“Perhaps he will,” Malagane agreed in a murmur, his eyes gleaming with avarice. “In which case, we must take steps to insure there are no troublesome witnesses left behind. And if the shire of Nottingham is indeed our final destination, I know just the man who would raze the forests to the ground if he thought Robert Wardieu d’Amboise was within his grasp.”
PART THREE
Nottingham
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Robin’s tiny band passed through the city of Rouen without further incident and, riding hard, reached the port town of Fecamp in time to admire the sunset the following night. Jean de Brevant, who had gone on ahead to arrange their passage, was not overly pleased to hear of their troubles at Gaillard. He was even less humoured to see Griffyn Renaud and Fulgrin in their midst. The former had bruised splendidly throughout the night and day. One of his eyes was blue and swollen completely shut. His jaw was cut, his lips puffed out of any recognizable shape. But he had kept pace with the others, remaining in his saddle through sheer strength of will.
Brenna’s heart had been in her throat each time they halted. She was afraid to go to him, afraid of what she might give away if she touched him or offered to tend his wounds. It was bad enough sensing Robin’s displeasure each time he caught her looking in Griffyn’s direction; bad enough to know he was aware of what she had given away already.
The ship Littlejohn had found was barely big enough to house the horses belowdecks and the men above. It was a single-masted cog, old enough, leaky enough, it had probably been used in its prime to carry Crusaders to the Holy Land.
Richard, Dag, and Geoffrey, after the first flush of bravado wore off, spent much of the time at the rails, their faces as green as the sea. Sparrow convinced himself the masts were trees and made a perch for himself in one, while Robin and Littlejohn preferred to huddle miserably against a bulkhead. Griffyn kept to himself, although he was never left entirely alone. Will FitzAthelstan was never very far from the dark knight’s side, and if Griffyn suspected he was being closely watched, he gave no outward sign of taking offense. He brooded more over the necessity of leaving Centurion behind than the circumstances aboard ship. The stallion had come up lame on the last few miles of their approach to Fecamp, and it had been considered wise not to risk further injury in the cramped hold of the carrack.
Fulgrin had generously offered to remain behind to care for the destrier, but since there was only Timkin to handle the rouncies and supplies (and because he knew as much about where they were going and what they were setting forth to do), his submission was refused. He made no attempt to conceal his indignation and stated bluntly that he preferred the company of the horses. He stayed below-deck for most of the crossing, only surfacing when the stench of offal and wet hay became more overpowering than the sight of the horizon lurching up and down.
Brenna, who had never been at sea before, watched the men falling like nine-pins struck with a guilles stick and waited for her own stomach to protest the chilly, wind-driven passage. Three full days she waited, feeling nothing more than a faint queasiness, and was congratulating herself on possessing an iron gullet when the ship encountered a storm just off the hip of Yarmouth. The wind that had been pushing them along at a brisk pace suddenly blew in from all sides and roared with an unrelenting fury. Waves broke over the deck in solid gray sheets and threatened to sweep away anything not securely lashed to a mast or bulkhead.
In this new shifting, slipping, sliding, careening world, the seas had completely erased any point of reference on the horizon or, indeed, on board the ship, and Brenna quickly changed her opinions of sea travel. Her stomach more than made up for its reticence, and at end of twelve hours of constant battering by salt water and stinging rain, having been one of those objects securely lashed to a capstan, she was never so happy to see land, regardless who ruled or how bitter the ale.
Damaged, the cog had to put in at Lowestoft. Robin had been hoping to sail as far north as the Wash before landing, and he estimated this would add as much as three days to their journey. The men seemed to recover their spirits as soon as they set foot on solid land, proving to be ravenously hungry and insatiably thirsty, eager to be on their way. The horses were not so quick to adapt, however, and one of the rouncies had to be left behind.
The sky did not lose its gray, sullen appearance, not even after the storm had blown itself far out to sea. It remained a dull pewter color, heavy with slow-moving clouds that drizzled a constant, fine mist over the land day and night. Clothing that had become soaked on board ship had no opportunity to dry properly, and Sparrow, whose mission in life, as always, was to remind people of how truly wretched they could be, carped continually about the frozen state of his nose and toes, and about the sanity of any king who would not only choose to conquer such a godforsaken place but actually fight to keep it.
