Robin Hood And The Pirates Part 1

Robin Hood and the Pirates.

by Clayton Emery.

"'Spose Richard'll send someone to fetch us back?"

"Let 'em. The first seven and ten can stop arrows."

Two men trudged the sh.o.r.e of the aquamarine Mediterranean. One was a knight in dusty leather coat of iron plates, a dirty quilted cap, broken boots that let in the dust, and a worn sword in a worn scabbard. In one hand he carried a battered Norman helmet, and in the other an impossibly long bow, crazed and checked in dark lines from the heat, yet gleaming with oil and hours of polishing. A quiver of bright arrows rattled softly at his back.

Beside him walked a giant in a tattered gambeson belted with rope. His shoes were mere sc.r.a.ps of horsehide. His braid, thick as a horse's tail, was bleached almost white, for he never wore anything on his head. Over his shoulder he carried a quarterstaff of red-glowing cypress eight feet long. On a string hung a pointed Saracen helmet, his sole booty and pay for two years' crusading.

They had waterskins strung around them, but they were flat, and the redware jug in the giant's hand was empty. A goatherd had promised there was a well ahead, just a few miles, but that had been miles back. The goatherd might have lied, since he was Muslim and they Christians.

The giant went on. "From outlaw to pardoned freeman to va.s.sal of the king to outlaw again. Makes a man wonder where he's going. In a circle or what."

"We're going to Jaffa."

"We're going home. That's a circle."

"If we make it."

Dust chuffed around their feet as high as their knees. The road was more stone than dust, but plenty of dust. The sea rolled away at their right hands. The land rolled away in sand dunes and coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. Other travellers pa.s.sed them, local people in voluminous robes colored saffron and black and red and blue, but they said little.

"Let 'em come," the knight grumbled. "Let 'em try and take us. We'll cut down the first with arrows, then more with sword and quarterstaff. After that, they can have us. Let 'em draw and quarter us and string our guts along the road for the buzzards. I don't care."

"You're jolly company."

"Me and three thousand ghosts."

Jaffa was blocky houses and blotches of gardens on hills surrounding a tiny harbor that held only fishing vessels and small coasters, and one lone merchant vessel lying by the long stone wharf. It was autumn, a time of storms, late in the shipping season. Yet the sky overhead remained molten bra.s.s, and the meager sea breeze did little to dampen the heat reflected from the dusty streets and blinding oyster-white buildings.

The two men laid out pennies and bought flat bread, white goat cheese, and figs, and washed it down with water from a public fountain. Then they joined the lazy bustle of the dockside, added themselves to the queue before the table at the head of the gangplank. Cargo in chests and bales and sacks were heaped all around the ship's gangplank, and mule carts came and went and stacked more and more produce to go into the hold of the single small ship.

At the table were a scribe and the burly Greek captain and a quartet of German knights, all in black like vultures, who d.i.c.kered with the captain in guttural French. As near as Robin could follow, they wanted the captain to avoid putting in to Cyprus, where the air was bad for Germans. The captain begged and whined and wrung his hands, and finally agreed to only land when the wind was offsh.o.r.e, and to withdraw at other times. Once that was settled, they argued about who would pay the landing dues, then the tolls, then the port charges, and so on and on. The final price they agreed upon made Robin gasp.

"That b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" the outlaw breathed to Little John. "Forty ducats a man!"

Little John watched a porter with a crate of chickens on his shoulder trot down the gangplank. "That include food?"

"Is that all you ever think about, eating?"

"Only when I'm hungry."

Robin Hood stepped aside as sailors hoisted bales of cotton off a cart and tromped down the gangplank.

"Well, we're sunk, clean through the bottom of my purse. I ain't got it. We'll have to --"

Someone was fluttering her eyelashes over her shoulder at Robin. In front of him stood a woman not twenty, dark-haired and winsome, in a red robe trimmed with silver fox tails. Beside her was an old man, probably her father. The old man noticed the flirting and swung around, scrawny hand on her upper arm. He too wore the rich red clothing of a merchant. His face was shrunken, his neck stringy, his teeth gone, but his eyes were brown and direct as polished agate.

He rasped in sunsoaked French, "You find my wife handsome, sir?"

