Hunter of Sherwood: The Red Hand

by Toby Venables

  Most of these men were now crammed into the easternmost quarter of the city, on the island of Ortigia, from which the greater part of over two hundred ships were preparing to depart. For now, the mood was celebratory, the level of anticipation high. Men revelled in the close quarters, the camaraderie, the adventure that was to come. But conditions were already turning squalid. Feeding the vast army and their horses in these cramped conditions was something that their commanders had easily mastered; getting rid of their filth, and their frustrations, was not. If things were not to change soon, that mood – that wildness – would turn on itself. But in two days, when the ships were fully provisioned, the troops would begin to board. Then they would be heading east – to take Byzantium.

  Though he admitted it to no one, it was the sea voyage – in the bowels of a pitching tarida, heavy with horses, water, weapons and men – that Gisburne dreaded far more than the battles that were to follow.

  Gisburne’s new master – the master of all these tens of thousands, now – was William II, the Norman king of Sicily. William the Good, they called him. Gisburne had never seen him, nor did he expect to. It was said the king rarely set foot outside his palace in Palermo, where he enjoyed the finer things in life. In this, he was quite unlike his grim, pragmatic Norman forebears. In just about every other respect, the pleasure-loving king was Norman through and through. Ruthlessly efficient, militarily decisive and energetically devoted to securing his rule, he was as vigorous in diplomacy as he was in war. Like all Normans, he was also driven by an an unquenchable desire to expand his realm, and entirely unhampered by self-doubt – traits inherited, Gilbert de Gaillon said, from the fearless Norse adventurers from whom they were descended. No challenge was too great. Nothing beyond reach. Though master of but one small island, William had engineered a marriage to the daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and invaded Salah al-Din’s empire at Alexandria. Now, he was set to conquer his old rivals, the Byzantines.

  And yet, within the kingdom of Sicily itself, William had presided over almost two decades of peace. Under his rule, people of different cultures and faiths were tolerated – even encouraged. Trade boomed. The arts flourished, ultimately finding their most perfect expression in the cathedral at Monreale, a Norman church whose architecture combined Syriac and Italian influences with the work of Byzantine artists and Muslim sculptors. It was, quite literally, a golden age.

  But with gold comes envy, and resentment. Subversive elements had arisen within Sicilian society. Meeting in secret, they dedicated themselves to resisting Norman rule, exploiting the oppressed poor to their own ends. Gisburne had heard whispers of them from the moment he landed on the island, but so elusive were they, he had begun to wonder if they were a no more than a myth.

  THEY CAME TO the mouth of the cramped, crowded alley. “The moon’s been at our back all the way,” said Gisburne. “Which tonight means the harbour should be somewhere down... Here.”

  They turned right into a wider thoroughfare. Along it, and heading in the same direction, carts laden with barrels rumbled – clearly destined for the ships at anchor in the bay. In spite of them, the crowds now thinned enough to allow Baldwin to come up alongside him. Baldwin was at least a foot shorter than he, and half his weight. How he was going to survive what lay ahead, Gisburne could not imagine. “How did you say you knew him again?” said Gisburne.

  “In Aquitaine, sir,” said Baldwin, enthusiastically. “There was I, fresh from England, knowing no one, lost amongst this great host of dour-faced Flemings and yearning just to hear my own tongue spoken again when a lump of bread is thrust at my chest and a voice says: ‘You look like you need a good meal!’” He laughed. “Turned out he was from the next village.”

  “What was the name of that village again? Yours, I mean.” asked Gisburne. In truth, he remembered it perfectly well. He just wanted to keep the lad talking. It would keep his mind off things, at least.

  “Anesacre,” said Baldwin. Then he shrugged, and cast his eyes down almost sheepishly. “A tiny place. I wouldn’t expect anyone to know it. I never met anyone who did. But then, right there, in the middle of Aquitaine...” He chuckled again, and shook his head. “It was like a miracle!”

  Gisburne smiled again. “Well, you can be a great help to me, Baldwin from Anesacre. I have only a name. But you... you know what he looks like.”

