‘God’s holy toenails,’ bellowed John in exasperation. ‘Do you think I haven’t done this a score of times before?’
Robin soothed him: ‘Yes, John, I know, but you will agree that they do tend to get a bit overexcited. . Be a good fellow and keep them on a leash until after the charge.’
The giant stomped away back into the circle of wagons, which was aswarm with women, children, men and beasts in a cacophonous muddle.
Tuck plucked at my sleeve. ‘You shouldn’t really be here,’ he said. ‘Your place is inside the wagons.’
I shook my head. ‘My place is beside my lord,’ I said gesturing with my chin at Robin who was stringing his own bow.
‘Well,’ said Tuck, ‘I thought you might say that, so if you are determined to play the warrior, you might as well look the part,’ and he handed me a heavy brown sack. It clanked.
For a young man there will always be something special, something magical, about his first sword, whether it is a small, notched rusty thing, little better than a long butcher’s knife, or the finest Spanish steel blade, engraved with gold and fit for a king. It is a symbol of power, of manliness — indeed, troubadours and trouveres, when they weave their songs about knightly love, often use the word ‘sword’ as an alternative word for the male member. And when they sing about sliding a sword into its sheath. . Well, I’m sure you understand, you’ve no doubt heard the salacious cansos and bawdy fabliaux. . A sword is an icon of manhood; to be given a sword is to have manhood granted to you.
My first sword, which I found inside the sack along with a dark green cloak and battered helmet, was a standard yard of tapered steel, a little scratched but sharp, with a fuller, a groove, running from the handle three-quarters of the way down the blade on both sides. It had a straight five-inch steel cross-piece, a wooden handle, and a rounded iron pommel. It was an ordinary weapon, like the ones carried by thousands of men-at-arms across England, but to me it was Excalibur. It was a magical blade forged by the saints and blessed by God. And it was mine. The sword came with a scuffed leather sheath attached to a worn leather sword belt. As I buckled the belt around my waist and then pulled out the blade, I felt as tall as Little John, a hero, the noble warrior who would defend his lord until death. I slashed the sword through the air in front of me, experimentally slaying invisible dragons.
Tuck who had been watching my hay-making with a kindly eye said: ‘Just try not to kill any of our folk.’
His words sobered me and, as he helped put on the cloak and helmet, I realised that I really might be expected to kill, to shove this blade into a living human body, to spill a real person’s guts on the green grass of this peaceful glade. And that he would be trying to spill mine.
I put the sword back in its sheath, and, as I turned to thank Tuck for his gifts, the mud-spattered spy came galloping around the bend on the road and this time headed straight for our little circle of wagons. He pulled up his sweating horse next to Robin and his thin line of archers, jumped off the beast and said breathlessly to Robin: ‘They’re coming, sir, hard on my heels; Ralph Murdac’s men. About thirty of the bastards. .’
Robin nodded and said: ‘Fine, good; get yourself and the animal inside the cart-ring.’ The man bobbed his head and led the horse away. Robin, turning to the archers who stood in a ragged line looking at him expectantly, said: ‘Right lads, let’s not play with them. When you see the bastards, start killing them. And when they get to that bush,’ and he pointed to a scrubby alder fifty paces away, ‘get inside the ring as fast as you can. Get in the cart-ring if you want to live — but not before they get to that bush. Does everybody understand?’ He glanced at me and I nodded, not wanting to speak in case my voice revealed my fear.
Then we waited. Robin was sticking arrows needle-point down into the turf in front of his place, idly arranging the pattern so that it was symmetrical; the Welsh archers leaned lightly on their bow staves, chatting to each other quietly, perfectly calm. They were a very muscular lot, though few were very tall, I noticed. Many of them had a similar body shape, as if related by blood: short and squat, with thickly muscled arms and deep chests. Tuck walked down the line blessing their bows. I stood there clutching the hilt of my sword, awaiting blessing and sweating with fear and excitement in the spring sunshine. I desperately wanted to piss. Time seemed to stand still. The hubbub from the circle of wagons seemed to quieten, though an ox would occasionally moan or a chicken squawk. I wondered if the spy had been mistaken. Where were they? Robin was cleaning his fingernails with a small knife and humming under his breath — it was ‘My Love is Beautiful as a Rose in Bloom’, but last night and our cosy harmonies seemed a thousand miles and many lifetimes away. Tuck was on his knees praying. I closed my eyes but, from nowhere, the image of the green-eyed girl coupling with her drunken beau in the farmhouse came into my mind. I opened my eyes quickly, and crossed myself. If I were to die I did not want my last thoughts to be of those sinners. And then, at last, at long last, I heard the drumming of hooves on a dry road and the enemy came into sight around the bend. A clattering mass of heavy horsemen, wrapped in steel and malice, and seeking our deaths.
They were a terrifying sight. Thirty stone-hard men-at-arms, mounted on big, well-trained warhorses, each man wrapped in chain mail from toe to fingertip and crowned with a flat-topped riveted steel helmet with a metal grill that completely covered his face. Soldiers such as these had hanged my father. On top of their mail they wore black surcoats, slashed with red chevrons, and they carried twelve-foot-long steel-tipped lances, man-killers, and kite-shaped wooden shields, faced with leather and painted with the red and black arms of Sir Ralph Murdac. Long swords and shorter daggers were strapped to their waists; spiked maces and razor-sharp battleaxes hung from their saddles. They were skilled killers, the lords of the battlefield, and they knew it.
They paused about two hundred yards away, their chargers snorting and pawing the grass, and they stared at our pathetic huddle of wagons, beasts, anxious peasant mothers and children, and our thin line of stunted bowmen. They looked like the steel monsters of some terrible legend, not flesh-and-blood men. Horsemen such as these had spread terror among the English folk for more than two hundred years, since William the Bastard came to take our land. Riders such as these had smashed the housecarls’ shield wall at Hastings, and, since then, their descendants had been hunting down the wretches who could not pay their taxes, slaughtering honest yeomen who stood in their way, raping any girl they took a fancy to, crushing English spirits beneath their steel-shod hooves.
Two knights rode out in front of the horsemen, the leaders of the conroi, as these cavalry units are called, each with a dyed-black-and-red goose-feather plume atop his helmet. They began to order the troop into two ranks of about fifteen men each. As I watched the superbly trained horses shuffle and jostle into position, I heard Robin murmur: ‘Stand fast, lads. .’ His archers drew their bowstrings back to their ears. ‘. . and loose.’ There was a rushing sound like a flight of swallows and a handful of arrows sped away, thin grey streaks against the blue sky. I heard Robin say again, perfectly calmly, ‘Fast. . and loose,’ and then I watched in amazement as the first barrage smashed into the ranks of the conroi. Which erupted into screaming bloody chaos. Horses cried in agony, kicking out savagely at random as a dozen yards of fire-hardened ash wood, tipped with razor-sharp bodkin arrowheads, slammed deep into their chests and flanks. Two men-at-arms fell dead from their horses, killed by the arrows that punched through their hauberks into heart and lungs. What had, moments before, been menacing, orderly ranks of mounted men preparing for the charge, lances held vertically, perfectly in line, like the palings of a village fence, was now a circus of rearing terrified horses and cursing gore-splashed men. Yet more arrows sliced into them. I saw one man, unhorsed, on hands and knees, skewered by a shaft through his throat, collapse on the green turf, clutching his neck and coughing blood. Another was cursing, a vile string of obscenity, damning God himself as he tried to pull a shaft from the muscle of his thigh. A riderless horse, lashing out with his hind hooves, caught his unseated owner plumb in the chest with an audible crack of bone and the man was hurled backwards and did not rise again.