The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [2]
I should like to record my debt to the published works of A. J. Holland, Dom Frederick Hockey, Jude James, F. E. Kenchington, Arthur Lloyd, Anthony Pasmore, and David Stagg, without which the writing of this book would not have been possible. Also I should like to record my thanks and admiration for the many invaluable articles to be found in Nova Foresta Magazine.
No thanks can be enough for Mrs Jenny Wood whose miraculous typing skills made sense of my manuscript. Nor to Kate Elton and, above all, Anna Dalton-Knott for the preparation of the manuscript.
Special thanks once again to Andrew Thompson for his wonderful maps.
As always I should be lost without my agent Gill Coleridge, and my two editors Kate Parkin and Betty Prashker whose patience, kindness, encouragement and creative help made this novel possible.
To my wife Susan, my children Edward and Elizabeth, and my mother, I owe a huge debt for their respective patience, support and hospitality.
Finally and greatest of all, I should like to place on record my extraordinary debt to two scholars: Mr Jude James and Mr Richard Reeves. Their kindness to me, their guidance and their astounding intellectual generosity are not only to be found in every part of this book, but have also made its preparation the most delightful experience of my professional life to date. Any faults that remain in the text are mine alone.
THE RUFUS STONE
APRIL 2000
High over Sarum the small plane flew. Below, the graceful cathedral with its soaring spire rested on the sweeping green lawns like a huge model. Beyond the cathedral precincts, the medieval city of Salisbury lay peacefully in the sun. Earlier that morning there had been an April shower, but now the sky was clear, a pale washed blue. A perfect day, thought Dottie Pride, to fly a reconnaissance mission. Not for the first time, she was grateful for the fact she worked in television.
Say what you like about her boss – and there were those who said John Grockleton was a brute – he was good about things like chartering planes. ‘He just wants to get on the right side of you,’ one of the cameramen had remarked. She couldn’t help that. The main thing was that she was in the Cessna now, and it was a beautiful morning.
From Sarum, the beautiful Avon valley continued due south through lush green meadows for over twenty miles until it reached the sheltered waters of Christchurch harbour. On its western side lay the rolling ridges of Dorset; to the east, the huge county of Hampshire with its ancient capital of Winchester and great port of Southampton. Dottie glanced at the map. There were only two small market towns on the Avon between here and the sea. Fordingbridge, eight miles south, and Ringwood, another five beyond that. A few miles below Ringwood, she noted, there was a place called Tyrrell’s Ford.
They had not even reached Fordingbridge before the plane banked and turned towards the south-east. They passed a low ridge, crested with oak trees.
And there it was below them; huge, magnificent, mysterious.
The New Forest.
It had been Grockleton’s idea to do a feature on the Forest. There had been controversy in the area recently: angry public meetings; local people starting fires. Television cameras had already been down there a few months before.
But it was another news item that had sparked off Grockleton’s interest. An historical surprise. A piece of ancient pageantry.
‘We’ll cover this at least,’ he had decided. ‘But there may be something larger here: a full feature, in depth. Have a look at it, Dottie. Take a few days. It’s a beautiful place.’
He really was trying to get on the right side of her, Dottie mused.
Perhaps there was something else in it for her boss, though. It had come out the day before.
‘Do you have any connections with the Forest?’ he had asked her.
‘Not that I know of, John,’ she replied. ‘Why, do you?’
‘Funnily enough, I do. My family was pretty big down there in the last century. There’s a whole wood named after us, I believe.’ He gave her a smile.