The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [274]
The fact was that curly-haired young Nathaniel Furzey was quickly bored. The schoolwork at Mr Gilpin’s came so easily to him that he had usually finished when the rest of the children were only halfway through. Sometimes Mr Gilpin himself would come by and read with him. The vicar had even been tempted, once, to teach him a little Latin, but realized that Nathaniel was picking it up so fast that he had stopped the exercise quickly before it went too far.
‘What do you think I should do?’ Gilpin had asked a fellow cleric. ‘I’m not talking of natural intelligence. Young Andrew Pride has quite as much of that as any of the boys you’d find at the schools in Salisbury or Winchester. I’m speaking of a rare bird, a natural scholar, a fellow who could spend a life at Oxford or Cambridge.’ He sighed. ‘I dare say Sir Harry Burrard or the Albions would pay for it if I asked them to send him away to school – if the parents agreed of course. But …’
‘You’d take him away from his family, his friends, the Forest,’ his friend had answered. ‘And if it didn’t work …’
‘Stranded like a boat on a sandbank.’
‘I think so.’
‘It’s easier in towns. If he lived in Winchester, or London …’ Gilpin mused. ‘I suppose the whole nation’s like that, though. Trees growing deep in the forests. Wonderful trees dropping thousands of acorns. One in a million is carved into a piece of fine furniture. Nature’s waste.’
‘True, Gilpin. But also England’s stock. Always plenty of it.’
So the vicar had left young Nathaniel in the little village school, after which he would doubtless grow up to enjoy a quiet Forest life. In the meantime he was mischievous.
One of the chief delights that occupied his active mind was that of playing practical jokes. Andrew liked these too, but even he was awestruck sometimes by the ingenuity of some of the jokes that Nathaniel devised. His most recent had concerned the Furzeys.
Although he had the same name as the Oakley Furzeys, Nathaniel soon came to share the Prides’ view of their neighbours. Even setting aside the dark memory of their betrayal of Alice Lisle, it seemed to the Prides that Caleb Furzey was a bit slow in the head. What intrigued Nathaniel, however, was Caleb’s imagination. For it was full of fear and superstition.
‘I always carries some salt with me,’ he assured the boy, ‘to throw over my shoulder.’ Burley he was afraid to enter, ‘on account of the witches’. He wouldn’t go up to Minstead church because he said it was haunted; and once, by mistake, he had gone round Brockenhurst church widdershins – though few Forest folk would have cared to do that – and had lived in fear for weeks. But any evil sign would set him off. If he saw a solitary magpie, he spoke to it at once; he walked carefully round ladders; and if he saw a jet-black cat with no white marking he’d be off as fast as he could. ‘Black cat: witch’s cat,’ he’d declare.
So Nathaniel had found a black cat. It was dead when he found it and it wasn’t really black, because it had some white hair under its chin. But when he’d discovered a man who knew how to stuff animals, and when he’d applied some black dye to the white patch, he reckoned the cat looked pretty good. Then he and Andrew Pride went to work.
There was nowhere that black cat didn’t appear. Walking along a forest path, Caleb would suddenly see it confronting him, turn away in horror and never see the string that jerked it quickly into the bushes. With luck he’d take another path and the boys would be able to set up an ambush there too. Next day, he’d see it at his window. Nathaniel was an artist, though. Days would pass and Caleb would think himself safe before, suddenly, the cat would appear in some new and improbable place to terrify him. Soon the whole of Oakley was out looking for the mysterious feline. It was Andrew’s father who guessed the truth, cuffed the two boys and gave the stuffed cat a discreet and decent burial. Nothing more was said about it after that and the two boys certainly never knew that when the timber merchant had told his