"Nothing of importance, sire," answered the young man, retreating rapidly.

"We were speaking of the phantom in the Marches forest," volunteered Merian. "Have you heard of this, sire?"

"Hmph!" puffed the baron. "Phantom or no, it cost me five horses."

"The creature ate your horses?" wondered Merian in amazement.

"I did not say that," replied the baron. Smiling, he slid closer to her on the bench. "I lost the horses, it is true. But I am more inclined to the view that, one way or another, the soldiers were careless."

"What about the missing footman?" asked the young man.

"As to that," replied the baron, "I expect drink or too much sun will account for his tale." He paused to reconsider. "Still, I grant that he was a solid enough fellow. Whatever the explanation, the incident has much altered his mind."

Merian shivered at the thought of something wild and freakish arising in the forest the very forest she and her family had passed through on the way to Hereford.

"But come, my lady," said the baron with a smile, "I see I have upset you. We will not speak of such abhorrent things anymore. Here!" He reached for a bowl containing a pale purple substance. "Have you ever tasted fruinenty?"

"No, never."

"Then you must. I insist," said the baron, handing her his own silver spoon. He pushed the bowl toward her. "I think you will like it."

Merian dipped the tip of the spoon into the mushy substance and touched it to her tongue. The taste was cool and sweet and creamy. "It is very good," she said, handing back the spoon.

"Keep it," said the baron, closing his hand over hers. "A little gift," he said, "for gracing this celebration with your, ah, presence lumineuse- your radiant presence."

Merian, feeling the heat of his touch on her skin, thanked him and tried to withdraw her hand. But he held it more tightly. Leaning closer, he put his mouth to her ear and whispered, "There is so much more I would give you, my lady."

The knight called Guiscard, in command of eight doughty men-at-arms, ordered his troops to follow the tracks made by the missing oxen. Most of the hoofprints, as expected, led back toward the valley in the direction the wagons had come. A few, however, led out from the pen and down the hill to the nearby stream. "Here, men! To me!" shouted Guiscard as soon as he was alerted to this discovery. "We have them!"

When the searchers had assembled once more, they mounted their horses and set off together on the trail of the missing oxen, pursuing the track as it followed the stream, passing down around the foot of the castle work and behind the shoulder of the next hill. Once out of sight of the builders' camp, the trail turned inland, heading straight up over the hill and toward the forest a short distance to the northeast.

The searchers mounted the brow of the hill and started out across the wide grassy hilltop toward the leaf-dark woodland, blue in the distance and shimmering in the heat haze of summer. The tracks were easy to follow, and the soldiers loped easily through the long grass, slowing only as they approached the beeches, elms, and finger-thin fir trees that formed a protective bulwark at the edge of the forest.

Passing between the trunks of two large elms, the trail of the missing oxen entered the wood as through a timber gate. The light was somewhat poorer inside, but the beasts left good, well-shaped prints in the soft earth-and, occasionally, soft splats of droppings-which allowed the knight and his men to proceed without difficulty. A few hundred paces inside the wood, the ox trail joined a deer run, and the hoofprints of the four heavy-footed beasts mingled with those of their swift-running cousins.

The path traced the undulating hillside, rising and falling with the rock escarpment beneath it, until it descended into a deep-riven glen with a brook at the bottom. Here the trail turned to follow the trickle of water as it flowed out from the forest interior, eventually joining the stream that passed by the foot of the castle. They pushed on, and after a time, the banks became steeper and rock lined as the brook sank lower into the folded earth, dwindling to little more than a blue-black rivulet at the bottom of a ravine of shattered grey shale.

The searchers moved deeper into the forest, where the trees were older and bigger and the undergrowth denser. Sunlight came in dappled fits and starts, striking green glints from every leafy surface. When the search party came to the top of a ridge, Guiscard halted his men and paused a moment to survey the path ahead. The air was still and humid, the trail dark and close grown. The knight ordered his companions to dismount and proceed on foot. "The thieves cannot have gone much farther," Guiscard told his men. "The only grazing is behind us now. They will not want to stray too far from it."

"Who says the thieves intend to graze them?" wondered one of the men-at-arms.

"Valuable beasts like those?" scoffed the knight. "What else would they do with them?"

The man shrugged, then spat. "Eat them."

Guiscard glowered at the soldier and said, "Move on."

The trail pursued its way down the slope of the ridge beneath trees of ever-increasing size and age. The upper branches grew higher from the ground, lifting the roof of foliage and dimming the sunlight with a heavy canopy of glowing green leaves. On and on they went, and when the knight stopped again, the wood had become dark and silent as an empty church. The only sound to be heard was the rustling and chirping of small birds, unseen in the upper branches high above.

Thorny shrubs-blackberry and bilberry-grew man high on each hand; a few hundred paces farther along, the trail pinched down to a constricted corridor before disappearing into a tangled and impenetrable bank of brambles. As they neared the wall of thorns, they saw that the narrow trail turned sharply to the left. The oxen had passed between two overlapping hedges; the animals had been led single file in order to squeeze through, and there were tufts of tawny hair caught on some of the lower thorns. The silence of the forest had given way to the noisy chafe and chatter of crows emanating from the other side of the bramble bank. Easing cautiously through the thorny hedge, the searchers entered a clearing. The racket of the birds had risen to a piercing cacophony.

Gripping their lances, the soldiers crept out from the thorn hedge and into a small, sunlit meadow ringed about with birch and rowan trees. In the centre of the clearing was a roiling, boiling black mound of birds: hundreds of them. Crows, ravens, choughs, jays, and others were fighting over something on the ground, and still more were circling and diving in the air above this squirming, living heap of feathers, wings, and beaks.

The air was loud with their shrieks and heavy with a sweet, turgid stink.

"Drive them off," Guiscard ordered, and four of the men-at-arms rushed the mound of birds, swinging their lances before them and yelling as they ran.

The birds took flight at the sudden appearance of the men and fled squawking and screeching into the sky; most settled again in the branches of the surrounding trees, where they continued to shriek their outrage at being driven from their repast.

The birds gone for the moment, the knight and the rest of the men approached the mound where their four comrades were now standing still as stones, enthralled by the heap before them.

"Out of the way," ordered Guiscard, striding up. The footman stepped aside, and the knight took one look at the mound before him and almost vomited.

Before him were what appeared to be the entrails and viscera of the missing oxen-artfully heaped into a single, glistening purple mound of rotting slime. Rising from the centre of this putrefying mass was a long wooden stake, and on the stake was the severed head of an ox. The skin and most of the flesh had been ripped from the skull to reveal the bloody bone beneath. Two of the hapless animal's hooves were stuffed in its hanging mouth, and its tail protruded absurdly from one of its ears, and jutting from the naked eyeballs of the freshly flensed skull were four long, black raven feathers.