Trouble in the Forest Book One: A Cold Summer Night Read online

  eventhorizonpg.com

  How the Season Faded

  IN THE warmth of summer, the forest remained cool and shadowed, removed from the brilliance of the clear skies and the heat of the day by the tangle of branches and the profusion of the leaves. The Hart had taken dominion over the forest’s vastness at the Summer Solstice, releasing the Bear from the task of stewardship. This year there was a chill in the air, a cold at the back of the wind that promised a hard winter ahead. More noticeable in the shade of the forest than in the warm glare of open lands: Beyond the trees the ploughed fields presaged a bountiful harvest, one that would provide sustenance for all through the lean months of winter.

  But within the depths of the forest another harvest was taking place, this one as deadly as the orchards and fields were life-sustaining. Misgiving haunted the Hart as he made his stately way through the sun-spangled glades and tremendous thickets and huge groves of oak and yew and beech and willow and ash, for he could sense the forest was changing; something stirred within it that would forever change it. Already it seemed less familiar to the Hart than it had during his tenure the previous year, and that brought an apprehension that dismayed him. Never in all his reign had the Hart wanted the Boar to hurry his coming, but now, with the forest alive with sinister whispers, he would not have protested surrendering his sway before the Autumnal Equinox, a time that on this glorious summer afternoon seemed terribly, terribly distant.

  How Word of Trouble was brought to deSteny

  “THERE IS trouble in the forest,” said the warden as he pulled his cap from his head and tugged at his hair to show respect. His deeply lined forehead was shadowed in grime and there was mud on his leggings and his cote. The tears on his sleeve indicated he had come in haste and that he hadn’t taken the time to make himself presentable. He stared down with embarrassment at the decorative tiles newly inlaid in the stone floor, afraid to smirch it. He did not look at the other man in the chamber.

  “Trouble?” echoed the master of the castle, the man responsible for defending it against all enemies. At thirty-one, he was a former Crusader and an experienced administrator with a reputation for fairness. His thinning hair was badger-grey, his eyes a soft, dark-gold color. There was a scar on his jaw and another on his left hand, and he had a small birthmark on his neck that looked like a smear of blood. He set aside his stylus and gave his attention to the warden, hoping to determine if the trouble required the attention of Sir Gui, or if he could manage it himself, an arrangement both he and Sir Gui preferred. He put his sheets of vellum under a weight in the shape of a miniature skull. The room was dimming anyway, and his eyes were beginning to ache. Neither the torches nor the oil lamps had been lit yet. “What kind of trouble? Poachers again? Or the Old Ones?” Poachers were an old annoyance, hardly worth reporting, but the warden was punctilious about it. The Old Ones rarely caused more than minor problems.

  “Not exactly,” said the warden unhappily, doing his best to conceal his unseemly fear. “That is, there’s poaching, that’s certain, and the Old Ones keep to their ways, but this is something else. It is more than deer and swans. It is—” He crossed himself, just in case. “It’s new, and it’s—” He struggled to find the word. “It’s wrong.” Then he fixed his stare on his wooden-soled boots so he would not have to see the wrath he knew was in Hugh deSteny’s eyes.

  But for once Hugh deSteny was not angry. “How do you mean, wrong? Do you mean against the law, or worse?”

  “Both,” whispered the warden. “It’s more than the deer and the boar, master. It’s isn’t just game.” He seemed to have difficulty finding the words. At last he blurted out, “One of my men is missing.”

  “Outlaws, do you think?” suggested deSteny.

  “At least,” said the warden, growing braver. “Outlaws who have more at stake than simply robbing travelers.”

  DeSteny picked up his stylus and held it between his fingers, rolling it back and forth. He had caught the underlying note of panic in the warden’s voice. “Tell me what you mean, Chilton,” he said emphatically.

  “I don’t know what I mean, and that’s the worst of it. I haven’t seen anything of the like before now. I knew I had to bring it to your attention, in case I come across more of them.” He shifted his gaze to the pale afternoon light beyond the narrow windows. “And I hope I never do again. Naught of those creatures. No.”

  The master of the castle heard him out. “Is it so terrible?”

  “Yes.” Saying it made it worse instead of better. “Yes, it is.” He crossed himself again, just in case.

  “Why?” DeSteny leaned forward across his writing table.

  “Because,” said Chilton, “it’s not—” He stopped. “It’s not natural. There were crofters found, a whole family, in their hut. They were all dead, and so pale they looked like cheese. Each of them had such a look fixed on his face as I never want to see on the dead again. Lord preserve me from it. They looked as if their souls had been taken from them.” He fought down the taste of bile at the back of his mouth. “All of them had bites on their necks. And nothing else.”

  “How do you mean, nothing else?” deSteny asked, the first stirring of apprehension in his gut.

  “Nothing else,” the warden repeated. “No look of a fight, no other wounds, just the ones in the throat. They were enough.”

  For the first time deSteny allowed his worry to show. “What kind of bites? Big ones, like a wolf would make?”

