Outlaw Read Online Free Page B

along the farm tracks until we joined the road that wound north through Sherwood Forest. This great wood of the shire of Nottingham was a royal hunting preserve that stretched for a hundred miles north of our village. It was a huge expanse of territory, at some points being fifty miles wide, containing many villages and hamlets, fields and commons; but most of the land was woodland, home to badgers, rabbits, wolves and wild boar, and, of course, the King’s deer. To hunt King Henry’s deer was a capital offence, punishable by hanging if a man was caught ‘red handed’, stained with the deer’s blood; even to be caught with a hunting dog in the forest could bring you branding or mutilation. And two toes from each of the dog’s front paws would be hacked off to stop it running swiftly again. Not that this constrained Robin’s followers, I soon learnt. If they were captured they were dead men, anyway. But they seemed to take a special pleasure in flouting the forest laws, murdering the King’s foresters and eating as much venison as they wished. It was almost part of the band’s identity. ‘We were Robin’s men; we ate the red deer, and we laughed at the law,’ one grizzled outlaw told me simply, but with immense pride, years later.
    As I walked along on that morning, through the sharp spring sunshine, through the tall alders and kindly beech, and the thick trunks of ancient oak trees, with the feathery fingers of lush green fens caressing my legs, the horrors of the night receded and Tuck, who walked beside me leaning on his staff, began to talk. About nothing at first - just talking as we walked through the peaceful woodland.
    ‘I have met hot men,’ he said. ‘Men who could become angry in an instant; some say they have too much yellow bile in their bodies; too much of the element of fire. These are violent, angry men, who in their passion would strike you dead. Our own King Harry is one; an intemperate fellow. In his rages, he will roll upon the ground, you know; quite literally biting the rushes on the floor. Chewing them. Rush-muncher, his servants call him, when his back is turned, when they think it’s safe to joke about their lord.’
    I stared at him: the King? Who would dare to mock the King? And Tuck went on: ‘And I have met cold men, so-called phlegmatic types, with too much water in their veins. A man who would take a blow to the face from a man who had seduced his wife. And he would say naught, but then have his wife quartered and send the seducer a severed leg tied with her garter ribbons. Oh yes, and smile at dinner with him, drink a toast to the man’s health.
    ‘Both are dangerous, of course, but the worst men are the ones who appear cold, but inside they are hot. They have the raging power of anger but the icy control of a calm man. This cold-hot man, this phlegmatic-choleric man, is the one to fear.’
    ‘And my master,’ I asked. ‘Is he a cold-hot man?’
    Tuck shot me a sideways look. ‘Well done, boy. You’re quick, I see. Yes, Robin is such a man. He’s cold-hot. And when he is very angry, that’s when he is at his coldest. And then God help his enemies, whoever they are, for Robin will have no mercy on them.’
    ‘Is he a good man?’ I asked. Forty-odd years later the question still makes me blush. The monk just laughed. ‘Is he a good man?’ he repeated. ‘Yes, I suppose, he’s a good man. He’s a sinner, of course. We all are. But a good man, too. If you asked me is he a godly man, I’d have to say no. He has his own peculiar notions about God but he has no love, no love at all for Mother Church. Oh, quite the opposite. He mocks it. And takes pleasure in robbing and tormenting its servants.’ Tuck crossed himself. ‘I pray the Lord Jesus will open his eyes to the truth one day.’ Piously, I crossed myself too, but what I was feeling was an intoxicating shock of excitement. Such boldness, to mock God’s representatives on Earth; what contempt for his immortal