Wolf's Head (The Forest Lord)

by Steven A McKay

  Again, Robin and Much shook their heads. The tales of Adam Bell never went into details of his physical characteristics, only his amazing deeds.

  “You see, then?” Tuck slapped his knee. “It’s not so hard to pretend to be someone when no one knows what you’re supposed to look like!” He smiled at the two friends and grabbed another piece of meat from his wooden bowl, wiping his chin with the sleeve of his robe as the juices dribbled down his chin. “Brilliant, it really is brilliant what he’s done.”

  The three men sat quietly again for a while, letting the sounds of the outlaws’ feasting wash over them, and wondering about what they’d learned.

  “Where does this leave us?” Much asked quietly, staring into the fire.

  “For now,” said Robin, “nothing changes. We carry on as before. If Adam was really a knight at one point, he’s lived in Barnsdale for the past few years as a wolf’s head. He has a lot he can teach us – about warfare and surviving as outlaws. I don’t know about you, but I mean to take whatever I can from his lessons.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A few weeks passed and things seemed to continue as normal for the outlaws. They had again moved their camp to another part of the forest, and things were quiet, but Robin knew the peace wouldn’t last long. Prior de Monte Martini seemed to have given up on the idea of hiring someone to hunt down him and Adam Bell – it must have cost too much – especially if the hunter failed, as Henry had. Certainly, since Robin had killed the bailiff, there had been no sign anyone else had come into Barnsdale looking for him.

  Unknown to the outlaws, though, the prior had sent a letter to the sheriff demanding he uphold the king’s peace and bring the wolf’s heads to justice. Which was why the soldiers had been in the forest looking for Adam’s gang a fortnight earlier.

  Now, Sir Henry de Faucumberg, Sheriff of Nottingham and Yorkshire couldn’t let the destruction of his men go unpunished; it would send the wrong message to the people of Yorkshire. He’d try again to capture or kill the outlaws somehow. It was just a matter of time.

  Robin was repairing a hole in the roof of the makeshift shelter he shared with Much when Little John approached him.

  “You heard the news, yet?”

  Robin put down the timber and iron nails he was using and shook his head, knowing, from the look on John’s face, something unpleasant was coming.

  “The sheriff’s made you a wanted man.”

  Robin didn’t understand. “We’re already wanted men. We’re outlaws!”

  “Up until now, we’ve just been normal outlaws. Now the sheriff’s put a price on your head.”

  Robin was stunned. “A price?”

  John put a big hand on his friend’s arm. “Anyone who helps the sheriff capture you gets twenty pounds. And if it’s an outlaw that turns you in, they’ll be pardoned too.”

  Robin’s blood ran cold. This was a disaster. Twenty pounds was a huge sum of money for most people in England, and the promise of a pardon would be just as attractive to outlaws who wanted nothing more than to go home to their families and live a normal life again.

  “Who told you all this?”

  “I went to Locksley today to visit a friend,” John told him. “The whole village is buzzing with the news, Robin. People aren’t openly saying they’ll turn you in – they know you’re part of Adam Bell’s group and are afraid of what he might do if he’s crossed. But sooner or later someone will decide it’s worth the risk.” He leaned in close to Robin and, in a low voice, said, “You’re going to have to watch your back even with some of these lads. Not all of them are as honourable as me and Tuck!” He smiled at that, and slapped Robin’s back, but they both knew there was a grain of truth in what he said. Although Robin was a popular man in the outlaw band, some of the men might see this as a golden opportunity.

  “I’ll be careful. Thanks for warning me. I’d better have a word with Adam about this; he’s not going to be too happy at the thought of all the trouble I’ve brought down on us. God, he might even tell me to leave.”

  Little John grunted. “Don’t worry about that, Robin. Adam knows you’ve got friends here now. We’ll have your back no matter what happens. We might be wolf’s heads, but some of us are still good men.”

  They grasped arms, and Robin went off to look for Adam, casting wary glances at the rest of the men, paranoia settling over him already. Mary, mother of God, he vowed silently, I will earn myself a pardon! I can’t go on living like this – I will, somehow, be pardoned!

