Erasmus was shocked. Hearing those words coming from a legendary people’s hero was like being told that Santa Claus did exist, but that, rather than delivering presents, he was responsible for stealing all those toys that children thought they had lost over the years. ‘Isn’t that where the money goes?’ he said.
‘We can’t all spend all our time propping up people who aren’t prepared to fight for their freedom.’
‘Marian does,’ said John quietly. There was another silence – even Alan paused in his playing. All eyes turned to Robin, who looked sullenly at his boots.
‘We used to,’ said Will, ‘but what difference did it make? You can’t go on giving money to the poor – it just gets taken back from them.’ He paused and grimaced as the owl hooted once more. Alan, seated some way behind Will, resumed his playing quietly.
‘The country needs to change,’ said Robin, looking up from his boots. ‘You can’t just throw money at these problems and expect them to go away. It needs changes at the top.’
‘That’s going to take time,’ said Erasmus. ‘What are you going to do in the meantime?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The people need a hero,’ said John.
‘Well, they can have a heroine,’ Robin snapped. ‘You saw what happened in Newark. We failed. If we can’t even get that right, how can we expect to do anything bigger?’
Deloial had been sitting quietly by the fire throughout the exchange – Erasmus had begun to wonder if the man was mute – now he looked at Robin with a quiet intensity. ‘Does this man’s escape mean so much?’ he said.
Robin shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but we’ve worked so hard.’
‘Mistakes can be rectified afterwards.’ The simple statement felt sinister – Erasmus assumed he didn’t mean you could get the right change on presentation of a receipt. He felt a sudden chill and shivered.
‘It’s not as if it was your fault,’ said John.
‘I know,’ said Robin, glancing at Erasmus as he did so, ‘but that’s what people will think.’
Alan, still playing his lyre at the edge of the clearing, called out to the group. ‘Why so sorrowful?’ he said. ‘You did not fail.’
Will turned and glared at the singer, but he was too busy looking into the eyes of his beloved. Noticing the gap in conversation, however, Alan looked back to the outlaws. ‘You took his bride from under his very nose – surely that can be considered a triumph. What matter a little coin when compared to that?’ He plucked a jaunty tune on his lyre and was just about to open his mouth to sing when a knife ripped through the strings and pinned the neck of the instrument to a tree. Alan looked down at his lyre then up at Will, whose hand was still held in a casual throwing pose.
‘Seems everybody ’tis critic to those of us with the art,’ said Alan. ‘Though the loss of the lyre is not what I would have wished, ’tis of little moment. I still have good voice.’ He looked at Will and noticed there was now a fresh dagger in the ruffian’s right hand.
‘However,’ Alan began slowly, ‘there are times when music is not appropriate and I imagine this is one of those.’ Will grinned humourlessly and turned back to the fire. Robin, who had been watching the exchange quietly, looked to Erasmus.
‘Why don’t you carry a sword?’ he said.
‘We don’t really have them where I come from,’ said Erasmus.
‘Then how do you defend yourself?’
Erasmus opened his mouth then closed it again. On reflection, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to introduce the outlaws to the concept of firearms, he considered.
‘Weapons aren’t allowed in my country,’ he said.
The outlaws seemed stunned by this announcement. ‘How can that be?’ Robin asked. ‘Surely, you need at least a stout stick to defend yourself from those who would steal from you.’
Erasmus shook his head. ‘The law prevents us from doing that.’
‘And does this lore also prevent the thief and the murderer from going about their business?’
Erasmus knew that, strictly speaking the answer was not all of the time, but he decided to simplify matters. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘It must be powerful lore indeed,’ said Robin. ‘Does it protect you even here?’
‘Not right now.’
‘You probably need to carry something with the right runes on it,’ said John.
Erasmus looked at him blankly, then realisation spread across his face. ‘We don’t have a written law,’ he said.
‘Then how does it work?’ said Robin.
‘It’s passed down to us by lawyers and ministers.’
Now it was Robin’s turn to look confused. ‘Is it a kind of chant?’ he said.
