Death of a Squire

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.

It had been her screams that had alerted him to her absence and he had leaped up, fear pounding in his throat as he dropped the belt and ran towards the noise. The pool where she was wont to sit was not far from their hut, in the shade of a stand of elder and oak, and it was from that direction that her howls of terror were coming. As he ran, Fulcher could hear the harsh threatening tones of a man’s voice mingled with his sister’s, then suddenly her shrieks had stilled, and when he came to the place where she had been sitting he saw her body sprawled half in, half out of the water, her head with its long fair tresses lolling on a tuft of grass, and her legs splayed wide apart. The water beneath her buttocks was tinged pink and he could see her maiden blood smeared on her thighs. Beside her stood the soldier, still pulling up his hose, looking down at her with disgust on his face. The man spun around when he heard the sound of Fulcher’s approach, his hand going to the dagger at his belt, but he was not fast enough to stop the boy’s wild rush.

Fulcher never knew afterwards where he found the strength to kill the man-at-arms. He had been only fifteen, albeit tall and with shoulders well muscled from constant swimming. But the soldier had been a man in his prime, hardened from practice with sword and lance, and should not have needed to expend much effort to defend himself against a lad with little experience of fighting apart from friendly brawls with village boys his own age. It must have been that Fulcher’s headlong charge at the soldier had taken him by surprise, for the man-at-arms fell backwards into the shallow water and had no time to recover before Fulcher fell on top of him and was smashing at his face with a large stone picked up from the bottom of the pool. On and on Fulcher had pounded, aiming below the protection of the leather cap the man wore strapped to his head, crushing nose and cheekbone until the face was no more than a bloody pulp and the water around the two struggling figures streamed with gore.

Whether one of the blows killed him, or if the soldier drowned in his own blood, Fulcher did not know, but suddenly he had become aware that the man was dead. Only then had he turned to see to his sister. She still lay as she had when he had first come upon them, sprawled as though in careless sleep, but with eyes wide open and sightless. Gently Fulcher had picked her up and cradled her in his arms, but the unnatural tilt of her head to one side told him that her neck was broken. He had carried her back to his family’s one-room shanty and had sat, cradling her in his arms, until his mother returned.

After that, events passed in a blur. His mother had gone to fetch his father and her brother from where they had been setting out traps for that night’s catch. Haltingly, through his tears, Fulcher told them what had happened. His mother had hastily packed a small sack with some hard bread, a few onions and some eels pickled in their own brine in a little mud-and-clay jar. She had added a small stopped pottle of ale before his father and uncle had hurried him from the shack to where a small coracle, one of the two boats they owned, was fastened to a stake in the riverbank.

“You must run, son, and hide. Once the soldier’s body is found there’ll be a hue and cry for him who did it. For all the whoreson’s evil act was deserving of death, his lord will still hang you for killing one of his men. Go far and go fast. And may God protect you.”

Fulcher had never forgotten the last look he had of his family. His father, tears creasing the deep folds of his face as he spoke; his uncle pressing the knife he had always prized into his nephew’s hand before clasping him with rough tenderness about the shoulders; his mother, face white with strain, wrapping him in her arms and murmuring a prayer as she kissed his cheek. Still dazed with shock, he had done as they instructed and lowered himself into the little boat. Only once had he looked back as he worked the paddle that skittered the tiny craft over the water. The remnants of his family had stood as though in a tableau like those painted on the walls of the village church, frozen stark against the sun-washed blue of the sky and the green trees of the forest at their back. It was the last time he was to see them, or they him.

Although that had been many years ago, Fulcher had always kept them in his mind’s eye and in his heart, through the days that followed when he had been fearful of capture and during the months afterwards as he had foraged for food and shelter. He had kept clear of towns, working when he could for cottars glad to exchange a bowl of food for a helping hand, stealing when there was no employment to be had. Even through one terrible snowbound winter when he had been forced to poach the king’s deer to stay alive, he had never forgotten his family.

