The Chronicles of Robin Hood (24 page)

Meanwhile, having paced out the range and stuck the peeled hazel-wand at either end, Little John was still whistling below his breath as he cut long blossom-laden sprays from a wild-rose bush which grew beside the stream, and twisted them into two rough garlands. When they were finished to his satisfaction he handed them over to Peterkin, who chanced to be near, bidding him hang them on the hazel-pricks; and himself went to join the knot of expert marksmen at the farther end of the glade.

Straying dogs were collected from the open glade by their various owners, and all was in readiness. Under the lime-tree the three women had gathered together; the two disguised lords sat side by side on the shady turf, like a couple of crows, in their black habits; and in the council seat, between the spreading roots of the lime, Robin and his strange, black-robed guest stood looking down on the assembled archers.

At a word from Robin, the first man stepped out to shoot. Every eye in the glade was turned upon Will Scarlet as he raised his bow, but no one watched more intently than the abbot. The arrow sped away down the sunlit glade, humming as it flew, passed through the garland within a finger’s breadth of the prick, and stood quivering in the trunk of an ash-tree beyond. Will Scarlet stepped back, and his place was taken by Gilbert.

Many times the arrows sped their course down or up the glade, thrumming in the warm air of the summer evening. Many times the bowmen passed and re-passed the watching figures beneath the trysting lime as they went from one mark to the other, collecting their spent arrows and turning to shoot back; but the abbot never lost interest. His eye was always upon the marksman of the moment, and his watchfulness was well rewarded:
only twice in all that evening did an arrow fail to pass within the garland, and no less than seven times the prick was split neatly in two—the last time by Little John.

At last it was over. The marksmen slipped the strings from their bows, and the petals were already falling from the short-lived dog-rose garlands.

Then the abbot, who had watched in silence all the while, turned to Robin, saying warmly: ‘I never saw bowmen to equal yours, friend outlaw. It seems a wicked thing that you and your band should be wasted here in the wilderness when England has need of true men!’

Robin of Barnesdale shrugged his shoulders. ‘It was not of our own free will that we came to the wilderness,’ said he.

‘No, I know that it was not,’ replied the other; ‘and if I were to carry the king’s pardon for you and your men, would you be loyal and true to him henceforth?’

For a moment Robin did not answer. He was looking away down the glade, where his men stood in groups, discussing the shooting that was past, while the evening shadows stole out from the forest and lay cool upon the sun-drenched turf. And suddenly he knew how much he had loved the life of the Greenwood with all its hardships and dangers. Then he felt Marian’s hand slip into his, and he said: ‘For myself, I would be a loyal man to the king. My lads must answer for themselves.’

‘Ask them, then,’ said the abbot.

So Robin lifted up his voice and called: ‘Ho! Lads! Gather to me!’

The small groups broke up, and men came running from the farthest ends of the glade, the dogs, as ever,
galloping at their heels, to stand in a wide half-circle before the trysting tree.

When they were assembled, Robin looked them over. ‘Lads,’ said he, ‘if the Holy Father here were to bring you, each and every one, a free pardon from the king, would you be loyal men and true to him henceforth?’

A great shout went up from the outlaws. ‘Yes! That we would!’

Abbot Richard waited, looking down at them, until they were quiet; then he put up his hands to the breast of his black habit. As the long sable folds parted, the astonished outlaws beheld the golden Leopards of England blazing on his scarlet surcoat. He thrust back the cowl from his head, and stood before them—the king!

For an instant there was an utter silence. Then Robin dropped on one knee at the king’s feet. He was followed by every man of the brotherhood, so that King Richard found himself looking down on a crowd of kneeling figures with reverently bowed heads. ‘It would seem that I have found loyal subjects in an unlikely place!’ said he.

Some mornings later, Robin sat in his old place between the great roots of the lime-tree, while the brotherhood squatted three and four deep in a wide half-circle around him.

The king had given back to Sir Richard the lordship of Linden Lea; he had bestowed on Robin Hood the lordship of Locksley and Malaset, for Marian’s father was lately dead. He had set right many other matters of a like kind; and bidden them wait three days, that their pardon might be proclaimed throughout the north country. Then he had returned to Doncaster, guided
through the forest by a royal escort under the command of Little John.

