He rose in darkness, as he always had, for at Woodgate, the day did not begin with sun or sound but with vigilance. Matins came not from a cloister, but from stone and frost. There were no bells to wake him, only the ancient call of duty that stirred in his bones before the first light. His prayers were not sung but whispered through breath that steamed in the cold. The iron gate was his altar; the morning mist his incense.
The first light belonged to the gate, and the gate to him. Silence preceded the world—yes—but at Woodgate, silence lingered, shaped like law, carved into the routines of a solitary man. No trumpet called the sun above the trees. No chorus welcomed the light. Only the hinges of the gate, groaning in their old iron beds, offered a voice to the morning. It was not the sound of waking, but of remembering—the moan of something ancient stirred once more to its task. It was the language of iron, aged and burdened, speaking only to those who listened with more than ears.
The gate had stood for more than a hundred years, a relic from the reign of King Henry—when the boundaries of Sherwood were first etched in royal ink and forest law weighed heavier than common law. What began as a royal toll point and forest boundary had become, over time, something older than law itself—a memory of order when the world was less wild and men still feared crossing without permission. The gate had seen outlaws hanged, pilgrims blessed, and nobles humbled. Once, a procession for Queen Eleanor had passed through it. Once, a priest had died in its shadow.
Most believed the gate no longer mattered. But Halward did.
He had requested this post—not out of ambition, but conviction. He did not crave glory or coin. What he wanted was something that still meant something. To guard a place not for its use, but for its meaning. To keep the threshold. The border between what was permitted and what was lost.
He was a man who believed in the power of symbols. And the gate was a symbol—of passage, of judgment, of memory.
The first act of his morning was not watchkeeping but worship. Though he had never taken formal vows, he had fought beside those who had—the Knights of the Temple and the Hospitallers, men who bore swords and psalters in equal weight. He had bled beside them in the sand, prayed beside them in the catacombs of Cyprus, and watched them die with scripture on their tongues. Their ways had left their mark. Not the dress, nor the tonsure, nor the obedience to abbots—but the inward rhythm of a life ordered by the sacred hours.
Before the bell, before bread, before even the cleansing of his hands, he knelt. A narrow wooden bench stood beneath the arrow-slit window, positioned to look eastward, out toward the tangled edge of Sherwood Forest. It was not a place of comfort, but of reflection. From there, he could watch the light rise through the branches like smoke rising through a ruined nave, the mist threading between trunks as if reluctant to disturb the hush. That bench, worn smooth by years of solitary vigil, served as his psalter and his perch.
His cell, if it deserved such a name, was a tower-top room more cloister than quarters. Cold-stoned and narrow, it bore a single slit to the east, through which the dawn crept like penance. There was a wooden cot, a three-legged stool, a lidded basin, and—most precious to him—a crucifix of cedar, carved by a fevered monk on the return voyage from Tyre. The Christ upon it was angular and bare, the face rubbed smooth by the press of Halward’s fingers through the years. Beneath it sat a votive candle, flickering in the gloom like a soul not yet judged. When he lit it, the room accepted the light as a foreign but necessary thing, casting the shadow of the crucifix long across the opposite wall.
He sat before kneeling, spine straight, breath even. His lips moved in rhythm with his thoughts: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." The words, drawn from the Desert Fathers, returned to him with the certainty of ritual and the stillness of ancient desert stone. They were his centering, his sharpening.
Before standing, he whispered the psalm he had kept close since the Siege of Acre, the one that lived in his marrow: "Dominus custodit introitum tuum et exitum tuum ex hoc nunc et usque in saeculum"—"The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth, and even forevermore." (Psalm 121:8). To a man who kept watch, it was not merely poetry. It was oath. It was anchor.
He prayed with purpose, not peace. His matins were forged of steel and silence. There were no choir stalls here, no incense or tolling bells—only wind and breath and the groaning memory of things once vowed and long unbroken.
He prayed for those who passed the gate, that they might be just. He prayed for those who approached with lies, that he might see through them. And he prayed—always—for the strength not to waver when the moment came. Though he had not taken vows, he lived by one: that none would pass who had not earned the right. He did not expect reward. The keeping was its own burden. And its own absolution.
When he rose, his knees ached. He did not grumble. He kissed the cross and let the flame gutter out between thumb and forefinger. In the darkened wick's curl of smoke, he saw nothing, but felt the quiet press of an old presence—Oswin, perhaps, or simply conscience.
Only then did he break his fast: a heel of bread, a wedge of salted cheese, and a draught of water from the cistern. He ate as he had eaten in the field—standing, chewing slowly, watching the dim light creep across the stone. He kept no kitchen, no hearth. Comfort was for those who feared the cold. Halward feared only the failure of duty. Even the bread he rationed with a monk’s precision, measuring the thickness by finger and memory.
He descended the tower’s spiral stair, hand grazing the cold wall out of instinct more than need. The stone whispered underfoot with each step, damp with the breath of old winters. The passage was narrow, monastic in its restraint. As he passed the small barracks room below, he paused briefly at the threshold. Inside, Wilmot lay tangled in his cloak, breath rising softly in rhythm with sleep. He looked so young—too young. Halward did not wake him.
He stood there a moment longer, studying the face turned toward the wall, the mess of hair, the hand curled near his chest as if in dream-prayer. What sins had this boy to account for? What burdens would the gate place upon him in time?
Halward said nothing, but he felt it—the weight of unspoken legacy—settle again across his shoulders like an old, worn mantle.
Outside, the mist had not yet lifted from the low road. It clung to the palisade like old breath, wrapping the forest edge in gauze. The scent was one of oak and ash, and something older still—earth that remembered fire, or perhaps forgot it only out of mercy. The trees stood like judges, robed and waiting.
At the threshold, Halward paused. His right hand reached for the ring of keys at his belt. Not because he doubted their place, but because he always touched them—first the keys, then the helm. Ritual was not superstition. It was structure. And without structure, there was only the forest.
He opened the gate with practiced care. The chain rasped; the weight was real, and growing heavier each season. He noted the rust along the lower hinge—more than yesterday. It would need oil before dusk. That would be entered in the ledger. He made mental note of every bolt, every groan in the wood, every change in tension.
Beyond the gate stretched the Nottingham road, dark with dew, rimmed with frost at its edges where the sun had not yet spoken. To the west, Sherwood Forest loomed—its line like the back of some sleeping beast, neither fully forest nor fully shadow. There were no birds in sight, but he heard one call—faint, high, like a question that had no audience. Somewhere within, things were already stirring. And watching.
Halward stood there a moment, unmoving, a silhouette against the morning’s slow gold. The helm under his arm bore the faint imprint of a lion, worn near to nothing. Once, it had gleamed in Acre’s sun, catching the light like judgment itself. Now, it watched over a gate few remembered and fewer still respected.
He set the helm down on the bench by the gate—the Warden’s Bench, carved long ago from the wood of a single felled ash. He ran his fingers over the gouges in its surface, each one a story, each one a name. The oldest cut bore no label. The newest was his own, made not with triumph, but on a day of mourning. He never sat on it. It was a seat for the living only when the dead were being counted.
He turned toward the rope and bell, affixed to the frame above the arch. The time had come to open the gate. This was no town. It was a threshold. A gate for those who carried papers, sealings, and oaths—not trade, not gossip. Still, the ritual required sound. The gate must declare its awareness of the world, even if the world no longer listened.
He pulled once. The bell answered low and slow, a groan of iron rung through chill morning. The sound vanished into the fog like a breath withheld. No echo returned. The world did not answer. And that silence, above all else, unsettled him.