Hunter of Sherwood: The Red Hand

by Toby Venables

  In the event, his ever-resourceful squire found him. Within minutes, Gisburne heard the sound of hooves, and there was Galfrid upon Mare, beetling towards him across the spongy meadow, his trusty pilgrim staff strapped across his back. Gisburne met him half way, a stone’s throw from the oak stumps.

  “So, what’s this all about?” said Gisburne by way of a greeting. He noticed, now, that what Galfrid carried across his was back not his pilgrim staff at all – that was tucked in its customary location on his saddle – but a stout longbow. By his side hung a sack whose object Gisburne could not guess.

  “Training,” said Galfrid. Gisburne laughed, then saw Galfrid did not mean it as a joke. “That’s what a squire does, isn’t it?” Galfrid said. “Helps his knight to prepare? To remain at his peak?”

  “Are you asking or telling?” said Gisburne, still smiling.

  “The point is,” said Galfrid, “you’ve been sitting on your arse for the best part of four weeks.”

  Gisburne recoiled. “I’ve traipsed about every whore-strewn street in London! And two days ago I fought the Red Hand himself. I hardly think that qualifies...”

  “Yes, but I bet you felt it afterwards,” interrupted Galfrid. “In your legs, in that dodgy shoulder of yours. Can’t have that with the challenges coming up. Training’s what you need.”

  And with that Galfrid dismounted, and lifted the sack from his saddle, then looked across towards the stumps.

  “Perfect distance, I reckon,” he said. “Yes, just here will do just fine.”

  “Fine for what?” Gisburne was already beginning to tire of this game.

  “To get back to what you’re good at...”

  “And what is that?”

  Galfrid took the the huge bowstave off his back, put one end upon his boot so it would not sink into the soft earth, bent the bow with supreme effort, and strung it. He held it out towards Gisburne, a smile on his face.

  Gisburne studied it. “Where did you get this?”

  “I liberated it,” said Galfrid.

  “Liberated it?”

  “From the Tower armoury.”

  Gisburne’s eyes widened. “You stole from the Tower? From under Fitz Thomas’s nose?” He could not resist a smile. “How in God’s name did you get it past the guards at the gate?” He looked at the thing – it was taller than Galfrid himself. Not the easiest object to conceal.

  “The Welshman had a potion to render both me and the bow invisible,” said Galfrid. He remained utterly deadpan as Gisburne stared back at him.

  “How remarkable that Llewellyn never mentioned this potion before,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

  “He lost it for a time,” said Galfrid, “on account of it being invisible.” Then he sighed. “All right, I walked out. With the bow in plain sight, over my shoulder. And I gave the guards a hearty greeting as I did so – made sure every one of them saw me. So they thought nothing of the bow.” At this he almost allowed himself a smile of his own. “The first rule of being successful as a thief is not to look like one.”

  “I dare say you could give Hood and his rabble a run for their money.”

  “The Welshman did help with its procurement from the armoury,” said Galfrid. “He also fixed these up for you.” Unwrapping the bundled sack, he revealed a quiver full of arrows, and drew one out. It bore one of the bodkin points that Llewellyn had given him. Gisburne had not even noticed they had gone. “Those fletched in red are bodkins, those that are plain are blunts for practice.”

  “Practice?” said Gisburne, looking from Galfrid to the stumps and back. Then he noticed the curious harness upon the quiver. He lifted the strap, puzzling over its arrangement. “And what is this?”

  “That was my idea.” Galfrid beamed. “You wear it not at your waist, but across your back.” He slung it over his shoulder to demonstrate. “You can draw an arrow and lay it more swiftly upon the bow, in one smooth action. Even if you are on the move.”

  Gisburne nodded in approval. “Ingenious.” His attention went back to the bow, and he turned the yew shaft around in his hands, testing the string. It was a good bow. The right size for him, but also the heaviest bow he’d ever seen – at the very limit of his pulling power, he would guess. Doubtless Galfrid had selected it for precisely those reasons. Then his smile fell away, and he thrust it towards the squire. “But I don’t want it.”

