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IV. Into the Woods

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Hodde lay dead.

It came as no surprise. That wound likely had bisected his liver and skewered a kidney for good measure. The leaf-stuffed wool beneath him was soaked through with blood, and from his pallor Thomas guessed it was the last he’d had in him. Covering the distance to the hut had cost him dear. He’d never have reached Pontefract.

Thomas sat down beside the corpse. Hodde had treated him with common courtesy, more than could be said of many outlaws. Whatever else, he’d shown the “mad monk” some kindness—had even left him food on occasion.

Thomas needed to get far away from here—first to the Great Limewood and then, presumably, to Nottingham. He would have to do something with the chest of his possessions. It contained the few things he had left of Janet’s. Leaving that chest for the Yvags to find was out of the question, but he couldn’t very well haul it about with him.

He opened it, lifted up the small, moth-eaten tapestry that covered the rest; beneath it lay the black Yvag armor he’d kept all this time and which showed no deterioration from the last time he’d worn it, a lifetime ago. He quickly shoved the armor aside.

Where it had been lay his own ördstone, the one he’d recovered in þagalwood. He picked it up. The row of blue gems pulsed as if the stone were saying hello, communicating in some fashion though he hadn’t beheld it in more than thirty years. He felt as he always had, that it was somehow attuned to him. Despite that he’d been transformed, he never understood what it was imparting. He sensed only pressure, a feeling of it moving about inside his thoughts.

He took out the two Yvag daggers he’d acquired over time, then gathered the very few things he would need. Hodde had conveniently presented him with a useful bow and a full quiver of arrows. His own and Waldroup’s, which he’d kept, were likely too old and brittle to be of much use. Everything else must vanish for now, especially the bishop’s ördstone, which went into the chest and under the black armor in place of his own. It flickered almost angrily, and its pressure pushed at his temples. He was sure that, if he slept in its presence, it would invade his dreams the way Waldroup’s collective of such stones had done to him long ago.

He took his pointed stone hammer and mortar hoe blade (the handle had long since been lost), and went around the back of the hut, behind a large birch tree. There he knelt and chopped up the earth with the pointed end of the hammer, then dug out a long trench with the hoe blade, making one end wider and much deeper. Returning to the hut, he brought out the chest, and his mason’s tools in the old, patched bag where he’d always kept them. He put the tools in the chest, too, and laid the off-the-shoulder bag aside. As he had no idea the size or nature of Hodde’s “treasure,” it would be wise to have something in which to carry it. Finally he placed his and Waldroup’s bows, wrapped in cloth, in the hole. By hand then he pulled the dirt back over the trench, stood and tramped it all down, and kicked leaves and debris over it until he was satisfied that it was undetectable.

Hodde’s body was another matter. The knights would undoubtedly track him here eventually. For one thing, Hodde had spilled too much blood along the way, but burying him in the woods was problematic. If he gave them any cause to look for the body, they might find everything else he’d just hidden from them. And a buried body meant someone cared enough to cover it up, which would send them looking for the true occupant of the hut. Better to let them have their body but not their answers.

Also, he had no desire to go about perpetually glamoured but half-naked in a linen shirt so old it would tear apart if anyone looked at it wrong. He needed clothes. Hodde no longer did, and while he’d proclaimed that Thomas was the only one who wouldn’t strip him naked, under the circumstances it was exactly what he needed to do. After all, he was carrying out his outlaw friend’s last request.

So he stripped the body, discovering as he did that clothing had changed somewhat since he’d last been aware of fashion. For one thing, Hodde’s olive-colored leggings extended much farther up his legs than any hose Thomas had ever worn. And the braies tucked into the tops of them, which allowed them to be attached to the braies’ girdle rather than being held up by bands (in his experience those almost never worked for long before the wool was piled around his ankles).

He bundled the clothing up and carried it to the nearby stream, where he knelt and washed it against the rocks. Blood snaked away on the water from the tear in the cotehardie. Most of it came out, and the red trim on the green wool more or less disguised the rest. The prelate’s cincture and maniple were another matter. The white cloth remained pink with blood. Thomas studied the jewels more closely—mostly cabochons, they would fetch a pretty penny. Hodde’s family would be well set up for a time.

He laid the clothing out in a patch of sunlight, then took an Yvag dagger and began sawing off his hermit hair and beard in repeated passes until both were as short as he wanted to go. The face that looked up at him then was a stranger, someone he hadn’t seen since he’d last visited Ercildoun. Janet was dying. He banished that memory, and the echoes of people calling for The Rhymer, pleading for more of his fits, his nonsense verses. He’d only been plagued by fits a few times since settling in here.

He shook his head, glad he had not gone back there. Here the fits when they came were simply something he weathered. Most occurred when he was alone, although they seemed to be tied to anxious moments—especially to the intrusion of others. Far fewer of them plagued “the Woodwose.” The worst was probably the one that had overwhelmed him in the company of Hodde’s band, but it had also revealed Robert Hodde himself to be a trustworthy confidant.

