The Death of Robin Hood (3 page)

She had once been a great beauty – a woman to stop a man’s heart – but on this day, although her looks had not entirely deserted her, she cut a poor figure: she was thin as a twig and dressed in a raggedy black nun’s robe, greyed by the dust of the road. Her once swan-white
face was decidedly grubby, she had the remains of a black eye, now faded to streaks of brown and yellow, and the lines on her brow beneath her midnight black hair and around her grey-blue eyes were cut deeper than I remembered.

‘My dear, you have nothing to fear from me, I swear it,’ said Tilda, smiling. Her familiar voice sent ripples running down my spine.

She stepped away from the table and came towards me. With difficulty, I managed not to take a step backwards, and pulled Robert tighter to my side.

‘I do not fear you,’ I said, lying once more.

‘That is as it should be. I know that we had harsh words when we last met. And you cannot know how much I regret them—’

‘I do not fear you,’ I cut her off, ‘I merely ask that you leave my hall, my home and my lands immediately.’

‘I have wronged you; Robert, too. I freely admit it. But I come humbly to seek your forgiveness for my actions. I know you are a kind man—’

‘You shall not have it. You schemed to kill us. You used your wiles and my own loving foolishness to snare me. You betrayed me to my enemies. At every turn you have sought my destruction. Whatever it is that you say you require, you shall not have from my hand. I shall have no more dealings with you. Now, I must ask you to leave. This instant. Or I shall fetch my men and have you thrown from the ramparts.’

To my utter astonishment, Tilda fell to her knees in front of me. She clasped her hands before her in supplication and I swear that a succession of oily tears began to course down her dirty white cheeks.

‘Sir Alan, I beg you. It was so hard for me to come here. Forgive me. Dear God, I ask you in all humility. Show me mercy. Forgive me and grant me sanctuary. I have nowhere else to turn. In the name of the love you once professed, forgive me. I beg you.’

I was
utterly at a loss. I had seen Tilda merry, fearful, sad and scornful, even spitting bile-bitter hatred at me. But I’d never seen her like this. So … broken. So stripped of dignity. Pleading for my forgiveness on her knees. My heart twisted in pity.

‘Go back to Kirklees. Go back home to the Priory, woman, and do not trouble us again. You shall have food. An armed escort, if you want it. But you will not stay here.’

‘I cannot,’ she said. Tilda was sobbing without restraint. She buried her face in her hands and her words came out jerkily, muffled and odd sounding.

‘Expelled. The mother Prioress. Anna. She and I, we … She threw me out. I have nowhere to go. I have no place. I am lost.’

A weeping woman on her knees is a hard thing for a man to witness, particularly if she was once his lover. But I knew Tilda of old and, while her grief did seem genuine, I could not bring myself to trust her once again. I hardened my heart and called for help.

‘Baldwin,’ I said to my steward, who was hovering by the table with his mouth open in shock. ‘Fetch the lady a satchel of food, a flask of wine and a warm cloak, and escort her from the manor. If she will not go, get Hal and some of the men-at-arms to help you. Robert and I will be in my solar. Report to me when she is gone.’

I turned my back on the sobbing woman on her knees in the hall and, half-pushing Robert to force him along, I stalked back to my chamber.

Inside, with the door closed and my weight leaning securely against it, I felt my heart pounding as if I had run a mile in full armour.

‘I do think that was rather harsh, Father,’ said Robert.

I had thought I was rid of Tilda once and for all but life is never that simple. Baldwin reported that he had provided her with food and drink and a cloak and escorted her – she was meek as a lamb, he said
– out of the main gate. He had stayed to watch her set out on the road towards Nottingham but after only a few hundred yards she had veered off the track headed towards the river and had collapsed down under a willow tree on the bank, a huddle of misery, still within a half-mile of my gates.

‘Do you wish me to send the men-at-arms to roust her?’ Baldwin asked.

‘No,’ I said. It was dark by then and to send a troop of mounted men to move along one tearful middle-aged woman seemed excessively cruel. ‘Let her sleep the night there in peace. Doubtless she will be gone in the morning.’

She wasn’t, of course.

The next morning, from the roof of my tower, I could clearly see her, a black shape under the willow tree, still as a stone. It crossed my mind to order out the men-at-arms then, and have them move her on with their spear butts, but I had not the heart for it. I contented myself with issuing stern orders to all the servants that Matilda Giffard must not be allowed to set so much as a toe within my walls again.

