The Outlaws of Sherwood Page 9

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The little band of outlaws had stabilized by late spring—by the time of the Nottingham Fair, and the end of Robin’s first year as a man with a price on his head. The folk that remained at last remained by choice—a combination of theirs and Robin’s. And if those that wished to remain (as Robin thought sometimes, particularly late on a sleepless night) too often had more of Much’s view of their life and prospects than his, he supposed it couldn’t be helped.

  Greentree itself was often nearly empty; there were too many watches to be stood now. There were look-outs at several, varying locations on the main roads through or near Sherwood, waiting for well-dressed travellers who peered so nervously into the shadows as to suggest they would be worth stopping; and other green-clad folk lay hidden in (occasionally, when they thought they could get away with it, behind) trees, to see who walked the more private ways that the outlaws walked. There were the two smaller outlying camps to be attended to, Growling Falls and Millward; and there were several tiny go-to-ground havens for the hard-pressed. And, most dangerous and exhausting, there was the running of the system of secret messages and messengers that provided for the folk who did not stay in Sherwood.

  As the season progressed, Will’s and Little John’s moods lightened somewhat; Will no longer sought solitary errands, that his oppression of spirit might not oppress his friends. In this the real difference between the two men was apparent, for Little John had always preferred duties he could perform alone. And while everyone was sympathetic to Will’s trouble (even those who thought privately that he was a little odd to be so distracted by the fate of a mere sister), only Robin guessed what the one other member of his band with a price on his head might be thinking. The other outlaws were a little in awe of Little John.

  Marian had brought no more word of Sess’s fate; but Robin still watched Will with an edge more of anxiety than he did Little John. Robin, in his dislike of philosophy, had a blind spot about some of his volunteers’ reasons for volunteering; he knew only that the blind spot existed. Will had given up, or lost, more than anyone else in his company. And since some of Robin’s blind spot was a guilty conscience about Marian, and as Marian and Will were friends, the conscience, or at least the uneasiness, tended to bleed over to stain Will too. It was all the worse that Will was a good friend to Robin; like Little John, Will Scarlet was one of the few of Greentree’s members he could talk to without feeling as if CHIEF was branded on his forehead and his every word must matter.

  And Marian gave him something further to worry about. “I fear that Will may take it into his head to attempt his sister’s rescue; he has friends among us, you know, and could perhaps do it even if you did not like it,” she said. “There are those who would like the romance of it well.”

  Robin had been thinking about the pleasant weight of her head upon his breast, and his arm around her shoulders. They were half-lying between two great roots of an enormous oak tree, and the earth was warm with the approach of summer despite the evening chill in the air. Overhead he could see a few stars through the scalloped leaves. It was not often that they slipped away from the cares of his people to be alone together, and Robin thought that this was just as well, since when he was alone with her his brain seemed to cloud over and … He shook himself gently, and sighed, and sat up, pulling his tunic down where it had rucked up during his quarrel with a few twigs and pebbles digging into his backbone.

  Marian sat up as he did, but leaned against him, and turned her face to his, slid her fingers along his jaw, and kissed him. His brain clouded over in a rush, like a thunderhead obscuring the sun. Then he took his arms from around her, where he discovered they had put themselves, apparently of their own volition, and stood up.

  There was a little silence, and Robin said, in a voice that did not sound like his own, “I am sorry for Will’s trouble, but you are right that I would not like it if we tried to rescue her. I do not like it that any woman should be married against her will, but I think we would overreach and risk what little gain we have made—did we decide to concern ourselves about such as she, who has at least a roof over her head, and food to eat.”

  Marian was silent so long that Robin stooped down beside her again. “Mari, I—”

  She stopped his mouth with her fingers, as she did so often when the tone of his voice warned her what he would say. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it again.”

  He took her hand in both his, and so they sat for some little time. With his hands locked together he could not give in to the desire to stroke her hair, and her face was turned away from him. “I think I will go … home now,” she said, and her voice was thick with misery.

  “Your father—”

  “Robin, I am a woman grown. I need not stay with my father forever. And—”

  But she said no more, and he dared not prompt her, and the silence stretched out between them till it was as impenetrable as the shadows around them. “I will try to talk sense to Will,” she said at last, with a little of her usual brisk manner. “For you. But if I were Will’s sister, I would want to be rescued.” And she was gone into the forest.

  A few days after Marian’s warning, Robin was sitting on the ground near the camp at Growling Falls, making holes in the dirt with a stick, puzzling out plans for a new hiding-place with Little John. There were still great stretches of Sherwood where there was nowhere for Robin’s folk to disappear when danger approached them too nearly. Now that they were putting themselves at greater risk by robbing the high road, such alternatives to disaster were terribly necessary; there had been a near miss for Harald and Gilbert just a week before. Little John had suggested that they begin to go underground. “Is not privy duty enough digging for you?” said Much. “But no, I daresay not, for your grandfather was a badger.”

  Robin looked up, frowning, when two sets of feet presented themselves at his elbow. Humphrey was not afraid of his leader’s frowns, but the strange young man with him blanched. Robin stood up, as did Little John; and Robin said, “Forgive my lack of attention. Who is it you bring here, Humphrey?”

