Outlaws

Chapter 1

Everyone in our village knew Hood was coming. Since the lord of the manor's death last winter, the village had an almost perpetual holiday atmosphere: there was no authority to force them to work demesne and, after tending their own strips of land, the villagers had time on their hands. the alewife's house was full all day and buzzing with talk of Hood's exploits, adventures and atrocities. But very little truth was spoken and news was scant: merely that he would be arriving at dusk and he would see anyone who had business with him at the church that night, where he would hold his court.

I was above all the noise and nuisance, quite literally, as I was hiding in the hayloft above the stable at the back of my mother's crumbling cottage in a den I'd built in the hay. I was thirteen summers old, I had a throbbing knot the size of a walnut on my forehead, a bloody nose, a bad cut on my cheek, and I was treating the terror that I felt with a large dose of absolute boredom. I'd been there since mid-afternoon when I had stumbled into our home, breathless, cut and bruised, having escaped the rough hands of the law and run the dozen miles from Nottingham across the fields all the way home.

We were poor, almost destitute and, after seeing my mother weeping with exhaustion one too many times after a day scratching a meagre living gathering and selling firewood to her neighbours, I had decided to become a thief, more precisely a cut-purse: I cut the leather straps that secured men's purses to their belts with a small knife that I kept as keen as a razor. Nine times out of ten, they never noticed until i was twenty yards away and lost in the thick crowds of Nottingham's market place. When I returned home with a handful of silver pennies and placed them before my mother, she never asked where they had come from, but smiled and kissed me and hurried out to buy food. Though it had ben a necessity that drove me to take my daily bread from others, I found, God forgive me, that I was good at it, and like it. In fact I loved the thrill of the hunt; following a fat merchant as he waded through the crowds, silent as his shadow, the rough jostle, as if by accident, a quick slice and away before the man knew his purse was gone.

That day, however, I'd been stupid and I'd tried to steal a pie - a rich, golden-crusted pie, as big as my two fists - from a stall. I was hungry, as always, but overconfident too. It was a ruse I had used before: I stood behind a blowsy alewife who was poking the wares on the stall and grumbling about their price; surreptitiously lobbed a small stone at the stall holder along - a cheese monger if I remember rightly - hitting him full on the ear; and in the ensuing recriminations between stall holders, I swept the pie off the board and into my open satchel and sauntered away.

But the pieman's apprentice, who'd been taking a piss behind their cart, came out just as I was scooping up my dinner and shouted: "Hi!"And everybody turned, so then it was "Stop thief!" and "Catch him, somebody!" as I squirmed like a maddened eel through the press of townsfolk until - CRACK! - I was knocked down by a cudgel to the forehead from some yokel and then grabbed round the neck by a passing-man-at-arms. He punched me twice full in the face with his great mailed fist and my legs went limp.

When I came round, moments later, I was lying on the ground at the centre of a jabbering crowd. Standing over me was the soldier, who wore the black surcoat with red chevrons of Sir Ralph Murdac, by the wrath of God, High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests. And suddenly I was seized rigid with terror. The soldier hauled me to my feet by my hair and I stood dazed and trembling while the scarlet-faced apprentice yammered out the talk of the stolen pie. My satchel was torn open and the circle of onlookers craned to see the incriminating object steaming gently, deliciously at my waist. I still get jets of saliva in my mouth when I remember it's glorious aroma. Then, a wave of jostling and shouting, and the crowd parted, swept by the spears of a dozen men-at-arms, and into the space stepped a nobleman, dressed entirely in black, who seemed to move in his own personal circle of awe.

