Outlaw (15 page)

From under the bed I could see the boots of two men. The door creaked shut. Then a man was kneeling by the foot of the bed. I couldn’t breathe. I thought my lungs would explode with terror. It was Hugh; I could just make out his long, thin shape and, O merciful God, he was facing away from me tugging at something in the floor. Through my naked, shivering fear, I had a cold clear thought: they
hadn’t
moved the hiding place! Hugh pulled out something from the ground - it looked like a small bag. There was a chink of silver as he passed it to the other man. And then he spoke: ‘So it is agreed, then. Tell your master to be careful. Tell him to speak to no one about this. Tell him . . .’ The other man interrupted rudely: ‘He knows this business better than you.’ There was an awkward silence for a few heartbeats, and then the boots moved, the door creaked and they left.

I let out my breath in a long shuddering gasp but lay curled under the bed for a few moments longer, pondering what I had heard. Hugh had been paying one of his spies: that was plain. These shadowy men drifted into Thangbrand’s at all hours of the day and night; they would talk only to Hugh; eat, rest for a few hours and disappear again. But there was something about the exchange that struck me as a little odd. Who was the spy’s master if not Hugh? I could not think and, as I brought my beating heart back under control, I dismissed it from my mind. Then I was out from under the bed and on my knees by the patch of earthen floor where Hugh had found his bag of silver. In the gloom of the bedchamber, it was hard to see anything that looked like a hiding place. My panic started to rise and I wanted desperately to be gone from that room. Frantically sweeping my fingertips over the surface of the floor, I could feel nothing but the hard earth, and then, to my soaring joy, my fingers brushed against a cold, hard circular shape buried in the ground. It was a metal ring, embedded in the earth, and I levered it vertical with my fingernails and pulled.

It was a trapdoor to a tiny cavern of riches. Inside the hiding place was a metal box. I pulled it out of its grave and into an area which was slightly better illuminated by a chink on the thatch. And my mouth fell open. It containing such things as I had never seen before: fat bags of coin, tiny jewelled pins, fine worked silver cups, golden crucifixes encrusted with precious stones, a string of great luminescent pearls and many, many precious stones from emeralds the size of a pea, to that glorious ruby that I had seen Freya holding, a gout of crystallised hearts-blood the size of a sparrow’s egg. My jaw hung slack. It was more wealth than I had known existed in the world, enough wealth to buy an earldom. And, I couldn’t help myself, I slipped the ruby into my pouch, along with a handful of silver pennies that were loose in the bottom of the box. It was madness, pure suicidal madness. I had seen how Freya had gloated over that ruby - there was no way that she would not immediately miss it. The moment she found out, we would all be searched, the ruby would be found and I would be brutally punished, maybe even killed.

I pulled the ruby back out of my pouch and held it in my hand. In the half-dark room it was no more than a cold hard lump in my hand. And then I held it up to one of the tiny beams of light that criss-crossed the darkness, and it leapt into life: its crimson heart ignited, and the stone began to glow with a malevolent beauty. I swear that the jewel began to feel hot in my hands as if one of the thin beams of light had given it life. I knew I could not put it back into Freya’s box. But something stirred in my mind, the germ of a thought, the beginning of a plan, and I shoved the jewel back into my pouch, replaced the box’s top, put the box in its hiding place, lowered the lid, brushed earth over it and crept out back into the harsh winter sunlight and the squealing of doomed swine.

