Outlaw (38 page)
It was the home-loving doves, you see. On the afternoon before that secret ride to rescue Marie-Anne, Robin had asked me to release three baskets of doves, each with his thin green ribbon attached. Those birds had flown high in the late afternoon sunshine, while everyone else was in a war meeting with Robin, and then the birds had headed back to their dovecotes, trailing Robin’s message:
Arm yourself, all you who would serve me, and come!
With those birds, he was summoning all of his woodland power. Every man in the whole of Sherwood who sought his favour, every man with a debt of gratitude he wished to discharge. I found out later that Brigid had also called all the men and women of her ancient religion together, from as far as North Yorkshire and the Welsh marches, luring them with the promise of the rich spoils of battle and the chance to strike a blow for the Mother Goddess. Tuck had seen the doves and had come, joining up with Brigid’s cohorts: a Christian monk and a pagan priestess marching together. All for love of Robin. When I told the story to friends, years later, few believed me, but I swear it is true.
This rag-tag horde of outcasts, madmen and religious fools charged out of the treeline like a host of avenging ghouls, screaming their war cries. And Brigid raced ahead of them battering Murdac’s men out of her path with the blackthorn staff that she wielded in both hands with savage, manic energy. Like twigs before a great river of humanity, all the black-clad troops before the charging horde were either swamped or swept away. In the forefront of that yelling, charging mass bounded Gog and Magog, silent and slavering. One of the great dogs leapt at an unfortunate man-at-arms in the rear ranks of the force surrounding the remains of the hedgehog, and with a snarl and a crunch had ripped off the lower part of his face. The man dropped his weapon and staggered back, hands groping at the bloody mash where his jaw had been. Then I saw a howling raggedy figure, stick thin, cut through both the man’s legs with a single blow of a scythe. The other huge dog, no less savage, was biting through padded aketon sleeves, crunching through the arm bones of Murdac’s men, crippling dozens in the course of that terrible onslaught. Brigid’s men and women attacked with an almost inhuman frenzy, striking down soldier after soldier with mattock or club, finishing them on the ground with knives, and then tearing at their clothes, almost before they were dead, seeking out coins and other valuables hidden about their persons. Brigid herself seemed to have the strength of ten men, felling armoured foes with mighty blows of her thick staff and screaming paeans to the forest gods and encouragement to her followers. The scrum of enemies around the hedgehog dissolved, Murdac’s troops, both horse and foot, wiped away by the ravaging army of raggedy pagans. Those who did not run immediately for their lives, were dragged down and slaughtered.
I followed the attack of the pagan horde in a more sedate manner, sword drawn nonetheless. But I encountered no enemies as I picked my way through the sea of corpses towards Robin. I could see clearly now the damage that the hedgehog had suffered; and it was a heart-rending sight. Great holes had been ripped in the once impenetrable circle of men and steel. More than half our men were down and those still in place were blood-spattered, weary beyond belief. I took my place beside Robin, silently waiting for orders, and surveyed the field that was, for the moment, ours.
Tuck had not charged with the pagans: he had gathered a score of bowmen, the remnants of Thomas’s men, I assumed, and they stood at the edge of the battlefield, by the treeline, calling targets to each other and shooting down the fleeing men-at-arms with dreadful accuracy. Murdac’s attacking force was in retreat, panicked men racing south to the tents and horse lines. But the battle was not won. To the south-west, near the line of the hills, I could see a formed unit of black horsemen, standing still, watching the field. Due south was a full battle of unused infantry, a hundred men standing in a black square in the hot summer sun. To the south-east, scores of red and green clad crossbowmen were streaming out of the treeline. Although pushed out of the woodland by our howling pagans, they were retreating in good order and forming up to the rear of Murdac’s line, beside the threatening box-like shape of the mangonel. I saw a group of dark horsemen, riding beneath a great black flag, cut deep with blood red chevrons, crossing to our front towards the Flemings. It was Murdac himself, his black head bare, and his closest companions; all still fresh, and completely untouched by the bloody hand of battle.
