by Angus Donald
Robin took me by the chin and lifted my face so that I was forced to look into his bright silver eyes. ‘Do not judge me, Alan, until you know the burden I am carrying. And even then, do not judge any man, lest you be judged. Isn’t that what you Christians preach?’
I said nothing. ‘Come,’ said Robin, ‘let us part friends.’ And he smiled at me. I stared into his silver eyes and knew that as horrified as I was by his cruelty, I could not hate him. I smiled back, but it was a pale, watery grimace. ‘That’s better,’ he said. And he clasped my arm once and was gone.
Chapter Seven
Autumn was approaching; the days were growing shorter now and Sherwood, glorious with leaf-hues of copper and gold, was often filled in the early morning with a freezing mist. I began to wear my padded aketon almost daily and, when I visited Bernard for my music lessons, the first thing he’d do would be to ask me to make a fire to warm our fingers. With Robin absent, my adventure in Nottingham and the awful mutilation of Sir John Peveril seemed to belong to another world, like a dream - or a nightmare. I had returned to life at Thangbrand’s as if nothing had happened.
Sir Richard was leaving us. Murdac had flatly refused to ransom him, even though it was his clear duty to do so, as Sir Richard had been serving him when he was captured. By rights, Robin could have executed him. He didn’t, though; Robin sent him a message saying he was free to go and that it had been an honour to have him for so long as a guest. We held a feast to mark the knight’s departure from Thangbrand’s, for he was much liked and respected by the outlaws, and I performed for the first time as an apprentice trouvère, thinking of my father as I sang.
I am afraid it was a dreadful song, unworthy of his memory, delivered without accompaniment, about a knight who having travelled the world and done great deeds and won great renown was finally returning to his hearth to hang up his sword and husband his lands. I have tried very hard to forget it, but I recall rhyming plough with slow, and I think that gives you its flavour. My poor efforts were kindly applauded by the company - and then Bernard sang. It was one of the finest performances I ever saw him give: he started with a bawdy, stomach-clutchingly funny song about a rabbit knight that wants to mate with a lady rabbit, with much amusement about finding himself in the wrong hole; then Bernard, judging the amount of wine and ale that had been taken perfectly, gave them a classic song of doomed love, Lancelot and Guinevere. Those rough outlaws were weeping by the time he bowed the last exquisitely beautiful chord. And then, again judging his audience perfectly, he gave them a stirring battle song to lift their spirits: the tale of Roland dying heroically at Roncesvalles, a ring of slain Moors at his feet and his horn clutched to his heart. They cheered Bernard to the rafters at that. And then everyone, including me, drank themselves unconscious.
The next day, Sir Richard made a solemn vow that he would not reveal any information about Thangbrand’s to the sheriff - after Murdac had betrayed him I doubt he would have done so anyway. He was then blindfolded and led back through the narrow, secret paths of Sherwood to the Great North Road.
Just before he left, he gave me a gift. It was a poniard, a beautiful foot-long piece of razor-sharp, polished Spanish steel, three quarters of an inch wide at the cross-piece and tapering to a wicked needle point designed to be thrust through chain mail, splitting the links with sideways pressure, and on into the body of an opponent. ‘This is a fine, strong blade,’ he said as he presented it to me. ‘And it has saved my life many times. Keep it about your person, Alan. It may one day save your life, too.’
I thanked him as they tied on the blindfold and I helped him into his saddle. ‘I am sorry that I will not be able to teach you how to use it,’ he said. As they spurred away, over his shoulder he shouted: ‘Don’t forget to move your feet!’
The very next day Tuck arrived at Thangbrand’s bringing supplies, half a dozen young men and boys for Thangbrand to train, and news. I was very pleased to see him and he greeted me with a great bear hug. ‘You’ve grown,’ he said. ‘And put on a little flesh.’ He grabbed my upper arm, kneading the muscle that had arrived after many hours of sword practice with Sir Richard. ‘You’re one to talk about flesh,’ I said, prodding him in his great belly. He aimed a gentle cuff at my head which I dodged easily.
As we sat down in the hall over a mug of ale and a cold roast chicken, Tuck’s face turned grave: ‘ I have bad news, Alan,’ he said. ‘It’s your mother.’
