THE ARMADA TREE

1587

‘You will go with me, a little way, upon my journey?’

The moment she had spoken he had felt his heart sinking. It was an order, of course. ‘Willingly,’ he had lied, feeling almost like a schoolboy.

He was forty and she was his mother.

The road from Sarum towards the south-east – it was a wide, grassy track, really – made a gentle progress across the broad meadows in which the city lay and then rose slowly, in stages, on to the higher ground. The cathedral was more than three miles behind them before they started the long drag up and over the high ridge, which was the south-eastern lip of the broad basin where Sarum’s five rivers met. Although there was a hint of sharpness in the breeze, that September morning, the weather was fine.

It was no light matter when Albion’s mother took to the road. Only upon the bridegroom’s thrice repeated promise of the best room in the house of Salisbury’s richest merchant had she consented to come to the wedding festivities without bringing her own furniture. Even so, as well as the carriage in which she travelled with coachman, groom and outrider, there was the wagon behind, groaning under the weight of two manservants, two maids and such a prodigious quantity of chests containing her dresses, gowns, shoes and formidable collection of toiletries – the coachman swore that one of the chests had a Roman priest in it, too – that one could only thank God the autumn weather was still dry for otherwise it must surely have stuck in the mud. But then his mother had firm views about how things should be done and, Albion reflected a little sadly as he rode beside the carriage, she did not stint herself. So the horses, at least, were glad when, cresting the ridge, the lady abruptly called a halt and ordered her litter.

The groom and the manservants silently assembled it, slotted in the poles and brought it to the carriage door. As his mother stepped out, Albion observed that she was already wearing wooden pattens on her feet to protect them from the mud. She had planned this halt, therefore. He should have guessed. She pointed, now, to the path along the ridge. Evidently she wished to go up there and expected him to accompany her. Dismounting, he walked up behind as the four men carried the litter and so, a curious little procession silhouetted against the sky, they made their way along the chalk rim as the small white clouds hurried over them.

At the high point she ordered the litter put down and stepped out of it. The men were told to wait at a distance. Then she turned towards her son, and beckoned. ‘Now, Clement,’ she said with a smile – the name had been her particular choice, not his father’s – ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Gladly, Mother,’ he said.

At least she had chosen a fine place to do it. The view from the ridge below Sarum was one of the finest in southern England. Looking back the way they had come, the long slope now appeared as a beautiful sweep down into the lush green basin from which, four miles away, Salisbury Cathedral rose like a grey swan from the Avon valley floor, its graceful spire soaring so high that you might have supposed the surrounding ridges had been spun out from it, like clay on a lathe, driven by an ancient spirit. To the north lay the bump of Old Sarum’s castle mound and the sea of chalk ridges beyond. Eastwards, the rich, undulating countryside of Wessex rolled away into the distance.

But it was turning south, in the direction of their journey, that one saw the longest sweep of all. For there, shelving gradually down, mile after mile, lay the whole vast expanse of the New Forest – wild oak wood, gravel ridges, sweeping gorse and heather heath, all the way to Southampton and the misty blue slopes of the Isle of Wight, plainly visible, twenty miles away in the sea.

Clement Albion stood before his mother on the bare ridge and wondered what she wanted.

Her opening words were not encouraging. ‘We should not fear death, Clement.’ She smiled at him in quite a friendly way. ‘I have never been afraid to die.’

The Lady Albion – for although her husband had not been a knight, so she was always called – was a tall, slim woman. Her face was powdered white; her lips were, as God had graciously made them, red. Her eyes were dark and tragic unless she was annoyed, when they became adamantine. Her teeth were very fine – for she despised all things sweet – and long, and the colour of ancient ivory.

To the casual observer it might have seemed that she had continued to dress in the fashion of her heyday because, being neither at court nor in London, and proud no doubt of the finery of her best years, she had quietly slid, as older women often did, a decade or two behind the times. Instead of the large ruff now in fashion, she maintained a simple high, open collar; her long heavy gown had large slit puffs on the shoulders and her arms were encased in the close-fitting sleeves of an earlier time. She wore a richly embroidered underskirt. On her head she usually carried a heavy veil held with a linen hood; but today, for her journey, she had put on a jaunty man’s cap with a plume. From a chain around her waist hung a fur-lined muff. To the casual observer it might have seemed a picture of dated charm. But her son was not deceived. He knew better.

Her clothes were all black: black cap, black gown, black underskirt. She had dressed in this way ever since the death of Queen Mary Tudor, thirty years before; there being, she would say, no reason to leave off mourning. Yet what made this attire so truly startling was the fact that the embroidery of the underskirt and the whole inside of her stiff, high collar were bright crimson: red as the blood of the martyrs. She had trimmed her widow’s black with crimson, now, for half a year. She was a walking emblem.

He looked at her cautiously. ‘Why do you speak of death, Mother? I hope you are in good health.’

‘I am, by God’s grace. But I was speaking of yours.’

‘Mine? I am well, I think.’

‘Before you, Clement, may lie great earthly glory. I pray it may be so. But if not, we should equally rejoice to wear the martyr’s crown.’

‘I have done nothing, Mother, to cause me to be martyred,’ he said uneasily.

‘I know.’ She smiled at him almost gaily. ‘So I have done it for you.’

When the Wars of the Roses had ended, a century before, with a final royal bloodletting, the new Tudor dynasty had picked up England’s crown. Descended only from an obscure branch of the royal Plantagenets, and on the female side, the Tudors had been anxious to prove their right to rule and, with this in mind, had been the most pious supporters of the Holy Roman Church. But when the second Tudor had needed a marriage annulled to get a male heir and secure the dynasty, politics had taken pride of place over religion.

And when King Henry VIII of England quarrelled with the Pope, divorced his royal Spanish wife and made himself head of the Church of England, he had acted with a terrifying ruthlessness. Sir Thomas More, saintly old Bishop Fisher, the brave monks of the London Charterhouse and several others all suffered martyrdom. Most of Henry’s subjects were either cowed, or indifferent. But not all. In the north of England a huge Catholic uprising – the Pilgrimage of Grace – had made even the king tremble before it was put down. The English people, especially in the countryside, by no means accepted the break with the old religious ways.

Yet as long as King Harry lived, good Catholics could still hope that the true Church might be restored. Other rulers might be impressed by the doctrines of Martin Luther and the new generation of Protestant leaders who were shaking all Europe with their clamour for change. But King Harry of England certainly believed he was a good Catholic. True, he had denied the authority of the Pope; true, he had closed down all the monasteries and stolen all their vast lands. But in all this he claimed he was only reforming papal abuses. His English Church was still in doctrine Catholic; he continued to execute troublesome Protestants as long as he reigned.

It was only when his poor, sickly son, the boy-king Edward VI and his Protestant guardians came to power that the new Protestant religion was forced upon England. The Mass was outlawed, the churches stripped of popish ornament. Protestants – they were mostly merchants and craftsmen in the towns – might have liked it, but honest Catholic folk in the countryside were horrified.

Hope returned for loyal Catholics when, after six years of this enforced Protestantism, the boy-king died and Henry’s daughter Mary came to the throne: child of the long-suffering Spanish princess – whom even Protestant Englishmen agreed Henry had treated shamefully when he divorced her – Mary wanted passionately to restore her mother’s true faith to her now heretic island kingdom and, given time, she might have succeeded.

The trouble was, the English didn’t like her. She was a sad woman. Deeply marked by her father’s treatment of her mother, passionate for her faith, all she longed for was a good Catholic husband and the blessing of children. But she had no charm; she was dictatorial; she wasn’t her father. When she decided to marry the most Catholic king of mighty Spain – which was sure to put Englishmen under Spanish rule – and the English Parliament protested, she told them it was none of their business. And then, of course, she burned several hundred English Protestants.

By the standards of the age the burnings were not so terrible. By the time of the later Middle Ages, although there was nothing in the scriptures to support such a thing, the Christian community had developed an extraordinary appetite for burning human beings alive and it was a fashion that lasted for several centuries. Nor did it seem, in England, to make much difference which side of the denominational divide you were on. Catholics burned Protestants and Protestants burned Catholics. The Protestant Bishop Latimer had personally presided over what can only be described as the sadistic ritual murder of an elderly Catholic priest – a burning carried out in so disgusting a manner that even the crowd who had come to watch it broke down the barriers and intervened. Now, under Mary, it was Latimer’s turn to be burned, although with less sadism, thereby to earn the reputation of a martyr for his faith.

But there were others – simple townsmen, innocent of political connivance but humbly seeking God – who were burned; and there were too many of them. Before long, the English were calling their Catholic queen ‘Bloody Mary’.

The King of Spain came and went, and there was no child; the burnings continued. Then Mary tried to fight a little war and lost Calais, the last English possession in France. And by the time the poor woman died, after five miserable years upon the throne, the English were sick of her and welcomed good Queen Bess.

Clement Albion stared at his mother in horror.

Did she deceive herself or was she really so fearless? Perhaps she herself did not know. One thing he was sure of: she had woven herself so closely into the part she played, and for so long, that she had become as stiff as the brocade of her dress.

Old King Harry had still been alive when she had married Albion. She was a Pitts – a notable family in the county of Southampton, as Hampshire was often called – and due, from a cousin, to receive a great inheritance. It was a marriage that had seemed to promise Albion great advancement. Nor, at first, had it seemed a difficulty that, like all her Pitts family, she was devout.

The crisis of Henry VIII’s reign had caused great shock in the county of Southampton. Bishop Gardiner of Winchester, in whose great diocese the region lay, was a loyal Catholic who had only with difficulty been persuaded to acknowledge Henry’s supremacy over the Church. He had nearly gone to execution like Fisher and More. When Henry had dissolved the monasteries huge tracts of the county had changed hands. In the New Forest, in particular, the great monastery of Beaulieu, the lands of Christchurch priory to the south-west, the smaller house of Breamore in the Avon valley and the great abbey of Romsey just above the Forest – these were all stolen, their buildings stripped and left to fall into ruin. For a family like the Pitts this was terrible indeed.

But the Protestant years of the boy-king that followed were almost beyond enduring. Bishop Gardiner was taken to the Fleet prison – a London common gaol – and then to the Tower, before being left under house arrest. In his place as bishop the king’s Protestant council sent a man who had been married three times, who held two bishoprics at the same time and who cheerfully sold part of Winchester’s endowment to pay off the family of the Duke of Somerset who had appointed him. ‘See’, a Pitt remarked drily, ‘how these Protestants purify the Church.’ And certainly, in the years of the boy-king that followed, the diocese of Winchester was well and truly purified. The churches of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight had been particularly well furnished. With what boundless joy, therefore, the Protestant reformers now fell upon them. Silver plate and candlesticks, vestments, hangings, even the bells were taken down. Some of this huge haul simply disappeared, stolen. Some was sold, although for whose account it was not always easy to say. Thus the English Church was liberated from popery.

Clement had no memory of his mother during these years. He had been born early in the boy-king’s reign, but he was not yet three when his mother had left. He could only guess at what strains these events had put upon his parents’ marriage, but it was apparently his father’s purchase of some property that had belonged to Beaulieu Abbey that made his pious mother realize she could no longer dwell in her husband’s house. She had returned to her family, the other side of Winchester. His father had always told him that he had refused to let her take her little child with her, so Clement supposed it must be so.

With the accession of Queen Mary to the throne and the return of Bishop Gardiner to the diocese his mother, also, had returned to her marital home and Clement had come to know her. She was a strikingly handsome woman. He had felt so proud of her. And indeed, it seemed to him that these were happy years. He would never forget his parents’ gorgeous apparel when he was allowed to accompany them to Southampton to greet the King of Spain when he landed there to marry Mary Tudor. His mother’s strong faith was well known, and she and her husband had been well received at the royal court.

There had even been a child born, Clement’s sister Catherine. She was a pretty little girl. He had pushed her about in a small cart and she had loved him. But then Queen Mary had died and Elizabeth had come to the throne; and not long after, his mother had gone again, taking his sister with her.

His father would never say why she had left; nor, when they met, did his mother ever tell him much. But he supposed he could imagine.

‘The Whore’s Daughter’. That was how his mother always referred to the queen. To good Catholics, of course, King Henry’s Spanish wife had been his only wife until she died. The charade of the divorce and remarriage, sanctioned by Henry’s breakaway English Church, was nothing but a fraud. So Queen Anne Boleyn had never been married and her daughter Elizabeth was a bastard. Nor, for Clement’s mother, could Queen Elizabeth’s Church be of any interest. The Church that Elizabeth and her counsellor Cecil tried to create was a compromise. The queen did not claim to be its spiritual head but only its governor. Its doctrines were a sort of reformist Catholicism and on the vexed question of the Mass – whether or not a miracle took place and the bread and wine of the Eucharist actually became the body and blood of Christ – the English Church maintained a formula whose ambiguity was little short of genius.

But what was ambiguity to her? The Lady Albion knew she was right. And this, Clement assumed, was the reason for her departure. His father was kindly and, in his way, devout. But the Albion family had been making accommodations ever since the days of Cola the Huntsman, five hundred years before and Clement’s mother despised compromise. She also despised her husband so she left. Perhaps, Clement thought, his father had been relieved to see her go.

Queen Elizabeth’s cunning compromise had not been enough to preserve her island kingdom’s peace. The terrible religious forces that the Reformation unleashed had now divided all Europe into two armed camps who would war with each other, at a huge cost in human life, for more than a century. Whichever way the Queen of England turned, she found herself beset with danger. She deplored the extremes of the Catholic Inquisition. She shared the horror of her Puritan subjects when, one terrible St Bartholomew’s Day, the conservative Catholics of France massacred thousands of peaceful Protestants. Yet she could not sanction the growing Puritan party in England who wanted, through an increasingly radical Parliament, to destroy her compromise Church and dictate to the queen herself. Even if her natural inclination was to move towards the ordered world offered by traditional Catholicism, that did her no good either. For since she couldn’t deliver her country to Rome, the Pope had not only excommunicated her but absolved all Catholics from allegiance to the heretic queen. Elizabeth couldn’t tolerate that: the Roman Church was outlawed in her realm.

The English Catholics did not rise in revolt, but they took all the steps they could to preserve their religion. And few places in southern England contained more loyal Catholics than the Winchester diocese. Even at the start of the reign, thirty priests there had resigned sooner than put up with Elizabeth’s compromise Church. Many of the better sort, as the gentry and merchant class were called, quite openly maintained their Catholic faith. One of the Pitts women was put in the Clink prison by the bishop for defying him and the queen’s secretary Cecil himself sent word to Albion to keep his wife quiet.

‘I cannot control her; she does not live in my house,’ Albion sent word back. ‘Although I couldn’t curb your mother’s tongue,’ he privately confessed to Clement, ‘even if she did live with me.’ His father had died not long after and it seemed the authorities had decided to ignore the Lady Albion since then.

But Clement always lived in dread. He strongly suspected that she harboured Catholic priests. The Isle of Wight and the inlets on the Southampton stretch of the southern coast were natural places to land Roman priests, and the loyal Catholic gentry, the recusants as they were already being called, were ready to give them shelter. These priests were strictly illegal now; no less than four had been discovered in the Winchester diocese recently and taken away for burning. Any day, Clement expected to hear of his mother’s arrest for harbouring priests. She would not even exercise caution. The crimson she was wearing, he thought, was a typical case in point.

When, twenty years before, the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots had been thrown out of her own kingdom by the Scottish Presbyterians, she had soon become the focus of every Catholic plot to overthrow her heretic English cousin. Held under house arrest in England, the wilful exile schemed endlessly until at last, at the start of 1587, Elizabeth had been practically forced by her own council to execute her.

‘She is a Catholic martyr,’ the Lady Albion had immediately declared and within a week she had come to visit her son, wearing the martyr’s crimson for all to see.

‘But must you openly defy the queen’s council and the bishop in this way?’ he had asked in a plaintive tone.

‘Yes,’ she had answered simply. ‘We must.’

We. That was the trouble. Whenever his mother spoke to him of the necessity of dangerous acts, she always spoke of ‘we’ – to let him know that in her mind he was infallibly included.

Ten years ago his mother had finally come into her cousin’s large inheritance. She became, therefore, a very rich woman, free to leave her fortune where and how she pleased. She never spoke of it. Neither did he. The idea that he could be loyal to the sacred cause in order to inherit her money was as unthinkable as to imagine that he would see a penny of it if he wasn’t. The nearest hint she had ever given of her position was once, when he had mentioned that his father had been short of money before his death, to remark: ‘I could not help your father, Clement. He was a broken reed.’ And in those words he thought he could hear, like a soft snap, the sentence of poverty for those who disappointed her.

‘We’, therefore, it was. The fact that she had yet to give him anything, that he now had a wife and three children and that, if he displeased the queen’s council he could count upon losing the several posts in the Forest that provided his modest income – these considerations, of course, must mean nothing if he were to keep her good opinion as they both stood before the most high God.

‘What do you desire of me, Mother?’ he managed to say at last.

‘To speak a word or two alone. I could not do it at the wedding.’ The celebration at Salisbury had been a large affair: one of her nieces had been marrying into a prominent Sarum family. To talk without risk of being overheard would have been difficult.

‘I have received a letter, Clement.’ She paused, looking at him solemnly. He wondered uneasily what was coming next. ‘From your sister. From Spain.’

Spain. Why had his mother insisted on marrying his sister to a Spaniard? A foolish question, really. Even the French, in her eyes, were not truly reliable in matters of religion compared with the Spanish. Back in Mary Tudor’s reign, when King Philip of Spain and his courtiers were in England, she had lost no time in making friends among the Spanish nobility. And sure enough, as soon as his sister Catherine reached the age of fifteen, his mother had boarded a merchant ship at Southampton and departed without so much as a by-your-leave for Spain. Once there, the whole business had been arranged in a trice. With the promise, no doubt, of a handsome dowry, Catherine had been betrothed to a Spaniard of impoverished but impeccable family – he was even related, distantly, to the powerful Duke of Medina Sidonia.

He had not seen her since then. Was she happy? He hoped so. He tried to visualize her. He had his father’s fair hair, but she was dark like her mother. She had probably turned into a completely Spanish lady by now. In which case, he thought glumly, you could be sure what her views were about the present crisis.

When King Philip of Spain had married Catholic Mary Tudor he had naturally supposed that he was adding England to his vast Hapsburg family domains. He had been disappointed when, at her death, the English council had politely but firmly told him he wasn’t wanted. Not that you could fault his persistence: he had offered repeatedly to marry Elizabeth, who had played him along for years. But the King of Spain was not to be trifled with. Not only had this English queen spurned him; she made friends and flirted marriage with his rivals the French. Her seafaring buccaneers – they were legalized pirates, really – raided his shipping; she aided the Protestants who rebelled against Spanish rule in the Netherlands. She had proved to be a heretic and the Pope wanted her deposed. When, at the start of 1587 she had executed the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots it was the final excuse he needed. With the Pope’s blessing he prepared a huge fleet.

The Spanish attack upon England would have taken place that very summer if that boldest of English buccaneers, Sir Francis Drake, had not sent fire ships into Cadiz and destroyed half the Spanish fleet. By the end of the summer, as Clement and his mother were contemplating the family wedding in Salisbury, though the danger seemed to be past that year, few people imagined that Philip of Spain had given up. He would surely try again. It was his nature.

‘We shall soon be delivered, Clement.’ It was ‘delivered’ as far as his mother was concerned; not ‘invaded’.

‘You have definite news?’

‘Don Diego’ – this was Catherine’s husband – ‘has risen far. He is to be a great captain in the army that will come.’ She smiled with satisfaction. ‘It will come, Clement, with the banner of the true Church. And then the faithful of England will rise.’

He had no doubt that she believed it. Encouraged largely by contact with people like the Lady Albion, the Spanish Ambassador had assured his royal master that at least twenty-five thousand Englishmen under arms would flock to join the Catholic army as soon as it set foot on English soil. It had to be so. Wasn’t it God’s will? And Queen Elizabeth herself, whatever she might say, was by no means confident of the loyalty of her Catholic subjects. The fact that some of the southern shore defences might be in the hands of Catholic sympathizers had already caused her loyal Secretary Cecil some alarm.

Yet would they rise? Albion’s own estimate was different. English Catholics might not like Queen Elizabeth much, but they had lived under her rule for thirty years, now. Few of them wanted to be subjects of Spain. ‘English Catholics long for the return of their religion, Mother,’ he said. ‘But few of them want to be traitors.’

‘Traitors? We cannot be traitors if we serve the true God. They are afraid.’

‘Doubtless.’

‘So they must be given heart. They must be led.’

He said nothing.

‘You lead part of the muster in the Forest, Clement. Is it not so?’ All along the southern coastal regions, musters of men had been raised in every parish – a local militia to resist the Spanish if they landed. ‘And the muster point for the Forest is down by the shore battery?’

‘Yes.’ He had been quite proud of his work with the muster that spring, even if they were still poorly armed.

‘But you do not mean, of course, to oppose the Spanish when they land?’

‘I?’ He stared at her. Did she imagine he was going to act the traitor – join the Spanish – for the faith?

But now she smiled. ‘Clement, I have news that will bring you joy. I have a letter for you.’ She reached into her black gown and from some secret recess drew out a little roll of parchment which she handed to him in quiet triumph. ‘It is a letter, Clement – a warrant – from your brother-in-law, Don Diego. He gives you your instructions. There may be more in the spring. They are coming next summer, without fail. God’s will be done.’

