Chapter Four #2
Intending to comfort, Dermot’s mouth ran dry. Words thought of moments ago were lost to him, becoming more evasive in silence.
‘I’m sorry,’ Aubrey echoed, murmuring sweetly to the horse when it slowed. Such a scene should’ve brought pleasure, yet Dermot felt all the disinterest of a eunuch.
Town was pleasant enough, owing to Stanley presence.
Streets were paved with fine brick as if fashioned for their use, the rest of the populace having to contend with woodlands and sludge.
A veritable limbo of bankers and lawyers, the only suggestion of another class of people were the boats bobbing on the sea, Lord Stanley having deemed fish too common for his table.
He dreamt of this place once, a reprieve from village life, but found only servitude.
Now, as they rode, townspeople made obeisance and sent prayers for a good hunt.
It was their luck that neither Robert nor Tristan dismounted and enacted some torture, their conditions being so strange and precarious.
They crossed the threshold into nature. Little remained, the Stanleys having turned much of it to farmland so men who’d settled for centuries were usurped by mere sheep.
The surviving woods, Dermot knew, would one day be wrestled for profit as well, and no longer would men look to it and dream of escape.
As soon as they quit town, a pretty voice not unlike those sea wenches reached him, melodious but altogether more tempting.
If it had been Aubrey, little prince that he was, Dermot would’ve been appreciative but unsurprised.
But the man whose voice might’ve bested any opera starlet was the scourge of all maids.
Tristan’s voice was disarming and sweet, his lyrics sentimental, the perfect partner for the unspoilt countryside.
Realising with a jolt he knew nothing about their private lives in truth, Dermot sat back, unsettled.
‘Dermot,’ Robert called. ‘I do hope you don’t intend to linger behind. I expect your full participation. And I feel I must warn you, if you hesitate in any way, I will take it as an affront to my poor brother.’
If the Stanleys were gracious masters and Tristan as amiable as his voice, they might’ve had a pleasant outing.
But as they neared the forest, Dermot became all the more harried.
He imagined pheasants shot from the sky, terrified beasts skewered by their swords, and this horror hung over him like a veil, obscuring all he saw and twisting it so everything was at once unbearable.
‘Ride by me,’ Robert said. He turned to watch them, impassive.
Realising Aubrey didn’t intend to move, Dermot brought his hands to the reins.
He pulled at them daringly, conscious as Aubrey’s fingers grazed his own, and tried to mask his relief as the horse went where instructed.
Tristan urged his own to the side, clearing a space so Dermot was trapped between them.
‘Speak of this to no one. If you do, I will know,’ Robert said.
The threat coiled around his guts and turned his bowels to water. An ordinary hunting trip required no such warning. Glimpsing Tristan from his side, he watched astounded as the bastard smiled at him.
Robert forced his horse forward with a sharp kick, Tristan immediately following. Doubtless the pair concocted some plan for the day, and Dermot dared not fall behind. Imitating Robert’s manner, trying to recall his scant training, he kicked at the animal to Aubrey’s shocked gasp.
‘What are they doing?’ Dermot said, leaning closer but not touching his charge.
‘I’m not sure,’ Aubrey said. His curls tickled against Dermot’s chin. ‘I’m scared. Please, you mustn’t think I wanted to force this on you.’ His voice took on a note of urgency.
Dermot’s mind stuttered and, unsure of what to do, he said nothing. Still contemplating his response, he rode peaceably until Robert’s head twisted like an owl sensing a rat. It was a grotesque, unnatural movement that sent bile running up Dermot’s throat; the gruel he’d prepared that morning.
‘That way, men!’ Robert called. ‘Come, follow me!’
As a man in his mid-twenties, Dermot felt more boy than man, and Aubrey was only nineteen.
But Tristan, a year or two Dermot’s junior, swerved to gallop after Robert and near killed his horse in the process.
They had no choice but to hurry after, Dermot’s strategy mere mimicry.
It was his rare luck the horse was eager to follow its fellows and not prone to spooking or any sort of foul play.
By their very nature, hunts were devised to sate a young man’s urges.
The lordling who might’ve skewered peasants could sate himself with the cries of a poor, unknowing creature.
It was this Dermot feared, for he had often looked at the animals upon Béchard’s table and felt something akin to pity.
Cruelty was boundless and, as a scream sounded from ahead, Dermot wrenched the reins back with a groan.
