Warlord(57)

King Richard’s words rang like a church bell in my head: It was at your master Robert of Locksley’s suggestion that I had the man hanged. If Robin had not bent my ear, that rascal Murdac might even be alive today. I might well have pardoned him.

Robin was well aware of our sovereign’s vast appetite for forgiveness – he had been pardoned himself by the King when he had had the sentence of outlawry lifted five years earlier. Did Robin fear that if Sir Ralph Murdac was not hanged he would ultimately go free? Was that why Robin urged the King to execute his enemy Ralph Murdac? Or was there some deeper reason? Did Robin secretly wish to prevent Murdac from revealing any more information to me about this ‘man you cannot refuse’ – because he himself was that very man?

I pondered what I knew about Robin’s history. Ten years ago, when my father had been ripped from this world, Robin had already been a powerful man; living outside the law, to be sure, but a much-feared warrior with a ruthless reputation for killing and mutilating anyone who stood in his way. He was then known as the Lord of Sherwood, and he held absolute if unofficial sway over a hundred thousand acres of England, from Nottingham to South Yorkshire. But Murdac had been his hated foe. Or had he? I remembered Robin telling me a few years previously that he had once had the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire in his grasp in those days and had demanded a ransom for his life – one that Murdac had subsequently failed to pay. However, Robin had said that for a year or more after that incident, Murdac had acknowledged Robin’s authority over Sherwood, despite his outlaw condition, and had left him and his men in peace to run their larcenous affairs as they saw fit. During this unspoken truce between the two most powerful men in central England, could Robin have asked Murdac for a favour or a boon? Could the outlaw have asked the sheriff to have one insignificant peasant summarily hanged? It was possible – Robin would not shy away from ordering a man’s death, if it served his purposes. And Murdac had been the sort of creature who would have a man hanged in an eye-blink purely for his own vicious amusement. I cringed in the saddle: I knew that it was entirely possible that Robin was the ‘man you cannot refuse’. There was nothing in my master’s character – and I knew him well – that would disavow this supposition. But was it probable?

Why? I asked myself. Why would Robin seek my father’s death? They had known each other, Robin had admitted that when he and I had first met, and they had liked each other, or so he said. What could have happened between them to cause Robin to resort to making a deadly agreement with his enemy Murdac? I had no answers for that – or for the many other questions tumbling around in my head.

There was, indeed, something to my mind that seemed to strongly indicate Robin’s guilt: ever since I had told my lord that I wanted to track down my father’s killer, he had tried to discourage me from the task. He had told me on at least three occasions to let the matter lie, insisting that no good would come of my investigations. Was he protecting himself? Was he trying to prevent me from discovering that it was his secret hand that had caused my father’s death? And there was one more thing: Robin had been present in the castle when Father Jean had been murdered at Verneuil; he was at Loches when Brother Dominic was killed; and he had been missing from the army on a private ‘scouting mission’ when Cardinal Heribert had been stabbed in his chair. Could my lord have accomplished these murders? Certainly, he was capable of them. Had he committed them? Was he even now trying to accomplish my death?

These questions chased themselves in weary circles for the next seven days, as Hanno, Thomas and myself made our way in easy stages, careful to spare Shaitan’s costly legs, on the main roads west to Le Mans and then north, through Alençon and Bernay, to Rouen. The weather was mild and cloudy but with only one rain shower during the entire journey, and we slept rough in hayricks, woods and remote barns, eschewing the company of other travellers. I was very aware that I had the best part of five pounds in silver in a broad leather money belt around my waist, the proceeds of Robin’s milking of the Tourangeaux, and now that we were away from the army, I had no small fear of meeting a well-armed gang of footpads. Large organized gangs of such lawless men infested many of the wilder regions of France, robbing and murdering unwary travellers, just as they did in parts of England. Some of these bandits were routiers who had grown bored with army life; others were peasants forced into outlawry by bad harvests, the ravages of war or by their own cruel lords. Some were simply evil men.

I did not want to meet any of them.