The Ransomed Crown

by Wayne Grant

  Tuck had scoffed at the claim.

  “There’s enough silver in the vaults beneath York Minster to keep every mercenary in the Midlands well paid for a year I’d wager. But the Archbishop has to provide for his palaces and his bishops’ palaces with those funds, so he takes food out of the mouths of his flock to pay the mercenaries. Makes me sick.”

  Robin required no convincing.

  “We’ll take the grain and if York burns, it will be on the Archbishop’s head, not ours.”

  They had scrounged and stolen ten wagons and seven draft horses to take away the grain. Some of the stronger men would have to pull the wagons without horses. His scouts had reported that the barn was well-guarded. That was expected. The church hereabouts looked to its own needs first.

  The guards were hired mercenaries and, no doubt, capable fighting men. He glanced at the skinny farmer next him with his sharpened pruning hook and wondered how he would fare against such men if it came to that. If his plan worked, he would not have to find out.

  The core of his band—a score of experienced men, well-armed with swords and longbows had moved into position almost an hour ago. Most of these men, he had known since his youth. As boys they’d roamed this huge forest and knew it like their mother’s face. When he and his companions had grown old enough to become unruly, his father had gathered them together and turned them over to Magnus Rask, his Master of the Sword, for instruction.

  Rask was a huge young Dane with a nasty temperament, but a man totally loyal to the lord of Loxley Manor. It was Rask who taught Robin and his companions how to use a blade and shoot a longbow. He had also taught them how to fight dirty in a brawl. The Dane showed no deference to any of them and was particularly hard on the son of his lord. He had happily administered many a beating to young Robin, but could never wipe the cocky smile off the boy’s face. In time he’d come to admire his student, even when the boy began to beat him.

  Rask and Tuck had done their best to train these new men. They drilled them every day. The farmers were clumsy but game and, until tonight, they had used them sparingly on small raids where the guard forces had been weak. They’d shown themselves to be brave enough, but if things went wrong this night, their training would be put to the test. Friar Tuck crept up beside Robin at the edge of the wood and whispered his report.

  “We count five guards posted around the barn, but there’ll be another twenty off duty in the village—perhaps more. As soon as someone raises the alarm they will be there in minutes.”

  Robin muttered a quick acknowledgement. Tuck’s report confirmed earlier scouting they had done over the past two days. Their problem was not so much the men on guard as the barn itself. It was a sturdy wooden structure with only one wide oak door at ground level. A small hatch sat under the eaves fifteen feet off the ground at the opposite end. This opening led to a hay loft. If the guards managed to retreat into the barn and barricade it, rousting them out would be difficult and take time—time for reinforcements to arrive.

  So the plan was simple. All the guards would be killed by his archers at the outset. Once they had been quietly dispatched, his farmers would break into the barn and load up the grain sacks as fast as they could while Rask and his archers kept watch on the hamlet. If all went well, the sun would rise over Southwell Minster and the next guard shift would find dead comrades and an empty tithe barn.

  “Does Magnus have the bowmen in place?”

  “Aye,” Tuck said. “There are two watching each guard. When they see the signal, they will take them all down at once.”

  “Good.”

  Robin turned to look a last time on the men gathered behind him in the woods. A horse snorted and he froze, but realized it was one of the draft horses they had stolen to haul the grain away. At this distance, it was doubtful the guards had heard. He exhaled slowly and walked to the edge of the wood. In his hand was a small torch—no more than a branch with flaxen cloth wrapped around one end and soaked in resin. He took flint from a small pouch and struck a spark. The torch flared. He let it burn for no more than ten seconds—long enough for his men to see—then rubbed the flame out in the dirt.

  Now it would begin.

  ***

  Bruun Vermeulen felt ill. He thought it might have been a bit of bad pork he’d eaten for supper, but it could have been the ale he’d consumed so freely at the meal. The brew had a strange odour to it and the tavern owner was not known for providing the most wholesome of fare. He had thought about getting excused from duty, but then he would have had his pay docked, so he had taken up his station just east of the tithe barn. He was to watch for any locals sneaking up from the village to filch grain from the holy church.

