Treasure of Sherwood

Prologue

The white-bearded man walked through the old oak trees into a clearing in the forest. He took a handkerchief from the sleeve of his tunic and wiped his brow, which was wet with perspiration after his long hike. The sun to his left, which had kept him unseasonably warm all through his walk, was beginning to sink below the horizon. Breathing heavily, he continued up the gentle slope to its highest point.

This hillock was about twenty-five feet across and raised ten feet or so above the surrounding forest floor, so that it could not even be seen from any distance because of the thick trees blocking the view. But the old man knew that at one time this spot had been a meeting place for representatives from all the neighboring farms and villages. That had been in pagan times, though. In fact, some believed that this was an old heathen burial mound from many centuries earlier. Well, he thought, if there are pagan spirits lurking in these woods, they would no longer congregate here after he had done what he had come to do.

The old man was accoutered like a knight, dressed in a well-worn habergeon of rusty chainmail, over which he wore a green surcoat with a brown lion rampant, the blazon of his house. A short arming sword hung from a sash around his waist, and he bore on his back a sturdy shovel and a pick. In addition to all of that, he carried a deerskin bag within which was a box he highly prized.

At one corner of the clearing a small boundary stone marked with a “W” poked out from the ground. The old crusader knelt by the stone and laid his shovel down, the end of the handle pointing due west to where the sun was setting. He used the spade’s handle to make a line running west to east, then took his sword and placed it precisely vertical to the shovel, the two instruments intersecting at the stone. Then he marked a spot on his right-hand side that he judged was precisely midway between the horizontal and vertical lines, and began a line in the sand, moving his sword now to lay it at a precise forty-five-degree angle, directly northeast of the stone. He carried this line out two sword lengths, which was exactly six feet. At that point he began to dig.

As he dug, he told himself he was glad the light was fading. It lessened the possibility that anyone would see him by chance digging in this mound. He also planned how he would record all of these steps in Latin on a map he would draw—he’d had a good deal of experience reading battlefield maps in the Holy Land, and was skilled in their use. And he planned how once his eldest son was old enough, he would share the secret with the lad, so that his family could depend on the treasure held within this box in coming years. It was, he thought, the future of his house.

Precisely three feet deep, he placed the box, tenderly as if it were a child. He filled in the hole by moonlight, and packed the earth down with his feet, finally drawing a branch across the whole area to disguise the fact that someone had been digging there recently. Then he gathered up his tools, heaved a sigh of relief, and started to make his way back through the oaks, to the tree where he had left his horse. He had wanted no horse tracks left where some tracker of the forest might follow them to his hiding place. He smiled as he made his way slowly back through the dark forest. He had insured his family’s security, he was now confident, for generations to come.

Chapter One

The mighty gyrfalcon was barely a speck in the sky as the small wedge of barnacle geese flew beneath it. When she judged the time was right, the great bird of prey tucked in her great wings and began a powerful drive aimed unerringly at the small, weak goose that trailed the others. The falcon struck hard, tearing the weaker goose with her powerful talons and curved beak while yet in full flight. Still clutching her prey in those formidable talons, the meticulously trained bird slowed, dropped the goose to the ground, and landed gracefully on the thick leather glove that protected the fist of Lord William Randal.

Lord Randal, astride the chestnut palfrey he saved for hunting, smiled at the great bird and spoke lovingly to her as he stroked her head with his other gloved hand. “That’s my pretty one! Best hunter in the mews, aren’t you my great Xenobia? Isn’t she, Dap?” This last he said as he leaned down to allow his falconer to take the gyrfalcon from him and to place the leather hood over her eyes, tying her then to the leash or creance and placing her in her cadge, the padded wooden frame she was carried in. She was a beautiful bird, with snow-white feathers. Powerfully built, she weighed nearly five pounds and had a wingspread of close to five feet. Lord Randal had paid dearly for her when she was brought from Iceland a few years earlier, and was justly proud of her.

