The lady of Wearie Manor hummed to herself as she stitched a new hem in her linen gown. Humming and hemming, she thought to herself, and smiled. It was Lady Phillipa’s favorite time of day. Her baby Robbie was asleep in his cradle downstairs, under the watchful eye of the nurse, Matilda. Her older children were with Father James at the parish chapel school in Macclesfield. The men of the house were hard at work threshing in the barn, and the women were doing the household’s weekly washing outside at the well. She could enjoy her time alone in the solar, letting her thoughts wander where they would.

Running the manor while her husband was away on crusade with his liege lord, Earl Ranulf of Chester, was a greater task than she’d anticipated. She had always had charge of the cook and household maids, the children and their nurse, but now she was also expected to give orders to the two huntsmen who doubled as manor guards, to the reeve, and to the farmhands and peasants who lived on the estate and owed their lord service, especially now, during harvest season. Lady Phillipa did not relish being in this position. She much preferred her books and her needlework, her interior life in the quiet time she spent alone in her chambers. These days it was hard to get a moment to herself until well after sunset, and so this peaceful hour was bliss to her.

It ended when a clamor reached her from downstairs. Robbie had begun to fuss, and the crying went on for several minutes without subsiding, so that Lady Phillipa, stifling a few mild oaths, rose unwillingly from her chair. She stepped out of her solar and went to the top of the stairs leading down to the parlor, where her nurse was tending the baby. “Matilda!” she called. “What’s happening down there? Can’t you keep him quiet?”

She received no answer, but in a few moments the child had graduated from bellow to sob. Lady Phillipa assumed that Matilda had picked up the infant to soothe him and had the situation well in hand. Yet no sooner had the lady seated herself in the solar once more, taking up her sewing, than the uproar started again, this time far more urgently: the child seemed to be screaming in real pain. Phillipa rushed back to the top of the stairs and shouted down, “Matilda! What in heaven’s name ails the boy?”

When she again received no answer, Lady Phillipa sighed and started downstairs. It was all too likely that her quiet time was over for the day. Damn that nurse! Phillipa had hired her herself, after the baby had come. Lord Wearie had gone off to the Holy Land two months before the child arrived. Matilda was a young woman from nearby Macclesfield whose own baby had died and who had no husband to support her. She had seemed an ideal nurse, but Phillipa was not happy with the woman’s work. She would have to give her a reprimand if she could not keep the child from this kind of frantic display.

When she reached the foot of the stairs, she turned toward the parlor and began to scold. “Matilda, you must know that this is not acceptable—”

But when Lady Phillipa entered the parlor, Matilda was not holding the baby. Instead the nurse was crouched in a shadowy corner at the far end—in fear or in hiding?—while looming over the cradle in the center of the room was a tall figure in a black hood, holding a long, bloodied tool of some kind. His intent was unmistakable: Phillipa could see red stains on the cradle as she watched its rocking slow and cease. The infant’s crying had stopped.

The lady had only one thought—to protect her child. She dashed forward and snatched the boy up in her arms, her mind recognizing at once that the infant was dead but her arms still pressing him to her breast in futile hope.

Sick with shock and grief, Lady Phillipa turned and ran screaming for the door, in the vain hope that one of the threshers in the barn or the washers at the well would hear. But the man was already upon her. He grabbed her long brown hair from beneath her linen fillet and, forcing her to her knees, yanked her head back.

“Spare me!” Lady Phillipa pleaded. “In the name of our sweet Virgin, Maria Misericordia, hold your hands!”

Her plea was useless. The weapon swept across the lady’s exposed throat, mingling the mother’s blood with the son’s. Her last thought, as darkness descended on her eyes, was a hope that the killer would be gone before her other children came home.

He was a little man, not four feet tall, with a long white beard and a face lined with deep wrinkles. He was dressed in Lincoln-green livery and brown hosen and hood, and he leaned on a crabstaff as if he needed it to hold himself up. But the irritating thing was that he stood in a cart parked across the Great North Road, blocking the progress of the four riders approaching from the south.

Their leader, a black-haired nobleman with a close-trimmed goatee, drew up his fine chestnut stallion and called in a voice used to making itself obeyed, “Get that thing out of the way, boy, or you’ll soon wish you had!”

The little fellow rubbed his chin and looked puzzled. “Boy? Do you know many boys with white beards and a face like an old leather pouch? Seems to me you’d ’ave a little more respect for age, if for nothin’ else.”

The haughty lord gasped at this impertinence. “You dare to bandy words with me, you mandrake mymmerkin? Move that cart, or I’ll have the tongue out of your mouth! Do you have any idea who I am?”

