The Outlaws of Sherwood Page 20

  “As drowning people in the soup came easily to you,” said Marian.

  She moved away as Nigel, with her father on his arm, babbling anxiously in his ear, approached them. “We will take our leave now,” said Nigel, meeting no one’s eye; and he brandished his hand imperiously at the horse-holders, who came up, eyes politely on the ground and lips firmly held in a straight line.

  Fortunately Marian could mount without assistance, for Nigel offered none, and her horse-holder did not know how. Aethelreda stood a moment, a little at a loss, and then the tall fair-haired outlaw was at her elbow, smiling down on her. “If you will permit the unclean touch of a rogue’s hands to the bottom of your boot, my lady,” he said. Aethelreda, amused, put her foot trustingly enough in his cupped hands, and she was lifted to her saddle with an ease she had not felt since her riding-master set her upon her first pony when she was four years old. “Thank you,” she said. “Some grace your rogue’s life has spared you, Will.”

  He stood a moment beside her, looking up now as she looked down. “Some grace, I guess,” he said. “But for old friendship’s sake, Reda, say ‘granted,’ not ‘spared.’”

  Reda shook her head, and Will said, almost pleadingly: “My wits are no quicker than they were those many years ago, but would it have been any better for the recognition I saw dawning in Nigel’s eyes to come after we parted? For I know the—the strength of Nigel’s opinions of old, and here at least they were made—short.” Reda still said nothing, and after a pause Will said, “Tell Marian I am sorry.”

  “I will tell her,” said Reda. “But it changes nothing.”

  Will said, “You would have stopped us drowning him in the soup, too, had you been there, Reda, would you not?”

  “I would,” said Reda. “He is not a kind man, I grant you, Will Scarlet, but he keeps his promises.”

  “And I do not?” said Will. “Perhaps you are right. I would have said rather that there are promises I wish I had had the opportunity to make.”

  “That is what Marian would say, too,” said Reda, and nudged her horse with her heels.

  “Good-bye, Sir Richard,” said Marian.

  “Good-bye,” said Sir Richard. “Your welcome here is always good.”

  “I will remember,” said Marian, but her face was troubled. She did not look at Robin, nor at Will; she turned her horse’s head and rode away, and the others followed, Nigel crouched a little, as if some portions of his anatomy pained him.

  “If I were not grateful to you,” said Sir Richard; “if, indeed, after this morning’s work I would not lay down my life for you should you ask it, I would now have you thrashed and thrown in the dungeon for a few days to cool off. You, Robin—and you too, Will—that was appallingly ill done.” He turned abruptly on his villeins, who were standing where Marian’s party had left them. “I shan’t want you—no, nor Windwing either—now.

  “For heaven’s sake, man, have you no sense?” he said to Robin. “It is not surprising that you must bait the sheriff as part of your rivalry—stupid it is, for he must pursue you till one of you pays with his death—but not surprising. But how could you expose your lady so? Do you not realise that but for her presence here, the sheriff’s men might be riding back to Nottingham with your heads on stakes?”

  “It is not—” began Will.

  “They outnumbered you nearly twenty to one. You are very quick and clever with your bowstrings, and I’ve no doubt blood would have been spilt generously—my hall would have smelt like a charnelhouse for weeks,” he said, and there was no smile about him. “And I see that my folk had been subverted by you, and I daresay they would have sided with you, which gave you the numbers again; but peasants know little of fighting. You scorn the sheriff’s men, but you have need of caution—you won today, whether you like it or no, by hiding behind a woman’s skirts. That you should then betray the woman for the sake of baiting a foolish little man whose worst fault is a lack of humour … I’m ashamed of you.”

  “Nigel is such a weasel,” said Will. “We’ve done her a favour, getting rid of him for her.”

  Sir Richard ignored this, staring at Robin, who was staring at his feet. “I love her, you see,” he said at last, indistinctly.

  Sir Richard grimaced. “A fine way you have of showing it.”

  “A fine thing I should love her at all, do you not think?” Robin said, looking up.

