The courtyard was strewn with bodies, lying in strange poses, arms and legs out-flung, scattered like dolls that a child has discarded. But they were not dolls: even from the treeline, a hundred paces away I could see the gaping wounds, red spattered tunics and hose, great swathes of bloody slush across the battle practice ground where we had all so often moved mechanically to Thangbrand’s commands. Mailed horsemen now picked their way among the mangled dead. These men wore the colours of Sir Ralph Murdac - black and red - their swords and spear tips dyed in gore, a strange colour-echo of the sheriff’s markings on their shields.
And there was the man himself. Astride a great black charger, bare-headed, his handsome face alight with battle joy. He was issuing orders to the mounted men and they formed up at the edge of the practice ground and faced the hall. The door of the hall, three inches thick of solid oak, was shut tight, but a ring of dead men - ours - was sprawled about it. The thatch above was well alight, sheets of smoke rolling from under the eaves and forging upwards to join a great black column that poured up to heaven. The outhouses were burning too; the horses in the stables hamstrung, slaughtered and roasting in the flames. Here and there patches of thatch of the hall roof would burst spontaneously into flames, even the wattle-and-daub walls were smouldering. And then I realised: the closed door, Sir Ralph’s men forming up in a conroi, ready to charge . . . Of course, there were too few bodies! Only a dozen or so and our company was fifty souls at least. Not everyone was dead. Thangbrand, Hugh, all the fighting men, they were still inside the hall. Soon they would sally out and . . . I felt a flicker of hope. And then it was gone. Murdac’s men ordered their dressing. More horsemen joined them. A second conroi was forming up on the other side of the courtyard. They were waiting for the sally. Waiting to slaughter the outlaws when they rushed from the burning hall. I could imagine the horror of the scenes inside the hall, the choking smoke, burning cinders falling from the roof, the knowledge that death awaited outside, the bitter despair, women and children weeping, shielding their heads with cloaks wetted in ale, Thangbrand giving orders, calm and brave, the men hitching up their belts, gripping their swords, wiping the sweat and tears away from smoke-shot eyes and waiting, waiting for the order to charge . . .
When the sally finally came, to my surprise, and to that of the sheriff’s men, it didn’t come out of the smouldering oak door but from the end of the hall, where Thangbrand and Freya had their chamber. The whole end of the hall fell away in one piece with a huge crash and out came the outlaws in a boiling rush. A ring of snarling, shouting swordsmen, clothes singed, faces blackened, surrounding our women and children. They held together well, twenty or thirty folk, jogging as a compact group toward the ruined gates, slipping in the slush, coughing smoke and screaming defiance and trying not to stumble over the dead on the ground. And then Murdac’s cavalry charged.
The steel-clad horsemen smashed into the ring of charred outlaws like an iron fist punching through a rotten reed basket. Immediately the cohesion of the circle was gone. Outlaws were fleeing in all directions, pursued by the men on horseback. It was sheer bloody slaughter. Some folk ran for the palisade, leaping up the wooden walls and trying to scramble over to escape and find safety in the forest. Very few made it. The horsemen murdered them, skewering backs as they clambered, pinning bodies to the wood with their spears. Those of our people still on the practice ground were swiftly cut down. The horsemen riding by at the trot, hacking down at heads and shoulders with their swords as they swept past, crushing skulls with mace and axe, and wheeling to ride and slash and bludgeon again.
There was little resistance as the horsemen, almost casually, carved our little band - men, women, even children - into bloody carnage. I saw Cat, beautiful, wanton, sinful Cat, with her red hair flowing free, running from a horseman, who caught her and caved in her skull with his mace, hard-ridged iron smashing through springing red hair, to leave her staggering, blood-washed, her head grotesquely deformed, before she dropped and never rose again. A knot of men and women, no more than a dozen, reformed by the gateway, clustered around Thangbrand, who stood above a cowering Freya wielding a great two-handed sword and bellowing his war cry at the circling horsemen. Outlaws, those who were still on their feet, some with horrendous wounds, gashed arms and sliced open faces, pressed around him, kneeling at his feet and looking outwards in a loose circle, clutching shields, if they had them, or holding out swords and spears, defying the enemy with a desperate courage. For a few seconds it resembled what it was supposed to be: the hedgehog, an ancient defensive manoeuvre against cavalry that Thangbrand had drummed into our heads over many hours on that very practice ground. But only for a few seconds. The second conroi of cavalry poured over the hedgehog like a great waterfall of horses and men, of sharp hooves and swinging swords, washing it away in a welter of blood. I saw Thangbrand take a spear to his throat that hurled him to the ground and then the outlaws were scattered again, the horsemen everywhere, scarlet-dappled swords rising and falling on running figures, blood splashing the horses’ flanks and fetlocks as they reared and trampled among the dying and the dead.