My heart lay like a stone in my chest. And he told me she was dead, killed by Murdac’s men along with many, many others in a raid on the village. ‘Sir Ralph told his men that he wanted to make an example of the village, as a warning to others not to harbour outlaws,’ said Tuck.
They had ridden in at dawn and started killing without ceremony; the grey-mailed horsemen chopping into men, women and children; attaching ropes to hovels and pulling them apart; burning anything that they couldn’t pull down. The men had fought, rake and spade against sword and mace, and they had died. Many ran into the greenwood to hide. An image of Thornings Cross, despoiled by the Peverils, came into my head. What difference was there, in truth, between the forces of the sheriff and a clan of robbers, I asked myself.
I was clutching the hilt of my Spanish poniard. ‘I must go there,’ I said, white-faced. But Tuck held my arm. ‘The village is gone, Alan. There is nothing left but ash and sorrow. Your mother is with God, now. I buried her myself and said the holy words over her body. She rests with the angels.’
‘If only I had been there . . .’ Tuck put a brawny arm around my shoulders. ‘If you had been there you would be dead. No, Alan, God has other plans for you. Your path lies with us.’
He had other news but I listened to it through a haze of grief, as in a waking dream coming in and out of understanding of his words. Robin had been causing havoc in Barnsdale, Tuck told me, raiding cattle and sheep from Yorkshire landowners. He had been pursued by Sir Roger of Doncaster, who had nearly trapped him twice. But Robin linked up with his men and turning on his pursuer he had trounced him in a fight. Little John had been wounded - but not badly. Sir Roger had barely escaped with his life. Tuck’s story lifted my heart a little, despite the aching pain of my mother’s death.
‘What news of Marie-Anne?’ I asked timidly. Tuck gave me a strange look. ‘Robin’s betrothed, the Countess of Locksley,’ he said formally, ‘is at Winchester with Queen Eleanor, and unlikely to stir for a while.’ Then he changed the subject.
The Queen, I knew, was as good as a prisoner in Winchester, a hundred and fifty miles to the south. Henry, her husband and, by the grace of God, our King, no longer trusted her as she had supported their son Duke Richard in his wars in France against the King, and although she was allowed a royal retinue, including ladies in waiting such as the lovely Marie-Anne, and all the comforts that befitted her rank, she and her ladies were under strict supervision by the Constable of Winchester, a bastard of King Stephen’s known as Sir Ralph FitzStephen.
The chance of my ever seeing Marie-Anne again seemed impossibly remote. I fought back a fresh wave of misery and tried to pay attention to Tuck’s news from the north. ‘ . . . he’s nearly got all the men he needs,’ said Tuck. ‘They are all housed in and around a series of great caves in the north of Sherwood; perfectly well hidden and with enough room to house a small army. And, in perhaps a six-month, he’ll actually have a small army . . .’ But I couldn’t concentrate on the news of Robin; my mother’s lined face, worn down by a lifetime of brutal work and private sorrow, rose before my eyes and tears spilled down my cheeks.
Tuck did not stay long at Thangbrand’s. He delivered his ragged charges for training and collected the chest containing Robin’s Share, swelled by a summer of plundering travellers in Sherwood. Then he left, accompanied by a dozen of the more competent men-at-arms, some mounted, some on foot carrying bowstaves. I thanked him for bringing me the tidings of my mother and told him that I now had a double reason to seek revenge on Sir Ralph Murdac: the deaths of both my mother and my fath
er. ‘Revenge is for fools,’ said Tuck. ‘Christ teaches forgiveness.’ I must have looked bewildered because he continued: ‘Always remember that God has a plan, my son. We sinners may not know what it is but He does,’ and he pulled me towards him and hugged me. As I buried my face in his rough monk’s robe, with its earthy scent of sweat and woodsmoke, I remembered that Sir Richard had used the same words. Then Tuck blessed me and rode away with his silver and his soldiers into the depths of Sherwood.