  Sir Richard’s expression did not change, but the sharpness softened a little. “I cannot help you there, except to say that she obviously loves you too, and perhaps you are as stupid as that poor man you have just been rubbing into the earth and therefore not entirely accountable for your actions.

  “Oh—go away. Perhaps we may meet on some happier day in future.”

  Robin began tentatively, “In Sherwood—”

  Sir Richard grunted a laugh. “Some day when I feel like eating treasonous venison I shall wander deep into Sherwood and wait to be rescued—or set upon.”

  “Good-bye,” said Robin, subdued.

  Sir Richard hesitated. “Thank you—I do thank you. I do not disavow my gratitude. And you still make the finest arrows I have ever seen.” He turned on his heel and walked back toward his gate. The outlaws looked after him. His folk were going back to their homes and their tasks; the village was no longer silent. Some were singing; some were drunk.

  “Let us get away from here,” said Robin. “I do not think the sheriff will have any stomach for us today, but that will not last long. We have preparations to make.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Robin knew why Will had spoken as he had; and Will’s words had some excuse, which was more than could be said for Robin’s subsequent behaviour. Perhaps it was the sting of a guilty conscience that made Robin pay acute attention to what Sir Richard had had to say on parting. But it was true that in the preparations for the confrontation at Mapperley Robin had chosen not to think too carefully about the aftermath. He knew now that he had been too blithe, and had let too many innocents share the danger. When the dozen who had gone on the adventure returned and whistled the all-clear, and the rest of the company began drifting (and, in some cases, stomping and crashing) back in to Greentree, Robin looked around him and thought bleak thoughts. The idea that anything resembling a community could form out of reach of the sheriff, even in the tangled fastnesses of Sherwood, was absurd; and it put the real outlaws at greater risk. Sir Richard was right; they had openly scorned the sheriff in a way they had avoided previously; even the theft of St Clair’s bride was little to this. The sheriff would not forget. With so many of his own men witness to it, he could not afford to forget.

  And so Robin spent the last of the outlaws’ coin filling the pockets of most of his folk as a preliminary to sending them away. There was always a rather more than less precarious balance between what news their spy system brought of honest work elsewhere, work that could be done openly under the sun, and what folk were available or suitable for it. Robin felt now that to be in Sherwood was the greater risk against the possibility that reputed work would prove illusory; and as they had done rather better in their high-road robbing than Robin had bothered, or perhaps wished, to take note of, he was able to provide everyone with enough ready money that they might bear themselves in relative comfort through some weeks of travelling. All the gold and jewelry had gone to pay Sir Richard’s debt; what remained, conveniently, was the smaller coin that ordinary folk might carry without too many awkward questions being asked.

  Greentree’s population dwindled as parties were sent off—not always willingly—to safer places. There had been barely two score of them to begin with. Then there were thirty; then a single score … at sixteen the attrition halted.

  “It means less privy duty,” said Much one night. “The only thing left is for you to start exiling us,” he added crossly, “and none of the rest of us is going to go voluntarily, so stop casting that speculative eye around, will you? The rows you had with Edward and Col are nothing compared to the trou
ble us red-eyed drooling-fanged last-ditch die-hards could give you.”

  Robin’s speculative eye rested most often on Alan and Marjorie. There were few enough women left, and there had never been many. Even Matilda had been sent on, and she was missed. She had a gift for getting things done; no one shirked privy duty when Matilda’s eye was upon them. Eva and Sibyl had stayed; they were as stubborn as Robin himself, their arrows flew almost as truly as Marian’s, and he still would not, as Much said, exile them when they were determined to stay. “Time enough to take up something like our old lives again—if we can—when the king comes home. I’ll not live with Normans till then; I love an oak tree better,” said Eva.

  Eva had briefly been a maidservant in Nottingham; but she was too young and too beautiful not to catch the sheriff’s eye. Except for the long red hair she refused to cut, it was hard to see her now as the frightened, soft-faced woman who had appeared (to Robin’s horror and dismay) at Growling Falls and flatly refused to be sent on. Sibyl had taken her part, and Eva had thrown herself into the learning of the outlaw trade with a stoic single-mindedness that had, at last, impressed even Much.

