Gisburne gaped at Llewellyn in astonishment. “Surely John did not just stand by?”
Llewellyn snorted. “He did not! He raged like you cannot imagine. But I saw Fitz Thomas’s face as he did so – when, for a moment, the mask slipped. He enjoyed it. And he knew John could do nothing. There was no one left to do his bidding – he had made sure of it. Except for me, a few pointless hangers-on and a handful of personal servants, you and Galfrid are all he has – all he can rely on. Within these walls, he is no better off than a prisoner. Than Hood. And outside them...”
“Outside them lurks the greatest threat he has yet faced,” said Gisburne. The Tower was a trap all right – but it was beginning to feel like it was John who was caught in it. “So, we can rely only on ourselves... Well that’s nothing new. But enough of thinking ‘beyond weapons.’ Just tell me something I can carry in my hands to stop this killer.”
Llewellyn sighed heavily. “As you know, plate armour is something with which I have been experimenting. The trick is making the sheets of steel of sufficient size and strength. They must be light enough for a man to carry, yet thick enough to provide adequate defence; soft enough to shape, but hard enough to resist blows and projectiles. Too soft and it can bend or be pierced, too hard and it will split and crack. But none of these issues affect this man. He has covered himself with flat plates, taking such weight upon himself as an ordinary man would not countenance.”
“Something must be capable of penetrating them,” said Gisburne.
“We already know they have deflected crossbow bolts at close range.”
“Might something more powerful be constructed? An arbalest?”
“Again, if I had more time...”
“Is there not something here, like that which you gave me for Jerusalem?”
“Which you left there...” grumbled Llewellyn. “Believe me, if I had such a weapon here I would tell you, and the crossbows in the Tower’s armoury are no different from those we know to have failed. And before you waste time looking, you’ll not find anything to meet your needs out there, either. The crossbow is frowned upon by the Pope, and meant only for heretics and infidels. Barons may bend the rules, but you’ll not find a banned siege weapon knocking about London’s streets.”
“There must be something...”
“Just one thing, perhaps,” said Llewellyn. Gisburne frowned. “Six feet of English yew.”
“A longbow?” Gisburne felt his muscles shrink from the idea.
“Little can match it for power,” said Llewellyn. “A heavy warbow might have a chance. Straight on, at close range, if the target is not moving...” He turned and rummaged in a small wooden box, then counted out two dozen steel spikes. “These are hardened bodkin points for arrows,” he said. “If anything can penetrate that armour, it will be these.”
“But you cannot say for sure...”
“No one can say that without seeing the armour.”
“By which time, it’s too late...”
Llewellyn exhaled sharply in exasperation. “Stop making excuses! You accept defeat before you’ve even begun! It’s not just about the armour. You know as well as I what de Gaillon would say: every fortress has its weak point – an overlooked or unguarded spot. The Red Hand has proved that himself time and again.”
“You mean an eye-slit in his helm?” said Gisburne. “A gap between the plates?” It seemed a forlorn hope. Not something he wished to stake his life on.
“I heard you were once pretty good with a bow,” said Llewellyn.
“A bow’s not a knight’s weapon,” snapped Gisburne. “And no man alive could guide his arrow point to such a target. It would be like...”
“Like trying to hit a silver penny?” ventured Llewellyn.
Gisburne scowled at him.
“I knew of one who could do it,” said Llewellyn. “I saw it done.”
Gisburne gave a humourless laugh. “Yes, but that man is now in a cell in this very fortress.”
“No, no,” said Llewellyn, waving his hand dismissively. “Not Hood.”
“There’s another? Another as good as him?”
“Perhaps better. I saw him. Right here in London. Though whether he’s even still alive...”
Gisburne leaned forward. “Tell me everything.”
XXXVI
DICKON BEND-THE-BOW WAS perhaps the greatest archer who ever lived.
It was not known from where he had come, only that he had one day emerged from the Forest of Dean and joined with a troupe of travelling jongleurs and gleemen making their steady way to the capital. That they had accepted him so readily said much for the potential they saw. Before the caravan had reached Oxford, his fame was already growing; by London, he was one of the most talked about men in England.
That Gisburne had never heard of him Llewellyn considered of little surprise. At the time – ten years ago – Gisburne had been a world away, running from disgrace and fighting for any master who would pay. And by the time he had returned home, Dickon was all but forgotten.
Yet, for one hot summer in London, as word of Dickon spread across the city like a fire, people had flocked to Smoothfield to see the tricks of archery he performed. He could shoot a songbird from the sky. Hit swinging targets blindfolded, simply by listening. And, from fifty yards or more, he would shoot a silver penny from between the thumb and forefinger of anyone brave enough to stand before his bow. Even as the astonished onlookers applauded the seemingly impossible feat, all wondered about the day he would surely come undone. Perhaps it was partly this that kept them coming back. No one, they said, could keep on tempting fortune so. No matter how skilled he was, one who dwelt perpetually on the edge of disaster as he did must eventually falter and tumble over that precipice. All – in various states of anticipation and apprehension – awaited the day his arrow would strike and maim one of his bold volunteers, and his career and reputation would be finished.
