Keeper of the Grail (15 page)

Finally the voice. “State your business,” it commanded.

“I am gathering forage for the horses. Our camp is yonder.” I needed to convince them, whoever they were, that I was not alone.

Again, silence. There were a few hushed whispers among them, but I could not determine what was being said.

“I think not, boy,” the voice said. “I think you are alone. There is no camp about. We would have seen it. Now, very slowly, draw your sword and lower it to the ground.”

There was no further sound for a moment. I heard the barest whisper of movement as those on my right and left moved to take a position behind me. They would surround and try to rush me, so I kept my hand on the hilt of my sword.

“You would assault a servante of the Templars?” I asked. “Are you mad? They will hunt you down, and you will know no mercy if you harm one of their own.”

“If you serve the Templars, as you say,” the voice replied, “we will be long gone before you are able to rejoin them. Now, this can end quickly and easily or with difficulty. Lower your sword and hand over that satchel and bedroll.”

His words told me they had been following me for some time, and if so, they definitely knew I was alone.

The moon was setting low in the sky but broke through the clouds and began giving shadows to the darkness of the woods. Ahead of me perhaps ten paces, the dim outline of a man grew less faint. He held a worn sword in his left hand and was dressed in shabby clothing. I could not make out much else, except that he was bearded and wore a cloth hat pulled low and close to his eyes.

Looking quickly to my right and left I could not yet see either of the other men. Sure that they had moved behind me, I tightened my hand on my sword, and with the other I firmly gripped the satchel. I was about to take flight when two sets of arms grabbed me roughly from behind.

“Let me go! Let me go!” I shouted. “Sir Thomas! Sir Basil! Help! Bandits!”

Of course, there were no knights nearby, but I hoped to confuse and delay the thieves all the same. Holding fiercely to the satchel, I managed to free my other arm momentarily, scratching and clawing and punching at the arms holding me. The man to the front of me started toward me with his sword raised.

I kicked and hollered and screamed mightily, but was outnumbered and considerably outmuscled. I started gasping for breath, for each time I yelled, the arms holding me grew tighter around my chest.

Then a very strange thing happened. The man who held me yelled loudly in my ear, followed by another painful scream a second later. His arms let loose and he staggered forward, falling to the ground. To my great surprise I saw in the dim light that two arrows had magically appeared in his backside and a large red stain darkened his pants, moving outward from each arrow’s shaft. He shrieked, wiggling on the ground, clutching at his buttocks.

From behind me a loud voice commanded, “Drop your weapons!”

The man in front of me paused, unsure what to do. The other man to the side of me released his grip on the satchel, and as he did so, I drew my short sword and jumped sideways away from him. He and his companion were confused, not knowing where the voice had come from, but realizing the situation had turned.

“Now! Drop your swords or my next arrow finds a throat and not an arse!” the voice shouted. “I have a wallet full of arrows and haven’t shot a bandit in a week, so move one more step toward the lad and see what sport a King’s Archer can make with swine like you!”

A King’s Archer? Here in the woods?

The bandits were silent. Their wounded companion struggled to his feet and had clearly lost his taste for thievery. He staggered past the leader of the group, howling like a wounded pig. In moments he had disappeared into the woods.

I kept my sword up and pointed toward the bandit closest to me.

“Very well,” the archer shouted from the woods behind us. “My arm grows weary. Perhaps I’ll just shoot you both and be done with it! The world could use two fewer bandits!”

It was not to be, however. The bandit closest to me ran, and I pivoted to face the leader. As I did so, I drew Sir Thomas’ battle sword from behind me, holding it in my right hand with the short sword in my left.

“Time to run,” I said.

As the bandit’s face grew more distinct in the gathering light, I could see a look of anger clouding his features. He had failed to rob an easy mark, and it did not sit well.

“I will see you again, squire of the Templars,” he muttered. But as he started to turn, an arrow whistled past my ear, taking the bandit’s hat off his head. I nearly laughed as I watched it land with a solid thud in the trunk of a tree ten paces beyond him. The bandit froze.