  Cecil would not discuss being sent away, although, young as he was (however young that was), Robin would have liked to try. He had gone white-faced when Robin had suggested it to him; but he did not deign to answer his leader’s remarks and, short of tying him up, Robin could not make him listen. On this occasion he merely faded into the undergrowth, in his now notorious manner, and for days after would disappear if Robin even looked at him twice. “If he’s a runaway aristocrat, as you think,” said Will cheerfully, “he’s no good for anything anyway, so why bother? He has no training for you to sell. I suppose he could go for a soldier, but—speaking as one who knows something about runaway aristocrats—he wouldn’t like it. I, of course, think he’s a myth, since I’ve still not met him.”

  Alan-a-dale struck a minor chord softly on his lute, and began to sing.

  Which brought Robin back to Marjorie again. Marjorie was a sore point. Robin had refused to back any aid to Will’s sister, and Will was not merely a member of the band but one he valued among the highest. Sess’s fate remained unknown; there was a thread of rumour that she had by herself escaped, or run away, but the family abruptly became so close-mouthed that not even Beatrix had been able to wheedle or claw a reliable tale from the Norwell lady’s-maids. All that was certain was that Sir Aubrey remained unwed. No one mentioned sisters in Will’s hearing, not even Much, who had little tact and several sisters; and the whispers about a rescue against Robin’s wishes had died away to silence. Will’s good nature appeared to harbour no resentment against Marjorie, who had been rescued; and Robin—as Marian had long ago predicted—could have no doubt of his loyalty to their company.

  But his conscience obsessively repeated to him that while their company owed a great deal to Will Scarlet, it owed very little to Alan-a-dale, whose own continued presence among them was rather a sore point as well. Either or both Alan and Marjorie found wandering through Sherwood would, in the normal way, have been sent on as fast as possible. But both Robin and his conscience had to admit that St Clair’s coin had been a major portion of the reckoning paid to Beautement; Alan’s music was good for morale and—everyone liked Marjorie, even those who still found Alan’s artistic temperament a bit much upon occasion. Marjorie looked as if a good breeze would knock her over, and yet none ever did. She never had tantrums, was never sick, and had borne up under Matilda’s gimlet eye with better spirit than anyone else ever had.

  He should send them away nonetheless. Keeping Greentree cheerful was not a vital occupation. A lord might have hundreds of villeins and servants before he indulged himself with a resident minstrel; and there were fourteen outlaws left—plus the resident minstrel and his wife.

  Alan’s face had lit up at the sight of the vellum pages—not long to contain mortgages—very similarly to the way he had become radiant at Robin’s grudging agreement to steal Marjorie away from St Clair; that kind of simple joy was rare enough anywhere, Robin thought, and was perhaps no more out of place for being contained in Greentree. And while Alan could not pull the longbow as strongly as Little John—nor even as Robin—he stood guard as alertly as any of them.

  He should still send them away. This was no place for such as they. Was it? And where could he send them? What lord in his right mind, with safer choices available, would prefer to cast his protection over a minstrel who had stolen the bride of as bad-tempered a Norman as St Clair? The Saxon lords that were left were, more often than not, hanging on by their finger-ends; Alan’s talents were not enough to outweigh the probability of making St Clair an enemy.

  “—and a tiresome myth at that,” Will said. “I only dignify him as a myth because I have sometimes seen Little John’s shadow bearing rather more, and smaller, arms and legs than are necessary for himself alone; but there’s always a sudden breeze in the nearest cover and the shadow rights itself when I approach.”

  “I don’t think—” began Robin; and then there was a loud rustling in the bushes—much louder than was allowed so near the camp: branches breaking, muffled but raised and furious voices—or one voice. The lot of them at Greentree had leaped to their feet and, feeling for their weapons, begun sliding toward the shadows, when Robin realised that the furious voice was familiar; even more familiar was the sound of a second voice, in brief, irritated expostulation. It had taken him some moments to recognise either because he had never heard either in such a passion.… “Little John,” said Robin, clearly and distinctly, “if you and Cecil do not leave off making such a noise at once I will shoot you myself.”

