Rewards and Fairies

The Tree of Justice

It was a warm, dark winter day with the Sou’-West wind singing through Dallington Forest, and the woods below the Beacon. The children set out after dinner to find old Hobden, who had a three months’ job in the Rough at the back of Pound’s Wood. He had promised to get them a dormouse in its nest. The bright leaf still clung to the beech coppice; the long chestnut leaves lay orange on the ground, and the rides were speckled with scarlet-lipped sprouting acorns. They worked their way by their own short cuts to the edge of Pound’s Wood, and heard a horse’s feet just as they came to the beech where Ridley the keeper hangs up the vermin. The poor little fluffy bodies dangled from the branches – some perfectly good, but most of them dried to twisted strips.

‘Three more owls,’ said Dan, counting. ‘Two stoats, four jays, and a kestrel. That’s ten since last week. Ridley’s a beast.’

‘In my time this sort of tree bore heavier fruit.’ Sir Richard Dalyngridge[7 - This is the Norman knight they met the year before in Puck of Pook’s Hill. See ‘Young Men at the Manor,’ ‘The Knights of the Joyous Venture,’ and ‘Old Men at Pevensey,’ in that book.] reined up his grey horse, Swallow, in the ride behind them. ‘What play do you make?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, sir. We’re looking for old Hobden,’ Dan replied. ‘He promised to get us a sleeper.’

‘Sleeper? A dormeuse do you say?’

‘Yes, a dormouse, sir.’

‘I understand. I passed a woodman on the low grounds. Come!’

He wheeled up the ride again, and pointed through an opening to the patch of beech-stubs, chestnut, hazel, and birch that old Hobden would turn into firewood, hop-poles, pea-boughs, and house-faggots before spring. The old man was as busy as a beaver.

Something laughed beneath a thorn, and Puck stole out, his finger on his lip.

‘Look!’ he whispered. ‘Along between the spindle trees. Ridley has been there this half-hour.’

The children followed his point, and saw Ridley the keeper in an old dry ditch, watching Hobden as a cat watches a mouse.

‘Huhh!’ cried Una. ‘Hobden always ’tends to his wires before breakfast. He puts his rabbits into the faggots he’s allowed to take home. He’ll tell us about ’em to-morrow.’

‘We had the same breed in my day,’ Sir Richard replied, and moved off quietly, Puck at his bridle, the children on either side between the close-trimmed beech stuff.

‘What did you do to them?’ said Dan, as they repassed Ridley’s terrible tree.

‘That!’ Sir Richard jerked his head toward the dangling owls.

‘Not he,’ said Puck. ‘There was never enough brute Norman in you to hang a man for taking a buck.’

‘I – I cannot abide to hear their widows screech. But why am I on horseback while you are afoot?’ He dismounted lightly, tapped Swallow on the chest, so that the wise thing backed instead of turning in the narrow ride, and put himself at the head of the little procession. He walked as though all the woods belonged to him. ‘I have often told my friends,’ he went on, ‘that Red William the King was not the only Norman found dead in a forest while he hunted.’

‘D’you mean William Rufus?’ said Dan.

‘Yes,’ said Puck, kicking a clump of red toadstools off a dead log.

‘For example, there was a knight new from Normandy,’ Sir Richard went on, ‘to whom Henry our King granted a manor in Kent near by. He chose to hang his forester’s son the day before a deer-hunt that he gave to pleasure the King.’

‘Now when would that be?’ said Puck, and scratched an ear thoughtfully.

‘The summer of the year King Henry broke his brother Robert of Normandy at Tenchebrai fight. Our ships were even then at Pevensey loading for the war.’

‘What happened to the knight?’ Dan asked.

‘They found him pinned to an ash, three arrows through his leather coat. I should have worn mail that day.’

‘And did you see him all bloody?’ Dan continued.

‘Nay, I was with De Aquila at Pevensey, counting horse-shoes, and arrow sheaves, and ale-barrels into the holds of the ships. The army only waited for our King to lead them against Robert in Normandy, but he sent word to De Aquila that he would hunt with him here before he set out for France.’

‘Why did the King want to hunt so particularly?’ Una demanded.

‘If he had gone straight to France after the Kentish knight was killed, men would have said he feared being slain like the knight. It was his duty to show himself debonair to his English people as it was De Aquila’s duty to see that he took no harm while he did it. But it was a great burden! De Aquila, Hugh, and I ceased work on the ships, and scoured all the Honour of the Eagle – all De Aquila’s lands – to make a fit, and, above all, a safe sport for our King. Look!’

The ride twisted, and came out on the top of Pound’s Hill Wood. Sir Richard pointed to the swells of beautiful, dappled Dallington, that showed like a woodcock’s breast up the valley. ‘Ye know the forest?’ said he.

