Maid Marian (6 page)

In this way the winter passed, slowly, as all trying things do, but steadily. Time, I thought, could be a great ally when something dreaded loomed ahead, for it played no favorites but marched forward with its measured steps, neither stalling nor hastening out of its rhythm. And so Lady Day came and went. I shed my black gowns and went again with my head uncovered, a maid once more.

Not long after the day had passed, a rider came from London town bearing word from our good Clym. He said a letter had arrived from the queen to be sent to the north to Lady Pernelle. The queen herself was across the channel, assisting Richard with matters of his realm, but the chancellor had received the letter and sought to pass it to its recipient. The delivery instructions had been taken down by a court clerk with a taste for thick wine whom Clym had wooed and entertained until he heard all there was to know. We had little time, Clym reported, for the letter was due to be taken forth with other correspondence for Yorkshire at the end of the week.

What this letter could contain, I was not certain, but given the timing, coming so quickly upon the heels of Lady Day, I thought it might pertain to me and to my impending marriage. Perhaps the queen sought Lady Pernelle’s approval for the match, in accordance with the bargain they had struck. Or perhaps Lady Pernelle stood to gain in some way from the new alliance the queen had planned—she surely had relations of whom I knew nothing. I guessed and wondered but could not determine it, and so I ceased my speculations almost as soon as they had begun. I could not discern the words of the letter unless I had a sight of it, and this, I decided, I must have.

A host of plans came to mind, but I plucked out the brightest one and laid it down, unpolished but gleaming, before Annie. She exclaimed at my boldness and gasped at my daring, but when I pressed her she agreed she could find no fault in my plan, for if it failed I should be no worse off than I was now, that much was certain.

And so I went forward to see Lord William to ask his leave to travel forth from Warwick, for I was determined to ride to Sherwood and seek help from Robin Hood.

Chapter Six

L
ORD
W
ILLIAM AGREED
to what I asked, which was not leave to ride to Sherwood, but permission to travel to Denby to visit an old servant I knew to be ill and possibly dying. No such servant in fact existed, but Lord William was oblivious to my affairs and thought me only a considerate mistress with a gentle, if not overly generous, heart. Permission obtained, I chose my guards and bade the groom prepare our horses, for Annie and I would take to the road at first daybreak.

Sherwood Forest was a two day’s ride from Warwick Castle, but instead of bearing to the north where we ought, we rode farther east toward Denby, so none might catch at our true purpose. My host of guards was a difficulty, for they trod at our heels like a pack of hounds we would have to shake. No group of outlaws was so foolish as to take on a host of armed men, and therefore I would have to shrug them off. Moreover, ’twas crucial that they believe we rode for Denby-upon-Trent, or all our hypocrisy would be exposed.

I rode all day in my usual silence, anxious about our future steps, although, as is often the case, I ought to have saved that nervous energy for it gained me nothing. We stopped that night at an inn of my choosing, a half-timbered house all thatched with straw, which boasted its wares in its very name, the Keg and Spoon. The innkeeper’s wife was coarse but merry, eager to make all the pennies she could by tending well to a great lady. I asked her to feed and sup the men at their own table in her bright hall, close to the flames of her roaring fire. In addition, I made this bargain, that she should receive an extra penny for each hour my guards stayed awake below, and I promised too that I would pay for every tankard and skin of ale that was consumed. This last I bid her tell the men, that they might feel free to make merry with revels while the moon was high.

Annie and I supped and slept, me wrapped in my cloak to keep some distance from the grimy sheets that dressed the bed. In the early hours Annie heard the cock’s crow, shook me awake, and we made ready. I paid the innkeeper’s lady six pennies and one more extra for her good cheer, and Annie and I slipped to the stables, two women escaping their own escort.

We startled the groom’s boy, asleep in the straw, but he wiped his eyes and saddled our horses without much noise or objection. I bade him tell my late-waking guards that my serving lady and I had grown restless from waiting and had chosen to ride forward without their company. They would be sure to catch us, I added, on the way to Denby Manor, and we should be happy to meet with them then. The boy took the message and lay back in the hollow he’d formed in the straw, pulling wisps of it over him for a blanket.

