Forbidden Forest (21 page)

The big man was on his feet at once. He knocked a winged spear to one side, kicked a lunging spearman in the face. Whipping the quarterstaff in a quick half circle, he knocked a thin, nimble spearman to the ground. He stabbed the end of the staff hard into the chest and belly of another armed man.

But several more attackers surrounded John, goading him with their spears. John struck one of them so hard the man's knees buckled, but an iron point ripped into his thick wool tunic. John blocked the man in the face with a cross blow, and heard Red Roger laugh.

John sent a prayer to the hills and the fields, the hedges and the stones, and to whatever ancient spirits dwelled there. He did not dream that this green country had any power that could save his life.

And yet he asked.

John stumbled, glanced down, and found the peasant's hack in his hands, damp with field mud, a great single tooth of iron. He drove the blade into the shoulder of a stout spearman. As a thrown spear missed John by a handsbreadth, the big outlaw struck out, snapping spear shafts, parrying swords, until at last the shaft of the hack broke, sending the head spinning.

Men fled. John retrieved his staff from the hoof-scarred road and climbed into the saddle of his startled, foaming mount.

Lord Roger drew his sword. It was a well-kept weapon, bright blue in the daylight. Then, like any nobleman deciding the day's hunt was too dull, he slid the sword back into its brunette leather sheath. He wheeled and rode off, leaping a hedge of wild rose and hazelwood.

John followed, his horse barely clearing the hedge. It landed heavily, and then rocked into a gallop as Red Roger vanished into the copse at the top of the hill.

Chapter 45

This was not the stately woodland of Sherwood Forest, but it was all royal hunt land, low trees and gorse. John's horse labored under the big man's weight, but he urged the sweating animal forward, over hummock and shrub.

Branches lashed the outlaw as he rode, and his horse slowed down as the thick nettles and dry, spongy peat land alternated, pine and berry bushes blocking the twisting trail. John reined in his mount and listened. He heard the thudding hooves of Red Roger's horse, and then silence.

Breath heaved in and out of the cob as John let the beast rest for a few heartbeats, and then the animal gave a groan as John urged it forward.

John saw the rope stretched across the trail at the last moment. It was too late to duck his head. The taut line of rope caught him in the throat, and he felt his body lift up out of the saddle. John crashed heavily to the woodland floor.

Red Roger was a heartbeat too slow in hurrying from the shadows. John had time to climb to one knee, gasping, clutching at his throat. He had enough time to find his quarterstaff and reckon his chances, staff against sword.

Red Roger hesitated.

The hesitation allowed Little John time to drive the end of the staff into Red Roger's ribs, knocking the lean swordsman back, and back again as the bigger man maneuvered. John knew from sword practice with Grimes Black that a staff could be hacked in half easily by a broadsword, and he also knew that the nobleman was not as strong as he was cunning.

It was no surprise when Red Roger gave a few lunges and retreated, back uphill through the low branches, John slogging forward through the wet ground, raising an arm to keep the branches from whipping his eyes. And when he took a step back, unwilling to continue this uphill trudge, Red Roger thrust, and thrust again, cutting a new rip in John's tunic, drawing blood from his arm.

So it is with cunning men, thought John as he dodged a broadsword flourish. They know how to make a game of everything they do. John lumbered forward again, ducking, plodding, the swordsman making John expend all the effort. Roger's lean, aquiline features were alight with a kind of joy.

John saw it long before they were close: the carefully layered grasses out of place in the ferns of the woodland floor.
A mantrap
. The big man was nearly out of breath, following the parrying nobleman up the faint deer trail, the heavy sword biting notches from John's staff until it was cut in two.

Out of breath as John was, he gave a resigned laugh. It was a harsh, rasping sound—his throat was raw where the rope had cut him. I am more clever than I used to be, thought Little John, but still not clever enough.

The laugh made Red Roger stop midfeint, a question in his eyes.

Little John stepped into Roger, seized his sword hand, and held it. He gripped hard, squeezing until the knuckles of Red Roger's hand compressed, bones and cartilage cracking. The nobleman gave a gasp, but would not let his weapon fall.

