‘Well, it’s late, girl. I’m for bed. Thanks for listening.’
Maddie heard the heavy thump of Sable’s tail on the boards once more. Then she heard the scraping sounds of Will coming to his feet. Moving silently, she fled across the room to her door. She had it almost closed when she heard Will lifting the front door to re-enter the cabin. Then the soft clack as the latch closed. Faintly, she heard the slither-thump of Sable sliding her forefeet out before her as she slipped down to a lying position.
Maddie waited till Will had crossed to his own room. As he closed the door carefully, she matched his action, so that any slight sounds of her own door latch engaging would be covered by his.
She lay carefully on the bed and pulled the blankets up to her chin. It was a chilly night and she was cold all over. She shivered once, then relaxed. She lay for a long time with her eyes open, thinking over what she had heard.
Eventually, she went to sleep. But a firm resolve had formed in her mind. She would make amends for her behaviour with the three village teenagers. She would never let Will down like that again.
And she would regain his trust in her.
IN LATER YEARS, Maddie often reflected on how the smallest event can have the most profound result. Four days had passed since she had woken with that blinding, nauseating hangover. Her young, fit body had expelled the poisons she had drunk on that dreadful night and now she was back to normal and ready for any activity.
Although she felt physically better, the memory of the hangover persisted, and she had vowed never to drink alcohol again.
She had apologised profusely to Will for the way she’d acted and he had nodded silently, accepting her words. But, like him, she knew that they were just words, and words were easy. Deeds were more difficult and she had resolved to show him how true and heartfelt her words of apology were. She applied herself to her training and her lessons with a new diligence.
He noted this, but said nothing. He would wait to see how long this new energy and application would last. It was early days yet.
They were finishing lunch one day when there was a knock at the cabin door. Several minutes before the knock, Tug and Bumper had both sounded an alert from the stable as they sensed someone approaching the cabin. Whether it was an enemy or not, they had no idea, so their warning was a neutral one. On the other hand, Sable was outside in her usual position at the end of the porch, and she had made no sound. That indicated to Will that whoever was approaching posed no danger.
He rose and moved to the door. At the last moment, he twitched his cloak aside to free the hilt of his saxe. Then he seized the latch left-handed and threw the door wide open. The movement was intentionally sudden, designed to give him an immediate view of the entire porch area – just in case someone was lurking to one side, out of sight. The animals may have detected no threat, but they were animals. They weren’t infallible.
On this occasion, however, they were proved correct. The person standing outside the door could hardly be described as threatening. He leapt back in surprise as the door flew open, startled by the unexpectedly sudden movement.
He was a small man, shorter than Will and painfully thin. His arms were like sticks, although there was sinewy muscle there. He obviously earned his living by hard labour. He was stoop-shouldered and his hair was beginning to recede from his forehead. His face was lined. Maddie estimated his age at around sixty, and weathered by years of hard work in the outdoors – in rain, hail or shine. He wore a farmer’s smock – threadbare and patched in many places – and carried a shapeless felt hat in his hands.
‘What can I do for you?’ Will asked.
The man bobbed his head nervously. He had never been in such close proximity to a Ranger and he found the experience somewhat unsettling.
‘Aah . . . hmmm . . . sorry to trouble you, Ranger. Didn’t mean to disturb you or nothing . . .’ he said uncertainly.
Will decided not to reply with the obvious – If you didn’t mean to disturb me, why did you knock on my door? He felt that such a reply would confuse the man even further and make him more nervous than he already was.
‘Did you need help of some sort?’ Will asked.
The farmer considered the question, rotating his hat several times as he did so.
‘Name is Arnold, Ranger. Arnold Clum of Split Oak farm.’ He gestured over his shoulder with a jerk of his head. ‘Off to the south there some ten kilometres.’
An impressive name for what was probably an unimpressive farm, judging by the state of Arnold’s clothes and his obviously meagre diet. Will realised that Arnold, like most countrymen, was going to take the long way round answering the question.
