Beneath my boughs, bright with green, year of our Lord 981
Though the wood is dark, the sun shafts through the canopy to pool in islands of glorious golden sunlight. This I know, because one of them is mine. My siblings fell in the shadows and struggled to take root; one by one they died. But I fell in a clearing and when first I breached the surface of the earth I felt the light on my striving buds just as I felt the worm-rich moisture on my roots below. I thought, this land is good, and I will flourish here.
Now I am small but I cut a dashing figure in the dimness of the wood. My companions are ash, elm and hawthorn, but already I know I am a prince among them. I reach towards the canopy where the light slits through, fresh with ambition. My adolescent leaves grow thick.
For the most part I have only the beasts of the wood come to pay me tribute, but from time to time the people of the parish come too. They bring their cows and pigs to graze, the pigs rooting for acorns and the cows tearing at clusters of grass. A child in a dirty jerkin who should be tending his mother’s cow likes to come and bat at my leaves, in a sort of fun. I sway merrily in response, bouncing to and fro like a gleeman’s dance. The shadowed old giants above us look down disapprovingly, but my branches are elastic with vigour and I pay them no heed.
One day as the child is playing with me, the cow wanders off. I am not tall enough to see where it went, and neither is the child. He panics, runs about the wood, stirring up the leaves that would have allowed him to follow its tracks. Then he runs off back to the village at Gods-home to pray help from his mother, or forgiveness. I don’t see him after that.
Beneath my boughs, a-quiver with wind, year of our Lord 1072
The Frenchmen came, with their strangely-cut linens and their heavy swords. They slice through the land like a bolt of lightning, upturning the old order. Through the forest we whisper their coming on the falling leaves and in the blowing of a chill wind.
The first thing they do in their generosity is to give us a Duke. We had a thegn before, so a Duke seems not so different. But this one’s title did not come from his keeping of fully five hides of land, church and kitchen, bellhouse and burh-gate-seat; nor has he earned it from faring thrice across the sea, as the merchant-thegns did, since as far as I can tell, he has crossed the sea only once, with William, and has no intention of returning. Instead, he turns the old system on its head; he takes his Duke-name and uses it to claim land for himself instead of the other way around. He and his countrymen have drawn a line on a map of the county and he has pointed to one part and said, this is mine. And that part was here.
He makes the serfs pay a tax, not a tithe on their yield, but a charge to use the land itself; whether rain or shine, plenty or famine, they must meet the tax, or be thrown out of their holdings. We sway in concern at this news, for many of the people of Gods-home are our friends, and we fear what the winter has in store for them, and for us.
Beneath my boughs, sparkling with rain, year of our Lord 1203
From the tallest of my branches a heron might just crane its neck to see the wall. It slices a fine line about the forest, from the river all the way up to the outskirts of the village, all about the place that is now the Duke’s estate.
Strange, that a wall should have such power; for it’s not tall or imposing, no more than three feet high, built cleverly with stones that fit just so. It might stop a cow or a deer but should pose no trouble for the people, who are wily and would climb the walls of the manor straight upwards if they put their minds to it.
But the wall seems not to be built entirely of stone. There must be a magic spell the Duke has put on it, built from words writ upon pieces of paper in the courthouse, that keeps the people out, for none cross. Where they used to bring their cattle now they no longer come to visit.
Instead, there are the deer. There used to be deer when I was young, but they were few in number and flighty, kept in check by the people and the threat of wolves. Now, husbanded by the Duke’s keepers, they own the land and with it the right to make use or misuse of it as they see fit.
They strip away our bark, damaging the heartwood, and many a young tree I’ve seen wither and die from the damage deer do. I am old enough to be safe, but still it hurts as they tear at me.
Fear not – for the wolves are here, the ones who rule the land, here comes the Duke’s hunt.
Beneath my boughs, entwined with rope, year of our Lord 1355
My love is slender and my love is sweet; her needles carpet the forest floor like a lady’s laughter fills a room. The scent of her sap fills the air when it rains. From whence she came I do not know; perhaps a pine-cone fell from a peddler’s pack one summer day, as he walked the road to market; perhaps a stork or pelican flying south for the winter was carrying her in its talons and dropped her. In the winter, when I and all my neighbours have shed our leaves and our branches draw naked lines on the sky, her boughs alone are ever green.
So too is the green the man wears who slips over the wall in the dead of night holding a bag and a bow. He must be some sort of hedge-witch or cunning-man that has defeated the word-spell that keeps everyone else out.
He steps through the forest carefully and quietly, trying not to wake a living thing. I am awake, though, and I watch as he takes up a place among my roots to notch his bow. His clothes, all green, are strange, not like the villagers wear, and his skin dark.