“Give it away to the first passing trull, I would,” he muttered for the umpteenth time. “The land is too sour to grow anything but cabbages. The wine is like vinegar”—here he burped to prove he had given it a fair test—“and the meat so foul, a man must needs check his breeks each time he passes wind to insure there are no unwelcome surprises. In truth, I had forgotten how dreary and woe begotten a place is this England.”
His opinions included the people as well. They were a forlorn, frightened lot, most of them cowering before the sight of the armoured knights like dogs who expected to be beaten. At the odd village they were greeted with the respect due their rank, but these were few and the number of amiable people fewer still, with none inclined to extend more than the barest courtesies to passing strangers.
It was here, in the small vills and hamlets, where Griffyn Renaud proved his worth again. His French, perfect on the Continent and seeming to be tainted with only a hint of the coarser dialects of Burgundy, lapsed easily and fluidly into plain Saxon English when the need was required, startling his companions as well as the peasants he addressed. Robin and the others knew enough of the heathen tongue to get by begging a cup of water or lodgings for the night. But Griffyn could talk like one of them—something even Littlejohn found he had difficulty doing, not having spoken the language in over a decade.
Renaud’s fluency saved them on more than one occasion when surly peasants deliberately sought to give them wrong directions as they worked their way inland toward the Great North Road—the main artery from London that passed through Nottingham, Lincoln, and York. It saved them on another occasion, when they were passing through a densely wooded forest and came upon an old man skinning a young, fat doe.
He must not have heard them approaching, for his left ear was missing and the right needed to be tilted toward the speaker’s mouth to catch every other word. When he did eventually see the riders coming through the woods, he dropped the bloody knife and threw himself down on his knees, his head bowed, his hands clasped through a fervent prayer that lasted until Robin and Littlejohn dismounted. By then his face, hardly more than wrinkles layered upon wrinkles, had drained to pasty yellow-white and his eyes refused to lift above the level of the swords the two knights wore belted at their waists.
“Good fellow, rise,” Robin ordered genially.
“I will stay here, be it all the same to ye, my lord,” the old man muttered, “to save my poor head the trouble o’ falling so far.”
Robin looked askance at Littlejohn, who translated and pointed to the dead doe.
“Indeed,” Robin said. “A fine, fat deer you have brought down this day, and you see before you hungry men who would gladly buy whatever meat you could spare.”
The old man cowered further, his belly almost rubbing the ground. “Take it all, yer worship, I need none o’ it. They eat my turnips, ye see. I try to drive them off, I swear it to ye, worship, I do, but they keep coming back. This one, I only meant to scare off with my arrow, in truth I did, for I could not shoot my own foot if I rested the broadhead on it first. I like the deer, truly I do. But they eat my turnips, an’ without my turnips, my family wo
uld starve an’ this small plot o’ land, poor as it is, would be taken away from me.”
“Is this your freehold, then?” Littlejohn asked.
“Aye, worship. As it was my father’s an’ his father’s before him.”
“Then surely you have the right to kill any animal that trespasses upon it, especially if they have come to eat your turnips.”
Griffyn, who had by then dismounted as well, came forward. “Not if that land is surrounded by royal forest,” he said quietly in French, for the benefit of his companions, and again in Saxon English for the old man. “And not if that forest is full of wardens and verderers who earn an extra bezant for every hand they chop off a man who was only trying to keep his family from starving … or his turnips from being eaten.”
A watery brown eye peered up from beneath the folds of wrinkles and gawped. “Ye speak like a son o’ the land. Has the king turned the children against us now?”
Griffyn smiled grimly. “Not in this lifetime, Father. We are only travelers seeking to make our way as peacefully through the forest as possible. My giant friend here was not trying to trick you; his belly speaks only the truth when it needs filling.”