“Best hunter in the whole shire, m’lord, by my reckoning,” Dap answered gruffly, the early morning damp graveling his voice. “But let’s see if this here new little runt can hold a candle to her, or if we should chop him up and feed him to Xenobia for dinner!” Despite his dry humor, Dap’s sun-browned features, sharp and expressionless as if carved from stone, betrayed no flicker of amusement as he removed the hood from his master’s newly acquired peregrine.

This new bird was a good deal smaller that the great gyrfalcon, at about two pounds, and his blue-grey wings spanned perhaps three feet, but as Lord Randal held out a small shred of meat to entice the shy young peregrine onto his gloved fist, he said, “Just wait, Dap. You’re going to be astounded when you see how fast this new fellow can fly. I’ve seen peregrines strike so fast, a young duck in flight never knew what hit him. I think I’ll name him Mercury, what do you think?” He stroked the nervous bird gently with his free hand and called over to his other servant, the dog boy, who stood at the edge of the clearing holding Troilus and Cresseid, Randal’s two greyhounds, by the leash. “What do you think, Wulf, ever seen a peregrine falcon in flight?” Wulf, a thin slouching lad of nineteen or so, with a long hanging face and ears and nose, had been gazing at the ground as if looking for something, and surprised out of his reverie by his master’s question, looked up and shook his head indifferently. Like his older fellow Dap, he was dressed in a simple brown tunic with a green hood, that being the livery of Lord Randal’s house. But he filled it out far less well than the stocky, muscular Dap.

“Well,” Randal told both of them as he scanned the sky from the back of his horse. “Let another wedge of geese fly by and I’ll loose him, and then you’re going to see something awe-inspiring, let me tell you!” The nobleman shook his wavy brown locks out of his face as he gazed upwards, shading his dark eyes with his gauntleted right hand as he held the peregrine on his left, and his smile revealed a full set of teeth still white enough after twenty three years’ regular use.

Perhaps it was because he and both his servants were carefully scanning the sky that they did not notice the half-dozen men in Lincoln green garb silently emerging from the trees that surrounded the clearing, moving cautiously forward with arrows notched in their longbows and the bows held at the ready. What those men saw were two unarmed servants, one with a pair of dogs and the other with a cadge for hunting birds, and their two palfreys tied to a tree, and an imposing young nobleman mounted and dressed in a fine brocade surcoat embroidered with flowers, and dark blue cloak and hood of fine woolen tiretaine. Hanging from his leather belt, this young fellow did have a short sword, but more importantly he also had a fat purse dangling there, and that is what had drawn the intense interest of the men in green.

“Now now, go quite easy there,” a good-humored nasal voice suddenly startled the three men in the clearing. “Move slow, or one of my boys might get excited and send an arrow in yer direction, and I’d hate to ruin that lovely embroidery on yer surcoat, m’lord. Must ’ave took some poor girl weeks o’ work makin’ it. I’d hate to have her work go to naught. Now get that bird calmed down and put away first, slow and careful now.”

The peregrine was squawking and fluttering his wings nervously, spooked when Randal had started at the sudden interruption. Fortunately, he was still on his leather leash, or Lord Randal would have lost his latest acquisition. He lowered the bird slowly to Dap’s hands, and the careful falconer replaced the bird’s hood and gently placed him back in the cadge.

The speaker, whom Randal assumed must be the leader of the group, was clad in green with a brown hood that lay across his back so that his wild brown hair hung free. He had a wide friendly looking smile that revealed perhaps half of his original teeth. The pug nose was sprinkled with freckles and the brown eyes twinkled with mischievous—though not, Randal judged, with evil—intent.

Lord Randal spread his hands in a calming gesture and addressed the speaker in what he thought was a conciliatory tone. “Be calm yourself young man. You are royal foresters of Sherwood, I am assuming? Well, I think you will want to stand down when you hear who I am. I am called Lord Randal of Halloughton, because I have a great manor house there, two miles from Southwell. I am not poaching here—I’ll have you know I have written authorization signed by the king himself to hunt in his royal forest. I appreciate your doing your duty, but you need not threaten me with arrest. My hunting here has royal sanction.” With that last word Lord Randal’s right hand moved unconsciously toward the hilt of his sword.

