Hunter of Sherwood: The Red Hand

by Toby Venables

  THE LATCH ON the door of the small room – the only such room in the house – clicked. The door was opened with slow, quiet deliberation. A familiar face loomed in the gap.

  Guy laughed aloud.

  “What are you doing still awake?” whispered his father in quiet outrage. Then his face broke into a smile, and he sat on Guy’s bed and ruffled the boy’s hair. He smelt of horses and leather and sweat. There was something sweet and reassuring in that smell.

  “I missed you,” said his father. For an instant, there was such feeling in his voice and face that Guy thought the man he had always regarded as implacable was about to weep. The possibility frightened him. In another moment, it was gone, and his father was laughing again.

  “You’re back!” Guy said, beaming. Statement of the obvious did not, somehow, seem out of place tonight. He fought the urge to hug his father, however; he thought himself too old for that sort of thing. He wasn’t sure if he saw disappointment flicker across his father’s face.

  “Did you look after everyone for me?” said his father. It was an odd choice of phrase. There was only mother now, unless one counted the horses and the few servants.

  “Sol and Luna missed Estoil,” he said. Then added, earnestly: “I combed and cleaned them out every day. And took them to the paddock.”

  His father frowned at him and leaned forward. “You didn’t try to ride Sol, did you?”

  Guy shook his head vigorously and felt his face redden. That was a lie. The command not to do so had been the last thing his father had said when he left, and yet Guy had made the attempt the very next day, climbing on the gate in the paddock to get himself onto the back of the big destrier. Sol had waited until he was sitting comfortably, then immediately bucked him off, as his father had clearly known he would. Now, Guy just hoped that in the pale light his guilt was not too obvious. As he flushed, he felt his chin itch.

  His father grinned, and nodded – either because he believed his son, or was too glad to be home to invite argument. Guy suspected the latter. Then suddenly his father looked closer at him. “What’s that?” he said, and raised the boy’s chin gently with a rough finger to reveal the vertical red mark there.

  Guy had forgotten about the scar. It seemed an age ago it had happened, though was barely more than four weeks.

  “I fell against the stone trough in the paddock,” said Guy, sheepishly. He chose not to mention that this was when Sol had thrown him, and that he was probably lucky to be alive.

  His father frowned, and looked at his face on both sides. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Guy said; then, looking defiant, added: “I didn’t cry.”

  His father laughed and ruffle his hair. “Brave boy,” he said.

  “There are wasps up there,” said Guy, changing the subject. “Building a nest in the Tall Tree.”

  “You leave them be,” said his father, wagging a finger. “No good comes of messing with those poisonous little bastards.”

  Guy laughed at that. His father’s momentarily stern expression dropped and he chuckled, too.

  “Where did you go?” said Guy. He had missed his father too, but now he was more concerned with hearing tales of adventure.

  “Your mother didn’t tell you?”

  “No,” said Guy. He expected his father to be annoyed at the answer, but for some reason he simply looked relieved. “She just said it was over the sea.”

  “That it was,” said his father, and sighed deeply.

  “What were you doing there?” asked Guy.

  His father looked him in the eye in silence, his mouth half open as if he had been about to speak but had suddenly been unable to find the words. He looked absent. Lost. It seemed to Guy his father was suddenly burdened, as if he had recently looked upon something terrible. He could not say quite what it was he saw in his face. But in the pale light of the moon, those features – of this man who had always seemed all-powerful – seemed somehow to have aged, to have gone beyond age, to become something else altogether. A thing without substance. A pale ghost.

  WHAT WERE YOU doing there? The words rattled round and round in Robert of Gisburne’s head, taunting and accusing him. He was exhausted, his body aching and sore and clammy, his clothes stuck to him. The miles, and the days, weighed upon him. He just wanted to sleep and forget, and tomorrow treat the past month as a dream from which he had now awoken. But he knew it would not be that simple. His relief at being home was overwhelming. It felt like deliverance. But something about it terrified him, too.

