Rival. The deep obsidian place that had Hooded itself upon his shoulders quivered and sang. Betrayer.
Rob turned, aimed the arrow between Gamelyn’s wide green eyes, pulled the arrow halfway to nock.
Then Rob saw her. The Abbess, hovering against the trees like a raven upon the dead-fields, and knew what his last arrow would cost him. He lowered his bow, shook his head at Gamelyn.
You win, my Summerlord. Beltain is your birth, your time. Take our Maiden into your stone gaol, protect her and love her as you could not me.
Stay, o King, and watch the King die.
Rob dispatched two more foes almost casually, then curled his fingers about the last arrow from his quiver, hurled the quiver aside. Licked the fletching and put it to nock. Spun the magic tight about it.
It pulled the air from him, set already starved lungs heaving like a broken bellows, danced crimson behind his eyes. His knees wobbled, tried to buckle; Rob bit his tongue and tasted blood, held them rigid by sheer will.
It was the last breath in him, but it was the only one that mattered anymore.
“Anadlu eich tynged, you bitch,” he whispered, and pushed against the longbow. “Marwolaeth yn canf—!”
Something thumped against his chest, hard, breaking the rhythm of the spell-words and staggering him back. Taken aback, he looked down and saw it: a thick crossbow quarrel buried halfway into his pectoral.
It was then the pain hit. It flowered fire into his entire being, sucked the last of that final breath from him. Sent him to his knees, the spelled arrow dangling from a limp string and the bow falling—so slow, ever so slow—from numb and useless fingers.
“Rob!”
A scream. It sounded like a scream, anyway, a word rasped all raw and horrified… but thick and slow, as if he were hearing it from underwater. Rob blinked, put a hand to the quarrel to pull it out. Couldn’t. His fingers were thick, fumbling and numb. Instead he looked up as his name sounded again—more ragged, more horror—and, almost in puzzlement, saw a familiar, broad, and ruddy-haired figure sprinting for him.
Saw the raven, gliding forth.
Saw the trees making a slow, blurry arc as he fell forward.
The quarrel splintered and shattered as Rob fell atop it, and the indescribable flare of pain sent him hurtling… the last thing he saw was black robes, and the glittering spin of a huge, pectoral cross dangling before his eyes before it all… went… away.
GAMELYN HAD run halfway across the clearing after Rob had turned from him—he’d almost wanted him to shoot, almost wanted to fall to his knees in some prayer-filled, sacrificial submission. But Rob had seen the Abbess at the same time Johan had seen him, and Gamelyn had lurched into a run. Rob was running out of arrows, and if Gamelyn was in the way, at least Johan wouldn’t let them shoot at him.
He saw the bolt hit Rob, and as if it had struck him as well, Gamelyn staggered to a halt, tottering. Horror-struck. Saw Rob fall forward, limp and sprawling. Screamed his name.
Then something slammed into his own temple and sent him sprawling, nearly unconscious, full out onto the forest floor.
No, he told himself. Don’t… go. You can’t. You have to….
To what?
Hands upon him, holding him down, and he fought. Fought against the ones holding him down, fought against the black with screams and kicks. It slowed around him, everything seemed to be floating, and suddenly Gamelyn heard Johan’s voice, wavering in and out of the threatening black. And then a female voice.
“Bring him here. He needs to see this. We need to make sure.”
He was muscled up, woozy and half conscious, and half dragged over where Marion was lying, where the Abbess had crouched over Rob like a carrion bird and tangled claws in his black hair, pulling his head up.
“See?” It was calm, almost gentle. Her cross reflected against the dark of Rob’s flat, staring eyes. “This is how a demon dies, Cousin. This is how we’ve freed you.”
Gamelyn didn’t say a word, merely lunged at her snarling like a rabid wolf, nearly won free of the soldiers holding him.
“Idiot!” Johan swore. “Do you just not know when to stay down?”
Another blow came stinging from the dark, and Gamelyn slumped, heard no more.
