The Chronicles of Robin Hood (25 page)

Best of all, perhaps, were summer evenings in the rose-garden. Marian loved the rose-garden better than any other place in the castle, and because she loved it, Robin loved it too. It was but a tiny square of turf in the sunny
corner between the great keep and the south tower, a turf seat starred with speedwell and wild thyme, pansies and gilly-flowers underfoot, and a thick hedge of roses all around—white roses that smelled like honey, crimson roses whose scent was dark and warm like their own petals, tiny pink single blossoms that Marian used for distilling rose-water. That was all, but the rose-hedge seemed to shut out the world, so that the little grass plot within was enchanted ground, like the centre of a fairy ring; and here Robin and Marian would often sit of a summer evening, while the yellow sunshine gave place to blue dimness, and the gay butterflies of the day-time to pale-winged night moths.

Sixteen years slipped away; happy years for the folk in Malaset, but hard ones for England.

Richard Cœur de Lion was dead before the ramparts of Chaluz, and his brother John now ruled in his place; and oppression and injustice were let loose in the land once more. For if John had been a brutal tyrant during the years when Richard was crusading or in prison, he was far worse now that he himself was king; and he had not been long on the throne before he made himself the most hated king that England had ever known. The poor folk had always hated and feared him for his cruelty and ruthlessness; but now the clergy and the barons were coming to hate him too—the clergy because he refused to obey church rulings and gave their fat possessions to prelates whom he brought in from overseas; the barons because he wrested from them their ancient rights and forced them to pay out most of their wealth to keep him in money for his constant wars. The few barons who yet clung to him for hope of power were behaving much as
they had done when King Richard was abroad, wrenching from the poor all that they possessed, and making honest folks’ lives a burden to them; and between them and those lords and barons who were turning against the king there began to be constant quarrels and small private wars.

Little cared King John for the misery of his people; and he brought in foreign mercenaries to hold down and quell their growing discontent. But slowly, as the years went by, the wrath of the English was growing stronger than the tyranny of their king.

In the spring of 1215 the barons gathered at Brackley in Northamptonshire, and there they drew up a Great Charter of Englishmen’s rights, knowing that if they could but force the king to sign it and abide by his signature, it would break his tyranny for ever. Far and wide they sent, summoning free men to join them, and from far and wide free men answered the call. Then, having sent word of their coming to the king, they marched south under the banners of Fitzwalter, William Marshal, and Stephen Langton; a great and glorious army of lords and barons, knights and squires, each with his following of fighting men. And with them marched Robin Hood and Sir Hugh de Staunton.

It was in the chill dawn of a May morning when Robin marched out of Malaset, with Little John beside him, and close on a hundred fighting men at his back. He looked back once, and saw Marian standing high above him on the ramparts, her crimson kirtle gay in the first sunshine, and the wind teasing her hair from beneath her wimple. She flung up her hand to him, and he waved back; then he turned his face towards the high moors.

He never saw Marian alive again.

Hugh de Staunton was waiting for him by the Mark Stones a few miles west of Mansfield, with a goodly company of men-at-arms, and they went on together to join the gathering of the barons’ army at Brackley.

Southward rolled the host, down from Northamptonshire into the rich valleys of Buckinghamshire, and up over the rolling Berkshire Downs, pennants streaming, weapons and armour glinting in the warm spring sunshine, shields and surcoats and horse-trappings of blue and crimson, green and gold, sable and silver, all powdered over by the great rolling dust-cloud stirred up by the horses’ hooves and the feet of marching men.

The king met them at Runnymead, in a smouldering rage that boded ill for the charter. June had come, and his bright silken pavilions were pitched in a meadow that was gay with clover and lady’s-smock, the Thames ran sparkling at the field’s end, singing blithely through the brown-flowered rushes on its banks, and cuckoos shouted from coppices far and near. But the king’s brow was black and sullen, and though he signed the charter with as good a grace as possible, it was only fear of the barons massed in arms against him that made him do so. And the ink was scarcely dry on the parchment before he was thinking how he could most easily break the promises that he had made.