John knocked the nobleman to the leaf meal and kicked the sword across the ground, the spinning blade winking into the shadows.

A dagger, tugged quickly from his horse-leather leggings, flashed in Red Roger's hands, and only John's reflexes kept the blade from slicing his hands, his wrists.

Roger's eyes darted to the bone-handled knife at John's hip. “Knife to knife,” said Roger. “I'll teach you yet, John.”

John took one moment to slip the hunting blade from its sheath. It was no match for the longer weapon in Red Roger's hand. As John settled the blade in his hand, Red Roger took one step back, and another, light-footing his way up the gentle slope, onto the mantrap.

Before Little John could cry out a warning, the cover of the trap fell in with a crash, and Red Roger vanished.

Chapter 46

Red Roger struggled, but could not not pry his body free.

Ash stakes thrust up around his form, through him. In the darkness of the mantrap, treetops and portions of sky began to gleam, reflected in Red Roger's spreading blood.

Little John lowered himself slowly, carefully, down into the pit, and knelt among the sharpened stakes, blood quaking around him. He put a hand on Red Roger's quick points, the places in his neck and wrists where life pulses, and felt only ebbing strength.

The noble outlaw had much to atone for, and John offered a prayer that Roger's soul might find peace. John knew that someday he would recall the noble adversary with the respect such a tireless opponent deserves. But now John was swept with the strongest sensation of relief. The feeling was so strong that he remained where he was for a long moment, steadying himself against the damp wall of the pit.

Then John stretched to his full height, and clung to the edge of the mantrap. He pulled himself out into the day.

John's horse waited at the faint trace, the barest hint of a path. With a whispered apology for taxing the animal's endurance further, John mounted the cob and rode back down the slope.

Henry's body lay where John had left it, its fists clutched in the scarlet mud.

John knelt, hesitating at the sight of the wounds. Then he searched the deputy's clothing for the brooch. The deputy's tunic was laden with hidden pouches: Flemish gold in one leather sack, and a skinner's knife in a sheath stitched next to Henry's ribs. The man had been a walking tier of hidden pokes and purses, worn silver and newly minted coin hidden beneath his clothes. Further weapons fell out, too, as the big outlaw searched—a dirk and a poniard sticky with blood.

But no sign of the brooch.

A falcon lifted high over the hillcrest and fell away to the far side, leaving the sky empty. If any creature or woodland power watched from the spine of the hills, or from the lichen-splashed stones of the pasture, John could not detect it.

And he was not sure he wanted to. “Never look hard where you think they're hiding,” Hilda used to advise.

“Where is it?” whispered John.

The wind sighed through the long, sheep-shorn field. Perhaps it was John's imagination, or some power in the field offered advice.

Jewels gleamed through Henry's fingers, and John retreived the brooch from the dead man's grasp. John looked down at the vacant face of the deputy. He imagined the mortally stricken Henry searching his pockets as he died, retrieving the jewel from a hiding place in his clothing, bringing it out so he could relish the sight of it at the end.

The tall outlaw untied the knot that fastened the horn to his belt. Even a knot could loose magic into the world around it, so Little John breathed a prayer. With his throat throbbing, and his mouth dry, it was no surprise when he could sound nothing more than a thin, rude bleat.

He licked his lips. Again he pressed the horn to his mouth, and this time the note was like a gander's hiss, a pathetic
blat
, even weaker than before.

John found Henry's goatskin of wine, slashed and empty, except for a few scant swallows that he let trickle between his lips. He filled his lungs with air—three, four deep breaths. And this time when he put the horn to his lips, he did not force the note.

And when it sounded it was a sour, strangled sound—except for the very last instant, when one pure note lifted up into the wind. John sounded it again, the same note, fuller this time, and louder. And again. The hillside echoed, the rooks fell silent, the tit-birds and the linnets rapt under the commanding, single note that Little John sent high into the blue.