Marion came back to consciousness and into hell. Fire in the sky, licking up to the gravid moon. And she could breathe, breathe deep into her lungs without pain, though she remembered she had been shot. They had been riding away from the horses—Gamelyn! a deep place within her mourned, What happened? Why?—And she had clung to Rob even when the quarrel had hit her in the back, because they had to run and couldn’t stop.
Only now the quarrel lay beside her, bloodied, not in her back. And Rob was standing over her, the black streaks of sucked-dry tynged tightening about him, almost like a cowl.
Like a hood.
Marion tried to speak, stop him. Then she saw Rob stagger back, an ebon shaft blooding and blossoming from his chest, and tried to reach toward him. But her limbs were not her own yet, and she couldn’t.
She saw Gamelyn hurtling toward Rob, saw how it took several soldiers to stop him, shoving him down into the dirt as he screamed and struggled and fought them.
It wasn’t his fault. It couldn’t have been. She had never heard anyone keen with such pain as that.
Saw a black, cowled figure rise from Rob’s body, step over it as if it was nothing.
Hooded One… His power is taken… taken….
Saw Gamelyn’s brother club him like a mad dog not once, but twice.
Again, she tried to crawl toward Rob, couldn’t. Saw his face, pale streaked by sweat-wet inked curls, his ribs, shuddering and heaving with a breath he no longer possessed, his eyes, deep and staring, lit by the flames lighting the night sky.
Saw the black figure lean over her.
“No…,” Marion said. “My… brother….”
“Your brother is well now, ma petit,” the black figure said, warping and fading. “You will be with him anon… Sacre Jesu!”
There was sudden fear and wonder in the voice, and as Marion looked up at the figure, she could see a raven. Knowing eyes, head cocking back and forth, a huge, sleek raven sitting fat and cheeky on the shoulders of Death, only the moon had drawn down another aspect, another face, very familiar: Hope and Sorrow….
Marion reached out, touched the chill face, and whispered, “Mother?”
Then sank into the black and knew no more.
Entr’acte
HE’D COME late, detained but for very good reasons. Had sneaked a ride on a covered cart most of the way, had been eager to see what an afternoon’s efforts had wrought, the magic that might had resulted.
Instead, John found the magic murdered.
The moon was still high in the sky, illuminating everything as if by daylight. In the north, sullen orange lit the sky: more light. Yet it was not a scene anyone would have wanted to see in such brutal detail. The sacred stones lay upturned and broken; the ones who’d thought to do honor to them had not even had the decency of any kind of burial, lying scattered, bloody and bloodied. Those who had somehow survived had no doubt already crawled away.
Upon the altar was the worst sacrilege. She had been beheaded, this vessel for their Lady….
Once she had been the si woman. Eluned of the March. Rob’s mother. Now she was merely another unrecognizable corpse.
John drew his tattered cloak tighter and hurried away.
He had to find them.
He hadn’t gone very far before another body greeted his eyes; a huddled ball of mangled flesh from which carrion eaters scurried away as they were disturbed. Also beheaded, the only thing to identify Adam of Loxley lay a few feet away: the great headdress of the Horned One. It was broken, and stripped of its gold trimmings by another type of carrion. He started to bend down, take it up, then shook his head.
It was finished.
And he still had not found what he sought.
He stood there, head down, breath
warming his chilled hands. Then he took in a deep, cleansing breath, opened his palms, let the breath out over them.
“Show me,” John whispered, with every warp and weft of mind-magic he possessed, then closed his eyes and breathed again, “Anadl fy tynged.”
And stood there, throat and chest thrown wide, hands outstretched, quivering and seeking any tiny vibration of the magic, any hint.
The answer came, in a faint and faltering echo. He opened his eyes, nodded, and broke into a run toward the crimson sky.
It was a lengthy run, but he was used to running even more than riding. The sky was a beacon, glowing sullen threat; smoke hung thick in the trees, and it was silent. Too silent.
A crashing in the brush; he alerted, then smiled as a forlorn nicker sounded. A black rouncey came forward, glad to see a friendly face. It was obvious the black one had waited, and waited… yet none had ever come for him until now. John rubbed at the gelding’s face and captured him with his name.
