Hood

by Toby Venables

  “Just as long as it isn’t that fucking hurdy gurdy,” said Galfrid. Mélisande sniggered. Even Gisburne smiled—but when he looked, Galfrid’s expression was as grim as ever.

  “Do you need help with that?” said Aldric, scurrying over.

  “No!” snapped Gisburne, positioning himself firmly between Aldric and the box. He pulled the strap tight, then added, after a pause which was a little too long: “Thank you.”

  Aldric nodded slowly and backed away. Then, as he turned and looked back at his own horse, it was his turn to shout. “Hey!”

  Asif, who was turning Aldric’s crossbow over in his hands, looked up. “Sorry, my friend,” he said. “I couldn’t resist. It is a good weapon.”

  Gisburne could not resist a snigger at how Aldric’s nosiness had left him open to someone else’s. But Aldric did not look amused.

  “Please,” he said, his hand extended, a look akin to panic on his face. “Put it down. Gently.”

  Asif frowned and looked over the bow again. “What is so special about this weapon of yours?”

  “It bites,” said Aldric. Asif laughed, but Aldric did not. “Hidden in the stock, just where you grip it, there is a spike,” explained Aldric. “It is attached to a spring, and charged with a powerful poison. I alone know how to disarm it. If anyone other than me picks it up and attempts to use it, they are dead...”

  Asif, needing no more convincing, placed the weapon gingerly on the cobbles.

  Aldric snatched it up. “It’s my own design,” he said. “Someone took my crossbow once and turned it on me.” His eyes met Gisburne’s briefly, then he looked away. “I swore I would never allow that to happen again. But it’s meant for enemies. So, please, all here, be warned.”

  “Consider it done,” said de Rosseley.

  “Consider yourselves told not to poke your nose in another’s business!” said Galfrid. “We all have our odd ways, our secret weapons.” He shoved his pilgrim staff through the straps on his saddle. “Like those damned rings of yours.” He gestured to the chakkars, now hanging from a loop on Asif’s cantle.

  “This is why we pack our own gear,” said Gisburne, slinging his shield across his black. It was freshly painted for the occasion—black, with a diagonal yellow band. Smiling, Mélisande had asked him why he wanted to look like a wasp, and he had replied—in complete seriousness—that it was because he had once been terrified of them. “Check everything yourself,” he added. “Know where it is. We all need to be as self-reliant as possible.”

  “Just as long as there aren’t too many secrets,” muttered Mélisande. Whether anyone heard it but him, Gisburne could not tell.

  And with that, they had mounted up and ridden on out of the palace.

  XXVI

  MÉLISANDE SURVEYED THE row of men, backs turned, each pissing against his chosen tree. “Remind me not to drink downstream of here,” she said with a sigh.

  “It’s good for the nettles!” called Galfrid.

  They had found the stream an hour before—or rather, Nyght had. Their progress had slowed to a creep, with Gisburne peering anxiously this way and that, checking the map obsessively. The forest had grown dark, the trees close—in places, enclosing them like a leafy tunnel. It was quieter here: the birds and beasts were more timid, and the sounds strangely muffled. It was then that Gisburne had seen Nyght’s ears prick up, and swivel to his right. He stopped and listened. Mélisande stopped too, then the others.

  “I hear it,” she said. A trickle of water—so sweet of sound it was almost musical.

  There, some twenty yards from the track, had been the stream, snaking between moss-covered rocks and disappearing beneath a blanket of brambles. The relief on Gisburne’s face had been plain to see. And there, having achieved at least one goal, they had stopped for refreshment, and calls of nature. With the light already fading, it seemed that here they would stay, for tonight, at least.

  “Why exactly does it have to be against a tree?” said Mélisande. “That’s something I have never understood.”

  “It’s one of those things we men prefer to keep a mystery,” said Galfrid. “Just as you women keep yours. By the way, if you have need...” He gestured towards the tangled, thorny bushes.

  “I’ll wait, thank you,” said Mélisande. “Anyway, someone has to watch your arses whilst you are all... exposed.”

