Hunter of Sherwood: The Red Hand

by Toby Venables

  With that, Took turned towards his men. His eyes, glittering in the cool light, moved methodically from face to face, scanning each in turn. Men shifted nervously as the gaze passed. Some began to mutter. Took’s eyes drew closer – met with Hereward’s. Hereward stood straight, defiant, determined to hold the monk’s piercing gaze until it had moved on.

  But it did not.

  Took, staring fixedly at Hereward, raised his right arm, his finger pointing, his expression cold. “Him,” he said.

  All eyes turned upon the object of his gaze. Space cleared as those closest to it backed away.

  And then Hereward knew he was dead.

  LIII

  The Tower of London

  23 June, 1193

  LATE UPON ST John’s Eve, Guy of Gisburne and his squire Galfrid presented themselves at the gates of the Tower of London. The guards at the gatehouse – several of whom now knew Gisburne by sight, and who greeted him genially – were just as reticent as ever to admit them. Now, at least, they had the courtesy to obstruct him with apology and regret, and Gisburne understood, finally, that their hands were tied – that it was Fitz Thomas, and no other, who determined to make his life difficult. Finally, the gates creaked open, and Gisburne – longbow over one shoulder, quiver hanging at his saddle – rode into the castle ward with his squire at his side.

  And thus it was that the great longbow returned to the Tower.

  Within the castle, all was the same as ever. Grooms and servants went about their business as if this day were no different from any other. It seemed impossible to Gisburne that life here could carry on in a state of such total oblivion.

  There was, however, one deviation from normality. At the centre of yard, before the keep’s west wall, a scaffold was under construction. Hood’s scaffold. Before it stood a beaming Fitz Thomas, admiring the work as if it were all his own idea, and his own sweat. So low had the man now fallen in Gisburne’s opinion that he found himself unable to believe the Lieutenant capable of admiring things in any other way. It was his – in fact, or by some imagined right – or it was nothing.

  “Magnificent beast, isn’t it?” he called across to Gisburne with a smile. The hearty relish with which he regarded this instrument of execution made Gisburne feel sick. He and Galfrid dismounted, and the squire led the horses away to the stable. “I imagine you have come to see that all preparations are in order for tomorrow?” said Fitz Thomas. “The big day! Well, I can assure you they are. And what is more –”

  “I have no interest in what is happening tomorrow,” interrupted Gisburne. “Only in ensuring we reach it.”

  Fitz Thomas guffawed as if Gisburne had made some unintelligible theological pronouncement of dubious scholarship, pulled a face at one of the workmen, who laughed dutifully, then looked back at Gisburne. “Well, God willing,” he chortled.

  “It’ll take more than God,” said Gisburne. “We need men. Armed and ready. For tonight he will come.”

  Fitz Thomas stared at him with what Gisburne finally realised was a kind of pity. The Lieutenant laughed as one might laugh at a deluded infant, or a particularly dim dog. “Are you still fretting about this Red Hand of yours?” Gisburne half expected to receive a pat on the head as he said it. “This is the Tower of London!” As if this, and this alone, were the entire answer to the problem, Fitz Thomas spread his hands wide and chuckled ever more heartily, catching the eye of one of the carpenters upon the scaffold as he did so. The man joined his laughter, and one by one, his fellows joined him.

  Gisburne’s patience was gone. Today was the last day. Perhaps the final time he would ever see the Lieutenant of the Tower. He would not be missed – and Gisburne no longer cared much whether he offended him. But he did need his co-operation until this thing was done.

  That morning, as predicted, Mélisande was gone. How, he would never know – years of practice creeping past armed guards, he supposed. Then he had gathered his things, ensured that money was left for Widow Fleet should he not return, and as much for his own sake as his host’s, he had washed his walls clean. All of those obsessive marks – all the words, numbers, pictures and plans – were now meaningless. Now, there was only action.

