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  Thomas pulled his psaltery from its bag on his back and began tuning the strings, humming to himself to get his voice limbered and ready. Then, slinging the strap around his neck, he strolled among the market-goers, plucking the strings and singing snatches of the most fashionable tunes. One by one, folk stopped to listen, and when he had gathered enough of an audience, he cried, "Who would like to hear 'The Tale of Wizard Merlyn and the Dragon King'?"

  A clamour went up from the throng. "I sing all the better with the sweet clink of silver in my ear."

  He placed his hat on the ground before him and strummed the psaltery. In a moment, the chink of coins did ring out as people pitched bits of pennies and even whole coins into the minstrel's hat. When he reckoned he had got all there was to get, he began the song: a spirited and very broad tale with many humorous and unflattering allusions to the present reign thinly disguised as the antics of King Arthur's court.

  When he finished, he thanked his patrons, scooped up his hat, and made his way to a quiet place to count his takings. He had managed three pence-enough for a pie or two, which he bought; leaving the market, he strolled down to the river to find a shady spot to eat and rest. He took from his bag an apple he had found in the ditch, and ate that along with his pork pie. Having slept badly in the hedge beside the road the night before, he napped through the warm afternoon, waiting for the long summer day to fade.

  At the appointed time, Thomas roused himself, washed in the river, gave his clothes a good brushing, combed his hair, and proceeded up the track to the castle once more, where he was admitted and led to the great hall. The meal was already in progress, but it would be a while yet before the crowd was ready to be entertained. He found a quiet corner and settled back to wait, snatching bits of bread and cheese, meat and sweets from the platters that went past him. He ate and tried to get the measure of his audience.

  In the centre of the high table, resplendent in blue silk, sat King John, called Lackland by his subjects-not well liked, but then, truth be told, few monarchs ever were while still alive. John's chief misfortune seemed to be that he was not his brother, Richard, called Coeur de Lion. The lionhearted king was better regarded-perhaps because he had hardly ever set foot in England during his entire reign. And where Richard was remembered as tall and robust, John was a squat, thick-necked man with heavy shoulders and a spreading paunch beneath his tight-stretched silks. His best years were behind him, to be sure; there was silver showing among the long dark locks that his shapeless hat could not hide.

  The High Sheriff, Lord William Wendeval, was a bluff old champion who was said to rule his patch with an authority even the king himself could not claim. He was a tall, rangy fellow with long limbs and a narrow, horsy face, and short grey curls beneath his hat of soft green velvet. The king and his sheriff had been drinking some time, it would seem, for both men wore the rosy blush of the vine across cheeks and nose. And both laughed louder and longer than any of the revellers around them.

  Slowly, the meal progressed. As the many dishes and platters circulated around the tables, musicians trooped into the hall and sent a fine commotion coursing among the throng at table. This Thomas considered a good sign, as players always gave an evening's roister a more festive air. When men enjoyed themselves, the money flowed more easily, and never more easily than when they were in a celebratory mood.

  He watched and waited, listening to the happy clatter around him and idly tuning the strings of his instrument; and when he judged the time to be right, he rose and walked to the high table.

  "My lords and ladies all!" he cried aloud to make himself heard above the raucous revel. "A songster! A songster!"

  "Hear!" shouted the high sheriff, rising from his chair and pounding on the board with the pommel of his knife. "Hear him! Hear him! We have a minstrel in our midst!"

  When the hall had sufficiently quieted, Thomas faced the high table and, with a wide sweep of his hat, bowed low, his nose almost touching his knee. "My lord high sheriff, my best regards," he said. He bowed again, lower still, and said, "Your Majesty, I beg the honour of your attention on this splendid festal evening." Turning to the rest of the company, he waved his arm. "My lords and ladies, gentlefolk all, it is my good pleasure to sing for your amusement."

  "What will you sing?" called the sheriff, resuming his seat.