Erasmus visualised the droning sound of Parliament in session: it could be construed as a chant, he supposed – certainly it usually seemed to be more about ritual than reason. He shrugged.
‘Here we have no such lore to protect us,’ said Robin. ‘Tomorrow, we shall see about equipping you with a weapon.’
Chapter Eleven
Look at the world through someone else’s eyes: unfocused, they see in swirls of colour. Here, there is the impression of green, blurring down to the edges of something crystalline, yet alive with movement. Above, the sweep of blue fills the canvas, divided only by rays of gold falling, like the promise of another fine day, on to the deeper greens and browns of the middle distance. Then, sharply, the scene focuses and we see the trees around us, the sun in the sky and the clear waters of the stream winding between its mossy banks.
Erasmus replaced his other contact lens and washed his face with a handful of water. It was quiet in the forest: the only sounds were those of the occasional bird calling to his fellows, or the scurrying of a small animal in the undergrowth. The outlaw camp, a short distance back, was filled, by comparison, with the snores of men who had taken their ale a little too enthusiastically. Erasmus was grateful for the chance to spend a little time alone and to deal with his ablutions without interference or all the awkward questions that would undoubtedly arise.
He envied people with twenty-twenty vision: as a child, the wearing of spectacles had automatically singled him out for derision. As an adult, his facial arrangements had been less of a problem and he wore the same pair of thick-rimmed glasses he had first received, safe in the knowledge it wouldn’t hamper his career. It had never even occurred to him that poor eyesight would be a major handicap for a time traveller. When researching his costume he’d been surprised to discover that glasses dated from the thirteenth century and disappointed to find they hadn’t arrived in England until the seventeenth. Reluctantly, he had decided to endure the wearing of contact lenses for the sake of the furtherance of knowledge – others had made far greater sacrifices for humanity than sore eyes. Besides, his other senses were probably better than most people’s; as he dried his face on his sleeve, he became aware of voices coming from a clearing nearby. Quietly, he rose from his knees and moved in the direction of the sound. At the edge of the clearing he pressed himself against a tree and cautiously looked around the trunk to see who was speaking.
The clearing was largely hemmed in by trees and bushes and Erasmus had to bend down in order to see through the foliage. There appeared to be three people in the clearing: a man on foot, who had his back to Erasmus, and two men on horseback, who both wore mail armour and the distinctive helmet of the Norman soldier. The tunics they wore over their mail both bore the same crest. Erasmus was sure he’d seen the crest somewhere before but, not being a great student of heraldry, he couldn’t immediately identify it. The standee, for his part, wasn’t wearing armour and had no identifying crest, although his general build looked familiar to the teacher. The three talked in hushed voices, the knights bending down in the saddle rather than raising their voices, and Erasmus strained to pick out more than a few words. There was something about a friar, somebody was a troublemaker and the name of a saint of some description. Taken out of context, the words meant not
hing at all. Erasmus just wished he could see the face of the third man; he was sure he would know who he was.
He looked around the clearing to see if there was another convenient viewing point where he might get a better look, then stood up and began to shuffle around the bush. As he did so, he stepped on a twig, which snapped under his foot. Erasmus stood rooted to the spot; he could feel his heart pounding in his chest and was convinced it would be audible to anyone with good hearing. Breathing as quietly as he could, he knelt down slightly so he could see through to the clearing, then gasped – all three men were now looking in the direction of his cover and the third member of the group was none other than Deloial – the quiet member of Robin’s entourage. What was he doing talking with soldiers – wouldn’t he be a wanted man?