Aubrey near fell into him with the force of it.
Pain came soon after, an invisible knife having wormed its way into his guts.
He flinched, hands loosening, near crying out with the shock of it.
‘Mightn’t you run a bit longer, boy?’ Robert said.
Hands shaking while a mere caress set him to turmoil, Dermot turned around. His eyes, burning and sore as they were, discerned the creature in front of them well enough.
‘I can’t!’ the boy cried. For he was young, scarcely eighteen to Dermot’s thinking. And unlike earlier encounters, he was no mystical creature of the forest. He was a perfectly ordinary young man juxtaposed with Robert’s black, predatory shadow.
Tristan moved as if to cut him down, sword raised high like an executioner leering over the block, faltering only at Robert’s shout. His weapon fell neatly to his side.
‘No, indeed. I have no wish to stop our hunt yet, especially after being spoken to so brusquely. It is Lord Robert, my boy, or else my lord. Have you no respect for your betters?’
The boy shook his head. ‘Not after being treated so!’ he said, fleeing further into the woods.
‘Onwards!’ Robert said.
Dermot fancied Robert grew yet more feverish after this exchange, pulling the reins eagerly as he rode after. Tristan followed behind, and Dermot, startled into submission, dimly kicked his horse and started it into a gallop.
The boy was clever enough, weaving between trees as he did.
The trick might have been enough to put off an amateur, as it slowed Dermot considerably, but Robert and Tristan had been instructed since boyhood.
Neither cared for the welfare of their horse, the poor creatures having their necks near broken.
And as Dermot near killed his own trying to keep pace, Aubrey brushed against his skin, inching closer and whimpering in either fright or shock.
What once would’ve stirred his cock, the noises near enough to what he’d imagined at night, left him cold and sickly.
He could scarcely steer, and Aubrey did nothing but cry.
Shouting came from ahead. Dermot hurried along, having lost them some time ago.
Tristan sounded like a man at his peak. He’d heard such noises before, when those of a certain profession and inclination had a new animal run in for execution.
Some took great pleasure in subjecting a new soul to torture that couldn’t safely be borne in a man.
They all offered the same excuse; the animal was a lesser creature.
But that same animal, having witnessed the deaths of its friends only moments before, endured all they could not.
Dermot watched as Tristan set the boy free only to grab him again, toying with him like a cat as they stood outside some cottage. Leaping from his horse, Dermot stood stupefied.
‘Dermot, here at last!’ Robert said.
Bizarrely, a middle-aged woman stood at his side.
Her face was like a mask fashioned for a pantomime, so white was she, both sides of her lips turned into a parody of a scream.
She pulled at Robert’s fine sleeves and black cloak as if to throttle him, but what was a desperate skirmish for her was but an amusement to him.
‘It seems those stories of forest hags are not the fancy of your people after all,’ Robert said. ‘For, you see, I have one here, and my brother has captured her kin quite soundly.’
The woman screamed and raised her hand as if to claw Robert’s face with her nails, only for him to twist her arms and bring her hands together in a firm clutch at her back. She cried out in agony, and Dermot again heard those huffs of amusement from Robert.
‘Auntie, oh Auntie, I thought you’d make them stop, not that they’d hurt you too!’ the boy cried.
‘Brat,’ Tristan said, letting the boy have one last run towards his aunt before grabbing him soundly by the waist and pulling him back.
‘You think that wench, a peasant living out in the woods and all, could tell us what to do? She may be your blood, but we strangers have more say over you than she ever could.’
‘Curse you! This is our land, and you’ve no right to it!
I live here, plant the seeds and toil in the fields, and not a soul suffers from it.
I know all about your family, I do.’ She paused, hardly able to be heard over Tristan’s laughter.
‘Coming across the sea when no one desired such a thing. We were quite happy as our own people, beholden to no one, having our communities and the like. Damn all towns and merchants, kings and all!’
Robert contorted her arms as if to break them.
‘Treason, I hear!’ Tristan cried, much to the horror of the boy he held.
‘And a great many unnatural ideas,’ Robert drawled.
‘Does this mere peasant woman suggest people may live wherever they like in spite of law and contract? Indeed, I am reminded of our discussion with the bishop. There is something strange about this woman. Did she not just curse us? Did you hear, brother? Dermot? My dear Aubrey?’