The road passed by a little glade with a stream babbling through it. I dismounted and led my destrier down to the bank, so he might drink while I washed the cuts on his flanks.
“Curse William,” I muttered as I dipped a corner of my cloak into the water and used it to sponge away the blood, “may he roast in the ovens of Hell for treating you so.”
I felt little remorse for William’s death. In life he was a monster who never showed me the slightest affection or even respect. He and his father made no secret of their contempt for my mother, whom they considered little better than a whore for her affair with Thomas Page.
I am blessed with keen senses. Something rustled in the trees beyond the stream, and I turned to shout a warning at Alan.
Too late. A red and black striped arrow whipped out of the forest like a giant wasp and hit him square in the chest.
The force of it jerked him off his feet. He sprawled in the dust, shot clean through the heart, and thrashed about horribly in his death-throes.
I froze in shock. One moment Alan was alive, and young, with the long road of his life spread before him. The next he was dead, snuffed out like a candle.
His horse whinnied in terror and bolted down the road. My destrier, trained to war as she was, remained calm. I stood by her, knee-deep in the stream, gaping foolishly at the second violent death I had witnessed in one morning.
The archer in the woods might have shot me down with ease, but I was saved by the appearance of nobility.
A rough, mocking voice rang out from the trees. “Step out of the water, if it pleases you, my lord, and throw that pretty sword onto the road. Leave the horse.”
“Slowly, now,” he added as waded back to the bank, “do as I say, or you’ll get one of my stingers in your kidneys.”
I climbed up the grassy verge onto the road, unclasped my sword-belt and let it fall. Then I raised my hands above my head.
Two men slunk out of the woods on the other side of the stream. Lean they were, like wolves, and their faces had a pinched, hollow-cheeked, hungry look. Bearded and sunburned, clad in faded green, each carried a yew bow as tall as themselves, and bore sheaves of painted arrows thrust into their belts.
“That’s a decent bit of horseflesh,” remarked the taller of them, leaning on his bow, “he’ll fetch a good price at market. Not sure about the owner, though. What do you reckon he’s worth, Will?”
“About six feet of English earth,” grunted his companion, “since he’s a tall lad.”
He drew an arrow from his belt. Terrified, I blurted out the first words that entered my head.
“I killed a man!” I yelped, “I’m an outlaw, or will be. Just like you.”
The archer paused. His arrow had a wickedly barbed point, and I sweated at the thought of it plunging into my flesh.
“Outlaws?” said the other woodsman, still in the quiet, amused tone, “who says we’re outlaws, my lord? If I wasn’t such a peaceful fellow, I might take that as an insult.”
Silence followed. It can’t have lasted more than a few heartbeats, yet seemed to stretch on forever. The tension broke when both men broke into peals of coarse laughter and started to cross the stream.
“Stay where you are, my lord,” said the one called Will, who had notched an arrow to the string and levelled it at me, “you’ve made us laugh, which is something, but you’re not safe yet. We killed your varlet, since he was a miserable-looking fellow of no account. You may prove more interesting. Or not.”
I stood quiet and did nothing, trying not to look at poor Alan’s body, while they inspected my sword and rifled my saddlebags for aught of value. The taller man gave a low whistle when he found the bag of silver pennies, and raised a hairy eyebrow at me.
“Stolen?” he asked.
“No,” I replied with a shake of the head, “the money is mine. My name is John Page. I dwelled at Kingshook, until my cousin came and forced a quarrel between us. Even now he lies on a bench in Kingshook Hall with a dagger through his heart, while I am reduced to a hunted criminal, landless and friendless.”
John Page. This was the first time I took my father’s name, and did so instinctively. My mother would have despaired, but I was no gentleman, still less a Daubeney. I was the Wolf-Cub, the sell-sword’s whelp, and would never pretend otherwise.
The outlaws - for that is what they were - seemed impressed. “Murdered your cousin, eh?” said Will. He held my sword, and ran his palm lightly along the edge.