  “No, master. Little ones, just four small holes, like a cat had nipped them—here.” He put his fingers on his own neck to indicate where the crofters had been bitten. “Here and here, like little fangs. Nothing really torn, the way beasts do when they’re hungry, or the cuts the Old Ones make with their flint knives. Very neat, careful-like. You wouldn’t think it would kill them, or drain them. But they didn’t have enough blood in them to cause death-bruises. Pale as linen and cold as marble. We looked them over, to be sure there weren’t other wounds, like a poignard in the ear or a poker up the arse, though neither of those wouldn’t take all that blood, and half the body would be blue with death-bruises. But there was nothing more. Only those two sets of holes. They’re not enough to drain them of blood, those four little holes on their necks. Unless—” His voice rose, trembled, and stopped. He could not continue.

  DeSteny finished for him. “Unless it was taken from them deliberately.” He got to his feet and strode the length of the stone chamber, appalled at what he was thinking. Memories of his time in the Holy Land flooded back, and along with them an abiding sense of failure that always accompanied these unhappy recollections. Surely the evil which had cost him so much there had not come to England? He could not rid himself of the fear-certainty that it had. “When did you discover these crofters?”

  “Yesterday. We sent word to the White Friars, and brought the dead to them, as we ought. They examined the dead, but would not do anything more. They said they could not bury them in sacred ground, not the way the crofters died. They claimed it was unholy, and would not anoint them because they were already damned. Once they saw the bodies, they were most determined to keep them outside the village.” Chilton crossed himself a third time. “The abbot said I should tell you about it.”

  “He was right,” deSteny agreed. “What have you done with the bodies?”

  The warden shrugged. “What else could I do? I left them outside the village walls, a league or so from their croft. I couldn’t do naught else, not without the permission of the monks, which I couldn’t ... The pigs have probably got them.”
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  “If you are fortunate, they have,” said deSteny with sudden emotion born of the memories he would just as soon not have. So much had changed for him since that first time he saw the kind of bites the warden described.

  “What do you mean, master?” asked Chilton, feeling a crawling, cold sensation make its way up his spine.

  “I mean, it would be best for all of us if those who died as you described were devoured before they can do more mischief.” He slapped his hand on his thigh and resumed pacing, his thoughts still caught in the far-off sands near Jerusalem. “How long will it take to reach the village where you left these crofters?”

  “Half a day’s ride, same as to the croft,” said the warden. “If there’s no rain. It’ll take longer if the creek’s up. But the signs are for clear skies for a few days more.”

  “We go there tomorrow morning,” deSteny decided aloud. “We leave at first light. Be ready to lead us. I will command a mule for you to ride.” He folded his hands and for a heartbeat or two considered doing something he had not done in years—praying. “Are you certain we can reach the croft in half a day?”

  “If we leave early, we should be at the croft by noon,” said the warden. “It’s not a hard ride from here.”

  “Noon. Very good. I would not want to venture to that place late in the day, not if your description of the killing is accurate.” He saw the distress in Chilton’s stance, and knew he would have to shore up the warden’s courage. “I saw something of the sort in the Holy Land, if what you say is accurate. Such killings are best investigated in full daylight. Once dusk falls, the darkness hampers everything. If there is any danger of it happening that we will be there at evening, I must know so that none of us will have to be out-of-doors after sunset.” DeSteny tried to make himself chuckle at these precautions, but it would not come. All he achieved was a kind of snort. “You may go to the kitchen. You have done excellent service, Chilton. I will see you are rewarded.”

  The warden tugged at his forelock again and put his shapeless hat back on his head. “That’s right gracious of you, my master.”

  DeSteny nodded to indicate he heard this. “And tell my page I want to talk with him.” He motioned the warden away, then took flint and steel from his capacious sleeve and set a spark to the oil lamp that stood on his writing table. The little wisp of flame did little to diminish the darkness. “It could be nothing, a disease, or a curse brought on the crofters,” he muttered to himself, and was unconvinced. “To have come so far ... But many have returned from the Holy Land, and a few would be all that are needed to ... It needn’t be that, but the wounds ...” He sat down and picked up his stylus again, and the wax tablet where he made notes. After a moment of reflection, he began to write.

  “You sent for me?” Nicholas Woodhull was an ambitious young lout whose younger-son father had followed King Richard on Crusade, leaving his family to manage as best they could. Nicholas had gone into service when he was seven and had scrambled his way from waiter to page in the intervening five years, making the most of every shred of opportunity that came his way. He had not forgotten that his rank by birth was superior to deSteny’s, and took as much advantage of it as he could when they were alone.

  “Yes,” said deSteny. “I am going into Sherwood tomorrow. There are crofters who have been killed there and I must determine—”

  “Will you take me with you?” asked Nicholas before deSteny could finish.

  “No,” said the master of the castle. “I will take a dozen men-at-arms, though. And the warden, Chilton. Notify the Marshal that I want to depart at dawn. Sir Humphrey may accompany us if he likes, but I do not require it. This is no work for the Marshal, in any case.” He looked at his notes.

  “And Sir Gui? Do I carry a message to him?” His eyes shone at the prospect of being allowed to attend the lord of the county.

