The Wolf and the Raven Page 9

  They didn’t want to attract too much attention, so Robin had given the barber his seven shillings payment for taking care of the friar, and asked him to pass on the other seven shillings for the feast to the village headman. He gave the barber a stern look as he handed over the silver, making it clear without saying anything that they would find out one way or another if the man kept all the money for himself.

  Gareth quickly ran to the house of the peasant that had brought him to the village and handed over their share of the money – more than a month’s wages – to the astonished man, asking him to give half to his fisherman friend, then the youngster rejoined Robin and the rest and they made their way as fast as they could back through the trees to their camp.

  Tuck looked peaceful enough lying on the stretcher, but the barber had told them again that the portly friar might never wake up.

  As they jogged back to camp, trying not to jostle the stretcher too much, they breathed prayers to God, his saints, and the Magdalene to help their injured friend.

  * * *

  “So that was Guy of Gisbourne.” John mused when they returned safely with Tuck to their camp in the woods near Notton, helping himself to a large chunk of venison from his wooden plate. “Impressive, eh?”

  Robin nodded thoughtfully but Will snorted.

  “Impressive? What was so impressive about him? He’s a soft, skinny noble. Good Christ, you were almost three times the size of him John! The only thing impressive about him was that armour of his.”

  The rest of the outlaws around the camp-fire murmured agreement at that. Gisbourne’s light black armour may have been ostentatious, but it was obviously functional and made its wearer stand out in a crowd. It was the kind of armour men coveted.

  “You never spoke to him, Will,” Robin said, gazing into the flames. “John’s right – Gisbourne had something about him. Something more than just fancy clothes. He had a kind of hypnotic gaze – almost made you forget he was an enemy when he spoke to you. I could imagine men hesitating for just a fraction of a second when they looked into his eyes – just before they felt his knife in their guts.”

  “Aye,” John agreed. “He had charisma; reminded me a bit of you.” He nodded towards Robin, no trace of humour on his big honest face.

  The young outlaw leader waved a dismissive hand, his face flushing slightly at the compliment from his giant friend.

  Allan-a-Dale, gittern in his lap, strummed a cheery chord. “My money would be on Robin if the two of them ever get in a fight,” he stated, eyes on the fingerboard as he traced a short melody. “That black armour looked nice, but it wouldn’t stop one of you big lads if you were to ram the point of a sword into it.”

  “Who’s taking bets on it?” Arthur, the stocky young man from Bichill shouted with a grin, raising his ale skin in the air, spilling much of it on the forest floor. “Anyone want to put money on it? Fight of the century!”

  Allan laughed and stood up, hammering out a few repetitive, sinister-sounding notes on his instrument which he wore on a fine leather strap over his shoulder.

  “The Wolf!”

  He pointed theatrically at Robin, drawing loud cheers from the inebriated outlaws as he continued the ominously descending riff on his gittern.

  “Versus…the Raven!”

  The men played along, booing and laughing loudly as Allan mimicked a bird – cawing, and flapping his arms ridiculously around the camp.

  No bets were placed on Sir Guy – the men had too much faith in their young captain’s strength and skill with a sword to wager against him.

  The evening wore on, the outlaws happy to have their friend Tuck back in the fold, even if he was still unconscious. At least the bastard Gisbourne and his cowardly crossbow hadn’t managed to kill the merry Franciscan yet. For this night, he was still breathing, and the men celebrated their escape from the men hunting them like animals.

  Robin looked over at the unconscious friar.

  They had tried to make him as comfortable as possible, covering his grey robes with blankets and laying him out on a bed of straw under a shelter near the fire. Still, it was another cold night for all spring was on the way, with the threat of frost – maybe even snow – in the air. Robin resolved to have Tuck moved into the large cave before the men turned in for the night.

  The outlaws – living a life where death was an ever-present threat – were right to enjoy the evening. They had escaped from the man sent to kill them, after all. And the scum that had murdered their friend Wilfred had been destroyed.

  Things could have turned out much, much worse for them that day.

