Outlaw

by Angus Donald

‘It’s the Peverils,’ said John, after he’d caught his breath. ‘They are raiding our villages again.’

  ‘Where are they, and how many?’ asked Robin.

  ‘They’ve sacked Thornings Cross; pillaged the church there, killed a few. Now they are heading north, back to their nests in Hope Valley. About twenty of the bastards.’

  ‘Geraint, Simon, take this train back to Thangbrand’s,’ Robin was addressing the two men-at-arms who had arrived with John. I was amazed that he knew their names, as I did not. ‘You go with them, Alan.’

  ‘I would prefer to come with you, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Do as you’re told,’ snapped Robin. Our mutual hilarity, the camaraderie of our purse-lifting adventure in Nottingham was gone. Robin had assumed his battle demeanour: grim, decisive, a captain not to be questioned.

  ‘John, lead the way, Owain, you and your bowmen are with me.’

  And he was gone, riding hard up the road after Little John, and followed by Owain and his six grim archers. The two men-at-arms looked at me dumbly. And I said: ‘You heard him; take this train to Thangbrand’s. I have other business.’ And I spurred after my disappearing master.

  I knew who the Peverils were: a big old sprawling clan of petty bandits and reivers who operated in the north of England, most of the time staying out of the area under Robin’s control. The family claimed to be descended from William the Bastard, though from the wrong side of the blanket, and one branch had once owned an impregnable fortress at Castleton. But because of their evil ways, they had been dispossessed by King Henry thirty odd years ago, and now they made their living by robbery and murder and ransom. In fact, if the truth be told, they were not much different to Robin’s band. There had been some talk of them at Thangbrand’s: the Peverils were reckoned to be cruel but cowardly and until now they had usually respected the places where Robin’s writ had run.

  I caught up Robin and his men within half a mile or so, and just followed behind them trying to keep up as they galloped hell-for-leather across the county. I once saw Robin look round and notice me. He frowned but never slackened his pace. I stayed at the end of the tail of men and speeding horses and ate dust for a good fifteen miles, sometimes on small dirt tracks through the woodland, sometimes across meadows, commons and fields, until we pulled up on a gentle rise overlooking a hamlet huddled in the crook of a small stream. A thick cloud of smoke hung over the place, and I could see that at least two cottages were still burning. The place had been totally destroyed: houses torched, cattle and sheep driven off; men murdered and women and children raped. Even the old cross that gave the hamlet its name had been pulled down. As we trotted down the slope into the village, I heard the sound of a woman wailing, and saw her soon afterwards. She was kneeling on the ground in front of a smouldering hovel, with the bloodied corpse of a young boy, maybe six years old, in her arms, rocking back and forward and keening to herself, a thin, high, wordless sound of sorrow. The boy’s head lolled with every rock of her body. We drew up on our horses and Robin dismounted and went over to kneel beside the woman. He put a hand on her shoulder and she started suddenly but stopped that dreadful noise and, through swollen red eyes, she stared at Robin, dumb with grief.

  As I looked around the village I saw signs of an evil I could hardly contemplate: the broken, chopped bodies of half a dozen peasants were scattered about the muddy street. The corpse of a priest lay a few yards away, an arm outflung in death. I noticed that some of his fingers were missing, hacked off, no doubt, for the rings they had borne. A girl, her throat slit and gaping like an extra mouth, was propped up sideways against the tumbled stones of the ancient stone cross in the centre of the hamlet. Her skirts had been tucked up around her chest and her naked lap was a mess of caked blood. I saw that someone had taken a knife to her white buttocks and I looked away quickly.

  ‘It seems they are all dead but her, sir,’ said Owain, indicating the grief-stricken woman. He and some of the men had briefly ridden around the tiny village looking for wounded survivors. The woman holding her dead son stared up at Owain on his horse and then at Robin kneeling beside her. He was offering her his wine flask. She took a sip and then a gulp and then began to sob quietly, her eyes closed, her chin sunk on her neck.

  ‘Which way have they gone?’ Robin asked her. She carried on crying, ignoring his question. ‘Which way?’ he asked again. She looked at him bewildered and then she indicated the northern road out of the village with a bloody finger. ‘We will be back to help later,’ Robin said, ‘but now we need to catch the men who did this. And make them pay.’

