Having said that, no one had been hurt, and we passed the rest of the night with great conviviality in The Trip to Jerusalem, feasting on honey cakes and ham and preserved berries washed down with ale provided by the frightened brewer and his wife, while Little John set riddles for the children to guess, and allowed them to ride on his back as if he were a horse. They were enchanting creatures, about five or six years old, I would say. And I privately swore that they should come to no harm, even if it meant facing Little John and Robin over drawn blades.
A few hours before dawn I asked Robin how he had known that I needed to be rescued. And I thanked him profusely, if a little drunkenly — for I must admit the ale had taken a hold of my tired head — for saving me.
‘It was the wagons,’ said my master, looking fondly at me over a foaming mug of good Trip to Jerusalem ale. ‘The wagons we captured outside of Carlton. There was no silver in them. Nothing valuable in them at all. Those great chests in the three great wagons, so firmly locked and sealed by Sir Robert de la Mare, were full of no more than sand and gravel.’
‘So we knew you were neck-deep in the shit, young Alan,’ interrupted Little John. ‘It was obvious: Murdac had hoped to trap us with the lure of silver, but he wasn’t prepared to risk the actual precious metal. We knew then that the game was up — that the minute you put your nose back inside Nottingham, you were headed for the noose.’
‘They sent two men to arrest Hanno here,’ Robin said, ‘but he’s not a man to be led meekly to the gallows.’
‘I kill them both — pffft, pffft!’ Hanno moved a flat bladelike hand back and forward across his own neck, and made a strange whistling noise between his broken teeth. ‘Then I take Ghost from the stables and fly north to Sherwood, very fast. I am lucky to be able to track down Robin that very same day.’
‘Still, I think we have more than compensated ourselves for the lost wagonloads of silver,’ said Robin with a smile, and he nodded towards the pile of bulging sacks of coin in the corner of the room. By my reckoning we had removed nearly two hundred pounds of coin from Prince John’s treasury — and I couldn’t help but return his smile.
‘To John Plantagenet’s princely generosity,’ I said, lifting my mug of ale. Robin laughed, and my friends all repeated the toast and we drank.
At dawn, with two packhorses tottering under the weight of precious metal, we rode through Nottingham town, hooded, anonymous and looking as innocent as six heavily armed and badly hungover horsemen can. I was happy to be astride Ghost once more, and even more pleased to be in the company I was — free at last of the subterfuge of the past six months. The tavern-keeper and his wife and their two sweet children waved after us as we rode away, the children looking happy, tired and just a little madcap, having spent the whole night awake with playful grown-ups, the parents relieved but still a little shocked and fearful. We made it out of the northern gates of Nottingham town as the church bells were ringing out for Prime and set our horses’ heads north on the road to Sherwood.
Chapter Seventeen
I was tired, deep in the bone tired, and when, a day later, we reached Robin’s Caves, an old outlaw hideout in the heart of Sherwood, the first thing I did was sleep for several days. But while I was restoring my muscles and sinews, and allowing my bruised face to heal, with lazy days spent pottering around Robin’s sprawling camp and long nights on a comfortable over-stuffed straw pallet inside the main cave, Robin was busy.
He invited friends, and fellow outcasts from Sherwood, and men loyal to King Richard from all over the north of England to join us in a feast under the stars in the Greenwood — and to hold a council of war. The country was on the verge of outright civil war, Robin told me; small groups of supporters of John had clashed with those of Richard in pitched battle on several occasions in the past few months, and Richard’s men had had the worst of it. Now they came to us, in their hundreds — poor men, knights, even a minor baron or two — to sit at a huge circular table in a clearing near Robin’s Caves, around a huge roaring fire, and gorge on roast venison, and wild boar, and mutton, on stews and puddings, and pies and autumn fruit, and cheese; all at the outlaw Earl’s expense. Vast quantities of ale and wine were drunk, too, but by and large the company remained orderly. The feasting lasted for several days, and there were games and competitions, wrestling and foot races, for those sober enough to participate.
