Hood

by Toby Venables

  “Devil...” Tancred looked into the fire and gave the word long consideration. There hung about him an air that, in spite of himself, Gisburne found almost tragic. “Did I deserve it?”

  Galfrid bit a sliver of dried meat and shrugged. “You had me tortured. And her.” He pointed at Mélisande with his eating knife. “You stole a holy relic. Aided the escape of England’s most notorious murderer. Then you tried to destroy Jerusalem. I’d say you deserved it.”

  Gisburne found himself once more studying Tancred’s features for signs of recognition. Of memory. Of anything.

  “Well, this is not solving our sword-naming problem,” said de Rosseley, with determined cheer.

  It immediately broke the spell. Ridiculous as Gisburne found the notion, even he embraced it. “Come on, then,” he sighed. “Do your worst...”

  “Are there rules?” said Aldric.

  “It should embody some particular quality,” said de Rosseley. “Of itself, or its owner.”

  “Joyeuse...?” said Mélisande, with only the mildest hint of irony.

  “Taken, I’m afraid,” said de Rosseley.

  “Foe Taker?” said Aldric.

  De Rosseley nodded approvingly, but Gisburne just winced.

  “Foe Dodger, more like,” muttered Galfrid under his breath.

  “Vengeance,” suggested Asif.

  Gisburne shook his head. “Too lofty...”

  Aldric smiled. “Spike!”

  “Too plain!” protested de Rosseley. “It should have something about it... It should bring something... Something...”

  Aldric snapped his fingers. “Lightbringer!”

  “Oh, please...” said Gisburne. “I’m a man with a sword, not the Archangel Michael.”

  “Ladghat,” said Asif.

  “What?”

  “It means ‘Sting’,” said Mélisande.

  “Like a scorpion’s sting,” explained Asif.

  Gisburne sighed in despair. “This is almost as bad as naming a horse.”

  “Naming a horse is easy,” scoffed Galfrid.

  “You only think so because you called yours ‘Mare’...”

  “Quicksilver?” ventured Aldric.

  “That does sound like a horse,” said Mélisande.

  “I like Quicksilver,” said de Rosseley.

  Gisburne shook his head again. “No.”

  “It should be something poetic, at least,” the knight insisted.

  “What use is poetry on the battlefield?” said Gisburne, tiring of the game. “I don’t need words. My sword speaks for me.”

  “Irontongue,” said Mélisande. Gisburne stared at her. The others, suddenly silent, did not quite dare. She gave him a little smile, then shrugged. “Because it speaks for you.”

  Since Gisburne failed to raise any further objection, de Rosseley—with all-too-obvious delight—declared Mélisande the namer of the sword. Irontongue it was.

  They settled down to sleep then, each in their own manner—each sheltering from the elements in their preferred way.

  De Rosseley watched in fascination as Asif—an apparent stranger to this environment—heaped up leaves and twigs into something like a grave mound, drew his sword, and lay down upon the pile.

  “You mean to sleep with your sword in your hand?” said de Rosseley. He looked impressed.

  “The scorpion sleeps with its sting,” said Mélisande, hooking her thick woollen cape over a branch.

  With no further word of explanation Asif pulled his cloak around him so it completely covered his head, then drew the sword underneath and hoisted the fabric upon its point like a tent. “An old Bedouin trick,” he said, grinning through the slim gap at the bottom. “Meant to shelter from sun, but I have found it works for rain just as well.”

  De Rosseley shook his head in wonder. “Never would I have believed that a Saracen had something to teach me about rain.”

  And with that, they settled down to sleep, wrapped in cloaks and under improvised canopies, Gisburne with Irontongue nestled by his side.

  XXVIII

  MÉLISANDE DID NOT know how long she had dozed; the fire still glowed, its warmth reaching her face. The hunched figure by the stream jolted her, reaching for her dagger and casting about for Gisburne, until she realised it was him. He was sitting, gazing into the water.

  She crept over and sat by him. He held Irontongue, scabbarded, in the crook of his arm.

  “You should sleep,” he said, without looking up.

  “Shouldn’t you?”

  The stream was fast and strong here, its racket amplified by the night. His gaze was fixed intently upon it, but look though she might, she could see nothing.