He took the letter from her in a daze. ‘How came you by this?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘Through your sister, of course. There is a merchant who carries me her letters. And other things.’

‘But, Mother. If this should ever be discovered. Cecil and the council have spies …’ And very good ones; it was well known. ‘Such a letter …’ He trailed off. Such a letter, intercepted, meant death.

She observed him silently for a moment or two; but when she spoke, her voice was surprisingly gentle. ‘Even the most faithful may be afraid,’ she said quietly. ‘This is how God tests us. And yet,’ she continued, ‘it is the very fear of God that also gives us courage. For you see, Clement, we cannot escape Him. He is everywhere. He knows all, judges all. We have no choice but to obey Him, if we believe. So it is only lack of faith that holds us back, that keeps us from rushing to His arms.’

‘Faith is not always easy, Mother, even for the faithful.’

‘And it is for that, Clement,’ she went on earnestly, ‘that He sends us signs. Our Blessed Lord performed miracles; the saints, their very relics, cause wonders even now. Why, here in the Forest, does not God send us a marvellous miracle every year?’

‘You speak of the oak trees?’

‘Of course, what else?’

It had been remarked upon for many generations now that there were three magical, or miraculous trees in the New Forest. They were all to be found in the area to the north of Lyndhurst; all three were old. And unlike any other oak trees in the Forest, or anywhere else in Christendom for all that Clement knew, they burst all three into green leaf for a mysterious midwinter week, at the feast of Christmas when everything else was bare. The Christmas Green Oaks, or the Green Trees they were called.

No one knew how and why it happened. Their breaking into leaf was against all nature. No wonder, then, if to pious Lady Albion and many like her, this reminder of Our Lord’s crucifixion, of the three crosses upon Calvary and of the resurrection of the dead, was seen as a sign that the divine message is everywhere and that the Holy Church sends forth new shoots in any season of the year.

‘Oh, Clement.’ Her eyes now grew suddenly misty. ‘God’s signs are everywhere. There is nothing to fear.’ She was looking at him with such emotion. It was the nearest thing to maternal affection he could ever remember seeing. ‘When we are delivered from heresy and King Philip rules, this will only lead to your glory.’ She smiled so tenderly. ‘But if – which I cannot think – it should be God’s will that this business fall out otherwise, I had rather see you, my dearest son, raised on a scaffold, even torn limb from limb, than that you should forsake your God, your Heavenly King.’

He knew she meant it, every word. ‘You know what my instructions are?’

‘To lead your muster, Clement, silence the shore battery and help the Spanish to land.’

‘Where?’

‘Between Southampton and Lymington. The Forest shore will not be easy to defend.’

‘You expect me to reply to this letter?’

‘There is no need.’ She beamed. ‘It is already done. I sent a letter to your sister, and Don Diego will convey it to the King of Spain himself. I have told them that you may be relied upon. Even unto death.’

He gazed southwards, over the Forest, towards Southampton and the distant blue haze by the coast. Was her letter, perhaps, already in the hands of Cecil’s spies? Would he live to see Christmas? ‘Thank you, Mother,’ he murmured, drily.

But his mother did not hear him. For she was already signalling to the servants to bring her litter.

The oak tree stood just apart from the wood.

The afternoon was warm.

In the wood, smooth, stately beech trees soared up to share the canopy with crusted oaks. The ground was mossy. All was quiet except for the faint rustle of the leaves and the tiny popping sound as, now and then, a green acorn fell to the ground.

Behind the tree, on a slight incline dotted with young oaks, lay a green glade down which the shadows stole at sunset.

Albion was alone as he rode towards the tree.

Oak: the genus Quercus, sacred since ancient times. There are five hundred species of oak tree upon the planet, but the island of Britain since the ending of the Ice Age contained mainly two: quercus robur, the common or pendunculate oak, whose acorns grow upon little stalks; and quercus petraea, the sessile oak, whose leaves have fewer lobes and whose acorns grow side by side with the leaf. Both kinds grew on the sandy New Forest soil. The common oak produced more acorns.

Albion gazed at the tree with pleasure. He had a particular interest in trees.

The New Forest and its administration had not changed greatly in the last four hundred years. The royal deer were still protected; the midsummer fence month still in force; the verderers still held courts and the foresters their bailiwicks. From time to time, also, gentlemen regarders – knights of the county often as not – would survey and check the Forest boundaries, although a steady trickle of small land grants to private individuals down the generations had made this a more complex task than it had been in olden times. But one change had been taking place. It was subtle, sometimes vague, yet increasingly present.

No one could say exactly when it had begun, but there had been an informal management of the trees in the Forest for centuries. The woodland crop was important: rods, poles, branches for wattle fencing, brushwood, fuel for fires and for charcoal. The trees supplied so many of man’s needs. Most of the supply came from the smaller trees and bushes like the hazel and holly. To obtain straight poles from a hazel, for instance, it would be cut just above the ground, causing it to send up multiple shoots which could be harvested every few years. This process was known as coppicing. More rarely, with oak trees, a similar cutting took place about six feet up, causing a mass of spreading shoots to emerge. This was termed pollarding, and the resulting tree with its stocky trunk and fan of branches was known as a pollard oak.

The only trouble with coppicing was that, when you had cut the underwood, the deer and other forest stock would come and eat up all the new shoots, destroying the whole process. And so the practice had grown up of inclosing small areas, usually with a low earth wall and a fence, to keep the animals out for three years or so, until the new shoots were too sturdy to be eaten. These inclosures were known as coppices.

A century earlier, just before the Tudors came to the English throne, an act of parliament had finally regulated the coppices. Inclosures could be made under licence and fenced for three years to allow regeneration. Since then the period had been extended to a generous nine years. These coppices were valuable and were leased out.

But beyond this activity there was the question of timber – of the felling of whole trees for the construction of large buildings, ships or other of the king’s works. In ages past there had been little need for timber from the New Forest, although huge trees might be provided for a cathedral church or other great project from time to time. But as building activity slowly rose in the Tudor period, the royal treasury began to look more carefully to see what income could be derived from its timber. In 1540, King Henry VIII had appointed a surveyor general to oversee the income, including that from timber, from all the royal woodlands, with a woodward for each county where the royal woodlands lay. The New Forest was not only, nowadays, a preserve for the king’s deer; very gradually the faint consciousness was stealing through the glades that it might also be a huge store of royal trees.

A few years earlier, Albion had managed to get himself appointed as the woodward for the New Forest. This had brought him some extra income; it had also caused him to learn a good deal more than he had ever known about trees. He had even become quite interested in them for their own sake. He looked with approval and even admiration, therefore, at the stately old oak.

It was a great, spreading oak; although its spread came naturally, and not from any pollarding. It was also famous. The first reason for its fame was that, situated some three miles or so north of Lyndhurst, it was one of the three curious trees that broke into leaf for a week at Christmas. But even this magical fact was not all for, somewhere in its long life, it had acquired a second reputation.

‘That was the oak tree that Walter Tyrrell’s arrow glanced off before it killed King William Rufus.’ So people said, and for all Albion’s life, at least, the forest folk had called it the Rufus tree.

Could it be so, Albion wondered? Did oak trees really live so long in the rather poor soil of the Forest?

‘The life of an oak is seven times the life of a man,’ his father had long ago told him. His own guess was that few of the great rotting, ivy-encrusted hulks with their twenty-foot girths were above four centuries old; and in this estimate he was roughly correct. The Rufus oak did not look five hundred years old to him.

Yet there was certainly something wonderful, even magical about the mighty tree.

The tree knew many things.

It was nearly three hundred years since Luke the runaway lay brother had planted it in a place of safety. Since then the wood had moved a little, as woods may do; deer and other grazing animals had eaten up the new shoots in the grassy glade and in this way the tree had been granted an open space of its own in which to grow. While its brethren in the wood, therefore, had grown up tall and narrow beside their neighbours, as oaks in natural woodland usually do, the branches of the Rufus oak had been free to spread outwards as well as upwards, seeking the light.

Despite the name that men had foolishly given it, the Rufus oak had begun its life two centuries too late to play any role in the dramatic death of the red-haired king – which had anyway taken place in quite another part of the Forest. But its life was already old, and complex.

The tree knew that winter was coming. The thousands of leaves, which had gathered in the light, would soon become a burden in the winter frosts. Already, therefore, it had begun to shut down this part of its huge system. The vessels that took the sap to and from the leaves were gradually closing. The remaining moisture in them was evaporating in the September sun, causing them to grow dry and yellow. Just as, in its different season, the male deer seals off the supply of blood to its antlers so that they dry out and are shed, so the tree in a similar fashion would shed its golden leaves.

Before the leaves, however, there would be two other fallings.

The acorns were already dropping in their green thousands. The crop of acorns for any oak will vary, depending mostly on the weather, from year to year; but unlike most other species, the oak as it grows older increases its production of seed, reaching the height of its fecundity in late middle age. Already the pigs were feeding upon the acorns as they pattered down below the spreading branches and scurrying mice would nibble them at night; and others would be taken further away by squirrels, or by jays who might fly some distance before burying them for safekeeping in the ground. Thus the oak was dispersing its seed for future generations.

The other falling was subtler and scarcely noticed. For during the spring the tiny gall wasp, which more resembles a flying ant than the common wasp, had laid its spangle-galls on the underside of the oak leaves. Now these galls, like little red warts, were detaching themselves and flittering down so that they could lie for the winter, hidden and insulated by the leaves that were about to fall on top of them.

Meanwhile, in the bark of the tree, the sap containing the essential sugar was sinking down to its roots, deep underground, to be stored there through the frosts.

Yet if it seemed that this was a season only of closure, it was not so. True, the falling of the leaves would see some of the oak tree’s companions of the spring and summer depart: the various warblers, the blackcaps and redstarts, would leave for warmer climes. But the hardy year rounders, the robins and wrens, the chaffinches, blackbirds and bluetits, although they might diminish or end their song, would still remain. The tawny owl had no thought of leaving the ancient oak; weeks had yet to pass before the myriad bats settled down into their winter sleep within its crevices. Others, thrushes and redwings, were just arriving in the Forest on their way from much harsher habitats. And the ivy that crept along its lower branches would actually use this season to flower, thus attracting the insects who would have been too busy, before now, to pollinate its flowers.

Indeed, the oak tree was about to supply the Forest with a prodigious quantity of food. It was not only the acorns. Upon the tree itself, its bark presented a continent of cracks and crevices in which countless tiny insects and other invertebrates moved about. In autumn the tits would descend upon this territory in flocks to feast upon them. Nuthatches would walk down while tree creepers went up, so that nothing was missed. But most important of all were the dropping leaves.

Death is not final in the Forest, but only a transformation. A rotting tree trunk lying on the ground provides home and food for a thousand tiny invertebrates; the falling leaves, as they decompose, are broken down by many organisms, especially woodlice and worms – although because of its acid soil, the Forest has few if any snails. But the greatest breakdown of material takes place afterwards and at a deeper level. For then it is the turn of the fungi.

Fungus – pale, loathsome, connected with mildew and rot, and poison, and death. And yet it is not. Is it a plant? Of a kind, although it is seldom green like the plants that sustain themselves, for the fungus contains no chlorophyll. Its cell walls, strangely, are made not of cellulose but of chitin, which also forms the walls of an insect’s body. It lives upon other organisms, like a parasite. The ancients, uncertain how to classify the fungus, said that it belonged to chaos.

And in the Forest the fungi are everywhere. Mostly they exist as strings of fungal matter, almost like bootlaces, called hyphae. Under the tree bark, under the rotting leaves, under the ground, they spread into a tangled web known as mycelium. And it is this hidden mass of mycelium that converts the rotted leaf mould, returning the nutrients – nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus – to the soil to nourish the forest’s future life.

It is only the fruit of the fungus that is normally seen and at no time did so much appear as at the autumn season in the oak woods. In the vicinity of the Rufus oak there were hundreds of species: the beefsteak fungus, like a raw steak on the base of an ancient oak bole; edible mushrooms and the poisonous death caps that mimicked them; red-and-white-spotted toadstools; the friendly penny bun, which is edible and whose mycelium draws sugar from the oak roots and gives them minerals in return; and the evil-smelling stinkhorn which, growing from a round underground pod called a witch’s egg, bursts into the upper world in a single day, with a slimy cap that draws the flies, before collapsing and shrivelling back only a day or two after its appearance.

These and many others shared the forest floor beneath the oak with tufted grass and moss, and yellow pimpernel.

When Albion reached the tree he dismounted. He had taken his time. After his mother had turned eastwards towards Romsey and Winchester, he had come slowly down into the Forest, pausing at hamlets here and there, hoping that the wood’s great quietness might calm his spirits. But it had not worked. Not only had his mother terrified him, but after her revelation, the business he must conduct the next day made him still more apprehensive. He was glad, therefore, to come and rest under the spreading oak. Perhaps that would bring him peace.

Why was it, he wondered, that the great oak had this power to revive him? What was its magic? Was it just the huge, gnarled strength of the tree? The fact that it remained there, a living thing yet unchanging, like an ancient rock? Both these things, he thought; and the falling acorns, and the rustling leaves. There was, however, something else – something he had often felt when he stood by the trunk of some full-grown spreading oak. It was almost as if the tree were enclosing him within an invisible sphere of strength and power. It was a strange feeling, yet palpable. He was sure of it, even if he could not say why.

In a way, his sense of the tree was accurate. For it is a fact that the roots of a tree mirror the spreading crown of its branches. As the branches spread out, so do the roots in proportion. If the tree’s branches die back, the roots do too. As above, so below. In this respect the system of the tree as a whole rather resembles, at top and bottom, the magnetic field of a bar magnet, or indeed of the Earth itself. And who knows what force fields, as yet unmeasured by man, may surround the physical manifestation of a tree?

After a little time, therefore, somewhat strengthened, Albion emerged from the oak to face the dangers of the coming days.

Jane Furzey was happy because she was with Nick Pride who was tall and handsome, and going to marry her when she said yes. She was going to say yes, but not until she had made him wait; that was what every girl did if she could.

‘Make him wait a year, Jane,’ her mother had told her. ‘If he loves you truly, he’ll want you all the more.’

She wasn’t going to give herself to him until they married either. She was going to get married in style. And in this exciting state they went about together often.

It had been kind of Clement Albion to allow her to come with the men this morning. There were just three men including Nick, and herself, bumping along in the little cart, while Albion rode his horse beside them. She was proud that Albion should have selected Nick for such special duties. She dangled her sturdy legs over the back of the cart. She had taken off her sandals. The sun was warm on her legs; the cool, salty air on her bare toes was delicious.

This expedition was rather an adventure and she looked about her with interest. They had already passed Lymington; she had never been down here before.

Jane was sixteen, Nick Pride eighteen. He lived in the village of Minstead, a couple of miles north of Lyndhurst, she in the hamlet of Brook, a mile and a half north of that. Their parents who, like most parents, were wise in these matters, thought they were perfect for each other; and so they were.

During the centuries the Prides had settled in many parts of the Forest, but the Furzeys had mostly stayed down in the south. Except for Jane’s family. For some reason – no one could remember when – the descendants of Adam Furzey had moved up to the Minstead area. ‘The Furzeys up at Minstead don’t get along with the other Furzeys,’ the Forest people would remark. And although in that region, where all the smallholding families intermarried, such differences usually got ironed out, it remained true that the Minstead Furzeys were a bit unusual. During the Wars of the Roses one of them had become a priest; and in the reign of old King Harry another had gone to Southampton. ‘He became a merchant,’ Nick’s father had told him. ‘Did very well, they say.’ The other Furzeys might mutter that the Minstead family thought too much of themselves, but this was no problem for the Prides, who thought well of themselves too. Nick Pride’s father and Jane’s father had always got along well and on the day, ten years ago, when Jane’s father had moved up to Brook, Nick’s father had remarked: ‘I reckon your Jane and my boy Nick would make a nice pair.’ And Jane’s father had agreed and told his wife, who knew it anyway. So there it was.

There was nothing very remarkable about Jane. She had a broad brow, brown hair parted in the middle, deep-blue eyes; she was short, with wide, well-shaped hips. Men were drawn to her. She cooked and baked and sewed; she looked after her little brothers and sisters; she had a dog called Jack who liked to chase squirrels; and there was nothing about the family’s smallholding she didn’t know.

She could also read, which was unusual. No one else in the family could, nor in any of the families like hers in Minstead or Brook. Had her father lived in a city like London as a small merchant or craftsman at this date, he would probably have been able to read. But in the country there was still little need. A rich yeoman with a big farm of his own might be a man of considerable substance but still mark his name with a cross, while the penniless clerk wrote it out in full.

No one had taught her to read. She had just, somehow, picked it up herself, from a Bible she had pored over in Minstead church, and from other written material she had found in visits to local markets. She did not prize this knowledge highly, since it was of little practical use; but it had amused her to learn something new. Nick Pride was rather pleased, though. ‘My wife can read,’ he could hear himself saying. It was an accomplishment, enough to show the world that he had married a superior woman. These things were important to a man.

When they married Jane would not be bringing any gold or jewellery or silken clothes with her: there was no need for such things in the Forest. But there was one small and humble ornament which she had begged and she had been promised for her wedding day.

It was a strange little wooden cross that hung on a string round her mother’s neck. Jane’s father had given it to her when they married.

‘I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s always been in the family,’ he had told her. ‘Hundreds of years, they say.’ He had shaken his head. ‘Funny old thing, really, but my grandfather told me: “You keep hold of that. That’s your birthright.”’

The cedarwood cross with its curious carving had been worn on the skin of so many generations now that it was almost black. But there was something about this family talisman that had always fascinated Jane since she was a little girl. She loved to touch it and hold it in her hand. She would try to decipher its carving as though it might hold some secret meaning. For she felt that it must, even if she could have no idea of the message that had been sent her, by a monkish ancestor, nearly three hundred years before.

She was going to wear it at her wedding.

The cart bumped down the lane and came on to a gravel strand.

‘Look,’ she cried in delight. ‘We’re at the sea.’

Albion looked irritably at the fortress ahead. Why the devil had his good friend Gorges insisted that he bring these men out here, anyway? It was a waste of his time, in his opinion. But behind this bravado lay a deeper apprehensiveness. After his talk with his mother yesterday – he couldn’t help it – he secretly viewed the fortress with a kind of panic.

‘Halloa,’ he cried to the sentry, ‘Albion’s muster.’

‘Pass, sir,’ came the reply.

They had crossed Pennington Marshes, passed the inlet of Keyhaven and now they had started along the track that led out to the end of the mile-long gravel spit opposite the Isle of Wight. On their right was the open sea. Above the sky was blue and seagulls were crying. And just visible at the end of the spit, glinting palely in the sun, lay their destination.

Hurst Castle. It would probably never have been built if it hadn’t been for Henry VIII’s marital troubles. England’s coasts had been threatened with raids, on and off, for over a thousand years. But when the Pope, at one point in his quarrel with Henry, had urged both Spain and her rival France to join forces and attack the heretic island, the king had decided he had better prepare himself and sent commissioners to inspect the coastal defences; and few places were more important than the port of Southampton and the Solent. When they got there, however, and saw the defences, their conclusion was simple: useless.

The most intelligent course was obviously to defend the two entrances to the Solent system so that enemy ships could not enter its huge shelter at all. At the western end this meant a pair of batteries, one on the Isle of Wight near the Needles, the other on the mainland. On the island there was already a ramshackle tower which could be put into service.

And on the mainland coast: ‘God has provided for us.’

The long, curving gravel spit that ran out from below Keyhaven was indeed a perfect God-given site. It ended with a broad platform; it commanded the narrowest part of the channel leading in and out of the Solent. Immediately they ordered an earthwork with gun emplacements – a bulwark. But King Henry wanted something more and soon an ambitious building was going up.

Hurst Castle was a small, squat, stone-built fort. It was an unusual structure, though. For it was neither round nor square but built in the shape of a triangle. At each of its three corners was a stout, semicircular bastion. In the western wall there was an entrance with a portcullis and a drawbridge over a small moat. Over the middle of the triangular fort stood a two-storey tower. Bastions, walls and tower all bristled with cannon. The Spanish, who knew all about it, considered Hurst a formidable obstacle.

And this was the place Albion’s mother expected him to betray. To her, of course, it was not only an obstacle to the true religion; its very stones were an offence.

When King Harry had sold off all the Church’s monastic lands to his friends, Beaulieu had passed into the hands of the noble family of Wriothesley. But many others in the area were keen to benefit from the opportunities of the age and none more so than a prominent Southampton merchant named Mill. An able man, he had already acted as steward of the old Beaulieu estate and was eager to please the king and acquire monastic lands of his own. As it was usual practice for the crown to subcontract important projects like building ships or forts to local entrepreneurs, it was not surprising that, when it came to the new Solent defences, the business should have been put in the capable hands of Mill. He had done an excellent job. The king was delighted. And when asked where he had got so much stone – there being little in the region – he affably replied: ‘From Beaulieu Abbey, of course.’

‘That impious Mill!’ the Lady Albion had exploded. To use the sacred abbey stones to defend the shoreline against the Pope! The fact that plenty of others had been busy dismantling the abbey and even its church, was not something that her son had cared to point out to her.

