Chapter 4: Obligation

(Robin Oaklea, son of Will Archer, narrates)

I really cannot believe what is happening! How is this possible?

I believe I’ve rescued a defenceless damsel, who was being attacked by a man twice her age, in front of his servants on a public road. Her distress was obvious, my remedy decisive. Or so I thought.

Just now she was so incensed by my efforts to rescue her that she has slapped me! And she slapped me quite hard! My efforts were apparently unwarranted. How was I to know that she is a married woman?

Henry, my father’s trusted guard, and Hugh, my best friend that I have known all my life, are still gathering up our arrows. These we loosed deliberately a little off target against the Madam’s knightly husband, his coachman and a brace of men at arms. Except, of course, for the arrow I fired into both the fleshy buttocks of her beau/

That dart is the source of the Dame’s ire.

That dart, I have no doubt, is lost forever.

My friends take their time collecting up the shafts, while staying well within earshot. They bear witness to my embarrassment in conversation with the Lady, now that the incident has turned from one of the triumph of good over evil, into a gross misinterpretation of events on my part.

Huh! I thought I was being the chivalric hero, like those that are sung of in stirring terms by travelling troupes of bards. There I was, one moment stepping up from the obscurity of my noble father’s shadow, to save a poor damsel in distress from a fate unmentionable. But the very next moment I am the donkey in the street play. I am betrayed by my immature sense of chivalry, while this woman allows her husband to treat her as a possession, the wont of all arrogant Normans of my limited acquaintance.

This is not the way of a true Christian marriage that my parents teach me by their everyday example. Theirs is a perfect love match of equal partners, not the public abuse by one to the other. Nor even unto the extent of defiling public decency, as with the married couple to which I have just borne witness. Why should I be the one to feel the shame of my actions? Why does this young woman, no older than I, and her old-man-who-should-know-better of a husband carry on so shamelessly?

I am angry now but I must cool my irritation, my indignation, to calmly restore order here and retire from this place with whatever dignity I may muster from wreckage.

“Well, Madam,” I say, “I do apologise for my blunt intrusion into your matrimonial affairs. If only you can appreciate the appearance of the incident from my point of view, you may warrant me with some justification for my action. My honest interpretation of the strange rituals which contribute to your particular fantasy of wedded bliss, looked to all the world like the ravaging of a minor by a savage and much aged outlaw. I am sure that your bridegroom will return soon to rescue his embarrassed bride from a fate far worse than the one that he had intended by your public deflowering. Therefore, we will take our leave of you before we become embroiled in another misunderstanding, one which next time might end in tragedy.”

“Wait, boy, you cannot just leave me here, alone, defenceless, at the mercy of wolves or bears, or worse, the real outlaws who occupy these woods!”

“You are right Madam, I should not. Though we have heard no reports of recent outlaw activity within these seldom travelled woods, we will walk you to the edge—”

“Walk? Why do you talk of walk? Are you vagabonds who have not mounts? Who are you anyway? Where’s your father? What would he be doing leaving you running wild around the country? Your companions ... I mean, the big brute looks too dumb to be your father, to be anyone’s father for that matter, and the scrawny boy looks dressed fit only for a parish-fed orphan.”

I laugh, and shake my head.

“The big fellow Henry Short, or Henry Little by turn, is my...” I was going to tell her that he was ‘my father’s man’, but my senses tell me not to betray exactly who we are, lest her spouse seeks us out for any offence we have caused his noble posterior, not least the number of linen thread stitches that he might not be able to ride comfortable for a week. “ ... is my companion in lieu of pro tem guardian, while Hugh of the Green here, is my oldest and best friend. He is fatherless, it is to be admitted, while his mother is indeed a parish pauper through no fault of her own. I am Robert of Oakl— er ... Bartonshire, though my friends call me Robin. We are merely competing archers, travelling from tournament to tournament, presently on our way to the Spring market fair at Rosemont. We do indeed have mounts, tethered a hundred yards back along the trail, lest they betrayed our intentions to interrupt your er, companions.”

At the Castle and on Castle business, Henry normally wears a long white sleeveless tunic over chain mail, that tunic marked in embroidered threads with the blue and green emblem of Bartonshire. When summonsed for this expedition, Henry wanted to wear the red dragon over blue wavy lines and barleycorn ears representing the marriage of Wales and innkeeper’s daughter by the river Bar. My father had adopted that design when knighted, but no tabard yet made would fit our Henry. Alwen promised to embroider one ready for his return, but asked him in the meantime to discard his chain mail and wear an ordinary woollen smock over his linen undershirt, so as not to invite questions why he was not serving duty in the Castle or on patrol.

As for Hugh, his widowed mother is infirm and she lives through the generosity of Father Andrew’s collection plate. Thus he wears the hand-me-downs left behind by his much older brothers who, though serfs, were forced to move far and wide while the old Lord abandoned the Manor of Oaklea to rot before my father took charge.

“We need hasten to catch up with my husband the Count, Master Robin, before nightfall, or he will be gone, off towards the coast.”

“There will be no catching him, Madam,” speaks Henry for the first time, as the only one of the three travellers that knows the lie of the land hereabouts with any certainty, “by the time we fetch our horses here and mount up, that cart being hauled by four horses will have easy reached the fork beyond the wood. There, the coast road is due east through Hensmere, if that be the way you was heading. We can leave thee there to await the return of your husband, whilst we press on north to Rosemont. Where we be expected at the Four Horse Shoes Inn there.”

She bites her lip, before saying, “But, you owe me favour, all three of you, by separating me from my spouse and protector, through your foolish intervention, as well as grievously wounding him in turn. My husband has undoubtedly abandoned me, believing me lost forever to a band of cutthroat outlaws with their lethal longbows. He will not return for me, I assure you and I find I am abandoned to the fate of a common waif, instead of a Lady, and therefore in need of assistance of a man or men of knightly virtue.”

“No, that obligation cannot be,” I say in protest, after all, what knight would leave such a beautiful creature to the fate of fugitives from justice? No, I would cut down every tree in this wood to find her if she was my true love. “Your own husband knight will surely return with men pressed from the burghers of Hensmere-town, to save you. They would leave no stick of this wood unturned until he does.”

“Ha!” she scoffs, bitterly, “what little you, a boy travelling the roads alongside an idiot and an orphan, know of Norman Knights! My new husband is a Count of Picardy. He has lost his lands in Burgundy and Picardy through swapping sides in treachery, and ended up fighting on the losing side. His widowed mother lives on the income from his Norman holdings, so he has only a poor estate in Lancashire, inherited from his maternal grandmother, to barely keep his head above his creditors. Even now his Baron creditors pursue him for their retribution. No doubt the Count thought that you three adventurers were in the pay of the Barons, whose patience has worn thin and prepared to take their pounds of flesh in blood and sinew rather than promised silver and gold. I fancy, even as he runs, he believes you might hold me for ransom.”