I was clutching Goody, my cloak wrapped around us both, and I covered her eyes with my hand as her father coughed out his last bloody breath on that gore-slicked stretch of mud and snow. ‘We must go,’ I whispered to her. ‘They will be searching for survivors soon and, if they find us, they will kill us.’ Goody said nothing. She just looked at me, her blue eyes huge in that deathly white face, and she nodded. She was a brave girl, that one. I urged her on and we began pelting back through the trees to Bernard’s cottage.
I pulled him from his bed, as he cursed me to Hell and beyond, thrust his shoes into his arms, and I made him understand by shouting and slapping at his boozy sleep-sodden face that we must run, now, no time for explanations. I grabbed a loaf and the remains of cold leg of pork, a tangle of cloaks and hoods from a nail behind the door and, as we tumbled out of the cottage into the bright light, I looked round and my heart jumped into my throat as I saw the first of the cavalrymen - half a dozen grim, blood-splattered riders - come trotting up the path from the hall. We sprinted for the thick cover of the trees, Bernard ahead holding tight to Goody’s arm, sometimes even pulling her off her feet as we fled. I followed behind, arms full of clothing and food, stumbling, sliding through the snow that seemed to suck at my boots. I imagined I could feel the thudding pulse of hoofbeats behind me and the wind before the slice of an unseen sword into my face. We ran, hearts pounding, breath sawing in our throats and burst through the undergrowth into the safety of the forest. Still we ran, lungs bursting with effort, away from the cottage and its clearing and deeper, deeper into Sherwood. At last we stopped and burrowed under a huge ancient holly tree, the spiky leaves scratching our faces as we scrambled deep inside its cover and came to rest, breathless, and curled round the thick trunk of the tree. There was no sound but our laboured breathing. We could see almost nothing through the thick green-black foliage. But if we could not see, we could not be seen.
The ground was dry beneath that wonderful old holly tree, and we bundled ourselves into cloaks and hoods and waited for our hearts to return to their normal pace. Twice in two hours we heard a horseman passing close by, the hooves of his beast visible through the spiny walls of our den. We ate up the bread and pork and munched on handfuls of snow, eyeing each other glumly but not daring to say a word. I loosened the poniard in its sheath on my belt. The snow fell fast and thickly, creating a heavy white blanket over the tree; and we could see even less of the outside world. The cold began to gnaw at my fingers and I shoved them under my armpits. We shifted our bodies, cuddling together like puppies with the cloaks shared among us. Goody seemed to be in shock, with red scratches criss-crossing her bone-white face; Bernard looked grey and haggard, his nose glowed red from booze and cold and, though he was not yet thirty, I could see the old man he would become. I peered out again through the leaves and wondered if anyone else had survived the massacre and whether we ourselves would live through the day. And then, after perhaps another hour, when in spite of the cold and the terror I had grown a little dull, even sleepy, I heard a drumming of horses’ hooves and the jingling of equipment that set my heart racing. The noises quietened and I could make out, through the curtain of holly, the legs and hooves of a large force of cavalry stopped not ten yards from our hideout.
Then a voice spoke, loud and so terrifyingly close that it might have been in my ear: ‘You are to take this sector, captain.’ The voice was speaking French, and was tinged with feverish excitement and a slight lisp. ‘And I want every tree, every bush, every leaf searched. I want all of these vermin dead, do you understand me. If you take them alive, hang them. Every single one of them. They are outlaws and their lives are forfeit. I want not one to escape and breed their poison in my county.’
I knew that voice, I’d last heard it in Nottingham, when I was quaking in the grip of a man-at-arms and its owner was calling me ‘filth’. It belonged to Sir Ralph Murdac.