  Galfrid, hauling up his braies, guffawed. “It’s been a long while since I was complimented on it, my lady.”

  “Didn’t say I liked it, Galfrid. Just that I was keeping watch on it...”

  Galfrid chuckled to himself. Against expectation, and in spite of their slower progress, the squire’s mood had brightened with every mile they had put behind them. He was like Gisburne in that regard, thought Mélisande. Give him something to do—something practical—and his worries melted away. And he rarely remained unhappy for long when on horseback.

  “We make camp here,” said Gisburne, and signalled to the boy Robert to see to the horses’ needs. “Tomorrow we leave the horses, and strike into the forest.”

  He patted Nyght on the muzzle, then, while the others busied themselves with unpacking their mounts, pulled out the map. His finger traced the line of what he hoped was this very river, and he looked about him. He could not see far ahead, but could tell the stream curved around to the northwest. Did this bend in the line correspond to it? How could he know if its span was meant to be ten yards, or a hundred? Sometimes he looked at the grubby, smudged marks and saw rivers, trees and tracks, but now he saw nothing but impenetrable scrawl. That curve could be mere embellishment, or an unsteady hand.

  Or a lie.

  “It is making sense at last?” said a voice by his side: Asif. Gisburne looked at him and gave a sort of shrug that said neither “yes” nor “no”. The Arab squinted at the scrap and frowned.

  “What is that?” he pointed to a black mark near the map’s edge.

  “A scorch mark,” said Gisburne. It had been a relic of Inis na Gloichenn. “Ignore that.”

  “And this?” Asif indicated a reddish brown area close to the stream.

  “Blood.”

  “Yours?”

  “No.” Gisburne glanced over at Tancred. The Templar—yet to relieve his horse of its burdens—was on his knees, apparently engaged in silent prayer. He cut a bizarre figure, kneeling in that glade. With his clasped hands and glinting mail he looked the very image of the pious Crusader knight, until one looked into his blank, staring skull of a face. Gisburne had seen all manner of grotesques carved into the stones of the Abbey at Vézelay: shrieking visions of Hell, contrived to shock all who looked upon them into penitence. Yet the most fevered hallucinations from the darkest imaginations of men paled utterly next to the flesh and blood reality that was Tancred.

  A hand clapped on his back jolted him out of his reverie. “But we have found the stream, yes?” said Asif, with a deep laugh. “You said it would be here, and you have found it!”

  Asif, still laughing, drifted away, and Gisburne crept over to Tancred.

  A twig cracked, and the Templar turned and looked at him.

  “I was giving thanks,” he explained. “For our safe arrival here.”

  “Do you recognise this place? This stream?”

  Tancred cocked his head on one side. “Recognise?”

  “Remember,” said Gisburne. “You have been here before.”

  “Have I?” Tancred looked about him, his head turning very slowly, as if taking in every detail.

  “Here,” said Gisburne, and held out the crude map. “Is it here?”

  Tancred took the scrap between bony fingers, and stared. So long did he look that Gisburne began to feel unnerved. Was he remembering? Without a word, he handed the map back, then shook his head slowly, the lips drawn back from his teeth in a parody of an expression—neither smile nor grimace.

  As Gisburne looked at Tancred, a curious shudder passed through him. He felt, for the first time, the stirring of doubt. Are you remembering? If this r
eally were the place—if you began to recognise after all—would you tell me? Or would you lead me ever further off the path?

  He peered closer at the Templar, holding his relentless gaze, as if daring him to reveal himself. But no matter how hard he stared into those eyes, he could not read the slightest thing in them.

  XXVII

  THEY WAITED UNTIL darkness before lighting the fire, to avoid their smoke being seen. By that time, all were feeling the chill of the night in their bones, but the fire, and food and drink—simple though they were—put the blood back in their veins.

  “Come closer to the flames, boy,” said Gisburne in a low voice. He cracked a dry stick in two with his seax and threw both parts upon the fire. “No need to sit apart. You’re one of us now.”

  Robert crept nearer and settled himself between Mélisande and Aldric. De Rosseley—who’d had the foresight to bring a flask of good wine—filled a small, horn cup and passed it to the lad, who sipped at it eagerly, then shivered.

