Hood

by Toby Venables

  “By degrees, they led me to an account of a young adopted boy, of prodigious talent and unpredictable temperament, who had left his father dead in Skipton and fled into Bowland forest. I talked with the mother—the widow Godberd. I could see that the one she spoke of was Hood, as clearly as if he were before me. She, too, could tell that I knew him without it being said. But in her eyes was no desire to see him: no yearning, no sadness. Only fear.”

  “Skipton?” said Galfrid. “But that’s...”

  “...less than a dozen miles from my home, yes.” He laughed at his own words, as if hearing them aloud made them absurd all over again. “We could have met, played together as children. All this searching, all these travels—from here to the Holy Land—and it leads me right back to my own doorstep.” He sighed and shook his head. “From there, it was but one more step. The child that Godberd took in had come from the priory at Kyrklees, the bastard child of a young nun. A nun who is there still.”

  “And the father?” said de Rosseley.

  Gisburne shrugged. “Only she knows the answer to that. De Gaillon always said that to know your enemy was to have power over them. That’s what the Red Hand taught me—to turn the skills of the hunt to the discovery of the truth. Following the signs to their source. But as I was asking those questions, working my way back, putting the mosaic together piece by piece, I discovered that Hood was doing the same. Our paths almost crossed a number of times. I met with several people who said they had spoken to another on the same matter. Sometimes he went in disguise, but I knew it was him. Doubtless there were times when he heard stories about me. And finally he, too, found the truth about Kyrklees. About himself.”

  “You went there?” asked Mélisande. “Met her?

  “I lingered outside the gate. For near half an hour, I pondered what I would say, what I would ask.”

  “And then…?”

  “I turned and rode away.” He shrugged. “What was the use? What purpose would it serve? All this time, I had thought if I could only find out who he really was, where he really came from, then I would know something of true value. But it meant nothing. I understood him no better than I ever had.”

  Another great sigh left him. “From that moment, I decided I was done with him.”

  “Until the Lionheart turned up...” said de Rosseley.

  “But what of Hood?” said Mélisande.

  Gisburne shook his head. “It would seem that, having discovered the truth, he too went no further. I think perhaps he was protecting them. The priory can cover up a bastard child, hide the odd indiscretion, but not that.”

  “Protecting?” said Galfrid. “That doesn’t sound like the Hood I know.”

  “There are other things,” said Gisburne. “The priory has received regular, generous gifts from an anonymous donor.”

  “Not unusual for a religious house,” said de Rosseley.

  “But the manner of their delivery is. Silver and gold deposited upon the ground outside the gate. Left in a heap, like household rubbish. The nuns of the priory take the gifts and utter prayers of thanks, and doubtless know better than to question them too closely, but here’s the thing... Empty though their bellies are, the local people know better than to touch the gifts. To do so means death.

  “None would even speak of it that I found—none except one, who I eventually persuaded with a promise of bread and meat. He told of another poor soul—starved half out of his mind, by all accounts—who filched a single silver cup from the pile. It was stolen anyway, why not have it? He disappeared that same night. Not a trace; not until two days later, when his flayed corpse was found nailed to a tree, his eyes pierced by Hood’s green-fletched arrows.

  “Anyway... What all this told me was that Hood had taken an interest, sought the answer to the great mystery—which had been a mystery even to him. He had begun to do something he had never done before: to question who he was, his place in the world. And I have come to understand, in recent weeks, that this makes him a hundred times more dangerous.”

  All walked in silence for a while, until they became aware of a sound ahead: the roaring of water. Gisburne’s heart sank at it, and what it might mean.

  The trees thinned, confirming his worst fears. Ahead was a wall of sheer rock, from the top of which tumbled the source of their stream.

  “Is that on your map?” said Galfrid.

  Gisburne strode from one side to the other in agitation, his eyes scanning the rock face. “There must be a way. Aldric? Can we scale this?”

  Aldric pulled a pair of lenses from his bag and squinted up at the cliff edge. It was not high, but it was high enough—as impenetrable as a castle rampart. “Well, we have a grapple and rope, but nothing that could get it up there.” He sighed. “Even if we did, the rock is crumbling. We couldn’t trust it.”

  De Rosseley threw down his bow in frustration. “Dammit!”

  “Look for steps cut into the rock,” said Gisburne. “Caves, fissures, anything. This is the path. It has to be.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” said Galfrid, irritably. “We know the village is on a stream, but it doesn’t mean that the path follows it.”

  “Then there’s a way around,” insisted Gisburne. “We have to find it.”

  “You do that,” said Galfrid, gloomily. “I’m going for a piss.”

  XXXI

  GALFRID PLODDED OFF until the voices behind him, hotly debating God knows what, had faded almost to nothing. Rather further than he needed, not as far as he would have liked. It occurred to him that he could simply keep walking; double back, collect his horse and pilgrim staff from the boy, and then ride off to a quiet life somewhere far from here. An apple orchard, perhaps, with space for a few pigs. Maybe some bees. He’d always fancied keeping bees.

  But he wouldn’t do any of these things. Couldn’t.

