Robin had brought cold roast beef, typically ignoring the fact that it was Lent, in fact, only five days away from Easter Sunday, and according to Church law we were supposed to be eschewing meat of any kind. He also brought bread, onions and a skin of wine and we made a cheerful camp with a small fire under a great spreading oak. And after we’d eaten, as the sparks danced above the fire, we wrapped ourselves in our warm green cloaks and sat cross-legged around the cheerful blaze, with our weapons close at hand. Robin took a long pull from the half-full wine skin before passing it to me. I drank deeply and passed it back.
‘Do you think Murdac actually has a hundred pounds of German silver?’ I asked him, wiping my mouth.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Every man within a hundred miles will have heard of the offer by now; and half of them will be thinking of how they can claim it. It was a very good move on his part. I salute the slimy little bastard,’ Robin lifted the wine skin towards the fire and took another long drink.
‘I had him once, you know,’ he said. ‘I had his life in the palm of my hand, and I let him go. Foolish of me; I should have killed him there and then. And I wouldn’t have this problem now. I could have avoided a lot of trouble if I had just snuffed him out there and then.’ He brought his forefinger and thumb together with a soft snap. ‘But I felt pity for him. I say pity, but it was merely weakness, in truth. He begged for his life on his knees and I couldn’t kill him. Sheer bloody weakness - arrogance, too. But then no man can see the future.’ He sighed and drank again.
‘When was this?’ I asked.
‘Here, take this; I’ve had enough,’ said Robin passing me the wine skin. He never drank to excess but I sensed that, that night, he might have wanted to. I took a small drink myself and kept quiet.
‘It was about seven, eight years ago, long before you joined us. We were just a handful of men then: John, Much the miller’s son, Owain and a dozen or so others. Waylaying rich travellers, mainly. I used to invite them to dinner in the forest, and then make them pay for the privilege. It was just a childish game, really. We were on the move all the time in Sherwood, dodging the Sheriff’s men, fearful that a decent-sized company of soldiers would find us. No more than a pitiful band of wandering footpads. I realised that I needed some real money to build the organisation I wanted; I needed, well ... respect from the villages. I wanted to do something big. I needed to do something spectacular. So John and I cooked up a plan.’
He shrugged off his cloak, went over to the woodpile and threw another branch on the fire. Sitting down again, and extending his hands to the blaze, he continued: ‘We decided to rob the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests himself, in his own castle.’ Through the leaping flames I could see his face clearly: he was smiling with pleasure at the thought, his silver eyes shining in the darkness.
‘There was to be a sword-play competition at the Nottingham Fair, open to all, and we decided that John should enter, calling himself ... what was it? ... something preposterous, something woody ... Greenleaf, I think. That’s it. Reynald Greenleaf, was to be his name. He was to try and get himself noticed by Sir Ralph Murdac and get himself taken on as sergeant-at-arms in the castle. Well, you know John, he won the contest easily, even killing his opponent in the final round. And Murdac swiftly took John into his employment.’
I was fascinated. I had never heard this tale before. Robin rummaged in the food sack and brought out the remains of the beef joint. He cut off a thin, delicate slice, and popped it in his mouth. I took another drink from the wine skin. ‘It wasn’t a subtle plan; the robbery,’ said Robin, chewing slowly. ‘We were after Murdac’s dining silver; the best goblets, cups and plates, mazers, bowls and platters that he used on feast days in his hall. And we heard that they were kept in a locked room off the kitchen.
‘John waited three days, playing the part of a loyal man-at-arms, and after midnight on the third day he went down to the kitchen, broke open the door of the store and filled a sack with the silver plate. Halfway through, he was discovered by the head cook, a huge man, and almost as strong as John himself. Apparently, they had an almighty set-to in the kitchen, pots and pans flying everywhere, and they beat each other to bloody steak. Must have made a hell of a racket. Eventually, John managed to knock him out and get away with the sack of clanking metal. But it wasn’t a smooth escape; the disturbance made by the fight in the kitchen had roused the castle and when John galloped out of Nottingham on a stolen horse, he was followed by Sir Ralph Murdac and a score of his men-at-arms, buzzing like angry wasps, hastily dressed and only half-armed.’ Robin poked the fire with a thin stick, setting his makeshift poker alight. He waved it in the air to extinguish the blue flames.