I gave Cat my virginity that afternoon in one of the corn stores, along with a silver penny, of course. It wasn’t what I had expected at all. Cat knelt before me and lifted my tunic and undid the woollen strings which tied my hose to my under-belt. She untied the string on my baggy linen drawers, too, and my undergarments fell to a crumpled heap around my ankles. My prick was as hard as steel, a pearl of dew glistening on the end, and she grasped the shaft and began gently to lick my swinging ball sack, and up and down the taut, engorged flesh of my most private part. I could feel an expanding bubble of heat in my loins, just above my arse, and I knew I would explode soon if I did not get her somehow to stop her delicious ministrations. But, oh Sweet Jesus, it was a heavenly feeling. Ripples of pleasure were running up and down my cock. I could feel muscles deep inside tensing like drawn bowstrings and begged, in broken tones, for pity’s sake, for her to stop. She looked up at me, with a knowing, lust-drenched smile, fully conscious of her power over me, and she then lifted off her chemise and showed me her naked body underneath. She was superb: creamy white skin, startlingly pale in contrast to her brown face, neck and hands; her breasts bobbing like ripe pink fruit, with tantalising, wide rose-coloured nipples, slightly hardened at the tip in the cold air. He waist was narrow, so small I could have enclosed it with my two hands, but her body flared out again to round, curving luscious hips and a little triangular badge of fluff in the centre. She lay back on the straw and opened her legs. I tumbled forward on all fours, hardly able to breathe, and crawled over her, my stiff prick twitching like a dog’s nose when it scents quarry. After a few moments of glorious, slippery fumbling, with her help, I managed to slide my manhood inside her tight hole . . . and almost immediately, in a matter of three heartbeats, I was pulsing out hot jets of my man’s essence. It was glorious, for a moment, but only for a moment. Cat was furious. ‘Not inside me, you fool,’ she said, pushing me roughly off her naked body. The few moments of mindless pleasure I had experienced were wiped away, like a wet sponge cleaning a slate. I felt ashamed of my ineptitude, at the speed of my ejaculation. Cat was cursing me for a stupid boy as she fumbled herself into her chemise and wrapped a cloak over that. ‘If I start growing a baby, and I have to go and see Brigid to get rid of it, you’ll be the one paying the fee,’ she spat at me. I nodded dumbly, just wanting her to be gone. I felt empty, foolish, a boy who had been trying to play the man and who had been caught out; and then there was the guilt. What would Tuck say if he knew that I had been consorting with whores? Cat spat a final volley of insults at me and stalked out of the corn store. So much for the act of love, I thought, as I wiped myself down with a scrap of cloth, pulled up my drawers, re-tied my hose and straightened my tunic. Is this really what Bernard is always extolling with his beautiful songs of illicit love? It seemed absurd.

I told nobody but Bernard, who was delighted and who insisted on drinking a toast to my manhood. He said he would write a song one day about raising a
posse comitatus
to recapture my lost virginity. Cat, it seemed, told everybody about my callow first attempt at the act of love. At the evening meal, Guy set the hall a-roar by taking a mouthful of ale and then swiftly squirting it out on the table as he jested long and loudly about the speed of my ejaculation. Will actually pissed himself laughing - and Guy naturally pretended that he had followed my example of involuntary emission. I should have felt deep hatred towards him. Normally his teasing antics would drive me to near-violent fury. And I did feel anger, at some level, but it was overlaid with sort detached pity for him: as if I were God himself looking down on an unfortunate mortal from a comfortable cloud. I knew exactly how I would serve him very soon. He did not.

It was several days before the theft of the ruby was discovered. The first I heard of it was a thin, high-pitched repetitive screeching, almost like a blast on a whistle, coming from the hall. I was on the practice ground with Will, going through the usual evolutions with sword and shield. We both ran immediately to the hall and the source of the awful noise. It was Freya, of course; she was in her chamber, kneeling on the floor with the contents of the jewel box scattered around her. She had ripped her plump face with her fingernails and blood streamed down her cheeks; now she was tugging at her thin grey hair and pulling it out in great greasy strands. All the time she kept up that appalling squealing, which only paused as she gulped a fresh lungful of air:
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee, ah, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, ah, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. . .

We all stood there staring at her, crowded into the chamber, in a half circle around this soft mound of screaming womanhood, kneeling on the earth floor amid the accumulated loot of a lifetime. She was terrifying, a blood-drenched howling madwoman, immobilising all with the eldritch horror of that awful, awful noise.

Then Thangbrand shouldered his way through the throng and hit his wife a huge open-handed wallop around the face. Freya was hurled across the chamber against the wall and mercifully she stopped howling. She curled herself into a great grey foetal ball and lay there sobbing and shivering while Thangbrand herded the rest of us out of the chamber and into the hall. I caught his livid eye as I left the room, and his gaze projected such an animal ferocity towards me that I involuntarily took a step backwards.

