Robin Hood (29 page)

This was the last thing Godfrey had expected him to say. “The temerity of the man.” He had to admit, though, that he admired this Loxley, or whoever he really was. Living openly in the dead knight's home? It was something Godfrey himself might have done.

He crossed to a nearby table, which held a map tracing the path he and Adhemar had burned across England. He looked to the French commander.

“Two men,” he said. “Four horses. Ride hard to the coast, and then onto Paris with a message for the king.”

Adhemar eyed him eagerly. “And the message?” he asked, his accent thick.

Godfrey considered, but only briefly. The moment for subtlety had long since passed. “Tell him it is time.”

Adhemar hurried off. Godfrey remained by the table, staring down at the map. He traced their path, his
finger gliding over Barnsdale and York, Peterborough and Darlington. At last, his finger came to rest, and he tapped the map lightly, looking up at Belvedere.

“And we to Nottingham. No prisoners and not a stone unscorched.” He grinned. “By God! I'll make the place famous!”

I
F NOT FOR
the great cross that still stood in the center of the village, Marshal might never have known that he was in the right place. Though a modest town, Barnsdale had always been clean and welcoming, a pleasant place to visit.

But Godfrey and his henchmen had left the village in ruin. Fields and homes and shops had been burned black, and everywhere Marshal turned, he saw fresh graves marked by simple crosses.

Yet, Barnsdale had been transformed in other ways as well. Throughout the village, bright banners fluttered in the wind, bearing the sigils of baronies from throughout Northern England. Small clusters of soldiers milled about in the lanes, if these men—some older than Marshal and Sir Walter, some no more than boys—could even be called soldiers. They sharpened blades and axes, turned pitchforks and hoes into makeshift pikes. They talked among themselves, their expressions grim but determined. A few of them watched Marshal as he made his way through the lanes. Perhaps they knew who he was. Perhaps they saw that he wore the colors of the Plantagenet and assumed that he was the king's man and thus an enemy of their cause.

Horses grazed where they could find food. Dust drifted through the streets, occasionally swirled with leaves and bits of straw in tiny whirlwinds.

Marshal made his way to a large canvas pavilion in the center of the village, where most of the barons and their men had gathered. A smith, working at what was left of the village forge, made new shoes for horses. Cooking fires burned and men waited in line for thin broth and scraps of bread. Most of those who had gathered here looked no more like soldiers than those Marshal had passed in the street, but they were being drilled by more experienced fighters. Nearby, an armorer distributed weapons from a wagon laden with rusted swords, lances, and old battle axes. Clearly, the barons and their men were in earnest. And few men knew better than William Marshal what an army of committed soldiers could accomplish, regardless of their training or the state of their weapons and armor.

Marshal entered the pavilion and immediately all conversations ceased, and every man looked in his direction. He recognized Baldwin and Fitzrobert right away. He had known the former for years. They had served together, fought together, gotten drunk together. Once he had counted the baron as a friend, though he could tell from the way Baldwin regarded him now that those days were gone. Fitzrobert, he didn't know as well, but there were few barons in all of England as formidable in appearance. He was a mountain of a man, and he glowered at Marshal with manifest hostility.

There were about two dozen other barons in the pavilion. Some of them Marshal knew as well as he did Baldwin; others he had never seen before. But he sensed that Baldwin and Fitzrobert were the leaders of the group and he focused his attention on them. The two men were angry to the point of bitterness,
and Marshal could hardly blame them. He had seen what Godfrey and his men had done to Barnsdale, Baldwin's home, and it seemed that the home villages of these other barons had suffered similar fates. Had William been in their position, he would have been eager for blood, too.

But in this case their calls for vengeance were misplaced. They needed to understand that King John wasn't their enemy; Godfrey and his French allies were. He soon realized, though, that Godfrey had planned all too well. Such was their rage at the king, that they would not listen to anything he said. Each time Marshal responded to their grievances he was shouted down. In their eyes, John was a villain, and Marshal was the king's man.

“I speak for all here,” Baldwin said, raising his hands to silence the other barons, and addressing Marshal. “As regent, John was vain and dissolute, but now a crown on his head makes him a despot. You have spent too much time in the palace, William.”

William opened his hands. “You must swim with sharks to understand them.” The barons began to shout at him again, but Marshal raised his voice and spoke over them. “John is new to the throne—but a brigand he is not. Godfrey has betrayed the king and England. He is an agent of King Philip; his marauders are French. Do not let his barbarism blind you to the threat approaching our shores. Every minute wasted in dissension brings this country closer to its own demise.”

He looked around the pavilion, hoping that some of the men might heed his warning. But even though a few appeared to recognize the truth in what he said, none of them was ready to join cause with John.
Godfrey had divided them, but John himself had sown the seeds of this rebellion with his pettiness and his lack of discipline.

“We have been bled by the Crown long before Godfrey,” Fitzrobert said, drawing nods and murmurs of agreement. “Go back to London and tell the king: We will meet him on the field of his choice!”

The others roared their approval.

L
ONG BEFORE THEY
reached the Barnsdale gate, Robin could see that the town had been attacked. The gate and town wall were blackened, and those few buildings which still stood within the walls had been damaged as well. Will, Allan, and Little John had been chattering on about the girls they had met in Nottingham, but seeing the town, they fell into a grim silence.

