Arrows erupted suddenly into the air as the bowmen in the forest shot their missiles, not at Bascot, but at their supposed comrade. Bascot knew then that Fulcher had told him the truth. Frantically, he twisted his head, looking for Gianni. The boy was still there beside Edward but even as Bascot spied him, the lad, with a quick movement, bit the arm of his captor so that the reeve’s nephew let out a yell and released him. Then Gianni shrugged, gathered his legs under him and ran, straight for the river. Bascot spurred his horse forward, towards the boy. The grey slipped at first, confused, then pushed with all its strength as his hind legs gained the top of the gravel ridge. Bascot guided him along it as Gianni, running like a deer, reached the bank and jumped as far as he could, legs flailing wildly to give him more distance. He landed with a splash in the water only a few yards from Bascot and, with one bound, the grey leaped forward and the Templar scooped the boy up from the roiling river, dragging him across the front of his saddle.
On the western bank all was confusion. The outlaw archers turned to aim their arrows at Bascot, and the Templar swung Gianni up behind him and pushed his shield over his shoulder so that the boy could huddle underneath its protection. He could feel the lad’s hands clutching at the back of his surcoat, holding on like a leech. Then a shout of warning sounded from the woods behind the archers and from the screen of trees, William Camville burst, his two squires and Roget close behind, swords in hand. The terrified bowmen scattered towards the water but, from the eastern bank of the Trent, the sheriff now appeared, his mount at full gallop and a deadly mace swinging from his hand. The castle men-at-arms were fanned out on either side of him, short swords at the ready.
The battle was of brief duration. Apart from their bows, most of the outlaws had little in the way of weaponry-a few cudgels, some rusty knives, the crude blades of scythes. Some half dozen of the outlaw band were killed outright and almost twice that number captured. Only one of the sheriff’s force sustained an injury; a man-at-arms had his wrist bone broken as one of the outlaws, more desperate than the rest, tried to wrest the soldier from his horse. The outlaw had died from a sword slash delivered by Richard Camville, the blow almost cleaving the man’s torso from the lower part of his body.
The sheriff was well pleased with the outcome of the foray, although he showed some disappointment at the loss of Fulcher. “Still, de Marins, I agreed to exchange him for your servant and that is what we have done. These other miscreants will pay the price for his escape. And I will ensure that they pay dearly, not only for his loss but for that of my deer.”
It was full dark by the time they reached the gates of Lincoln castle, with the captured outlaws, bound at the hands and to each other, stumbling between the men-at-arms guarding them on either side. Gerard and William Camville, along with Richard and the two squires, rode at the head of the procession, the sheriff for once in a jocular mood, while Roget and Ernulf passed a wineskin back and forth and exchanged jokes with the men of the garrison. More somber were the foresters, Tostig and Eadric. Bascot wondered if this was because they had not been able to capture Green Jack or whether it was because Fulcher, a poacher on the territory in their care, had escaped.
But the Templar gave the foresters, the outlaw leader and Fulcher no more than a passing thought. At his back Gianni was fast asleep, wrapped in one of the soldier’s cloaks and with the cap that Ernulf had given him-rescued from the head of one of the captured outlaws-fastened securely on his head. To feel the boy’s chest rise and fall in the soft rhythm of sleep and to know that he was safe, that was enough.
Twenty-five
Fulcher struggled against the river’s tow after he pulled away from the Templar’s horse. Staying underwater, and close to the bank, he had surfaced only briefly to snatch a mouthful of air when it became necessary. The arrows loosed by the outlaws fell thick around him at first, pushing through the water near his head, shoulders and legs, finally losing their impetus as the current swept them away. When he judged it safe he let himself drift into a stand of osiers and, under their screen, came to a halt and cautiously put his head above the water and looked back. In the distance he could hear the sounds of fighting, like a buzzing of hornets, above the roar of the river but no one, neither soldier nor outlaw, came in pursuit of him.
Easing back into the river he swam, with the powerful strokes that seemed more natural to him than walking. He would put a good distance between himself and the warring factions downstream before coming out from under the protective blanket of the river. As he cleaved through the water, the sting of the contusions on his body eased, the deep ache of his bruises started to abate and he began to feel the life of the river around him; otters at play as they fed, trout darting between his legs, a heron prompted into hasty flight, startled by his sudden appearance. Clumps of reeds swept by on the periphery of his vision, then a willow with branches low from the heavy rain alongside clumpy fronds of sedge grass. How he had loved the river when he had, as a child, accompanied his father and uncle as they had gone out, in the early part of the evenings, to set snares for the eels that provided their livelihood. He had loved it all, even weaving osiers to make traps or, in winter, fashioning nets from hemp that his mother had made from nettles gathered in the summer and then pulped and spun, just like wool. He had proved himself even better than his kinfolk at discovering the secret places where the snake-like fish loved to gather, especially in winter when, with only instinct to guide him, he would creep quietly into the mud and unerringly find their nests.
His family had been poor, but he had never lacked a full belly-most often eel stew thickened with barley-or wished for a home within the protective walls of a nearby village. Their shack on the water’s edge was always damp, but it had been clean and they had been free of a lord’s demands, for his father’s family had long before been granted their plot of ground on the riverbank and held their status as free men. He had been happy then and had expected to continue so. And perhaps he would have, except for his sister, a young girl who, although barely nubile, was possessed of a shape that belonged to a girl of far older years but had retained the mind of a child.
His mother had tried to keep her daughter by her side, but often the girl would wander off to pick the wild flowers that grew in the grass alongside the riverbank or to sit in a shallow pool, unaware of the wetness of her clothing, as she laughed with glee at the little fish come to nibble her toes. She had been doing just that on the day a lone man-at-arms from the garrison at nearby York castle had ridden past the spot where she was sitting. Fulcher knew she would have felt no fear of the man as he approached her, for she had never been treated with other than kindness by her kin or the villagers. No inkling of the dangerous lust her ripe breasts and shapely bare legs could incite in the stranger would have occurred to her.
Fulcher had been on his own with her that day, his mother gone to trade eels for flour from the miller on the far side of the village. So engrossed had he been in making himself a new belt fashioned from dried eel skins that he had not paid enough attention to his sister, and had not noticed when she strayed from the spot where he had left her playing with shiny stones collected from the riverbed.