Outlaw (20 page)

The fire was almost out now but a greyness had began to fill the clearing. But as I leaned on my club, breathless, exhausted, I saw that there were still fifteen or so animals slavering in a half ring around the tree. Was this my end? Was my fate to be worn down by these monsters, and then torn apart and devoured? I lifted the club with great difficulty and swung feebly at one of the beasts as he feinted towards me. His brothers did not move. Their great pink tongues lolled from their jaws and they seemed to be laughing at our feeble attempts to fight them off. Goody was wrapping a piece of torn shirt about my wounded arm when, as if by a silent signal, all the wolves advanced together. I waved my club, biting my lip from the searing pain in my arm. Bernard managed to hit one great wolf a smart crack on the skull and the animal howled and scuttled out of range. And then, suddenly, all together, the animals froze and turned to face the far end of the clearing. It was almost comical: the animals, for an instant, all absolutely still in the attitudes of attack as if they had been turned to stone. I turned to look in the direction they were all staring and my heart leapt as, out of the treeline, raced the two biggest dogs I have ever seen. As big as bull calves, coats red and grey, with massive square heads and terrible jaws that could bite through a grown man’s leg, two huge hounds came bounding across the clearing. Crossing it in a couple of heartbeats, they piled straight into the wolves. Though they were outnumbered nearly eight to one, it was no contest. One of the huge hounds seized a young wolf’s head in its massive jaws and crunched straight through into its skull. The other ducked and plunged its fangs into a wolf belly and ripped out a trail of red and yellow intestines before turning to snap gorily at another cringing grey form. Men were spilling into the clearing, too. Some on horseback, some on foot. The wolves were now in full retreat, tearing away across the snow, pursued by the two giant hounds. One horseman, holding a strung war bow, galloped into view, leapt from his mount and, without pausing for breath, drew and loosed an arrow that skewered a running wolf through the body and left it kicking and yelping in the snow. It was Robin, I saw, with a surge of joy. And beside him was Tuck, firing arrow after arrow at the disappearing pack, and the huge shape of Little John and half a dozen other much-missed friends.

‘About bloody time,’ muttered Bernard. And he dropped his branch and collapsed in a heap in the wolf-churned frozen mush.

Chapter Ten

I fell to my knees in the snow, dropping the club and finally allowing my bone-weary arms to dangle from the shoulders. Robin was here. I didn’t know why and how he had appeared in the nick of time to save us from certain death, and in my soaring relief, I didn’t care.

Tuck came over and lifted me to my feet. He enfolded me in his brawny arms and I felt his great warmth and strength flow into me. He tended to my arm, cleaning it quickly and wrapping it in a fresh bandage. Robin greeted me, stared into my face with his great silver eyes, and congratulated me on my survival. He looked pleased to see me and I felt the familiar glow of affection for him. Then he thanked me for rescuing Godifa. ‘It was she who saved me,’ I said, my voice unsteady with relief. And I told all of them how she had slain Ralph, the wildman, and helped to fight off the wolves with my poniard. Goody just stood there with her head hanging, looking more guilty than heroic, but the men all made a great fuss of her, telling her that she was her father’s daughter, and that he would have been proud of her, which made her choke back a sob.

Best of all, Robin’s men had brought food. John spread thick woollen blankets on the snow, and we fell on the cold meat, cheese and bread that they provided from their saddlebags. Bernard discovered a skin of wine and appeared to be trying to drink it all in one huge draught. Tuck had looked at the bump on his head and allowed that he probably wouldn’t die immediately. In fact, the wine and food revived Bernard sufficiently that, sitting on a crumb-strewn blanket in that snowy clearing, he even began to compose what would later be known as ‘The Death Song of the Sherwood Werewolf’, an eldritch melody mimicking the howls of wild wolves, that tells of the beast that lurks in the hearts of all men. I could hear him humming under his breath between gulps of wine. He performed it some weeks later, in a cosy fire-lit cave when I was surrounded by dozens of Robin’s warriors, and even in that stout company, it chilled my soul.

