Assassin in the Greenwood hc-7

by Paul Doherty

  The soldiers pushed the three prisoners out as Lincoln went to the top of the table and filled wine cups. He brought one back to Corbett and thrust this into the clerk's hand, telling his soldiers to seal the hall doors. Then he stared round the assembled company.

  'Robin of Locksley is dead. He deserved a better end, as did those others whom Branwood so coldly murdered. The traitor will stand before King's Bench at Westminster and his trial will be very brief. For the rest, you are bound to silence on what you have seen and heard tonight.' He sipped from the wine cup. 'Though I gather the truth will soon be out.'

  Lincoln gazed round the sombre, shadow-filled hall.

  'The King must come here,' he murmured. 'This place has to be purged and cleansed!' He summoned one of his household knights, whispered to him then glanced at the Prioress. 'My Lady, I will give you suitable escort back to your convent tomorrow morning. John Little, I suggest you stay in the friary with Brother William till fresh letters of pardon are issued. For the rest,' he shrugged, 'these proceedings are now finished. You are all free to leave.'

  Corbett and Lincoln watched as everyone filed out of the hall, still subdued and shocked.

  'You are probably right, Corbett,' Lincoln murmured. 'We'll find a great deal in the cellars. Perhaps tomorrow I will visit Sherwood myself and give the outlaws there something to remember, now they are bereft of their leaders.'

  'The Blue Boar tavern?' Corbett asked.

  Lincoln grinned. 'My mounted serjeants will meet you there before dawn. But, Hugh, listen. Why did Roteboeuf tell you about Scarlett?'

  'They couldn't touch the old outlaw,' Corbett replied. 'He was wary and kept hidden by Holy Mother Church. So Branwood gambled. I was given Scarlett's name to see if the old friar knew anything as well as to depict Branwood as the righteously angry royal official!' He shrugged. 'Scarlett knew little but I glimpsed that huge gardener and began to wonder. Was he John Little, and if so why was he hiding? Had Branwood known of his presence, he would never have sent me there.'

  'A ruthless man,' Lincoln murmured.

  'Yes,' Corbett replied. 'Determined to play both roles. He even sacrificed his squire Hobwell to sustain the sham. It was all a sham,' he murmured. 'The Prioress was unwittingly dragged into it: she couldn't explain Robin's death or that of Marion so pretended they'd both fled back, to Sherwood. Branwood's depredations there only corroborated her story.'

  'Well, it's finished,' Lincoln remarked. 'Branwood will go in chains to Westminster. Do you want an escort to London, Hugh?'

  Corbett shook his head. 'Ranulf and I will now be safe. And besides, I must return to Locksley. There's one man, an old priest, who must be told the truth.' Conclusion

  Smithfield Market in London was already hot and packed with people even before the bells of nearby St Bartholomew's Priory tolled for morning mass. The throng pressed in but not to attend the stalls and booths which had all been packed away. The crowds were drawn by the huge black scaffold set up in the middle of the market place, fascinated by the flames leaping from the massive copper cauldron and the grim, red-masked executioner. In one comer of the scaffold a huge post had been placed, a gibbet with a long rope dangling down; the executioner's apprentice was already setting up a thin narrow ladder in preparation for the grim ceremony about to commence.

  Corbett was present, Ranulf beside him. Maltote had volunteered to look after their horses in nearby St Bartholomew's. All of London, even the great barons and ladies in their silks and costly raiment, had fought for a place. Corbett was there only at the King's express command.

  'You will see the bastard die!' Edward had roared. 'You will be my witness! And die he will!'

  The clerk lifted his face to catch the cool morning breeze. Corbett hated executions. He only wished he could collect his horse and ride past the Barbican north to Leighton Manor. However, the King had been most insistent. Naylor had already been hanged, drawn and quartered: his limbs, oiled and pickled, now hung over Nottingham's city walls as a warning to all would-be wrongdoers. Roteboeuf had been more fortunate: he had pleaded benefit of clergy, turned King's Evidence and been issued a pardon on one condition. He was to be denied food and water or any possessions and ordered to walk barefoot to the nearest port. There he would be exiled, forbidden to re-enter England on pain of death. His master Branwood had been tried before a special Commission of Justices. The former under-sheriff had arrogantly confessed to all his crimes, openly deriding the King. He'd passively accepted the sentence of the Chief Justice of King's Bench that he 'be taken to a lawful place of execution and there, at a time appointed by the court, hanged by the neck, cut down whilst still living, his body sliced open and disembowelled, his head to be struck off and his limbs quartered. The head to be set upon London Bridge and the quarters of his body sent to four principal cities of the kingdom'.

  Corbett opened his eyes. 'I don't care what the King said!' he muttered out of the side of his mouth. 'Once Branwood is here, I'm leaving!'

