by Dan Davis
“I am sure he has his reasons. But whatever they truly are, it is beyond me. You must see him more than I do.”
“He is almost always with the king,” the sheriff said, clearing his throat. “Or in York. Or seeing to his own lands, which continue to be acquired, here and there. On occasion, he has honoured me with his presence on his way to or from York. So, Richard. If he has not let you off your leash, why are you here?”
“I hear there is trouble in Sherwood.”
He nodded without meeting my eye, drinking. “There is always trouble in Sherwood.”
“Oh?” I said. “There is no new figure arrived in the shire, no outlaw leader?”
He looked up sharply. “I do not remember you as a man who dances around your meaning. What do you know, Richard?”
“A tinker came to my hall. He had come from somewhere up north and he said there were murders happening in Sherwood. A new leader, uniting the outlaws and robbers.”
“These people are always banding together for a time. Leaders never last long.”
“Is there a reason you are ignoring my question, Roger?”
He sighed and stood up, crossing to his narrow window. Night had fallen outside. “I am not certain you should become involved in this. In fact, I know that you should not.”
“What is it?”
He turned to face me.
“I first heard about this fellow the summer before last. Some of the men living in the forest fled. A handful fell into our hands. They all told the same story. A new man living deep in the green wood at some special place. None of them could agree on where in the wood it was but they all said he was a knight. A nobleman. Nonsense, of course. They all claim to be some disposed, wronged hero when they are in fact a burglar from Bodmin. Nevertheless, whoever he was he was scaring men that I would have placed money on being beyond fear. I sent my best bailiff, John, to Mansfield to find out if there was any truth to the rumours. He was to go from there into the centre of the woodland.” Roger paused to look out the window again.
“And?” My heart thudded against my chest.
“My chief bailiff never returned, nor the men I sent with him. John the Bailiff was a good man. Not kind, not at all, but he was sharp and I relied upon him. He had his ear to the ground, despite his head being so far above it. But they disappeared. Then the bodies of villagers and outlaws starting washing up dead in the fall rains. Washing up against Cunigsworth Ford. Others were found in the Rivers Meden, the Maun and in Rainworth Water. A dozen, all told. Men and women both, even a child. Killed from being savaged about the neck.”
I gripped the table as sweat broke out all over my body. My muscles tensed, I resisted the urge to leap up and throw over the table.
Roger nodded at my expression. “Yes, like you, I too thought of the massacre of Ashbury Manor.”
I took a slow breath. “Why did I not hear of this?”
“The forester and his deputies claimed it was all the work of a wolf or a bear. The wounds were well washed by the waters and the skin was clearly torn, not cut. And the bodies were bloated and many corrupted so it was simple enough to claim it was thus. Most of all, the victims were largely outlawed folk so no one other than their families was concerned by the deaths. God knows, the king and his court had enough to concern themselves with. But the people around here were afraid. Praise God, it went quiet over winter and I prayed that was the end of it. I even began to believe it had been wolves or some sort of enraged bear.
“Last year I had to go to the king, down to Windsor. It was a rather unpleasant summer. The barons forced the king to sign their ludicrous document. When I returned to Nottingham, I found my men had kept to the castle and the town, fearing to venture into the wood. The forester was drowning in drink, sitting on his behind and doing nothing but fining and harassing those who live outside the woodland but still inside the boundary of the legally afforested area. Nothing would get that man into the trees again, he said.”
“Was he just afraid?” I asked. “Or had someone bribed him?”
“Is the fear not enough?” Roger asked. “In the short time I was away down south, the Knight of the Greenwood had tightened his grip. All the villages and farms in and around the wood were paying their tithes to this king of the outlaws. All were calling him the Green Knight or the Knight of the Green or some such nonsense. And the warden was collecting no fees. No forest courts were held. The foresters were out there giving the money to this leader, as were the agisters. The verderers were scared witless. The woodwards and the rest had disappeared. Everything was going to this outlaw leader.”
The king’s forest warden and his deputies the foresters set up forest courts and made inspections of forest lands. They were therefore the Crown’s least popular servants as they received forest income, levied fines for violations of forest law and extorted every penny. Permission was required before forest land could be cleared and cultivated and the Crown received rent in perpetuity for that land. The right to pasture animals was controlled and would be withdrawn by the foresters, in the king’s name, for the slightest offense. Of course, they might just look the other way if you paid them what they asked for. If an individual offender could not be identified in the forest courts, the forester would gleefully impose the required fine on the entire family, village or community.
It was not just the warden and his deputies who made up the forest bureaucracy. Each forest had verderers who reported to the king rather than the warden. They were elected locally, often held the post for life and did little other than rake in money so the posts were coveted, fought over and as corrupted as Judas. The agisters collected the fees from everyone who had permission to keep cattle and pigs in the forest and they creamed money off the top.
The king granted deer parks, chases and warrens to his barons and those lords employed woodwards, warreners, reeves and beadles in private offices all over the forest, each the master of his specific domain.