“If
I
see
you,”
the voice shouted, “the last thing
you
will see is my arrow, seconds after it pierces your chest, so I hope you’ll please me by making more idle threats. The King requires me to kill ten bandits a month, and so far I’m one short.”

But the bandit didn’t hear the last part. Losing his hat had clearly unnerved him. He disappeared into the woods before the last words of the archer had echoed off the trees.

My shoulders slumped and I felt myself go limp. I was angry with myself for walking so blindly into a trap, yet relieved at being alive. Remembering the archer with the itchy temperament behind me I sheathed both swords and looked in the direction of the voice, my hands empty and held out from my sides.

“Hello? Archer?” I said to the woods behind me. I still saw no one. “I thank you for your help!” I did not speak too loudly for who knew what other dangers these woods held? If there were three bandits nearby, there were likely thirty.

“Hello?” I said again. “Will you not come forward, so that I may thank you face-to-face?”

Then I saw him. From twenty paces away he stepped from behind a wild olive tree and walked to where I stood. He was taller than I but wore the colors of the King, and in his left hand he carried the traditional longbow made of yew. On his back sat a wallet full of arrows, the gray feathers riding above his head. He was thick through the arms and chest like most archers I had seen. His hair and face were fair in color. Close up I could see his features clearly, and was startled to see that he was young—my age, or perhaps a year or two older.

I extended my hand. “I owe you both thanks and my life,” I said. He cautiously looked at me, then took my hand, shaking it briefly. “My name is Tristan.”

“Robard,” he answered. “My name is Robard Hode, formerly of the King’s Archers.”

“If I may inquire, what brings you to these woods?” I asked.

“My conscription is over. I’m on my way back to England,” he replied.

And that is how I first met Robard Hode, born in Sherwood Forest near the shire of Nottingham.

19

R
obard had traveled here from the south near Jerusalem. He did not know of the fall of Acre, which had been his destination. I told him that Acre was in the Saladin’s hands, and he agreed we could travel to Tyre together. When he asked me why I chose to travel at night, I explained to him that I carried dispatches for the Templars there, and dared not allow these documents to fall into the hands of the enemy. He accepted my explanation without much question.

I was grateful to have Robard and his bow as traveling companions. As before, we kept to the hills near the main road. At night we built no fires. Walking in the darkness we quietly exchanged the stories of our lives.

Robard was seventeen years old. His father owned a large farm near the shire of Nottingham. When King Richard took the throne and raised his army for the Crusades, he levied taxes on all the farmers of England. After a poor harvest two years before, Robard’s father had been unable to meet his burden. Those who could not pay were allowed to join the army or send a son in their stead to join the Crusaders. Robard joined the King’s Army, and after two years of service, his father’s debt was forgiven.

It was Robard’s father who first taught him to use the bow. And two years of nearly constant warfare had made him an exceptional archer. In the King’s Army he learned that an archer was only as good as his equipment. Before we slept each morning, Robard obsessively checked his bow for signs of wear or weakness. He studied and rechecked the hide strings that held the grip, a piece of wood fastened to the shaft. He removed every arrow from his wallet, checking the feathers and the points to make sure they were secure and sharp. Each morning, when it was light enough to see clearly, he would take several practice shots at a distant tree. Retrieving the arrows from the trunk, he checked them again, returning them to his wallet.

As we traveled, Robard told me much of his life and what he had witnessed during his years in Outremer.

“I’ve seen nothing but waste and destruction,” he complained. “The Lionheart”—Robard spat out the name as if something sour and unpleasant had landed on his tongue—“commands us to take a fortress or a city or a swatch of land, and we do. Then a few weeks or months later the Saladin’s forces take it back. Men are killed for nothing. Yet the King keeps raising his army and taking more taxes while poor men like my father struggle to feed their families.”

Robard was quietly intense, and when he spoke of his home and father and the struggles of the people of his shire, he became quite passionate. I sensed a great determination in him.

“What will you do when you return to England?” I asked when he finally paused in his rant against King Richard, the rich and the general inequalities of the known world.

