Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus

by Toby Venables

“What?” said Gisburne.

  “These trees,” he hissed. “This rock. Almost there.”

  Galfrid stared hard at him—seemed about to speak—then another voice silenced him.

  “He tells the truth.”

  The company were on their feet, knives in their hands, swords drawn as a tall figure stepped out from the dark trees.

  The dim glow from the fire lit his face as he did so, but Gisburne—Irontongue in his fist—had already recognised him.

  John Lyttel.

  They spread swiftly, surrounding him, Mélisande at his back, her dagger point at his belly—he was too tall for her to rest her blade on his throat.

  Lyttel did not resist. Galfrid, Asif and Aldric had bows and crossbow trained on the surrounding shadows.

  But there was no other sound, no other sign.

  “I am alone,” Lyttel said. “On that you have my word.”

  “Your word?” said Gisburne, laughing.

  “My life is in your hands, whether you believe my word or not,” said Lyttel. “That must be worth something.”

  “We’ll be the judges of that,” muttered Galfrid.

  Gisburne stared at him suspiciously. For days they had hunted Hood, and he had eluded them. Now, a member of the Wolf’s Head had just walked right into their camp.

  Gisburne drew closer, Irontongue’s point hovering before Lyttel’s face. “So why is your life in our hands, outlaw?”

  “I can lead you there.” He spoke in a low whisper, as if afraid the trees themselves would overhear him. “I can take you to Hood’s camp.”

  “To ensure we walk into your trap?” said Mélisande, pressing the point at his belly. “To be captured and killed by your master?”

  “Hood is not there,” said Lyttel. Somehow, Gisburne knew he was telling the truth.

  “He will be,” said Gisburne. “And soon.”

  “And the army?” asked Lyttel. Gisburne suspected a trick, but he looked into Lyttel’s face and saw genuine concern. Lyttel never was blessed with a great deal of guile.

  “You don’t know?” said Gisburne

  “Would I ask if I did?” The big man laughed irritably.

  To his surprise, Gisburne found himself answering the question. “Beaten, dispersed. But for how long, I don’t know.”

  Lyttel nodded slowly. “Then you have an opportunity,” he said. “The one you’ve been waiting for.”

  “And what opportunity would that be?”

  “To kill him.”

  Gisburne stared into the big man’s face, looking for a hint of deception, but there was none.

  Without prompting, Lyttel spoke again, more confidently. “This route you take through the forest is the old way, but it became too easy to find. So we fixed it. Now, not even Hood risks it. He will take the longer route, all the way around, knowing you are stuck here for the night. But some of us know the way through, and if you come with me now, you will reach the village ahead of him.”

  “Hood knows we are here?”

  “Hood knows everything,” said Lyttel. “He meant for you to take this path, to spend the night in this forest. To be worn down by it. This is his forest, remember. Not yours, not the King’s, certainly not Prince John’s.” He took a deep breath. “He is counting on at least one of you making it through, though.”

  “Me?”

  “You. Always you. But there is one thing Hood did not reckon on.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Me.”

  Gisburne pushed his blade point at Lyttel’s throat. “You betrayed your fellows, supported a murderer and thief, used your knowledge to prise him from the jaws of justice and bring death to the King’s own palace—the Tower you were once sworn to protect. Tell me, John Lyttel, why should we trust you now?”

  Lyttel fixed his eyes on Gisburne’s. “Because I want what you want.”

  “And what is that?”

  “An end. To this madness...”

  Gisburne looked into the face of a man who had once guarded the Tower with almost unblemished record, who had served his King and fought with honour at Hattin. And in it he saw truth. He saw pleading. Advantage.

  “Lead on.”

  “You are certain of this?” said Mélisande.

  “As certain as I ever was of anything.”

  Then they kicked dirt over the fire and followed behind John Lyttel.

  LXIV

  LYTTEL MOVED SWIFTLY, smoothly—he was amazingly quiet for such a big man. The past months had made him a creature of the forest, and of the forest’s night.

  Away from the fire, their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, but Gisburne found it was impossible to properly penetrate the shadows about their feet, which made the going uncertain.