  Ranulf nodded absentmindedly. He was thinking of the voluptuous Amisia, now a moderately wealthy resident of the convent of the Minoresses, and above all of the King's fulsome praise of his work in breaking the French cipher. Ranulf closed his eyes and muttered a rare prayer. He only hoped Corbett had been right. All he could do was wait and see. The King, at Corbett's insistence, had closed all ports and limited sea passage to and from France. Accordingly, Philip would never know whether Achitophel had been successful or not. Nevertheless, the news from Paris was that something was about to happen. Jacques de Chatillon, Philip's uncle and commander of the French armies in Flanders, had according to one of Corbett's spies paid a quick visit to the Louvre Palace. He was now back on the French border. Edward's allies in Flanders, the mayors and principal burgesses of some Flemish cities, were beginning to report movement by French troops. Little news came, however, of Courtrai. Edward had held on to the secret as long as he could, his spies in Flanders reporting little or no activity in that vicinity.

  Ranulf looked up as the crowd suddenly roared. A black-garbed, macabre procession preceded by a blast of trumpets entered the market place. Ranulf glimpsed the nodding black plumes fixed between the horses' ears. Two dark-garbed executioners, a host of city officials following, clustered round the ox-hide hurdle on which Branwood had been fastened. Royal archers went before, beating a way through. The procession stopped at the foot of the scaffold. Branwood was untied and, preceded by six tormentors dressed like devils, hustled up the steps.

  Corbett took one brief look but Branwood was unrecognisable, hair and beard now straggly, his body one open wound from neck to crotch. Two of the tormentors pushed him to the railing of the scaffold for the crowd to glimpse, then back towards the ladder and the waiting noose.

  'I have seen enough,' Corbett whispered.

  Followed by Ranulf, he fought his way back through the crowd, into the cool darkness of the archway of St Bartholomew's Priory where a white-faced Maltote stood holding their horses' reins.

  'Come on!' Corbett urged.

  They mounted and made their way out. Corbett shielded his eyes from the sight of a figure jerking on the end of a rope as the drums began to rattle out their death beat. In a few minutes they were clear of the market place, pushing their way through the narrow alleyways into Aldersgate. At last Corbett reined in.

  'It's all over, Ranulf,' he whispered, leaning over to pat his horse's neck. 'We will ride to Leighton. The Lady Maeve is waiting for us.'

  'And Uncle Morgan?' Ranulf interrupted. Corbett rubbed the side of his face. 'Oh, yes, we must not forget dear Uncle Morgan!' 'And after that, Master?'

  Corbett half-smiled. 'You are free to go back to London. I think I'll stay at Leighton to see what news arrives from across the channel.' He grasped Ranulf's wrist. 'But whatever happens, by Yuletide, Ranulf, you will be a man of substance, a royal clerk, ready to climb the greasy steps of royal preferment.'

  On the same day Corbett rode to Leighton the French army marched on the city o
f Courtrai. Philip believed no force could withstand the cream of French chivalry: phalanx after phalanx of heavily armoured knights, columns of men-at-arms and serried ranks of Genoese bowmen. The French were confident of success. They, the chivalry of Europe, the finest army in Western Christendom, would ride down the simple artisans, weavers and burgesses of Flanders.

  By nightfall of that same day, Philip and all the great lords of Europe were shocked to hear that this army was no more. The French had attacked but the Flemings were waiting: Philip's knights charged courageously, time and again, only to break against the massed cohorts of Fleming foot soldiers with their long pikes and short stabbing swords. Courtrai was a disaster for Philip and what was left of his army fled in haste back across the border. All the French King could do was kneel before the statue of his sainted ancestor and bitterly wonder what had gone wrong.

  Around Nottingham the forest stood silent, a sea of green under the darkening sky. Hoblyn the outlaw crouched beneath the spreading branches of a great oak tree, his eyes never leaving the trackway.

  Times had changed but Hoblyn, now past his fifty-sixth summer, was philosophical. As a youth he'd run wild with Robin Hood. When the great outlaw leader had accepted the King's pardon, Hoblyn had tried the path of righteousness but found it difficult to follow. He had returned to the forest, killing the King's deer, keeping a wary eye out for royal verderers and looking for the occasional unprotected traveller.

  Then Robin had come back and Hoblyn had rejoined the band. Like the rest, he wondered the reason for some of Robin's actions but saw no need to question him. Robin was always a will-o'-the-wisp. He was the son of Herne the Huntsman and wove magic to blend with the trees and talk to the birds and animals as well as the goblins and elves who lurked in the forest. Now Robin had gone again. Something terrible had happened in Nottingham. The taprooms of different taverns were full of tittle-tattle: how Robin had killed the sheriff; how he had wrought vengeance on the sheriff's evil serjeant-at-arms, John Naylor; how Robin had gone away but one day would return. Hoblyn could not make sense of it. All he knew was that the outlaw and his chieftains had gone. No more would the horn sound, summoning him to a meeting or to receive whispered instructions.