  He had been on duty for an hour when his stomach heaved. He bent double to retch into the grass and never saw the torch that flared at the far tree line. Nor did he see the two arrows that passed harmlessly over his bent back—but he heard them and he knew that sound. The guard nearest him made a small cry, like an animal in pain, then went silent. Bruun Vermeulen was an experienced soldier and no hero.

  He dropped to the ground and began crawling toward the village.

  ***

  The wagons were being wheeled across the open field when Magnus Rask found Robin.

  “We may have lost one of the guards,” he said grimly. “My boys saw him go down, but when they checked, there was no body and no blood.”

  Robin nodded.

  “We have to expect the other guards will be roused. They’ll send a rider to call out the garrison at Newark Castle. The Sheriff has three score mounted men there and they could be here in three hours or less.”

  “Aye,” said Rask. “We’d hoped to have till dawn, but we’ll load what we can by midnight. We can hold off the local boys that long. What shall we do with the rest of the grain?”

  “Any that’s left, they’ll sell,” Robin said flatly. “Not a loaf of bread will go the people who grew it.”

  “Not a crumb,” Rask agreed.

  Robin did not hesitate.

  “Burn it.”

  ***

  It was just past midnight when Robin called a halt to the loading. Six wagons had been piled high with sacks and hauled out of the tithe barn into the forest. The mercenaries in the town had been roused and had, no doubt, sent for help, but they chose not to venture from the hamlet after the first man to do so fell dead with a longbow shaft in his chest.

  Inside the barn, a spark was struck in the hayloft. Within minutes, black smoke began to pour out of the hatch under the eaves as the hay in the loft went up and caught the thatch of the roof. By the time Robin and his archers reached the shelter of the forest, the place was a roaring inferno.

  The empty fields around Southwell Minster were illuminated by the flames as the last wagon disappeared into the trees. There was an abandoned mill deep in Sherwood that Robin had set the men to repairing months ago. Now it would be put to good use and there would be flour for bread—but not nearly enough.

  Tuck settled in beside Robin at the edge of the woods. Rask had spread his archers for a mile or more along the track that the wagons had taken. It made for a lethal ambush corridor. If a mounted force came from Newark, they would not get far once they reached the woods. Riding into Sherwood with ill intent had become a deadly undertaking.

  Robin looked at his good friend. Most of the men who had gone outlaw with him had managed to put back some of the flesh they’d lost in the siege of Nottingham Castle, but Tuck still looked gaunt. He’d been taking just enough food to keep his strength up for the past months and could not be persuaded to take more.

  “Children are dying all across Nottinghamshire,” was all he would offer in reply to Robin’s entreaties.

  As the creaking and groaning of the last overloaded wagon faded, the monk spoke.

  “It’s not enough, Robin. For every mouth we feed, there are ten going hungry.”

  “Aye, Tuck, it’s not. But what more can be done? We can raid and ambush as long as we can get
safely back into Sherwood, but we haven’t the strength to challenge the Sheriff out in the open, not in daylight. With a few more men and decent weapons, we’d have a chance, but as it is, we’re forced to skulk in the forest like the outlaws we are. It feels like we are alone in this, but I wonder—are there other’s resisting John’s madness?”

  “The Queen.”

  “Aye, the Queen, but we don’t know her plans or even if she still lives. It’s been nearly a year since we gave her the King’s message and most people are long dead at her age.”

  Tuck grunted.

  “I suppose she isn’t immortal, though if any woman could aspire to that, it would be Eleanor.”

  Robin was silent for a while.

  “The King could be dead too.”

  Tuck nodded.

  “Possible, but I doubt it. News like that would spread fast, even into Sherwood. And if he’s alive, he will put an end to this within a week of his return.”

