‘Oh he exists all right,’ said Marian. ‘It might be better for us all if he didn’t.’ She turned away and breathed deeply of the forest air. Erasmus watched her hunched shoulders as they heaved up and down.
‘What did he do to you?’ he said gently.
‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ said Marian, keeping her back turned. ‘We don’t mention his name in this camp and that’s an end to it.’
Erasmus watched thoughtfully as Marian crossed the clearing to where Alice was sharpening her dagger on a stone. What could Robin Hood have done that had caused feelings to run so high? If he were anything like his legend, then it would be inconceivable he would wish to inflict such pain on the woman he was supposed to love. And, if he were such a terrible man, what writer would then bring the legend together in a form where he and Marian were lovers and companions in arms? Curiosity gnawed at Erasmus, but he knew that, at least for the moment, he would get no more from Marian. He looked across the clearing at where Maude sat, studiously ignoring him. Perhaps he needed to mend his bridges with her in order to find out what was really happening in not-so-Merrie England.
Maude’s task for the morning was to catch rabbits and she reluctantly agreed to Marian’s insistence that Erasmus accompany her. As Marian had said, if they had an extra mouth to feed then the extra hands could catch some extra rabbit and earn their keep. The two walked through the forest in subdued silence, Erasmus looking around him for any sign of furry comestibles.
Eventually he decided that sufficient time had passed for him to break the silence. ‘How do you catch a rabbit?’ he said.
Maude looked at him in shock. ‘You never ’unted rabbit?’
‘I’ve never eaten rabbit,’ said Erasmus, ‘and to be honest, I’ve never hunted anything.’
‘What do you eat in foreign?’
‘We farm animals mainly. People only hunt animals for sport and it’s not a very popular pastime.’
Maude nodded understandingly: farming was a common practice for her people as well, but it tended to be difficult to set up a farm when you were in hiding from the authorities – a field of sheep was an even bigger indicator of occupation than neatly piled rocks. She unslung a small bow from her back and picked out an arrow from her concealed quiver.
‘You hunt them with a bow?’ said Erasmus incredulously.
‘Traps would be found,’ said Maude. ‘We all use bows – except for Alice.’
‘What does she use?’ Erasmus wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know the answer.
‘Just ’er dagger.’
‘She’s very fond of the whole up-close and personal approach, isn’t she? Did she have an unhappy childhood?’
Maude shrugged. ‘She ’asn’t said.’
‘You don’t ask, then?’
Maude shook her head. ‘Best not to,’ she said. She motioned for Erasmus to be quiet, set her arrow to her bow and stared intently into a nearby thicket. Erasmus followed her gaze, but it was too dark under the leaves for him to make anything out. Maude, however, seemed to be staring intently at something in the shadows and, as Erasmus watched, her posture changed. In a single motion, she went from an upright, civilised stance to that of a hunter – thousands of years of evolution appearing to fall away at a stroke. Her eyes glittered as she pulled back on the bowstring then, in a single fluid motion, she released her grip and the arrow sailed into the thicket. There was a soft thud and Erasmus could see the green feathers of the flight, still quivering slightly, in the shadows of the bush. He knelt down and stretched his arm under the bush, grasping towards the arrow. There was something warm just at the furthest extent of his reach. He closed his hand over it, then yelped and withdrew it hurriedly.
‘What?’ Maude hurried to his side and looked at him.
‘I think it’s still alive,’ said Erasmus, looking at the scratch on his palm. ‘It must have bitten me.’
Maude knelt down and pulled on the arrow. Erasmus expected some kind of squealing, or at least the rustling of leaves as the beast struggled, but it slid out unresistingly. It was quite definitely dead. It wasn’t, however, a rabbit.
‘A hedgehog!’ said Erasmus. ‘No wonder it hurt.’
‘I just saw movement,’ said Maude. ‘Mind you, there’s good eating on an ’edgehog.’
Erasmus nodded. ‘That’s as may be,’ he said, ‘but how do we carry it home?’
