The Girl Green as Elderflower by Randolph Stow Page B

not to think of his stomach. His open-air ploughboy’s face was sallow, and his fringe of hay-coloured hair damp with sweat.
    ‘Heave up! Heave up!’ shouted big Reynold, the owner of the boat, to his men. Then to the soldier he explained: ‘I don’t mean you, John. That warnt a very fortunate thing to say.’
    It was not indeed, and John, running for the side, puked long and painfully. As he choked, Reynold gave him a hard friendly slap on the back. ‘Keep an eye on it, boy,’ he advised. ‘If you see a little brown ring, thass your arsehole.’
    The men hauled on the net, calling to the herring: ‘Swim up! Swim up!’ When the rope was exhausted, they seized the meshes. Suddenly one of them yelled: ‘Reynold! Oh my Christ!’
    The sick young soldier was at first too absorbed in his internal miseries to pay much attention to the hubbub all around him. But Reynold’s voice, sharp with bewilderment, called ‘John!’ and he turned with indifferent obligingness to look at the tangle of net.
    Between and around the legs of the gaping men herring were escaping back into the sea. But the men had eyes only for what sprawled in the dank meshes, like a baby half struggled free from a shawl.
    The man was of strong, was even of beautiful build. His wet brown hair was curled, as was the beard of the same colour which all but hid his fine lips. His powerful chest was shaggy, and water trickled down it to the arrow-like line of hairs leading to the bush where his sex drooped lax and large.
    His face showed no expression, his eyes merely roving from one to another of the faces staring down at him. When they came to John, they paused. There was all at once a change, like a recognition, in that gaze of North Sea grey. The brown beard twitched, and then the wild man grinned, warmly, as white as shells.
    Through the afternoon mist Reynold, John and the wild man walked from the haven to the mound where the great keep, in all its splendour of newness, raised its three turrets and handsome conical roof over the marshes, the forests and the sea. A basket slung on Reynold’s broad back dripped saltily. The wild man’s hands were bound behind him. His eyes, though taking in everything, seemed incapable of surprise, and he walked easily, athletically, unconcerned. The great height of the keep impressed him no more than the fact of his capture out at sea.
    On the steps leading up to the door, under the raised portcullis, a young sentry was standing. Peering into the mist, he said: ‘That you, John? Proper boony, innit?’
    ‘Iss,’ said John. ‘Me and Reynold Fisher. And another chap.’
    The three passed into the vestibule, and the sentinel started and stared. ‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘Who’s that?’
    The wild man looked at the young sentry, and his sea-grey gaze grew fixed. The soldier was a dark youth, comely in a gypsy fashion, with long-cut black eyes and a shapely, thin-lipped mouth. There was humour in the mouth and the eyes, but humour which seemed to visit rather furtively. The wild man edged away from him, drawing closer to John.
    ‘He don’t like you, Robin,’ John said.
    ‘Fucking hell,’ the sentry said again. ‘He’s bollock-naked.’
    ‘He’s a wild man,’ big Reynold explained. ‘Our chaps net him in the sea.’
    ‘Fucking hell,’ said Robin, for the third time. ‘What are you going to do with him?’
    ‘Take him to the Constable,’ John said. ‘Do you know where he’s likely to be?’
    ‘In the lower hall,’ Robin said, and the flicker of a smile moved his secretive mouth. ‘Yeh, you take him up there, boy.’
    John and Reynold, the wild man between them, went single file up the steps, and entered the great round hall, where at the great table the Constable sat. He was in conversation with a second lieutenant, a leggy youth whose bony face had not yet settled into adulthood. They paid no attention to the new arrivals, but somebody else had done so. From the stone bench encircling the room