The Chronicles of Robin Hood (10 page)

‘Certainly we will have you.’

So Peterkin joined the Outlaw Brotherhood.

Among the first trees of the Chase they found the little band waiting. Will Scarlet’s voice whispered out of the darkness: ‘What news?’

‘She has gone,’ Robin answered dully. The men
crowded round him, scarcely visible in the crowding shadows; and briefly he told them what had happened. ‘Lads,’ he finished, ‘we must find my lady before harm comes to her, or she is retaken by her father or that devil—Roger of Doncaster!’

‘We will find her, Master, never fear,’ came the answer from the darkness around him; and Robin’s heart warmed towards his men as he gave them their orders.

Diggery he sent off hot-foot to Kirklees Nunnery, for he thought perhaps Marian, knowing that Ursula, his kinswoman, was a nun there, had gone to her for shelter. He sent Gilbert off on the same errand to Sir Hugh de Staunton’s manor, over towards the Peak, and bade him search for her also on the road, since it was hardly likely that she would reach the manor that night.

But though she might have gone to either of these two, Robin knew in his heart that she was far more likely to have gone eastward into Sherwood or Barnesdale, seeking him; and he portioned out his men accordingly. This man was to watch the Nottingham road; this man to watch the track from Doncaster; a party to cut south through the forest towards Sheffield; another, under Will Scarlet, to search the southern skirts of Barnesdale. So he divided the forest among searchers in a wide curve about the eastern sides of Locksley.

Finally, he sent Roger Lightfoot, the swiftest runner of them all, speeding back through the forest to Dunwold Scar, to rouse out the rest of the band. The score of men split up into their separate parties, and melted into the darkness; and Robin Hood was left standing alone among the stately trees of Locksley Chase, where so often he had walked and ridden with Marian.

Where was she now, he wondered? Was she safe? The forest, which was a familiar friend to him, would be full of danger to a defenceless girl who did not know its ways. And how desperate and afraid she must have been, before she made up her mind to run away. Robin dropped his ribboned lute on the turf, and turning on his heel plunged away into the darkness.

By the following dawn the whole outlaw band—save for a few under the captaincy of Little John, who were to remain at the Scar in case Marian should find her way there—were out and scouring the forest from Nottingham to Barnesley; but all that day they searched without success, and Robin with them.

Diggery and Gilbert returned from their errands with word that Marian had not gone either to the nunnery or her kinsman’s manor; and the day drew on to evening. Robin had not rested, and scarcely eaten, since the search began; nor did he rest the following night, but still walked the forest deer-paths in the moonlight, his bedraggled finery more stained and tattered than before, his face haggard beneath his hood.

Dawn found him following a narrow track between the little villages of Sheffield and Worksop, not many miles from Dunwold Scar. It was a quiet dawn, giving promise of a glorious day later; but Robin, usually so alive to the beauty of the forest, did not see the shreds of mist among the trees, nor the lengthening catkins on the hazel sprays. On he went, moving wearily down the track, for he was very tired; and as he rounded the corner into a broad ride among the trees, he saw a figure seated on a fallen tree-trunk some twenty yards from him. The light was still bad, but he could see that it was a stripling boy in a
rough tunic and great-hooded capuchin, who sat with elbows on knees and head sunk in cupped hands, a broadsword at his side and a round buckler lying on the turf at his feet.

Robin halted for a moment, and then went on. He took no particular pains to be silent, and a moment later a twig snapped sharply under his foot. Instantly the boy snatched up his buckler, and springing up, stood like some wild thing at bay. Robin could not see the face in the shadow of the great hood, but he liked the boy’s speed and his look of defiance, and called out to him, kindly enough: ‘Nay, my little game-cock, I mean you no harm.’

For answer, the boy gave an odd, short cry, and drawing his sword, made straight at Robin, shield up, blade raised to strike. Then Robin laughed grimly, and drawing his own sword, stepped forward to meet him.

They met, shield to shield, and their blades rang together. The boy was as quick on his feet as a wild cat, and as fierce; but he was no match for Robin, though the outlaw fought only on the defensive, contenting himself with warding off the blows aimed at him. At last, growing tired of the fight, Robin brought up his blade with a flash, and beat his assailant’s sword from his hand. The weapon flew wide, to land with a thud on the grass some way off. And then a strange thing happened, for the brave swordsman dropped his buckler, and sinking down upon the turf, held out imploring hands, and begged in a girl’s voice: ‘Mercy! Have mercy, good sir, and let me go away!’

