fast day: Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and all those interminable, joyless holy days.’
Tuck gave me a grin, to let me know that he was joking, and stuffed a whole leg of chicken into his mouth, stripping the flesh from the bone with his strong white teeth. ‘I have always been afflicted with a large appetite,’ he said, with his mouth full. ‘So, for my sin, I was sent off to a hermit’s cell in the forest where there was a ferry owned by the Priory. I was alone, and my duty was to act as the ferryman, conveying travellers safely across the river. I was to take my meagre living from their small gifts of food. Prior William thought it would teach me a lesson. Perhaps cure my gluttony.
‘One sunny day I was lying under a tree, eyes closed, in deepest contemplation, when a young man rode up on a horse. It was Robin. His shouts of greeting roused me from my meditation. He was well dressed and armed with a fine sword in a gold-chased scabbard. I could tell he came from money. “Good morning, Brother,” he sings out. And then I realised he was also very drunk and I noticed that his face was badly bruised. “Will you carry me across this river safely to the far bank?” Robin said cheerily, nearly falling off his horse.
‘I scrambled to my feet and said that I would, if he would grant me alms, food or drink as payment. He said: “I shall give you what you deserve for this service.” Then he walked his horse on to the ferry. I was wary of him: drunken, heavily armed young men usually mean trouble for someone. I know because I was not always a monk. Before I took my vows, I was a soldier in Wales, a bowman and a damned good one, though I say so myself, fighting for Prince Iorweth, and in those days I did my full share of swaggering about in drink.
‘The ferry was a simple floating platform linked to a rope that stretched across the river. The rider or pedestrian just walked on to the platform and I punted them a dozen yards across to the other side with a sturdy pole. Robin said nothing as I heaved the ferry across the calm brown water, but he took a long pull from a flask of wine at his belt. When we were still a few yards from the other bank, I stopped the ferry. It floated downstream a yard or two until it came to rest, held against the gentle current by the rope.
‘“I’ll take that payment now, if it pleases you, sir,” I said. Robin stared at me, then his handsome young face contorted in anger and he snarled: “I will pay you what you deserve, monk: and that is nothing, you brown parasite. You and your filthy brethren have been sucking the blood of good men for too long, threatening them with damnation unless they offer up their wealth, their food, their toil and even their bodies. I say you are all blood-suckers and I will not allow you another drop of mine. Take me to the bank and then get you to Hell.”
‘I said nothing but merely shoved my pole into the mud of the river and began to move the ferry back to the original riverbank. “What are you doing, you God-cursed tub of shit, you prick-sucking pig,” Robin was spitting at me in his rage. I stayed silent. But with two or three good shoves on the pole we were back where we had started, the ferry nudging up against the bank. “If you will not pay,” I said. “You shall not cross.”
‘At this Robin drew his sword. It was a beautiful blade, I remember thinking, far too good for the drunken lout who held it. “You will carry me across this river or I will have your life, you soul-selling leech,” Robin said, holding the sword to my throat. I looked into his grey eyes and I saw that, drunk or not, he meant what he said. My life hung by a thread. And so I shoved the pole into the riverbed and we began to cross once again. Robin relaxed; he still held the sword, but it was no longer tickling my throat.’ Tuck paused at this point and took a bite from a wrinkled apple.
‘Now, Alan, have a care about repeating what I tell you next. It is a sensitive issue with Robin. He’s a proud man and he can be very dangerous in defence of his reputation. ’ I nodded and he continued. ‘About halfway across the river, he holding out the sword and with his back to the other bank, I suddenly shouted, “My good sweet Christ,” and pointed over his shoulder at the edge of the wood behind. Robin spun drunkenly around in alarm to see what I was pointing at. . and, holding the punting pole like a spear, I smashed the blunt end of it into the side of his head, exactly on the temple. He dropped like a sack of onions and slid off the ferry into the slow brown river.’
I stared at Tuck, my mouth agape. Then I started laughing. ‘Are you serious?’ I asked, between gasps of breath. ‘Robin Hood fell for that old trick? “I say, what’s that behind you?” A ruse that was well into its dotage when Cain killed Abel?’
Brother Tuck nodded. ‘He swallowed it. But try not to mention it to anyone. The poor boy is still very sensitive about it. He was very young, you must remember, and thoroughly drunk.’
I controlled my snorts of laughter with a mouthful of cider: ‘What happened next?’