Time passed. To Erasmus it felt like hours he spent in his uncomfortable pose, though he knew it was probably a matter of minutes. Eventually, Deloial turned his back to the bush and the three resumed their conversation sotto voce. Erasmus took a deep breath, then returned to his original hiding place. He wiped the sweat from his brow and looked around him for a twig-free route away from the clearing. He had just taken his first step when an acorn fell from above and bounced on his head. Resisting the urge to swear, Erasmus looked up to see a squirrel, hanging from a branch by its tail and attempting to swing itself towards a cluster of acorns on another branch. As it scrabbled for a purchase, it dislodged another acorn and this one bounced off the teacher’s forehead as he stared up at the scene. He rubbed his head and was just about to turn and walk away when a third acorn fell into his open mouth. This time he couldn’t stop himself, he spat the acorn out and choked loudly. He didn’t need to look through the bushes to see the reaction: the sound of hoof beats advancing steadily on his position was sufficient warning and, silently cursing the squirrel, Erasmus took flight, running down to the stream, leaping across it and charging blindly into the woods beyond.
All attempts at silence was discarded in his panic and Erasmus crashed through bushes and undergrowth with less subtlety than a teenager in a school corridor at home-time. Behind him he could hear his pursuer closing in. He glanced quickly back and saw the soldier had a sword in his hand. Erasmus could almost feel the horse’s breath on his collar as the soldier raised his sword, ready to swing, and the teacher put on a desperate burst of speed… and tripped over a tree root. As he crashed into a pile of bracken he expected to hear the sword whistle past his head, but instead he heard a soft whooshing noise, a thud, a groan and a sound that resembled a pyramid of bean tins falling to the floor after someone had removed the one at the bottom. There was the sound of whinnying, then the hoof beats grew gradually quieter and receded into the distance.
For a few moments, Erasmus lay in the bracken, grateful for the moment of peace and quiet after the burst of activity. Then, painfully, he rolled over on to his back and pulled himself to his feet. As he did so, he found himself staring into a pair of green-grey eyes, set in a round face, framed by raven-black hair.
‘Maude!’ said Erasmus, and she fell into his arms and hugged him.
Eventually, Erasmus disentangled himself from the woman’s embrace and looked at her. Her face was a mixture of concern and pleasure, a combination of emotions that seemed somehow too complex for the Maude that Erasmus knew – though he admitted his experience here was limited. In her hand she carried a bow and Erasmus could see a quiver of arrows, fletched with pale green flights, protruding from behind her shoulder.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said.
‘Keeping an eye on you, m’duck.’
‘You do realise it’s dangerous out here, don’t you? I was almost killed by a soldier this morning.’
Maude smiled and pointed. Erasmus’ gaze followed her extended arm and he saw a fallen body in the undergrowth, marked out by the green flight of an arrow that was buried in its back. Clearly, if anyone should have avoided wandering around in the forest, it wasn’t Maude. He looked back to the woman and she smiled reassuringly.
‘Who was he?’ said Erasmus.
‘Just one of the Sheriff’s men.’
Erasmus nodded: he knew he’d seen the coat of arms somewhere – it must have been when he had been in the castle. Suddenly a thought occurred to him.
‘So what was Deloial doing with them?’
‘Deloial?’
‘There were three of them,’ said Erasmus, ‘two soldiers and Deloial, chatting back there in a clearing. Wouldn’t they have arrested him?’
‘Who’s Deloial?’
Erasmus was confused. ‘One of Robin’s men,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you know?’
‘We’re not really on speaking terms,’ said Maude. ‘We keeps ourselves to ourselves.’
Erasmus nodded. He’d already realised the outlaw groups didn’t mix, but it was annoying that their knowledge of their opposite numbers couldn’t provide him with more information about this mysterious character who didn’t feature in any version of the legend he’d read. Something was rotten in the forest of Sherwood and it wasn’t a dead squirrel.
Maude intruded on his thoughts. ‘What were you doing with your eyes?’ she said.
Erasmus looked at her blankly. ‘When?’
‘Earlier, by the river.’
Erasmus racked his brains to remember his original reason for wandering down to the stream. Maude must have seen him put in his contact lenses.
‘Have you been watching me all morning?’ he said.
‘’Course,’ said Maude. ‘I wouldn’t want anything to ’appen to you.’
‘What about Marian and the others?’
‘They can look after themselves.’
‘No.’ Erasmus shook his head. ‘I mean, won’t they miss you?’
