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soul, of Hell itself. Like the wolf’s head nailed to the church door, it was dizzying.
    ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ Tuck continued, ‘A few months ago, Robin, Hugh and a handful of his men ambushed the Bishop of Hereford as he was travelling with a considerable armed retinue through Sherwood. After a brief and bloody fight, the Bishop and his followers were subdued. Robin took three hundred pounds in silver pennies off them; then he ordered the Bishop to sing Holy Mass for his men. I was away at my duties in the north and the men had been without the comfort of a religious service for some time.
    ‘Well, the Bishop, a stupid, arrogant man, refused to celebrate Mass in the wilderness at the command of outlaws. So Robin ordered the slaughter, one by one, of all the priests and monks who had the bad luck to be accompanying the Bishop on that day. He didn’t touch the captured men-at-arms or the female servants, but the clerics, he killed them all, one after the other, as the Bishop looked on and prayed for their souls. When they were all dead, the corpses lying in a stinking blood-spattered pile, they stripped the Bishop to his drawers and put a sword to his throat, and only then did he consent to sing Mass for the outlaws, shivering in his skimpy braies, in the gloom of the wild wood. Then Robin sent the Bishop on his way, almost naked and alone, stumbling all the way on foot twenty miles to Nottingham. Of course, Robin’s men loved it, if only for the entertainment. And, some felt their souls were more secure after the Mass.’
    ‘And yet you serve him?’ I asked. ‘You, a monk, serve a man who mocks Mother Church, who kills priests . . .’
    ‘Aye, well, actually, I do not serve him. I serve only God. But I’m his friend and so I sometimes help him. I help him and his men, God forgive me, because all men need Jesus’s love, even godless outlaws. And I regard the wild places in Sherwood as my parish. These men, if you like, are my parishioners, my flock. Remember, boy, we are all sinners to one degree or another. And Robin is not a bad man; he has done many bad things, no doubt. But I have faith that he will come to see the light of Our Lord Jesus Christ in time. I’m sure of that as I am of Salvation.’
    He fell silent. As we walked along, I thought about hot men and cold men and cold-hot murderers. And good men. And bad men. And sinners. And Hell.
    The morning passed and it grew hot under the sunshine. I wanted to ask Tuck so many things. But he had begun to sing a psalm to himself under his breath as we walked and I did not dare to disturb his thoughts. So for an hour or two we strolled along in companionable silence, keeping our place in the great slow-moving column and saving our breath.
    A horseman, well-mounted but in shabby homespun clothes, came riding up the column to Hugh, who was on a grey mare a few paces ahead of us. The rider’s hood was pulled far forward so as to conceal his face unless you were looking directly at him. In the full sunlight of a spring morning he still managed to look shadowy and sinister, as if he had somehow wrapped the night around himself. He drew his horse alongside Hugh’s and, leaning forward, whispered something into the clerk’s ear. Robin’s brother nodded, asked a question and learnt its answer. He handed the shadow man a small leather purse, said something inaudible to him and then Hugh spurred forward and galloped to the head of the column where Robin was riding. The hooded man turned his horse and trotted back the way we had come towards Nottingham. Tuck paid him no mind. He continued to plod along in that steady mile-eating pace, barely using his staff at all. Then, suddenly, a trumpet, shockingly loud, sounded from the head of the column. I started, looked around for an alarm but everything seemed normal. The cavalcade came to a halt. The people were chatting to each other unconcerned. The armed men leaning on their bow staves. The cheerful sun looked down