  ‘We paid you,’ the woman said in a low voice. Robin flinched, but he kept her gaze. ‘For protection,’ the woman continued. ‘Your men said that if we paid, you would protect us from . . .’ the woman’s free arm waved at the scene of carnage in the muddy street. Robin stood up. ‘I failed you,’ he said. The woman stared at him. ‘But I will catch them,’ Robin continued, ‘and I swear I’ll make them regret that they did this.’ She nodded: ‘Catch them,’ she said, her voice rough. ‘And kill them, kill them all.’ Robin nodded and put the wine flask into her hand. We saddled up and Robin detailed one archer to ride ahead as a scout. He looked blankly at me. ‘I told you to go to Thangbrand’s,’ he said, but without much emotion. I shrugged.

  ‘Don’t ever disobey me again,’ he said, and his eyes flashed like a knife drawn in the night. I nodded, too dispirited to be truly frightened, and we rode out of the defiled village and took the northern road.

  That night we camped, cold and fireless in a high wood of beech trees. Matthew, the archer-scout, had reported back to Robin. The Peverils were less than half a mile away, feasting on stolen roast mutton round a great blaze in a hollow below and to the north of our beech wood. They had not bothered to set any sentries, Matthew reported, and were drinking plundered casks of ale round the fire, and singing. They also had a captured woman with them and were taking turns to rape her.

  The night air was cold but Robin had forbidden us a fire. We were to march down upon the Peveril camp, leaving the horses behind, and attack them on foot just before dawn. They were twenty-four men. We were nine. But they would be in a drunken sleep, unaware of our presence until we struck. We were cold and we were angry - the men had been shocked by what had been done at Thornings Cross - and, best of all, we were led by Robin. The enemy would all die, of that I was certain.

  I was on the edge of sleep, wrapped up in my cloak and hood, sitting between two roots with my back to the trunk of a comfortable tree when Robin came over to me.

  ‘In the morning, take care that you don’t get yourself killed,’ he said quietly. ‘Hang back when we go in, these are very dangerous men.’ I shook my head. ‘Do not disobey me further,’ Robin said, his voice chilling.

  ‘I can fight,’ I said. ‘I’ve learnt a thing or two at Thangbrand’s.’ I wanted very much to pay them out for what they had done at Thornings Cross.

  ‘You haven’t learnt nearly enough,’ said Robin. ‘I want you to hang back, come in when the fighting is nearly over. And even then be careful.’ I said nothing, feeling strangely sullen, mulish.

  ‘Look,’ he said, his voice dropping so that no one but I could hear him, ‘you are more valuable to me than a common archer. Truly. Bernard says you have real talent. I don’t want you dead in some forgotten skirmish, I need you alive.’

  I continued to sulk. Did he think I was afraid? Had he forgotten that I had already killed a man in battle?

  ‘You are just like your father,’ said Robin. ‘He was a headstrong man, who did not like to be given orders.’

  ‘Will you tell me what you knew of him?’ I asked, wanting to change the subject. ‘He never spoke to me about his life before he came to Nottinghamshire, met my mother and fell in love with her.’

  ‘Really? How strange that I should know more about him than his son,’ he said, and settled down beside me, back to the tree. ‘Well, he was a good man, I think, and kind to me, and a truly wonderful singer. But
you know that already. He came to my father’s court at Edwinstowe when I was just a boy of nine or ten. He was a trouvère . . .’ I sat up straighter against the tree, my interest quickening. Robin went on: ‘ . . . and when he came to Edwinstowe during the winter, my father invited him to spend Christmas with us. We had little entertainment in that district and his music made the castle seem warmer and brighter during the short, cold days and long, frozen nights of that season.’

  ‘Where had he come from?’ I asked. I found it difficult to imagine my ragged father, the field-toiling villager, as a silk-clad trouvère, keeping his Christmas at a great lord’s castle.

