Post of the Month 

~ October 2011 ~ 

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Much ~ Written by Gwyn.  Posted on the HoS Yahoo group September 2010.

Hidden by the dense bushes at the edge of the track, Much stared.

Here it was, the crossroads near Linby which he had dreamed of. Four dirt and stony tracks converging and leading in four different directions. In the winter he could see that the ways would be bad, for the ruts in the tracks were deep, but now in summer they were dry. In rainy weather, they would also be bad, thought Much suddenly, as those deep ruts would be boggy.

He looked across the edge of the forest and the crossroads to the huts beyond. There was a cott built upon the back of some ramshackle barn which clearly served as an alehouse, and tacked onto it at the side was a smithy. It was hard to see what had come first - the alehouse, designed to make the most of the crossroads where people could stop and rest or shelter from bad weather before turning onto any one of the tracks, or the smithy. Perhaps the alehouse. He could see a small toft out the back of the cott and two young children playing. It seemed a family lived here and ran this enterprise. Free men. They would be less insular than the villages in and around Sherwood; would think less of a stranger if he wandered along one of the tracks and ended up here.

He watched the forge. The smith was busy at work there, by the glow and spark of his fire - a square, muscular man with a beard, he worked upon fashioning a shoe for a fleabitten grey which stood quietly by, resting a hind foot, its reins looped round a post. It looked the mount for a well to do merchant, Much thought, studying the creature with an experienced eye. A boy was working the bellows for the smith, and both were intent on their work. From the alehouse, there came the low deep voices of men.

Much eyed the alehouse warily. He did not want to go into the alehouse if he could help it. There, he could draw attention to himself from unwanted quarters, and besides, the men who drank there now would most likely be but passers-by. He wanted to talk to someone who lived here, who saw all who came by on the roads converging on this place. The smith was the best for that.

Much disappeared back into the trees, whereupon he slung his long-bow and quiver from a high branch of an ash, out of the eye level of anyone walking past, and then he doubled back through the trees, parallel with the road leading to the crossroads, till he came across its bend, hidden from the alehouse and smithy. Looking up and down, and ensuring the road was deserted, he then stepped from the fringe of trees out onto the track and began leisurely walking along it towards the alehouse and smithy, seeming for all the world like he was a traveller.

He rounded the bend in the road, and looking up, he saw that the smith busy at his forge had seen him coming. He walked leisurely onwards, knowing that without the telltale bow and quiver, he looked just like a village lad.

He broke out of his thoughts at a sudden commotion ahead of him - a yowling cat shot across the road in front of him, pursued by a yapping dog - a small dog. The cat fled into the relative safey of the smithy itself to jump to an high place to safety - and the dog shot after it - straight in front of the fleabitten grey that was tied there awaiting its shoe. The grey snorted, jerked its head, and broke the reins which tied it to the post - and it plunged in alarm, and shot off along the road towards Much, followed by the angry shouts of the smith and the boy who both ran out from the smithy after it.

Much darted across the road, heading the horse off with outstretched arms as it tried to pass. "Whoa there...." he soothed as he approached the horse, who paused on the track and eyed him, and then blew down its nostrils at him. The smith was approaching behind; Much shook his head at him to remain still, and the smith, seeing that Much clearly knew what he was doing, nodded and dropped back.

"Hey," Much soothed, lowering his arms and gradually approaching the grey, who eyed him a moment longer and then dropped its head to munch on the long grass at the verge of the track. Much reached it and slid a hand along its flank and up its neck, and then gathered up the reins which the horse had been in danger of putting its foot through. He patted the sweating neck, and examined the broken reins as the smith came up.

"Here," said Much simply, offering the horses' reins to the man.

"My thanks be to you, lad," the smith said gruffly, taking the reins Much offered, "its owner be in the alehouse, and I'd have been in no end of trouble had the beast disappeared into the forest. Come have a drink with me."

He led the way back to the forge. There was an aleskin hanging from a hook on one of the upright beams of the forge, the man took it down and offered it to Much. Much gratefully swigged from the aleskin. As he did so, he noticed the large ash upended by the side of the smithy, its branches half-stripped for firewood, its once green leaves dying. Its roots were up-ended from a deep hollow in the ground. It was a way into the conversation he wanted.

