by DAVID B. COE
“Who?” he asked, breathing hard.
“Think!” Walter told him, his voice harsh in the still, dark room. “King Henry's soldiers! You were there. You saw it. Do you remember what happened after that?”
Robin closed his eyes again, reaching back for that memory as well. But though he scoured his mind for any hint as to what followed the horrors he had just seen, nothing came. At last he opened his eyes again and shook his head.
“Almost nothing before I was young in Normandy, brought up among farming folk.”
“You were taken there by two men,” Walter told him. “Noblemen. Sympathizers. They took you out of danger, and hid you with a family in France.”
“You!” Robin said, comprehension crashing over him like a wave. And with that understanding came a vague memory of two men standing with Robin and his father by the cross in Barnsdale.
“Yes,” the old man said. “The other was a nobleman, my best friend since my youth.”
Robin shook his head slowly, trying to keep up with all that the knight had told him. “I don't understand. Noblemen, led by a stonemason joined in … in what?”
“An appeal to justice,” Walter said, his voice growing stronger, his eyes open wide in the darkness and shining with moonlight. “And one without bloodshed. He was a philosopher, and he had a way of speaking that took you by the ears.” He paused, as if savoring the memory. “Finally, hundreds listened, who took up his call for the rights of all ranks, from baron to serf, and many a nobleman saw the right of it.”
A visionary, Walter had called his father. And yet what was left of the stonemason's dream? The hidden memories of a little boy, and the dreams of an old knight.
“His call died with him,” Robin said softly.
But Walter grabbed for his hand again and gripped it hard. “Not dead!” the man said. “Not now!”
Robin considered this, staring at their hands in the ghostly light. “You and I and others, Sir Walter.”
The old knight nodded, staring at Robin intently through sightless eyes. Robin stared out the window toward the fields and the shadowed wood beyond. The notion that had come into his head earlier in the day returned now. Not exactly his father's way, perhaps, but certainly his own.
WILLIAM MARSHAL SAT at the writing table in his chamber, gazing out an open window at the rooftops of London. The sun was just up in the east, and the waters of the Thames glittered with its light, as if diamonds had been strewn across its surface. He smiled bitterly at the thought. Strange that such rank waters should look so lovely at a distance. He shifted his gaze toward the White Tower, which gleamed in the morning sun. Something dark and rank festered within its walls as well.
It had only been a matter of days since John had banished him from the throne room and the halls of power, but already William felt like a stranger in the city. He had served kings most of his life. To have that taken from him by the likes of Godfrey and Richard's wastrel of a brother …
A knock at his door roused him from his dark thoughts. A servant entered, carrying a small rolled piece of parchment, sealed with wax. A message from his man in the north.
Marshal broke the seal and unrolled the parchment.
The message scrawled in that familiar hand was chillingly brief. “200 French arrive at night at Hampton Bays.”
Marshal took a long breath and gazed once more toward the White Tower.
GODFREY HAD NEVER been to Peterborough before, and after today he didn't imagine he would ever want to return. Not that there would be much left of the village once Adhemar's men were done with it, but even if the French were to be more gentle in their collection of taxes than they had been in other towns, he couldn't think of why anyone would come here. There was dung and mud and a few patches of grass and not much else to speak of. Still, if anyone could wring blood from this stone, it was Godfrey.
He signaled to Adhemar, who waved his men forward, giving instructions solely with hand gestures. No words. That had been the sole condition he had placed on the French commander and his legionnaires. The men started toward the village gate, pulling the ironclad tax wagon with them. The legionnaires entered the village like vikings, breaking down doors and ransacking houses, pulling out into the street anything that looked even vaguely valuable. If they didn't find anything upon their initial search of a house, they ripped apart walls, searching for hidden caches.
From nearly every house came the frightened wails of children and the screams of women. One man tried to keep the soldiers from seizing two of his chickens. The soldiers clubbed him until he fell to the ground, blood running from his head. Another tried to block the doorway to his house, but was overwhelmed by the legionnaires, who forced him back inside. Godfrey didn't see the man after that, but he heard the soldiers beating him, heard the man's wife sobbing and begging them to stop.
It was strange, even eerie in a way. The screams of the villagers, the sounds of furniture being smashed, and houses being destroyed, and not a word from the soldiers. These were disciplined men. Once more, Godfrey was impressed.
Yet, despite the best efforts of Adhemar's men, they added few coins to the tax wagon. There simply wasn't enough wealth in these godforsaken villages. Even taking everything, they didn't wind up with much.
