quick visit to the stables to check that Ghost was comfortable, I collected two goblets of wine, a plate with a large piece of cheese, a loaf of bread, two apples and a small fruit knife and took them on a tray into Robin’s and Marie-Anne’s solar, which was at the end of the hall. I reasoned that Robin and his lady might be hungry when they returned. Then I settled down to wait in their chamber.
The solar was lit by a single good-quality beeswax candle, in a silver candlestick on a small table of the far side of the big four-poster bed. I came around the bed and placed the food on the night table; then I sat gingerly on the embroidered silk bedcover, and looked around the room as I awaited Robin’s return. It was a good-sized chamber, perhaps ten paces long by six paces wide, the walls panelled with dark wood and hung with one or two small tapestries depicting the hunt. It had a polished wooden floor that creaked slightly in the centre under a person’s weight and was partially covered by a large wolfskin rug. The great oak bed was at one end of the room against the wall, perhaps three paces in from the door. Beside the bed was a large window with a stout wooden shutter, bolted from the inside, which opened out on to the castle courtyard. At the far end of the room were two clothes chests, one each for Robin and Marie-Anne, and a washbasin on a thin iron stand with a jug of water beside it. A large dresser, on the wall opposite the door, held feminine items such as jewellery, hair pins, face powder, perfume and a large silver mirror. From my seat on the bed, I could just see my reflection in the mirror: a big lad looked back at me, taller than average, and with the broad shoulders and thick arms of a swordsman. My oval face and regular features seemed entirely unremarkable to me, save for the mop of bright blond hair on top. The merest fluff of a beard showed on my cheeks and I remembered that I had not shaved for several days. I ran a hand over my face, and looked away at the rest of the room, noting an antler rack that held cloaks and hats, a crucifix hanging on the wall — which must belong to Marie-Anne — and a large throne-like oak chair.
Considering the power that Robin now wielded in England, his private chamber was rather austere, but then he had never been a man overly concerned with comfort. Years of living wild as an outlaw had given him the ability to travel light, and apparently Marie-Anne was content with only the bare necessities of feminine life.
As I sat on the silk bedcover, I could feel the effects of the long day’s travel. I was exhausted; for weeks I had been galloping about England delivering messages for Robin — and paying for my board and lodging by entertaining unfamiliar nobles in strange castles with my music — and now, warm, well-fed and safe, I could feel my eyelids turning to lead. Surely Robin could not be long. It was perhaps two hours after sunset and he would not like to have Marie-Anne out late at night in her condition. My head was nodding, and I had an overwhelming urge to lie down. I was sure that my master would not mind if I slept for a few minutes, just to be fresh for our discussion. So I kicked off my soft leather shoes and stretched out full length on the comfortable bed. I just managed to lift my head from the soft goose-feather pillow and blow out the candle before I was drowned in sleep.
I came from deep sleep to fully awake very swiftly, like a man rising up fast from a deep pool and breaking the surface to gulp down clean air. But some devious instinct made me remain absolutely still and silent. There was someone coming into the room. I caught a glimpse of his shape, silhouetted in the doorway, back-lit by the dull glow of the banked hall fire. He was short, shorter than Robin, and much broader in the shoulder, too. And in his hand, just glimpsed, was a sword.
The man closed the door behind him, the wooden latch closing with a click, and the room was once again pitch dark. All the hair on my neck stood to attention; goose bumps rose on my forearms. I lay still for one more moment and then, the knowledge hitting me like a bucket of icy water in the face, I rolled. And only just in time. There was a whist of sharp metal passing swiftly through the air, and then a thump as the edge of the man’s sword plunged into the bed where I had been lying just a heartbeat before.
I scrambled to my feet, knocking over the night table with a deafening clatter of wood, silver and steel. Like a fool, I bent down to pick up the scattered food and utensils, hearing a patter of soft-shod feet running towards me and a hiss above my head as the sword swept over my stooping form in the black of the room. I found the fruit knife in my hand and dived under the bed and squirmed through the dust and cobwebs and out of the other side. But the swordsman anticipated my move, leaping round from the far side of the bed in the same time it took me to crawl under it. As I began cautiously to poke out my nose, there was a splintering noise as the intruder’s blade hacked down inches from my head and buried itself in the floorboards. As the man wrestled with his stuck blade, I recoiled under the bed and, turning to my right, fast-crawled out of the end of the four-poster, working forward as silently and swiftly as I could on elbows and knees, scuttling like a crab over to the far wall, and when I reached it I crouched, back to the wooden panels, knees round my ears, trying not to pant, with the little fruit knife held out in front of my body.