  “It’s my pleasure, sire,” beamed Baldwin. “A privilege.”

  “It’s all right,” said Gisburne, raising a hand. “And you don’t need to call me ‘sire.’ I’m not a knight; not even a gentleman. Just a soldier. Like you.”

  Baldwin frowned at that, as if the ideas behind it were too big for him. “Th-thank you, si –” he began, then corrected himself. “I mean, G... G-G...” So badly did he stutter over the name that finally he just gave up and looked away, red-faced.

  Gisburne felt a sudden, sick pang of horror. It rose up in him without warning. He clenched his fists into tight balls and fought it down. It was not for himself or his own fate that he felt it, but that of the boy. He could not imagine how the lad had come to be here, how he had fallen into such a life. Perhaps he was running from something; Gisburne had seen that a hundred times. Part of him wanted to grab the boy by his tunic and implore him to run away home, to meet some plump farm girl, settle down, work hard, live a dull but happy life and have scores of children – to tell him that nothing he could have left behind could be possibly worth this, and that where they were heading was the worst place in the world.

  Gisburne at least knew what they were in for. He understood the hardships that lay ahead – knew the challenge of simply surviving day-to-day, before you even got as far as facing an enemy bent on your destruction. But even for him, with all he had seen – and there was much – this was on an unimaginable scale.

  It went without saying that it would be bloody and desperate. But it would also unfold in an alien land, and upon a battlefield that would be so vast that even from horseback one could not see to its edge. He pictured the blood-muddied expanse, heaped with fallen bodies – a hellish, tangled marsh of gore the mere crossing of which would destroy the spirit of the strongest of men. And clambering over it, with the roar of fifty thousand throats, eyes wide with hate, their enemy – golden armour glinting, teeth white in the merciless eastern sun, blades flashing like forest of scythes.

  Into this scene, the air growing dark with ten thousand arrows, he pictured Baldwin blundering, upon his head an ill-fitting helm, in his hand a sharpened stick. He shuddered and shook his head. Every man here had their own fears and vulnerabilities to deal with, but sometimes it was those of others that proved truly crippling. De Gaillon was right – the best and worst thing to take into battle was an imagination.

  Gisburne’s eyes scanned the tops of the arched doorways on either side of the cobbled street – then he saw what he was looking for. From the cracked, honey-coloured plaster of one such rounded arch projected an elaborate iron bracket, and beneath it, the size of a suckling pig, hung a wooden effigy of a boar, its back bristling with iron pins, and the whole showing signs of flaking blue paint.

  “Here,” said Gisburne, and dived into the open doorway.

  Inside the heaving, sweaty inn, the sounds suddenly became familiar. By the door, a band of forbidding Brabançon axemen clad in brown leather muttered about a barrel-table, but in every other part the voices were English. Gisburne turned momentarily from the sea of faces in this dark, hectic interior to glance at his companion; Baldwin’s expression was one of utter terror.

  The men that packed the place were not regular soldiers. They fought not for their own lands, nor for duty, nor honour, nor through obligation. They had come because William the Good was rich, and would pay. And because they had heard Byzantium was abundant with gold, ready for the taking. Such men did not treat this task lightly. They were not ignorant of the hardships of campaigning. Most looked upon William’s own soldiers with disdain, and had seen – and survived – f
ar more action than they.

  Gisburne no longer had to remind himself that he was looking upon his own kind. To Baldwin, however, this was still an alien world. Gisburne grabbed Baldwin’s sleeve, pulling the boy behind him as he plunged into the crowd.

  He knew what he was looking for, even if he didn’t know a face. A certain build, a broadness of chest – a thickness to the right arm and shoulder. What was distracting him now, however, was the women.

