The further west I wended, however, the pickings got better in one respect, but worse in another. More had heard of King Raven, to be sure, and some were happy enough to talk. But those who knew of him held that this Raven was not a real man at all. Rather, they had it that he was a phantom sent up from the lowest infernal realm to bedevil the Normans. They said the creature took the form of a giant, high-crested bird, with wings to span a ten-foot pike, and a wicked long beak. Deadly as plague to the Normans, they said, and black as Satan's pit whence he sprung, he was a creature bred and born of deviltry-although one alewife told me that he had given some kinfolk of hers aid in food and good money when they were that desperate for it, so he couldn't be all that bad.

As green spring gave way to summer, I settled for a spell with a swineherd and his gap-toothed wife on their small farm hard by Hereford, where Baron Neufmarche keeps his great stone heap of a castle. Although Wales is only a few days' saunter up the road, I was in no hurry just then. I wanted to learn more, if more was to be learned, and so I lay low, biding my time and listening to the locals when they had cause to speak of matters that interested me.

When the day's work was finished, I'd hie up to town to spend a fair summer evening at the Cross Keys, an inn of questionable repute. The innkeeper was a rascal, no mistake-it's him they should be hanging, not Will-but he served a worthy jar and thick chops so tender and juicy your teeth could have a rest. I came to know many of the local folk who called at the Keys, and they came to trust me with their more private thoughts.

Always, I tried to steer the talk towards happenings in the March, hoping for a word or two of King Raven. Thus, it fell out one night that I met a freeman farmer who traded at Hereford on market days. He had come up to sell a bit of bacon and summer sausage and, seeing me cooling my heels, came to sit down beside me on the low wall that fronted the inn. "Well," said I, raising my jar, "here's hail to the king."

"Hail to the king, devil take him when he will."

"Oh? Red William gone out of favour with you?" I ask.

"Aye," says the farmer, "and I don't care who knows it." All the same, he glanced around guiltily to see who might be overhearing. No one was paying any mind to a couple of tongue-wags like ourselves, so he took a deep draught of his ale and reclined on his elbow against the wall. "I pray for his downfall every day."

"What has the king done to you to earn such ire?"

"What hasn't he done? Before Rufus I had a wife and a strapping big son to help me with the chores."

"And now?"

"Wife got croup and died, and son was caught in the greenwood setting rabbit snares. Lost his good right hand to the sheriff 's blade. Now he can't do more'n herd the stock."

"You blame the king for that?"

"I do. If I had my way King Raven would pluck out his eyes and eat his right royal liver."

"That would be a sight," I told him. "If that feathered fella was more than a story to tell on a summer night."

"Oh! He is," the farmer insisted. "He is, right enough."

My vengeful friend went on then to relate how the dread bird had swooped down on a passel of Norman knights as they passed through the March on the King's Road one fine night.

"King Raven fell out of the sky like a venging angel and slew a whole army o' the baron's rogues before they could turn and run," the farmer said. "He left only one terrified sot alive to warn the baron to leave off killin' Brits."

"This creature-how did he kill the knights?" I wondered.

The farmer looked me in the eye and said, "With fire and arrows."

"Fair enough," says I. "But if it was with fire and arrows, how do they know it was the phantom bird who did it, and not just some peevish Welshman? You know how contrary they can be when riled."

"Oh, aye," agreed the farmer. "I know that right enough. But it was the King Raven, no mistake." He shook his head with unwavering assurance. "That I know."

"Because?" I prodded lightly.

"Because," says he with a slow smile, "the arrows was black. Stone tip to feather, they was black as Beelzebub's tongue."

This bit of news thrilled me more than anything I'd heard yet. Black arrows, mind! Just the kind of thing ol'Will Scarlet might think up if he was about such business as spreading fear and havoc among the rascal brigade. In this tetchy farmer's tale, I saw the shape of a man, and not a phantom. A man that much like myself it gave me the first solid hope to be getting on with.

I lingered on the holding through harvesttime to help out, and then, as the leaves began to fall and the wind freshened from the north, I took my leave and, one bright day, took to the road once more. I walked from settlement to settlement, pausing wherever I could to seek word of King Raven.

Autumn had come to the land, as I say, and I eventually arrived at the edge of the March and entered the forest. Easy in my own company, I remained alert to all around me. I travelled slow and with purpose, camping by the road each night. On those clean, clear mornings I rose early and made for a high place, the better to watch and listen and learn what I could of the woodland 'round about.

See now, the Forest of the March is an ancient wood, old when Adam was a lad. A wild place not like any forest I'd known in England. Denser, darker, more tangled and woolly, it clutched tight to its secrets and held them close. Mind you, I am a man used to forest ways and byways, and as the bright days chased one another off toward winter, I began to get the measure of it.

One morning, just as the weather turned, I woke to a chill mist and the sound of voices on the King's Road. I had seen wolf scat on the trail before sunset and decided a prudent man might do well to sleep out of reach of those rangy, long-toothed hunters. So, having spent the night in the rough crook of a stout oak within sight of the King's Road-a stiff cradling, to be sure-I stirred as the daylight broke soft on a grey and gusty day, and heard the sound of men talking on the trail below. Their voices were quiet and low, the easy rhythmic tones familiar, even as the words were strange. It took me a moment to shake the sleep out of my ears and realise they were speaking Welsh. My mother's tongue it was, and I had enough of it from my barefoot days to make myself understood.

I heard the words Rhi Bran y Hud and knew I was close to finding what I was looking for, so… Yes, Odo, what is it?" My scribe rouses himself from his snooze and rubs his dream-dulled eyes.

"These words Riban Hood," he asks, yawning wide. "What do they mean?"

"If you would let a fella get on wi' the tellin', God knows you'd find out soon enough," I say. "But, see here now, it en't Riban Hood, as you will have it. It is Rhi Bran-that part means "King Raven." And Hud means… well, it means "Enchanter." It is what the British folk call the phantom lord of the Marchlands."

"Ree Bran a Hood," he says, dutifully writing it down. "A good name."

"Aye, a good name, that," I agree, and we rumble on. Well, I shinnied down to join those fellas on the road and see what they could tell me of this mysterious bird.

"Here now," I called, dropping lightly from the last branch onto the bank above the road. "Can you fellas spare a traveller a word or two?"

You would have thought I'd dropped down from the moon to see the look on those two faces. Two men, one big as a house and the other slighter, but muscled and tough as a hickory root. They were dressed in odd hooded cloaks with greenery and rags sewn on, and both carried sturdy longbows with a quiver of arrows at their belts. "What!" cried the big one, spinning around quicker than you'd have thought possible for so large a lump of humanity.

This one has spent a fair bit of time in the greenwood, thinks I, his knife is in his hand that quick. "I mean no harm, friend," I said. "And full sorry I am if I startled you. I heard you talkin' and was hopin' for a little chin music, is all."