Hunter of Sherwood: The Red Hand

by Toby Venables

  At the sight of it, Gisburne – utterly drained – dropped to his knees upon the damp earth. As he looked into that face – hauntingly familiar, though seen for the first time – he wondered why so many of his victories filled him with such bitter sorrow.

  SOME DISTANCE AWAY, a small group of people was gathering, at least half of them Tower guards. All stared down in disbelief, paralysed by what they saw. A woman wailed and sobbed uncontrollably.

  Gisburne stood and moved to join them. Galfrid and Mélisande followed his flame.

  This body contrasted in every way with the other. It was face down – broken and contorted and covered in blood. Gisburne nudged the body with his foot and rolled it over, to a collective gasp of horror. As the head lolled back, the slashed neck wound yawned open like a lipless mouth. The woman’s sobs pierced the air.

  Gisburne drew his torch closer to the face. As he did so, Galfrid frowned. Here were John’s clothes, John’s hair and complexion, John’s stature. Even, somewhere behind the terrible injuries, John’s face. Yet as they looked upon him now, in the full light, all began to understand.

  It was not John.

  “Behold, Edric, son of Ælfric,” said Gisburne. “A weaver from Pocklington who had the dubious honour of looking every inch like our noble Prince.” This was the man who had taken John’s place with his entourage on the journey from Nottingham, who had caused Gisburne and the real Prince to be kept waiting outside the Tower gates. As the truth was revealed, a murmur gradually rose. None now knew whether to rejoice or to continue mourning.

  “Then where is Prince John?” said Galfrid.

  “Hidden with Llewellyn in the bowels of the castle,” said Gisburne, “accompanied by the last two members of his bodyguard. It is a place none but a handful of people know. I had thought it prudent to consider additional precautions should our defences be breached.” He sighed heavily as he looked upon the battered body. “I gave him the choice. At least, I hope I did. He knew of the dangers. Yet he accepted the task without question.” This man – this humble weaver, who had cowered in his wagon from Nottingham to London – was, Gisburne thought, one of the bravest men he had ever met. He only wished he could have saved his life, instead of hastening its end.

  “Misdirection...” he muttered, to no one but himself.

  THE SPELL WAS broken by the jovial tones of Fitz Thomas, as he bustled over in a state of self-important jubilation, his hands held aloft in triumph. Behind him scuttled a hunched servant bearing a tray of cups and a flagon.

  “A great day!” Fitz Thomas proclaimed, rubbing his hands in glee. “The fire is contained, the Red Hand vanquished and I hear now that the Prince yet lives! A great day indeed!”

  “A great day?” said Gisburne, barely able to conceal his disgust. “Six men lay dead. One of them at your feet.”

  “Ah, yes, of course,” huffed Fitz Thomas. “Very sad. Tragic. Yes.” He grinned once more, his token grieving completed. “But a victory! Still a victory! And so here...” Turning to the servant, he took up the flagon and filled a cup with wine. He thrust it into Gisburne’s hand, then proceeded to fill another. “I think you have earned this, my friend. So let us drink to success, and –”

  Fitz Thomas never completed the sentence. When he looked back on it, Gisburne would recall a distinct sound which, had he not been distracted, he might have identified. But all he knew at the time was that sudden stop, and a weird look of surprise upon Fitz Thomas’s face. The flagon tipped in his hand, splattering wine upon the earth, then both flagon and cup were dropped. He staggered forward a step, blood appearing from nowhere on his white surcoat, and spreading from the centre of his breastbone. There were screams. His eyes bulged. His throat gurgled. More blood frothed and cascaded from his contorting mouth, and with a sickening crunch, the gory spike of a polearm burst from his chest.

