by Dan Davis
“That’s right,” Much said, licking his lips.
“And he did not warn you to expect me?”
“Expect you, lord? Well, perhaps I was told all about you. Perhaps they been talking about you showing your face round here for months, now. I don’t rightly remember. Maybe you’ll be cattle, lord.” Much grinned. “You won’t get past Mansfield. None of you will.” He giggled.
“My thanks,” I said. “You are a murderer of the innocent. You have slaughtered entire villages. I wish I had more time to make you suffer properly but this will have to suffice.”
I forced him onto his face, snapped the arrow shafts off and held him down while I smashed his limbs with his own hammer. He screamed loud enough to wake the dead. With my foot upon the back of his head, I smashed his feet and his knees. I smashed his hands and his arms. The skin split apart in a half dozen places at each joint. Bone shards ripped through his skin like bright red shards of pottery. His muffled screams were incoherent wails. I crushed his spine and his ribs and still he bucked and wept.
I rolled him onto his back, seeing how he yet lived. William’s blood keeping him alive and awake beyond what mortal men can endure. Still, he cried and begged me to stop so I smashed his jaw and teeth into a quivering mass that tumbled into his throat and stoppered his screams. Still, he writhed around, living through an ordeal. I thought to leave him like that. I even considered trickling blood into his ruined throat to see if I could prolong his torment. But as I looked about for a cup and a likely body, I saw the archers and my other men staring at me in profound horror. At once, I found myself without the heart to continue torturing the man. I almost felt shame but not quite.
I turned to Jocelyn. “The women will be in Mansfield, or in this hunting lodge to the north. We should leave immediately.”
Jocelyn stared back, dismay on his shadowed face. Confused for a moment, I looked around me.
My men were turned away from the violence I had done, their shoulders hunched, collected in small groups on the outskirts of the village. Jocelyn stared at me, Swein and Anselm were turned away.
I realised then that I had drunk from the body of Will Scarlet, in the open, in front of everyone. In front of Jocelyn, in front of Swein’s archers. In front of Anselm Marshal. I devoured blood before Roger de Lacy, Sir Guy and their two surviving men. My wounds had healed before their eyes. No wonder they either stared at me or looked away in horror.
My secret was truly out. The stories told about me were revealed to be true.
I felt a wave of hot nausea before I realised that I did not care.
“Richard, it is almost dark,” Jocelyn said, his face in shadow. I knew from his tone that he thought I had gone too far, that I had thrown away my future but in that moment I cared not what Jocelyn thought.
“So?” I said. “We can travel at night, we have done so many times. It is imperative that we move quickly. Perhaps we can beat this trap before it is set.”
“Richard,” Jocelyn said, lowering his voice as he stepped up to me. “You may not know weakness or fatigue. Especially after gorging yourself on the blood of evil men. But every other man here does. We must rest. There are wounded to take care of. Not least your friend the sheriff. And Sir Guy.”
“Fine,” I said. “Swein, tell the men to take turns on watch. One or two up high, upon the thatch. The rest of them get fires going inside the houses. Eat, drink. Rest. We will leave well before dawn. We will need the darkness.”
Swein exchanged a glance with Jocelyn and nodded to me, going off to carry out my instructions.
We dragged the bodies out of the village, separating the sheriff’s dead men from William’s creatures, and led the nervous horses in.
My men lit the hearth fire in the largest of the abandoned house in Blidworth. Most of us gathered inside, to rest and eat.
After checking the archers on watch at the edges of the village, I came inside and sat by the fire on low stools beside the sheriff and Guy. Both men stared at me, saying not a word. Roger seemed miserable, no doubt hurting physically but also wounded in his pride. He had failed in his mission.
Roger was wounded all over. His mail had been pierced and rings torn apart into a gash at one shoulder. The way he held himself suggested that he had broken ribs and no doubt his skin would be a mottled, purple bruise from neck to ankle. If he ever made it back to Nottingham, he would be abed for a week or more.
