It had all been over in less time than it takes to string a bow. And not a word had been spoken, not a cry made. Robin lifted his victim clear of the flames and dragged him over to the second corpse. He reached down to the dead man’s belt, unhooked a bunch of keys and strode over to a locked door in the corner of the room. In a couple of heartbeats, the door was open and Marie-Anne was in his arms. After a long embrace, Robin drew back and looked into her face. ‘Did he hurt you?’ he asked. I noticed that she looked pale and thin and her fine hunting gown was badly torn and covered in mud and filth, and what looked like blood. She hugged him close to her again and muffled by his cloak I heard her say: ‘All is well now that you are here.’
As I looked at Marie-Anne clasped in Robin’s arms, and saw the love that was so clearly between them, and how right they looked together, I felt something inside me shift. The resentment that I had felt towards them at the Caves was completely gone. She was still my beautiful Marie-Anne, I could see her beauty in a dispassionate way, even thin-faced and grimy as she was, but she had subtly changed. Something indefinable about her was different. I still loved her, but perhaps for the first time I saw her as a real woman, a woman with fears and joys, pains and pleasures, rather than a goddess, to be worshipped in a dream. She was not mine, I knew then, and she never would be.
We wasted little time: Robin hurried Marie-Anne out of the guard house and up the narrow spiral stairs. At the top, we paused to see that the wall was clear of sentries; then we were jogging along the wall and in no time Robin and Reuben were lowering Marie-Anne in a loop of rope to the ground. I followed, with Robin just feet above me, climbing hand over hand down the knotted rope. I saw Reuben’s head, once again, outlined against the greying sky; the rope was pulled up and we three were scrambling up the other side of the ditch and back to where we had left the horses.
Pride is the worst of my sins these days, but I cannot help but feel a glow of satisfaction that I was part of that night’s work. It was a quintessential Robin exploit: precise, well-planned but with no frills and based on speed, good intelligence and audacity. But, above all, what made it typical of the way Robin operated was that it was successful. As the three of us trotted back up the track towards Linden Lea in the golden early morning light, we were greeted by the surprised sentries at the ramparts with a blast of trumpets. The noise woke the rest of the outlaw band who, tumbling out of the hall and the outbuildings, saw Marie-Anne was returned, and began to cheer us until the manor’s encircling palisade seemed to tremble with the tumult. No one seemed to mind that Robin had deceived them the night before in pretending that the attack would be today. John handed me down from my horse and said: ‘I knew that devious swine was up to something,’ before nearly crushing me to death in a welcome bear-hug. Many, many people, friends and relative strangers, crowded round me to hear the story of the rescue, which I was not too modest to tell, although I may have exaggerated my role by a small amount. When breakfast was brought out and set on the trestle tables in the courtyard, Linden Lea took on a holiday air, with men shouting jests and insults to their friends, and raising mugs of ale to Marie-Anne’s safe recovery. Sir Richard shook me vigorously by the hand and told me that he was proud of me. I felt lighter than air, a genuine hero and I was grinning so much my face began to hurt. For a moment, the jollity was interrupted by another fanfare of trumpets and, looking out over the valley, I saw a great column of men and horses and baggage approaching down the track to the south that ran parallel to the stream. I was alarmed, at first, and then I saw Thomas’s ugly old face out in front of the column, and Much Millerson beside him, and behind them a horde of familiar faces all dressed in dark green and armed to the teeth with war bows and swords, spears and axes: I was looking at the full strength of Robin’s private army, almost three hundred men-at-arms and bowmen, each armed, trained and disciplined by Robin and his officers - and spoiling for a fight.
We welcomed them into the courtyard of Linden Lea; more food was fetched, someone broached a cask of wine, and all across the open space the newcomers were told the story of how Robin had rescued Marie-Anne from the jaws of the Nottingham beast. As stories will, it grew in the telling. And continued to grow in the years that followed. Robin had single-handedly slaughtered a hundred men, according to a version I heard a few years ago. He had hidden in the belly of a great deer to gain entrance to Murdac’s feasting hall, according to another story. But the truth, I believed, was impressive enough.
After an hour or two of feasting, Robin had a plank set atop two big barrels and vaulting onto it he shouted for silence in the noisy courtyard. The men were not completely sober at this point and Robin had to call three times for quiet before he had their attention.
