The Outlaws of Sherwood Read online

  “No,” said Much, consideringly, “but not a wasted one either.” The roll of coin had proved to be of silver and a few gold coins. It was laid out presently to wink in the firelight, as the outlaws who had shared the adventure took a little time before early bed or going on watch.

  Cecil, who had spent the afternoon digging at the latest privy ditch, sat with them. Robin had noticed his hesitant arrival but had not commented; and Cecil seemed to have nothing to say for himself—perhaps from exhaustion. But when he reached to pick up a chunk of bread, Robin also noticed the hand twitch upon contact and the involuntary hiss of breath between the boy’s teeth; Robin could guess at the blisters because he had been well-acquainted with shovel-handle blisters in his own first weeks in Sherwood. And Cecil still said nothing, though he frowned broodingly over the palm of his hand for a moment. When Much picked up one of the gold coins and held it for a moment over the flames till it gleamed like a tiny sun, Cecil looked at him thoughtfully, and then around, slowly, at his new mates; when he caught Robin watching him he dropped his eyes immediately. I wonder whom he imagines in the old lord’s place? thought Robin. Even with a dark tunic like those worn by most of the outlaws belted over his ragged and outsize Norman-style clothes, he was visibly unassimilated; and he rested on his elbow as if he might leap twenty feet sideways at any moment.

  Not a bad attitude for an outlaw, especially a new one, thought Robin, but he’s so—intense about it. He’ll wear himself out. And we can use an uncomplaining digger.

  Cecil still wore the floppy cap they had first seen him in, which made him look more waifish than ever, like a kettle with a lid too big for it. Fourteen, thought Robin uncomfortably; but his eyes drifted down to rest on the boy’s big capable hands dangling from their thin wrists, and he felt a little better. Maybe sixteen. And he will learn. I think I will not be sorry that I let him join us. I will send him hunting with Little John, who will not laugh when he is sick, learning to gut a deer.

  “I hear I missed sport,” said a familiar voice, and Robin looked up; a very dirty and travel-worn Will Scarlet was unslinging his bow and an assortment of bundles and small furry corpses over a convenient branch. “Is there anything left a ravenous man might call supper?”

  “An interesting question,” said Much. “A ravenous man, I assume, will eat almost anything; but is he more inclined to call food one thing than another because of his hunger?”

  “Because of your tongue it shall be fried and I will eat that,” said Will, picking up half a broken loaf and spearing a piece of meat congealing in its pan over the low fire. There was a minor skirmish at the edge of the clearing; “Who was that?” said Will, chewing. “He was in a fever to be elsewhere.”

  “Your face, no doubt,” murmured Much.

  “No doubt,” said Robin, looking at the suddenly vacated space by the fire. “You will have to meet our newest member later. His digestion, perhaps, is rebelling against our diet.”

  “Nothing wrong with our diet,” said Much; “unless you’re a Norman. Our guest this afternoon would have made a poor supper companion, I feel sure, and we were wise to detain him no longer than necessary.”

  “What is the new member’s name?” asked Will. “And I was bolting at frequent intervals for the privy at least a fortnight after I got here, Much, my friend, and if you tell me I am a Norman, I will fry more of you than just your tongue.”

  “Cecil,” said Robin. “And a very stripling.”

  “Cecil?” said Will in an odd voice. “Oh. There are surely a good number of Cecils in England; it stands to reason that one of them should make his way to Sherwood.” He stood up, stuffing in a last mouthful, and shrugged back into his gear. “These will not keep the better for being warmed by the fireside. Much, would you like a tippet of the skins?” And he stumped off.

  “Mmph,” said Much. “He is as rude as a Norman.”

  “Little John,” said Robin. “When Cecil re-emerges, tell him you are to take him hunting tomorrow. He can’t dig for a day or two till his hands heal or they’ll get infected—find him something to tear up for palm-guards while you’re at it.”

  “The tender skin of the gentry born,” said Much. “You and I wouldn’t know.”