“Roger,” I said to the sheriff. “Before dawn, you will take your two surviving men back to Nottingham, along with Sir Guy.”
My tone, perhaps, shocked him out of his silent contemplation and his wariness of me.
“I am the sheriff. You do not command me where to go, nor when. You vile fiend. How dare you?”
“Roger,” I said. “You must understand that you will not be the sheriff for very much longer. The Marshal is Regent now. Your agreement with the archbishop, whatever its nature, has not worked in your interest. The Marshal will win the struggle for power. The archbishop will be dead. You will be removed from your post.”
“Nonsense,” he said to me. “Nonsense,” he repeated to Sir Guy. “The archbishop has power that you cannot-” he stopped. “Well, perhaps you can conceive of his power. But he is the richest man in the kingdom. He has-”
“He has made a pact with the devil,” I said. “He has conspired with William de Ferrers, the Green Knight, this Lord of Eden, to murder King John by means of poison. The archbishop has schemed with you to grant William the run of the king’s forest of Sherwood in return for what favours? Immortality for the Archbishop and riches for you. And for the hand of the Lady Marian. So cheaply bought, Roger? What else were you offered? A bright future for your children? A position at court? A castle or two?”
He twisted his face and mumbled. “And a divorce. He would free me to make Marian my wife.”
I shook my head, amazed at his folly. “Well, it will all come to nothing. The only reason I have not killed you so far is because we were once friends. Or were we? Perhaps I was never anything to you. How long have you and Hugh been scheming like this? Since before John was king?”
“If you murder me,” Roger said. “Then you would have to kill Sir Guy and my two men.”
“Would I? Perhaps, if I was going to yet be a lord and a knight, after all, this, then I suppose I would. You know, in fact, you will all spread the tales of my drinking blood, of my torturing a prisoner and the rest. I think it really would be best if I killed you all. By freeing you, I am only doing myself a disservice.”
Roger failed to hold my gaze. “What do you demand in return for our silence?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I will let you go because it is the honourable thing to do.”
They stared at me and traded looks.
“You are in league with the devil,” Roger said, warily. “We all saw you. How can I believe you wish to act with honour.”
Sir Guy did not meet my eye but he nodded.
“You do not believe me but I am trying to be a good knight,” I said. “And anyway, it does not matter what I do, your time as sheriff of any shire in England is over. The Regent will replace you. Do not worry so, the Marshal is not a vindictive man. He will allow you to return to your lands and live. You, Sir Guy, will have to decide whether you stay in Nottingham. I am certain the new sheriff will want a man who knows the place. Or perhaps Roger can find you some quiet employment.”
“I will tell them,” Roger said, quivering with indignation or perhaps with fear. “I will tell everyone that are the monster everyone always said you were. I will swear, and so will my men, that we witnessed you murdering prisoners and drinking their blood. You will be charged with murder. Stripped of your lands but properly, this time.”
I nodded. “You may say what you wish,” I said. “They will not believe a disgraced man. But if they do then it does not matter to me. I do not want my lands. I am not going home. You have nothing to threaten me with, Roger. And I am done with you. Get some rest before you
ride.”
Roger de Lacy stared for a moment, gathering strength for an argument. Instead, he sighed.
“All this for a woman,” he said. “A stupid, stuck up little girl holding on to her precious maidenhead as if it was the Holy Grail. The Green Knight can have her, the filthy little bitch.”
My mailed fist smashed his face and threw him down. I felt the bones of his cheeks crack and a number of his teeth broke loose.
When I left before dawn, Roger was breathing but had not woken. His face appeared to be rather a mess. Sir Guy swore he would take Roger back to Nottingham, thought it was doubtful de Lacy would be much use for anything ever again.
“You know,” I said to Guy as I mounted. “That was a courageous charge you made for your friend.”
“Bloody stupid,” Guy said, rubbing his neck. “You evil bastards have the strength of the devil.”
“That we do.”
We rode north, for Mansfield. The village of the giant they called Little John. The man who had taken Marian and Eva. The man who waited for me and my men to come to him.