‘My friends, we are well met here, and firstly it is right that we should thank our host, the generous provider of this shelter and this fine food and drink: Sir Richard at Lea.’ The knight, who was standing next to me, took a modest bow and was lustily cheered by the outlaws. ‘I would also like to thank all of you for joining me here in this beautiful valley, and I will tell you what we are here to achieve. There are many here with a price on our heads, myself included,’ there was another loud cheer, and Robin took an ironic bow, ‘and there are many here who have been forced to leave their families, their hearths and homes by so-called law-men, by bullies who claim power of life and death over you in the name of the King.’ The mood in the courtyard had grown more sombre now and there were one or two angry growls. ‘And there are many here who have been injured, humiliated and denied your natural rights as free Englishmen.’
‘And free Welshmen,’ someone shouted.
‘That’s right,’ continued Robin. ‘We are all free men here. And as free men, we join together; we come together in the wild places, away from towns and priests and Norman lords, and we come together because we have one thing in common. All of us have chosen to say no! No, I will not be subjugated by your unjust laws; No, I will not submit to your corrupt Church; No, I will not bow down to any local petty tyrant who demands my labour, the sweat from my brow, who takes the food out of the mouths of my babies. No! We are free men; and we are willing to prove the fact of our liberty with our swords, with our bows, and with our strong right arms. And we will never surrender our freedom. Never!’
Robin had bellowed the last word and the crowd began to cheer like men possessed. The noise rolled towards Robin in great waves of emotion. Our leader let the uproar continue for some time and then he raised his hands to call for quiet again.
‘Tomorrow, my friends, tomorrow, we will have an opportunity to show our mettle. Sir Ralph Murdac, the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests is coming here; that French cur is coming to this beautiful valley with his armed men, and his big horses. He is bringing his law to us, here, in this place. And, as we are outlaws, he means to kill us all. So what shall we do? Shall we run away and hide? Shall we crawl back into our holes in the forest and await, shivering with fear, to receive his
justice
?’ Robin gave the last word an ironic twist. ‘No, my brothers; look around you, and know our strength. We will not run. We will fight. And we will kill. And we will win.
‘There is a new King coming to the throne; a just King; a noble King; a fair man and a mighty warrior; and, if we can win this fight today, if we can smash this man Murdac, bring down this so-called High Sheriff, I warrant that the King will grant us all full pardon for any crimes committed. Full royal pardons for all who fight with me. So I ask you now to remove your hoods and raise your voices to good King Richard: God Save the King! God Save the King! God Save the King!’
How they roared. Some of the men even had tears in their eyes. I looked at Sir Richard: his jaw was hanging open in amazement. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it,’ he said. ‘He talks like a ranting priest, but he rants about the most extraordinary Godless, unnatural things: freedom from the Church? Freedom from our rightful lords, who have been set above us by God? What nonsense, what dangerous, heretical nonsense. But they loved it. They absolutely loved it.’ He was staring around at the courtyard which was filled with cheering men, embracing each other, and shouting God Save the King! over and over.
Robin called the captains to him in the hall: Little John, Hugh, Owain the Bowman, Thomas and me. Sir Richard attended the meeting as a military adviser. Robin’s first command was: ‘Don’t let the men drink too much, I need them with clear heads.’ And then he plunged into his plans for the battle.
The valley of Linden Lea, a wide grassy expanse that might have been designed by God as a battlefield, ran roughly north-south, with the manor at the northern end, and the road to Nottingham running alongside a stream down the centre of the valley. To the east of the valley was thick woodland, to the west, rose steep bare hills with an ancient track running along the top. Robin’s plan was simple: our infantry, about two hundred men-at-arms, and perhaps a third of our bowmen, say twenty-five archers, would form a line across the road about halfway up the valley. They would make a shield wall blocking the way. They were bait. Robin wanted Murdac to attack the outlaw infantry with his cavalry, and when he did, Robin’s men would form up into an impregnable hedgehog, a ring of sharp spears and shields that no horse would charge.
‘We think he can muster, in total, only about two hundred and fifty knights and mounted men-at-arms and about four hundred foot soldiers,’ Robin told us.