  “It was something for King Henry,” he said, finally, and forced a smile. “Something secret. So, you mustn’t tell anyone.” He leaned in towards his son, his good humour now fully returned. “You swear?”

  Guy nodded earnestly, his eyes wide with wonder. “I swear.”

  Robert had been worried about the boy of late. For the past year he had been running wild, getting into all manner of scrapes and ignoring his parents’ commands. No, it had been longer than that. Since little Adela had died of the red fever, in fact – and Robert felt sure it was in some way connected. Brother and sister had always had a close bond. When it had struck – randomly, out of nowhere, a meaningless tragedy – young Guy had reacted not with grief, but with anger. He had wished to blame someone – to call them out and fight them. Finding he could not, he declared that he hated God, then fought with a boy from the village whose family were respected for their piety. He would have damn near killed him if the blacksmith’s lad had not pulled them apart.

  Robert had meted out punishment as seemed fitting, but in truth had felt ill-equipped to deal with it. His wife Ælfwyn had met the boy’s sudden, uncharacteristic aggression with tearful perplexity. They had never been the most devout of couples, but after Adela her relationship with God became all the keener. She began praying for the boy, and, assuming her husband shared her bemusement, urged him to do so, too. He did nothing to contradict her assumption. The real problem was not that Robert failed to understand his son’s feelings, but that he felt exactly the same.

  “What’s that?” said Guy, squinting in the dark.

  Robert saw his son’s eye caught by something at his side. He immediately knew what. A glint of polished metal – the silver of a pommel atop a black grip.

  “A new sword,” said Robert. “Given to me by the King himself.”

  The boy leaned further forward, his hand outstretched. “Can I...?”

  “Tomorrow!” insisted his father. “I need to stable Estoil. He needs his sleep. And you need yours.” He stood to leave.

  “A story, then!” called Guy. “Before you go. From your travels.” Robert stopped. His guts tightened. Somehow he managed a good-natured smile. Recounting what had happened was the very last thing he wanted – this night or any other.

  “I told you,” he said, “it was secret. By order of the King.”

  “I mean a ghost story!” said Guy. “I haven’t heard any for weeks. Mother won’t tell me them. You said you’d listen out for new ones.”

  Robert slumped back down on the bed. “You and your ghost stories,” he laughed. “How tales of spooks and ghouls are supposed to help you sleep I can’t imagine...”

  “Please!” begged Guy.

  His father screwed up his face in thought, as if digging deep into his memory. “Well, there was one,” he said. “Told me by a pilgrim. But I’m not sure you’re ready for it yet...” His father made as if to leave again.

  “I am!” said Guy in desperation. “Please...”

  His father narrowed his eyes, nodded, and turned back.

  “I’ll be in trouble with your mother if it gives you nightmares.”

  “It won’t, I promise.”

  “Well then...” Robert said, nodding slowly. And, in hushed tones, he found himself relating the following story.

  THERE WAS ONCE a man named Richard, who went on a pilgrimage. His wife was with child at the time, but Richard’s determination to serve his God was such that earthly consideration
s took second place. And so he said his goodbyes and left her behind in England.

  The journey was hard, with many hazards along the way, in the wild mountains most of all. There were thieving bandits, wolves, wild dogs. Every night, one of the pilgrims in Richard’s party would keep watch over the others. This particular night, it was Richard’s turn to stay awake and warn them of danger.

  It was a still night – strangely quiet – and he was almost dozing off when a great clamour jarred him awake. He peered about in alarm, but when he looked about, the deafening tumult had awoken none of his fellows. They lay as if dead in their slumber. Then he looked upon the pilgrim road, and saw, advancing along it, a ghostly procession. Wraiths and phantoms of the dead, blowing tunelessly upon trumpets and banging upon drums – wasted in their flesh, their withered faces drawn into expressions of terrible melancholy. Each one rode upon the back of a beast – not just horses, but sheep, pigs, oxen... the very animals that had been used to pay for each of their funerals. He watched in dumb horror as the ghastly sight swayed past. Then he saw the strangest sight of all. Behind the parade of dead riders was some living thing, rolling along the dusty ground in a leather boot. The pilgrim thought at first it was a skinned hare. Then, to his horror, he realised it was a baby – too tiny to be alive.