  “What do you hope to see?” she said. “The future?”

  He smiled, still not taking his eyes off the tumbling water, and she looked upstream, where it faded into total darkness. If it did lead to Hood’s lair, then all their fates lay somewhere along its course.

  “Actually, I was hoping to see the past,” said Gisburne.

  She frowned. “Memories? That’s not like you.”

  “More often of late. But this is something more pragmatic. If this stream passes through Hood’s village, and they make use of it, then it stands to reason some of their waste will find its way past us.”

  Mélisande nodded. “So, if you see it, you know for certain where it leads...” She looked at him, frowning. “You’re not certain, then?”

  Gisburne said nothing.

  “Well, never let it be said the life of Guy of Gisburne is not glamorous. Picking through middens, wading through sewers, and now watching for turds in a stream.”

  He smiled. “My mother would have called this a ‘burn.’ That’s what my name means, you know—gisel burna: ‘rushing stream.’”

  “Really? So, a rushing stream, watching a rushing stream.”

  Gisburne pondered this for a moment, as if some profound truth were contained within it.

  “Well, it was really your idea,” he said at length. “That comment you made about not drinking the water downstream...”

  “But you could sit here all night and see nothing. And seeing nothing proves nothing, one way or the other.”

  He nodded slowly, gazing somewhere far beyond the water. “Our course is set,” he said. “We must follow this stream tomorrow, no matter what.”

  “Then leave this. Come to bed.”

  But Gisburne did not respond.

  She looked at him for a long time, then said: “Let me ask you honestly; who are you doing this for? You? Richard? Marian?”

  He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “Honestly? I don’t know.”

  “These doubts you’re having, Gisburne... they will cripple you.”

  “Doubts are necessary,” said Gisburne. But he sounded defensive.

  “Of course,” she said, “but not all the time. Look at what you’ve done, what you would never have done, had you doubted. You forced your way back into Castel Mercheval—one man, against an entire garrison.”

  “I came back for you.”

  “And Galfrid...”

  “And Galfrid.”

  “But you’re missing my point. You had a plan to get in, but no plan to get out. None at all. There could be no plan. It looked like suicide, but some part of you believed, against all reason, that it could be done. That it would happen if you simply willed it enough.”

  “You’re saying I’m like him. Like Hood?”

  “I am saying that you have become so afraid of being like him, that you no longer allow yourself to be you. All these things that have happened... They have shaken you. Your estrangement from Galfrid, Prince John’s fall from power, being drawn back into Hood’s game. Fighting for his hero, Richard—yes, especially that.

  “But you are not Hood. You could never be him. And to occasionally be like him, well... At times, we all are. And perhaps we need to be; to screw our doubts and fears into a ball and hurl them back in the face of fate. What I’m saying is, we need that old Gisburne. The o
ne who was not afraid to be a little mad. The one who destroyed Tancred’s men in the Forêt de Boulogne and took Castel Mercheval. You need him.”

  “It was easier, then. I was alone.”

  Mélisande laughed. “Alone? What reason would there have been to go back to the castle if you’d been alone? You were never alone.”

  Gisburne looked at her, as if struggling with these thoughts, then turned slowly back to the stream.

  “Come to bed,” she urged. But Gisburne did not move.

  She placed a hand gently on his back, then, and left him, absorbed once more in the flow of the water.

  XXIX

  Sherwood Forest

  24 March, 1194

  NEXT DAY, THEY rose early and ate a simple breakfast. Dried fruits, salted and dried meat, scraps of bread. They spoke little.

  Gisburne sat, silent but for the scrape of the whetstone along the edge of his old seax. He heard de Gaillon’s voice: always hone the blade before a battle... It was testament to his old mentor’s pragmatism that his advice worked as well literally as figuratively.

  Gisburne gazed at the grey, pitted blade, losing himself in the whetstone’s steady rhythm. The seax had belonged to his mother’s grandfather, forged back when Saxons had still ruled this land. If ever there were a blade with a history, it was this. He twisted the wrapping cord back under itself where it was coming loose from the grip, and wondered, idly, if it had ever been given a name. Impressive though Irontongue undoubtedly was, he loved this solid, functional blade more. He thought then about the eating knife that hung from his belt. It seemed that the smaller and more prosaic the blade, the more he cared about it.

