Tuck who had been watching my hay-making with a kindly eye said: ‘Just try not to kill any of our folk.’
His words sobered me and, as he helped put on the cloak and helmet, I realised that I really might be expected to kill, to shove this blade into a living human body, to spill a real person’s guts on the green grass of this peaceful glade. And that he would be trying to spill mine.
I put the sword back in its sheath, and, as I turned to thank Tuck for his gifts, the mud-spattered spy came galloping around the bend on the road and this time headed straight for our little circle of wagons. He pulled up his sweating horse next to Robin and his thin line of archers, jumped off the beast and said breathlessly to Robin: ‘They’re coming, sir, hard on my heels; Ralph Murdac’s men. About thirty of the bastards . . .’
Robin nodded and said: ‘Fine, good; get yourself and the animal inside the cart-ring.’ The man bobbed his head and led the horse away. Robin, turning to the archers who stood in a ragged line looking at him expectantly, said: ‘Right lads, let’s not play with them. When you see the bastards, start killing them. And when they get to that bush,’ and he pointed to a scrubby alder fifty paces away, ‘get inside the ring as fast as you can. Get in the cart-ring if you want to live - but not before they get to that bush. Does everybody understand?’ He glanced at me and I nodded, not wanting to speak in case my voice revealed my fear.
Then we waited. Robin was sticking arrows needle-point down into the turf in front of his place, idly arranging the pattern so that it was symmetrical; the Welsh archers leaned lightly on their bow staves, chatting to each other quietly, perfectly calm. They were a very muscular lot, though few were very tall, I noticed. Many of them had a similar body shape, as if related by blood: short and squat, with thickly muscled arms and deep chests. Tuck walked down the line blessing their bows. I stood there clutching the hilt of my sword, awaiting blessing and sweating with fear and excitement in the spring sunshine. I desperately wanted to piss. Time seemed to stand still. The hubbub from the circle of wagons seemed to quieten, though an ox would occasionally moan or a chicken squawk. I wondered if the spy had been mistaken. Where were they? Robin was cleaning his fingernails with a small knife and humming under his breath - it was ‘My Love is Beautiful as a Rose in Bloom’, but last night and our cosy harmonies seemed a thousand miles and many lifetimes away. Tuck was on his knees praying. I closed my eyes but, from nowhere, the image of the green-eyed girl coupling with her drunken beau in the farmhouse came into my mind. I opened my eyes quickly, and crossed myself. If I were to die I did not want my last thoughts to be of those sinners. And then, at last, at long last, I heard the drumming of hooves on a dry road and the enemy came into sight around the bend. A clattering mass of heavy horsemen, wrapped in steel and malice, and seeking our deaths.
They were a terrifying sight. Thirty stone-hard men-at-arms, mounted on big, well-trained warhorses, each man wrapped in chain mail from toe to fingertip and crowned with a flat-topped riveted steel helmet with a metal grill that completely covered his face. Soldiers such as these had hanged my father. On top of their mail they wore black surcoats, slashed with red chevrons, and they carried twelve-foot-long steel-tipped lances, man-killers, and kite-shaped wooden shields, faced with leather and painted with the red and black arms of Sir Ralph Murdac. Long swords and shorter daggers were strapped to their waists; spiked maces and razor-sharp battleaxes hung from their saddles. They were skilled killers, the lords of the battlefield, and they knew it.
They paused about two hundred yards away, their chargers snorting and pawing the grass, and they stared at our pathetic huddle of wagons, beasts, anxious peasant mothers and children, and our thin line of stunted bowmen. They looked like the steel monsters of some terrible legend, not flesh-and-blood men. Horsemen such as these had spread terror among the English folk for more than two hundred years, since William the Bastard came to take our land. Riders such as these had smashed the housecarls’ shield wall at Hastings, and, since then, their descendants had been hunting down the wretches who could not pay their taxes, slaughtering honest yeomen who stood in their way, raping any girl they took a fancy to, crushing English spirits beneath their steel-shod hooves.