With his departure, the cavalry school at Thangbrand’s was suddenly short of recruits and Guy, having proved his quality at the quintain, was absorbed into its ranks. I was still training with Thangbrand as a foot soldier but, thanks to Sir Richard’s help, I was now demonstrating his hackneyed sword moves to the new arrivals. Bernard was impressed with my progress at music; I had a natural ear, he said, and I was now composing with increasing confidence: indeed, one set of verses that I created at this time, about the threshing of corn and the winnowing of chaff, is still being sung to this day. I heard local peasants singing it just the other day as they worked; the words have changed slightly but it is still my simple tune. When I asked one of them about the song, he said it was traditional. That made me smile and remember Bernard’s waspish comment: ‘I don’t know why you waste your time writing chants for grubby peasants. Life is about love, boy, love, it’s the only fitting subject for a trouvère.’
But I didn’t know anything about love, except for a strange yearning to see Marie-Anne again. Lust, on the other hand, was something I was beginning to know a great deal about; indeed I felt it daily as a growing pressure in my loins. Tuck had warned me about the sin of onanism; it would make me go blind if I indulged myself, he said. The other boys at Thangbrand’s, particularly Guy, jeered at this notion but I liked and respected Tuck and, for his sake, I tried very hard to abstain.
There were a dozen or so women at Thangbrand’s: fat Freya, of course, and the wives and daughters of the men-at-arms. Little yellow Godifa, of course, if you could count her as a woman. And there was Cat - gorgeous Cat - about seventeen summers old, with creamy skin, generous breasts, red hair and startling green eyes. And she was available. She was available to anyone for a silver penny. She had haunted the fringes of my thoughts since I had first set eyes on her rutting against the wall with the outlaw on the first night after I joined Robin’s band. I knew she had sometimes lingered by the battleground to watch me at sword practice with Sir Richard but I had never had the courage to speak to her. And yet I lusted after her, I lusted almost day and night. Particularly at night. When I could no longer control myself, under my blankets, amid my snoring companions in the hall, it was she who appeared in my mind, naked and beckoning. The problem, as I saw it, was that I didn’t have a single penny or anything valuable that I could exchange for her favours. I did, however, know where to get them.
As well as Cat’s lubricious charms, the great ruby that I’d seen in Thangbrand and Freya’s chamber had also been at the back of my mind. Although Thangbrand’s ferocity had terrified me, as time went by, my curiosity about the contents of that metal box buried in the floor was growing. What was in there apart from that great jewel? I decided to find out.
My chance came soon enough. Winter was knocking on the door at Thangbrand’s and with it Slaughter Day. On this day, all the farm pigs - there were about half a dozen - which had been fattened in the wood all autumn would be killed, cut up and preserved in salt for the winter. We did not have enough feed to keep them through the cold months and so if left alive they would lose weight until they were skin and bone, or even dead, by spring. So we killed them.
Slaughter Day was something of a celebration at Thangbrand’s: there was a lot of work to be done, penning, killing, scalding the flesh to remove the bristles; dismembering the carcasses and packing the meat in casks of salts. But it was also a feast because a lot of the meat could not be salted and so it was eaten in a variety of forms. Sausages were made from thoroughly cleaned intestines; the heads were boiled in great vats to make brawn; the air was filled with the delicious scent of roasting pork as the off-cuts, and odds and ends of pork, not worth salting, were cooked and eaten hot. More or less everyone was involved in the work, which was supervised by Freya and Thangbrand. But I slipped away at the height of the blood-letting, muttering that I had an errand to run for Bernard, who, of course, was not the slightest bit interested in gorging on pig meat with the rest of us, not when he had his own private barrel of wine and his beloved vielle at home. Bernard claimed that the squealing of the swine hurt his sensitive musical ears.
With everyone either at the pig-pens, the slaughter yard or in the kitchen, a separate building because of the risk of fire, I slipped unnoticed into the hall and crept into Thangbrand and Freya’s chamber. My heart was fluttering like a trapped bird, though I knew the chance of someone catching me was slim, and my mouth was dry. It was a sensation I knew well from my days as a thief in Nottingham; I liked it. And I had an excuse ready: Bernard had lent Freya a comb, I would say, and I had been asked by him to retrieve it.