“Na, na, na, none of that my lord,” the speaker cautioned. “Put that hand in the air, won’t you? Skipper, slip over there and take that sword out of our new friend’s scabbard will you?” At that, one of the others put down his bow—he had seemed ill at ease with the weapon anyway, Randal had noted—and stepped to the horse, relieving Randal of his sword. This fellow was a strange looking woodsman, with long blond hair braided down his back, and a battle axe stuck into his belt: a weapon, Randal had no difficulty imagining, with which the muscular blond was probably far more comfortable than his bow.

With Lord William now unarmed, the group’s spokesman let his own bow dip and his arms relax. “Now as to arresting you, we’ve no such intention. You mistake us, my lord. We don’t care about yer poaching. We do enough of that ourselves. We’re certainly no royal foresters. Let me introduce myself: they call me Much, the miller’s son. And frankly, my lord, we’re not impressed wi’ yer king’s permit. I mean, who’s the king these days anyway? Nobody around here has seen such a person. Fact is, it’s our captain who happens to be Master of Sherwood Forest. And he doesn’t want us to arrest you. He wants us to invite you to dinner.” And with that Much gave the nobleman a gap-toothed grin.

Lord Randal found Much’s grin almost irresistible, and couldn’t help grinning back. With a confident nod to his two servants, he replied, “Well then, Much the miller’s son, lead us on! I’ve a notion I’d like to meet this captain of yours! And to repay his courtesy, we’ve got two fat geese and a couple of nice rabbits my hounds tracked down in the game bag Wulf is holding over there. I’d like to contribute those, and the one my gyrfalcon has just killed, to pay for my share of the dinner.”

“Well…,” Much’s grin grew broader as he looked down at the earth and rubbed the back of his neck, and his five companions stifled their laughter. “Yer share might end up costing you a bit more than that. And by the by, we’re going to have to bring you hooded like yer hawks there, since we can’t let anybody see how to get to our camp, ya see. So if yer two men will mount their horses, my friend John here will supply the masks.”

Intrigued but not alarmed by the woodsman’s curious words, Randal nodded to his men, and Dap, carrying the cadge, mounted his grey palfrey. Wulf first picked up the newly slain goose and bagged it before mounting his own dark brown rouncy. John the cook’s son handed a black hood to each of them and made sure they drew it over their faces, and Much took the reins of Lord Randal’s horse to lead the whole party through the woods. “Just a reminder, my lord,” Much whispered confidentially. “I wouldn’t try to sneak a peek from under that hood. Or try to break away with yer horse. My men have still got their bows. And trust me, they’re crack shots.”

***

After an hour or so of tramping through the woods, listening to the clomps of the horse hooves on the forest floor and the songs of those birds that still remained in Sherwood in early October, along with the occasional remarks the outlaws made quietly to one another, Lord Randal was thoroughly confused. He had tried to remember which direction his horse had been turned, and to guess how far it was between turns, but after the first quarter hour he was so completely turned around, what with Much’s constant changes of direction and retracing of steps, that he gave up any thought of remembering how he had come.

At length Lord Randal began to hear voices, many jolly voices that seemed bantering with one another as a group of people went about their mid-day tasks, and he smelled the smoke of a good sized campfire, and felt full sunlight on his face, suggesting they had come out of the deep woods. Then he felt a tug at his belt and realized some hand had reached up and snatched his purse away. That annoyed him somewhat, and he recalled what Much had said about his paying for his meal. But immediately thereafter someone yanked the hood from his head and, blinking a bit in the sun, he looked around at a boisterous encampment, with at least fifteen more Lincoln-clad foresters, some bustling, some lounging, within a wide clearing around the largest oak tree Randal had ever seen.