  Hoblyn shrugged and spat. He did not care. He was sure Robin would come again. He tensed as he heard the jingle of harness, the soft clip-clop of hooves. Round the corner of the forest track came a solitary rider. Hoblyn peered through the gathering darkness and grinned. By the looks of him the traveller was a well-fed priest. Hoblyn slipped his mask over his face, pulled his cowl forward and hurried at a half-crouch to the edge of the track. He fixed an arrow to his bowstring, waited till the rider was almost upon him and stepped out on to the path. Hoblyn pulled the bow string back, the sharp-edged arrow pointed directly at the priest's chest.

  What do you want? the cleric shouted, all a fluster, gathering his reins.

  'Well, for a start, the wineskin you have hung on your saddle horn.'

  The priest released it and the wineskin dropped with a thud to the ground. Hoblyn moved slightly to the right.

  'And the purse swinging from your belt. Be careful!' he lied. 'There are a score of others on either side of you!'

  The priest licked his thick lips and stared into the darkness. He heard a crackle and rustling in the undergrowth and, gabbling with fright, unhitched the purse and let it fall.

  'I am a priest,' he spluttered. 'I do God's work!'

  'As do I!' Hoblyn retorted. 'Spreading God's wealth amongst the poor. You may ride on, priest!'

  The priest gathered the reins of his horse in his hands. Hoblyn stepped aside to let him pass.

  'Who are you?' the priest spat, glaring down at the masked, cowled figure.

  Hoblyn smiled. 'Why, don't you know? This is Sherwood. Tell your friends that Robin Hood has come again!' Author's note

  The battle of Courtrai was, as described in this novel, a major disaster for Philip IV, a precursor of those great defeats of the fourteenth century when massed knights suffered against groups of disciplined, well-armed and determined peasant foot soldiers.

  The secret diplomatic war preceding Courtrai is also as outlined. A survey of the documents in the Public Records Office, particularly in Categories C.47 and C.49, will illustrate the heightened suspicion of the French felt by Edward I and his commanders at this time. Edward was bound by treaty to Philip and could not openly aid the Flemings. His relief at Philip's defeat is clearly evident in his correspondence following news of Courtrai.

  The use of ciphers is also interesting. Some are still unbroken; others, such as that used by Edward III in 1330 in his correspondence with the Papacy, could only be solved when the historians gained access to the Vatican archives.

  Nottingham too is as described, a Danish burgh built around a castle where secret passageways and galleries abound. Indeed, in 1330, when the young Edward III wished to depose his own mother and her lover Roger Mortimer, he and a number of household knights managed the coup by using one of these secret passageways to enter the castle and arrest Mortimer.

  The story of Robin Hood is one of the most famous in western folklore, but did the man himself exist? My theory that he did and fought with Simon de Montfort is based on a very curious Latin poem on Folio 103 of the Registe Premonstratense (Additional Manuscript M.55 4934-5 in the British Library) which indicates that Robin Hood was known by 1304.

  Andrew Wyntoun, a Scottish chronicler, in his work 'Original Chronicle of Scotland' written in 1420 also records (under a verse bearing the date 1283) that 'Little John and Robin Hood were alive then and waging their war against the Sheriff in Sherwood'.

  Earlier still, in 1341, John Forduen, a canon of Aberdeen, included in his 'Scottish Chronicles' for the year 1266 the following assertion: 'About this time there arose from the dispossessed (i.e. those who fought for de Montfort) and banished that famous Robin Hood and Little John with their companions. They lived as outlaws amongst the woodlands and the thickets.'

  The Assassin in the Greenwood is based on the theory that Robin Hood lived in the reign of Edward I and, according to the evidence mentioned above, was pardoned by that King. I have also woven in other references, such as Little John's being a servant of the sheriff, Robin Hood's bitter feud with Guy of Gisborne and his doomed romance with Maid Marion. The outlaw's death at Kirklees may have been as described – eighteenth-century antiquarians described his tomb there which bore an inscription not only to Robin Hood but to 'William Goldberg and a man called Thomas'.

  The position of sheriff in Medieval England was also as described in this novel. Many sheriffs entered secret alliances with outlaw bands (e.g. the Coterels in Leicestershire in the mid-fourteenth century, who even had the effrontery to capture the King's Chief Justice). Branwood would not have been out of place among these men. In the end, however, the Robin Hood story is an amalgam of many legends and this novel must be viewed as just one interpretation of them.

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