Why this book

This 1843 romance sets Robin Hood not in misty legend but squarely inside King Henry the Third's real reign, weaving Sherwood's outlaws through the true Barons' War and the Battle of Evesham of 1265, where forest justice and royal politics share a single battlefield and a single fate.

The Story

In Sherwood Forest, a hunched, ragged peasant drinks quietly at a village inn until rough servants mock and attack him. The innkeeper's daughter, Kate Greenly, pulls the men apart before real harm is done, and the stranger limps out into the night, seemingly harmless.

Outside a church, the peasant straightens, sheds his false hump, and reveals a hidden dagger to Blawket, loyal yeoman of the Earl of Monthermer. His name is Hardy, a forester in Robin Hood's service, and he warns Blawket that a spy in noble livery now watches Sherwood's roads.

At the village May-Day dance, Richard de Ashby, cousin and heir presumptive to the Earl of Ashby, corners Kate Greenly and whispers something cruel. Her betrothed strikes him across the face, and the music stops as every eye turns toward the two furious men.

Richard's men beat the young suitor four against one, until Hardy and his green-clad foresters step from the crowd demanding fair play. As Richard flees the brawl, an arrow splits his hood in warning — a message about Sherwood's justice he cannot mistake for accident.

Hugh de Monthermer, a young knight betrothed to Lucy de Ashby, has been closest friends since boyhood with Prince Edward, heir to England's throne. Both men prize honor above comfort — a bond soon to be tested by war, false accusation, and a fearful King's word.

Deep in Sherwood, Robin Hood hosts the Earl of Ashby at a forest feast, then reveals a harder truth beneath the courtesy: Lucy, the Earl's own daughter, is held safe but captive nearby, hostage until Richard returns the abducted Kate Greenly to her grieving family.

Hugh arrives seeking Lucy and refuses to be Robin's forced messenger, until the outlaw relents. Robin releases Lucy into Hugh's own charge, on one condition: Hugh must persuade the Earl of Ashby to force Richard's hand and bring Kate safely home to her father.

The Earl of Ashby refuses to move against his own kinsman Richard, but Simon de Montfort, leader of the barons, hears Hugh's plea and calls it just. Montfort orders Richard's arrest on the spot, and the old Earl storms out in fury with his son Alured beside him.

Richard forges a letter in secret, luring Hugh alone to a lonely chapel at Monington. But Tangel, Robin's small and fiercely loyal servant, reaches Hugh first with a warning: the summons is a trap, and armed men already wait hidden among the surrounding trees.

That same day, Prince Edward slips free of his baronial captors during a rigged horse race, galloping to freedom on a swifter grey charger. He finds Hugh waiting at the storm-lashed chapel, and the two friends renew their bond of loyalty amid thunder and driving rain.

Richard arrives with three hundred armed men to finish what his forged letter began. Edward orders him to halt, but Richard defies his own prince and charges straight at Hugh — who unhorses him cleanly in single combat before Edward's men can even intervene.

Simon de Montfort marches his army to Evesham, and battle erupts across the fields. Welsh allies break and flee early, but Hugh and Robin Hood's archers hold firm together, driving back the Earl of Norfolk's charging men through smoke and a storm of falling arrows.

King Henry, struck down by his own confused soldiers, is dragged to safety by Prince Edward himself. Alured de Ashby charges at Hugh and is captured. Nearby, the mortally wounded Simon de Montfort makes his final confession as his men vow to die at his side.

Hugh's own uncle, the old Earl of Monthermer, falls badly wounded as the barons' line breaks apart around him. Robin Hood lifts the old warrior himself, carrying him from the killing field to safety, even as the whole battle turns decisively against Montfort's cause.

Still fighting on, Hugh is struck by a mallet and his horse is gored beneath him. He yields to Prince Edward with the old knightly cry, 'rescue or no rescue,' and Edward spares him with quiet kindness, carrying him gently from the ruined field himself.

Weeks later at court, the Earl of Ashby finally consents to Hugh marrying Lucy. But courtiers Guy de Margan and his allies swear before the King that Hugh secretly met masked plotters deep in the forest — and sudden suspicion of treason falls hard upon him.

King Henry brands Hugh a traitor on the courtiers' word alone. Furious but controlled, Hugh demands trial by combat or, at minimum, a single day's grace to prove his innocence honestly. Reluctantly, the King grants him twenty-four hours — kept always under close guard.

Hugh secretly warns his outlawed uncle to flee before soldiers can find him. Meanwhile Kate Greenly, disguised as a page boy, slips into Sherwood carrying letters she intercepted — proof of a plot to have Hugh executed before Prince Edward can ever return to save him.

The stolen letters reveal a deeper conspiracy: Richard and his ally Mortimer mean to see Hugh killed and his uncle's lands divided between them before the Prince can ever return to intervene. Robin Hood reads the proof by firelight and vows the execution will never happen.

By night, Tangel scales Nottingham Castle's thirty-foot wall alone, slipping into Hugh's chamber with a priest's robe and a silken rope ladder hidden beneath a cloak. Together they climb down into darkness, praying the sleeping guards below stay exactly that — soundly asleep.

Disguised in borrowed robes, Hugh and Tangel bluff past torchlit sentries using a stolen password and slip out behind a passing noble's party, unnoticed by anyone. Free at last, Hugh meets Robin Hood waiting in a lane, and together they vanish into Sherwood's safety.

