I have never been quite so glad to see a symbol of Norman power in my life. I had grown up in and around Nottingham town but I had never been inside its castle - indeed, had I entered it, I’d have been terrified, as being inside that fortress meant facing torture and death for a thief such as me. But, as our mud-splattered, blue-nosed party approached Winchester on the Andover road, I realised how much I had changed in the year I had been with Robin’s band. I caught a first glimpse of the castle as we topped a small rise, and I merely thought: ‘Praise be to God: hot food, hot water to wash in, and a chance to put on some dry clothes.’Then my eye was drawn to the soaring majesty of the city’s long cathedral, famous for housing the holy shrine of St Swithin, the saint who brings the rain - and I scowled. It had taken us more than a week to travel the two hundred or so miles from Robin’s Caves to Winchester, and it had hardly stopped raining since we set out. The roads had become quagmires, mere channels of mud through which the horses had picked their way with their hooves sucked down by the sludge at every step.