But look – he is not the only one on the hunt. Can you see the keeper hiding behind the trunk of my love? He is even quieter, because he has been waiting since sundown. He knew the man in green would come and laid the trap for him into which the man in green has walked.
My love sighs in sorrow and I reach out to comfort her as the breeze ripples through our branches.
A single roe buck treads the moonlit canopy. Deer sleep only briefly before moving on, so it will be searching for another place to rest. The man in green draws back the bowstring.
Then – thwack! Something screams. It is the man in green. He has a bolt growing from his shoulder like a sapling, and his blood is black in the moonlight. The deer flees. Out comes the keeper holding a heavy crossbow, who places the man in green under arrest. “Filthy gypsy,” he mutters as he drags the wounded man away.
The trial is over quickly. The Duke is magistrate as well as petitioner. He sits in his judge’s seat, high above the man in green and the rest of the congregation.
I am the land, the Duke says. Who trespasses my land, betrays me.
They take him out of the courthouse and up the drive towards the Duke’s house. But they veer off into the wood, towards me. There is a big group of them, the Duke, his men, the keeper, the officials of the court holding the man in green down, and all the village come to watch, even the priest. Already a man is here tying a rope from my boughs. Perhaps he was a sailor – the knot is tight and holds true.
The crowd roars as they lead him up the steps to the rope. The priest says a few words. He has hardly finished when the keeper kicks away the steps.
Beneath my boughs, heavy with snow, year of our Lord 1576
She comes often to sit with her back against my trunk, hands wrapped in squirrel-furs against the cold. She caresses my roots idly. I offer her peace, though she seems distracted.
At first she came to hunt, and her family with her. Then her brother was caught by the keepers, and taken away. Over the treetops I saw him tried for stealing the Duke’s venison, and chained in the village square until he froze to death.
Now it is just her. Still she comes.
She sets traps, tidy as a goodwife’s stitching, and conceals them both from the squirrels and from the keepers. She no longer tries to catch deer, perhaps because of the memory of her brother. But she takes anything else instead: rats, voles, a badger, even a curious fox. She kills them quick and cleanly with a knife and hides them in a bundle as she makes her way back towards the fence.
But odd days before she checks the traps she takes companionship with me, for which I am grateful. It is quiet in the woods except for when the Duke’s hunt rides through, all a-calling. Hers is a calmer presence.
One day, as she sits beneath my boughs, we hear the baying of dogs. The Duchess is out riding with her ladies and their retinue. Abruptly she bolts to her feet like a startled vixen. She looks to and fro. The hounds are close – she won’t make it as far as the fence.
I remember the man in green swinging from my branches, to and fro, to and fro.
I loose an acorn from a low branch. It falls and hits her right on the crown of her skull. She looks upward, eyes wide. Then her eyes light up. She foists one leg up, then another, wedging her foot into a knot in my trunk. Soon she’s high in my branches. Though my leaves are all gone for the winter, my branches are thick. If she’s quiet, she’ll stay hidden.
Before long the hounds arrive, and at their heels the ladies atop their horses. The hounds are quick to smell her and stand about my roots barking up at her. But the Duchess and her ladies don’t pay them any heed, are here for each others’ company, not to hunt in earnest. A dark-haired Comtessa, the Duchess’s bosom friend who is visiting from the Continent, is asking the Duchess passionately about her husband, about whether the rumours are true, and the Duchess is evading answering.
Then I feel her tense as the Duchess dismounts her horse. She wants something out of her saddlebags, though really she wants rid of the Comtessa whose questions she finds tiring. A lady-in-waiting offers her a hand but the Duchess waves her aside, shoos the others away. They walk their horses a little way towards the stream, call over the dogs, give the Duchess some space.
Then the woman in my branches slips, just a little.
It is the cold which has numbed her hands and made her knees weak; she stumbles only briefly, but it’s enough to kick some snow to the ground, to make the Duchess look up. She freezes with her glove half-on and the two women lock eye contact.
Here we are, the three of us, in the black wood all alone.
The Duchess, very slowly, draws her hand from the glove.
She places her long finger, white as snow, to her lips.
Then in a fluid motion she mounts her horse and rides off to rejoin the others.
Beneath my boughs, sticky with sap, year of our Lord 1610
According to the people in the village, the young Duke is acquiring a reputation for hot-headedness. His late father was not loved, but he was respected; and though his son has his golden hair, he lacks his father’s ability to placate the people of the parish with a well-chosen word or a well-timed boon.
