I had the urge to throw my arms around him — but I controlled myself, as a man should. I did not want Robin to think that I had been frightened for my life. So I merely whispered: ‘What took you so long? I’ve been bored almost witless waiting for you to turn up.’
Feeble stuff, I know, but I sensed Robin smile in the darkness. ‘I’m a very busy man,’ he whispered back, with the hint of laughter in his tone. ‘So much silver to steal, so many ruffians to rescue.’ Then he continued, still in a low, barely audible voice: ‘Are you fit, Alan? Are you injured? Do you think you can climb a rope?’
I admitted that I was largely intact.
‘Then come on — unless you’d rather stay here and wallow a while longer in your comfortable little cell.’
We slipped out of the door and, in the dark corridor outside, I sensed a shape and heard another familiar voice: Hanno. There was a rustle of cloth and Hanno handed something heavy to Robin and my lord quickly returned to the storeroom. He was gone a few moments, and I grabbed Hanno’s arm and asked him in a whisper what Robin was doing.
‘A wolf’s head,’ said my friend. And I imagined his awful grin in the darkness.
‘What?’ I whispered back.
‘He leaves a big wolf’s head in there, Alan. It is freshly cut this morning from an animal trapped in Sherwood.’
‘For God’s sake, why?’ My voice was rising in volume. This seemed to be behaviour that verged on madness. Why were we standing there in that dark corridor talking about decapitated vermin? I was suddenly alarmed: had the strains of outlawry turned Robin insane?
It was Robin himself who replied, coming silently out of the storeroom door, but bolting it shut with a loud click. ‘Terror, Alan — just giving them the fear,’ he whispered. ‘You know how I like to do it — minimum effort to create maximum terror.’
Then we were off: with Hanno leading, we crept down the dark corridor, Robin bringing up the rear. We turned right, and swiftly left — Hanno seemed to know exactly where we were going, but I did not. The punches I had taken to the head must have made me slow-witted, for it only dawned on me then, as we padded silently through the passages under the great tower and the upper bailey in the dead hour after midnight, what Robin had been doing back in the storeroom. He was trying to convince the castle’s men-at-arms that I had been spirited away from my condemned cell by wild magic. And by leaving a severed wolf’s head, he was saying that it was he — Robin Hood, the outlaw earl with the wolf’s head device on his banner — who had accomplished this demonic trick.
If people generally believed Robin to be guilty of heresy, consorting with devils and spirits, and so on, he had only himself to blame. Hard on the heels of that thought came another: he welcomed people believing that he had extraordinary, demonic powers. I recalled a spectacularly ugly, oneeyed friend called Thomas from my early days as an outlaw who had told me that Robin dabbled in all this devilish stuff to add to his mystique with the country folk. But it was obvious that he enjoyed it too. It was forbidden, wrong, ungodly — and Robin revelled in that type of thing.
Something else occurred to me belatedly. I touched Robin’s sleeve and whispered: ‘How did you get in here? And where are we going now?’
He chuckled almost silently and said: ‘You’ll soon see!’ And I had to be content with that.
At the end of the next corridor we all paused, and flattened our bodies against the cool sandstone wall. Around the corner came the sound of footsteps: a lone soldier’s boots. One man and a glow of light.
I felt the warmth of Hanno’s face next to my ear, and he breathed three words: ‘Watch and learn!’
The unfortunate man-at-arms came round the corner and Hanno leapt on him as quick as a hunting weasel, his left hand clamping over the man’s nose and mouth, his right arm punching a long dagger into his unguarded belly just below the rib-cage, and then twisting it upwards into his chest. The man was smashed back against the far wall, dropping the horn lantern he was carrying with a clatter; he had been taken completely by surprise, and was only able to utter a few muffled grunts of pain and shock before Hanno’s long, questing blade found his heart, ripped it open and, with a gout of hot blood, the man-at-arms slumped to the ground, a twitching, unstrung marionette, who was very soon still.