‘Been farming there most of my life,’ Arnold Clum continued, confirming Will’s suspicions about roundabout answers. ‘It’s not a big farm, mind you. Just a small holding. We grows a few vegetables – not too many. The soil is rocky out there. And we keeps some sheep. Mostly though, we depend on the hens. The wife keeps them.’
Maddie had risen from the table and moved to stand slightly behind Will. Arnold Clum noticed her and bobbed his head, tugging at a nonexistent hat brim. The hat, after all, was in his other hand.
‘Afternoon, miss,’ he said politely. He stared at her, confused. She was dressed as a Ranger, but she was a girl. He found the two facts hard to reconcile.
‘Maddie is my apprentice,’ Will said, by way of explanation. ‘You can call her “Ranger Maddie”.’
‘Ah, yes, well . . . afternoon, Ranger Maddie,’ Arnold said.
Maddie smiled at him. She decided she liked being referred to as Ranger Maddie. She felt it gave her a certain cachet – although she wasn’t totally sure what cachet might be. It was a term she had heard used once and she thought it might have something to do with prestige.
‘We’ve got maybe twenty, thirty hens and one rooster,’ Arnold continued, focusing his attention back on Will. ‘Keeps us in eggs, of course, and from time to time we kill one for the pot. Nice to have a bit of meat from time to time,’ he added. Unconsciously, he licked his lips at the thought of a chicken going into the cook pot. His expression was so wistful that Will was willing to bet ‘from time to time’ was no more often than once a month.
‘Chickens can be useful that way,’ Will said, hoping to move the narrative along a little faster.
Arnold Clum nodded several times. ‘Aye. Right handy beasts, chickens can be. Raise ’em virtually anywhere, you can.’
‘I’ve never tried,’ Will said.
Arnold shrugged and looked up at him, his head tilted sideways.
‘Aye, well, you should. Dead easy, chickens is. Just need a small patch of ground for them to scratch around in. They like scratching around. Then you can feed them any sort of scraps and –’
‘Are you having some problem with your chickens?’ Will asked.
Arnold stopped in mid-sentence and stared at him, mouth slightly open. ‘How’d you know?’
Will sighed. The man had said he needed help and obviously his chickens were the most important creatures in his life. It was a logical guess. And it was a further logical step to assume that the problem was with some kind of predator. After all, if the chickens were sick, he would hardly have come to a Ranger for help. An apothecary was a better bet.
‘Something’s taking your chickens?’ Will asked.
Arnold’s mouth dropped open a little wider. ‘You Rangers are uncanny!’ he said. ‘It’s true what they say. I turn up here asking for help and straight away you know there’s some critter taking my chickens – and eating my eggs.’
Not quite straight away, Will thought. But still, the loss of chickens and eggs would be a serious matter for someone like Arnold. Judging by his undernourished frame, he got little enough to eat as it was.
‘Seen it a couple of times – usually on dusk,’ Arnold said. ‘About the size of a small dog, it is. And quick as a snake. I’ve got no way of stopping it. I’ve got an old spear, but I’m no great shakes with that. Comes and g
oes as it pleases, it does. Not frightened of me one bit. My wife, Aggie, she said to me, Arnold, go fetch the Ranger. He’ll know how to deal with this!’
‘Probably a weasel or a stoat,’ Will said thoughtfully. He could imagine the problems Arnold would have, trying to kill a fast-moving creature like that with an old spear and his shaky hands.
‘Mebbe so,’ Arnold agreed. ‘But he’s a big ’un. Mind you, so he should be, with the number of my eggs he’s been eating!’ He added the last with a little heat.
Will nodded sympathetically. ‘Well, we’d better see what we can do. We’ll come out this afternoon. No need for you to lose more eggs. Now, let me know how to get to your farm.’
Arnold gave him directions, then departed. He was riding a raw-boned plough horse with no saddle. The horse looked as ragged and threadbare as his owner.
‘Thought I’d let him go ahead of us,’ Will said to Maddie. ‘Farmers love to talk when they meet someone new and I thought we’d spare ourselves that.’
‘Is it really worth our while?’ Maddie asked. ‘I mean, riding all that way for just a few eggs?’
‘It’s just a few eggs to us. To him it’s a matter of eating or going hungry. And looking at him, I’d say he’s done plenty of that.’
