burning slowly up towards my shoulder.
In the shadow of the great rock, the dream woman was holding her baby, both of them wrapped in the scarlet blanket. She looked across at me and smiled and immediately I felt calmer; it was a smile from across the ages, an eternal comforting smile. The flames in my wooden arm were suddenly extinguished, as if the limb had been plunged into a bucket of water, and the scorch marks receded, pulling back into a single black line across my forearm. I looked back at the mother and saw that she was changing again. The scarlet cloak began to darken, to brown, then black; the woman began to alter her shape, her back became more curved, her breasts shrivelled. Teeth dropped from her mouth like the petals from a dead flower and the flesh of the face collapsed in on itself. The baby on her knee began to darken and shift its shape. A dark fuzz appeared on its skin, thickening into fur and a long black tail sprouted from its backside. I was looking at a crone with a black cat blinking on her knee. She looked again at me and smiled: a toothless grimace in a walnut face. She held out one hand, extended a bony finger and beckoned: and I screamed, filled with a nameless masculine terror.
When I awoke, I was lying on a straw pallet in a dark hut, naked under a thick blanket that smelled of smoke and ancient sweat. The only light was provided by a small fire in the centre of the room. A blackened iron pot hung from a chain over the fire, and a woman was tending the pot, and humming to herself under her breath. By her profile, I knew she was the woman from the dream, all of them somehow, the maiden, the mother and the crone, all in one. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the ceiling and in the corners of the hut were stacked mounds of rubbish: old swords and shields covered in cobwebs, the antlers of a great deer, dusty old cloth bundles and what looked like a human skeleton. The woman saw that I was awake and, ladling some broth from the iron pot into the bowl, she brought it over to my pallet.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked in a curious lilting accent. I mumbled that I felt better and then realised I was starving and began gulping down the thick soup. She watched me eat and I stared back at her while I slurped and swallowed like a greedy child. I studied her with care. She had an ordinary oval face, about twenty years old, I guessed, but careworn with the beginnings of the lines that would stay with her for the rest of her lifetime. She had long brown hair pulled back and tied up like a horse’s tail at the back of her head. No hood nor wimple; and she appeared to be wearing only a shapeless brown sack of a dress. Around her neck, on a leather thong, she wore a curious symbol, shaped like the wishbone of a chicken or the letter Y. I looked into her face again and saw that she had the kindest nut-brown eyes, and, though she was only a handful of years older than me, I realised that she reminded me of my own mother.
When I had finished eating she took the bowl and gave me a goblet containing an infusion of herbs to drink, slightly bitter but refreshing. ‘Let me see that arm,’ she said, beginning to untie the clean white linen bandage. ‘We thought for a while that you must lose the limb, it was so badly infected, but, by the blessing of the Mother, and what little skill I have, it seems to be mending well.’
She undid the final twist of the bandage and I cried out in shock. There were four deep punctures in the flesh of my arm, deep red wounds with black edges rimmed with yellow pus, and in each pit crawled a couple of fat, pink maggots. She smiled: ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ she said. ‘They’re doing you good. They eat the bad flesh and leave the wholesome meat alone. You owe your arm to my fat little beauties.’ With infinite care she picked off the maggots one by one and dropped them in a small wooden box. Then she gently washed the wound with a yellowish liquid and packed each puncture with a mass of cobwebs, before binding the whole arm again in a fresh bandage. ‘You must sleep now,’ she said. ‘Rest will bring healing. .’ And before she had finished speaking, I was fast asleep.
When I next awoke, Robin was there. ‘Brigid says you are healing well,’ he said with a grin.
I stared at him. ‘Who?’
‘Brigid, the priestess; the one who healed you. The Irish woman who has no doubt been feeding you eye of newt and dried bat’s penis for the past week.’ He was smiling. ‘Though I must say you look well on it.’ And I did feel well. There was yet another clean white bandage on my arm and it gave a little twinge when I flexed the muscles but apart from that I felt fine. A little weak perhaps, but fine. Actually, I felt rather good.
