Robert Lyndon - Hawk Quest

‘You know he won’t leave my side. I’ll tell you what. While I’m gone, you can think of a name for him.’

‘I’ve already chosen one. It’s-’

‘Tell me when I get back,’ Wayland said, breaking into a run.

The pup thought it was a game and bounded ahead before crouching to spring up in mock ambush. Wayland began to feel a bit foolish. His mother would scold him for leaving Edith alone in the darkening wood.

As he approached the clearing he heard voices and the clinking of harness. He threw himself down, grabbed the pup by the scruff and wormed through the forest litter until he reached the treeline.

There was too much horror to take in at one glance. Two Norman soldiers held Hilda and his mother outside the house. Another pair had pinned his father face down over the chopping block. Thorkell lay on his back, his face a bloody mask. Then Wayland saw the mounted man at the far end of the clearing. He spurred his horse and charged, slashed down and half severed his father’s arm. Whooping, the rider galloped to the other end of the clearing, turned and pounded back. This time Wayland saw his father’s head roll off the stump and blood squirt from his neck.

His mother and sister were screaming. They were still screaming when the men dragged them into the house. Their screams grew muffled and then stopped. After a while the man who’d murdered his father came out, his face splattered with blood. He took a pitcher of water and poured it over his head. When he mounted his horse, he reeled in the saddle as if drunk. One by one the other men came out, tying up their breeches. Wayland prayed that his mother and sister would come out. After a while smoke coiled from the door. The killers didn’t leave. Flames began to lick up the thatch. The blaze grew and the Normans laughed and held out their hands to it. Even where Wayland lay he could feel the singeing gusts. The Normans left. One of them carried a deer carcass slung over his horse. Another was draped with live chickens. The others drove two cows, a horse and oxen before them.

Wayland ran towards the blaze. The heat frizzled his hair and blistered his face before it beat him back. He stood screaming as the roof dropped into the house and a ball of fire rolled into the sky. He watched the walls collapse and then he sank to the ground, his mind numbed by all he had seen.

He became aware of the dog pushing its head against his legs. His face and hands were scalded and peeling. He registered that it was dusk and remembered his sister. He tried to run, but his legs wouldn’t obey him. He reeled and tripped, staggered into trees.

The basket of mushrooms was still under the tree, but Edith was gone. He listened. There were only the sounds of the wood settling to rest. He called, softly at first, then louder. An owl shrieked. He found Edith’s trail wandering towards the gorge. The trees were thickest in this part of the wood, spreading twilight even on the sunniest days. The dog was too young and shocked to help. It sidled against him, getting under his feet, while he searched and called until it was too dark to see. He slid down with his back against a tree. A wind sprang up and rain began to spit. For a time he continued to call, his voice growing hoarse. Then he sat still, his eyes vacant, the dog pressed shivering against him as he relived one nightmare while anticipating the next.

In the dripping grey dawn he tracked his sister through a graveyard of windfallen giants along the edge of the ravine. Her trail stopped at a hole by the base of an old ash. For a moment he thought she might have fallen into an animal den. But when he peered down through the tangle of roots he saw water far below. Edith’s body floated into view, face down, turning in the current, her long blonde hair fanned about her. He climbed down and pulled her out, kissed her white face and held her tight against him. When he let go, he felt something wither and twist inside him. He removed her crucifix, threw back his head and howled at the gods or monsters that had inflicted such hideous cruelties.

From that day on he never spoke a word.

It snowed again and then froze. For a week winter held the country in a deadlock. It froze so hard that shelves of ice formed on the river-banks and trees split at night with sharp cracks. Inside the great hall the garrison huddled around the hearth like corpses in a prehistoric burial chamber. Fresh food grew short. Men’s teeth wobbled in their gums. Every day Wayland and his dog went out to check traps and snares, traipsing through the ice-encased woods like figures in a woodcut. Sometimes Raul accompanied them, his crossbow slung over his back, a knife tucked into loops at the front of his fox fur hat.

A week before Lent the wind shifted in the night and the garrison woke to find winter in retreat. Plates of ice spun down the river. By evening it had spilled over its banks and carried away one of the bridges. Next morning Hero saw an uprooted tree surging down the torrent, a hare clinging to one end of the trunk, a fox facing it at the other end.

Three days later Hero entered the hut to find Vallon lying just as he’d left him, brooding over their confinement.

Hero cleared his throat. ‘The waters are starting to subside. In a day or two conditions will be good enough for travel.’

Vallon grunted.

Hero tried again. ‘Olbec’s announced a hunt for the day after tomorrow.’

‘It isn’t the hunting season.’

‘We need the meat. There’ll be a feast in the evening. Drogo wanted you to take the field with him.’

Vallon snorted. ‘We know what quarry he’s after.’

‘Have no fear. Lady Margaret insisted that you accompany her party.’

Vallon’s eyes turned. ‘Will the Count be with her?’

Hero shook his head. ‘His wounds make it too painful to ride. He’ll stay behind and organise the festivities.’

Vallon stared off pensively for a moment, then swung his legs to the floor. ‘Tell the lady I’d be honoured to attend her.’

Before cock’s crow Wayland, with two huntsmen and a forester, left the castle to quest for a stag with at least ten tines on his antlers. The huntsmen were accompanied by lymers — big, heavyset hounds with drooping jowls and doleful expressions. Their function was to locate the stag and track it in silence to its covert. The hunt breakfast was in full swing when one of the huntsmen returned to report that they’d harboured a hart of twelve in a wood beyond the Roman wall. Gravely he uncapped his horn and rolled fumets on to the table. Drogo and his comrades passed the deer droppings about, sniffed them, rolled them between their fingers, and agreed that they belonged to no rascal but a warrantable beast.

Hero watched the hunting party sally out. Ahead went the huntsmen, leading hounds leashed in couples. Drogo led the field and behind them rode the ladies, Margaret wrapped in furs and silks, Vallon at her side on a borrowed palfrey. His hair had been trimmed and fell in auburn waves to his shoulders. His bearing made Hero’s heart swell with pride. He waved and received a dignified acknowledgement. Last came the priest, borne along on an ox-drawn butcher’s cart, gripping the front rail like a mariner facing an oncoming storm.

The horses cantered away over the turf, throwing up green divots. Clouds sailed across a gentian sky. Snow still lay rotting in the shadows, but banks of primroses had flowered and from every thicket birds sang with pent-up energy. In the fields around the castle peasants followed the age-old rhythm of the plough. Hero closed his eyes, relishing the sun on his face, the smell of turned earth. Spring had arrived. The knot of dread in his guts relaxed. He felt an intense sense of well-being.

When the tableau had passed from sight, he returned to the guesthouse and laid out parchment and gall ink on the rough table. He dipped his quill and raised it like a wand, but the magic he expected to conjure wasn’t forthcoming. He knuckled his brow. He scratched his head. He sighed. Transferring thoughts onto parchment was no easy task. So many words to choose from, so many ways of arranging them. He sucked the end of his quill, trying to decide what rhetorical style was most appropriate for his subject.