The barons knew King John of old, and their knowledge had not taught them to trust him; so a large part of the host remained in the south to keep watch and ward over the charter that meant so much to Englishmen; and among those who stayed were Robin and Sir Hugh.

But King John’s treachery was swift, and it was yet
early autumn when news reached them of foreign hordes in the king’s pay landing at all the north coast ports: of Flemings, Saxons, and Brabanters pouring through the north country, pillaging and burning as they went.

Then the northern barons hurried north again to defend their lands, Sir Hugh among them; and with Sir Hugh, Robin and his men took the York road once more.

On a misty October day when the golden bracken was deepening to russet, the two little companies left the Sheffield track and swung up into the high moors between Sherwood and the Peak. At their head marched Robin, the grey milky light glinting on his ring-mail; and his face was grim and set beneath his steel cap. They had passed through three burned-out villages that morning—silent villages with dead men and women lying among the blackened ruins of their homes, and his heart was sick in his breast with fear for Marian, alone in Malaset with only the serfs and a handful of men-at-arms for its defence.

Little John marched beside him, scarcely less grim than he, and on his left strode Sir Hugh de Staunton, his face bleak, and the old scar on his cheek leaden-grey with weariness. The three had marched their men forward relentlessly on that long road from London, and there was not a man in the ranks behind them who was not utterly worn out. But they held on doggedly, the weary miles paying out behind them; and now only the last lift of the moors lay between them and the end of the long forced march, and they pressed forward with their eyes straining ahead of them for any blur of smoke against the evening sky.

On they went, up and over that high moorland crest,
and dropped down on the farther side, following the sandy track that wound down towards the wide dale of Malaset; and as the track dropped more steeply valley-ward, Robin lengthened his stride and the weary men behind him quickened almost to a run.

Where the track swung round a last shoulder of the moor, the Lord of Malaset came to a sudden halt. The dale opened before him—quiet farmland between the high moorland fells and the dark verge of Locksley Chase where the evening shadows were already gathering like smoke among the trees. A mile away across the fields the village lay very quiet too, with the quietness of desolation upon it; nothing moved save the faint smoke that drifted upward from the blackened ruins of its homesteads. Beyond, the great keep of Malaset stood upreared against the evening sky, seemingly untouched by the desolation below it, but in the fading light the open ground before the castle was a-swarm with figures, and even as Robin watched, red fire sprang up from the timbers of the gate-house, and a distant uproar came faintly to his ears.

He gave one sharp, savage cry, and began to run, slipping his bowstave from his shoulders as he ran. Little John and Sir Hugh were beside him, and the rest came storming at their heels. Across the farmland they raced, weary men who had forgotten their weariness, over crisp pasture and frost-hardened plough, and came at last into the blackened ruins of Malaset village, each man freeing his bow as he ran.

King John’s mercenaries had gained the causeway after a hard fight for it; they had stormed the gates, and now a mortal struggle was raging around the burning
gate-house where the little, gallant band of defenders stood at bay behind their hastily-flung-up barricades. The marauders had thought to gain an easy victory, for serfs and villeins and a bare handful of men-at-arms were no match for close on two hundred heavily armed soldiery. But the Englishmen were strengthened by the knowledge that they defended their own womenfolk, their own children—for the villagers had all flown for shelter to the castle as soon as warning of the raid came to them, and now the inner bailey was full of children and dogs and cattle, while in the outer court the women toiled to and fro, tending the wounded, carrying sheaves of arrows to the few bowmen in the archers’ gallery, aiding their menfolk at the barriers.

Again and again the foreigners strove to break through into the courtyard; again and again they were hurled back. The defenders were fighting with the grim, desperate courage of the wild boar that had been their forefathers’ battle-crest, and already the barrier was strengthened by the bodies of dead Flemings and Brabanters; while from the arrow-slits overhead ever and anon there whistled down a clothyard shaft, to find its home in some foreign heart.