Chapter Nine
Huddled with Goody and Bernard, rigid with terror, under the flimsy protection of the holly tree, I listened to Sir Ralph Murdac just a few feet away as he gave orders to his mounted men-at-arms for our murder. I could see the blood-splattered hooves of his horse just a few feet from my nose but, penetrating the fear, his lisping French tones grated on my soul and I felt a lick of hot rage. As I lay there, I could image his handsome, scornful face as he commanded his minions to hunt us down and extinguish our lives. I remembered the pain of his riding whip as it lashed my face. I could even smell his perfume over the stench of hot horse, battle sweat and blood, a revolting waft of lavender, and, frightened as I was, angry as I was, I felt the beginnings of an itch in my nose and an almost overwhelming urge to sneeze.
The slightest noise would have meant death for all of us, and yet the sneeze was growing inexorably, making my nose twitch and my eyes feel as if they had been rubbed with onion juice. I could do nothing to stop it; I stuffed the bundled hem of my cloak into my face, and my face into the leaf mould on the floor of the forest and then it came roaring out: an eyeball-bulging explosive whoosh that convulsed my whole body. Inside my head it sounded deafening, but when I lifted my head I heard . . . nothing. Murdac was silent, listening, I assumed, to confirm what he had heard. A horse shifted its weight, steel accoutrements clinking. My heart was in my mouth, every muscle tense. I was determined to run if we were detected. I would not stay to be hanged like my father. In the silence, a horse farted loudly and a man laughed and said something in an undertone to his mate. Murdac called the men to order and continued giving orders in his sibilant French whine. I felt my body relax and looked round at Goody and Bernard who were staring at me in unbelieving horror. Their expressions were so comical that I felt like laughing. Instead, I sneezed again.
It was far louder than the first sneeze, which had been almost totally muffled by my cloak. And we didn’t wait to see if we had been detected. As fast as a frightened rabbit, Bernard was squirming out from under the holly branches, followed by Goody and myself. We burst from under the back of the tree and sprinted away into the wood. Behind us there were shouts and trumpets and the thunder of hooves and we raced towards the thickest part of the forest, our faces whipped by branches, arms and legs scratched by grasping twigs.
They were slow to come after us, no doubt surprised by our sudden appearance. But a race between a man on horseback and a man on two feet is no race at all. Except, that is, in thick woodland. We were off the path in ancient wilderness, dodging through the small gaps between trees, wading through thick snow, scrambling under fallen boughs, through brambles and ropes of ivy, all three of us hurtling, ploughing through the thick snow, spurred by panic, in roughly the same direction, Bernard in the lead, myself in the rear. We could hear the horsemen behind us but, as I snatched a backward glance through the thick undergrowth, I could see we were getting farther and farther way from the half a dozen riders following us. They had their swords out and were chopping wildly at low slung branches and trailing fronds to hack a clear path for their mounts, but they could only proceed at a walking pace, twin plumes of smoke shooting from the horses’ nostrils. I looked behind me again and we were a good fifty yards clear, almost out of sight. Hope swelled - but then I looked to my friends and I saw that they were both in trouble. Bernard was staggering with exhaustion from the unaccustomed exercise, Goody was trembling with cold. She looked ready to drop. I ran forward to them and, with a fast backward glance to check we were unseen, dragged them away at right angles to the direction we’d been running, deep, deep into the thick snowy undergrowth, ploughing through the freezing white crust and sinking up to our knees. After thirty yards of stumbling through the drifts, we all tumbled into a ditch and lay there gulping air, hearts hammering; ears straining for the sound of horsemen.
Nothing. Sherwood seemed empty of all life. A white wilderness. But our track through the snow was clear to see, leading straight to our damp, slush-splashed, panting huddle. We couldn’t stay there more than a few moments to catch our breath. I looked up at the grey sky; it had begun to snow again, but there were only two or three hours of daylight left in that short winter day. If we could stay out of reach of the horsemen until nightfall we would be safe. Probably. So I loaded Goody on to Bernard’s back and pulled a dead branch from a fir tree, the crack as it broke off echoing loudly through the forest. We all paused, listening in terror. Then, when we heard nothing but the eerie silence of the snow-blanketed wood, Bernard whispered: ‘Which way?’