In the end they buried the hedgehog – it was easier than carrying it, but safer than leaving it.
The sun was at its apex by the time Maude and Erasmus decided they had hunted enough for the day. It hadn’t been a hugely successful hunt, but their catch of three rabbits and a squirrel would be enough to feed the outlaws. Erasmus carried a rabbit in each hand as he walked alongside Maude. He was in high spirits: the quarrel of the morning had blown over and Maude was her usual friendly self once more. As they made their way through the clearing where they’d buried the hedgehog, Erasmus decided it might be the appropriate time to pursue his line of questioning once more.
‘Why is Marian so upset by the mention of Robin Hood?’ he said.
Maude stopped and turned to look at him. ‘Why do you keep on about ’im?’
‘I told you – it’s why I came here in the first place.’
Maude adjusted the position of the rabbit on her shoulder and continued towards the camp. ‘She’s never said. She seemed upset when we first found ’er, you see, but we didn’t like to ask.’
‘She’s not your leader then?’
‘Oh, she’s that all right – stands to reason, she’s nobility – but there was a time before.’
‘Before?’
Maude stopped again and examined Erasmus’ features. His smooth face was not an unkindly one and there didn’t seem to be a trace of guile behind his hazel eyes.
‘You won’t tell Alice what I’m going to tell you, will you?’ she said. ‘Promise?’
‘I don’t think she’d listen if I—’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise,’ said Erasmus, wondering what was so bad that even telling Alice was a bad idea.
‘There were five of us at first,’ Maude began. ‘We’d all run away from ’angings or bad masters and found our way into the forest. We didn’t rob nobody or nothin’, just kept ourselves to ourselves and the Sheriff never bothered to look for us. ’E had bigger game to catch.’
‘Robin Hood?’
Maude nodded. ‘Back then, Robin ’ood was all you ’eard about. ‘’E’d steal from rich merchants and give it all to the poor. ‘’Elp anyone in trouble, ’e would.’
‘What happened?’
‘We don’t know, people just stopped talking about it,’ said Maude matter-of-factly. She stepped over a tree root and pulled the rabbit’s ears to stop it sliding down her back. ‘At that time we ’ad other things to think about.’
‘Other things?’
‘Alice came to the forest, what, ’bout two years ago. Murdered a man at the altar, they said. I don’t know about that, but she wasn’t ’appy to simply live in the forest and stay alive. She wanted to kill. Gisburne began to lose soldiers – ’e was told to get all the women out of the forest and we thought the only way to save ourselves was either to join Alice or stop ’er.’
‘Which did you do?’
‘Neither. That’s when Marian came along. She’s got a way with people ’as Marian. She got Alice to stop butchering people and she brought us all together.’
‘Did she ever say why she wanted to join you?’
‘No. Why should she ’ave? ’
‘Well. It’s just... she’s from a noble family, isn’t she? Seems an odd thing to do – just heading off into the forest to start life in the rough.’
‘It’s not like that,’ said Maude. ‘Marian came to us because she said the country was run by bad men and we’ve got to do what we can to disr– disru–,’ she faltered.
‘Disrupt,’ Erasmus supplied.
‘That’s it,’ said Maude, ‘to disrupt their
doings. We robs from the rich and gives it to the poor. We ’elp people and we don’t kill people – unless we can’t avoid it.’
‘What about up at the castle? Alice seemed to be able to avoid it.’
‘She’s too fond of killing. If it weren’t for Marian, she’d ’ave given every man in the kingdom a shave ’e wouldn’t forget by now.’
Erasmus adjusted his grip on one of his rabbits. The beast’s eyes looked at him balefully and, although he hadn’t managed to kill any of the rabbits, Erasmus looked away guiltily.
‘I still don’t understand why she didn’t join up with Robin Hood,’ he said.
‘With Robin’ood? Why would she?’
‘Well, if he was doing the same thing already. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? They might even get along.’
‘But ’e’s not doing the same thing.’
‘I thought you said he was.’