Hugh gathered everyone together in the hall at noon. His thin, tall figure in its black tunic and hose was even more schoolmasterly than usual. He cleared his throat: ‘It seems there is a thief among us,’ he said. Somebody sniggered - about half the men in the hall were on the run from the law for playing fast and loose with other people’s property. ‘Quiet,’ he snapped, his eyes roaming the hall and extinguishing any merriment with their bleak gaze. ‘There is one here who steals from his comrades. We will find him out now and he will be punished. Everyone is to form up in one long line - now, do it now. Form a line with your left hand on the shoulder of the man or woman in front.’

The puzzled outlaws shuffled into a great line, snaking up and down the hall. Then, at Hugh’s command, we all felt in the pouches and pockets of the person in front. ‘You are looking for a jewel, a great and precious jewel,’ said Hugh. I felt totally calm. The man-at-arms behind me ran his hands over my body in a cursory search and rummaged in my waist-pouch. He found nothing, of course. It might have been foolish to steal the ruby but I wasn’t stupid enough to keep it on my person. Nothing was found.

The outlaws, despite Hugh’s severe gaze, refused to take the situation seriously. ‘I reckon you might need to be searched a bit more thoroughly,’ said one broad-shouldered ruffian to Cat. ‘Plenty of places you might have hid that jewel ain’t been properly investigated yet. I’d better take a look.’ Cat waggled her behind and giggled: ‘No extra charge to you, my big beauty!’

Thangbrand, hand clenched tightly on his sword, was striding about the hall, the embodiment of bottled fury. He kept glancing over at me. In a low voice, shaking with rage, he said: ‘Search their chests; and start with his.’ And he thrust out a finger directly at me. There was nothing in my chest, of course, except dirty clothes, as was soon proved. But Thangbrand continued to glare at me while the search was widened. The outlaws started hauling out the chests of their friends from against the wall of the hall where they were normally kept and pawing through their trinkets, keepsakes, smelly old hose and crusty drawers. No ruby was found. Instead, an infectious air of suppressed hilarity passed through the assembled men and women, with outlaws trying on each other’s clothing and cavorting around the hall to jeers and cheers. Then suddenly, Will Scarlet gave a great yell of triumph and everybody stopped and stared at him. Held above his head, glinting bloodily in the sunlight, was the great ruby.

‘Where did you find it, boy?’ asked Hugh. Will’s eyes opened wide. It was almost comical: he had belatedly realised what his find meant. He said nothing but he was staring straight at Guy, who was standing near the open door. ‘Where did you find it, boy?’ said Hugh once again, with iron in his voice. ‘In whose chest did you find it?’ Will was still staring at Guy and then with shaking hands he lifted his finger and pointed straight at him. Guy’s face went white. He said: ‘No, no . . .’ The hall was frozen in shock. Thangbrand’s son? How could Guy steal from his father? Thangbrand’s face was crimson with fury. In the silence, the rattling scrape of his sword being drawn. Then, blade in hand, Thangbrand stalked towards his grey-faced son. Guy was terrified: he lifted both hands out in front of him, fingers outstretched, as if to push away the silent accusation; to insist upon his innocence. But Thangbrand was still advancing, naked sword in his fist. Then, suddenly, Guy’s nerve snapped and he turned, quick as a rat, and dashed out through the open door of the hall and away into the sunshine.

Chapter Eight

After a long life, in which I have committed many sins, I look back on that moment in Thangbrand’s hall with mixed but powerful feelings. I did a terrible thing by hiding the ruby in Guy’s chest; and I fully meant to cause the harm that it did - breaking for ever the bond of love that had existed between Guy and his father Thangbrand. And Thangbrand, in his rough way, did love Guy. He loved him even after the discovery of the jewel in his chest. If Guy had not run, if he had kept his nerve and denied the theft and stood his ground, he might have been punished but Thangbrand would never have killed his own son.