The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [171]
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.