  The crowd scattered, but Gisburne stood rooted to the spot as Fitz Thomas’s body began to rise into the air before him, hoisted on the polearm’s point until it was flailing like a beetle on a pin. Behind him – roaring, now, with the effort – was the Red Hand, smashed, bloody, but alive, his eyes wild. How he lived – how he had survived such a fall – Gisburne could not comprehend, but before he could move, the body of Fitz Thomas was flung away, crumpling upon the ground like a doll, and the Red Hand lurched unsteadily towards him. He swatted Galfrid aside, grasping at Gisburne with outstretched hands.

  Falling back, stumbling on uneven ground, Gisburne thrust at his attacker with the torch. Sparks flew at the impact – and the Red Hand burst into a fierce column of flame.

  With a great howl he ran headlong, the heat near roasting Gisburne as he passed. Running blindly, he plunged off the steep edge of the half-constructed moat, and with great spray of water and a hiss of steam was sucked into its dark, weedy depths by the weight of his own armour.

  LIX

  IT WAS SOME time before the assembled company gathered their wits and allowed themselves to believe the danger was past. Mélisande hauled Galfrid to his feet, and together they crept to edge of the black water. There Gisburne stood, staring at the still-rippling surface of the moat.

  Mélisande stood beside him. “I have never seen a human body cling so determinedly to life,” she said. “It took all the elements to kill him: air, earth, fire and water.”

  “Who was he?” asked one of the Tower guards.

  “Niall Ua Dubhghail,” says Gisburne. Then added: “My brother.”

  GISBURNE TURNED HIS back on the dark water then. “We’re done,” he said to Galfrid.

  “Not quite,” said Galfrid, and looked up at the sky, already beginning to redden with the returning sun. “There’s an execution come dawn.”

  “I’ve no taste for it,” said Gisburne. Galfrid simply nodded.

  Wearily, Gisburne looked up at the White Tower. Within, the injured were having their wounds tended by the still able-bodied Hospitallers. Some, he knew, would not survive. But Ranulph would live to fight another day – or to spend it in quiet contemplation. Gisburne would suggest the latter.

  As he turned, he gazed back towards the octagonal tower at the far south-west corner of the outer wall – thankfully far from the night’s chaos. There, he could see, the two Hospitaller knights still stood guard over the outer door. “We must remember to relieve our Hospitaller friends before we go,” he said, gesturing towards the tower. “I think the prisoner is now safe up there without their presence. Or ours.”

  At that, a member of the garrison – one who Gisburne recognised as having regularly guarded Hood’s cell – frowned, and stepped forward. “Pardon me, sire,” he said, hesitantly. “But you don’t mean to refer to Hood?”

  “Yes,” said Gisburne. “Why?”

  “He’s not in that tower, sire. Hasn’t been all night.” Gisburne’s blood froze in his veins. “He was moved, earlier today – I mean, yesterday. Before all this. I took him across myself.”

  “Across? Across where?”

  “The stables,” said the guard. “Over yonder.” He pointed towards the stable block, a stone’s throw from the main gate.

  “What idiot ordered that?” fumed Gisburne.

  “The stables are attached to the garrison,” observed Mélisande. “There may be some logic in it.”

  “But the garrison is empty,” said Gisburne. He turned again on the guard. “Hood was the prisoner of the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire,” he fumed. “On whose authority was he moved?”

  “The Sheriff himself,” said the guard. “Sir William de Wendenal.”

  Gisburne and Galfrid stared at each other. “That is not possible,” said Gisburne.

  “But I saw the order,” protested the guard. His manner was nervous. “It bore his seal. There was no question. It said he was to be moved in the light of the threat from the Red Hand.”

  “Who brought this order?” demanded Gisburne.

  “A young lady,” said the guard. “Nobility. She was not expected, but Sir William welcomed her.”<
br />
  “Of course he bloody did...” muttered Galfrid.

  “Name, man!” demanded Gisburne. “What was her name?”

  The guard looked from face to face, and swallowed hard. “Lady Marian Fitzwalter.”