Many years had passed before he had finally come to Sherwood and had crossed the path of Green Jack. In all that time he had never slain another man. He had promised the Templar that he would kill Jack if he had the chance. Would he? The sounds of fighting behind him after he had swum away from the Templar’s horse did not bode well for Jack’s band of outlaws, or for their leader if he had been captured. The sheriff was not a man known for his clemency. It could be that Camville had taken Fulcher’s revenge for him, or perhaps the Templar had, especially if his young servant had been harmed.

Fulcher knew that his best course would be to continue his flight southward, follow the Trent’s course and put as much territory between himself and Lincoln as he could, past Nottingham perhaps, south to a part of England he had never been before. He had only to lay up somewhere and get himself dry, beg or steal some clothing that was warmer than the rags he had on, and then keep going. But if he did, he knew that the memory of Green Jack would follow him, haunt him; that if he did not find out whether his old adversary had escaped or been captured and hanged, he would never rest. Whatever patch of the greenwood in whatever part of England he stepped into, he would be looking for Jack behind every tree trunk, in every dark copse in the midst of winter. No, he had to go back, back to the camp and see if he could find out what had happened. If he came upon a victorious Jack with the Templar in his clutches, Fulcher would challenge him, and in doing so, probably die. But if Jack’s plan had not worked, if he had been taken, then he could safely leave the fate of the treacherous outlaw leader to the sheriff. Either way, Fulcher would be satisfied that their old score was settled.

Green Jack was sitting snug under the all-embracing arms of an oak tree a good few miles from where the rout of his plan had taken place when Camville’s soldiers had attacked. He had stayed in his perch high above the riverbank only long enough to watch as first Fulcher had escaped from the Templar, and then that damned mute servant had freed himself and leaped into the river. As soon as the men of the castle garrison had erupted from the forest on both sides of the river, Jack had made his escape, and quickly, calling to the two men he had kept by him to follow.

They had not made their way back to the camp where the women and children of the band were waiting for their return. If any of the men that had been captured had let loose their tongues, that would be the first place the sheriff would look for him. No, Jack had never been known as a stupid man, and he was not going to spoil that reputation now. The women would have to look after themselves, or starve. He had given them no more than a passing thought before he and his two cohorts had gone south, towards Nottingham. He led them to a billet he had made safe from all eyes but his own, a snug little glade in the middle of a thick ring of trees and a hedge of bramble, penetration of which was impossible unless you knew the secret of a narrow opening at the base of the prickly growth, and Jack had made sure he was the only one who did by covering it cunningly with vines very much like the ones he wore twisted about his person.

Now he was forced to share this secret with the two outlaws who had accompanied him. They were both men who had been with him a long time, good bowmen who would be loyal as long as he kept them free of the sheriff’s clutches and provided them with a hefty share of the rich pickings gleaned from robbing any travellers they came across.

For now, he sat alone, having sent his men off to forage for game. He needed time to think. They would have to stay hidden for a while, he ruminated, and, as he thought of the problems that faced him, the scene on the riverbank once more played through his mind. Damn the Templar! And damn Fulcher! He had known the risk involved in pretending to exchange the Templar’s brat of a servant for the outlaw, but the lure of having one of the hated monks and his old adversary both within his grasp had been too powerful. And it would have worked, should have worked, if Fulcher hadn’t made his successful grab for freedom. Jack had known the sheriff’s men would be waiting within the screen of bushes; what he hadn’t bargained for was that they would also be on the Sherwood side of the river. A mistake in his own judgement, he had to admit, but he had gambled that Camville’s foresters would not know of the one and only track that led to where his men lay in wait. But even so, if Fulcher had not broken free when he did, there might still have been time to take the Templar…

