Edward Marston - The Wolves of Savernake

Savernake Forest trembled in the fading light. A cool breeze came out of nowhere to whistle through its undergrowth, to rustle its leaves, and to make its boughs genuflect fearfully towards the heavens. The sun was falling slowly into the seductive embrace of the horizon and only a few last rays were left to probe through the fretwork of branches and to conjure shapes out of the gathering gloom. When the breeze stiffened, the whole forest shivered with a pale fear. On a warm summer evening with its trees in full leaf, its grass thrusting forth in unchecked profusion, and its shrubs at their most riotous, it stood silhouetted against the watchful quietness of the sky and felt the icy touch of premonition.

The crouching figure who moved quickly and furtively along the riverbank paid no heed when birch and oak and ash came to life to bend and whisper all around him. He was a creature of the forest and knew its whims and wilfulness of old. When a weeping willow dived angrily downwards to sweep the ground then thresh it with violent malice, the man did not even lift his eyes. Alric Longdon was a miller, one of eight in the area, a low, squat, round-shouldered man of forty or more with a compact strength in his hunched frame and a face as big, white, and plain as a sack of his own flour. He was carrying something in his hand and scurried along with a stealth born of long acquaintance with Savernake. Tied to the river for his livelihood, married indissolubly to the swift current of this tributary of the Kennet, he listened to the restless surge and followed water to his destination.

A noise made him halt in his tracks. It was the resounding hiss of bracken being trampled by heavy feet. Longdon froze. Savernake was a royal forest and subject to forest law. King William protected his hunting grounds with a savagery such as the miller had never known under Saxon rule. Longdon was already trespassing. If he was caught by a keeper or a verderer, he would be beaten or fined or both. If the court decided he was poaching, Longdon could be blinded or cas-trated. His free hand went to his eyes to guard them against the unthinkable, then it travelled down to his groin to cover it against the unbearable. The miller had a young and beautiful wife who satisfied his lust without complaint and who lay beneath his sweating nakedness with gentle obedience. He would not surrender his manhood for a walk in the forest. Better to kill than to be cut down to such humiliation. His hand tightened on the dagger in his belt.

But his alarm was unnecessary. There was a wild flurry of movement in the bracken, then hooves pummelled the earth. Whatever had been approaching him, it was no forest official with a warrant to enforce the law. The animal was even more frightened than he and took flight as soon as it caught his scent. Alric Longdon continued on his way. He then turned off the river, following to its source a rippling stream that fed into it. As he climbed steadily upwards, he saw the water cut deep into the chalk. It vanished briefly below ground and became a gurgling echo. It surfaced once more and twisted back down towards him through its narrowing banks with playful urgency.

Savernake was not continuous forest. It was a vast acreage to the north of the county, a series of straggling woods and coppices, linked by areas of heath and gorse and downland which might themselves be dappled with timber or criss-crossed with hedgerow. Red and fallow deer were the favoured prey of the king and the herds needed trees in which to hide and open spaces in which to forage. Hunters required paths along which they could gallop, glades where they could rest, and fields where they could run down their quarry. Savernake was a great, rich, rambling, and largely uncultivated wilderness that was teeming with animal life to provide royal sport for the royal personage.

Alric Longdon was now in light woodland, tracing the serpentine writhing of the stream and blending happily with the foliage in the half-darkness. He was safe. No keeper would find him here in his secret territory. He knew his way by instinct. The water swirled capriciously in a semicircle, then it took him farther up the hill before it disappeared below ground again. Longdon stopped, felt the leather pouch he was holding, then knelt beside a withered yew. Blasted with age and split by lightning, it stooped over the stream at the point where it issued forth from its subterranean cavern. The tree was skirted by moss and swathed in so much bindweed that it looked as if its huge, gaping wound had been bandaged to stop the crevice from widening. The miller stroked the yew as if welcoming an old friend.

Another sound disturbed him and caused him to look up. But it was only a bird, startled by his presence and taking to the air through the branches with a vigorous flapping of its wings. Alric Longdon laughed silently. He thought of his mill, his wife, his welcoming bed. He thought of his cunning scheme and his hopes of good fortune. He thought of Savernake and its eternal mysteries. He thought of his most favourite place in the whole forest. His lips were still curled in a smile when the bushes nearby parted abruptly.

Black eyes glared at him, teeth glinted, and a low growl set his hair on end. Longdon tried to scramble up, but he was far too slow.

Before the first scream of horror could reach his mouth, he was knocked over backwards and his throat was eaten away in one vicious, all-consuming bite. His head, his shoulders, and his leather bag were submerged in the stream that had led him to his death. Blood gushed out of him and darkened the water, forming a long red slick that was carried along with increasing force through the woodland. As it joined the river and met the main current, it was borne along on the surface like a stain on nature itself. Alric Longdon lay dead beside a yew tree in Savernake Forest while a part of his being raced towards the biggest mill in the valley.

His soft-eyed young wife was sitting patiently in her kitchen, awaiting the return of her husband. There was food on the table for him and submission in her heart. The mill was a clamorous homestead.

As the massive wooden wheel went on its ear-splitting round over and over again, dipping and rising endlessly through the foaming water, it never occurred to her that the man she had married was helping to turn it with his life-blood.

They had travelled well over ten miles before the madness seized him.

One minute, he was riding at the head of the little cavalcade, talking amiably with his companions and enjoying the unhurried progress across Salisbury Plain; the next, he went completely ber-serk. Letting out a blood-curdling cry, he dug his heels into the flank of his mount and rode hell-for-leather up the grassy incline ahead.

Mantle streaming behind him and one hand aloft with a sword in its grasp, he charged at an invisible enemy and terrified them into immobility with the fury of his attack. Ralph Delchard was half a mile away before he reined in his horse on the crest of the rise. He gazed at something in the distance and waved his sword in salute. A Norman lord with position and age that should bring dignity was behaving like an impetuous young soldier in his first battle. As the others trotted slowly in his wake, they could hear his ripe laughter echoing across the plain. Was this drunkenness or sheer lunacy?

Gervase Bret was the first to catch him up. His honest face was crumpled with apprehension. Ralph was a friend, a mentor, almost a father to him. A son does not expect such wild abandon in a revered parent. Perhaps it was the fault of the animal. It had taken its master unawares and bolted. One glance at the grinning Ralph Delchard disposed of this theory. He was one of the supreme horsemen in the service of the Conqueror. Not for him the small, sturdy, compliant English mounts that most of them rode. Certainly not the braying donkey that Canon Hubert sat astride. Ralph was in the saddle of his destrier, a Norman steed with a high Norman temper, a big, fiery war-horse which had been trained for action in the field and which would gallop on command through the mouth of hell itself without losing its stride.