The Outlaws of Sherwood Read online

  Bill stood up to his full if insignificant height, and leaned casually against a tree by the narrow, tree-crowded path. Robin, if he continued, would have to pass so near him their sleeves might brush; and there was no graceful nor inconspicuous way to leave the path altogether. The others sat where they were; Tom had a very large grin on his face. There was what appeared to be the remains of a meal spread out around them; one or two were still chewing, and Robin could smell the sharp tang of the ale in the small open cask that lounged on the greensward among them.

  “A very good day to you, Master Robin,” said Bill, his arms folded across his negligible chest, the sole of one foot cocked nonchalantly against his tree. “I’m afraid I can’t suggest that you join our feed—I fear there is little left but crumbs.”

  Tom stood up, and Robin recalled that Tom was the only forester his father, who could see goodness in almost anybody, had called bad. Tom was still grinning; there were small strings of meat caught between his teeth. He shot the king’s deer for his own belly whenever he chose, and the Chief Forester looked the other way—so long as he got a haunch of it. “Perhaps young Robin would like the crumbs—he’s a little too thin, don’t you think, lads?” He reached out as Robin stood hesitating a few paces from where Bill leaned against his tree, and seized his arm.

  Robin could not stop the spasm of disgust that crossed his face as the man’s fingers touched him, and he jerked himself free with an unnecessary violence—a violence that he knew at once had cost him any chance he might have had in escaping this meeting without some kind of skirmish.

  Tom laughed, for he knew it too, and it was what he wanted; and he was pleased that his prey had proved so easy to bait. He pawed at Robin again, circling the young man’s upper arm with his thick fingers. “Too thin, eh, lads? Too thin to do a man’s work as a forester?”

  Robin flushed but stood stiffly and said nothing, hoping against his better judgement that Tom might yet let him pass.

  But Tom only stretched out his other hand, and pulled one of Robin’s arrows half out of the quiver—by the feathers, Robin knew, and he gritted his teeth, for he could not afford damage to even one of his arrows—and then let it drop again, and Robin heard the protest of the other stiff pinions as the dropped shaft forced its way downward. “And certainly too thin and weak to draw a man’s bow like a man.”

  He laughed again, and the hot foul wash of his ale-smelling breath over Robin’s face brought all the young man’s frustrations to a boil. Tom knew as well as he himself did that he could not easily draw his father’s bow, which was a hand’s-length longer and better than a stone heavier to pull than the plainer, lighter bow he carried. He kept his father’s bow in what had been his father’s room, carefully wrapped and stored against damp and rodent teeth; and occasionally he took it out and practised with it, when no one was near. But he could not bear it that this man should gibe at him so, now, and just before anger stopped thought altogether he said to himself: They are here to trap me—well, let them do their worst. And then the anger overcame him, and he snarled at his tormentor: “I can draw a bow as well as you, or any other fat forester who can barely sight down his arrow for fear of stinging his paunch with the released string.”

  Now Tom let go of Robin and his own face began to flush up with anger, and Bill dropped his crossed arms and stood warily, and the other four men stopped chewing and got to their feet. What they thought of doing or might have done Robin did not know; but anger still darkened his mind and while it did he felt no fear. “If you choose to doubt me, then I will happily meet you at the Nottingham Fair later today, for I go now to that place that I may see how I fare at the archery contest. And I will say that I will shoot far more handsomely than you, whose greasy hands will let his bow slip, and mayhap his arrow shall pierce the sheriff’s hat where he sits watching the performance, and then you shall win a prize specially for you, and yet like not what you might have chosen.”

  The seven men stood for a moment like a tableau in a Christmas pageant; and then Tom said thickly, “We shall not wait for the fair; we shall have our shooting match here. And by my faith, if you do not shoot as you choose to boast you can, be sure that I shall take great pleasure in basting your ribs till your sides are as red as any flayed deer’s.