  They were grasped or entwined or draped upon the men with varying degrees of reluctance or enthusiasm, or weaving among the jostling, laughing men as they brought more drink or food. Most wore their dark hair down, in brazen fashion. Several allowed their smocks to fall from their olive-skinned shoulders and breasts without shame. A few simply kept on the move as best they could with their heads and eyes cast low, employed purely to fetch and carry. All were continually beset by a ceaseless onslaught of lewd remarks and groping hands, attention that they enjoyed or endured with expressions ranging from delight, to disgust, to total vacancy, genuine or contrived. Gisburne conjured up an image of the tired-looking whores in London, and wondered whether it really was true that foreign women were more beautiful, or whether distance from home merely rendered them so.

  In the gloom at the far end of the inn, barely pierced by the flickering lamps and candles, Gisburne could make out a group of cheering, laughing men in a tight circle. Behind them, by the fireplace, more than a dozen tall, tapered staves were stacked against the wall. Longbows.

  “This way,” Gisburne said, nudging Baldwin. As they picked their way past a pack of crossbowmen, one of their number – a stout man with a prickly beard who had clearly gone too far with the woman upon his lap, or lacked means of payment – was slapped about the chops so hard that it resounded like the crack of a whip. His comrades cheered as he reddened and shrank. The woman looked upon him with a thin, almost reptilian smile of total disdain, and tossed her head of glossy black curls, winning herself at least a dozen new admirers in the process.

  The men in the circle were archers. At their centre was a tall man with dark hair and neatly trimmed beard, his shoulders broad, his smile apparently inextinguishable. Gisburne edged into the circle.

  On the small table top were spread three cards depicting a maiden, a knight and death. With amazing speed and dexterity he would turn them face down, move them about, then challenge onlookers to find the maiden card. Every time, they failed. Gisburne himself followed the movements intently, certain that he had not once taken his eye off the maiden. But on each occasion, she eluded him. Money was flung down and scooped up. Twice, an entirely new card was made to appear among the three – once a dragon, once a portly abbess – then disappear again without trace. Men cheered and clapped as they drank, several grabbing at the cards from time to time and turning them over to try to discover how it was done. Gisburne noticed the man’s right hand was bandaged, and wondered if that had some part to play in the trick.

  He turned to see Baldwin frowning as he scanned the company.

  “Well, do you see him?” said Gisburne. “Your friend from the north?”

  Baldwin looked at every face, his bemusement deepening. “No...”

  The magician at the centre of the group suddenly looked up from his tricks, and made eye contact with Gisburne.

  “Welcome!” he called out, and extended his hand. “Join us, friends! Always on the lookout for new victims to fleece of their hard-earned pennies!” All about him laughed, which struck Gisburne right away. Several had, he presumed, already been fleeced by the magician’s tricks, or were in the process of being so, yet still they laughed.

  “I’m looking for Robert of Locksley,” said Gisburne, his voice raised so all present could hear.

  “Well, you’ve found him,” said the magician. “I am Robert.”

  “Then I have a pleasant surprise – this man says he knows you,” said Gisburne, gesturing to Baldwin. “Baldwin, from Anesacre.” But when he glanced back at him, the young man’s face registered nothing but confusion and dismay.

  “But this is not...” he began, then his voice faded away to nothing.

  Locksley beamed his winning smile. “Tell me, where was it we met? You’ll have to remind me – this poor memory is not what it was!” A few around him chuckled. Baldwin simply looked more confused and embarrassed than ever.

  “I... I must have been mistaken,” he stuttered. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “I dare say I might be if the situation demanded it,” he said. A man next to him guffawed. Locksley extended an arm in welcome. “Join us anyway, lad,” he said. “Let’s put right this base omission!”

  Two of Locksley’s comrades grabbed Baldwin and hauled him into their midst, one pressing a charged cup into his hand. Gisburne found one thrust into his, and did not resist. Baldwin looked about, utterly bewildered, and – not knowing what else to do – drank deep from it. The men about him cheered, and slapped his back, and filled his cup again.

  Locksley turned back to Gisburne. “And what of you, friend?”

  “Gisburne,” he said. “Guy of Gisburne.”

  Locksley grinned broadly, and thrust his hand forward.