The enemy was not beaten. Far from it. To the crossbowmen’s right, Murdac and his picked knights stopped in front of yet another black square, another battle of marching spearmen, just coming into view from the far end of the valley, their weapons held aloft, spear points glittering in the bright sunlight. Sir Ralph checked his horse, circling in front of the marching men, shouting encouragement, and then he rode on to where the Flemings were straightening their ranks.
Robin, standing at the edge of his shattered formation, amid the dead and wounded of both sides, the ground a churned marsh of blood and mud, was watching the enemy as closely as I was. His shoulders were slumped, his face grey with fatigue. He had a cut on his cheekbone, but otherwise, to my relief, he appeared unharmed. Then he seemed to straighten up, to come to a decision, and I saw him reach to his belt with a bloody hand, tug at a strip of rawhide and release his horn. He stood straighter for a moment, took a big lungful of air, and blew. Three long blasts, and then again three. The notes echoing around the bloody field. It was retreat, the signal to return to the manor. ‘Help the wounded, Alan,’ he said to me in a toneless voice. Then with a final glance at the enemy lines, he turned, lifted a blood-drenched man to his feet, and the pair began to limp their way painfully back to Linden Lea.
We straggled back to the manor, hundreds of us, as the shadows lengthened and the sun grazed the top of the western hills: Hugh’s tired horsemen, very few in number; the bloodied surviving spearmen of the hedgehog; bowmen hobbling and using their stout yew staves to make better speed; blood-spattered pagans, who stopped frequently to rifle the corpses of the dead. And there were so many dead, the field was littered with corpses, and wounded crying for water and aid. Most of us made it back to the manor unharmed, the unwounded helping the wounded; but a few fell prey to Murdac’s circling horsemen; those men who had not heeded Robin’s horn in time, and were cut down with axe or sword. I carried a spearman with a huge gash in his side on my back all the way home. But when I got to the courtyard of the manor and rolled him as gently as I could on to a pile of straw, I saw that he was already dead. As the last few men stumbled through the gate, almost unable to walk from tiredness, we slammed the great oak bar down and looked to our wounds.
Marie-Anne and the men who had remained in the manor had been busy. Food had been prepared, once again on great trestle tables in the sunny courtyard, and the wounded were given great jugs of weak ale to slake their thirst. The badly wounded were placed in the hall itself and tended by Marie-Anne, Tuck, Brigid and the servants. There were scores of them, bloodied and exhausted, crippled by spear and gashed by sword; a few jovial, proud of what they had achieved, others pale and silent, plainly just waiting to die. The most grievously wounded were helped onwards to their eternal rest by Robin’s men. Robin himself went round the hall comforting the worst hurt and praising their valour. One man, a cheery rascal with a great hole in his shoulder, pulled a white dove trailing a scrap of green thread, from his ragged, blood-slimed jacket. Robin solemnly accepted it and scrabbled in his pouch to find a silver penny with which to reward the man. Most of the wounded, though, were more despairing; they drank greedily at the wine flasks that were passed around the hall and the sounds of pain increased as the sun finally sank behind the hills to the west. They all knew that Robin had thrown the dice and lost. Murdac’s troops had surrounded the manor and, in the morning, he would overrun the place and we would all die.
The fall of night had ended hostilities and Robin had sent out emissaries to Murdac for a truce to gather our wounded from the field. Murdac agreed and all through the night parties of men walked in and out of the manor bearing stretchers. Soon the hall and all the outhouses were packed with wounded and dying men; the courtyard, too. The warm night was filled with the moans of the wounded and the sharp cries of those receiving medical attention. Tuck went round those near death offering the last rites and he prayed with those who in extremis looked to Our Lord Jesus Christ to save their souls. Brigid did likewise with the pagan wounded. Marie-Anne was haggard with tiredness: she was trying to nurse all the wounded men, hundreds of them, with only the help of a few hall servants. John was organising the collection of wounded from the field; the dead we left where they lay.
