Outlaw (7 page)

“A trick, I tell you,” cried Sir Guy of Gisbourne. “A trick.”

“Sometimes, Guy,” said the sheriff scornfully, “sometimes I think you are a very stupid man. You send my sister into Sherwood to bring out the child so that Robin Hood would come after him. She does it. We have the child. So Robin Hood may not have come himself as you thought he would, but his woman has. And the result will be the same – Robin Hood’s head. Do you know how strong is a woman’s love for her child? No, she would do nothing to risk her son’s life. She would do anything to save him, anything. Look at her. Take my word for it, she will lead us to him. Have no doubt of it, for she knows what will happen to the child if she does not.”

“She will lead us into a trap,” Sir Guy roared. “I know she will. I see in those scheming red eyes nothing of motherly love, but only revenge and hate.”

“Bring me the child,” the sheriff called out. “And have three hundred men ready, armed and on foot at the south gate.” He smiled at Sir Guy. “You forget, Guy, that the corn is high in the fields. I shall hide my men in the corn. No one will see them. She will ride ahead with her son, wave the silver arrow and we will wait. If he comes, we shall kill him. If he does not, then we shall know it is a trick and we shall kill her and the child. What have we to lose?”

At this moment the door opened and the Abbess of Kirkleigh came into the room carrying little Martin in her arms, Alan Wicken alongside her. She listened in silence, her eyes fixed on Marion and dark with suspicion, as the sheriff told her how at last they would capture Robin Hood, how they would be led to him by his own woman. “Brother,” she said, “do not do it. Do not give the child to
this woman. I know her. She loves Robin Hood better than life itself.”

“And maybe she loves her son more,” retorted the sheriff. “What do you know of a woman’s love? What do you know of a mother’s love?”

“Listen to the abbess, my Lord,” said Alan Wicken. “She is right. I have seen the love in Marion’s eyes. She would never betray him, not in a million years.”

“Do you think I haven’t thought of all this?” stormed the sheriff, snatching the child away and handing him to Marion. She cuddled him to her and kissed him, the tears running down her cheeks.

“Thank you, my Lord, thank you.” And Marion put up her wimple again. “You are right, both of you,” she said. “Yes, I love my Robin and I hate what I am about to do, but my child comes before anything, before anyone.” And with the boy in her
arms she walked out of the great hall of the castle, set him on the saddle of her horse and mounted up behind him.

Robin and Much and Little John lay in the dry ditch by the burnt-out mill. “I should never have let her do it,” Robin was saying, and not for the first time. “It’s madness. Does she think a nun’s habit will protect her? What if the sheriff doesn’t go along with it? What if he takes her prisoner too? What if he kills them both?”

“What if? What if?” said Little John, chewing on some barleycorn. “Did you think ‘what if’ when you went in there to rescue your father? Well, did you?”

“If she’s not here soon,” said Robin, “then I’m going in after her.”

“You won’t need to,” whispered Much, who was peering over the top of the ditch. “Have a look.” And there over the crest of the hill Marion came
riding, little Martin clinging to the pommel of the saddle and bouncing up and down.

Robin squinted into the sun. “Are you sure it’s her?”

“It’s her right enough,” said Little John, his hand grasping Robin’s arm. “But wait for her signal like she said.”

As they watched, they saw Marion rein the horse to a standstill. Then she was waving the arrow in the air, the silver glinting in the sun. “Up you go then, Robin,” said Little John. Robin leapt out of the ditch and ran down the road past the burnt-out mill. As planned, he slowed to a walk as he climbed the hill. The corn was high in the fields all around him. She let him come on as long as she dared, then all of a sudden put her heels to the horses side and came galloping down towards him, one arm around little Martin. From behind her,
from the corn on both sides of the road rose an army of the sheriff’s men. Robin lifted his horn to his lips and blew. His own army of Outlaws, some five hundred strong now, rose as one from the standing corn and at once loosed off five hundred arrows, none at random, each one aimed at a man’s heart. Scores of the sheriff’s men fell back into the corn, some ran at once, and the rest stood their ground as the Outlaws came at them, their bloodcurdling war yell on the air, their great swords scything both corn and men before them. Marion and the child rode through the oncoming Outlaws, on to Sherwood and safety. But Robin, Much and Little John stood shoulder to shoulder with the Outlaws and fought. This was no short, sharp ambush, no little skirmish. This was a vicious close-quarter killing battle. They hacked and they slashed until the man in front of them dropped, and when
he did, there always seemed to be another to take his place. They were all of them wet with blood and sweat, and tears too. All those lessons Tuck and Much and Robin had taught them stood them in good stead, for after two hours’ fighting the sheriff’s men at last turned and ran. From the top of the hill the sheriff and Sir Guy of Gisbourne watched all this in horror and disbelief. Neither dared even to draw his sword, for both knew that they would surely be sought out by the Outlaws and die in the corn that afternoon if ever they joined the battle. As their men streamed past them towards Nottingham, battered and bleeding in defeat, they saw the triumphant Outlaws simply melt away into the corn again, a phantom army disappearing.