  “Who are you,” he asked, “and why do you roll?”

  Peering from its black shroud, the child replied in a thin and dreadful voice. “It is not right that you address me. For I am your child, stillborn and buried without a name.”

  Struck through with sorrow and remorse, the pilgrim wrapped the creature in his shirt, baptised it and gave it a name. And it gave a great cry of joy, and walked upright into paradise.

  The pilgrim kept the old boot. Upon returning home, he asked his wife to bring his boots to him, but she could find only one. To her astonishment, the man then produced the other, and told his tale – whereupon the midwife who had attended her confessed that she had buried the dead child in the boot, unnamed and unbaptised.

  THAT STILLBORN CHILD – its face, its voice – haunted Gisburne for months afterwards. It still figured in his nightmares from time to time. But it wasn’t just the tale that had affected him so. It was the look on his father’s face as he had concluded it – an expression of unutterable sorrow.

  For a while after, in his sleep, his father repeatedly muttered a strange word that Guy did not recognise. He thrashed in agitation as he did so, as if recalling some torment. More than once Guy went to him, but neither he nor his mother had ever dared to wake him up. It had passed. Then, when he had nursed the old man on his deathbed, the habit had momentarily returned, and the buried memory was unearthed.

  Years later, Gisburne discovered that the word was a name, and that it was Irish.

  XII

  The road to Berughby

  15 May, 1193

  GALFRID WAS TO find the answer to his questions at a lonely inn somewhere between Aslockton and Bottesforde.

  The squire had been ready soon after dawn. To his great frustration, Gisburne had not gathered himself to leave until long past midday – and the pace from Nottingham had been slow. At times, Galfrid had stared at Gisburne, wondering if something was wrong – if some ailment or injury was troubling him. But Gisburne just looked about, seeming to enjoy the day’s fine weather, taking deep breaths of the warm air and the scent of new spring blooms. Out across the cultivated fields, a light haze hung. In the wide open space three small boys with slings were cavorting, charged with keeping pigeons off the bean crop.

  Galfrid turned away and eyed a now familiar rectangular box slung behind Gisburne’s saddle. “I can’t believe you’re bringing that.”

  Gisburne looked at the squire, then at the hurdy gurdy that had somehow survived fire, brimstone, ordure and everything else that Salah al-Din’s Jerusalem had thrown at it. “I like it,” he said.

  Galfrid kept his eyes fixed ahead. “So, what’s hidden it it this time? Greek Fire? Poisoned blades? The jewel encrusted arsebone of Saint Jerome?”

  “Nothing,” said his master. Galfrid stared at him with narrowed eyes. Gisburne caught the look. “Check if you don’t believe me.”

  Galfrid was damned if he was going to do that.

  “I just like it,” said Gisburne.

  Galfrid turned his attention back to the road. “So, is it to be this speed all the way to the Tower?” he said. Part of him relished the prospect. Another part wanted simply to press his horse to a gallop so they could get there and get on with it – whatever ‘it’ was.

  “It’s like I said,” replied Gisburne, without turning to look at him. “No rush...”

  “No rush?” said Galfrid, bemused. “You’re always in a rush.”

  “Not today,” said Gisburne.

  Galfrid sighed heavily, and looked back out across the fields.

  THEY WERE LITTLE more than a dozen miles from Nottingham when Galfrid noticed Gisburne was scanning the horizon ahead. He did so with sudden eagerness, as if expecting trouble. Galfrid followed his gaze. Some way down the road, just coming into view beyond a sheltered copse of trees, was an old inn.

  “Are we stopping?” said Galfrid. “Already?” Not that he minded. If Gisburne insisted on taking things easy, then a few extra ales along the way were fine by him. His master grunted, as if only dimly aware of his squire’s question, then geed Nyght into a trot.

  “Right, then...” said Galfrid, mostly to his horse. “So now we hurry...” And he urged the mare on.

