The Wood Beyond the World

Golden Walter

Walter is heir to Bartholomew Golden, a headman of the Goldings and one of the richest merchants of Langton on Holm, and by all reckoning a lucky young man — except that his bride of six months has turned from him to a worse man, and her voice in the house makes his heart beat even as her hatred makes the streets loathsome. He is no roisterer and no brawler, but courteous, forbearing, and a perilous foe in a fray, and it is precisely this gentleness that makes his restlessness so sharp. His departure in the Katherine sets the whole tale in motion: a young man who has never wanted for anything, now wanting only to be somewhere else.

The Maid

The Maid serves the Lady of the wood as a bonded servant, and the iron ring she wears is a token that she belongs to her Mistress and may not be parted from her. When Walter first sees her, she blushes and hangs her head like a shamefaced girl, yet the Lady's open fondling of her — the kiss, the bared shoulder, the swept skirt — reads less as affection than as a claim staked before a stranger. She matters because Walter, already entangled, cannot keep his eyes from her, and because whatever she truly feels must be guessed at rather than heard.

The Lady

The Lady commands the strange land beyond the wood and holds Walter as her squire, speaking to him with an openhearted warmth that leaves him shamefaced and half convinced his earlier fears were a dream. Before the Bears she stands amid blossoms that knit themselves fresh about her, and the whole folk rise and shout and smite their shields, so plainly is she the heart of the year's increase. Yet she is also the Mistress who keeps the Maid in thrall and warns Walter, with a laugh, that other eyes look on her fair-ankled servant — a jealousy dressed as sport that makes her the story's central peril.

The Old Man

He dwells in a straw-thatched house under a wooded mound with orchard trees and a few sheep, the only man between the sea and the dwellings of the Bears, and trades them calves and cider for pelts and lumps of copper. He warns the shipmaster plainly that the Bears are manlike in body but miscreants in soul, worshipping no god he can name — only a certain woman, with mickle worship. His talk gives Walter and the crew their first true map of the land ahead, and his quiet dread of the wild folk colors everything that follows.

Bartholomew Golden

Walter's father, a wealthy merchant who dies early in the story.

Arnold Penstrong

Arnold commands the Katherine and is the practical counterweight to Walter's restless grief, the man who grins at the old hermit's talk of manlike bears and asks the blunt questions a merchant's son is too courteous to put. He is loyal without being sentimental, and his presence aboard gives Walter's flight a shape: not a romantic quest but a working voyage with a master, a crew, and a course. When the ship reaches the green plain and the little house by the river, it is Arnold who decides they will at least go ashore for tidings and refreshment.