He made a few lazy cuts in the air. “This brand has seen service,” he added, fingering the dint halfway up the blade, “you come from fighting stock, my lord.”
The mock title was starting to irk me. “I am no lord,” I said hotly, “my father was a peasant who rose to the captaincy of a Free Company. They called him the Wolf of Burgundy.”
I had hoped the name might jog their memories. Instead they looked blank. “We are plain men,” the tall one said gruffly, “with no interest in soldier’s tales.”
He stabbed a finger at me. “You’re no soldier either, John Page. Just a petty fugitive and cut-throat, like us. Or is our company not good enough for you?”
I knew the right answer. To say otherwise was death.
“I’ll gladly come along,” I said, swallowing my hatred and disdain of these men, “if you will have me.”
4.
I’ve always been something of a play-actor. Happily, the outlaws were convinced, and decided to take me to their master.
“You may have heard of our chief,” remarked the tall one, who introduced himself as Long Hugh, “he was once the chaplain of Lindfield, before he tired of saving men and decided to rob them instead. Robert Stafford, he is named, though he prefers to call himself Frere Tuk.”
It was my turn to look blank. I had heard of Friar Tuck, the jolly renegade priest of the Robin Hood ballads, but this Robert Stafford was unknown to me. The Weald was full of outlaws and outlaw captains, most of whom ended up as gallows-fodder.
Long Hugh laughed, and slapped me on the back with his hairy paw. “You must have led a sheltered life at Kingshook, lad,” he grinned, “our master has made himself lord of the Weald, or the part of it that covers Sussex, and declared war on all foresters, verderers and wardens who would deny him his rights.”
It sounded absurd, and this Stafford/Tuk was clearly a madman. The Weald, like every other forest in the land, belonged to King Henry, and he was not the sort to share power with deranged chaplains.
Henry, however, was in France. With the King out of the country, along with the best of his nobles and fighting men, England was a lawless place, where all manner of petty thieves, outlaws and draw-latches might hope to profit from the lack of royal authority.
The outlaws took me deep into the forest. They left Alan to rot on the road, and to my eternal shame I raised no protest. My own life depended entirely on their goodwill. One word out of place, and I had no doubt they would slit my throat and leave my body for the wolves.
I tried to make conversation with the outlaws. “Why does your master call himself Frere Tuk??” I asked innocently, “after the man in the ballads?”
“Yes, and because he rejects all earthly ranks and titles,” replied Will, “a priest should be just that, and nothing more. A brother to every true man under the eyes of God.”
He looked sidelong at me. “Now you come to a better understanding of our master,” he said, “and us.”
I did, and my blood ran cold. It seemed, from the little they had told me, that Robert Stafford was a type of heretic, one who rejected the power and authority of the church. His followers, or at least Will and Long Hugh, shared his creed.
They were all dead men walking. As outlaws, who thieved and murdered for a living, the shadow of the gallows hung over them. As heretics to boot, they could be burned at the stake. I had fallen in with a dangerous fellowship, enemies of both secular and religious law.
For the present there was nothing to be done, save earn their trust and wait f
or the first opportunity to run.
They took me away from the road, following a path only their eyes could see. At times the woods opened out into little clearings, where I caught glimpses of the beautiful rolling hill country of the South Downs, and on occasion a distant glimmer of the sea.
It made my heart ache to look upon the distant blue water, which offered my only chance of survival. In a few short hours England had become a death-trap. I could almost hear the baying of the Sheriff’s hounds, and feel the burn of the rope about my neck. My father had famously survived the gallows, though the scar stayed with him all his days. I doubted God or the Devil would allow his progeny to enjoy a similar miraculous escape.
My companions were cheerful, as men are when they have no fear of death or regard for law. They laughed and joked all the way, and swapped blood-curdling tales of the terrible crimes they had committed. Long Hugh, it seemed, had murdered his wife and her lover after returning from the fields one day to find them together in his bed.
“The old bitch did me a favour,” he said, “she had a face like a pig’s backside, and I was tired of getting drunk every night before I could bring himself to mount her. The blacksmith’s lad she took for a bedmate was no prettier.”