‘’E was, yes. But like I said, people stopped saying ’e was. Perhaps ’e’d stopped?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Erasmus thoughtfully. He frowned. ‘How did you end up in the dungeon?’ he asked.
‘I was unlucky. I came across a man robbin’ a young girl and tried to stop ’im.’
‘What happened?’
‘Turns out ’e was a soldier, trying to have ’is way with this girl from the village. ’E rose all ’ell and ’is mates came in and got me. Sneaky.’
‘Sneaky?’
‘If ’e was a soldier, ’e ought to ’ave been dressed as one. ’Ow was I supposed to know?’
‘Well, you can’t exactly…’ Erasmus hesitated, ‘steal from a girl in full armour, can you?’
Maude looked at him, momentarily puzzled. ‘’Course you can,’ she began, then stopped and smiled. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Suppose not – though some girls reckon they like a man in armour. Takes all sorts. ’Ow do you like your girls?’
Erasmus flushed. ‘Not in armour,’ he said. ‘Perhaps in amour.’
Maude shot him a quizzical look. ‘That foreign?’
‘French,’ said Erasmus.
‘You’re not one of them, are you?’ she said, suddenly worried. Erasmus was taken aback, his twenty-first-century mind placing an entirely different meaning on the words than was intended, but he quickly realised what was meant and shook his head.
‘I speak several languages,’ he said, ‘but English is my native tongue.’
‘Where do you come from?’ Maude asked.
‘I couldn’t begin to explain.’
Maude nodded and adopted a thoughtful silence as they arrived back at the camp. Ethel had fashioned a makeshift work-surface out of the flatter stones and Maude deposited her catch down carefully. Erasmus followed suit and the two walked away from the clearing as Ethel began to skin the animals with a sharp knife.
‘Do you really want to find out about Robin ’ood?’ said Maude, once they were out of hearing distance of the clearing.
‘Yes,’ said Erasmus. ‘I really do.’
Maude looked at him. His features were earnest and she knew she couldn’t refuse him. ‘I’ll show you where they’re camped,’ she said. ‘After that, I’m afraid you’re on your own.’
Chapter Nine
He parted company with Maude in a small clearing to the west. After she had extracted a promise from him that he would return once he’d found what he needed to know, she had given him directions to the area where Robin was usually seen. She wasn’t able to accompany him for the rest of the journey herself. Erasmus hadn’t pressed the point – although the question ‘why?’ nagged at his mind incessantly. Just what had happened between the two outlaw bands that they didn’t want to either talk about or see each other?
Now, he was alone. It was true that his surroundings were beautiful: the natural avenue wound its way gently around the contours of a small hill, and the trees were spaced at just the perfect distance to provide a pretty dappled light on the ground below. But it was difficult to appreciate the unspoilt bushes when you suspected that any one of them could hold a man with a dagger. It didn’t help that here, even more than back home, the promise of justice was little more than reassurance for the weak-minded. It’s all very nice to know that should you have your throat cut the authorities will do their best to catch the man responsible, but it doesn’t do very much to stop the bleeding. And it would take over eight hundred years for the ambulance to turn up.
He wondered whether there was a fate worse than Alice to be found in the forest. It was unlikely. The only fate worse than Alice would probably have to be two of her. He hoped fervently she didn’t have a twin sister. Why couldn’t I have picked a safe period in history to visit? Erasmus wondered, then his brow furrowed as he racked his brains to find any suitable candidate. None came to mind.
A small brook wound through the trees ahead and, as he approached it, Erasmus tried to get a grip and banish such morbid thoughts from his mind. This was, after all, research, and you couldn’t expect to make great discoveries without getting your hands dirty. He should have been more prepared, that was all. If he’d waited a couple of weeks, he could have probably confiscated a veritable arsenal of weapons from the students and he would have been better equipped to face the challenges of a hostile century.
