Harry de Moraville studied English literature at the University of York and acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He has been a professional actor and an English literature and drama teacher. He is now a writer working on a collection of short stories about duty, self-expression and our relationship with the natural world.

Lady of the Wood

Timothy stood muttering in the dark hall, face creased in concentration, waiting for eight o’clock. When the clock struck, he removed his cap, exhaled, pushed open the door and entered the study, his footsteps lost in the deep pile of the carpet. He tried not to look at the shelves of glass jars and cases that stared down from the walls like an audience. Slimy shapes, lurking limbs and wings quivered in the firelight. Once in the centre of the room he pulled himself up straight, imagining books balanced on his head. To his left, a bay window reached up from a studded leather bench to the ceiling. Stealing a glance, he saw himself in the black glass, alone and alert, cap in hand. The clock ticked, a log settled in the grate. In front of him was an immense desk where an empty picture frame stood among neat stacks of paper, arcane, glinting instruments and heavy books. Sitting at the desk, upright, his back to the boy, was a man wearing a black waistcoat over a white, sharply collared shirt. His pen kept scratching as he spoke. 

‘Field larkspur?’ The voice was brittle, as though it hadn’t been used all day. 

‘Consolida regalis,’ said the boy, counting off one in his head. 

‘Salix babylonica?’ 

He paused. Babylonica. Hanging gardens. He saw branches dangling over water. 

‘Ummm. Weeping willow?’

‘Speak up.’ The pen kept scratching. 

‘Weeping willow, sir.’ 

‘Petrocelinum crispum?’

Timothy paused again. He longed to undo his collar. The shapes in the jars loomed over him.  

‘I…’

The room held its breath. 

‘I don’t know, sir.’ 

The black coat stiffened. The pen made a swift, clear mark. The boy swallowed and ran his fingers over his palms, willing himself to focus. But each misstep with its promise of pain increased the pressure and made the next answer harder to access. By the end of the interrogation his pale face was glazed in sweat. He’d lost count of his mistakes. Unspeaking, the figure at the desk rose, his shadow mountainous on the study wall as he withdrew a slim cane from a desk drawer and rolled up his sleeves. The boy kept his eyes closed throughout. When it was over, blinking back tears, he bowed his head and said, ‘Sorry, father.’ As he left, he looked at the window again, longing to press his palm to the dew cool glass. Through the reflection he could make out a distant line of trees, a deeper dark within the darkness. 

The following morning was unsettled as he plodded across the lawn, mushy leaves sticking to his boots. He pulled the collar of his duffle coat tight with one hand, the other holding Flora and Fauna of the British Isles. A magpie landed on the grass beside him, then another. They always seemed nosy. Peeking into others’ business. Pica pica. He sniffed and looked over at the house, wishing to be inside with a detective novel or his flute. Brundish, the gardener, appeared on the terrace wheeling a barrowful of nettles, his white beard wafting before him. He returned Timothy’s wave with a nod. At the edge of the lawn Timothy joined a rough stone path beneath two hawthorn trees whose twisting branches met in the middle. Walking under them, he scrunched up his face for a moment, then said, ‘Crataegus monogyna.’ The hawthorns wove into hedgerows that funnelled him towards the walled kitchen garden. Planning to study the herbs that had caught him out the previous evening, he read his reference book while walking, and the toe of his boot caught an uneven stone. He tumbled forwards, broke the fall with his welted hand and yelped in pain. A hedgerow rippled and a tiny yellow bird with black and white tail markings shot out of the top. He twisted himself to keep the bird in view but it was gone. His hand throbbed. The book was muddy. His lip quivered. 

‘What the heck you doing?’ said a voice, startling Timothy, who looked around, wiping his nose on his sleeve. The hedges looked blankly back. 

‘Up here!’ 

There was a girl perched on the wall, seven, eight feet off the ground, her bare feet kicking back and forth. Despite the distance between them Timothy shuffled back on his bottom. He’d heard enough tales of gipsy children. 

‘I won’t bite!’ she said with a brisk laugh. He squinted up at her, shielding his eyes with his book. 

‘What are you doing up there?’ he said at last, trying to sound brave. 

‘What are you doing down there?’ she shot back. ‘Reading in the woods!’ 

She was teasing him, Timothy realised; he was used to that. He would ignore her. He dusted himself down, jammed his cap on his head and continued alongside the wall towards the herb garden. All the while, however, he was aware of the girl shadowing him from above.

‘Really, what are you doing?’ she said, more kindly this time. ‘Maybe I can help.’ 

‘You’re not allowed up there,’ said Timothy, refusing to look up. He glared into the undergrowth instead, raking it for a flash of yellow feathers. 

