“I’d like to ensure that. But there are so many of them, and I don’t trust our records well enough to track them all. If even one slips through the cracks, he could easily lie his way into the Guard.”
De Lacy dipped his bread into a bowl of honey, and rolled it around mindlessly. “You have an idea. Go on and say it, then.”
“It’s not just the ones staying. Everyone we arrested, they’ll never be trustworthy. If we catch one hunting in the forest a month from now, we need to know where he came from. If they land back in my gaol in a year as a debtor, we need to know. We need a way to track them. Something reliable.” He felt the stir of the room hold its breath. “Something they could neither hide nor remove.”
“You can’t be serious,” Wendenal said aloud. It was Guy’s experience that anyone who uttered those words knew fully well that the person in question was entirely serious.
“There are a few options,” Guy continued, hoping to keep it unemotional. “A knuckle off the small finger. A hot brand to the shoulder. If you have a better idea, I am open to it.”
Wendenal waggled his jaw in a predictably naïve protest. “You can’t mutilate your prisoners,” he balked, “not if you want to keep the people on your side.”
“Do you have a better suggestion?” de Lacy asked, his eyes closed.
“Improve your record-keeping.”
“That cannot be done within the week.”
“Then isolate them, immediately.”
“They’re already in the only place we can hold them,” Guy said softly, with genuine regret. There was no pretending the gaols were prepared for this sort of crowding. They were already overflowing, and they’d have to start releasing men soon. There simply wasn’t enough time. “I wouldn’t bring it up if I had an obvious option. Unless you want to end that policy?”
The Sheriff closed his eyes. Guy knew what it meant. He had made this decision, which meant he had to be willing to live with its consequences if he wanted to see it through. Eventually he nodded, quite small, and looked to each of them, hoping for other solutions. His eyes, sunken and wrinkled, focused on the Earl of Warwick. “You’re the outsider here, Walerian. What do you say?”
“Do not use the brand,” the earl suggested, too quickly, and with a strange finality. “I would think the knife is better than the fire. Take the bottom of their left earlobe. Just the tip. Just this, what you can grab.”
He tugged on the floppy end of his own ear between his thumb and forefinger, yanking it around. All around the table did the same, consciously or not. Guy squeezed his own hard, but it barely hurt. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.
Somewhere in the world, Jon Bassett was still in a hole.
Or he had deserted the Guard.
De Lacy alone did not move. “Is there anyone at the table who has a problem with this?”
“I have every problem with this,” Wendenal sputtered. “You’ve already turned this city upside down, terrified everyone, now you’re going to start cutting the ears off of innocent people? Do you honestly think this is a step in the right direction?”
Guy wanted to bite back, but the baron beat him to it. “You offer condemnation, Wendenal, but not alternatives.”
Wendenal breathed heavily, but did not say more. There was no other logical option. Everyone present looked at each other, a resigned camaraderie forged in those silent moments. How strange, Guy thought, that this would bring them some sort of unity. None of them liked it, but justice wasn’t meant to be liked. It was meant to serve the better good—and at this moment, the better good required a necessary cruelty.
“Very well. Have it done, Gisbourne.”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
They resumed their meal in silence. Roger plucked the bread from the honey and it slopped onto his plate. “It’s too sweet to eat now,” he growled.
INTERLUDE
WILL STUTELY
THORNEY VILLAGE
FRIDAY, 18TH DAY OF OCTOBER 1191
“STUTELY!”
Stutely announced himself as he arrived so that they wouldn’t need to interrupt themselves to greet him. He unleashed a great roar of laughter from his barrel belly, so loud he couldn’t even hear them join in. The fire was low, because Munday didn’t know how to build good fires, even though Stutely had told him to do it better a dozen times last week. Munday was a little thick. He’d always been jealous of Stutely, and wished he was as big and as strong, being just a skinny wafer of a man himself. And with only a joke of a beard. The short red catfur on Munday’s chin was nothing next to the fistfuls of manflow pouring gloriously from the peak that was Stutely Mountain.