The dwarf put his hands on his hips and made a great show of looking over the fuming toff from head to toe. What he saw was a tall, thin man of early middle age, dressed in a rich surcoat of red silk, emblazoned with a gold lion rampant, over dark blue hose and soft leather boots. The surcoat was belted with a broad sash from which hung a short sword. On the man’s head was a blue hat that matched his rich, vair-lined taffeta cloak, evidently worn only for display on this mild September morning.

The woodsman studied the lord’s sneering lips, and finally answered, “Can’t say as I know exactly ’oo y’are, but I’m pretty sure I can tell what y’are—boy.” He grinned at the nobleman with a mouth that still boasted three or four sound teeth.

It was all the goading the arrogant nobleman could bear. He exploded with such exasperation that his horse reared up. “That’s enough, you poxy mumblecrust! Gilbert de Ogrestan brooks insolence from no man, let alone a stunted puppet like you! Men, seize that churl and bring him to me. I’ll gut him like a pig!” He pulled his short sword out of its sheath and brandished it threateningly.

The other three riders, all dressed identically in chainmail corslets under white surcoats, with blood-red crosses upon them, looked at one another with amusement. None of them moved to follow Sir Gilbert’s order. He was not their commander.

“Well, Gilbert de Ogrespit,” said the woodsman, “you don’t seem so much of an ogre t’ me. Thorvald of Sherwood is what they call me, at yer service.” He proffered a stiff bow in Sir Gilbert’s direction. “And I’m ’ere t’ request the pleasure of yer company at a fine venison dinner with my dear master.”

Gilbert ignored the invitation. “Damn you men!” he screamed at the three knights behind him. “I told you to seize him! Obey my commands, or I’ll report your disobedience to the preceptor at Whitley!”

“My master,” Thorvald continued, unfazed by Gilbert’s shouts, “will be quite interested in that fat purse you’ve got there, ’angin’ from yer saddle.”

At this Sir Gilbert stopped shouting. He glanced at the purse and then, determined to end this charade for good and all, dismounted his horse, held up his blade, and moved fiercely in the dwarf’s direction.

“Well now, that’s not wise, Sir Ogre,” Thorvald cautioned.

As he spoke, ten more green-clad foresters stepped out from among the trees at each side of the road. Each held a drawn longbow, its arrow pointed straight at the breast of either Sir Gilbert or one of his companions.

The three red-cross knights wanted no part of this altercation. They raised their hands in surrender, and one of the bandits, who wore a scarlet hood over his green livery, lowered his bow and relieved them of their swords, giving each one to the little man on the cart.

Sir Gilbert, cautiously lowering his own blade, now adopted a slightly more conciliatory tone. “That purse is none of your concern, sirrah Thorvald. Neither yours or your companions, who I see are nothing but a rabble of thieves. Before you do anything you will regret, know that I am of the order of Knights Templar—as, indeed, are my companions, as you can see from their garb. These men returned from the Holy Land a few weeks ago, and were injured and ill when they arrived. They’ve been recovering in the Templars’ hospital in Newark-on-Trent, and now that they’re whole, I am guiding them to our order’s preceptory at Whitley. They carry letters of credit obtained at our preceptory in Tortosa, Syria, and will exchange them for cash in Whitley.”

“Letters of credit?” Thorvald echoed, puzzled.

Sir Gilbert sighed with impatience. “The arrangement is no doubt beyond your understanding. Crusaders to the Holy Land can deposit their cash or valuables at one of our Templar strongholds and receive letters of credit in return, which they can then exchange at any other Templar house between England and Jerusalem. It costs a great deal to go such a distance, and travelers are reluctant to carry cash with them on the road—reluctant because outlaws like you are only too willing to relieve them of their valuables! Thus the Templars make the roads safe and secure.”

“What won’t they think of next?” commented the fellow in the red hood.

It soon became apparent that he was the true leader of this bandit party, for he took the short sword away from Sir Gilbert, paying no attention to his outrage, and handed it to Thorvald, who dropped it with the other Templars’ weapons in his cart.

“But you, Sir Gilbert,” said the man with the red hood, “are carrying cash yourself. Why is that, pray tell, if you think the roads are full of thieves?”

Sir Gilbert, incensed, spat out, “Insolence! I am taking the cash to Whitley to deposit it in my name, in the security of our house there. I thought I would be safe in bringing my money north on the king’s own highway in my own land!”

The man in the red hood flashed Sir Gilbert a crooked smile. “I can’t say much for your judgment there, old man.”

Now Thorvald spoke up again. “Ask ’im about the vows, Will. Ask ’im that!”

“Right,” said Will Scarlet. Looking steadily into Sir Gilbert’s eyes, he said, “You claim that you’re a member of the Knights Templar, but my understanding is that you people take holy vows, like monks. Vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Isn’t that the case?”

Sir Gilbert seemed annoyed at the question. He had just opened his mouth to answer when one of the other knights—the eldest, with streaks of white in his beard and in the hair hanging below the chainmail coif he wore—spoke first: “We do all take such a vow. And every true Templar adheres to it without question.”