  "Tonight, I have prepared a special surprise right worthy of this splendid occasion-but more of that anon. I will begin with a tune that is sure to please Your Majesty." He began strumming, and soon the hall was ringing to the strains of a song called "The Knight and the Elf Queen's Daughter." It was an old song, and most minstrels knew it. Though not the most taxing on a songster's abilities, it had a soothing effect on a restive audience and made a good prelude to better things.

  The song concluded, and the last strains were still lingering in the air when Thomas began the lay known as "The Wooing of Ygrain"-also a firm favourite among the nobility, what with its themes of flirtation and forbidden love.

  He sang two more short songs, and then, pausing to retune his psaltery, he announced, "Majesty, Lord Sheriff, distinguished lords and ladies, hearken to me now! Tonight in your hearing for the first time anywhere, I give you a song of my own composing-a stirring epic of adventure and intrigue, of kingdoms lost and won, and love most fair and wondrous. I give you 'The Ballad of Brave Rhiban Hud'!"

  In fact it was not, strictly speaking, the first time he had sung this song. He had laboured over its verses, true, but in the main it remained much as it had been composed by his grandfather and sung by his father. Indeed, the song had earned his family's reputation and never failed to find favour with an audience so long as the singer took care to adapt it to his listeners: dropping in names of the local worthies, the places nearby that local folk knew, any particular features of the countryside and its people-it all helped to create a sense of instant recognition for those he entertained, and flattered his patrons.

  Thomas strummed the opening notes of the song and then, lifting his head, sang:

  Come listen a while, you gentlefolk alle,

  That stand here this bower within,

  A tale of brave Rhiban the Hud,

  I purpose now to begin!

  The song began well and proceeded through its measured course, pulling the audience into the tale. Very soon the listeners were deep in the singer's thrall, the various lines drawing, by turns, cheers and cries of outrage as events unfolded.

  Thomas, knowing full well that he had captured them, proceeded to bind his audience with the strong cadences of the song. For tonight's performance, the tale was set in Nottingham and the forest was Sherwood. William Rufus and the Welsh March and Richard de Glanville never received a mention. Tonight, the king of the tale was John, and the sheriff none other than Sheriff Wendeval himself. It was a risky change of cast-noble hosts had been known to take umbrage at a minstrel's liberties-but Thomas perceived the mood was light, and everyone thrilled to the daring of it.

  "God save the king," quod Rhiban to he,

  "And them that wish him full well;

  And he that does his true sovereign deny,

  I wish him with Satan to dwell."

  Quod the king: "Thine own tongue hast cursed thyself,

  For I know what thou verily art.

  Thou brigand and thief, by those treasonous words,

  I swear that thou lyest in heart."

  "No ill have I done thee," quod Rhiban to king,

  "In thought or in word or in deed,

  Better I've served than the abbot's foule men,

  Who robbed from them in sore need.

  "And never I yet have any man hurt

  That honest is and true;

  Only those that their honour give up

  To live on another man's due.

  "I never harmed the husbandman,

  That works to till the ground;

  Nor robbed from those that range the wood

  And hunt with hawk or hound.

  "Bu
t the folk you appointed to rule my stead,

  The clergymen, shire reeves, and knights,

  Have stolen our homes and impoverish'd our kin

  And deny'd us what's ours by full rights."

  The good king withdrew to consider the case

  And did with his counsellors sit,

  In very short time they had come to agree

  On a ruling all saw justlie fit:

  "King Bran, thenceforward, full pardon shall have,

  By order of royal decree.

  And the lands that his fathers and grandsires kept,

  Have no other ruler than he."

  Quod Rhiban: "Praise Christ! This suits me full goode,

  And well it becomes of us both.

  For kings must be e'er protecting their folk

  So hereby we swear you our troth.

  "And vow we this day, to the end of the earth, shall grief ne'er come 'tween us twain."

  And the glory of Rhiban Hud, eke his king, i'this worldsrealm always shall reign.