‘Whatever you’re searching for, it would be easier from here.’ The teasing note was gone. He looked up. She wore dark trousers rolled up to the knee, a greeny brown shirt bridged by braces and a rough worsted bag at her hip. At that moment the sun broke cover and spilled over the top of the wall, catching a flow of amber hair. Timothy’s mouth went dry. 

‘Why do you dress like a boy?’ he managed to ask. 

‘I don’t dress like anything,’ she snorted. ‘If I had it my way I wouldn’t dress at all.’ Pretending he hadn’t heard this, Timothy turned his reddening face back to the hedgerows. ‘Come on,’ the girl continued, ‘there’s an easy way up. Follow me.’ 

A little way along, above a tangle of ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) and fluffy parapets of wild carrot (Daucus carota), was a step where a stone had crumbled from the wall. The girl readjusted her position and craned down an arm. 

‘Get your foot in there,’ she said, ‘and take my hand.’ 

Timothy glanced back at the house. Brundish had disappeared round the corner and his father’s study curtains were drawn. He tucked his book into his satchel, positioned his foot in the niche and reached up. Without thinking, he presented his bad hand, which the girl seized. He yelled in pain but clung on, and, confused, she did the same, so when Timothy, eyes bulging, pulled backwards, the girl lost her balance and fell. They both ended up in the ragwort bed, one sore and embarrassed, the other rolling around laughing. 

She sat up, wiped her eyes and asked, ‘Why did you do that?’ 

He hid his hand in his pocket, stared at the ground. She stopped laughing. Her voice became gentle and serious. 

‘Can I see?’ 

Slowly, he raised and opened his fist. As she extended her fingers he flinched but didn’t pull away and she traced the air over the wound. She had a sharp nose, he saw, turned up slightly at the end. A constellation of freckles on either side. 

‘I know just the thing,’ she said suddenly, jumping to her feet. ‘Come on!’

She dived into the undergrowth, flitting through the brambles and bracken like light. He kept losing her. Burrs grappled his trousers, thorns raked his face, evil Latin names swam through his head. Eventually they were by the lake, the girl kneeling in a ditch marbled by roots. He stood over her as she snapped off several large, mottled green and purple leaves. 

‘Arctium lappa,’ he said under his breath. 

She produced a wooden pestle and mortar and some muslin from her bag and coddled the leaves into a paste, spitting into the mixture as she went. Then she stopped, eyed her work dubiously, said, ‘Wait there,’ and bounded off again, returning a minute later with a handful of bay leaves which she worked into the recipe. 

‘Laurus nobilis,’ he said, more confidently this time, hoping she’d hear. She looked up, brow furrowed, then spat once more into the bowl, made a satisfied sound and told him to hold out his hand. The poultice was slimy and cool. As she smoothed it on he felt vulnerable and strong all at once. 

‘Why do you do that?’ she said, her eyes focused on wrapping the muslin. 

‘Do what?’ 

She tied off a knot, sat back and looked at him. ‘Those strange names you give everything. What’s the point?’ 

‘It’s Latin,’ he said defensively. ‘It’s the way plants and animals are classified. It’s official.’ 

‘I see,’ she chuckled. ‘But why do you need to know it?’

He was about to ask what an uneducated girl knew about anything, but when he met her green eyes he saw that they were guileless, open. And so he told her about his father, the famous naturalist, about his discovery of a beetle that balled up when threatened, impersonating a stone. It was his beetle, Coleoptera Carii, Carr’s beetle. He told her about the long Latin name that his father had first mentioned to him in a draughty hospital corridor two years ago. How that long name had carried off his mother and altered his father. How the nightly tests started soon afterwards. As the words poured out, he felt a weight shifting within him and when he had finished the world seemed quieter. The wind brushed the alders (Alnus glutinosa) at the lake’s edge. 

‘It’s not his beetle,’ said the girl after a while. ‘None of any of this,’ she took in the view with a sweep of her head, ‘is ours. And it’s not Latin neither. Don’t fill your head with that.’ 

‘But I have to,’ he said, in a higher pitch than he’d have liked. ‘I have to learn or…’

‘Learn?’ Her eyes flashed, hawk sharp. ‘Your father might know an awful lot. But he’s no idea what he can learn from the land. Nor do I, nor does anyone.’ 

They sat quietly for a moment, then Timothy ventured, ‘You must have names for things too?’ 

She nodded. ‘We do. Beggar’s Buttons are what’s soothing your hands, helped along by a little bay. But it’s what they do that matters. And I certainly don’t just mean what they do for us. Oh,’ she added, standing up. ‘And that yellow bird you saw earlier? The one that got you all of a fluster?’ His eyes widened. ‘That there is the Barley Bird.’

