The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [376]
‘Your office. Why not, Godwin? I’m so glad you’d like it in there.’
Although he didn’t know it, the Colonel had just looked at his first Minimus Furzey.
Colonel Albion was right about the elections. Gladstone lost. March saw a new Parliament. Within weeks, Cumberbatch and his men were felling timber. George Pride himself had been forced to witness one ancient oak come down, over by the Rufus stone.
‘He just did it to make a point really,’ he told his wife sadly.
His own inclosures were in good order. One in particular was due for thinning that year; so when Cumberbatch called him in and demanded a list of timber to be felled, he was able to satisfy him quite easily.
‘Good man, Pride,’ the Deputy Surveyor said with a brisk nod. ‘We may be giving you a new plantation to look after soon. Mr Grockleton suggested we could drain some of those bogs and plant them.’
‘Yes, Sir,’ said George.
Apart from this, the spring passed without incident. Young Dorothy was happy going over to the Furzeys. ‘It’s a funny sort of place,’ she told her father. But the Furzeys were very kind to her and she liked the children. ‘They’re brought up just like Forest children in some ways,’ she reported.
Beatrice she liked. ‘You can see she’s a lady, Dad. But she doesn’t live like one I must say.’ Minimus she found funny, but strange. ‘It’s amazing what he knows, though.’ George himself had often wondered how the artist had managed to marry the landowner’s daughter. The whole Forest knew the two men didn’t speak.
‘Even worse than me and Dad,’ he’d say, for although the two Prides still avoided each other, they didn’t actually refuse to speak if they chanced to meet.
Spring turned into summer and the Forest remained quiet.
They had met at midnight up by Nomansland, the remotest hamlet on the Forest’s northern edge. By the light of the stars and a quarter moon they had ridden their ponies across, past Fritham, like a pack train of smugglers from the good old days. There were about a dozen of them, good Forest men all, led by the big fellow who had spoken to George at Lyndhurst.
When they reached George’s inclosures they stopped and cut some gorse and dry bracken and started a small fire. They had some torches coated with pitch. At various points along the fence they stacked dry material that would burn.
‘I should think we’ll have ourselves a nice little fire here,’ said the burly man.
‘What about the gates?’ asked one of the men.
‘Makes a very nice gate, does Berty Puckle,’ said the big fellow. ‘You don’t want to burn those. That’d be a crime.’ He was pleased with this joke. ‘Now that would be a crime.’ He laughed. ‘Be a crime that would, don’t you reckon, John?’ There were several laughs in the darkness. ‘We might take some of those gates. Come in useful those will.’
A few minutes later, several of the smaller gates had been removed from their places.
‘All right then, let’s start,’ the big man cried, and the men with the torches started to light the fires.
They had a quarter-mile of fencing burning nicely when George Pride came along. He was carrying a gun.
There were cries and whoops.
‘Here he comes. Here comes trouble. Whoah there, George!’
But George wasn’t smiling.
Nor was the big man.
‘Thought I told you to stay in bed,’ he cried.
George said nothing.
‘Go home, George,’ called several voices. ‘We don’t mean you no harm.’
But George only shook his head.
‘You stop that,’ he cried.
‘What are you going to do, George?’ asked the big man in his big voice. ‘You going to shoot me?’
‘No. I’ll shoot your pony.’
There was a pause.
‘Don’t be stupid, boy,’ said a voice.
‘If I shoot a few ponies,’ George called out, ‘you’ll not only walk home. You’ll have to explain to the Deputy Surveyor how your pony came to be there.’
‘You might miss and shoot me, George,’ said another voice from the dark.
‘That’s right,’ said George.
‘I’m not very pleased, George,’ said the big man.
‘I didn’t think you would be,’ said George.
So they left, and George tore down