  Thomas led the crowd a merry chase through the greenwood and the exploits of the noble rogue Rhiban and his struggle to regain his birthright. Justice denied and at last redeemed was a theme that always swayed an English crowd, and it seemed now as if he played upon the very heartstrings of his audience as blithely as he plucked the psaltery. Both king and sheriff listened with rapt expressions; there were occasional sighs from the ladies, and grunts of approval from the men. Deeper and deeper did the spell become, recounting those days long ago-times all but forgotten now, but kept alive in his song. Inevitably, stanza gave way to stanza and the song moved to its end, and Thomas, singing for his king as he had rarely sung before, delivered the final lines:

  The seasons pass quickly in the realm of King Bran-

  As seasons of joye always do.

  John and Will Scadlocke many children now owne

  And each have another past due.

  Strong sons and fayre daughters to them and their wyves

  The Good Lord upon them has blest.

  But the fairest and strongest and smartest who is,

  None of them e'er has guess'd.

  And Rhiban the Hud now feasts in his hall,

  For married now has he beene.

  And summer has settled in clear, peaceful lands,

  For Merian reigns as his queene.

  But we see not the fryer who wedded them two,

  What has become him his luck?

  Lo, newly installed in the bishopric there,

  Is one: Bishop Fryer Tuck.

  Good gentlefolk all, we have finished our laye-

  A song of brave Rhi Bran the Hud;

  Taking only from others what never was theirs,

  He restored his land to the good.

  But one final ride has our Rhiban to make,

  Before his and our paths shall part.

  See, he has outlived his queene and his friends

  And bears he within a sadde heart.

  He rides on his steede with a bow by his side,

  Much as he has done of olde.

  His long hair is white and his eyesight is weak

  But he calls in a voice strong and bold:

  "Once again, O, my fine merrye men,

  We shall in the greenwood meet,

  And there we'll make our bowstrings twang-

  A music for us, very sweet."

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  The High Cost of Heaven

  And so… the legend grew, extending its reach far beyond the place and time of its birth. Not only did it travel, it changed in the telling as poets, singers, and wandering storytellers the likes of Alan a'Dale and grandson Thomas charmed their audiences by adjusting their tales to more closely conform to current local tastes. Rhi Bran y Hud the British freedom fighter may have faded in the process-transformed at last into Robin Hood the loveable outlaw-but the legend endured, and still delights.

  Some readers may bridle at the central premise of this series: that a scant handful of homegrown volunteer warriors could successfully stand against the combined might of an entire army of heavily fortified professional soldiers.

  As unlikely as it seems, this exact scenario was repeated time and again in British history. One of the best examples took place in 1415 in what has become famous as the Battle of Agincourt. Not only did a vastly inferior British force confront the best and boldest knights of France on a muddy farm field a stone's throw away from the little northern town, but the beleaguered British dealt them a blow never to be forgotten.

  Henry's ragged no-hope army was largely made up of volunteers and vassals, most of them sick with dysentery and exhausted from a summer-long campaign in miserable weather. Harried and hopelessly outnumbered, they prepared to face the flower of French nobility a few miles from Agincourt. The French army, under King Charles VI's commander, Constable D'Albert, numbered in excess of twenty thousand men, mostly knights. Opposing them, King Henry V commanded around six thousand ragged and starving men-but, of those, five thousand were archers, and most of them Welsh.

  On that bright Saint Crispin's day in October, the great French army was massacred. Accounts of the battle read like a "What Not To Do" handbook of combat. The French produced blunder after blunder in bewildering array, so many as to be almost literally incredible. Even so, it would have taken a military miracle for French horse-mounted knights to succeed when, by some estimates, upwards of seventy-two thousand arrows were loosed in the first fateful minute of the conflict. Of this devastating power, historian Philip Warner writes, "Fear of the longbow swept through France. Its deadly long-range destruction made it seem an almost supernatural weapon." Prayers against it were offered in churches at the time; this was a last resort, for nothing else came close to stopping it.

