with a strange gentleness, cradling their heads in his enormous hand and thrusting once, quickly, through the ribs to release a bright gout of heart’s blood. It seemed that this was the custom of Robin’s band. And nobody commented on the way these men were hurried on to Heaven, or the other place. Graves were dug, again with great speed, for our dead. Their dead — there were twenty-two corpses, and no wounded: all who had not run, except Sir Richard, had been executed by Robin’s men and women — were stripped of anything valuable: weapons, mail, boots, clothes, money, and lined up by the side of the road; their grubby chemises, these undershirts being the only item of clothing too dirty even for Robin’s men to steal, fluttered in the wind, grey, ragged flags to mark their passing to the next world. Tuck said a few brief words over the row of dead men, and I felt a pang as I caught sight of my victim’s blond, blood-smirched hair. They were the enemy, but they were also warriors and men. Tuck made the sign of the cross over the bodies and turned away; Hugh, mounted and at the head of the column, gave the cry: ‘Forward!’ and the whole lumbering train set off again down the forest road. I looked at the sun — only an hour had passed since we had been warned by the spy. I hitched my sword belt, turned my back on the bloody clearing and walked after the column, following my victorious outlaw lord.
We turned off the Great North Road soon afterwards, and on to a series of lesser tracks, each one narrower than the last. The great green wood closed in around us until the sides of the ox-carts were whipped with branches and the sunlight was rarely seen. The rutted pathway twisted and turned so regularly that, in the gloom of the forest, I soon lost track of north and south, east and west. As darkness fell, I realised that I was hopelessly lost. But Robin clearly knew where we were heading and we plunged ever onward, travelling by the light of a few pitch-wood torches, until we arrived at an ancient hall, deep in the forest.
Robin left us there: Hugh, the wounded men-at arms, the women, the children, the livestock, the cumbersome ox-carts and their loads of tribute, Sir Richard and me. The steward of the hall, Thangbrand, a grizzled old warrior, had killed a pig and prepared a feast for Robin and his band, but I was filled with strange melancholy humours after the battle and could barely eat; I kept thinking of the blond boy I had killed — his face hung before me when I closed my eyes, red mouth smiling, showing his white teeth, as blood seeped around his neck from the hideous wound in his spine. He was too young to have been one of the men who had killed my father, yet I had no doubt he would have obeyed such an order. So I believed I had taken at least some measure of vengeance for my father in taking this man’s life, even if he was only a symbol, an embodiment, of the forces that had deprived me of my parent. And I was very glad that Robin had seen me kill this enemy; but why then did I feel so miserable? It was too much to understand, so I retired to a corner of the hall, wrapped myself in my cloak and tried to block out the sound of carousing around the ale barrels and find the oblivion of sleep.
Robin and his unburdened cavalcade left the next morning. Every man was freshly mounted on horses from Thangbrand’s stables. Tuck embraced me and urged me to mind my manners and consider my immortal soul every once in a while. Little John gave me a powerful slap on the back. When Robin himself came to bid me a brief farewell, I knelt and asked if I might not accompany him, but he raised me up and told me to obey Hugh in all things and attend to my lessons with him. ‘You will serve me better with a little education under your belt, Alan. I need clever men around me. Learn from Thangbrand, too,’ he said. ‘He was once a great fighter and he has much to teach you. One kill doesn’t make you a warrior, though it was a fine start, a very fine start.’ He smiled and clasped my shoulder. ‘I’ll be back soon, never fear,’ he said. ‘Doubtless, I’ll have need of your new skills before long.’ Then he turned his horse and cantered away. As I watched him ride away through the trees, I felt suddenly uncertain, bereft, even a little afraid. I was alone among strangers in the middle of the wilderness.