But worse news awaits Hugh in the greenwood. Richard has forged a letter in Hugh's own hand, luring the trusting old Earl of Ashby — Lucy's father — to a lonely hawthorn tree, where hired killers already wait to murder him and hide the body.

The old Earl is stabbed from behind while bravely defending himself, and his body hidden in a sandpit. Richard rides straight to the Earl's own household, planting whispers that Hugh — already a fugitive — must surely be the murderer everyone should now fear and hunt.

Alured, hearing witnesses describe strangers who match nothing about Hugh at all, begins to doubt the accusation entirely. Princess Eleanor then reads aloud a letter proving Hugh was miles away in the forest when the murder happened, planting the first real seed of doubt.

Lucy de Ashby is brought before King Henry herself. Fearless, she denounces the case against Hugh point by point, reading Richard's forged letter aloud and exposing its false wording line by line — silencing Guy de Margan's accusations before the entire stunned court.

Unmoved on the murder charge alone, King Henry orders trial by combat: Alured against Hugh, at Trent Butts. Brother is forced to raise a lance against his own sister's betrothed, while Lucy watches in horror, unable to stop what the crown itself has ordered done.

In Sherwood, Robin Hood arms Hugh with a plan rather than despair: win a week's delay under royal safe-conduct, and use every day of it to hunt down proof of Richard's true guilt before a single lance is ever raised at the lists.

In Nottingham, Kate Greenly tends Richard's dying hireling, Dighton, locking the door against interruption. Before Father Mark as witness, the dying man confesses in writing that Richard de Ashby ordered the old Earl's murder himself — signing his name before he breathes his last.

Alured, searching Richard's house on a hunch, finds Kate beside Dighton's body and the signed confession itself. Yet pride keeps him from withdrawing his challenge outright — he cannot bear the shame of being called a coward who backed down from the lists.

Lucy carries the confession straight to Princess Eleanor, and confesses her own desperate plan in the same breath: she means to flee with Hugh rather than let either man die at the lists for a crime that Richard de Ashby alone truly committed.

Cornered by rumor, Richard begs the courtier Guy de Margan for help. Margan, fearing his own part in the conspiracy will surface, presses Richard toward a darker plan: ensure that neither Hugh nor Alured survives the combat, so no living tongue can accuse either man.

Richard poisons the unguent on Alured's lance and the wine in his cup, gambling that both his enemies will die together at the lists before any truth can reach the King's ear — and his own crimes can finally vanish with them into silence.

The night before combat, Alured visits Hugh's cell and admits, quietly, that he believes him entirely innocent. Yet honor still binds him — a sworn challenge cannot simply be unmade, and so he must raise his lance against a man he no longer blames.

Riding to quell revolt at Leicester, Prince Edward sends back a royal warrant naming Hugh his own prisoner, ordering his flight rather than his combat. Lucy, disguised as a nun, slips the warrant to Hugh in secret, her heart pounding beneath her borrowed habit.

Reading the warrant, Hugh sees the honorable path at last — to obey his prince's order is no coward's flight. He and Lucy escape together down a secret stair and through a hidden courtyard, vanishing into the night roads toward Sherwood's waiting safety.

Hunting for Kate to silence her forever, Richard drinks alone through a sleepless, terror-filled night. Word reaches him that Alured lies dying — poisoned by the very wine cup Richard himself had doctored, a horror closing in on him from every direction now.

At dawn, Tangel disguises herself as a frail old woman and leads Richard down a lonely lane, promising to take him to Kate. Instead, Robin Hood's outlaws spring from the hedges, overpower him, and bind him hand and foot before he can even cry out.

At the lists, astonishing word reaches Prince Edward: the old Earl of Ashby did not die after all. A loyal yeoman drank the poisoned cup meant for him and perished instead, while a skilled physician quietly saved the Earl's life in secret hiding.

Edward offers Alured a last chance to withdraw the combat now that new truths are surfacing fast. But bound by his own sworn oath, Alured refuses, insisting he must face Hugh to the very end, whatever the poisoned cost may still prove to be.

Hugh rides onto the field bareheaded beside his uncle. Behind him comes an astonishing sight: the old Earl of Ashby, alive, borne on a litter by yeomen guarding a bound prisoner — Richard de Ashby himself, captured at last with his own confessed accomplice.

Alured leaps from his horse and embraces his living father, and the charge against Hugh collapses in that single instant. Turning to the man he nearly killed, Alured begs Hugh's forgiveness — and receives it freely, brother and rival reconciled at last on the field.

Hugh yields the captured murderers to King Henry himself. Richard begs pardon, citing his own service at the Battle of Evesham, but the King, pressed hard by his own barons, banishes him for ten days on pain of death instead of granting mercy.

As Richard rides out alone, cursing Alured and Hugh with his last free breath, an unseen arrow marked with Robin Hood's own name finds his heart instantly — the outlaw's justice arriving exactly where the King's own mercy had stopped short of true reckoning.

What it means

Forest Days insists that true honor outlasts forged letters, poisoned cups, and a King's fear — because loyalty, patient proof, and quiet courage endure treachery, even when royal justice falters and only the greenwood's own law finishes what the crown's court could not.

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