The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [374]
He had gone across, leading the pony, to collect it from Fritham on a sunny August day, taking his daughter with him. At Fritham, he had drunk a little cider, exchanged a few words with the landlord of the Royal Oak, and then, having loaded the pony, started back again very contentedly towards his home. Dorothy was dancing about in the sun. The smoked haunches of venison bumped against the pony’s flanks. They passed by a stony outcrop where some gorse was growing and he saw her go running in there like a wild thing. It had made him laugh.
When he heard her cry, he thought she must have fallen in some gorse, and calling to her to come in, he continued walking with the pony. He heard her cry again, and stopped.
‘It’s a snake,’ she cried.
An adder. There were harmless grass snakes in the Forest, but there were adders too. He ran back.
‘Was it a big one?’
She nodded and pointed at a hole in the ground a few yards away. The snake had already disappeared.
She pointed to the place on her leg. It was already starting to swell. He could see the marks left by the creature’s fangs. A bite from a large adder could be a serious matter for a young child. He felt for the knife he always carried.
‘Sit.’ He ordered. ‘See the pony?’
She nodded.
‘Look at it,’ he said. ‘Don’t take your eyes off it.’
She did as she was told. He cut. She tensed sharply, but didn’t cry out. He cut again. Then sucked, and spat, and sucked again. He could taste the venom, a sharp and spiteful taste.
He continued for a quarter of an hour. She was shaking like a leaf but never said a word. Then he put her on the pony and took her home.
It was on the way back that he realized he loved her more than his other children.
A wet February day: Mrs Albion, in a tight little closed carriage, bowled down the lane past Brook, carrying her secret package to her house. She was anxious to get home before her husband’s train steamed into Brockenhurst.
The windows of her carriage had fogged up, so she drew one down and stared out.
There are times in winter when it seems as if the whole Forest is turning into water. A misty haze enveloped the trees, clinging to the ivy-wrapped trunks of ancient oaks, seeping into the interstices of stricken branches, soaking into softening logs. The Forest floor was waterlogged. Huge puddles covered paths and greensward and leafy carpet, turning everything to a brownish, peaty slush. Above, below, in every direction, an all-pervading dampness seemed to be offering to sink into the soul. The Forest was often like this in the months of the old winter heyning.
She had just been to see her grandchildren. Colonel Albion and Minimus had never met again after their interview. The break was not exactly formal. If anyone mentioned the Colonel to Minimus he just shrugged and said: ‘He shouts at me.’ If anyone was unwise enough to speak of Minimus to the Colonel, he said nothing, but his face began to go dangerously red. Perhaps Minimus sometimes felt a little weary of their stand-off; perhaps Albion a little sad. But still they did not meet. And there was no money.
Actually there was a little money. Mrs Albion was quite clever at gleaning small amounts from her allowance – enough to buy clothes and hire a maid – which she would pass to her daughter on her clandestine visits to the cottage near Fordingbridge. Not that her husband actually forbade her to go there, but she wisely hid her visits from him. If Colonel Albion saw his daughter in the street, which he scarcely ever did, he would give her a bleak nod, but would not stop to speak. He had never seen either of the two grandchildren who had since been born. ‘They are being brought up as godless heathens, keeping the lowest company,’ he had stated glumly. It was true, and it greatly shocked Mrs Albion, that neither Beatrice’s boy nor girl had been baptized. ‘No doubt,’ the Colonel concluded, ‘they will lead their lives accordingly.