  Instinctively, Gisburne gripped it – realising only after he made contact that it was the one that bore the bandage. For a moment it seemed pain flickered in Locksley’s face and was banished, and Gisburne made to withdraw his hand – but the man responded with a tightening of his grip, and continued the steady shake. As he did so, the bandages shifted, Gisburne now saw that they covered what looked like a burn. It had reduced to a crusty mass the skin and flesh of the first three fingers and most of the palm. It looked, too, as if what tight skin remained had repeatedly cracked and bled, and even now wept into the greying bandages.

  “You’re injured,” said Gisburne.

  Locksley let go and held his hand before his face. “A little disagreement with some locals at a tavern in Palermo,” he said, examining it as one does some curious artefact. “Three of them. They took rather extreme exception to my presence. So, I made use of the Italian I had learned and told them to kiss my hairy arse.” His comrades cackled, nudging each other. “They thrust my right hand in the fire until I could smell the flesh burning. Then they left me there, making to leave. I knifed one and pinned another to a door. The other ran, but not fast enough. I dragged him back and introduced the fire to his face until his brains boiled.” He grinned again, and put his hand down. “But it’s nothing, really.”

  “Locals?” said Gisburne with a frown. “Openly attacking soldiers of the King?”

  “Openly? No! Dressed up in black hoods that covered their faces.” He gave a single, dismissive laugh. “Cowards! Don’t ask me what it was about. They were jabbering some bollocks about tyranny and justice...”

  “Black hoods?” said Gisburne, his eyes widening. “Christ’s boots... The Beati Paoli.”

  “The Beyati-what?”

  Gisburne had heard endless rumours since arriving in Sicily, but this was the first time he’d met anyone who had actually seen them. “Vigilantes. Rebels against Norman rule.” Gisburne shrugged. “No one knows exactly what or who they are. You never see a face, just the hood. Sicilians won’t speak of them openly. But word is they consider them guardians of justice, champions of the oppressed; you know the kind of thing.” He shook his head in dismay and swigged from his ale cup. “It’s said they rob from the rich to give to the poor.”

  Locksley roared with laughter, slapping his thigh. “What an idiotic idea!” Several of the men joined in.

  Gisburne raised his cup to him. “Here’s to you. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Luck?” said Locksley, his laugh dying away. “It wasn’t luck.”

  Gisburne at first thought it was meant as a joke, or perhaps a boast. Various members of the company nearby chuckled at the words. But Locksley’s expression, for the first time, seemed deadly serious. Then it melted into laughter again.

  Gisburne eyed the i
njured hand – the hand with which Locksley drew his bowstring. At full draw, that string put enough force behind the arrow for it to pass straight through an armoured man at two hundred yards. And it was those first three fingers that took all that pressure. When released, the string whipped along them – felt like it was damn near taking them off if you didn’t do it right. “Can you still...?”

  “Yes,” snapped Locksley before Gisburne could finish. “I can still shoot. Nothing will stop me doing that.” He withdrew the injured hand. It went to a necklace at his throat – a small, discoloured metal disc, threaded on leather.

  Gisburne simply nodded, and let it go. When he was ten he had burnt his right foot in a bonfire. The searing pain of it when the wound was fresh, and the feverish days and nightmare-filled nights afterwards when it seemed to throb through his entire being – all that was bad enough. But then, two weeks later, when it seemed to be healing, he had walked on it against his father’s advice, and the skin, tight as a drum, had split. He’d had many injuries in his time – several far worse that that – but never had he known such agony. The Beati Paoli had seen Locksley was an archer – even if he had not been carrying a bow, his build told anyone as much – and had known exactly what they were doing to him. Of that, Gisburne had no doubt. They had meant to deprive him of his livelihood and let him live, as a warning to others. But they had not reckoned with the iron will that lay behind it, and now all three were dead. Others who had perhaps been fearful of the Beati Paoli before would now follow Locksley’s example. Gisburne began to see how this man had earned his reputation. On the battlefield, such fearless tenacity was worth a king’s ransom.

  “I’ve heard you’re quite a demon with a bow,” said Gisburne.