know about that,’ he said. ‘Reuben told me. We are riding for Nottingham at dawn. But. . but there’s something else, isn’t there?’ I nodded again and, haltingly, I outlined my theory about the traitor in the camp. Robin listened in silence. As I finally came to a stop, he sighed, a long deep shuddering exhalation. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, thank you for bringing this to me, Alan. It’s something I’ve suspected for some time, since Thangbrand’s in fact. And I think I may know who our man is.’ He sighed again. ‘I must ask you two, on your honour, not to speak to anyone of this.’ He stared at Thomas and then at me, his silver eyes boring into my head. ‘Say nothing about this to anybody,’ he repeated. We both nodded. And he continued: ‘But first we must recover Marie-Anne; so get some food, get some sleep and be ready to ride at dawn. It’s good to have you back, Alan,’ and he smiled at me, his silver eyes glowing in the candlelight. It was a brief glimpse of that golden, carefree smile of yore, shining like a beacon through his misery. At once I felt the old familiar glow of affection for him.
‘It’s good to be back,’ I said and smiled back at him.
Then Robin looked a little more closely at me. ‘You are hurt,’ he said, the concern strong in his voice. I stared at him. How did he know? I thought I had hidden the discomfort of my torture wounds perfectly. ‘I will get someone to fetch Brigid,’ he said. ‘And don’t trouble yourself too much over this business about the traitor, Alan. All will be well.’
An hour or so later, Brigid took me to a small cave away from the main camp and, by the light of a single candle, she bade me strip so that she could examine my wounds. After anointing them with dark, musty smelling tinctures and binding the worst burn on my right side ribs with a cold moss poultice, she made me bend over while she examined the burn inside my buttock. I was unwilling but she told me not to be childish and, reluctantly, I obeyed. As I leant forward, hands on knees, and could feel her hot breath on the back of my legs, an image of her naked painted body at the pagan sacrifice sprang into my mind. Oh God, and, as if I had not had enough humiliation, I could feel an uncontrollable stirring in my private parts as her long fingers gently daubed something cool on the small burn between my cheeks.
‘All finished,’ Brigid said brusquely, and she stood up. I straightened and hurriedly fumbled for my drawers in an attempt to hide my fully erect member. These days I would be proud, overjoyed even, to sport such a tumescent organ; but in those youthful years I seemed to have a swelling in my drawers at least half the time, and I thought it a cause for shame. Brigid just laughed and, looking directly at my wayward organ as I desperately tried to cover myself, she said: ‘You should have stayed longer at the spring ceremony of the Goddess, rather than slipping away like a thief that night. Instead of wasting your sap mooning over Marie-Anne, you might have made some pretty young girl very happy.’
I was speechless with embarrassment. I’d thought that hardly anyone had known I was there at that pagan blood-festival, as I had my hood pulled forward, and had shunned the firelight. But, evidently, my participation was common knowledge. I felt humiliated; twice in a handful of days had I been as easily stripped of my tender dignity as a dead rabbit of its fur, and so, stung, I snapped: ‘I’d had my fill of the murder of innocents and had no mind to watch more blood-drenched blasphemy.’
‘Innocents murdered, you say.’ Brigid was totally calm. ‘Blasphemy, too.’ She gazed at me but her kind brown eyes now seemed harder than oak. ‘That man who was the sacrifice-’
‘His name was Piers,’ I interjected hotly.
‘The sacrifice,’ she said emphatically, refusing to acknowledge his humanity by naming him, ‘would not have been allowed to live by your master. Robert of Sherwood would have had him killed for his disloyalty. Instead, he gave him to me. And now he is with the Earth Mother, cared for by Her as lovingly as She cares for all her children, living and dead.’
‘Robin would never have taken part in that foul witchcraft, that Devil worship, but for you.’ I was almost shouting now. ‘He would have given the man a clean death and a Christian burial.’ Even as I said it, I knew I was only partially speaking the truth.