‘We’re still badly outnumbered,’ grumbled Little John. ‘We have, what? Four score bowmen; two hundred men-at-arms and only fifty cavalry: three hundred and thirty men against six hundred and fifty. God’s holy toenails, that’s odds of two to one.’
‘Their infantry are not good,’ said Robin confidently, ‘and we have, as you have pointed out, John, about eighty prime bowmen who can knock out a sparrow’s eye at a hundred paces. We’ll win; it will be a tough fight, but we’ll surely win.’ And he carried on with the briefing.
The bulk of the archers would be hidden in the woodland to the east. As the cavalry attacked the hedgehog, the archers would emerge from the wood and fire into the advancing conrois from their right flank, hopefully completely disrupting their charge and killing many men and horses. ‘You are to command the woodland archers, Thomas,’ Robin said. And the one-eyed man nodded. If the cavalry attacked the archers they could retreat into the wood and safety. Even if the cavalry reached the hedgehog largely intact, they would still not be able to break it, if it was well formed and well commanded. ‘That’s your job, John,’ said Robin, for which he received a sarcastic: ‘Thanks very much.’ As their cavalry tried vainly to break into the ring of shields and spears, our own mounted force, hidden just behind the crest of the hills to the west, would swoop down and destroy the enemy horsemen from behind. ‘That’s you, Hugh, don’t bring the horses down until they are committed to trying to break the hedgehog. Then come down and smash them. Understood?’ Hugh said nothing.
With Murdac’s mounted men in flight, Robin continued, our men would then combine and march on the ranks of their infantry. Seeing their defeated cavalry streaming back to the lines, followed by our victorious troops, they were likely to flee, and if not, they would be softened up by our archers emerging from the wood on the left before being charged by the combined outlaw infantry and cavalry.
I thought it was a brilliant plan. I could see it all in my mind’s eye. The bloody field, enemy horsemen fleeing for their lives, the feeble cries of the enemy wounded, myself victorious after the battle . . . Hugh awoke me from my reverie. ‘That’s all very well, but what if Murdac’s cavalry doesn’t attack,’ he said, with an edge of irritation in his voice. He was very put out that his brother hadn’t included him in his plans for the rescue of Marie-Anne and had been sulking all day.
‘If he doesn’t attack, so be it. The shield wall slowly retreats, making its way back to the manor, then we settle down and wait. When Murdac brings his forces up to attack us in this well-fortified manor, we still have archers to his left rear, and our cavalry to his right rear. We have him between three fires. Any more questions?’
Nobody said anything and so Robin dismissed us to make the men ready. As the captains left to organise their men, Sir Richard said to Robin: ‘It’s time I was on my way.’
I was appalled; I had assumed that Sir Richard, that supreme warrior, that
preux chevalier
, would be fighting alongside us.
‘I can’t persuade you to join us?’ Robin asked.
‘As I told you before, it’s not my fight,’ said Sir Richard. ‘Christians should not shed each other’s blood when we need every good fighting man in the Holy Land. In turn, I ask you again, can I not persuade you to take the Cross? To join me in this great mission to free Jerusalem from the infidel?’
‘It’s not my fight,’ said Robin. They smiled at each other and clasped hands. Then Robin turned away and I was left with Sir Richard. ‘Are you really going to leave us?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
He looked at me and said gravely: ‘I’m sorry, Alan, but I must ride south to join Queen Eleanor. She is travelling the land and taking homage from the barons of England on behalf of her son Richard. My brother knights of the Order and I are our future King’s trusted counsellors - we ride with the Queen as an escort, but also we hope to persuade many of England’s nobles to take part in the holy pilgrimage that Richard has sworn to undertake next year. I would like to help you but I am engaged in God’s work, far, far more important than the outcome of this brawl.’
‘But this is your family’s land. This was your father’s house. Will you not fight to protect it?’ I asked.
‘It is mine no longer,’ said Sir Richard. ‘Our Order demands a vow of poverty. When my father died, I made over this hall and these lands to the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon. This place belongs to God, now. He will protect it. And have no fear, Alan, my friend, God will keep you safe through this battle, too, I am sure of it.’ He smiled. ‘That is . . . as long as . . .’ he stopped again.