As I walked along on that morning, through the sharp spring sunshine, through the tall alders and kindly beech, and the thick trunks of ancient oak trees, with the feathery fingers of lush green fens caressing my legs, the horrors of the night receded and Tuck, who walked beside me leaning on his staff, began to talk. About nothing at first — just talking as we walked through the peaceful woodland.
‘I have met hot men,’ he said. ‘Men who could become angry in an instant; some say they have too much yellow bile in their bodies; too much of the element of fire. These are violent, angry men, who in their passion would strike you dead. Our own King Harry is one; an intemperate fellow. In his rages, he will roll upon the ground, you know; quite literally biting the rushes on the floor. Chewing them. Rush-muncher, his servants call him, when his back is turned, when they think it’s safe to joke about their lord.’
I stared at him: the King? Who would dare to mock the King? And Tuck went on: ‘And I have met cold men, so-called phlegmatic types, with too much water in their veins. A man who would take a blow to the face from a man who had seduced his wife. And he would say naught, but then have his wife quartered and send the seducer a severed leg tied with her garter ribbons. Oh yes, and smile at dinner with him, drink a toast to the man’s health.
‘Both are dangerous, of course, but the worst men are the ones who appear cold, but inside they are hot. They have the raging power of anger but the icy control of a calm man. This cold-hot man, this phlegmatic- choleric man, is the one to fear.’
‘And my master,’ I asked. ‘Is he a cold-hot man?’
Tuck shot me a sideways look. ‘Well done, boy. You’re quick, I see. Yes, Robin is such a man. He’s cold-hot. And when he is very angry, that’s when he is at his coldest. And then God help his enemies, whoever they are, for Robin will have no mercy on them.’
‘Is he a good man?’ I asked. Forty-odd years later the question still makes me blush. The monk just laughed. ‘Is he a good man?’ he repeated. ‘Yes, I suppose, he’s a good man. He’s a sinner, of course. We all are. But a good man, too. If you asked me is he a godly man, I’d have to say no. He has his own peculiar notions about God but he has no love, no love at all for Mother Church. Oh, quite the opposite. He mocks it. And takes pleasure in robbing and tormenting its servants.’ Tuck crossed himself. ‘I pray the Lord Jesus will open his eyes to the truth one day.’ Piously, I crossed myself too, but what I was feeling was an intoxicating shock of excitement. Such boldness, to mock God’s representatives on Earth; what contempt for his immortal soul, of Hell itself. Like the wolf’s head nailed to the church door, it was dizzying.
‘I’ll tell you a story,’ Tuck continued, ‘A few months ago, Robin, Hugh and a handful of his men ambushed the Bishop of Hereford as he was travelling with a considerable armed retinue through Sherwood. After a brief and bloody fight, the Bishop and his followers were subdued. Robin took three hundred pounds in silver pennies off them; then he ordered the Bishop to sing Holy Mass for his men. I was away at my duties in the north and the men had been without the comfort of a religious service for some time.
‘Well, the Bishop, a stupid, arrogant man, refused to celebrate Mass in the wilderness at the command of outlaws. So Robin ordered the slaughter, one by one, of all the priests and monks who had the bad luck to be accompanying the Bishop on that day. He didn’t touch the captured men-at-arms or the female servants, but the clerics, he killed them all, one after the other, as the Bishop looked on and prayed for their souls. When they were all dead, the corpses lying in a stinking blood-spattered pile, they stripped the Bishop to his drawers and put a sword to his throat, and only then did he consent to sing Mass for the outlaws, shivering in his skimpy braies, in the gloom of the wild wood. Then Robin sent the Bishop on his way, almost naked and alone, stumbling all the way on foot twenty miles to Nottingham. Of course, Robin’s men loved it, if only for the entertainment. And, some felt their souls were more secure after the Mass.’
‘And yet you serve him?’ I asked. ‘You, a monk, serve a man who mocks Mother Church, who kills priests. .’
‘Aye, well, actually, I do
He fell silent. As we walked along, I thought about hot men and cold men and cold-hot murderers. And good men. And bad men. And sinners. And Hell.
