Outlaw (3 page)

‘Why?’

I was taken aback by his question: he must know that I needed to escape the law, that I needed sanctuary, and yet I sensed that he wanted a less obvious answer. I looked into his silver eyes and decided to tell the truth, as I had to Tuck. ‘I am a thief, sir,’ I said, ‘and I would serve under the greatest thief of all, the better to learn my trade.’

There was a sharp intake of breath, all around the church. It occurred to me belatedly that perhaps Robin did not care to regard himself as a common felon. One of the hooded men behind Robin half-drew his sword but stopped when Robin raised a pacifying hand.

‘You flatter me,’ said the Lord of the Wood. His voice had grown cold, his extraordinary eyes now blazed like naked steel. ‘But that was not what I meant by my question. I did not mean why would
you
wish to serve
me
. I meant why should
I
take
you
on; why should I burden myself with another hungry mouth?’

I could think of no reason. So I hung my head and said nothing. He continued, his voice as chill as a grave: ‘Can you fight like a knight, clad in hard steel, dealing death to my enemies from the back of a great horse?’

I remained silent.

‘Can you draw a war bow to full stretch, and kill a man with one arrow at two hundred paces?’

He knew that I could not; few grown men could achieve such a feat, and I was then a slight boy.

‘So what can you offer me, little thief?’ The mockery dripped from his voice.

I lifted my chin and stared back at him, little spots of anger on my cheeks. ‘I will give you my skill as a cut-purse, my willingness to fight for you as best I may, and my absolute loyalty until death,’ I said, far too loudly for the confines of the small church.

‘Loyalty until death?’ said Robin. ‘That truly is a rare and valuable thing.’ His voice seemed to have lost its scorn. He considered me for a few heartbeats. ‘That was a good answer, thief. What is your name?’

‘I am Alan Dale, sir,’ I said.

He looked surprised. ‘Is your father’s name Henry?’ he said. ‘The singer?’ I nodded. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Robin that my father was dead. He was silent for a while, regarding me with those great silver eyes. Then he said: ‘He’s a good man. You have his resemblance.’ Suddenly, he smiled - as shocking as a blast of a trumpet - white teeth gleaming in the dim church. His coldness slid away like the shedding of a cloak, and he was transformed. I knew by his sudden warmth that he would take me and I felt my heart bound with joy.

‘And by the way, young Alan, I am not a thief,’ said Robin, still smiling. ‘I merely take what is my rightful due.’ There was a murmur of gentle laughter around the church.

Tuck lightly touched my elbow, guiding me away from the great chair: ‘Say God-be-with-you to your mother, boy, you’re with us now.’

As we walked back to my mother by the church door, I found my legs had become weak and shaky beneath me and I stumbled against Tuck’s side before he caught me and held me upright. Then I kissed my mother, hugged her, muttered goodbye, and watched as she walked outside into the dark and out of my life for ever.

As the church door closed behind her, Tuck said: ‘Not bad, little thief. But I’ll have that egg back now, boy, if you please.’ And, as he held out his open palm, he was smiling.

I waited at the side of the church on a bench next to the clerk and his table of parchments. On the far side of the table was a heap of produce from local farms, tribute offered to Robin: several cheeses; loaves of bread; a basket of eggs; two barrels of ale; a honeycomb in a wooden bowl; two chickens, tied together at the legs; numerous sacks of fruit and even a purse of silver pennies; a kid was tied to the table leg and it kept trying to nibble the parchment - at which the clerk would slap at its muzzle without raising his head. He was a thin man, balding, and his long fingers were covered in ink spots. Then he looked up from his scribbling: ‘I’m Hugh Odo,’ he said, smiling kindly at me. ‘Robert’s brother. Wait quietly here until our business is concluded.’

I looked to my right and noticed a human form on the floor in the corner of the church and a tall hooded man next to him, armed with long sword and a great bow, standing guard. The man on the floor was bound tightly, hands and legs. I noticed that he was actually shaking with fear. He was moaning inaudibly through a cloth gag. His wild staring gaze caught mine for a few moments and I looked away, embarrassed and a little frightened by his naked terror.

