Wolf's Head (The Forest Lord)

by Steven A McKay

  “Aye!” the one in the middle replied, with a confident grin. “Who the fuck are you?”

  The three men laughed.

  “Very amusing, Hood,” the sheriff shouted in reply. “Where are the rest of your men?”

  “Shagging your mum!” Little John shouted, his great voice somehow piercing the mist all around. Even the sheriff’s own men laughed at that, although they tried to hide it when de Faucumberg glared at them.

  “Where’s my money?” Abbot Ness demanded, the thought of his two hundred pounds lending him courage.

  “Right here,” Robin replied, patting the chest on the cart. “All yours. Once we get the pardon for Matilda Fletcher of Wakefield.” Technically, she was Matilda Hood now, but Robin saw no reason to mention that to his enemies.

  “Check that chest!” de Faucumberg ordered some of the monks who had travelled with the abbot. “Make sure there’s two hundred pounds in it.”

  “There’s not. There’s one hundred and eighty-nine pounds. I give you my word on that.” Robin told the sheriff.

  “Our agreement is for two hundred pounds, Hood”.

  “Yes, two hundred, wolf’s head!” Abbot Ness shouted, spittle flecking his lips in anger.

  Robin shrugged. “Take it or leave it. One of my men refused your deal, so we had to take his share out of your chest. Our friend – a friar – says two hundred pounds less eleven is one hundred and eighty-nine, so…that’s what’s in your box, abbot.”

  “That’s not the deal!” Ness ranted, but the sheriff waved a hand at him.

  “It’s only eleven pounds, for God’s sake man. Is it all there?”

  One of the men he had ordered to check the chest nodded his head from atop the cart, his hands still digging through the huge mass of silver coins as his companions tried to count the total. “It looks like it, my lord sheriff!”

  “Where’s the girl’s pardon?” Will growled.

  “Pardon?” Henry de Faucumberg retorted in apparent confusion, one eyebrow raised. He waved his hands at his men. “Circle them!” he roared.

  Little John and Will Scarlet drew their swords, both looking angrily at Robin.

  “Come on then, you fuckers,” Scarlet yelled, drawing his sword and holding it in front of himself defiantly.

  Little John held his huge quarterstaff before himself confidently, but he looked at Robin questioningly. The sheriff’s forty men outnumbered them almost two to one. “If your plan’s going to work, it better happen soon,” he growled, eyeing the sheriff’s soldiers warily.

  “You men are outlaws.” The sheriff nodded towards them. “What made you think I would honour a bargain made with men such as yourselves, who are outside the law? I’m sorry to do this – for outlaws you seem like honourable enough men but I must see justice done,” he shook his head as if genuinely sorrowful, but raised his voice and shouted to his men. “Advance! Kill them all.”

  De Faucumberg’s men began to close in on the outlaws, who, regardless of the freezing air, were sweating freely.

  “We’re not getting out of this,” John grunted bitterly. “But I’m going to do my best to make it to that bastard sheriff before I go down.”

  Robin, dismayed at the failure of his plans, murmured his assent. “On my word, then…”

  “Hold!”

  Despite the freezing mist, the powerful voice, full of authority, reached everyone in the clearing. No one moved, eyes straining warily to see who had shouted the command.

  “Stand your men down, de Faucumberg!”

  Robin heaved a huge sigh of relief and flashed a knowing grin at his tense friends as Sir Richard-at-Lee and his sergeant, Stephen, materialized through the haze, their black mantles and snow white crosses seeming almost ethereal in the cold light.

  Another armoured noble rode beside Sir Richard, and, by the noises following them, they had brought a small army along.

  The sheriff’s face fell as he saw the newcomers approaching. He knew who Sir Richard and his noble companion were, as did Abbot Ness who cursed in surprise at the sight of the man he had sought to dispossess of his lands not so long before.

  “Get your men back out of the road, de Faucumberg, now!” Sir Richard ordered.

  The three outlaws heaved sighs of relief as the sheriff grudgingly waved his men back behind him.

  “Sir Richard came then,” Will smiled ruefully.

