Hearing the conversation outside was getting louder, Erasmus put down his chalk and began to wind the crank which turned the blackboards on their rollers and gave him a clean surface on which to write. A loud thump outside the door disturbed him and, realising he couldn’t put the moment off any longer, he strode to the door and opened it.
‘What was that noise?’ he demanded of the straggle of boys who were lined along the wall.
‘It wasn’t me, sir,’ Kirkby protested.
‘I asked what the noise was, not who wasn’t responsible. Have you got a guilty conscience or have you just neglected to wash your ears out this morning?’
Kirkby didn’t answer – he couldn’t see what the right answer was.
‘Well?’ Erasmus directed his gaze over the whole class.
‘Please, sir.’ Harrison’s unbroken voice rang out like the song of a lark that had just undergone an intensive interrogation.
‘Yes, Harrison,’ Erasmus prompted.
‘It was my sandwiches, sir.’
‘Your sandwiches? What have you got in them – gunpowder?’
‘No, sir,’ Harrison objected. ‘Barnstaple threw them at the door.’
There was a chorus of ‘sneak’ from the back of the queue. Erasmus took a discreet look and noted Barnstaple and his usual bunch of cronies. He felt sorry for Harrison: he admired the child’s sense of duty and fair play, but sometimes he felt it would be better if the boy just kept his mouth shut. He looked down at his feet and found a small packet of sandwiches, so tightly wrapped in cling-film you felt that Harrison’s mother was trying to suffocate the contents and make sure they were dead. He motioned to the boy at the front of the queue, who obediently bent down, picked up the package and passed it to the master.
Erasmus looked sternly at Barnstaple. ‘Why did you throw this?’ he asked.
Barnstaple maintained a sullen silence.
‘We’ll stand here until someone tells me,’ Erasmus informed them, ‘and you know what that means, don’t you?’
Some of the smaller boys nodded. Erasmus’ system of punishment basically involved adding up the minutes for which his lesson was disrupted and claiming the time back in a detention. It wasn’t an entirely fair system, since the whole class were punished for the fault of a handful of troublemakers but, as Erasmus himself pointed out, his detentions weren’t about punishing people, but about making sure they came out of school with the right amount of education. British education might be going to the dogs, but there was no way this teacher was going to turn his school into just another kennel.
Barnstaple, knowing Erasmus wouldn’t back down and unwilling to undergo an entire hour’s detention, held up a small wooden device.
‘I was testing this,’ he admitted.
‘Bring it here,’ Erasmus demanded. Barnstaple made his way to the front, the line of boys leaning against the wall to let him pass, whilst simultaneously staring curiously at the contraption. Erasmus took the device from the boy and examined it closely.
‘It’s a catapult,’ Barnstaple explained.
‘I can see that,’ Erasmus told him. ‘More accurately, of course, you should call it a trebuchet. Now what are you doing throwing people’s sandwiches with a piece of siege artillery?’
‘I thought they might want to use it in the play.’
‘I see. This would be the famous production of Robin Hood, would it?’
Barnstaple nodded.
‘And where in the legends does it say that the outlaws fired sandwiches from trebuchets, hmm?’
Barnstaple shrugged. ‘They had them back then,’ he managed.
‘Trebuchets, yes,’ Erasmus agreed. ‘However, I believe they were somewhat short of sandwiches and, even if they weren’t, I doubt it would ever have occurred to them to use them as ammunition.’
‘The French used to throw animals over castle walls,’ someone contributed. ‘Perhaps the English just used to throw their lunch.’
Erasmus looked up, trying to find the source of the comment, one eyebrow raised quizzically. He identified the source of the comment as Atkinson and looked at him levelly. ‘Do you understand why the French threw cows over castle walls?’ he asked.
‘Because they had BSE?’ Atkinson suggested.
‘In the thirteenth century,’ Barnstaple sneered.
Erasmus looked at Barnstaple sternly and the boy fell silent. ‘Believe it or not, Atkinson,’ Erasmus continued, looking back towards the boy, ‘you’re actually thinking in the right area. It was common in siege warfare to hurl diseased animals into besieged castles – the idea was that the disease would spread amongst the inhabitants and lead to an early surrender. However, I fail to see what relevance this has to Robin Hood.’ He looked down at Barnstaple once more.
‘I was just getting into it,’ said Barnstaple. ‘You know, history and all that.’
Erasmus pushed back the classroom door and ushered the pupils to their seats. He handed Harrison his sandwiches as he passed. Once the last few pupils had filtered past, he closed the door and made his way to his desk.
‘Taking an interest in history is very commendable,’ he told the class as they stood quietly behind their desks, ‘but plays about Robin Hood actually say very little about the history of this country. In fact, there are significant elements of the plays which flatly contradict history as we know it.’
He motioned for the class to sit and, as they complied, he surveyed them: there did seem to be a spark of genuine interest, even if it had initially revolved around a practical interest in siege weaponry.
He waited for the noises of scraping chairs and low murmuring to subside, then addressed the class. ‘Can anyone give me an example of a historically dubious aspect of the Robin Hood legend?’ he asked.
Harrison raised his hand, eager to be the first to answer. Erasmus decided not to choose the boy: he’d already embarrassed Barnstaple once this morning and it wouldn’t do to let him draw too much attention to himself – not with double physics after lunch, anyway.
‘Heathfield,’ he called out, noticing the child was holding his left arm up and supporting it with his right as if it were becoming burdensome.
‘Marian, sir,’ Heathfield said.
‘What about Marian?’
‘My dad says she didn’t exist, sir.’
‘Does he now? And what makes him say that?’
‘He says that women knew their place in the Middle Ages, sir, and that they didn’t go out partying with their friends to all hours of the night.’
Erasmus tried hard not to smile: Heathfield Senior’s remarks often said more about the insecurities of twenty-first century man than they did about the position of twelfth- or thirteenth-century woman. He noticed Harrison had put his sandwiches on the edge of the desk – should he tell the boy to put them away? He didn’t understand why Harrison had to wave his sandwiches around like that anyway – did he think they’d run away if he left them in his bag?
‘I was told the French made her up,’ Atkinson contributed. ‘She wasn’t in the early legends and the French added her in.’
‘Why would the French do that?’ Barnstaple challenged.
‘Hufter,’ Atkinson sneered. ‘We were all French back then anyway – that’s just like saying we made it up.’
‘If we were