‘Do you see?’ Hanno was at my ear again. ‘That is perfect. The dagger goes in, here, and then up, here’ — he was poking at my abdomen with a rough finger, but I was in no mood for more lessons in silent murder; I was looking at the dead man by the light of his dropped lantern, studying the comical look of surprise on his face — and his belt. For tucked into it, on the left-hand side, was a triangular-bladed stabbing weapon with a plain wooden handle and a stout crosspiece in steel. It was my misericorde. By happy chance, this was one of the men-at-arms who had seized me in the great hall two days ago. He must have thought the misericorde a legitimate prize of war. Well, it was mine again now. I took it from the dead man’s belt and slid it into my left boot. I took his sword and sword belt, too. And suddenly all my fears melted away. Whatever happened tonight, I would not allow myself to be recaptured. I had a weapon in my boot and one at my waist, and I was prepared to kill the whole world if necessary.
Robin knelt beside the lantern, opened the little horn door and pinched out the candle inside — and once more we were plunged into absolute darkness.
Hanno led us silently and swiftly onwards, down a dank set of stairs, through a door and into a short corridor, where we paused again. I could see another glow of light seeping from around the corner. Motioning us to stillness and silence, Hanno dropped quietly to the floor and peered at boot-level around the corner from where the light was coming. He stood again and moved in close to Robin and me: ‘Two of them,’ he breathed. And putting a palm on my chest, and shoving me gently against the wall he whispered: ‘You stay here, Alan. Don’t move.’
My master nodded at me, and then pulled up his hood to cover his face. And with that my two friends, the one with a bare round shaven head, and the other shrouded in his hood, both armed and very dangerous, stepped around the corner and left me alone in the gloom.
I heard Hanno say loudly in his best English accent: ‘Hello, you fellows, be so good as to tell me: is this the way to the cheese store?’ Then there was a thump and a muffled scream and a clatter of falling metal and a horrible wet gurgling sound. And suddenly I knew exactly where in Nottingham Castle we were. We were just outside Prince John’s treasury. Just yards away from the greatest haul of silver coin in central England.
When I peered round the corner I could see Robin and Hanno, each manoeuvring a slumped guard’s body and arranging it so the arse was on the ground, legs extended, back to the stone wall of the corridor. They were evidently trying to make it appear as if the men were asleep at their post by the door. The ruse would not have fooled anyone for very long: the spreading pool of blood beneath each corpse told the truth.
Taking a heavy bunch of keys from one of the dead men, Robin inserted one into the big iron lock and turned it. As I approached down the corridor, he flung the door open and held up the horn lantern, relit from the guards’ candle stub, to cast its glow inside the room.
It was like a dragon’s treasure cave: a glittering hoard. There were small barrels overflowing with silver pennies, iron-bound chests containing precious gems, small round sacks of coin piled in heaps, silver and gold plates and candlesticks, cups, knives, mazers, serving dishes, bright pieces of women’s jewellery, and all the moveable wealth of middle England scattered about the place on shelves, in wooden boxes and casks and even in mounds on the floor. As the candlelight was reflected, sparkling and bouncing off this incredible accumulation of booty, I sensed that even Robin was stunned to see so much wealth in one place.
But he did his best not to show it. Instead he busied himself pulling open his cloak and unwinding a series of confections of rope and cloth bags from around his waist. He hurled a couple at me and I caught them in the air. Unfolding them, I found that they were pairs of rough canvas bags attached to stout networks of rope. Hanno showed me how to wear them: he filled the two canvas bags with silver pennies then draped the heavy bags over his neck so that the chinking burdens hung from a kind of harness under his arms, gently nudging his ribs. Then he grabbed another pair of bags and began again.
‘Only coin, I think,’ said Robin. ‘Leave all the bulky stuff. And carry no more than you can comfortably run with, boys. Quickly now!’
And we fell to with a will, using our hands to shovel the bright discs of silver in glittering cascades into the bags and then hanging them around our necks and shoulders, festooning our bodies with a fortune. I could not resist a quiet laugh: if I were to die at this particular moment, I thought to myself, I would die a very rich man.
Robin passed me a wide leather belt upon which were hung six big leather pouches at equal distances. I strapped it around my waist and filled each pouch with golden coins: fat, greasy, glittering Bezants, the like of