Jack let his heart fill with the deep anger he had felt the first time he had laid eyes on Fulcher. He was of a type, was the eeler, one of a sanctimonious breed reminiscent of the Templar monks. Always bleating about feeding the women and children first, wanting to share whatever meagre pickings there were with the others, as if he were God and Jesus all rolled into one. Jack had known he was a threat to his leadership right from the moment they met and he had not been wrong. Only two days in Jack’s camp and Fulcher was objecting to the order Jack had given for one of the women to be flogged because she had taken a knife to a bowman who had been trying to bed her. Cut the man’s arm, she had, plunged it right into the muscle of his bicep. He would not be able to pull a bow until it was healed. Her punishment had been justified. Did she have the ability to take the bowman’s place until he was fit again? No, but she would most likely be one of the first to complain when there was less food to be shared for lack of his skill. But Fulcher had not seen it that way, and he and Jack had argued, an argument that had culminated in a fight with Jack getting the worst of it before his men had pulled Fulcher off. Later that day Fulcher had left the camp, taking Berdo, Talli and their womenfolk with him. Jack knew then that he would have to get rid of Fulcher. He had seen the admiration in the eyes of some of his own men for Fulcher’s strength, and for his open disdain of Jack’s leadership. And by ordering some of his more trusted men to keep the little renegade band from food, he had nearly managed to destroy the danger that Fulcher represented. When Fulcher had been taken into custody, with Copley’s connivance, by Camville’s men-at-arms, how Jack had rejoiced to know that Fulcher was in the clutches of the sheriff. And that would have been the end of it, with Fulcher dangling from the end of a rope, had Edward not come carrying the Templar’s servant. The temptation to have Fulcher at his mercy, to humiliate him and see his arrogance humbled had been too great to resist. And his indulgence had been his undoing.

For a moment Jack almost let self-pity engulf him, the feeling that fate had once again played him false, mischievously letting the double prize come so close to being in his grasp before snatching it away, but he shook his head and forced himself to control his despair. For now, he was safe, as was his cache of silver. He had built up a band before; he would do it again. Time enough when the winter was over. Until then he and his two men would be snug enough here. Yes, when spring came, all would be well once more.

His thoughts were interrupted by the return of his companions. Later Jack realised that he should have known something was amiss by the way they came in almost silently, with not a word of greeting or a look at each other. But, at the time, his thoughts were elsewhere and only the game they had brought in-two small hares, a hedgehog and a badger-caught his notice briefly. Nor did he pay much attention when they started a small fire and damped it down with turf after burying the game, wrapped in leaves, beneath the flames. It wasn’t until the food was done, barely cooked but edible, that he observed there was something shifty about the way his two cohorts were eyeing him across the fire.

“What’s up?” he asked, his hand straying stealthily to the dagger at his belt.

“Nothin’, Jack,” replied Warin, the older of the two, a tall thickset man with a nose that had been slit for stealing. “We were just wondering what you reckon on doin’ now.”

“What need is there to do anything?” Jack responded. “We’re safe enough here and there’ll be plenty of game in the woods to do us through the winter. What do we lack with food in our bellies and a dry spot to lay our heads?”

“There are other bands in Sherwood,” put in the other bowman eagerly, a youngster named Geraint, who had escaped into Sherwood when the hue and cry had been set after him in Nottingham after he had killed a man in a drunken brawl. “In the southwest; we could join one of them. Short Shank’s maybe. He’s always looking for men that are good with a bow.”

“Aye,” said Jack. “That’s because he can’t pull one himself.”

The jest did not produce a smile on the faces of the two men. They looked first at each other, then at him. Finally Warin said, “We’re not of a mind to stay here, Jack, not all winter long. Aye, it’s snug enough, but there’s no ale, and there’s no women.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “For a week or two, maybe, but not for the long months ’til spring. We’ve decided, Geraint and me, that we’ll head south. Join another band, or forage on our own, if need be. We’ll not spend the winter pent up in here like monks in their cubbyholes.”

Jack stood up. “Well, you’d best go then. I’ll not deny I’d expected more loyalty from you, but ale and women are as powerful a lure as any to a man. I wish you good fortune.”

Still the two men stood there and the tenseness in their stance made the hackles rise on the back of Jack’s neck. His hand found his dagger and he pulled it free, but his movement was not quick enough. Both Geraint and Warin had arrows nocked to their bows, the barbed tips pointing at his chest.

“We’ve no wish to harm you, Jack,” Warin said, “but we’ll need a little silver to pay our way until we’ve earned some of our own. Ale does not come cheap even if women do, and I doubt whether Short Shanks will provide us with either unless he sees we have something to share that will prove our good faith.” He motioned with his head and Geraint moved a little to one side. “Now, we knows that you has silver here, for you would not have left it behind at our old camp if you had stowed it there, so here it must be. And we wants it.”

