Andrew Fish - Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow

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.

As they approached the gates of the town, the party came to an abrupt halt and Erasmus found himself staring at the back of Maude’s head. He craned his neck to see past and to find out why they had stopped.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Maude, letting go of his arm as she did so.

‘Why have we stopped?’ said Erasmus.

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