Outlaw (21 page)
‘That’s possible,’ said Robin.
‘Possible? He’s perfect!’ Hugh pounded the table with his fist. The blow echoed through my skull. ‘That man is hated, loathed by everyone - his zeal in collecting the Saladin Tithe has bordered on madness, and I doubt he handed over all the silver to his cousin. What tax collector does? We know that Murdac himself squirrels a good bit of silver away that is never passed on to the King. His cousin’s coffers are probably overflowing, too.’
Robin’s brother pushed his chair back and stood at the table, fists balled and resting on the wood. He radiated certainty. ‘His manor is fairly remote, I visited there once years ago,’ he continued, his voice booming painfully in my ears in the confines of the cave. ‘He has only a handful of men-at-arms living permanently in the place. And,’ he said with a flourish, like a gambler playing the winning card, ‘he’s unmarried. No wife and bairns to worry about.’ Hugh sat back down again looking at Robin in triumph.
‘Yes. Good. Well done, Will,’ Robin said, nodding down the table at the red-head, whose face split into an enormous gappy grin. To Little John, Robin said: ‘Can you handle this one?’ John nodded. Hugh frowned. And Robin added: ‘I want this William of Southwell’s head brought back here. I will have it delivered to Murdac with a personal message. Take Will Scarlet with you, as he knows the place.’ The big man nodded again. Robin turned to Hugh: ‘Peace, brother, I want you to organise something else for me, more important than a punishment raid . . .’ Hugh nodded, but he seemed reluctant.
‘All right. Next,’ said Robin. ‘I want Selwyn’s Farm set up as a new training school, and I want guards posted day and night on all the roads approaching it. I do not want a repeat of Thangbrand’s.’ Then to Hugh: ‘You still have people inside the castle? Good. Make sure they give us plenty of warning when any force larger than, say, fifty men rides out of Nottingham . . .’
The conference continued. But I began to feel seriously ill. My bitten arm was throbbing - it had not healed well despite being bound in a bandage soaked in Holy Water by Tuck. My head was banging and my vision came in and out of focus. I watched blearily as Robin listened to his men’s views, made a decision and moved on to the next point. He was unfailingly polite, even when the most ridiculous schemes were proposed, saying merely: ‘I don’t think that idea is the best we’ve had today.’ He didn’t need to be cruel: John was always ready to lambast a fool and Hugh’s analysis of an idiotic proposition was merciless, as I knew well from my days as his pupil.
Even though I was trying hard to concentrate, I found my attention wandering. The words blurred and I began, through my dizziness and pain, to ponder the relationships between these men. They all seemed to have well-defined roles within the band: Hugh, it seemed, controlled the money, and the intelligence side of the operation; he had a subtle mind, a philosophical approach to their business. John was the enforcer of Robin’s will, and responsible for training the men in the use of arms. Robin was the judge: he made decisions, gave orders, balanced the two competing forces of mind and body represented by his brother and John. And Tuck? Tuck was an enigma. What was he even doing associating with this rough company?
The conference came to a conclusion and, after dismissing the men, Robin remained at the table with Hugh, talking quietly with the clerk. I watched the two men talking. Hugh’s face was alight with pleasure as he listened to Robin’s quiet instructions. In that light they looked so alike, though Hugh’s face was longer and older and, in some way, sadder. But it was clear that Hugh worshipped his younger brother; his face had a look of total devotion as he listened. Robin put a hand on Hugh’s shoulder and they both rose from the table, Hugh hurrying off out of the cave, happy and purposeful. I didn’t see him again for weeks.
Robin came over to me as I loitered by the mouth of the cave, hoping that he would give me a mission as well or some difficult task to perform. He looked hard into my face, concerned. ‘You are not well,’ he said. ‘Let me see your wound.’ He led me back to the long table, my legs wobbling beneath me, and sat me down. As he gently unwrapped the layers of bandage, I noticed the smell for the first time, a waft of corruption, the stench of rotting meat. As he loosened the last layers of blood-and-pus-soaked cloth, he broke the half-formed scabs over the puncture marks made by the wolf’s teeth, and I screamed as a white agony rioted up my arm and howled into my brain. Then I knew no more.
