“ Mon ami,” Roget said sadly, “all men-and women-are corrupt. It is not a fine art to know that; it is to judge the degree of iniquity that is difficult. And those with the fairest face and form often have the blackest hearts. It is a sorrow, but it is true.”
Ernulf nodded in morose agreement and held out his wine cup for replenishment. Bascot thought on the mercenary’s words, reminded of the last time he had been involved in a matter of unlawful slaying and how he had been so easily gulled by a pretty countenance and a soft manner. Was it happening again? Was the dairymaid lying to him? And if she was not, and she also was not the girl the charcoal burner’s son had seen with Hubert, then who was?
Fourteen
Near the northern tip of Sherwood Forest, and a good few miles from Lincoln town, a ragged band of men, women and a few small children were gathered around a barely smouldering fire. Above the almost dead embers some thin strips of venison were roasting, threaded on a wooden skewer. It was the last of their store. Hunger was beginning to make itself felt once again and the hopelessness of despair was etched on all their faces. A tattered canopy of leaf-bare branches still shielded them a little from the stark winter sky above, but the smell of snow was in the air and they were cold. All the men were fugitives, brigands who had, in one way or another, broken the law and fled from the harsh penalties of justice. The women, tied by bonds of marriage or kinship, had chosen to flee with their men rather than face a life of poverty alone. But hunger is still hunger and is not eased by sharing it. Dusk had not yet fallen but most of their number were already asleep, too weak to stay awake. The women were huddled together, the children in their midst, getting as much shelter as they could from bracken piled against the trunk of a fallen tree. One of the children, a babe of barely twelve months, began to cry and his mother soothed him by pushing a rag soaked with ale into his mouth. Soon there would not even be any ale, for the last of the brew they had husbanded so carefully was almost gone.
“We’ll have to go back to Camville’s chase,” said Fulcher, handing the child’s mother one of the strips of venison. It was little enough, but she could chew it until it was soft enough for the babe to swallow.
“Go back there?” Talli burst out. “Has hunger mazed your senses?”
“No,” responded Fulcher, “but it soon will, unless we get something to eat.”
He looked around at the little band. The strips of venison had come from the chunks of meat taken from the deer they had poached, but even though it had been bolstered by the addition of boiled hedgehog and a few dried berries, it had not lasted long when shared amongst them. Rustling noises came from the forest around them as small nocturnal animals began their nightly quest for food and in the distance the lone howl of a wolf sounded. Fulcher shuddered. They were helpless in the face of winter’s onslaught.
“There’s deer enough in Sherwood,” Berdo said. “And not so much chance of getting caught.” The dying glow from the fire lit up his face, catching the stub of all that remained of his left ear, clipped for stealing. “There’s more cover to hide from the foresters, for one thing and, for another, we don’t have to cross the river to bring the meat back.”
Talli nudged his companion. “You know why we can’t take a deer in Sherwood, and it’s nothing to do with the foresters.”
Berdo seemed about to say more, then decided against it. Fulcher gave him a glare. “Spit it out, Berdo. It’s me that Green Jack’s got an argument with, not the rest of you. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
Berdo looked up. Fulcher was their leader. They had been together for two years now, ever since the day that Fulcher had helped him and Talli escape from the confines of the sheriff’s gaol in Nottingham. He was strong, and he was clever, but what he said was right. It had been Fulcher who had fought with the leader of another band in Sherwood. And Green Jack-so called for his ability to move through the greenwood with no more noise than a leaf rustling on a twig-had been there longer than Fulcher and had more men under his command. Fulcher and his band had been penned into this small northeastern corner of Sherwood for months, finding themselves stopped by an arrow or a sharply flung stone if they attempted to move deeper into the forest. That was why they had been forced go farther afield than Sherwood to find meat. The feud between the two outlaw chiefs would end only if Fulcher turned over the leadership of his band to Jack or if Fulcher left the area entirely.
Berdo leaned forward, speaking earnestly, encouraging his leader to pretend to disappear. “It’d be easy to do, Fulcher. If you was to hole up somewheres and stay out of sight, Jack would think you’d gone for good and let the rest of us join up with him again. We could even sneak you some food if you needs it. It’d only have to be until the cold weather is past, then, in the spring, we could get together again.”
Fulcher leaned across the fire and grabbed the front of Berdo’s filthy jerkin, pulling him forward so that the thief’s face was close to the embers. “Do you think I’m going to hide from that vermin? Let him think I’ve turned tail and run? I’d rather roast in hell.”
Talli laid a placating hand on the arm of his leader. “Easy, Fulcher. Berdo don’t mean it. He’s hungry, that’s all, and his stomach is talking through his mouth.”
Reluctantly Fulcher released Berdo, who slumped back onto his haunches, resentfully rubbing his face where the heat from the fire had scorched it.
“Maybe you and Jack could call pax, Fulcher,” Talli suggested. “Just for the winter. Let one of us go and talk to him, see what he says.”
Fulcher hawked and spat into the fire. “You know what he’ll say, Talli. Same as I would if I were him. Leave me and join his men and he’ll see that you get a share of whatever they can steal or beg. You can go if you want. I won’t stop you, nor blame you. It’s your sister and her boy over there that’s starving and you want to see them fed.”
Fulcher rested his elbows on his knees and stared into the fire. Finally, he straightened up. “I’ll make your choice for you, Talli; for all of you. Tomorrow I’ll go alone to Camville’s chase and try to snare some game. If I don’t, I won’t come back. Then you can go to Jack for help, or to the Devil for all I care.”
With these last words he rose to his feet and strode off into the darkness. Talli looked nervously at Berdo. “He’s sure to be caught. That lad that was hanging in the tree will have been found by now and Camville’s soldiers will be all over the place looking for whoever put him there.”
Berdo shrugged and rubbed his fingers over the remains of his ear. “If he’s taken, he’s taken; if he’s not, he’s not. Either way we’ll get some grease for our innards, if not from Fulcher, then from Green Jack.”
Tostig finished inspecting the buckstall that Gerard Camville had instructed his huntsmen to erect for the enclosure of deer destined for slaughter, then mounted his horse and rode to John Chard’s camp. As he approached the compound he heard the burner’s dog whining. The animal was on the far side of one of the dome-shaped mounds, paws edged close to the body of a man who lay facedown on the ground. Tostig knelt beside the animal and turned the lifeless form over. It was the charcoal burner. The broken shaft of an arrow protruded from his chest and there was a look of surprise on his face. He had been dead some hours, for his body was as cold as stone.
The dog became agitated now, backing away from Tostig, its declawed feet clumsy as it scrabbled round the side of the mound. The forester followed, trying to coax the animal to return, but the dog kept up his lopsided gait and disappeared into the shack that had been the charcoal burner’s home. Tostig went to the door and pushed back the flimsy curtain of bound reeds that covered it. As he stepped inside, the dog began to growl, belatedly trying to protect another body that lay on the floor. It was Chard’s older son, Adam. His throat had been slashed from ear to ear. In his hand was still clutched a stout branch with which he must have tried to protect himself. On the other side of the shack his little brother lay in a similar condition, mouth set in the rictus of a silent scream above the gaping wound in his throat. Blood was spattered over the boys’ clothing and on the beaten earth of the floor. Of what had once been the charcoal burner’s family, only the dog remained alive.