  But, as the others danced and sang and downed their ale, and Gareth produced a bottle of the barber’s ‘medicine’ with a wild grin, Robin sat thoughtfully on his own.

  Gisbourne’s men weren’t like anything they’d faced before in the forest. They had clearly been well drilled by the king’s bounty-hunter. The soldiers also outnumbered them, and were at least as well armed and armoured as the outlaws.

  Robin took a long pull from his ale skin, tensing his huge bicep muscles as the bitter liquid warmed his belly. Aye, in a fair fight, one-on-one, he’d probably beat Sir Guy, he thought.

  But he doubted Gisbourne was the type of man to fight fair, and, as he watched the rest of the men smiling and enjoying the evening, he realised he’d have to watch his back from closer to home. He wasn’t the only one not joining in with the revelry: Matt Groves sat alone under a thick old beech tree, staring at him.

  As their eyes met, Groves curled his lip derisively but looked away, draining his ale skin and wiping his wet mouth with a stained sleeve.

  This has gone on too long, Robin realised. He hates me. Eventually he’ll find the courage to slip a knife in my back...

  The outlaw leader, half-drunk himself, glared at Groves, willing the man to react so he could finish it right there and then, but Matt never looked at him again.

  As he glanced back down at his good friend Friar Tuck, unconscious, possibly never to wake up again, Robin decided.

  These were his men now. They were loyal to him, despite his youth.

  It was hard enough having men like Gisbourne and the sheriff, de Faucumberg, after them, without worrying about members of his own group.

  He would talk to Little John and Will Scarlet in the morning. It was time they removed Matt Groves.

  * * *

  The loud crack of wooden practice swords clattering against each other filled the cold morning air.

  Sir Guy of Gisbourne liked to be up at dawn to read from his bible then to practice his one-on-one combat skills with whoever was awake and not too hungover from the previous night’s ale. Today, he sparred with a tall, but fat soldier. Gisbourne hadn’t bothered to ask the man’s name and, irritated by his opponent's lack of finesse, had given him quite a beating.

  Since Thomas of Lancaster’s failed rebellion, Sir Guy and his bounty-hunters had taken up temporary residence in the earl’s former castle at Pontefract which was now in the hands of Sir Simon de Baldreston, although de Baldreston's seneschal, Sir John de Burton, looked after the day-to-day running of the place.

  The majority of the escaped rebels – including Robin Hood and his men – had fled into the forests nearby so it was an ideal base; certainly it was closer than de Faucumberg’s castle in Nottingham, so the sheriff had been quick to suggest Gisbourne seek Pontefract’s hospitality for a while.

  “Ow, fucking hell!” the fat soldier roared, dropping his practice sword from numb, scarlet fingers. “We’re on the same side you know,” he muttered, clasping the injured hand under his armpit with an angry glare at his black haired tormentor.

  “You taking out your frustration on the peasants?” Gisbourne’s sergeant Nicholas Barnwell, came into the courtyard carrying a mug of ale and half a loaf. The angry soldier stormed off, muttering under his breath, much to the amusement of Sir Guy.

  “I don’t know how oafs like him dare to call themselves ‘soldiers’,” he replied,
tossing his own wooden practice sword noisily back onto the pile in a corner of the practice area. “No defence and too fat to attack without giving his opponent time to react. Good for nothing but arrow-fodder.”

  Barnwell laughed. “Nothing to do with you being pissed off at Hood’s escape then?”

  “Aye, that too,” Gisbourne shrugged with a small smile. “That fat bastard’s lucky I didn’t use a real sword to spar with him.” His face became serious again as he continued. “I can’t believe we were so close to the man we’ve been sent here to kill. And his whole gang too!”

  “Now you know why the king sent us here,” Nicholas mumbled, mouth filled with crusty bread. “Hood and his men seem to live a charmed life.”

  Gisbourne nodded agreement. The stories the sheriff had told him about Hood, and his predecessor Adam Bell’s, time in the forests of Barnsdale suggested it would be very hard, if not impossible, to catch this gang. They were well trained, well armed, had the support of the common people who seemed to love them, and their leaders had great tactical skill. Not to mention much better knowledge of the local terrain.