Ah, wife. Robin Hood pulled his eyes back into his head. "Indeed, grandfather. Sir. I was thinking you're a lucky man." To change the subject, he asked, "Sir, you look a well-travelled man of the world, wise with years. Can you tell me what you'd consider a fare price for pa.s.sage? And is this ship bound for Genoa or Venice?" He spoke in French, for English was unknown off its tiny fogbound island.

The old man squinted at Robin as if he'd buy him, like a horse. Then he answered, "Venice. And I'd think a man could expect to pay thirty ducats to eat reasonably good food."

"And for bad food? We've had little for two years, and any will seem a feast."

"If you care not what you consume," the old man shook his head in distaste, "you might expect to pay only twenty ducats."

Robin Hood jingled the coins in his purse. That was more like it, but still not close. Despite the claw on her upper arm, the girl continued to flutter and flirt. For something to say, Robin asked, "And where is it you prop your feet?"

"Padua is my home. I have a villa on the east of the town. Do you know Padua?"

"I've never had the pleasure, though I've had the desire. It's said throughout the Continent there is no finer-looking town or finer-speaking people." It was a standard thing Robin Hood said to fill conversations and spread good will.

The old man didn't let his businessman's face change expression, but he did purse his lips and straighten his head on his skinny neck, pleased at the praise of his homeland. Out to impress his wife, the merchant nattered about his villa in the hills, his olive orchards, his gardens, the furnishings and silken hangings in his expansive and airy home. He finished with, "I'm to show my new bride her new home, and have her meet my va.s.sals. That is, of course, if we make it."

"And why shouldn't we make it?"

"This late in the season, and us alone, there'll be pirates thicker than seagulls on the water." He spoke with relish, trying to frighten his wife and yet rea.s.sure her he could protect her. "Aye. Thick they are in these waters, and thicker they'll be now that more folk are returning from the Holy Land. These pirates load their ships to the gunwales with men and race out of harbors onto ships, as sharks descend on a crippled whale. And of course, we might not fear pirates if a storm shipwrecks us. Or we're becalmed, which is worse. 'Few men die in a storm,' they say, 'but many in a calm.'"

Little John muttered to Robin, "I don't recall no pirates coming over here."

"Coming over here," Robin reminded him, "we had a hundred armed Crusaders crowding the decks."

"Oh, aye."

The old man waxed about the terrors of the sea voyage. Robin Hood tried not to yawn. After two years of hand-to-hand fighting and unimaginable horrors, spurious pirates couldn't interest him. He sank into his previous gloom.

The old man rattled on. "... I only hope our captain is up to outfoxing any pirates there might be. Yet I can't bring myself to trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle..."

The merchant finally shut up, for the Germans had stumped aboard and it was his turn to d.i.c.ker. Robin squinted at the hot sun overhead. His head throbbed. "The pirates would be doing us a favor to sink us. It'd be cool at the bottom of the sea."

"There's octopuses down there, too. You can eat them, I hear."

The merchant d.i.c.kered long and hard with the Greek captain, a hammer against an anvil. The merchant finally got the best pa.s.sage available, including chairs in the aftercastle under an awning, two meals of good food a day, held even if the merchant was late, use of the privy closets at the stern, a small gla.s.s of Malvoisie per day for seasickness, permission for a cook to use the galley when not in use, and s.p.a.ce for ten chests belowdecks away from the hatches. For this the merchant paid fifty ducats for himself, thirty for his wife, twenty for his cook.

Skull throbbing, Robin Hood wasted no time in haggling when he stepped up to the table. He upended his shabby purse. "Thirty-two ecu for the two of us. We'll sleep where we fit and eat what we can get."

The captain was a burly Greek with black curly hair on his chest, neck, ears, arms, hands. He raised both hairy hands in a deprecating, half-praying manner. The customer was always right, if ill-informed. "Sir. I'm afraid I've no room for pa.s.sengers who can only pay what I would charge to ferry a horse all the long way to Venice. And from the size of your servant here, he'd eat as much as three men, let alone horses."

Little John thumped his quarterstaff, like a ship's spar, on the stone wharf. "I don't eat no more than a hermit. Spring water and stale bread suits me."

"Done." Robin Hood banged the table. He pointed to the escrivain, who managed the paperwork aboard ship. "You, write it."

