cover and came to rest, breathless, and curled round the thick trunk of the tree. There was no sound but our laboured breathing. We could see almost nothing through the thick green-black foliage. But if we could not see, we could not be seen.
The ground was dry beneath that wonderful old holly tree, and we bundled ourselves into cloaks and hoods and waited for our hearts to return to their normal pace. Twice in two hours we heard a horseman passing close by, the hooves of his beast visible through the spiny walls of our den. We ate up the bread and pork and munched on handfuls of snow, eyeing each other glumly but not daring to say a word. I loosened the poniard in its sheath on my belt. The snow fell fast and thickly, creating a heavy white blanket over the tree; and we could see even less of the outside world. The cold began to gnaw at my fingers and I shoved them under my armpits. We shifted our bodies, cuddling together like puppies with the cloaks shared among us. Goody seemed to be in shock, with red scratches criss-crossing her bone-white face; Bernard looked grey and haggard, his nose glowed red from booze and cold and, though he was not yet thirty, I could see the old man he would become. I peered out again through the leaves and wondered if anyone else had survived the massacre and whether we ourselves would live through the day. And then, after perhaps another hour, when in spite of the cold and the terror I had grown a little dull, even sleepy, I heard a drumming of horses’ hooves and the jingling of equipment that set my heart racing. The noises quietened and I could make out, through the curtain of holly, the legs and hooves of a large force of cavalry stopped not ten yards from our hideout.
Then a voice spoke, loud and so terrifyingly close that it might have been in my ear: ‘You are to take this sector, captain.’ The voice was speaking French, and was tinged with feverish excitement and a slight lisp. ‘And I want every tree, every bush, every leaf searched. I want all of these vermin dead, do you understand me. If you take them alive, hang them. Every single one of them. They are outlaws and their lives are forfeit. I want not one to escape and breed their poison in my county.’
I knew that voice, I’d last heard it in Nottingham, when I was quaking in the grip of a man-at-arms and its owner was calling me ‘filth’. It belonged to Sir Ralph Murdac.
Chapter Nine
Huddled with Goody and Bernard, rigid with terror, under the flimsy protection of the holly tree, I listened to Sir Ralph Murdac just a few feet away as he gave orders to his mounted men-at-arms for our murder. I could see the blood-splattered hooves of his horse just a few feet from my nose but, penetrating the fear, his lisping French tones grated on my soul and I felt a lick of hot rage. As I lay there, I could image his handsome, scornful face as he commanded his minions to hunt us down and extinguish our lives. I remembered the pain of his riding whip as it lashed my face. I could even smell his perfume over the stench of hot horse, battle sweat and blood, a revolting waft of lavender, and, frightened as I was, angry as I was, I felt the beginnings of an itch in my nose and an almost overwhelming urge to sneeze.
The slightest noise would have meant death for all of us, and yet the sneeze was growing inexorably, making my nose twitch and my eyes feel as if they had been rubbed with onion juice. I could do nothing to stop it; I stuffed the bundled hem of my cloak into my face, and my face into the leaf mould on the floor of the forest and then it came roaring out: an eyeball-bulging explosive whoosh that convulsed my whole body. Inside my head it sounded deafening, but when I lifted my head I heard. . nothing. Murdac was silent, listening, I assumed, to confirm what he had heard. A horse shifted its weight, steel accoutrements clinking. My heart was in my mouth, every muscle tense. I was determined to run if we were detected. I would not stay to be hanged like my father. In the silence, a horse farted loudly and a man laughed and said something in an undertone to his mate. Murdac called the men to order and continued giving orders in his sibilant French whine. I felt my body relax and looked round at Goody and Bernard who were staring at me in unbelieving horror. Their expressions were so comical that I felt like laughing. Instead, I sneezed again.
It was far louder than the first sneeze, which had been almost totally muffled by my cloak. And we didn’t wait to see if we had been detected. As fast as a frightened rabbit, Bernard was squirming out from under the holly branches, followed by Goody and myself. We burst from under the back of the tree and sprinted away into the wood. Behind us there were shouts and trumpets and the thunder of hooves and we raced towards the thickest part of the forest, our faces whipped by branches, arms and legs scratched by grasping twigs.