Adhemar had walked the length of the lane running through the village—not a great distance, really— and had come back to stand beside Godfrey as the Englishman watched the soldiers move from house to house. Adhemar looked into the wagon and frowned. He scooped up the small pile of coins that had been added to their plunder and then tossed it back into the wagon contemptuously. He looked at Godfrey, scowling, as if to say, “So much work and this is all?” Godfrey was sure though that they would be able to wring more treasure from the cities and hamlets to the south.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Robin found the boys in the shed where Friar Tuck brewed his mead. Between Will, Allan, and Little John, the snoring should have been enough to wake the entire village of Nottingham, but somehow the three of them slept. He retrieved a bucket of water from the nearby well, returned to the shed, and tossed the water onto his friends. They sputtered and groaned, but at least they were awake.
“All right, lads,” he said, tossing the bucket aside. “You should have left while you had the chance. Something's afoot. Off we go.”
He glanced at the friar, who looked both startled and amused. Nodding once, Robin left the shed, with Tuck following. He could hear the boys grumbling.
THE DEACON COULDN'T help but be pleased. Not one, but two wagons filled with grain. The bishop would be delighted, perhaps delighted enough to elevate him to the priesthood and give him his own tenancy. And not down here in the hinterlands, either. A tenancy near to York, where he might win the favor of the bishop and thus advance his career more quickly.
That fool, Tuck, had too much charity for the people in his little hamlet. The bishop had far more important matters on his mind than plantings and harvests in the countryside. Which was why the deacon would be elevated to abbot before long, while the friar remained exactly what he was, where he was.
The sun was setting in the west, and the shadows of the wood were beginning to bring a chill to the air when the deacon steered his cart around a bend in the road. He sat up straighter, pulled from his reverie by a strange sight. A hooded man sat on a stool in the middle of the lane, looking very much like a man in a tavern waiting for an ale. The two carts rumbled closer to him, but the man didn't so much as look up. He simply sat there, almost as if he were asleep, right in the center of the road. The deacon didn't see any way to go around him, and he had no wish to run the man over.
Drawing closer, the deacon saw that the man wore leather breeches and a woolen cloak about his shoulders. He didn't appear to have any armor, but he held a bow across his lap and had an arrow loosely nocked to the string.
Finally, the deacon had no choice but to stop the carts. He raised a hand signaling a halt to the driver behind him.
He pulled back on the reins and shouted “Whoa!” to his horse. The wagons slowed to a stop. The deacon stood up in the front of his wagon, peering through the dimming light, trying to get a better look at the man sitting before him.
“You there!” he called.
The man looked up at him, though the hood continued to shroud most of his face. “Do you speak to me?” he asked, brazenly.
“Do you see anyone else, you insolent wretch?” the deacon demanded. Could the man not see that he wore the bishop's colors? Did he not recognize the Church's grain carts?
“I do not,” the hooded man said. “But perhaps if I were sitting high, like you …”
The deacon had had quite enough. “By God, you'll be sitting in the stocks at York! Move aside!”
“No one may pass who can't answer the riddle,” the man said.
The deacon opened his mouth to respond, but then stopped himself, smiling and feeling a bit more at ease. A riddle. The man had to be a lunatic, but if all he wanted was to play at riddles, he was probably harmless enough. But the hooded man still hadn't moved, and the daylight was failing, and the deacon's patience wasn't infinite. He glanced back at his pike-men, sharing the joke with them.
“Moon-mad,” he whispered. The soldiers laughed. Facing the hooded man again, he said, with just a hint of impatience in his voice, “And what is the riddle?”
“What did the thief say to the honest man?” the stranger asked.
The deacon shrugged. “Let me pass, you loon. I'm on Church business.”
“Oh,” the hooded man said, sounding disappointed. “You've heard it before. I'll ask you another.”
It took the deacon a second to realize that he had been insulted. He straightened, glaring at the stranger. Then he turned to look back at the three guards behind him and nodded once.
The soldiers climbed down off the wagon carrying long pikes, and advanced on the man slowly, shoulder to shoulder, their weapons leveled at the stranger.
The hooded man gave no indication that he feared the guards. In fact, he crossed his legs as if making himself more comfortable. When the guards were almost upon him, he sighed heavily.
“What has six legs and isn't going anywhere?” he asked, sounding bored.
The pikemen glanced at each other, grinning, looking supremely confident. The deacon didn't consider himself a cruel man, but he looked forward to watching the guards teach this troublemaker a lesson. The guards stopped in front of the man and prepared to move him bodily from his stool.
And that was when everything started to go horribly wrong.
The deacon heard a sound behind him, and twisting around saw a second hooded man, this one with impossibly broad shoulders and a long wooden stave. This man swung himself upside down from a low branch over the second cart. He tapped the shoulders of both the driver and the soldier beside, and when they turned to look, he flipped himself onto his feet, and in the same motion whirled his stave in a blurring circle. The two guards tried to fight him off, but this hooded man was too fast for them. In the span of perhaps two heartbeats, he had knocked both men off that wagon and onto the forest floor, where they lay senseless.