Father Tuck turned up — coming all the way from London; deserting his mistress the Countess Marie-Anne for a few days but bringing her love and affection to her husband. He had messages too for Robin’s ear from Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and her senior counsellors Walter de Coutances and Hugh de Puiset. Even William of Edwinstowe, Robin’s older brother, came for one day. He and his men-at-arms kept themselves to themselves and ate and drank sparingly. William and Robin had a long, intense conversation at the back of the main cave, which I was not privy to, but it seemed to have a satisfactory conclusion, for they embraced stiffly after the talking was done, and soon afterwards, William and his men rode away towards the south, heading for London, according to the gossip around the campfires.
One day while we were sitting alone, indulging in yet another massive bout of gluttony, I plucked up my courage and directly asked Tuck for news of Goody.
‘Oh, she is very well. And I think she must be happy, too. She has a gentleman admirer who calls on her every day bringing flowers and sweetmeats, costly silks and perfumes.’
‘What did you say!’ Suddenly I felt sick and pushed away my plate, still piled high with rich food.
‘I said young Goody now has a gentleman admirer,’ Tuck repeated calmly, and then he drew my platter towards him and, with dainty fingers, he picked up and took an enormous bite from a crisp slice of a suckling pig.
‘And who is this lecherous bastard? Some scabby, rat-faced, turnip-muncher, I make no doubt!’ I realized that my voice had grown rough and loud and my cheeks were glowing hot.
Tuck leaned his head back and regarded me over his big red nose as he chewed. When he had finished his mouthful of pork, he said: ‘He is Lord Chichester’s eldest boy, Roger. A handsome lad, and quite refined — the ladies all say so.’ And he grinned at me.
‘All the ladies say so! I’ll wager they do. And you let this philandering, over-bred, chinless stripling get close to my Goody! How could you, Tuck? He’ll be smarming all over her, trying to weasel his way into her bedchamber with pretty words — sweetmeats, silks and perfumes, indeed! I hold you responsible, Tuck. God’s bones, I’d like to meet this horny little rich boy. If he has so much as laid a hand on her, I’ll cut his balls off, I’ll…’
‘Calm yourself, Alan! Do calm down. Why don’t you ride down to London yourself and you can meet this boy Roger. You will find that he is a very chaste and God-fearing fellow, mild-mannered…’
‘Chaste and mild-mannered, my arse,’ I muttered. ‘Nobody called Roger has ever been less than a full- blooded whore-mongering lecher…’ And then I stopped. I knew I was making a rare idiot of myself, but perhaps Tuck was right. Perhaps it was my duty, as Goody’s friend and honorary older brother, to pay a visit to this Roger person and make damn sure that he understood a few basic rules of gentlemanly behaviour: like no touching Goody, no fondling, no kissing — in fact, no speaking to her alone, or gazing at her longingly from afar, or sending her little scented love notes…
It was clearly my week for making a fool of myself. I brought up the prospect of a southern journey with Robin the next evening after a late supper. Most of the guests had departed by then and there were only about thirty of Robin’s senior men gathered around a table in the main cave finishing a modest meal of soup and bread and cheese. To my surprise, Robin thought it a good idea.
‘You can escort a packhorse train of silver to London for me,’ he said. ‘You’ve been sitting about for too long now. It’s been — what? — three, four weeks since we pulled you out of Nottingham. I reckon it’s about time you did something useful. Take at least twenty men with you, and be very, very careful. I’ve just heard that you have been formally declared outlaw by the shire court — it’s Prince John’s doing, of course — and there’s a price on your head: a pound of finest silver. Congratulations!’
I beamed at him. I felt a strange kind of pride to be an outlaw; I had been too insignificant to be properly outlawed when I was last living wild in Sherwood. Now I was a dangerous, wanted man with a price in silver on his head. And I rather liked it.