  The inn was an odd, rounded building part-covered in ivy, which looked as if it was collapsing in on itself. But the smell of woodsmoke wafted from the chimney, and the alestake outside was decorated with fresh flowers. As they approached, however, his master seemed to be looking elsewhere.

  Then he saw it. In the copse of trees, standing motionless and only just visible from the road, was a white horse. On it sat a cloaked and hooded figure, his face entirely obscured. Galfrid felt his muscles tighten. He looked down at the pilgrim staff tucked beneath his saddle bag. There was a sword at his belt too. And a mace tucked away on the saddle’s other side. But the staff had become his favoured weapon of late. It gave him additional reach – and the advantage of surprise. That staff hid several surprises. Without stopping, he reached down, loosened the straps, and drew it out.

  Gisburne, a good twelve paces ahead of him, had no weapon drawn. The figure on the white horse turned, and walked slowly forward. Gisburne rode straight up to him, still unarmed. Galfrid pulled his horse up beside him, staff gripped and at the ready. He judged that with one good swing he could clout the rider about the head, if need be. That may not unhorse him, but he’d be senseless for a while.

  The stranger looked up at his approach, then pulled back his hood. Galfrid gasped in astonishment.

  “Good day, squire Galfrid,” said Prince John, with a mischievous smile.

  GALFRID SHOT A glance at Gisburne, his expression pinched.

  “You bastard,” he muttered. There was exasperation in it, but also, Gisburne sensed, relief. He hoped the squire now understood. But even so, he could not resist a laugh at Galfrid’s expense.

  “Don’t blame Sir Guy,” smiled John. “I suggested we allow as few people as possible to know of this. He took me at my word, and told precisely no one.”

  “But I saw you leave Nottingham two days ago...” said Galfrid, in protest.

  “You didn’t see Prince John,” said Gisburne. “Just his entourage. The Prince was never there.”

  “But I saw...”

  “There is a man, who looks very much like me,” said John. “Who is me, for the moment. Even those travelling with him believe it. Of course, given the risks, he is too wary to leave his carriage. And so the deception is maintained.”

  Galfrid stared at Gisburne. “It’s the bloody skull of St John the Baptist all over again. I can’t believe I fell for that a second time.”

  “Misdirection,” said Gisburne. “Let’s hope the Red Hand is simil
arly diverted.

  “We maintain an even pace, keeping the royal entourage two days ahead. That is the decoy. If anything happens, we’ll know about it. But for now, we are simply a pair of knights and a squire travelling upon the road.”

  John laughed aloud at that, and slapped the side of his horse affectionately. Gisburne realised that the Prince was actually looking forward to this, even in the face of the present danger. And why should he not? He was free of the court. Free of the bureaucrats and the flatterers. Free of the unwanted attentions of the clergy and the struggles for power. And, most of all perhaps, he was free of what all the naysayers thought of him, be they barons or peasants. For a while, at least, he was not prince or heir – he was just himself. Quite what that was, Gisburne was not entirely sure.

  “If this deception is to work,” Gisburne said. “We’ll have to dispense with calling you my lord...”

  John shrugged. “You never bothered with the niceties anyway. But it is noted. Address me as ‘Sir John.’ Or simply ‘John.’ We’re familiar enough for that, I think.” Gisburne gave a respectful nod. John turned to the squire. “Galfrid? You are to call me ‘John.’ Can you do that?”

  “Yes, my lor – Sorry, I mean, J – Joh –” But try as he might, Galfrid could not bring himself to address the Prince by his Christian name.

  “Galfrid is a squire,” said Gisburne, coming to Galfrid’s rescue. “It would be more natural for him to afford a knight the courtesy his station demands.” He turned and looked Galfrid in the eye. “In fact, to witness it at all would be a novelty...”

  “Of course, of course...” said John, nodding earnestly. “‘Sire,’ then.”

  “You hear that, Galfrid?” said Gisburne, unable to suppress a smile of satisfaction. “‘Sire.’”

  “Yes,” said Galfrid flatly. “‘Sire.’”