  Robin snorted.

  “December is but a few days away and the King promised to be home by then. But you will recall how long it took him to get to the Holy Land. He is a man easily distracted and prone to dither. If he is late in returning, there might be nothing left to save.”

  From the village across the fields a small cheer erupted and men could be heard shouting.

  “They’ve arrived,” Tuck said.

  Just then a column of mounted men burst out of the village and rode past the flaming barn. A man in front pointed to the deep ruts the loaded wagons had made in the soft earth. The lead riders spurred their horses into a trot, heading straight for where Robin and Tuck crouched in the shadows.

  “They never learn, do they?” Tuck observed.

  “I hope not,” said Robin as he drew a clothyard shaft from his quiver.

  Treason

  In early November, Marshall left London to meet with the Earl of Oxford. His bodyguard rode with him, all save Sir Nevil who stayed behind to deal with any trouble that might be stirred up in the city with the Earl absent. The night of the Justiciar’s departure, Andrew Parrot waited until most in the house had retired for bed, then stepped out the front door and headed west. A few seconds later, Jamie Finch slipped out of the rear of the house and followed him.

  The clerk took a route up Cheapside and into the teeming market district. A dozen times he cast quick glances over his shoulder to ensure he was not followed. He never saw Jamie Finch. At length, he came, as he always did, to the White Mare and tapped on the door. It opened quickly and he slipped inside. The woman who greeted him was fat and florid. She held out her palm and he placed a coin in it. She inspected it, then led him down a hallway past a large parlour where women lounged on cushioned benches.

  Parrot did not give them a second look. At the end of the long hall, they reached another door and the woman opened it for him. There was a passageway there, too narrow to be considered an alley, that ran between the rear of two buildings.

  Andrew Parrot stepped into the dark space and did not look back as the door closed behind him. The narrow cleft at the rear of the White Mare opened onto a broad avenue only a few steps from his destination. He cast a quick look up and down the street, crossed over and tapped on the door. It opened a crack, then swung wide. Bishop Poore’s most trusted agent smiled warmly at the clerk.

  “How are you, Andrew?”

  “I’m well. I’ve brought you information—important information.”

  “Wonderful! I marvel at your boldness, Andrew. I truly do. What do you have for me?”

  Andrew Parrot felt the familiar flush he always felt when praised this way. He knew this thing he was doing was wrong, that it would hurt a man he admired, but it was worth it if it pleased the person sitting across from him. He gave the agent a detailed report on what he had discovered.

  Twenty minutes later he was at the back door of the White Mare. He knocked and the woman let him in. He hurried down the corridor and out the front door. He noticed that the night had grown colder and pulled his robes tight around his shoulders. He did not notice the man standing in the shadows who had been patiently waiting for him to reappear. The one followed the other at a discreet distance back to Marshall’s house.

  ***

  When Marshall returned to London a week later, news reached him that a force of two hundred men, sent by the Earl of Norfolk at Marshall’s request to bolster loyalist forces in London, had been ambushed outside the town of Colchester with great slaughter. Marshall was aghast—and furious when word reached him of this disaster.

  With barely a hundred men scattered around the capital, the forces loyal to Richard were no match for John’s garrison in the Tower. Thus far, no open hostilities had broken out between the factions inside London, but Marshall knew control of the city would one day be contested. He had need of Norfolk’s two hundred men.

  “Barely thirty survived!” he railed. “Thirty! By God, someone will pay for this. I swear it!” His guards clustered near the entrance to the parlour office as the Justiciar stormed around the small space and cursed this latest news. He turned to Sir Nevil.

  “Nevil, send word to the Earl of Norfolk that we will find and punish whoever did this! He’ll know it is an empty promise, but send it nevertheless.” He paused and looked at the worried faces surrounding him.

  “Leave me,” he commanded. “I need to think.” Millicent had watched all of this from the bottom of the stairs, drawn there from her room by the Earl’s loud oaths. She turned and started back up.