  Gisburne felt his world collapse around him. Marian. His Marian. Daughter of one of the most respected knights in the land, last seen associating with a sympathiser of Hood. And carrying the orders of a dead man – stamped by the seal ring that had been upon his severed right hand. Pieces of the mosaic – until now, meaningless shards – clicked together, the pattern suddenly becoming clear. The Red Hand had given Hood’s men that ring. In return, they had given him the information he needed to enact his revenge – had even brought him to Tancred – and used the attack as a diversion from their own rescue. As a final insult, they had tricked the Tower’s own guard into moving Hood – to a place a child could break out of. A child...

  The final piece of the picture fell into place. The face of a boy, in a tavern outside Nottingham, who had raved about Hood. And the same face, just hours before, here within the Tower, carrying bread towards an empty garrison.

  Without a word, Gisburne turned and raced towards the stable block.

  LX

  MICEL LOOKED DOWN in numb silence at the knife in his hand, and the dead, bloody body of the boy – the same age as him, more or less. His first kill.

  “You bunch of rogues took your damned time!” laughed Hood, and clapped his arms around them in hearty greeting. He stood now, unbound and beaming, surrounded by the principal members of his loyal band, Took and John Lyttel – dressed as Tower guards – and in her finest gown, Marian. Beyond the door, the crackling fire ship – whose arrival moments before had been their signal to move – bathed the stable’s interior in orange light.

  Micel supposed it the greatest of honours to be included among this select company, and to be witness to this momentous deed. He had long anticipated this moment – had looked forward to it, and worked towards it with every ounce of his being. Yet he found that he felt nothing at all. Perhaps it was necessary. Perhaps this was the price you paid for becoming inured to death.

  Hood was exactly where they said he would be – where Marian had made sure he would be. He had been tied like a hog, but the guard had been minimal, enacting their plan was absurdly easy.

  Three guards and a stable lad now lay dead upon the straw. The stable lad had been his; they had saved that kill for him. Micel stared at the still-warm corpses – slabs of meat that only moments before had been living, breathing beings, with dread and sorrow and regret in their eyes. Time and again he went over the violence of the past few minutes, but he could make nothing of them. What lay at his feet now was utterly without meaning.

  He glanced up and saw Marian staring, hollow-eyed, at the same butchery. Yet what went on behind those eyes seemed just as distant, just as unfathomable.

  Hood rubbed his wrists, and – laughing heartily – stepped forward and caught hold her arm. She snapped out of her weird reverie and smiled weakly.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m all right.” Her voice cracked slightly even as she tried to reassure him.

  “But of course you are!” laughed Hood. “We’re all together again!”

  Micel saw her fists clench and her back straighten, as if she were steeling herself.

  “I know this was necessary,” she said. “For the greater good.”

  Hood regarded her as one regards a child speaking charming but meaningless babble, then threw his great arms about her. “My sweet Rose!” he chuckled.

  “We must hurry,” said Took. “They won’t be distracted forever. If the gatehouse guards get wind of what’s afoot...”

  “They’ll let us pass,” said Lyttel. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  Then Micel saw Hood’s eyes upon him. It was the first time his idol had stood before him as a free man. The moment had fuelled a thousand fantasies, but now it was real. Somehow the man appeared not as indestructible, the scene not as composed, the colours not as bright as in all his imaginings. And yet, there was that spark lighting up the man’s face – something he could not have imagined before meeting him – that rooted him to the spot. The outlaw king stepped past Marian, and nudged Micel upon the arm. “And this is the fine fellow who made it all possible! Where’d you find him?”

  “Starving and half-dead in the forest,” said Lyttel. “He’d killed one of the king’s deer, but didn’t look like he had much idea what to do with it next. He’d come looking to join us. I took him under my wing.”

  Hood placed his hands upon his knees and bent towards the boy. “Every day you brought me food,” he said, his beaming face and white teeth looming down at him. “Yet still I do not even know your name.”