“What makes you think I have any silver at all?” Jack asked, trying not to sound intimidated. “The pickings have been lean these last months.”

Warin laughed, a dry hacking sound. “If you hasn’t any, then that’s your misfortune, for if you come up with nowt, then I reckon as how we’ll have to kill you. All we’re asking of you is what we ask of any we rob-pay up or give us your life. Now that’s fair, ain’t it, Jack?”

As Geraint took another step, Jack took his chance and threw his knife at Warin, diving to one side as he did so. As he rolled he snatched at a thick length of tree branch, hearing an arrow thud into the log on which he had been sitting moments before. Straightening, he saw that Warin had fallen face-first across the fire and Geraint, white with fear, was in the act of fitting another arrow to his bow. Jack swung the branch, loosing it as it reached the apex of its arc and it slammed into Geraint’s left arm, knocking him backwards into a stumble so that his arrow misfired and flew low, piercing the meaty part of Jack’s thigh. Ignoring the pain, Jack was on the bowman in a trice, knocking him to the ground and pushing the tree branch across the young man’s neck. It took only a few moments’ struggle before he ceased to move, his windpipe crushed.

As quickly as he could, Jack rolled, cursing the stab of pain that shot up into his groin as he did so, to see if Warin had recovered. It was with a sigh of relief that Jack realised the older archer had not moved. Already an acrid stink was beginning to fill the air from the scorching of his flesh and clothes. Jack pushed him off the burning embers and turned him over. The dagger had taken him clean in the heart. He was as dead as Geraint.

When Fulcher pulled himself from the riverbank he travelled quickly and quietly back to the place where Green Jack had been making his camp on the day that Fulcher and the others had left the band, praying it had not been moved in the interim. It was full dark now and the wet rags he wore clung to him like freezing fingers of river weed, bringing shivers to his body whenever he paused to catch his breath and bearings. He kept the Templar’s dagger in his hand, wary not only of being discovered by Jack’s men, but of wolves. Once or twice he glimpsed a shadowy shape moving amongst the trees, but they drifted away at his approach, proving to be only small animals as fearful as himself. Above him a nearly full moon shone a silver light through the bare branches of the trees, showing him the path he sought clear like a snail’s track through the forest. The rain had ceased but it had grown colder, and there would be frost before morning. He hoped he was either warm or dead by then. He might be both, perhaps. The teachings of the church warned that the flames of hell were as hot as the heart of the sun.

When he came to the dell where the camp had been situated, he took care not to let his presence be known until, by peering through the surrounding foliage, he could see a few people were still gathered there. Only women and children seemed to be huddled in the small glow of a dying fire, but then he noticed that on the periphery of the dim circle of light were two of the younger men of the band, sitting hunched over on the ground and staring into the dark. All looked forlorn and miserable, and there was no sign of Jack or any of his bowmen.

Fulcher straightened and walked into the enclosure. At the noise of his approach, a few of the women started up in fear, clutching their children to them, while the two men bolted upright, one clutching a stout wooden club in one hand while the other brandished a piece of rusted iron that had once protected the wheel of a cart.

“Peace,” Fulcher said as he went up to them, mindful of their nervous glances at the dagger in his hand and of the fear on the faces of the two boys, as well as the countenances of the women.

“We didn’t know the bowmen were going to shoot at you, Fulcher,” one of the young men blurted out, the one with the old shard of wheel rim clutched in his fist. “Jack only told us we was to lure the Templar to our side of the river and then we’d get to hold him for ransom as well as loose you from Sheriff Camville. ’Twould be a double victory, he said, with plenty of silver paid as ransom for the Templar. I swear, he never said aught of playing you false…”

“He’s telling the truth, Fulcher, ’though I don’t suppose you’ll believe me,” one of the women interjected. She had most likely once been very pretty, but now weeping sores covered her face and neck, and her hair, a matted tangle of grime, hung lank around her shoulders. “Jack told us just what Will said-the women and those of the lads who weren’t one of his trusted bowmen, that is. Said it would be a great victory over the sheriff to get you out of his clutches and hold the Templar for ransom besides. Black-hearted liar that he is, we believed him. Even cheered him for being so bold on behalf of you, an old enemy. Well, do to us what you will, Fulcher. Our men are gone, all except for Will and young Thomas here. There’s no one to hunt, or keep us safe. We’ve naught to face but starvation or being eaten by wolves. If you’ve a mind to kill us, at least it’ll be a quick death.”