  The outlaws around him all froze, looking at one another in surprise and dismay. Little John’s evenness of temper, and Cecil’s silence, were so well-known to them that they felt a shiver of fear. The quiet emanating, after Robin’s words, from the undergrowth was now one of some final, terrible battle of wills; and then Cecil burst into the firelight as if propelled by a mangonel; and Little John followed at a somewhat more leisurely pace, but with a lowering brow.

  “We made a little discovery today,” said Little John. “Rather, perhaps, an interesting one.”

  “I won’t leave,” said Cecil, on his hands and knees, near the broken ring of the standing outlaws, where he had stumbled and fallen after his abrupt entrance. He took a deep breath, half a sob. “I won’t leave.”

  “I don’t believe you’ve been asked to—at least not recently,” said Robin, who went over to pick him up. “I suppose this ferocity must bear upon the nature of the discovery?”

  Cecil writhed out of Robin’s hands as he tried to draw him up and near to one of the logs they used as seats; but not before his face had been clearly lit by the fire, with the other outlaws looking on curiously.

  “Cecily,” breathed Will, and if Little John had not at that moment grabbed his protege’s shoulders, the young person known as Cecil would have dived once again for the shadows under the trees.

  “Sess—you—” Will began, and took a step nearer. He looked hurt and glad and worried and hopeful and furious all at once.

  Cecil, or Cecily, threw up a hand as if expecting a blow, and shrank back, as much behind Little John as his hands on her shoulders would allow: Little John was holding her much as one might hold a wolf-cub: straight-armed and wary. “I won’t leave,” she said. “I don’t care what you say. I am worth my salt. You can’t send me away—I couldn’t stay,” she went on, confusedly; “you know what Sir Aubrey is; the very thought of him made me sick, till I could not eat, and they put off the wedding because they said I was sick.” Little John’s hands relaxed a little. Cecily was speaking half to her brother and half to the others, glancing nervously around as if any one of them might tie her up and carry her back to her old life if she was not careful; and she both leaned into Little John’s grasp and seemed to want to hold herself aloof from it. Him she avoided looking at; but perhaps it was only that turning to see his face would be too
awkward.

  Her voice went higher and higher and she spoke faster and faster. “Father said that if I would not have Sir Aubrey he would not have me; and so to go on saying ‘no’ would avail me nothing. What could I do? I thought of jumping off the watch-tower, but that made me even sicker than the thought of Sir Aubrey. And then … you disappeared.” She swallowed. “And I remembered what you had been saying.…”

  Will took another step toward her. “If you touch me I’ll knock you down,” she said to him quite calmly.

  “She might just do it, you know,” said Little John. “I’ve been teaching him—her—to handle a larger opponent.”

  “You left me behind,” said Cecily, standing stiffly between Little John’s hands, to Will. “You could have taken me with you.”

  There was a silence. “I did not think …” Will began again.

  “No, you did not think,” said Cecily. “It was all very well for you to go around gnashing your teeth and clenching your fists about the Normans, and looking doomed and heroic—it was not you who had to marry one. Oh, it might have come to that,” she went on, in a tone of voice so dry it burned; “but you were only the second son, and you would not have been handed over to your Norman wife like—like—” Her voice broke and her head dropped, but Will came no nearer. To the ground she said, “It was hard enough to pick up what you had learnt about the outlaws in Sherwood. I did not like listening at key-holes, but I had no choice. If I had known you meant to go so quickly I would have confronted you sooner, and then it was too late.”

  After a little silence, Will said, hesitantly, “But—there are other women in this camp. Once you were here—”

  “Why have I gone on pretending to be a boy?” Cecily said, and her voice flared out again as it had when she first plunged into the firelight ring. “How many of us are left? There have been those who would have stayed, had you let them. Perhaps Matilda and Nell had no better right to stay than Edward and Ben and Col; I don’t know. But … Eva and Sibyl speak mostly to each other, and they have each other to guard their backs—and they’re yeomen’s daughters. Marjorie … Marjorie scrubbed pots for Matilda till Matilda was sent away and now she scrubs pots alone because no one has taught her to do anything else. She’s a lady. But she has Alan.… And they have all lived in Sherwood longer than I.”