‘Do you think Murdac actually has a hundred pounds of German silver?’ I asked him, wiping my mouth.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Every man within a hundred miles will have heard of the offer by now; and half of them will be thinking of how they can claim it. It was a very good move on his part. I salute the slimy little bastard,’ Robin lifted the wine skin towards the fire and took another long drink.
‘I had him once, you know,’ he said. ‘I had his life in the palm of my hand, and I let him go. Foolish of me; I should have killed him there and then. And I wouldn’t have this problem now. I could have avoided a lot of trouble if I had just snuffed him out there and then.’ He brought his forefinger and thumb together with a soft snap. ‘But I felt pity for him. I say pity, but it was merely weakness, in truth. He begged for his life on his knees and I couldn’t kill him. Sheer bloody weakness — arrogance, too. But then no man can see the future.’ He sighed and drank again.
‘When was this?’ I asked.
‘Here, take this; I’ve had enough,’ said Robin passing me the wine skin. He never drank to excess but I sensed that, that night, he might have wanted to. I took a small drink myself and kept quiet.
‘It was about seven, eight years ago, long before you joined us. We were just a handful of men then: John, Much the miller’s son, Owain and a dozen or so others. Waylaying rich travellers, mainly. I used to invite them to dinner in the forest, and then make them pay for the privilege. It was just a childish game, really. We were on the move all the time in Sherwood, dodging the Sheriff’s men, fearful that a decent-sized company of soldiers would find us. No more than a pitiful band of wandering footpads. I realised that I needed some real money to build the organisation I wanted; I needed, well… respect from the villages. I wanted to do something big. I needed to do something spectacular. So John and I cooked up a plan.’
He shrugged off his cloak, went over to the woodpile and threw another branch on the fire. Sitting down again, and extending his hands to the blaze, he continued: ‘We decided to rob the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests himself, in his own castle.’ Through the leaping flames I could see his face clearly: he was smiling with pleasure at the thought, his silver eyes shining in the darkness.
‘There was to be a sword-play competition at the Nottingham Fair, open to all, and we decided that John should enter, calling himself
… what was it?… something preposterous, something woody… Greenleaf, I think. That’s it. Reynald Greenleaf, was to be his name. He was to try and get himself noticed by Sir Ralph Murdac and get himself taken on as sergeant-at-arms in the castle. Well, you know John, he won the contest easily, even killing his opponent in the final round. And Murdac swiftly took John into his employment.’
I was fascinated. I had never heard this tale before. Robin rummaged in the food sack and brought out the remains of the beef joint. He cut off a thin, delicate slice, and popped it in his mouth. I took another drink from the wine skin. ‘It wasn’t a subtle plan; the robbery,’ said Robin, chewing slowly. ‘We were after Murdac’s dining silver; the best goblets, cups and plates, mazers, bowls and platters that he used on feast days in his hall. And we heard that they were kept in a locked room off the kitchen.
‘John waited three days, playing the part of a loyal man-at-arms, and after midnight on the third day he went down to the kitchen, broke open the door of the store and filled a sack with the silver plate. Halfway through, he was discovered by the head cook, a huge man, and almost as strong as John himself. Apparently, they had an almighty set-to in the kitchen, pots and pans flying everywhere, and they beat each other to bloody steak. Must have made a hell of a racket. Eventually, John managed to knock him out and get away with the sack of clanking metal. But it wasn’t a smooth escape; the disturbance made by the fight in the kitchen had roused the castle and when John galloped out of Nottingham on a stolen horse, he was followed by Sir Ralph Murdac and a score of his men-at-arms, buzzing like angry wasps, hastily dressed and only half-armed.’ Robin poked the fire with a thin stick, setting his makeshift poker alight. He waved it in the air to extinguish the blue flames.
‘Of course, we were waiting for John in the forest, and when Murdac’s half-dressed soldiers turned up, we shot them to pieces with our bows from dense cover. They didn’t stand a chance. The soldiers charged into a hail of arrows and, without proper armour, in three heartbeats there were a dozen empty saddles and a litter trail of men bleeding, cursing and dying on the forest floor. The rest had to run for it.’
He stopped for a moment. ‘But they left Ralph Murdac behind.’
‘So you captured the Sheriff himself?’
‘Yes, we had him, and he was wounded, not badly, just an arrow in the flesh of his left arm. But his horse had been pierced by a couple of shafts and had thrown him. He was terrified: surrounded by a pack of bloodthirsty outlaws, men he would have hanged on sight if he had caught them in Nottingham; his own men wounded and dying around him, the rest fled. He was on his knees, pleading for his life, tears absolutely running down his face. I’ll never forget the sight of someone so… lost.’
‘The men thought it was funny, of course — the high and mighty Sheriff, begging for our mercy. I had my sword drawn and I was preparing to dispatch him, when Tuck intervened. And in my youthful weakness, I listened to him. ‘Make him swear, on the Cross, that he will not molest us in future,’ said Tuck. ‘Make him swear, by all that is holy, that he will pay a ransom,’ he insisted, ‘and spare your soul another black stain.’
‘I was soft then, a fool, and I listened to Tuck’s plea. So Murdac swore a great oath that he would not pursue us in the forest, that we outlaws might do as we chose in Sherwood. He promised to deliver a ransom to the very spot he was kneeling on in three days’ time, I forget how much now, but a decent sum; twenty marks, I think. And, being the idiot that I was then, I let him go.’
Robin stabbed at the fire again with the stick. ‘He never paid up, of course. Perhaps he had intended to do so when he was begging for his life but, once he was snug at home in Nottingham Castle, there was no chance he was going to part with his silver to an outlaw. But, strangely, he did leave us alone, for a year or more, and it gave me more than enough time to build up my strength. All manner of people came to join me. I was made, then, with the common people. The robbery was a success, in that aspect. I had their attention, and their respect.’
‘If you had killed Murdac, it would have brought the wrath of the King down upon you,’ I said. ‘Henry would have come north with all his might and crushed you like an insect,’
‘Yes, there is that,’ conceded Robin, ‘but I wish I had slit the little poison-toad’s throat nonetheless.’
The next day, by the early afternoon, we were walking our horses through the low arch of Micklegate Bar — with its gruesome array of the severed heads of criminals set on spikes on top — and into York. It was my first visit to this great northern town, and I was most curious to see the place. As we rode down the centre of wide street to the old bridge over the River Ouse, I took in the closely packed workshops and houses, the milling citizens, the noise and smells of the streets; there seemed to be a great number of people out of doors, far more than would be abroad in Nottingham at this hour, and many seemed to be agitated about something. There were also, I noticed, many more men-at-arms among the throng that would be usual in a town this size.
Robin seemed to be reading my thoughts: ‘Sir John Marshal, the Sheriff of Yorkshire, is assembling local contingents here to go on the Great Pilgrimage,’ he noted. ‘You need to mind your manners, Alan, with so many soldiers about. Don’t get into any trouble; don’t provoke anyone to violence.’ As so often when he spoke to me, Robin was half-serious and half-joking.