‘Well, I fished him out, of course,’ said Tuck. ‘He was quite unconscious, and so I wrapped him up in a blanket and let him sleep in my cell for the rest of that day and the whole night.
‘In the morning he was awake, with an aching head and a mouthful of apologies, and I fed him broth and we talked, and made peace between ourselves. We have been friends ever since. And, a few years later, after he was declared outlaw — which is a story for another day — he would visit me quite often, and sometimes leave wounded comrades at the cell for me to tend. Until he found someone who could heal them better than I. But that too is another story. Anyway, I have never seen Robin the worse for drink since that day. And I have never seen him openly display his anger. But he is angry inside — why, I do not know, but inside he is boiling and outside, these days at least, he is ice. He is the quintessential cold-hot man.’
The noon meal was over. All along the column Robin’s people were packing away food sacks into the carts, sweeping crumbs off clothes, throwing away scraps. I was feeling full and not a little sleepy after such a huge meal. I had not slept the night before, though the hideous scenes with the man whose tongue was carved out seemed like no more than a nightmare in the glorious afternoon sunshine. Tuck noticed my tiredness and suggested I ride in one of the carts for a while. So I made myself a nest among the sacks of grain and bales of hay in the largest cart and lay back as the cavalcade moved off down the road. I thought about Tuck’s story; trying to imagine Robin, the calm, controlled man that I had met last night, as that raging drunken youth, but it seemed incredible, so I dismissed it from my mind and very soon the swaying of the cart and the soft familiar noises of the cavalcade lulled me to sleep.
When I awoke it was dark, a crescent moon was high in the sky and the cart was in the courtyard of what looked like a large farmstead: a long hall with stables and various outbuildings. I must have slept all afternoon and for the early part of the night. There was nobody around, but the horses were housed, next to a dovecote, in an open shed, one of many off to the side of the hall itself. One of the horses was more striking than the others: pure white and more richly caparisoned than any I had seen on our journey here or, in fact, ever: it was the mount of a lady, not some well-to-do farmer’s wife, but a noblewoman. I stared at the horse for a while thinking that the bridle alone would be worth five marks, and, very briefly, I considered lifting it. I was hungry again and there were sounds of revelry — great gusts of raucous laughter and music — and a strong smell of roasting meat and spilled ale coming from a partially open door at the side of the house. I’d never get away with the bridle, I thought. I didn’t even know where I was exactly, and I had nowhere to run to, and nowhere to sell the loot. So, scrambling out of the cart, I brushed the hay and seeds off myself and went to the half-open door in search of food.
Inside the hall was a scene to make the Devil blush: a big, hot, noisy communal room with a huge fireplace at one end; a haunch of venison on the spit at the fire being turned by a sweaty, grubby, half-naked boy; Robin’s men and women sprawled around the room or slumped drunkenly at a table, which was littered with the remains of their feast — broken bread, a small lake of spilled ale, piled greasy wooden platters, scraps and animal bones. In one corner of the hall a couple were mating like beasts, the girl, a redhead not much older than me, leaning with her palms against the wall, her skirts rucked up around her waist, with her paramour thrusting and grunting from behind. The noise was deafening, crimson-faced men shouting jests at each other across the table; three women were screaming at each other, waving their fists; a drunken oaf was blowing a wailing stream of pain from a set of bagpipes. The redhead being serviced in the corner suddenly turned her head and looked directly at me as I hovered in the doorway. She had huge, gorgeous eyes the colour of spring grass and she held my gaze for a few heartbeats before smiling and raising a suggestive eyebrow. Her look was like a physical blow, those mesmerising, bright green eyes and her air of cynical detachment from the heaving beast behind her, inside her. I looked away quickly, but not before I felt a disturbing and distinctly pleasurable stirring in my virgin loins.
I took a step back and averted my gaze and my eyes alighted on two men seated at a small table near the door talking quietly — an oasis of sober calm in the maelstrom of drunken tumult. It was the giant John with his back to me and Hugh, the clerk, deep in some private conversation. A man stumbled over to their table, body swaying like a young silver birch in a gale, with a full pot of ale in his fist. He leaned towards the centre of the table, pushing his face between John and Hugh and shouting something that I didn’t catch. The clerk just leaned back and John, without even rising from his seat, smashed his huge left fist across his body full into the face of the
