Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire
Eustace Folville stood in Charnwood, leaning against a tree. Around him were his closest friends and kinsmen, his Brotherhood as he liked to call them. He had recently shot and killed a deer, and several of the company were working on the carcase, expertly skinning and gralloching it for supper.
He folded his arms and tilted his head back to sniff the air. Spring was coming, there was a fresh scent on the breeze, and it was a bright, fine day, the first such day after a rough winter. And yet there were clouds on Eustace’s horizon. He and his criminal Brotherhood did not usually reside in the forests, and did so now out of stark necessity. Enraged by the murder of his servant, Sir Roger Beler, the King had for once shown some initiative and ordered a special commission of oyer and terminer at Leicester to investigate the matter.
Eustace had many sympathisers and accomplices among the local gentry, but their influence was not enough to shield him, the prime suspect. The law, usually such a sluggish and ineffective beast, had twitched into life and was scrabbling around, seeking something to devour. Eustace had put the word about that he and his brothers had fled to Wales.
When the scandal had died down, and the commissioners had grown bored with their hopeless task, the Brotherhood would re-emerge. Eustace felt reasonably certain that nobody would betray him in the meantime. Too many in the region, lords, knights, and clergymen, were either in debt to him or had employed him to do their dirty work.
He smiled at the prospect of supper. The deer was almost ready for roasting, so he sat down against the base of his tree to watch the fire being kindled.
The Brotherhood ate their supper sitting in a rough circle, the carcase of the deer cooking over a spluttering campfire in the middle. The pleasant smell of wood smoke and roasting meat wafted over the clearing, masking the stench of their unwashed bodies and the lingering odour from the latrine pits. Eustace’s youngest brother, Walter, was acting as kitchen boy and cutting great strips of meat from the deer, passing the steaming, bloody flesh around on a pair of flat knives.
The outlaws washed the meat down with a barrel of head-swimmingly strong mead. After two cups of the sweet, heavy liquid Eustace was in the mood for some entertainment.
“Thomas,” he said through a mouthful of venison, gesturing at another of his brothers, “sing us a song.”
Thomas was the musician of the Brotherhood. He looked hesitant, but a ripple of encouragement passed around the circle and one of his neighbours clapped him on the shoulder. “All right,” he said, picking up his battered lute and tweaking the pegs. “I am missing a string, but I can play a melody on one string, I suppose. What do you want to hear?”
“I want no knights’ tales,” declared Eustace, “no morality airs, and no religious fables. We are yeomen of the forest now, so let us have something appropriate. Give us the ballad of Robin Hood and the Monk.”
Thomas chewed his lip as he tried to remember the words.
“In summer,” he began uncertainly, reciting rather than singing, and plucking a tentative melody on his lute, “when the woods are bright, and the leaves are large and long. It is full merry in…in…”
“Fair forest!” someone cried, prompting a shout of laughter. Thomas blushed furiously, but ploughed on. “It is full merry in fair forest, to hear the birdsong. To see the deer drawn to the dale, and leave the high hills, to shadow them in the green leaves, under the greenwood tree.”
His confidence grew as he entered the second verse. “It befell on Whitsun, early on a May morning, the fair sun was shining, and the merry birds were singing. ‘This is a fine morning,’ said Little John, ‘by him that died on the tree, a happier man than I lives not in Christianity…’”
The tale rambled on, the early cheerful tone turning to something darker. The outlaws swayed along to the rhythm of the well-known tale, nodding and shouting in approval of the bloodier moments.
‘“Pluck up thy heart, my dear master,” John urges Robin, but his chief is no mood to be merry,’” Thomas recited. “As an outlaw, he dare not venture into Nottingham to observe Matins, and this weighs heavily on his conscience. ‘It is a fortnight or more, since I my Saviour have seen,’ he declares, ‘but this day I will go to Nottingham, armed with the might of mild Mary.’”
“Bloody fool,” remarked Three-Finger Wat, a poacher turned outlaw who had lost two of his fingers to the chisel of a royal forester, “wouldn’t catch me risking my skin for the sake of little baby Jesus.”