Stutely greeted them by reciting each of their names, one by one, with only two mistakes. Most simply mumbled their response, intimidated by his personality. But Stutely had learned long ago to not waste his time pitying weak people. Munday made room for Stutely to sit on the log, across the flames from the two Billinsgate brothers, Hanry and Rog. Both were field-workers who were jealous of Stutely’s strength. They’d never be able to push a ’barrow the way he could. Pushing the ’barrow meant Stutely could move around the fields from worker to worker each day, taking in the sights, telling stories. Pushing the ’barrow was the best job of them all, so Stutely always made sure to give a grand show of how great it was, so the others would have something to dream about.
“We ate without you, we got sick of waiting.” Hanry flicked the ladle in the cooking pot. Hanry’s beard was thin and patchy, and it made him look stupid. Stutely pretended to think and used both hands to stroke his own beard, just to remind Hanry of his place. Stutely didn’t say anything out loud about beards, though, because he didn’t want to make it too obvious. He was crafty like that.
“Perfect, you left me the best part!”
They didn’t even realize that a lot of the chunks in soup would end up at the bottom of the pot, so Stutely could scrape out the bowl and eat a better meal than any of them. Which he deserved. Hanry was always angry when Stutely was late, but mostly he was jealous that Stutely had other important things to do. There were a lot of folk in Thorney that didn’t know what to do when they had free time, but Stutely was always busy. Sometimes he’d move big stones around in the creek to try to redirect the water, or other times he’d practice sneaking up on the goats.
Next to him was Rog’s family, his scrawny wife Sarra and their stickly little stick boy Hugh. Hugh had arms like sticks, and legs that looked like sticks. Hugh was only ten years old, but he looked up to Stutely. Probably because his father Rog had a beard that was only a few inches long. Rog was also jealous of all the words that Stutely knew. Some days Stutely would give little Hugh a new word to learn, and the boy would use it all day long until his parents got so jealous they’d tell him to stop using it.
“Anyhow,” Sarra said to little Hugh, “if you see anyone you don’t know, you just stay away from him. This fellow sounds rather dangerous if you ask me.”
“Who’s dangerous?” Stutely laughed. This person they were talking about, whoever he was, didn’t sound so dangerous to him. But, of course, Stutely was much braver than most. If there were some sort of dangerous man looking to steal their goats, Stutely would chase him back to whatever pathetic mother had borne him. Beside, this goat-thief they were talking about probably wasn’t even good at catching goats, because sneaking up on them was very difficult, and nobody had more practice at it than Stutely.
“No one,” Sarra answered. “There’s some band of pillagers out there is all, and they’re just looking to steal more and more from people like us, so we’d all best keep our eyes and ears open for a few days.”
“No they ’ouldn’t!” little Hugh answered. “They’re not taking anything from anyone, they’re giving it out! They ’ouldn’t takes from us. If Robin brought his men to Thorney, Robin ’ould give us gold, too!”
“Robin Hood?” Stutely coughed on a burnt piece of the meat he was trying to chew on. “Who’s that?”
“You haven’t heard a
bout it yet?” Munday slapped Stutely in the arm hard, but obviously not hard enough to hurt. “It was just a few days ago in Godling. You know how it is there, too many people and not enough food. Until one morning they wake up to some strangers sitting on a wagon with barrels of food and a pot like this one here full to the brim with coin! Overflowing, they say! And they hand it out to everyone, and people would take so much they wouldn’t even want any more, that’s what they said.”
“That never happened,” old Wrinkles cackled, one of the older men. “That’s some fool story.”
“It did happen, it did,” Munday came back at him. “I heard it from a fellow who says his brother went through Godling and heard it himself. They say this Robin is a knight who went off to war and came back again, not being able to stand being away from home and all. He walked up to King Richard himself and says, ‘I have to go back to Nottingham and take care of the people,’ so King Richard put him in irons. But he escaped and stole all the Sheriff’s money and he’s come back to give it out to anyone who needs it. That’s why they’re after him.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Wrinkles groaned. “You’re a right brick you are, Munday.”