  He searched the entire camp, but couldn’t find Adam Bell. While he was wandering around he bumped into Will Scarlet.

  “Have you heard about the price on my head?” Robin asked, wondering how this violent, quick tempered man would view the sheriff’s bounty.

  “I’ve heard.” Will grunted. “But you’re one of us now, Robin. You’re probably wondering about some of the lads here – wondering if they’ll turn you over to the sheriff.”

  Robin tried to keep his face impassive as Will carried on. “Maybe one of them will, but I don’t think so. You know the stories of what Adam does to traitors – he won’t stand for it. If one of these men turned you in Adam would have the rest of us hunt him down. His life wouldn’t be worth living, money and pardon or not. Don’t you worry – I’ll be having words with everyone, let ’em know this is a brotherhood. We stick together. You stood up to that prior, bust his nose – that makes you a good man to my mind.”

  Robin was struck by the sincerity in Will’s eyes. Will Scarlet, a man Robin always stepped carefully around, was vowing to put his life on the line for him.

  “Thank you. You don’t know how much it means to me to know you men are there for me.”

  Will smiled grimly. “Well, I feel a bit responsible, to tell the truth.”

  “How so?” Robin asked in surprise.

  “If I hadn’t been teaching you how to use a sword so well for the past few months, you’d never have been able to kill the bailiff and his men!” He laughed and slapped Robin on the arm, pushing past him. “Come on, I’m going fishing, you might as well come too unless you’ve got anything better to do.”

  In the months Robin had been an outlaw, he had never had a real conversation with Will Scaflock. Maybe today he’d find out what made this man tick.

  As the pair sat on the grass with their rods in the river, they shared a large skin of strong ale together. The drink seemed to make Will relax more than Robin had seen in all his time with the group.

  “What’s your story, Will?” he asked. “It’s obvious you’ve been a soldier. It’s even more obvious you hate our noble rulers. How did you end up a wolf’s head?”

  For a minute or so, Will sat in silence, staring out across the water, which sparkled like gold as a bright afternoon sun shone down from above.

  Then, quietly, he began to speak.

  “I was a soldier,” said Will. “A mercenary. I fought in many battles, in many different countries. France, Germany, I even fought alongside the Hospitaller knights in the Holy Land. I was a good soldier. I loved the life, I loved the danger. I loved the fighting. I never loved the killing though, not then. Although I was paid well to fight, I picked my wars – I only fought for causes, and men, I felt were honourable.”

  “Then, when I was back at home in Nottingham for a while, I met a girl. Her name was Elaine. I’d never met a girl like her. She was beautiful, with long brown hair and dark eyes, and we could spend hours together, just talking. We never got tired of each other’s company,” he smiled, picturing his wife, then his customary frown fell on his face again.

  Will couldn’t stand the thought of being away fighting in another far off place, away from Elaine. So he took a job as a forester, in Sherwood, to be close to her. It wasn’t as exciting as being a soldier, but Scaflock was happy, and, for the first time in his life, content.

  “We eventually married,” Will said with a grunt, casting his line into the sluggish river again. “We had a small house in Nottingham. Then we
had three children: two boys, Matthew and David, and a little girl, Elizabeth. My little beautiful Beth…” he stared out at the water, his eyes dull, the expression on his face almost childlike as he thought again of his daughter.

  After a while Will seemed to come out of his reverie and carried on. “But the boys were getting bigger, and Elaine kept saying we needed a bigger house. She was right, but being a forester didn’t pay well enough for us to move to anywhere else.”

  Then Will had heard that one of the nobles living in Hathersage was looking for bodyguards, and went to see him. The man knew him – Scaflock had fought under him in Damascus a few years before. He offered Will a job, with a much higher wage than he was getting as a forester, so he jumped at the chance.

  “Christ, how I wish I’d never met that man!” Will hissed. “Roger de Troyes, his name was. He probably wishes he’d never met me either now…” a dark smile lifted the corners of his lips for a moment before he continued his tale.