All that day we rode to the west, through the open fields of Leicestershire. We had agreed that we ought not stay that night in an inn, for if our guards sought us in this region they could find easy news from an innkeeper or servant. Instead we rode for Annie’s village and her family home, a bit out of our way to the west, but where we could find a safe place to sleep where no Warwick men would think of searching.

In the late afternoon we neared her village, and as we grew closer the men on the roads began to hail Annie by name, welcoming her home. She flushed and grew cheerful, excited to encounter her native space of friendly faces and warm hearts. The village contained little more than one great house, a rugged chapel, and perhaps ten cottages along the road. Annie led us confidently to a cottage in good repair, somewhat on the edge of town, and there we stopped our horses.

This cottage peeped cautiously at the world from under its heavy weight of thatch, in truth not much more than a stable in size. The mud-work walls had once been whitewashed, but the rains of winter had rinsed it away so that patches, like tear streaks, showed brown through the white. The yard was neat, though of plain bare dirt, clean swept by wind and the housewife’s broom.

We had come at an odd hour, Annie explained, when most of the townsfolk had just retired from the fields and animals stood at the stable door, anxious for milking and a clean bed of hay. But even so I had scarcely time to take in the browns of the house and yard before a group of Annie’s kin surrounded us, embracing their daughter with laughter and tears.

“’Tis so good to see you, Ma and Da, and Polly, ye too. Here, let me present to you my mistress, Lady Marian Fitzwater, of which you’ve heard me speak a thousand times if I did a one. We are in need of a place to sleep for this night only and thought we might rest ourselves here.”

She spoke in Saxon and, for all my practice, went so fast that I scarcely understood nine words out of ten. Her family turned as she spoke and regarded me in heavy silence, wondering, I supposed, why a noble lady would wish to sleep a night in their cottage. I stared back at them with a nervous heart, feeling a lost lamb in the midst of a goose gaggle. At last I did as I always did in a host of strangers I meant to please, I began to smile. I smiled first at the children’s faces, for at times it is easier to show warmth of heart to a child than to an adult, but then, emboldened, I smiled too at the man and two women who stood before me.

Some smiled back, some looked amazed, and this gave me courage to open my mouth.

“I’m very happy to meet you all,” I said, conscious of my Norman accent. “Annie has told me so much of you.”

“Ah, Miss Marian,” the old lady exclaimed, clasping my hands with her two strong ones, caressing my soft palms with her calloused fingers. “You’re right welcome to our home, of course ye are. ’Tain’t much, this house, but you’re free to sleep in it, this night or any other.”

As if her action determined theirs, the others quickly followed suit, repeating her words and shaking my hands. The children reached out to stroke my silk skirts and exclaim to each other over my shoes, my hair, my strange way of speaking.

They were seven in total: Annie’s father and good-natured mother, her widowed sister Polly, and Polly’s four children. I knew their names as well as my own, for I’d heard Annie speak of this brood more continually than anything else. But even so, I made a show of repeating each one, for that seemed something I could do to cover my feeling of strangeness. The eldest was Riccon, a tall boy who already helped his grandfather in the fields, then Bess, then Nat, then baby Jackie. Riccon and Nat soon tired of Bess’s game of eyeing my clothes, and moved on to our horses which stood as we’d left them, resting in their reins. Annie’s father saw the boys go and leapt up to tend to the beasts as if his heart allowed him no rest while animals stood uncared for. He led them away, saying nothing to the two boys who trailed behind, to find a stable and some oaten meal.

I worried over her father’s silence, for he had said scarcely three words to us since our arrival, but Annie whispered that he was just quiet and slow with strangers, so I tried to relax. I too was quiet with new people and by this time wished with all my heart that we had chosen to sleep in an inn. But we were here and all was settled, and this was where we should remain.

I expected that we would retire inside, for the light was growing faint and a chill would soon be in the wind. But the women of the family remained without, talking rapidly of this or of that neighbor, who was now reeve and who now hayward and whose daughter was to be married to the miller in the next village over. I stood by, quiet and dumb, looking from time to time at young Bess, who would giggle and hide when she caught my eye.

