Scarlet

Iwan only laughed. He had already made up his mind about me. 'Peace, Siarles,' he said. 'He doesn't want the money.'

'How can you be so sure?'

'Any man after the reward money would have thought of a better answer than that. Why, he'd have a whole story worked out and like as not say too much and get himself all tangled in the telling. Will, here, didn't do that.'

'Maybe he's just that stupid.'

'Nay, he isn't stupid,' replied Iwan. I liked him better and better by the moment. 'I'll wager my good word against anything in your purse that claiming the reward money never crossed his mind.'

'You would win that bet, friend,' I replied. 'In truth, it never did.' Seeing as how Iwan had made such a fine argument for me, I asked, 'Am I to be thinking that you know this Rhi Bran?'

Siarles, still suspicious, frowned as Iwan said, 'Know him, aye, we do.'

'Would you kindly tell me where he can be found?' I asked, nice as please and thank you.

'Better than that,' said Iwan, 'we'll take you to meet him.'

'Iwan!' snapped Siarles. He was tenacious as a rat dog, give him that. 'What are you saying? We don't know this Saxon, or anything about him. We can't be taking him to Bran. Why, he might be anybody-maybe even a spy for the abbot!'

'If he's Hugo's spy we can't be leaving him here,' countered Iwan. 'I say we take him with us and leave it to Bran to decide who and what he is-aye, and what is to be done with him.' Turning to me, he said, 'If we take you with us, do you swear on your life's blood to abide by our lord's decision whatsoever it may be?'

Ordinarily, I do not like swearing my life away on the whims of persons unknown, but seeing as he was only granting me the chance I'd been seeking all summer, I readily agreed. 'On my life's blood, I swear to abide by your lord's decision.'

'Good enough for me,' said Iwan. 'Follow us.'

'And see you keep quiet,' added Siarles for good measure.

'I'll be as quiet as you were when you woke me from my treetop perch just now,' I told him.

Iwan gave out a laugh and, in two quick strides, disappeared up over the bank and into the brushwood beside the road. 'After you,' said Siarles, prodding me with the tip of his bow. 'I'll come last, and don't you put a foot wrong, 'cause I'll be watching you.'

'There's relief, to be sure,' I replied. Stepping into the forest, I was led a merry chase to meet the man I'd crossed half the country to see. God save me, but I never imagined him the way he first appeared.

CHAPTER 5

The trail went on and on. My guides maintained a curious wolf-trot pace: three steps quick walk alternating with four steps slow running. It took a bit of getting used to, but, once I got the knack, I soon understood that it allowed a body to move quickly over long distances and still have breath enough and strength to do what you came to do when you reached your destination. I had never seen this neat trick before, and was glad to add it to my own tidy store of forest craft… You should try it, Odo,' I tell my bleary-eyed scribe. He raises his pudding face to see if I jest. 'It would do you good.'

'I will take you at your word,' he says, stifling a yawn. He dips his quill in the horn, and the wet nib hovers over the parchment. 'Where did they take you, these hooded strangers?'

'Where did they take me? Pay attention, and you'll learn soon enough. Now then, where was I?'

'Running through the greenwood to meet the Raven King.'

'Not the Raven King,' I tell him. 'It is King Raven-there is a difference, monk. Get it right.'

Odo gives an indifferent shrug, and I resume my tale… Well, we ran miles that morning, and I am firmly persuaded most of it was just to confuse me so as to prevent me leading anyone else to their forest hideaway.

For the most part, it worked well enough. On a fella less firmly rooted in woodland lore, it would have been well-nigh confounding. As for myself, it produced only mild befuddlement, as Iwan probably guessed after a while. For we came to a place where a little clear water stream issued from beneath a natural rock wall, and after we'd got a few good mouthfuls, the big man produced a scrap of cloth from his quiver. 'Sorry, William,' he said, handing me the cloth. 'You must bind your eyes now.'

'If it makes you and yours feel better, I'm happy to do it,' I said. 'I'll even let Siarles here tie the knot.'

'Right, you will,' said Siarles, stepping behind me as I wound the cloth around my head. He tied the loose ends, gave them a sharp tug, and then we were away again, more slowly-this time Iwan leading, and me stumbling along with my hand on his shoulder, tripping over roots and stones and trying to keep up with his long- legged strides. It was more difficult than I would have thought-try it yourself in rough wood and see how you go. After a time I sensed the ground beginning to rise. The slope was gradual at first, but grew steeper as we went along. I heard birdsong high up, scattered and far off-the trees were getting bigger and farther apart.

Gaining the top of the ridge, we came to a stony ledge and stopped again. 'Here now,' said Iwan, taking me by the shoulders and turning me around a few times, 'not far to go. A few more steps is all.'

He spun me around some more, and then Siarles spun me the other way for good measure. 'Mind your step,' said Siarles, his mouth close to my ear. 'Keep your head low, or you'll get a knock.' He pressed my head down until I was bent double, and then led me through a gap between two trees and, almost immediately, down a steep incline.

'Cel Craidd,' said Iwan. 'I pray it goes well with you here.'

'You better pray so, too,' added Siarles in tone far less friendly. He had taken against me, I don't know why- maybe it was that jibe about his name. Or maybe it was the cut of my cloth, but whatever it was, he gave me to know that he held me of small regard. 'Play us false, and it will be the last place you ever see.'

'Now, now,' I replied, 'no need to be nasty. I've sworn to abide, and abide I will, come what may.'

Siarles untied the binding cloth, and I opened my eyes on the strangest place I have ever seen: a village made of skins and bones, branches and stones. There were low hovels roofed with ferns and moss, and others properly thatched with rushes; some had wattle-and-daub walls, and some were made of woven willow withies so that the hut seemed to have been knitted whole out of twigs, and the chinks stuffed with dried grass, giving the place an odd, fuzzy appearance as if it wore a pelt in moulting. If a few of the hovels in the centre of the settlement were larger and constructed of more substantial stuff-split timber and the like-they also had roofs of grassy turf, and wore antlers or skull bones of deer or oxen at the corners and above their hide-covered doorways, which gave them the look of something grown up out of the forest floor.

If a tribe of Greenmen had bodged together a settlement out of bark and brake and cast-off woodland ruck, it would look exactly like this, I thought. Indeed, it was a fit roost for King Raven-just the sort of place the Lord of the Forest might choose.

Nested in a shallow bowl of a glade snugged about by the stout timbers of oak and lime and ash and elm, Cel Craidd was not only protected, but well hidden. The circling arm of the ridge formed a wall of sorts on three sides which rose above the low huts. A fella would have to be standing on the ridgetop and looking down into the bowl of the glade to see it. But this concealment came at a price, and the people there were paying the toll with their lives.

Our arrival was noticed by a few of the small fry, who ran to fetch a welcome party. They were-beneath the soot and dirt and ragged clothes-ordinary children, and not the offspring of a Greenwife. They skittered away with the swift grace of creatures birthed and brought up in the wildwood. Chirping and whooping, they flew to an antler-decked hut in the centre of the settlement, and pounded on the doorpost. In a few moments, there emerged what is possibly the ugliest old woman I ever set eyes to. Mother Mary, but she was a sight, with her skin wrinkled like a dried plum and blackened by years of sitting in the smoke of a cooking fire, and a wiry, wayward grizzled fringe of dark hair-dark where it should have been bleached white by age, she was that old. She hobbled up to look me over, and though her step might have been shambling there was nothing wrong with the eyes in her head. People talk of eyes that pierce flesh and bone for brightness, and I always thought it mere fancy. Not so! She looked me over, and I felt my skin flayed back and my soul laid bare before a gaze keen as a fresh-stropped