I was going to cut off his head and I was going to drink from his severed neck. And I was going to do it before my men, not caring that the rumours would get back to the lords of the land.
For what I had said to Roger was true. I knew that once I had gone into the depths of Sherwood that there would be no going back for me. For years, I had denied it but I was not a knight like any other and I could keep up the lie no longer. After I killed William and destroyed his followers I would leave England forever.
Chapter Thirteen – Heart of Eden
“Surely, this entire abduction was meant as a means of luring you into Sherwood?” Jocelyn said as we rode slowly in the darkness, his voice low. “All of us, in fact. Of killing all of us in a single attack. There must be a better way of approaching this problem.”
We rode in almost complete darkness, finding our way down the path to Mansfield by feeling the overgrown hedgerows on either side of the road.
“I would have been in Sherwood a year ago if the archbishop had not kept me away,” I said. “Him sending me away was for William’s purposes. Taking Marian and Eva, I do not know what that could be other than a warning, or as a means of staying my hand should I corner him once more.”
Jocelyn’s voice grew louder. “That man you tortured told you explicitly that the ladies are bait on a hook.”
“He was a fool and a liar,” I said, whispering. Our horses were so close that our knees bashed together. “We can trust nothing that he said.”
“You will believe anything so long as you think it leads to your vengeance.”
“Our vengeance, yes,” I said. “Yours and mine both.”
“Even if it means risking Marian’s life? And Eva’s?” Jocelyn was as impassioned as he could be while keeping his voice down.
“William knows that by taking her, harming her, he will enrage you into attacking him,” Jocelyn said. “And we are.”
“If he was going to kill them, why not do it at the Priory? Or anywhere else and leave the bodies to be found? And why would their deaths enrage me? Marian is a dear girl and I know you are smitten with her but she is hardly anything to me. And Eva. She shares her bed with me but not her heart.”
“Come now,” Jocelyn said. “You care for that woman much more than that.”
“Perhaps,” I said, for of course I cared for her. “But William cannot know that.”
“William knows you will come to rescue a lady in distress,” Jocelyn said. “You said that even when you were a boy, you always loved the ballads where the knight rescues the lady. William knows that you came for me and Emma in Palestine. He is playing you like a harp, Richard. Both of us. We are riding directly to where he wants us to go.”
“I do not say you are wrong,” I said. “But what else can we do?”
“All I want,” Jocelyn said. “Is to get Marian back. I do not care if she decides against marrying me. Who can blame her? Who can blame her when I have so little to offer for our future? But I must do this thing. And not because it is like living some blasted ballad or poem, do not say it is. I do not wish to be a tragic hero and I do not expect her to throw herself into my arms. But I do care for her. I do. Truly. And I will get her back. I will save her. No matter the cost.”
Our men ahead slowed down and we reined in a little
“You know,” I said. “I have been thinking about my own future.”
“You do wish to marry Eva,” he said. “I knew it.”
“No,” I said, even though I would rather have liked to do so. But she was better off without me. “Far from it.”
“What future, then?” Jocelyn asked, shifting in his saddle.
“I must move on,” I said. “After I kill William. And the archbishop. I shall have to go away. Take the cross, perhaps. And I was thinking that I would renounce my claim to Ashbury. You will get the place anyway, when I am dead, you are my heir and you have been since soon after you came to me.”
“For God’s sake,” Jocelyn whispered. “Do not throw your future away for me.”
“You are a good man,” I said, for I knew he wanted Ashbury. “But unless I fall in battle, I will not die. Never, Jocelyn, do you not see? I will never age. How long will my servants put up with me? Leaving will be for the best, that much I have decided. And of course, Ashbury must go to you. Just promise me that you will take care of your sister. And please take care of the servants, the labourers and the village. Or allow Emma to do it until you find her a good husband and then let Marian do it after she marries you.”
Jocelyn grunted. “I pray we find her soon. Wait, what should I do about Tutbury Priory?” he asked.