Two knights rode out in front of the horsemen, the leaders of the conroi, as these cavalry units are called, each with a dyed-black-and-red goose-feather plume atop his helmet. They began to order the troop into two ranks of about fifteen men each. As I watched the superbly trained horses shuffle and jostle into position, I heard Robin murmur: ‘Stand fast, lads . . .’ His archers drew their bowstrings back to their ears. ‘ . . . and loose.’ There was a rushing sound like a flight of swallows and a handful of arrows sped away, thin grey streaks against the blue sky. I heard Robin say again, perfectly calmly, ‘Fast . . . and loose,’ and then I watched in amazement as the first barrage smashed into the ranks of the conroi. Which erupted into screaming bloody chaos. Horses cried in agony, kicking out savagely at random as a dozen yards of fire-hardened ash wood, tipped with razor-sharp bodkin arrowheads, slammed deep into their chests and flanks. Two men-at-arms fell dead from their horses, killed by the arrows that punched through their hauberks into heart and lungs. What had, moments before, been menacing, orderly ranks of mounted men preparing for the charge, lances held vertically, perfectly in line, like the palings of a village fence, was now a circus of rearing terrified horses and cursing gore-splashed men. Yet more arrows sliced into them. I saw one man, unhorsed, on hands and knees, skewered by a shaft through his throat, collapse on the green turf, clutching his neck and coughing blood. Another was cursing, a vile string of obscenity, damning God himself as he tried to pull a shaft from the muscle of his thigh. A riderless horse, lashing out with his hind hooves, caught his unseated owner plumb in the chest with an audible crack of bone and the man was hurled backwards and did not rise again.
But these were no ordinary soldiers. These men were proud horse warriors, Sir Ralph Murdac’s hand-picked men-at-arms, feared in two counties, disciplined by hours of practice with horse and lance and sword and shield. The arrows were still scything into them but the men-at-arms had their shields up and were steadying their horses with their knees, pushing them back into some semblance of formation. The two knights, gaudy plumes nodding madly, were rallying the conroi with shouts and threats. And then I watched, heart in my gorge, as they ordered their ranks, turned their huge horses towards us and charged. The horsemen levelled their lances and began to gallop across the glade, bunching as they thundered across the grass, their massive hooves making the world vibrate, heading straight for our feeble defensive ring.
‘Fast . . . and loose,’ said Robin. And the steel-headed arrows, once again, slashed across the field to slam a foot deep into the charging horses. Two men were hurled backwards out of their saddles, as if their bodies had been attached to a rope tied to a tree. ‘One more volley, boys, then we run. Stand fast . . . and loose.’ Robin pulled a hunting horn from his belt and blew two short blasts, high and clear, and then a long one. The final handful of arrows drove into the charging conroi as it reached the alder bush and then we were all scrambling, breathless, tripping, terrified, back, back into the defensive circle of wagons. I ran, too, clutching my sword, as if the Devil were on my tail - I ran fit to burst my heart. It was only a short distance, perhaps thirty yards, but the horsemen were nearly upon us. I imagined I could feel the hot breath of an enormous beast and his steel-faced rider, the hooves crushing me; I could almost feel the pricking of the steel lance head between my shoulder blades . . . and then I was at the circle and sliding, sliding on the grass under the wheels of the nearest wagon - and into the legs of the blacksmith, still clutching his huge hammers, who peered down at me and said: ‘All right there, son, you seem a bit out of breath.’ And he winked at me.
The conroi was checked by the wagon circle. It was too big an obstacle for the horses to jump and, in frustration at missing the archers, the riders milled around the outside, leaning out of their saddles and stabbing with their long lances at our folk inside the ring, who dodged and parried and retreated out of reach. Robin’s horn sounded again; two short notes and a long one, and out of the green wall of the forest our own blessed horsemen erupted.
They were a beautiful sight: a dozen mailed cavalrymen perfectly aligned in a single row, galloping towards our defensive ring. Hugh was in the centre with the white wolf banner fluttering above his head as his men swept across the glade. Their lances were couched, tucked under the arm and held parallel to the ground, aimed at the foe, spear points lusting for blood. One of Murdac’s men had just time to shout a warning and then Hugh’s men crashed into the scattered ranks of the enemy, spearing men and horses as they smashed through the milling throng, scattering the sheriff’s troop like wolves running through a herd of sheep.