‘You ought to see the bluebells there in Spring!’ said Una.

‘I have seen,’ said Sir Richard, gazing, and stretched out his hand. ‘Hugh’s work and mine was first to move the deer gently from all parts into Dallington yonder, and there to hold them till the King came. Next, we must choose some three hundred beaters to drive the deer to the stands within bowshot of the King. Here was our trouble! In the mellay of a deer-drive a Saxon peasant and a Norman King may come over close to each other. The conquered do not love their conquerors all at once. So we needed sure men, for whom their village or kindred would answer in life, cattle, and land if any harm come to the King. Ye see?’

‘If one of the beaters shot the King,’ said Puck, ‘Sir Richard wanted to be able to punish that man’s village. Then the village would take care to send a good man.’

‘So! So it was. But, lest our work should be too easy, the King had done such a dread justice over at Salehurst, for the killing of the Kentish knight (twenty-six men he hanged, as I heard), that our folk were half-mad with fear before we began. It is easier to dig out a badger gone to earth than a Saxon gone dumb-sullen. And atop of their misery the old rumour waked that Harold the Saxon was alive and would bring them deliverance from us Normans. This has happened every autumn since Senlac fight.’

‘But King Harold was killed at Hastings,’ said Una.

‘So it was said, and so it was believed by us Normans, but our Saxons always believed he would come again. That rumour did not make our work any more easy.’

Sir Richard strode on down the far slope of the wood, where the trees thin out. It was fascinating to watch how he managed his long spurs among the lumps of blackened ling.

‘But we did it!’ he said. ‘After all, a woman is as good as a man to beat the woods, and the mere word that deer are afoot makes cripples and crones young again. De Aquila laughed when Hugh told him over the list of beaters. Half were women; and many of the rest were clerks – Saxon and Norman priests.

‘Hugh and I had not time to laugh for eight days, till De Aquila, as Lord of Pevensey, met our King and led him to the first shooting stand – by the Mill on the edge of the forest. Hugh and I – it was no work for hot heads or heavy hands – lay with our beaters on the skirts of Dallington to watch both them and the deer. When De Aquila’s great horn blew we went forward, a line half a league long. Oh, to see the fat clerks, their gowns tucked up, puffing and roaring, and the sober millers dusting the undergrowth with their staves; and, like as not, between them a Saxon wench, hand in hand with her man, shrilling like a kite as she ran, and leaping high through the fern, all for joy of the sport.’

‘Ah! How! Ah! How! How-ah! Sa-how-ah!’ Puck bellowed without warning, and Swallow bounded forward, ears cocked, and nostrils cracking.

‘Hal-lal-lal-lal-la-hai-ie!’ Sir Richard answered in a high clear shout.

The two voices joined in swooping circles of sound, and a heron rose out of a red osier bed below them, circling as though he kept time to the outcry. Swallow quivered and swished his glorious tail. They stopped together on the same note.

A hoarse shout answered them across the bare woods.

‘That’s old Hobden,’ said Una.

‘Small blame to him. It is in his blood,’ said Puck. ‘Did your beaters cry so, Sir Richard?’

‘My faith, they forgot all else. (Steady, Swallow, steady!) They forgot where the King and his people waited to shoot. They followed the deer to the very edge of the open till the first flight of wild arrows from the stands flew fair over them.

‘I cried, “’Ware shot! ’Ware shot!” and a knot of young knights new from Normandy, that had strayed away from the Grand Stand, turned about, and in mere sport loosed off at our line shouting: “’Ware Senlac arrows! ’Ware Senlac arrows!” A jest, I grant you, but too sharp. One of our beaters answered in Saxon: “’Ware New Forest arrows! ‘Ware Red William’s arrow!” so I judged it time to end the jests, and when the boys saw my old mail gown (for, to shoot with strangers I count the same as war), they ceased shooting. So that was smoothed over, and we gave our beaters ale to wash down their anger. They were excusable! We – they had sweated to show our guests good sport, and our reward was a flight of hunting-arrows which no man loves, and worse, a churl’s jibe over hard-fought, fair-lost Hastings fight. So, before the next beat, Hugh and I assembled and called the beaters over by name, to steady them. The greater part we knew, but among the Netherfield men I saw an old, old man, in the dress of a pilgrim.

‘The Clerk of Netherfield said he was well known by repute for twenty years as a witless man that journeyed without rest to all the shrines of England. The old man sits, Saxon fashion, head between fists. We Normans rest our chin on our left palm.

‘“Who answers for him?” said I. “If he fails in his duty, who will pay his fine?”

‘“Who will pay my fine?” the pilgrim said. “I have asked that of all the Saints in England these forty years, less three months and nine days! They have not answered!” When he lifted his thin face I saw he was one-eyed, and frail as a rushlight.