There was one incident that struck me as a little strange, though. Robin had brought a prisoner with him, a common soldier of middle age or even slightly older, with a hangdog, frightened expression on his saggy face, and a painful-looking wound in his shoulder from an arrow that prevented him from lifting his right arm to defend himself. Robin told me that he had encountered a small group of Murdac’s men while he was searching for survivors of the massacre at Thangbrand’s. They had quickly destroyed this handful of enemy soldiers but, unusually, instead of dispatching all the surviving warriors cleanly and quickly, Robin had insisted on keeping this man alive. Looking at him, and remembering Sir John Peveril, I suppressed a shudder. Seated on a horse, with his legs bound underneath the animal’s belly and his good hand tied to the pommel, he was a forlorn figure. I went over to speak to him, but Robin stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t talk to him, Alan; in fact, don’t even look at him,’ he said. ‘Just make believe he doesn’t exist, that he’s a ghost.’

I stared at him. Was he contemplating another ghastly mutilation? But I dared not disobey, so I avoided the poor man. May God have mercy on my soul.

My recollection of the rescue fades at this point. Perhaps it was the shock of the past few days that robbed me of my memories, perhaps the wolf bite or my total exhaustion. Perhaps it is just the price of living such a long time: I am old now, by any standard. And the details of some parts of my life have become blurred and some moments disappear from the mind altogether. But some memories are clear as a crystal mountain stream, and one of those was my first council of war with Robin’s men at the Caves.

We must have packed up our belongings in the clearing, though I don’t remember it, and mounted the horses. And Tuck must have called his great wolfhounds to heel: they were Gog and Magog, he told me later, and he insisted that they were still puppies. A friend had given them to him and he was training them for war, he said. But puppies or not, I never found myself entirely comfortable in their presence, knowing that these huge canines could rip one of my arms off with no more effort than it would take me to pull a drumstick off a capon.

Doubtless we rode away through the forest for many hours, though I can recall not one thing of the journey. And, presumably, when we reached Robin’s secret base, half a dozen great caves deep in Sherwood, my wounded arm was attended to and I was allocated a place to sleep. I must also have spent some days recovering from my recent ordeal but this too has slipped my memory: my recollections revive at a long table loaded with food and drink, three or four days after the fight with the wolf pack. Robin was seated at the head, flanked by Hugh and Little John. The benches down the sides of the table were filled with outlaw soldiers eating a midday meal of roast venison off solid gold plates that bounced the light from outside the cave on to the low ceiling. I had never seen such splendour before and I was shocked by the casual way that the men banged these precious plates about and scraped them with their knives. Right at the bottom of the table, Will Scarlet and I sat sharing a boiled capon with onion sauce. Tuck was absent; he almost never joined in the councils of Robin, saying, only half in jest, that it offended his Christian soul to hear the wicked plots of evil men.

Bernard took no part in our deliberations either; he and Goody were in a separate cave where they were polishing ‘The Death Song of the Sherwood Werewolf’, Goody providing a spine-chilling howl-like accompaniment. She had made an astounding recovery since her adventure and seemed to be her bright and cheerful self once again, although she liked to keep either Bernard or myself close by her at all times and I did hear her sobbing quietly beneath the covers once or twice, when the pain in my bitten arm prevented sleep.

Hugh and Will Scarlet, I discovered, had survived the massacre at Thangbrand’s by pure chance. Early on the morning of the attack by Murdac’s men, Will had been squatting at the long trench, partially covered with wooden boards, which served us as a latrine. He had seen the first mounted troops pour through the gates at dawn and, without even tying up his hose, he had sprinted straight into the forest and had hidden in a tree for a day and a night. Robin’s men, riding south to join Thangbrand for the end of the Yuletide celebrations, had come across Will in the charred ruins of the old Saxon’s hall, crouched on the ground, knees hugged to his chest, rocking back and forward and weeping uncontrollably. To me, now, he seemed a changed boy: friendly, seeking my favour. The days of our mutual animosity, it seemed, were long gone. However, every time he smiled at me, and I saw the gap in his front teeth that I had put there with my sly iron nail, I did wonder if he had truly forgiven me, or whether, one day, when I was least expecting it, he might seek vengeance.

Hugh, too, had been relieving himself around the back of Thangbrand’s hall when the enemy horsemen struck. He said he had bellowed a warning into the sleeping hall, grabbed a sword and raced for the stables, intending to fight on horseback. But, by the time he was mounted, the outlaws were barricaded inside the hall and all of Thangbrand’s men outside it were dead. So he too fled into the forest and, riding north at a breakneck pace, he came across Robin’s men by nightfall.

