ he rebuked her. The fact that she had no idea he was arriving did not seem to matter. ‘Tomorrow morning, first thing. Be ready,’ he ordered.

‘But where are we going?’ she asked.

‘To Winchester,’ he informed her, as though it were obvious.

Winchester. At last – a place of real importance. There would be royal officials there, knights, people of consequence.

‘Except’, he added as an afterthought, ‘we’re to stay a few days, first, at a manor west of here. Down in Dorset.’

‘Whose manor?’

‘Hugh de Martell’s.’

There was a change in the weather the next morning. As they rode westwards into the sweeping ridges of Dorset, a great, grey cloud had risen up from the horizon, blocking the sun, its shining edges imparting a dull, luminous glow to objects in the landscape below.

Walter had maintained his usual grumpy silence for most of the way, but as they came over the last, long ridge he remarked to her gloomily: ‘I didn’t want to bring you here, but I thought I might as well before you go to Winchester. Give you a day or two to smarten up your manners. In particular,’ he went on, ‘you should observe Martell’s wife, the Lady Maud. She knows how to behave. Try to copy her.’

The village lay in a long valley. It was very different country from the Forest. On each side huge fields of wheat and barley, neatly divided into strips, swept up the slopes until they rolled over the valley’s crests. At the near end a small stone Saxon church rested on a green by a pond. The cottages were neatly fenced, more ordered than most such places. Even the village street looked tidy, as though swept by some unseen controlling hand. And finally the long lane led to the gatehouse to the manor itself. The house was set some distance back. Perhaps it was a trick of the light but as they rode through the entrance the close-cropped grass lawns, which lay on each side of them, seemed to Adela to be a darker green than the grass they had passed before. Ahead to the left was a large, square range of farm buildings, timber frame over stone, and to the right, set apart behind a large, well-swept open courtyard, stood the handsome hall with its accompanying buildings, all in knapped flintstone and topped with high, thatched roofs with not a straw out of place. This was no ordinary squire’s house. It was the base of a large territorial holding. Its calm, rather dark order said quietly, but just as clearly as any castle: ‘This land is the feudal lord’s. Bow down.’

A groom and his boy came out to take their horses. The door of the hall opened, and Hugh de Martell stepped out alone and came swiftly towards them.

She had not seen him smile before. It was warmer than she had expected. It made him more handsome than ever. He extended his long arm and held out his hand to help her down. She took it, noticing for a moment the dark hairs on his wrist, and stepped down beside him.

He quietly moved back and, before Walter could say anything remarked: ‘Just as well you came today, Walter. I was called away to Tarrant all day yesterday.’ Then he led the way, with an easy stride, towards the hall, holding the door for her as she went in.

The hall was large, as high as a barn with great oak-beamed rafters and woven rush matting on the floor. Two large oak tables, both gleaming, flanked the big open hearth in the centre. The wooden shutters were pulled back; the high windows let in a pleasant, airy light. She looked around for her hostess and almost at once, from a smaller doorway at the far end, that lady came in and went straight to Tyrrell.

‘You are welcome, Walter,’ she said softly, as he took her hand. ‘We are glad you could come.’ After only a short pause, she turned to Adela also. ‘You too, of course.’ She smiled, although with just a trace of doubt, as if faintly uncertain as to the younger woman’s social status.

‘My kinswoman, Adela de la Roche,’ said Walter without enthusiasm.

But it was not the cool reception that claimed Adela’s attention. What really struck her was the other woman’s appearance.

What had she expected Hugh de Martell’s wife to look like? More like him, she supposed – tall, handsome, nearer his age, perhaps. Yet this woman was only a little older than herself. She was short. And she wasn’t handsome at all. Her face, it seemed to Adela, was not exactly bad-looking but it was irregular; certainly her lips, which were small, weren’t straight – as if they had been slightly pulled up on one side. Her gown, although good, was too pale a shade of green and made her look even more pasty-faced than she was. A poor choice. She looked meagre, insignificant. That, Adela decided, was what she thought.

She had no chance to observe more just then. The manor house boasted two chambers where guests might sleep, one for men, another for women, and after her hostess had shown her the women’s chamber she left Adela to her own devices. But a little later, returning to the hall and finding Walter alone there, she quietly asked him: ‘When did Martell marry?’