‘Of course, we were waiting for John in the forest, and when Murdac’s half-dressed soldiers turned up, we shot them to pieces with our bows from dense cover. They didn’t stand a chance. The soldiers charged into a hail of arrows and, without proper armour, in three heartbeats there were a dozen empty saddles and a litter trail of men bleeding, cursing and dying on the forest floor. The rest had to run for it.’
He stopped for a moment. ‘But they left Ralph Murdac behind.’
‘So you captured the Sheriff himself?’
‘Yes, we had him, and he was wounded, not badly, just an arrow in the flesh of his left arm. But his horse had been pierced by a couple of shafts and had thrown him. He was terrified: surrounded by a pack of bloodthirsty outlaws, men he would have hanged on sight if he had caught them in Nottingham; his own men wounded and dying around him, the rest fled. He was on his knees, pleading for his life, tears absolutely running down his face. I’ll never forget the sight of someone so ... lost.’
‘The men thought it was funny, of course - the high and mighty Sheriff, begging for our mercy. I had my sword drawn and I was preparing to dispatch him, when Tuck intervened. And in my youthful weakness, I listened to him. ‘Make him swear, on the Cross, that he will not molest us in future,’ said Tuck. ‘Make him swear, by all that is holy, that he will pay a ransom,’ he insisted, ‘and spare your soul another black stain.’
‘I was soft then, a fool, and I listened to Tuck’s plea. So Murdac swore a great oath that he would not pursue us in the forest, that we outlaws might do as we chose in Sherwood. He promised to deliver a ransom to the very spot he was kneeling on in three days’ time, I forget how much now, but a decent sum; twenty marks, I think. And, being the idiot that I was then, I let him go.’
Robin stabbed at the fire again with the stick. ‘He never paid up, of course. Perhaps he had intended to do so when he was begging for his life but, once he was snug at home in Nottingham Castle, there was no chance he was going to part with his silver to an outlaw. But, strangely, he did leave us alone, for a year or more, and it gave me more than enough time to build up my strength. All manner of people came to join me. I was made, then, with the common people. The robbery was a success, in that aspect. I had their attention, and their respect.’
‘If you had killed Murdac, it would have brought the wrath of the King down upon you,’ I said. ‘Henry would have come north with all his might and crushed you like an insect,’
‘Yes, there is that,’ conceded Robin, ‘but I wish I had slit the little poison-toad’s throat nonetheless.’
The next day, by the early afternoon, we were walking our horses through the low arch of Micklegate Bar - with its gruesome array of the severed heads of criminals set on spikes on top - and into York. It was my first visit to this great northern town, and I was most curious to see the place. As we rode down the centre of wide street to the old bridge over the River Ouse, I took in the closely packed workshops and houses, the milling citizens, the noise and smells of the streets; there seemed to be a great number of people out of doors, far more than would be abroad in Nottingham at this hour, and many seemed to be agitated about something. There were also, I noticed, many more men-at-arms among the throng that would be usual in a town this size.
Robin seemed to be reading my thoughts: ‘Sir John Marshal, the Sheriff of Yorkshire, is assembling local contingents here to go on the Great Pilgrimage,’ he noted. ‘You need to mind your manners, Alan, with so many soldiers about. Don’t get into any trouble; don’t provoke anyone to violence.’ As so often when he spoke to me, Robin was half-serious and half-joking.
Crossing the old bridge over the river, Robin and I moved into single file, and I covered my nose at the stench of the public latrines - wooden shacks that had been set up, their backs extending out over the slow moving brown water so that the townsmen could relieve themselves directly into the Ouse. To my right, a couple of hundred yards away, was the mound and high wooden walls of the King’s Tower, the great keep of York Castle, that glowered over the town as a reminder of the King’s power in the North. On my left, a quarter of a mile away, was the magnificent soaring bulk of the Minster, a huge monument to God’s glory on Earth; and next to it, slightly closer to the river, was the Abbey of St Mary’s, one of the holiest institutions in Yorkshire. Robin I knew had had problems with the Abbot in the past - he had mocked him publicly for his wealth, and robbed his servants as they travelled through Sherwood - and I knew he wanted to avoid the place, if at all possible.