  “Aye, and just in fucking time too,” John laughed, starting to relax as the threat of imminent doom passed.

  “You have a document, I believe?” Sir Richard demanded of the sheriff, who remained silent. “A pardon for the girl, Matilda of Wakefield?”

  The sheriff still said nothing, even ignoring the confused and worried whispers of Abbot Ness.

  “Well hand it over then, de Faucumberg!” Sir Richard roared. The soldiers behind him were plainly visible now, even through the thick mist. He had at least fifty men with him, all in chain or plate mail, including a dozen or so mounted knights.

  In contrast, the sheriff’s forty men had come lightly armoured, and on foot, to aid movement through the forest, since they had been expecting a possible fight with seventeen highly mobile outlaws through the greenwood.

  A pitched battle in the clearing they found themselves in now would be a slaughter and the sheriff knew it. His precarious position became even more obvious as the rest of the outlaws, marshalled by Friar Tuck, moved closer to the clearing, the fog parting to reveal longbows trained on De Faucumberg’s men. And him.

  He reached into his saddlebag and lifted out a scroll.

  “Here,” he grunted, nudging his horse forward, then, when he was close enough, he tossed it at Robin’s feet, his face scarlet with rage and humiliation.

  “Let’s see it, Robin,” Sir Richard said, beckoning the outlaws to come towards him.

  Little John and Will still had their weapons at the ready, and they followed their young leader as he moved towards the mounted Knight Hospitaller.

  Richard unrolled the scroll and glanced over it. “Good, it’s in order,” he said, returning the document to Robin, warning him to keep it safe.

  “Now you may go, de Faucumberg.” The big knight waved a dismissive mailed hand at the raging sheriff.

  Abbot Ness finally found his voice as he realised the sheriff was going to retreat. “What about my silver? That cart and its contents belong to St Mary’s Abbey!” he cried, pointing desperately at his money. “That wolf’s head stole it!”

  “Get out of here, now, de Faucumberg, while you still can,” Sir Richard said to the sheriff. “And take that grasping abbot with you before I remove the bastard’s head – man of God or not.”

  Ness tried to protest but the sheriff knew he was beaten and roared at the abbot to forget it and follow as he turned back towards Nottingham.

  “The king will hear of this, Hospitaller!” de Faucumberg shouted angrily over his shoulder.

  For the first time Sir Richard’s noble companion spoke, laughing coldly at the sheriff’s retreating back. “King Edward will soon have more to worry about than your whining, de Faucumberg. Next time we meet, I won’t let you run away with your tail between your legs. England has had enough of Edward, and his lackeys like you!”

  The three outlaws looked at Sir Richard-at-Lee in surprise, expecting some reaction to his companion’s treason. The knight sat stony-faced on his great warhorse though, watching the sheriff and his men disappear into the mist.

  “You’re Robin Hood, then,” Sir Richard’s noble companion turned his head with a smile, fixing the young outlaw leader with a commanding gaze. “I’ve heard a lot about you, lad.”

  Sir Richard laughed at the blank expression on Robin’s face. “This is the Earl of Lancaster,” the knight said to the outlaws. “We spoke of him when I first met you.”

  Robin, Will and John had no idea how to behave around an earl, so they did what seemed proper and dropped to one knee, heads bowed.

  Sir Richard laughed again, but his words were indignant
. “Get up you fools! You never knelt to me when we met. Quite the opposite!”

  The three outlaws were not enjoying this at all. They had no idea why the Earl of Lancaster had helped save them from the sheriff.

  Richard was amused to see the three tough men nervously scratching the backs of their necks and fidgeting like naughty children. “Relax, lads, you’re in the company of friends now,” he smiled reassuringly.

  Robin warily got to his feet, John and Will following his lead, and looked at the earl, still somewhat overawed. “You wanted to meet us, my lord?”

  Thomas, Earl of Lancaster jumped down from his horse and walked over to stand in front of the outlaws. “I did, Robin,” he agreed, extending a hand which Robin shook. The man’s grasp was firm, but his face was open and his eyes were smiling. “I’ve heard a lot about you, from Sir Richard here, and also from my tenants. You killed my bailiff in Wakefield – Henry.”