John's mind played a trick—he seemed to hear a tantalizing note echoing his. Soon Red Roger's toughs would ride down the hill again, drawing steel from sheath. His mind betrayed him yet again—another haunting, sweet-sounding horn.

For what felt like an age, John stood beside the broken body of the lawman, eyeing the field for signs of Red Roger's men.

Then a cart squeaked and groaned over the crest in the road, oxen plodding briskly, wheels rolling serenely along the muddy High Way. A driver trotted beside the beasts, and a hooded, round-backed carter leaned forward on his perch, the sort of stolid, world-weary man who cares nothing for sun or rain. The load of stacked flour sacks was barely restrained by the ropes, the freight about to tumble. The cart took little time to roll up from the south—the oxen were shuffling along at a fresh pace they would not be able to maintain for long.

As the load approached, the carter called out a long, low syllable, and the cart creaked to a standstill.

The carter threw back his hood, straightened his back, and Robin Hood jumped down from the perch. Flour sacks broke open, and Alan Red, Grimes Black, and Lucy spilled onto the road, stretching and beaming at the sight of the open sky.

Robin Hood took John's arm. “You're unhurt, John,” said the outlaw leader, half assertion, half question. Robin Hood's smile could not disguise his concern.

“Are you surprised to see me standing?” said John.

“Every day should surprise,” said Robin Hood, with a laugh, as he embraced his friend.

Chapter 47

Geoffrey, the lord sheriff of Nottingham, poured them each another cup of green wine.

“And for your troubles,” said the sheriff, “no doubt Heaven will repay you.”

Margaret had held the rapt attention of the sheriff and her father, telling a tale both truthful and incomplete, of gentle outlaws, safe but unnamed hiding places, and a relentless deputy. She had spent only one night here in the city, and her sleep had been broken by dreams of trees stirring, and the soft laughter of sentries in the woods.

The sheriff laughed sadly. “Henry would face the most flinty justice,” he said, “if he had lived.”

The castle around Margaret whispered with the steps of servants, and the high, oak-beamed ceilings were the stuff of ballads, the sort of strong-walled keep where ladies awaited lovers. But how still the air in such a room, she thought, and how muted the distant murmur of the birds.

“I myself have word from the greenwood,” said the sheriff.

“You must tell us!” prompted Margaret's father.

“Lionel Ogbert, shield bearer to your worthy husband,” began the sheriff, after hesitating. Fine manners and compassion made him pause again, and then he continued, “Lionel took Sir Gilbert's life in a gamblers' dispute.”

“How did you discover the truth?” Margaret heard herself ask in a whisper.

“People come and go from the greenwood,” said the sheriff. “With a word for my ear, from time to time.”

“Which one of the outlaws brought you this news?” asked Margaret.

“It was a message from Little John,” said the sheriff, “given to me by the quick-eyed, toothless man called, I believe, Will Scathlock.”

Margaret was surprised at how she felt just then. If John himself had visited Nottingham, without an opportunity for her to see him—the thought was painful.

Chapter 48

The streets of Nottingham seemed crowded to Margaret.

And how narrow the passageways, a dung heap beside every door. She made her way beside her father, but she felt how shrunken and gray she was becoming, moment by moment, no longer simply Margaret, among friends in the wood, but Widow Margaret.

“I suppose it's our duty to attend,” said her father, making his way beside her in the street.

“People will expect to see us there,” offered Margaret.

Two days had passed since their meeting with the sheriff. She had been waking at night, alive with the impression that she was in the forest, with Little John nearby, only to fall back into the bedding, hearing the watchman's singsong. Bridgit was pleased to be within walls and even now bustled among laundry and servants. “The forest was all very well,” Bridgit had said, “but my dream has always been to serve my lady in a great house.”

Margaret feared that she might live for decades now, a remnant, well provided for but clothed in shades of gray and black, as was proper for widows. She might even inherit her husband's dwelling, under her father's guidance, as the law provided. William had been sitting, goose quill in hand, making inventories of new spices he expected from London any day. Margaret knew that she would see flowers only in the marketplace, and great oaks only from afar. And when, she wondered, would she ever again hear laughter?