Previously...
“Jesus!” Allan skids to a stop in front of us, John bundling up behind him. They both wear the same expression – abject fear. Swords they can do, arrows they can do, drowning they cannot.
Abruptly, my heart erupts into life. I have to save these men, my friends. I have to get them safely back to England. And I have to get myself back to England and keep my promise to Marian.
They are all looking to me and I am determined not to let them down. I will never let them down, I think. Robin Hood will never let them down.
Chapter 11
“Much, listen to me. I need you to help me here. I can’t do this thing on my own.”
Much wipes his vomit-flecked chin with the back of his hand, nods.
“Allan?” I say.
Allan shudders, as though he’s just surfaced from one nightmare and stepped into another. I’ve never seen him this frightened before.
“Allan, go and find out about the boats, and find Salim if you can.”
“Right. Yes. Boats. Salim.” He turns full circle, and another, as if he doesn’t know which way to go. John grabs his shoulders and propels him towards the stern.
“John, we’ll need water. The barrels.”
John nods, squares his shoulders and strides away.
“Much, go with John. I’m going to—”
“What, Master? Going to what?”
Not like that.
“Robin!” Much calls, as I push past him and charge towards the hatchway. “Where are you going?”
I’ll be too late, I think. Gisborne is sitting in a locked cage, the cage is in the hold and the hold will be full of water. I doubt that whoever is guarding him, if indeed anyone is, will waste his breath trying to get him out.
As I skid to a halt in front of the steps that lead to the hold, a memory blazes: Gisborne and me in Locksley pond, against the wishes of our families, who were constantly warning the young of the village to keep out of its seemingly innocuous waters. We used the pond irrigate the village’s crops. Various waterfowl inhabited its algae-strewn waters and occasionally you would find someone gazing at it in a moment of quiet contemplation. It was not for youngsters to lark about in, but we all did.
Gisborne and I had had another one of our arguments, over the usual thing: his father going to fight in one of the glorious crusades that I had heard snippets of information about, but of which my father would never divulge. Gisborne had been labelling my father a coward and I’d been defending him, while secretly wondering if Gisborne spoke the truth. It had ended in a challenge, as so many of our arguments did. This time to swim the length of Locksley pond.
As we took off our boots, I glanced across at Gisborne. He was both taller than I was and, at three and ten, three summers older, but I knew I was the better swimmer. I’d seen him in the river that ran the outskirts of Sherwood, all arms and legs and thrashing about.
“Frightened, Locksley?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
“So, how do we—?”
“On the count of three,” he said.
“And first one across wins?”
He nodded. “Agreed. Ready?”
“Ready.”
We both jumped after one.
Some village kids were watching us from the bank. As we hit the water, I heard several shouts go up; some were warnings, others were cheers. Little Robert was there. He was the son of our scullery maid, Magda. He hated Gisborne, said his scowls frightened him. I could hear him calling my name, urging me on.
It was hard going. The pond always appeared much smaller when you were standing on the bank, and I’d not swum in all my clothes before. I flicked a glance at Gisborne. We were neck and neck. There were further shouts from the bank: grownups, my father among them. I did my best to ignore them. I had to beat Gisborne.
We both reached the centre of the pond at the same time. Briefly, I panicked, thinking that if Gisborne tired and sank under the water it would be impossible for me to save him, being so much smaller than he was, but I saw he was still going strong. In fact, he was doing better than me and had begun to forge ahead. I immediately kicked off in earnest.
My water-clogged eyes flicked to the thick stand of reeds that bordered the edge of the pond. I fleetingly wondered how easy it would be to get through them and whether Gisborne and I would end up in a snarl of leaves and roots and both end up having the village men drag us out, with neither of us being able to claim victory. Then I heard a high-pitched squeal. Something was wrong. I needed to see, so I paused and trod water, cursing the fact that I would now almost certainly lose to Gisborne.
The watching children had become silent, but the grownups were still shouting, including Gisborne’s mother. I could hear her shrill French rising above the rest of the adult voices.
I kicked off again, frightened that if I trod water for much longer I might become too tired to make it to safety. I was also frightened about what would happen to me once I emerged from the pond. My father would ban me from playing in the forest, stop me from riding and, God forbid, deny me my bow.