  ‘He had come from France. His father was known as the Seigneur d’Alle, a minor landowner, and Henri d’Alle, as the second son, was destined for the Church. As I remember, he joined the choir of the great cathedral they were beginning to build in honour of Our Lady in Paris. But something happened. He never spoke about it but I believe he fell foul of Bishop Heribert, a cousin of our own Sir Ralph Murdac, as it happens, and a powerful man in the Church. Heribert was, from what I have heard, a thoroughly corrupt priest, but at the time he was in sole charge of the cathedral music at Notre Dame. There was a rumour of stolen gold plates and candlesticks and your father was blamed. They told him that if he admitted that he had stolen the gold, he would be forgiven and, after a penance, allowed to remain in the Church. He refused absolutely. I am certain that he was innocent, by the way, and so maybe he was right to refuse to admit guilt. But, he was a stubborn man, and by refusing, he was forced to leave the Church and France itself and take to the road in England as a trouvère, entertaining the nobility with music at their castles. He never forgave the Church for discarding him; at times he was even openly hostile to its priests.’

  Robin paused, hesitating for a moment’s thought, and then he continued. ‘At Edwinstowe, I had a priest-tutor sent by the Archbishop of York. He was a brutal man, and he used to beat me often. He’s dead now, of course, but he plagued me somewhat when I was a boy. Your father spoke to him. I do not know what he said to the man, but that Christmas, while your father was there with us, there were no more beatings. And I am grateful to him. I feel I owe him, for that brief respite.’

  He fell silent. Then he said: ‘So, you see, I feel that I owe you a little because of the help your father gave to me that Christmas, and of course the joy that his music gave me. And so I ask you to promise me, be careful in the morning. Hang back.’

  ‘What they did today, the Peverils, at the village, I want to avenge that,’ I said, hoping to please him with talk of vengeance.

  He sighed. ‘They deserve to die, they deserve to suffer. But, if I am honest, what we are doing tomorrow is in my own interest, too. For years the Peverils have respected me and my demesne. They acknowledge me as Lord of Sherwood. Now they have broken our pact and shown a lack of respect and I must teach them a lesson, them and others like them, that when I stretch out my hand to protect a village, a family, a man, they are protected. I must demonstrate that I will defend my realm. My safety, and my freedom, and my future all depend upon this. If men do not fear me, why should they not inform the sheriff of my whereabouts? Why should they pay me for protection, pay me to give them justice, if they think I can deliver neither?’

  ‘Is it not a simple matter of right and wrong?’ I said. ‘These are evil folk and they must be punished.’

  ‘There is that. But right and wrong is rarely simple. The world is full of evil folk. Some people would even say that what I do is evil. But if I were to rush about the earth punishing all the bad men that I found, I would have no rest. And, if I spent my entire life punishing evil deeds, I would not increase the amount of happiness in this world in the slightest. The world has an endless supply of evil. All I can do is to try to provide protection for those who ask it from me, for those whom I love and who serve me. And in order to protect myself and my friends, men must fear me, and to make men fear me, I must kill the Peverils tomorrow. And you, my young friend, must hang back.’

  I could see his teeth grinning at me through the darkness as he rose to his feet. And I smiled back at him. After he had left, I pulled my cloak tighter and tried to sleep, but his words haunted me. Was the world really a place with an endless supply of evil? Yes, we were all sinners, that was true. But what of Christ and his promise of forgiveness and eternal life?

  We attacked the next morning, in the grey light just before dawn. It was less a battle than a slaughter. Robin’s men advanced on silent feet, took up positions behind trees less than thirty paces away, and loosed arrow after arrow into the sleeping forms on the ground by the remains of the large campfire. The first victims’ screams awakened some of the Peverils but few in their drink-befuddled state managed to get all the way to their feet, and those who did were cut swiftly down with a relentless barrage of arrows. Then we charged, and the survivors were hacked apart as John, Robin and the six bowmen stormed through the camp wielding axe and sword in a welter of swinging steel, screaming men and spraying blood. I had meant to hang back as Robin had asked but, when he blew his trumpet for the attack and the men charged, I ran with them, the blood running hot in my veins.

  I was in no danger, though, as I faced no opponents. All the enemy were dead within a dozen heartbeats from when the first arrow shaft was loosed. Except two.

  Sir John Peveril had an arrow in his shoulder and one through his heel and he swung a heavy falchion, a thick bladed sword, in menacing sweeps at the three bowmen who surrounded him. ‘I want him alive,’ shouted Robin, and Little John, who was behind him, stepped forward and swung his great axe, cracking the back of his skull with the flat of the axe-head.

