Nothing. Sherwood seemed empty of all life. A white wilderness. But our track through the snow was clear to see, leading straight to our damp, slush-splashed, panting huddle. We couldn’t stay there more than a few moments to catch our breath. I looked up at the grey sky; it had begun to snow again, but there were only two or three hours of daylight left in that short winter day. If we could stay out of reach of the horsemen until nightfall we would be safe. Probably. So I loaded Goody on to Bernard’s back and pulled a dead branch from a fir tree, the crack as it broke off echoing loudly through the forest. We all paused, listening in terror. Then, when we heard nothing but the eerie silence of the snow-blanketed wood, Bernard whispered: ‘Which way?’
I paused to consider. Robin was God knows where in the north, Thangbrand’s was a smoking ruin by now, my mother was dead, my village had been destroyed, but, from nowhere, an image of Marie-Anne came into my head. She, I knew, was at Winchester, far away from Murdac and his murderous horsemen. And she could put us in contact with Robin. ‘We march south,’ I said, trying to sound decisive, and I stuck out an arm in the direction that I guessed led towards Winchester. And Bernard turned without a word, Goody gripping on to his back like a monkey, and began to tramp through the snow. I walked backwards behind them, brushing at the marks in the snow with the branch, trying to erase our footprints as best as I could, and blessing the falling snow that would, given enough time, cover our tracks.
All that frozen grey afternoon, as the snow fell steadily, we tramped through the woodland. Sometimes we carried Goody on our backs, sometimes she walked by herself. She never complained as we trudged through the silent white landscape. I was sure our tracks must have been covered by the snow and, after an hour of quiet progress, I dared to hope that the horsemen had abandoned the chase. The only living thing we saw was the low, lean form of a wolf, a grey shadow running through the wood on a course parallel to our own. January in Sherwood, I remembered, was known as Wolf Month; there were tales of babies snatched from their cradles by starving wolves in January, even one tale of a wolf leaping out from ambush on a mounted man and biting a chunk of flesh out of the horse’s rump before disappearing back into the forest.
I picked up a broken branch and hurled it in the direction of the grey slinking beast, and it shambled away, disappearing into the gloom of the twighlit wood. On we marched, legs numb from cold. We were drenched and exhausted. As night began to fall, I knew we must find a safe place to rest: Goody’s fingers and nose were blue with cold and Bernard’s face was a sickly yellow colour. Suddenly, from directly ahead, there was the shocking blast of a trumpet. Galvanised with fear, we dived down a snowy bank and cowered beneath the white roots of a beech tree, as two horsemen in Murdac’s black-and-red livery galloped past. I was certain that they hadn’t seen us as they thundered by, but what worried me was that they had come from in front of us, not from behind. In despair, I discovered that I had completely lost my sense of direction and, in the gloom of coming nightfall, we must have been walking in circles. I realised with dread that I had no idea where we were or in which direction we should be heading. As we crouched under the bank, beneath the lattice of snow-covered roots, trying to muffle the noise of our teeth chattering, I tried to work out which way we should be heading. But my brain was clouded with the cold. And as the snow continued to fall, it dawned on me that the threat of Murdac’s horsemen notwithstanding, if we did not find warmth and shelter soon we might not survive the night.
After another quarter of an hour of trudging through the snow, in the last of the light, we came upon the perfect place to camp. I don’t mean to blaspheme, but there are times in my life when I feel as if the Lord God Almighty has ordered the world just for my benefit. As we stumbled through the snow, numb with cold, terror and fatigue, we came into a small clearing in the forest, at the centre of which was a huge, ancient oak tree, several yards across, which had been hollowed by time and rot into a half-open tube, with space for three to sleep inside. We were not the first to have used this as a resting place: scraping away the snow near the entrance, we found the remains of a fireplace, with large blackened stones placed to reflect the heat and muddy cinders. And inside the hollow trunk, neatly stacked, was a small pile of dry kindling and a dozen seasoned oak branches, snapped into logs. We knew it was a risk, and that the light would be visible for hundreds of yards in all directions, but we needed the warmth of a fire. So I made a blaze with the flint and steel in my pouch, we huddled in our tree shelter and waited for our limbs to unfreeze. We had no food — we had left the remains of pork and bread under the holly tree that morning — but as the warmth filled the round wooden space, my mood began to lift. Goody, who had not said a word since she had seen her mother and father cut down at Thangbrand’s, snuggled up to my side and began to weep quietly. I cuddled her skinny body to me and stroked her fine golden hair until she fell asleep. Bernard, on the other hand, seemed to become more irritable and twitchy than relaxed as the heat flowed back into his body. He appeared to have forgotten our hideous adventures and soon he was recovered enough to complain about our lack of wine. ‘There was an almost full wineskin by the cottage door; why on earth didn’t you grab that as we were leaving?’ he asked me testily. I said nothing. My stomach growled and my mouth was dry but we had nothing to eat, let alone Bernard’s precious wine, so I chewed a few handfuls of snow and just sat, gazing into the fire, allowing my clothes to dry out, and thinking about that terrible day. Had anyone survived except us? Were there others scattered in the forest, dying of their wounds in the cold? Thangbrand was dead, I’d seen that horror; and Freya, no doubt, had been butchered with the rest. But where was Hugh? Had he managed to escape?
Suddenly I sat up straight with a jerk. I had been dozing. Bernard appeared to be asleep, lying stretched out along the curve of the inside of the tree. Goody was cocooned in a cloak at my feet. What had awakened me? It was danger of some kind or another. The fire was dying down, but the moon was bright and nearly full. I threw another log on to the hearth and, as I watched the sparks burst and the flames revive, I saw, at the far edge of the clearing, in the bright moonlight, the figure of a man. And he was walking towards us.
My hand leapt to my belt and settled on the comforting handle of my poniard. And I gave Bernard’s sleeping form a kick. The man walked across the clearing directly towards our fire. He was skeletally thin, with a lean, hollow face, covered almost to the eyes with a grey beard. His greasy grey hair fell to his shoulders. His lips were twisted into a smile of greeting, and I caught a glimpse of small sharp yellow teeth. As he came closer, I could see that he was dressed in what appeared to be a cape of wolf pelts, and a wolf-pelt kilt, his feet bound in grey rags. I could see his naked chest and prominent ribs beneath the cape — by God, he must have been cold — and his skin, filthy and covered with scratches and half-healed cuts. He carried a heavy wooden club over one shoulder and, as he arrived at the other side of the fire, I could see he was shivering. He raised his free hand in greeting.