  Galfrid, who had taken the bow back purely in reflex, stared at him in amazement, then pushed it towards his master once again.

  “You have need of a powerful weapon,” he said.

  But Gisburne did not take it. “And it is appreciated. But it’s not enough.” With firm hand, he again pushed it away.

  “It’s the best England has. Your best chance.”

  “I don’t trust to chance,” snapped Gisburne.

  The bow came back again. “Then what do you trust to? Even the slimmest chance is better than none. You taught me that. And don’t give me all that a bow is not a knight’s weapon shit!”

  Galfrid had anticipated exactly what Gisburne had been about to say. Now, thrown back at him like this, the words seemed idiotic, arrogant. Not like his own words at all. “I have not shot a bow since Boulogne,” he said, avoiding Galfrid’s gaze. “That skill is gone.”

  “Bollocks. It never leaves you,” urged Galfrid. “And we both know how this is going to go. You will come up against this man again. But you cannot let him get too near.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” snapped Gisburne. “I’m the one who’s seen him up close, remember.”

  “The bow is your best chance.” He thrust it hard against Gisburne’s chest. This time, Gisburne took it, flung it upon the ground and turned back to his horse.

  In a burst of anger Galfrid snatched it up, and lunged towards his master. “What is it with you? Are you really so pig-headedly proud? Do you want to be killed? Or is there some other fear brewing in there? The fear that using the bow somehow makes you more like Hood?” He roared the last, with such heat that he startled a cloud of crows from the nearby treetops.

  Gisburne stood silent, motionless, listening to the mocking laughter of the black birds as they wheeled overhead. The words had hit home. Until now, Gisburne had known only that he felt a deep reluctance to rely on the bow. He had not interrogated that feeling. Perhaps he had not wanted to. But, as he so often did, Galfrid had pinned it.

  The squire took a step towards his master, his expression suddenly changed. “I just don’t want you to die.”

  Gisburne turned, grabbed the bow with one hand and a blunt with the other, then turned and in one swift movement loosed an arrow into the air. There was an explosion of black feathers and a crow fell spinning to the earth.

  “Satisfied?” he said, and stalked off back to his horse.

  GALFRID STOOD LONG after the sound of Nyght’s hooves had faded, staring at the crumpled black bird, its feathers fluttering in the gusting wind. Its breast glistened with wet blood. The arrow itself had bounced off. He would retrieve it later.

  His attention wandered to the forest’s edge. Gisburne, always self-contained, had of late become an enigma. A Gordian knot of tangled problems. Clearly, the past weeks, and those to come, weighed heavy upon him. But something else was gnawing at his soul. Galfrid did not know quite what – but he had his suspicions. Dickon. Dickon the distraction. Dickon the irrelevance. For good or ill, Galfrid sensed that until Gisburne solved the unsolvable enigma of Dickon Bend-the-Bow, he would never be himself. And if he was not himself, how could he hope to stop their most determined adversary? He had pursued Dickon in the hope that it might help; instead, it was in danger of bringing about his downfall.

  A sudden sound made him start. The flap of wing, close by. At first he could see nothing. Then it came again. The crow shifted on the ground – twitched and flapped with sudden ferocious energy. Galfrid stood, transfixed.

  Then, as he watched, it flopped, sat upright, shook its ragged feathers and – to his utter astonishment
– flew away.

  XLV

  THAT NIGHT, GISBURNE had a strange dream. A man burning – but not the one he thought. Though the face was indistinct, he knew it to be Thomas of Baylesford, and fought to get to him, his limbs heavy as lead. But then, somehow, it was Hood’s face laughing up at him from the flames, even as his flesh sizzled and blistered and fell away from his bones. And in his hand, refusing to be consumed by the fire, was an arrow. No, not an arrow – a rose.