For a long moment Robin remained staring down at the bowed figure; then he cast down his own sword, and stooping suddenly, put back the clumsy hood.

Long golden-brown hair flowed out over his hands, and next moment he had his lady in his arms. She had known him at the moment when he bent over her to put back her hood, and with a little glad cry laid her head against his breast like a tired child.

‘Sweetheart,’ he said at last, ‘what possessed you to do such a mad thing?’

‘Why, I am not such a poor swordsman after all,’ said Marian, between tears and laughter. ‘For you taught me yourself, Robin, long ago in Locksley Chase. And how was I to know you in those clothes? And when you came upon me so suddenly, I was afraid.’

‘And so you attacked me because you were afraid, my valiant lady?’ said Robin gently. ‘And as for these clothes: I put them on to play the minstrel at your wedding, meaning to bring you away to the Greenwood. But you had already flown—and I have been searching for you ever since.’

‘Oh, Robin, if I had only known! But I had no one to counsel me. I have been so unhappy since you were proclaimed an outlaw. I have had no word from you in all these years, and I did not know how to get a message to you when my father chose a husband for me and I was in need of your help. So at last I stole some food and a broadsword and took one of the scullions’ Sunday clothes, and came to look for you.’

‘Dear love,’ said Robin gravely, ‘I have sent you no word in all these years because I thought it best that you should forget me—wolfshead as I am. But now that you have come to me, why, Friar Tuck shall wed us this very day.’

So they set out for Dunwold Scar, walking hand in
hand, and as blithe as birds on a tree, though both of them were very weary. And as they went, they talked together joyously, for they had many things to say to each other after the years they had been parted.

The sun was yet low in the blue sky of early morning when they came into the long forest-ride below the caves of the Scar, and the few outlaws who had been left there were moving about, collecting arrows and unstringing bows after the morning’s target practice. They came running to their leader—then, seeing his companion, checked a little shamefacedly, uncertain how to greet a lady (for Marian’s long hair still streamed loose about her shoulders and her face was no longer shadowed by her hood).

Robin saw their uncertainty and called his tall lieutenant out from the others. ‘Little John,’ said he, ‘this is my dear lady.’

Little John came forward and dropped on one knee before Marian, raising to his lips the hand which she held out to him. She looked down at him very kindly, saying: ‘So you are Little John? I have heard much of you already, though ’tis scarcely two hours since Robin found me.’

Little John flushed with pleasure beneath his tan, and from that moment was her staunch friend and devoted slave.

Then came the others, one by one, to bend the knee to her; and Marian turned from one to another, gravely, as Robin told her their names. Lastly came the gigantic friar, with his ban-dogs thrusting around him as usual. He took her hand, very kindly, in his, while the dogs stood round with stiff legs and quivering noses. They were enough to scare any maid, those great hounds, and
Little John would have whistled them off; but Marian was used to dogs, and of a good courage, and she held out her hands to them, speaking to them softly. With pricked ears they came forward to sniff at her hands; the pack leader began to wag his tail, Orthros whined deep in his throat. They had accepted her into the band.

Robin turned away, and calling out three of his men, sent them off: Roger Lightfoot southward, George-a-Green westward, and Hob-o’-the-Hoar-Oak to the north, to begin the recall of his scattered band from their search.

‘And now,’ cried he, as the three men sank into the forest in their different directions, ‘food, Little John! Food—and a great deal of it!’

So Marian and Robin sat down side by side on the soft turf below the caves: he still in his bedraggled minstrel’s finery, she in the scullion’s Sunday clothes; and Little John brought them cold venison and manchet bread in a napkin of fine linen. They ate hungrily, while in the glade before them the outlaws continued with their daily tasks—though they often paused to glance aside at the lady.

The pale February sunshine dappled the turf, where the tiny green rosettes of the primroses were beginning to uncurl; the little brook which ran down one side of the glade sparkled between its rushy banks; a robin sang his heart out from the topmost branch of an oak tree, and in all broad Sherwood there were no happier people than Maid Marian and Robin Hood.