The scribe looked to his captain, but the Greek stared only at the meager pile of worn coins on the table, the sadness of the ages in his eyes. He turned his hang-dog look upon the Englishman, slyly looked him up and down. He nodded at Robin Hood's belt. "Perhaps, good sir knight, if you're leaving the wars behind, you won't be needing such a fine sword any longer?"

Robin Hood put a hand on his hilt and the captain took an involuntary step back. "This was my father's sword. I'd give up my arm before I'd part with it. I'd walk to Venice."

Little John cleared his throat, reached behind his back, then set his captured Saracen helmet on the table. "Can we throw this into the bargain?"

The captain brushed the air with both hands. "That, I regret, good sir, I cannot use. I could fill my hold with Muslim helmets."

Robin Hood sighed. He dropped his Norman helmet with its frowning nasal on the table. "Perhaps you can use this."

The captain rolled the helm in his hands, frowned over the coins. Robin Hood knew he was holding out for more. But he had nothing else. He'd sold his horse and tack to get this little money. His Lincoln green coat of arms had been torn into rags long ago. He'd chucked his battered shield after the first mile. His belt knife was worn to a stripe. His leather hauberk was falling apart. No one could use his bow. He began to wonder how long a walk it would be to Venice. Half a year, at least.

Something caught his eye. The merchant's young wife again. The two had lingered as their ten chests were loaded by porters. The girl whispered hurriedly to her aged husband. The Paduan merchant frowned, then finally acquiesed, an old man unable to refuse a young woman. Croaking like a crow, he called, "Perhaps, captain, you'd agree to take them aboard for their abilities. These two have obviously seen their share of fighting, and could make a good show against any pirates."

"Pirates?" The captain was shocked. "There is no danger of pirates, Don Giovanni, not on this sea, not at this time of year. Besides, all men pa.s.sengers are required to take up arms in the event of an attack. It's custom and law. I could not discount their pa.s.sage for such a simple --"

Robin Hood rapped the table with his fist. He pointed a brown calloused finger at the scribe. "The day wears on. Move that quill."

The escrivain looked up again, and the captain sighed like a ruptured bladder. The scribe scratched the contract. The captain tried to salvage something. "You must understand, sirs, in that you are not paying full fare, I can provide you only the simplest accommodations, sleeping above decks, and the commonest fare, such as our sailors eat. No meat, only peas and lentils, but all sumptuously prepared by the finest cook on the Mediterranean."

The two Englishmen grunted by way of agreement.

The squint-eyed escrivain finished the contract, which would go to the captain, then scribbled two extracts, one for the pa.s.sengers and one for the court of commune of Jaffa. Common law required that pa.s.senger lists match from port to port, to ensure pa.s.sengers didn't disappear at sea.

The outlaw s.n.a.t.c.hed the extract from the scribe's hand, and he and Little John bounced up the gangway. "Peas and lentils. We'll pa.s.s enough wind to push the ship to Venice all by ourselves. But maybe our sweet captain will throw us a haunch of rat now and then."

Little John tunked his quarterstaff along the gangplank. "Been times these past months I'd'a welcomed a nice juicy rat. Maybe we can fish. These're the waters where Jonah got swallowed by a whale, ain't they?"

"Aye. Monsters swallow up saints while pirates and grasping merchants sail through without a qualm."

"We're outlaws. Maybe we could become pirates. I bet they eat all right."

"Belt up."

The Saint Theresa was round-bellied and turned up as a shoe, a buss ninety feet long, painted rust red and sea green in lines and checks. The foremast raked forward while the mainmast was upright, as if the shipwright had been drunk, but Robin knew this design was merely the melding of two schools of thought, the boxy hull of a European cog driven by the lateen-rigged sails of an Arabian dhou. Above the stern, forming a roof over the steermen, was a square box called the aftercastle, like a misplaced pavillion complete with parti-colored awning, originally a fighting platform, now a haven where the wealthy could pay extra to avoid the common folk. Instead of a single rudder board at the stern, as Northern seamen used, there were twin oars through slots at the rear, like the two back feet of a horse. There were two hatches in the main deck, then a forecastle like a balcony at the bow. The sails were huge graceful triangles of yellowed Egyptian cotton on long slanted cypress yards. Atop the masts were two small tubs, fighting tops or crows' nests, and above them fluttered yellow banners marked with the arms of her Venetian owner. Yet the eyes painted on the bow, so the ship might see where she was going, spoke pure Greek.