  He selected a suitable tree and hoisted up his mail and tunic. As he stood, his urine splashing and steaming against the green trunk, half whistling a tune he’d heard the Durham masons singing, his eye settled on a sprig of broom. It was long dead, desiccated. Not much to look at. An unremarkable bit of grey-brown foliage in a hundred thousand acres of the stuff.

  What was not the same, however, was that this tiny fragment—this insignificant atom of Sherwood. It was fastened to a low, broken branch with woven grass, twisted into a secure knot.

  Frowning, he reached out to pluck it up, but stopped himself. Tied. It had been tied.

  He withdrew his hand, and stood a moment. “Over here,” he called. No response. “Over here!”

  Gisburne looked around this time.

  “I have something...” said Galfrid.

  He made himself decent as the group hurried up to him, Gisburne a good three strides ahead of the others.

  “Common broom,” said Mélisande as they gathered around it. “What is broom doing so deep in the forest?”

  “We passed a patch of it early this morning,” said Aldric. “But there’s none around here. Not for miles, I’d say.”

  Gisburne peered closer. “So, it has not only been put there deliberately,” said Gisburne. “It has been chosen, brought here.”

  “To what end?” said Asif.

  “Perhaps it’s nothing,” said Aldric. “A charm. A traveller’s idling.”

  “Who but Hood’s men travel through here?” said de Rosseley.

  “You’re missing the point,” said Galfrid. “This is planta genista. The emblem of the house of Anjou. Old King Henry. King Richard. Prince John.”

  Gisburne’s eyes lit up. “Fitz Osbert...” he whispered. “Hereward! It cannot be a coincidence...”

  “A message?” said Mélisande.

  “A marker,” said Gisburne. “One few would notice and none think strange.”

  “Unless they were looking for it...” added Galfrid, nodding.

  Gisburne laughed and clapped his hands together in delight. “You said he was no use to us, Galfrid, but you were wrong. Dead he may be, but he speaks from beyond
the grave. I am certain of it!” He pushed past it and turned about. “Look around. Look everywhere. If it is a marker, there must be more.”

  They spread out, eyes hunting every tree, every branch.

  “Here!” called Aldric. Gisburne ran to him. The young enginer was crouched by a holly tree some twenty yards further into the forest. “No broom, I’m afraid, but this has been tied.” The now empty loops of grass about the slim branch were twisted in identical manner to Galfrid’s discovery.

  “Follow the line these make,” said Gisburne. “Look for a third.”

  They crashed through the dead leaves and broken twigs for another forty or fifty yards—so far that Gisburne convinced himself they had missed it and was ready to turn back.

  “Here!” called Asif up ahead. And there it was—another sprig of broom, carefully tied like the first.

  “That’s three,” said Gisburne. “And they form a straight line.” He pointed. “That way.”

  “Westward,” said Mélisande carefully. “Away from the stream.”

  The stream had been their only lead, but this felt right—the first real glimpse of their quarry.

  “We follow this track now,” said Gisburne.

  XXXII

  TWO MORE SPRIGS of broom marked the way, extending the straight line through the oak trees; each a little further than the last. Then, for what seemed an age, there was nothing.

  Gisburne stopped in a small clearing lined with oak and beech, amidst thick, tangled undergrowth.

  “No more markers,” said de Rosseley.

  “Or we’ve missed them,” said Aldric.

  “There must be something,” said Gisburne, eyes alighting on a rough break in the foliage at the edge of the clearing. He turned to Galfrid, and saw his gaze already fixed upon it.

  Eyes narrowed, the squire walked towards the dark opening. “Here... The branches have been pushed back. Some have been broken—and over time, too.” He peered through. “And... Yes, I see a beaten path beyond.”

  “An animal?” said Asif. “A deer, or a boar?”

  Galfrid shook his head. “People have passed this way.”

  “They’ve been careful up to now,” said Gisburne. “This means we’re drawing close.” He turned to the others. “Nock your bows. Keep arrows to hand.”

  They bent and strung their bows, then Gisburne led the way towards the opening.

  But then a voice—harsh and insistent—froze every one of them in their tracks: Tancred’s. “No!”

  It was the first time he had spoken in hours, and it seemed to Gisburne that he was sounding a little more like his old self. He stood, motionless, staring with unblinking eyes at an unpromising patch of bramble and ivy that filled the space between two entwined oak trees. He raised a bony finger. “This way.”

  “You remember...” said Gisburne. Galfrid looked at Gisburne, then back at the Templar.

  “These two trees,” said Tancred. “Like lovers embracing—reaching out for one another. Their shape is distinctive.”

  “But the beaten path is this way,” said Mélisande.

  “It is meant to appear so,” said Tancred. “But that way are deadly traps.”

  De Rosseley stepped up to Tancred and pushed aside the curtain of ivy-covered brambles with his bow. Beyond it, the forest opened up, and Gisburne made out a faint line where earth and litterfall had been compacted.

  “There is a trail,” he said. He turned to Tancred. “This will take us there?”

  Tancred nodded.

  “Do you really trust this?” said Galfrid.

  “He’s been there. He remembers.”

  “And if he remembers wrong?”