‘Well, you’ve spent long enough as a slug-a-bed. What you need is some fresh air, exercise.’ Robin grinned at me. ‘I know you like to steal so let’s go and take a few of the King’s deer.’
That afternoon and for many days afterwards I hunted deer with Robin. Though I was weak at first, my full strength returned after a day or so and I found I was happy. In fact, I had never been happier. We would ride into the forest to a place where the huntsmen had seen small herds of red deer and then we would proceed on foot; stalking the animals through the dense woodland, armed with war bows. These man-killers made from yew had a much greater range than the light ash hunting bows most people used, but I could not draw one to even half its full extent with my wounded arm — to be honest, I never really mastered the great bow, even after spending years with some of the finest archers in the world. But I could stalk like a born forester, moving silently through the wood, watching every step to avoid treading on a stick that might snap under my feet and scare the game. We would approach the deer, moving painfully slowly with the wind in our faces to prevent the animals from scenting us, pausing for a few heartbeats between each step and remaining still as statues to check we were undetected. When we had worked our way close enough to the hart or hind, say, a distance of fifty yards, or even closer if the trees were dense enough, then Robin, or occasionally one of his men, would loose an arrow, aiming a hand’s breadth below the shoulder to rake the heart and lungs. Robin was a magnificent shot, but there was always a helter-skelter chase after the animal had been hit and had begun its death run. We crashed through the undergrowth following the trail of bright red blood splashes until we would come across the heaving, exhausted, dying beast. Then the huntsmen would dispatch it with their spears.
If the animal was a stag, with a set of impressive antlers, the men would cut the horns free from the body and pack them up with special care, while the carcass, belly contents removed, was heaved on to the back of a horse for the journey home. I noticed that the death of each deer seemed to affect Robin strangely. Each time we killed, he would bow his head and offer a silent prayer over the animal before the huntsmen could gralloch the beast. And more often than not, Robin almost seemed to have a tear in his eye after the kill. It was strange behaviour, knowing as I did what he was capable of doing to his fellow man. But his sadness over a dead animal never seemed to dampen his enthusiasm for the chase.
My time was my own at Robin’s Caves; I had no formal lessons, and few chores. When I wasn’t hunting with Robin, I enjoyed a few practice sword bouts with Little John. He had returned after his mission to Southwell with a heavy, dripping sack, which he had dumped at Robin’s feet. I excused myself and left the cave while they examined the contents, but I heard that Robin had a severed head delivered to Murdac during one of his feasts with a parchment note stuffed in the mouth.
Little John seemed impressed with my sword skill, though when we fenced — both of us with borrowed blades, as mine, I presumed, had melted in the fire at Thangbrand’s and John always used an enormous double- bladed axe in battle — I knew he was going easy on me and, try as I might, I could never penetrate his guard. I was a little scared of him, truth be told; he had held himself apart from me in our previous encounters but our fencing sessions at the Caves brought us together and I sensed that he wanted to be friendly. And, despite his huge size, his toughness and his appallingly blasphemous oaths, I liked him.
One day, as we sat at the big table, caring for our weapons after a muddy practice session in the forest, with the wind moaning outside the main cave and the rain dripping from the entrance, John told me the story of how he had come to join Robin as an outlaw.
‘I was in the service of his father, you know, old Baron Edwinstowe,’ he told me as he scrubbed at a rusty patch on his chain-mail armour. ‘I was master-at-arms at the castle, as my father was before me, God rest his soul, and it was my duty to teach young Robin to fight. He was about your age, maybe a little younger, and full of sin and impudence in those days.’ He chuckled at the memory. ‘But he was a good-looking boy and there was fire in him — and courage, too. I like a brave man, always have, always will.’ He paused in his tale and used a small fruit knife to scrape away at an obstinate patch of red rust on his massive hauberk. Then he continued: ‘We started our training the right way, with the quarterstaff. The Baron objected, saying it was a peasant’s weapon. A mere piece of wood. But I insisted — there is great skill in wielding a staff; it doesn’t cost anything to make, and, when you are desperate, a solid piece of wood can save your life.’ I thought of Ralph’s club and the night of the wolves and silently agreed.