  “Bartlemey brought word that there is fresh spoor, down near Tuck’s chapel, of a sizeable herd. Find out if he can shoot at a moving target.”

  Robin was contentedly trimming a new arrow when Marian returned to the camp the next morning. He watched her through his eyelashes as she crossed to him, his hands easy and knowledgeable along the clean narrow flank of the arrow as his heart beat faster. It was not … well, the alternative was that he might never have met her at all; and that did not bear thinking about.

  “News,” she said, dropping down beside him. She picked up a few of the feathers laid out on a ragged bit of leather at Robin’s feet, and smoothed them with her fingers.

  “You can make yourself useful, if you like,” said Robin. “There’s needle and thread in the pocket.”

  “That reminds me—I brought more thread,” said Marian, pulling it out. “It was bargaining for the best of it that let me linger where I would hear the news.” She chose her feathers and then looked at them uncertainly. “You know I never stitch them well enough for you,” she said.

  “Ah, but you stitch them well enough for almost anyone else, dear heart,” said Robin, “and I am not the only fletcher in our company. I shall have the arrow you finish—and you shall have mine. Ben has several that need feathers.”

  “Ben?” said Marian. “My stitching is not that bad.”

  Robin grinned. “He has grown greatly in skill while he has been waiting for that leg to mend; I am a gruelling taskmaster, when I choose. And our company depends upon our arrows. Little John and Cecil went out with a few of his today.”

  “Cecil?” said Marian, threading the heavy needle. “A new man?”

  “A new boy,” amended Robin. “His bow is much too big for him, even by our standards; stolen, of course. He probably chose the largest he could find. I doubt he could pull it more than a half-dozen times before his shoulder came out of its socket; but he shot three arrows very sweetly with it yesterday.”

  “Three should be enough,” said Marian.

  “He plants his feet as if he would grow roots,” said Robin.

  “Little John will cure him of that,” said Marian.

  “That is what I hope,” replied Robin. “And he can teach him staff-work as well, which will give him something new to think about. I cannot figure the boy out; he is obviously well-born, and yet he knows archery. A few do, of course, but this boy doesn’t seem to know anything else—and fired up when I tried to ask him about it. He is over-ready to fire up; Little John is the teacher for him on all counts. But I hope his peevishness is not important. I do not like secrets; Greentree is crowded enough without them. What is your news?”

  “Shall I tell you what you will least like to hear first?” said Marian. “For it concerns you.”

  “You have begun now,” said Robin.

  “The sheriff of Nottingham grows fierce over the depredations of the outlaw band in Sherwood; he declares that it is all the fault of their chief rogue, that Robin Hood, who is perhaps the devil himself, or at least devil-inspired, to incite men to such pillage. As God is his witness, he treats men fairly and taxes them only as befits a king’s loyal man and is in all ways a good and honest master.”

  Robin snorted.

  “It is astonishing, is it not, that the only truly wicked outlaws in the entire length and breadth of our green England should be here where they can plague that flower of justice and charity, the sheriff of Nottingham? Fate is a funny thing. I hear also, by the way, that some purse you took was to buy a young girl’s father’s permission that the girl should come to the sheriff’s household.… So one girl in Nottingham has cause to love you, and the sheriff hates you with a particular ferocity just now, as I believe the girl is very lovely. She, meanwhile, has run away, or so her f
ather says; I hear that he told her where to run and gave her what little money he had in coin.”

  “You know her?” said Robin.

  “I supplied the coin,” said Marian. “She’ll be with the Sisters of Watersmeet by now, and when the sheriff guesses—if he does—it will be too late.

  “But to finish my story: the sheriff, thus pricked, has decided he must have you, even at cost, even to the extremity of dipping into his own pockets—those pockets you have already stolen so much from—to bait the trap. The foresters, who love you as little as he does, perhaps because of the stripes laid across their backs by their chief on this account, cannot come at you. And so he has decided that he must lure you to come at them.”

  “You fascinate me,” said Robin.

  “So there is to be an archery contest in Nottingham, at the harvest fair; and the prize for the contest is to be a golden arrow.”