As he passed the edge of the treeline and followed the brook downstream, he let the sunlight play on his face and, for the first time since he had arrived, began to relax and take in the scenery. It was lovely to see such an unspoilt environment – there were no burnt-out Mini Metros lying on their roofs, no discarded needles dumped carelessly in hedges, not even a crisp packet drifting along the forest floor. Yes, the twelfth century had its problems, but they were simple problems and they had simple solutions. Buoyed on by this fresh optimism, Erasmus walked with a spring in his step down to where the brook tumbled into a gorge to join with a much larger river. Unfortunately, the only crossing was by means of a single log, laid over the chasm like a bridge.
Back in the days when health and safety had been a twinkle in a politician’s eye and safety mats had meant something that resembled a quarter-inch thick rubber carpet, teachers of physical education had been a special breed of sadist, who had spent their every waking hour devising progressively crueller and more unusual punishments for their students. The students who met such challenges head on and passed with flying colours, or at least shrugged off sports-related injuries as only par for the course, were largely ignored by such people – it was the small group of boys who could make getting over a vaulting horse seem as difficult as scaling the north face of the Eiger who were their preferred prey.
For Erasmus – the prey of choice amongst PE teachers – the most pointless exercise had been the obstacle course: every week the master would dragoon his pupils into wandering around the gym, carrying trestles and bars and effectively assembling the instruments of their own torture. Every week he would have them lay it out slightly differently, increasing the length of a jump here, swapping two obstacles there, in order to prevent anyone from actually mastering the timing required to complete the course unharmed. Then, after the safety mats had been laid out, each pupil would make his way around the course in turn, observed by their colleagues. The objective was to complete two flawless circuits of the course before you were allowed to get changed into your regular clothes and go to lunch.
Somewhere on that obstacle course would be the bane of Erasmus’ life – the balance beam. Formed from two huge vaulting horses with upturned benches serving as ramps and the beam itself, it still haunted his dreams – particularly after eating gorgonzola for some reason. Every PE lesson had seemed to end the same way: the children would stand around and watch as the teacher forced Erasmus onto the beam time and again. He would stand on the vaulting horse, observing a six-inch thick beam, too young to challenge the teacher as to why it was so important for him to cross it when there was a perfectly good floor only four feet below. He would take one step, two, sometimes as many as four and then, as if his inner ear had just woken up
and asked what the hell was going on, he would topple to the floor and be told to repeat the exercise. Sometimes it had been as many as a dozen times before the teacher had decided he’d had enough. If the lesson hadn’t been the last before lunch, Erasmus imagined he would never have survived to tell the tale.
Now, here he was facing a natural balance beam. There was no crowd of taunting children, no teacher who had been thrown out of the army for being too psychotic. But the river below had teeth of rock and Erasmus didn’t imagine even the most blasé of health and safety inspectors would accept a piece of rubber mat as proof against it.
He first became aware he wasn’t alone when the bridge wobbled. Erasmus, staring down into the river below as he crossed, adjusted his footing to prevent himself from falling, then looked up to see what had caused his world to shake so violently. Standing at the other side of the river, with one foot on the bridge, was a giant of a man, his grizzled face barely visible beneath a mass of hair and beard. In his hand he held a staff that Erasmus felt was probably almost the size of the bridge itself. As Erasmus caught his eye, he stamped on the bridge and Erasmus had to stretch his arms out to both sides to prevent himself from ending up in the river. The giant laughed at him.
‘GET OFF MY BRIDGE!’ he bellowed.
‘I need to cross,’ said Erasmus. ‘This is the direction I was given.’
‘Well, you can cross in t’ water, not on my bridge.’
Erasmus looked down at the river – it seemed deep and fast and he hadn’t enjoyed swimming lessons any more than he had enjoyed the assault course.
‘I’d rather cross the bridge, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘People who cross my bridge have to fight for t’ privilege.’
Erasmus was beginning to get annoyed with this giant – he saw enough bullies at school and, like most adults, he lived in the vain hope they would grow out of it. This man had definitely grown but, apparently, he had grown into it. Following the advice usually given to victims of bullies, Erasmus pulled himself up to his full five feet eight and stared at his tormentor’s six feet five, determined to stand his ground, no matter how shaky it was.
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