  The stranger dragged his eyes away from Little John, whom he appeared to recognise as something out of a childhood nightmare, and looked at Robin. “My name is Alan-a-dale,” he said; his voice was a light tenor, but there was a curious, creamy undertone to it. He could make folk do what he wanted them to with that voice, Robin thought, but looking into the young man’s eyes he saw that the boy did not know this. At least not yet. Alan bowed, and Robin registered that the bundle on his back was of a specific shape, and the specific shape was that of a lute; the long stem of it was visible over his shoulder when he straightened. “I have recently heard tales of a band of folk who live in the deeps of Sherwood and prey upon the wealthy Normans who have gained their wealth through injustice to the good Saxon folk.” He paused, but Robin had only half-listened to the familiar compliment, and waited to hear the purpose behind it.

  “Indeed, perhaps I have heard of this band for enough of time that I have written a ballad or two about them; a ballad or two received well enough at market day among the yeoman farmers and goodwives, but not so well among those who live in great castles and feel the need to have an eye to their own wealth.” He paused again, but this time as if his thoughts had overtaken him, and as if those thoughts were burdensome.

  He plays the part very well, thought Robin. Little John, who had moved a little to one side, as if to loom better with a magnificently branching yew tree at his back, caught Robin’s eye; the same thought was reflected in his own. The young stranger cast his own look toward Little John, spoiling his characterization; then he pulled himself together again. “I have remembered the tales of this band of folk,” Alan-a-dale went on slowly, “in the back of my mind, perhaps, but still there, and as more than a tale to turn to song. I have thought of this company as a court I might apply to for justice in extremity—an extremity I feared I might find myself yet come to.”

  “Which we guess ha
s fallen upon you as fated and foreshadowed,” said Little John, who had little patience for poetry.

  “You speak truly,” said the young man, with a glance at Little John that was, to Robin’s amusement, humble, and with no awareness of irony. “I love a lady,” Alan-a-dale said, and his voice lifted and fell so that he almost sang it. “I love a lady … fair and pure as dawn, as the first bud of a rose-tree in spring.…” Little John made a strangled noise, and Alan quailed and broke off, looking surprised and hurt.

  “This lady has fallen to some ill fate?” suggested Robin, making a mental note to have a little chat with Humphrey about his eliminatory methods of dealing with strangers who wished to present cases of trial and trouble to the noble outlaws of Sherwood. Humphrey was perhaps better off making arrows.

  Alan’s face darkened, and his long-fingered musician’s hands clenched into fists. “The blackest of fates! She is to marry a Norman she loathes, because her father is greedy of the favour the alliance would bring him; and—my lady loves me, and would have me, but I am but the younger son of a small Saxon lord, and I have no Norman favours to offer.”

  Robin offered a small prayer to fate that Will Scarlet would not walk up just now. “And what would you have us do?” Robin said, wondering whether the comparatively simple—as he thought—economic basis for his company’s defiance of Norman rule was soon to be set permanently awry by the demands of star-crossed ladies. Meanwhile he added Humphrey’s name to the list of folk he thought would go with Will to the succouring of his sister. “Why came you to us?”

  “They are to be married a fortnight hence,” Alan-a-dale said eagerly, “in a small chapel held by the Norman brigand who would steal my lady as he stole the lands he holds. It is a chapel in a corner of Sherwood far from Nottingham, and far enough from known haunts of Robin Hood that this Norman hound feels safe in bragging that he fears no outlaw.”

  “What might the Norman hound’s name be?” inquired Little John in a tone of voice that made Robin look at him sharply. Alan answered, “The Baron Roger of St Clair.”

  Robin said, “Has this name some meaning for you?”

  “Indeed it has,” Little John answered. “I had not thought to steal the bride of the man who drove me off my farm, but that trick would do as well as another.”

  “Then you will do it?” Alan said, with hope so bright in his eyes that Robin wished that the yew tree might fall on his friend. “We cannot decide at once, nor so easily,” said Robin. At least the boy had enough sense to look merely disgracefully hopeful, rather than certain. “If revenge were to become our sole motive, the great vengeance of the Saxon against the Norman, we would have no time for sleep, and the trees of Sherwood could not shelter the vast numbers of us. Not to mention trying to keep all those people fed.” He looked again at Little John, who appeared unmoved, and then at Alan-a-dale, who stood looking at the ground like a scolded child. To the top of his head Robin said reluctantly, “I do not say we will not do it.”

  “Will not do what?” Marian asked. Will Scarlet stood behind her. Blast, thought Robin. They both carried strung bows, and Marian had a brace of rabbits over one shoulder.

  “Roger of St Clair has taken it into his head to marry this man’s sweetheart,” Little John said. “He would have us take her away from him before he succeeds.”

  “I sympathize with love’s loss,” Marian said lightly. “I will not say against the plan.”

  “Nor I,” said Will. Little John snorted.

  “I know you have little use for love and love’s dolours,” said Will; “surely you do not speak in favour?”

  Little John replied, “I speak not in favour of the relief of love’s trouble, but in favour of doing Roger of St Clair some hard mischief, for it was he who drove me off my farm.”