A few of his neighbours guffawed, but Eustace frowned. Despite his crimes, he retained some respect for the divine, though not enough to stop him robbing priests.
Thomas continued, skipping through the parts where Little John and Robin quarrel, and the latter goes to Nottingham alone to pray. There, thanks to the treachery of a ‘great-headed monk’, he is ambushed by the Sheriff and a band of varlets carrying staves.
The outlaws leaned forward eagerly to listen to what came next.
“Robin took out a two-handed sword that hung down by his knee, and where the Sheriff and his men stood thickest, toward them would he. Thrice throughout them he ran then, it is the truth that I do say, and wounded many a mother’s son, and twelve of them did he slay. His sword he broke upon the Sheriff’s head, suddenly it broke in two. Alack, the smith that made thee, Robin said, “by God I wish him woe!”
The outlaws cheered the account of the fight, and groaned as Robin breaks his sword and is overpowered by the Sheriff’s remaining men.
The darkest part of the ballad followed. Eustace cocked his head and listened with narrowed eyes as Little John and Much the Miller’s son ambushed the great-headed monk and his ‘little page’ as they pass through the forest. Enraged by the monk’s complicity in the capture of their master, the outlaws murder both:
‘“John smote off the monk’s head, no longer would he dwell. And Much did stab the little page, for fear lest he would tell.’”
The cold-blooded killing of a small boy did not shock the outlaws, and most nodded at it with grim approval. Every one of the Brotherhood knew they would do the same, and some had done much worse. The mead was doing its work, mingling with the tune to create a strange, otherworldly affect. For a moment, the greenwood of the ballad and of reality seemed to merge, and Robin Hood came to life in the person of Eustace Folville. With his curling brown beard, dark green forester’s clothing, bow and arrows at his feet, and the hunting horn hanging from a baldric over his shoulder, he looked every inch the famous outlaw.
There the resemblance ended. Unlike good Robin’s, his eyes did not twinkle with honest merriment and the sheer joy of the outlaw life. He sat and stared into the fire, his cold mind mulling over the complex web of relationships he had built up in the Midlands. Who were his friends and enemies, who owed him debts, who did he owe debts to, who could be bought or intimidated or persuaded…all these considerations, and one worrying issue that had only recently surfaced.
His agents had reported other gangs encroaching on Folville territory, not local men, but Northerners, well-horsed and armed. No doubt they thought to find richer pickings in the south, away from their own bleak, ravaged country. As yet Eustace had no reliable information as to the size and number of the invaders, but was determined to defend his patch. He had too much at stake, now, to risk losing all in a turf war.
The spell of mead and music was broken as someone blundered into the clearing. Thomas stopped singing, his lute died away on a discordant note, and the outlaws looked around them in drunken confusion. Some half-rose, swearing and reaching for their weapons, but then saw that the newcomer was Adam, one of Eustace’s scouts.
“What is it?” Eustace got to his feet, slightly unsteadily. He rubbed his face, trying to will away the mead fumes.
The scout’s dirty face twisted in consternation. “Master, Anketil and your cousin Nicholas have returned. But the others are not with them.”
Frowning, Eustace motioned at Adam to lead on. Some of the Brotherhood followed their chief through a gap in the trees and down a shallow earthen bank that led to a little glade with a stream babbling through the middle. Here Nicholas Folville, a tall red-haired man, and Anketil of Hoby, shorter and dark-haired with a greasy, pockmarked face, were waiting. Nicholas had a defiant expression, fists planted on his hips, but Anketil looked like he would much rather be anywhere else.
“Well, Nicholas, what is this?” demanded Eustace. “You were out with John Rees and Philip Shirfield. Where are they?”
“Dead,” Nicholas answered in a curt, matter-of-fact tone. “We were interrupted during a job.”
“Ambushed,” squeaked the cowering Anketil. Nicholas swore and cuffed him about the head. “I told you not to speak.”
“Anketil is a member of the Brotherhood, and can speak if he wishes,” Eustace said. “You are in no position to fault others, cousin. I put those men in your charge. How did they die? What job?”