Stutely laughed at this loudly, and spat the inedible piece of fat back into the pot. He’d never even wanted it in the first place. “He’s right, you’re a brick, Munday,” he said, wiping his fingers in the pot to wash off the black burn. “This Robin Hood wadn’t never no knight. Beside, anyone can steal. You want a real story, you should talk about me. I’m an outlaw, too, you know.”
Hanry grabbed the pot. “Hang off it, Will, you’re not an outlaw.”
“I am so!” Stutely barked, and Hanry flinched. Of course he flinched. All he was was a coward and that’s all he ever would be. “I had half the guards in Nottingham after me once upon a while, and they ain’t never found me.”
“They ain’t looking for you since, since they ain’t caring about you.”
Rog laughed with his brother. “Every time he tells it there’s more guards in it. Last time there was a hunred guards. Now you’ve got half of Nottingham after you. I’ll bet there was only two guards and both of them was drunk.”
Since Rog had clearly forgotten the details, Stutely started to tell the story of his famous escape. “For your entertainment, ladies and … well we only have ladies here, don’t we?”
He rounded the fire ring and plucked a bowl of stew from one of the older men who had fallen asleep. There was still plenty of food in it, the old fool.
Sarra stood up and walked away, probably to fetch the rest of the village before they missed too much of the story. She tried to drag little Hugh along with her, but he broke off and huddled under a cloak with Munday.
“It was a night just like this one.” Stutely claimed a stick from the fire and waved it through the air magically, creating a trail of smoke that floated upward and away like a trail of smoke. “I was deep in the King’s Wood. I hadn’t eaten in three days and my belly made a sound like a bear.”
He growled out into the night, and it sounded so realistic some of the men and women who had already gone off to sleep nearby shouted out for someone to kill the bear, being afraid for their lives.
“That’s when I saw her. A great big stag, bigger than any stag you’d ever seen before, and she—”
Something suddenly clattered above him, a pinecone or a rock or a boulder that sailed through the lower limbs of a tree and skittered across the dirt.
“Who threw that?” Stutely yelled, dropping the stick. Whoever had thrown the something was a coward and was already hiding. “Where was I? The stag. She was a beauty. Staring at me. I didn’t move a muscle and neither did she, and I could feel some sort of connection between us. So I stared at her and thought as hard as I could, don’t move, reaching out with my mind. I was in control of both of us.”
Little Hugh was amazed by the way he described it, probably because he had been sure to use a lot of fancy words that made it seem like it was happening right now. Stutely had always been really good at telling stories.
“Here, I’ll try it on you,” Stutely kneeled in front of little Hugh and opened his eyes extra wide. For a second it felt as if it was working. Then little Hugh laughed and flopped his arms around and stuck out his tongue. But Stutely hadn’t really been trying very hard. He only meant to have fun, because he was a fun person and people liked him.
“And that’s when it happened. The stag suddenly dropped dead. Just like that. But when I walked up to her to claim my prize, I saw she was stuck with two arrows, sure as day. See I didn’t kill her with my mind like I thought. Nobody can do that. No, all I had done was frozen her there, making her an easy target for these two other fellows out hunting as well. But I wasn’t going to let them take my stag, no I wasn’t. So I took my knife out of my belt and I went screaming at them, waving and yelling. But they weren’t no huntsmen, they were two archers with the Sheriff’s Guard.”
“No…” moaned Munday, even though he’d heard the story before. Or maybe he’d forgotten that part. Little Hugh smiled big and chewed on something in his mouth.
“Well it’s against the king’s law to go hunting in the King’s Wood you know. And soon enough I could see torches all around me, as far as you can see, and people yelling and screaming and dogs barking. Well, anyone else would have probably gotten down on the ground and started crying, but not old Stutely. I’m too smart for all that. I knew they was looking for a big giant man, so they wouldn’t pay any attention to an animal. I broke some branches off a tree, and held them up like this.”