I was surprised, therefore, to find not my father’s strong arms hauling me from the water, but those of the local bailiff. As I choked and spluttered, shivering and feeling none too clever, I still hoped I had beaten Gisborne.
Then I saw him, pushing his mother away and snarling at a couple of younger kids who were jeering at him.
Someone let out a piercing cry and my father emerged from the reeds with a child in his arms: Little Robert had fallen into the pond.
As the bailiff let go of me, I was torn between the desire to run and the desire to find out how Robert was. My curiosity won out, and I crawled across the soggy grass near to where my father had laid Robert on the bank. For a moment, the body of onlookers obscured my view of them both, until the bailiff shouted at them to stand back. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My father should be punishing me but, instead, he was hitting Little Robert.
“No, Father!” I flung myself at him and grabbed him round the neck. The surprise of my landing on my father’s back threw him off his haunches and he fell backwards, nearly crushing me. I fully expected him to turn around and lash out at me and I braced myself. But it didn’t happen. Instead, a wet and angry Gisborne grabbed hold of me.
“You idiot!” he yelled, pinning me to the ground.
“But he’s hurting him,” I cried, trying to squirm out from under Gisborne’s lean weight.
And then I saw my father stop bashing Robert on the chest and bend over, putting his mouth to Robert’s own small one. I didn’t understand, but Gisborne did.
“He’s saving his life, Locksley, which is more than he’ll do for you when this is over.”
And although I didn’t understand, I found myself trusting Gisborne’s words and I stopped wriggling and turned to watch my father.
Magda was on her knees, crumpling her skirts and crying. Robert gave a strangled gurgle and my father rolled him onto his side. Both pond water and sick gushed out of his little mouth.
An audible exclamation went up from the gathered crowd and my father sat back, wiping his face.
I started to crawl away.
“Robin,” my father growled.
I ran.
~
I lost more than a race that day.
Realising I had to do the decent thing, I made my wet and miserable way back to the house to await my father. I had a long wait, and by the time he had dragged himself indoors I think some of the fire had gone out of him.
“Robert will be fine,” he said. He tugged off his boots and began peeling off his wet clothes.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
My father said no more until he was fully clothed. Then he came and stood over me. “Robin?”
“Yes, Father?” I made myself look up at his stern face.
“That was a very foolish thing you did today and after you have been repeatedly told not to play in the pond.”
“But, Guy—”
“I do not want to hear about Guy. At least he had the sense to know how to help young Robert.”
I squirmed in my seat.
“You will be punished.”
“Yes, Father.”
“And you will go to Robert’s mother with your apology.”
“Yes, Father.”
My father pulled off the belt he’d only just threaded through his breeches. I expected no less and held out my hands. To my consternation, my father hauled me to my feet. “I think,” he said, giving my breeches a tug.
“Yes, Father.” I turned around, pulled down my breeches and bent over.
He’d threatened this punishment before for various misdemeanours, but had never actually resorted to it. And even as I stood there, shivering with cold and more than a little fear, I thought he might not go through with it.
“How old are you, Robin?”
“Ten summers, Father.”
The belt made a whoosh as my father swung it back. Ten whooshes in all. Each a little harder than the last, each hurting like hell. But the lashings were nothing compared to the shame I felt; shame for disobeying my father’s rules yet again, and shame when I realised that if Guy had not pulled me away when he did, I might have wasted precious moments while my father was trying to save the life of Little Robert.
~
My punishment was nothing less than I deserved – ten lashings, no riding for a month and no playing in the forest until I had completed a list of tedious and non-essential tasks around the estate.
I did not go down to supper that night and my father did not call me. I’m not even sure if there was any supper and I could not have sat comfortably in any event.
I wondered if my father would come to my room to give me a further tongue-lashing. He did not. It seemed he and his belt had said all there was to say.
Stretching out on my bed, I stared at the dark knothole in the wooden bedpost. And I remained that way until I heard the creak of the stairs and the soft click as my father shut his bedroom door.
I half thought about escaping my room using the trellis and house supports as handholds, as I had done on many occasions, of running to the top of the hill above Locksley and sitting in the hollow where my mother slept her eternal sleep. But not tonight. Tonight I had a feeling that this might be one occasion where she agreed with my father.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Then I remembered my prayers. I quickly rattled them off and endured another burst of shame for not being more fervent about them, another reason why my mother might scorn me this day. Then, troubled and exhausted, I climbed into bed.