Robin’s horn sounded again, three rising notes that set the hairs on my neck standing erect:
ta-ta-taaa, ta-ta-taaa
. ‘Come on, then, lad,’ said my blacksmith friend. ‘That’s the attack, that is.’ And he leapt up on to the wagon and over the other side, swinging his two great hammers, surprisingly nimble for such a big man. Once out of our cart-ring he gave a passing enemy horse a great smash on the forehead and the poor animal tottered and sank to its knees. Quick as a weasel the smith was on his rider, even as the animal was sinking, pounding with both the great lumps of metal in turn at his square helmeted head. He must have smashed through the helmet and into the brain because, suddenly, there was a great gout of blood and greyish pink matter that splashed the front of his chest. He saw me watching, appalled at this savage display, and he smiled an enormous, battle-mad grin and shouted: ‘Don’t gawp, boy, get stuck in, get stuck in . . .’
Robin was to my right, standing on a wagon with another archer; both of them calmly shooting arrow after arrow into the enemy horsemen. I turned to my left and there was Little John, outside the circle, swinging his enormous axe with murderous skill. I saw him hack into the back of a rider and cut straight through his mail, severing the spine. As he tugged the double-blade loose, the man fell forward, limp as a doll, his head almost touching his foot in the stirrup as a scarlet fountain from his partially severed waist shot straight into the air.
Everywhere I looked there were Robin’s followers, men, and some women too, on foot, some armed only with quarterstaves or stones, some with hoes or scythes, surrounding isolated riders and smashing them and their mounts with a near-berserk fury. A body of horsemen, disciplined and armed with the long lance, can destroy a crowd of infantry in moments; but when the horseman is alone and surrounded by a pack of blood-crazed peasants with a chance to wreak vengeance for the crimes committed against them, and their forebears, by that mounted symbol of Norman power, it’s like watching a crippled spider being overrun by a pack of maddened ants. The horses were hamstrung, quick-smart, with long, sharp knives; the unfortunate man-at-arms’s legs seized by many hands. He was yanked, tugged alive, from the saddle to be pulverised to bloody ruin on the steaming earth. Pounding metal, blunt tools punched into living flesh; screaming man and horse, and hot, squirting blood.
But it was not all going our way: one of the plumed knights was wreaking havoc on our people. His reins dropped over his saddle horn and controlling the horse only with his knees, he laid about him with sword and spiked mace, smashing skulls and severing arms. As I watched an arrow slammed into his thigh, and he wheeled away with a curse.
The blacksmith just in front of me had stopped hammering at his foe’s mashed skull and was watching Little John, who sank his huge axe-blade with a graceful backhand into the throat of a passing horse. The unfortunate animal, spraying gore, reared with the last of its strength and dislodged the rider, who lay winded on his back on the life-drenched ground. Within a heart-beat, he was surrounded by a swarm of hacking, gouging peasantry. ‘That’s the way, lad,’ the blacksmith grinned at me, ‘no lollygagging, get stuck in.’ And then his mad, happy face suddenly changed shape, paled and he sank to his knees. From the centre of his chest the bloody tip of a steel lance was protruding. He looked down in disbelief and his huge body juddered and jiggled as the man-at-arms on the other end of the spear tugged at the weapon to release it from his sucking flesh.
An image of my father’s distorted hanged face leapt into my mind and I found myself screaming ‘Noooo . . .!’ My naked sword was in my fist and I was up and had leapt over the wagon before I could think. I charged at the rider, whose lance was still trapped in the smith’s body, and swung my weapon at his leg, crazed with red fury. The blade slammed into his mailed calf and the man shouted in pain but the blow did not break through the chain armour. The man dropped the lance and swung at me, left handed, across his body, with a huge war axe. I dodged, and then another horse barged into the back of his and he staggered in the saddle, both arms flailing, the axe hanging from its strap on his left wrist. I grabbed the mailed sleeve of his right arm, my mind boiling, heaved and, with a rattle and a crash he thumped down on to the turf, his helmet knocked off, wheeling away.
I didn’t think for a second about what I was to do; it was as if there was another boy controlling my body. As the enemy horseman sprawled on the ground, bareheaded, I swung the sword as hard as I could at his exposed neck and I felt the jar of the blade as it chopped into his spine at the base of his head. He screamed and his body gave a huge convulsive jerk. But my heart, my tender heart was singing. Here was vengeance, this was a blow struck for my father’s memory. The man convulsed again; there was a massive spurt of bright gore and then he lay still, face up, blood pooling underneath him, with my old sword half-severing his head from his body.