  Britain's losses that day in the fields of Agincourt numbered around one hundred-and many of those were noncombatants: unarmed, defenceless baggage boys and chaplains who were slaughtered out of extreme frustration by the already-beaten French who attacked the supply wagons encamped a mile or so from the battle field. On the other side of the equation, the French lost around two thousand counts, barons, and dukes; well over three thousand knights and men-at-arms; and more than one thousand common soldiers for a tally in excess of six thousand dead. These numbers are conservative: some accounts of the time estimate that as many as twelve thousand were killed or captured that day.

  In any event, it was a defeat so devastating that it would be a generation or more before France could regain its military confidence against the British. As military historian Sir Charles Oman put it: "That unarmoured men should prevail against men cased with mail and plate on plain, open ground was reckoned one of the marvels of the age."

  Decisive as it may have been, Agincourt was not by a very long shot the first battle to be decided by the longbow, nor would it be the last. But it was, perhaps, the most powerful demonstration of a now little-remembered law of medieval combat-namely, that when two opposing forces met, those with the most archers would invariably win. A sort of corollary stated that when both sides boasted roughly the same number of archers, the side with the most Welsh archers would win. Such was the highly recognized talent of the Cymry with the longbow, and their renowned fighting spirit.

  As we are once again reminded by the British chronicle of the Saxon kings, the Brenhinedd y Saesson: "The men of Brycheiniog and the men of Gwent and the men of Gwynllwg rebelled against the oppression of the Ffreinc. And then the Ffreinc moved their host into Gwent; and they gained no profit thereby, but many were slain in the place called Celli Garnant. Thereupon, soon after that, they went with their host into Brycheiniog, and they gained no profit thereby, but they were slain by the sons of Idnerth ap Cadwgan, namely, Gruffydd and Ifor…"

  This rebellion provoked a reaction: "In that year King William Rufus mustered a host past number against the Cymry. But the Cymry trusted in God with their prayers and fastings and alms and penances and placed their hope in God. And they harassed the
ir foes so that the Ffreinc dared not go into the woods or the wild places, but traversed the open lands sorely fatigued, and thence returned home empty-handed. And thus the Cymry defended their land with joy."

  It was precisely this fierce and tenacious spirit that the Normans faced in their ill-advised invasion of Wales. The unrivalled talent with the longbow-though born in the forests and valleys of Wales-was honed to lethal perfection in the white heat of contention following William II's decision to extend the dubious benefits of his reign beyond the March. It was a decision which sparked a conflict that was to sputter and flare for the next two hundred years or more, and provided the fertile ground from which sprang the legends featuring that shrewd archer, Robin Hood.

  Wily Welsh archers were not the only plague in William's life, however; he also suffered from that acute affliction of his time: fear of purgatory.

  Like a great many prominent men,William Rufus found himself in continual debt to the church, paying out huge sums of money for prayers to be said for the departed under his purview. All throughout the Middle Ages, abbeys and monasteries large and small did a roaring trade in penitential prayer, employing their priests on a perpetual, round-the-clock basis. The holy brothers prayed for their patrons and their patrons' families, of course, and also for the souls of those unfortunates their patrons might have killed. For the right fee, the local abbot could guarantee that the requisite time in purgatory would be shortened, or even excused altogether, and no one would have to suffer eternal damnation.

  Quaint as it might seem today, buying and selling prayers for cash was a business conducted in dead earnest at the time. For it would be difficult to overestimate the fear of hell and its attendant horrors for the medieval mind. As tangible proof of this deep-seated and widespread phobia, the abbeys rose stone by ornately carved stone to dominate the medieval landscape of Europe. These beautifully wrought works of art can still be visited a thousand years later: belief made physically manifest.

  Though greatly reduced in every way now, all through the Middle Ages the monasteries amassed enormous wealth on the exchange of prayer for silver, becoming ever more powerful, extending their influence into all areas of medieval life and commerce. It was to be their downfall in the end. For when the wealth and power grew so massive as to exceed that of the monarchy, the threatened kings fought back.