He put his fists on his head where he had placed his fake horns, and in his imagination he could still feel how big and heavy they were.
“I headed back the way I came, and they never found me none. Some of them came close, but all they saw was a stag and not me.”
Munday laughed. “I always love that part. I like the idea of you running through a forest with your fists on your head, pretending you’re a deer.”
“I was a stag,” Stutely corrected, “and they was horns not fists.” Munday had ruined the end of the story with his own stupidity. Stutely huffed. He had wasted his time on them. “The point is, I’m an outlaw more than this Robin Hood person is, so I don’t know why he’s got everyone so excited.”
“I don’t think that’s his name,” Munday muttered.
“Yes it is, I heard about him. His name’s Robin Hood and he’s a goat thief and a big ol’ liar, and if he shows up in Thorney trying to hand out stolen gold and food I’ll knock him on his ass and let him know what Stutely thinks of big ol’ liars, is what I’ll do.”
* * *
STUTELY WAS DREAMING OF beautiful women riding white bears when Robin Hood showed up in Thorney. Almost the whole village gathered around a strange wagon filled with crates and barrels. A great big giant man sat atop, calling them out to gather. Five or six others he didn’t recognize walked around the crowd, talking and laughing, pulling crates off the wagon and sharing its contents. More and more stories had come through Thorney lately, about Robin Hood and Will Scarlet and Little John, and now here they were.
“I don’t believe it,” Stutely said, pushing his way through the crowd to get closer to the cart, where a bald troll man greeted him. His teeth were crooked and his beard was pathetic, like the hair that grew on the tops of Stutely’s feet.
“Good afternoon, friends!” said the little troll, even though they’d never met.
Munday elbowed Stutely in the ribs, not enough to hurt. “I told you it was true!”
“These are trying times, are they not?” asked the troll. “Well, the Lord helps those who help themselves…” he continued, very seriously, and then pulled open a small soft sack and laughed, “so help yourselves!”
The bag was filled with gold shillings, so many it looked like it might rip and pour gold out onto the road at any moment. Munday’s hand darted into the sack and pulled one out, and others around did the same. Stutely slapped the
tops of some of their hands for being too greedy. He didn’t trust the troll man. He picked a coin and looked at it closely, and smelled it and tasted it. It didn’t much smell or taste like anything, and he was pretty sure real gold coins would smell and taste like something pretty amazing.
“Are you the one?” Munday asked.
“Am I the one?” the troll asked back, because trolls were full of puzzles and riddles.
“He means Robin Hood,” Stutely answered. “Are you Robin Hood?”
The troll looked confused. He was probably not used to being outwitted so quickly.
“You must mean Robin over there.” The troll indicated a man with short hair, and a hood hanging from the back of his neck. He didn’t look anything like the stories had made him out to be. He wasn’t nearly skinny enough to go running silently on tree branches, and Stutely laughed out loud when he saw that Robin Hood didn’t even have a beard at all. His pudgy beardless face smiled dopily, and the troll man introduced him.
“Ah yes, this is Robin Hood!” he said, loud, and then he and Robin Hood whispered to each other quietly and laughed.
“Yes, that’s me,” the unimpressive dope said when he got close enough.
“The things they say about you aren’t true, are they?” Stutely asked, but then Munday shoved him angrily.
“Of course they’re true, don’t be rude!”
“What do they say about me?” Robin Hood asked, pretending not to know. They must have heard about Stutely’s storytelling skills, since the others gathered to listen as well.
“Munday here says you walk around in the branches of the forest and jump down on rich folk and steal their jewelry. They say you snuck into Nottingham Castle and stole out of the Sheriff’s pocket itself.”
Munday giggled and clutched his fake gold coin. “This is the Sheriff’s personal money! And I’ve got it!” He laughed and doubled over, turning the coin around and around in his hand as if it were real.
The giant man leaned closer and asked, “Where’d you hear those stories?”
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