I dreamed of women. And the wild wood. I was lying on my back in the sun-dappled forest, and I could hear singing: it was ‘The Maiden’s Song’. The singer was a girl of almost impossible beauty: lithe and slim as a young willow tree, with a white shift that clung to her young body and small sweet breasts. As she sang, she danced, weaving in and out of the trees as if they were her dancing partners. I scrambled to my feet and began to run after her, crying for her to wait for me. As I blundered through the woodland with the girl always just out of reach, the sky began to grow dark and I burst out of the forest into a wide stretch of empty moorland and stopped. My eye was drawn to a huge grey stone, almost man-height but canted over at an angle like a partially uprooted tree. The white girl danced on by the stone but her steps were slower, more solemn. She beckoned me but I could not move and, with a pretty shrug, she continued to dance around the grey rock, caressing it. Then she stepped astride the stone, mounting it as one might a horse, the massive grey rock thrusting out between her thighs. And the rock transformed into a great grey stallion, pawing the air with great plate-sized hooves. The girl gave a great howling cry and she and her mount took off into the sky. They flew above the clearing, wild shrieks bursting from the girl as they swooped above my head. And then, softly as a falling feather, they returned to earth and the horse became a stone again. The girl rolled smoothly off its back and lay curled at its base, seemingly asleep. As I watched her, her pale face began to flush with colour and she clutched her belly and started to moan. Again I tried to move, to go to her aid, but I could not. It was dawn and when I looked down at my feet, I saw that they had become the roots of trees. I looked again at the white girl: and saw that she was no longer a girl. She was lying on her back, naked, in a pool of blood that rippled and changed and became the folds of a red blanket under her body. Her breasts grew and filled and hung pendulously either side of her chest; her belly swelled too and now was massive, ripe; and then, as I stared at her, her vulva opened like an enormous flower and, with a long scream from the woman, a huge bloody baby squeezed out from between her legs. I held out my right arm to her, but found it almost impossible to lift - I saw that it had become a thin branch, ending in gnarled twigs where my fingers had been. The limb burst into flames and pain shot through my arm. The flames began to spread higher, burning slowly up towards my shoulder.
In the shadow of the great rock, the dream woman was holding her baby, both of them wrapped in the scarlet blanket. She looked across at me and smiled and immediately I felt calmer; it was a smile from across the ages, an eternal comforting smile. The flames in my wooden arm were suddenly extinguished, as if the limb had been plunged into a bucket of water, and the scorch marks receded, pulling back into a single black line across my forearm. I looked back at the mother and saw that she was changing again. The scarlet cloak began to darken, to brown, then black; the woman began to alter her shape, her back became more curved, her breasts shrivelled. Teeth dropped from her mouth like the petals from a dead flower and the flesh of the face collapsed in on itself. The baby on her knee began to darken and shift its shape. A dark fuzz appeared on its skin, thickening into fur and a long black tail sprouted from its backside. I was looking at a crone with a black cat blinking on her knee. She looked again at me and smiled: a toothless grimace in a walnut face. She held out one hand, extended a bony finger and beckoned: and I screamed, filled with a nameless masculine terror.