Now the three waiting-days were over, and it was time to set out into the future. Robin had already shared out the contents of the treasury amongst his band, as best he might, and all of them would have money in their pouches with which to start their new lives. Now he looked round upon them, rather sadly.

‘So, here’s an end to our wolfshead days,’ said he at last. ‘We have our freedom to go and come as we will, and now our ways part.’ Suddenly he rose and flung out his hands to them. ‘Lads,’ he cried, ‘you who have been my brothers-in-arms—it has been a good life, this of the Greenwood, that we have lived together; and let us not forget it quite, when we be law-abiding subjects of the king.’

‘We will not forget,’ they answered. ‘We will never forget.’

Many of them were in tears. They were free now, with no price on their heads, free to come and go as they would; and they were sad, because it was the end of the brotherhood, because it was good-bye. They would gladly have followed Robin still, but they knew he was no rich lord to support a host of henchmen; and even now, in their sadness, they were beginning to remember—some of them—well-loved plots of earth and valleys of dear remembrance, to which they would go back now, as free men; while others were beginning to feel the call of new adventure.

So they struck hands with Robin for the last time, bade farewell to old comrades, and whistled their dogs to heel; and in ones and twos and little groups they strode away
into the forest, some heading for well-remembered villages that seemed to call them home, some outward bound to seek their fortunes in the ranks of the king’s army.

Robin stood leaning on his bowstave, to watch them go: Much back to his mill, Friar Tuck to his hermitage, Will Scarlet marching gaily south to join the king’s archers, Peterkin to the nearest hedge-tavern, with his bundle of balls and daggers under his arm.

The Lady Elizabeth took a tender farewell of the two younger women before she mounted her waiting horse and rode south beside her husband, with Diccon at her stirrup, and Simon the Squire trotting half a length behind.

Alice clung to Marian when it came to parting, weeping bitterly and swearing to come and see her often and often; then she tore herself away, and forgot her tears, to go with Alan to the little forest manor at Newstead, of which he had so often told her.

Marian stood very still beside Robin, and in a little while he turned from the deserted glade to look down at her with a rather sad smile.

‘It is only you and I now, sweetheart,’ said he.

‘You and I, and one other,’ she replied. ‘Look behind you, my Robin.’

Wondering, he did as she bade him, and saw a gigantic figure standing a few paces off at the edge of the glade, waiting patiently to be noticed.

‘John,’ said Robin, very gently, ‘I had thought you half-way to Cumberland before this!’

Little John came to him slowly. ‘And why should I be for Cumberland, Robin?’

‘Because it was from Cumberland that you came when
first you joined our band, and often I have known you homesick for your native fells; so now that the band is no more, where should you go, save back to Cumberland?’

Little John set a huge hand on Robin’s shoulder, and shook his head slowly. ‘I go where you go,’ he said simply. ‘We be brothers—you and I.’

‘We be brothers—you and I,’ answered Robin. ‘That is a true word, Little John. We ride for Locksley together, then, the three of us.’

So in a little while they set out, Robin riding one of their two remaining horses, with Marian on the saddle-bow before him, and John, mounted on a raw-boned mare, half a length in the rear.

Behind them the Stane Ley was silent and deserted. Soon the little wooden cabins and the turf-roofed stables would fall into decay, and brambles and virgin’s bower and many-tendrilled ivy would cover the ruins, fresh grass would spring up through the black scars of the cooking fires; and the Stane Ley would be just as any other of the many glades of Barnesdale Forest.

AT FIRST IT
seemed very strange to Robin to find himself Lord of the Manors of Locksley and Malaset, where he had spent so much of his boyhood on his uncle’s farm, and stranger still to be the master of that strong grey castle, standing guard over its quiet dales between Barnesdale Forest and the Peak. Yet he had ever loved Locksley village, and now it seemed to welcome him home again.