To cap it all off, he is hardly ever here; he spends his summers in Oxford or London, and when he comes back it is in the arms of a new woman who becomes the subject of much speculation in the village. It is rumoured that he has gambling debts which bit by bit are hollowing out the grand house from the inside out, moving him to sell the silverware from the dressers, the tapestries from the walls, the gilt-leaf manuscripts that his great-grandfather took from Gosham Abbey when he seized it at the old King’s behest. Soon there will be nothing in there but his grandmother, the dowager Duchess, and they joke that he is looking for a way to sell her too.
Well, here he comes, his carriage rolling up the drive, pulled by four fine black stallions that he certainly cannot afford. The man inside sways too much with the motion of the carriage, looks ill – perhaps he is drunk. (Truly a man must be in a wretched state to have his morality questioned by a tree.) Or perhaps he is just travel-addled. But then they turn the corner towards the house and I don’t find out.
Over the next few days changes begin to be made clear in the estate. Much of the household are dismissed as superfluous to requirements and can be seen walking back up the long drive, clutching all their possessions to their chests, morose. The cards must have been against him this time, whispers the wind in our leaves.
What surprises us more is when the workmen arrive with axes. The young Duke waves wildly about, gesticulating to them. He speaks of improving the land, improving its yield that it might make itself useful at last. Now they are standing in the wood and we peer down at them with dread in our hearts.
The Duke gestures randomly and his hand finds itself pointing to me, to my heart. That one, he says. Start there.
Instantly a workman is there with a heavy axe. He looks up and down my height, his eyes full of calculations. He waves to his companions to move clear. Then he places a foot on one of my roots, readies his axe, hefts it carefully, not without love, and with a tremendous effort he swings the axe directly into my trunk.
From nowhere a voice commands the Duke. Like a green-veined sapling, it is weak and strong at the same time. He turns and it is his grandmother the Duchess, who is striding across the forest floor to meet him, furious. She strides right up to the workman with the axe and slaps him in the face. He stumbles, leaving the axe embedded in my trunk. The Duchess shouts at him and he comes back to grab the handle, wrestles it out. Sap weeps from my wound, but the mark is hardly big enough for a child’s hand.
The Duchess is admonishing at her grandson with the fury of a thousand storms. Vandal, she shouts; have you no respect? The Duke is trying to placate her, but he is reduced to a schoolboy. Our family’s future rests upon this, mama – it is our very birthright I am working to protect. Without it our house will wither and die.
She says, look about you, this is your birthright.
He says, I am the land. If I cannot make use of this land, it is of no use to anyone.
She sighs, and for a moment she is the young woman on the horse again, one glove half off. In years to come the workmen who were there will tell each other that she is obsessed with me because it was beneath my boughs that she met her love, and they will be right.
Take them all, she says, but not this one.
And so watch the axes swing as one, through ash and elm and hawthorn, all around me; watch them cut holes through to the sky, the bodies of my friends fall to the ground one by one. Listen for the slow creak of fir as they bury their axes in the body of my love and she falls screaming to the ground.
Beneath my boughs, blackened with soot, year of our Lord 1791
The light is overwhelming and comes from all sides; there is no escape from it. But the meadow has its own beauty that I knew not in the wood. A thousand different types of insect hum happily in the summer dusk, hovering over the grass, landing on my trunk, which gives my aged boughs happiness.
The sheep bring less joy. They crop the grass so the insects go elsewhere, and like the deer they chew at my bark, though I am old now and don’t really care, and they find the taste woody and dry. Their slit-barred eyes quiver as they survey the meadow, and me, and the dog that the keeper trains to bring them in. We coexist, but I know this land is theirs now.
From here I can see the Duke’s house for the first time. The first Duke built it and I know they whispered it was a thing to behold. But now I can see its entirety and it is far larger than I knew. When the dowager Duchess’s father was Duke, he grew the east and north wings with even more vigour than I did growing from the forest floor, funded by his friendship with the King and the spoils of the Abbey’s dissolution. Now it sprawls, from the straight-standing facade that overlooks the valley, to the gaggle of outbuildings, stables and staff-houses that nestle out of sight. Visitors coming up the drive gasp in awe and joy to behold it. The new Duke smiles each time they do this, because the appearance of things being in their just places is what pleases his heart more than anything else.
And he is a canny one, this Duke. His plans to build are even more impressive than the last. For he understands that to build is not the expression of plenty, but an investment. Improving the land will reap its own rewards, when carefully husbanded. He is the one who will spin straw into profit.