The morning passed and it grew hot under the sunshine. I wanted to ask Tuck so many things. But he had begun to sing a psalm to himself under his breath as we walked and I did not dare to disturb his thoughts. So for an hour or two we strolled along in companionable silence, keeping our place in the great slow-moving column and saving our breath.
A horseman, well-mounted but in shabby homespun clothes, came riding up the column to Hugh, who was on a grey mare a few paces ahead of us. The rider’s hood was pulled far forward so as to conceal his face unless you were looking directly at him. In the full sunlight of a spring morning he still managed to look shadowy and sinister, as if he had somehow wrapped the night around himself. He drew his horse alongside Hugh’s and, leaning forward, whispered something into the clerk’s ear. Robin’s brother nodded, asked a question and learnt its answer. He handed the shadow man a small leather purse, said something inaudible to him and then Hugh spurred forward and galloped to the head of the column where Robin was riding. The hooded man turned his horse and trotted back the way we had come towards Nottingham. Tuck paid him no mind. He continued to plod along in that steady mile-eating pace, barely using his staff at all. Then, suddenly, a trumpet, shockingly loud, sounded from the head of the column. I started, looked around for an alarm but everything seemed normal. The cavalcade came to a halt. The people were chatting to each other unconcerned. The armed men leaning on their bow staves. The cheerful sun looked down from above: it was noon.
‘Time for dinner,’ said Tuck, with a great deal of relish. He rummaged in the nearest cart and pulled out a dirty white sack and huge stone bottle. ‘Let’s sit over here,’ he said, and we sat down in the shade of a wide chestnut tree. All around us men and women from the column were unpacking bags and satchels and spreading blankets on the grass. Out of our sack, like a travelling magician I had once seen at a Nottingham fair, Tuck started to pull wonderful things, luxuries of the kind that I rarely saw then and very seldom ate: a loaf of fine-milled white bread; a whole boiled chicken; smoked gurnard; cold roast venison; a round yellow cheese; hard-boiled eggs; salted cod; apples, stored in straw since the previous autumn. . He gestured at the stone bottle, inviting me to drink, and I pulled out the wooden stopper and took a long swallow of cider. This was a feast fit for a royal household: my normal noon-day meal, if there was anything to eat in our house, which was seldom, consisted of coarse rye bread, ale, pottage and, if we were lucky, some cheese. Meat we rarely ate, perhaps a rabbit poached from the lord of the manor’s warren once in a while. The monk tore a leg off the plump chicken and tossed it to me. I grabbed a handful of the soft white bread, ripped off a hunk and quickly began to fill my belly.
Tuck cut himself a large slice of cheese, wrapped it in bread, took a deep swallow of cider, and sighed happily. His mouth full, he gestured at me to eat and drink. And he further encouraged my gluttony by cutting me a large chunk of smoked fish. The food and drink seemed to loosen his tongue once again, and between mouthfuls he said: ‘You asked how I, a man of God, come to help Robin, a godless murderer. Well, I shall tell you. .’ And he began.
‘I have known Robin these nine years past; since he was but a boy, not much older than you. He had been sent to stay with the Earl of Locksley, to learn the skills of a knight, but he was a wild one even then, forever running off into Barnsdale forest when he should have been attending to his lessons. But he was not an outlaw, not the Lord of the Wood you see today, whom everyone must obey on pain of death.’ He lifted his chin towards a distant group of figures — Robin, his brother Hugh and John — sitting on the ground, laughing and eating, joking with each other in a carefree way, but surrounded by a ring of grim armed men. ‘But he despised the Church, even at that age,’ he continued, ‘and when we first met, to him I was no more than a symbol of a tyrannical and corrupt institution.’ He paused and took another huge swig of cider.
‘I was a wayward monk, a sinner, who had been sent away from Kirklees Priory — yes, I know it is more famous as a nunnery, but a certain number of monks lived in an adjoining brother house — what was I saying? Yes, I was sent away to live alone in a cell in the woods. What was my sin, you ask? Not what you suspect, you horny young rascal, with the nuns and monks living next to each other; it was plain greed. I could not control my appetite on fast days. And, in those days, under old Prior William, almost every day at Kirklees was designated a