The rest of the night, I waited, sitting there in silence at the side of the church, watching Robin hold his court. A steady stream of villagers came in, spoke respectfully to Robin, received his judgement and paid their fines to Hugh. It was a shadowy night-time version of the manorial court in which, before his death, our local lord had dispensed justice. One woman’s herd of pigs had damaged a neighbour’s crops; she was ordered to pay a fine to the neighbour, four piglets, and to pay Robin a piglet for his justice. She agreed to pay without question. The man who had seduced his best friend’s wife had to pay him a milk cow in compensation, and a fresh cheese to Robin. Again there was no argument.

As Robin dispensed petty justice all that long night, the mound of produce became larger: some, as poor as my mother, paid only an egg or two; one man, who had accidentally killed another in an ale house fight, led a bull calf over to the table and tied it next to the goat. I eyed the purse of silver; it was lying on the table near to where I was sitting. Hugh the clerk was busy in his parchment roll and I could have had it easily. But some instinct stayed my arm. Finally there were no more supplicants and Robin rose from his chair and came over to the table to look down on the bound man.

‘Take him outside; do it there in front of everyone,’ he said to the hooded man-at-arms, his voice flat. And then he turned aside to talk to Hugh, who began showing him the parchment roll. The bound man was lifted on to his feet by two men; at first he was docile and then he began struggling wildly, writhing, twisting his body like a man possessed, as he realised he was about to meet his fate. One of the hooded men punched him in the stomach, a blow that knocked him breathless to the floor, and then he was dragged outside.

Tuck came over and took me by the arm; he led me out of the door and round the corner of the church. There, as I looked on, Robin’s men forced the bound wretch to his knees. He was sobbing and choking on the cloth that had been shoved into his mouth and tied there with a long strip of leather.

‘You must watch this,’ said Brother Tuck. ‘This is your penance.’ A small crowd had formed to observe. The man’s eyes, huge with terror, rolled in his head. John the giant came over to the man. He pulled the sodden gag out of his mouth and wedged a thin iron bar, crossways, at the back of his mouth, over his tongue, hard up against the hinge of his teeth. One of the men-at-arms strapped the bar in place, with the leather strip that had been used to gag him. The victim was moaning loudly, half-choking and writhing his body, eyes closed, mouth grotesquely forced open by the iron bar. He might have been laughing. The two men behind the wretch steadied his head, and held it still with the iron bar. John produced a pair of iron tongs from his pouch and seized the man’s tongue by the tip. In his other hand he held a short knife, razor sharp.

I knew what was coming and a wave of nausea burned my stomach. In my mind, my own right arm was on a block in Nottingham castle, an axeman standing over me, the axe swinging high and . . . I turned my head away from the victim before me, choking back bile . . . Then I felt two strong hands grasp my own jaws and force my head back towards the scene in front of me. The victim’s eyes opened and he stared at me for an instant. He was grotesque, like a stone demon on the side of a church: huge gaping mouth and his tongue pulled out by the tongs. ‘This is your penance,’ repeated Tuck quietly, keeping his powerful hands round my face, forcing me to look. ‘See how Robin serves those who inform on him to the sheriff. Watch and take heed!’ And John the giant sliced through the thick root of the tongue, with one sweep, and then dodged quickly as a fountain of blood roared from the man’s mouth. The man was screaming, a bubbling liquid howl of livid pain and, released by his captors, he fell to the ground, still tightly trussed, bellowing and jetting gore from the bloody cave of his gaping mouth.

I wrenched my head away from Tuck’s hands and staggered to the wall of the church where, my head reeling with disgust and horror, I retched and puked, and brought up the remains of the beef pie that had brought me to this present situation. After a while, when there was nothing more in my stomach, I leaned my forehead on the cool stone of the church wall and gulped down the cold night air.

As my head cleared, I realised fully for the first time what I had promised when I swore loyalty until death to Robin. I was now bound for life to a monster, a devil who mutilated others for merely speaking to the sheriff’s men. I knew then that I had left the world of ordinary men.

I had become an outlaw.

Chapter Two

Now, as I look back after nearly sixty winters, I can hardly believe how soft I was then. I was to see worse in my time with Robin, much worse. And although I never enjoyed watching another’s pain, as some in our band did, I did learn to hide that weakness in time, as becomes an outlaw, or any man. On that spring night, however, I was young, only thirteen summers old. I knew little of the world and its cruelties, I knew very little about anything. But I was about to learn a great deal.