  “To tomorrow,” said de Rosseley, tipping his own cup at Gisburne.

  They drank, then Aldric wiped his mouth and sat staring into the flames. “I suppose it may be the last time we do this.”

  No one responded. It was not done, to speak of an imminent battle in these terms, but Gisburne could not blame Aldric for doing so. He drew his eating knife, cut a slice off the dry, smoked ham, and slid it in his mouth.

  “Still with that old eating knife?” said de Rosseley.

  “It never leaves him,” said Mélisande.

  “And it never shall,” said Gisburne, with a smile. He turned the knife around in his fingers as he chewed the firm, salty meat. The black, riveted bog oak of the grip had seen some knocks, and the slender, tapering blade—thick as a sword at the back, keen as a razor at the front, and with a point as sharp as a needle—carried a now-irredeemable patina from nearly twenty years of daily meals, but he could imagine no replacement. It was not just that the knife, simple as it was, seemed so perfect to him in form, so right in his hand. It was that this knife had taught him something.

  He had loved this knife before it was his. Coveted it, in fact; so much that as a callow squire of barely a year’s service to Gilbert de Gaillon, he had contrived to steal it. The night that he had done so, only to be discovered by his master, was seared into his memory. It could have been the end of him, destroying both career and reputation before either had even taken shape. Yet de Gaillon—the paragon of fairness and pragmatism, to which Gisburne always aspired—had given the boy a chance. Gisburne, sickened and shamed, had grasped it. All was put right again. None knew of it, or would ever know, other than himself and de Gaillon—and neither would speak of it again. The next morning, it was as if nothing had changed.

  And then, that same day, the knife’s owner—an older lad named Nicolas, whose respect all the younger squires strove to earn—gave it to Gisburne as a gift, just like that. Nicolas knew nothing of the attempted theft, and had nothing to gain by his generosity. It was an act of pure kindness. His father had given him a fine, new eating knife, and he felt Gisburne—who had always shown admiration for the older one—deserved the blade.

  There had been many critical moments in Gisburne’s eventful life—turning points, forks in the road, revelations and brushes with death. But somehow, this moment, so small by comparison, eclipsed them all.

  From then on, the value of that knife changed and grew—and Gisburne and his values with it. He had come to be a man who hated thieves, liars and cheats above all else. Of all the evils in the world—many of which he had seen first hand, and up close—it was dishonesty he detested most. And all because of one night, when he had been made to glimpse it within himself.

  “There have been times I wished he cared about it less,” grumbled Galfrid. “Nearly got us killed, last time we were in London.”

  De Rosseley frowned and looked from Galfrid to Gisburne and back again.

  The squire shoved a bit of cheese in his mouth. “Had a spot of bother in a tavern full of Germans. Not one of ’em under six foot. Things turned a bit... fighty. Made it out by the skin of our teeth, then”—he pointed his eating knife at Gisburne—“realises he’s left that damned knife in there. So back in he goes. A minute later he comes flying out the door and the fight fills the entire street.”

  Gisburne chuckled, glad of the memory. This was the most convivial Galfrid had been for months.

  “I can attest to it,” said Mélisande with a slight blush. “I was involved myself, against my better judgement.”

  “It was because of this that something of Lady Mélisande’s real character was revealed at court,” explained Gisburne.

  She sighed. “You might say that knife has a lot to answer for.”

  “Well, if any of you see him without it,” said Galfrid, “you’d best start saying your prayers—for that day you’ll know the world is ended.”

  Gisburne, still smiling, caught Galfrid’s eye. For a fleeting moment they connected as of old, then the squire’s smile withered, and he looked away.

  “That sword of yours,” said de Rosseley, gesturing at the blade that lay beside Gisburne. “I’ve had my eye on it. It looks a fine specimen.”

  “My father’s,” said Gisburne, glad of the diversion. “Given to him by Old King Henry, for services in Ireland. Almost as old as me.”

  “It deserves a better sword belt, then,” said de Rosseley in slight disgust. “How many times has that been repaired now?”

