I give him also his shrewd, calculating mind and a farsighted sense of self-preservation. He could see, or maybe smell, the right way to jump a long way off. The old goat rarely put a foot wrong where his own vital interests were concerned. The king liked him, too, though I can’t think why. Still and all, royal favour never hurts a’body while it lasts. Making it last: aye, there’s the grit in the loaf.
So, when William the Conquering Bastard got himself killed in a little foray in France—took an arrow, they say, just like poor King Harold—that upset the apple cart, no mistake. And Thane Aelred was one of those ruddy English pippins as got bounced from the box.
Aye, heads rolled everywhere before the dust settled on that one. Stout Aelred’s lands were confiscated, and the good man himself banished from the realm. All of us vassals were turned out, thrown off the land by the king’s stinking sheriff and his bailiffs; our village was burned to the last house and pigsty. Aelred’s holding was returned to forest and placed under Forest Law, devil’s work.
Most of us, myself included, lingered in the area awhile. We had nowhere else to go, and no provision made for us. For, like the others in Aelred’s keep, I was born on his lands, and my father served his father as I served him. The Scatlockes have been vassals ever and always, never lords . . .
Yes, Odo, that is my real name—William Scatlocke,” I pause to explain. “Y’see, it’s just some folk have it hard with such a ragged scrap between their teeth, and Scarlet has a finer sound.”
“I agree,” says he.
“Splendid,” I tell him. “I will sleep so much better for knowing that. Now, where was I?”
Odo scans what he has written, and says, “. . . you were telling about Forest Law. You called it the devil’s work.”
Aye, and so it is. Forest Law—two perfectly honest and upright words as ever was, but placed together they make a mad raving monster. See now, under Forest Law the crown takes a piece of land useful and needful for all folk in common and at a stroke turns it into a private hunting park forever closed to common folk for any purpose whatsoever. Forest Law turns any land into king’s land, to be used by royals only, them and their fortune-favoured friends. The keep of these so-called parks is given to agents of the crown known as sheriffs, who rule with a noose in one hand and a flamin’ hot castration iron in the other for anyone who might happen to trespass however lightly on the royal preserve.
Truly, merely setting foot in a royal forest can get you maimed or blinded. Taking a single deer or pig to feed your starving children can get you hung at the crossroads alongside evil outlaws who have burned entire villages and slaughtered whole families in their sleep. A petty thing, hardly worth a morning’s sweat, as it may be. Yes, that dark-eyed deer with the fine brown pelt and tasty haunches is worth more than any fifty or a hundred vassals, be they serfs or freemen, and there’s a fact.
Forest Law is what happened to Thane Aelred’s lands—hall, barn, sty, granary, milkhouse, and mill all burned to the last stick and stake, and the ashes ploughed under. The age-old boundary stones were pulled up, and the hides taken off the registry books, and the whole great lot joined up to the lands of other English estates to be declared king’s forest. Aelred himself was hauled away in chains, leaving his poor lady wife to make her way as best she could. I heard later he and his were dumped aboard a ship bound for Daneland with other miserable exiles, but I never really knew for sure. The rest of his folk were turned out that same day and herded off the property at the point of long Norman spears.
Those of us without friends or relations we might flee to for aid and comfort took to the greenwood. We aimed to live off the land in spite of the threat of death hanging over us if we were caught. As one of Aelred’s foresters this was no great hardship for me, but others who were not used to such stark conditions suffered mightily. Cold and fever took a heavy toll, and the sheriff ’s men took more. They killed us whenever they could, and chased