‘Elise, you are sure that you can do this; that you wish to do this?’ Robin said, fixing her with his strange silver eyes, his handsome face concerned and kindly. They were equals in height, but she was as thin as a straw, clad in a long shapeless dark dress that had once been green, her lined face topped with a mass of white fluffy hair. She looked like nothing so much as a giant seeding dandelion.

‘Oh yes, Master Robin, I can do this. It is but a small thing to spin a few tales at a campfire.’

‘And you know which tales you are to spin?’ asked my master.

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she said impatiently, ‘the spirits of dead men are trapped inside the wild ponies hereabouts, and horse-headed monsters patrol the night stealing men’s souls for the Devil… Wooooooah! Hooooagh!’ She made a series of loud eerie noises in the back of her throat and waggled her fingers in the air like a madwoman. It should have been ridiculous, comical even, but on that warm September afternoon I felt my blood chill a little. ‘Don’t you worry, master, they will all have nightmares,’ this odd woman continued. ‘And don’t you concern yourself about me, sir; no harm will come to me. I have seen the shape of the future in a bubbling cauldron of blood soup, and all will be well; you shall have your victory, sir. Mark my words. A great victory after a night of fire and mortal fear.’

Robin embraced her, and promised that she would be well rewarded for the risks she was taking. ‘Serving you, my lord, is reward enough,’ said this strange creature calmly in her French-accented tones. ‘Your fame will last for more than a thousand years,’ Elise continued; her eyes seemed to have glazed over, and she clearly had at least one foot sunk in the swamp of madness. ‘And those who serve you, they too will be remembered: John, Tuck, Alan, even my poor dead husband Will — they shall not be forgotten. So, I say again: the reward of serving you is enough: it is a path to immortality.’ And she gave a short, high-pitched laugh that was uncomfortably close to a cackle.