  He awoke suddenly, in a sweat. The dream swirled in his head – some impressions from it still vivid, others already fading. Within the confusion, Osanna’s words came back to him – words that had been clattering around in his head as he slept. Something she’d said about Dickon. Sweet little rose – that’s what he called me. Gisburne sat bolt upright in the dark room, and laughed, loud and deep. In the still of the night, it shook the rafters.

  “I’m such a fool!” he said, only dimly aware that he had said it aloud. Then he leapt out of bed and hauled on his boots, hurrying past the chimney breast in a series of awkward hops until he had reached Galfrid’s chamber.

  The drowsy squire stirred and propped himself up on one elbow.

  “I’m such a fool!” laughed Gisburne, and clapped him heartily upon the shoulders. “The answer was right there!”

  “Wha – ?” croaked Galfrid. But before he could articulate anything more, Gisburne, with another great guffaw, had grabbed the longbow from the corner of the room, taken up the quiver of arrows and – still in his nightshirt – was clumping away down the stairs.

  GISBURNE STOOD IN the dark silence of the back yard, a bodkin point arrow resting upon the bow. He laughed to himself – then chuckled more at the impression he would have given anyone watching. They would have thought him a madman. But he did not care. So many nights he had sat awake striving to puzzle out the mystery, with no relish for the day to come. But tonight, he was eager for the dawn.

  At the far end of the yard came a snuffling. Osekin’s pig was pushing its snout through the loose pickets of the fence, making a bid for Widow Fleet’s emerging turnip tops. Gisburne raised the bow, took aim, and began to draw. As if somehow aware, the pig fell suddenly silent and stood stock still, the white cross upon its back gleaming in the moonlight. Using all his strength, Gisburne drew the arrow to almost its full length. “Not today, Sir Pig,” he whispered, then turned and loosed the shaft into the drying post at the end of the yard.

  It split the four-inch thick post asunder and continued into the night, the thunderclap of its impact sending Osekin’s pig scrambling for refuge and setting dogs barking all across London.

  XLVI

  The Tower of London

  17 June, 1193

  ONCE MORE, GISBURNE stood before Hood in his cell. This time, it was Gisburne who was laughing. “Dickon...” he said. “Dickon!”

  That same look of fear flickered in Hood’s face.

  “All this time I was searching for this phantom in the hope that he might in some way help me understand you,” said Gisburne, pacing and turning about the cell as if he were the one caged. “But he was you. You are Dickon!”

  Hood merely looked confused, as if he was being spoken to by an idiot. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, old man...” But his fingers fidgeted with the necklace at his throat.

  In a fury, Gisburne grabbed Hood’s shackled wrists and hauled him to his feet.

  “Of course you do! You know it all. But your lies are catching up with you. And I vow to hasten them upon their course... Geoffrey of Lemsforde called upon you with two of his captains to recruit you for Henry’s secret service. But you declined. Why? Osanna said he seemed to recognise you. But where from? An army from which you deserted? Another life with which you grew bored – which you also left in flames? Not until later did Lemsforde recall where you had met. He came back alone to confront you. A fatal mistake – for him. You set afire the wagon, took your bow and arrows, and were gone.” Gisburne stood for a moment, his face inches from Hood’s. Hood’s eyes remained as empty of expression as a snake’s. Gisburne pushed him away in disgust. Hood fell back hard against the wall, then – chuckling quietly as if this were all part of some child’s game – slid down until he was sitting on the floor. Gisburne turned away, exasperated, and paced the cell. “And then what?” he muttered. “Who did you become next? Robert of Locksley? Or was there another before that – before we met in Syracuse?”

  “Ah, Syracuse!” smiled Hood, and slapped his knee. “Those were good times, weren’t they? Do you remember that Scottish archer with the one eye that looked way off to the left?” He laughed at the memory, shaking his head. “I wonder whatever became of him?”

  “He died, Robert,” said Gisburne. “Saving your neck. He scalped a Turcopole who was about to skewer your guts with his lance, then took one of our own incendiary arrows in his back. You left him burning.”

  Hood frowned at Gisburne’s words, as if trying to recall a lost dream, and failing.