  “I need your help,” said Gisburne. “We must work together to prevent this catastrophe – to safeguard the life of the Prince, and to bring the Red Hand’s reign of terror to an end. And for that, I need your men at my disposal. To distribute around the fortress. There are things that we can do. Traps that we can lay. I know this enemy – how he will try to trick us, how he will attack. This way, we have the best chance of bringing him to justice.”

  Fitz Thomas frowned and nodded sagely. It was clear he had barely listened to half of what Gisburne had said. “But you see, the problems are not within these walls, but out there.” He gestured to the city beyond. “The people are in a state of turmoil. They are afraid – whipped up, may I say, by stories such as the one you continue to spin!” He laughed, and looked to the workmen again for support. This time, they studiously avoided his gaze. “These poor folk look to us to help them in their hour of need. And for that reason, the Tower garrison has been put at the disposal of the City to help keep the peace – a gesture to the Lord Mayor, Henry Fitz Ailwyn.” He smiled a patronising smile. “You see, there are more important collaborations, Sir Guy. It is not all about you and your needs.”

  Gisburne fumed. He wished, there and then, to dash out Fitz Thomas’s brains. “Are you telling me that at a time of threat, the foremost royal palace in England is without a garrison? Whose idiotic idea was that?”

  Fitz Thomas’s sickly smile curdled, but the Lieutenant recovered. “You talk of threat...” he said, smiling again. “But it is one man! Let him come, I say. Let him be broken against these walls!” He sighed, and smiled again, and then explained as if to a deaf old woman. “Relations between the Lord Mayor and the Crown are delicate. It will be good for the city. Good for us all.”

  “Well, that’s something,” said Gisburne. “Next morning, when they find you, your men, your dog and the king’s own brother slaughtered and the Tower put to the torch, we will at least have good relations with the Lord Mayor to fall back on.”

  At that, Fitz Thomas’s mask of affability fell away completely, and Gisburne found himself staring at the face of a bitter, hateful old man, his eyes devoid of sympathy or care. With a reddening face, Fitz Thomas stepped towards him. “I give you my permission to move freely within these walls,” he rasped, spit hitting Gisburne’s chest. “But should you interfere with the running of my castle, or attempt to foist your orders upon my men, you will be cast out of those gates!”

  “You can’t do that,” said Gisburne.

  “I’ll do as I like!” snapped Fitz Thomas. He was shaking with fury. Gisburne watched as the Lieutenant fought it down, then plastered another false smirk across his face. “Well... Now that is understood, I’m sure we can continue to be friends.” And with that he turned and walked away, exchanging a joke with the watchman as he went.

  “THAT LOOKED LIKE fun,” said Galfrid, weighed down with their gear.

  “He threatened to have us thrown out,” said Gisburne.

  Galfrid looked around. “D’you think there are enough here to do that?”

  Gisburne gave a humourless snort. “I said he couldn’t. I think he misunderstood. So how’s it looking?”

  “Not good. We have a fair army of cooks, scullions, stable lads and pages, but beyond that...”

  “How many guards do you count?”

  Galfrid puffed out his cheeks. “Four on the gate. A few on the Towers. A couple loitering over by the stable. In all, I’d say no more than a dozen.”

  “The heart of England, presided over by that oaf and a dozen men... And them not even the pick of the crop.”

  Gisburne sighed, and looked westward towards the city. The evening sun was setting beyond the wall, its deep shadow creeping across the yard. “Prepare the weapons,” he said.

  LIV

  IT
WAS CLOSE to midnight when Gisburne and his squire stood upon the battlements of the White Tower, watching for whatever might come. John had been forewarned, and was secured within. There was little more they could do now but wait.

  Gisburne leaned on the stone parapet and faced into the steady breeze, gazing towards the glinting water of the river.

  Galfrid looked across at the two Tower guards upon the battlement, who had at least afforded them the courtesy of keeping their distance. “You haven’t yet asked what Ranulph Le Fort told me,” he said.

  “You’ll tell me in your own time,” said Galfrid with a shrug. “If you need to.”

  “I need to,” said Gisburne. “Want to. You deserve to know.”

  Galfrid nodded slowly. “Was he able to fill the gaps in our knowledge?”