As they reached the end of the promontory, Albion saw that the drawbridge was lowered and the gate open; and he had no sooner ordered the three men down from the cart than a familiar figure, a man of about his own age with a broad intelligent face, fine grey eyes and thinning hair, which did not detract from his handsomeness, came striding towards him.

‘Clement.’

‘Thomas.’

‘Welcome.’

Thomas Gorges was of ancient lineage and, Albion thought, it showed. He had friends at court. But above all, Cecil and the council trusted him. For that reason he had been chosen to escort Mary Queen of Scots to her final imprisonment. He had also been knighted. And for some years he had been captain at Hurst Castle where, with the threat of invasion imminent, he had been spending a good deal of time. ‘These are your men?’ he enquired. Albion nodded. ‘Good. My master gunner will show them round.’ Apart from Gorges himself and his deputy, there was a considerable garrison at Hurst, headed by the master gunner. ‘I always think’, Gorges went on quietly, ‘that the more you show the men how things are done, the better you fire their loyalty. Come, Clement,’ he continued pleasantly, ‘let us talk.’

As he glanced around him, Albion considered, it would be hard not to be impressed. Two tiers of cannon protruded from embrasures in the bastions and the walls on the seaward sides. There were cannon in the central tower as well. No ship entering the Solent could escape this battery and, as for its defences, not only were the walls thick, but they had been built slightly convex to deflect cannonballs. Even under heavy bombardment, Hurst Castle would be a tough nut to crack.

Gorges grinned. ‘I hope you find everything in good order, Clement.’ There was no question that Gorges had been an excellent custodian. He had added more cannon, had the central tower rebuilt and greatly strengthened, trained the garrison admirably. He was so highly regarded by the council now that, although the lord-lieutenant of the country was nominally in charge of the county’s musters, if Gorges wanted anything – arms, materials or men, he got them at once. ‘So tell me, Woodward,’ he enquired genially, ‘when am I getting my elms?’

It was a curious thing, Albion reflected, that although you built ships of oak, if you used it in a place like Hurst, open to the salty sea breeze, oak timber soon rotted. When Gorges needed new mountings for the cannon, therefore, he had advised him to use elm, which lasted better. ‘I marked the trees last week. They’ll be cut and timber delivered in ten days.’

‘Thank you. Now tell me about these men you’ve brought.’

‘I’m putting Pride in charge. He’s young but trustworthy. Intelligent. Pleased with the responsibility and anxious to prove himself. He’ll be on his mettle. The other two are good fellows. They’ll be all right.’

‘How wise you are. I shall speak with them at once. By the way,’ he added casually, ‘did I tell you that Helena is here?’ Helena: his wife. Albion felt a glow of pleasure. He was fond of Helena. ‘She’s been waiting for you. Why don’t you talk to her while I see the men?’

Albion paused. The suggestion was so charmingly made that he might not have given it a second thought. Instead, he frowned. He had never been quite sure why it was necessary to bring these men down here at all when he could perfectly well have told them their duties up at Minstead. ‘Surely, Thomas, if you are seeing my men, you wish me to be present?’

A slight blush. A look of embarrassment, quickly covered, but not quite quickly enough. What did it mean? ‘Look, here she comes. Do walk with her a little, Clement. She has been so anxious to see you.’ And before Albion could argue, his friend had gone, leaving him alone.

Nick Pride felt pretty pleased with himself. They were standing in the master gunner’s chamber, which had a fine view over the Solent, when Thomas Gorges came in. The aristocrat had spoken to them very civilly for a few minutes, explaining the importance of their duties and Nick had observed him with interest.

He was impressed. If Albion was a gentleman, he sensed that this man was something more. He came from another world, even if Nick did not quite know what that world might be. Putting the two men side by side in his mind, he decided that Albion needed Gorges, but Gorges didn’t need Albion. I reckon that’s what it is, he thought.

‘So, Nicholas Pride,’ Gorges now said. ‘I hear you are the guardian of the beacon.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ he cried, swelling out his chest. ‘I am.’

The idea of planting beacons of fire on hilltops to alert the countryside of an enemy approaching went back to classical times; but it was the Tudors who had developed them into a regular system in England. A beacon lit at the south-western tip of England could start a chain reaction of coastal fires that would warn London within a couple of hours. At the same time as the message was passed along the coast, however, a network of secondary beacons, radiating inland, picked up the message and alerted the musters in the local settlements to assemble and go to their muster places to defend the coast.

There were two big coastal beacons for the Solent area, one at each end of the Isle of Wight. The hinterland of the New Forest was mainly served by three inland beacons: one up on Burley Beacon, a second on a hill towards the Forest’s centre and a third, to summon the northern hamlets, upon an old earthwork at the top of the hill above Minstead village.

‘Come and stand by me now, Nicholas Pride,’ the captain commanded and he drew apart from the others. ‘Now then,’ he said softly, so that only he and the young man could hear each other, ‘recite to me the duties of your watch.’

Nick Pride reckoned he did all right. Albion had coached him thoroughly. There was a precise sequence of signals the Isle of Wight beacon would send, culminating in the one that told him to light his own. He recited them all correctly. He gave the details of how it was to be manned, who would keep watch and when, how it was set up and lit. Gorges questioned him, quietly but thoroughly, and seemed to be satisfied. To Nick’s surprise, though, when this was over, the officer did not immediately end their conversation. He seemed to want to know more about him; asked about his family, his brothers and sisters, their smallholding. He even talked about his own family and made Nick laugh. Nick felt surprisingly relaxed. Gorges asked Nick what he thought of the Spaniards and Nick told him they were cursed foreigners. Gorges told him that their King Philip was nonetheless said to be very pious and Nick said that might be so but he was a foreigner anyway and any good Englishman should be glad to cut off his head. ‘Francis Drake singed his beard for him at Cadiz, Sir, didn’t he? With those fire ships. That taught him a lesson I should think.’ Gorges said he hoped it had.

The aristocrat had been listening and watching him carefully and now knew him better than he knew himself, but young Nick Pride was entirely unaware of it. ‘I see, Nicholas Pride, that I may trust you,’ he said at last. ‘And if the queen herself asks me – and she may – who keeps the watch at our inland beacon, I shall remember your name and tell her you are her loyal man.’

‘Indeed, Sir, you can,’ cried Pride, more delighted with himself than ever.

Jane was sitting on a sandy bank, gazing across the Solent when the strange couple came along.

It was warm; there was a hint of haze across the waters so that the Isle of Wight was a sleepy blue. Sandpipers and waders skimmed over the mudflats in front of her and around the fort the fork-tailed swallows darted and sped, although soon they would be leaving for warmer climes.

The man and woman were driving a large wagon with high-boarded sides. It was carrying charcoal.

Jane had already noticed that just below the fort on the Solent side there was a small lime kiln. It had been there, in fact, for some time, a solid business – not on the scale of the nearby salt pans, of course, but profitable – the lime being shipped mostly across the English Channel to the island of Guernsey near the French coast. The charcoal would be needed as fuel for the kiln’s furnace.

The wagon turned off the track just before reaching the fort and went down to the kiln. Moments later she saw the man, aided by two others from the kiln, start to unload the sacks from the back of the wagon. She watched him with interest.

He was somewhat shorter than the other men, but he looked very muscular. His hair was thick and black, but his beard was short and neatly trimmed. His eyes were set wide apart and watchful – hunter’s eyes, she thought. She felt sure he had already taken her in as he unloaded the sacks of charcoal. So why did he seem strange? She wasn’t sure. She had lived with the Forest folk all her life; but this man looked different from the Prides and Furzeys, as if he belonged to some other, more ancient race, inhabitants of a deeper woodland than they knew. Was it her imagination or had his face been burnished by the charcoal fires to a darker hue? Was there something oaken, almost tree-like about him?

It was not hard to guess his family. She had seen several men like him before, at local fairs or at the court at Lyndhurst.

‘That’s Perkin Puckle,’ her father would point out. Or: ‘I think that’s Dan Puckle, but it may be John.’ And always the litany continued: ‘The Puckles live over Burley way.’ No one had anything to say against them. ‘They’re good friends, long as you keep on the right side of them,’ her father had told her. But, even if nobody said so, Jane had understood that there was something vaguely mysterious about the family. ‘They’re old,’ her mother had once remarked, ‘like the trees.’ Jane watched the man curiously.

She did not at first realize that she was being watched herself. She had not noticed the woman leave the wagon; but there she was, sitting not far off by a tuft of marsh grass, gazing at Jane thoughtfully. Not wishing to seem unfriendly, Jane nodded to her. Unexpectedly, the woman moved across and sat down only a few feet away from her. For several moments they both watched the men at their work.

‘That’s my husband.’ The woman turned to look at her.

She was small and dark-haired – cat-like, Jane thought. She supposed the woman might be about thirty-five, like her husband. Her eyes were dark, almond-shaped; her face looked pale.

‘Is he one of the Puckles, from Burley?’ Jane ventured.

‘That’s right.’ It seemed to her that the woman’s eyes were measuring her in some way. ‘You married?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Considering it?’

‘I think so.’

‘Your man: he’s here?’

‘In there.’ Jane indicated the fort.

Puckle’s dark-haired wife did not say anything for a little while. She seemed to be staring across the water. Only when she spoke again did she transfer her gaze to her husband. ‘He’s a good man, John Puckle,’ she said.

‘I’m sure.’

‘Good worker.’

‘He looks it.’

‘Lusty. Keep any woman happy.’

‘Oh.’ Jane was not sure what to say.

‘Your man. He good? He knows how to halleck?’ A coarse word.

Jane blushed. ‘I expect so. But we are not yet married.’

The woman’s silence conveyed that she was not impressed with this information. ‘He made himself a bed.’ She nodded towards her husband. ‘All oak. Carved it, too. At the four corners. I never saw such carving.’ She smiled. ‘Carved his bed so he might lie in it. Once you lie in his oak bed with John Puckle, you’ll not want any other bed, nor other man.’

Jane stared. She had heard the village women talk at Minstead, but although they would joke quite crudely about the men sometimes, there was a directness about this strange person that both repelled yet fascinated her.

‘You like my husband?’

‘I …? I do not know him.’

‘You like to halleck with him?’

What did this mean? Was it some kind of trap? She had no idea but the woman was making her nervous. She rose. ‘He is your husband, not mine,’ she said and began to move away. But when, from a safe distance, she stole a glance back, her companion was still sitting quietly, apparently quite unperturbed, and gazing thoughtfully out towards the island.

Helena had suggested they walk along the beach together. Beside them lay the broad open waters of the English Channel. The thrift and sea-campion were no longer in flower but their green shoots extended like a haze all along the strand. Their words as they conversed were accompanied by the quiet hiss and the deep-drawing rattle of sea on shingle, and the cries of the white gulls rising from the foam.

Clement Albion was very fond of Helena Gorges, even if she sometimes made him smile. She was Swedish by birth, very fair, beautiful. ‘You are as kind as you are beautiful,’ he would tell her with perfect truth. Although he could have added: ‘And not a little vain.’

It is a universal law that no woman, once she has acquired a title, is ever willing to give it up. Or so it seemed to Albion. When Helena the Swedish beauty had been brought to Queen Elizabeth’s English court it had not been long before she had been snapped up as a bride by no less a person than the Marquis of Northampton. She had also become a great favourite of the queen. Sadly, her noble husband had died after only a year, leaving her glamorous, lonely, but a marchioness.

There were very few peerages in Queen Elizabeth’s England. The Wars of the Roses had killed off many of the great titles and the Tudors had no wish to make more feudal lords. But one title they had brought into use in England was that of marquis. There were scarcely a handful of them. They ranked only below the haughty dukes. In the order of precedence, therefore, the young Marchioness of Northampton walked through the door before even countesses, let alone ladies and gentlewomen.

So when she had met and fallen in love with aristocratic Thomas Gorges, who was then not even a humble knight, she had married him, but still insisted on calling herself the Marchioness of Northampton.

‘And she’s still doing it,’ Albion would say to his wife with a laugh. ‘Thank God Thomas just thinks it’s funny.’

Certainly she and Thomas were very happy together. She was a good wife. With her striking looks, her golden hair, her dazzling eyes, she would come on foot along the spit to the fort – she had a wonderful, elegant stride – and charm the garrison. If she was at court she never lost a chance to advance her husband’s career. At present, Albion knew, she had a particular project in hand and so, after they had asked the usual tender questions about each other’s families, he gently enquired: ‘And what of your house?’

The fact was, he knew very well, that his friend Gorges for once in his life had overreached himself. He had recently acquired a fine estate just south of Sarum – indeed, Albion had looked over the land the day before, during the interview with his mother. On this estate, known as Longford, Gorges had intended to build a great house. But some time had passed and not a stone had been laid.

‘Oh, Clement.’ She had a charming way of taking your arm to share a confidence. ‘Do not tell Thomas I have told you, but we are’ – she made a little grimace – ‘in difficulty.’

‘Can you not build a smaller house?’

‘Very small, Clement.’ She smiled conspiratorially.

‘A cottage?’ He meant it as a jest, but she shook her head and looked serious.

‘A small cottage, Clement. Perhaps not even that.’

Could things really be so bad? Thomas must have overspent more than he had guessed. ‘Thomas’s fortunes have always risen,’ he offered. He had no doubt his friend’s career would continue to be brilliant.

‘Let us hope they rise further, then, Clement.’ She smiled again, but ruefully this time. ‘No new dresses for me this year, I fear.’

‘Perhaps the queen …’

‘I’ve been at court.’ She shrugged. ‘The queen hasn’t a penny herself. This Spanish business’ – she waved towards the horizon – ‘has emptied the treasury.’

Albion nodded thoughtfully.

‘Speaking of this Spanish business.’ He hesitated a moment, but decided to go on. ‘I brought some of my men down, as you know. Thomas wanted to see them.’ He gave her a sidelong glance. It was as he had suspected. He could see that she knew something. ‘Then Thomas insisted he see them alone, without me. Why did he do that, Helena?’

They had both stopped.

Helena was looking down at the shingle at her feet. A wave broke up the beach towards them, then ebbed away. When she answered, she did not look at him. ‘Thomas is only following his orders, Clement,’ she said quietly. ‘That is all.’

‘It is thought that I …?’

‘There are many Catholics in the county, Clement. Everyone knows it. Why, even the Carews …’ Thomas Carew had been the previous captain of Hurst Castle. His family, good Catholics all of them, still lived at the village of Hordle at the Forest’s edge, only a few miles away.

‘One can be a Catholic without being a traitor, Helena.’

‘Of course. And you are still left in command of part of the muster, Clement, are you not? Consider that.’

‘But your husband nonetheless has to make sure that I and my men are loyal.’

‘The council is watching everyone, Clement. They have no choice.’

‘The council? Cecil? They distrust me?’

‘Your mother, Clement. Remember, even Cecil has heard of your mother.’

‘My mother.’ A wave of panic suddenly seized him. He thought of their interview the day before, and felt himself blushing. ‘What’ – he tried to sound unconcerned – ‘has my foolish mother been saying now?’

‘Who knows, Clement? I am not privy to all these things, but I told the queen …’

‘The queen? The queen knows of my mother? Dear God!’

‘I told her – forgive me, Clement – that she was a foolish woman. Her opinions are not yours.’

‘God forbid!’

‘So, dear Clement, you should not be alarmed. Concern yourself with my house instead. Find me a way to build more than a cowshed at Longford.’

He laughed, relieved, and they turned to go back towards the fort. The sea was edging a little higher up the shingle. Ahead, across the water, the four chalk Needles of the Isle of Wight were gleaming. To Albion, at that moment, they seemed phantom-like, unreal. Some gulls rose, ghostly white, cried, then flew away, out to sea.

‘Clement.’ She had stopped. She was facing him. ‘You know we love you. You’re not a traitor, are you?’

‘I …?’

Her eyes were searching his face. ‘Clement? Tell me?’

‘Dear God, no.’

‘Swear it.’

‘I swear. Upon my honour. Upon all that is sacred.’ Their eyes met. Hers were troubled. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Of course I do.’ She smiled. ‘Come on.’ She linked her arm in his. ‘Let’s go back.’

But she was lying. He knew it. She wasn’t sure. And if she and Thomas Gorges didn’t trust him, then neither did the council nor the queen herself. The months ahead suddenly looked bleaker than ever.

And wasn’t it ironic when, whatever his mother might demand, he had just told Helena the truth.

Hadn’t he?

When winter came, it was icy cold. But the tree was used to that. For even as the tree had reached middle age, a century before, England had been entering the period, which lasted through the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, known to history as the little Ice Age. Temperatures throughout the year, on average, were several degrees cooler. In summer the difference was not so noticeable. But winters were often cruel. Rivers froze. In great trees cut during this time the yearly growth rings are close together.

By early December the oak tree was sealed off for the winter. Its branches were bare and grey; the tight little buds on their twigs were protected from the frosts by waxy brown scales. Deep underground the sugar in the sap would ensure that the moisture in the tree did not freeze.

On St Lucy’s Day, the thirteenth, the traditional day of the winter solstice, sleet fell at dawn, then froze by noon so that when a pale sun shone during the brief hours before the grey day’s ending, the oak tree’s crown was all hung with icicles as though some ancient silver-haired dweller of the forests had stopped there and become rooted to the spot. And even as the faint sun lent a shining to the greyness, the wind hissed through the icicles to freeze them further still.

Some way up, in a fork in the tree, where once a pigeon had made her nest, a large owl perched silently. A visitor from the deep-frozen forests of Scandinavia, it had come for the winter months to the more temperate island. Its eyes gazed blankly at the snow, but when dusk fell its astonishing asymetric ears would guide it, on soundless wings, infallibly down upon any little creature that ventured out into the darkness. Had anyone looked carefully at the ground by the oak tree’s base the remains of a thrush would have told them of the owl’s last meal. Slowly the silent bird turned its head. It could do so, if it chose, through more than three hundred and sixty degrees.

Above the owl’s perch, in a blackened fissure, a little colony of bats hung, like webbed pellets, in their winter hibernation. All over the tree, on branch and twig, tiny larvae, like that of the winter moth, were tight-wrapped in their cocoons. Down the tree’s great trunk spiders crouched in crevices behind windows of ice. Around its foot the brown bracken, bent and broken, lay flattened in the fallen leaves, ice-frosted.

Below the ground worms and slugs, and all manner of earth creatures, were insulated by the frozen leaves above from the bitter cold. But in the bushes, although the robin, like a puffball in its downy winter feathers, would probably survive, the song thrushes and blackbirds were ragged and gaunt. Two weeks of deep frost or snow, and many would reach a point of weight-loss and weakness from which there would be no return.

But if these little creatures dwelt always perilously at the brink of life and death during their few brief seasons of consciousness the tree, with its massively larger system, was also massively stronger. It was still less than three hundred years old. Yet nature imposed limitations upon the mighty oak as well. For of its vast fall of acorns that autumn thousands had been eaten by the pigs and other grazers; others trampled; others stored by squirrels or birds, others yet destined, as saplings, to be eaten by the deer. Of all that inundation of acorns, not a single new oak tree would result; nor would one for another five or ten or even twenty years.

She was feeling very weak now. She had sensed that something was wrong back at summer’s end, been sure of it before she had gone with Puckle, that autumn day, to deliver the charcoal to Hurst. She had been thinking of the future by then.

She had used all the remedies she knew. She had tried to shield herself. Each month, as the moon waxed from maiden to mother and waned back to crone, she secretly prayed. Three times she drew down the moon. But as winter came she knew: nothing can change the wheel of life; there would be no healing and she must pass from this life to another.

Nature is cruel, yet also merciful. The canker that was eating away the life of Puckle’s wife caused other changes in her body. She became pale, her blood changed its composition; she began to be drowsy, thus ensuring that, before the canker grew into its final monstrous life and racked her body with pain, she would instead slip sleepily towards an earlier closing.

She and Puckle had three children. She loved the woodsman. She knew very well that, after her passing, life must go on. And so it was, in secret, that she made her prayers and did what she thought best.

And now it was the year’s midnight, when scarcely seven hours of sunlight is seen and all the world seems to withdraw into the deep blackness under the ground.

Two weeks later, just after Christmas, Clement Albion rode by.

The hard frost had broken just before the sacred festival. Although the ground was still crisp underfoot, he saw a clique of birds fighting over a worm in the ground leaves. A squirrel, a blur of red, dashed across into a cover of hawthorn bushes.

But it was the oak he had come to see.

In the wood beside it the soaring grey and silver branches were bare, save for encrustations, here and there, of dark ivy or lichen, white as death. The oaks that dotted the glade were all bare too.

But the oak that stood apart was a stranger sight entirely. It had shed its icicles. Its tiny, tight-wrapped buds had broken out into sprigs of leaves. The midwinter tree was green. Albion stared in silence. Nothing stirred.

Why did this New Forest tree, which is well recorded, behave in this way? Possibly some accident had occurred during its growth – a lightning strike, for instance – which had somehow reset the internal clock, whose operation is not fully understood, by which a tree regulates its flowering. Perhaps more likely was some genetic peculiarity. One such trait, in which there is a failure in the autumnal sealing-off process, causes certain oaks to retain their leaves right through winter into spring. The Christmas leafing might have been another such genetic condition and the recorded existence of three such oaks in the same area further suggests that it could be so. But nobody knows.