Robin Hood and Little John found themselves with barely enough room to stand, for the ship was packed. More cargo and more pa.s.sengers straggled on board, and more people and more bales and chests and sacks, stowed below or stacked across the decks, yet still more came aboard. Many spit on the deck for good luck as they boarded. There were people from all over the Holy Land and Christendom. There were merchants with chests and crates and oilskin-wrapped bundles of spices, pelts, rare woods, bra.s.s kitchen utensils, silver-chased armor. There were pilgrims in rough woolen robes with palm leaf badges st.i.tched around their hems or hats to show they'd been to Jerusalem, or as close as they could get, toting iron-tipped staves. There were harlots with b.a.s.t.a.r.d children, returning to Christian lands now that the siege of Acre was broken. There was a papal messenger with the crossed keys of Rome st.i.tched on his breast. There were two musicians with flute and tambour, scholars carrying books in oilskin pouches, a Benedictine monk and two nuns. They had some things in common. Most wore a travelling cloak fastened with a cloche over one shoulder, and everyone had earflaps or chin bands to hold their hats down in the sea breeze.

And every one of them, it seemed, brought one or two or more chests with them, for every traveller was a trader. There were too many people, Robin thought, and too much cargo to ride safely all the way to Venice. Even the sailors loading the ship were uneasy. Robin heard them talking as they glanced over the side apprehensively and clucked their tongues. The iron cross nailed at the waterline, a marker installed by the port authorities, never to be submerged more than two feet, was sunk clear out of sight. Already, they murmured, the ship felt sluggish and dead on the roll. Robin and John felt like the only ones aboard who hadn't brought chests full of trading goods.

Robin Hood moved to stand by the after hatch. Roiling from the dark depths came the dead mud stink of bilges, a blend of spices such as cinnamon and cloves and eye-watering black pepper by the ton, the greasy stink of olive oil and burned wood from the galley, even the sweet green odor of horse manure, for the animals had been floated on rafts and prodded through another hatchway in the hull. And of course, there were more chests stacked to the ceiling, and tiny pa.s.senger berths four feet wide and six deep that reeked of unwashed bodies.

Little John's rumbled, "How long need we sail? I forget what it was coming over."

"A month. More if we're becalmed or we dally. This one is greedy, the sailors were saying. He stops at every island that'll hold an anchor. Rhodes, Corfu, Modon, wherever the h.e.l.l that is, Cyprus if those Germans let him."

They watched more goods brought on board, and more people, till the round-bellied hold could swallow no more. Then sacks of rice and bales of cotton were stacked around the masts and covered with old sails and lashed tight with scratchy hemp rope. Robin clucked his tongue. The captain -- or more pecunious traders -- were banking on no rain for a month. Finally, crates of chickens were lashed atop the heaps, and people climbed amongst them, nestling around and inside the loads like a lot of squirrels digging in autumn leaves. Little John and Robin Hood staked out a pocket near the stern and flopped into it to sleep, exhausted.

They sailed the next day. Sailors snaked the gangplank aboard. Porters cast the cables from the bollards. The two steersmen plied their trade. The sailors hoisted the sails hand-over-hand, tightened lines and squinted aloft. In the stern, the escrivain shuffled his papers and counted booty as the captain watched. On the dock, a pair of brown-skinned girls strewed flowers in the wake of the ship, wishing it a safe return. Sharp the captain might be, Robin Hood thought, but he took precautions to appease the spirits. As the ship warped out of the dusty harbor, he watched the blinding white hot sandy land recede, as if it were sinking into a cool blue sea.

His reverie was interrupted as something touched his sword hilt. He snapped a hand onto it and trapped the bony hand of a child, a somber-eyed boy, too old to play. The rest of the children had discovered Little John and gotten over their shyness. They flocked around him like sheep around a shepherd, and the giant chuckled and tousled their hair and asked them their names and got them, though most of the children didn't speak his language. Giggling and pushing one another, they poked the giant as they might a statue.