Thangbrand’s hall, like his name, was a throwback to Saxon times. Built of sturdy oak posts and wattle- and-daub walls, in a wide clearing hidden deep in Sherwood, it appeared to exist in a simpler time, a time before the proud Frenchmen came to these shores. A large oblong building, with a high thatched roof, the hall was the centre of a settlement of about thirty folk. A rickety wooden palisade surrounded the hall and its outbuildings: stables, granaries, workshops, a smithy, a cookhouse and several ramshackle huts where the lowlier human inhabitants slept, along with the animals. It was in one of these that Sir Richard was lain. He had sworn to Robin the night before, on his honour as a knight, that he would not try to escape until his ransom was agreed and paid by Sir Ralph Murdac. In truth, he was too much knocked about to run far. He had lost vast quantities of blood and he was only intermittently conscious. An axe blow had smashed several ribs and punctured his right side, Tuck told me, after he had tended to him to the best of his abilities. His left thigh had been pierced by an arrow, which had been removed while Sir Richard was unconscious. Fortunately, the thigh bone had not been broken. Now bandaged and pale, stripped of his armour, but with a flask of water mixed with wine at his side, he sat on the floor of a pigsty, propped against the back wall on a pile of clean straw, and observed the bustle of his rustic prison through the wide opening.
Thangbrand’s household, of which Hugh had assumed temporary mastery as Robin’s lieutenant, consisted of Thangbrand, his extremely fat wife Freya, their two dark, well-made sons, Wilfred and Guy, who were only a few years older than me, and a skinny daughter called Godifa, of about nine or ten summers. Another boy, William, a sturdy red-head about my age much given to oafish grinning, lived there as well, a cousin of some sort. There were also a dozen men-at-arms, some wounded from our skirmish, some I’d never seen before, and half a score of male and female servants.
Shortly after Robin left, Hugh summoned me and outlined the shape of my life there at Thangbrand’s. I should learn, he told me, as much as I could from those around me. And I would be punished if I disrupted the household, if I stole anything or did not attend to my duty. If I behaved myself, and paid close attention in my lessons, and worked hard, I would receive something of inestimable value, a treasure of the mind, a
My day, he said, would be structured thus: at dawn, before breakfast, I would do chores around the hall, feed the chickens and pigs and the doves in the dovecote, under the supervision of Wilfred, Thangbrand’s elder son, for an hour or so. Then we — Wilfred, Guy, William and me — would break our fast and then be instructed in the arts of war with some of the men-at-arms by Thangbrand until noon, when we would eat the main meal of the day. Then, in the afternoon, we would be instructed in French and Latin, in grammar, logic and rhetoric, and in
At the feasts on high days and holidays, I was to serve at table in my best clothes, with my face washed. I was not to pick my nose or my ears in sight of the guests. Nor was I to get drunk. I was to sleep every night in the hall on a straw-filled palliasse on the floor by the fire with the other men and boys. Hugh had his own hut, not far from the hall, where he slept and met his dark couriers, the shadowy men who brought him news from the four corners of the country, and Thangbrand and Freya slept in a solar at the end of the hall that was their own private chamber.
Hugh then issued me with new clothes, as mine were nearly falling off me: several pairs of linen drawers, known as braies, two pairs of green woollen hose, two chemises, an ordinary brown knee-length tunic for daily wear, a much finer green surcoat trimmed with a little squirrel fur at neck and hem for special occasions, and a hood of dark green wool, the same colour as the cloak that Tuck had given me. I was to look after them, Hugh told me, and keep them clean. I also received a pair of new leather boots, worth more than anything I had ever owned, and an aketon, or gambeson, a heavily padded coat, worn both for warmth on cold days and protection in battle. It was too large for me. But when, in private, I strapped my sword belt over the aketon, and put on my helmet, I felt more like a man-at-arms and less like a servant.
Discipline was harsh at Thangbrand’s, which I soon discovered was more military training camp than peaceful backwoods farmstead. There were no light beatings of the kind my father had given me to make me mend my wild ways. Instead, the penalties for any transgressions were savage. Several days after I arrived, one of the men-at-arms, a fellow called Ralph, got drunk and raped one of the servant girls. Thangbrand dragged the rapist before Hugh, who said he was going to make an example of him. He had him beaten bloody with quarterstaves by the other outlaws until he was barely conscious, then the poor man was castrated in an awful ceremony performed in front of the entire population — I vomited at the sight once again, to my shame. Naked, bleeding from the gory hole between his legs, and barely able to walk, he was driven out of Thangbrand’s settlement into the forest to starve or, more likely, be eaten alive by the wolves.
I was frightened, I admit — the man’s agonised screams visited my dreams for weeks afterwards — and I