  Mélisande emerged from the forest’s edge, adjusting her hose, and returned him to reality. Shoving the seax in the scabbard that hung across the back of his belt, he stood, his mail hanging heavy upon him, and looked up at the grey sky, barely holding back the rain. “Time to move,” he said. “Leave the shields here. They’ll only get in the way.”

  “I thought that was the whole idea,” muttered Aldric.

  Mélisande re-buckled her belt and pulled her surcoat straight. “Is all quite well with you, Master Fitz Rolf?” she said. Aldric had been staring, and now reddened and looked rapidly away. “I am aware that my presence here, and my garb, take a little getting used to,” said Mélisande. “Just try to think of me as one of the boys.”

  “That is rather a challenge,” said de Rosseley, looking her up and down.

  Mélisande looked him straight in the eye. “I may not relieve myself standing up, Sir John, but I can take a kick to the goods better than any man here.” Aldric nearly choked on his drink, while Galfrid chuckled quietly to himself and tied his sword belt.

  De Rosseley looked mortified. “I meant no offence...”

  “I’m teasing, Sir John,” said Mélisande with a sweet smile, throwing her arrow bag across her back and taking up her bow. “I grew up in a household of men and boys, all obsessed with knighthood, all determined to outdo each other. In that environment, a girl either becomes a shrinking violet or a fiercer fighter than all of them.”

  De Rosseley raised his horn cup and smiled. “Here’s to shrinking violets, then,” he said. He drained the cup, shook out the dregs and kicked dirt over the embers of the fire.

  Gisburne, whose eyes were back on the map, sensed Mélisande beside him. “You must know that thing back-to-front by now,” she said.

  He hastily screwed it into a ball and thrust it back into his gauntlet. “Map or no map, we follow the stream.” Then he lifted Llewellyn’s cylindrical box by its strap, heaved it over his shoulder and turned to the boy Robert. “At any sign of danger, sound the horn,” said Gisburne. “We will hear it, and if we can come, we shall. Have you been practising?”

  The boy nodded.

  “And with what are you charged?”

  “Stay here for two nights, and if none are returned by then, lead the horses back to Clippestone.”

  Gisburne smiled, and ruffled the lad’s hair. “You’re a brave boy. Just remember: drink from the flasks, not the stream.”

  The boy nodded.

  Galfrid, meanwhile, stood in an apparent quandary, looking from his bowstave, which occupied one hand, to his pilgrim staff, which occupied the other. Only now, it seemed, had he realised that he could not manage both. He turned to Robert, and held the staff out to him. “Look after this for me, boy,” he said. The boy took it, looking bemused, and Galfrid came in closer. “Should you have need, twist the top and pull. You’ll find a sword concealed in the shaft. It’s got me out of many a tight spot.” Galfrid winked and tapped his nose and then withdrew, leaving Robert looking thrilled with his new acquisition.

  “Will we really turn back, if we hear that horn sounding?” said Galfrid as they left the glade behind them.

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to,” said Gisburne.

  XXX

  THE STREAM TURNED northward, and they followed it. As they picked their way through the trees, keeping the plash and purl of the water at their right hand, the forest began to change. The ground became uneven and rocky, the air strangely still and heavy, with the musty scent of fungus. The oaks were huge and ancient here—like something out of an old legend, de Rosseley said—great roots bulging and entwining beneath their feet, and everything about them furred with green moss, as though all were part of one giant, slumbering creature.

  They walked using bowstaves for staffs—all except Aldric, whose crossbow was slung across his back. Here, under the canopy, the six-foot lengths of yew caught on every branch and bramble.

  Still, they served the purpose well enough. The spike on the foot of Gisburne’s bow, which bit satisfyingly into tree roots, sank disconcertingly into mud, which was a small irritation. Mélisande’s bow, by contrast, had been without a spike or ferrule of any kind, so Aldric had improvised by tying a stuffed leather pouch about the nock. “A boot for the bow,” he called it. It didn’t sink into any but the softest mud, leaving Mélisande, who had begun with a disadvantage, ending up better off than any of them. Gisburne admired the ingenuity; they would have need of that.