"That fall down in the storm of a few days ago, did it?" Much asked the smith and nodded at the tree.

The smith retied the grey's reins to the post. "Aye, and a fair storm it was. Took most of the thatch off the forge and made the ways wet and boggy hereabouts."

"'Twas a terrible storm," Much agreed.

The boy went back to working the bellows and the smith took up hammer once again. "You looking for work? None here to be found - I have an apprentice," and he nodded at the boy.

"Nay," said Much, "I be a bondsman from over at Maybury. You know if many carts went past here the day after the big storm? I be looking for me brother and uncles. They were travelling this way, and haven't returned yet. Me mother's worried out of her mind and sent me to walk the ways, to see if I could meet them if they be on the way back to our village."

"Going to Nottingham, was they?" the smith asked as he heated the shoe in his fire once more.

"Aye," said Much, "they had a deal of wool to sell there. They'd have got onto the Lincoln Road near Maybury and would have come this way."

The smith took the shoe out and holding it with tongs, hammered at it; Much watched the sparks fly. "There was some poor buggers who came past here in a wagon from the direction of Maybury, the morning after that storm. The road here was full of mud that morning after the storm. Just as they got to the crossroads, their cart got stuck in a rut."

"Was it a covered cart?" Much asked.

The smith cooled the shoe in water then bent to fit it to the horse who now stood quietly. "Nay, just an open cart. Humped with covered items in the back of it, covered with sacking."

"Aye," lied Much, his heart thumping, "that sounds like me brother's cart. Coming from the direction of Maybury. Just the one horse. Four men." Nasir had said five had converged on the scene of Robert's clear attack, so if one had been killed, then the smith would have only see four, Much thought now.

The smith nailed the shoe to the horses hoof, frowning in cocnentration to himself. "Aye, that be right. There were four men. One of the poor buggers be injured - holding a cloth to his eye and said he couldn't see out of it, He'd had an accident; he said an overhanging branch had hit him in the eye and knocked him clean off the cart. Looked like he'd lost the eye. There was blood all down him from the injury, and blood on the sacking in the back of the cart. They said they needed to get going, take him to a physic in Nottingham. He groaned mightily. They called him Potkin."

"That's my uncle," Much pretended.

Potkin. So he had a name of one of Robert's abductors. For Much was sure by now Robert had been abducted, not killed outright. For what murderers took away a body they had killed, thus endangering themselves of being found with it? No, murderers usually killed and fled the scene of their crime, leaving the body of their victim behind.

"You spoke to them, then?" said Much.

"Aye, with one of the others I took the bridle of their horse and got it forwards, and with the others pushing the cart from behind, we got the cart out of where it was stuck in one of the muddy ruts. Told them my wife made good ale here, and they should tarry and drink - but they were hurried to go. Struck me as strange that they refused the offer of good ale, especially as it was of the first draw and would have eased the pain of the man with the injured eye."

He scratched his head in thoughtful memory. "Stood on the track and watched them go - and twas then I saw the blood in the mud at my feet. Like it had dripped down from the cart."

Much's heart pounded. Blood....from Robert or perhaps the man Robert might have slashed the throat of?

"So they took that way, then?" Much pointed to the road that led East to Nottingham.

"Aye, they did."

"What time of day did they come this way?" Much asked. "I hope they made it to Nottingham before the days end."

"They came this way early. Not much above sunrise. We were still making the fires hot in the forge."

Much thanked him and left the forge.

He walked on along the track until he had reached the bend and knew he would disappear from the smithy's sight. Then he slipped off the track and back into the trees, whereupon he returned to where he had left his longbow and quiver and reclaimed it. And all the while, his heart was thumping with excited possibilities. He had to get back to camp to tell the others.

He ran across the forest, cutting past trees, small streams, taking the deer trails that no-one save the outlaws ever knew of or took and all the while he ran, his heart flew - because it seemed at last he had some definate sighting of the men who had taken Robert - and Robert, Much was sure, had lain covered in that cart. Alive and headed for Nottingham.