A single stone, set near the edge of a woodland glade. A couple of cars were parked in the little gravel car park nearby and she could see their occupants standing by the small monument.

'The Rufus stone,' she said.

'Ah. I've heard of that,' said the pilot.

Few of the hundreds of thousands who went to wander or camp in the New Forest each year failed to pay the curious site a visit. The stone marked the spot where, according to the nine-hundred-year-old tale, King William Rufus, the Norman king - called Rufus on account of his red hair - had been killed by an arrow in mysterious circumstances while hunting deer. After Stonehenge, it was probably the most famous standing stone in southern England.

'Wasn't there a tree there once?' asked the pilot. 'The arrow glanced off it and hit the king?'

'That's the story.' Dottie saw another car make its way into the gravel car park. 'Only it seems,' she said, 'that he wasn't shot there at all.'

THE HUNT

1099

The deer started. She trembled for a moment, then listened.

A grey-black spring night still lay like a blanket over the sky. Along the edge of the wood, in the damp air, the peaty scent of the heath beyond mingled with the faint mustiness of last year's fallen leaves. It was quiet, as if the whole island of Britain were waiting for something to happen in the silence before the dawn.

Then suddenly, a skylark started singing in the dark. Only he had seen the hint of paleness on the horizon.

The deer turned her head, not satisfied. Something was approaching.

Puckle made his way through the wood. There was no need to move silently. As his feet brushed the leaves or snapped a twig, he might have been mistaken for a badger, wild pig or some other denizen of the Forest.

Away on his left, the screech of a tawny owl careened through the dark tunnels and sweeping arches of the oaks.

Puckle: was it his father, or his grandfather, or someone further back who had been known by the name of Puckle? Puck: it was one of those strange old names that grew, mysteriously, out of the English landscape. Puck Hill: there were several along the southern shores. Perhaps the name came from that. Or perhaps it was a diminutive: little Puck. Nobody knew. But having got one name, the family had never seemed to bother with any more. Old Puckle, young Puckle, the other Puckle: there was always a certain vagueness about which was which. When he and his family had been kicked out of their hamlet by the servants of the new Norman king, they had wandered across the Forest and finally set up a ramshackle camp by one of the streams that ran down to the River Avon at the Forest's western edge. Recently they had moved several miles south to another stream.