Now a group of half a dozen outlaws came forward to meet the new arrivals. They were led by a suntanned mountain of a man who gave Lord Willian quite a start. The man was at least six and a half feet tall, with broad shoulders and bulging biceps and a bulk that must have weighed a good twenty stone. He approached Randal with his right hand extended, and the lord was struck by the giant’s sharp blue eyes, his ruggedly handsome face, his blond hair and well-trimmed beard.

“Welcome, my lord,” the fellow said, taking Randal’s hand and helping him from his horse. “I see our friend Much had invited you to dine. I’m John Naylor, though folk hereabout call me ‘Little John,’ obviously because of my puny size. And you are?”

At the name “Little John,” Lord Randal’s eyes grew large. Of course, waylaid in Sherwood these days? Who else could it be but that band of outlaws known to be led by Little John and the notorious Robin Hood. He let out an inarticulate “Ah!” and shook his head as if to shake the cobwebs from the corners of his brain. “So this is the camp of the infamous Robin Hood, is it? Despoiler of the king’s deer? The thief that terrorizes all the folk who enter Sherwood?”

“Well, not all the folk,” Little John corrected him. “Just the rich ones. They’re the ones need terrorizing.”

“Well now, that’s putting it a bit crudely John, don’t you think?” A freckled, handsome youth at John’s side interrupted. “My lord, what my friend means to say is that it is only rich nobles or prelates that we invite to dinner, and we do ask of them a small contribution to help pay for their entertainment. To the common folk we do no harm. In fact, we often share our pickings with the poor folk of the forest—talk to any of them and you’ll hear us spoken of more fairly.”

“Oh, our guest is quite ready to contribute to the feast,” Much said. “In fact, if you take the game bag from that scrawny slouching brute on the brown horse, you’ll find a brace of geese and rabbits he’s pledged to give us.”

“Is that so?” Little John said. “Scarlet, why don’t you grab that bag and take it to Ellen there at the cooking spit? She’s just about to start the meal, I would think!”

At that one of his other companions, one with laughing blue eyes and a great mane of blond hair that was covered by a bright red hood worn over his Lincoln green tunic, took the bag from Wulf and flashed Lord William a wide smile before dashing toward the cooking fire.

“That’s Will Scarlet,” Little John told the lord. “And this other young scamp you’ve been talking to is my own personal thorn in the flesh, Will Stutely. But you ain’t answered my first question, my lord. Who are you?”

“My apologies, my good man, I was so taken aback by being here at the camp of the Sherwood outlaws I quite forgot my courtesy. But he is one Will” (Randal nodded at Scarlet’s retreating back), “he is another (and with that he nodded at Stutely), “and I must make a third. William Randal is my name, Lord of Halloughton. I hunt in these woods with the king’s sanction. But I am told I’d much better have the consent of Master Robin Hood, de facto Lord of Sherwood.” At that the corner of Randal’s mouth twisted upward slightly to match his mocking tone.

“Who exactly the king is anymore we’re hard put to say here in the north,” Stutely continued in a mock-serious vein. “But we do know that the representative of royal power here in Nottinghamshire—one Sir Guy of Gisbourne—far more resembles the arse end of your horse than he does the arm of a king.”

Lord Randal cocked his head. “Do I detect some bitterness there in your voice young Stutely?”

“I was entertained in Sir Guy’s dungeon for about twenty years one night,” Stutely answered, then pointed to the scar over his left eye. “He left me this to remember him by.”

Randal looked thoughtful a moment and then mused, “Yes, well, Gisbourne—he is one of those who characterized your whole band as thieves and poachers deserving to be hanged.” But then after another brief moment’s thought, he added, “Of course my neighbor, Sir Richard of the Lee, says those claims are nonsense—that you are a generous and kindly crew who exact a toll only on those who can afford to pay it.”

“You know Sir Richard, then?” came a voice from behind. When Randal turned around, he was face to face with another sturdy, well-built yeoman in the Lincoln green livery of the outlaws, standing with hands on his hips and flashing a most mischievous grin. While not so striking as Little John, this fellow had an easy air of confidence and authority about him, from