The door to the chamber creaked appallingly as I pushed it open. I called out to Freya to say that it was only me, knowing well that she was elbow-deep in pig’s blood at the slaughter yard, and went inside. Although it was full daylight outside, I could barely see in the gloom of their bedchamber. It had no window and the only illumination came from spears of light that bored through tiny holes in the wattle-and-daub wall and from under the eaves. There was little furniture in the room: a big curtained double bed, a chest for clothes, a table and two chairs. I went straight to the corner where I’d seen Freya on her knees a few weeks before and put my hand to the earth floor where I thought the box had been hidden. I found nothing under my groping fingers, just smooth earth. I brushed my fingertips back and forwards, in wider and wider sweeps: nothing. I couldn’t understand it; had they moved the hiding place? It was likely, Thangbrand knowing that I had seen it. And then I heard someone coming, footsteps outside and the door creaking . . . and in a blind panic, forgetting my comb story, I scuttled under the bed and curled in a tight ball at the far side by the wall. Visions of Ralph, the rapist who had been beaten and castrated, flooded into my mind. And the informer whose tongue had been sliced off outside the church. And Sir John Peveril. If I was caught stealing . . . it didn’t bear thinking about.
From under the bed I could see the boots of two men. The door creaked shut. Then a man was kneeling by the foot of the bed. I couldn’t breathe. I thought my lungs would explode with terror. It was Hugh; I could just make out his long, thin shape and, O merciful God, he was facing away from me tugging at something in the floor. Through my naked, shivering fear, I had a cold clear thought: they hadn’t moved the hiding place! Hugh pulled out something from the ground - it looked like a small bag. There was a chink of silver as he passed it to the other man. And then he spoke: ‘So it is agreed, then. Tell your master to be careful. Tell him to speak to no one about this. Tell him . . .’ The other man interrupted rudely: ‘He knows this business better than you.’ There was an awkward silence for a few heartbeats, and then the boots moved, the door creaked and they left.
I let out my breath in a long shuddering gasp but lay curled under the bed for a few moments longer, pondering what I had heard. Hugh had been paying one of his spies: that was plain. These shadowy men drifted into Thangbrand’s at all hours of the day and night; they would talk only to Hugh; eat, rest for a few hours and disappear again. But there was something about the exchange that struck me as a little odd. Who was the spy’s master if not Hugh? I could not think and, as I brought my beating heart back under control, I dismissed it from my mind. Then I was out from under the bed and on my knees by the patch of earthen floor where Hugh had found his bag of silver. In the gloom of the bedchamber, it was hard to see anything that looked like a hiding place. My panic started to rise and I wanted desperately to be gone from that room. Frantically sweeping my fingertips over the surface of the floor, I co
uld feel nothing but the hard earth, and then, to my soaring joy, my fingers brushed against a cold, hard circular shape buried in the ground. It was a metal ring, embedded in the earth, and I levered it vertical with my fingernails and pulled.
It was a trapdoor to a tiny cavern of riches. Inside the hiding place was a metal box. I pulled it out of its grave and into an area which was slightly better illuminated by a chink on the thatch. And my mouth fell open. It containing such things as I had never seen before: fat bags of coin, tiny jewelled pins, fine worked silver cups, golden crucifixes encrusted with precious stones, a string of great luminescent pearls and many, many precious stones from emeralds the size of a pea, to that glorious ruby that I had seen Freya holding, a gout of crystallised hearts-blood the size of a sparrow’s egg. My jaw hung slack. It was more wealth than I had known existed in the world, enough wealth to buy an earldom. And, I couldn’t help myself, I slipped the ruby into my pouch, along with a handful of silver pennies that were loose in the bottom of the box. It was madness, pure suicidal madness. I had seen how Freya had gloated over that ruby - there was no way that she would not immediately miss it. The moment she found out, we would all be searched, the ruby would be found and I would be brutally punished, maybe even killed.
I pulled the ruby back out of my pouch and held it in my hand. In the half-dark room it was no more than a cold hard lump in my hand. And then I held it up to one of the tiny beams of light that criss-crossed the darkness, and it leapt into life: its crimson heart ignited, and the stone began to glow with a malevolent beauty. I swear that the jewel began to feel hot in my hands as if one of the thin beams of light had given it life. I knew I could not put it back into Freya’s box. But something stirred in my mind, the germ of a thought, the beginning of a plan, and I shoved the jewel back into my pouch, replaced the box’s top, put the box in its hiding place, lowered the lid, brushed earth over it and crept out back into the harsh winter sunlight and the squealing of doomed swine.