He has them dig a quarry just out of sight of the house, at the furthest corner of the estate, just over the wall from the poorhouse that he begrudgingly allowed them to build for the moral improvement of the parish. I don’t see it but I hear it, and so do all the birds in the sky, who chatter unhappily at the noise. The quarry grows, eating into the hillside until it is almost hollowed out.
Then the real work begins. In the hollow of the clay-wet quarry they lay foundations for a grand house, with tall walls reaching to the sky. But when it breaches the hilltop and I see it for the first time I see they neglected to build windows! The eccentricity of it is charming.
They bring in boatloads of coal and experts from Birmingham, who arrive on the canal holding measuring devices of a hundred shapes in blown glass through which the world appears irreparably distorted. The clay they pulled from the hill they set into the furnace and work it until it is unrecognisable. Now watch the steady stream of objects emerge from its maw. Pots, and plates, and cups; cones and cubes and cylinders, a veritable geometry lesson proceeding from the furnace, for what purposes nobody knows, but the engineer takes one and eyes it, satisfied, and says something about the impact of gun-powder. The Duke nods and goes to write a letter to his friend, the Governor, to say that his order has been fulfilled and will be on the next boat to Bombay.
Into the air rises the coal-smoke which settles on my leaves, turning black the green.
Beneath my boughs, crown’d with sunlight, year of our Lord 1981
They come at dawn, climbing the wall with ease, helping each other over; men, women and children all, in plastic anoraks and carrying bags full of food and hot tea in Thermoses. They carry signs which they have painted themselves in garages and on kitchen tables. Though they all live less than a day’s walk away (not that many measure distances so, not any more), none have set foot in my meadow in their lives. Children look around wide-eyed and gawp at the manor nestled in the hill, only just visible through the morning mist. There is a carnival atmosphere, betrayed only in passing by the heavy looks exchanged by the adults in charge.
One by one they settle down around my trunk. A mum in dungarees leans to her child and tells it about me, points out a dove’s nest right at the top of my canopy, and a squirrel who looks down on them in surprise, and a knot that looks like the dowager Duchess’s face.
Look, says the mum. This is the oldest tree in the county. The Gosham Oak. See how its limbs are so pale they’re almost grey? It’s old, very old, but still alive after all these years. Nobody knows how old it is. When it was young, King Arthur rode through these woods, and Robin Hood on a holiday from Sherwood Forest, and before them Boudica, and the giants.
Don’t be silly, Mummy, says the child. No such thing as giants. You mean dinosaurs.
As the sun boils off the mist it reveals not only the manor in all its glory, and the summerhouse, and the folly Venetian grotto, and the ruins of the clay-pit, but also the diggers. They have been parked on the drive all night, out of sight of the house, but close at hand, ready to begin. Now the construction crew arrives on site and before they have even had a chance to start the JCBs they see the army of people sitting about my trunk, playing games and shouting. They send for the Duke, who is furious.
What the hell are you doing, he says. How dare you violate my property. I’ll have you all thrown in jail.
Some of the children are still playing but others have come over in fear and are being held by their parents while they are pleading their case. The golf course is unlawful, they say. It violates the code of responsibility you have to us, your constituents, your neighbours, the fellow citizens of Planet Earth, fellow enjoyers of this land.
I am the land, he says. I’ll do with it as I damn please, as is my legal right. Now get the hell out of here.
They argue for a long time while the JCB drivers mill about awkwardly. Eventually the police arrive, a van full of them. They bring a loudhailer and cannisters of tear gas. They proclaim that this is all unnecessary and a peaceful resolution can be reached if everybody acts reasonably. But the hippies won’t budge.
An adolescent, chasing a sibling around the van in fun, knocks into a police officer and is wrestled to the ground by three of their colleagues. As they bend her arm about her back I hear something crack like a dead branch.
Then it all falls apart. The hippies scatter like sheep, panic-eyed. The police run after them, amateurish sheepdogs in black and white, occasionally catching one and not quite being sure what to do next. One police finds a box full of firelighters and matches in someone’s bag and starts waving it around shouting about arson. A child who climbed the bough from which they hung the man in green sits there weeping because it can’t get down and none of the adults are paying any attention any more.
And then it is over as quickly as it began; a crowd of sad, smelly hippies staring sadly from the back of the police van as it drives back up the drive; others being herded out by estate staff, kids and all. Behind them they have not had a chance to pick up their rubbish so the ground is strewn with greaseproof paper, sweet wrappers, newspapers and sad posters. As it leaves, one child bends over to the ground and pockets an acorn.
The diggers close in. Just as they prise the first of my roots from the earth, the sun bursts through the clouds to cast my uppermost leaves in a glorious halo of gold.