“Then why,” Will Scarlet continued, “are you wearing such a rich cloak, Sir Gilbert? And why those fine soft boots? And why is your own coat of arms on your surcoat, instead of the red cross of your order?”

“You brazen churl, who are you to question me thus!” Sir Gilbert shook his fist at Will, but then, noticing the curiosity with which his three companions were waiting for his reply, he explained resentfully, “I serve an important function in my order, raising funds to support our gallant forces in the Holy Land. I meet with powerful noblemen and prelates in my work, and I must appear as what I am, a wealthy man of means, in order to gain their respect.”

Sir Gilbert’s three companions looked skeptical, particularly the white-haired gentleman who had spoken before. “So,” he muttered, “our crusading garb is not respected, then?” He and the other the knights were shifting warily in their saddles, watching their captors, clearly wondering if the bowmen’s strong arms might be tiring.

“Returning to the subject of that bulging purse, Sir Gilbert,” Will went on. “You’re saying it contains money earmarked for your Templars in the field at Acre and Jerusalem? And you’re transporting it from Newark to Whitley in order to deposit it there?”

As Sir Gilbert nodded, Thorvald spoke up again from his perch in the cart. “Why don’t ya just give the money t’ these three, ’stead of makin’ ’em ride all the way up to Whitley with you to collect their money with these letters o’ credit?”

The three knights looked at one another, and the oldest one said, “Yes, why?”

Sir Gilbert scoffed. “I don’t expect illiterate bumpkins like yourselves to understand the fine points of banking as the Templars have developed it. This money I’m carrying is destined for an entirely different purpose; it will be deposited in a different place.”

“And would that different place,” Will asked, “be your own pocket?”

Sir Gilbert’s face turned a shade that matched his captor’s hood. He was sputtering in frustration as Will said, “Here’s what I think, Sir Gilbert. I think that money in your purse was raised in Nottingham, where you conspired with the Sheriff in a scheme to tax residents and visitors unlawfully, raising money that you claimed would support the crusade but in fact was meant purely for your own use, with the Sheriff receiving a third of the profits. Am I close to the mark, my lord?”

Sir Gilbert continued to sputter. He had no answer to make, for Will Scarlet was right in his assessment, and he knew he was right because Robin Hood’s men had received a message that same day from Lady Maude Peveril, wife of the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood’s occasional lover, informing them of this Gilbert de Ogrestan’s nefarious activities and his plan to journey north with his ill-gotten gains. Maude had no vehement objection to ill-gotten gains—she regularly excused her own husband’s, as well as her lover’s—but she was offended by Ogrestan’s arrogance, and by his cruelty in bilking poor Nottingham parishioners who thought their contributions were promoting a holy purpose. Robin and his men agreed.

“Right,” Will Scarlet concluded. “Let’s bring them all home, then! Thorvald, relieve Sir Gilbert of his very large purse. Much—”

At his name, Much the miller’s son lowered his bow with a gasp of relief. “About bloody time! I wouldn’t ’a given tuppence for that old bloke’s head if I’d ’ad to hold onto that bow any longer.”

“Blindfold them, Much, and tie their hands,” said Will. “As for Sir Gilbert, put him in Thorvald’s cart and tie him hand and foot. I trust him about as much as I’d trust a feral wolf. We’ll bring them back to camp, and give them that venison feast Thorvald promised them!”

KNIGHT OF SHERWOOD is my fourth Robin Hood mystery. In deference to the origins of this legendary figure in the ballad tradition, my Robin Hood novels all have a similar structure: first, each novel focuses on a crime depicted in a traditional English or Scottish ballad—in this case the ballad Lamkin—that I have expanded into a novel-length mystery. Second, each novel foregrounds one of the characters usually associated with Robin’s band—in this book Will Scarlet, a young man who, according to the tales, killed his father’s steward and then fled to Sherwood Forest to seek protection from his uncle, Robin Hood. And third, the comprehensive story arc of the entire series—involving Robin, Maid Marion, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and the evolving relationships between them—forms a good portion of the plot.

In this novel, after Lady Wearie and her son are brutally murdered, her childhood sweetheart, Will Scarlet, eagerly offers to seek out her killer. While Will sets off for his home town with Sir Palomides and Maid Marion, Robin Hood is challenged by a marauding, ragtag army led by Guy of Gisbourne, who is intent on pillaging the towns of northern Sherwood and blaming it on Robin’s men. Can Scarlet discover his true love’s murderer when he himself is a wanted man? Can Robin and his men stop Gisbourne’s army from plundering the castle of Robin’s protector, Countess Lydia? And will Maid Marion be forced to watch as her own beloved is slaughtered before the castle walls? All will depend on Robin’s courage and the skill of Scarlet’s bow.