Chapter 5: Plans Change

(Robin Oaklea, son of Will Archer, narrates)

The Lady Elinor of Pitstone walks for an hour before we emerge from the deeper wood into lighter forest. She complains about it mightily before we mount up, now that the road is better under the horses’ hooves. Lady Elinor has to ride on my chestnut bay, with her sat in front of me, and we ride together, in silence. After riding a couple of miles, I get down and walk alongside. She fumes at the loss of speed.

“How will we ever catch up at this rate?” she raves, “if that is still your intention.”

“It is. I agreed to take you where you wish to go, madam, but my horse will be damaged carrying us both for any distance and now we are out of the shade it is starting to get hot.”

Hugh offers sharing his horse, but she looks down her nose at his scrawny mount, one that the Farrier at Oaklea recently accepted in lieu of a bill. Henry rides on quietly, feeling no obligation to offer his Castle-owned mount, already overloaded enough by his large frame.

“Once we get through the forest,” I inform her, “we will be near Coraton, a small town where Henry tells me we will have to spend the night.”

“And, through your impetuous intervention, I have no purse...”

“I will settle the inn’s rate for the night and hire another horse to take us to the port or buy one if need be, we are still in my father’s county, his credit is good here.”

“His county?”

“My father Sir William Archer, is the Bartonshire reeve.” I tell her. There is little point in hiding such from her, she will know at the inn soon enough.

She falls silent and remains so until we stop for lunch on a patch of grass that the sun has dried of dew, near a stream.

“So why are we stopping here for lunch?, when we could press onto...” Her Ladyship’s voice falters as she forgets the name of the town I mentioned a moment or two earlier.

“Coraton.” I say, “There is a ford over a stream there where we can cross. Beyond the town, the river runs into another river and is impossible to ford, so the main road remains on the high ground on the left of the stream, which leads onto Hensmere, where the Count will no doubt be arriving late this afternoon. Even we didn’t stop here, and pressed onto Hensmere, we would arrive there three hours after dark.”

“So, there will still be enough night left to sleep if we pressed on into Hensmere?”

“We could sleep fer far longer than a single night, my Lady,” Henry speaks up in his gruff voice. “Aye, madam, we could nigh on sleep forever. Nobody but a fool tries to cross Hensmere Marsh for three hours in the dark, without losing the road and drowning in the mere. We be no fools. That area is notorious for quicksand, sometimes people are sucked down for a year or sometimes for centuries, before the deep releases the bodies. They have long been dead but they be so well preserved in yon airless muck, that they look like they’ve only been sleeping. But they never awaken again.”

I shiver at the thought of drowning. I fell in the leet once as a boy but Hugh, who swims like a fish, leapt in that day to save me. He taught me to swim after and, in turn I taught Hugh how to use a bow and arrow to shoot fish. From the evidence of Hugh’s recent bowmanship, he was the better teacher of us both.

So, we stop to eat our lunch, an admittedly rough fare of crumbly dark bread and dried fish, bought cheap from the Wellock Inn, washed down with bright spring water from the stream. She accepts that we cannot make it to the larger town today, so she finds she has an appetite and eats near all my ration, while I confess I have completely lost any wish to eat.

Hugh decides to start up converse with her Ladyship, “So, what manner of man is this husband, who runs from his bride at the first sign of trouble?”

She sits and chews for a moment, reflecting on the question. “He is old and fat, and lazy, but he was eager in his greed and penny-pinching enough to slip away from the inn without paying his tally, while all were diverted by the fuss and commotion first thing. I think some misfortune had befallen his family, but a handsome man, who dressed well, departed early before breaking fast, with his messenger I think, giving Count Gervais the opportunity to drag me to his coach and ride off in the other direction and avoid settling the bill.”

“What a rat, is your Count Gervais,” Hugh comments, “why in Heaven’s name did you want to marry him for?”

“Every father wants to see his daughter married off, Master Hugh, preferably to a Duke, but if not then a Count might do at a pinch.”

Hugh grins and sits by her and they continue their conversation. I slip away from our guest to speak to Henry, who is left to check that the horses are drinking and have spring grass to chew to supplement the bags of oats we brought all the way from the granary at Oaklea.

“I know what thee’s come to say, Master Robin, an’ I’m dead agin it. Sir William put me in charge of getting thee to the next two fairs, then back to Bartown in plenty o’ time for the Fair that be there. If’n I don’t, he’ll have me flogged fer sure!”

I laugh at that, the idea of my father having anyone flogged seems unbelievable, especially the affable Henry. “No, he won’t H, I will take full responsibility for this, I know what I am doing—”

“Like back in that wood when thee shot that Count in the arse?!” he says, with a grin as wide as the stream the horse were drinking.

“It was a natural mistake, Henry,” I mutter.

“Aye, lad, it were, an’ I daresay I would make the same mistake me’sen, but ye father’d chew my ears about it for ever.” He chuckles and adds, “but, it were a fair shot lad, I’ll give thee that!”

“I made the mistake and I am prepared to pay for it. It was I who robbed her of her happy honeymoon, for I am sure she would have grown to accept the ugly old bully in time, so I must be the one who has to atone for the error.”

“Happen yer right Master Robin, but I must stay with thee, as Sir William commanded, so it will be Master Hugh who must ride home to tell your father where thee’s heading.”

“Hugh, ride alone? He’ll get lost, you know what he is like.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“I will ask him when we start to move on, we can leave the decision until we reach Coraton and the fork in the road.”

“In the daylight on the morrow he should find his way back. It will take him two days from Coraton, one and a half days from here.”

“Well, he might find his way back here from there, Henry, but through the wood, where the road is washed away in places? No, he could easily take the wrong path.”

The path is hard to follow even with Henry as guide.

Mmm, Henry gives me much to ponder as we pack up, saddle the horses and move off down the road. Lady Elinor is sitting behind me, as she says she felt more uncomfortable in front. She has to keep her slender arms around my middle and clenched in front of me. I am clearly more uncomfortable than she on this leg of the journey.

I confess to myself that I had enjoyed the previous hour that we had ridden together. At the time my mind was numb and I could hardly bare to bear my thoughts on the subject, my horse simply following the others, under little control from me. So then I had concentrated on the trees, a lot of trees, and the birds and every wild thing that stared at us with bright eyes from the hedges and undergrowth beyond the well trod path.

I recall now how every time I looked forward I was looking through a veil of red hair that blew up in my face by the lightest of airs in the stillness under the trees. When the sun started to break through at the canopy opened as we emerged into the forest, the breezes strengthened, almost obliterating my vision. Her smell, too, had enveloped me, as it even does now, a warm body smell, with hints of lavender, that tease my senses like they never have before.

We descend again, down a steep slope and the slight change of gait stiffens her grip, her hands grip my shirt, I feel her shift her position as she peers around me to see what is coming, after some time when she had simply rested her head on the middle of my back between the shoulder blades.