Though I had never seen him before, I knew immediately that this was Sir Ralph Murdac himself: the magnate who held Nottingham castle for the King and who also held the power of life and death over all the poplin a huge swathe of central England. The crowd fell silent and I gawped at him, terrified, as he gazed calmly up and down my thin body, taking in my dirty blonde hair, muddy face and ragged clothes. He was a slight man, not tall but handsome, with an athletic body clad in black silk tunicc and hose, and a pitch-dark cloak, fixed with a golden clasp at his throat. In his right hand he held a riding whip; a yarding black leather-covered rod tapering from an inch thick at the butt to the width of a bootlace. At his left side hung a silver-handled sword in a black leather scabbard. His face was clean- shaven, finely carved and framed with pure black hair, cut and curled neatly into a bowl shape. I caught a whiff of his perfume: lavender, and something musky. The palest eyes I had ever seen, cold and inhuman, seemed to glitter like frost beneath dark eyebrows. He pursed his red lips as he considered me. And suddenly all my fear receded, like a wave pulling back from the shingle of a beach... And I discovered that I hated him.

I was filled with a cold stony loathing: I hated what he and his kind had donate me and my family. I hated his wealth, I hated his expensive clothes, his good looks, his perfumed perfection, and the arrogance that he was born to. I hated his power over me, his assumption of superiority. I focused my hate in my stare. And I think he must have recognised my animosity. For an instant our eyes locked and then, with a jerk of his perfectly square chin, he looked away. At that moment I sneezed a colossal nasal bark so loud and so sudden that it shocked everyone. Sir Ralph started, and glared at me in astonishment. I could feel snot and blood mingling in my battered nose. It began to run down the side of my mouth and onto my chin. I resisted the urge to lick at it. Murdac was silent, staring at me with utter content. Then he spoke vey quietly:"Take this...filth... to the castle," he said in English, but in a lisping French-accented whisper. And then, almost as an afterthought, he said directly to me:"Tomorrow, you disgusting fellow, we shall slice off that thieving hand."

I sneezed again and a plump gobbet of of bloody phlegm shot out and splattered onto his immaculate black cloak. He looked down at the red-yellow mess, then, quick as a striking adder, he lashed me full in the face with his riding whip. The blow knocked me onto my knees, and blood started to pour from a two-inch cut on my cheek. Through eyes misty with rage and pain, I looked up at Sir Ralph Murdac. He stared back at me for a second, his blue eyes strangely blank, then he dropped the riding whip in the mud, as if it had been contaminated with plague, turned smoothly away, hitched his cloak to more comfortable position and swept through the surrounding rabble of townsfolk, who parted before him like the Red Sea before Moses.

As the man-at-arms started to drag me away by my wrist, I heard a woman cry:"That's Alan, the widow Dale's son. Have pity on him, he's only a fatherless boy!" And the man paused, turning to speak to her, with my gripped in only one of his fists. And, as he turned, I focused my hatred, my anger, and I twisted my wrist against his grip, ripped it free, squirmed through a pair of legs and took to my heels. A fury of bellowing erupted behind me: men-at-arms cursing and shouting at the people obstructing their path. I jimmied right and left, sliding through the crowd, shoving past stout yeomen, dodging around the goodwives and their baskets. I created a tornado of confusions as the people reacted angrily to my passing. Men and women turned fast, furious at being shoved so so roughly.

Carts were knocked flying; pottery crashed to the ground; the hurdles contain a herd of sheep were smashed and the animals let loose to add their bleating to the tumult; and I was away and racing down a side alley, bursting through a blacksmith's forge and out the other side, up a narrow street, squeezing between two big townhouses, and turing left down another street until the noise subsided behind me. I stopped in the doorway of church by the town wall and recovered my wind. There appeared to be no pursuit. Then fighting to calm my hammering heart, I walked as coolly as I could, my hood pulled forward, a hand held casually over my cut and bruised face, out of the town gate, past the dozing watchman, and onto the winding road that led into the thick woodland. Once out of sight, I ran. I ran like the wind, despite my pounding head, and a sick feeling churning in my guts. I gave it my all till our village came into sight around a bend in the road. As I paused to catch my breath, I found I was clutching my wrist tightly. I still had my arm, praise God, I still had my light fingers. I still had the pie too.