The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [60]
He listened carefully, then was silent for a few moments. ‘Did you realize that you might have been risking your life for me, my dear cousin?’ he said at last. He had never called her his dear cousin before.
‘I didn’t really think of it,’ she replied honestly.
‘This Pride – he knows nothing except the message you gave him, from the Lady Maud?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Let’s hope he is discreet, then.’ He stayed lost in thought for a while. Then, gazing ahead he said quietly: ‘You must forget everything you heard, everything you saw. If anyone asks, if Cola asks, you went for a ride in the Forest. Is there any reason why you should have done so?’
‘Actually,’ she confessed, ‘I had an assignation with Hugh de Martell. But I missed it.’
‘Aha!’ Despite everything, he laughed out loud. ‘He’s incorrigible, you know. Be warned. But it couldn’t be better. Stick to that if you must. Say you panicked and fled to find me if further pressed. But’, he became very serious, ‘if you value your life, Adela, forget everything else.’
‘What really happened?’ she asked.
He paused for some time before he spoke and, when he did, he chose his words carefully. ‘I don’t know. We’d split up. One of my Clare kinsmen came racing up to me and said there’d been an accident. “And as you were alone with the king,” he said, “you’ll take the blame.” I told him I hadn’t been with the king, but I got the message, if you see what I mean. He promised me they’d keep the hue and cry off my trail for a day or two if I made myself scarce and got across the sea. No point in arguing.’
‘Was it an accident?’
‘Who knows? Accidents happen.’
She wondered if he were telling the truth, and realized she could not know. She also realized that it was irrelevant. What mattered most – a hidden truth or a series of fleeting appearances? Or what men chose to say, or chose to believe?
‘I’m afraid, my poor little cousin, there’s nothing much I can do for you at present. I did have a possible suitor for you, but nobody will be wanting an alliance with a poor cousin of mine for a while. And you certainly can’t come with me to Normandy now. What’s to be done?’
‘I’ll go back to Cola’s first,’ she replied. ‘Then we’ll see. They tell me’ – she smiled – ‘that I’m going to be very happy.’
‘You are slightly mad,’ he replied, ‘but I begin to love you.’
Just then they came to the top of a low ridge. The sunset was in all its glory now, ahead of them, a vast red glow on the horizon over the Avon valley. And then Adela turned round to look back and saw all the purple heather of the heath suddenly transformed into a vast, magnificent, crimson fire, so that it seemed as if the whole Forest floor were molten, like the mouth of a secret volcano.
Then she and Tyrrell continued on their way, and when they could see the darkening river and the broad meadows by the cattle ford, she turned northwards and left him to take his flight towards the west.
A single arrow from a bow had killed Rufus. The red-headed monarch had died instantly. His companions had gathered and taken counsel quickly. It was his silent, thoughtful younger brother Henry who, after only moments of persuading, had announced: ‘We must go to Winchester at once.’ The treasury was there.
It was fortunate indeed that, no doubt thanks to the efficiency of Cola, Puckle and his cart should have been near at hand. They wrapped the body of the king, put it in Puckle’s cart and all set out for the ancient capital. All, that is, save Cola who, his work done, returned slowly home.
He reached his manor some time after dark, at just the same time as, in another, larger manor further west, they woke the Lady Maud, sleeping after her ride, to tell her that her husband, out riding in the Forest, had fallen from his horse, broken his neck on a pile of wood and was dead. She slept no more that night.
Another mother and child, deep in the Forest, did rest quietly that warm summer night: the pale doe and her fawn were at peace with the world, as they had been during most of the day. For, having briefly heard riders nearby and thought