  “Lady Millicent, a moment of your time please.”

  Surprised at the summons, she hurried back down the stairs and joined him in the office. He closed the door behind her.

  “There can be no doubt that this outrage was done on John’s orders, though he will have covered his tracks carefully. To arrange such an ambush, he had to know of our plans well in advance. Norfolk could have let the secret slip somehow, but I doubt it. That man has ever been tight-lipped. Only three men here in London were privy to that information—Sir Nevil, Parrot, who wrote out my plea to the Earl, and myself. I did not inform the Archbishop of my intentions.”

  Millicent saw where the Earl was heading.

  “So you will now consider the possibility that one of your own is a spy?” she asked.

  Marshall nodded wearily.

  “I fear I must. Have you learned anything that would point to a traitor in this house?”

  “My lord, what I have is thin, to be sure. But your clerk, Parrot, often spends time in your office on nights you are away. On other nights, when you are absent, he visits a brothel.”

  Marshall arched his eyebrows.

  “He works late when I am gone and has visited a bawdy house?” I’ll concede the latter surprises me, but even Master Parrot must need some respite from time to time! I don’t see that this suggests treason.”

  “I agree, it proves nothing, my lord, but it is the only thing I’ve observed that seems…out of ordinary.”

  Marshall rubbed his chin.

  “Keep a close eye on Parrot, then. He seems too meek a man to engage in treachery, but who knows what lies inside a man’s soul. His visits to the ladies of the night might not be the only secret he keeps hidden. But tell me, you have nothing to report regarding Sir Nevil?”

  “Only that he is a most boring man, who rises early, does his duty and takes to his bed at the same time every evening. I’ve not seen him leave the residence, save on your instructions.”

  For the first time Marshall smiled.

  “You know, Nevil once had a wild streak. When we were younger he lured me into more than one awkward situation, but age has calmed him. I would stake my life that Nevil Crenshaw is not your spy.”

  Millicent wasn’t so sure. If she were to exonerate every man vouched for by Marshall, her work would have been over before it had begun, but she had no further evidence to present.

  “I hope you are right, my lord. I will keep close watch on both of these men and hope that one makes a
mistake.”

  “Very well, my dear, keep me informed.” He rose, indicating their meeting was over. She crossed the parlour and headed up the stairs to her room. After three and a half months of careful watching she could only say that the clerk had unexpected habits and that Sir Nevil was boring. No wonder Earl William had not taken her seriously.

  I make a poor spy!

  A Lion at Bay

  Seven men rode into the Julian Alps on a clear and cold day in early November. In the lead was a tall knight mounted on a formidable warhorse. He wore a tattered surcoat with a rampant stag on the front over a mail shirt. A second knight rode beside him, his left arm secured with a splint and lashed to his side. Five men wearing the red cross of the Knights Templar followed the two leaders. Four were true members of that fierce band of holy warriors, but the fifth was not. The fifth was the ruler of an empire, trying to slink back home unnoticed through a land filled with his enemies.

  For three days they rode hard across a low coastal plain with the mountains looming larger with each passing hour. Twice they were stopped by local officials, curious as to the identity of their traveling band. They claimed, honestly, to be returning Crusaders and invoked the Truce of God.

  The Pope had declared that no Christian ruler could molest Crusaders on pain of excommunication, and for local officials this was enough to gain them passage. But every one of the seven knew that, no matter what the Pope might threaten, Richard’s enemies had more concern for vengeance and profit than the salvation of their souls. The Truce of God would not save Richard the Lionheart if they were discovered.

  On the fourth day it began to snow. It wasn’t heavy, but even in the valleys it made the footing treacherous for the horses, and on the high peaks the white drifts crept further down the slopes. On that day, the King fell ill with a fever. His strong constitution kept him in the saddle, but he needed rest after the calamity of the shipwreck and their hurried flight north.