But it never did. His undoing, when it came, took a very different, and even more unexpected form.
“So, where do I find him?” Gisburne had asked. In part, it had been a joke – something to mock and defuse his sense of frustration. But only in part. Somewhere in him, that frustration was grasping for new possibilities, new strategies, new weapons, no matter how remote or impossible they seemed.
Llewellyn had laughed. “No one knows. Probably he’s dead...”
“Probably?”
“Let’s just say you’ll have to look elsewhere for your answer,” said Llewellyn. “It was stupid of me to mention it.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Then Llewellyn had related the end of Dickon’s story, as much as it was known.
One night, so it was recorded, when that glorious summer season was at its peak, a fire had broken out in the entertainers’ encampment upon Smoothfield. It had not spread far – most of the wagons were spared or barely scorched – but these were also the early hours, and it had been some time before the sound and smell had alerted the sleeping troupe. By the time they knew what was happening, one wagon – the heart of the blaze – was utterly destroyed. Dickon’s wagon. Within its collapsed, blackened frame next morning was found a single charred body. No one knew how or why the conflagration had started. The wagon was near no campfire, and there were many who swore Dickon’s lamp had been extinguished for the night before theirs.
“Some, who did not wish to believe him dead, said it was another trick,” said Llewellyn. “That he’d had enough of that life and had spirited himself away – though why he should wish to do so at the height of his fame, they were less able to explain. Others said that he had been murdered by an envious rival – and there were indeed those who claimed he’d had a hooded visitor that night. But perhaps, after all, it was just a stupid accident. Such things happen in real life. But everyone had their theory.
“What was yours?” asked Gisburne.
Llewellyn had snorted. “Mine? Mine’s worth no more than anyone else’s. None of that really matters. I only know
he was not seen or heard of ever again.”
Llewellyn was right. None of it mattered. Not now. But somehow, Gisburne found he could not let it go. Perhaps it was the very incompleteness of the story that drew him. Thoughts of it were still battering his teeming brain when he again stood before the door of Hood’s cell, and the bolts were shot back.
“IT MUST BE very dull for you in here,” said Gisburne.
Hood shuffled where he sat, and gave a little shrug. “It has its moments,” he said.
“When they bring the bread? When they take out your piss pot? I’m sure you can hardly contain yourself.”
Hood smiled. “Well, I have your visits to look forward to, don’t I?” He regarded him quizzically. “So, what is it to be today?”
“I would like to make your life – what’s left of it, anyway – more interesting.”
“Songs?” said Hood, sitting forward. “Magic tricks, perhaps? I am all agog.”
“Nothing so trivial. A new game.”
Hood rose to his feet, dusted off his hands, his chains rattling, and cocked his head to one side. “This wouldn’t be to do with that Red Hand again, would it?” he said.
Gisburne was silent for a moment. He knew that what he wanted would come at a price. So, he would give Hood something. That much, and no more. “There have been more killings,” he said. “Right here, in the heart of London.”
Hood puffed out his cheeks in an exaggerated expression of surprise. Gisburne tried to fathom whether the surprise was real, but could not. “Well, whatever he’s about, it certainly seems like he means some business,” said Hood.
Gisburne nodded. “They say he is unstoppable. His notoriety is already outstripping yours. If things continue this way, the Red Hand will be all they talk about.”
He saw Hood’s expression darken. “Don’t try to play me, Guy,” he said. “You won’t win.”
“Won’t win? Look around, Robert. You’ve lost already. You, too, thought yourself unstoppable. I stopped you nonetheless. But there is a way to get back in the game.”
“A deal?” Hood’s eyes sparkled.
“A challenge. To prove your worth.”
“Ah, I see. You want me to do your job for you. To stop the unstoppable Red Hand.” He chuckled – without humour, this time. “Well, you stopped me on your own, so you can stop him, can’t you?”
“I know you know things. Perhaps enough to bring him down.”
“From within these walls? That’s not much of a game, Guy.”
“But imagine if it was known you had achieved that?” Hood sat motionless for a moment, and Gisburne drew closer. “Your reputation would be greater than ever. And John would look kindly upon such an act. Who knows? Perhaps there would be no need for an execution after all...” It was a dangerous promise – and one he did not know he could keep.
Hood stared at him for what seemed an age, as if trying to ascertain that Gisburne really meant what he’d said. He began to chuckle again, louder and deeper, until it was a gale of laughter. Gisburne stood and watched in silence. Somehow, such unrestrained merriment seemed obscene in this wretched place. But it was the laugh of a man who felt he had already won. Finally, it subsided, its last echoes dying away as Hood brought himself back under some semblance of control.
“Oh, Guy, Guy, Guy... I’ve been in prison for six months. How could I possibly know anything?” It was true. The guards swore no word had been uttered within Hood’s earshot, and Gisburne believed them. They were good men. “Good that de Rosseley survived, though,” he added casually.
