Hood

by Toby Venables

  “I felt a change of career was in order. I have discovered my future is in fish. Also, Saladin’s son wanted to kill me.”

  Gisburne stared at him in disbelief. “So, your life was in danger in Jerusalem, and so you—a Saracen—came to the Christian kingdom of Richard the Lionheart, scourge of Saladin and champion of the Holy Crusade. For safety?”

  “Well, when you put it like that...”

  Gisburne chuckled to himself, and began to unwind the bloody wrappings from the man’s head, taking care to avoid the razor-sharp blade that still protruded from it.

  “It has not been easy since the Sultan died,” said Asif. “The sons are not like the father. They squabble. And the new Emir, al-Afdal...” He shook his head in disgust. “I had served under Christians as well as Muslims. He never trusted me.”

  The last of the wrappings revealed the face of an Arab, his neck covered in a distinctive pattern of tattoos. “So it would seem...” said Gisburne.

  “Hashashin... I knew I had irritated the wrong people, but even I had not realised how much.”

  “Well, he’s a dead hashashin now,” said Gisburne.

  Asif put his foot on the dead man’s face and pulled on the disc. Metal squeaked against bone as it worked free.

  “Still playing with those toys?” said Gisburne.

  “They are good for more than tricks,” said Asif wiping the blood from the smooth steel. “As you can see...” His expression turned sombre. “More will come.”

  “Then we’ll stop them.”

  “Nothing will stop them. Except my death.”

  Gisburne gazed down at the lifeless figure. “Well, then... Perhaps it is the right time for you to die after all.” He looked up at Asif, then back to the dead man. Yes. Similar enough. “Let’s say I was never here. That our hashashin friend succeeded in his quest and rode away from this encounter alive. That you are indeed lying dead there in the mud. And they”—Gisburne nodded his head towards the three dumbstruck onlookers, still rooted to the spot in terror—“witnessed it all.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “I can make you disappear, Asif, though where I would take you may yet prove more hazardous.”

  Asif grinned. “You always did like conjuring tricks. You and that friend of yours—that Locksley.”

  Mention of the name gave Gisburne a sudden chill. “Locksley is precisely why I am here, though he is now better known as Robin Hood.”

  Asif’s eyebrows raised. “I have heard this name... The ordinary people idolise him. You say this is the same person?” Gisburne nodded, and Asif shook his head. “He is a dangerous man. I liked him well enough, but I learned things about him, even while the two of you were still in Jerusalem. I meant to tell you, but you were both gone before I had the chance.”

  “I found out in my own time,” said Gisburne. “And you may yet have a chance to bring him to justice.” He stood and strode off behind the barrel stack, returning a moment later with a black Saracen bow and a quiver full of arrows.

  “Good bow,” said Asif.

  “It’s yours, now. All these, too.” Gisburne gestured to the weapons strewn upon the ground, then crouched and began to strip the dead hashashin of all that remained. “Put them on. The armour too.”

  Asif frowned. “Why the armour?”

  “You’re going to need it. I’m looking for good men, Asif, to help me hunt down Locksley. There’s gold in it.”

  “Always happy to work for honest pay,” said Asif. “And my opportunities elsewhere would seem to be diminishing.” Asif held up the coat of scale armour. “This, though... This makes me feel like a thief.”

  “It’s not robbery, Asif, but exchange. You must give him your clothes. Your belt, your purse—everything. There is no other way.”

  Asif questioned it no more.

  When he was done, Gisburne threw the hashashin’s travelling cloak back over his friend’s huge shoulders.

  “Phew! He stinks!” protested Asif.

  “Better the stink of the living than of the dead,” said Gisburne. “But I’ll be honest—the fish are hardly helping your case...” He turned to the wharf rats. “You! What is your name?”

  “J-Jupp, sir. But I...”

  “Go to whoever you answer to, Jupp. Go immediately and tell them Asif al-Din ibn Salah is dead. Set upon, in an attempt at robbery.”

  “But, sir...”

  “No one here will question the death of an Arab, nor look too closely. Your skins will be safe. Tell his employer. Tell everyone. Asif al-Din ibn Salah—can you remember that?”

  “Asif Adam... Eeeb...” Jupp’s face contorted about the unfamiliar sounds.