But the bravest defence could not last for long against such odds; there were English dead piled beside the Brabanters in the gateway, and many of those who still lived were wounded sore.

Once more, with a savage yell, the mercenaries charged. And in that moment came a deep whistling hum, an angry sound like that of a disturbed hornets’ nest; but it was a flight of grey-goose shafts, and not of hornets, that drove into the rear ranks of the Brabanters.

The daylight was waning fast, but the flames of the burning gate-house lit the scene with a ruddy glare and made a clear target of the men who had kindled the blaze. Many were down, dead and wounded, under that first flight, and a second followed it, before a man’s heart might pound twice, slaying their captain and spreading confusion among the rest; and almost before they could turn about to face the new menace, their attackers were upon them.

Robin could never afterwards remember much of that fight. He did not know that the struggle was long and bitter, or that the defenders of Malaset had dragged aside their own barricades and rushed out to add their strength to his. He did not know, until Sir Hugh told him afterwards, that scarce a dozen of King John’s cut-throats had escaped with their lives from that evening’s work. There seemed to be a red mist heating behind his eyes, and he knew nothing save the scarlet flash of his sword reflecting the flames of the burning gate-house and the savage joy of feeling the blade bite deep.

Then it was all over and the red mist ebbed away; the fierce joy died in him, and he found himself standing in the ruined gateway, his sword naked and blooded in his hand. Men were dousing the fire with water from the castle well, and as the flames died down the thick reek of sodden smitch filled the air. It was almost dark until someone brought a torch, and by its light he saw dead men sprawling all across the gateway and the causeway-head, English and Fleming, attackers and defenders together.

His serfs crowded about him where he stood in the gate-way, and he saw Little John bending over a fallen
comrade and Sir Hugh de Staunton leaning against the wall and dabbing at a gash that had partly opened the old scar on his cheek; and he looked about for Marian, but could not see her.

But from the throng he picked out Rafe-the-Archer, chief of the few who had been left to guard Malaset while its lord was away, and demanded: ‘Rafe, where is my lady?’

Then he saw the trouble in the man’s eyes; and he knew. With a strange, cold calm upon him he followed Rafe up the narrow stone stairway that led to the archers’ gallery. The clouds of the day had begun to break up and stream away eastward before the light wind that was rising, and through their shreds and tatters the sky showed green as a witch ball and gemmed with the first stars. But the archers’ gallery was sheltered from the wind behind its frowning, arrow-slitted rampart-wall, and the torch which one of the bowmen was holding aloft burned steadily, shedding a saffron glow over stone wall and timber flooring, and the figures of the archers who had so lately defended the castle. One sat propped against the wall, while a comrade knelt over him to cut the arrow-barb from his shoulder; one stood staring out through his loophole, with his hand clenched on his bowstave so tight that the knuckles shone white. The rest stood with bowed heads around one of their number who lay still.

They parted silently to let Robin through, and he found himself looking down on Marian, with a cross-bow quarrel in her heart. Her bow lay beside her, and she was clad as the other archers, in leggings and worn leather jack; but they had taken off her steel cap, and her russet
hair flowed softly round her face and shoulders, shining warm in the torchlight.

For a long time Robin looked in silence, and then he turned away without a word. They bore Marian to her bower and laid her on the bed; and Robin went back to his wounded men.

There was much to be done that night, and Robin strode from place to place, unceasingly, seeming unable to be still a moment, a man with eyes like bright, blue glass in an ash-grey face; and the men who saw him that night never forgot his look.

But in the darkest hour he went back to the chamber where Marian lay, and knelt down beside the bed; and there he remained, while the grey dawn filtered into the room and the yellow sunshine followed it and streamed down from the high window in a shower of gold that lay gently across Marian’s body.

Then he bestirred himself and got to his feet, slowly, like one who is very tired. Stooping, he kissed her on the forehead; then went quietly from the room and down the winding stair and out into the rose-garden that she had loved so well. The sun had not reached it as yet and the little grass plot was grey with hoar-frost, but in the rose-hedge the last crimson buds of summer were opening to the morning.