winter’s day, we rode out to beard the sleeping lion in his den.
What is that, Odo? I have not told what we planned to do?” My weak-eyed scribe thinks I have skipped too lightly over this important detail. “All in good time,” I tell him. “Patience is also a virtue, impetuous monk. You should try it.”
He moans and sighs, rolls his eyes and dips his pen, and we go on . . .
CHAPTER 25
Coed Cadw
Richard de Glanville watched the forest rising before him like the rampart of a vast green fortress, the colours muted and misty in the pale winter light. Just ahead lay the stream that ran along the valley floor at the foot of the rise leading to the forest. He raised his hand and summoned the man riding behind him to his side. “We will stop to water the horses, Bailiff,” he said. “Tell the men to remain alert.”
“Of course,” replied the bailiff in a voice that suggested he had heard the command a thousand times and it did not bear repeating.
The man’s tone of dry irritation piqued his superior’s attention. “Tell me, Antoin,” said the sheriff, “do you think we will catch the phantom today?”
“No, Sheriff,” replied the bailiff. “I do not think it likely.”
“Then why did you come on this sortie?”
“I came because I was ordered thus, my lord.”
“But of course,” allowed Sheriff de Glanville. “Even so, you think it a fool’s errand. Is that so?”
“I did not say that,” replied the soldier. He was used to the sheriff ’s dark and unpredictable moods, and rightly cautious of them. “I say merely that the Forest of the March is a very big place. I expect the phantom has moved on.”
The sheriff considered this suggestion. “There is no phantom, Bailiff. There are only a devil’s clutch of Welsh rebels.”
“However that may be,” replied Antoin blandly, “I have no doubt your persistence and vigilance has driven them away.”
De Glanville regarded his bailiff with benign disdain. “As always, Antoin, your insights are invaluable.”
“King Raven will be caught one day, God willing.”
“But not today—is that what you think?”
“No, Sheriff, not today,” confessed the soldier. “Still, it is a good day for a ride in the greenwood.”
“To be sure,” agreed the sheriff, reining up as they reached the fording place. The water was low, and ice coated the stones and banks of the slow-moving stream. Sir Richard did not dismount, but remained in the saddle, swathed in his riding cloak and leather gauntlets, his eyes on the natural wall of bare timber rising on the slope of the ridge before him. Coed Cadw, the locals called it; the name meant “Guardian Wood,” or “Sheltering Forest,” or some such thing he had never really discovered for certain. Whatever it was called, the forest was a stronghold, a bastion as mighty and impenetrable as any made of stone. Perhaps Antoin was right. Perhaps King Raven had flown to better pickings elsewhere.
When the horses had finished drinking and his soldiers had taken their saddles once more, the sheriff lifted the reins and urged his mount across the ford and up the long slope. In a little while, he and the four knights with him passed beneath the bare, snow-covered boughs of elm trees on either side of the road and entered the greenwood as through an arched doorway.
The quiet hush of the snowbound forest fell upon him, and the winter light dimmed. As he proceeded along the deep-shadowed track into the wood, the sheriff ’s senses pricked, wary to a presence unseen; his sight became keen, his hearing more acute. He could smell the faint whiff of sour earth that told him a red deer stag had passed a short while earlier, or was lying in a hidden den somewhere nearby.
After a fair distance, they came to a place where a narrow animal trail crossed their own. Here the sheriff paused. He sat for a moment, looking both ways along the ground. The tracks of pigs and deer lay intertwined in the snow and, here and there, the spoor of wolves—and all were old. Just as he was about to move along, his eye caught the sign that had no doubt caused him to stop in the first place: the slender double hoofprint of a deer and, behind and a little to one side, a slight half-moon depression. Without a word, he climbed down from the saddle and knelt for a better look. The half-moon print was followed by another a short stride