  “Just say the big Saracen, Asif,” said Gisburne. “Now go!” They jumped at the command and scuttled away, evidently happy to escape with their lives.

  Gisburne stared down at the prostrate body and clapped a hand on Asif’s shoulder. “Well, you’re dead, my friend. Now you must leave, with all possible haste. Avoid the town. Make your way north, to Nottingham. From there, travel west to Clippestone. It is a royal palace, everyone knows it, but be careful who you ask. If questioned, say you bring news from the East, and if doubted, show them this.” He pressed a gold ring into Asif’s hand. “It bears the symbol of Prince John. I’ll not lie, there are more who hate him than love him, but even in these disordered times, few would dare incur his displeasure. We meet there in eleven days, on the fifteenth of this month.”

  With no more than a brief nod, Asif turned and was gone.

  “IS THAT BLOOD?” said Mélisande as they rode past the Leper Gate and on towards the outskirts of the bustling town.

  Gisburne looked at his sleeve. “Fish,” he said, and wiped it away.

  “I’m curious... Why an Arab?”

  Gisburne noted that she did not use the familiar term ‘Saracen’ but the Arabs’ own word for themselves.

  He shrugged. “Because he’s here. Because he’s a friend. And because he is one of the most capable fighters I ever met. He even knew Hood a little, in the Holy Land.”

  “Our little band is beginning to take shape.”

  “It must,” said Gisburne. “We will have only one chance. Hood’s army is ramshackle—untrained, undisciplined, poorly fed—and I believe the ties that bind it will break under stress. But only if we can eliminate the source of its strength—the half-dozen closest to their master. There are many who will fight for Hood, but only a few who will stand with him to the last.”

  “So you mean for us to match them.”

  Gisburne nodded. “Man for man.”

  “And woman...”

  Gisburne smiled and nodded.

  “Do you know much about this core?” she continued.

  “I have lived with them in my head for months. Years. Took, the rebel monk; John Lyttell; Will the Scarlet; O’Doyle, brother of the Red Hand; Much, who they call the Miller’s son...”

  He felt a pang of anger at the last; and also, perhaps, guilt. Once, he had attempted to part the lad from his infatuation with Hood. It had only been a fancy in the boy’s head then. Weeks later, he was one of the Sherwood fanatics, instrumental in effecting Hood’s escape from the Tower. Many had died that night—at least one of them by Much’s own hand. Since then, Gisburne had heard that Hood was taking a special interest in the boy, doubtless fuelling his hero-worship. He was angry at the ruined life—the stolen life—and guilty at his own failure. Perhaps he had berated the lad too hard. Perhaps it was he who had finally driven him to seek a new master in the forest.

  “And Lady Marian?” said Mélisande.

  What of Marian? That, Gisburne did not know. Perhaps she could be rescued, returned to the fold. There was always the chance. Perhaps she was already lost. He honestly did not know which he feared more.

  “I have sworn to restore Marian to her father, if it can be done,” he said. He saw a pained expression upon Mélisande’s face, and her gaze drop to the ground. It had been only a month since her own father had died—barely three, since he had bani
shed her from his presence. By all accounts, he had recanted on his deathbed, but that came too late for Mélisande, and his death, too soon.

  “What if it can’t?” she said, irritably. Gisburne knew she hated any hint of weakness in herself; she was using anger to cover her grief. “What if she won’t be restored—if she fights back? Whose task will it be to kill her? Mine? Is that why I’m here?”

  “You know better than that.”

  She looked instantly regretful. “Perhaps I’ll just take on Hood,” she said with a conflicted smile. “Get it over with.”

  “Hood is mine.”

  At the crossroads, they passed St James’ Chapel—the furthest religious house from the centre of the town, and a place of lepers—and there turned northward towards the humped stone bridge. A great graveyard opened up beyond the chapel, and Gisburne and Mélisande stared in silence across the crop of disordered grey grave markers—some wood, some stone, some already fallen—the only sounds the cawing of crows and the clop of their horses’ hooves on the loose stones. Near the low wall marking out the hallowed ground were seven fresh graves, as yet unmarked.

  “You know,” said Mélisande, turning her attention ahead, “there was a legend among the pagans that told of the ultimate battle between divine heroes and their demonic counterparts—each matched in combat with their nemesis, to whom fate had always joined them.”

  “Who won?” said Gisburne.

