The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [169]
‘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