  Robin placed a hand on his sword hilt but the earl smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, lad, you did me a favour. I never realised how much the villagers hated him – since I replaced him the people have been more productive, which is all a lord wants to hear from one of his holdings.”

  Richard-at-Lee had dismounted as well by now and gave the three outlaws friendly pats on the back, smiling the whole time.

  “The earl has a proposition for you, boys,” the Hospitaller told them. “Why don’t we head for one of the nearby villages and we can discuss it?”

  Robin shoved Matilda’s pardon safely inside his cloak and shrugged. “Let’s go then,” he replied. “Wooley isn’t far, and I could do with an ale or two after this afternoon.”

  “What about the money?” Little John wondered.

  Robin was no fool. He knew Sir Richard was a friend, and the Earl of Lancaster – who was watching Robin intently from atop his horse – had come to help them as well for some reason. But near two hundred pounds was a lot of silver. Enough to strain any apparent friendship.

  “Since the earl and Sir Richard saved our skins, why don’t we give them half the money?” Robin decided, with a smile towards the two horsemen.

  “I still owe you men £100 for the loan you gave me to pay off Abbott Ness,” Sir Richard noted, raising an eyebrow at Robin’s generosity.

  “We can forget that,” the young outlaw shrugged, laying a restraining hand on Will’s arm as the fuming outlaw tried to protest. “We helped you, you’ve helped us, and we all,” he glared at Scarlet, “come out of this much, much richer.”

  The noblemen broke into wide grins. Robin knew – from the way the earl had been gazing at him – if it had come down to it, the earl would have demanded all of the money. He had more than enough men to back up such a demand after all.

  But Robin’s offer was enough to placate the lord and everyone, even Will when he realised what had just happened, was happy with the idea.

  Sir Richard and the earl each filled their men’s horses’ saddlebags with silver until there was roughly half of the original one hundred and eighty-nine pounds left in the chest.

  “I’ll take the cart back with the rest of the lads,” Little John offered. “Scarlet has more experience dealing with nobles than I do – I’m just a simple village blacksmith!”

  Robin nodded gratefully at his giant friend and handed him the document of pardon for Matilda. “If it comes to it, forget the money, John. Just make sure this letter gets safely back to Matilda.”

  The great bearded outlaw nodded solemnly and tucked the document inside his bearskin cloak.

  “Ready, lads?” Sir Richard asked, wandering over and putting a brawny arm round the shoulders of Will and Robin.

  “Aye,” Robin laughed. “Let’s go get a drink.”

  The young outlaw was in good spirits. His men still had near a hundred pounds of silver they didn’t expect to have after today, they were still alive, and his pregnant wife was a free woman again. The day had worked out perfectly. The only thing that could make him happier, he thought with a wry smile, would be a pardon for him and the rest of his men.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “A pardon? For all of us?” Robin gasped in disbelief.

  The Earl of Lancaster nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, Robin. For you, and every one of your men.”

  Robin looked at Will, who shrugged his shoulders and took a drink of his ale.

  A short time ago they had arrived in the small town of Wooley and found seats at a table in one of the local taverns, a neat looking place, with two hearths in the main room. The earl had sent most of his men home, but kept a handful of guards with him, in case of trouble. Those men waited discreetly by the front door. Well, as discreetly as was possible for half a dozen armoured men in a small-town inn with only a handful of tables in it.

  Robin, Will, Sir Richard and the earl had a table of their own and, since it was only mid-afternoon, the inn was quiet, so they were fairly private.

  Small fires were smouldering in the hearths when they walked in from the frozen winter streets, but a shout from Sir Richard had seen the landlord piling on a few logs. Soon enough the room was lit by a cosy orange glow from each end and the four men sat contentedly with their mugs of ale, feeling the warmth seeping into their bones, drying out the icy mists of Barnsdale forest.

  “What do we have to do for this pardon?” Robin asked eventually, as the chill left his bones and the ale warmed his head enough to help him think straight.

