“Aye,” says the farmer, “and I don’t care who knows it.” All the same, he glanced around guiltily to see who might be overhearing. No one was paying any mind to a couple of tongue-wags like ourselves, so he took a deep draught of his ale and reclined on his elbow against the wall. “I pray for his downfall every day.”
“What has the king done to you to earn such ire?”
“What hasn’t he done? Before Rufus I had a wife and a strapping big son to help me with the chores.”
“And now?”
“Wife got croup and died, and son was caught in the greenwood setting rabbit snares. Lost his good right hand to the sheriff ’s blade. Now he can’t do more’n herd the stock.”
“You blame the king for that?”
“I do. If I had my way King Raven would pluck out his eyes and eat his right royal liver.”
“That would be a sight,” I told him. “If that feathered fella was more than a story to tell on a summer night.”
“Oh! He is,” the farmer insisted. “He is, right enough.”
My vengeful friend went on then to relate how the dread bird had swooped down on a passel of Norman knights as they passed through the March on the King’s Road one fine night.
“King Raven fell out of the sky like a venging angel and slew a whole army o’ the baron’s rogues before they could turn and run,” the farmer said. “He left only one terrified sot alive to warn the baron to leave off killin’ Brits.”
“This creature—how did he kill the knights?” I wondered.
The farmer looked me in the eye and said, “With fire and arrows.”
“Fair enough,” says I. “But if it was with fire and arrows, how do they know it was the phantom bird who did it, and not just some peevish Welshman? You know how contrary they can be when riled.”
“Oh, aye,” agreed the farmer. “I know that right enough. But it was the King Raven, no mistake.” He shook his head with unwavering assurance. “That I know.”
“Because?” I prodded lightly.
“Because,” says he with a slow smile, “the arrows was black. Stone tip to feather, they was black as Beelzebub’s tongue.”
This bit of news thrilled me more than anything I’d heard yet. Black arrows, mind! Just the kind of thing ol’Will Scarlet might think up if he was about such business as spreading fear and havoc among the rascal brigade. In this tetchy farmer’s tale, I saw the shape of a man, and not a phantom. A man that much like myself it gave me the first solid hope to be getting on with.
I lingered on the holding through harvesttime to help out, and then, as the leaves began to fall and the wind freshened from the north, I took my leave and, one bright day, took to the road once more. I walked from settlement to settlement, pausing wherever I could to seek word of King Raven.
Autumn had come to the land, as I say, and I eventually arrived at the edge of the March and entered the forest. Easy in my own company, I remained alert to all around me. I travelled slow and with purpose, camping by the road each night. On those clean, clear mornings I rose early and made for a high place, the better to watch and listen and learn what I could of the woodland ’round about.
See now, the Forest of the March is an ancient wood, old when Adam was a lad. A wild place not like any forest I’d known in England. Denser, darker, more tangled and woolly, it clutched tight to its secrets and held them close. Mind you, I am a man used to forest ways and byways, and as the bright days chased one another off toward winter, I began to get the measure of it.
One morning, just as the weather turned, I woke to a chill mist and the sound of voices on the King’s Road. I had seen wolf scat on the trail before sunset and decided a prudent man might do well to sleep out of reach of those rangy, long-toothed hunters. So, having spent the night in the rough crook of a stout oak within sight of the King’s Road—a stiff cradling, to be sure—I stirred as the daylight broke soft on a grey and gusty day, and heard the sound of men talking on the trail below. Their voices were quiet and low,