There was barely any oversight by the king’s justicar and the officials were as corrupt, exploitative and self-interested as it was possible to be. No commoner who lived in a forest wished to be under forest law. But such is the way of things. A forester’s rampant corruption was inevitable and unavoidable. They lived to line their own pockets. An appointment to most of the posts meant you would be set for life.
Which is why it made no sense that they had given up all that. No sense at all, unless the Green Knight was someone of astonishing power. Someone who could terrify all those officials. It was a wonder the great lords of the land had not done something about it.
“By God,” I said. “But what about the Church? The priests in the villages. They would not stand for this. Does the archbishop know about this?”
“I wrote to him,” Roger said. “More than once. He finally said that he had written to his men and that I was overreacting. The local deacon was not concerned. The Prior and monks at Newstead Priory claimed to be perfectly happy with their situation.”
“I do not understand,” I said. “The Church was unconcerned with the loss of their local authority?”
“No, indeed,” Roger said. “Now I believe that the monks, the priests, all of them had been frightened or bought into silence. But this green fellow is most certainly stealing from the poorest and the wealthiest in Sherwood and taking it all for himself.”
With every word the sheriff spoke, I was more certain that the Knight of the Greenwood was William de Ferrers. There was no longer a modicum of doubt in my mind. Who else could terrify an entire shire into compliance without raising alarm in the outside world? It was remarkable.
“Did the archbishop offer nothing in the way of help?” I asked. “He has the ear of the king, after all.”
“King John is negotiating with the Pope and Philip the King of France and, therefore, has no time for your petty local issues. So our wise archbishop wrote to me. He finished with something that I shall attempt to quote to you verbatim. I suggest you keep your own counsel in thi
s matter, he wrote, and if you cannot then the king will have to take an interest in your existing position for the Crown.”
“I do not understand,” I said. “He thought that you were at fault?”
Roger chuckled and took his seat back at the table. He drank down a cup of the Gascony wine. “All England knows you are a terror on the battlefield, Richard. But you will never make a courtier.”
“No, thank God. Tell me his meaning, then.”
“It was a threat. Be silent about the events in Sherwood or I shall remove you from your position.”
“He has the king’s ear to such an extent?”
Roger shrugged. “Hugh is the Archbishop of York. He and the Archbishop of Canterbury vie for influence. The Marshal, of course, remains the most powerful loyal baron and I know that the great man struggles to resist the ambition of both archbishops.” He broke off. “I heard the Marshal’s son was your squire?”
“Anselm, his least important son. A good lad. He is Jocelyn de Sherbourne’s squire.”
“So you retain a following of sorts,” the sheriff said, “despite being held back by the archbishop.”
“Jocelyn and our squires are all I can afford to keep,” I admitted. “And if the price of everything goes up much further I shall have to sell my horses, send Anselm back to his father and call myself a beggar.”
“Of course, of course, times are hard indeed, very hard,” Roger said, as if he had ever known anything close to privation. “I wonder, though. Do you think you could attract more men? Perhaps if you had the coin to pay them?”
“My reputation cannot be so tarnished that hungry men would not take my coin,” I said. “What are you asking me?”
He rubbed his eyes, sighing. “Last year I commissioned a knight to scour the wood clean of this infestation. A man named Sir Geoffrey of Norton.”
“But I know this man,” I said. “He fought beside me on the walls of Acre when we were young. A solid knight. Somewhat headstrong but he had the strength to justify it. He had a marvellous voice. I think he was injured at Arsuf and returned home.”
“Indeed? Well, he was not so young when I found him. I paid him and two knights, half dozen squires and twenty bowmen to go into the wood.”
“He is dead?”
Roger sighed. “It was his intention to catch the outlaws in the villages and homes of their families over winter. They rode into the wood to roust out the outlaws and force them to give up their master or, at least, the camp and to burn it. Bring the man out of hiding.”
“A good plan.”
The sheriff shook his head. “Three days after they left here, two surviving bowmen dragged themselves to the Priory before succumbing to their wounds. The Knight of the Greenwood, the Green Knight or his men ambushed Sir Geoffrey. There was a great slaughter. I had hoped to receive a ransom for the man but it has been four months and we have had no word. I hesitate to conclude that the worst has happened and so I hold out hope for his survival. It is likely that they are holding him until they need his ransom. But whatever the truth of it, his commission was a failure.”
“And you want me to take his place,” I stated. “To finish what Sir Geoffrey began to do.”
“As soon as they told me you were at my gate, I knew that God had answered my prayers. But with times being as they are, I am afraid that I have no money. I can hire few men. One or two perhaps, if they are desperate enough. You shall have a commission and a warrant to arrest or slay the Green Knight but I do not know how you would accomplish this task. It is too much to ask, I know.”
“Roger,” I said, leaning forward. “Surely if you know me at all then you know it is a task I had assigned myself before ever I came to see you,” I said. “It is a task I would carry out without your commission, without even your leave. For the Green Knight must surely be William de Ferrers and I am sworn to end his days with the edge of my sword.”
He looked at me for a long time, judging me, perhaps or deciding whether to tell me something. Before he did so, his brows knitted together and he glanced at the main door to his chamber.
