Outlaw

rock of her body. We drew up on our horses and Robin dismounted and went over to kneel beside the woman. He put a hand on her shoulder and she started suddenly but stopped that dreadful noise and, through swollen red eyes, she stared at Robin, dumb with grief.

As I looked around the village I saw signs of an evil I could hardly contemplate: the broken, chopped bodies of half a dozen peasants were scattered about the muddy street. The corpse of a priest lay a few yards away, an arm outflung in death. I noticed that some of his fingers were missing, hacked off, no doubt, for the rings they had borne. A girl, her throat slit and gaping like an extra mouth, was propped up sideways against the tumbled stones of the ancient stone cross in the centre of the hamlet. Her skirts had been tucked up around her chest and her naked lap was a mess of caked blood. I saw that someone had taken a knife to her white buttocks and I looked away quickly.

‘It seems they are all dead but her, sir,’ said Owain, indicating the grief-stricken woman. He and some of the men had briefly ridden around the tiny village looking for wounded survivors. The woman holding her dead son stared up at Owain on his horse and then at Robin kneeling beside her. He was offering her his wine flask. She took a sip and then a gulp and then began to sob quietly, her eyes closed, her chin sunk on her neck.

‘Which way have they gone?’ Robin asked her. She carried on crying, ignoring his question. ‘Which way?’ he asked again. She looked at him bewildered and then she indicated the northern road out of the village with a bloody finger. ‘We will be back to help later,’ Robin said, ‘but now we need to catch the men who did this. And make them pay.’

‘We paid you,’ the woman said in a low voice. Robin flinched, but he kept her gaze. ‘For protection,’ the woman continued. ‘Your men said that if we paid, you would protect us from. .’ the woman’s free arm waved at the scene of carnage in the muddy street. Robin stood up. ‘I failed you,’ he said. The woman stared at him. ‘But I will catch them,’ Robin continued, ‘and I swear I’ll make them regret that they did this.’ She nodded: ‘Catch them,’ she said, her voice rough. ‘And kill them, kill them all.’ Robin nodded and put the wine flask into her hand. We saddled up and Robin detailed one archer to ride ahead as a scout. He looked blankly at me. ‘I told you to go to Thangbrand’s,’ he said, but without much emotion. I shrugged.

‘Don’t ever disobey me again,’ he said, and his eyes flashed like a knife drawn in the night. I nodded, too dispirited to be truly frightened, and we rode out of the defiled village and took the northern road.

That night we camped, cold and fireless in a high wood of beech trees. Matthew, the archer-scout, had reported back to Robin. The Peverils were less than half a mile away, feasting on stolen roast mutton round a great blaze in a hollow below and to the north of our beech wood. They had not bothered to set any sentries, Matthew reported, and were drinking plundered casks of ale round the fire, and singing. They also had a captured woman with them and were taking turns to rape her.

The night air was cold but Robin had forbidden us a fire. We were to march down upon the Peveril camp, leaving the horses behind, and attack them on foot just before dawn. They were twenty-four men. We were nine. But they would be in a drunken sleep, unaware of our presence until we struck. We were cold and we were angry — the men had been shocked by what had been done at Thornings Cross — and, best of all, we were led by Robin. The enemy would all die, of that I was certain.

I was on the edge of sleep, wrapped up in my cloak and hood, sitting between two roots with my back to the trunk of a comfortable tree when Robin came over to me.

‘In the morning, take care that you don’t get yourself killed,’ he said quietly. ‘Hang back when we go in, these are very dangerous men.’ I shook my head. ‘Do not disobey me further,’ Robin said, his voice chilling.

‘I can fight,’ I said. ‘I’ve learnt a thing or two at Thangbrand’s.’ I wanted very much to pay them out for what they had done at Thornings Cross.

‘You haven’t learnt nearly enough,’ said Robin. ‘I want you to hang back, come in when the fighting is nearly over. And even then be careful.’ I said nothing, feeling strangely sullen, mulish.

‘Look,’ he said, his voice dropping so that no one but I could hear him, ‘you are more valuable to me than a common archer. Truly. Bernard says you have real talent. I don’t want you dead in some forgotten skirmish, I need you alive.’