  “Come,” said he, turning on his heel. “What shall we use as mark?” He spoke, not to Robin, but to his friends; yet even they quailed before the fierceness of his gaze. Bill backed cautiously away from him, as if Tom might order him strung up kicking for a more challenging target. “There,” he said, and Robin’s heart sank in him as Tom pointed. “See the gnarled oak tree, two score rods distant, I judge, or thereabouts? And see the crotch halfway up that tree, and the small black burl beneath the crotch? At that we shall aim.” He strode over to where his bow and quiver lay, next to the small open cask on the ground, and he snatched them up, tumbling the quiver through the loop on his belt, his knuckles white where they held the bow.

  “As the challenged, I go first,” he said; but Robin was too sick to protest that it was not this test he had offered as challenge; nor, he knew, would a protest have done him any good. At such a range he would be lucky if his arrows did not bounce—if they struck the correct tree at all. The anger that had borne him up drained away as suddenly as it had risen, and he was cold and weary, and knew he had been a fool. He wondered if Tom meant to kill him after. There was no doubt that Tom was the better archer, any more than it was uncommon knowledge that Robin was not the archer his father had been; Bill had made his ears burn often enough on this subject—for all that Bill himself could barely hit the broad side of a barn at six paces. Robin thought sadly that he had not known the old wound could still hurt so sorely.

  Robin turned heavy eyes to Tom as the bigger man took his stance and pulled his arrow powerfully back—but he noticed that the man’s hands were not quite steady. With anger? Robin thought. Or with ale? Either way he will take joy in beating me senseless.

  “Three arrows each we may try,” Tom said between his teeth, and let go his first shaft. It flew straight, but a little awry, for it buried itself at the left edge of the burl, and not the center. The second struck so near to the first that their feathers vibrated together; and this second one was nearer the burl’s center. But the third, which should have struck nearest of all, went wild, and sank in the trunk a finger’s-breadth from the burl. Tom threw his bow down savagely and turned to Robin. “Let us see you shoot yet half so well,” he said threateningly.

  Robin slowly moved forward to take his place, slowly unslung his bow, bent it to slip the string into its notch, and pulled an arrow from his quiver. But his hands were steady as he drew the bowstring back and sighted down the arrow.

  His first arrow struck the far right side of the treetrunk, a good hand’s-breadth from the burl. There was a snicker behind him. It might be Bill; he doubted it was Tom. And yet his arrow was, for him and indeed for most archers, good shooting. It was not for his archery that Robin’s father had called Tom Moody bad. He notched and drew his second arrow, and it flew beautifully, to strike at the veriest right-hand edge of the burl; and yet it was nearer the mark than only one of Tom’s, and Robin had already shot two.

  He fitted his last arrow to the string, staring at his hands, which went fairly about their familiar work without acknowledging the trouble that they and the rest of Robin were in. The arrow was his best; from the same fine-grained bit of pine he had made a half-dozen arrows Sir Richard had paid handsomely for, so handsomely that Robin had let himself keep the last, the odd seventh, in the wistful hope that so excellent an arrow might have an effect on his marksmanship. When he raised the bow, for a moment his eyes clouded over, and he could not see the tree he was aiming for; and he wondered, as his arrow quivered against the string, if he would ever shoot another after Tom and his lads got through with him.

  He murmured a few words under his breath—a prayer, perhaps, or a farewell to Marian; or an apology to his father—and loosed his
last arrow.

  Another vagrant breeze arose from nowhere, and kissed his arrow in its flight; Robin felt it brush his cheek as well. And the arrow, perhaps, wavered.

  And struck true, dead center, in the burl.

  A barely audible gasp rose behind him: a hissing of breath through shut teeth. Robin stared at his arrow, its shaft still vibrating, and for a second time his vision briefly clouded. He blinked, and heard footsteps behind him, and stiffened to prevent himself from cringing away from what he felt sure would be a heavy hand on his shoulder, preliminary to the beating he would still receive, from many heavy hands, despite his lucky shooting.

  But Tom strode straight by him, toward the tree, and after a moment Robin followed him without looking around.