When I awoke, I was lying on a straw pallet in a dark hut, naked under a thick blanket that smelled of smoke and ancient sweat. The only light was provided by a small fire in the centre of the room. A blackened iron pot hung from a chain over the fire, and a woman was tending the pot, and humming to herself under her breath. By her profile, I knew she was the woman from the dream, all of them somehow, the maiden, the mother and the crone, all in one. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the ceiling and in the corners of the hut were stacked mounds of rubbish: old swords and shields covered in cobwebs, the antlers of a great deer, dusty old cloth bundles and what looked like a human skeleton. The woman saw that I was awake and, ladling some broth from the iron pot into the bowl, she brought it over to my pallet.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked in a curious lilting accent. I mumbled that I felt better and then realised I was starving and began gulping down the thick soup. She watched me eat and I stared back at her while I slurped and swallowed like a greedy child. I studied her with care. She had an ordinary oval face, about twenty years old, I guessed, but careworn with the beginnings of the lines that would stay with her for the rest of her lifetime. She had long brown hair pulled back and tied up like a horse’s tail at the back of her head. No hood nor wimple; and she appeared to be wearing only a shapeless brown sack of a dress. Around her neck, on a leather thong, she wore a curious symbol, shaped like the wishbone of a chicken or the letter Y. I looked into her face again and saw that she had the kindest nut-brown eyes, and, though she was only a handful of years older than me, I realised that she reminded me of my own mother.
When I had finished eating she took the bowl and gave me a goblet containing an infusion of herbs to drink, slightly bitter but refreshing. ‘Let me see that arm,’ she said, beginning to untie the clean white linen bandage. ‘We thought for a while that you must lose the limb, it was so badly infected, but, by the blessing of the Mother, and what little skill I have, it seems to be mending well.’
She undid the final twist of the bandage and I cried out in shock. There were four deep punctures in the flesh of my arm, deep red wounds with black edges rimmed with yellow pus, and in each pit crawled a couple of fat, pink maggots. She smiled: ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ she said. ‘They’re doing you good. They eat the bad flesh and leave the wholesome meat alone. You owe your arm to my fat little beauties.’ With infinite care she picked off the maggots one by one and dropped them in a small wooden box. Then she gently washed the wound with a yellowish liquid and packed each puncture with a mass of cobwebs, before binding the whole arm again in a fresh bandage. ‘You must sleep now,’ she said. ‘Rest will bring healing . . .’ And before she had finished speaking, I was fast asleep.
When I next awoke, Robin was there. ‘Brigid says you are healing well,’ he said with a grin.
I stared at him. ‘Who?’
‘Brigid, the priestess; the one who healed you. The Irish woman who has no doubt been feeding you eye of newt and dried bat’s penis for the past week.’ He was smiling. ‘Though I must say you look well on it.’ And I did feel well. There was yet another clean white bandage on my arm and it gave a little twinge when I flexed the muscles but apart from that I felt fine. A little weak perhaps, but fine. Actually, I felt rather good.
‘Well, you’ve spent long enough as a slug-a-bed. What you need is some fresh air, exercise.’ Robin grinned at me. ‘I know you like to steal so let’s go and take a few of the King’s deer.’
That afternoon and for many days afterwards I hunted deer with Robin. Though I was weak at first, my full strength returned after a day or so and I found I was happy. In fact, I had never been happier. We would ride into the forest to a place where the huntsmen had seen small herds of red deer and then we would proceed on foot; stalking the animals through the dense woodland, armed with war bows. These man-killers made from yew had a much greater range than the light ash hunting bows most people used, but I could not draw one to even half its full extent with my wounded arm - to be honest, I never really mastered the great bow, even after spending years with some of the finest archers in the world. But I could stalk like a born forester, moving silently through the wood, watching every step to avoid treading on a stick that might snap under my feet and scare the game. We would approach the deer, moving painfully slowly with the wind in our faces to prevent the animals from scenting us, pausing for a few heartbeats between each step and remaining still as statues to check we were undetected. When we had worked our way close enough to the hart or hind, say, a distance of fifty yards, or even closer if the trees were dense enough, then Robin, or occasionally one of his men, would loose an arrow, aiming a hand’s breadth below the shoulder to rake the heart and lungs. Robin was a magnificent shot, but there was always a helter-skelter chase after the animal had been hit and had begun its death run. We crashed through the undergrowth following the trail of bright red blood splashes until we would come across the heaving, exhausted, dying beast. Then the huntsmen would dispatch it with their spears.