The Death of Robin Hood Read Free Page A

courtyard, which was the manor’s highest point and its last refuge in war, and their duty it was to warn of the approach of strangers.
    Standing, straightening my clothing, brushing at a patch of drool on my tunic and vaguely looking around for my sword – it was hanging on the wall in my bedchamber, I remembered – I heard the sentry call down to me from the tower.
    ‘A woman, sir, all alone. No horse, nor baggage. Looks like a beggarly type wanting a free meal.’
    My elderly steward Baldwin, who with his unmarried sister Alice ran the daily business of the manor, was by my shoulder. He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Sir Alan?’ he said.
    ‘Let her in, Baldwin,’ I said, still filled with a glowing benevolence for the world. ‘If she needs a meal, give her a good one and whatever scraps of meat and bread we can spare for her journeying and then send her on her way.’
    ‘As you say, sir.’
    ‘I’m going to my solar to take a little n— That is to say, I shall retire to my chamber for a while to study my scrolls.’
    I left the glare of the sunshine and pushed past Baldwin into the gloom of the hall. I gave no more thought to the beggar woman, for as I entered my solar at the far end and lay down on the big, comfortable bed, I fell into a deep and delightful sleep.
    I awoke in the pinkish twilight of the long summer evening, refreshed and still brimming with contentment, and lay for a while listening to the sounds of the servants clattering plates in the hall, no doubt preparing the evening meal. I could hear the voice of my fifteen-year-old son Robert but I could not quite make out his words over the noise of the hall servants. He seemed animated, though, unusually cheerful, and I wondered who he was talking to. And then I heard
her
voice.
    I sat up abruptly and an icy chill puckered the skin of my forearms. Iwas out the door of the solar in an instant – and there she was. Seated at the big hall table a few feet from Robert, elbows on the board, deep in conversation.
    ‘Get away from her!’ I bawled, running towards my son and the beggar woman. They both started to their feet, shocked.
    ‘Robert, get away from that woman right now.’
    ‘Why, Father, we were—’
    ‘Get away. Come and stand behind me.’
    My heart was racing, I could feel my face and neck hot with surging blood. I curled a protective arm around Robert. ‘Did she feed you anything? Robert – did she give you anything to eat or drink?’
    ‘Father, you are behaving in a very—’
    ‘Answer me. Did she give you anything to eat or touch your skin?’
    ‘Father …’ My son looked into my face and saw that I was in deadly earnest. ‘She gave me nothing. She did not touch me. We were waiting for you to wake before we ate. She will take supper with us tonight.’
    ‘She will not,’ I said. My right hand was groping wildly across my waist for my sword hilt but, of course, the blade was still hanging on the wall in the bedchamber. I looked at the woman, now smiling crookedly at me from the other side of the table.
    ‘Sir Alan,’ said Matilda Giffard in her wood-smoke-deepened voice, ‘what a joy it is to set eyes on you again.’
    ‘I cannot say the same,’ I said coldly.
    I looked at her. Matilda Giffard, Tilda, as she was to me … a woman I had once – no, twice – thought I was in love with but who had proved herself as treacherous and cunning as a starving rat.
    She had once been a great beauty – a woman to stop a man’s heart – but on this day, although her looks had not entirely deserted her, she cut a poor figure: she was thin as a twig and dressed in a raggedy black nun’s robe, greyed by the dust of the road. Her once swan-whiteface was decidedly grubby, she had the remains of a black eye, now faded to streaks of brown and yellow, and the lines on her brow beneath her midnight black hair and around her grey-blue eyes were cut deeper than I remembered.
    ‘My dear, you have nothing to fear from me, I swear it,’ said