He grinned at me, and patted the hatchet at his belt. “Truth to tell, neither were a lovely sight after I gave them a few taps with this. I left them lying together in their own blood, and fled to the greenwood.”
His dreadful tale, described with such callous relish, made me shudder. Worse was to come, for Long Hugh was but a child next to his companion. Will - William Bolle, was his full name, ex-vintner of Haslemere - boasted of no less than five murders. His first victim was a tax collector, who unwisely threatened Will with imprisonment and confiscation of goods if he failed to pay his arrears. Two were merchants who refused to hand over their money when ambushed in the forest by Stafford’s outlaws, and the fourth a miller’s daughter Will found washing clothes by a stream.
“I had her,” he said, licking his lips at the memory, “and might have let her live, but she clawed me.”
He tapped the thin white scars on his left cheek. “Almost took my damned eye out. Put me in a temper, she did, and fought like a wildcat. Messy business.”
His fifth victim was, of course, my hapless groom. I swore a private oath to avenge Alan’s death, the first of many oaths of vengeance I have taken.
I was sick with horror by the time we reached Stafford’s lair. The outlaws might claim to be no soldiers, but they had set up their headquarters in proper soldierly fashion. It lay deep in a wood, masked by natural walls of briar and thicket, with only one narrow path leading through the hedges.
A bird-call sounded from one of the thick cluster of trees as we started down the path in single file. Long Hugh cupped his hands around his mouth and returned it, a creditable impersonation of an owl, and beckoned at me to look up.
“There’s a man in that beech yonder,” he said, pointing at one of the trees towering over our heads, “who can put out a rabbit’s eye at a hundred paces. He keeps watch for us.”
“That’s John Burnham,” said Will, “the best archer in West Sussex. Took the prize at Chichester fair, three years in a row.”
In which case, I wanted to say, he should be with the King’s army in France, putting his skills to good use against French knights instead of fellow Englishmen. Instead I kept quiet, and trembled at the thought of the deadly shadow hidden among the swaying branches, far overhead, waiting for a target.
We followed the path until it reached a man-made ditch, six or seven feet deep, and spanned by a bridge made of half a dozen planks lashed together.
Two men guarded the opposite end of the bridge. They looked much the same as my companions, rangy, bearded villains with cold eyes. They hailed Will and Long Hugh, and stared at me with deep suspicion.
“What’s this?” snarled one, nodding at me, “a hostage, or a rabbit for the pot?”
“Not enough meat on him,” said the other with a smirk.
He whistled at the sight of my destrier. We had led the beast all the way through the forest, sometimes hacking a path for him where the woods grew too thick.
The outlaw picked at his filthy nails with a knife. “Fine horse,” he added, “very fine. Should fetch a good price.”
Will stroked the destrier’s mane, a strangely tender gesture for such a man. “Should,” he said curtly, “whether he will or not depends on Stafford.”
The sentries at the bridge frowned, and Long Hugh shot his companion a look full of warning. There was a sudden tension in the air. In it I sensed my salvation.
We were allowed to pass over the rickety bridge, which bent and creaked ominously under the weight of my horse, and towards the little stockade, half-hidden by the trees, that lay beyond.
The stockade was roughly circular, and made of great logs cut into pointed stakes. There was another sentry on the gate, a black-bearded rogue who clacked his toothless gums at me as we passed.
A foul latrine stench wafted from inside. My companions laughed when I clapped a hand over my mouth and nose, and shoved me through the gateway.
Inside was a long-house, again made of logs and with a thatched roof, not unlike an ancient mead-hall. There were a few smaller outbuildings and tents scattered about, and maybe a dozen souls, all of them damned, lounged in the dirt and late autumn sunshine.
I noted three women among them. Pale, lank-haired slatterns, as lithe and nervous as the men. They looked at me with hostile eyes, and my heart thumped as Long Hugh seized my wrist and led me towards the long-house.
