Excerpts from The Wolfshead:Outlaw (A story of Robin Hood)

Excerpts #6

© Copyright David Cook 2014

Beginning

Robin was contemptuously called the Wolfshead, a name now given to any outlaw who is a menace; a fugitive to be hunted, and killed, as the savage and feral wolf. But Robin was no threat to the common folk. He was the noblest and humblest man that I ever met. Surprisingly, Robin liked the nickname, for he said it struck fear into his enemies.

And he had many. The priests speak that God punishes the wicked and rewards the good. Robin was a good soul. He was charitable and he was kind. He was a symbol of liberty. He revered our Good Lady the Virgin Mary until the day he died, and so I believe his final resting place is in Heaven.

I hear many accounts of Robin in Sherwood Forest and in Barnsdale Forest, and even in Wales of all godforsaken places. I hear his stories here in Winchester and watch as folk of all ages become still as the dead when the ballads are spoken in the ale-houses. They love Robin as a father, or a son, or a brother, and yet, they never knew him. I have found this everywhere.

After the gut-wrenching horror of the last battle, our band scattered like the embers of a stamped-out fire. I travelled the length and breadth of England, paying minstrels to sing of Robin’s deeds. It’s the only achievement in my life that I’m proud of, apart from being a father.

Since my first wife died, I remarried and have another son, Robert, and a daughter, Avice. Robert is coming to see me after the city bells’ ring the hour of nones. I have never told a soul about my former life. Not even Katherine, my second wife. It would have upset her, and her father, and he was a rancorous piece of gristle that had great influence here in the city. But Katherine died seven years past, so I will tell my children of my adventures before I, too, am gone from this world.

I was plucked from my mother’s womb at midnight on what was the coldest night anyone from my village of Clanfield could ever recall. I was an ill child, and at twelve months old I almost perished as my two eldest brothers had. Somehow, I survived the fever and lived. At seven I worked in the ten acres my family farmed in Sherwood, scaring off the birds that plagued the crops. At sixteen, I was the eldest of five, I had long fair-hair; coarse like straw thatch, and I had my father’s long nose, a trait it was said my English ancestors all had long before the Norman’s landed.

I have glimpsed kings, lords and knights come and go as the seasons; however, it was in the summer of our Lord, 1199, aged sixteen, that I first met Robin.

It was in Sherwood Forest, and I was about to commit murder.

Training

Dawn bleached the world, colouring the low long wisps of cloud with streaks of pale gold, and edges of shining silver. Smoke drifted from freshly fed fires and the smell of meat roasting wafted across the patch of grass where I stood sweating fiercely.

‘Watch your guard! Bring your sword up! No! Don’t wave it around like it’s your goddamn prick! Bring it up! Up! Christ’s balls! Ben, for the last time! Guard!’

The blades clashed and sparked, the shock jarred my arm. I felt my fingertips tingle from the pressure, but I had at least blocked the attack if rather clumsily.