“You may pull down the Priory, stone by stone,” I said.
He chuckled. “You cannot mean to give me Ashbury, Richard,” Jocelyn said quietly though he could not keep the excitement from his voice.
“I do. And I will,” I said. “I have decided. You will have the wealth and position you need to get a good wife. The Regent knows you, he will use you well. You can get a knight or two of your own, take on a couple of squires, a page, a groom, a servant. Your very own shit-bucket carrier. Everything a country gentleman needs to live a full and proper life.”
“Richard,” he mumbled. “I do not know what to say.”
“No need to say anything,” I said. “Even just thinking about it has made me feel happy. We will get the women back, kill William, I will go away and then everything will be right in the world.”
Swein, ahead of us, held his horses on the side of the road until he was abreast of us, a dark shape against the darker background.
“Perhaps I can make a suggestion about how to attack the village of Mansfield, Sir Richard.”
“Oh,” Jocelyn said, his words full of his smile. “The peasant has been studying strategy.”
“I have,” Swein shot back. “Studying by observing William of Cassingham. Perhaps if you yourself had-”
“Enough,” I said, tired. “What do you suggest, Swein?”
“You mean to ride into Mansfield at dawn, with all our forces surrounding the village and trap Little John and his men. But that way risks Marian’s life. And Eva’s. They can hold a knife to Marian’s throat and we will be able to do nothing about it.”
“You see another way?” I asked. Stratagems always intrigued me because I could never think of any by myself.
Swein’s voice grew excited in the darkness. “Why not send in a single man, or perhaps a pair, disguised as beggars. Or monks? Or some other sort of travelling folk, perhaps a man selling pots. That way we can discover the lay of the land, the positions of the enemy and where the women are being held. Then we leave and relay said whereabouts back to you, my lord. That way, we could creep in tomorrow night, snatch the women and flee with them without notice. We can ride hard for Nottingham or some other place of safety. Lincoln, maybe. Hide the women with Anselm’s father or some other great lord. Then we can go back fo
r the Green Knight.”
I waited for Jocelyn to pour scorn upon the suggestions, yet he did not.
“I commend you for your creativity, Swein,” I said. “And your ideas might work against mortal men. But we are facing men who can see and hear and smell better than you. And these blood drinkers would see a stranger as a walking meal. A beggar or pot seller wandering into their village at dawn would be nothing more to them than a pleasing way to break their night’s fast. And if we took the women and attempted to flee then they would catch us. A mortal man could outpace a horse over a day in a woodland such as this. These men could catch us before we got away from Sherwood.”
Swein took a deep breath, ready to object and to argue for his ideas. I spoke over him as he began.
“Yet you make some good suggestions. You have a natural capacity for cunning and no doubt have a long future ahead of you as an outlaw. Let us push on. In order to do what must be done, we need to be at Mansfield before it is light. And dawn approaches.”
***
I crept through the shadows between houses just as a rosy dawn grew in the east. I would have been quieter without my armour and I would have seen and heard better without my helm but I simply could not bring myself to go without either.
The village of Mansfield was quiet. Like Blidworth and Linby, the folk were clearly dead, enslaved, or terrified into silence and abject misery. The houses were quiet. The few fires, from the faint smell of the dry smoke, were burning low. There were no animals in the pens by the houses. There were few crops growing in the gardens. The middens still stank, of shit and rot, corpses and old blood.
Jocelyn and Swein had both argued that it should be them sneaking in alone. Or that I should take archers with me, at least one or two, who could watch my back while I stole back the women.
Once, months before, Jocelyn had accused me of being so arrogant that it bordered on madness. Confidence turns to arrogance when your view of yourself becomes warped beyond truth. It becomes madness when your view of the world itself is warped and that night, my madness had reached a new height. I told my men that I alone was strong enough to fight my way out if anything went wrong. I believed that no man, not even William’s men, could stand against me. Had I not proved myself better than them at every turn? What a ludicrous notion.