‘The Lord of the Wood is not a follower of your nailed God, Alan. He is no Christian,’ Brigid said. ‘He has the spirit of Cernunnos inside him, whether he believes it or not.’ I was shocked by her words, hearing them spoken out loud. But she spoke honestly: Robin was no Christian.
‘He’s no God-damned pagan either,’ I yelled. Brigid was as cool as a January dawn, while I knew I was behaving like a furious, impotent child. I dropped my eyes from her brown gaze and took a deep breath.
She laid a hand on my bare arm, I looked up again and she smiled at me. I could feel my temper begin to wane. ‘I think that none of us can know what another truly believes,’ she said. ‘And Robin is even more complicated than most in that way. I believe he is constantly looking for the Divine, constantly looking for God, in whatever shape or form he — or she. .’ she smiled at me again, and I smiled ruefully back, ‘might take. And I hope that, one day, he may be successful in his quest and find true happiness.’
‘Amen,’ I said.
I slept badly, dreaming of Marie-Anne being violated by a long queue of laughing soldiers. The queue stretched all the way around the walls of Nottingham, like a snake. And then the queue indeed transformed into a real snake, a great red and black muscular reptile that tightened its coils around the castle and squeezed and squeezed until the stone fortress erupted like a penis bursting with lust, ejaculating a steam of men and women into the sky in a great hot jet. .
Thomas awakened me an hour before dawn. I opened my eyes and stared into his hideous one-eyed face and I couldn’t suppress a start of fear. The pain in my ribs was almost gone, only a dull ache reminded me of my humiliation. ‘Better get ready,’ said Thomas, ‘we’ve a long ride ahead of us today.’
I stumbled around in the half-dark, chewing on a crust of old bread while I rooted out my aketon. I knew the thick padding of the jacket would be too warm later on in that July day, but I was prepared to suffer the discomfort of heat for the sake of extra protection. Over the aketon I strapped my sword and poniard. I put on a hood over my head and over that a bowl-shaped steel helmet that I buckled under my chin. Then I went to see about the horses.
The storms of the previous days had scrubbed the sky clear of clouds and sun was straining to rise above the treetops as we rode out of Robin’s Caves, and headed south towards Nottingham. We were fifty or so well- mounted horsemen, most of us, although not me, armed with twelve-foot ash-wood lances with Robin’s wolf’s head device fluttering just below the razor-sharp steel tip. Robin rode at our head, with Hugh just behind. At the rear of the column rode Little John, a battered ancient horned helmet on his straw-coloured head, his huge war axe strapped to his back, leading a string of pack mules laden with baggage: food, barrels of beer, extra weapons, even a few crates of the home-loving doves. I caught Will Scarlet’s eye as he rode in the centre of the body of horsemen. He grinned nervously at me. Was that the guilt of betrayal I saw in his eyes? Or was I imagining it? Did I want him to be the traitor? Tuck had not been seen for many weeks, Thomas had told me that morning when he bad me farewell; not since his argument with Robin at Easter. I prayed that it was not the big monk who was responsible for the betrayal. No, it couldn’t be Tuck. As we thudded through the forest, the hot yellow sun rising on our left flank, I wondered again if the traitor was riding among us. And whether we were all galloping blindly into a trap.
Chapter Sixteen
We did not, thank God, charge directly into Sir Ralph Murdac’s lair. Instead, Robin led us south to the fortified manor of Linden Lea, some miles outside Nottingham. The manor stood in a long valley, forested on the eastern side and with steep hillsides to the west. North of the manor house was a vast field of ripening corn. South of the manor was meadowland, with a fair-sized stream running along the bottom of the valley, following the main track to Nottingham. The stream filled the deep moat that circled the manor house and the settlement was further defended by a fifteen-foot-high palisade of stout wooden tree-trunks with sharpened ends inside the moat and surrounding the hall and its half a dozen outbuildings. Standing legs astride at the door of the hall, as our cavalcade clattered over the wooden drawbridge in the golden light of a perfect summer afternoon, was its master, Sir Richard at Lea himself.
We were given a royal welcome by Sir Richard, who had evidently been prepared for our arrival: hot meat