Over two hundred men lay dead in the corn that night when Robin and his Outlaws came back to collect their dead. They knew already who was
missing, what to look for. Thirty-five of the Outlaws had died in the fierce heat of the battle that afternoon, thirty-five good friends, thirty-five good fighters they could ill afford to lose. They carried them back home to Sherwood and buried them in the clearing with the others. Little Martin was safely home and the battle had been won; but grief is a more powerful thing than exultation. They lay down that night on the forest floor, numb in their sadness, but thankful they were still alive to see the stars above them.

In Nottingham Castle the sheriff brooded by his fire and swore that he would hang, draw and quarter anyone who was ever heard to speak the name of Robin Hood. Side by side in bed that night, Sir Guy of Gisbourne and the Abbess of Kirkleigh swore they would not rest until the day Robin Hood lay dead and cold in his grave.

When Friar Tuck returned from his pilgrimage a few days later, he was not alone. The wan young man he brought with him seemed sunk in a deep sadness. He stared about in bewilderment as the Outlaws crowded round him. “Who are you? Who is he, Tuck?” they asked. Friar Tuck waved them away with his sword.

“Leave him be. Leave him be,” he cried. It was then that he noticed that many of the Outlaws were bandaged, that others lay stretched out under the trees. “Oh God, what has happened here?” he said,
suddenly alarmed. Marion was bending over one of the wounded. “Robin! Is Robin hurt?” cried Tuck. And much to his relief, he saw Robin parting the crowd to get to him. The two friends hugged each other.

“It’s so good to have you back, Tuck,” said Robin, and Tuck held him at arm’s length, looking him up and down. “Not a scratch on me,” Robin laughed. “Good as new.”

“But there has been a fight, hasn’t there? What happened?”

And Robin told him the whole story from the beginning, blow by blow. Friar Tuck listened in silence, his brow furrowing all the while in fury. “The Abbess of Kirkleigh, it could be no one else,” he said. “I told you about her, the sheriff’s sister, and Guy of Gisbourne’s lover. Had I been here I would have known her. I would know her anywhere,
fiendish witch that she is. Let me just come within a sword’s length of her, by God’s good grace.” He shook his head. “I should have been here, I should have been here.”

Only Marion seemed to be able to comfort him. “It’s over, Tuck,” she said. “What’s done is done. Martin is safe, and the sheriff and his men stay inside the walls of Nottingham, too frightened even to come out. Better still, you are back home, safe and well. We have missed you, Tuck. We did not think we would, but we did.”

As the laughter died away, the young man whispered something into Tuck’s ear. Tuck nodded and looked around anxiously. “Little John,” said Tuck. “Where’s Little John?” He grasped Robin by the arm. “He’s not one of the thirty-five, tell me he’s not.”

“Don’t worry. He’s fine,” said Robin. “He’s gone
back to the battlefield again to collect the best of their swords. He won’t be long.” And the young man smiled for the first time. “You know Little John, do you?” Robin asked him.

“Oh, he knows him.” Tuck spoke for him, and put his arm around him. “He knows him well. I tell you, this man is heaven sent, by God’s good grace, heaven sent. Did we not pray every day for freedom and justice? Well, we will have them both, and soon, for God has heard us. This man is the answer to all our prayers. With his help we shall have our good King Richard back home where he belongs. We know the vile usurper, Prince John, scours the land for gold, claiming he needs it to pay the king’s ransom. But we know too that the last thing in the world he wants is his brother back on the throne. Why else does Richard still languish in his Austrian dungeon after all this time? And was it not because
of this that we collected the ransom ourselves and hid it away in our cave chapel, ready for the right moment? Now, by God’s good grace, the right moment has come. We will pay the ransom and fetch back our king.”

“But how? No one knows where the king is,” said Robin.

Friar Tuck smiled. “This man does. Tell them, Blondel, my friend, how you found good King Richard, tell them how you did it.” The young man hesitated, looking to Friar Tuck for reassurance. “Don’t worry yourself. They’re an ugly bunch, but not as savage as they look. Speak up. Tell them what you told me in Canterbury.”