Albion sighed. Was it a miracle, as his mother insisted? Was the tree speaking to him, reminding him of his duty and his religion? Was this marvellous tree a living emblem, like one of those haunting signs on the road to the Holy Grail in the tales of knightly romance?

He hoped not. Since the autumn there had been no whisper from the council to suggest he was further suspected. He had encountered Gorges twice, and each time his friend had been warm and natural towards him. The truth was that he just wanted a quiet life. Was that so wrong? Didn’t most people? A tree that flowers at midwinter: the promise of life in death. Three flowering trees, three crosses: the crucifixion upon Calvary. Whichever way you looked at it, if the green trees were a sign from God they suggested death and sacrifice.

If only the Spanish invasion did not come. His mother could leave him her fortune believing that he would have joined the invaders; Gorges, the council, the queen herself would have nothing with which to reproach him. He heartily prayed that he would not be put to the test.

He had not heard from his mother for some time. He should have gone to see her at the Christmas season but had found an excuse not to. He wondered for how long he could avoid her.

A second later he saw her.

She was in the green tree, high in the branches. She was all in black, as usual, but the entire lining of her cloak was bright red. She was flapping it and flying from branch to branch like a huge, angry bird. She turned her head to look at him. Dear heaven, she seemed about to take wing towards him.

He shook his head and told himself not to be so foolish. He glanced at the tree again and it was normal. But his hands were trembling. Not a little shaken by this maternal hallucination, he turned his horse’s head and made away for Lyndhurst.

Young Nick Pride bided his time all through winter. Early April saw drenching rains but then a gentle warmth spread through the Forest. The world became green again; blossoms broke out. He knew that the time had now come, that Jane was waiting for him to declare himself; but he, too, had his part to play.

All through April he came courting. Sometimes they might not see each other for a day or two, but if they did not find some other reason, they were sure to meet at Minstead church on Sunday. Nor were there any lovers’ quarrels; they had, it seemed, no need for that. She was sensible Jane Furzey and he was handsome young Nick Pride, and that was all there was to it.

All the same, Nick Pride thought as the time approached, perhaps it was better if she were not quite sure of him – just for a day or two; so she didn’t take him for granted. He planned it very carefully.

Towards the end of April Albion assembled a muster at Minstead. Nick Pride was called, of course; so were Jane’s brother and two other men from Brook. They were going to stage a small parade and John knew that Jane and her family would be coming down to watch. He chose the evening two days in advance of the muster, therefore, to make his opening move.

The village of Minstead lay on the slope of a high rise that ran westwards across the central section of the Forest. The Minstead cottages mostly straggled along the lower half of the lane that climbed up to the crest of the rise, at the top of which the lane passed round a curious feature.

Castle Malwood, they called it, although there was never any castle there. It was just another of the small earthwork rings, like those at Burley and Lymington, which demonstrated that iron-age folk had used the Forest once, before the Romans came. Occupying the ridge’s highest local point, however, it had obviously been chosen because it offered commanding views of the area and, since Albion had ordered a thinning of the trees that had grown up below its modest banks, the site’s ancient pre-eminence had been partly re-established. From the top of its earth wall, now, one could see clean across the southern half of the Forest to the Isle of Wight: which was why it had been chosen as the perfect place to build the inland beacon, of which Nick was the guardian.

He was feeling quite proud of himself, therefore, as he led Jane, with her little dog Jack, up on to the grassy rampart of Malwood that evening and pointed out the view. ‘That’s where the big beacon will be.’ He pointed to the Isle of Wight. ‘And here’ – he indicated – ‘the very spot you’re standing on, Jane, is where we’ll be putting up our beacon next week.’

He was pleased to see that she looked suitably impressed.

‘What do you think will happen, Nick, if the Spanish come?’ She was looking at him with a trace of concern.

‘I’ll light my beacon and we’ll all muster, and then we’ll go down and fight them. That’s what’ll happen.’ He watched her and saw the thoughtful look on her face. ‘Afraid something might happen to me, are you?’ he asked, secretly delighted.

‘I? No,’ she lied and shrugged. ‘I was thinking of my brother.’

‘Ah.’ He smiled to himself. ‘You shouldn’t fear,’ he said handsomely. ‘When the Spanish see the whole muster I doubt they’ll dare to land.’

They talked, after this, of smaller matters. The sun slowly sank towards the horizon. The Forest before them was bathed in a golden haze, while the Isle of Wight in the distance began to turn blue-grey. It was very quiet. She gave a small shiver; he put his arm round her and then they gazed together towards the south in silence.

‘I love to look over the Forest,’ she said after a while.

‘So do I.’ He let some more time pass.

‘Well, Nick.’ She smiled up into his face now. ‘If the Spaniards have not killed us, I suppose there will be rejoicings at summer’s end.’ Then she stared out towards the island again.

It was his cue and he knew it. But he said nothing. Long moments passed.

‘I’d best get home,’ she said at last.

He heard her disappointment and let some more time pass. Then he nodded. ‘I’ll walk with you,’ he answered quietly. Then, briskly, ‘There’s much to think of this summer, isn’t there?’ And, secretly chuckling at his cleverness, he walked her back to Brook.

Let her wait. Let her be uncertain, he thought, just for a day.

A fine day it was, when it came.

Minstead was a curious place. Technically it was a feudal liberty: which was to say that, although lying completely surrounded by the royal forest, it had its own private lord with his own manor court. In practice this did not make a huge difference to anybody. The lord rented out some fields and received some modest feudal dues. Neither the manor peasants nor the lord could break the forest law of the territory all around the manor’s few hundred acres. Both the lord and his peasants, however, derived benefit from the manor’s common rights of fuel and pasture on the Forest, and this was quite valuable. Since time out of mind, the manor had belonged to the same feudal family as Bisterne in the Avon valley, which had now passed, by marriage, from the male line of Berkeley the dragon-slayer to the equally mighty family of Compton. But the lord of the manor had no house at Minstead. His steward came and took the rents, held court, gave what management was needed. The feudal liberty of Minstead was just a quiet village in the Forest.

It did, however, have one building of significance. Beside the lane, near the bottom, was the small village green. On one side, in a shallow dell, lay the nearest thing to a manor house the village possessed, which was the vicar’s rectory with its four acres of glebe. On the other, set upon a little knoll only two hundred yards from the green, was the parish church – significant because it was the only one in this part of the Forest. Not that the structure itself was large; although its walls were stone, the thatched roof made it seem more like a big cottage. Inside, the nave was not thirty feet wide and had a homely gallery you could reach up and touch. But it was a parish church. Even the chapel used by kings and queens at Lyndhurst came under its aegis. And it was Minstead church where the men of Minstead and Brook were meeting for their muster.

As Nick Pride looked around he felt delighted. The afternoon sky was a fresh light-blue; white puffs of cloud sailed over the church on its knoll. The muster consisted of the chosen men of the parish together with its outlying hamlets, known as tithings. There were a dozen men, including the three from Brook and a fellow from Lyndhurst, and it seemed to Nick that they were quite an impressive fighting force.

Of the twelve men, eight had bows and, thanks to Albion’s strict command, every one of these now possessed a full dozen arrows. Six of the men had long bills in their hands, sharpened and gleaming. God help the Spaniard, he thought, who came within reach of these terrifying spears. Three of the men had short-brimmed metal helmets. And he, from his father, had a breastplate of armour, a sword and metal splints to protect his forearm. One of the men had complained that since Nick was minding the beacon he had no need of these arms and should give them to someone else. But he had protested: ‘Once the beacon’s lit, I’ll be fighting too.’ And Albion had ruled that he should keep everything. Nobody had an arquebus, but that was not surprising: few English villagers had guns.

The orders for the day were straightforward: they would train for an hour or two up by the church; then they would march down to the green to give a demonstration of their fighting skills to the village; after which they would break up and there would be refreshments. And then, he thought cheerfully, he would carry out his plan. He looked at the weapons glinting in the sun and smiled to himself.

Clement Albion looked at them too. He had done his best. Indeed, he was actually rather a good commander. His men were probably as well armed as they could be. He had put heart into them, and taught them how to stand firm and thrust with their long bills. Trained bowmen they would never be, but at least four of them were accomplished poachers and could probably shoot better than most.

And how long would these good fellows last against four fully trained, fully armed Spaniards? He didn’t know; a few moments, perhaps. Then they would all be dead; shot and hacked to pieces every one. Thank God they didn’t know it. So it would be, he knew very well, for every parish muster in the county.

In the spring of 1588 the defending forces in the all-important central section of England’s southern coast were in a state of complete shambles.

The musters of raw village recruits with their ancient bills and hunting bows were all but useless. Often the bowmen only had three or four arrows. Many of the men had no weapons at all. When the county knights and squires had come to a big review at Winchester, it was found that only one in four was fit for any kind of service. Worst of all, the business was in the hands not of one, but two great noblemen, who constantly quarrelled with each other and not even the commissioners sent down by the council had been able to bring order to the business. Neither Winchester, the all-important port of Southampton, nor the harbour of Portsmouth, a little further along the coast, where old King Harry had started to build up a naval dockyard, was properly defended with troops. Three thousand men, the best of what there was, were being stationed on the Isle of Wight, but the mainland was, for all practical purposes, undefended. This was England’s state of readiness as it awaited the great invasion of the most highly trained army in Christendom. In the words of one of the reports back to Queen Elizabeth’s council: ‘All thinges here is unperfect.’

All this, although he kept it from his men, Clement Albion knew very well. He had visited Southampton and the naval yards at Portsmouth. He had attended meetings at Winchester. Not only was there no effective army to oppose the Spaniards, but the council was even afraid that some of the peasantry who longed for a return to the old religion might help the invaders. And while he personally rather doubted this, as Clement gazed at his poor, doomed little troop of men, he found himself wondering: was his mother right, after all? Would it be wiser, if the Spanish came, to join them? As a loyal son of the true Church, connected through his sister to the grandees of Spain, they’d be sure to welcome him. But if so, when? As the ships approached? After the troops landed? Could he, should he, really attempt something at Hurst Castle?

‘Well done, Nicholas Pride,’ he called out, as the young fellow attempted to parry and thrust with his sword. ‘We’ll show those Spaniards what Englishmen can do.’

By late afternoon it was time to show the village. They lined up in a column two abreast and, because he had armour, Albion put Nick in the front row. Then they gave three cheers, so that everyone would know they were coming, and sent a boy down to make sure; and Nick secretly wished they had a drum to beat, but they didn’t. Then they marched, almost in step, down the short track, shaded by overhanging trees and came down on to the green and there was everybody waiting, including Jane, who was wearing a red shawl round her shoulders. So they marched to the middle of the green, which was only thirty yards from end to end anyway, and took up their positions. And then they gave a display.

It was a brave show, no question about it. The men with their long bills stood in a line and raised and lowered and thrust with their weapons all together, so that you could hardly imagine any Spanish troops getting past such an awesome phalanx. Next they set up targets and the bowmen shot their arrows, hitting somewhere on the target every time. But the finest show of all, surely, was when Nick Pride and Albion himself unsheathed their swords and had a mock fight. Back and forth on the green they went, with a display of skill such as, very likely, Minstead had never seen before, until at last Albion, who was taking the part of the Spaniard, let Nick win and gamely surrendered. And there was laughing and cheering on the echoing green, and Jane watching, half smiling, while Nick raised his sword high in the air and the afternoon sun glinted on his armour, just as he had hoped it would. For now his moment had come. Striding across the green to where Jane was standing, he stood in front of her and stuck his sword into the ground – she looked a bit surprised – and then he went down on one knee and her eyes opened very wide as he said: ‘Jane Furzey, will you marry me?’ Everyone heard it. She started to blush and a voice from somewhere called out: ‘That’s a fine offer, Jane.’ Other voices joined in, but they were listening, too.

He guessed she might say no just because he had taken her by surprise like that, so he looked straight up into her eyes to let her see that he loved her truly, and then he began to look just a little bit afraid himself, which worked very well because after only a moment’s more pausing, which was probably just for show, really, she said: ‘Well, I suppose I might.’

Then everybody cheered.

‘Name the day,’ he cried.

But now it was her turn to put him in his place, so she pursed her lips and looked around, and glanced at Albion and started to laugh. ‘When you’ve fought a real Spaniard, Nick Pride,’ she cried, ‘and not before!’

Which Albion told her was a very good answer.

The following morning Jane Furzey walked across to Burley. She hardly ever went over that way but her mother had heard there was a woman there who made lace, and she asked Jane to go and see if there might be work for one of her younger sisters. So Jane set off, taking her little dog Jack with her.

The morning was sunny. Passing by the Rufus tree she went westwards for a time, which quite soon led her across high heath, before turning down through woodland in the direction of Burley.

Jack was in his element. If he spotted a blackbird after a worm, he chased it. If he saw a patch of mud, or a pile of leaves, he rolled in them. Three red squirrels, in his opinion at least, were lucky to escape with their lives. By the time they came towards Burley his brown-and-white coat was black with mud and Jane was ashamed of him. She didn’t want to arrive at the lace maker’s cottage with her dog in this condition. ‘You’d better have a bath,’ she told him.

There were several ways to approach Burley from the Minstead direction, but the most pleasant, and also the cleanest, was along the great lawn from due east. For here there ran a clean, gravelly stream and, on each side of it, several hundred yards across and almost two miles in extent, stretched the broad, delightful swathe of close-cropped grass.

It was one of the largest of the forest’s great lawns. Partly dry, part marsh, it was grazed by cattle and ponies, and continued up to the edge of the village. Burley Lawn, it was called at the village end; but a few hundred yards further east a small mill had stood for a couple of generations and, from there, in its long eastward extension, it was known as Mill Lawn.

Having held a protesting Jack in the clear stream until he was clean, Jane had let him scamper along the short grass of Mill Lawn. Once or twice, out of bravado, he had made as if to chase a pony, but he was still clean as they passed the mill and came on to Burley Lawn. The ground was soggier here, so she made him keep to the dry path beside her; and confident that all was in good order she continued very cheerfully. There were clumps of small trees and gorse brakes dotting the lawn now. The woodland to right and left, with its small oaks and bushes of hazel, seemed to be edging closer. They passed a dark, gnarled little ash tree.

Then Jack saw the cat.

Jane saw it also, but a moment too late. ‘Jack!’ she shouted, but it was no good. He was off in a flash and there was no stopping him. A yelp, a hiss, a blur of bodies as they raced away to her right. She saw the cat leap and Jack splash through a puddle of mud, watched and groaned as his filthy, dripping form tore away through the bushes. She was surprised the cat didn’t race up a tree, but obviously it had some other cover in mind for she could hear Jack still in hot pursuit, barking wildly. And then there was silence.

She waited, then called. Nothing happened. There was no sound. She called again, several times. Still nothing. Had the cat finally taken refuge somewhere? She would have expected to hear Jack barking. She waited a little more and then, with a sigh, followed in the direction the two animals had gone.

She had walked perhaps fifty yards into the trees when she saw the cottage. It was a fairly typical white-walled, thatched Forest cottage, although better than many since a window under the roof on one side indicated that there was at least one room upstairs. In the clearing round it were a small yard and some outbuildings. There was no sign of the cat, or of Jack and she was wondering if they had veered off somewhere else when she heard the dog’s bark. It came, unmistakably, from inside the cottage.

She went to the door, found it ajar and knocked. No reply. She called out. Surely there must be someone about. Still nothing. She called to Jack and heard him bark again, somewhere within; but he did not come. She wondered if he might have got trapped in there, yet still hesitated. She did not want to go in without permission. At the same time, she did not like to think of her dog wreaking havoc in a stranger’s house.

She pushed open the door and entered.

It was a cottage like many others. The door gave into the main low-ceilinged room, which had a fire and hanging pots at one end. In one corner were a scrubbed table, some benches and a cot where, by the look of it, a small child slept. To the right, behind a door, which she did not like to open, was another room. Ahead, a narrow staircase, hardly more than a ladder, led up to the loft room above.

‘Jack?’ she called softly. ‘Jack?’ A small bark came in answer, from upstairs. ‘Jack,’ she called, ‘come down.’ Was somebody holding the dog up there? She looked round to see if anyone was watching her from outside. They did not seem to be. She stepped forward and started to go up the stairs.

There were two rooms up there: on the left, an open loft; on the right an oak door, which the wind, presumably, had blown shut. Slowly, she pushed it open.

The room was only a small one. The light came from a low window at knee height, on her left, just below the eaves. On her right, against the wall, was an old chest upon which, to her surprise, the cat was now lying, comfortably curled and watching her as if her presence were awaited. But strangest of all was the sight in front of her.

Taking up most of the wall was an oak four-poster bed. Across the top of the four posts was a simple cloth canopy whose edges just touched the sloping thatch of the bare roof above. It was not a huge bed. It had been built, perhaps, in that very room she guessed, to take two people, neither very large. The oak was dark, almost black, and gleamed.

And it was carved. She had never seen such carving. Animals, stags’ heads, grotesque human faces, oak leaves and acorns, fungi, squirrels and even snakes – all climbed up or looked out from the four dark, gleaming posts of that strange bed. And suddenly remembering where she had heard such a bed described, she murmured aloud: ‘This must be Puckle’s place.’

Yet almost stranger than the bed itself was the behaviour of Jack.

The bed was covered with a simple linen counterpane. He was sitting on it. His black paw marks were clearly visible where he had jumped up. Yet he sat there now, wagging his tail, showing no sign of wanting to come to her nor, apparently, of chasing the cat. He seemed to expect her to come and sit there beside him.

‘Oh, Jack! What have you done? Come off that bed at once,’ she cried. And she went to pull him off. But he resisted, crouching down, although still wagging his tail. ‘You naughty dog,’ she scolded. ‘Come.’ And she had just started to lift him off when a gruff voice behind her made her jump and almost scream, as she whirled round.

‘He seems to like it there.’

Puckle was standing in the narrow doorway. There was no mistaking him. His black beard was still close-cropped; she had not realized that his eyes were so bright. He did not move. He just watched her.

‘Oh.’ She gave a little gasp of fear. Then, as he remained where he was, giving no sign of anger, she began to blush. ‘I am so sorry. He ran after your cat.’

‘Yes.’ He nodded slowly. ‘He looks like he would.’ Did he believe her? Something in his manner suggested he thought this was not the whole truth.

‘He’s made such a mess.’ She indicated the counterpane. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

She stared at him. He had clearly been out working in the Forest somewhere. She could see the tiny beads of sweat still on the black hairs that curled at his open neck. When she had seen him before, at the end of summer, his face had seemed dark, almost oaken; but now, like a snake that has shed its old skin, or a tree that has put on its fresh leaves for the spring, John Puckle’s colouring seemed quite light. He made her think of an alert, handsome fox.

‘I must clean it,’ she said.

He did not reply, but he turned his eyes to the dog. Jack looked back at him happily and wagged his tail. Jane began to relax a little. Nobody moved.

‘Did you carve all this?’ She indicated the bed.

‘Yes.’ His gaze returned to her face, watchful. ‘You like it?’

She looked again at the strange, dark faces, the gnarled and curling oaken forms. Did they repel her or attract her? She wasn’t sure. But the skill of the carver’s hand was astonishing. ‘It’s wonderful,’ she blurted out. He did not reply but only nodded quietly, so after a small pause, she added: ‘Your wife told me about the bed.’

‘She did?’

‘At Hurst Castle. September last. You were delivering charcoal.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is she here?’ Jane asked, not certain whether she would care to see the strange woman or not.

‘She’s dead. Died this winter.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ She hardly knew what to say. She stared at Jack and the counterpane. He had made an awful mess of it. She scooped him up now, and turned. ‘Let me take the counterpane and wash it.’

‘It’ll brush off,’ he pointed out.

But somehow her trespass made her feel so guilty that she wanted to do more to make amends. ‘Let me take it,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring it back.’

‘As you like.’

So she took the counterpane off the bed, gave the pillows a good shake, smoothed everything down and departed with Jack, feeling a little less guilty now than she had before.

The oak tree put on its leaves slowly in the spring. After its miraculous midwinter greening it had drawn its systems down again like any other oak; the Christmas leaves had frozen and fallen; and there it had remained through the rest of the winter, grey and bare. By March, however, the sap was rising. The oak trees in the wood did not all break into leaf at the same time but over a period of about a month, so that the canopy in early spring varied greatly, from bare brown buds, or the palest leaves, to a fresh green rustling crown.

Colour came to the oak, however, in many forms. Ivy fruits in spring, providing pleasant feeding for the blackbirds; but on its lower part the deer in winter had eaten away the ivy leaves up to the browse line, leaving the space clear for the lichen to grow. Oaks carry more lichens than other trees. Some were already yellow but, since they contain algae with green chlorophyll, others were growing grey-green beards. Most dramatic were the big, furry lichens sprouting out from the trunk and known as ‘lungs of oak’.