Maddie pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘Oh. I see.’
‘This is part of what we do, Maddie,’ Will told her. ‘We help people in trouble. Whether it’s tracking down highwaymen or arresting killers – or saving a farmer’s eggs. Rangers are here to serve the people.’
‘I hadn’t thought of it that way,’ she said. ‘So, should we get moving?’
Will shook his head. ‘Not just yet. I wouldn’t want to catch up to him. I’ll help him, but I don’t want to have to listen to him.’
THEY REACHED THE farm an hour before dusk. They rode into the yard and looked at the small, dilapidated farmhouse. It was made from bark slabs and wattle and daub, with a thatched roof that was barely higher than Maddie at the edges. A spiral of smoke curled from the chimney.
Maddie made a move preparatory to swinging down from the saddle, but Will put out a hand to stop her.
‘Wait till we’re invited,’ he said quietly.
Maddie took note. As a princess, of course, she had never felt the need to be invited. She had always assumed she was welcome wherever she went. But now, she waited as Arnold and a woman who was obviously his wife emerged from the farmhouse.
‘Welcome, Ranger, welcome. This here’s my wife, Aggie. Aggie, this is the Ranger, and Ranger Maddie.’
Aggie performed a slight curtsey, the action curtailed by years of hard work and an aching back. She was as thin as her husband and her hair was grey. Like Arnold, her face was lined by years of working hard and going short.
‘Welcome, Rangers. Step down, please. Would you like tea? Summat to eat, perhaps?’
‘Thank you, no, Mistress Aggie,’ Will said. These people had little enough. He didn’t want to deprive them by sharing their meagre provisions. ‘Let’s take a look at this henhouse of yours.’
He and Maddie dismounted. As was their custom, they left the reins of their horses trailing. Ranger horses didn’t need to be tied up. They’d stay put as long as their riders were here.
Arnold and Aggie Clum led them to a sizeable enclosure set some fifteen metres away from the house. It was two and a half metres high and made of narrow willow wands, set vertically into the ground and intertwined with horizontal strands. Every two or three metres was a more substantial fence post. Inside it was a ramshackle roosting house, constructed of odd bits of timber and bark. An angled ramp ran up to it, allowing the hens access.
The structure was intended to contain the hens and keep them safe at night. Not that it had seemed to work, Maddie thought.
They entered the enclosure and Maddie stooped to peer inside the henhouse. There were rows of brooding boxes inside and she heard the faint cluck of hens as the sound of her movement disturbed them.
Arnold pointed to the fence farthest from the farmhouse.
‘Comes up and over there, quick as you please. Nothing I can do to stop him.’
Will moved to the point the farmer had indicated. There was a water trough at that point and it wasn’t totally watertight. A slow trickle ran from it, wetting and softening the ground. He studied the tracks in the mud and beckoned to Maddie.
‘Look at that. What do you think?’
She frowned. He had shown her dozens of tracks in the past months. She wasn’t sure.
‘A weasel, maybe?’ she said. She was half guessing, because she knew it was a predator of some sort and a fox could hardly have climbed that fence. Will drew his saxe and pointed to the tracks.
‘See there? There are claw marks there at the front of the paws.’
She looked at him, wondering what he was getting at. He realised he hadn’t explained this to her before, so he continued patiently.
‘It’s a pine marten,’ he said. ‘Like a weasel or a mink. But with one difference. A marten’s claws only retract halfway. So you can see the marks of the claws in his tracks. Looks like a big one too.’
‘He’s big, all right,’ Aggie said with heartfelt venom in her voice. ‘And right quick too.’
‘Well then, we’ll see if we can slow him down a little,’ Will said.
They found a spot against the farmhouse where the top of the chicken-run fence would be silhouetted against the evening sky, and settled in to keep watch. They waited as the light faded. Arnold had told them that the marten had become increasingly bold over the past week, raiding the chicken house every day or two. It had been two days since he’d last appeared, so chances were good that they’d see him tonight.
Will had his bow. When Maddie went to fetch hers from the bow case beside her saddle, he shook his head.