  Everything had gone well for a few months. It became clear why the nobleman needed a bodyguard – he was forever getting drunk and treating people like filth. Will had to restrain people from killing him quite a few times.

  “He was an unpleasant bastard, he really was,” Will grumbled. “But me and my family had moved to a bigger house in Hathersage, away from the stinking tanner’s workshops and filth of Nottingham, and I needed the money he was paying me to pay my rent. So I just got on with it. I had to.

  “Then one day, me and de Troyes were back in Nottingham at a feast thrown by the sheriff. No, not the same one that’s there now, this was a few years ago before de Faucumberg got the job. Anyway, de Troyes and some of the other guests were getting drunker by the minute, as I sat in a corner making sure no one tried to kill him if he got to be too much of a pain in the arse.”

  Again, Will paused, replaying the moments in his mind – the moments that changed his life forever, and turned Will Scaflock into Will Scarlet.

  “I went off for a piss,” he went on, “and when I came back to the hall, he was nowhere in sight. I found him in a side room, with a couple of others, taking it in turns with this young girl. But the girl wasn’t willing; she was crying, and trying to get these so-called noblemen off her.

  “I dragged them off – they were so drunk they just laughed – and sent them back out to the hall to pass out. The girl was in shock, but I didn’t know what to do. I’d seen women raped before, but during wars, in the heat of battle, not like this. She was breaking her heart, so I tried to calm her, and gave her some money – I thought she was just a serving girl, see – and went back out to make sure my piece of shit employer behaved himself for the rest of the night.”

  Robin was appalled, but he wasn’t naïve. He knew things like this happened all the time, up and down the country. “The nobles can do what they like,” he muttered in disgust.

  “Exactly,” Will snarled angry agreement. “If a nobleman wants to hump a serving girl – he does. If anyone tries to stop him, they get killed, or outlawed, or…you know, Robin! You’re lucky your girl Matilda wasn’t stuck in some brothel by that bastard prior, ’cause he could do you know. He could.

  “Anyway, I thought everything was sorted out. Things went on as usual for a couple of weeks. Then . . .”

  Will had gone to Nottingham to buy a new dagger. He was only gone a matter of hours. But when he got home to Hathersage…

  “I found Elaine.” Will whispered, his head drooping, the fishing rod in his hand completely forgotten. “She was lying on the floor, holding onto my little boy Matthew. They’d both been stabbed, over and over again. My other son David, he had only a single wound in his side, but it was deep and long and his blood was everywhere…Our servants….everyone, everyone in my house had been butchered. Even our pet dog had had its back broken. My entire family, wiped out…

  “I couldn’t take it all in,” he looked at Robin with a look of disbelief on his weather beaten face. “My mind just snapped. I couldn’t bear to look at it, I had to get away. It was as if I left my body. I don’t even know where I went for the next few hours. I just remember waking up in an alley, with some beggar trying to steal my fancy new dagger.

  “After that, I had nothing left to live for. My whole life had been stolen from me. Even if the law were interested – which they wouldn’t be – my family were gone. I had nothing. I’ve…got…nothing any more.”

  Will never knew who had murdered his family, but it seemed obvious he had been the main target and the murderers would still be after him. For that reason he slipped into his employer, Roger de Troyes’s, house when he finally came to his senses, to see if – with his money and connections – de Troyes could help find out who had done this.

  “I didn’t expect his reaction,” Will growled. “He was terrified when he saw me, obviously thought I would be dead. Before I could say anything he blurted out the whole story.”

  The girl de Troyes and his friends had raped wasn’t a serving girl after all. She was another – very powerful – nobleman’s daughter. When her father found out his girl had been raped at the feast, he demanded to know the story from Roger de Troyes, since he recognised de Troyes from her description.

  “De Troyes said it was me!” Will exploded, jumping to his feet and hurling the fishing rod onto the grass. He turned back to Robin, his fists clenched in rage. “That noble scum blamed me for the rape! I had stopped the bastards from brutalizing her any more, I’d tried to comfort her . . . yet her father had come to my house and butchered my family!”