Scarcely had the oak’s buds begun to open into leaf when the green woodpecker, flashing green, gold and scarlet, came through the woods with its undulating flight and found a cavity, high up in a dying branch, in which to make its nest. Chaffinches with grey heads and pink breasts began trilling in the branches. By April, with fresh leaves coming out all over and the birds of summer beginning to return from southern climes, the cuckoo’s call was echoing through the woods; the bracken, everywhere, was springing up in stiff stalks and its tightly curled ferns beginning to unfurl; the gorse was in luminous yellow flower and hawthorn bushes breaking out into thick white blossom. Only one feature of oak woods was notably missing. For in the open Forest, although there are wood sorrel, yellow pimpernel, primrose and dog violet to add their pretty colours to the ground, there are no carpets of bluebells – because the deer and grazing livestock eat up any they can find.

And now, as its leaves unfolded, it was time for the oak to begin the huge process of spreading its seed. Each mighty oak brings forth both male and female seed when, in the spring, it breaks into flower. The male pollen, which must be carried down the wind, is in the form of hanging strings, like golden catkins, with tiny flowers. As spring progresses, the oak becomes so thickly bearded that it is as if it has grown a golden fleece.

The female flowers – it is these, when pollinated, which will grow into acorns – are as yet less visible. Like little opening buds, close inspection reveals that they have three tiny red styles which will collect the pollen as it is blown by.

By late April, therefore, the oak, green-leaved, bearded with golden strings, like some hoary old figure from the days of the classical myths when the gods played games with men by the oak groves, was ready to spread its seed. The pollen could be carried great distances across the thick woodland canopy, encountering and intermingling with the pollen of a hundred other trees along the way. It would be hard to say, therefore, which oak was the father of any single acorn grown; for the female buds of any oak tree might receive the passing pollen of dozens of other oaks so that an acorn on a single branch might have been fathered by one oak while the acorn next to it could be the result of pollination from another. So the oak tree would fructify, communally, with perhaps a hundred brother and sister oaks, and children too, who made its old community.

They had set up a maypole at Minstead on May Day. The vicar, who wisely allowed such harmless pagan practices, had organized a modest feast on the village green. The people from Brook had come down, too.

The children had danced round the maypole very prettily; there had been some drinking; and in the evening when it was all over, Nick Pride had walked Jane Furzey home.

They walked up the rise above Minstead and then, drifting idly together, took the path that led past the Rufus oak.

There had been several days of rain recently. Indeed, although nearly a week had passed since Jane’s strange encounter in Burley, she had still not found a good day to return Puckle’s counterpane. But today the sun had shone with scarcely a cloud to interrupt it and the evening was still deliciously warm. She walked beside Nick contentedly.

It was only natural, it seemed to Nick, that they should have paused by the Rufus tree and kissed.

Nick had never kissed for as long as this before. As the minutes went by, his lips and tongue exploring, time seemed to cease in the womb-like space under the spreading tree. The turquoise sky at the end of the glade was turning to orange. Somewhere in the wood behind, a faint rustling told him that a deer was making its delicate way between the trees. He clasped Jane tightly, his hands searching, trying to draw her evermore completely to him. With slowly mounting excitement he wanted to possess her entirely. He must. It was time.

‘Now,’ he murmured. They were betrothed. They would be married. There was no prohibition any more. All nature told his body this was the moment. ‘Now.’

She pulled back. ‘No. Not now.’

He moved forward, took her in his arms again. ‘Jane. Now.’

‘No.’ She pushed him gently but firmly back and shook her head. ‘I cannot, now.’

He was trembling with passion. ‘Jane.’ But she turned away from him, staring down the glade. He stood there, breathing rapidly. Just for a moment, it occurred to him to take her, there and then, by force. But he knew that would not do. Was she really so determined that she would not give herself to him until they were married? Or perhaps she had only meant that her monthly curse was upon her. He did not know. ‘As you like,’ he said with a sigh and, gently putting his arm round her, began to walk her home.

She said little on the way back. Indeed, it was all she could do to hide her feelings. For how could she tell him what was really in her mind? How could she admit that her refusal came from another cause entirely? She did not understand it herself. All she knew, that warm May evening, was that something had come between them: that despite her intentions, her feelings for him, despite everything, as she had felt him holding her fast, pressing against her, some invisible barrier had suddenly interposed itself, so that she could not let him possess her. Was it her fear, because she was a virgin? Was it panic at the thought she was about to lose her freedom? She did not know. It was mystifying, troubling. He was the man she was to marry and suddenly she did not want him. What did it mean?

Three miles away, when Nick and Jane were leaving the maypole on the green, Clement Albion had been engaged in that exercise so necessary to busy men. He had been assuring himself that his conscience was clear. He even muttered aloud: ‘I have done all I can. God knows.’

The trained bands he had mustered were as ready as they were ever likely to be. The beacons were prepared. For all the fearsome reputation of the council’s spy system, nobody knew exactly when or how the great Spanish invasion fleet was coming; but those like Gorges with any pretence to information assured him that it would, and soon. Had he, then, anything with which to reproach himself? If the council were to summon him tomorrow and demand whether he were a loyal servant of his queen, could he look Cecil in the eye and declare fearlessly that he was?

‘My conscience is clear.’ Nobody was listening. He tried it again. ‘Her Majesty has no cause for complaint against me. I have deceived her about nothing. Nothing.’

Well, almost nothing.

The position of woodward was a profitable one. In return for acting as guardian of the trees in Her Majesty’s forest he received a salary and valuable perquisites. The bark, for instance, from felled or fallen oaks was his; and he would arrange for cartloads to be taken across to Fordingbridge, to the tanning pits there, where the tanners would pay well for this useful ingredient in the preparation of leather. Then there were the leases to see to.

The coppice in front of him was a well-made thirty-acre inclosure, near a track that ran west from Lyndhurst. It had an earth bank and a stout fence in good repair. It was the woodward’s responsibility to let this coppice on the usual thirty-one-year lease and this he had done. To be precise, he had let it to himself. By the terms of the lease, he had the right to sell off the underwood, which was mostly thorn and hazel; but at the same time he was obliged to conserve the more valuable timber wood, keeping at least twelve untouched standards, as the young timber trees were called, to the acre. Albion’s coppices, therefore, should have contained not less than three hundred and sixty standards of timber and, when the lease had begun, so it had. But somehow a hundred and fifty of them had disappeared, leaving two hundred and ten. The profits from these timber sales had been a useful addition to his income.

It was the sort of thing Her Majesty’s woodward was supposed to notice and report, to ensure that the leaseholder was fined. But as he was the leaseholder too, this dereliction had miraculously escaped his notice.

More serious, perhaps, had been the sale of a much larger coppice, not long ago, for the benefit of the crown. He had arranged the sale efficiently enough and fowarded the money to Her Majesty’s treasury. A large quantity of underwood had been sold and was fully accounted for with a written record. What the record did not show, however, was that much of this underwood was actually timber, of far higher value. The difference between the real and the recorded sale had gone into Albion’s purse.

This error still might be found out by the regarders when they next made their inspection of the Forest, as they did every few years. But then, as he was also one of Her Majesty’s regarders, Albion thought it unlikely that the issue would be raised.

Yet again, the crown had been known to set up a commission of inquiry to investigate even the regarders as well, and the woodwards and the gentleman leaseholders of the Forest. But so serious a matter was this, that the last time such a thing had been done, the said regarders, woodwards and gentlemen had found it necessary to arrange that the members of the said commission should consist entirely of – themselves.

For a time, during the months after his conversation with Helena Gorges at Hurst Castle, Albion had lived in some discomfort. To be an undisturbed woodward was one thing; but if the council ever started to take steps against him; if neighbours should understand he was a marked man; if Cecil’s servants came down to the Forest seeking crimes with which to charge him, who knew what might come to the surface? Even if no treason was found, the prospect of disgrace and ruin grew uncomfortably large.

But winter and spring had passed, and now it was May. The cuckoo was sounding in the woods. In the manner of every good man who thinks it unlikely he will be found out, Albion’s conscience was clear. Although the sun was sinking in the west, the huge canopy of sky over the Forest was still azure, with thin ribs of high cloud gleaming pink and silver overhead, as Albion rode southwards. Having passed Brockenhurst and gone south another mile, he then turned east to cross the Forest’s modest central river by the quiet ford below which his house lay.

He was rather surprised, therefore, as he came in sight of the ford, to see two wagons, one richly curtained, the other groaning under a stupendous load of boxes and furniture of every kind, crossing the river just ahead of him. Across the ford, one either continued up to Beaulieu Heath or turned south along a track that led to Boldre. The Albion house, a timber gabled manor, lay in a wooded clearing about half a mile down the track that led to Boldre.

They turned south. He rode after them. But the second wagon took up so much of the path that he had to wait behind it; and so, a little while later, he saw with astonishment that the first was turning up the track that led to his house. It had already rumbled up to his door, and the servants were coming out and a groom was holding back the wagon’s curtains to allow its occupant to descend, before he could ride up to the door himself.

The figure descending was dressed all in black, except for the inside and trimming of her gown, which was crimson. Her face was powdered a thick, ghostly white.

‘Dear God!’ he cried, scarcely thinking. ‘Mother, why have you come?’

She gave him a brilliant smile in return, although her eyes were as keen as those of a bird after a worm. ‘I have news, Clement,’ she said. And a moment later, finding his ear close to her red mouth as he entered her unavoidable embrace, he heard her whisper as to a fellow conspirator: ‘A letter from your sister. The Spanish are coming. I have come here so that we may welcome them, my dearest son, together.’

May passed and most of June, and still the Spanish fleet – the Armada, they called it – did not come. The weather was unusual. One day there would be blue sky and summer sun over the Forest; but time and again, the dark, lowering clouds had returned, sweeping up from the south-west with gales of rain or hail; few could remember a summer like it in years. Late in June, news came that a storm had dispersed the preparing Spanish fleet to several ports. ‘Drake will be up and at them,’ people said. But although Sir Francis was urging the council to let him go, the Queen was hesitant. The trouble with England’s favourite pirate was that as soon as he attacked the enemy successfully, he’d go running off trying to capture prizes instead of attending to duty. For the great explorer and patriot still loved money, she well knew, more than anything.

As Jane Furzey came on to the long stretch of Mill Lawn she felt rather guilty. Had she really let two months pass before returning to Burley? What with the weather and so much going on, she told herself, she really hadn’t had time to return Puckle’s counterpane. With luck, she thought, he won’t be there. Then she could leave it and hurry away.

Today the weather was fine. Across the big Forest lawn the gorse was all green now, but the short turf was brightly spangled with daisies and white clover, yellow buttercup and hawkweed. Pressing close to the turf, tiny sprigs of self-heal added purple tints to the green; and on the banks of the little gravel streamlet that ran down the lawn, blue forget-me-not grew out of the weeds.

Jane reached the thatched cottage just before noon. Puckle was not at home, but his children were. There were three of them. The eldest was a girl of about ten; obviously going through a skinny stage, she was thin as a spindle, dark-haired, rather solemn and had clearly been left in charge of the other two. A younger girl, also dark, was playing on the patch of grass in front of the cottage door.

But it was the youngest child who really caught her attention. He was a chubby, cheerful little boy of three. He had evidently been playing with a toy horse his father must have made for him; but the moment he saw Jane he toddled happily up to her, his round face wearing a big smile, his bright eyes full of trust and apparently sure that she would amuse him. He was wearing a nicely embroidered smock and not much else and, taking her hand he asked: ‘I’m Tom. Would you like to play?’

‘I’m sure I should,’ she said. But first she explained her errand to the older girl.

The child was naturally a little suspicious at first, but when she inspected the counterpane she nodded. ‘My father said a person would come with it,’ she remarked, ‘but that was a long time ago.’ It seemed that Puckle was not expected back for a while and so Jane talked with the girl. It was soon clear from her manner and the things she said that she had had to take on the role of mother to the family, and Jane began to feel rather sorry for her. She needs a mother herself, she thought.

As for Tom, the toddler was enchanting. He produced a ball and demanded that she kick it to him, which she did, to his great delight, for some time. He is such a pretty little boy, she considered, I wish he could be mine. Finally, however, if she was not to run the risk of meeting Puckle, she thought she had better go.

‘I had best put this back on your father’s bed,’ she said to the girl, picking up the counterpane. The child assured her there was no need, but she insisted and went alone up the stairs to the little room where Puckle’s oak bed stood.

There it was: dark, almost black, and gleaming. It was certainly curious, every bit as strange as she remembered it from her encounter before. The oaken faces, like gargoyles in a church, stared out at her as though she were a friend they were welcoming back. Hardly meaning to, she ran her hand over some of the carved figures – the squirrel, the snake. They were so perfect it was as if they were alive, about to move under her hand at any instant. She even felt a trace of fright and, as if to reassure herself, tightened her grip, squeezing the gnarled oak wood under her hand to prove to herself that that was all it was. For an instant she felt almost giddy.

Carefully she spread the counterpane, made sure that everything was tidy, then stood back to survey her handiwork. This was where Puckle had lain with his wife. ‘Keep any woman happy.’ The strange woman’s words came back to her. ‘Once you lie in his oak bed with John Puckle, you’ll not want any other bed.’ Jane’s eyes went round the room. There was a linen shirt of Puckle’s on the chest where the cat had been lying the first time she came in there. Glancing behind her to make sure she was not observed, she went over and picked it up. He had worn it, but not much, she thought. It smelled only a little of sweat, more of woodsmoke. A good smell. A little salty. She laid it carefully down again.

She looked once more at the bed. It was so strange: the bed seemed to look back at her, as though it and Puckle were one and the same. As in a way they were, she realized, given how much of himself he had put into the carving. Puckle turned into oak, she thought with a smile, and laughed to herself. If all this carving, this astonishing strength and richness were within the soul and body of the man too, no wonder his wife had had good things to say of him. But why to her? Perhaps she had said such things to everybody. But then again, perhaps not.

She turned and, with a last look at the gleaming four-poster, went down the stairs and out of the cottage door into the bright sunlight. Just before she reached it she heard the little boy cry out in pleasure and, blinking for a moment in the sudden light, she looked at the figure now scooping the toddler up in his arms.

Puckle was black – as black as one of the oaken faces on his bed. He turned, catching sight of her, looked straight at her, and she felt herself give an involuntary shudder. She understood, of course. He had been out at one of his charcoal fires and was covered with black dust. But he looked so like one of the strange, almost devilish faces on the bed that she couldn’t help herself.

‘Bring me water,’ he said to the girl, who reappeared in a moment with a wooden pail. He stooped, scooping the water quickly on to his face and head, then washed his arms. He stood up straight again, his face now clean, while from his head the water was dripping down, and laughed.

‘Do you recognize me now?’ he asked Jane, who nodded and laughed as well. ‘You have met Tom?’ he enquired.

‘I played ball with him.’ She smiled.

‘Will you stay a while?’ he asked, cheerfully.

‘No. No, I must go.’ She started to turn, and was astonished to discover that she wanted to stay. ‘I must go,’ she repeated, disconcerted with herself.

‘Ah.’ He came over to her now. His hand reached out and took her elbow. She was aware, suddenly, of the muscles on his thick, powerful forearm. ‘The children like you,’ he said quietly.

‘Oh. How do you know?’

‘I know.’ He smiled. ‘I am glad you came,’ he said gently.

She nodded. She hardly knew what to say. It was as if, as soon as he had touched her, they had shared something. She felt a flood of strength coming from him, while her own knees went weak. ‘I must go,’ she stammered.

His hand was still on her arm. She did not want him to take it away.

‘Come, sit.’ He indicated a bench near the door.

So she sat in the sun with him, and talked and played with the children until, after an hour, she left.

‘You must come again, for the children,’ he said. And she promised that, when she could, she would.

By July, Albion often rode out into the Forest simply to be alone. The last two months had not been easy.

Perhaps his wife had summed it up best. ‘I can’t see the Spanish invasion will make any difference to us, Clement,’ she had said at the end of May. ‘This house has already been occupied.’

His mother and her occupying forces appeared to be everywhere. There never seemed to be less than three of her servants crowding into the kitchen. Within two weeks her groom had seduced his wife’s young maid. At meals, at family prayers, morning, noon and night, his mother’s brooding presence seemed to fill the house.

Why was she there? Albion had no doubt. She was going to make sure he fulfilled his obligations when the Armada came.

For three weeks his wife had suffered. She understood very well that his mother had a large fortune to leave, and she was a good daughter-in-law; but she was a mother first and she wanted a quiet life for her family. He had not dared tell her about his mother’s insane offer of his services to the King of Spain and had begged his mother not to, for fear of frightening her. Meekly therefore, his wife had done her family duty. But finally even she could take no more. ‘This occupation has gone on too long,’ she told him. ‘My house is no longer my own. I don’t care if your mother has ten fortunes to leave. We can live without. They must all go.’

It was with no small fear that he went to his mother to explain the problem. Her reaction astonished him.

‘Of course, Clement. She is quite right. Your household is not large. My poor manservant has been sleeping in the barn. Leave everything to me.’

And the very next morning, to his astonishment, the whole cortège – the wagons piled high, the servants all on board – had been ready to depart. He and his family had stood and watched in wonder as the order was given to move off. There had been only one puzzling feature.

‘Shouldn’t you be in your carriage now, Mother?’ he asked. ‘It is about to move.’

‘I?’ His mother looked surprised. ‘I, Clement? I am not going.’ She raised her hand and waved as the two wagons began to rumble past them. ‘Do not worry, Clement.’ She gave him a brilliant smile. ‘I shall be quiet as a mouse.’

And from that day, with just a few chests of clothes and her prayer book, she had kept to herself in her chamber. ‘Like a good nun,’ as she put it. That is, when she was not sitting in the parlour, or instructing the children in their prayers, or giving the servants little commissions to do, or letting his wife know that the roast beef could have been cooked a little less. ‘You see,’ she would observe, every day at dinner, ‘how I live like a hermit in your house. You must scarcely know I am here.’

If her continued presence was a nuisance for his wife, to Albion himself it grew daily more alarming. Her private conversations with him left no room for doubt: the Spanish were going to triumph. ‘I wrote to your sister long ago about the strength of the musters,’ she declared. ‘The Spanish troops will smash them easily. As for our ships, they are all rotten.’ The first statement was true, the second false. But she had entirely made up her mind about it.

The problem was, how could he deal with the suspicions that must attach to him from her presence in his house? He decided that the best defence was attack.

‘My mother is now completely out of her wits,’ he told one or two gentlemen who he knew would repeat the information, ‘and there’s an end of it.’ When a number of recusants were interned by the council in case they proved dangerous, he remarked wryly to Gorges: ‘I have interned my mother myself. I am now her gaoler.’ When Gorges reminded him that he personally had had charge of Mary Queen of Scots, Albion riposted: ‘My mother is the more dangerous.’ And when Helena asked if he actually kept her under lock and key, he replied morosely: ‘I wish I had a dungeon.’

Were they convinced? He hoped so. But two incidents soon told him better. The first occurred just after news came that Drake had been refused permission to attack the Spanish in their ports again. The orders that the queen had wanted to give had caused some wry amusement among her commanders. Albion had been down at Hurst Castle just afterwards.

‘Do you know, Clement,’ Helena had remarked, ‘the queen wanted the fleet to go back and forth like men on sentry duty?’ She laughed. ‘It seems that Her Majesty, although she sends her buccaneers across the seas, did not know that their ships cannot change directions just as they please, ignoring the wind. Now the fleet is going to …’ But she suddenly checked herself and added sheepishly: ‘To do something else. I do not know what.’ And Albion had turned and seen Gorges standing behind him, quickly removing a warning finger from his lips.

The second incident came early in July.

The fact was that, despite its fearsome reputation at home, the royal spy system in England had been unable, with the Spanish Armada almost daily expected, to discover anything about its plan of action. There were, in fact, two threats to consider. One came from the great fleet itself; the other from the Spanish forces already just across the sea in the Netherlands, where they had been busy putting down the Protestant revolts against Catholic Spanish rule. The Spanish troops in the Netherlands numbered tens of thousands, they were battle hardened and their commander, the Duke of Parma, was a fine general. It was assumed that they would attack England’s eastern coast, probably near the Thames estuary, at the same time as the Armada arrived. If so, that would stretch England’s defences in two directions. But was this correct? Was one attack a diversion? Did the Armada mean to destroy the English fleet at sea, take the first English port it came to, Plymouth probably, and use that as a base; or would it sail up the English Channel to capture Southampton, the Isle of Wight, or Portsmouth? Nobody knew.

‘I have had another letter from Spain,’ his mother said quite calmly, one evening, when he returned from a visit to Southampton.

‘Today? How?’ Who could possibly have brought such a thing to his house in that quiet corner of the Forest?

She waved the question aside as if it were irrelevant. ‘You must be ready, now, Clement. The time is close.’

‘When? When are they coming?’

‘I have told you. Very soon. No doubt the beacons will be lit. You will know. Then you must do your duty.’

‘What other news did you receive? What is their intention? Do they make for the Isle of Wight? For Portsmouth?’

‘I cannot say, Clement.’

‘Let me see the letter, Mother.’

‘No, Clement. I have told you all you need to know.’

He stared at her. Did she not trust him? Of course she didn’t. She suspects, he thought, that if I learn anything more about the Spanish movements, I might tell Gorges or the lord-lieutenant. And she is right. I probably would. He wondered where the letter was. Should he search her chamber? Was there any way – during her sleep, maybe – that he could search her clothing? No hope, he considered.

And then another thought came to him. Could this be a ruse, a cunning contrivance? Was it possible that there was no letter, that she had invented it to test him, to see what he would do? Was she as devious as that? Perhaps.