‘Just three years ago.’ He glanced round and went on in a low voice: ‘He lost his first wife, you know.’ She had no idea. ‘Lost her and their only child. Heartbroken. Didn’t marry again for a long time, then thought he’d better try once more, I suppose. Needs an heir.’

‘But why the Lady Maud?’

‘She’s an heiress, you know.’ He gave her a quick, hard look. ‘He had two manors, this one and Tarrant. She brought him three more, same county. One of them marches with his land at Tarrant. Consolidates the holdings. Martell knows what he’s doing.’

She understood the bleak reminder of her own lack of manors. ‘And has he got an heir now?’

‘No children yet.’

Shortly after this the Lady Maud appeared and conducted her to the solar, a pleasant room up a flight of steps at one end of the hall. Here she found an old nurse, who greeted her courteously, and she sat and made polite conversation while the two women worked on their needlepoint.

Their talk was friendly enough. Dutifully following Walter’s earlier advice, she paid close attention to all that her hostess said and did. Certainly the lady of the manor seemed quite easy company in this setting. She clearly had a complete grasp of everything relating to the household. The kitchen where the beef was already on the spit, the larder where she was making preserves, her herb garden, her needlework, of which both she and the old nurse were quite rightly proud – all these things she spoke about with a quiet warmth that was pleasing. But if Adela asked her about anything outside these boundaries – about the estate or the politics of the county – she would only give a slightly twisted smile and answer: ‘Oh, I leave all that to my husband. That’s for the men, don’t you think?’

Yet at the same time she obviously knew all the landholders of the area well and Adela found it hard to believe that she did not have some idea of their affairs. Evidently, however, she did not believe it was her role to admit to such knowledge. She has decided what she wants to be and what she ought to think, Adela realized. She does so because she believes it’s to her advantage. No doubt, behind her mincing little smile, she thinks me a fool if I don’t play the same game. She also noticed that as she quietly stitched, the Lady Maud asked her almost nothing about herself – although whether it was because she was not interested or because she did not wish to embarrass Walter’s obviously poor relation, it was impossible to tell.

In the afternoon they all went for a ride round the estate. With its huge fields, its neatly kept orchards, its well-stocked fish ponds, it was the perfect model of what such a manor should be. There could be no doubt that Hugh de Martell knew his business well. When they came to a long slope that led up to the crest of the ridge, the two men cantered up it and Adela would have liked to follow at the same pace.

But the Lady Maud was firm: ‘I think we should walk the horses. Let the men canter.’ So Adela was obliged to keep her company and they only got halfway up the ridge before the return of the men caused them to turn round again.

‘Fine view,’ Walter remarked as they did so.

On their return from the ride they found that the servants had set out trestle tables in the hall, spread them with cloths and soon afterwards they were seated for a meal. Since they had not eaten yet that day a full dinner was now served. Everything was quietly but handsomely done. A small procession brought bread and broth, salmon and trout, three meats. Hugh de Martell carved himself; the Lady Maud served Walter from her own plate. The wine – this was rare indeed – was clear and good, lightly spiced. Fresh fruits, cheeses and nuts rounded off their meal. Tyrrell politely complimented the Lady Maud upon each course and Martell took the trouble to amuse Adela by telling her a funny story about a merchant from Normandy who spoke no English. And perhaps she drank just a little too much.

Yet how could she possibly have known she was making a mistake when she mentioned the Forest? Since, in Walter’s eyes, she had made such a fool of herself there, he might have assumed she would not bring up the subject of the deer drift. It was hard to know. All she did at first, in any case, was to ask her hostess if she ever ventured into the New Forest.

‘The New Forest?’ The Lady Maud looked faintly startled. ‘I don’t think I’d want to go there.’ She gave Walter one of her little smiles, as if Adela had said something socially inappropriate. ‘The people who live there are very strange. Have you been there, Walter?’

‘Only once or twice. With the royal hunt.’

‘Ah. Well that’s rather different.’

Adela saw that Walter had just given her a disapproving frown. Obviously he wanted her to change the subject. But it also irritated her. Why should she be treated like an idiot all the time? He was going to despise her anyway. ‘I ride in the Forest alone,’ she said blithely. ‘I’ve even hunted there.’ She paused to let that sink in. ‘With your husband.’ And she gave Walter a smile of cheerful defiance.

But whatever reaction she might have expected, it was not the one she got.

‘Hugh?’ The Lady Maud frowned, then went a little pale. ‘Went hunting in the Forest?’ She looked at him questioningly. ‘Did you, my dear?’ she asked in a strangely small voice.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said quickly, with a frown. ‘With Walter here. And Cola. Back in the spring.’

