by DAVID B. COE
Upon waking and descending the stairs of Peper Harrow to the great hall, he found Sir Walter already awake and sitting at the long wooden table, which was laden with old scrolls. Walter waved him over, grinning and gesturing grandly at the mountain of parchment.
And so Robin was introduced to the extensive writings of Thomas Longstride.
It seemed that referring to his father as a mere stonemason was akin to calling Richard the Lionheart a mere soldier. Robin's father had written at length about politics, about opposing the king and rousing the people of the realm from their torpor, and about his dreams for England. Some of what Robin read inspired him; some of it confused him, and these tracts he and Walter discussed until his father's words became clearer. Through it all, though, Robin's admiration for Thomas Longstride grew, and his understanding of his own life, of notions that over the years had struck him as if out of the blue, crystalized.
For so long he had thought of himself as rootless, a mercenary—an Englishman, to be sure, but one without any true ties to the land or its people. His father, though, had been so much more. And seeing this, reading the man's words, visualizing for himself the realm Thomas had tried to build, Robin realized that he wanted more for himself and for England. He had never been a man to indulge in regrets or self-doubt. He had chosen a soldier's life, and had lived it to its fullest. But after learning so much about his father, he could no longer be satisfied with the man he had been.
Walter seemed to understand this. At first he said little, save to answer Robin's questions and refer him first to one scroll and then to another. But as the morning wore on, Walter began to say more. He spoke of what he and William Marshal had done to help Thomas spread his teachings to others. He described the horror of watching Henry's men murder the stonemason, and of seeing Longstride's dreams, and those of the people who had followed him, die in the wake of that terrible day in Barnsdale. And at last, Walter told Robin of all he and Marshal had done to see Robin safely to France, so that one day Thomas Longstride's son might take up his cause.
Only a day or two before, Robin might have refused to listen. This isn't my legacy, he might have said. This isn't the life I want. But not now. He listened, and he thought he could hear in the old man's words, an echo of his father's voice.
Between all that he had read and heard and thought about, Robin lost track of the time. But sometime around midday, he and Walter heard a commotion outside the house. Walter appeared alarmed, and Robin understood why. After all this talk of freedom and remaking the realm even in the face of opposition from the Throne, he couldn't help wondering for just a moment if King John's men had come for them.
As it turned out, this wasn't too far from the truth.
One of the house servants hurried into the great hall leading a messenger. The man looked exhausted; his clothes were ragged and travel stained. But he stood straight-backed before the two of them as he gave his message to Sir Walter.
“My lord,” he said, “Peterborough has been burned by the king's men. Darlington and York as well. Fitzrobert gathers an army to slay King John in London! He asks the barons to gather for council at Barnsdale.”
Walter turned from the messenger to Robin. The old man might have been blind, but his eyes seemed to burn deep into Robin's soul.
“Cometh the hour, cometh the man,” he said. “The time for pretense is over. Hug me like a father.”
Robin didn't flinch from his gaze. “Have you told me everything?”
“Your father, the mason Longstride, was the leader of our rebellion against Henry. That is why he was killed. Promise me you will avoid the same fate.” Walter pointed directly at the messenger, though his eyes remained fixed on Robin. “Go with this man,” he said. “You will find what you are looking for.”
Robin gazed at the man and began to nod. At last his path was clear, his past made sense, his name had meaning. This was his father's cause; he was the man to lead it.
He gave Walter's arm a quick squeeze, stood, and followed the messenger out into the courtyard.
MARION STOOD ON the bottom stair, her hand resting against the cold stone wall, her head tilted slightly, so that she might hear all that Robin and Walter said to each other. She shouldn't have been listening. But the matters Robin and Walter discussed had ramifications for all of them, and she wanted to understand fully the connections between the two men.
Mostly she wanted to know more about this man who had come into their lives so suddenly and with such profound consequences for them all. Since Robin's arrival, Nottingham had been transformed. The wild boys were beginning to emerge from the shadows of the wood, music and dance and laughter had returned to the fields surrounding Peper Harrow. And despite the dark tidings he carried with him from King Richard's army, Marion felt her own heart moving past grief to a new and unlikely love.
Now it seemed that there was even more to this man—and Walter—than she had imagined. Robin's father was the leader of a rebellion to which Walter had been party. Had her Robert been involved in this, too? From the sound of it, she didn't think so. But still she wondered.
The messenger, though, had spoken quite clearly. A new rebellion had come, and the other barons looked to the house of Loxley for aid. She didn't know whether to be proud or outraged. And so she hid in the shadows, and she listened.
For several days now, they had acted at being husband and wife. But there could be no denying how powerfully they had been drawn to each other the previous night as they danced in the firelight. She had lost one love to the last crusade. Would she lose another to the barons' rebellion?
Walter turned in his chair and looked back toward the stairway.
“Marion?” he called.