  For a long time, nobody spoke, their footfalls cracking and rustling in steady rhythm. After perhaps an hour, the ground began to broaden and flatten, and they were again able to walk side by side. Their spirits lifted. There was even an little dappled sunshine sneaking between the branches. One could almost imagine they were out for a spring stroll, or on a morning hunt.

  “So,” said de Rosseley. “Tell us more of Hood. I know all about what he is now, but not how he got there. What of his history?”

  “Now that is a tangled tale...” said Galfrid.

  “One hardly worth telling,” said Gisburne.

  Mélisande snorted. “Gisburne once claimed he had lost all interest in Hood.” She gave him a sideways look. “And yet, here we all are...”

  Gisburne smiled a little uncomfortably. “That never was entirely true,” he said. “For all I might have wished it were. After Hood’s escape from the Tower—after the Red Hand—I was obsessed with him. We were, by then, making plans for Inis na Gloichenn, but in truth my mind was only half on that task.”

  “I remember it,” said Galfrid, casting a glance at Tancred, who walked in silence on the far side of the group.

  “Even then, I was reminded daily how we came by the information, that it was by Hood’s pleasure we were able to act at all. But, strange though it may now seem, it was not the idea of finding him that possessed me, or not exactly. Rather it was finding out who he was. What he was. Where he had come from. I had known him for years—fought by him, shared food and drink and lodgings with him—and yet, I came to realise, he remained an enigma.”

  De Rosseley sighed. “A pity your enigma will not be solved before we finish him.”

  “But it was,” said Gisburne.

  Galfrid missed a step; Aldric almost walked into him.

  “It was?” Galfrid moved up closer. “You said that knowledge was los
t.”

  “Hood had gone to great lengths to obscure it, but everything leaves a mark somewhere. I just had to learn to stop looking for the tracks, and start looking for the hiding of them.”

  “Well? Come on, man—who is he?” said de Rosseley

  Gisburne shrugged. “No one.”

  “That’s it? That’s your answer?” de Rosseley looked far from satisfied.

  “He’s not a god, not a devil—though both have been claimed, from time to time. Just a man. Born to a woman, like everyone else. Like I said, hardly worth telling.”

  “Born to a woman?” repeated Mélisande. “My God. You found his mother...”

  Gisburne nodded. “I did.”

  “Well, come on, man, tell us,” said de Rosseley. “We’ve little else to entertain us.”

  And so, as they trudged on through the forest, Gisburne related the story.

  “It was ten years ago when I arrived in Sicily to fight for William the Good, in his war against the Byzantines. That was where I met Robert of Locksley, as he was then known, in an inn marked out by a blue boar. I took him as I found him; a charismatic if reckless character, a fearless fighter, and a matchless bowman. Only years later did I learn that, before Sicily, he had gone by the name Dickon.

  “Dickon Bend-the-Bow was a master archer—some say the greatest who ever lived. He had emerged from the Forest of Dean one day and joined with a troupe of entertainers bound for London. Within a month, people from near and far were clamouring to witness his tricks—before he disappeared without trace.

  “I went to the Forest of Dean. I spoke to some who claimed to have known him. They described a quiet, reclusive man, who lived alone in the forest. He’d had no great archery skills back then, they said. When asked how he had suddenly acquired them, they claimed he had made a deal with the Devil by a crossroads.”

  “A reasonable assertion...” said de Rosseley.

  “He had also, rather less reasonably, grown by six inches. What became of the real Dickon—the quiet, reclusive Dickon—is anyone’s guess. I dare say his bones lie somewhere in that forest. He was a man who had a use, and who would not be missed, much like the poor soul from whom Hood stole the name Robert of Locksley. But then, quite by chance, I happened upon stories of another great archer, further north, who had been accused of poaching deer and made a daring escape. He exactly fitted the description of Dickon Bend-the-Bow, and Locksley, and Hood. I followed the stories north, forgetting names—he used so many—and trying to look beyond them, to something else. There are many things Hood is good at hiding, but his talent is not one of them.