The Death of Robin Hood Read Free

Alert Lord Fitzwalter – tell him … tell him that the bridge is under attack by several hundred of the King’s men and that we will hold as long as we can. But it cannot be for long. Tell him to come with all speed.’
    ‘But I want to fight. If you send me away, I’ll miss everything—’
    ‘For once, Miles, just do as you are bloody well told!’ My lord did not raise his voice above a murmur but there was a whip-crack in his tone that sent his younger son scurrying for the wooden stair.
    ‘Now, Alan, let’s see about discouraging these Flemish fellows, shall we?’

Chapter Two
    Ifear, my dear Prior, that I have begun my tale in the wrong place. My mind is not what it was, I am old and I become easily confused these days, and my tales of blood and glory stray from their proper paths. I crave your indulgence for I must tell you of what occurred some weeks before the battle at Rochester Castle, else it will make no sense to you or to anyone who might read of my deeds and those of my comrades in the years to come.
    As you well know, my dear Anthony, I have spent many hours in the past few days studying the Bible, and I find much comfort there. Robin would have scoffed at my new-found piety in the face of death but it is not salvation I seek – that I leave in the hands of a merciful God – but wisdom. There is much to be found in the holy book. I am reading Ecclesiastes and that wise old man wrote, if I have managed to untangle the Latin correctly, that there is a time for everything, a season for every activity under Heaven; there is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot; a time to kill and a time to heal …
    I was healing that August of the year of Our Lord twelve hundred and fifteen, a little slowly but surely, from a painful wound to the waist Ihad taken in a short, bloody fight on the walls of London that June. England, too, it seemed, was slowly healing after the struggle between the rebellious barons and the King. After Runnymede, I had dared to hope that all would be well in the kingdom for the rest of my life. That peace would reign in the land and folk would be left to sow and reap, to live, love and raise children.
    A vain hope, it must now appear, but honestly held.
    It was also the time to uproot, or at least to cut the barley, rye, oats and wheat that had grown tall and bright in the fields around and about my manor of Westbury in Nottinghamshire. That summer was a blazing, golden joy, long days of sunshine with only the occasional growling of a distant thunderstorm to remind us that the Heavenly Kingdom was not, in truth, at hand. All the menfolk of Westbury – my tenants from the village, the manor servants and the few freemen, old soldiers for the most part – were in their strips of field, backs bent and sickles in hand, as they lopped the nodding heads of grain from the stalks before the women following gathered them in bundles and stacked them to dry. All the local children came behind their parents, collecting the kernels of grain that spilled from the flashing blades and tucking them safely in their pouches before the wheeling flocks of birds could settle and gorge. The little ones made a game of their labours as often as not, chasing each other and shrieking with mirth. It would be a bountiful harvest, all were agreed, and if the weather continued to favour us there would be no fear of hunger or hardship till the following spring at least.
    I confess I was not labouring in the fields with the other men. I was nursing my wound by drowsing in the strong afternoon sunshine, slumped on a comfortable bench outside my hall in the courtyard of Westbury, a jug of ale at my elbow, my belly full of venison stew and a blissful contentment suffusing my frame, when I heard the trumpet sound. I jerked upright fully awake – for while Englandmight appear to be at peace, I still kept a pair of sentries day and night on the roof of the squat stone tower in the