Chapter 28: Together

(Robin of Oaklea narrates)

Just before noon on a warm sunny spring afternoon, we merry men and one woman remount on fresh horses that are waiting for us on the side of the road, about ten miles from Oaklea, where we join the road between Bartown and Oaklea at a crossroad from the south. There another armed monk hands a message to Ranulf.

“Robin, a message from your mother, she fears the village of Oaklea is in the hands of marauders, her brewery draymen missing. She makes no mention of your mother, Lady Elinor.”

“No matter,” I say, “we must go on with all haste.”

“This is a remarkably good road,” comments Brother Canon Friar Ranulf as soon as we turn onto the road heading west. “It is better than any other I have seen in England, it reminds me of some of the wonderful roads I have seen near Rome.”

“It was built by my sister, Alwen,” I say proudly, not wishing to add to the detail, I am uncertain how a friar pledged to celibacy will understand the simple logic of my half sister also being my mother by marriage. It was a complication too far for some. “She is a remarkable woman. She had the road engineers dig up a cross section of old Roman road to find out how it was built and made them adhere to a copy of the foundations and various layers. In fact all that summer she travelled to the site in a covered cart, inspecting every yard of road. I know, because I learned how to ride a horse at that time, taking her lunch and the figures from the Inn and the brew house, to keep everything ticking over. Until this ride, I had forgotten that ten years ago as a small boy, I rode so much.”

“Now it looks like you were born to ride a horse,” he smiled. It was a rare thing, a smile from Brother Canon Friar Ranulf, he was normally all business and had been driving us on like he owned us, with the minimum of rest since landing at London.

Now we were becoming quite a force on the road as more cloaked and armed monks joined us on the road. Before we mounted, I strung my bow and slung it over my back. I fitted both my quivers of arrows to my belt. Seeing me getting ready for well, I knew not quite what, made Hugh do the same, although he only had a single quiver. He complained bitterly that he was a much better swordsman than a bowman, so Lady Elinor said she would like to use his bow if he was so unhappy with it.

“Have you ever used a bow?” Hugh asked.

She replied, “My father was a soldier, who practiced all manner of weapons, so I have had some little instruction from him in the martial arts.”

The Friar Knights too, now thirteen strong, openly strapped their swords to their hips, ready to draw and fight on horseback if needed. One of the Friars, a huge red-haired man called Brother Cleric Michael, also had a fiercely ornately engraved and enamelled double headed axe, which “belonged tae ma fartha”, he grinned, as he slung the fearsome weapon over his back.

This Brother Cleric Michael was asked by Hugh if he was going to use his sword in whatever was coming, to which the Brother laughed, saying he had never drawn it in “God’s Work, as I always have both hands full!” and thus happily gave up its temporary charge to Hugh, who in turn passed his own bow and quiver to Lady Elinor.

“We should leave you here with a Friar for your protection, Lady Elinor,” I sanctioned, “and send for you once we have secured the safety of your mother, and ascertained why these abductors and rescuers are gathering in the village in which I was born and raised.”

“You are not leaving me out of this, Master Robin. Remember, I am a Countess and will remain so until I can arrange an annulment on grounds of non-consummation. Thus I outrank you, in fact, I outrank you all. Be sure that I will accompany you, and be extremely grateful if you all would make every effort to save my mother. As for my own safety, I trust that to fate. So let us ride to your village, a place I am intrigued to see, and we will have no more of this nonsense that I am a weak woman always in need of a knight to keep away from harm’s door.”

“Well, my Lady,” grinned Ranulf, “you are presently in a party without even a single knight in it, so rest assured we will occupy ourselves with our mission and we will leave you to your fate ... but as you are a full and equal partner in this venture, in spite of the elevated position of your rank, we will treat your defence just as diligently as we would any one of our own, and we count Robin and Hugh among our own, do we not, Brothers?”

“Amen!” cried the other armed Friars, all with crazy grins, to which Hugh and I, with Lady Alwen following a fraction of a second later, raised clenched fists to the sky. In a moment there were seventeen clenched fists in the air before we galloped towards Oaklea.