He extended his bandaged hand. ‘I’m Timothy Carr.’ 

‘Beth,’ she replied, smiling. ‘And I don’t need to shake your hand, Timothy Carr, seeing as I’ve already spat on it.’ Then she vanished through the trees. He sat there a little longer, watching the lake’s skin stretch and release with the clouds. A heron swam through the air, its grey wings fanning and folding as it settled among the lily pads. He watched it in silence. 

Later, the wind shrieked down the chimney as Timothy waited for the first question, flexing his hand behind his back. He’d removed the dressing, but even in those few hours it felt better. His father was hunched low over his work, scribbling. After perhaps a minute, Timothy wondered if he’d heard him come in. He cleared his throat and the back at the desk straightened, as though called to attention. Then the questions began and Timothy moved calmly through his memory, feeling less alone this time. He only got one wrong. 

That night the storm flung itself against the house as he lay with the sheets pulled up to his chin. Usually he read until his candle failed, but tonight his thoughts were outside. He could picture the trees straining at their roots like ship’s anchors, branches tearing the air. He saw the surface of the lake whipped into furrows, shoreline nests flooded, burrows hurriedly fled. He saw the jackdaws’ nests which studded the tops of the poplars flung to and fro, clinging on. His eyes were closed now, and through them he saw his father’s great greenhouse, whose frame was forged up north and transported down by train. Rounded iron arches rose to meet a ribbed dome, pinched at the top and crowned by a wrought iron beetle. He moved towards it through grass which contracted and released with the gusting wind. The silhouettes inside were monstrous: jagged ferns, snaking vines, giant spiky palms crowded the dark glass. He walked up the shallow flagstone steps to the door whose ornate filigree made him want to laugh. In slow motion his arm stretched for the handle and as he touched it the shadows inside began to boil and churn with the clouds above them. He heard a clean shattering of glass to his left and, turning, saw a tendril feeling its way through the crack. More glass smashed above him and a palm tree thrust through the dome, shedding leaves of glass. He staggered back. He could no longer make out individual breaks, plants were punching through the glass all over, binding themselves to the iron skeleton, pushing greedily out, rushing to meet the open air. As vines and creepers fastened on they twisted and tautened, wringing the structure like a towel, exploding the remaining panes into the night. Timothy felt a surge of joy. He threw back his head and laughed into the racing sky as the greenhouse shuddered and splintered and sank into the sea of green. 

Next day Timothy sensed a quiet patience in the woods as they recovered from the storm. Again Beth appeared out of nowhere, again she bandaged his hand, and this time they moved along the top of the wall together. She talked about the plants they could see, the birds they could hear. She showed him fungi, pointing out which ones nourish, which poison, which teach through expanding the mind. ‘Well, they all teach in one way or another,’ she said. He didn’t once reach for his book. 

Walking behind her, Timothy saw that Beth’s hair was plaited this time, the coppery knots and coils reminded him of Harvest Festival loaves. They sat eating blackberries, watching a weasel slink in and out of the masonry. She told him her full name, Beth Brundish. 

‘No, not his daughter, for goodness sake! His granddaughter.’ She had only recently moved into the gardener’s cottage. She had no parents. Timothy felt that he half understood. 

‘He’s not a bad man,’ he said after a pause. ‘My father I mean.’ She was silent. ‘It’s just. He only knows one way. He’s a naturalist. Natural history. That’s what he can teach me.’ Timothy thought of the jars on the walls in his father’s study, the insects in their solutions, neatly categorised, grotesque. As though reading his mind Beth’s face darkened. 

‘There’s nothing natural about collecting like that.’ 

He met her eye. ‘Or teaching like that,’ he said. ‘But,’ he went on, struggling with himself. ‘It’s about understanding. The more we understand about…’

‘No,’ she cut in. ‘It’s about control.’ He shrugged. 

‘A few miles from here,’ she went on, ‘Over the marshes, due north, there’s this pine forest and in it there are, were, these spreading beech trees. Foresters saw them as competition to the pine and chopped them down, one by one.’ She clenched a fist, swallowed. ‘But what they didn’t realise, see, is what the beech provided. And when they sawed into their precious pine, they found it weaker.’ 

‘And what about the other life the beeches supported?’ Timothy ventured. ‘Watsonalla cultraria, I mean, the hook tipped moth. And mice and voles. And the flowers that thrive under its canopy too, such as…’ 

‘The red orchid,’ she said. 

They dropped down from the wall, Beth catlike, Timothy in a heap, and walked through the trees. As they skirted the far side of the lake her pace slowed, she seemed pensive. 

‘Is everything alright?’ he asked, feeling grown up. 

She searched his face, then nodded to herself and said, ‘It’s getting late. Meet me here at five o’clock tomorrow.’ 