And so Blondel began. “I am Blondel. I am the king’s minstrel. I was with him in the Holy Land. At the end of each day he always loved to hear me sing, and one song in particular he loved. It soothed
him, he said, soothed away his worries and his pains. Sometimes we would sing it together. We called it ‘The Candelight Song’, a flickering tune, like no other I have ever heard. He was taken hostage on his way home from the wars; and like everyone else, all I knew was that he was being held by the Duke of Austria, but I did not know where. He has dozens of castles. It could have been in any of them. So for these last months, I have wandered through Austria, playing the mad minstrel. I would walk round and round each castle, singing ‘The Candlelight Song’, hoping he would hear me and know me and sing back the song. Castle after castle I tried, and there was no answering refrain. I began to despair. The day I found him was a wild and windy day. I remember that because I had to sing out loud against the wind. I thought it was an echo I was hearing at first, but it was not. It was
another voice, but the same song. I had found my master.” His voice caught in his throat at this moment, and his eyes filled with tears. “I could not see him, only his hands on the bars of the dungeon window across the moat, but it was him. It was his voice.” He could speak no more.

“And do you know what Blondel did?” Friar Tuck took up the story. “He did what any loyal Englishman would have done, anyone who did not know our Prince John as we do. He came back to London and told Prince John where the king was being held. And what did our valiant prince do? Did he send men to besiege the castle and rescue his brother? Did he send the ransom money? No. None of these. Tell them what he said, Blondel.”

Blondel spoke through his tears. “He said that Richard could rot there, for all he cared.” The crowd murmured with indignation.

“And then,” Tuck went on expansively. “And then the miracle happened. By God’s good grace, Blondel came to Canterbury, to the holy shrine, to pray for his master; and I was there at vespers, praying too. I heard beside me a man crying, this man. We got to talking outside the shrine. We ate together, and I confess it, we drank together too, and he told me his story. It was God’s good grace that brought us together, and it’ll be God’s good grace that will take us over the seas to Austria to pay the ransom and bring our king out of his captivity. He will have his master home, and we shall have our king back on his throne, and justice at last in this land.” He turned to Robin and patted his great belly. “Well, and isn’t it food time now, by God’s good grace?”

Just then Little John came into the encampment laden with swords. He saw Blondel, dropped the swords with a clatter and ran to him and swept him
up in a great bear hug. What a feast they had that night around the fire. Blondel taught the Outlaws ‘The Candlelight Song’, and they sang it again and again until everyone knew it by heart. As the Outlaws sang, Robin planned. With Will Scarlett and his father and Marion and Little John and Much and Tuck, he devised how they might bring Richard safely back to Sherwood. All knew that there was no time to lose. The king could die in his dungeon. Prince John could pay the ransom before them and have him murdered – he was capable even of fratricide, they had no doubt of that. They had to move fast.

The smelting of the gold began that night. It was to take all the next day for Little John to turn the gold chains and plates and cups and ewers and crosses into golden horseshoes. After all, as Little John said himself, you couldn’t be too careful with
all these nasty folk about, thieving everything they could lay their filthy hands on. Nothing was safe these days; but horseshoes were safer than almost anything. No one ever stole horseshoes. And so that the golden horseshoes would not wear away, each horse would be doubly shod. A shoe of solid gold and an iron one beneath to protect it. Will Scarlett worked night and day at his cutting and stitching, until Robin and Much and Little John looked their parts, and that was no easy task. All three had to look like noblemen, like emissaries from the court of Prince John. They were to be accompanied by their holy friar who insisted on a new habit of the best Irish cloth, and by Blondel of course, who would travel as their servant, and would therefore need no new clothes.

“I shall call myself Robin, Earl of … Locksley. Yes, Locksley sounds good,” said Robin, dressed up
in his finery for the first time, and parading like a peacock in front of Marion and little Martin that last evening.

Marion smiled at him a little ruefully. “Just don’t ever forget who you really are,” she said. “And come back safe to Sherwood, for me and for Martin.”

And so, the next morning, they rode away, their horses’ hooves glinting gold in the sunlight, but they were not glinting for long. By the time they reached the London road, the horses were covered in mud to their fetlocks, and the gold hidden from the world. Behind them they left the band of Outlaws in the care of Marion, Will and Robin’s father, every one of them already longing for the day they would return to Sherwood with their king.

They put up at an inn by the river at Southwark in London, a dingy, stinking place full of rats and filth that they were all glad to leave. The sea-crossing
was wretched too, and particularly for Robin. Heaving over the ship’s side, he longed for the trees of Sherwood, and for ground that did not move under him. It was made all the worse for him because Little John would keep clapping him on the back and telling him to cheer up. Robin had never before felt like strangling him. The roads through France were no better than in England. The early autumn rains had turned them into quagmires. Every river they came to was swollen and bank-high. Fording was usually quite impossible, and there were often long detours to the nearest bridge. Then they would lose their way. Tuck’s much vaunted perfect sense of direction was proved fallible on too many occasions.