  “No, not yet. I will make him a report, if it is necessary, when I return.” Not, he added to himself, that Sir Gui would pay much notice to it, as it concerned only crofters, whose rank was just slightly higher than serfs. “We will want horses for all the men, and a mule for the warden. And one for a monk, as well. I will ride my sorrel mare.” Experience had taught him this was the prudent thing to do—he did not want to be in a bad situation on an unfamiliar horse. “I will want to talk to that Trinitarian who came here last week. The one from Whitby.”

  “He is in the chapel,” said Nicholas. “Or he was a short time ago.”

  “Fetch him for me,” said deSteny, adding in a firm voice, “I want this done at once, Nicholas.”

  The youth looked briefly sullen, then bowed his head a little and hurried away, leaving deSteny to finish the notes to himself; Nicholas, as was true of most of the minor nobility, was wary of those who could write.

  DeSteny had lit two more of the oil lamps by the time the Trinitarian friar came to him, and he had begun to make notes on what he had been told of the trouble in the forest. He favored the monk with an impatient click of his tongue, then said without any pleasantries or introductions, “What do you know of a thing that kills with a bite?”

  There was no sign of distress at this sudden question, only a hesitation while the monk considered the question. Then the Trinitarian crossed himself and said, “Many things bite, Sheriff. Even men, from time to time, if they are driven to it, or if they are mad.” The monk was a short, stocky, square-faced man in his enveloping red habit of his Trinitarian Order, not yet middle-aged though his tonsure made him look older than his years. There was a staunch dependability about him, as if he would be reliable in a fight. His speech was flavored with the rough accents of the north.

  “So they do,” said the master of the castle, appreciating the friar’s calm answer. “Many things bite. From lice to lions.” His smile was harsh. He put his hands squarely on the table and levered himself to his feet. “But what of things that kill with a single bite on the neck? Do you know of those?”

  The friar regarded the Sheriff with alarm. “I know they are dangerous, whether they are wolves or something worse. We hear stories, we monks, in our wandering. I have kept close to towns because of the tales.” His eyes narrowed. “And it isn’t wolves, or asps, is it? You would not bother to ask me about wolves.”

  “No, it isn’t wolves,” deSteny allowed.

  “Worse luck,” added the friar, taking hold of his rosary as if it were a dirk. “We might need a priest then, to deal with it.”

  DeSteny nodded. “That we might. We will have to see. And it is why I will need you to accompany me tomorrow morning. We are going to see if these monsters have killed a family of crofters.”

  The Red Friar put up his hand. “I am not prepared to exorcize the place. That is a job for a priest, in any case.”

  DeSteny began to pace. “It is,” he agreed uncomfortably. “But you are the best we have here, with our two priests gone to the Holy Land.” He frowned suddenly. “We could send to London, if we had time, to ask for an exorcist. But I fear we haven’t time enough for that, not if it is as dire as it seems.”

  “Not if crofters are being killed,” the Trinitarian agreed slowly. “I can bring the Host and Holy Water and Holy Oil. It should help, if there is any contamination of the place. And I can bury the dead safely.” Burying was one of the chief tasks of monks, who were permitted to administer Last Rites to the dying as well as tending to the burial of those who hoped for salvation.

  “If they can be buried. The White Friars would not do it,” said deSteny. He watched the Red Friar bless himself and utter a brief prayer to guard against evil.

  “Did they? How? When that is their task?” He placed the tips of his thick fingers together. “How unlike the Carmelites to refuse.”

  “Will you bury them?” asked deSteny.

  “If the dead can be buried, I will.” The Trinitarian regarded deSteny with interest. “And if they cannot?”

  “The
n,” said Hugh deSteny with a sigh, “we will need more powerful help than you or I can provide.”

  “Amen,” said the Red Friar.

  How the traveling Scholars fared in Sherwood

  THEY HAD left Wallingford’s protecting stone embrace not long after dawn with the intention of reaching Saint Stephen’s Priory by nightfall, a group of scholars and a mounted escort to guide and protect them on their journey; it was a precaution taken by most travelers and ordinarily it would have been sufficient to keep them from danger. But one of the horses had stepped on a rusted knot of iron and had to be led while his rider rode double with another one of the armed escort, slowing the progress of the train. So it was that they were still four miles distant from the Priory when the last of the light fled the forest, leaving them in darkness under the black canopy of leaves.

  “I don’t like it,” whispered their leader, a young officer whose experience was largely confined to training and drill. He looked around at the dense shadows and blessed himself like a child afraid of the dark.

  “Nor do I,” said his sergeant, who was missing an eye and an ear, victims of the same Saracen arrow. He reigned in his horse and motioned to the party. “It will be hard-going from here to the Priory.”

  One of the men sneezed and crossed himself.

  “How much further?” asked one of the scholars, whose command of the language of England was poor.

  “Too far to go tonight,” said the sergeant, as much for his young officer as for the scholars. He felt the trees loom above and around him like the tremendous hands of a cruel giant, hands that might close upon them at any instant.

  “We should have left Maeslen and his horse to make their own way,” grumbled one of the men-at-arms.

  “Not on the Prince’s business,” countered the sergeant with an uneasy hitch to his shoulders. “And not in any company of mine. If we break our numbers up, we do nothing but insure our fall.”