The sheriff coughed and said loudly, “Shall we descend to the hall for a little food? I am utterly famished, are you not?”
He spoke as men do when they wished their servants to attend to them, instead of calling for them directly, so I expected the door to the corridor to open. The sheriff looked nervous.
When no servant entered, on a whim I jumped to my feet, stepped to the door and yanked it wide open. It was an instinct that had served me well before and would continue to serve me for centuries. I half imagined that Roger had betrayed me and that armed men were about to burst in through that door and slit my throat.
Instead, a young woman stood there, caught leaning forward at the waist listening at the gap between door and frame. Huge eyes stared up at me. Her lips formed a plump circle of surprise.
I believe my own expression would have been rather similar.
“Marian!” Roger shouldered me aside. “What are you doing, girl? Lurking about in the corridor?”
She stood up straight, closed her mouth and stared at Roger with loathing.
The girl was extremely beautiful. Startlingly so. Her eyes were clear, her hair shining and dark and her skin was perfect.
“Lurking?” she shot back at him. She thrust her chin up and set her shoulders back, straining her dress against her chest. She may have been young but she was no girl and my loins stirred for the first time in many moons. “How can I do anything other than lurk in this God-forsaken place?”
Roger looked shocked. Hurt, even. “Marian...” he mumbled.
She stared at him for a moment longer, her cheeks flushed. The girl scoffed at his hesitation. With a final glance up at me, she spun on her heel and strode off, clattering down the stairs.
The sheriff stared after her, frozen to the spot.
I cleared my throat. “Your daughter?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, his face turning dark. “Come, let us eat.”
***
Later, we sat full of meat and ale, his men drinking at the tables in the hall. But it was not a joyous hall to drink in. The food was poor, little more than onions, meat and bread in various combinations. At least it was plentiful.
The subdued atmosphere I had noticed among those men while walking through the hall earlier now made sense. They had lost Sherwood to murder and sedition. They did not understand what was happening but they knew enough of their enemy to be afraid and that fear had kept them in the castle for months. They were ashamed.
We talked of the war. Which barons were where and what each was doing, what the king’s plans likely were in fighting them. Lots of rumour, plenty of martial opinion offered though little of any value. My hauberk felt like a hundredweight on my shoulders. My gambeson underneath was stifling. It was foolish of me to wear it indoors and yet I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was at war and at risk, even inside that fine castle.
After a while, Roger’s head was nodding. He had drunk an astonishing amount of ale before calling for wine. His misery was profound and I suspected that the cause of it was more than the presence of the Green Knight nearby.
“The girl,” I said. “Roger, listen. You called her Marian. Who is she?”
Roger was rather unfocused but the mention of her name woke him up. “That girl,” he said, grimacing. “That damned girl. She is the daughter of Sir Geoffrey of Norton.”
“What is she doing here, Roger?”
He took a long time to answer. His words were slurred, his movement sluggish. “No family,” he said, stopping to burp. “If Sir Geoffrey is truly dead.”
“How can he not be?” I asked. “Do you really think William de Ferrers is the type of man to ransom another? And anyway, surely the girl is of marrying age? She must be twenty years old or so.”
His face clouded over. “What do you mean? What do you mean by saying that? You filthy bastard. Just because you have that face, you think she wants yo
u? You’re finished. You stay away from her, you accursed demon.” He reached for me and I gently pushed his hand away and held it on the table. His strength was as a child’s, compared to mine. I wanted to snap his wrist. I wanted to grab the jug of wine and smash it into his face. I wanted to sink my teeth into his flesh and tear it apart.
His men were watching closely. The hall was quiet. Forcing a smile, I released his hand.
“I meant nothing by it at all, my lord sheriff.” I stood and bowed a little. “I wish you a good night, thank you for your generosity. I shall return tomorrow to discuss how I can help you with the Green Knight.”
He waved his hand at me and grabbed another greasy bird off our plate.
Oftentimes, you find that the longer you know someone, the greater the chance that their character will disappoint you.
“I will show myself out,” I said to the old servant at the hall door who struggled to his feet and lit a lamp. He held himself as if he had once been a soldier or at least a bailiff used to violence. But he was well past it.
“My lord says I must-” the old man stammered.
“You will stay here,” I said, clapping my hand down on his shoulder. He winced. “I would not want an old man such as yourself to risk falling down some steps, unnecessarily.”
“But-” he said.
“Ah, yes, I would appreciate borrowing your lamp,” I said. “You are too kind. Now sit down.”
I had a quick look around the keep but I could not find the girl. For some reason, I expected her to be skulking around. But I was bored and tired so I gave up.
I was almost out of the keep when Marian stepped out of the shadow of a side doorway near the doorway into the inner bailey.
I pretended to be surprised.
“Come with me,” the young woman whispered.
I hesitated and looked around. It was still quiet and very dark.
“I will,” I said. “But you should know that if the sheriff’s men see us together I do not think Roger will be pleased with you tomorrow.”
“I care nothing for what that monster thinks,” she hissed. “And neither should you. This way, hurry.”