The older boy didn't let go of Robin's sword. He asked in a quiet voice, "Was you at Acre?"

Robin Hood rubbed his forehead. His eyes burned. He wasn't much company, especially for somber boys who longed to be knights. "Aye."

The boy sat on the lumpy canvas. "What was it like?"

"Like? Oh..." The outlaw propped a foot on a bundle. "There was a lot of fighting and a lot of dying, and not much progress. No land changed hands, and little coin. Sand got into everything. There were times of no food, and poor people starved to death while knights killed hangers-on to keep them from hamstringing their horses. But then the garrison in the castle surrendered -- after two years of siege, Richard talked them out in a month -- and everyone was glad. But then Richard was stuck with three thousand prisoners and another army within bowshot. He couldn't get no ransom. So Richard beheaded them. Three thousand men, lined up like sheep at spearpoint, their heads whacked off like chickens. Three thousand heads, son. You could have piled them in a pyramid would reach higher than this mast. Even the sand couldn't soak up all the blood, and it ran in rivulets like snowmelt. Then wh.o.r.es and knights alike started slitting their bellies, thinking they'd swallowed their silver or their gems before surrendering. They rooted around in dead men's guts like pigs turning over a manure pile. Then those bodies began to rot in the sun, and give off ga.s.ses like to kill a man. The vapors did kill many, a funny way of getting revenge. Wolves or hyenas or some kind of wild dogs came down out of the hills. You could hear them fighting over bones and guts all night, snarling and snapping. The vultures got so fat they could barely flap their wings, and the dogs would pull them down and tear them open like popinjays, so that even the carrion eaters weren't safe.

"But we got the castle, and put our garrison inside. Saladin's army pulled back and Richard mounted for Jerusalem. Two years of struggle got us a pile of sandy rock. We were soldiers with G.o.d on our side, fighting for right and justice and our king, slaughtering soldiers just like us, working for the same thing, but calling their G.o.d by another name. That's a crusade."

The boy was silent, stunned, his breath and dreams shattered.

By Robin's side, Little John said quietly, "What he means, lad, is that when you grow up, be a carpenter or a tinker or a vintner or something. Something good that helps people. Never a soldier, who only work by killing."

"Is that what he said?" breathed the lad.

The English outlaw put a hand to his brow and squeezed so hard his hand turned white. The children all stopped to listen, confused at an adult confused. "G.o.d, John, I'm so tired of fighting and bloodshed. I'm so tired of hearing men plead to G.o.d to forgive them as they die and die, or die cursing G.o.d and their king and themselves. If this weren't my father's sword, I'd sink it in this sea and let the rust feed the fishes."

"That sword's done a lot of good in its time. I've seen it."

Robin looked back at the sh.o.r.eline, a string of soft white humps like a s...o...b..nk. "Better it had been forged a bell in a chapel tower to call the faithful to prayer."

"Talk like that makes my knee ache." Robin Hood had once hoisted the giant, crippled by an arrow in his knee, onto his shoulders and then fended off the Sheriff's men until they reached safety.

"There'll be more fighting at home. A new sheriff'll be hot to drink our blood. More fighting, more dying. How many have we lost so far, and how many more will we lose?"

"It ain't the ones that die that are important, it's the ones that go on living because Robin Hood came to their rescue."

"You sound like me before I went crusading in the Holy Land."

The giant lifted his quarterstaff to give two blonde girls a ride. "The Holy Land's behind us, and good riddance. It's Sherwood we're bound for, and I ain't never stepping out from under a green growing tree again."

"G.o.d d.a.m.n Richard," Robin muttered. "I hope he gets sand in his eyes and a sword up the b.u.m. I hope he dallies all the way to Jerusalem and runs out of supplies and his men open his veins to drink his blood. But his crusade became mine too, John. All gone to smash. I'm as guilty as anyone for those poor betrayed men."

"The moon follows the sun, too. That don't make it the moon's fault when there's no rain."

Robin Hood looked around at him. "What?"

"You did everything you could to stop the ma.s.sacre. You argued with the king 'till you was hoa.r.s.e, until he was red in the face, until his ears were sore. You were lucky yours wasn't the first head he laid on to the block."

"And now we're running away."

"Naw, we ain't. Our work's done, so we're going home."