As he hurried back to the house his mind hurried with him. Crossing the terrace, he heard a gruff exclamation from one of the rose beds. Brundish knelt there, secateurs in hand. Unaware of anyone being there, he repeated the word  – which sounded rude – in his malty, pipe-smoker’s voice. 

‘Everything alright, Brundish?’ 

The old man registered Timothy’s presence. ‘Forgot m’gloves,’ he said, sighing like an old set of bellows. 

He was preparing to lever himself up when Timothy said, ‘I’ll fetch them for you Brundish. Where are they?’ 

The gardener sank back down. ‘Not the whippet I use t’be,’ he chuckled. ‘Thank you. Last place I set’m down,’ he scratched his cheek through his beard. ‘Was the green’ouse, if I recall.’

Timothy glanced at the clock as he trotted through the house, calculating that he’d just have time to help Brundish before getting ready for supper. He was glad to have an excuse for visiting the greenhouse, which was usually out of bounds. As he reached the door, however, he froze. A shadow was moving among the vegetation. He leapt to the side and dropped down below the level of the windows, pulse racing. Dimly, he got the sense that he’d been here before. He could hear something now, coming from inside: a sort of strangled wail, like an animal in pain. Slowly, his fingers on the ledge, he raised his head just enough to peek through the glass. Layers of leaves and stems and flowers came into focus. A small man was slumped amongst them on the floor, his head in his hands. The wailing rose and fell with his shoulders. Timothy watched, his breath fogging the pane. Eventually, with a final great heave, his father sat up and drew a handkerchief from his pocket. 

The events of the day clung to Timothy as he washed and changed for supper. He’d never seen his father like that, not in the hospital nor the churchyard. He unwound the muslin from his hand, and then suddenly remembered why he’d gone to the greenhouse in the first place. ‘Poor Brundish!’ he said out loud. Although, now he came to think about it, he couldn’t ever remember seeing the old gardener wearing gloves. 

The following day he met Beth at the appointed time and followed her across a tartan blanket of bracken. She didn’t flit ahead this time, there was a ceremony to her movements. The woods thickened, became unfamiliar. He knew that he was farther from the house than he’d been before. Eventually they reached a clearing where a sheer sided rock rose from the mossy ground. And there, growing from the cliff, a part of the rock, was a single silver birch tree with a dense beard of lichen that made it look ancient and wise. Its foliage was a confetti of brilliant yellow pennants. 

‘The Lady of the Wood,’ whispered Beth. Then she lay prone, pressing her ear to the moss as though tracking hoofbeats. Timothy felt like an intruder. Something was happening here that he didn’t yet understand. But he wanted to. So he settled down on the ground beside Beth and, shuffling into a comfortable position, found his shoulder against hers. He could sense her warmth as he closed his eyes. The moss smelt musky, subtly sweet. He listened to the rustling leaves, the chattering birds he tried not to identify. The twig snap of a squirrel. As his mind quietened he felt himself sinking into the forest floor, or rather it grew up through him, roots moving in both directions, fusing him with the soil. Then he heard a familiar voice, but not in his ears. She spoke within him and what she said was soothing and sad. There were different kinds of facts, he knew now. Those you can count and recite, and those that lodge themselves deeper and can only be felt. He had no idea how much time had passed, but when he opened his eyes the moon was a sideways smile in the sky, and Beth was holding his hand. 

He felt taller, walking back. He didn’t wipe his boots at the door or look at himself in the hall mirror. When he entered his father’s study it was past eight o’clock. His bare head was tousled, his knees caked in mud. He watched the moon through the window. 

‘Ardea cinerea.’

Timothy pictured the bird landing like mist on the water. He raised his chin and said nothing. 

‘Ardea cinerea?’ his father said again, a note of surprise in his voice. 

Timothy saw the grey heron flutter water droplets from its wings. And said nothing. 

The pen made its mark. 

‘Quercus rober.’ 

English oak. He was taking it easy on him. Still Timothy said nothing. He closed his eyes as his father, with increasing agitation, kept up the questioning. The names washed over Timothy, bringing with them images, smells and feelings which he savoured in silence. 

His father took the cane from its drawer slowly, playing for time. Timothy exposed his hand. He could sense Beth’s saliva on his skin, under it. His father walked towards him. This time Timothy kept his eyes open. The cane sliced through the air and Timothy closed his palm and caught it on impact, wrapping both hands around the wood. His father’s grey eyes looked down in astonishment, then, for the first time in a long time, they looked  into his son’s.

‘We’re going to be alright, father,’ said Timothy. ‘May I?’ 

His father swallowed and released his grip.  

Timothy looked down and smiled. He was holding a slender switch of silver birch.