Robin called his council to order by banging a jewelled silver cup loudly on the wooden table. A hush fell over the company; I couldn’t help but feel a wave of excitement. I was being included, for the first time, in the deliberation of the greatest outlaw in England. I felt that I was one of his trusted lieutenants. My face felt hot, sweaty and my pulse was racing with excitement.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Robin. ‘Before we begin. Let us make a toast to Thangbrand, a good friend and a great warrior. And I vow, here and now, upon my honour, that his death shall be avenged. Gentlemen: Thangbrand the Widowmaker.’ We all murmured the dead man’s name and drank. Robin emptied the jewelled cup and set it down. It may have been the closeness of the packed cave but I began to feel slightly uncomfortable. My head began to ache, a pulse pounding in it like a great drum.

Robin said: ‘Which brings us to the next point: I believe we were betrayed at Thangbrand’s. Somebody led Murdac and his men to the farm. The question is - who?’

Hugh said: ‘It could have been anyone. A local peasant, a villager dissatisfied with Robin’s justice . . .’

‘They are all too fearful,’ interrupted Little John. ‘God’s greasy locks, we put enough effort into terrifying them. Who would betray us and risk pain and death for himself and his family?’

‘There is one candidate,’ said Hugh slowly. ‘Wolfram - or, as he now calls himself, Guy. He stole a great jewel from Thangbrand and fled the farm in fear of the wrath of his father.’

‘Would he betray his own parents?’ asked Robin. ‘Stealing - well, yes. But leading troops to his mother and father’s door, setting them up to be butchered . . . I don’t know. Make enquiries, would you, Hugh. I want to know quickly. And, if it is Guy, I want him dead. But not so quickly.’

Robin continued: ‘The next problem is what to do about Murdac. For many years we had a perfectly good working arrangement with our high sheriff: I didn’t molest his men, I allowed his servants to carry out their duties in peace, and he left what is my preserve untroubled. That arrangement is at an end. He has murdered my friends and stolen my property. He has ceased to show the proper respect for my operations and he has demonstrated, in a most barbaric fashion, that he does not fear my vengeance. So, gentlemen, any ideas? What shall we do about Sir Ralph Murdac, liegeman of our noble King Henry and constable of the royal castle of Nottingham?’

There was a silence for several heartbeats and then one of the outlaws, a big stupid man called Much, the son of a rich Nottingham miller who had been forced into outlawry after murdering a man in a tavern brawl, muttered: ‘Why don’t we kill the bastard?’

Robin smiled at him but without using his eyes and said: ‘I’m listening . . .’

Much was clearly embarrassed to have the limelight - he ducked his large head and muttered: ‘Get a few men into Nottingham Castle, I know it well, I used to deliver flour there . . . wait in dark passage in the keep, Murdac comes along, knife to the throat, no more problem.’ His words were greeted with the silence of incredulity. He stumbled on: ‘Or maybe a good archer on the battlements could . . . a long shot, but with one arrow . . .’

‘Stop your mouth, you fool,’ interrupted Little John. ‘We’d never get in there. Do you know there are more than three hundred men-at-arms in the castle? And what about afterwards? How would the men get out alive in the uproar that would follow? No, no, no. We must wait till he ventures out of his lair and then cut him down in Sherwood; we take him on our ground, not on his.’

Hugh cut in: ‘Do we really desire his death?’ There was another stunned silence. ‘I mean, is it not better merely to teach him a lesson? If we can take our revenge, and teach him a lesson at the same time, he may be more malleable. More amenable to making another arrangement with us, that would be to our mutual advantage.’ My head was still pounding. I took a sip of ale from a silver goblet and, as I looked at the beautiful vessel, it swam in and out of focus. I tried desperately to concentrate and listen to the arguments.

‘What about his family?’ said Will Scarlet, from his seat beside me.

‘We’re not going to be killing women and children,’ said Robin. ‘Whatever people may say, we are not monsters.’ He looked round the table to be sure that all present had taken this point. Will blushed: ‘I wasn’t thinking of Sir Ralph’s wife and little ones, sir - his wife died last year, and his children are in Scotland - merely of his cousin William Murdac, the tax collector. Do you know him? He lives out towards Southwell?’