  In a fury Scaflock had drawn his dagger and, seeing his death coming, de Troyes begged forgiveness. “Said he was sorry for blaming me for the rape, offered to pay me fortunes to leave, and cried that he was my friend really.” Will slumped back onto the grass beside Robin and held his head in his hands, tears coursing down his face. “Of course I killed him, then and there: slit his throat with my dagger. But it didn’t really make me feel much better.

  “I would have gone after the man whose daughter had been raped – the man who had killed my family. But in my blind rage I’d been too hasty: I’d killed de Troyes without even asking him who the man was. He might have blurted it out when he was confessing, but I couldn’t remember if he had or not. If he did, it’s never come back to me.”

  When he left de Troyes house, Will was covered in blood, wild eyed and crying to himself like a wounded beast. Of course people saw him, and knew his face – Hathersage being a small place.

  He moved from place to place for a long time, but the memory of his butchered family would never let him find peace. Visions of the bloody murder scene woke him in the night and haunted his days.

  “The only thing that keeps me going is my rage,” Will said matter-of-factly. “My hatred for the real scum in our society: the rich and so-called noble- men. I’d take my own life and pray I’d meet my family in heaven, but I plan on killing as many of those fucking “noble” parasites as I can before God judges me.”

  Will sat in silence for a long time after he finished his tale, staring out at the river, the tears he had shed drying slowly in the warm breeze. Robin kept his peace, knowing there was nothing he could say that would make his brooding companion feel any less empty.

  Eventually, Will reached for the ale skin again and took another long pull. He forced a bleak smile. “That’s my story. I might not be the most sociable outlaw in Adam’s band, but you know you’ll always be able to count on me if there’s any noblemen after your hide.”

  Robin returned the smile. “I hope you find some peace, Will.”

  Scarlet just grunted, but the pair recast their fishing lines and talk drifted to more mundane matters – the quality of the fish in the river and the warm weather they had enjoyed so far this year. Little John eventually joined them with a jug of ale of his own and the intense bond of camaraderie Robin had briefly shared with the taciturn Will passed – the young outlaw wondered if he’d ever feel such a bond of friendship with the man again.


  Tuck’s words had proved correct though, Robin mused. There were certainly hidden depths to Will Scarlet. His rage was understandable given the horrors he had suffered, but would his anger consume him in the end?

  * * *

  “Move aside!” Sir Richard, dressed in his most impressive Hospitaller armour roared at the two guardsmen, who shared a nervous glance at the sight of the two riders coming towards them.

  Even their huge horses wore coats of mail covered with mantles of black and white, while the men themselves seemed to be dressed ready for battle.

  “Stand aside!” the knight shouted again, removing his helmet to reveal his grey-bearded face. “My name is Sir Richard-at-Lee. Your lord” – his mouth twisted in disgust as he spat the word – “is expecting me. I bring the bail monies for my son who has been unlawfully imprisoned here!”

  The two guards had been told someone might come to pay the bail for the young man from up north, so they nodded respectfully at the knights and stepped aside.

  Sir Richard had travelled a few days earlier to St Mary’s abbey in York, where he had collected the money Abbott Ness had promised to loan him. From there, he had come to Glamorgan as fast as possible; every minute his son was imprisoned felt like an hour to the fiercely protective big knight.

  Richard and his sergeant – Stephen – pulled their swords from their scabbards and handed them over to the guards, who waved them through the gatehouse.

  The steward of the castle had been warned of their approach, and he appeared now to greet them, a pair of stable boys rushing over to take their horses to be fed and watered. The Hospitallers lifted heavy saddlebags from their mounts and glared at the steward, a haughty, proud looking thin man of about forty years.

  “You must be the commander of Kirklees,” said the man, a heavy Welsh accent making him hard to understand, squinting in the bright late-afternoon sunshine. “I bid you welcome.”

  “Never mind that bollocks,” Sir Richard cut the man off. “I’m here to pay your lord for the return of my son. Where is he?”