I couldn’t sleep. I was hungry, ravenously so. I tried all my usual tricks: counting, word games, reciting French, but nothing worked. I needed something to eat.
Judging my father asleep, I tiptoed to the bedroom door. I opened it slowly, trying to avoid its usual squeak.
In the semi-darkness, I could not see what I had trodden on, but I managed to suppress a cry as something sharp dug into my bare foot. I bent down to examine the offending item, and my hunger, all my longings in fact, instantly disappeared when I saw what it was that I had stepped upon.
It had been a work of art, made by Little Robert’s father shortly before he’d died of the pox. A waste of time my father had said, but then was secretly proud of me when he saw how good I was with it.
With trembling fingers, I carefully picked up the shattered pieces of yew that had once been a slender but amazingly strong bow. The bowstring fluttered uselessly from the splintered wood. Even my arrows were snapped in half.
Clutching the pieces to my chest, I backed into my room and shut the door with my bare and bleeding foot. I placed the ruined bow on my bed and relit the bedside candle in order to see what could be done, but on examining the pieces, I knew it could not be salvaged.
My bow. It set me apart from the other village boys. It gave me power over Gisborne, whose height and dark scowls had most of Locksley’s youth following him out of fear, or awe, or a mixture of both.
My bow. It made me feel good about myself and filled me with a sense of purpose and pride. Now it was in pieces. I dropped the broken weapon onto the bed, threw myself on top of it and cried until I could cry no more.
I hated my father.
~
And I hate you, Gisborne. I hate you for being trapped in a cage in a hold that will soon be full of water, if it isn’t already; and I hate the fact that I’m fool enough to try to save you.
“Gisborne!” Unbuckling my quiver, I drop it on the deck, my bow too; they will be of no use to me now. I yank off my boots, throw them aside. There’s no time to strip further.
The hold is gloomy, the only light that pouring through the open hatchway, but it is enough to see that the waters are rising rapidly.
“Gisborne!” I yell again, guiltily hoping I’m too late and there is no other course for me to take but to try to make my escape with the others.
“Locksley?”
Damn the man.
I dive from the top step. Hitting the icy seawater, I gasp and then swim the few strokes necessary to reach Gisborne’s prison. Gisborne is upright, his hands gripping the bars, his stockinged feet bent around them. Somehow, he’d managed to pull himself to the roof of the cage. The water is up to his chin and he has only inches of breathing space left.
“You came for me,” he rasps.
Taking a deep breath, I dive under the water.
I manage to locate the cage door by feel alone, but quickly realise it’s hopeless. Without a key, there is no way of opening it. I give the door a few tugs, more by way of convincing myself that at least I had tried. With my lungs close to bursting, I kick back up to the surface.
Gisborne’s face is pressed to the roof of the cage, desperate for a final mouthful of air before the water comes over his head.
“It’s all right,” he says, sounding remarkably calm. “You came.”
“I’m sorry, Gisborne.”
“Don’t be.” He spits water.
“The key?” I ask. “Where’s the key?”
“Forget it. There isn’t time.”
“Answer the question, damn it!”
His long dark hair resembles black seaweed, floating on top of the water.
“I don’t know. The guard usually hangs them on a hook by the steps whenever he leaves me, but it’s too—”
I don’t wait to hear what he’s about to say. I swim towards the submerged steps, arm-over-arm, legs kicking, as I did in Locksley pond.
My thrashing hands hit the wall and I run them over the planking alongside the steps, up and down, floor to hatch. No keys. The boat is creaking and groaning as the merciless water fills its cabins and corridors, the galley and the hold. I have to get out.
Somersaulting under water, I push off from the wall. My toes hit something hard and key-like.
Inwardly cursing, I kick back to the wall. I find the hook this time, farther away from the steps than Gisborne had suggested. Clutching the keys, I surface and swim back to the cage. The water has risen above the cage roof and when I swim down, I see Gisborne, arms out-flung, floating at the top of the cage, his feet still hooked around the bars.