  Gisburne sighed heavily. “Well, there’s no one to save your neck this time,” he said. “And you are the one who will burn.” For all that Hood had done – all the chaos and misery and false hope he had spread – it nonetheless tore at Gisburne. Hood had still been a friend, of sorts. Gisburne was not like him: he could hide his emotions, yes, but not turn them off. In a perverse way, the thought reassured him. “Your execution is now one week away. Your last chance to reveal the truth.”

  Hood looked back at him with a vacant expression. “Truth?” he said. He uttered the word as if it were in an unknown tongue.

  “What does it matter anyway?” said Gisburne in defeat. “It can’t change anything. Thessalonika. Hattin. Rose.”

  Hood perked up at the name. “Rose? Is Rose coming? How wonderful!” He grinned at the prospect, rubbing his hands in glee, his chains rattling, then looked suddenly perturbed. “I really should tidy up in here...”

  “She’s dead, too, Robert. You killed her. Don’t you even remember that? That poor whore in Jerusalem whose life you snuffed out? And I helped you bury her. Dear God...”

  “No, no... Rose is coming. To see me. You really should meet her, Guy. You’d like her.”

  And with that, he began to sing softly:

  “There is no rose of such virtue

  As is the rose that buried you

  Alleluia!”

  The song dissolved into another insane chuckle.

  GISBURNE DID NOT believe Hood’s mad act – not for one minute. Finally, he was done with him. “No more...” he said, and turned to the door. “You’ll not see me again, Robert.”

  But before he could reach it, from the gloom behind him came a peculiar, sing-song voice. “Mis-di-rection!”

  Gisburne stopped in his tracks. He turned. “What did you say?”

  Hood spread his hands. “Magic tricks. Remember those? I remember them. People always loved my magic tricks.”

  “I’ve no time for your mindless riddles,” said Gisburne. He turned again and hammered his fist on the door. “Guard!”

  “You see, the essence of a magic trick,” persisted Hood, wagging a raised finger, “is that the most important thing of all is happening while everyone is busy looking somewhere else.”

  Then he cocked his head and looked Gisburne straight in the eye. His eyes were burning with a strange intensity. It was not madness, but a fierce and unfathomable intelligence. As it bored into him, Gisburne felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

  “I’ve already wasted precious time looking in the wrong place,” he said. “And seen a life lost because of it. Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because I want to help you,” said Hood, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  Gisburne stared at Hood for a moment. His gaze did not falter. In his eyes there was no madness. “How does this help me?”

  “Because it’s what you most need to know.” He grinned. “The answers to your questions are far closer than you think.” And he tapped the
side of his head.

  Gisburne took a step towards him. “What do you mean?”

  The thick iron bolt was shot back, and the door creaked open. Two helmeted and armoured guards stood framed within the space it left. Hood raised his eyebrows. “Goodbye, Guy,” he said.

  “What does that mean,” demanded Gisburne, “‘closer than you think’?”

  But Hood simply sat, and smiled, and bowed his head, and sang quietly to himself.

  XLVII

  Jewen Street

  22 June, 1193

  FOUR DAYS PASSED. On three of them, the streets erupted into violent confrontation. None really knew who they were fighting, nor why – but fear fuelled their anger, and opened the door to their prejudices. Two Jews were beaten and left for dead. A burning brand was hurled into an inn where two of the perpetrators were known to drink. It was swiftly extinguished – but still the city smouldered. A red hand print appeared on the stones of St Paul’s. It proved to be paint, not blood – but Gisburne did not doubt that blood would follow.

  He and Galfrid, meanwhile, puzzled further over the document. Gisburne quizzed de Rosseley and Prince John about the names it contained – but the questions yielded nothing. And, at Gisburne’s insistence, Galfrid did not search for Ranulph.

  “But you said we must find him,” Galfrid had said.

  “It is in hand,” said Gisburne, but would say no more. Instead, he had instructed Galfrid to keep up casual contact with Isaac – both to keep him safe, and to make sure he kept him abreast of their investigations. That, Galfrid had done.