She didn't want him to know that she had been listening, and she didn't trust herself to speak of Robin with anyone just now. Silently, she withdrew.
IT HADN'T TAKEN Robin long to find Will, Allan, and Little John. This was something else that had changed so quickly for him in recent days. Not long ago he had been ready to bid farewell to his friends and accept that the time had come for them to go their separate ways. But they resisted, and he was glad. He couldn't imagine undertaking this journey to Barnsdale without them.
They had followed him back to Peper Harrow and waited for him now as he saddled his horse and cinched his pack. As he readied his things, the house servant he had sent to find Marion appeared in the barn doorway. She was alone.
“Where is Marion?” he asked her as he retrieved his bow.
The girl curtsied deferentially. “I couldn't find her, sir.”
Robin frowned, wondering where Marion could be. He didn't like the idea of leaving Nottingham without saying good-bye to her. By the same token, he knew that he couldn't afford to delay their departure. From what the rider had said, it seemed that Fitzrobert and the other barons were itching for a battle. Robin needed to reach Barnsdale as quickly as possible.
He thought about telling the girl to search the house for Marion again, but then thought better of it. There was too much to explain, too much he didn't yet understand—about himself, about what he was setting out to do, about what he and Marion had begun to share. In the end he merely nodded to the girl and led his friends from the barn and out of the Peper Harrow courtyard.
SHE STOOD AT her window, taking care to keep out of sight, and she watched them ride away. She wasn't sure why she had avoided the servant Robin sent for her, or why she didn't call to Robin now, to offer a word of farewell and a wish that he return to her. She recalled watching her husband ride off to Richard's war and wondered at the changes wrought by ten years of waiting. She hadn't been nearly as frightened when Robert left. She had been young and in love and convinced that he would return, that life couldn't deal her so cruel a blow as to take her husband. She knew better now, and so she prayed that fate would be gentler with her this time.
THEY HADN'T RIDDEN far before Robin reined his mount to a halt, pausing on the road to look back at Nottingham. The town had
not seemed like much when first he saw it, but it had changed in the few days he had spent there. The lanes seemed to hum with activity; shops were busier, people looked happier, more at ease.
And even as he resolved to see his father's work through to its end, Robin also felt the tug of the place on his own emotions. For the first time in his memory, he had found a home in his native land, and someone with whom he could imagine spending the rest of his days.
He felt the others watching him. After a few moments, Will, who was closest to him, began to whistle softly the melody he sang the night before. Robin couldn't hear the tune without thinking of Marion; of the firelight on her face, of the way she had felt in his arms.
If I were a minstrel,
I'd sing you six love songs,
To tell the whole world of the love that we share…
He turned his mount once more and led the men away from Nottingham and Peper Harrow, toward Barnsdale, where a rebellion was brewing.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
They were awake with the first faint glimmerings of daylight. Adhemar's legionnaires moved about the camp with their usual quiet efficiency, their blue cloaks and tabards blending with the pale gray smoke of cooking fires and the fine, cool mist that lingered in the wood, so that they looked like ghosts drifting among the trees.
As the men around him fed themselves and prepared to break camp, Godfrey bent over a crude washbasin, splashing cold water on his face and shaved head. They had miles to ride today, as they had the previous day and the one before that. Their campaign had taken on a rhythm of sorts, one that felt comfortable to him. Word of the barons' rebellion had reached him. He hoped it had reached London, as well. The king would see in the alliance between Baldwin and Fitzrobert a threat to his power. And without Marshal there to guide him, he would meet the threat with the only tools he understood: bows and pikes and swords. By the time Philip Augustus crossed the channel, England would be neck-deep in civil war.
At the sound of his own name, Godfrey straightened and turned, drying his face with a towel that he then tossed aside. Belvedere had returned and approached him now with one of his toughs in tow. Belvedere looked travel weary, but he wore a self-satisfied smile.
“I found him, m'lord,” the man said.
“Where?” Godfrey asked, resisting an urge to raise a hand to the fading scar on his cheek.
Adhemar stood nearby, and Godfrey sensed that he was listening closely to their exchange.
Belvedere smiled, as if sharing some great joke. “In plain sight, living in Nottingham as Sir Walter's son.”
This was the last thing Godfrey had expected him to say. “The temerity of the man.” He had to admit, though, that he admired this Loxley, or whoever he really was. Living openly in the dead knight's home? It was something Godfrey himself might have done.
He crossed to a nearby table, which held a map tracing the path he and Adhemar had burned across England. He looked to the French commander.
“Two men,” he said. “Four horses. Ride hard to the coast, and then onto Paris with a message for the king.”
Adhemar eyed him eagerly. “And the message?” he asked, his accent thick.
Godfrey considered, but only briefly. The moment for subtlety had long since passed. “Tell him it is time.”