At the mention of the name, Gisburne exploded with anger, swiping Hood across the face. Hood staggered and fell, his chains jangling about him.
“How could you know that?” demanded Gisburne. “How?”
But Hood simply laughed even more, wiping the blood from his mouth. He rolled over and leaned against the wall. “Are you going to kill me, Guy?” he chortled. “I often used to wonder if you would.”
“You’re going to die anyway.”
“Speak for yourself!” quipped Hood, and spat blood upon the stone.
Gisburne moved away from Hood, and slumped against the far wall, sliding down onto his haunches. For a while they sat in silence, near mirror images of each other.
“I know you know you know who the Red Hand is,” said Gisburne. “I also know that were I to beat you to the very threshold of Hell, you would not reveal it. Not unless you wanted to. Instead, let me appeal to you. You have one chance to do some good before you die. To make a mark upon the world outside these miserable walls – to do something memorable.” He leaned forward. “I will see that people hear of it.”
With one finger, Hood flicked at the dry fragments of bread that lay scattered on the stone beside him. “You know, every day the boy brings the bread and potage. And every day they fish around in the soup and pull the bread to bits before he brings it in.” Gisburne sighed. He should have known he would not get a straight answer.
“Why do they bother with that?” continued Hood. He tutted as if horribly inconvenienced, picked up the largest chunk of bread, briefly regarded it in his hand, then broke it in half. For a moment Gisburne had a surreal vision of Hood as Christ at the Last Supper.
“It’s to check someone hasn’t hidden a knife in it,” he said.
“It’s unhealthy,” said Hood. “Poking about with their dirty blades and filthy fingers... Yeuch!”
Gisburne stared up at the thin slit of light. “Do you know how you are going to die, Robert?” He sensed, rather than saw, Hood’s shrug.
“Beheaded, perhaps. Upon Tower Hill. Then my head stuck on a spike on London Bridge. The new one. For all to see.”
When Gisburne turned back to look at him, Hood was smiling. His eyes were distant, unfocused. Staring somewhere beyond the walls, to a place that was no place – a circumstance yet to be realised, a time yet to come. At a vision of his own death.
“That’s how I see it, anyway,” said Hood. “How about you?”
Gisburne marvelled at such unrestrained self-confidence, such magically unburdened ego. It knew no fear, no limits. It trampled everything before it, even in death.
“Beheading is for nobles,” said Gisburne. “Not common criminals.”
“Do common criminals get locked in the Tower?” said Hood. There was a note of challenge in his voice – one for which Gisburne had no response.
“You are to be hanged,” he said. “Not on Tower Hill. Not in public at all, but here, in the Tower precincts. A first, I believe. You should feel honoured by that, at least. Then your body is to be burned, and the ash scattered. No grave, no marker. And for once in your life, there will be no audience to witness the event. No one to weep or wail, no one to appeal or play to, no one to write the ballads or tell the tales when you’re gone. No one outside these walls will even know it has happened. One day, years from now, some decrepit drunk slumped outside an inn will say: ‘That thief Robin Hood... I once knew a song about that man. Whatever became of him?’ And no one will know, nor remember the tune, nor even recognise the name.”
Hood sat in silence, staring at the ground, his fingers unconsciously turning the featureless charm about his neck. Gisburne had expected the usual irrepressible chuckle to rise from him, but nothing came. Not for an age. Finally, his hand dropped, and he lifted his head and looked hard at his tormentor.
“You’ve got it all wrong, Guy,” he said. “Reality doesn’t drive legend forward. It just gets in the way. Look at our bold Lionhearted king... The less England sees of him, the greater his legend becomes. Should he return, and sit upon his throne and live to a ripe old age growing fat and embittered and discussing taxes and drainage and roads, then the people will see him for what he is. A man. But should he never come back... Well then, his reputation will be unassailable.” His face split in an intense smile. “So, you see, Guy – you haven’t made people forget me. You’ve made me immortal.”
Gisburne had stood, unflinching, before some of the mo
st dangerous, most brutal men this world had put upon a battlefield. But there was something in Hood’s look that was truly terrifying. Something he could not fight, could not grapple with.
“Well, at least I’ll not have to think of you any more,” he said. And he turned to go.
“Have you thought how you will stop him?” said Hood.
Gisburne turned. “Him?”
“The Red Hand. When you meet him. I’m sure you’ve been thinking about it.”
Gisburne felt an uncanny chill. He stared at him, trying to anticipate the moves he had in his head, but he was unreadable. “I don’t need your help, Robert,” he said with a sigh. He was suddenly tired – tired of this struggle, these games. “Not unless you’re going to tell me who he is.”
“I think it’s probably better you find that out for yourself.”
“Goodbye, Robert...”
“But I’m willing to bet I could bring him down. Armour or not.”
Gisburne stopped, but said nothing. He refused to be drawn in this time.
“Oh, you’re good with a bow, I know,” said Hood. “You should have applied yourself to it.”
“I’m a knight,” said Gisburne, wearily. “Knights don’t shoot arrows.”
“No. They just die by them.”
Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus Page 70