‘I don’t think I knew that.’ She was looking at him with a silent reproach.

‘I’m sure you did,’ he said in a firm tone.

‘Oh. Well,’ she replied softly, ‘I do now.’ And she gave Adela her twisted smile before adding with a forced playfulness: ‘Men will go off hunting in the Forest.’

Walter was gazing down at his food. As for Martell, was there a hint of impatience in his manner? A slight shrug of the shoulder? Why would he not have told her? Was there some other reason for his visit to the Forest? Were there other absences, perhaps? Adela wondered. If he escaped from his wife from time to time, she was not sure she blamed him, whatever he got up to.

It was Walter who came to the rescue. ‘Speaking of things royal,’ he calmly remarked, as though nothing awkward had occurred, ‘have you heard …’ And a moment later he was relating one of the latest scandals from the royal court. As they so often did, this concerned the king’s shocking words to some monks. Impatient of religion himself, Rufus could seldom resist baiting churchmen. As usual also, the Norman king had contrived to be both rude and funny. Shocked though she felt she must be, the Lady Maud was soon laughing as much as her husband.

‘Where did you learn this?’ Martell enquired.

‘Why, from the Archbishop of Canterbury himself,’ Walter confessed, which made them laugh all the more. For it was a fact, quite amusing to Adela, that Tyrrell had somehow managed to ingratiate himself with the saintly Archbishop Anselm too.

And then, having got into his stride, Walter started to entertain them. First one, then another, the stories rolled out. Witty, amusing, mostly about the great figures of the day, frequently accompanied by the admonition ‘Don’t repeat this,’ Walter told his stories well. No one could have failed to be delighted, flattered, fascinated by such an amusing courtier. For Adela it was a revelation. She had never seen Walter being charming before. He certainly never is to me, she thought. But you had to admit he had the skill. Despite herself she was impressed.

And it occurred to her too – if he was impatient with her, could she entirely blame him? This clever Walter Tyrrell, who had married into the mighty Clares, was a friend of the great – could she really complain if he was ashamed of her as she did one gauche thing after another?

When, some time later, the contented party broke up and prepared to retire early to bed, she went to his side and murmured: ‘I’m sorry. I keep doing the wrong thing, don’t I?’

To her surprise, in reply, he smiled at her quite kindly. ‘My fault too, Adela. I haven’t been very nice to you.’

‘True. But I can’t have been a burden you wanted much.’

‘Well, let’s see if we can do something for you in Winchester,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’

She woke early the next morning feeling wonderfully refreshed. She opened the shutters. The day was beginning, the pink of dawn already fading from a clear blue sky. The damp cool air tingled on her face. Apart from the gentle twittering of the birds, everything was quiet. Some way off a cock crowed. She thought she detected the faint smell of barley in the air. No one was stirring yet in the house, but across the ridge she saw a single peasant making his way along a path. She took a breath.

She couldn’t wait in the chamber until the household started to appear. The day was too inviting. She felt too excited. Pulling on her chemise and a linen overshirt, tying her girdle, sweeping back her loose hair with both hands and with only slippers on her feet, she went quickly out of the house. If she looked a little wild, she thought, it didn’t matter. No one would see her.

Just beyond the house was a walled garden entered by a gate. She went in. It would be some time before the sun invaded that silent space. Herbs and honeysuckle grew there. Three apple trees occupied a patch of lawn, their half-ripened apples still hard, although they had put on their first blush of colour. Wild strawberries showed among the grass too, spangling the green with tiny specks of red. There were cobwebs in the corners of the wall. Everything was drenched in dew. Her mouth widened with delight. Why, she might have been in some castle or monastery garden in her native Normandy.

She remained there, drinking in the peace of the place for some time.

There still did not seem to be anyone about when she came out. She considered walking across to the stables, which were in the big square of outbuildings, or perhaps the field beyond where some of the horses had been put out for the night. But as she came along the side of the manor house her attention was caught by a small door set low in the side wall, with three stone steps leading down to it. She assumed this must lead to an undercroft and that it would be locked. But as it was her nature to do so, she went down to try it and, to her surprise, it opened.

The undercroft was large; the low cellar extended the whole length of the building. Its ceiling was supported by three thick stone pillars down the centre, which divided the area into bays. The light from the door, which she left open, was supplemented by a small barred window set high in the opposite wall.