As I leaned my head on the church wall, staring down at the remains of the beef pie, I could sense a stir of activity behind me: a sudden busy-ness. There were men gathering the tribute and loading it into ox-carts, horses being brought, outlaw-soldiers shooing away the curious villagers, and Robin was there, mounted and giving orders. A man pulled the bloody wolf’s head off the church lintel and threw it away into some bushes. The candles were extinguished, the church door locked and it seemed that within minutes we were packed up and on our way. There was no horse for me, I was a poor rider anyway, but Tuck stumped along beside me, leaning on a staff, as we joined the slow-moving cavalcade of carts and mounted men and beasts that snaked away into the woodland.

Dawn was just breaking as we moved off north-west, out of the village and along the farm tracks until we joined the road that wound north through Sherwood Forest. This great wood of the shire of Nottingham was a royal hunting preserve that stretched for a hundred miles north of our village. It was a huge expanse of territory, at some points being fifty miles wide, containing many villages and hamlets, fields and commons; but most of the land was woodland, home to badgers, rabbits, wolves and wild boar, and, of course, the King’s deer. To hunt King Henry’s deer was a capital offence, punishable by hanging if a man was caught ‘red handed’, stained with the deer’s blood; even to be caught with a hunting dog in the forest could bring you branding or mutilation. And two toes from each of the dog’s front paws would be hacked off to stop it running swiftly again. Not that this constrained Robin’s followers, I soon learnt. If they were captured they were dead men, anyway. But they seemed to take a special pleasure in flouting the forest laws, murdering the King’s foresters and eating as much venison as they wished. It was almost part of the band’s identity. ‘We were Robin’s men; we ate the red deer, and we laughed at the law,’ one grizzled outlaw told me simply, but with immense pride, years later.

As I walked along on that morning, through the sharp spring sunshine, through the tall alders and kindly beech, and the thick trunks of ancient oak trees, with the feathery fingers of lush green fens caressing my legs, the horrors of the night receded and Tuck, who walked beside me leaning on his staff, began to talk. About nothing at first - just talking as we walked through the peaceful woodland.

‘I have met hot men,’ he said. ‘Men who could become angry in an instant; some say they have too much yellow bile in their bodies; too much of the element of fire. These are violent, angry men, who in their passion would strike you dead. Our own King Harry is one; an intemperate fellow. In his rages, he will roll upon the ground, you know; quite literally biting the rushes on the floor. Chewing them. Rush-muncher, his servants call him, when his back is turned, when they think it’s safe to joke about their lord.’

I stared at him: the King? Who would dare to mock the King? And Tuck went on: ‘And I have met cold men, so-called phlegmatic types, with too much water in their veins. A man who would take a blow to the face from a man who had seduced his wife. And he would say naught, but then have his wife quartered and send the seducer a severed leg tied with her garter ribbons. Oh yes, and smile at dinner with him, drink a toast to the man’s health.

‘Both are dangerous, of course, but the worst men are the ones who appear cold, but inside they are hot. They have the raging power of anger but the icy control of a calm man. This cold-hot man, this phlegmatic-choleric man, is the one to fear.’

‘And my master,’ I asked. ‘Is he a cold-hot man?’

Tuck shot me a sideways look. ‘Well done, boy. You’re quick, I see. Yes, Robin is such a man. He’s cold-hot. And when he is very angry, that’s when he is at his coldest. And then God help his enemies, whoever they are, for Robin will have no mercy on them.’

‘Is he a good man?’ I asked. Forty-odd years later the question still makes me blush. The monk just laughed. ‘Is he a good man?’ he repeated. ‘Yes, I suppose, he’s a good man. He’s a sinner, of course. We all are. But a good man, too. If you asked me is he a godly man, I’d have to say no. He has his own peculiar notions about God but he has no love, no love at all for Mother Church. Oh, quite the opposite. He mocks it. And takes pleasure in robbing and tormenting its servants.’ Tuck crossed himself. ‘I pray the Lord Jesus will open his eyes to the truth one day.’ Piously, I crossed myself too, but what I was feeling was an intoxicating shock of excitement. Such boldness, to mock God’s representatives on Earth; what contempt for his immortal soul, of Hell itself. Like the wolf’s head nailed to the church door, it was dizzying.