The folk were old friends, most of them; the younger men had been boys with him, the ancient ones had been cronies of his uncle Stephen, who was now dead; even the dogs were the descendants of those he had known in boyhood. And he had other friends too, dumb yet
faithful, to make him welcome: the grinning gargoyles above the west door of the church, the great tithe-barn where the white owls nested and reared their young every year, a certain hollow lime-tree on the borders of Locksley Chase; these, and many more.

Within the castle he was not so happy. Used as he was to the broad glades and leafy ways of the forest, he felt caged and shut in by the strong grey curtain-walls; and the stars which had been his friends when he slept beside his fire in the Stane Ley seemed less friendly when seen through the window-embrasures of the great keep. But to Marian, the Castle of Malaset was very dear, for it was her home; and as time went by Robin came to love it also, at first for Marian’s sake, but later for its own.

During the last years of the old lord’s life, he had sadly neglected his possessions, and all that he owned had fallen into decay; and now it fell to Robin and his Lady, with the faithful Little John to aid them, to set matters right, both within the castle itself and throughout the demesne and manor. The hovels of the villeins were put in good repair, and the neglected land slowly put to rights; new trees were planted in the chase, where old ones had fallen, and long-derelict wind-breaks replanted with hawthorn and quickset. Robin—ever a farmer, even after his landless years of outlawry—planted willows in the wet bottom where nothing else would grow, and bought new oxen to replace the worn-out beasts in the plough-team; and above all, he made friends with his serfs and villeins, so that they worked for him willingly and gladly, as they had never done for Fitzwater.

Inside Malaset Castle the same thing was going on. Stables and kennels were put into repair, guardroom and
armoury set to rights. There were several casts of hawks in the mews, where there had been nothing for many a long day save a crazy goshawk in perpetual moult.

Little John descended upon the men-at-arms in the guardroom, denounced them for lazy slovens and good-for-nothings, and set about driving into them the discipline that the brotherhood of the Greenwood had learned so well. They grumbled for a time, sullenly resentful at being roused out of the lazy ways they had drifted into when the old lord was in his dotage; but Little John’s good-tempered friendliness—and the strength of his right arm—soon won them over to his way of thinking.

Meanwhile, Marian was replenishing the store-rooms, and caused the faded walls of the bower to be painted lime-leaf green and flecked with golden stars, made friends with her house-varlets and hand-maids, and set to work on the herb-plot and garden that had been left to run riot since she went to Robin in the Greenwood. She had a way with plants, as she had with people, and under her skilful hands the tiny rose garden below the south tower soon began to bloom again.

The great Castle of Malaset was fully awake once more, and full of a coming and going of servants and men-at-arms, as it had been in older days. Robin kept open house, as the Saxon gentry had always done; and many were the guests who found warm shelter and a good meal beneath the smoke-blackened roof of his great hall.

Sir Richard-at-Lea came sometimes, and sometimes Alan A’Dale; more often Sir Hugh de Staunton would ride over from his own manor to spend a few days hunting with Robin in Locksley Chase. Often a weary knight-errant would claim hospitality, and almost always there
were guests of a poorer sort—men-at-arms and archers tramping home from service overseas, brown-skinned sailor-lads bound from one port to another, dusty palmers from the Holy Land, yeomen on a journey, pedlars and friars and strolling minstrels. All these were sure of a welcome, and help if they had need of it; but most welcome of all, by far, were stray members of the brotherhood, who sometimes came to sit at Robin’s table. They would come quietly and sit among the men-at-arms far down the lower tables, but none ever came that his old leader did not at once recognize. Then Robin would go striding down the hall to wring his hand, bid him welcome, and demand his news. So Robin of Barnesdale never quite lost touch with his old life or the men who had lived it with him.

They were happy years, those at Malaset. Robin and Little John laboured hard to make the manor prosperous and keep it so. Marian worked as hard as either of them, for it was no easy thing to be the Lady of a great Manor. But all three of them loved their task; and they had their pleasures too: days of hunting and hawking in Locksley Chase, with the russet leaves lying thick underfoot and the frosty distance as blue as wood-smoke; long winter evenings when the wind roared against the ramparts, and the great hall was a place of warmth and flickering light where guests and men-at-arms and dogs crowded to the blazing fire while some wandering minstrel plucked his lute and sang to them of love or war or hunting.