LITMIR.BIZ

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trembled when they saw the words but not because of their master’s threats. They knew from the ancient laws that it be a bad omen that the words be written in gold, that they be etched so deep into the bark.

      A bad omen indeed.

      For every oak that Francis felled, the sorceress’s curse went deeper, slithering into the branches and the very roots of the Rodermere family tree.

      As seasons passed and gathered years with them, one turret rose out of his grand house, then another, slightly taller, and finally the third turret rose higher, taller than the tallest oaks, a monstrous scar upon the forest. The sorceress’s land was cleared to make way for a park, gardens, jousting grounds, orchards of stunted trees. The house itself had claimed four thousand and sixty of her oaks. Its banqueting hall, its chapel, its carved wooden panelling, its long gallery, its staircases – all from her oaks made. Those faithful trees told her the truth of that family, of the twisted knots of its unhappiness.

      In their dying, dried-out whispers, they said, ‘He has no son, he wants a son. Two daughters born, two daughters dead and still no son has he.’

      They spoke of a house petrified, of Lord Rodermere’s many cruelties, of his servants who shivered at his presence, of his wife who dreaded his voice at her chamber door.

      It was the Widow Bott who told the sorceress what her oaks could not, she being the local midwife and cunning woman, and close with the servants at the House of the Three Turrets. The sorceress knew her well. There was not a babe born in these parts whose birth she had not attended except those of the daughters of Eleanor, Lady Rodermere. Her arrogant, bumble-brain, shit-prick of a husband never wanted the Widow Bott near his wife. The widow was a handsome woman, her own mistress and had not succumbed to his oafish charms. In a fury at being rejected, he had threatened to ruin her unless she lay with him, accused her of putting him under a spell, stated publicly that he distrusted her forest remedies and advised all godly men not to let her near their wives for he believed her to be a witch.

      In that alone he was right and it was the powers of the sorceress that had made her so. He should have known no one lived in the heart of her forest unless she had invited them there. The monks who first claimed this land had been wise enough to fear the darkness of the woods where the sunlight had little power. They began to believe that at the heart of forest, in the darkest place, lived the Devil himself in the guise of a black wolf. These stories grew in the retelling until the black wolf took on monstrous proportions. It was dread of this beast that stopped many a brave heart from venturing deep into the forest but it did not stop Gilbert Goodwin.

      When first the sorceress laid eyes on him he was but a lad, adrift in her realm. He showed no fear, only a curious interest in finding himself with night coming on and his path lost. And being alive to everything he watched the moon shine through the trees, bewitched by the darkness that lifted the curtain onto another forest more magical, more savage than that of his daytime wanderings. He climbed one of the sorceress’s oaks and slept in its mossy hollow till morning. Then, refreshed, he found by her design the rich larder of the forest where he gathered mushrooms and there saw his way home.

      He was apprenticed to the steward of the late earl, Edmund Thursby, and the earl wisely saw in him more than a glimmer of intelligence. Gilbert Goodwin had learned a great deal from the old earl. He had admired his care of the forest and respect for his peasants.

      Master Goodwin understood his neighbours. They may well go to church on Sunday, sit through dull sermons, chill their knees on stone floors, yet he knew in their souls they prayed that the black wolf stayed in the heart of the forest and did not eat their livestock or their babes.

      After the sorceress’s oaks were felled the sightings of the black wolf became more numerous. Its very size and shape belonged to a deep magic that Gilbert Goodwin knew should be respected if you valued your life and your land.

      All this the sorceress had learned for she oft walked invisible beside Master Goodwin, listening to his thoughts, though he was never aware of it. He had filled out the thinness of his youth, grown well-built with a kind, thoughtful face and grey eyes that saw more than many and a tongue wise enough to hold its peace until speech became necessary. Francis, Lord Rodermere, for reasons that he could not fathom, felt inadequate when speaking to his steward. Even in height, Master Goodwin was superior.

      On a spring morn they stood together, side by side, in a graveyard of oaks whose stumps stood as raw wounds that broke from barren soil, their once ethereal canopies but a ghost’s memory. Now in this new season there was no leafy protection from the rain that drizzled on leather and fur, that dripped from brims of hats. Gilbert Goodwin’s thoughts that miserable morning were filled with sadness for the utter pointlessness of such destruction. He looked at the standing trees and wondered if they too were doomed.

      ‘It is only a matter of time before the head of that black wolf is nailed to my wall,’ said Lord Rodermere. ‘If it were not for the quality of the hunting I would have these woods felled. That would put an end to the pagan beliefs of the peasantry.’

      ‘The forest has stood for thousands of years, my lord,’ said Master Goodwin. ‘You are the first man to have had an axe taken to those great oaks.’

      ‘Do not say that you, like my buffoon of a father, believe in all that elfin gibberish.’

      ‘Your father was a wise man,’ said Master Goodwin, ‘and understood his people. I would call a buffoon a man who thinks he knows everything, is averse to all advice, who acts without knowledge and is driven by conceit, only to be surprised at the consequences.’

      Lord Rodermere was unsure if he had just been insulted by his steward but not knowing how to respond if he had, he continued.

      ‘You believe that some sorceress has the power to put a curse on me?’

      ‘I believe,’ said Master Goodwin, his grey eyes never leaving his master’s face, ‘that you would have fared better if you had let the forest be, and built your house of bricks and mortar. This forest has always been a place of great beauty and greater terror.’

      Gilbert Goodwin’s wit was too fast for the slow, wine-soaked brain of Lord Rodermere, who in order to enforce his authority said, ‘You are not seen often in church on Sunday. Do you worship at a different altar?’

      Master Goodwin did not answer.

      ‘I thought you better than a mere peasant.’

      Again the steward held his tongue.

      ‘Never married?’

      ‘No, my lord.’

      ‘Why not? Is your prick so small it could bring no woman satisfaction?’

      Gilbert Goodwin, well-versed in his master’s rages and jibes, had expected as much. Lord Rodermere was thinking of his own baubles.

      The hands of time tick on, the sorceress’s remaining oaks, her elders, and her ashes – white trees of death – move imperceptibly closer to the House of the Three Turrets. For all his lordship’s boast of glass windows very little light shines in and long shadows fall across his lordship’s gardens and his lordship’s orchards.

      Lady Eleanor bears him a third daughter. The child lives, but smallpox makes her soft skin toad-blemished and only now does Lord Rodermere begin to wonder if he has indeed been cursed. He enquires of his steward where he might find the sorceress who visited him when he hacked the first oak. Master Goodwin tells him plainly that it is best he looks no more. This time Lord Rodermere does not laugh so loudly for the words of the curse are echoing in his empty head.

       . . . whose beauty will

       be your death.

V

      One May morning, Lord Rodermere, out hunting with a party of friends, thought he saw in a thicket a vixen and set off after her until by twists and turns he became lost. He stopped and shouted out in the hope of one of his party hearing him. And all he saw and all he heard was the

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