We headed neither right to the castle nor left to the Minster, but straight up the hill through ranks of squeezed in houses, some of them two or even three storeys high. It was an impressive town. And yet, even though I had never been in York before, I could sense that something was wrong in the place: fellows would scurry about shouting half-heard messages to their fellows; a gang of apprentices crossed our path heading north, and drunkenly singing a song that ended in the chorus ... ‘Ah-ha, ah-ha, ah-ha, another pint of ale, my boys, ah-ha, ah-ah, ah-ha, and then the Jew shall die, my boys, ah-ha, ah-ha, ah-ha ...’ It seemed that a great many people were walking up the road with us and towards the market; a tide of humanity all moving in the same direction.
I felt uneasy and glanced at Robin; he too was frowning but we pushed on up the hill until a space opened up to our left and, by the ripe smell of rotting meat, I knew we were passing the town’s shambles. Robin put a hand on my arm and we reined in at the entrance to the meat market. In a wide space, lined with rough stalls selling bloody cuts of pork and beef, and with row upon row of dead chickens hanging by their feet, a huge crowd had formed. Standing on a box at the back of the market, a short, middle-aged man dressed in a robe like that of a monk - except that it was a grubby off-white colour, instead of the usual brown - was haranguing the multitude. As Robin and I stopped to listen, more and more townspeople joined the throng in front of the monk, straining to hear his message: it soon became clear that his theme was the Great Pilgrimage, and the urgent need to free the Holy Land.
‘... and yet their beasts continue to defile our Holy places; the unbelievers’ cattle shitting on the very floors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself; their Satan-black slaves pissing in the font where many a devout Christian babe has been baptised. How long, O Lord, how long will you suffer these Saracen desecrators to live? Where is the strong right arm of the Christian faith? Where is the army of the righteous who will scrub the Holy Land clean of these filthy, Christ-denying wretches?
‘I tell you, brothers: the great men of the land are doing their part; even our good King Richard has made his solemn vow to recapture Jerusalem and rid it of these unbelieving lice that swarm on the very stones where Christ preached his blessed ministry. And all the great lords of England and France, too, are doing their part to rid the world of the foul corruption of the paynim: our noble Sheriff, Sir John Marshal, brother to Christendom’s greatest knight, William the Marshal, is summoning his men, brave knights from across the county of Yorkshire, to cross the seas and vanquish these stinking hordes of the Devil.’
The crowd was cheering by now; wrapped up in the white priest’s words. ‘But what can I do, you ask; how can I play my part in this great endeavour to rid the world of sin and faithlessness? What can I do?’ The white monk paused, searching the crowd with his eyes. ‘I am no great knight, nor lord nor king, you say. I am but a humble man, a good Christian but no sword-wielding horse-warrior, with wide lands and great estates. And to you I say this: the Devil is among you! Here! Today! In this very town!’ There was a collective hiss from the crowd. The white monk held out his arm, index finger extended and he moved it slowly over the crowd. For some strange reason, it was difficult not to follow the pointing finger with your eyes.
‘The Devil is here, I say, among you, at this moment. You do not need to go to far Outremer to fight the good fight. You do not need to risk life and limb on the long road eastwards. There are evil heretics, unbelievers, demons shaped like men who dare to reject Christ, to spit in the face of Holy Mary Mother of God ... and they are right here in York; living among good Christian folk like human rats. You know of whom I speak; you know this form of mankind; they are the ones who steal the bread out of honest men’s mouths; who with their God-cursed debt payments ruin the lives of honest men; they are the race who defy Christ, who murdered our Blessed Saviour on the Cross; who even today kidnap little Christian children and slaughter them for their foul Satanic rituals ...’
The growls from the crowd had been growing and then somebody shouted: ‘The Jews! The Jews!’ and the crowd took up the chant, drawing out the long syllable into a deep booming ‘Oooooooh’. It was a sound to freeze the blood, the deep roaring of the crowd chanting: ‘Jooooooos; kill the Jooooooos; kill the Jooooooos,’ low and reverberating, like the base howling of a crazed beast.
‘It is God who wills it; God wills it, I say; it is God Almighty who demands that the Jews, that race of degenerate fiends, be wiped from the face of the Earth ...’