  Robin sighted along the shaft of his new arrow. “So?”

  Marian smiled. “So the outlaws of Sherwood, renowned, as they are, for their archery, cannot possibly stay away from such a contest.”

  “Why not?” said Robin, genuinely surprised.

  “Why, for the golden arrow,” said Marian.

  “Golden arrow? And what would we do with a golden arrow? Give it to Alan for a lute-string? I could hang it around my neck on a chain, perhaps, and let it stab me in the ribs when I tried to sit.”

  “And your honour as an outlaw?” Marian suggested.

  Robin set down his arrow and laughed. “My honour as an outlaw concerns staying alive; and presenting my neck anywhere near the sheriff of Nottingham, who feels it wants lengthening, did he recognise it, runs directly counter to that honour. Besides, you know I can’t shoot worth a pig’s sneeze.”

  “The sheriff will be gravely disappointed,” said Marian.

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard all week,” said Robin cheerfully. “But you said you had two pieces of news?”

  “I do not think this will make you laugh,” said Marian, and paused. “You will remember Sir Richard of the Lea?”

  “I remember him over every arrow I fletch,” said Robin. “Your news will have to do with his son?”

  “Yes,” said Marian. “He has gone beyond what his father can protect him from at last; the wonder is only that it has taken so long. You may not know that Sir Richard began to mortgage his lands some time ago to buy young Richard out of earlier misdeeds. The mortgages are held by Blaise de Beautement—who, as you will know, is a friend to our friend the sheriff. It is thought that it is upon the instigation of our sheriff that Beautement is calling in his loan now, when Sir Richard has not a chance of saving himself. He long ago sold anything that might fetch ready money.”

  “Mortgaged?” said Robin. “I had not heard. I did not think he was so hard pressed.”

  “Young Richard killed a man,” said Marian.

  “A pity it is the man did not kill him,” said Little John, looming over them a moment before he folded his long legs and sat down. “I had heard a rumour of this, but I did not know it would come true so quickly. Young Richard has killed men before.”

  “But never a Norman,” said Marian.

  “Beautement I do not know,” said Little John.

  “I know him,” said Marian; “he is merely a creature of the sheriff’s. Sir Richard was desperate indeed to turn to such a one, who he must know would wish to do him ill. The sheriff has made little pretence of liking a Saxon lord who too often is heard wondering when the king will return from the Holy Land to set his own country to rights.”

  “And now they will strip Sir Richard of his lands,” said Robin. “Is the day set?”

  “The meeting is a fortnight hence. Sir Richard is gone to the city to see what might be done; but he knows as we do that the answer is, nothing.”

  “It will please the sheriff’s fancy to do this deed at Sir Richard’s own home, I suppose?” said Robin.

  “Of course. I’m sure the sheriff is greatly looking forward to that day.”

  Robin’s eyes met Little John’s. “Perhaps we may add something to his enjoyment,” he said. “So, John, how does our new recruit?”

  “He shoots stiffly, as you know,” said Little John; “but with a bow that outmatched her as his outmatches him, even Marian might be provoked into shooting stiffly.”

  “Thank you,” murmured Marian.

  “I told him as much, and he wished to rant at me; but he did not refuse the smaller bow I offered—”

  “Offered?” said Robin.

  Little John smiled. “Firmly offered him, and we have gone some way this day in teaching him not to plant his feet as if they were the cornerstones of some great building.”

  “Do you like him?” said Robin.

  Little John looked bemused. “I hardly know. It is an odd thing that you ask, for I’ve been asking myself, and it’s not a question I care for; nor is he the first raw young man I have—um—”

  “Intimidated into behaving himself,” said Robin. “It is a thing I value you for. I am over-inclined to yell, and I cannot loom as you do.”

  “He is not the first raw young man you have given me for a first lesson,” Little John said peaceably. “But he is—different. He is not without talent or brain—or wit,” he added, a little ruefully. “But he has as many moods in an hour as I have in a year, though that may only be the strangeness of his new life. And he is mortally afraid of something; he is halfway up a tree while I’m still turning toward the sound of a broken twig.”