All was still around the town, save for a single bird that circled once overhead and then swooped down into the village. It had the look of a messenger pigeon. Robin wondered what new tidings awaited them within those scorched walls.

Crossing through the gate, Robin found the lanes of the village crowded with a ragged army of yeomen and peasants of all ages. They were armed and some wore armor, but Robin was certain that few of them had been soldiers a month ago. Many wore haunted expressions, as if they had already witnessed horrors enough to last them a lifetime.

And looking around, he had no doubt that they had. Barnsdale had been ravaged. What hadn't been torn apart had been burned. Almost no home or shop had been spared.

Robin glanced back at Will and the others before
dismounting and beginning to walk slowly through the village. His village, where he had passed the earliest days of his childhood. The place looked familiar to him and he tried to get his bearings, to recall where his home had been. He could tell that the others were following, but he didn't look back at them. The place had taken hold of him—the look of it, the smells. His blood seemed to flow through his body and into the very earth on which he walked.

You will find what you are looking for,
Sir Walter had said.

Robin was close now. He knew it. The deeper into the village he walked, the more powerful the feeling grew. And so when he turned the corner, he should have been prepared for what he saw. Should have been, but wasn't.

Towering over the ruin that once had been Barns-dale's village center, stark against the blue sky, stood the Celtic cross that he remembered from his youth. The cross his father had built.

Seeing it, Robin felt as though he had been punched in the stomach. He walked toward it, unable to look away, and unable to resist the memories that washed over him once more.

H
E IS TOO SMALL
. Something is happening at the center of the crowd, but men's backs block his view, so that all he can see is the cross towering above all of them. The men are soldiers, he realizes. They wear chain mail and tabards bearing the Plantagenet leopards. But this doesn't stop him. He wants to see,
has
to see, and he can't. And so he begins to push his way through, snaking between and around and under when all else fails. He pushes past a forest of legs and swords
hanging from belts, and comes at last to the front of the army that has gathered in the center of the village.

His father stands straight and tall before the cross, facing the king's men, dignified and strong, as unmovable as the cross itself. If he is afraid, he shows no sign of it. But Robin is afraid. And he sees fear written on the faces of those who look on.

Thomas Longstride draws his sword slowly, his eyes still on the soldiers. There is no menace in the gesture, no threat. He pulls the weapon free and then turns it so that he can offer the hilt to the nearest of the soldiers. It is an act of goodwill, a peace offering. Any fool can see that.

R
OBIN DIDN'T WANT
to remember any of this. He knew the ending as well as he did his own name. He had seen it, he had remembered it once. He wanted only to turn away, to leave this place. But still he walked on toward the cross, breathing quickly and hard now. And still the images came, inexorable as the tide.

T
HE KING'S MEN
have grabbed hold of Thomas Longstride. They grip his arms, holding them outstretched so that he is defenseless. Around them, the people shout that he has done nothing wrong. Robin screams for them to let his father go. But the guards won't listen. The man who has taken the stonemason's sword raises it and strikes….

R
OBIN STAGGERED AND
cried out as if taking the remembered blow himself. He nearly fell, but righted himself, his eyes unseeing….

* * *

H
E SCREAMS, SWOONS
, collapses to the ground, and for a moment is lost to the darkness. But soon he feels powerful hands lift him. He tries to fight them off, to kick and punch and bite. His father is dead; he will not be taken, too.

But through half-lidded eyes he sees that it is not the king's men who have taken him, but two others. Young men, grim and determined.

And from a distance of too many years, the older Robin, the man walking through the streets of his youth, recognizes these two. Sir Walter, his eyes whole and clear, and William Marshal, his mane of red hair untouched by silver. They spirit him away through the village, away from blood and murder and his father's cross.

R
OBIN PAUSED IN
the lane, looked back up at the cross. This was where he had watched it happen, where he had fallen. He knelt, touching the ground, trying to slow his heart and catch his breath. Looking up again, he stopped breathing altogether. Thomas Longstride knelt before him, alive, untouched by the sword, his dark eyes boring into Robin's.

Robin felt a sob ripped from his chest. He closed his eyes tight and took several deep breaths to compose himself. When he opened his eyes once more, the vision of his father was gone. He was alone in the street again, watched by the soldiers before him and his friends, who stood just behind. He climbed to his feet, weary, frightened by what was happening to him, and walked the remaining distance to the base of the cross.

Reaching it he knelt again at the place his father had fallen.

“Robin?” Little John's voice. He sounded worried.

“Journey's end,” Robin said without turning.

The stone before him was covered with soot, bloodied, weathered by storms and wind and thirty-five winters. But he could see the chisel work, and he reached out tentatively to brush his fingers against the blocks. Blocks his father had cut and shaped. He pulled his sword free, and pressing it to the base of the flagstone on the stone step, he pried the block loose. There was a scroll there, as he had known there would be and he opened it, revealing the words he remembered from his youth, words he had read on the hilt of a sword not so very long ago and yet seemingly a lifetime.

Then, again using his sword, he lifted a second stone to reveal handprints. One clearly belonged to a boy. It was tiny, the impression in the dried cement shallow, tentative. The one just beside it was that of a man, firmer, deeper. Robin placed his hand over that one. His palm and fingers fit it perfectly.