  “Then we are in agreement,” Marian said, “and we have not yet quarrelled. Unless you wish to quarrel, my Robin.”

  Robin looked at her where she stood, lithe and slender, wearing one of the dark-green woolen tunics that nearly all his forest folk now wore; probably one originally cut for him, for they were nearly of a size. Her hair was tied back, and her boots and breeches tied too as the outlaws did; she might have been a young man. “I never wish to quarrel, Mari,” he said. “But I do wish to tell of this at least to Much before I agree.”

  “Much will not support you,” said Marian gaily; “he will like the flavour of this adventure very well, for he is the worst romantic of us all.”

  “Allow me to direct your eyes away from the romance of love and outlawry,” said Robin patiently, “and to direct them toward the cold heart of the matter at hand. I do not wish to risk our folk at such an undertaking without some gain, for I have more in common with Little John than with Much. The gain I have in mind is of the sort that weighs in the hand; we have had an expensive fortnight—our fortnights seem to be growing steadily more expensive—and our coffers, if I may call them so, are low. Again. Little John, do you know of aught lying easy for robbery in St Clair’s holding?”

  “The chapel will be full of valuable things for the wedding,” Alan said, but Robin shook his head.

  “We will not steal from that final judge of our lives and hearts that some call God,” he said. “The Norman church is full of the corruption of man, but the idea of God is not yet corrupt, and I will not poison our small efforts by showing any lack of respect to—”

  “—even to take back what a Norman hound has wrongly seized?” interrupted Alan.

  “Aye, even to that extent,” said Robin.

  “This could mean trouble, did it get out,” murmured Little John. “The sheriff would carry his treasure-house merely to within the nearest church doors, and sit back at his ease.”

  “Let us not gallop to meet future difficulties,” said Robin. “A walking pace is enough.”

  Little John said thoughtfully, “The other side of this is that on the day of the lord’s wedding, everyone on the lord’s estate may be expected to be thinking chiefly of the lord’s wedding. I know the grounds and ways of the estate well, from days before St Clair came to it. Perhaps I still have a friend or two at the great house itself—if they have not been turned off for knowing me, or their own worth. I could find this out if you wish it, Robin, and gladly would I lead a few of our company to the great house while you spent your attention on the chapel. Though I would be sorry to miss facing St Clair on my own legs.”

  “Do you find out what you may,” said Robin. “We have only a fortnight’s time—if we do it,” he added, with an eye to Alan, who was obviously struggling to remain silent; his fingers twisted themselves together, untwisted, and clutched each other again. “If we do it, we should have been planning long since.”

  Marian said, “There is one more question.”

  Robin murmured, “Would you spoil your position for so little a thing as practicality?”

  “I assume that you would wish to marry your lady in place of the doggish Roger?” she said to the boy, ignoring Robin.

  Alan’s eyes flashed, as if his honour had been impugned. “Of course.”

  “The priest will be St Clair’s own,” Marian said, “and he will not marry to your orders.”

  Alan said angrily, “He will do what he is told to do with a dagger at his throat!”

  “Not necessarily,” said Marian. “He will know that killing a churchman is counted as a peril to your soul, even deeper than the black sin of murdering an ordinary mortal; and he may know that Robin Hood’s band is known not only for their outlawry but for the curious ways they seem to pursue it: and, pertinent to this case, they have spilt very little blood. Third and most important, if your Roger of St Clair is the kind of master I guess he is, your priest may feel his life is not worth saving, if he goes against his master’s orders.”

  Little John said, puzzled, “What need you with a clergyman at all? Alan and his lady need only make their vows to each other, and if this goes as it looks to be going, there will be folk in plenty for witness if they wi
sh it. The Church cannot yet force us to marry to its rules, any more than the Normans have found a way to force us to theirs; although it is a near thing sometimes. It is the Normans, now, who have our church by the throat; and if it were my wedding, I would want none of their words read out over me.”

  There was a little silence, and Marian said, “I was in truth guessing. And I am guessing that your lady would wish the clerical forms?”

  Alan said, “Indeed,” rather hotly. “She is very gently bred.”

  “I see,” said Little John, dryly. “We speak of gentlefolk and ladies, whose tendernesses I do not understand. Where, then, are we to find a tame clergyman to quiet our lady’s nerves?”

  “I like not—” began Alan.

  “I recommend you learn to like it,” put in Will, “for yon small John is necessary for this adventure. Forget you not that we have not yet won our leader’s vote for this thing, and Little John’s support for your cause is to be nursed by whatever means come to your hands. At present the means are to permit his quaint sense of humour its rein. So: we must provide our own clergyman. And I have just the man.”

  “You do?” said Alan, enmity forgotten immediately.

  Will looked at him a little whimsically. “I do. He is a priest and a friar who has forsaken his order for the deep woods and solitude; but he is a priest still, and I think he would listen kindly to our story.”

  “Story?” said Much, returning from patrol. “What story? Here, Robin, that old despot Stephen of Dunbury is riding for Sherwood, and the weight of his panniers will founder his poor horse if we don’t relieve it. What story?”