Give it up, Robin, I tell myself as I ease my way down the bars towards the lock. He’s gone. I find the lock and push a key in. It won’t turn. Wrong one. I try a second, but as I’m fumbling with it, thinking it will be the third and final key because that’s how these things work, I drop the whole bunch. If it were possible to scream under water then I’d be raising the roof by now. Gripped by a stubborn madness, I kick towards the bottom of the hold. Finding the keys, I swim back to the lock. If I don’t get it right this time, I will have to give up. I need air.
I ram a key in, praying it’s the right one. The cage door swings open, but I don’t have enough air left to go in and get Gisborne. I kick back to the surface, take a hurried gulp of air and dive under again.
“Don’t die because of Gisborne.”
This is what you’d ask of me, my love, if you were here.
I swim up under Gisborne’s seemingly lifeless body, grab his ankles and pull him down and through the cage door. Surfacing, I manage to flip him over onto his back. I hook my arms under his armpits and kick-swim towards the few steps still showing above the ever-rising seawater.
Draping his inert body on the steps, I place two fingers on his neck, in the soft hollow just beside his windpipe. I can’t feel a pulse, although I’m not certain I would feel it even if he had one; my fingers are numb with cold. I thump him on the chest. “Damn you!” I have wasted precious time trying to rescue a dead man.
Something brushes against my leg. I look down at the seawater swirling about the steps. My bow. It must have slid through the hatchway when the boat started to list.
Another memory blazes.
~
To be honest, I hadn’t known where to start. My upbringing was geared to becoming lord of the manor, ready to step into my father’s shoes. I was required to master the day-to-day running of the estate, to learn good manners and to acquire a head for figures; and, although I also learned the rudiments of crop farming, milling and of shoeing a horse, in order to understand my peasants better, nowhere did it teach me how to make a decent bow. Dan Scarlett was the man for that and my father had forbidden him to make me another one. Therefore, it was with stubborn determination rather than expertise that I sat in the forest some few days after my punishment had ended trying to fashion a new bow.
It took me the better part of a morning. I had exhausted all the swear words I knew and some that I made up. I had lost a fingernail and taken a chunk out of the palm of my hand, the evidence of which was smeared on my breeches. Most of all I had proved that I wasn’t good with wood. But it was a bow, of sorts.
So why didn’t it work? After what felt like my hundredth attempt to hit what would have previously been an easy target for me, I hurled the thing away in a fit of temper and frustration.
Feeling sorry for myself, I slumped against the expansive trunk of a nearby oak. I stared at the useless bow lying atop the leaf litter and pressed my dirty and bloodied hands to my eyes in an effort to staunch the stupid, hot tears that had begun to spill down my face. I didn’t hear the telltale footsteps until the last moment, when he was right upon me.
“Locksley?”
I hugged my knees to my chest, pressing my face into the thick material of my breeches.
“Robin?” Guy lightly touched my shoulder.
“Go away,” I sniffed.
“What?”
I raised my tear-streaked face to look at him. “I said go away!”
For a fleeting moment, I thought I saw the ghost of compassion and the beginnings of a smile on his face, but he quickly rearranged his features into their usual dark demeanour following my brusque rejection of him.
“Up yours, Locksley,” he snarled. He turned on his heel and sped off through the trees.
~
It could only have been because of some crazy notion of hurting my father that I took the stupid bow home. I think I thought I could shame him into getting me another one.
“Robin, you made yourself a new bow,” my father said, sounding neither angry nor pleased.
“It’s a piece of rubbish!” I shouted, flinging it dramatically onto the floor.
“But—”
I didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. I hurtled up the stairs, slammed my bedroom door and rammed home the latch. I threw myself on my bed.
After crying myself to sleep, I awoke sometime close to dawn. My bedcovers were dotted with blood from the cut on my hand.
I don’t know what my father did with my hand-fashioned bow, but, two weeks later, a village boy delivered a new bow to Locksley manor. I had always thought it was my father’s way of saying sorry.
~
You idiot, Robin, I scold myself, thumping Gisborne again. Not in fury this time, but mirroring those images of my father hitting Little Robert by the edge of Locksley pond. I have no idea why I’m doing this when I need to be getting off this sinking boat. Is it because I want him to live, or am I using this as an excuse to physically punish him for killing Marian, even if he may not be able to feel it? Whatever the reason, it isn’t working and the water is still relentlessly rising.
