The Forest by Edward Rutherfurd Page B

the roof of the cow stall needed repairing, she thought she had seen a fox near the chicken coop – but it was no good. By mid-morning he was gone, without even taking his dog with him. Not that he had told her what he was up to. Had she known that, she would probably have called the neighbours to restrain him. Nor did she see that, a few moments after leaving, he took a bow from a hiding place in a tree.
    He had been waiting two months for this. Ever since his encounter with Edgar he had been careful to be a model of good behaviour. He had retracted his fence to its proper place. His cows were brought in from the Forest two days before the fence month. When Cola only glanced suspiciously at his dog, he had turned up at the royal hunting lodge at Lyndhurst the very next day. This was where they kept the metal hoop known as the stirrup – if a dog was not small enough to crawl through it, then his front claws were “lawed,” cut off, so that he could not be a threat to the king’s deer. Pride had insisted they took his dog to the stirrup, “Just to make sure he’s all legal, like,” he assured them with a charming smile as the dog wriggled safely through. He had been careful. He had also had to waitfor the right weather conditions; and those had come today when the faint breeze had blown from an unusual quarter.
    He might not be able to get his field, but he was going to get something back from those Norman thieves. He would strike a little personal blow for freedom: or for his own obstinacy, as his wife would have said. As secretly pleased with himself as a boy on some forbidden adventure, the tall man with the swinging gait had made his way through the woods. If he was caught the consequences would be terrible: the loss of a limb, even his life. But he wouldn’t be caught. He chuckled to himself. He had thought it all out.
    It had been noon when he had taken up his position. This had been carefully chosen – a little vantage point by the edge of some trees with a hidden depression where he could easily lie concealed while watching out to see if anyone was approaching. He had studied the habits of his quarry carefully.
    Soon after noon, as he had expected, they had appeared and, thanks to the change in the direction of the breeze, he was downwind of them.
    He had made no move. For over an hour he had patiently watched. Then, as he had expected, he had seen one of Cola’s men walk his horse silently across the open ground about half a mile away. He had let another hour pass. No one had come.
    He had already selected his target. He needed a small doe – one that he could carry swiftly on his broad back up to his place of concealment. He would return for it that night with a handcart. There would be just enough moon tonight to allow him to see his way through the dark forest tracks. There were several small does in this little herd. One was paler than the rest.
    He took aim.
    For the first few days Adela could not believe that Walter had done it to her.
    If the villages of Fordingbridge and Ringwood, which lay on the River Avon as it flowed down the Forest’s western edge, were scarcely more than hamlets, the settlement at the river’s southern estuary was more substantial. Here the Avon, joined by another river from the west, ran into a large, sheltered harbour – an ancient place where men had fished and traded formore than a thousand years. Twyneham, the Saxons had first called the settlement and the great sweep of meadow, marsh, woodland and heath that extended for miles along the south-western edge of the Forest from there, had long been a royal manor. In the last two centuries, thanks to a series of modest religious foundations endowed there by the Saxon kings, the village was more often referred to as Christchurch. It had grown into a small town and been fortified with a rampart. Five years ago, Christchurch had been given a further boost when the king’s chancellor decided to rebuild the priory church