  “They all lost,” said Mélisande. “Each side destroyed the other. It was the end of the world.”

  “We are not gods, and they are not demons. And if it takes our destruction to end them, well...” His voice trailed away, the latest in a string of gloomy thoughts overwhelming it. “You know you don’t have to do this. I am not a general, and I do not give orders.”

  “Do you think I would take them if you did?” said Mélisande with a smile. She sighed. “Every army, no matter how small, needs its general. And there will come a time when someone looks to you. When we all do.”

  “But being there... That must be their own choice.” Gisburne realised, even as he said it, how unconvincing he sounded. Mélisande knew it too. She always knew.

  “Do you think this of all your soldiers,” she said, “or just me?”

  Gisburne found he could not meet her gaze.

  “I don’t need your protection, Gisburne. And you have no need to distance yourself from the responsibility this places on you. We all understand the dangers. We do it of our own free will—and out of respect and love for you.” She blushed a little, then added: “All of us.”

  They rode in silence for moment.

  “Anyway,” she said, “why would a woman want to return to a life of privilege and luxury in the lush surroundings of her beloved Boulogne when she could be facing certain death on a fool’s errand in a dank forest?”

  They both laughed, despite themselves, the dark clouds broken.

  “So, where next?” she asked.

  “North. Fountains Abbey.”

  “To him?”

  Gisburne stared straight ahead, his smile fading.

  “You really mean to do it, then...” Still, Gisburne said nothing. Mélisande started to say something more, stopped herself, then began again. “You are sure about this?”

  “I am sure.”

  XII

  Fountains Abbey

  10 March, 1194

  “YOU SAY HE still remembers nothing?” said Gisburne.

  Ralph Haget, the Abbot of Fountains Abbey, watched as their subject deftly parried another blow, then turned his ice-blue eyes back to his guest.

  “Nothing of his former life. He recalls his name, several childhood memories—some very vividly—and his early career as a knight, but beyond that...” Haget simply shook his head. “It is as if, for him, the years in between never existed.”

  “Perhaps that is the best thing that could have happened to him,” said Gisburne.

  He watched from the cool shade of the cloister as the slender fighter’s wooden sword caught his opponent a sharp thwack about the side of his unprotected head. The big Norseman uttered a guttural curse. For a moment the pair locked weapons, then broke apart to take up their positions again, the slender man’s closed helm glinting in the low sun.

  They were an odd sight, these two. In part it was their surroundings. The small, cloistered courtyard—a place mostly used for growing medicinal herbs, but with an open, circular space at its heart—was undoubtedly a perfect space for close combat practice. It even afforded them privacy—which, given the nature of the combatants, was perhaps advisable. But it was the sheer incongruity of the scene that struck Gisburne. That this place of quiet contemplation in a house of God was ringing to the sound of clashing weapons—and under the stewardship of an Abbot who was an avowed pacifist—was strange enough, but then consider the men themselves. On the one hand, a broad Norseman whose plaited beard and hammer pendant marked him as a pagan—one of the very last of his kind; on the other, a graceful knight, in a domed, close-fitting steel helm whose locked faceplate—a lifeless, blank-eyed mask in parody of a human face—completely concealed the features beneath.

  He announced his readiness, and battle was joined again. For a moment they danced around each other, then the Norseman tried a feint, and followed with a lunge—but his opponent, far swifter than he, and with movements more akin to a dancer or acrobat than a fighter, parried, dodged, spun full circle and brought his sword blade, two-handed, hard against the Norseman’s ribs. The big man exclaimed again, stretched his aching sword arm and in a gruff, flat voice called the score. From within the mask, Gisburne heard what might have been a laugh.

  “There is little more we can do here,” said Haget. “Physically, he is as fit as one could hope, as you can see. Remarkable, when one considers what he has endured.”

  “The time has come for me to take him off your hands. I have a task for him.”

  “Are you sure this is a wise course, Gisburne? Those things he did... They are forgotten, but not gone.”

  “This is something by which he may yet redeem himself.”

  Weapons clattered again in the sunlit arena. The Norseman went in harder this time, with savage energy. He could not hope to match his opponent in swiftness, but Gisburne could see his ploy—to force an error. As he rained down blows, the helmed warrior danced and spun—until his foot caught a patch of green upon the still-wet stones and half slid from under him. His arms flailed momentarily as he righted himself—but the Norsemen, seeing the gap, caught him square on the helm with a clang of wood on metal.