  There was no doubt that Robin’s arrow was beautifully centered, and that neither of Tom’s better shots came near it. Tom growled something, jerked the perfect arrow out of the tree, and trod on it. Robin heard the shaft break, but said nothing, thinking of his ribs, and of the sound of approaching soft footsteps behind him. But Tom still made no move toward him. He pulled his own arrows out of the tree and then stepped aside, glaring; and Robin, in a daze, stepped forward, retrieved his two remaining arrows, and restored them carefully to his quiver. He would check them later. After a moment he also stooped and hastily picked up the splintered halves of the broken arrow; and these he thrust under his belt.

  Still no one said anything, and he moved cautiously away, toward the path, toward his day at Nottingham Fair, his day with Marian. He had to turn his back on Tom to do this, and he walked jerkily, as a man passes a growling mastiff which he knows would be happy to tear his arm off if he makes a false move; and he had regained the path and turned down it, carefully not looking back, when there was a strangled shout behind him.

  “And do you think then, that you shall go unhindered to Nottingham Fair, and boast to your friends in the dirt that you did best Tom Moody at archery?”

  Robin, too conscious of what was happening off to one side, was not conscious enough of what lay under his feet on this rough woods path; and he stumbled, ever so slightly, and his head nodded forward to save his balance. And an arrow whistled past his ear.

  It whistled so nearly that it creased the nape of his neck, gently, and the narrow place where it rubbed was red and painful for many days. Fear jumped back into Robin’s throat and stopped his breathing, and his bowels turned to water: He means to kill me, he thought, and he turned like a creature at bay, crouching against the possibility of a further shaft from his enemy, groping over his shoulder for his bow, which he had providentially not unstrung. He notched an arrow and let fly back at the little group around the gnarled oak tree.

  He aimed for Tom Moody’s right leg. He had aimed neither well nor carefully, and he took no thought for the consequences, should he succeed at so tricky a shot—or should he fail. But he was nonetheless appalled as he saw the feathered shaft appear as if by magic in Tom’s broad chest, as he heard the man’s hoarse cry of pain and terror. Tom looked down a moment, and clutched at the great spreading red stain around the thing that grew now so abruptly from his breast; and then his knees buckled, and he fell forward on his face and lay still. The snap of the shaft as Tom’s weight crushed it was very loud in the stillness; and then, like a long echo of that sharp, final sound, a squirrel appeared on a branch of the oak tree, and shrilly protested the invasion of his peace.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Robin had no memory later of taking to his heels. He ran, his traitorous bow still clenched in one hand, till he could run no more; and then he walked till he caught his breath, and ran on. Once or twice he fell. He did not know where he went or where he was going; as he lay on the ground the second time, the wind knocked out of him, the ragged ends of the broken arrow in his belt digging into his flesh, his foot aching from the root that had tripped him, he thought, I will run till it kills me, for I have killed a man, and my death is demanded by the king’s law. And he got up, limping a little, and ran on. He ran till he was blind with running, till he thought he had lived his entire life running, one foot pounding down in front of the other endlessly, till his bones were on fire with it, and every time either foot struck the ground his whole body cried out against the jolt. He set his teeth and ran on.

  But his body betrayed him at the last, and the next time he fell he could not get up but lay, face down, in the leaf-mould, stirring only faintly, like a baby first learning to crawl. And then even that movement ceased, and he turned his cheek to the earth and gave up; and after a little while an uneasy sleep took him. He drifted in and out of sleep, vaguely conscious that the sound of water was very near and that he was more and more thirsty; and he noticed also that the light was growing dim, and at first he thought that in truth he had run himself blind. But he realised that it was only twilight, as happens every evening, whatever the events of the day past have been. And he sighed, and turned his other cheek to the earth, and shut his eyes.

  But then he came wide awake, more alert than he had been since Tom Moody first stepped up beside him that day and seized his arm. For he heard, faintly, careful footsteps coming through the trees—coming toward the place where he lay. He rolled over—and his cold exhausted muscles groaned with the effort, and he gasped, and moved more slowly. With numb swollen fingers he snatched up his bow, and scuttled, stumbling, to stoop painfully behind the boulder to his one side. Behind him, now, as he waited to see what was before him, was the stream; and the sound of the water made his mouth suddenly ache, and he turned away from what he expected was his last doom to scoop up the cold water in the hand that did not hold the bow.