Nicholas looked uncomfortable, and could not meet his leader’s gaze. “It happened on the road to Market Harborough. We had met with some of Elizabeth Clinton’s servants, and were working on them, when we were attacked. This one” – he jerked his thumb at Anketil – “ran away, and left us to fight as three against four. John and Philip were killed, and I barely escaped.”
Eustace did not rage or go red in the face. He kept his composure, and to anyone who did not know him it would be difficult to tell he was angry at all. But the men around him did know him, and had learned to sense his moods. A few of them started to back away
“Richard,” he said, turning to his brother, “take Anketil away and flog him. Let the stripes be a reminder to him not to desert his brothers.”
Richard nodded and took the little man by the arm, who offered no resistance as he was led away to his punishment.
“Are you trying to undermine me?” said Eustace, stepping closer until his face was inches from his cousin’s. “Do you have it in mind to challenge my leadership?”
Nicholas recoiled. His fingers curled around the grip of his sword, but he was not stupid enough to draw.
“I gave explicit orders that Clinton and her people were to be let alone. Why did you disregard my orders?”
His cousin’s mouth had gone dry, and he had to swallow before replying. “I care little for your politics,” he managed, “and they were a ripe target. One old man and his servants, all of them with full purses hanging from their belts, their saddles loaded down with valuables. It would have been a crime to let them alone.”
“And yet you come back with nothing, and two of your comrades have paid for your ambition and bad faith with their lives. This is badly done.”
Eustace paused, while three of the Brotherhood took up positions around Nicholas.
“You must pay for your transgression,” said Eustace. “A simple flogging will not suffice, and I am not inclined to cut off a kinsman’s hand. You will play a game. The game of buffets, I think.”
There was a delighted murmur from the men surrounding Nicholas, and he blanched under his freckles. “I would rather play the game of swords,” he said in a voice that laboured to remain steady.
Eustace shook his head. “I am sure you would, since there is not a man in the Brotherhood who is your equal with a sword. No, cousin, you are to be punished, not given an opportunity to show off your skill. Thomas, go and fetch the Knuckler.”
Thomas nodded and ran off to the cluster of rough tents in the middle of the camp. There he spoke to a lean, rangy man wearing the loose grey tunic, girdle, and hooded cloak of a friar. The man nodded obediently and left his supper to follow Thomas back to the glade. His gait was as loose as his garb, and he flexed his shoulders and knuckles as he walked. Sensing violence, many outlaws left what they were doing and streamed excitedly in his wake.
“Strip him,” said Eustace, and the men surrounding Nicholas tore off his jerkin and took away his sword. He was muscular underneath, his pale skin criss-crossed with the scars of old fights, but he could not hide his fear as he watched the Knuckler approach.
The one known as the Knuckler stopped at a respectable distance from Eustace, and bowed his head. Then he shrugged off his friar’s garb, to reveal him naked except for a loincloth. His head was shaved and his body resembled a greyhound’s, arched and dangerously lean, and devoid of fat. His veiny hands were enormous, with knuckles the size of halfpennies.
Eustace stepped back, and the outlaws, thirty men in all, formed a ring around the Knuckler and Nicholas, who was given a shove in the back to propel him towards the semi-naked man.
“You two will exchange buffets until one can no longer stand,” said Eustace. This was greeted by a few derisive cheers, since there was no doubt as to who the loser would be. “You may begin.”
Nicholas gamely put up his fists, and had hardly done so before the first swift bone-cracking punch landed in his stomach. His cousin watched the massacre unfold for a while, and then turned on his heel and stalked away.
His brother Richard, who wore monkish robes similar to the Knuckler’s, went after him. “Do you not care to witness your own punishments?”
Eustace stopped. “I know what blood and bruises look like. Curse this mead, it has clouded my wits. I forgot to ask Nicholas who attacked him.”
“I can go back and make sure the Knuckler does not hurt him too badly.” Richard smirked. “He will obey me. After all, we are fellow churchmen.”
“Good. Get a description from him, and speak to Anketil as well. Then you, Thomas and Robert will take some men and patrol Watling Street. If you see the bastards we are looking for, bring them to dinner.”
“Dinner, Eustace?”
“Yes,” the outlaw growled, “because I intend to make a meal of them.”