We were very busy over the next few days with the harvest and, while I cannot pretend that Tilda disappeared from my mind completely – she hovered constantly on the fringes of my thoughts like an unpaid debt – I did manage to banish her from my daily processes. I ignored her, in truth. She stayed by the willow tree day after day, moving very seldom, at least in daylight, troubling nobody as far as I could tell and slowly, almost imperceptibly, becoming absorbed into the landscape of Westbury.

Four days after the tearful scene in the hall, Robin arrived.

My
lord came apparelled for war and with two score mounted men-at-arms at his back. He was in high spirits, oddly, for the news he bore was almost all bad. Over a cup of wine in my hall, he informed me that the King had reneged on the promises given at Runnymede and that we were summoned once more to war by Lord Fitzwalter and the Army of God. I confess my heart sank at the news.

‘We knew it couldn’t last, Alan,’ said my lord. ‘When has King John ever kept a promise, let alone one extracted at the point of a sword?’

He made a good argument: John was one of the most duplicitous men I have ever had the misfortune to encounter, indeed the bitter hatred felt for him by the barons of England had much to do with his untrustworthiness, but my dreams of a peaceful existence had been scattered to the winds by Robin’s arrival.

‘I need you, Sir Alan,’ he said. ‘I need your sword once more. Will you come?’

I nodded dutifully. I could not in good conscience resist a call to arms from my lord: he had made me, raising me from a penniless thief
to the prosperous knight I was today. He’d given me everything. I owed him my life and my lands.

We were joined at dinner by Sir Thomas Blood, Robin’s man and an old friend of mine too who had once served as my squire and had painstakingly trained my son Robert in the arts of the sword. He also was in high spirits and he proudly showed me his shield, which was freshly painted with a new blazon, the head of a buck with an arrow in its mouth. The buck and the arrow were in Robin’s honour – a reference to a time in his youth when he was a famous outlaw.

Robin had granted Sir Thomas the small manor of Makeney in Derbyshire, a richly deserved reward, for Thomas had been his loyal knight for many years now. He was also a newly married man, having taken a bride, a pretty girl from Westbury, in fact, called Mary, who had recently given birth to their first child, a dark, chubby, perpetually bawling boy. Clearly they needed their own home.

‘You will probably have learned this already, Alan,’ said Robin, ‘but Philip Marc is back, too. Despite what the charter decreed, John has returned him to the exalted post of High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests.’

This was news to me. ‘What happened to Eustace de Lowdham?’

‘Oh, he has graciously agreed to step aside and has accepted the role of deputy sheriff. The fool says he’s happy to have been relieved of the burden of high office.’

Philip Marc was my enemy. He was a French mercenary, fanatically loyal to the King, who had hounded me for taxes I did not owe and had even seized my son Robert for a while in an attempt to force me to pay. Lord de Lowdham was a weak-willed but amiable fellow who the rebel barons had induced to take the shrievalty after Runnymede. I was surprised King John had not had him permanently removed.

‘It gets worse,’ said Robin. ‘Sheriff Marc has a remit to destroy all unlicensed
stone castles in Nottinghamshire and there are more than a few landholders hereabouts who are hastily pulling down their new walls to avoid exciting his ire.’

I looked out of the open door of the hall at the squat stone tower that I had built in the courtyard two years before. My keep, my refuge in time of trouble. I had been so proud to have raised it. It made me feel like a real knight, less of a gutter-born churl who had done suspiciously well for himself and was now aping his superiors.

I tore my eyes from it and said: ‘How are Marie-Anne and the boys?’

As well as Miles, Robin had another son, Hugh. They were as unalike as iron and silk. Hugh, the eldest, was a steady, sensible man, a little dull and priggish to my mind but a decent fighter and a fellow who once he had fixed his mind to something would never give up until it was accomplished. Miles was another man altogether: wild, pleasure-seeking, irresponsible – and loved by almost everybody who met him.

‘They are busy,’ said Robin. ‘Hugh is to be constable of Kirkton while I am away – he’s recruiting more men and strengthening the walls of the castle. Marie-Anne is laying in stores in case of a long siege. Though I hope it won’t come to that. You are welcome to send your household there if Philip Marc becomes overly oppressive.’