He traded another look with the black-haired face in the water, leaned close to see the blue eyes, the pale scar on the right side of his head. Who was that? Surely not him. He was ancient, as old as Taliesin.

He finally plunged into the cold water, destroying the reflection. Then he bathed, and soaked his head to rid himself of loose bits of hair, held himself under long enough to drown all fleas and lice. When he crawled out on the bank again, he felt renewed. His lean torso ached from disuse. He’d lost muscle mass, although not as much as he would have expected.

Hodde’s clothes did not fit him well. Hodde was skinnier than he was even now. The woven shirt stuck to him. The cotehardie was looser; the armpits had been left open for movement and flexibility that an archer would need. Even so, it was tight on Thomas, and he left it loosely laced over the shirt. He was sure he would split the shoulder seams of the shirt the first time he drew his bow. In Nottingham, perhaps he would engage the services of a seamstress.

Fortunately, Hodde’s feet were about his size and the leather shoes fit well enough, better than his own.

The wet wool leggings were certain to itch, but at least this new method of attaching them to the braies’ girdle was more comfortable. He tied the long belt around the cote, then tugged down on the fabric to hide the rent in it. Had anyone laid eyes on him then, they would have thought him one of Robert Hodde’s merry band of cutpurses, or maybe the ghost of Hodde himself.

Returning to his hut, he attached his quiver to the left side of the belt, strung the two Yvag daggers in their sheaths to the right, then slid Hodde’s bracer onto his left forearm.

Grabbing the quarterstaff to lean on, Thomas left his hut, circling into the trees away from where he was headed before doubling back, deeper into Barnsdale Wood. If the Yvags came this far and tried to track him, he would make sure they knew no joy at all.


Hodde’s Great Limewood figured prominently in Thomas’s brief history with the outlaw.

Hodde and his band—it was seven men at the time—had come upon Thomas’s hut one chilly afternoon. They had been tracking an enormous buck and it had conveniently bounded off the King’s preserve, meaning that they could legitimately kill it without running afoul of Isabella Birkin, chief Keeper of Sherwood Forest, and her forces. It was the deer that led them to the old stone hut and the “man of the woods” who dwelled within. They felled the buck within a few yards of the beehive hut. The commotion drew the recluse out. He saw what had happened and, without thinking, insisted he be given a portion of the quarry. All of them laughed at him, but Hodde immediately agreed—provided the Woodwose (as he called him) would accompany them back to their Barnsdale camp.

Thomas had reluctantly agreed, but had not been in their company five minutes when his head became cold as ice and jagged light flashed behind his eyes, mushrooming darkness in front. He fell to the forest floor.

When he came to, Robert Hodde was the only person with him and he was back inside his hut. “Sent others on wi’ that buck so they’d no’ see what I’m lookin’ at.”

Thomas looked at his hands. His glamour, of course, had deserted him.

“Nah then, what are tha?” There was awe but no fear in his voice. “This be fairy glamour?”

Thomas nodded. It was close enough to the mark.

“What did riddle mean?”

“I spoke?”

“Oh, aye. An’ riddle to be sure ’twas.” Hodde scratched his chin as he recalled it. “‘A parting of ways, the band dissolves. Before is met a new friend, the survivor t’ the Great Limewood will be summat.’”

Thomas nodded, listening to the riddle’s retreating echo. “Summoned,” he said. “Not summat. ‘The great limewood,’ what’s that?”

“Our camp. Where we’re goin’. Come on.” Hodde reached down to him, drew him to his feet. “Well, put yer glamour back on first. T’others are nah ta know.”

Then Hodde led the old Woodwose through the woods, across a broad heath, and then back into more trees. Soon they walked beneath a canopy of oaks, birch and ash, with a fairly clear forest floor. Thomas wondered who the “new friend” could be.

Even if their camp hadn’t encircled it, the Great Limewood tree was unmistakable. Its massive trunk divided into five boles, easily climbable. Two displayed what he thought of as squirrel holes—from fist- to head-sized, enough of them that he could easily have mounted the lower half of the trunk until he was up among the foliage.

They had drunk ale, eaten charred venison and field fare, and probed him with questions: how long had he lived in Barnsdale Wood, had he had run-ins with the so-called foresters (who did not consider themselves outlaws, but representatives of the King’s preserve, but mostly culled herds that “needed the trimming”). They’d returned him to his hut at evening’s end with a cooked rump of venison, unharmed, and addled with drink for the first time in decades. Within months Isabella Birkin’s Keepers had driven the band elsewhere, and probably arrested a few in the bargain. But not, it seemed, Hodde himself.

Now Thomas considered the riddle anew. Robert Hodde had hidden what treasure he had in one of the hollows in that limewood tree.

“The survivor to the Great Limewood will be summoned.” The opaque riddle from years gone by was finally coming true: He was the survivor and Hodde himself had done the summoning.


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