The old man seemed to inspect them closely for the first time. While they wore mail hauberks and chausses and carried their weapons and shields in plain sight to discourage too close a scrutiny, their tunics were plain, without cresting or colors, and their shields had been draped in gray bunting, in the fashion practiced by those knights returning from pilgrimage. Brenna wore her hair bound in a tight coil and stuffed beneath an oversized cap. She wore no mail but, like the two squires, was protected by a short leather byrnie and a well-padded surcoat that camouflaged any hint of her sex.
“Ye’re not the king’s men?”
Griffyn shook his head.
“Ye’re not wardens?”
He shook his head again.
“Not wringers?”
“Only hungry travelers who would be willing to pay thee well to share a portion of your venison.” Griffyn drew a couple of marks from his belt, possibly the first the old man had laid eyes upon in some time, for he stood, wobbling on weak legs, his gaze fixed on the twinkling silver coins.
“Aye, I need only a portion o’ the haunch myself; but ye mout take the whole chine if ye have a belly as big as this”—he glanced at Littlejohn—“to fill.”
He licked his lips and his bony hand seemed to stray toward the coins a moment before he controlled the impulse and withdrew it, wiping the palm on the greasy fabric of his tunic. “But I’ll take no coin for it. Killing the royal deer would only cost me my hands, but if the wringers came an’ found the coins, well …” He shook his head mournfully. “It would be the gallows-tree for me an’ all my kin, innocent as they may be o’ any crime.”
It took a moment for the translation to win a reaction from Robin. “Wringers? Who are they?”
“Tax collectors,” Griffyn explained with a frown. “Of the worst sort. They travel in packs, like wolves, and concentrate on the poorest farms and farmers, tearing a hut apart board by board and breaking the occupant’s head if they even suspect him of hoarding an extra grain of wheat they have not listed in their rents.”
Robin flushed, for his father had never condoned brutality or violence when dealing with his tenants, and those tenants, in turn, rarely betrayed his trust by trying to cheat their lord of his due. They were, in fact, happy to keep the storerooms at Château d’ Amboise bulging. More than once over the past years harsh winters and poor crops had seen the Wolf open his doors to his people, even to sending wagons to neighboring demesnes to purchase grain and meat for those who would have starved otherwise.
“It makes little sense to beat, maim, and starve the very men who work the land and provide the rents that keep the manor lord in comfort.”
The old man, who must have known more French than he had initially let on, smirked at Robin’s naïveté. “Not if that lord is the Earl of Huntington an’ his lord is John Lackland who seeks to take every last morsel o’ bread out o’ every man’s mouth to satisfy the hunger in his own.” He straightened and puffed out his chest. “An’ ye may stab my heart with yer dagger for saying so, if ye will. I’ll not beg to recant.”
But it was Griffyn who looked suddenly stabbed. “The Earl of Huntington, you say?”
“Aye. Though I warrant he calls himself god in his private chambers.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Aye. Gisbourne. Guy o’ Gisbourne. He were awarded the Huntington claim some years back after the old earl’s son disappeared—murthured by the king’s men, some say, though there are others who swear he’ll come back one day to seek his vengeance. If yer horses be as strong as they look, ye’ve been riding on Gisbourne’s land since yester-noon, an’ if ye keep riding hard, ye’ll not pass out o’ it before another three days hence, well ayont the Great Road. Owns a fair piece o’ Nottinghamshire, he does, an’ lords over it as high sheriff to make his thievery sound like justice. Like as not, he would own all o’ Lincoln an’ York too if not for the King o’ Sherwood.”
“The King of Sherwood?”