The room was silent. The darkness was impenetrable. But my fear was subsiding and, in its place, a cold, hard anger bloomed. I was locked in a room with a sword-wielding maniac who was trying to kill me, and who had almost succeeded three times. I tested the edge of the fruit knife. It was very sharp, although the blade was only two inches long. It would serve. After two years of mixing with Robin’s outlaws, some of the most efficient cut- throats in England, I knew exactly how to kill a man quickly with a small blade. My heart began to slow, and I remained perfectly still as I waited for my enemy to reveal himself.
Then the man spoke, softly: ‘My lord earl, why do you not call upon your liegemen to help you?’ It was a Welsh voice; I should have guessed by the short powerful body shape that he was an archer — and that was good news. By and large, our archers were not overly proficient as swordsmen; I knew because it was my duty to train them. It was a crumb of comfort, and I felt my courage swelling with the thought. It was also clear that this man thought he had Robin trapped in the room. There was no question of my calling out. It would have brought me help, yes, but if I made the slightest sound, he would be on me with his sword in a heartbeat and, even in that total darkness, I could be cut to pieces. I would be dead or mutilated before any of Robin’s men, now snoring in the hall, could come to my rescue, and he would be out of the window and lost in the courtyard. So I remained dumb. And smiled into the blackness. He had revealed his position to me. By the sound of his voice, I knew he was standing by the end of the bed. I heard the swish of his sword as he sliced the air experimentally around his body, trying for a lucky strike. But I was three paces away and crouched low. If I stayed still he was unlikely to catch me with his sword. And, if he was to find me, he must move.
After a long silence, in which all I heard was an indistinct whisper of cloth, the floorboards gave a harsh creak, very loud in the silence, echoing like the cry of a gull. The board creaked once again and then stopped, and I knew he was in the middle of the room, standing still to make no further noise. I could see his position exactly in my mind. But I needed him to come nearer to me, without discovering my own location. Groping around in the dark, my hand alighted on the cool earthenware of the water jug. I put my hand inside to discover that it was half-full. Lifting it silently with both hands, knife between my teeth, I hurled the jug away from me and into the corner of the room. It smashed with an unbelievably soul-wringing noise and I heard the floorboards creak again as the man rushed towards the corner and began to flog the air with his sword. On hands and knees I crawled forward to where I believed he stood and, knife in my right hand, grabbed him with my left around the thigh. I was only slightly off the mark and, as I seized his knee, he let out a shriek of surprise and fear. A moment later and I had plunged the knife deep into the soft inside of his thigh, then ripped the blade out of the flesh in a scooping motion. He screamed horribly in pain and terror and I felt him batter at my shoulders with the hilt of his sword. But I had been rewarded for my strike by a great gush of his blood into my face, a hot fountain that immediately drenched my upper body, and I knew then that he was a dead man.
Dropping the knife, I scrambled out of reach of his flailing sword and scuttled back under the bed. The man’s howls filled the room, shrill and heart-rending, and I knew that the alarm had been satisfactorily raised. Scream upon scream echoed about me as his life jetted out of his slashed thigh. Then I heard him slump to the floor like a dropped sack of grain, weak and whimpering now, as he tried to staunch the torrent of spurting lifeblood. I could smell its sour iron odour. Even in the pitch dark I could clearly imagine what was happening, as I had seen it once before: I had deliberately cut through the great pulsing artery that ran down his inner thigh, and unless he could find a tourniquet to stop the blood flow, in less than thirty heartbeats he would be as dead as last night’s dinner.
The door of the solar burst open and a crowd of men-at-arms rushed in, bringing torches and rush lights and an excited clamour to the room. The man was seated, legs widespread, in the middle of a lake of blood, his agonised face drained and white. I poked my bloody head out from under the bed and stared at him.
He managed four words before he collapsed, lifeless into the crimson pool: ‘Not my boy, please…’ he