At the same time, the last two guards in the deacon's cart drew their swords. And as soon as they did, two archers stepped out from behind trees and fired their arrows. Thunk, thunk! Before the deacon could turn to see what these darts had done, the two men nocked and fired two more. Thunk, thunk! The arrows had pierced the tunics of the two guards—one arrow each at the wrist and the collar—and pinned the men to the wooden frame of the wagon. Neither man appeared to have been hurt, though both of them looked astonished, not to mention terrified.
“Near misses,” said the hooded man on the road. “They won't miss again if you move!”
Facing forward again, the deacon saw his three pikemen turn to watch what was happening to their fellow soldiers. They had raised their pikes and now, without warning, their weapons were jerked out of their hands and hurled into the forest, as if … the deacon swallowed … as if by magic.
The pikemen looked around, clearly unnerved by this, and began to move away from the hooded stranger, back toward the wagon.
The deacon supposed he should have been scared, too, but he didn't run; he refused to run. His hands trembling with rage, his chest rising and falling with each breath, he glared at this common thief standing in the road. He could see that the hooded man was grinning, but his eyes remained hidden. Still, the deacon thought he knew the man, though he couldn't say from where.
“I demand to know who you are!” he said, his voice quavering.
The hooded man's smile broadened. “Men of the hood,” he said, “Fare thee well.”
From the corner of his eye, the deacon saw a movement behind him, and too late he realized that he had allowed another of the hooligans to creep onto his cart. He felt a hard blow to his head and started to fall. Looking back as he tumbled off the wagon, he had the strangest sense that he also knew the hooded man who had hit him. But before he could figure out why this one looked so terribly familiar, he hit the ground and blacked out.
THE DEACON LANDED with a thud and gave a low groan. But he didn't move, and he didn't open his eyes. Out cold.
Robin threw back his hood and looked up at Friar Tuck, who had knocked the bishop's man on the head. The priest pulled back his hood as well, and grinned down at him. Clearly Tuck was enjoying himself. He was right: he definitely was not a “churchy” friar.
“The Lord giveth …” Tuck said.
Robin climbed up onto the cart with him. “… And the Lord taketh away.”
Allan and Will joined Robin and Tuck on the first wagon, still laughing about the way they had used their looped ropes to snatch the lances out of the guards' hands and fling them into the wood. Robin had to laugh, too. The men had looked terrified.
Little John settled himself onto the second wagon, and nodded to Robin, indicating that he was ready to go. Tuck flicked the reins and clicked his tongue at the horses, working to get the wagon turned around on the forest lane. It took some maneuvering to get both carts headed back in the right direction, but soon they were rattling southward again, toward Nottingham.
“My advice is to plant it now,” the friar said, once they were on their way.
Robin glanced at him. “Why is that, good Tuck?”
A mischievous grin spread across the priest's face. “When it sprouts, I can claim it as a miracle from God. The Church in York won't dare deny a miracle.”
Robin laughed. He couldn't remember the last time his spirits were this high. He didn't know if his father would have approved of what he had done, or if this was what Sir Walter had in mind. But at the moment he didn't care. He and his companions had struck a blow against the wealthy and powerful on behalf of those who had neither riches nor influence. All in all, it seemed a good day's work.
As they continued down the road, Allan began to strum his lute and Will began to sing, his voice loud and merry, if slightly off key.
Oh gather ‘round me, people,
A story I will tell,
About the Sherwood outlaw,
The farmers knew him well.
He took the Church grain,
And hid it in the ground,
And in a few short weeks,
Green treasure could be found!
As he started the verse again, the others joined in, their voices echoing through the trees. Thus they made their way back to Nottingham, growing quiet as night fell and they drew closer to the town.
By the time they steered the cart into the planting fields, they were taking every care to make no sound at all. Not that the people of the town would have minded—though Robin wondered what the ill-mannered sheriff would have thought of what they had done. But despite their singing and joking, all of them knew how great a risk they were taking. They had no wish to give the Church or the sheriff any excuse to punish others for their mischief.
Working quickly and in silence, they halted the c
arts, filled slings with as much grain as they could carry, and began to scatter the seed in the furrows Farmer Paul had made with his plow and dray. Several times they had to refill their slings, but they planted all the grain from the first of the carts they had stolen. It took hours—Robin was weary and sore by the time they finished—but again, he couldn't help thinking that he had done God's work this evening and night.
They hid the carts and horses in a barn at the far end of the field, where no one was likely to find them.
Then Robin made his way back to Peper Harrow. The house was dark and still as he crept through the courtyard and into the great hall. A fire still burned low in the hearth, and the hall was warm and smelled of stew. Robin's stomach growled loudly and he realized that he hadn't eaten anything for hours. Still, his fatigue was more powerful than his hunger.