  “Perhaps we need to try something different…” he mused.

  “Fuck it.” Nicholas turned away. “Stop fretting. There’ll be another time to catch them. Come and have some breakfast with the men.”

  “You know I don’t eat in the morning,” Gisbourne replied. “You go back in; I’m going to finish my practice session. I want to be ready for Hood and his men the next time we meet.”

  As his sergeant wandered off, ale mug raised to his lips and waving the hard bread at his leader, Gisbourne drew his sword from its ornate black sheath and began to practice with it, flowing from one position to another with an economy of movement that was breathtaking to watch.

  As he spun and twisted, his mind worked over the problem of Robin Hood and his men and, as he finished – his body moving astonishingly fast to end gracefully back in a defensive stance – a smile spread over his face. A passage from the Gospel of Matthew had come to mind.

  Yes. He would find thirty pieces of silver and then they would try something different to catch this wolf’s head…

  * * *

  “Exaudi nos, Domine sancte, Pater omnipotens, aeterne Deus: et mittere digneris sanctum Angelum tuum de caelis, qui custodiat, foveat, protegat, visitet atque defendat omnes habitantes in hoc habitaculo. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.”

  Allan finished the prayer, watching Tuck hopefully, but the friar remained unconscious. Maybe the minstrel had got the Latin wrong? He'd heard the prayer once, as a child, when his father had been dying, and memorized it.

  “What did all that mean?” Much asked him.

  “No idea,” Allan admitted, to looks of amusement from Much and Robin who sat crouched on the forest floor beside the friar. “I heard it years ago, when my father was dying, and I memorized it. It seemed appropriate to say it now.” He shrugged apologetically, but the two young men from Wakefield nodded encouragingly. Anything was worth a try after all.

  Most of the outlaws were away from camp that morning, either hunting, fishing or gone off to local villages on errands. Robin, Much and the minstrel had stayed behind to watch over the camp, while a few of the others sparred and practiced with longbows close-by.

  When Robin had woken up, hungover, he’d decided not to tell John and Will about his thoughts on Matt Groves the previous night after all. What had seemed like a good idea under the influence of ale now, in the cold light of morning, seemed extreme and unnecessary.

  Matt would need to be dealt with somehow, but murdering him in cold blood just wasn’t in Robin’s character.

  He shrugged and put Groves out of his mind for now then motioned towards Tuck.

  “He told me how he came to be a Friar, but he never got around to telling me why he joined us. Seemed insane to me, leaving his safe life, to become a wolf’s head. Something to do with that bastard prior, de Monte Martini.”

  Prior John de Monte Martini was the reason Robin had become an outlaw in the first place. The clergyman's threats towards Matilda at the previous May Day celebrations in Wakefield had led to Robin smashing the prior's nose and the young man being declared a wolf's head as a result.

  Much nodded. “Aye, that’s right, Tuck told a few of us the story one night when we were sitting by the camp-fire. You must have been on watch at the time or something.”

  “He did?” Robin leaned forward eagerly. “Go on then, let’s hear it. I’ve been curious about it ever since we first met him.”

  Much waved a hand at Allan. “You tell it, you’re the minstrel,” he smiled. “You’ll make it a better story than I would.”

  “Well,” Allan began, making himself more comfortable on the log he sat on, “you know Tuck was a wrestler but gave it up when he was accused of cheating? And he saved the life of the Bishop of Norwich – what was his name again…?”

  “Salmon,” Much offered.

  “Aye, John Salmon,” Allan agreed. “Well, Tuck went off with the bishop and, with his help, Tuck became a Franciscan. Learned to read, learned Latin, studied the bible and so on.”

  Robin nodded. He knew all this already. “What did he do after that?”

  “Well, the Franciscans knew about Tuck’s previous life as a wrestler. They knew he could look after himself, so they used him to escort valuables around the place – money, religious relics, that sort of thing – against the threat of outlaws like ourselves.”

