We forged onwards slowly, walking the horses, looking for some sign of Nur and her camp. But we found no trace of her, just a surrounding army of thick grey trunks and shifting walls of green dappled foliage. I knew that this patch of Sherwood Forest, an island of trees surrounded by farmland, was only twenty or thirty acres in size and yet we seemed to have been travelling for an age with no sign of leaving the woodlands – by now we should have ridden clear through these woods and be entering the broad open wheat fields around Alfreton. I began to regret my haste in sallying out after the witch without a guide: if I had paused and found a countryman, a good local man who knew this place like his own hearth, to lead us through this dank wood, we would not now be – I had to admit it – lost.
I looked down at Shaitan’s feet and saw that the path had disappeared completely; we were merely threading our way through uncharted woodland, passing where we might between the trees. I could not see the sun, not even its vague direction; this opaque green world had swallowed it whole. We seemed to be within an enchanted fairy realm, a place of magic and evil. I had a brief moment of panic, a sudden breathlessness, and thumping heart, which I believe I managed to conceal from the men: I knew not where we were, or how we might escape with our lives, indeed with our souls, from that fell place. Eventually, I called a halt.
‘I believe we must have scared her away,’ I said, attempting a brisk, confident tone but producing one that came out dull and eerily muffled by the closeness of the trees. ‘We will not see her this morning, I fear. And perhaps we may never see her again. But the day is drawing on, and I should like to eat my dinner back at Westbury. So we will now return the way we came and rejoin the Great North Road without delay. This way, men, and look lively for I am hungry for my own hearth!’
I turned Shaitan and urged him in the direction from which we had just come; but something was wrong with my senses, for after only a few moments I found myself facing a wall of dense greenery with no clear passage through it. Oddly, we seemed to be surrounded by the wood, as if the trees themselves had moved in around us, hemming us in. I dismounted and ordered my men to do likewise and, drawing Fidelity, I began to hack at the brambles and fronds, and the low swooping branches that blocked our path forward. It was slow going, and sweaty, aching work, and my sword arm was weakened by many months of inactivity, but we did make some progress. I slashed and swiped at the swaying woodland, moving forward only a yard at a time, the thick sap running down the fuller of my blade like the blood of wounded trees. At last, the boughs began to thin, and when I had hacked through a thick patch of head-high green ferns, I found myself – to my surprise – leading Shaitan into bright sunlight and a clearing no more than thirty paces across. My eyes were dazzled at first after so long in the gloom of the forest, and I found that I was standing at the edge of what could only be described as a small village. I was astounded: all around the edge of the clearing a ring of mean hovels had been constructed. There were huts, even tiny cottages of timber and turf, with trickling smoke coming from holes in the bracken-thatched roofs – and people, scores of people, mature women sitting by their doorways cradling babies, young girls tending pots by a fire-pit in the centre of the space, skinny children in tattered clothes running hither and yon, squealing and laughing, playing catch-me-if-you-can in the warm sunlight.
I heard my men and their big horses crashing through the greenery behind me, then Thomas was at my shoulder, his own sword drawn, staring agog at the scene before our eyes. These are the outcasts, I thought, these are the runaways, rejects and outlaws of the kind who had once flocked to Robin for protection. And they are all women.
Apart from their sex, there were other characteristics that united these people: they were all ugly, some spectacularly hideous; deformed, crippled, lacking limbs or digits or ears; leprous, blind or ancient or just drooling mad. Only the babies, wrapped in filthy rags, appeared to be whole. I absorbed all of this in a few heart-beats, and while I was staring in amazement at the hidden village, the women in turn noticed me. A crone at the far side of the clearing, seated by the entrance to a sagging turf hut, gave a gibbering screech, pointed a bony finger at me, and fled into her hovel. The whole village immediately erupted in a chittering, babbling roar, and the placid, happy scene disintegrated into movement. Old women with flapping empty dugs scrambled to scoop up suddenly screaming babies and darted away into the forest; emaciated girls with filth-matted hair wailed and cowered behind the nearest trees. One lumpen woman, broad-shouldered but with an enormous purple goitre swelling from her neck, grasped a thick branch from the wood pile and, growling, took a pace towards us and shook it in our direction in a distinctly threatening manner. Everywhere were women scurrying and rushing; calling out in alarm and anger. The occupants of the sturdier hovels bustled inside and slammed their doors, throwing wooden locking bolts across with a thump.