  “Micel.” He had meant it to sound strong and fearless, but what he heard coming from his mouth was the voice of a nervous child.

  Hood roared with laughter at that. He gestured to the big man – “So, you are Little” – and then to the boy – “and he is Much! Well, there is no better, or bigger, wing to be under than that of John the Miller.”

  An anxious Took looked out into the castle ward, then dodged back in. “We must go.”

  But Hood, refusing to be hurried, bent down, dipped his finger in the blood of the dead stable boy, and smeared a red mark upon Micel’s forehead. “Now you are truly one of us.”

  “Please,” said Took, “God is with us, but even His patience is not infinite.”

  Hood ruffled Micel’s hair and turned. “So, how do we make our escape from this wretched place? Plunging into the river? Leaping from the battlements?”

  “We walk out,” said Took. “In plain sight, through the main gate, with you as our prisoner. Lady Marian is known; she carries the seal of the Sheriff. And we have a familiar face...” He gestured to John Lyttel. Micel had learned the big man was once a guard within these very walls. It was his knowledge that had furnished the Red Hand, and provided the means for the plan, but it was Took had given it shape.

  The rebel monk shoved a page’s hat upon Micel’s head, then wrapped rope around Hood’s wrists so they once again appeared bound. “God will make them blind,” he said. And, taking up positions either side of him, with Micel walking alongside Marian, Took and Lyttel closed the stable door behind them and led Robin Hood to freedom.

  LXI

  THE STABLE STALL lay open and empty, the straw soaked with the blood of the dead.

  Exhausted, beaten, his shoulder feeling like it had been wrenched from its socket, Gisburne contemplated the disaster. And in the face of it all – even in the presence of this slaughter – he found himself laughing. How could he have been so stupid? Every day the boy brings the bread and potage. Hood had said it to his face. And still, he had not seen it – how Hood had got information from outside. It was the boy. All along, it was the boy – the least regarded. He was just the lad who fetched and carried – and they had checked everything he fetched, everything he carried. For blades. For messages. But none had spared a thought for what the boy himself might whisper in those fleeting moments. The most important thing of all is happening while everyone is busy looking somewhere else. Hood himself had said it. The answers to your questions are far closer than you think...

  As he stood there, a figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the glow of the blazing ship. Gisburne half turned to face Prince John – the real Prince John. He gazed about in horror.

  “What in God’s name...?”

  “He’s gone,” said Gisburne.

  “What?”

  “Hood. Gone. Whilst we chased after our killer – as they knew we would – they took him. From here, where they had made sure he had been moved. And it was Marian who did it.” He laughed again. “Marian!”

  “We must alert the guard!” cried John, turning for the door. Gisburne now saw that two of his own men – the very last remaining to him – were positioned outside.

  “It’s too late,” he said.r />
  “But if we move swiftly...”

  “It’s too late!” snapped Gisburne. “He will have disappeared into the city as surely as if it were a forest. Another rat in a city of rats.”

  “Surely we must try to...”

  “No!” shouted Gisburne. “No more.”

  John’s guards looked in on the stable, hands on their swords; the Prince signalled for them to leave. He and Gisburne stood in silence.

  “Very well,” John nodded. “You are tired. I know that. These past months have taken their toll. But we must not let this setback defeat us.”

  Gisburne stared at the ground, his jaw clenched, every bone in his body aching. “You knew...” he muttered. “About my father. About this...” He gestured towards the fire, the Tower, the swirling, green-black water into which the Red Hand had plunged. “What hope have we when our enemies work together, and we cannot?”

  “I suspected,” said John, defensively. “I knew of the scandal, yes. Seen a possible connection. But I was trying to protect you from...”

  Before he could finish, Gisburne had grabbed the Prince by fistfuls of his tunic and lifted him onto his toes. “You knew!” he roared, and flung him across the stable, sending him sprawling amongst the bodies and straw. What would come of it, Gisburne neither knew nor cared. He was done.