‘I am sorry you keep secrets from me, Mother,’ he said stiffly; but this had no effect upon her at all.

It was the sequel the next day, however, that was truly frightening. He had chanced to meet Thomas Gorges in Lymington and Gorges, after they had talked a few moments, had given him a keen look and remarked: ‘We are still trying to discover the Spanish intentions, Clement. We suspect that letters may be coming to recusants in England which might contain information of value.’

‘That is possible, I suppose.’ Albion tried to keep calm.

‘People like your mother.’

He could not help it. He felt himself go white. ‘My mother?’

‘Has she received any letters, any messengers, any strange visitors? You surely must know.’

‘I …’ He thought furiously. Did Gorges know she had received a letter? If so, hadn’t he better tell him? Let the authorities search his mother, since he didn’t dare, and uncover her secret. But in that case what would they find? God knew what such a letter might contain to incriminate him. He dare not risk it. ‘I do not know of any such letter,’ he said hesitantly. ‘But I will question her.’ And then, in a flash of inspiration: ‘Do you suspect her, Thomas? God knows what her madness may lead her to.’

‘No, Clement. I ask in a general way only.’

Albion studied his face. He could be lying. Gorges was far too discreet to give himself away. And then a horrible thought occurred to him. What if Gorges, or those above him not only knew of the letter but had already read its contents? In that case Gorges knew more about it than he did. God knew what sort of trap this might be. ‘If my mother received a letter from the King of Spain himself, Thomas,’ he said, ‘mad as she is, she very likely would not tell me because she knows very well that I am loyal to my queen. That’s the truth of it.’

‘I know you can be trusted, Clement,’ Gorges said and moved off. But when a man says he knows he can trust you, Albion thought sadly, it usually means that he does not.

 

Nick Pride had certainly proved himself so far.

‘Who keeps the watch and ward at Malwood?’ Albion would cry as he came to make his inspection – almost daily by mid-July. He had discovered that the young man loved to be hailed in this manner.

‘Nicholas Pride, Sir,’ the youth would answer. ‘And all is in good order, may it please you.’

It certainly was, but for form’s sake Albion would inspect everything, starting with the beacon.

The beacons that would warn England of the coming of the Spanish Armada are often imagined as bonfires. But it was not so at all. Nick Pride’s up at Malwood was typical of its kind.

It had been placed at the highest point on the old earth wall from which, thanks to Albion’s tree thinning, it was visible for many miles. It consisted of a stout pole, about twenty feet high, which had been securely planted several feet into the ground and was also held firm by four supporting stakes, called spurs, angled up like guy ropes to its apex. On top of the pole was fixed a large metal barrel filled with a mixture of pitch, tar and flax, which would burn with a bright flame for hours.

You reached the tar barrel up a ladder – a single beam fitted with cross bars – and you lit it with a flaming torch. In order to have a flame to ignite the torch, Nick and his companions kept a small charcoal brazier alight, day and night, just below.

Nick always shared the watch with one other man, the one not on duty resting in a tiny wooden hut just inside the earth wall. In recent days Nick had been up on Malwood all the time, the other two men taking it turn and turn about. People would drift up from the village from time to time to keep them company; but for some reason the council had ordained that no dogs were permitted at any of the beacons. Perhaps it was feared they would be a distraction.

There was only one eventuality where the beacons would not be useful: if there was fog or extreme bad weather – and given the repeated storms this last was a distinct possibility. In that case, a chain of staging posts had been organized across the country. Light horsemen would race from one to another, carrying the news. The horse they rode was called a hobby, and so each man, with his single message that he must deliver, would ride his hobby horse from post to post.

The beacons on the Isle of Wight were more complex. At each end of the island there were a set of three. If one was fired it indicated either that a signal had been received from down the coast, or that the watchers on the island had seen the invading fleet on the horizon themselves. This served to alert the next county whose watch would light their beacon in turn. If the enemy was approaching the coast, a second was lit. This signalled the beacons of the coastal defences to be ignited and summoned the musters. If three beacons were lit, however, it meant that the coastal defences needed reinforcements from further inland, and then the inland beacons were lit and the trained bands were to go quickly to their meeting points and march down to the coast. Malwood was counted as an inland beacon. ‘However,’ Albion had instructed Nick Pride, ‘as we’re short of men, you are to light your beacon if you see a two-beacon alert on the island and then we’ll march down to Hurst.’

Most days Jane would come and spend an hour or two with him. She would bring him a pie that she had cooked, or cakes, or a jug of some cool drink made from fruit and flowers that she and her mother had prepared. And they would sit together up on Malwood’s grassy walls and gaze over the green forest towards the blue haze of the sea. In the evenings, sometimes, she would remain with him until long after dark, keeping watch together.

So Nick Pride waited for the Spanish Armada in company with the girl he was to marry; when he saw her coming, his heart would dance; when he looked down at her and put his arm round her waist as they viewed the Forest at twilight, he felt a great surge of warmth and thanked the faint evening stars that he had been blessed with her.

Obsession. She did not know the word, but everything belonging to it she had learned to understand. Disquiet, melancholy, distraction – all the long litany – Jane was sixteen and in three weeks she had experienced it all.

She had been back to see him several times already. The first time she had walked by, seen the children and played with the little boy until he came. The next time she had come, knowing Puckle would be there. They had talked; she had sat and watched as he played with Tom, or quietly carved a piece of wood. She realized that she already knew every sinew in his hands.

She had felt his hand upon her arm and upon her shoulder; she longed, now, to feel it around her waist. She could not help it. Nor was this all. Strong though he was, when she watched his daughter preparing the food, or saw him rather helplessly set out to wash the children’s dirty clothes, he suddenly seemed vulnerable. He needs me, she thought.

Twice she had gone to where she knew he would be working in the woods and watched him from a distance, although he did not know it. Once, unexpectedly, she had seen him go by in his cart, along the track up from Lyndhurst. She had felt her heart jump, but stood quite still, just staring after him as he passed, unaware of her presence.

Obsession. She had to conceal it. Her family knew nothing of her walks to Burley since she had always made some excuse for her absence. Nick Pride, of course, had no idea of it. But what did it mean? Why was she suffering? Why was it, night and day, that she longed to be only there, in the woodman’s presence?

Each time she went to Burley she passed the Rufus tree and each time she came back, she would pause there, trying to make sense of her thoughts and prepare herself, before returning to her family and to Nick.

How aware one became of the forest sounds, resting under the great oak’s shade in the late afternoon. The woods were full of birds – chiff-chaffs and tits, redstarts and nuthatches – but their mating and nesting was all done now, their young were mostly grown and flying. Their song was muted and occasional, therefore, and only the cooing of the pigeons came regularly through the woods. It was the ceaseless sound of the wood crickets, the drone of myriad insects, the humming of the bees as they visited the honeysuckle scenting the forest air – this was the sleepy summer music Jane listened to, all around.

But the shady space in which she rested was not still. Far from it. For summer was the time when the vast, hidden population that the tree’s huge system had housed came out to make an appearance. The space under the tree was teeming with life.

It would have been impossible to say how many species there were – perhaps ten thousand; probably more. There were the ticks and mites, so small you could hardly see them, which had made their way from the ground up the swaying bracken so that they could be brushed off on to the bodies of passing warm-blooded animals, like humans, sucking the blood and causing the skin to itch. More irritating still were the horseflies, who had spent the winter as maggots by the oak tree’s roots and now attacked, clumsily but constantly. There were spiders and bugs by the hundred, crawling over the warm bark, caterpillars – blue, yellow, green, orange – making their fantastic, furry progress to feed upon the leaves; there were weevils and ladybirds and moths. Butterflies were rarer in the Forest, but the handsome red admiral could be seen and, high in the canopy, the gorgeous purple emperor would feed on the sugar-rich trails left by the tiny aphids as those minute insects made their way across the leaves.

Jane would remain for an hour under the tree. She would look at the bright caterpillars, or gaze out at the green shadows of the other oaks in the glade. Sometimes her thoughts would turn to the coming Armada and to young Nick up by his beacon; sometimes she would think of Puckle. Before she left, she would appear to be calm. But she was not.

Above her, the huge system of the great tree was in a high state of activity. It knew nothing of the Armada, or of Jane. The myriad leaves of its spreading canopy, upturned to the sun, were daily converting the heavy carbon dioxide in the air to carbon, which was transmitted to its bark, while the oxygen was released back into the air. In this manner, through the great tree, the planet itself was breathing.

And also growing. As the carbon passed into the oak tree’s bark, which in turn would be added, as a yearly ring, to the thick wood beneath, so eventually when the oak and its fellows crashed to the ground and their successors did the same, century after century, a thin carbon layer would be added to Earth which, imperceptibly, would grow down the aeons.

His mother had vanished.

It was a late afternoon in the third week in July when Albion returned to his house to find that she had taken a horse, ridden out and not been seen for hours. For a few moments – he couldn’t help it – he devoutly prayed that she might have fallen, or struck an overhanging bough in the woods, and broken her neck. ‘She said nothing of where she was going?’ he asked his wife.

‘Nothing.’

‘You couldn’t stop her?’ His wife only replied with a look that told him the question was foolish. ‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Of course not.’

Alive or dead, he would have to go out and search for her. There were still long hours of daylight left. But he dreaded what he might find. A rendezvous with the Spanish army itself hardly seemed too unlikely. ‘God save us,’ he muttered.

As the Lady Albion came towards the Rufus tree she was feeling very pleased with herself. Indeed, she thought, she really should have done this before.

She had ridden in quite a large arc. Coming up from Albion’s quiet house by the ford, she had taken the road up to Brockenhurst, inspected the little church there and spoken to several of the villagers. Although few of them had seen her before, word of the strange lady at Albion’s house had gone round Brockenhurst long ago, so when they saw the odd figure in black and red come riding by they guessed who it was. The rumours about her were mixed, however. If the gentry knew all about the Pitts family and Albion’s troubles, the local forest folk were less clear. It was thirty years since she had lived in the Forest herself. Few remembered her and those memories were vague. They knew she was devout and a recusant, but that did not shock them. Word was that she was rich, which was always impressive. She might be liberal with her money, too, if you got on the right side of her. Some said she had gone mad. This could be interesting. They politely doffed their hats or put knuckle to forehead and gathered round in hopeful anticipation.

In fact, she was rather good with them. She was not a Pitts for nothing. She had an easy, proud style that impressed them and she spoke them fair.

She told them she had inspected their church and was sorry to see it had been somewhat damaged by carelessness, not malice, she hoped. At once, several long faces in the group told her she had sympathizers. She had not said more but bade them a courteous good day and proceeded on her way towards Lyndhurst, leaving behind the impression that she was surely not mad, but a fine lady.

At Lyndhurst she had encountered a cottager and had a similar conversation. Then she had swung up, round Minstead and come down through Brook, where she had done the same thing.

Now, as she approached the miraculous tree, she saw a girl, standing alone looking thoughtful, under its branches. The girl had an intelligent face. She drew up in front of her. ‘Good day, my child,’ she said kindly. ‘I see you are standing under a tree which, they tell me, is miraculous.’

Indeed, Jane politely replied, it was so. And she told the strange lady about the tree’s midwinter leafing and the Rufus legend.

‘Perhaps’, the Lady Albion pointed out, ‘this is a sign from God.’ She mentioned the two other trees. ‘Did not Our Lord hang on the cross with two thieves?’

‘And there are three persons also, My Lady,’ the girl suggested, ‘in the Trinity.’

‘Indeed you are right, my child,’ said Albion’s mother approvingly. ‘And is this not a sign to us that we should be faithful to the true Church?’

‘I suppose, My Lady, it may be so. I had not thought of it,’ Jane answered truthfully.

‘Think on it now, then,’ the Lady Albion commanded firmly. And then more gently: ‘Are you faithful, child, to Our Holy Church?’

Jane Furzey knew nothing of Albion’s mother. Brook was ten miles from Albion’s house; the lady had departed from the Forest almost fifteen years before Jane had been born. She had no idea who this impressive person with her air of splendid authority might be; but as she gazed at her now a thought occurred to her.

Jane had never seen the queen. Each summer, Queen Elizabeth would make a royal progress through some part of her kingdom. Several times she had come into other parts of the county, although not into the Forest. Was it possible that Her Majesty was coming down here now to see the shore defences? Would the queen ride about without a retinue? It seemed odd; but perhaps her gentlemen were nearby and would come up in a moment. The lady’s rich clothes, her haughty bearing and kindly words certainly matched every description she had ever heard of the queen. If it isn’t her, she thought, it’s somebody very important. ‘Oh, yes, My Lady,’ she said and attempted a rustic curtsy. She wasn’t sure what the queenly figure had meant, but she was certainly going to agree.

Albion’s mother smiled. It had been clear to her in all the three places she had visited that many of the peasants, perhaps most, were still faithful to the old religious ways. In this assessment she was perfectly correct. Now here was this intelligent girl, quite alone, confirming everything.

Another thought occurred to her. ‘They say, child, that the Spanish will soon be here. What will happen when they come?’

‘They will be met by the muster, My Lady. My brother,’ Jane added eagerly, ‘and my betrothed’ – she hesitated only a moment when she said this last word – ‘are both in the muster.’

‘They are both steadfast to the true Faith?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And brave men both, I am sure,’ the lady continued warmly. ‘Who is their captain?’

‘A noble gentleman, My Lady,’ Jane hoped this was the way to talk to a queen. ‘His name is Albion.’

‘Albion?’ This was exactly what she wanted. ‘And will they follow him obediently?’

‘Why yes, My Lady.’

‘Let me put you a question, child. If it should chance that the Spanish upon our shores are truly our friends and not our foes, what will your brother do?’

Jane looked perplexed. How was she meant to answer?

‘If this good captain, Albion, should instruct him so?’

Jane’s brow cleared. ‘He will obey, loyally, I promise you, My Lady, whatever Albion commands.’

‘Well said, my child,’ the lady cried. ‘I see you are truly loyal.’ And with a wave that might, indeed, have been given by a queen, she rode off towards Brockenhurst.

When she met her unhappy son just north of that village she greeted him gaily with words that made him quake even further: ‘I have been speaking with the good people of the Forest, Clement. All is well. You are loved and trusted, my son.’ She beamed at him approvingly. ‘You have only to give the word and they are ready to rise.’

Two more days passed and the weather over the Forest continued fine. It was said that the Spanish had definitely set sail, yet no one knew their whereabouts. The English fleet was down in the west, at Plymouth. The beacons were ready, but still no message came. Up at Malwood young Nick Pride wailed in high excitement. Each evening Jane visited him, and this evening she had promised to stay and keep him company as he took the night watch. ‘I may fall asleep, Nick,’ she had warned.

‘You may.’ He had smiled confidently. ‘I shall not.’

So when evening fell she told her parents she would remain up at Malwood with him and took her usual path down from Brook past the Rufus tree. The shadows were lengthening as she reached the old oak and she was walking by, not intending to pause, when suddenly she realized she was not alone. Under the trees nearby stood a small cart. In the cart sat Puckle.

She gave a little start. He was watching her calmly. She wondered if he had been there long and why he was waiting. He seemed to expect her to approach and so, conscious that her heart was beating faster than she wanted it to, she went over.

‘What brings you here?’ she asked with a smile.

When she had drawn near his eyes had dropped as though studying his hands. Now he slowly raised them. They were very clear, large and bright as they looked straight into hers. ‘You do.’

She gasped. She didn’t mean to. She couldn’t help it. She remembered telling him she usually came this way to Malwood. So he had been waiting for her. She did her best to stay calm. ‘And what can I do for you?’

He continued to look at her coolly. ‘You could get into the cart for a start.’

She felt her breath suddenly short above the heart. A tiny tremble went through her body. ‘Oh?’ She managed another smile. ‘And where are we going?’

‘Home.’

Her home? She frowned, glanced at his face, then looked down at the ground. He meant his home: the cottage at Burley with the carved bed. The nerve of his offer was almost shocking. She could not look up. She had not expected this. Yet his manner suggested he thought it was inevitable. He had come for her. It was shocking, but simple. She ought to turn and walk away. Yet, against all reason, she experienced an unexpected sense of hidden, deep relief.

She knew she had to walk away, but did not move.

‘I have to spend the watch at the beacon with Nick,’ she said at last.

‘Leave him.’ His voice was quiet as the dusk.

She shook her head, paused, frowned. ‘I must see him.’

‘I’ll wait.’

She turned and began to walk towards Malwood. The light catching the leaves was crimson gold. She glanced back, once, towards the Rufus oak, standing in a pool of orange light. Puckle had not moved. She walked on.

What did she mean to do? She didn’t know. Did she know? No, she urged herself, she didn’t. She needed to see Nick Pride. She had to look at him.

It did not take long to reach the old earthwork. As she entered it the fire of the Forest sunset was making a bright crescent around the dark-green shadow within its walls.

Nick was standing by the hut and he came towards her, looking excited. ‘It’s time to go up. You’re late.’

How young he seemed. How sweet – she felt a wave of affection for him – but how young.

She let him lead her up on to the earth wall beside the beacon. He was talking eagerly about the day he had passed, how one of his men had almost missed his watch. He sounded so proud of himself. She was glad for him.

After a while, she said: ‘I have to go back to Brook for a while, Nick. But I’ll try and come by later.’

‘Oh.’ He frowned. ‘Something wrong?’

‘Some things I have to do. Nothing much.’

‘But you won’t come after dark.’

‘’Course I will. If I can. I know the way.’

‘There’ll be a bit of moon tonight,’ he agreed. ‘You could see your way, I suppose.’

‘I’ll try to come.’ Why was it that this lie gave her such pleasure, such excitement? She had never behaved like this before. The delight of deception was quite new to her. With an extraordinary sense of lightness she kissed him and left him, and made her way back towards the Rufus tree.

She was trembling, nonetheless, when she got into the cart. Without a word. Puckle took up the reins, touched the pony with his whip and they moved off. What was she doing? Did she mean to go with Puckle in secret and return to Nick? Was this a sudden severance from her family, her former life and her betrothed, to become Puckle’s woman? She did not know herself.

The sunset was glowing deep red ahead of them as the cart came out on to the open heath. The red shafts caught Puckle’s face so that it looked strangely ochre, almost demonic, as they rolled towards the west. Seeing it, she gave a little laugh. Then the great orb of the sun sank and the heath grew dark, and she leaned over so that, for the first time, he put his arm round her to comfort her as she journeyed with him towards the mystery of the forbidden.

The cottage was silent in the pale moonlight when they arrived. The children were not there. Presumably they were with some other member of the Puckle clan that night. He lit a candle from the embers when they got inside and, carrying it upstairs, set it on the chest so that its soft light made the strange oak bed glow in an intimate and friendly manner. The counterpane was off.

When he took off his shirt, she put her hands on the thick dark hairs of his chest, feeling them wonderingly. His face, with his short pointed beard, suddenly looked triangular, like some forest animal’s in the candlelight. She was not quite certain what she should do next, but he gently lifted her up and laid her on the bed, and when she felt his powerful arms around her she almost swooned. As he came on to the bed with her she was soon aware that he was as hard and firm as the oak bed itself, but for a long time he stroked and caressed her so that it seemed to her as if, in some miraculous way, she had become one of the creatures he had so expertly carved, nestling, peeping out, or writhing upon the bedposts. And if, once, she cried out for a moment in pain, she could scarcely afterwards remember quite when or how it was, during that night when, as though by magic, she became at one with the Forest.

She was not aware, as she slept, that just before dawn the coastal beacons had sprung into flame to announce that the Armada had been sighted.

Don Diego yawned. Then he bit his knuckle. He must not fall asleep. He must complete his task. His honour was at stake.

He was tired, though, very tired. Six days had passed since the Spanish Armada had been sighted entering the English Channel and the beacons had been lit. Six days of action. Six days of exhaustion. And yet he had been lucky. His relationship, distant though it was, with the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had now been given command of the whole Armada, had secured him a place in the flagship itself. And from this privileged vantage point he had witnessed it all.

The first days had been promising. As they passed the south-western tip of the island kingdom a cheeky English fishing vessel had come out to look at them, circled the whole fleet counting numbers, then vanished. Although one of the Spanish boats had chased it unsuccessfully, the Duke had only smiled. ‘Let it go and tell the English how strong we are, gentlemen,’ he declared. ‘The more terrified they are the better.’

The next day, as they sailed slowly towards Plymouth, they learned that the English fleet was trapped by the wind in Plymouth harbour. A council of war was called on the flagship and it was not long before Don Diego knew what was being said.

‘Smash them now. Take the port and use it as our base,’ the bolder commanders urged. And it seemed to Don Diego that this was good advice.

But his noble kinsman thought otherwise. ‘King Philip’s instructions to me are very clear,’ he told them. ‘Unless we have to, we are to take no unnecessary risks.’ So the mighty Armada had sailed slowly on.

But that very night the English ships had rowed out of Plymouth and stolen the advantage of the wind. And they had been on the Spanish fleet’s heels, like a pack of hounds, ever since.

The English attack had been almost continuous. The Spanish galleons, with their high castles fore and aft, and their huge complement of soldiers, were certain to win any encounter if the English came close enough to grapple. So the English circled, darted in and out, and poured in volley after volley of cannon fire, while the Spanish responded. ‘But the English seem to fire much more often,’ Don Diego had observed to the captain.