“Arawn.”
Arawn willingly carried him the rest of the way.
Trees grew thinner, gave way to a clearing. Bodies littered the ground here, too, and torn-up earth.
Arawn knew what he was looking for, went to stand beside the prone figure. John slid down, wobbling; his legs almost didn’t want to carry him. It was… impossible.
What had happened? Where was the Knight? The Maiden?
For here lay the Hunter….
He gave a groan as he knelt beside the fallen one. Turned him over—gently, ever so gently. There was a broken-off crossbow quarrel still piercing the Hunter’s breast; wisely John did not touch it, but laid his head upon the Hunter’s breast. Thought he heard a slow, sullen thump, but was not sure. Rocking back and forth on his haunches, a finger in his mouth as he thought, suddenly he nodded and dug into his purse.
He had found it at the glassblower’s; a lovely, flat piece of robin’s-egg blue that, in a pinch, had a decent cutting edge. He held it to the slack lips, waited.
The glass misted, faint but undeniably there.
Tears rose to his eyes, grateful and sudden.
Beside him, Arawn grunted. A shadow fell over them, and John started, peered up to see an old man, white hair streaming from a bloodied forehead, leaning heavily upon a staff.
“Ah, the Hooded One cannot die from an arrow,” Cernun said, and knelt down with them. “Nay, we will not let him.”
John smoothed the hair back from Rob’s face, and wiped his eyes, and nodded. “Aye, lord.”
End Book One
Acknowledgments
THERE CAN be numerous things that go into writing a book, and books either based on or set into historical timeframes have their own challenges and joys. Greenwode and its immediate sequel, Shirewode, have led me on an amazing journey.
Over thirty years ago, I wrote the first novel of a trilogy: what would become the precursor to this project. I had the opportunity to travel to England and research the stomping ground of Robyn Hode (aka Robin Hood)—his time and place, companions and precursors and successors. I spent hours hunched amongst ancient tomes in the closed stacks of libraries and ignoring my ever-patient spouse; on the other hand, he and I together made the most romantic of pilgrimages (and yes, he does consider such things romantic) to cairns and priapic chalk giants, stone circles, and the eye of the White Horse. We crawled castles and churches, both ruined and intact, hid ’neath the bracken of Sherwood Forest (what remains, anyway), and slid as if ice-skating on sheep dung whilst climbing Glastonbury Tor. In short, we got to touch a depth of history that, in the Americas, has been long destroyed by white invaders. Bliss!
The first incarnation of Greenwode nearly went to contract twice but was felled by various strokes of ill luck. I put it away in my files, thinking the matter finished… yet it was never forgotten. The soul-breath of these books—tynged anadl, as the Heathen of the Wode no doubt would say—has been swirling and morphing for all that time and, in the manner of all magics, has exhaled with its own new life. I thought I was merely giving the manuscript a good stiff edit; instead, a valiant and freshman effort remade itself into something deeper. Greenwode kept growing into a duology that explored the ways myths can be birthed and how legends, both on paper and in the collective of the unconscious, cannot help but intertwine. I ended up digging even deeper into the old ballads than before, giving honor to the original sources while taking a new tack, setting for the horizon of an authentic, earthy, and affective story. Greenwode is about the origins of Robyn Hood, companioned by the other characters that had the making of him, not just Marion but an oft-forgotten precursor to the outlaw tales: Gamelyn Boundys. Not nearly so notorious as Robyn, but often regarded as one of the earlier faces of the Robyn legend, Gamelyn was inspiration for another bard who wrote a play based on a fifteenth-century retelling of The Tale of Gamelyn—a play called As You Like It. He is also suspected to be the Gandelyn of “Robyn and Gandelyn,” a ballad that easily slides into the myth of the brother/lover kings who do battle for the May Queen. It seems to me as of late that the mythic romance (in the oldest, truest sense of the word) of Robyn’s world seems to be falling by the wayside. There’s plenty of gritty militaristic “reality,” plenty of safe retellings in a world that craves formula and extremes of marketability, but the myth and magic of Robyn’s truest love—the “swete grenwode”—has been missing.