Every morning and evening Little John checked the horses’ golden shoes, all twenty of them, to be sure none had worked themselves loose. Being of
softer metal, they flattened out more than iron shoes, but they were tailor-made to each hoof, and with a few new nails from time to time, they lasted well enough. Weary and saddlesore, it was a journey of four long weeks before they reached Austria and the Danube. When at long last Blondel saw the castle rising from the valley floor in the bend of the river, their sense of elation and relief banished at once all thoughts of exhaustion. “That’s the place,” cried Blondel. “I have dreamt of it night and day.”

At Robin’s suggestion, Blondel set off at once, alone, to find out if the king was still there. They watched him ride slowly around the castle, again and again, before he came galloping back to them. He was breathless with excitement. “He’s there, the king is there. I sang. He sang. He’s there. I told him we had brought the ransom, that we were taking him home.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” said Robin, setting his heels to his horse’s side. And the five of them rode down into the valley, splashed through a stream at a canter and thundered over the drawbridge into the castle courtyard.

Armed men rushed at them from every side. “We are from the court of Prince John of England,” Robin cried, brushing aside the spear pointed at his chest. “We have come to pay King Richard’s ransom, but we will pay it only when we see the king brought out alive and well.”

“We will see your money first, Englishman,” said a voice from the top of the steps. The soldiers backed away instantly. “I would not trust an Englishman as far as I could spit.” And the man threw his cloak about him as he came down the steps towards them.

“And who are you to insult us so?” Robin asked.

“The Duke of Austria,” the man replied. “And you?”

“He is Robin of Locksley,” said Friar Tuck, dismounting slowly, “and I am his friar, and my bottom is sore.”

“And where is the ransom? You have no baggage.”

“These fine horses,” replied Robin, “are all the ransom you will get. They are worth at least a hundred thousand pounds, your price for our king, I believe.”

“An English joke.” The duke’s hand was on his sword now. “A bad English joke.” At this, Friar Tuck stopped rubbing his bottom; and suddenly, before anyone could stop him, his sword was in his hand and he lunged towards the duke, lifting his chin with its point.

“No joke,” he snarled. “I’m not laughing, am I? Now, by God’s good grace, you will do as I say, or
I shall separate your dukely head from your dukely body.” The Duke of Austria waved back his men. “Tell your soldiers to lay down their weapons,” said Friar Tuck. And Little John and Much made quite sure that every one of them did.

“Now,” said Robin. “Bring me Richard the Lionheart, and you shall have these horses which are full payment for the ransom, as I have promised. You will see when you examine the horses that I do not break promises. In return, I shall want fresh horses, and your word on the Holy Bible that we shall be able to leave this castle and this country unhindered.” The duke made the oath on Friar Tuck’s Bible, and gave the order for the king to be brought up. He had little choice for Friar Tuck’s sword was never far from his throat. So they waited there for the king, as the first snows of winter began to fall.

The man who stumbled, blinking, into the courtyard some minutes later, looked more like a beggar than a king. Emaciated almost beyond recognition, he walked slowly, unsteadily, towards them over the cobbles. Little John ran to his side to support him. The king looked up at him. “Little John,” he smiled. And then Blondel was there too, on his knee before his beloved king. “Dear friend,” said the king, “how can I ever thank you?”

“Thank Robin Hood and his Outlaws, Sire,” said Blondel. “It is they who have done this. I just pointed the way.”

And so in that cold courtyard, Tuck still guarding the duke, and with snowflakes falling all about them, Richard the Lionheart met Robin Hood. “Sire,” said Robin. “Weak though I know you are, we must leave at once. Fresh horses are being brought. We leave these behind in payment of your ransom.”

“Five horses for a king?” said the king. “Hardly a king’s ransom, is it?”

Robin bent to lift one of their hooves. “Each one of their shoes is of solid gold, gold raised in Sherwood to bring you home. Can you believe it, Sire, but this goat of an Austrian duke thought we were trying to cheat him.” Fresh horses were being led into the courtyard now, saddled and ready. Little John and Blondel helped the king up into his saddle.

“Tuck,” said Robin. “Let the duke have his poxy head. On to your horse, we’ll be away.” And he strode over to the Duke of Austria, who was clutching his throat, his face pale with fear. “All you have to do, my Lord Duke, is to take the shoes off all our horses, and you will find your ransom paid in full. We have our king. You have your gold. Everyone is happy. You will not mind if I take your cloak for my king?”