Her eyes took a few moments to accustom themselves to the shadows but she soon saw that it contained the sort of items she would have expected – although unlike the jumble one often found in such storage places, everything here was stacked in an orderly fashion. There were chests and sacks; one bay was taken up by barrels of wine and ale; in another hung some archery targets, unstrung bows, arrows, half a dozen fishing nets, collars for hounds, falconing gloves and hoods. Only as she came to the furthest bay on the left, where there were wood shavings on the floor, did she see something strange – gleaming faintly, a tall form in the shadows so like a man that it made her jump.

It was a wooden dummy. The reason it shone softly was that it was wearing a long coat of chain mail and a metal helmet. Behind it, she now saw, was a second dummy wearing the leather shirt that went under the chain mail. On a stand was a high-pommelled saddle, against which rested a long studded shield; on a frame next to this, a huge broadsword, two spears and a mace. She gave a little intake of breath. This must be Hugh de Martell’s armour.

She knew better than to touch anything. The chain mail and the weapons had all been carefully oiled to keep them from rusting; in the faint light she could see that everything was in perfect readiness. Not a link in the armour was out of place. There was a mingled smell of oil and leather, metal and resinous wood shaving that she found strangely exciting. Instinctively, she moved close to the armoured figure, smelling it, almost touching.

‘My grandfather used a battleaxe.’

The voice came so unexpectedly, not an inch from her ear, that she almost screamed. Her slippered feet left the stone floor. She whirled round, all but brushing against his chest as she did so.

Hugh de Martell did not move but he chuckled. ‘Did I startle you?’

‘I …’ She tried to get her breath. She could feel herself blush wildly. Her heart was palpitating. ‘Oh, mon Dieu. Yes.’

‘My apologies. I can move softly. I thought you were a thief at first, in this light.’ He still had not shifted. The space between them seemed only enough for a shadow.

She realized suddenly that she was only half dressed. What could she say? Her mind would not focus. ‘A battleaxe?’ It was the last word she seemed able to remember.

‘Yes. We Normans are all Vikings, after all. He was a big, red-headed man.’ He smiled. ‘I get my dark hair from my mother. She was from Brittany.’

‘Oh. I see.’ She saw nothing, except his leather jerkin and the sleeve of his long arm. She was aware, only, that there was a pause before he spoke.

‘You’re always exploring, aren’t you? First the Forest, now here. You have an adventurous spirit. That’s very Norman.’

She turned her face up towards his. He was smiling down at her. ‘Aren’t you adventurous?’ she asked. ‘Or perhaps you don’t need to be.’

His smile went, but he did not look angry, only thoughtful. He had understood her, of course: the settled manors, the rich wife; her little challenge to suggest he had lost his Viking ancestors’ spirit. ‘I’ve plenty to do, as you see,’ he answered quietly. There was a sense of calm authority, of power that emanated from him as he spoke the words.

‘I am put in my place,’ she replied.

‘I wonder where your place is.’ His look of amusement had returned. ‘Normandy? England?’

‘Here, I think.’

‘You are going to Winchester. That’s a good place to find a husband. So many people go there. Perhaps we shall see you again in this part of the country.’

‘Perhaps. Do you go to Winchester?’

‘Sometimes.’

He took a step back now. His eyes, she realized, had automatically taken all of her in. He was about to turn away. She wanted to say something, anything to keep him there. But what could she say? That he had married a rich woman unworthy of him? That he’d have been better with her? Where, where on God’s earth could anything between them possibly lead?

‘Come.’ He was offering to escort her out. Of course, she should go and dress herself properly. She did as he indicated, walking in front of him towards the light at the door. Only just before she reached it did she feel him take her hand, firmly raise it and brush it softly with his lips.

A courtly gesture in the shadow. Unexpected. She turned to him. Something like a pain seemed to stun her across the chest. For just a second she could not breathe. He bowed his head. Like a sleepwalker she went through the door into the bright world outside, almost blinded by the light. He had turned to lock the door. She walked on, not looking back, into the manor house.

The rest of the day passed quietly. Most of it she spent in the company of the Lady Maud. When she saw Hugh de Martell, he seemed polite but somewhat cold and aloof.

And when she and Walter parted from him the next morning to make their way to Winchester he remained formal and unapproachable. But at the top of the ridge she glanced back and saw his tall, dark figure, still watching after them until they passed out of sight.