  For all but Lyttel. He seemed to move with such little regard for the terrain that Gisburne wondered if they had moved beyond the traps—if, indeed, they were already beyond them where they had camped. But then he looked back and glimpsed, in the thick darkness, a row of iron spikes high in the trees ready to swing down upon the unwary. Gisburne supposed Lyttel could make the journey blindfold.

  They heard water before they saw it—the rush and babble of a stream flowing fast over a rocky bed. Lyttel dived through a gap in the trees—which seemed to lead nowhere—and there it was.

  It was clear why Hood had chosen this spot. The river was clear and in plentiful supply; and though it was neither deep nor wide, the far bank was high and looked near-impossible to climb, giving the outlaws a natural moat. It was spanned by a log bridge some thirty feet to their right, which a brave horse might cross, but which even men could only traverse in single file. The bridge could be withdrawn or tumbled into the river to hinder attack, and there were thick ropes attached to it for this very purpose.

  Further to their left, the land rose up to a low escarpment of rock—a good lookout point—and the river bent away around it.

  But there was no lookout, and no guard upon the bridge. No one to haul it back to the opposite bank.

  As they stood at the end of the log bridge, Gisburne glimpsed the flicker of flame ahead. The lights of Hood’s village. The thought of it—of finally being here—sent a shiver through him.

  Then there was the smell. It was one he was familiar with—not from places where people chose to live, but where they had died. It was the stink of the battlefield near Thessalonika two days after the battle; the reek of the barn in the Limousin where they had found an entire family—ten, at least—dead by their own hands. The stench of the infirmary ward in Jerusalem where those who would not recover lay—rotting while they yet lived, a hair’s breadth from the mortuary.

  Lyttel hesitated at the bridge, as if, after all he had done, he was suddenly reluctant. Then he turned to Gisburne. “Prepare yourself,” he said, and he strode across.

  Gisburne had often referred to it as a village, and it was certainly that. Beyond a line of trees on the opposite bank, their way suddenly opened out—so unexpectedly wide that they all stopped out of sheer surprise. The wood had been partly cleared, the earth trod hard, though the settlement was dotted with huge, ancient oaks that served as support for some of the larger structures.

  There were huts—some high in the trees—and stalls for animals, a forge, butts for archery practice and, raised about a huge oak of unguessable age, a great wooden hall in the old Saxon or Norse style, like an overturned ship.

  It seemed a thriving community—and one that had gone entirely its own way, with no need of barons, clergy and kings. Had it been bustling with Hood’s people—or even entirely empty—it may yet have maintained the illusion. But the few signs of life told a grimmer story.

  Dazzled by the torches after the dark of the forest, Gisburne did not see them at first: movement in the shadows, a slight figure. Then another. More of them—until finally he realised, just as one suddenly realises that the ground upon which one is standing is crawling with ants.

  Gisburne advanced and shaded his eyes from the torches’ glare. The
y were everywhere, in the dark—thin children in rags, old women, sick men. All those too weak or ill to fight. They sat, motionless, and stared blankly at the intruders, like pale ghosts. He was not even sure they were all alive. Doubtless, when they came here, they thought they had found protection, but it had become a grove of death.

  Gisburne stepped further, feeling revulsion and rage rise in him. His fellows advanced slowly behind him, fanning out, each discovering their own horrors. From one tree hung an iron cage containing what was once a man. To the trunk of another were nailed human hands—grisly trophies from enemies, Gisburne assumed, or wrongdoers. Or just the unlucky.

  The still air wafted, and the stink hit him again. He heard Asif exclaim under his breath. It had come from beyond a large rock at the far end of the village. Gisburne strode towards it.

  Lyttel saw him go. “Do not go there...” he said, a note of pleading in his voice.

  Gisburne, unperturbed, plucked a torch from a tree as he passed, stepped past the rock and then reeled at the smell. Things buzzed and flew up, and tiny clawed feet scampered into the dark. And suddenly he realised that what he had taken to be a tangle of thick, old tree roots was no such thing, but a mass of emaciated bodies, thrown into an open pit until they filled it, limbs twisted, dull eyes and empty sockets staring. He staggered back, and turned away.