Some of the children started crying at her words, burying their faces in their mothers’ bosoms. Fulcher hunkered down by the fire, laying his knife between his feet. “I’ve no mind to hurt any of you,” he said. “Tell me what happened at the riverbank. Were all the men taken by the sheriff? Where is Green Jack?” As he spoke he reached out to the warmth of the fire, holding his hands in plain sight.

Reassured by his manner, a babble of voices broke out as they explained what had happened, how the sheriff and his soldiers had burst from the wood and captured or killed most of the men, and how the Templar had retrieved his servant and got away.

“Me and Thomas only escaped because we were at the back, hidden in the bushes,” Will said. “When the horsemen rode out from the north, on our side of the river, they had swords and maces. Dropped our men like they was a rack of skittles at a village fair.” He looked down, shamefaced. “We ran. I had only this”-he lifted up the club, which he had laid across his knees-“and Thomas’s weapon was not much better. We just ran and kept going until we couldn’t hear the fighting anymore. Then we made our way back here.”

“And Jack? Do you know if he was taken with the others?” Fulcher asked.

Another woman spoke. Heavily pregnant, she was sitting on the ground near the fire, an old rag drawn around her head and shoulders for a shawl. Her eyes were dull, uncaring. Fulcher remembered that she had once been Jack’s doxy. “Not him,” she said. “Not Green Jack. Never even came near the fight, just stayed back and let the others carry out the devil’s plan he had made.”

“How do you know that?” Fulcher asked, nodding with thanks as one of the other women passed him a rough wooden mug filled with watered ale heated over the fire. Talli’s sister, he noted; Talli and Berdo must have been among those taken by the sheriff.

“Followed him, didn’t we?” Now it was the first woman who had spoken that piped up. “Well, I did, anyway. Mary, here, she couldn’t keep up, what with her belly being so big.”

“Followed him to where?”

“When all the men left, with the boy, to where they was to meet the Templar, I saw Jack go off in a different direction, with Warin and Geraint. I heard him tell the others that he would meet them in a little while, that he was going to make sure the sheriff’s men had not got onto our side of the river.”

She stopped and picked at one of the sores on her chin, then continued, “Me and Mary thought it was strange, for he went upstream, not down, and there’s no ford there for the soldiers to cross, not without making a commotion. So we went after them. I saw Jack climb up into a tree, high, the way he does, and thought at first that maybe he was doing what he said and could see better from up there. But he didn’t come down. And Warin and Geraint waited at the bottom. Never stirred towards where the other men were.”

“Then the noise of fighting at the riverbank started.” Mary took up the tale, her voice still listless. “I was scared, but I waited until Leila came back, and then we ran here as fast as we could. Then Will and Thomas turned up.” She nodded in the boys’ direction. “We all just stayed here. We didn’t know what else to do. We couldn’t run, not with the children. Besides, where would we go? We thought that if the soldiers came and found us, it’d be no worse a fate than being a meal for the wolves.”

“So you don’t know where Jack is?” Fulcher asked, his anger at the outlaw leader beginning to burn bright again.

“Only that he probably made his way south,” Leila said. “Wouldn’t go north, would he? Sherwood’s trees peter out a few leagues that way and he’d be in open country. He likes to be deep in the greenwood, does Jack.”

“In the morning, will you show me the tree that he climbed?” Fulcher asked Leila.

She nodded, puzzlement on her face. “I will, but I doubt you’ll track him. He’s too canny, and too much of a coward, to be caught.”

“That’s exactly what I’m hoping he’ll think, Leila,” Fulcher replied.