  “That’s what he was doing when we robbed him,” Much offered, remembering the day they had stopped the friar and his guards taking a chest full of silver through the forest. The outlaws had beaten the guards easily, but Tuck had shocked everyone when he brutally knocked out their previous leader, Adam Bell, using a cudgel hidden in his grey robes.

  They all grinned at the memory and Allan carried on. “Aye, he would often travel to places with groups of mercenaries and he ended up in Lewes Priory one day. The prior asked him to travel to France, to buy some religious relic or other.” He furrowed his brow and looked over at Much. “What was it de Monte Martini wanted?”

  “Some hair from Christ’s beard,” Much replied. “It had turned up in some French village – Eze I think Tuck called the place – and the prior thought it would look good in his collection.”

  Allan took up the story again. “That’s right, the prior gave Tuck some crazy amount of money to go to France and buy this hair. Off he went on a ship with half a dozen guards and the silver. He didn’t tell us much about the journey, other than to complain about having to walk up some huge mountain to reach the village! At least no one bothered them on the way. I suppose France isn’t infested with wolf’s heads and robbers like England.” He smiled and continued. “Anyway, this Eze is, apparently, a small village, and the local priest was more than happy to sell the relic for such a huge sum of silver. Tuck and his men made their way back through France” –

  “Sampling the best of the exotic local food and drink,” Much laughed, nodding towards the unconscious friar’s round belly, “at de Monte Martini’s expense.”

  “I can imagine,” Robin smiled. Tuck liked his food, there was no denying that. “I bet he enjoyed that journey.”

  “Until they returned to England,” Allan nodded grimly. “When they got back to Lewes, Tuck paid off his guards and, taking Christ’s hair, which was in a small, fancily decorated reliquary inside a plain wooden box, went to give it to the prior.” He paused and met Robin’s eyes. “Now, you know Tuck. You know he takes his faith very seriously.”

  Robin nodded. It was true. Although he was a man outside the law, the friar was still very much a man of God – more of a Christian than the likes of Prior de Monte Martini with his string of brothels would ever be, that was for sure.

  “Well, as he sat outside the chapter house, waiting on the prior to see him, Tuck opened the little box for a last look at the hair. He hadn’t looked at it since they’d bought it from the priest in France – Tuck thought it woul
d be disrespectful to keep staring at it, so he’d stopped himself until then, but when he opened the wooden box, Pater Noster on his lips, for a final look at the relic…” Again, Allan paused dramatically.

  “It was gone!” Much broke in to the minstrel’s annoyance.

  “Shut up!” Allan shouted with a glare. “I’m telling the story.”

  Robin and Much shared a laugh at their mate’s indignation.

  “The box was empty,” Allan went on. “One of the mercenaries must have taken the reliquary when Tuck was sleeping off too much French wine one night. When the guards kept asking for a look at it, the daft bastard had told them no one would be opening the box until he handed it over to the prior.”

  Robin shook his head sadly, looking over at his unconscious big friend. “Always wants to see the good in people, does Tuck,” he said. “Naïve old sod.”

  “Of course, the prior called him in then, and he had to tell him what had happened. It didn’t go down too well.”

  “I see why Tuck wasn’t too keen to go back to de Monte Martini when we robbed him,” Robin muttered.

  “Exactly,” Allan replied. “The prior suspected Tuck might have stolen the relic himself, so he had him stripped naked and searched. Of course they didn’t find it, and the local bailiff was called to hunt down the mercenaries. They found five of them, but one had left town as soon as they’d parted ways with Tuck, and the rest of them didn’t know where he’d gone.”

  He shrugged. “No one ever found the relic, and de Monte Martini made Tuck’s life miserable afterwards. When we robbed him on his way down to Lewes with the prior’s silver, Tuck knew he would be blamed again and be thrown in jail or worse.”

  “So he joined us,” Robin said, and the three men sat in thoughtful silence for a while.

  It had been two days since they had brought Tuck back to camp, and he’d shown no signs of stirring, despite the prayers of the outlaws.