  “Yes. And more.” Gisburne sighed. “It transpires that Ranulph was one of the men my father trusted most in the world. Everyone trusted Ranulph, it seems. Well, you’ve seen him... He’s a force to be reckoned with. And uncompromising. One of the reasons, I suspect, why he never became rich. So much did my father have faith in Ranulph, that he charged him with carrying out one of his last wishes – delivering a casket in the event of his death. To Ireland. To a woman named Liadan.”

  “Liadan?” said Galfrid. “Is that...?”

  “Yes,” said Gisburne. “The name upon the parchment. The one we could not read. Whether my father had obscured it deliberately, or through some impulse of which even he was not aware, we will never know. But Liadan was the widow of the chieftain Faelan Ua Dubhghail. It was my father Ua Dubhghail had been coming to kill that night – the night Ranulph intercepted and killed him, and lost his fingers. There was a word I occasionally heard my father mutter in his sleep. I never understood it. But now I do. I understand it all. It was Liadan’s name he uttered. The name of the woman he had met that first time in Ireland. Who he met again when he returned with John, when her jealous husband sought him out, out of revenge, or for fear that their love may be rekindled.”

  Only when he spoke these words, the matters behind them being made more real, did Gisburne realise how hard it was to accept this truth – to face the fact of his own father’s infidelity. There was pain in pushing them out – but, like a bad wound, it felt good, and right, to get rid of the poison.

  “She must have meant a good deal to him,” he continued, steadily. “Or perhaps he was wrestling with his guilt. Either way, he left her what little wealth he had left. Not much. Ranulph did not know what was in the casket – and being a man of trust, did not look. But it seemed that, alongside the small quantity of silver, it contained documents from the Irish expedition – including the third copy of the Milford Roll – and a letter to Liadan, penned by my father. Perhaps he hoped to make amends by it. If so, it did not have the desired effect. In fact, it was the spark that lit the inferno which now threatens to engulf us.” He turned his face away from the squire.

  “My father did not think beyond Liadan being a widow. But she’d had the good to fortune to have remarried, and into a noble Irish household. Her husband discovered the letter, learned the truth. Liadan and her two sons were cast out – disgraced and disinherited. Ranulph later learned, to his horror, that Liadan had died by her own hand.” He sighed heavily once again, and bowed his head.

  “And so to the final detail... The younger of Liadan’s two sons – thirteen in the year of John’s expedition – had been of prodigious size and strength. He looked, by all accounts, very different from his brother. There had always been cruel whispers about his parentage. When driven out, penniless, he had been forced to find a trade. He did so – as a blacksmith and tinsmith. That boy would now be twenty-one.” Gisburne paused, took a deep breath, then continued. “When my father went to Ireland the first time, for King Henry, it was the spring of the year 1171.”

  Galfrid frowned at this information. “Spring of 1171. That would have been –”

  Gisburne anticipated him. “Twenty-two years ago. Nine months before the boy’s birth.”

  For a time, they stood in silence, then Gisburne spoke again. “Through all of this, as we have crept closer to this truth, there is one fundamental error that we have made. It has been with us right from the very start, nudging us off course.” He turned to Galfrid. “He’s not coming for John. He’s coming for me.”

  GISBURNE TURNED BACK towards the river, and as he did so, a patch of pale white caught his eye. There, in the moonlight, he could make out the sail of a ship: Baylesford’s, leaving upon the tide. Somewhere on it was Ranulph Le Fort – and Mélisande. It was coming closer, sailing past them to the sea, and on to France. His heart was heavy at the sight of it. He would have done anything – paid any price – to have her with him now. But he knew it had been right to send her away, to safety. This was his fight alone. It had always been so.

  It was, he now knew, the revenge of a son upon a son. What the Red Hand had always known was that wherever John was under threat, there would Gisburne be. He had known John would come to the Tower. He had known Gisburne would come to protect him. He had known too that Gisburne would torture himself almost to madness chasing the murdering phantom around the city. Gisburne had done everything the Red Hand had wanted – unwittingly, and unaware that he himself was the focus of all his hatred.