ONCE AGAIN THE
forest was a place of rustling leaves, and dancing sun-splashes on turf and tree-bole. The hawthorn trees were in bloom, and in the open parts of the forest the gorse flamed golden as though all the furze was afire.

Three months had passed since Marian came to the Greenwood. At first the outlaws had been shy of her, and shy of having a woman among them—‘And her a fine lady, too!’ as Hob-o’-the-Hoar-Oak said to Much-the-Miller’s-Son. But Marian had shown herself a worthy comrade. When Roger Lightfoot had cut his hand half off she had neither shrieked nor swooned, but held the edges of the gash together while Robin stitched it. She
had not been afraid when there was an alarm of an attack, but had calmly strung her bow and taken her place beside Robin. She had not complained when the nights were cold. She took her turn at cooking and cleaning, and her place among the younger outlaws at the daily target-practice. Above all, she was friendly: laughing with them, sharing their joys and sorrows; and so, little by little, they grew to accept her as one of themselves, especially Friar Tuck’s dogs, who loved her dearly.

On this particular morning she had gone up with Robin to visit the pickets watching the Nottingham road for a rich merchant who they had heard was to pass that day. She stood looking away down the road: tall and slender as a birch tree in her long green gown, with her russet hair bound closely round her head. Her gown was of the same Lincoln cloth as the tunics of the wood-rangers, and the skirt was caught up through her belt so that it should not get in her way; under it she wore men’s long hose and rawhide shoes. There were four clothyard shafts in her belt, and she carried a bow which Will Scarlet had built for her. It was a light bow with a pull of thirty pounds—very different from the great bows with their lateral pull of a hundred pounds which none but Robin and Little John could bend—but already she could use it well.

It was very pleasant among the nut trees by the wayside, and very quiet, so that they heard the trit-trot of pony’s hooves and the trundling of cart wheels while they were yet a long way off.

‘Now, who comes here?’ said Robin softly, as the outlaws rose and moved back into the deeper shadows of the trees.

Little John remained where he was, gazing northward
through a little opening between the nut trees. Then, as the trit-trot and the trundling drew nearer he laughed, and stepped back.

‘It is the proud Potter of Wentbridge. I know him of old—a stiff-necked creature, and he has never, to my knowledge, paid any toll for passing through the forest.’

‘Has he not?’ replied Robin. ‘By the powers, he shall do so now!’

A moment later he parted the nut bushes and stepped out into the road. A fat little pony was coming along the Nottingham road at a fast trot, drawing behind him a neat, small cart. Seated in the cart, among a pile of gaily coloured earthenware pots, was a large, burly man with a brown smock, a red face, and a jaunty pheasant’s feather in his slouch hat.

Robin stood waiting at the side of the road, and caught the pony’s bridle as it drew level with him. The fat little creature came to a docile halt at once, and Robin laughed up into the indignant face of the potter above him.

‘Come, Master Potter,’ said he. ‘Why such a surly visage? All I ask is that you pay me my just toll of silver; then you may go on your way unmolested.’

The potter’s usually pleasant face grew dark with rage. ‘Not a piece of my good silver do you see!’ he cried; and then, leaning down to look more closely at the tall man in green, demanded with sudden suspicion: ‘What might
your
name be?’

‘Men call me—Robin Hood,’ answered Robin, warily watching the potter’s face.

‘
Do
they?’ asked the man. ‘Do they indeed?’ And he leapt down from his little cart and hurled himself upon the outlaw.

Robin was ready for him, and the two came together in the middle of the road. The potter was a powerful man and, though he was a little shorter than Robin, he had a grip like the hug of a brown bear, and a face which did not seem to feel the blows which the other planted on it.

For a while they reeled to and fro, sometimes locked together, sometimes smiting joyously at arm’s length. At last Robin got in a strong left to the point of the jaw. The potter sagged for a moment, and then bore heavily forward. As Robin stepped back he caught his heel against a half-buried stone, and next instant lay flat on his back with his antagonist on top of him. He had hit his head in falling, and was half stunned, so that for a moment the potter had him at his mercy. Then the outlaws, who had been watching delightedly all this while, broke from cover and flung themselves upon the potter.