  He went down with the sheer force of it, and sat for a moment on the ground, his breath rasping beneath the mask. The Norseman extended an arm and hauled his opponent to his feet, a look of grim satisfaction upon his face. He was now only trailing by seven strikes to one. Still panting, the masked man reached up to the catches on the faceplate of his helmet.

  There was one sharp click, then another, and with a grating squeal the expressionless face swung open. For a moment the weirdly disconnected non-face hung in the air, a hollow-eyed silhouette obscuring what lay beneath, until he grasped the helm upon either side and slowly eased it off his head.

  Even Gisburne, who knew well enough what to expect, felt his flesh creep at what was revealed.

  There was the living skull, its dark flesh burned and withered until it barely covered the bone. There were the lips drawn back across the blackened teeth, and the lidless eyes that stared without cease. And there, beneath it all, were the two misaligned sides of what flesh remained, divided from right brow to the left of his chin by a near-vertical scar.

  That life could exist behind such a shattered visage seemed impossible. It was a face that belonged in the grave—in Hell. But even they had spat it out.

  As if sensing something, the vision turned and looked directly at Gisburne. Gisburne, chilled to the bone in spite of the balmy weather, looked back into the face of Tancred de Mercheval.

  IT HAD BEEN over three
months since he had seen him last, when he delivered him into Haget’s care. Then, he had been a broken man. Not physically—he had injuries, yes, but God knows he’d already had a lifetime of those. It was what was within that had changed. Something new was emerging. Or perhaps something already there was falling away—Gisburne could not be certain. He only knew that some metamorphosis seemed to have occurred—that the vile grub that was Tancred was somehow transformed; into what, he could not exactly say. But now, his decision to keep the one they had called the White Devil alive when all thought him dead suggested new possibilities—possibilities he could never have grasped when he had first brought him here.

  Haget had accepted Tancred without argument that day—the only living being Gisburne knew who would. Gisburne trusted Haget completely, but there were other reasons why Fountains seemed appropriate. Many among Haget’s brotherhood were former soldiers—they gravitated towards him, and he gladly accepted them—and if it came to it, were far better equipped to handle Tancred and his pagan manservant than the average pasty cleric.

  In the event, no such precautions were needed.

  “Model residents,” Haget had told Gisburne when he had arrived that morning. “Tancred observes every office, day and night, and prays in between. He shames some of the brothers with his devotion. And his man sees to his every need without a word.”

  Haget had nevertheless made a point of taking Gisburne via a circuitous route through the infirmary—a reminder, he supposed, that the Abbey was not here just to grant favours to the well-connected.

  It seemed much changed since his last visit. The place was now packed with ragged, grey figures—old men, young women, barefoot children—some pale, many thin and hollow-cheeked, some merely looking lost.

  “All these people are ill?” he had asked as they passed through.

  “Hunger is a sickness,” Haget had said. “Rest assured, the tables of their lords are replete with food. It’s not they who suffer, just the poor souls who helped put the food there.” His eyes blazed with a pale blue fire. “There is a familiar cycle to these things. When the harvest is good, those above merely take the best part of it. When it is poor, they take it all—and demand more work to make up the shortfall. The people who work the land tire and hunger. They entreat their lord, who tells them to tighten their belts—that it is necessary. The priest tells them that it is good for the soul, that it will make them stronger. So they tighten their belts. What choice have they? But they do not grow stronger, only the hunger does. They begin to eat the fodder meant for their animals. Now their animals hunger. Their lord tells them to work harder still, for his table must not be wanting. They forage the hedgerows—but their lord takes that, too. Bereft of nourishment, they seek out the plentiful deer in the forest, whose meat furnishes the royal tables. When caught, they’re flogged if they’re lucky, hanged if they’re not. Those not bold enough to poach begin to look to the ailing ox, and think how many mouths its flesh might feed, until, finally, they give in to temptation. Well, why not? It was going to die anyway. Its meat is tough and meagre, and soon gone. And now they have no food to eat, no seed to grow, no ox to plough. And what does their lord do? He punishes them over the death of the ox. And here we are...” He spread his hands wide, then shook his head in anger. “It almost makes me want to take up my sword again.”