  The Earl of Lancaster drained his own mug and shouted for another round, fixing Robin with a stony gaze. “Join the rebellion,” he said quietly.

  Again, Robin and Will looked at each other, but neither man said anything.

  “You know I asked the king to help my tenants after a few hard years?” Thomas asked. “Well, he promised aid, but never followed up on his promise. My tenants are struggling to stay alive – that means people like your family in Wakefield, Robin. The king expects me to pay him the same rents I paid when harvests were good, which would mean me squeezing more money from my tenants. Money they simply don’t have. If I take any more rent from them they’ll die, or have to become outlaws…No offence, lads,” he smiled, draining his ale, “but we have enough outlaws in Barnsdale already.”

  Robin had no idea how to deal with the situation. Although he was the leader of the outlaws’ gang, he was still only eighteen. He looked at the more worldly wise Will hopefully.

  Scarlet shrugged his wide shoulders. “I’d say it’s a good deal,” he told his young friend. “What other options do we have? The king’s a bastard, just like his da. He’ll squeeze the people until they’ve nothing left to give, to pay for his wars against the Scots and the Welsh and whoever else.”

  “You think the earl’s a better option than the king?” Robin asked, not caring that the earl was sitting at the table with them. He knew Will would be honest no matter who sat with them.

  “Aye, he is,” Scarlet replied. “I’m sure he’s expecting to take a lot of money and lands out of this rebellion. Even take the throne for himself.” He glanced at the earl but the man just stared back, giving nothing away. “From what the people say though, and since Sir Richard’s backing him…well, I think he’s probably a decent enough man who genuinely wants to help the people.”

  “Can his rebellion succeed?”

  Will shrugged. “I’ve been stuck in the greenwood with you lot, I don’t know how the balance of power lies. I don’t see how it matters though.”

  Robin looked at his friend quizzically.

  “You don’t pick sides based on who’ll win, do you?” Will grunted. “You choose the side that has the same goals and ideals as you do yourself.”

  Robin was out of his depth. He finished his ale and gladly accepted another from the landlord who was hovering around refilling each man’s mug as it was emptied.

  “I don’t know you,” the young outlaw said eventually, after some other small talk, “but I trust Richard and I think Will knows which way the wind’s blowing so I’ll join
your rebellion, in return for a pardon once we win.”

  Richard-at-Lee hadn’t said much so far, but he reached forward and clasped Robin’s forearm now. “You’re a strong man,” the knight told him earnestly. “Exactly the kind of man we need to make England great again.”

  Robin felt his face flush red in embarrassment. He was no fool though.

  “We’ll join your rebellion, assuming every one of us is pardoned, but what about our wages? And the chain of command?”

  “If you join our army you take orders like everyone else,” the earl replied.

  “That’s fine,” Will replied, understanding where Robin was going with his question. “But it would make sense to keep us – all sixteen of us – as one company. There’s no sense in assigning new captains to a group of soldiers who already fight as a unit.”

  Thomas looked thoughtful but Sir Richard nodded at him and agreed with Will.

  Robin grinned at Scarlet. “He’s right, Sir Thomas, we fight best with our own chain of command. If we join your rebellion you should let us fight the way we know how. It’s to your advantage.”

  The Earl of Lancaster wasn’t too bothered whether the outlaws joined him or not, if he was honest. He was trying to gather the biggest army he could, and Sir Richard-at-Lee had told him Hood’s men would be a good addition to his fighting force. But they were only sixteen men. As good as they supposedly were they weren’t critical to his plans. He drained his ale and slammed a fist down on the table with a laugh.

  “Fine! Whatever, Robin! You can lead your own men under Sir Richard’s Hospitaller banner. And when we win: a pardon for the lot of you!”

  Robin grinned and looked at Will for advice.

  “Can’t say fairer than that,” Scarlet smiled, draining his own ale mug. “One more thing though…the Lord of Hathersage, John de Bray?”

  “What about him?” the earl wondered, confused by Will’s question.

  “I ain’t taking orders from that prick. Is he part of your rebellion?”