I thanked him distractedly. I was still thinking about the tower and wondering, given its relative insignificance compared with some of the greater fortifications in the county, whether it might escape the sheriff’s notice. ‘And Miles?’ I asked.

Robin said nothing for five whole heartbeats.

‘I cannot understand that boy,’ he said at last. ‘He has no regard for discipline at all. He tells me he is wedded to the rebel cause, to the great charter of liberties, that he is afire to teach the King and all his foreign mercenaries a bloody lesson – but when it comes to
training with our men, organising our forces for battle, preparing, if you like, to teach that bloody lesson, he seems to have no interest.

‘He spends half the day abed. He is up half the night with the wine jug. Every week he is involved in some new scrape, usually involving too much drink and some unfortunate local girl. I tried confining him to the castle and he blithely ignored my orders and spent two days absent – God knows where. He came back, refusing to give an account of himself but with a badly cut lip and his best clothes torn and stained with blood. I took away his horse and his purse; he borrowed a mount from a farmer, robbed a travelling monk of two shillings and set out on his revels again. He is twenty years of age yet behaving like an unruly apprentice: always surly, disrespectful to Marie-Anne, downright rude to me. He is a thorn in my backside, to be honest.’

I tried not to smile at Robin’s words. Miles sounded exactly how I imagined Robin to have been when he was his son’s age. There was a secret about Robin’s sons that was never mentioned for fear of angering the Earl of Locksley: while Miles was truly his son, in looks as well as character, Hugh was not. He was the fruit of a forced coupling between Robin’s enemy, the former sheriff of Nottinghamshire Ralph Murdac, and Marie-Anne, who had briefly been his prisoner. Murdac was long dead but Hugh resembled him in many ways – the same colouring and shortness of stature, although, praise God, he did not seem to have Murdac’s evil ways and had proved himself to be as true a man as any in Robin’s ranks.

‘You can wipe that foolish grin off your face, Alan Dale,’ said Robin. ‘Miles is joining us here tomorrow. And you will see how much you like his company then. At least, I left orders to that effect at Kirkton. I couldn’t find the damn boy when I left. I’m taking him with us on campaign. I dare not leave him at home: he’d probably burn the castle around his mother’s ears.’

‘So where
are we going?’ I asked.

‘South,’ said Robin. ‘To London first; we will receive further orders from Fitzwalter there.’

Dinner was served by Robert and his massive servant Boot, a dark-skinned giant from the forests of Africa who had once been the sheriff’s executioner at Nottingham Castle, and we ate heartily – venison, roast goose and pigeon pie, fresh bread, cheese and preserves, for who could tell what privations the future might hold. At the table Robin introduced me to his new squire, a broad-shouldered, deep-chested, red-haired young fellow of good family in Kent named William of Cassingham, and known by all as Cass. He seemed an amiable sort, who clearly worshipped Robin. He was, for a squire, unusually armed. At his waist, on the left side, in a two-foot long, five-inch broad leather sheath, he wore a falchion, a crude, wide, single-bladed weapon that was more like a butcher’s cleaver than a proper sword. At the other side of his belt was an arrow bag filled with two dozen shafts topped with goose feathers; and it was very difficult to part him from the long yew bow that he carried as if it were an extra limb.

‘He’s a talented lad,’ said Robin quietly, as the squire took his place at the board, ‘if a little savage in his habits. But strong as a bull – and brave with it.’ My lord obviously had regard for the fellow and that was enough reason for me to like him. But beyond a few mumbled pleasantries, Cass said little at the feast and ate as if this were to be his last meal on earth, tearing at great chunks of meat with his teeth and barely chewing them before swallowing the lump down with vast draughts of red wine. He reminded me of the strange tales I had heard of the pagan cannibals of Africa – ferocious creatures who filed their teeth into points and craved human flesh. But, in truth, he was no wild man. He merely ate with a great determination, almost as if he were challenged, as if he were determined to vanquish all the meat and drink before him.

When they
had served the dishes and poured the wine, Boot and Robert joined us at the table and listened in silence while Robin regaled us with tales of Kirkton, the misadventures of Miles and all the doings in his Yorkshire lands. After the meal, while Robin was seeing to the comforts of his men-at-arms in the barns out in the courtyard, Sir Thomas took me aside.