They were slow to come after us, no doubt surprised by our sudden appearance. But a race between a man on horseback and a man on two feet is no race at all. Except, that is, in thick woodland. We were off the path in ancient wilderness, dodging through the small gaps between trees, wading through thick snow, scrambling under fallen boughs, through brambles and ropes of ivy, all three of us hurtling, ploughing through the thick snow, spurred by panic, in roughly the same direction, Bernard in the lead, myself in the rear. We could hear the horsemen behind us but, as I snatched a backward glance through the thick undergrowth, I could see we were getting farther and farther way from the half a dozen riders following us. They had their swords out and were chopping wildly at low slung branches and trailing fronds to hack a clear path for their mounts, but they could only proceed at a walking pace, twin plumes of smoke shooting from the horses’ nostrils. I looked behind me again and we were a good fifty yards clear, almost out of sight. Hope swelled — but then I looked to my friends and I saw that they were both in trouble. Bernard was staggering with exhaustion from the unaccustomed exercise, Goody was trembling with cold. She looked ready to drop. I ran forward to them and, with a fast backward glance to check we were unseen, dragged them away at right angles to the direction we’d been running, deep, deep into the thick snowy undergrowth, ploughing through the freezing white crust and sinking up to our knees. After thirty yards of stumbling through the drifts, we all tumbled into a ditch and lay there gulping air, hearts hammering; ears straining for the sound of horsemen.
Nothing. Sherwood seemed empty of all life. A white wilderness. But our track through the snow was clear to see, leading straight to our damp, slush-splashed, panting huddle. We couldn’t stay there more than a few moments to catch our breath. I looked up at the grey sky; it had begun to snow again, but there were only two or three hours of daylight left in that short winter day. If we could stay out of reach of the horsemen until nightfall we would be safe. Probably. So I loaded Goody on to Bernard’s back and pulled a dead branch from a fir tree, the crack as it broke off echoing loudly through the forest. We all paused, listening in terror. Then, when we heard nothing but the eerie silence of the snow-blanketed wood, Bernard whispered: ‘Which way?’
I paused to consider. Robin was God knows where in the north, Thangbrand’s was a smoking ruin by now, my mother was dead, my village had been destroyed, but, from nowhere, an image of Marie-Anne came into my head. She, I knew, was at Winchester, far away from Murdac and his murderous horsemen. And she could put us in contact with Robin. ‘We march south,’ I said, trying to sound decisive, and I stuck out an arm in the direction that I guessed led towards Winchester. And Bernard turned without a word, Goody gripping on to his back like a monkey, and began to tramp through the snow. I walked backwards behind them, brushing at the marks in the snow with the branch, trying to erase our footprints as best as I could, and blessing the falling snow that would, given enough time, cover our tracks.
All that frozen grey afternoon, as the snow fell steadily, we tramped through the woodland. Sometimes we carried Goody on our backs, sometimes she walked by herself. She never complained as we trudged through the silent white landscape. I was sure our tracks must have been covered by the snow and, after an hour of quiet progress, I dared to hope that the horsemen had abandoned the chase. The only living thing we saw was the low, lean form of a wolf, a grey shadow running through the wood on a course parallel to our own. January in Sherwood, I remembered, was known as Wolf Month; there were tales of babies snatched from their cradles by starving wolves in January, even one tale of a wolf leaping out from ambush on a mounted man and biting a chunk of flesh out of the horse’s rump before disappearing back into the forest.
I picked up a broken branch and hurled it in the direction of the grey slinking beast, and it shambled away, disappearing into the gloom of the twighlit wood. On we marched, legs numb from cold. We were drenched and exhausted. As night began to fall, I knew we must find a safe place to rest: Goody’s fingers and nose were blue with cold and Bernard’s face was a sickly yellow colour. Suddenly, from directly ahead, there was the shocking blast of a trumpet. Galvanised with fear, we dived down a snowy bank and cowered beneath the white roots of a
