It was late in the summer of 1193, in that thin northern darkness which never quite persuaded itself to become night. I clearly remember the hour as the Village had grown unusually quiet, or as quiet as was possible in those days. Somewhere beyond my window, a forge continued to ring in patient rhythm as a dog barked near the lower storehouses. From the watchfires along the palisade came the familiar, faint smell of peat smoke drifting through the open shutters.
I had been sitting at my desk with a cup of chamomile tea gone cold beside me, holding a report from France in my hand, though I had read the same line three times and found no wisdom in it. Age teaches patience, but does not always teach when one should seek rest.
'Rat-tat-tat!’ A sudden, urgent knock at the door startled me into alertness.
'Come in,' I called, already knowing that whoever stood beyond the threshold had not come to discuss anything so easily resolved as missing ribbons or a quarrel over candle wax.
Tobbi, my most trusted set of eyes in the Human World, flung open the door and entered with purpose, giving me even more of an indication that what he had to tell was not something I would want to hear. In those days he was younger, quicker, and not yet quite so fond of sounding important, though the habit was already sprouting. He had been away for three weeks, travelling through the Human World by old routes and ordinary ones alike, meeting Helpers at mill doors, monastery gates, market stalls, and wayside chapels. He knew how to pass unnoticed, which is a rare gift for anyone, Human or Elf.
That night, however, he looked as though he had been running for his life. As if someone, or something, had chased him all the way home.
His cloak was dusted with road grit, one boot was caked in dried mud, and his beard had acquired the particular wildness that comes when an Elf has recently slept more often in a hedge than a bed. Tobbi usually brushed his boots before entering my study and straightened his cap, too. The fact that he had done neither settled a small weight in my chest before he even spoke a word.
'Santa,' he began, and then stopped, as though he had realised that his next words were too small for the news behind them. Instead, he held out a folded sheet of parchment.
I took it from him and broke the seal. The message was brief as most messages carrying grave news are. People in distress seldom waste ink on elegance.
I read it once. Then, because hope is a stubborn creature, I read it once more.
'When?' I asked now fully understanding Tobbi’s haste in getting this news to me.
The Elf lowered his eyes to the floorboards. 'Within the fortnight. Possibly sooner. The Sheriff is said to be preparing the gallows already.'
I slowly placed the parchment upon the desk, smoothing it with my palm though it had no crease worth smoothing and asked, 'You have confirmed this?'
'With three Helpers,' he replied. 'One in Nottingham itself, one living north of Leicester, and one who had word from a gaoler’s cousin.' He gave a tired little shrug. 'Not the cleanest chain of truth, sir, but the same name reached us by every path.'
Robin of Locksley.
I should explain that this name had been known to me for some time already. England had been troubling the edges of our attention for months. King Richard was being held captive in Europe after being shipwrecked on his return from the Crusades, and while kings are often absent in spirit even when present in body, a throne left empty has a way of inviting hungry hands. Taxes rose. Lands changed masters too quickly. Old loyalties were being tested, and men who already possessed power discovered, as they so often do, that possession rarely satisfies appetite.
Our network of Helpers in the Human world had recently written of a returned crusader near Nottingham, a man dispossessed of what should have been his, gathering around him others who had found less justice under the law than beneath the trees of Sherwood. At first he had been nothing more than one name among many. A brave man, perhaps. A foolish one, perhaps. In troubled times, the two are often mistaken for each other.
But now he had been taken.
'The network asks for help?' I questioned quietly.
Tobbi hesitated, and that hesitation told me nearly as much as his answer. 'They do. Not openly. Not all of them even know what they are asking. But those closest to Sherwood believe this cannot be handled by ordinary means.' He looked up then, and for the first time I saw fear beneath his weariness. 'Sir, they almost never ask.'
'No,' I replied with a sigh. 'They do not.'
There were good reasons for that. The Helper network had been built upon many small acts: a loaf placed where hunger might find it, a message carried beneath a saddlecloth, a warning passed across a market stall with the price of turnips. Quiet hands doing quiet work. Our intervention in the Human World was not something to be done simply because danger had sharpened its teeth.
Yet there are moments when one life becomes something more. Robin, I suspected, knew very little of the shape history had begun moulding around him. Few of us ever do. But I had lived long enough by then to recognise the first tremor before the avalanche.