  “The image in my mind is clear,” said Tancred. “I would stake my life on it.”

  “And ours too?” said Galfrid. “What if this way is the trap?”

  Gisburne held Galfrid’s gaze for an age. “We go this way,” he said at length. “Because it was hidden. But we go with caution.”

  “I’ll scout ahead,” said Mélisande.

  Gisburne took her arm. “No...”

  “Trust me,” she said. “I know what to look for. And they will not see me before I see them.” She shook him off and pushed past the tangled stems.

  “Well, at least we seem to have lost our Norse friend,” muttered de Rosseley, close to Gisburne’s ear, and they plunged in after her.

  The forest was open, but eerily still. Gisburne fought the urge to break into a run, his heart pounding beneath his armour now they were so close to the end. They would find it now; they could afford to wait their moment.

  But no sooner had Mélisande disappeared from sight, barely a hundred yards from the clearing, than Aldric stopped and looked about him, listening intently. “Is that thunder?” he said.

  “That’s the waterfall you’re hearing, lad,” said Galfrid.

  “No, there is something,” said De Rosseley with a frown, and peered above, through the towering trees. “Is it rain?”

  Gisburne heard it too—and something about it made the hairs on his arms stand up. Mélisande’s pale face emerged between the low boughs. She was running headlong back towards them, dodging between the trees with a terrible urgency, eyes wide and hair flying. She had made no sound of warning, and, as she neared, still running, pressed a finger to her lips.

  Gisburne needed no more to understand what was coming. He looked around. “Up into the trees,” he said.

  Aldric stood, momentarily bemused, as Mélisande swung up into the boughs of a squat oak like a squirrel.

  “Up!” hissed Gisburne. “Now!”

  From the forest ahead and to either side of them, the sound intensified—a rumbling, a pattering. Not rain, feet. Hundreds of feet.

  There was no more hesitation. Weighed down by gear and mail hauberks though they were, they hauled themselves up into the trees. Twigs whipped their faces, and straps and bowstaves caught on every branch, but there was no time to debate or complain.

  Gisburne had pulled himself up into the same tree as Galfrid, who, with astonishing agility, was already yards above him. He pulled himself up onto a thick, green-dusted limb almost parallel with the squire, the cylindrical box hugged beneath him, and shuffled into a more secure position, flat on his stomach.

  Suddenly struck by the absurdity of their situation, he looked though the branches at Galfrid with a broad grin, only to be met with an expression of horror. Gisburne followed the squire’s gaze to his own belt, just in time to see his eating knife, its scabbard upended—caught up in the strap of his bag—slide free of its sheath.

  It fell slowly, as if through water. Gisburne watched as it bounced on the ivy-covered bough, spun around several times, and stuck, point down, in an exposed root directly below him.

  His mind raced. The knife would be seen; they might as well have raised a flag.

  He peered into the distance as far as the trees would allow, then back down at the knife. The host was not yet upon them. If he could just reach it...

  As he began to make his move, he again caught Galfrid’s eye. The squire shook his head sharply, as the noise of many trampling feet rose up around them like the rush of an incoming wave. Gisburne, unmoving, stared back down at the knife, its blade glinting in the feeble light—and saw as the forest floor was blotted out by a dark swarm of men.

  XXXIII

  HE SAW NO faces—most were hooded for travel—but could see there were young and old and everything in between. Some carried spears, and a few had swords, but there wasn’t a one who did not have a bow across his back and a quiver stuffed with arrows; some clearly carried more in plain canvas bags, which rattled as they ran. Many of the bows were thick about the middle, and the shoulders of the archers were thick, too. From the look of them, they had spent the past two seasons doing little more than preparing for war.

  He hardly dared to take his eyes off the knife standing proud of the tree root, every moment expecting a cry of discovery. But they were everywhere, filling every space, every ga
p—a great trampling horde stretching as far as the eye could see, the rhythmless rumble of their footfalls so relentless that he felt it was crushing him.

  Gisburne’s fingernails dug into the green bark as he watched a dozen, a score, a hundred oblivious feet brush past the slender blade. He and his company were horribly exposed—perched only yards above the horde, with the trees barely in leaf. One of the outlaws had only to look up... Not until he began to feel dizzy did Gisburne realise he was holding his breath.

  The buzzing swarm passed as suddenly as it had come, the racket gradually merging with the sighing of the wind in the trees. Not until the birdsong had returned did anyone move.

  Gisburne swung down first, and plucked the cherished blade from the tree root. One by one, the others dropped to the forest floor.

  “We’re too late,” said Gisburne. “They’ve heard the King is back. They’re on the march.” He cursed and kicked the tree that had harboured him.

  “That was more than five hundred...” said Aldric.

  “It’s hard to be sure,” said de Rosseley, “but I’d say no fewer than seven.”

  “And they are equipped for war,” said Asif.

  “Damn!” cursed Gisburne, his boot slamming the tree again. “If we had only set out a day earlier. One day!”

  “Well, it proves one thing,” said Mélisande. She looked at Galfrid. “Tancred was right.”

  The squire looked away, not wishing to acknowledge it.

  “But what now?” she continued.