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from above: it was noon.
    ‘Time for dinner,’ said Tuck, with a great deal of relish. He rummaged in the nearest cart and pulled out a dirty white sack and huge stone bottle. ‘Let’s sit over here,’ he said, and we sat down in the shade of a wide chestnut tree. All around us men and women from the column were unpacking bags and satchels and spreading blankets on the grass. Out of our sack, like a travelling magician I had once seen at a Nottingham fair, Tuck started to pull wonderful things, luxuries of the kind that I rarely saw then and very seldom ate: a loaf of fine-milled white bread; a whole boiled chicken; smoked gurnard; cold roast venison; a round yellow cheese; hard-boiled eggs; salted cod; apples, stored in straw since the previous autumn . . . He gestured at the stone bottle, inviting me to drink, and I pulled out the wooden stopper and took a long swallow of cider. This was a feast fit for a royal household: my normal noon-day meal, if there was anything to eat in our house, which was seldom, consisted of coarse rye bread, ale, pottage and, if we were lucky, some cheese. Meat we rarely ate, perhaps a rabbit poached from the lord of the manor’s warren once in a while. The monk tore a leg off the plump chicken and tossed it to me. I grabbed a handful of the soft white bread, ripped off a hunk and quickly began to fill my belly.
    Tuck cut himself a large slice of cheese, wrapped it in bread, took a deep swallow of cider, and sighed happily. His mouth full, he gestured at me to eat and drink. And he further encouraged my gluttony by cutting me a large chunk of smoked fish. The food and drink seemed to loosen his tongue once again, and between mouthfuls he said: ‘You asked how I, a man of God, come to help Robin, a godless murderer. Well, I shall tell you . . .’ And he began.
    ‘I have known Robin these nine years past; since he was but a boy, not much older than you. He had been sent to stay with the Earl of Locksley, to learn the skills of a knight, but he was a wild one even then, forever running off into Barnsdale forest when he should have been attending to his lessons. But he was not an outlaw, not the Lord of the Wood you see today, whom everyone must obey on pain of death.’ He lifted his chin towards a distant group of figures - Robin, his brother Hugh and John - sitting on the ground, laughing and eating, joking with each other in a carefree way, but surrounded by a ring of grim armed men. ‘But he despised the Church, even at that age,’ he continued, ‘and when we first met, to him I was no more than a symbol of a tyrannical and corrupt institution.’ He paused and took another huge swig of cider.
    ‘I was a wayward monk, a sinner, who had been sent away from Kirklees Priory - yes, I know it is more famous as a nunnery, but a certain number of monks lived in an adjoining brother house - what was I saying? Yes, I was sent away to live alone in a cell in the woods. What was my sin, you ask? Not what you suspect, you horny young rascal, with the nuns and monks living next to each other; it was plain greed. I could not control my appetite on fast days. And, in those days, under old Prior William, almost every day at Kirklees was designated a fast day: Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and all those interminable, joyless holy days.’
    Tuck gave me a grin, to let me know that he was joking, and stuffed a whole leg of chicken into his mouth, stripping the flesh from the bone with his strong white teeth. ‘I have always been afflicted with a large appetite,’ he said, with his mouth full. ‘So, for my sin, I was sent off to a hermit’s cell in the forest where there was a ferry owned by the Priory. I was alone, and my duty was to act as the ferryman, conveying travellers safely across the river. I was to take my meagre living from their small gifts of food. Prior William thought it would teach me a lesson. Perhaps cure my gluttony.
    ‘One sunny day I was lying under a tree, eyes closed, in