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Erasmus wondered briefly at how bad it had been to start with, but the advantage now seemed to be his and he took a step forward and waved his hot metal dangerously close to the knight’s face. Gisburne took another step backwards, tripped over the anvil and fell, catching his head on the edge of the bench. Erasmus knelt down and examined his foe – he appeared to be unconscious. Smiling, he rose and turned to the door, only to find the way blocked by two armed guards. He waved his hot iron in front of him and was just beginning to advance when the armourer, having returned to his forge whilst Erasmus’ back was turned, threw a bucket of water over him. Erasmus stood for a moment, blinking and watching the steam rising from his now-useless weapon then, knowing he was beaten, he let it drop to the floor.
Chapter Six (#u7a67593e-1572-5627-b6d9-522f7bea1cbd)
Erasmus examined his surroundings with disdain. If he’d been asked to rate the dungeon he was in he wouldn’t have given it five stars – three rats would have been more appropriate. This was not because he thought it was fairly average for mediaeval accommodation, but because that’s how many rats he’d counted in the first few minutes of his confinement. The straw didn’t show any obvious evidence of housekeeping and, with the only light coming through the grille of the trapdoor above, the view was little to write home about. What made it worse was the fact he had to share: there were at least half a dozen prisoners in the pit and, going by the smell, some of them had been there for some time.
An old man with an unkempt beard sat in a corner staring at the wall. After a while he began to argue with it, and two other men, sitting quietly together in a corner, shook their heads with sad familiarity.
Erasmus himself was sat in the middle of the room where he had landed. He was still winded from the fall but, surprisingly, his arms and legs seemed intact. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, the first thing he noticed was that the dungeon probably merited a higher rating on his rat scale and the second was that the straw seemed somewhat unevenly distributed, with a greater part of it piled underneath the trapdoor. Obviously, somebody had moved the straw into place in order to spare any subsequent unfortunates the same pains they themselves had experienced.
He looked around the dungeon, trying to identify a likely candidate for his mysterious benefactor. There was a young man sitting in one corner, mending his boots with something that appeared to be rat-gut and a needle improvised from a bone; a surly, bearded man who glared at everything – rats, people and walls – but made no attempt to argue with anything and, surprisingly, a young woman, who sat patiently at one side of the room, with a smile which spoke of someone who knew something nobody else did. Feeling that a bit of conversation that wasn’t punctuated with sword-thrusts might be nice and that he probably ought to get away from the trapdoor before the next arrival, Erasmus stood up, made a show of tidying the straw for the next visitor then, still limping slightly from the impact, joined the woman by the wall.
‘Afternoon,’ he greeted her casually. ‘Mind if I join you?’
‘It don’t look like I’ve got much choice,’ said the woman, ‘us being stuck in the same ’ole an’ all.’
‘I can sit over there if you’d prefer,’ said Erasmus, pointing to where the old man was crouching by the opposite wall. Having had no satisfaction in his argument, he was now picking up loose pieces of straw and making a little mound next to his feet.
‘Sit where you bleeding like,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t give a tinker’s cuss.’ Erasmus suspected the woman probably wasn’t responsible for the impromptu crash-mat.
‘Have you been here long?’ he said.
‘That’s an old one. Why didn’t you start with “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”’
‘That’s an old one where I come from too,’ said Erasmus. ‘Sorry, I’m not trying to…’ He searched his mind for a mediaeval equivalent for ‘chat you up’.
‘Get in me britches?’ the woman provided.
‘I was going for something a little more polite.’
‘Polite,’ the woman laughed. ‘You’re a posh ’un, aren’t you? What they stick you in ’ere for – you eat with one of them new-fangled fork things?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Erasmus was genuinely confused.
‘They ’ung a man for that a few months back,’ the woman continued. ‘Only things made by God should touch ’is bounty they said. ’Course, ’e was eating the King’s deer at the time, so that might ’ave ’ad something to do with it. Personally, I don’t see what’s wrong with ’em.’
‘With what? Deer?’