‘They do. Our crews are used to firing only once or twice before we come alongside and grapple. But the English ships are organized as gun platforms. So they just keep firing. They’ve got more heavy cannon, too,’ the captain added morosely.

But what Don Diego particularly noticed was the relative speed of the English and Spanish ships. It was not, as he had supposed, that the English vessels were smaller – some of the biggest English vessels were actually larger than the Spanish galleons. But their masts were set differently; they dispensed with the cumbersome castles; they were built not for coming to grips and grappling with the enemy, but for speed. The traditional medieval sea battle had been an extension of an infantry attack; the English navy was almost entirely artillery. When the Spanish ships tried to catch them and board them, as they did several times, the English ships sailed easily away.

But the Spanish were not an easy prey. The Armada had entered the Channel in a single formation – a huge crescent seven miles across with the most heavily armed ships forming a protective screen all round its leading edge and the most vulnerable transports huddled in the centre. The English, harrying them from the rear, had scored some successes. On Sunday, three days before, they had inflicted horrible damage on some ships that had fallen behind and the next day they had taken several of these while the commander of one galleon, Don Pedro de Valdez, which had damaged its rigging by fouling another vessel, ignobly surrendered to Sir Francis Drake without even putting up a fight. But after that the Duke had ordered the wings of the great crescent to fold in behind and from then on the mighty fleet had proceeded up the Channel like a huge moving stockade.

In this new formation the Armada was almost impregnable. If the Spanish could not catch the English, the English could not dent the Spanish. Again and again they tried.

‘Take care,’ the Spanish captains had been warned. ‘The English gunners aim for the waterline.’ And on Tuesday, off the southern promontory of Portland, the English had given the Spanish everything they had. Yet although there had been a number of casualties, remarkably little damage had been done. This was partly because the English did not dare come too close. As a result, even the cannon balls from their largest cannon had lost much of their velocity before they struck the huge galleons and many of them just bounced off. The other reason, which would never be reported in the island kingdom, was plain. As Don Diego remarked to one of his companions: ‘I’m glad these English fellows aren’t terribly good shots.’

The Armada was almost impregnable, but not quite. And it was a minor success on the part of the English gunners that gave Don Diego his opportunity for glory now.

When Albion’s mother had told her son that his brother-in-law was an important captain in the Spanish army she had, as usual, overstated the case. What Catherine had actually written to her mother was that her husband Don Diego hoped to gain a command. Only in the celestial world of the Lady Albion’s imagination had this hope already been translated into a brilliant existence.

In truth, Don Diego had never had a career at all. He was a good man. He had elegant manners. He loved his wife, his children and his farms. And if, like every true aristocrat, he longed to add lustre to his family name, his happiness with his domestic life had always held him back. But now, in middle age, when a man knows that if he is ever to do anything with his existence he had better do it now, Don Diego had seen the prospect of the great expedition in England as a lifetime’s chance. His kinship with the Duke of Medina Sidonia, although distant, was real and had secured him a place on the flagship. And so this middle-aged man, whose marriage had saved his estate, and whose children loved him, went out to risk death so that he could bequeath them a little of the military glory that had so far been lacking in his homely life.

But what exactly was his position in this great enterprise? Why the same, exactly, as that of all the other gentlemen like him who were travelling with the Armada. There were scores of them in the fleet: rich gentlemen, poor nobles, royal princelings from all over Europe; there were bastard sons of Italian dukes in search of fame and plunder, plus, almost certainly, a natural son of the pious King of Spain himself. Some knew how to fight, some came to watch, some, like Don Diego, were vague about why they came. It was, after all, a crusade. But tonight, at last, Don Diego’s chance had come.

It was in the nature of the defensive formation the Armada had adopted that the great convoy could only move at the speed of its slowest vessel. If one of the ships were disabled, then every ship would have to slow down – and they were moving slowly enough already. Crippled vessels, therefore, had to be ruthlessly left behind.

The ship that had been damaged was a common hulk – a slow, blundering vessel with only a few guns but a contingent of troops and a hold full of ammunition and supplies. Yesterday’s pounding from the English had damaged one of her masts and holed her, as well as killing the captain. All day today the hulk had limped along, but by evening it was clear she couldn’t keep up. And it was in early evening that the duke, who had been wondering if he could find something for his harmless kinsman to do, suddenly summoned him and enquired whether he could deal with it.

Don Diego had been working, now, for hours. He had laboured hard and intelligently. The first thing he had done was to get the troops off on to other vessels. Next he had turned his attention to the all-important ammunition. Unlike the English, the Spanish ships had no means of getting fresh supplies. Everything they needed had to be carried with them. They had been returning the English fire for four days now and some of the ships were getting short of powder. Using what smaller boats he could, Don Diego and the remains of the hulk’s crew had unloaded barrel after barrel of powder and conveyed them to other ships. Then he had done the same with the cannon balls. That had been a slow and difficult process. Half a dozen had fallen into the water. One had almost gone through the bottom of the boat they were loading. Darkness had fallen and they were still at it. The crew were beginning to get a little grumpy, but he gave them no rest. Towards eleven o’clock the job was done.

As he had been awake since before dawn that day and had taken no siesta, Don Diego was starting to get very tired. Despite the fact that they had been lightening the hulk for hours, she was going slower and settling in the water all the time. A message came from the duke: he thanked Diego for his good work, but now the hulk must be left behind. The crew, it was clear, were ready to leave.

Yet Don Diego hesitated. There was still one thing he wanted to do.

He had made the discovery when he went down to check the hold. Although there were still all sorts of things down there, the gunpowder, which had been in the upper part, and the shot below had all been cleared. In the lowest part of the hold, against the bottom of the ship, he could hear the water sloshing about as the hulk wallowed lower. Holding the lantern over the water, he had peered down to see how deep it was. And then he had seen a faint, silvery glow and realized.

The entire bottom of the hulk was lined with bullion: silver bars; thousands of them. They gleamed mysteriously under the watery light as he gazed at them.

Such treasure, of course, was of no great importance to the Armada, for the fleet as a whole was carrying a prodigious quantity of gold and silver. In the present circumstances the powder and shot was of far more value. But if the hulk was just left to drift, the English would have the silver and this idea irked him. It’s my operation, he thought, and it’s going to be perfect.

The solution was quite easily arranged. Half the crew he put off straight away. The rest, just enough to do what was needed, he ordered to remain. He also kept two pinnaces, one on each side.

‘We shall allow this ship to fall behind,’ he told them, ‘taking care not to foul any others as we do so. Then we shall scuttle her.’

The men looked at him sullenly. They had to obey this gentleman, who knew nothing of ships and who had been foisted upon them; but they didn’t like it.

‘What do we do after that?’ one of the men asked, with a hint of insolence in his voice.

‘Get into the pinnaces,’ Don Diego replied. ‘No doubt,’ he added coolly, ‘if you row hard we can catch up.’

The night was dark. Clouds covered the moon. Very slowly, yard by yard, the hulk was falling back through the fleet. To right and left, as the minutes passed, great shapes loomed up at them, hovered, showing lights here and there, then drew mysteriously away. The process of falling back might take half an hour, he guessed.

He went down into the captain’s big cabin in the stern. There was a large chair there and he sat in it. He was tired, but he felt a sense of satisfaction at what he had done. Well, nearly done. He was exhausted, but he smiled. For a moment, a wave of sleepiness almost overcame him, but he shook his head to drive it off. It would be time, he thought, in a little while, he’d go back on deck again.

Don Diego’s head sank on to his chest.

Albion inwardly groaned. It was the middle of the night and still, God help them, his mother had not gone to bed.

The oak-panelled parlour was brightly lit: she had ordered fresh candles an hour ago. And now, for perhaps the fourth time – he had lost the will to keep count – she had worked herself up to a climax of fervour again.

‘Now is the time, Clement. Now. Saddle your horse. The game’s afoot. Summon your men.’

‘It is the middle of the night, Mother.’

‘Go up to Malwood,’ she cried. ‘Light the beacon. Call the muster.’

‘All I have asked, Mother,’ he said patiently, ‘is that we wait until dawn. Then we shall know.’

‘Know? Know what?’ Her voice rose now to a pitch that might have pleased any preacher. ‘Have we not seen, Clement? Have we not seen them coming?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said flatly.

‘Oh!’ She threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘You are weak. Weak. All of you. If only I were a man.’

If you were a man, thought Albion privately, you would have been locked up long ago.

It had been late afternoon when the Armada had been sighted. The two of them, with a party of other gentlemen and ladies, had gathered at the top of the ridge by Lymington from which there was a fine view over Pennington Marshes down the English Channel. As soon as the distant ships had come in sight his mother had started to become highly agitated and he had been forced to take her horse’s bridle, pull her to one side and whisper urgently: ‘You must dissemble, Mother. If you cry for the Spanish now, you will ruin everything.’

‘Dissemble. Yes. Ha-ha,’ she had cried. Then, in a whisper which, surely, must have reached well beyond Hurst Castle. ‘You are right. We must be wise. We shall be cunning. God save the queen!’ she had suddenly shouted, so that the ladies and gentlemen turned in surprise. ‘The heretic,’ she hissed with delighted venom.

For three nerve-wracking hours they had continued to watch as the Armada came eastwards. The wind had been dropping and its progress seemed slower and slower. The English fleet, drawn up in tidy squadrons now, was visible not far behind. Before long, several small, swift vessels could be seen detaching themselves from their squadrons and making their way swiftly across the waters towards the Solent entrance. In less than an hour, two had navigated the entrance and anchored in the lee of Hurst Castle, while two more had pressed on towards Southampton. Soon they could see the men from Hurst Castle going out in lighters laden with powder and shot, and as soon as the two vessels had taken on all that could be spared they sped off again towards the fleet, from which tiny puffs of smoke and fire could be seen from time to time, accompanied, after a long pause, by a faint roar like receding thunder.

The Armada, so far, showed no sign of making towards the English shore. The ships remained in silhouette, a mass of tiny spikes like cut-outs, inching along the horizon line. On the Isle of Wight the garrison still had not lit the second or third beacons. But as darkness began to fall and the distant show resolved itself into a few sporadic flashes, Albion’s mother remained as committed as ever to her former belief. ‘They will turn and approach us under cover of darkness, Clement,’ she assured him confidently. ‘They’ll be in the Solent by morning.’ And so she had been saying ever since.

Albion glanced across at his wife. She was dressed in her nightclothes, prepared for bed. Her fair hair, only lightly streaked with silver, hung loose. She had gathered a shawl around her and was sitting quietly in a corner, saying nothing. If she took no part in the conversation, however, Albion knew quite well what she was doing. She was watching. As long as he could control his mother, well and good. But if not, she had already warned him she had given the servants their orders, which even he did not dare to countermand.

‘We shall lose our inheritance,’ he had cautioned.

‘And keep our lives. If she commits us to treason we shall lock her up.’

He did not blame her. She was probably right; but the thought of losing all that money was very hard for him; which was why even now – for his children’s sake, he told himself – he was temporizing with his mother, playing for time. ‘I sent a servant up to Malwood, Mother,’ he pointed out for the third time. ‘If the beacons signal any approach, I shall be told at once.’

‘The beacons.’ She said it with disgust.

‘They work very well, Mother,’ he said firmly. ‘Where do you think I should be? Down at the coast with my men already? Ready to silence the guns at Hurst Castle?’ He regretted it even before he finished speaking.

Her face lit up. ‘Yes, Clement. Yes. Do that, I beg you. Be ready, at least, to strike quickly. Why do you hesitate? Go at once.’

Albion stared thoughtfully at the gleaming candles. If he went out upon this errand, would it pacify her? Was that the sensible thing to do? Perhaps. But at the same time, another idea was in his mind. He was quite sure the Armada was not heading into the western Solent. They had been too far out to sea. But what if they came in at Portsmouth, just past the Isle of Wight? Or at any of the havens along the southern coast? There was Parma to consider, too. What about his great army in the Netherlands? That could be landing by the Thames even as they spoke. His mother might be dangerous; she might be mad. But was she wrong? It was the calculation he had never shared even with his wife. The time was very close. If the Spanish landed they might win. If they won, shouldn’t he be on their side? How could he discover who was winning? There were probably not a few Englishmen who were thinking such thoughts that night.

And surely, he considered, when there was a strong chance his mother’s cause might triumph it would be foolish indeed to make of her, his greatest advocate, an enemy.

‘Very well, Mother. You may be right.’ He turned to his wife. ‘You and my mother should remain here and tell no one I have gone. There are some good men I can trust.’ This was pure invention. ‘I shall gather them now and we shall go down to the shore. If the Spanish show signs of landing …’ He hadn’t, in truth, any idea what he would do, but his mother was beaming.

‘Thank God, Clement. At last. God will reward you.’

Not long afterwards Albion rode out of his house in the wood and made his way southwards towards Lymington. If he was going to stay out all night, he considered, he might as well be down at the shore. Who knew? Something might happen.

Behind him his wife and his mother sat quietly in the parlour. Some of the candles had been snuffed. The room was bathed in a soft, pleasant glow.

After a while the older woman yawned. ‘I think’, she said, ‘I may rest for a little while. Will you promise to wake me as soon as there is any news?’

‘Of course.’

The Lady Albion went over, kissed her daughter-in-law on the forehead and yawned again. ‘Very well, then,’ she said and, taking a candle, left the room. A few moments later Albion’s wife heard her enter her chamber. Then there was silence. She waited, snuffing out all but one of the candles, after which she went up to her own bed, got in as quickly as she could and laid down her head. As far as she was concerned her mother-in-law could sleep until doomsday.

And she was fast asleep herself, half an hour later, when the Lady Albion quietly stole out of the house.

Everything was pitch-black when Don Diego awoke. For a few moments he stared about him, trying to remember where he was. Then, feeling the arms of the chair and dimly seeing the big cabin around him, he remembered. He rose with a start. How long had he been sleeping? He staggered out and went up on to the deck, calling to his men.

Silence. He ran to the side to look for the pinnace. It had gone. He crossed to the other. That had vanished too. He was alone. He stared forward into the darkness. The sky was cloudy; only a few stars peeped through, but he could see the waters all around. And he saw no ships. He frowned. How was it possible? If so much time had passed the hulk should have sunk. What had happened?

Had he known the sailors better he might have guessed quite easily. Anxious to lose as little time as possible, they had made only the smallest attempt to scuttle the ship, then taken to the pinnaces as soon as they could. Afterwards the men on each pinnace, having gone to different ships, would claim they thought Don Diego was in the other. As for the hulk, it had continued to sail slowly forward but, one of the departing sailors having thoughtfully turned its rudder, it had peeled off to port. By the time the English boats saw it distantly in the darkness they had mistaken it for a ship of their own. And so for several hours, the hulk had been wallowing gracelessly forward, on an increasingly north-easterly course.

It was now, peering forward, that Don Diego suddenly realized something else. Ahead of him in the blackness, perhaps two miles off, was a faint, pale shape. At first he had thought it was a cloud, but it wasn’t. He realized it was part of a larger, darker shape. It was a line of white cliffs. He could make them out, now. He looked to port. Yes. There was a low, dark coastline there, running for many miles. His mind was working clearly. He realized where he must be. The dark line must be the south coast of England. The white cliffs must belong to the Isle of Wight.

He was drifting into the western mouth of the Solent. For long moments he gazed ahead, awestruck but thinking. Then he slowly nodded his head.

Suddenly he laughed aloud.

For see, he realized, what God’s providence had done. He had just been granted an opportunity far greater than any he had dared to hope for. It was quite beyond his dreams. Truly God granted miracles.

He was still marvelling at his good fortune when the hulk struck a sandbank, lurched and stuck fast.

Nick Pride heard the horse as soon as it entered the place, but he kept his eyes on the distant beacon. There was still only a single pinpoint of light out there in the blackness.

Nick was alone on the wall. His relief was asleep in the hut. He had been on his own since dusk when, after watching the distant Armada on the horizon for an hour or so, Jane had left. This was the critical night. If the Spanish started to make for the coast, the Isle of Wight beacons would certainly go to three. He had not taken his eyes off the signal for even a minute since nightfall.

Yet even so, his mind had several times wandered to other matters.

What was the matter with Jane? Three nights in a row, now, when she had come to see him she had kept him company for a little while but refused to stay. Each time, in some way, there had been a strangeness in her manner. One night she had seemed preoccupied and elusive, on another she had suddenly criticized him and seemed cross for no reason. A third time she had seemed good-humoured, yet almost motherly, kissing him on the forehead as if he were a child. Tonight, when she had said she must go, he had looked at her strangely and asked her what was wrong. She had pointed out towards the ships of the Armada on the horizon and asked him: ‘Isn’t that enough to be worried about, Nick? What is to become of us all?’ Then she had abruptly left him.

He supposed this must be the reason for her agitation. Yet each time he turned the matter over in his mind it still did not seem quite right.

A snort from the horse behind him told him it was almost at the wall. He had not expected Albion, but it was typical of his captain to take the trouble to visit even at this time of night. He awaited the familiar salute.

‘You. Fellow. Watchman.’

A woman’s voice. What could this mean?

Whatever he was supposed to say in challenge he forgot. Instead, like a village rustic he enquired: ‘Who’s that, then?’

There was a brief pause, then the same person called out in a tone of authority: ‘Light your beacon, fellow, summon the muster.’

This was too much.

‘The beacon only gets lit when there be three on the island. Well, two, anyway. Those are my orders from Captain Albion.’ That sounded definitive.

‘But I come from Albion, good fellow. It is he who bids you light the beacon.’

‘And who might you be?’

‘I am the Lady Albion. He sent me.’ Some practical joker, obviously.

‘So you say. I only light this beacon when I see two down there,’ Nick said firmly. ‘And that’s that.’

‘Must I force you?’

‘You can try.’ He drew out his sword.

‘The Spanish are coming, fool.’

For a moment Nick Pride hesitated. Then he had an inspiration. ‘Tell me the password, then.’

There was a pause. ‘He told it me, good fellow, but alas I have forgotten it.’

‘He told you?’

‘Yes. Upon my life.’

‘Was it’ – he searched his mind – ‘Rufus oak?’

‘Yes. Yes, I believe it was.’ The miraculous tree.

‘Well, then, I’ll tell you something.’

‘Yes?’

‘There ain’t no password. Now be off with you, you trollop.’

‘You shall pay for this.’ The voice was furious, but disappointed – you could hear that in the dark.

‘Be off, I say.’ He laughed. And a moment later the strange rider retreated into the shadow again. He wondered who she was. At least it gave him something else to think about as he gazed down, once more, at the single light in the distance.

As for the Lady Albion, she turned her horse southwards. If necessary, she was going to seize the guns at Hurst Castle herself.

The short night was already well advanced by the time Albion came on to the high ground at Lymington. The clouds were still obscuring the stars. Looking out to sea past the faint paleness of the Isle of Wight’s chalk cliffs and the Needles, he could see nothing in the deep gloom. Wherever the Armada was, he did not think it was approaching the shore. In all probability it had vanished behind the Isle of Wight by now. Perhaps, at first light, he thought, he would ride westwards a few miles along the coast to see if he could get a view of the fleets behind the island. For the time being he dismounted and sat on the ground.

He had been there some time when he thought he saw a dark shape out in the water. For a moment he felt he’d imagined it. But no: it was there. A ship was approaching. He stood up, his heart suddenly pounding. Was it possible that the Armada had slipped in unnoticed? Or perhaps a squadron had been sent in under cover of night to seize the Solent? He turned and swung himself into the saddle. He must race to Hurst Castle and alert them.

But then he paused. Must he? Was he going to help Gorges or let the Spanish take him by surprise? Nobody could blame him. Nobody knew he was there. He suddenly realized, with a horrible force, that his moment of decision had come. What side was he on?

He had no idea.

He had spent so much time telling his mother one thing and the world another that he truly couldn’t remember where he stood. He stared helplessly out to sea.

The ship was still approaching, but very slowly. He searched in the darkness, trying to see others, but could not find them. He waited. Still nothing. Then the dark shape seemed to stop. It had. He smiled. It must have hit a sandbank. He continued to watch. It would be perfectly possible for half a dozen Spanish ships to run aground out there. But although he waited no other shapes appeared. Whatever it was, the ship was alone.

He gave a sigh of relief. He needn’t make a decision after all. Not yet.

Another hour later the first hint of light appeared in the east. The clouds were thinning, too. In the greyness the horizon line appeared unbroken. The Armada was no longer in sight.

He could see the hulk clearly, now. He looked for any sign of life upon it, but there didn’t seem to be. The wind had dropped to the lightest of breezes; the water around the ship was calm. There might be survivors. If so, they would probably be on the beaches past Keyhaven.

He wondered whether to go and see. It could be dangerous if there was a boatload of them. On the other hand he was mounted. He had a sword. He considered, then shrugged.

His curiosity had got the better of him.