  “Poor boy,” said Marian. She looked around. “Where is he?”

  Little John shook his head. “Hiding in the shadows somewhere. I suggested to him that he make his report to Robin—I wanted to hear myself what he would say—and he could meet the lady Marian as well, but he gave me such a look as the creature in the snare when it sees the hunter’s knife. It is the same look he casts over his shoulder as he climbs a tree to escape the breaking of a twig. He begged that I let him off, and so I did. For all his nerves, I have hopes of him when he has looked around him a little more.”

  “And when he has grown accustomed to sleeping on the ground,” said Robin. “He probably hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since he left his home. He also has to learn to duck. I heard him walk into what passes for the lintel of our cave-door last night.”

  “His home?” said Marian. “Where is he from, then? Is there a reason he is afraid of meeting me?”

  “He is well-born,” said Robin, “but we know no more; he has not told us that much, but everything about him proclaims it. He fears, I guess, that he knew you in his former life.”

  “I see,” said Marian, and her face cleared momentarily; but it clouded again. Robin looked at her inquiringly. “I am trying to recall what news I may have heard of recent runaways,” she said; but if she remembered anything, she did not tell it.

  Further details of Sir Richard’s disgrace were soon brought back to camp. Rafe, who had a girlfriend who was a tavern-girl, returned from an evening in her company so preoccupied with the tale that Much teased him for being a poor lover: “She’ll not tell you things if you forget her in the telling; and then you’ll lose both her and her tales. She may be a comely wench enough, but we shall miss the tales.”

  Rafe said, very much on his dignity, “Lucy understands that I may occasionally think of things that concern her little; she likes me for it.”

  “No one, man or woman, ever liked such a preference,” said Much, but Will broke in, grinning: “Not everyone, Much, demands such perfect attention to himself as you do. Why do you not have the fortitude to get yourself a town girlfriend who might tell tales that Rafe’s Lucy knows not? Because you cannot spare your own attention long enough.”

  “I—” said Much, just as Will said, “Confess!” and Robin said across them both, “Is this an outlaw band or a nursery?”

  Alan-a-dale, who lacked, perhaps, humour, nonetheless had an admirable sense of combustible situations from his years as
a bard in Norman halls. He struck a gentle chord on his lute, and began to sing. He had dextrously learned to muffle each string as he played it, so that the aftertones died away almost immediately. He became so clever at this that his music had taken on a magical, ethereal quality, till it was easy to believe that his songs were from the faeries, who were standing just out of sight in the shadows. And, as Robin wryly said to Marian, as the faeries’ music was said to choose its listeners, presumably no unfriendly ear heard it.

  Marriage had been kind to Alan; his moodiness was all but gone, and he smiled more now, even if most of the outlaws’ jokes puzzled him. Robin was still hoping to hear of some kindly Saxon baronial hall that wanted a bard, but it was not the sort of thing an outlaw spy-system was over-liable to be informed about—and, meanwhile, Alan seemed to think that he belonged where he was. He sat near the fire now, when he played; he had even learnt to ignore Little John.

  What Marjorie thought, she never said—not even, Robin believed, to her husband. She was sitting next to him now; she lifted her head from his shoulder when his hand slipped up the fretwork to find its place. When he sang, she sang harmony in a weary little voice no louder than a sparrow’s. The song Alan had chosen was a song of love, and it was hard to tell if it was a melancholy song or not. Robin thought, looking at the two singers, that Marjorie would have said that it was, and Alan would have said that it was not. The song ended, and Alan gave his young wife a kiss; she smiled, and put her head back on his shoulder, but she did not look away from the fire.

  “I have it in my mind that we shall make a merry meeting of it for the sheriff and his friend Beautement, when they do come to rob Sir Richard of his home,” said Robin. “Rafe, you have my leave to spend the next day or two in town; I will give you some small coin for supplies we must have, and you may spend your evenings making it up to Lucy so long as you spend your days gossipping in the market-place.”