Autumn comes with kindness to the Forest. The long light of summer slides into September; the spreading oaks are still green; the peaty humus of the heath retains a soft, seaside warmth; the air smells sweet and tangy.

In the world outside it is a mellow time. The harvest is done, the apples are ready to fall, the mists on the bare fields a damp reminder to men to gather in all they can as the sun begins its gradual recession towards the ending of the year.

But in the Forest nature takes a different form. This is the season when the oaks shed their green acorns and the forest floor is covered with their falling. Men like Pride turn out their pigs to eat the acorns and beech nuts – the mast as this feed is called. It is an ancient right, which even the Norman Conqueror had no wish to stop. ‘If the deer eat too many acorns when they’re green,’ his foresters reminded him, ‘they get sick. But the pigs love them.’ As the days pass, the beech trees begin to yellow; yet, just as this sign of gentle decay is seen, another almost contradictory transformation also takes place. The holly tree is either male or female and it is now, as though to welcome the future coming of winter, that the female holly bursts into berries whose thick, crimson clusters gleam against the crystal-blue September sky.

As the equinox passes and all nature becomes aware that the nights are starting to be just a little longer than the days, further changes are seen. The heather flowers having turned into a haze of tiny white dots, the heathland goes from its summer purple to autumn brown. The brown of the bracken stem climbs into the drying ferny leaves until, in certain clumps, they catch the autumn sunlight like polished bronze. The acorns lying in the fallen leaves have rolled free from their cups and they, too, are brown. The evening mist brings a damp chill. The cold dawn has a bracing bite. Yet in the Forest, these signs mark not an end but a beginning. If the sun is now departing, it is only to cede his place to a yet more ancient deity. Winter is on the way: it is the time of the silver moon.

It is the time for the rutting of the deer.

The buck stalked down the centre of the rutting stand. It was dawn. There was a light frost on the ground. Around the edge of the stand, on ground marked by their slots, as the tracks of the deer’s cleft feet are called, eight or nine does were waiting to be serviced. Some of them were moving about making a wickering sound. There was tense excitement in the air. The pale doe was also there. She was waiting quietly.

The buck’s antlers were splendid and he knew it. Their heavy, burnished blades spread out some two and a half feet from his head and they were fearsome to behold. They had been fully grown since August when their velvet covering had begun to peel off. For many days he had scraped and rubbed the new antlers against small trees and saplings, leaving scour marks on their bark. It had felt good when the strong saplings braced and bent against their weight; he had felt his growing power. This honing served a dual purpose: not only did it clean off the last vestiges of peeling velvet, but the bone of the antlers, creamy white when they emerged, became coated, polished, hardened to a gleaming brown.

By September he was getting restless. His neck swelled. His Adam’s apple enlarged; the tingling sensation of power seemed to be filling his whole body, from his hindquarters to his thickening shoulders. He began to strut and stamp the ground, he had an urge to exercise, to prove his power. He moved about the woods alone at night, wandering here and there like some knight in search of adventure. Gradually, however, he began to move towards that part of the Forest where the pale doe had seen him the year before – for bucks instinctively move away from their original home when they are going to mate, so that the genetic stock of the deer will be constantly mixed. By late September he was ready to mark out his rutting stand. But before that one other ancient ceremony had to begin.

Who knew when the red deer first came to the Forest? They had been there since time immemorial. Bigger than the fallow interlopers, men had designated them by different names: The male red was a stag, the female a hind; the young red was not a fawn, like the fallow, but a calf. While the fallow buck’s antlers rose in broad blades, the stag’s still larger crown rose in spiky branches. The red deer’s numbers were never large. Lacking the fleetness and cleverness of the fallow, they were easier to kill and already the fallow far outnumbered them. While the fallow liked the wooded glades, the red remained on the moor where, as they lay in the heather, they seemed, even in full daylight, to blend into the land itself. Primeval and Nordic, compared with the elegant French arrivals, it seemed appropriate, as the autumn rut approached, that even the fallow great bucks should yield precedence to these ancient figures who had endured in the empty silences of the heath since, very likely, the age of ice.

It is normally a few days after the autumn equinox, when he has taken charge of the group of hinds who will form his exclusive harem, that the red stag raises his mighty head and utters the haunting call, a few notes higher than the bellow of cattle, which echoes over the heather at twilight and causes men to listen and say: ‘The stags have started to roar.’

