The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [174]
She looked once more at the bed. It was so strange: the bed seemed to look back at her, as though it and Puckle were one and the same. As in a way they were, she realized, given how much of himself he had put into the carving. Puckle turned into oak, she thought with a smile, and laughed to herself. If all this carving, this astonishing strength and richness were within the soul and body of the man too, no wonder his wife had had good things to say of him. But why to her? Perhaps she had said such things to everybody. But then again, perhaps not.
She turned and, with a last look at the gleaming four-poster, went down the stairs and out of the cottage door into the bright sunlight. Just before she reached it she heard the little boy cry out in pleasure and, blinking for a moment in the sudden light, she looked at the figure now scooping the toddler up in his arms.
Puckle was black – as black as one of the oaken faces on his bed. He turned, catching sight of her, looked straight at her, and she felt herself give an involuntary shudder. She understood, of course. He had been out at one of his charcoal fires and was covered with black dust. But he looked so like one of the strange, almost devilish faces on the bed that she couldn’t help herself.
‘Bring me water,’ he said to the girl, who reappeared in a moment with a wooden pail. He stooped, scooping the water quickly on to his face and head, then washed his arms. He stood up straight again, his face now clean, while from his head the water was dripping down, and laughed.
‘Do you recognize me now?’ he asked Jane, who nodded and laughed as well. ‘You have met Tom?’ he enquired.
‘I played ball with him.’ She smiled.
‘Will you stay a while?’ he asked, cheerfully.
‘No. No, I must go.’ She started to turn, and was astonished to discover that she wanted to stay. ‘I must go,’ she repeated, disconcerted with herself.
‘Ah.’ He came over to her now. His hand reached out and took her elbow. She was aware, suddenly, of the muscles on his thick, powerful forearm. ‘The children like you,’ he said quietly.
‘Oh. How do you know?’
‘I know.’ He smiled. ‘I am glad you came,’ he said gently.
She nodded. She hardly knew what to say. It was as if, as soon as he had touched her, they had shared something. She felt a flood of strength coming from him, while her own knees went weak. ‘I must go,’ she stammered.
His hand was still on her arm. She did not want him to take it away.
‘Come, sit.’ He indicated a bench near the door.
So she sat in the sun with him, and talked and played with the children until, after an hour, she left.
‘You must come again, for the children,’ he said. And she promised that, when she could, she would.
By July, Albion often rode out into the Forest simply to be alone. The last two months had not been easy.
Perhaps his wife had summed it up best. ‘I can’t see the Spanish invasion will make any difference to us, Clement,’ she had said at the end of May. ‘This house has already been occupied.’
His mother and her occupying forces appeared to be everywhere. There never seemed to be less than three of her servants crowding into the kitchen. Within two weeks her groom had seduced his wife’s young maid. At meals, at family prayers, morning, noon and night, his mother’s brooding presence seemed to fill the house.
Why was she there? Albion had no doubt. She was going to make sure he fulfilled his obligations when the Armada came.
For three weeks his wife had suffered. She understood very well that his mother had a large fortune to leave, and she was a good daughter-in-law; but she was a mother first and she wanted a quiet life for her family. He had not dared tell her about his mother’s insane offer of his services to the King of Spain and had begged his mother not to, for fear of frightening her. Meekly therefore, his wife