Adhemar hurried off. Godfrey remained by the table, staring down at the map. He traced their path, his finger gliding over Barnsdale and York, Peterborough and Darlington. At last, his finger came to rest, and he tapped the map lightly, looking up at Belvedere.
“And we to Nottingham. No prisoners and not a stone unscorched.” He grinned. “By God! I'll make the place famous!”
IF NOT FOR the great cross that still stood in the center of the village, Marshal might never have known that he was in the right place. Though a modest town, Barnsdale had always been clean and welcoming, a pleasant place to visit.
But Godfrey and his henchmen had left the village in ruin. Fields and homes and shops had been burned black, and everywhere Marshal turned, he saw fresh graves marked by simple crosses.
Yet, Barnsdale had been transformed in other ways as well. Throughout the village, bright banners fluttered in the wind, bearing the sigils of baronies from throughout Northern England. Small clusters of soldiers milled about in the lanes, if these men—some older than Marshal and Sir Walter, some no more than boys—could even be called soldiers. They sharpened blades and axes, turned pitchforks and hoes into makeshift pikes. They talked among themselves, their expressions grim but determined. A few of them watched Marshal as he made his way through the lanes. Perhaps they knew who he was. Perhaps they saw that he wore the colors of the Plantagenet and assumed that he was the king's man and thus an enemy of their cause.
Horses grazed where they could find food. Dust drifted through the streets, occasionally swirled with leaves and bits of straw in tiny whirlwinds.
Marshal made his way to a large canvas pavilion in the center of the village, where most of the barons and their men had gathered. A smith, working at what was left of the village forge, made new shoes for horses. Cooking fires burned and men waited in line for thin broth and scraps of bread. Most of those who had gathered here looked no more like soldiers than those Marshal had passed in the street, but they were being drilled by more experienced fighters. Nearby, an armorer distributed weapons from a wagon laden with rusted swords, lances, and old battle axes. Clearly, the barons and their men were in earnest. And few men knew better than William Marshal what an army of committed soldiers could accomplish, regardless of their training or the state of their weapons and armor.
Marshal entered the pavilion and immediately all conversations ceased, and every man looked in his direction. He recognized Baldwin and Fitzrobert right away. He had known the former for years. They had served together, fought together, gotten drunk together. Once he had counted the baron as a friend, though he could tell from the way Baldwin regarded him now that those days were gone. Fitzrobert, he didn't know as well, but there were few barons in all of England as formidable in appearance. He was a mountain of a man, and he glowered at Marshal with manifest hostility.
There were about two dozen other barons in the pavilion. Some of them Marshal knew as well as he did Baldwin; others he had never seen before. But he sensed that Baldwin and Fitzrobert were the leaders of the group and he focused his attention on them. The two men were angry to the point of bitterness, and Marshal could hardly blame them. He had seen what Godfrey and his men had done to Barnsdale, Baldwin's home, and it seemed that the home villages of these other barons had suffered similar fates. Had William been in their position, he would have been eager for blood, too.
But in this case their calls for vengeance were misplaced. They needed to understand that King John wasn't their enemy; Godfrey and his French allies were. He soon realized, though, that Godfrey had planned all too well. Such was their rage at the king, that they would not listen to anything he said. Each time Marshal responded to their grievances he was shouted down. In their eyes, John was a villain, and Marshal was the king's man.
“I speak for all here,” Baldwin said, raising his hands to silence the other barons, and addressing Marshal. “As regent, John was vain and dissolute, but now a crown on his head makes him a despot. You have spent too much time in the palace, William.”
William opened his hands. “You must swim with sharks to understand them.” The barons began to shout at him again, but Marshal raised his voice and spoke over them. “John is new to the throne—but a brigand he is not. Godfrey has betrayed the king and England. He is an agent of King Philip; his marauders are French. Do not let his barbarism blind you to the threat approaching our shores. Every minute wasted in dissension brings this country closer to its own demise.”
He looked around the pavilion, hoping that some of the men might heed his warning. But even though a few appeared to recognize the truth in what he said, none of them was ready to join cause with John. Godfrey had divided t
hem, but John himself had sown the seeds of this rebellion with his pettiness and his lack of discipline.
“We have been bled by the Crown long before Godfrey,” Fitzrobert said, drawing nods and murmurs of agreement. “Go back to London and tell the king: We will meet him on the field of his choice!”
The others roared their approval.
LONG BEFORE THEY reached the Barnsdale gate, Robin could see that the town had been attacked. The gate and town wall were blackened, and those few buildings which still stood within the walls had been damaged as well. Will, Allan, and Little John had been chattering on about the girls they had met in Nottingham, but seeing the town, they fell into a grim silence.
All was still around the town, save for a single bird that circled once overhead and then swooped down into the village. It had the look of a messenger pigeon. Robin wondered what new tidings awaited them within those scorched walls.