And more days will pass before, in the woodland glades, the fallow bucks add their own, different call to the sounds of autumn.

The buck’s stand was not one of the most important – older and more powerful great bucks held those – for this was still his first rut. It was about sixty yards long and nearly forty wide. He had prepared it carefully for days. First, working his way around the perimeter of the stand, he had used his antlers to thrash the saplings and bushes. As he did so, a strong scent exuded from glands below his eyes, marking the bushes as his territory. He anointed the trees along the perimeter too. Then, as the moment came closer, he had made scrapes with his forefeet, which also contained glands, upon the ground, even tearing it up in places with his antlers. He urinated in the scrapes, then rolled in the wetted dirt. This created the pungent smell of the rutting buck, thrilling to does: for unlike the red deer, it is the females who come to the male in the fallow rut.

And so, as if for some magical knightly tournament that was to take place in the forest glade, the handsome young buck was ready to challenge all comers on his rutting stand. His rut would last many days, during which time he would not eat, living on the energy provided by a phenomenal production of testosterone. Gradually he would grow less alert; by the end he would be exhausted. The watching does would guard him, therefore, patrolling the outer edges of the stand, looking out and listening. And indeed, all nature participated: for the birds would call out at the approach of danger and even the forest ponies, usually silent, would whinny in warning if they saw human intruders come near the dappled forms in their secret ceremony.

The buck had been pacing the stand for hours. Trampled grass, crushed bracken and nutty brown acorns lay underfoot. As well as the does, two prickets and a sore, who was trying to look as if he might step into the ring, were watching. A faint light was filtering through the trees. From time to time he would pause in his pacing to give the rutting call.

The rutting call of the fallow buck is known as a groan. Stretching his head slightly downwards, he then raises his swollen throat to emit this call. Its sound can hardly be described – a strange, grunting, belching trumpet. Once heard, it can never be forgotten.

Three times he groaned, handsome, powerful, from the centre of the stand.

But now a new figure was approaching through the trees. There was a rustle as the does scampered out of his path. He emerged and crossed the line quietly into the stand, walking calmly towards the buck as though he had not a care in the world.

It was another buck and, judging by his antlers, the two were perfectly matched.

The pale doe trembled. Her buck was going to fight.

The interloper moved slowly across the stand. He was darker than her buck. She could smell his scent, pungent, sour, like the mud from brackish water. He looked strong. He walked past her buck who fell into step – this was the ritual of the fight – just behind. The two males kept walking, almost casually; she saw the muscles flexing in their powerful shoulders, their antlers waving slowly up and down as they went along. She noticed that one of the two little curved horns just in front of the base of the antler blades on the dark buck’s head was broken, leaving a jagged spike. A sudden twist of the head and he could gouge out her buck’s eye. The other does were watching silently. Even the birds in the trees seemed to have quietened. She was aware only of the slow swish of the feet of the two males on the fallen leaves and bracken.

All nature knew her buck’s fate was about to be decided. A buck might challenge one of the mighty great bucks and lose with honour. Perhaps the interloper had broken his horn that way. But when two matched bucks come head to head, one must be defeated. He may be wounded, sometimes killed; but most important he has lost, his pride is shattered. The does know it, the whole forest has seen. He slinks away, and the stand and the does belong to the victor.

The pale doe watched as the two males reached the end of the stand, turned and started back again. Was it, after all her waiting, to be the darker, sour-smelling buck with the vicious spike who destroyed her chosen mate and then possessed her? She had come to the rutting stand. She belonged to the winner by right. That was the way of it. Then she saw her buck give the sign.

A nudge. That was the signal. Her buck moved forward just a little so that his shoulder nudged the hindquarter of the interloper.

The dark buck wheeled. For just a second there was a pause as the two bucks braced back on their hind legs; then, with a crack that echoed through the woods, the two huge antlers crashed together.

Two full-grown bucks fighting is a fearsome thing to behold. As the powerful bodies with their swollen necks strained, grunting, against each other, the pale doe involuntarily backed away. They suddenly seemed so huge, so dangerous. If one of them broke loose, if they came charging towards her … They were evenly matched. For long seconds they inched back and forth, their antlers locked low, their hind legs digging into the ground, muscles bulging as if they might snap. Her buck seemed to be gaining.