“Go home, help my father farm. He’ll need it if this war goes on much longer. The rich barons easily pay their taxes to the King while poor folk go hungry, sending their sons to die here in this desert wasteland because they cannot pay.”

Robard was a bitter young man on the subject of the rich in general, the poor in particular and taxes especially. Though I was certainly no saint, I winced at his reference to the Holy Land as a “wasteland” and quietly crossed myself.

“I knew a man at home,” Robard went on, “a farmer, like my father, with seven children. After the poor harvest two years ago there wasn’t much in the way of food for such a large family. One day he went off into Sherwood Forest and killed a roebuck. On his way home he stumbled across a squad of bailiffs led by the shire reeve of Nottingham. As usual, the shire reeve and his men were out collecting taxes from poor farmers who couldn’t afford to pay them even if gold were to grow out of the ground like beans. They saw him with the buck and attempted to arrest him, saying he had no authority to hunt the King’s deer.”

Robard’s voice rose. I wished to quiet him, lest more bandits or, God forbid, the Saladin’s men heard us in the woods.

“But before they could grab him he escaped into the woods. As far as I know, he’s still there hiding out. All because he wanted enough meat to feed his children,” he said. “That is who I am forced to fight for. We serve an absent King who cares nothing for his subjects, only that they can send their sons to feed his army. He leaves his sniveling coward of a brother Prince John in charge, and that poor excuse for a monarch allows the shire reeves to rule the countryside like barons. Lionheart, my arse,” Robard said, spitting on the ground for emphasis.

“What of the man and his family?” I asked.

“Ha!” Robard said. “When they couldn’t catch him, the shire reeve arrested his wife instead, confiscated his lands and sent his children off to orphanages. When I return, I hope that fat shire reeve makes a move toward arresting me for something.” Robard held his bow out in front of him, and pantomimed shooting an arrow.

I thought perhaps it might be best to change the subject, so I told Robard some of my history, my time with the monks and how I came to be the squire of a Templar Knight.

“Raised by monks, you say?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you can read and write?”

“Of course,” I said almost incredulously. Then I cringed, realizing Robard had asked me this because he could not. I had taken it for granted. The monks who raised me were learned men who saw to it that I was educated. The Templars were also men of letters. Robard had been born a peasant. No one had ever taught him. He looked at me intently for a moment, then glanced away. I wondered if this had changed his opinion of me. Hoping I hadn’t embarrassed him, I quickly changed the subject, telling him of my service with Sir Thomas.

After that, Robard seldom asked questions about my life and I did not offer more than the barest of details. Still, I was glad to have him along. He was well trained and had showed courage in facing down the bandits. So far I had enjoyed his company—as long as I kept the conversation away from taxes, King Richard, shire reeves, the Holy Land, noblemen, the Saladin and the rich.

We made much better time traveling together. I had no doubt there were others in the woods and on the road who spotted us at some point. But together we were more formidable. We kept moving ever eastward toward Tyre.

On the early morning of our third day together, Robard shot a hare. Deep in the woods we built a fire with very dry wood that gave off little smoke. We roasted the hare and ate a fine meal, the first meat I had eaten since leaving Acre.

We made many miles at night and in the predawn hours bedded down in a rocky outcropping a few hundred yards off the main road. Tall boulders surrounded us on three sides, making a U-shaped enclosure, with the open side to the west, so we would be shaded from the hottest sun while sleeping through the day. Unrolling our blankets on the ground, we were asleep in minutes.

Hours later, a faint and subtle humming sound roused me from sleep, and I was instantly awake. It was still twilight, not quite dark, but I sensed something amiss. I listened. All was quiet. Then a noise, a whisper of movement, came from the woods beyond the boulders.

I rolled quietly to my knees, picking up my short sword. Robard lay a few feet away, snoring softly. Through the opening in the rocks, I could see several yards into the woods, and for a moment, I thought I saw a black-clad figure moving through the trees. Not sure if my eyes were playing tricks, I quietly crawled to Robard, placing my hand over his mouth. He awakened instantly, grabbing at my wrist, but I hissed him to silence, pointing to the opening in the rocks.