  This place was not just outside the law, but outside of all order, all humanity. All sanity.

  Striding back—wishing to put as much distance between himself and that pit as possible—Gisburne caught Lyttel’s eye and saw shame.

  “I understand your desire to see this undone,” said Gisburne, fighting to suppress his fury. “There is humanity in you yet, Lyttel. The remnant of a good man. You were that, once. But what I do not understand is how it came to this. What changed you so, to become complicit in this...”

  Lyttel nodded slowly, head hanging low. “You know, I hated you, Gisburne. You are right. I was, I hope, a good man, trusted by all. And I repaid that trust. Then one night as I was guarding the Tower battlement, someone broke in, just to prove it could be done. No one was killed, nothing stolen, no harm done or meant. But the breach of the walls... That was surely down to someone’s failing, and could not be permitted again. It might have been any one of my fellows on that battlement that night. But it happened to be me.”

  Gisburne bowed his head, knowing it was he who was the intruder.

  “The Tower Constable was a fair man, but also hard. He had little choice. I had, at any rate, only been given the post as a favour to Geoffrey of Launceston, who sought good treatment where he could for those who had survived Hattin. I never even met the man, but it had felt like some compensation after the long road from Hattin, and capture.”

  “You were captured at Hattin?” said Mélisande.

  “I was,” said Lyttel. “And for a long time thought I would die. There was no one alive willing to pay ransom for this.” With a wry smile, he indicated his own huge frame. “But I must not complain. Had I not been kept longer in the Holy Land, I would never have met my wife. She was—is—a Syriac Christian. She risked everything. Travelled back with me to England. Endured the name-calling, being spat at—far worse from those who had never left these shores than those who actually fought out there. They didn’t stop to ask her religion, or wonder why such a man as I had loved her. They just saw a Saracen.

  “When I lost my post at the Tower, I had not seen her for weeks. That was the one bright thing on the horizon—that I could finally go home. I was free. But when I got there, she had gone. No word, no hint as to why or where. I stayed a while, but found my neighbours had as little love for me as they’d had for her. Having no money, I had to give up the house, sell all I had. All her things, too. And I knew then that even were she alive, even if she thought to come looking for me, she would never find me again, nor I her. I realised I was not free. I was a prisoner—and this whole land was my prison. Mine and thousands like me, whose lives mattered not one bit, whose bodies did not even belong to them, and had no value to those that owned them.

  “Then I heard of someone who proposed a different way. A way in which people might truly be free.” He lifted his head. “And, that, Guy of Gisburne, is what so changed me.”

  Lyttel looked Gisburne in the eye, and it was Gisburne’s turn, now, to feel shame.

  “I say all this so you will understand why I acted as I did, but it does not excuse it. It does not excuse this...” He gesture towards the pit of the dead. “There is such a thing as too much freedom.

  “I have had many names in my life, but the very worst of them—that which I hate the most—is John Lyttel. If I am ever again a free man, my only desire is to return to my father’s mill in Isledon and once again become plain John Attemille.”

  “Then let us make that happen,” said Gisburne. “And wipe this place off the face of the Earth.”

  LXV

  THINGS MOVED SWIFTLY. Gisburne relieved Aldric of his burden and dispatched him to act as sentry. Then, as the rest of the company made preparations—watched by the empty, uncomprehending eyes of the thin ghosts in the shadows—Lyttel hastily explained the particulars of the camp. Gisburne strapped vambraces on his forearms and slung his quiver upon his belt as he listened.

  There were two cabins high in each of the largest trees: the treasure store, containing all their spoils, and the armoury. Within the latter, amongst sundry weapons filched from the victims of their attacks, were another hundred bows and twenty barrels of arrows—enough to seed another rebellion.

  Gisburne gazed up at them, knowing what must be done. “If there is anything about this camp that you value,” he said to Lyttel, “take it now. Keep it about you.”

  Lyttel shook his head. “There’s nothing.”