Then she saw his hind legs slip. The interloper pushed forward, a foot, a yard. Her buck was clawing the ground, but slipping in the damp leaves. He was about to go down. She saw him lock his legs. He was sliding back, his body rigid, locked in position. The interloper gave a final shove; he seemed about to lunge forward and grind her buck down.

But something had changed. Her buck had hit firmer ground. His feet suddenly got their purchase on grass. His hindquarters shivering, he dug in. She saw his shoulders rise and his neck bear down. And now the interloper was slipping on the wet leaves. Slowly, cautiously, their antlers locked, the two straining bucks began to turn. Now they were both on grass. Suddenly the interloper disengaged. He gave his head a twist. The jagged spike was aiming at her buck’s eye. He lunged. She saw her buck rock back, then smash forward. His whole weight came down on the interloper’s antlers. There was a rasping crackle. The interloper, because of his vicious manoeuvre, was not quite straight. His neck was twisting. He was giving ground.

And then, in a rush, it was all over. Her buck was shoving him back, foot after foot. The interloper was off balance; he struggled, turned and was caught on the flank. Her buck was in full spate now, butting, tossing his head, driving his opponent before him. There was blood on the interloper’s side. Her buck’s head rammed again into his antlers with a tremendous blow. The interloper cried out, turned, stumbling, and limped off the stand. He had lost.

Having strutted magnificently down the stand of which he was now the undisputed master, her buck turned his face towards her.

Why did he suddenly look strange? His huge antlers, his triangle of a face, the two eyes like black holes, staring blankly towards her: it was as if her buck had vanished, been transmogrified into some other entity named only ‘deer’ – an image, a spirit, swift and terrible. He bounded towards her.

She turned. It was expected of her; it was instinctive; but she was also afraid. All year she had waited. Now it was her turn. She began to run, away from the stand, through the trees, the bushes brushing against her. All year she had waited, yet now, knowing him so large, so powerful, so strange and terrible, she was trembling with fear. Would he hurt her? Yes. Surely. Yet it must be so. She knew it must. She had a strange sensation, as though all the warmth, all the blood in her body was rushing backwards, into the base of her spine and her hindquarters, which were trembling as she ran. He was coming. He was just behind, she could hear him, sense him. Suddenly she could smell him. Hardly knowing what she did, she stopped abruptly.

He was there. He was upon her. She felt him mount her; her body staggered under the weight. She had to fight to stand up. His scent was all over her like a cloud. Her head involuntarily snapped back. His antlers appeared, hovering above, terrible, absolute. And then she felt him enter. A searing red pain and then, something full, urgent, tremendous, filling her like a flood.

Adela liked Winchester. Lying in the chalk downs, due north of the great Solent inlet, it had once been a Roman provincial town. For centuries after it had been the chief seat of the West Saxon kings, who had finally become kings of all England. And though, during the last few decades, it was London that had become the effective capital of the kingdom, the old royal treasury remained at Winchester and the king would still from time to time hold court at his royal palace there.

It was not far from the New Forest. A road led southwest for eight miles to the small town of Romsey, where there was a religious house for nuns. Four miles more and one was in the Forest. Yet, as Adela quickly found, it seemed a world away.

Set on a slope, overlooking a river and surrounded by sweeping ridges topped with woods of oak and beech, Winchester was essentially a walled city of about a hundred and forty acres, with four ancient gates. The southern end contained a fine new Norman cathedral, the bishop’s palace, St Swithun’s priory, the treasure house and William the Conqueror’s royal residence, together with several other handsome buildings of stone. The rest of the town was on a fitting scale, with a market place, several merchant halls, houses with gardens and dovecotes, and busy streets of craftsmen and tradesmen. By one of the gates there was a hospice for poor folk. The views over the downs were broad, the air bracing.

The city had retained much of its ancient character. The streets all had their Saxon names, from Gold Street and Tanners Street even to the Germanic-sounding Flesh-mongers Street. But the court of Wessex had been an educated place. Even before the Norman Conquest, the city had bustled with priests, monks, royal officials, rich merchants and gentlemen, and one would have heard Latin and even French spoken, as well as Saxon, in Winchester’s halls.

The arrangements Walter had made for her were certainly an improvement upon the merchant at Christchurch. Adela’s hostess was a widow in her fifties, the daughter of a Saxon noble by birth, who had been married to one of the Norman keepers of the Winchester treasury and who now lived in pleasant stone-built lodgings beside the western gate. Walter had been closeted with her for a long time when they first arrived and after he had gone the lady had given Adela an encouraging smile and told her: ‘I’m sure we can do something for you.’