Will remained with my destrier. He guarded the animal jealously, glaring fiercely at any who so much as glanced at it.
A man appeared in the doorway. Long Hugh stopped dead at the sight of him, and gave a stiff little bow.
“Master,” he said, “we found two horsemen on the road. This one is John Page, the Bastard of Kingshook, and says he wants to join us. We slew his companion, a serving-man of no account.”
The one he called master stepped into the light. He looked like a humble clerk, thin and stooped and of medium height, with a mean, narrow face and puckered grey eyes. Unlike his followers, who wore the tough, practical clothing of those forced to live rough in the wild, he was clad in a dark brown clerical gown, and his only weapon was a bone-handled knife tucked into a red velvet scabbard. His age was indeterminate: anywhere between twenty-five and forty, with a few grey strands in his neatly brushed and curled brown hair.
He clasped his bony hands together and squinted at me. “I know of you, bastard,” he said in a dry, oddly high-pitched voice, “you have taken your father’s name, eh? That is good. No man should be ashamed of his origins.”
“Take me, now,” he added, plucking at the worn cloth of his sleeve, “I was once a poor chaplain, and destined to die as such. Then God sent an angel to whisper into my ear. He told me I was meant for greatness.”
He spread his arms. “Look about you, John Page. This is the seed of my kingdom on earth.”
I stifled an urge to laugh. His kingdom, as he called it, stank of unwashed bodies, rotting meat and overflowing latrine pits. His subjects were a pack of thieves and murderers, driven out of society and forced to live like animals in this squalid encampment.
It mattered not. Robert Stafford was one of those men for whom reality is a mere trifling detail. Even at short acquaintance, I could sense the power in him, derived from an unshakeable belief in destiny.
He gently took my elbow and steered me away from Long Hugh. “You wish to swear fealty to me, eh?” he said, patting my hand, “I am glad. You are the first gentleman to acknowledge me as lord. Others will follow. One day I shall march on Westminster to claim Saint Edward’s crown, with all the lords and commons of England behind me.”
“You aim high, my lord,” I replied courteously, “but England already has a King.”
He raised a finger to silence me. “Henry Plantagenet will be dead inside
six weeks,” he said firmly, “the angel told me. God means to punish the House of Lancaster for usurping the crown. Henry will die of the bloody flux in France, leaving no heir, and his nobles will fall to squabbling among themselves. When they have all slaughtered each other, and England cries out for a godly master - then shall be my time.”
I have lived long enough to see part of Stafford’s prophecy come to pass, though his angel was sadly mistaken in the detail. King Henry did die of the flux, at Meaux, seven years after his triumph at Agincourt. He left an infant son, who grew to be a weakling, and even as I speak the nobles of England threaten to make war on each other. God help my native land in the days to come.
Stafford halted to gaze admiringly at my destrier.
“He’s mine,” said Will, shuffling closer to the beast, which ignored him and nuzzled at the grass.
“Master,” he added hastily when Stafford gave him a cool stare. The former chaplain exerted a strange hold over his bestial followers, though he seemed a feeble creature in body. Any of them might have slit his throat with ease.
Stafford folded his arms in their heavy sleeves. “Yours, is he?” he remarked casually, “and what do you mean to do with him?”
Will cleared his throat. He looked fearful in the presence of his chief. “I have kin at Chichester,” he replied, “respectable people, who live inside the law. They can sell the horse for me at Chichester market.”
Stafford glanced at me. “How much is the animal worth?” he asked.
“At least three hundred pounds, my lord,” I replied. A sigh rippled around the stockade. Three hundred pounds was more than any of them could reasonably hope to see in a lifetime.
“Enough to make you rich, Will,” said Stafford, “you could leave Sussex, and start again in some other part of England, where no-one knows your face. Is that your plan? To break your oath, and abandon us?”
Will had some guts. “Any man may seek to better himself,” he retorted, “is that not our creed? I was born low, the son of a vintner who sold bad wine. Why should I not take advantage of a stroke of good fortune, and seek to die a gentleman?”
The Wolf Cub Page 4