‘Forks, of course. I mean you eat your pottage with a spoon, don’t you – you aren’t expected to scoop it up with your fingers and I’d love to see the man who could cut a loaf of bread without a knife.’
‘There are some,’ said Erasmus, unable to resist the automatic urge to educate people.
‘You what? You’re pulling my leg.’
‘In China,’ said Erasmus. ‘They focus all their energy into the edge of their hand and use the force to split logs.’
‘China? That in foreign?’
Erasmus tried to think what the woman would recognise as a name for China. ‘Cathay?’ he hazarded – she shook her head. ‘Yes, it’s foreign,’ he said.
‘Know a bit about foreign, do you?’
‘We travel a lot where I come from.’
‘Well you ain’t gonna get much travelling done in ’ere. You ever seen a cell like this?’
‘Not from the inside, no,’ said Erasmus. ‘We’re a bit more civilised where I come from.’
‘Sounds like you chose to come to the wrong country. Mind you, it’s not all bad.’
‘No?’
‘No, sometimes the pottage ’as fresh carrot in it.’
‘Oh,’ said Erasmus.
The woman looked him up and down appraisingly.
‘You know, you can get in me britches if you want,’ she said quietly. ‘I reckon a woman ought to be glad to ’ave a civilised man like you. Better than the rough sort you get round ’ere, anyway.’
Erasmus flushed red and, although he was sure it was too dark for the woman to tell, she seemed somehow aware of his embarrassment.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘is a woman offering ’erself not done where you come from?’
Erasmus thought briefly of the culture of twenty-first-century England where some women would probably dance naked if it got them on Big Brother. He thought about trying to explain that they simply didn’t offer themselves to poor teachers with no prospect of fame and fortune, but decided against it. ‘Not really,’ he said.
‘Fair enough,’ said the woman. ‘What are you in for? My name’s Maude, by the way.’
‘Erasmus,’ said Erasmus.
‘Is that a name or a crime?’
‘It’s my name. I’m in for…’ Erasmus paused; he wasn’t exactly sure why he was in a dungeon. ‘I think I embarrassed a knight,’ he continued.
‘Embarrassment, eh! Telling bawdy jokes, were you?’
‘No. I think it’s because I made him fall off of his horse – must be a couple of years ago.’
‘And you’ve been locked up for that? God, they’ll put you away for anything now. Who was it?’
‘I don’t know his name. Tallish chap, though, well built.’
‘They all look like that – built like towers with brains to match.’
‘He had blonde hair and a scar on his cheek – that was the second time I saw him, anyway.’
‘What? ’Is hair changed colour?’
Erasmus shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The scar was new. Looked like he’d been slashed across the cheek.’
Maude looked at him thoughtfully. ‘That’s Gisburne, that is,’ she said. ‘You get on the wrong side of ’im he won’t forget it. They call ’im Guy the Gamekeeper.’
‘Gamekeeper?’
‘He kills poachers for sport. Well, I’m going to let you in on a secret, m’duck, any enemy of Gisburne is a friend o’ mine and I think friends ought to ’elp each other, don’t you?’
Erasmus nodded. ‘Quite,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m going to be busted out of ’ere in a few ’ours – I might be able to get you out as well.’
Erasmus’ eyebrows raised in curiosity. The name Gisburne had rung a bell.
‘Who’s coming?’ he said. ‘Is it Robin Hood?’
‘Robin ’ood?’ Maude chuckled, a sound not dissimilar to the clucking of a broody hen.
‘He does exist, doesn’t he?’ said Erasmus – it would be a dreadful disappointment to find that Robin was a legend even now.
‘Oh, ’e exists,’ said Maude. ‘I just don’t think ’e’s the kind of person you want to rescue you.’ She ignored Erasmus’ attempts to interrupt with questions and continued. ‘Now, when the girls get ’ere, try not to say too much – ’specially to Alice – and I might be able to bring you along.’
‘Alice?’
‘One of the girls, but she’s a little enthusiastic with ’er dagger when there’s men around. You keep quiet and she’ll probably let you get away with your balls.’