  As he spoke, Gisburne lowered his eyes and caught sight of a figure framed in the shadowed doorway of a thatched hut. It was tall and rangy, and leaning upon a staff. Gisburne thought it must be an old man—one of Hood’s aged rejects, he supposed—until it stepped forward, revealing a lad of no more than fifteen.

  Even after all this time, with him having so grown, Gisburne remembered him. The boy Micel—the one Hood called Much.

  His face looked pale, and as he moved, it was clear he could not do so without the support of the quarterstaff. In the dim light of the torches, he caught sight of Gisburne, and his expression contorted into anger and hatred.

  “Traitor!” he cried, his voice catching. It was, Gisburne realised, addressed to Lyttel. “You brought them here! Traitor!”

  Lyttel stepped towards him, but the boy had drawn a knife.

  “Get back inside,” ordered Lyttel.

  “You poisoned me!” said Much. There was more than anger in his voice. There was disbelief, despair, betrayal. “Gamewell said to watch you! You poisoned my food! Tried to kill me!” He raised the blade with a quaking hand.

  “To save your life, boy!” said Lyttel. “So they would not take you with them!” He swatted the knife from Much’s hand. The boy stumbled, sank to the ground and sobbed. Gisburne was about to talk to the boy—to comfort him—when another voice spoke out from behind him.

  “Guy?” it said.

  It was a voice he had heard for half his life—at one time, he had been as accustomed to it as his mother’s or father’s. Even now it was so familiar, so unchanged by time, that for a brief moment hearing it seemed in no way strange. As he began to turn, already half smiling, the strangeness—the wrongness of it in this terrible place—dawned on him like the slow waking from a dream.

  Marian. It was Marian. She was alive. And she was here.

  She shuffled out of the doorway of Hood’s great hall into the torchlight—and all sense of familiarity disappeared.

  He thought of how she had looked that time at Dover Castle—the evening seemed impossibly distant, though it was little more than two years ago: her beautiful lips always ready to laugh, her hazel eyes sparkling but also curiously sad, her gestures so disarmingly
open, so honest.

  It had been a wretched evening. He had been the reluctant guest of an even more reluctant host—the petulant weasel Matthew de Clere—and at dinner had been placed in a draughty position about as far from the fire and the food as possible, what Gisburne’s father referred to as “one up from the dogs.” As he had sat there, anticipating the morrow’s grim sea voyage and dabbling in the dregs of the cold soup whilst de Clere’s hounds were thrown choice cuts, Marian had been the one glimmer of light.

  Her dress had been of blue-grey, her veil and wimple of white, topped with a simple circlet of silver. Plain enough for a nun, he had thought. But that had only thrown her beauty into greater relief; the curve of her breasts and hips, the curling wisps of auburn hair that escaped the veil, the natural, unaffected grace with which she bore herself. She had always been beautiful, and in later years had become beguiling, yet carried it with unselfconscious ease and a blissful ignorance of the effect it had on others. Yet another reason why Gisburne had lost his wits over her.

  What stood before him now was like something broken. She looked at him with an odd, twisted smile, the stained dress hanging on her bones like a winding sheet upon a corpse. Her face was gaunt and skeletal, her eyes unfocused and underscored by deep shadows, her hair knotted and dirty. She was like the ghost of the woman he had loved—like something returned from the grave.

  As she tottered towards him, he saw she was barefoot. Hood had taken her shoes—a precaution, he supposed, against her running away. But she did not seem about to run. He doubted there was the strength in those shaking limbs, or the awareness in her head of where to run or why.

  “Guy...” she said again, her voice dreamy and distant. She stopped, looking up at him with something like love in her eyes. It both captivated and horrified him.

  She stretched out filthy fingers to his cheek—then recoiled as they met solid flesh.

  “But how can you be here?” she said.

  “We’re going to bring you back,” he said. The words surprised even him. He turned and looked about, and saw that everyone now was watching. For an instant he caught Mélisande’s eye—and she turned away. Marian was now surveying the assembled faces with a look of wonder. It gradually lapsed into a frown as her gaze came to rest upon Lyttel. “You betrayed us...” she said, barely louder than a whisper.