I continued to sulk. Did he think I was afraid? Had he forgotten that I had already killed a man in battle?

‘You are just like your father,’ said Robin. ‘He was a headstrong man, who did not like to be given orders.’

‘Will you tell me what you knew of him?’ I asked, wanting to change the subject. ‘He never spoke to me about his life before he came to Nottinghamshire, met my mother and fell in love with her.’

‘Really? How strange that I should know more about him than his son,’ he said, and settled down beside me, back to the tree. ‘Well, he was a good man, I think, and kind to me, and a truly wonderful singer. But you know that already. He came to my father’s court at Edwinstowe when I was just a boy of nine or ten. He was a trouvere. .’ I sat up straighter against the tree, my interest quickening. Robin went on: ‘. . and when he came to Edwinstowe during the winter, my father invited him to spend Christmas with us. We had little entertainment in that district and his music made the castle seem warmer and brighter during the short, cold days and long, frozen nights of that season.’

‘Where had he come from?’ I asked. I found it difficult to imagine my ragged father, the field-toiling villager, as a silk-clad trouvere, keeping his Christmas at a great lord’s castle.

‘He had come from France. His father was known as the Seigneur d’Alle, a minor landowner, and Henri d’Alle, as the second son, was destined for the Church. As I remember, he joined the choir of the great cathedral they were beginning to build in honour of Our Lady in Paris. But something happened. He never spoke about it but I believe he fell foul of Bishop Heribert, a cousin of our own Sir Ralph Murdac, as it happens, and a powerful man in the Church. Heribert was, from what I have heard, a thoroughly corrupt priest, but at the time he was in sole charge of the cathedral music at Notre Dame. There was a rumour of stolen gold plates and candlesticks and your father was blamed. They told him that if he admitted that he had stolen the gold, he would be forgiven and, after a penance, allowed to remain in the Church. He refused absolutely. I am certain that he was innocent, by the way, and so maybe he was right to refuse to admit guilt. But, he was a stubborn man, and by refusing, he was forced to leave the Church and France itself and take to the road in England as a trouvere, entertaining the nobility with music at their castles. He never forgave the Church for discarding him; at times he was even openly hostile to its priests.’

Robin paused, hesitating for a moment’s thought, and then he continued. ‘At Edwinstowe, I had a priest- tutor sent by the Archbishop of York. He was a brutal man, and he used to beat me often. He’s dead now, of course, but he plagued me somewhat when I was a boy. Your father spoke to him. I do not know what he said to the man, but that Christmas, while your father was there with us, there were no more beatings. And I am grateful to him. I feel I owe him, for that brief respite.’

He fell silent. Then he said: ‘So, you see, I feel that I owe you a little because of the help your father gave to me that Christmas, and of course the joy that his music gave me. And so I ask you to promise me, be careful in the morning. Hang back.’

‘What they did today, the Peverils, at the village, I want to avenge that,’ I said, hoping to please him with talk of vengeance.

He sighed. ‘They deserve to die, they deserve to suffer. But, if I am honest, what we are doing tomorrow is in my own interest, too. For years the Peverils have respected me and my demesne. They acknowledge me as Lord of Sherwood. Now they have broken our pact and shown a lack of respect and I must teach them a lesson, them and others like them, that when I stretch out my hand to protect a village, a family, a man, they are protected. I must demonstrate that I will defend my realm. My safety, and my freedom, and my future all depend upon this. If men do not fear me, why should they not inform the sheriff of my whereabouts? Why should they pay me for protection, pay me to give them justice, if they think I can deliver neither?’

‘Is it not a simple matter of right and wrong?’ I said. ‘These are evil folk and they must be punished.’

‘There is that. But right and wrong is rarely simple. The world is full of evil folk. Some people would even say that what I do is evil. But if I were to rush about the earth punishing all the bad men that I found, I would have no rest. And, if I spent my entire life punishing evil deeds, I would not increase the amount of happiness in this world in the slightest. The world has an endless supply of evil. All I can do is to try to provide protection for those who ask it from me, for those whom I love and who serve me. And in order to protect myself and my friends, men must fear me, and to make men fear me, I must kill the Peverils tomorrow. And you, my young friend, must hang