  As Gisburne stared towards the steadily approaching ship, half in a dream, it seemed a weird light flickered. He blinked, thought he had imagined it. But there it was again, seemingly upon the ship itself. In a great burst, the whole sail seemed to light up, as if it somehow had the sun behind it. A shout went up from one of the guards upon the battlement. Then Gisburne saw the flames.

  “Mélisande...” The name caught in his constricted throat.

  Cries broke out on the shore far below. Bright with flame, but still with a head of speed from the brisk wind, the ship suddenly veered to port. He heard a great creak and a crack of timbers as it turned sharply towards the one weak point in the Tower’s outer curtain wall: the wide inlet that cut through from the river – a half-completed moat abandoned by Longchamp. There was a horrid familiarity about the scene now unfolding. This had been Gisburne’s point of entry to the Tower complex over a year earlier. And he, too, had set a ship afire.

  The entire vessel shuddered as it smashed through the staves bristling the mouth of the inlet. Cries of alarm echoed all about the shore. Driving deep inland, the ship struck the bank, rose halfway up it with a great groan of timbers, and keeled to one side, flames leaping high into the night sky.

  Gisburne stared, sick to his heart.

  “It’s begun,” he said.

  LV

  IT WAS AS if the sun had risen in the castle ward. Even as Gisburne emerged from the keep, he could feel the heat from the flaming wreck. “Get more men on this door!” he bellowed at the guard, and ran down the stone steps to the castle ward.

  All about it, dark silhouettes of panic-stricken servants flitted, fetching water and hurling it wherever they could reach. Some drenched the nearest buildings and trees as proof against the fire spreading, whilst the meagre remains of the garrison dodged about in response to Fitz Thomas’s orders, barked above the crackle and roar of the flames – some gripping spears and crossbows, others helping to move water, but almost all without clear direction, and to little effect.

  “He’s here,” said Gisburne looking about him.

  “How can you be sure?” says Galfrid.

  “Because it’s what I did. The same trick. The most important thing of all is happening while everyone is looking somewhere else – that’s what Hood said.”

  “But what is the most important thing?” said Galfrid. “Where is he headed? The keep? Or there?” The squire pointed to the far tower in which Hood was held prisoner. Gisburne looked at it, then back to the keep. It was an impossible choice. But there were only two of them. They could not cover it all.

  “The keep,” he said. “It has to be the keep. If we could only get more men...” He ran to Fitz Thoma
s, and caught hold his arm.

  “Leave the ship to burn,” he shouted. “There’s nothing more to be done here. We must secure the Tower.”

  Fitz Thomas turned to him, his face red and sweating from the heat. “Are you mad? A fire is raging at the very heart of the kingdom, and you tell me to simply ignore it?”

  Gisburne almost laughed aloud at his words. “The heart of the kingdom...” Only now did the Lieutenant show concern. “The fire is not the issue,” insisted Gisburne.

  Fitz Thomas gave a sarcastic laugh and held out his hands towards the inferno. “You think this is not an issue?”

  “It’s a distraction to keep you busy while the Red Hand makes his way in there!” He pointed towards the gaunt edifice of the White Tower.

  “Good luck to him!” scoffed Fitz Thomas. “He’ll be banging his head against the most secure walls in England.” But Gisburne could see he was close to panic.

  “You’re doing exactly what he wants.” said Gisburne.

  “I am doing exactly what I want!” snapped Fitz Thomas. “Instead you would have me do what you want, but what do you know of it?”

  “More than you! I have tracked this man for six weeks – have faced him in combat.”

  “And yet still he runs free! Not a resounding success, is it Sir Guy? Well, this is my domain. Mine! I am the commander of this garrison and custodian of this castle. Me! Not you. And I will do as I like.”

  Gisburne turned to any member of the Tower garrison who were near enough to hear. “We must search the Tower wards for an intruder,” he shouted above the din. “Someone who may have jumped from the ship as it ran aground. He is a big man –”