Don Diego watched cautiously. He was still rather wet, but he counted himself fortunate. The hulk had run aground only a mile or so out from the shore. The sea was calm. It had been quite easy, in the ship’s hold, to find all he needed to make a simple, buoyant raft and fashion a broad-bladed paddle. The tide had helped him reach the sandy beach well before dawn broke. He had concealed the raft, climbed the sandy little cliff and started to walk along the heath. One precaution he had taken. Like most of the gentlemen travelling with the Armada, he wore a long gold chain round his neck. Its links were as good as any currency. For the time being he had concealed this inside his shirt and doublet. He also made himself as presentable as he could. He cleaned his shoes and stockings, brushed his breeches and doublet as far as possible. He understood the English fashions followed the Spanish. He was not sure how well he spoke English. He had gone to great trouble to do so and his wife assured him he did. Perhaps he could pass for an English gentleman who had been robbed rather than a Spaniard who had been shipwrecked. He would find out soon enough.

He walked along cautiously, ready to dive for cover in an instant if necessary. He knew from the maps on the duke’s flagship what the lie of the land was around the mouth of the Solent. He knew where Hurst Castle stood. He wished he knew where Brockenhurst was, but he didn’t.

His mission now, in any case, was wonderfully simple. He had to avoid being robbed, or killed by any overeager musters. He had, as soon as possible, to find one man; then all his troubles would be over.

He saw the lone horseman coming towards him from some way off. He leaped behind a gorse bush and waited, preparing himself carefully.

As he approached the gorse bush Albion slowed his horse to a walk and then stopped. He had seen the lonely figure walking along, apparently by himself, and watched him dart behind the bush. Now, with his hand on his sword, he waited for the next move.

He did not have to wait long.

The dishevelled Spaniard – for it was quite obvious that this was what he was – stepped out and, to his surprise, addressed him, despite his Spanish accent, in passable English. ‘Sir, I ask your help.’

‘Indeed?’

‘I have been waylaid and robbed, Sir, on my journey to a kinsman who lives not far from here, I believe.’

‘I see.’ Clement kept his hand on his sword, but decided to play out this charade to see where it would lead. ‘You come from where, Sir?’

‘From Plymouth.’ It was true, in a way.

‘A long journey. May I know your name?’

‘You may, Sir.’ The Spaniard smiled. ‘My name is David Albion.’

‘Albion?’

‘Yes, Sir.’ Don Diego watched as the Englishman’s face registered complete astonishment. I have impressed him, he thought and, emboldened, continued: ‘My kinsman is no less a person than the great captain, Clement Albion himself.’

To say that this information impressed the Englishman would be an understatement. He looked stupefied. ‘Is he so great a man?’ he asked weakly.

‘Why, I think so, Sir. Is he not captain of all the trained bands and shore defences from here to Portsmouth?’

For several terrible seconds Albion was silent. Was this his reputation with the invading Spanish? Had the entire Spanish Armada heard of him? Would any captured Spaniard cry out his name? How, unless England fell into Spanish hands within days, was he to explain this to the council? Appalled though he was, he collected his wits enough to realize he had better find out more. ‘You are not David Albion, Sir. Firstly, because I perceive that you are Spanish.’ He quietly drew his sword. ‘And secondly because Albion has no such kinsman.’ He looked at him severely. ‘I know this, Sir, because I am Albion.’

For a moment the Spaniard broke into a delighted smile, then checked himself. ‘How do I know that you are Albion?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Clement replied calmly.

But the Spaniard was looking thoughtful. ‘There is a way,’ he said quietly. And then he told Clement his name.

‘But what luck – I should say what a sign of God’s providence – my dear brother, that of all the people in England I might have encountered’ – Don Diego looked so delighted, so touched – ‘I should have come straight upon you.’ He looked at Albion happily but seriously. ‘It’s wonderful, you know.’

They were sitting, at Albion’s suggestion, in a pleasant hollow near the cliff where they would not be disturbed. It had only taken a few moments to verify who they were. Albion had asked tenderly after his sister Catherine and Don Diego had been equally anxious to know the good health of the mother-in-law whom he described as: ‘That wonder, that saint’. When Albion had politely congratulated him on his own high command, however, Don Diego had looked mystified.

‘My command? I have no command at all. I am merely a private gentleman travelling with the Armada. It is you, my dear brother’ – he inclined his head – ‘who have achieved such a high and honourable state. Your mother wrote to us about it long ago.’

Albion nodded slowly. He began to understand. He saw his mother’s fantastic hand in all this now. But this did not seem the moment to disillusion the well-meaning Spaniard. There were so many things he needed to find out. Was the King of Spain himself expecting him to deliver Hurst Castle to the invaders?

‘Ah, my plan!’ Don Diego’s face lit up. ‘Your mother’s plan, of course, I should say. What a woman!’ But then his face fell. ‘I tried, my dear brother. God knows I tried. I wrote a long memorandum to my kinsman the Duke of Medina Sidonia. But …’ His hand indicated a falling motion. ‘Nothing.’

‘I see.’ Things were looking up.

But what exactly, Albion ventured to ask, was the Spanish plan of invasion?

‘Ah. What indeed?’ Don Diego shook his head. ‘We all supposed, all the commanders of the ships supposed, that we should take a port as a base. Plymouth. Southampton. Portsmouth. One of them. From there our ships could be supplied.’

‘That seems wise.’

‘But His Majesty King Philip insisted the Armada go straight to meet Parma. In the Netherlands.’

‘The Armada will transport Parma’s troops across, you mean?’

‘No. It seems the waters by Parma’s army are too shallow for our galleons. The Armada will rest at Calais.’

‘That’s only a day’s sailing away.’

‘And then?’

‘Then Parma will cross to England. He’s a great general, you know. Some say’ – he dropped his voice as though he could be overheard – ‘that it’s Parma who will make himself king of England, instead of King Philip. Not that he would be so disloyal, of course.’ Don Diego still looked doubtful.

‘So how will Parma cross? Has he a fleet?’

‘Flat-bottomed boats only. So he’ll need fine weather.’

‘But the English ships would blast any such transport vessels out of the water,’ Albion objected.

‘No, no, brother you forget. Our Armada will be only a day’s sailing away. And our galleons are bristling with troops. The English won’t dare come near enough to attack them.’

‘Then why are they doing so now?’

As if to underline the question a faint rumble was heard from the sea beyond the Isle of Wight. The English attack on the Armada had just begun again.

Don Diego looked troubled. ‘Actually, my kinsman the Duke of Medina Sidonia did seem to hint that he … thought the king’s plan was imperfect.’ He shook his head. ‘We were told your ships were all rotten and that they’d run away.’

‘Did my mother tell you that too?’

‘Oh, most certainly.’ But now Don Diego brightened. ‘However, my dear brother, we must never forget one all-important thing.’

‘Which is?’

‘That God is with us. It is His will that we should succeed. Of this we are certain.’ He smiled. ‘So all will be well. And of course, the moment the English know we are on land, even if only half Parma’s men get across …’

‘What then?’

‘They will rise.’ He beamed. ‘They will understand that we have come to liberate them from the witch Elizabeth, that murderess who has them in thrall.’

Albion thought of the simple men of the musters, who had just been told that the main cargo of the Spanish galleons was the torture instruments of the Spanish Inquisition. ‘They may not all rise,’ he said cautiously.

‘Oh, a handful of Protestants. I know.’

Albion did not reply. One thing was becoming clear to him. If his brother-in-law was even half correct about the Spanish strategy the dreaded invasion was unlikely to succeed. And he was considering this, and its implications for him personally, when he realized that his brother-in-law was speaking excitedly.

‘… such an opportunity. You and I together. The moment Parma lands we can lead the trained bands from here and sweep up to London to join him.’

‘You want us to put ourselves at the head of a great rising?’

‘It will bring you even further glory, brother. And as for me.’ Don Diego shrugged. ‘Even to ride with you would be a great thing for me.’

Albion nodded slowly. It was a piece of glorious insanity worthy even of his mother. ‘Raising a great force’, he said tactfully, ‘is not so easy in England. Even if the Faith were stronger …’

‘Ah.’ Don Diego looked at him gleefully. ‘That is just the wonder of what has occurred. That is where God’s providence is so clearly seen. Our own Spanish troops’, he added reassuringly, ‘are no better. They have all been promised huge plunder in England. But this, my brother, is just the point. God has placed in our hands all that is needed to do His will. We can pay the troops.’ And seeing Albion’s look of astonishment he waved towards the sea. ‘When I was shipwrecked, all alone, I supposed it was a punishment. But it was not. That ship out there. Under the waterline, the whole hull is filled with silver!’ And he laughed with joy at the wonder of the thing.

‘You had no companions at all?’

‘No. You and I alone, brother, are in possession of this silver. It has been placed in our hands.’

Albion became very thoughtful again.

Motioning the Spaniard to remain where he was, he stood up and moved to the edge of the cliff. The ship had settled down. It would not budge. Not even the high tide would float it off now. As he gazed at the stranded hulk the silver morning sun started to break over the Forest horizon in the east.

He turned to look down at Don Diego. What a strange thing fate was. That he should have encountered the Spaniard in such circumstances, after so many years, and find, moreover, that he liked him. For there was not the least question: this well-meaning, middle-aged Spaniard was a very nice man. Albion sighed.

His mind was going over the ground carefully. He thought of his sister, he thought of himself; he thought of Don Diego with his belief in the Catholic cause and of his mother. He thought of the council, of Gorges, of their suspicions about him. And he thought, very carefully, about the silver. That, he realized, made the situation very interesting. After a while he began to form a plan. As he considered its several aspects it seemed to him that it would work. Meditatively he glanced back, towards the rising sun.

Then he saw her. She was riding alone across the ridge by Lymington. Her cloak was flapping behind her, black and crimson. Her hat was at a mad angle. She looked like some wild apparition, a mounted witch who might canter clean off the ridge and sail up into the air. At the same instant the thought struck him, with a sudden, cold panic: what if she saw him and found Don Diego now?

He threw himself to the ground in terror, realized that the Spaniard was looking at him in astonishment, waved him to be silent and peeped over the tussock in front of him. The Lady Albion was still up there. She had not seen him. She had halted and was staring out to sea. He continued to observe her for a moment or two, then slid back into the hollow to join the Spaniard.

‘Is everything all right?’ Don Diego asked, puzzled.

‘Yes. All is well.’ Albion looked at his new-found brother-in-law with affection. It really was an infernal pity that things could not have been otherwise. ‘There is something I must show you, brother,’ he said quietly and drew his sword. ‘On the blade. See.’

Don Diego leaned forward to look.

Then, very suddenly, Albion ran him through.

Or nearly. For the sword point struck the golden chain under the Spaniard’s shirt. And while Don Diego offered a cry and stared in wide-eyed astonishment, Albion, wincing, had to lunge again, several times, until he was successful. It was a messy business.

He waited until the body had finished shuddering, then removed the gold chain, which weighed nearly four pounds, and covered Don Diego as well as he could with sandy soil, before going to his horse. Mercifully his mother had vanished again. She’s probably trying to raise a rebellion in Lymington, he thought grimly.

He glanced back at the place where Don Diego lay. He felt guilt, of course. But sometimes, it seemed to him, you could hardly say whether a thing was good or bad. It was a question of survival.

But now he must hurry. There were things to do.

‘Silver? You are sure?’

Gorges and Helena were alone with him in the big chamber in Hurst Castle. They had kept him waiting there some time while he gazed over the Solent, but now they had both come to join him.

‘I questioned him closely. At sword point. I think he was telling the truth.’

‘And this Spaniard – he was alone?’ Gorges enquired.

‘He said he was. He was trying to scuttle the vessel and got left on board by mistake. I saw no others,’ Albion continued, ‘so I think he was. No one’, he said carefully, ‘knows about this silver except ourselves. I came straight to you.’

‘But you killed the Spaniard.’ Gorges was looking thoughtful.

‘He suddenly drew on me. I had no choice.’

‘Shouldn’t we get the body?’ Helena asked.

There was a long pause. Gorges looked carefully at Albion and Albion looked back.

‘Perhaps not,’ said Albion helpfully.

‘The wreck’, Gorges said firmly, ‘belongs to the queen. There’s no question about that. I shall hold it in her name.’

‘I was wondering,’ Albion suggested. ‘The queen is very fond of you, Helena. She might grant you the wreck. I mean, she’s granted prizes to Drake and Hawkins, and Thomas has held Hurst for her even if he hasn’t been to sea.’

‘But Clement.’ Helena looked doubtful. ‘I don’t think she’d part with all that silver.’

Gorges was looking at her silently.

‘What silver?’ said Albion very softly.

‘Oh.’ She got the point at last. ‘I see.’

‘I shall report the wreck to her at once. You could write a letter too. Ask her if we may have the salvage. Say it’s only a hulk. Any ammunition will go to the fort, but if there’s anything else of value, may we have it. You know the sort of thing. She knows’, Gorges confessed drily, ‘that I am somewhat in need at present.’

‘But what’ll she say when we find all the silver?’ Helena asked.

‘Luck,’ said Gorges firmly.

‘We don’t know that there is any silver,’ Albion added. ‘Even my information may be incorrect. Your conscience should be quite clear. There may be something, that’s all.’

‘And the Spaniard?’

‘What Spaniard?’

‘I will go and write the letter at once, Clement.’ She gave her husband a glance. ‘We are grateful.’

There was silence in the room for a few moments after she had gone.

Then Gorges spoke. ‘Did you know that just before you arrived here your mother was arrested in Lymington?’

‘No.’

‘We had a message from the mayor. It seems she was trying to persuade the people there to rise. For the Spanish.’

Albion went pale, but kept his composure. ‘I wish I could say I was surprised. She went mad last night. But I didn’t know she’d got out.’

‘That’s rather what I thought. She said that you would lead the rising, Clement.’

‘Really?’ Albion shook his head. ‘Last night she told me that since I didn’t seem to want to, she’d do it herself.’ He smiled ironically. ‘I’m grateful for her new faith in me.’

‘She said you always planned to join the Spanish.’

‘Is that so? The only Spaniard I’ve seen so far I killed.’

‘Quite.’ Gorges nodded slowly.

‘You know,’ Albion proceeded quietly, ‘even if my mother were not entirely out of her wits – and she has been talking like this for years – it would have been completely impossible for me to do any of these things she speaks of. I have heard it all a hundred times. She dreams of risings every day. She places me at their head whatever I tell her.’ He sighed. ‘What can I do?’

Gorges was silent. ‘It’s quite true,’ he said after a few moments. ‘You couldn’t have anyway.’

‘I wouldn’t have, Thomas. I am loyal.’ He looked Gorges in the eye. ‘I hope you know that, Thomas. Don’t you?’

Gorges stared straight back. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I know.’

From dawn until ten that morning, in a near calm, out on the horizon behind the Isle of Wight the English ships pounded the Armada. By afternoon both fleets were on their way again up the English Channel and for two days they continued, until the Duke of Medina Sidonia anchored off Calais and sent urgent messages to the Duke of Parma asking that general to come at once and cross to England.

Parma said: ‘No.’ With irritation he explained that a crossing in his flat-bottomed boats was quite impossible if enemy ships were anywhere in sight. Unless the Armada could come and fetch him – which, in the shallow waters off the Netherlands, they couldn’t – he wasn’t coming. All this, it turned out, he had been telling the King of Spain for weeks – a fact which the king, preferring to trust in providence, had not seen fit to tell the Duke of Medina Sidonia.

So the Spanish Armada lay off Calais, sending ever more baffled messages to Parma, and Parma stayed in the Netherlands, a day’s journey away, despatching even crosser messages back. And the English waited by the Thames, expecting an invasion at any moment because the one thing that had never occurred to them was that the King of Spain had sent his Armada without any co-ordinated battle plan at all.

The Armada spent two fruitless days like this. Then, in the dead of night, the English sent in eight fire ships, coated with tar, blazing as brightly as a thousand beacons and the Spanish captains, in panic, cut their cables and scattered. The next day the English fell upon them. The Spanish were driven towards the shore, some wrecked, some taken; but the majority were still intact.

Then, on the following day came God’s wind.

The Protestant wind, they called it. Nobody, on either side could ever deny that, whatever their valour or their piety, it was the weather that truly destroyed the mighty Armada. Day after day, week after week it blew, turning the seas to heaving froth. Ships lost sight of each other; galleons were scattered all over the northern waters, some were driven on to the rocks in northern Scotland or even Ireland. Less than half reached home. And whether it was to reward the Protestants for their faith or punish the Catholics for their shortcomings, both Queen Elizabeth of England and King Philip of Spain could agree that such winds could only come from God.

For the Lady Albion the weeks of gales were a time of trial indeed. For a start, she was kept, on Gorges’s strict instructions, in the tiny gaol in Lymington. And although the mayor of Lymington petitioned many times for her to be taken to another place – or beheaded, or set free, or anything so long as the indefatigable lady could be removed from his charge – it was not until October that the council agreed that, although a traitor, the lady represented no actual danger to the state. After her release, while Albion had never ceased to profess his personal loyalty to her, she never felt quite the same about him. And the following year she had taken ship and gone to visit her daughter Catherine whose husband Don Diego had been lost – no one knew exactly how – in the great disaster of the Armada. That poor Don Diego had been safely buried by her son, the first night she had been in gaol, deep in the Forest where he would never be found, was something she never imagined.

It was hardly surprising that she remained with her daughter in Spain; and if, after failing to answer her summons that he join her there, Clement Albion forfeited any hope of inheriting her fortune, he was philosophical about it. ‘I really think’, he once confessed, ‘that I’d give up one of my coppices just to make sure she never returned.’

Albion’s own fortune remained modest, however, but that of his friends Thomas and Helena Gorges enjoyed a spectacular increase. For Queen Elizabeth looked kindly upon their request and granted them the hulk. By the time they had quietly emptied its contents, Sir Thomas Gorges and his wife the marchioness realized that they had one of the greatest fortunes in the south of England.

‘And now’, Helena joyfully declared, ‘you can build your house at Longford, Thomas.’

It was not until nearly two years later that Albion was invited to accompany them up to the big estate below Sarum. ‘The house isn’t quite finished yet, Clement,’ his host told him, ‘but I’d like you to see it.’

They had certainly chosen a beautiful site, Albion thought, as they came to the lush parkland down by the Avon. But what no one had prepared him for, and which caused him first to gasp and then to burst out laughing, was the design.

For there, in the tranquil peace of an inland Wiltshire valley, built on a huge scale, with handsome windows instead of embrasures, was a massive triangular fortress. ‘By all the saints, Thomas,’ he cried, ‘it’s Hurst!’

It was indeed. The great country house, which Gorges called Longford Castle, was an almost exact replica of the triangular coastal fortress by the Forest. In memory of the Spanish hulk and its cargo of silver he had even had carved, high over the entrance, a depiction of Neptune reclining cheerfully in a ship with his trident sloped over his shoulder, on each side of which was a caryatid, one with his face and the other with his wife’s carved upon them. You had to admire his cheerful humour.

‘Helena insists that Swedish castles are all triangular and that the carving depicts her Viking ancestors,’ he said with a wink.

Swedish castle or gunnery fort, whatever you thought it was, the great triangular mansion would long remain one of the most eccentric country houses in England.

And if perhaps thereafter, Albion felt an occasional pang of jealousy at his aristocratic friends’ good fortune, he had to confess that, thanks to Gorges and Helena, his loyalty was never questioned again. He was even able, with a good conscience, to expropriate a considerable quantity of Her Majesty’s timber in the course of his subsequent career.

Jane married Puckle.

Nick Pride was completely astonished and so was everyone else. ‘If I hadn’t been stuck up at Malwood at the beacon, it would never have happened,’ he said.

‘If she was going to do a thing like that,’ said his mother, ‘you’re better off without her.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nick. ‘It’s like she was under a spell, I reckon.’ Which didn’t make much sense.

Jane’s parents weren’t too pleased about it either. In fact, when they got married Jane’s mother didn’t want to give her the little wooden cross she’d always promised her. But in the end, not wanting to quarrel with her, she did. And Jane wore it like a talisman.

The great Armada storm did not only change the lives of men; here and there it made small alterations in the greater life of the Forest too.

It was deep on a night, when the Spanish galleons were tossing helplessly in the northern seas, that the wind chose to race with a particular urgency through the glade by the miraculous Rufus tree. The branches of the great tree bent and shook. The myriad life forms in its crevices clung or crouched deeper into their shelters. Tiny organisms, minute particularities, flew off into the moving darkness of the wind, carried into chaos. All around, tall trees swayed, bent, oak leaves and acorns rattling in the furious tearing and buffeting of the wind, which howled and gusted and whooshed in the blackness.

But the roots of the miraculous tree were as wide as its branches and even though, on this wild Armada night, the upper world might have succumbed to madness, the lower world of the tree was silent, still, unmoved by the frantic waving of its branches.

Nearby, however, just inside the neighbouring wood, a different oak, only two centuries old, had grown up in close company with other oaks and beech trees, tall and straight. Its canopy was therefore very much smaller; its roots smaller in like measure.

And so it was, in the great turning and wrenching of the howling wind, that suddenly, dragged clean out of the ground by nature’s blind forces, this tall oak crashed down through its neighbours and smashed, a falling giant, to the Forest floor.

It is an awesome thing when an oak tree is torn down, but also beneficial. For the broken sections of the tree’s canopy, its great network of branches, lie like so many protective cages upon the ground. Within these cages for a year or two a new shoot may grow because the deer and other creatures that prey upon saplings cannot reach it.

Two cages of this kind fell upon that stormy night. And in the coming acorn fall, after so many years in which its children all had been wasted, two acorns from the miraculous tree would lie in the leaf mould within these oaken cages and take root, and grow.