Into this man-made Hell of death and blood, into this gore-splashed slaughterhouse, echoing with the awful screams of souls in pain, stepped Bernard de Sezanne. He was dressed in the finest yellow silk tunic, spotless and embroidered with images of vielles, flutes, harps and other musical figures. He was clean shaven and his hair had recently been trimmed. He held a scented handkerchief to his nose and he walked straight up to me, stepping delicately over the dead and dying on the floor of the courtyard without paying them the slightest heed, and, as I gawped at him stupidly, he said: ‘Let me see your fingers, Alan, quick now.’
I was astonished; I could not believe this clean and scented apparition was real. It must be a figment of my battle-addled brain, but the figment insisted that I hold out my hands in front of me, like a schoolboy showing his mother that his grubby paws were clean. And I complied. Clean, they were not, crusted as they were with blood, earth and green tree lichen, but Bernard solemnly counted the fingers and professed himself relieved. ‘All ten, that
is
a comfort,’ he said. ‘You may not be the greatest vielle player but you would have been a damned sight worse if one of these blood-thirsty villains had lopped off a thumb or two.’ And then he embraced me and told me that he must see Robin at once.
I was bursting with questions: where had he come from? What was he doing in the middle of a blood-sodden battlefield? But he hushed me and made me lead him over to Robin, who was helping a wounded man drink from a cup of wine.
‘I have a message that I must deliver to you in private,’ Bernard said to Robin. And my master, wordlessly, ushered him away to a private chamber at the end of the hall and the door was shut in my face.
They were inside for an hour or more, and after a while I was sent to fetch wine and fruit but forbidden to join their private counsels. Finally Robin and Bernard emerged, and Robin told me to find Bernard a jug of wine and a corner to sleep in, while he went back to caring for the wounded. Bernard would tell me nothing but that I should sleep easy, for all would be well. But sleep did not come. We shared the jug of wine, that is to say I managed to get a few sips down, while Bernard seemed, as usual, to have the thirst of ten men. Then I lay in the straw next to my musical mentor, listening to him snore, and trying to fathom what his coming could mean. Finally, I did fall into an uneasy sleep, only to be awakened before dawn, once again, by ugly old Thomas shaking me by the shoulder.
I sat up, my whole body stiff from the unaccustomed exertions of the battle the day before, and I was no more than half-awake when Thomas said: ‘Robin wants to see you.’ And so I left Bernard to his hoggish slumber and followed the one-eyed man through the courtyard to a corner of the hall.
Robin looked fresh, although I knew he had not slept. He handed me a pure white dove, and as I looked down at the gorgeous bird, and felt its fluttering heartbeat beneath my fingers, I noticed that it had a long red ribbon tied to its pink left foot. ‘Go to the palisade and release this,’ he said.
‘Just one?’ I asked in surprise, ‘What does it mean?’
Robin looked at me for a moment, and I saw a gleam of sadness in his silver eyes. ‘It means simply: I accept.’ And then he turned away to return to the wounded.
I walked to the palisade and climbed the steps to the walkway and, with a silent prayer to God the Father, his Son, and the Holy Ghost beseeching them all to come down from Heaven in their Glory and save us, I threw the bird up into the air. It flapped its perfect white wings, circled the manor, and then flew off to the West, disappearing over the hills and trailing its thin red message of acceptance behind it.
As I watched the bird fly to freedom, the sun came up in all its blinding majesty over the woods to my left, and I looked out on to the field of battle at the beginning of what was already looking like another beautiful day. During the night, Murdac’s troops had completely surrounded the manor of Linden Lea; a thin black ring of men and horses and wagons on all sides, campfires already burning and skeins of grey smoke beginning to drift in the light wind. I saw crossbowmen, spearmen, and conrois of cavalry stirring among the various parts of the lines of tents and piled war gear. But they had suffered in yesterday’s battle, too. They still outnumbered us, but this was not the invincible black horde that had marched on us the day before. Almost directly ahead, opposite the main gate, perhaps four hundred yards away, I could see the standard of Sir Ralph Murdac himself, the black flag with red chevrons, rippling in the breeze atop a large pavilion. And there was the man, riding across the front line, his face clearly visible under a simple helmet with a large triangular nosepiece. I thought I could see something glinting redly at his throat, but I told myself it must be a trick of the light. He was heading towards the great box-like wooden structure of the mangonel, which had been moved much closer to the manor overnight.