  Sir John dropped immediately and lay still.

  The other survivor was a mere boy, no more than ten years old, I reckoned. He had not received a scratch, the archers being reluctant to target such an insignificant foe. He was quickly disarmed of his rusty, short sword and trussed up like a Christmas goose.

  Sir John Peveril, meanwhile, had been spreadeagled and tied down securely to four pegs driven deep into the ground. Robin made sure that the pegs were at least a foot deep in the soil and that they were immoveable. Then the men stripped Sir John’s clothes from his body and woke him by taking turns to piss in his face. As the man awoke, roaring, spluttering and cursing, he looked down at his naked body, strapped to the woodland floor, and his eyes widened with terror. He lifted his head and made out Robin in the first rays of the sun, standing above him like the Angel of Death, and his control dissolved. His whole body began to shake with terror.

  ‘Rob . . . Robert, please,’ he stammered through slack lips. ‘I’ll pay you, I’ll pay you anything you like. Just cut me loose. I swear, I swear, I will go away. I will leave, I will leave England . . .’

  Robin looked away from the dribbling, piss-drenched coward, pegged and helpless on the ground in front of him. I followed his gaze. He was looking off to his left at a pale object on the ground. It was the naked body of a young girl, dead, bruised face turned to the sky; the waist and legs sheeted in black blood. Robin turned back to Sir John. His face was a cold mask of indifference.

  ‘Pick a limb,’ he said.

  ‘What? What?’ spluttered Sir John.

  ‘Pick a limb,’ said Robin, in a voice of ice.

  ‘Yes, right, of course, Robert. I deserve to lose a limb. But can we talk about this . . . I can make reparations . . . I can pay back . . .’

  ‘Pick a limb - or you’ll lose them all,’ said Robin, implacable. He nodded to Little John who was standing by, his great axe held casually in one hand.

  ‘God fuck you, Robert Odo, and all those you love. May all the demons of Hell carry you now to the rotting pit . . .’ Little John took a step closer. Sir John shouted: ‘The left, God damn you all, the left arm. I pick the left arm.’

  Robin nodded. He turned to Little John and said: ‘Let him keep the left arm; remove the others. And I want three tight tourniquets on each limb before you cut. I don’t
want the bastard bleeding to death.’

  I would like to forget the sound of Little John’s skilful axe as he carried out Robin’s orders, three hideous wet crunches; and the screams of Sir John before they gagged him; and the sight of his unconscious torso, with a single white arm still attached, the fingers clutching deep into the soil to ride the agony, but I never shall, if I live for another fifty years. I could not watch it all and Robin, perhaps as a kindness, ordered me to check that all the rest of the enemy were dead. One was not, but he was badly wounded and unconscious with two arrows in his belly, his eyes fluttering and rolling. As I sawed down on his windpipe with my sword to send him onward, I heard the last meaty hack of John’s great axe-blade and a great sigh of held breath expelled from our bowmen. None had been killed and only two had slight injuries. It had been a great victory, but the punishment meted out to Sir John had dimmed the men’s spirits; they had had their vengeance.

  We set the boy free, unharmed, leaving him to tend to the mutilated half-man that was his captain and to pass on the message to all the other Peverils that this was Robin’s work. Then we wrapped up the corpse of the girl and, loading it on to a horse, we left that grim hollow and our dead enemies where they lay.

  Robin delivered the corpse back to the woman at Thornings Cross, and gave her silver, which had been recovered from the Peverils. Owain had been wrong in his report that all the villagers were dead; several had run into the woods when the Peverils had charged into their village and had thereby saved their lives. All the inhabitants were in the tiny churchyard as we rode off, mid-afternoon, digging graves for their friends and family: a group of miserable peasants, survivors, toiling in the shadow of the church, dwarfed by mounds of fresh earth.

  It was after dark when we returned to Thangbrand’s and I felt drained of all energy both in body and spirit. When Robin came to say goodbye to me the next day - he was returning to his cave hideout in the north - I could not look him in the face. I had slept badly, suffering nightmares in which Sir John Peveril was pulling his truncated form towards me over the floor using only his remaining arm.