‘This time of year, he’ll have a good rich pelt,’ he said. ‘An arrow broadhead will tear it up and ruin it. So use your sling. I’ll keep my bow ready in case you miss.’
Maddie glanced at him, her chin going up. ‘I don’t plan to miss,’ she said.
Will shrugged. ‘Nobody ever does.’
It was chilly after the sun set and Maddie longed to wrap herself in the warm depths of her cloak. But Will shook his head.
‘He may not be frightened of humans,’ he said, ‘but Aggie and Arnold say he’s quick as a snake. We’ll only have seconds for you to hit him and we can’t afford to waste time untangling ourselves from our cloaks.’
Accordingly, she pushed the cloak back on either shoulder to free her arms and stood with a shot already loaded into the sling. Will kept an arrow nocked to his bow. Behind them, the dark bulk of the farmhouse would help conceal them from view.
The sun had dropped below the treetops but there was still light reflecting from the clouds when Will gently nudged her. A dark shape was scurrying out of the bushes and across the cleared ground of the farmyard. It was low to the ground and moving fast. Maddie touched his hand to let him know she had seen the predator. Then she watched as the marten scurried to the hen enclosure and swarmed up the fence. Inside the henhouse, she could hear the worried clucking of the hens as they sensed the arrival of their nemesis.
Maddie laid her right arm back, letting the shot dangle in the pouch of the sling.
The marten hesitated at the top of the fence, getting his balance on the swaying willow wands, as he prepared to transfer from climbing to descending. As he did so, Will made a gentle clicking sound with his tongue. The marten’s head came up as he searched for the source of that sound, and Maddie whipped the sling up and over, stepping into the shot as she released.
The light was poor and it was a small target. But Maddie had hurled hundreds, if not thousands, of shot over the past months, in all conditions: in bright sun, in semi-darkness, in pouring rain. The lead sphere smashed into the savage little predator and hurled it backwards off the top of the fence. It fell to the soft ground outside the enclosure with a dull thud. For a moment or two, its back legs qui
vered. But that was simply a muscular reaction. The marten was dead.
‘Good shot,’ Will said quietly. He was impressed. It had been a difficult shot and Maddie had managed it perfectly. He knew there was a big difference between practising with a lifeless target and being faced with a split second shot at a live, fast-moving quarry. In a louder voice, he called to the elderly couple in the farmhouse.
‘She got him.’
The door opened and a shaft of light fell out across the farmyard as Aggie and Arnold emerged. Maddie was already moving towards the lifeless form at the base of the fence.
‘Be careful,’ Will called. ‘Make sure he’s dead. Those things can bite through your gauntlets.’
She waved a hand in acknowledgement and approached the animal more carefully. She drew her saxe and prodded it experimentally. But there was no reaction.
He was a big one, she saw, more like a small dog than a large cat. Obviously, the diet of chickens and eggs agreed with him. The pelt was thick and lustrous as well. She knelt beside the marten, re-sheathed her saxe and took out a small skinning knife from her belt pouch. Quickly, she skinned the animal, slicing the thick, shiny fur away from the body.
Will watched approvingly. Skinning was an art she had already been skilled in when she came to him.
She rose and walked back to where they were waiting for her, the pelt hanging from one hand. Then she held it out to the farmer’s wife.
‘Here, Mistress Aggie. You can make this into a fine neck warmer or hat for the winter.’
‘But it’s yours,’ Arnold protested. ‘You killed him. The pelt is yours.’ That was the rule of hunting, he knew. The successful hunter kept the pelt for himself. Or herself.
‘And I’m free to do as I please with it.’ Maddie smiled, holding the pelt out. Hesitantly, Aggie took it. ‘You’ll have to peg it out and salt it,’ Maddie continued. ‘You know how to do that, don’t you?’
‘Oh aye. I know how to do that all right,’ Aggie said. She looked admiringly at the pelt in her hand. It was a fine piece of fur. Pelts like this were for the gentry, for the rich. Not for poor farmers like her. ‘Thank’ee, Ranger Maddie. Thank’ee. This is a pelt fit for a fine lady, this is.’