It is past time to revive it!
So here we are. As nothing is created in a vacuum, from ancient ballads to the most far-out, speculative SF or fantasy world, I must give due to some of the sparks that kindled Greenwode (Yes! Go read them!):
There are so many wonderful examples of English medieval ballads and texts, but of particular help to this project were: “A Gest of Robyn Hode,” “The Tale of Gamelyn,” “Robyn Hode and Guy of Gisborne,” “Robyn and Gandelyn,” “The Wanderer,” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Perceval, The Canterbury Tales. Many thanks go to the translators and essayists, too numerous to name, who have done and continue to deconstruct and decode and discuss these tales.
The books which were never far from my keyboard: Rymes of Robyn Hode by R.B. Dobson; The Golden Bough by James George Frazier; The White Goddess by Robert Graves; Margaret Murray’s The Divine King in England and The God of the Witches; The Fairy-faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz; Robin Hood by J.C. Holt; Medieval Roads and Tracks by Paul Hindle. Others that I read for mythic and historical texture were Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Beigent, Leith, and Lincoln; The Templars by Michael Haag; Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages edited by Clara Lees; The Templars: Knights of God by Edward Burman; The Knights Templar by Stephen Howarth; numerous and valuable medieval histories by not only Joseph & Frances Geis but also Barbara Tuchman, as well as various books by Mircea Eliade. A book I first read at least forty years ago, which led to much more study, was Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon. A childhood mainstay (with illustrations by the amazing N.C. Wyeth) was Paul Creswick’s Robin Hood and, of course, The Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle.
Credit must of course go to my draft readers, Carole and Rosina. The former is a remarkable friend who has read more of my writing in primitive stages than anyone should have to endure, kicked my arse on a regular basis, and is solely responsible for nagging me into trying publishing again. The latter has reminded me of such things as “knob” being a much more appropriate term than the one (oft overused to much hilarity) that denotes both a rooster and a certain bit of male anatomy; she also reassured me that my grasp of Yorkshire sound and dialect was “no’ so bad, pet.” And of course there is my lovely John, who is actually quite chatty and gregarious, puts up with his mad and obsessive writer spouse, can push a longbow, and looks really good in tights.
The Internet did not exist when I first wrote this book. No, really, it didn’t. A weekly trip to the library was my staple then; as to now, I have a love/hate relationship with the initials WWW. It has proven both invaluable resource and irritating distra
ction. When one enjoys research as much as I, to have the possibility of finding a picture of That Remote Barrow Mound, or a map of the wapentakes of Yorkshire, or a resource about the Templars that does not rely on some unfathomably popular and thoroughly unreadable work of fiction… well, it is often irresistible. I must salute The Robin Hood Project at the University of Rochester (lib.rochester.edu) and British History Online (british-history.ac.uk) for being invaluable and easily accessed sources of texts and historical references.
It is also impossible nowadays to discount the effects of TV/movie influences. Robin of Sherwood, a brilliant mythos in its own right, a mystical and thankfully British retelling from the ’80s that will always be one of the quintessential Hoods. The Lion in Winter, because, well, how not? Douglas Fairbanks, yowza! Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone with their sped-up action, bendy swords, and neon tights. The black-and-white TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Richard Green, which I adored as a child. Robin and Marian. Daffy Duck and Friar Porky. Men In Tights! Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
And the caveat? (Come now, you knew there must be one somewhere….)
While Greenwode and Shirewode are both lovingly researched and historically based, this duology is above all else speculative, and therefore firmly in the realm of Fantasy. I have done my damnedest not to let very malleable facts obfuscate the purpose of the magic and the myth. Any retelling of history is a fantasy—and that’s as it should be, for we live in a wonderful and terrible chaos of scattered viewpoints and unfortunate crusades. Archeological evidence rests on the interpretations of individuals, all of whom have their own agenda. Papers can be forged and languages lost. And if a people has a mostly oral transmission of their language and are subsequently wiped out….
I am a history geek, no question, but all of us history buffs have to remember this very important fact:
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