Certainly, she hadn’t lacked company. The first day they walked through the streets, to St Swithuns and back through the market, her hostess was greeted by priests, royal officials and merchants alike. ‘My husband had many friends and they remember me for his sake,’ the lady remarked; but after a day or two’s experience of the other woman’s kindness and common sense, Adela concluded that they liked the widow for herself.

Her own position was made easy.

‘This is a cousin of Walter Tyrrell’s, from Normandy,’ her hostess would explain; and Adela could see from their respectful reaction that this immediately placed her as a young noblewoman with powerful connections. Within a day, the prior of St Swithuns had requested that the two women would dine with him.

In private her new friend was reassuring, but down-to-earth. ‘You are a handsome girl. Any noble would feel proud to have you at his side. As to your lack of inheritance …’

‘I’m not penniless.’

‘No, of course not,’ said her friend, although perhaps with more kindness than conviction. ‘One should never claim anything that isn’t true,’ she went on, ‘but equally there’s no need to put people off. So I think it would be best if we just … say nothing.’ Her voice trailed away. She gazed into space. ‘Anyway,’ she added brightly, ‘if you make yourself agreeable to your cousin Walter, perhaps he might provide something for you.’

Adela looked surprised. ‘You mean … money?’

‘Well, he isn’t poor. If he thinks you might be useful …’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Adela confessed.

‘Oh, my dear child.’ The widow took a moment to recover herself. ‘From now on,’ she said firmly, ‘we must both work to ensure that your cousin feels you will be a great credit to him.’

If her hostess encouraged her to be a little wiser about her own situation, the society of Winchester also made her more aware of what was passing in the outer world. She had known, for instance, that the king had his differences with the Church, but she was quite shocked when a senior churchman, talking casually to them in the cathedral yard, referred to him openly as ‘that red devil’.

‘Yet think of what Rufus has done,’ her friend said afterwards. ‘First he has a flaming row with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop goes to see the Pope and Rufus refuses to let him re-enter England. Then, here in Winchester, the bishop dies and Rufus refuses to install a new one. You know what that means, don’t you? All the revenues of the Winchester diocese, which is hugely rich, are paid to the king instead of the Church. And now, to add insult to injury, he’s just made his best friend, who is an absolute rogue, into the bishop of Durham. The churchmen don’t just hate the king. Many of them would like to see him dead.’

Another subject she soon encountered concerned her native land. Several times, when they learned that she had come from Normandy, people had remarked: ‘Ah, I dare say we shall all be under one king again soon.’ She had known that when Duke Robert of Normandy had gone on crusade three years before, he had raised the money for the expedition by a huge loan from his brother Rufus, offering Normandy itself as security. What she had not realized, but everyone in Winchester knew, was that Rufus hadn’t the slightest intention of seeing his brother return to his duchy. ‘If he isn’t killed on crusade,’ he had apparently told his friends gleefully, ‘he’ll come back penniless. He’ll never be able to repay. Then I’ll get Normandy and be as great a man as my father the Conqueror was.’

‘He’s probably right,’ the widow told Adela, ‘but there is a danger. Some of Robert’s friends tried to kill Rufus a few years ago. Some of the Clares, actually. Mind you, they’re all afraid of Rufus. But you never know …’

‘What about the third brother, young Henry?’ Adela ventured. ‘He’s got nothing to rule.’

‘That’s true. You may see him, by the way. He comes through here from time to time.’ Her friend considered for a few moments. ‘I think he’s probably clever,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t think he’d take sides with either brother because you only get caught in the middle. I think he keeps his head down and gives no trouble. That’s probably the wisest thing to do. Don’t you think?’

Whenever there was any entertaining to be done in Winchester – if a party of knights came through, or some royal official and his retinue were to be given a feast by the keeper of the treasury – the widow and Adela were sure to be of the company. Within a few weeks she had met a dozen eligible young fellows who, if they were not necessarily interested themselves, might mention her to others.

It was at one of these feasts that she met Sir Fulk.

He was a middle-aged man, but quite agreeable. She was sorry to hear that he had just lost his fourth wife – he did not seem to say quite how. He had estates in Normandy and in Hampshire, quite near Winchester. He thought he had once met her father. She could not help wishing that, with his little moustache and round face, he did not remind her so much of Walter, but she tried to put the thought from her. He spoke affectionately of all his wives.