“Aye, a brave man. A hero.” The brown eyes blazed a moment. “A bold an’ stouthearted lad who showed himself not to be afraid o’ the king’s men an’, by his example, fit spines back into the men who followed his ways an’ kept the forests safe for humble fools like me. First thing Gisbourne did when he came to Nottingham was to put his soldiers on the road an’ in the forests—looking to purge it o’ outlaws, he claimed. Looking for pennies to steal an’ women to rape, mores the like. Honest farmers had to hide their grain in tree stumps just to keep their families from starving, an’ honest husbands had to hide their wives an’ daughters an’ sisters in dung heaps to save them being carried away to whore for the guards in Nottingham Castle. Then one day, a troop o’ these black-souled monsters were waylaid on their way back through Sherwood. Claimed the devil stopped them, for he were dressed all in black an’ wore a hood over his face, as did the dozen or so disciples who sprang out o’ the trees an’ bushes behint him. Took back the women, they did, an’ took back the chickens an’ grain an’ pennies, then sent the guards on their way well blistered to show the sheriff his thievery would not go unpunished thenceforth. Aye, an’ it has not.” The old man chuckled. “Even though Gisbourne threatens to hang every taxman who comes back with his purse empty an’ his mouth full o’ pitch an’ feathers.” He stopped and laughed so hard, he had to slap his knee and stamp his foot. “Paints them in hot pitch, he does, then rolls them in chicken feathers afore he puts them back on the road. More ’n one has been mistaken by the sheriffs own wardens an’ shot for the castle kitchens.”
“These outlaws must be rich fellows by now,” Robin suggested.
“Nay!” The old man sobered and spat with enough vehemence to startle the horses. “They keep not one cutting o’ one copper groat! What they takes, they gives back to those it was stolen from—an’ more besides! My own son—” He stopped and chewed on his tongue, as if he had said too much already, but then he cursed and continued. “He were beaten by the wringers—so bad he lost an eye an’ half a foot. When he heard about it, the King o’ Sherwood found the wringers an’ demonstrated a mort o’ Saxon justice. Eye for an eye, foot for a foot. He gave my Barth more than what was took, as well as the satisfaction o’ knowing there are six o’ the sheriffs men walking with sticks an’ seeing half what they did afore.”
“This outlaw king does indeed sound like a stout fellow,” Littlejohn agreed. “I trust he will not take offense to our passing through these woods or mistake us for the king’s men.”
“In fact,” Robin said, “we should like to meet him, if you can tell us where he may be found.”
The old man looked instantly suspicious, and his gaze went from face to face, studying each with renewed wariness and fear.
“We are not come in search of any reward or bounty,” Griffyn assured him.
The turnip farmer wilte
d again and shook his head sadly. “Would do ye no good even if ye were. Some yellow-livered, fish-pricked swine has already collected it, for he has been locked away in the sheriffs donjons this past month, an’ Gisbourne has set the hanging for Saturday next.”
“That is”—Littlejohn counted on his fingers—“four days hence. Has no one tried to free him before now? What of these brave men you say follow him?”
“They would follow him to hell if he asked it o’ them, but they’ll not do the sheriffs work. Nottingham is a fortress. In the woods, aye, they move like ghosts an’ know how to cause a man to melt with fits just by whispering his name. But a castle with a full garrison? Few o’ the foresters ever held a sword afore he put one into their hands.”
Dag, whose common sense was often the victim of his impulse and passion, looked at his brothers. “We have swords, and know well how to use them.”
“Day an’ night,” the old man said, “we have prayed for another brave man to step forward and don the lincoln hood with enough boldness an’ courage to rescue him.”
“You see before you the bravest man in all of England, France, and Normandy,” Richard declared. “His name is Robin W—”
“—of Locksley,” Griffyn interjected hastily. “His name is Robin of Locksley and he would need to know a great deal more about this outlaw king before he would commit his sword to the fight.”
“Locksley?” The brown eyes watered under the folded wrinkles of a frown as they peered intently at Robin’s face—a face that was turned to look askance at Griffyn.
“Locksley!” The old man’s brown eyes bulged out of their creases, and he fell onto his knees again, grasping Robin’s gloved hand and pressing it over his head as if he was seeking a benediction. “The bard was right! Ye did not die by the king’s sword! Ye did come back … and ye’ve brought Albion with ye!”
This time Robin glared at Griffyn, who only shrugged and murmured, “I thought it might as well be a good Saxon name that takes credit for any prayers we might answer between here and Nottingham.”
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