The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [298]
Why did she feel so happy? She thought she understood. She was not so foolish, she told herself, as to believe that Mr Martell’s liking her – for she was sure he did – would necessarily lead to anything more than that. Mr Martell had, there was no question, the pick of almost any young lady in England. But it was very pleasant, all the same, to feel that he admired the things she had to offer: her family, her intelligence, her gentle humour. She had had no dealings with men before. Yet the first she had met, and one of the most eligible, clearly valued her and was attracted to her. It gave her a sense of confidence that was most agreeable. That, she thought, was why she was so happy and relaxed.
But even this was not quite all. No, the contentment she felt derived from something even simpler. Something she had just felt when she was walking and laughing with Mr Martell and it took her a few minutes to realize what it was.
She had felt so easy in his presence. That was the answer. She had never been so comfortable in her life. It gave her a strange feeling of lightness. It really seemed to her, just then, as if she had entered a world in which there was no more pain.
She smiled to herself and, for no particular reason, pulled out the wooden cross she often wore and felt the faint lines of its ancient carving. She sat there for some minutes, enjoying the peace of her surroundings.
After a little time Nathaniel came back and sat down contentedly beside her. ‘What is that?’ he asked, noticing the little cedarwood crucifix.
‘A cross. My grandmother gave it to me. It’s very old, I believe.’
He inspected it and nodded solemnly. ‘It looks old,’ he agreed and leaned back, testing the seat for comfort. Having satisfied himself, he let his eyes wander round the cloisters. ‘Do you like it here?’ he asked and, when she said she did: ‘I like it here too.’
They had sat together for another minute or two before Nathaniel pointed to a place on the wall just behind Fanny, causing her to turn and look. For a second she did not know what he had seen, but then she noticed it: a letter ‘A’ that someone had scratched in the stone. It was quite small, very neat and the script looked Gothic, as if it might have been carved long ago by some monk’s hand. She smiled. A letter ‘A’ left in the stone, a tiny record of a life, vanished, deep beneath the ground.
‘How surprised the monk who carved that would be – if monk it was – to see the two of us sitting in his cloister now,’ she remarked. ‘And not at all pleased, we may be sure,’ she added with a smile.
It was a pity, therefore, that Brother Adam could not have appeared to tell his descendants that, on the contrary, he was very pleased indeed.
A minute later Mr Gilpin emerged to tell them they were going to inspect the rope works and then go down to the shipbuilding yard at Buckler’s Hard.
Slowly, slowly, the great tree moved forward. Slowly the six mighty carthorses, harnessed one behind another, hauled on the chains, and the huge cart behind them creaked and lurched under its load. They were bringing a forest oak tree to the sea.
Puckle sighed. What had he done?
He had been right, the day he had met Grockleton, to spot the value of the spreading oak near the Rufus stone. Normally trees were felled in winter and transported in summer when the ground was hard. But for some reason Mr Adams had allowed this tree to be felled late. And so, while its pollarded brother had been left to live another century or two, this splendid son of the ancient, miraculous oak had felt the sharpened axes swing and thud into its side, biting their way into its two-hundred-year-old core until at last, in sight of the place where its magical old father had grown, it had toppled, and fallen and crashed down upon