  “Enough to make it the way I want it,” said Gisburne. He chuckled to himself. “My father was so proud of that sword. Never saw much use. I don’t think he ever used it in anger, and then it lay idle for a long time after his death. I never thought myself worthy. But when I came to face the Red Hand... I felt it was time.”

  “That, and you’d left your previous sword in a sewer,” said Galfrid.

  Gisburne smiled. “Yes, that too.”

  “May I?” said de Rosseley.

  Gisburne gestured for him to help himself. De Rosseley hesitated. “Before I pick this up, is there anything I should know? Will it poison me? Or burst into flame? Or turn into a serpent?”

  “Not that I am aware.”

  De Rosseley drew it from its scabbard and turned it over in his hand. It had been a sight to behold when Gisburne’s father had first brought it home, and had thrilled him as a child; the simple crossguard and pommel were covered in silver, the three ridges upon the black grip perfectly fitted to the hand. The crossguard had now lost most of its silver coat, the pommel was pitted, and the grip worn and hardened by sweat, but its quality shone through nonetheless.

  “A good blade,” said de Rosseley. “And with a history. Does it have a name?”

  “A name?” Gisburne looked at his friend as if were suddenly speaking a foreign language.

  “It deserves a name.”

  “What purpose does a name serve?”

  “Purpose? Come on!” cajoled de Rosseley. “Every great sword should have a name. And this is a great sword—a king’s sword.” He raised it, moved it, felt its balance, the blade reflecting the orange light of the fire, then levelled the point at Gisburne. “How will the ballads sing of it if it hasn’t even a name?”

  “If my story troubles any balladeers, then let them make up a name to fit their metre. They’ll make most of it up anyway.”

  “You surely don’t want to leave that responsibility to them,” said Mélisande. “Who knows what monstrous epithet they’ll come up with?”

  “They’ve already done that,” said Gisburne, and poked the fire irritably. “Such things are out of our hands, anyway.”

  “Already done it?” said de Rosseley.

  “‘The Dark Horseman,’” said Mélisande with a smile. “Sir Guy’s nickname on the Continent.”

  “Of course...” said de Rosseley. “Just as you were known as ‘The Shadow’, my lady.”

  “That legend persists, even though I am now revealed.” She snorted dismissively. “
There are those who refuse to believe it was me—some who have claimed my exploits for their own.”

  De Rosseley tutted in disgust. “Such things truly are out of our hands... What of you, Arab? You already have more names than the rest of us put together. Did your time in Jerusalem earn you a nickname, too?”

  “Not I,” said Asif.

  “Oh, yes it did,” said Gisburne. “Al Akrab.” He looked around the others. “The Scorpion.”

  Asif scowled. “What did I do to deserve that? I was only ever fair towards the Christian—”

  “It was your own men called you it,” interrupted Gisburne. “And I believe it was a compliment—your skill with a knife was legendary.”

  The Arab grunted.

  De Rosseley lay the sword across his lap and rubbed his hands. “The Dark Horseman, the Shadow, the Scorpion... We are shaping up to be quite a colourful crew. Squire Galfrid? Any colourful names to add to our list?”

  Galfrid sniffed. “Many. None repeatable.”

  “Master Aldric?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Aldric.

  “You’ll earn them,” said Gisburne. “Of that I am sure.”

  “But what of you, Sir John?” said Mélisande. “I can’t believe, with all you do, that you have avoided this dubious honour.”

  De Rosseley reddened slightly.

  “His French rivals at tournament call him le Martel,” said Gisburne.

  “‘The Hammer’...?” said Mélisande, eyebrows raised.

  De Rosseley shrugged. “What can I say? I hit things.”

  Only Tancred now remained to be asked—but there the conversation died, and with each passing silent, glaring second, the omission became the more uncomfortable.

  “Am I to take it,” breathed Tancred, “that I also had such an epithet—one that you would sooner avoid?”

  The excruciating silence returned.

  “They called you the White Devil,” said Galfrid at last. He looked Tancred full in the face. “It was not meant as a compliment.”