‘Ah,’ said Erasmus, nodding. ‘So what’s Robin Hood like?’
‘What is this obsession with Robin ’ood?’
‘He’s a legend where I come from.’
‘Well he isn’t a legend ’ere and, if you don’t want a nice ’igh singing voice, I wouldn’t mention’is name when Alice is around.’
‘Why?’
‘Ask a lot of questions, don’t you? I don’t know what it’s like in foreign, but over ’ere that can shorten your life.’
‘Shorten it?’
‘By about a ’ead’s’eight. Now, d’you say it was afternoon when you got ’ere?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, we got a couple of’ours then. You sure you don’t want to…’
‘Thanks, but not right now.’
‘Suit yourself. Guess I’ll get a bit of kip then.’
Erasmus leant back against the wall and breathed deeply. He was definitely in the right time, but things weren’t turning out quite the way he’d planned. As he closed his eyes, the old man picked up his little collection of straw, wiped up some rat-droppings with it, then walked over to the middle of the room and dumped it on the pile.
Chapter Seven (#u7a67593e-1572-5627-b6d9-522f7bea1cbd)
Erasmus lay back against the wall of the dungeon, deep in thought. As a tourist in his own time, he’d visited the shells of many castles and seen their ruined dungeons, but nothing had really prepared him for the psychological impact of being imprisoned in one.
He’d heard the stories, of course: he knew well the tale of how prisoners in Carlisle Castle had been compelled to lick the walls to quench their thirst; he’d seen the waxworks that filled the dungeons of Warwick, hanging around in manacles or tied on racks. The trouble was that such images were so different to anything in his experience that it was hard to relate to them. You could understand the pain of torture as prisoners were interrogated; you could even try to comprehend the deprivations of an inadequate diet whilst they awaited their fate – something familiar to many poor university students – but what was difficult to handle was the simple torture of imprisonment itself. The greatest terror a dungeon could bring was not the application of thumbscrews to extract a confession, or even the cheerful banter of the hangman as he came to measure you up for your scaffold, it was the horrifying tricks the mind of an incarcerated man could play when there was nothing to do but think. And for someone who did a lot of thinking it could take a lot less time for the effects to kick in.
Oubliette. The word ran through Erasmus Hobart’s brain looking for a reason. Place of forgetting – oubliette. Forgetting what? Surely you only forget things when you’re preoccupied. If all I’ve got to do is think, I ought to have an eidetic memory by now. The time. What’s the time? See, you’ve forgotten that. No, I remember what the time was when I saw it last, I just don’t know how long ago it was. That’s not the same as forgetting. Is it day or night? How can you tell? It never changes in here. It can’t have been more than four or five hours, but what time did I arrive? Oubliette.
The distant sound of a grunt roused Erasmus from his thoughts and he looked around the room. Most of the prisoners were asleep, so perhaps mediaeval people had some internal body clock that told them whether it was day or night in the outside world. The old man wasn’t asleep, though, he seemed to be continuing his earlier argument with the wall, but even he was keeping his voice down.
Oubliette. Why did they call it that? Did they forget they’d shoved you in it perhaps? No, it couldn’t be that – they’d be popping round to have a look every five minutes, just to see what was there. Perhaps forgetting was a crime? Perhaps you could get locked up for forgetting. That wouldn’t go down very well back at school – every time someone handed their homework in late, they’d be struggling for an excuse other than ‘I forgot’. ‘The dog ate it’, ‘it got flushed down the toilet’, ‘Mulder and Scully came round and confiscated it because the FBI didn’t want it published’ – he’d heard some excuses since he’d started, but ‘I forgot’ was still the original and classic. Oubliette. Why oubliette?
There was a grating noise from above and the trapdoor slid back to reveal several hooded figures. For a moment, Erasmus thought the Oubliette Squad had come to take him, leaving him as just a memory in the minds of people who hadn’t been born yet. Maude, however, seemed less than worried and looked up expectantly.