‘Marian knows where I am.’
It was nice to have a guardian angel, Erasmus mused, glancing back at the fallen soldier behind him, but it did complicate matters, particularly when the guardian angel’s motives weren’t entirely altruistic. He looked at Maude with a concerned eye: trying to avoid entanglements was very much a cardinal rule of time travel; nobody was entirely sure what would happen if you didn’t, but everyone tended to agree the results wouldn’t be good. The question was, at what point did your presence disrupt the flow of history: if Maude was ultimately supposed to meet someone and didn’t because she continued to carry a candle for someone from the future, the ramifications seemed to be almost as bad.
‘What were you doing?’ Maude returned to the question with a persistence that could have been construed as cute if it wasn’t so maddening. Erasmus sighed. Telling people about modern technologies probably wasn’t advisable either, but at least he could be relatively assured that Maude wouldn’t understand enough to be able to do any damage.
‘I wear little pieces of glass in my eyes,’ he said. Admittedly the lenses were plastic, but that was a whole other can of worms he wanted to avoid.
‘Why?’ she said.
‘Where I’m from, people do that when they have poor eyesight. It helps us to see better.’
Maude screwed up her face trying to understand, then simply shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s a strange place, this foreign,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Erasmus.
‘Are you going back to ’im?’ said Maude, nodding her head in the direction of Robin’s camp.
‘Yes. I haven’t really learnt much about him yet.’
Maude nodded understandingly, but there was a hint of disappointment in her eyes.
Erasmus smiled. ‘Trust me,’ he said, ‘as soon as I know all I need to, I’ll come and find you.’ After all, he thought, he’d need somebody’s help to get back into Nottingham Castle to retrieve his time machine. He patted Maude on the arm gently. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be missed if I can help it.’
The outlaws were just beginning to stir when Erasmus returned to the camp. He moved quietly to where the ale barrel was stood and helped himself to a tankard. This was an aspect of mediaeval
life that still seemed alien to the teacher: in his time, people who drank alcoholic beverages first thing in the morning were regarded with concern, but here it was the only safe drink on offer. He was still nearly eight hundred years from the nearest Starbucks and at least five hundred from the first teashops. Of course, mediaeval beer was weaker – it made the average American beer seem like whisky – but, Erasmus considered, it must still have proved a severe handicap to progress. Perhaps that was why the Industrial Revolution hadn’t happened until the English had been introduced to tea? He took a sip from the ale to wet his throat, then turned to watch as the outlaws roused themselves. Deloial, he noticed, hadn’t yet returned and Erasmus wondered what other appointments he was keeping. Presently, Robin joined the teacher by the ale barrel and Erasmus poured him a tankard.
‘You’re up early,’ said Robin, accepting the drink from the teacher’s hand.
‘Not particularly,’ said Erasmus. ‘I thought everyone got up early round here.’
Robin considered this. ‘Why would they?’ he said.
‘To make the most of the sunlight.’
Robin shrugged. ‘I’m sure the peasants do,’ he said, ‘but there have to be some perks to being an outlaw. Besides, the rich merchants don’t rouse themselves until they want to, so there’s no need for us to hurry to empty their purses.’
Erasmus looked at Robin curiously: since he always seemed to speak in a light-hearted manner it was hard to tell when he was being serious. If he did genuinely believe in lounging around and letting the peasants struggle on, then he wasn’t the Robin Hood that Erasmus had been brought up to believe in. Then again, Erasmus lived on the other side of a long tradition of romantic heroes: generations of poets, writers and television directors had put their stamp on the character until the real man was so buried under legend as to be almost invisible.
It was clear the image of the perfect hero was an unrealistic one – certainly the suits of Lincoln green with their neatly cut, almost crenellated collars and the green hats with feathers weren’t in evidence – perhaps even the deepest motifs of the legend were also based on little more than artistic licence. Robin, for his part, seemed unaware of the effect his actions were having on Erasmus and he drained his tankard at a gulp and poured himself another.
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