The women settled on rounds of wood, and Polly found for me the cleanest among them. Bess had no seat, so she hung behind her mother or aunt, smiling at me with a toothy grin or wiping a dirty hand across her cheek.

While the women spoke, I observed them, noting the strong thrust of their chins and the way they all had of clucking their tongues. Polly and Annie resembled one another in look and gesture and tone of voice. Both shared a height far beyond what either of their parents possessed and auburn hair that could be traced neither to their mother’s gray locks nor their father’s dark ones. They were both buxom women, broad and fair, with rosy cheeks, strong hands, and quick tongues.

But, unlike Annie, Polly and her mother shared the rough reddish skin that comes from life in the open wind, their clothes were of homespun, and their hands were gnarled from heavy work. Beyond those distinctions of environment and habit, they three were no more different than ducklings born from the same clutch of eggs. I wondered, seeing them, if my own mother had been so like me.

From time to time Polly or her mother looked at me shyly with a crooked smile, but they had no words to share with me, and I knew even less what to say to them. At one point Polly asked if the journey from Warwick had been a pleasant one, and I said that it had, yes, thank you very much. That said, we lapsed again into silence while Annie lambasted Eadom Tanner, an unfortunate villager who came late to the haymaking and had been fined and beaten by the steward.

When the father of the house returned, Annie’s mother went in to fetch the supper. I was glad to see her go, for our noon meal had been taken early, and I felt a rattling within my belly. In time she returned with two wooden bowls and wooden spoons, and these she handed to Annie and me. Annie set to and began to eat, but I hesitated. Would the others not be eating? Their eyes were on me, and I sat frozen. At last Annie looked up from her bowl and whispered to me in French, which was now become our secret language.

“Go ahead, m’lady, and eat. They haven’t bowls to go around, so we must dine in shifts, ye see.”

“Annie,” I said, hoping my voice did not convey the terror I felt, “what is it?”

She chuckled softly and moved a bit closer. “’Tis meal porridge of oats and rye. They’ve no bread here till the harvest comes due, and this is the best they can manage. Look here, m’lady, they’ve placed some bits of meat in specially for ye.”

I looked at the meat, twisted and unrecognizable, and lifted my spoon. I was loathe to offend such gracious hosts as these people were, but as I raised a piece to my mouth I felt my stomach heave with fright. With a powerful bite I got it down and much of the porridge and then determined that I could protest I hadn’t hunger enough to finish.

The remains of my supper were promptly given to Riccon and Nat, who ate it down in four quick bites. I sat still on my log while the rest of the family consumed their meals, scraping the porridge from the bowl as if it were a rich cream pudding. Still we remained seated outside, but I did not question. I felt I had acted poorly about the supper and was ashamed—of that, of my accent, my manner, my clothes. There was no end to my current shame, and as apology or perhaps as penance, I sat in silence.

When the night grew darker I calmed somewhat, sensing some safety in not being seen. After a time I noticed Bess at my elbow, clutching tightly to a crude wooden poppet, no more than a stick with two knobs for arms. I coaxed her in silence to let me see it, and when she did I brought forth my handkerchief, resolving to give it up for this girl.

In those days I carried my needle and thread always about me for embroidering, and these I fished out together with my small eating knife. Working in silence, since I feared, for some reason, to let the others know what I did, I cut the linen and fashioned a gown. The sleeves and skirt I stitched tight with thread and with quick stitches I gave the shift a silken girdle, blue on white.

All the while I was working, Bess stood close by, watching my hands in awe and silence. At last it was done, and I handed the poppet back to her mistress, pleased with this project as I had not been pleased with any in years. Bess clasped it to her with shining eyes and did not stray from my side again all that night or the following morning.

A
T LAST
A
NNIE SAID
it was time to retire, and I rose, grateful, for I was chilled to the bone. Her mother went in and lighted a lamp, and Annie bid me follow as well. When I passed through the door, I saw for myself why we had stayed outside as long as we could, for within the house was cramped and dark, filled with smoke from the fire, fumes from the tallow lamp, and the scent of dampness.