I cease my thumping, remembering how my father opened Little Robert’s mouth and covered it with his own open mouth.
Forgive me, Marian.
“Robin, there’s nothing to forgive.”
I ease Gisborne’s mouth open and lower mine to it. I can’t remember how many times my father breathed his life-giving air into Little Robert’s mouth, I was too frightened at the time, but I know it wasn’t too many times, thank the Lord.
I blow air once, twice, raise my head and shout, “Come on, Gisborne, you bastard.” Nothing. One more time, I think. Just one more time.
It isn’t necessary. Gisborne’s eyelids flicker and his eyes open. Mercifully, he turns his head away from me as he vomits. The boat gives an ominous lurch and I almost lose my purchase on the stairs. My bow is lodged between the wooden steps. I yank it free and tug on Gisborne’s sleeve. “Guy, we have to get out of here, now!”
Amazingly, he manages not only to scrabble up the steps and clamber out the hatchway, but also to scoop up my quiver on the way. When I follow him out onto the sloping deck he hands it to me. Our eyes meet.
“It was you, wasn’t it? You had that bow made for me, not my father.”
Gisborne stares at me in puzzlement. Then his eyes light up at the memory and he nods.
The boat lurches again and I grab hold of a beam. Immediately, a searing pain scorches through my injured arm and I let go. Only Gisborne’s bulk behind me stops me from slipping back into the hold.
“It’s too late,” Gisborne says, his arms about my waist.
“It’s never too late,” I insist. “Now come on.”
Clinging to each other, our stockinged feet slipping on the wet decking, we claw and stumble our way to the upper deck.
The storm had materialised into nothing more than a heavy downpour. But the weather had never been the reason for the boat’s sinking, age and its numerous voyages having finally taken its toll. It could have sunk at any time, even in the silky calm waters of the harbour at Acre.
“You cannot seriously tell me that hunk of junk will get us all the way to France.”
Much, my friend, you were right.
“Where are the others?” Gisborne flicks his long wet hair from his face.
“They went in the rowboats,” I tell him. “At least, I hope they did.”
“Then we’ve had it.”
“No, they’ll wait for us.”
“For you, you mean.”
The boat gives another sickening lurch and I realise what’s about to happen.
“Keep hold of me,” I shout.
I grab a length of sodden rope from the deck. I have no idea if it will reach, or if my injured arm can take the strain, but there is no obvious alternative. I secure the rope to an arrow and aim it at a rail on the boat’s prow. Gisborne slides his arms around my waist, bracing his back against the main mast’s beam, the one I tried to pepper with arrows.
I draw back the bowstring and make some fool noise as another shooting pain rips through my injured arm. I drop the arrow.
“Here,” Gisborne says, picking it up. “Let me.”
“No.” I snatch the arrow out his hand. “I can do this.”
“Always you have to be the hero.”
Not now, Marian.
I nock the arrow, take aim and loose. The iron-tipped shaft embeds itself into the rail.
“Wait here,” I say, looping my bow over my head.
The boat tips at a crazy angle and begins to slide into the sea.
Ignoring Gisborne’s cries to leave him and get the hell off the boat, I inch along the slippery rope, praying it will hold. The arrow dislodges before I’m anywhere near the rope’s end, but I’m far enough along to find a few final handholds and scrabble to the boat’s rail. I watch in fascinated horror as barrels and boxes slide past me. It’s a miracle none of them smashes into Gisborne and sends him crashing to a watery grave. But there he is, still wedged up against the mast, moments away from being swallowed up by the encroaching sea.
I knot the rope onto the rail and wave at him. “Come on, Gisborne. Climb!” He doesn’t move, either because he thinks it’s impossible, or because he’s terrified. I shout again. “Guy, first one to the boats wins.” I have no idea if the rowboats are within striking distance, or whether either of us can swim well enough to reach them: this is not Locksley pond.
Whether it’s me calling him Guy, or the fact I’ve just issued a challenge, Gisborne hauls himself along the rope. I offer him my good arm as he reaches the top.
“You ready?” I point at the choppy sea.
Gisborne nods. He turns to face me and gives me a lopsided grin. “Frightened, Locksley?”
I grin back. “No. You?”
“No. On the count of three?” he says.
“Agreed.”
We count one, and jump.