  The taste of it on his tongue shocked him to full consciousness, and he realised what his actions meant: that he wanted to live. Even with Tom Moody’s blood on his head, and the king’s men looking for him as a murderer—he wanted to keep his life.

  He was too tired to run any more; either luck was with him and the footsteps would go away, or he would try to give himself up with dignity. He had several good arrows left; but even if he had the strength to draw his bow—and he was not at all sure he did—he would not seek to take any more life. Even his own.

  The mercurial luck that had played with him all this day seemed to turn its face from him now, for the footsteps came ever closer. It sounded like two people—only two; and he thought wistfully of his several good arrows, but he did not move to ready one. The footsteps were approaching with rather too much haste at the expense of care; while they belonged obviously to woodsmen and not common soldiers, he could follow their progress without difficulty. And they seemed to be coming directly and deliberately toward his place of concealment.

  He closed his eyes briefly, for his head swam with weariness and an urgent will to live; and when he opened them he thought he dreamed, for he did not see two grim king’s foresters reaching out to drag him to gaol and the hangman’s noose, but—Much and Marian, their faces pale and taut with worry.

  He stood up, not knowing what he could say, and staggered around one end of his boulder. His head felt light, and Marian’s face was surrounded by tiny bright twinkling stars. She ran forward, heedlessly dropping her bow on the ground, and threw her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his; her hair tickled his nose. Much, with a sigh, laid his bow carefully against the boulder that had hidden Robin. Another squirrel chattered somewhere close by, and the stream made small glooping noises as it ran, as fish broke the surface to swallow water bugs and bits of leaves.

  Marian said, “I was so afraid we wouldn’t find you—that you’d go straight away, take ship for the Holy Land—be sold as a slave to the Saracens—that we’d—that I’d never see you again.”

  Much said, “We heard they had some trouble planned for you today—but we only heard this morning. ’Twas a friend of my father’s told him. If there had been time we would have tried to stop you coming; but it was too late.”

  Marian, unmoving, said to Robin’s shoulder, “I was worried today, at th
e fair, long before there was any reason to worry—before you were even late.”

  “And then you were late,” said Much.

  “And then you were later, and then we started looking,” Marian said, and turned her face at last; there were tear marks on it, and Robin felt a pricking behind his own eyes, that Marian should cry over him. “This place was my best hope—and my last—that you might think to come here and look for us.”

  Robin looked around, puzzled, and then recognised what he had not thought to look for. This was the little river where Much’s father’s mill. lay, below them where they now stood by over a mile. But here, with its splendid boulders for playing King of the Mountain, and a pool just upstream for pirates and leaf-sailing races, was where Much and Marian and he had spent happy hours as young children. He murmured, half to himself, “I’ve been running—as I thought, away, or somewhere—all day. Since morning. And this is where I end: barely a league from—from where …”

  Marian stepped back, but only to put her hands on Robin’s shoulders, as if she feared that if she did not hold on to him he might still go to the Saracens. “Robin—has it been so bad, since your father died?”

  Robin almost smiled. “Not so bad as right at present.”

  But Marian would not be distracted. “Why did you never tell us? I—I thought you grieved for your father, and did not wish to press you as you seemed not to want to speak. But—someone could have done something—my father—or you need not have been a forester.”

  Robin shook his head. “Your father—or anyone else—could have done nothing, had I been willing to ask. Hush,” he said, as Marian opened her mouth. “It doesn’t matter. Forestry, and the making of arrows, is all I know; and you know what Will Fletcher in Nottingham is like—he would have stood no competition, and I could bear him less as a master even than the Chief Forester.”

  “It is not Will who would have brooked no rivals,” said Much, “but the sheriff, who might have found you a little less willing to pay his tax.”