‘There you are,’ said one of the hooded figures – Erasmus noted the voice was female. ‘I bet you thought we’d forgotten you.’
The corridors above the dungeon were in darkness and Erasmus concluded it was night. He wanted to ask the exact time, but Maude had told him not to speak unnecessarily and, besides, they didn’t have accurate clocks in these days. It had almost been tempting to keep his watch on, but it wouldn’t have helped – he had no way of getting the right time in the first place.
He looked at his rescuers: a small group of women, each wrapped in a black cloak, beneath which Erasmus could catch the occasional glimpse of green cloth or brown leather. The women paid little attention to him: once Maude had persuaded the aggressive, short-haired woman (Alice, Erasmus presumed) that Erasmus was from foreign and was, therefore, not the same as other men, they had reluctantly let him out, but they showed no interest in talking to him. Instead, Alice issued orders to her companions in hushed tones, and the three of them began to pull up the ladder from the dungeon floor. Alice busied herself with an unconscious guard in the corner, trying to make his posture look natural, so that people would assume he was asleep on duty. As she turned to pick up his helmet, she noticed one of the other male prisoners trying to climb out on the ladder.
‘Is he from foreign too?’ Alice asked Maude.
‘Don’t think so,’ said Maude.
Alice hefted the guard’s helmet and used it to hit the prisoner on the head. He gave a single, startled yelp then fell back into the dungeon with a thud. Maude and the other two women made a redoubled effort to pull up the ladder, then closed the trapdoor and locked it. Erasmus could do nothing except watch as Alice, apparently uninterested in the fate of the man she had brained, returned to her efforts with the guard, casually slitting his throat to make sure he didn’t wake up and spoil the effect. Erasmus wondered whether he really wanted to be rescued by these people: he might have been safer in the pit.
Once the trapdoor was closed, Alice led the way through the maze of passages that ran away from the dungeon. Erasmus looked around him in wonder – he’d known about the Nottingham caves, of course, but he hadn’t realised how extensive they were. With all the twists and turns he rapidly lost all sense of direction. Had Maude not been dragging him along by the arm, he could easily have become separated from the women. Just as he was beginning to wonder if he was going to find himself at the centre of the Earth, he found himself being bustled up some rough steps, hewn from the rock itself, and the party emerged through a door in the foot of the castle and into the outer bailey.
The night sky was scattered with wispy clouds and the light waxed and waned as drifts of cirrus passed across the face of the moon. They made their way across the bailey, keeping to the shadows of the outbuildings. As they passed the time machine, Erasmus felt a sudden desire to run, to get into it and go back to the safety of his own century. He paused and Maude looked at him questioningly.
‘What is it?’ she hissed.
‘He does exist, doesn’t he?’ said Erasmus.
‘Who?’
‘Robin Hood.’
Maude gave him a puzzled look. ‘Of course ’e does. Why are you asking me that now?’
Erasmus took one last look at the time machine and sighed. ‘I was just thinking about home,’ he said.
‘You’ll never get there if the guards catch you wandering round ’ere. Come on.’
Erasmus let himself be dragged along by the arm, noticing as they passed through the outer gatehouse that the two, apparently slumbering, guards seemed to have small puddles of blood forming on their tunics. Alice obviously took a lot of pride in her work.
The town of Nottingham was a far cry from the lively city of Erasmus’ experience. A clutch of primitive, timber-framed buildings huddled against the castle rock as if for protection, their whitewashed walls appearing faintly blue in the moonlight. There were no lights in the windows and the only sounds that could be heard were the occasional bleats of sheep, penned near the perimeter wall of the town.
Erasmus let the women guide him through the streets. Maude still held his arm tightly, despite the fact that the risk of getting lost had subsided as soon as they reached the surface. Nevertheless, he made no attempt to disentangle himself and quietly followed the group, catching the occasional glimpse of Alice as she slipped in and out of shadows further along the street. Had the cover been continuous, or had Erasmus not known she was there, he probably wouldn’t have seen her creeping along. He found that thought rather disquieting.
