The Outlaws of Sherwood (20 page)

Upon the next morning, rather lighter of the greater portion of their gear, they were taken to a different part of the forest than where they had been waylaid; and Sir Miles rode face down across the back of his charger this time, for that was the one horse too conspicuous for resale. But the sack of meal rode listlessly today, and seemed rather troubled by saddle-sores. The parting was simple. Little John loosened the bonds on one of Sir Miles' men, and left him to struggle free and help his fellows as the outlaws went silently away.

Rafe came back with one sum for Sir Richard's mortgages and Marian another, but they were not so far different, and Robin doubled the higher one. “Usury,” said Little John. “The
lower
figure is usury.”

Robin shrugged. “The taxes the Normans would hold us for are usury; I see little difference. And we shall be paying Norman usury with Norman gold.”

“Got from Saxons,” growled Little John.

“The system isn't perfect,” said Robin with a grin; “keep your eye on the short term, my friend. If we look farther than tomorrow's stew or keeping Sir Richard's lands in the hands of the last local Saxon lord with power enough to be a nuisance to the Normans, we shall merely go mad.”

“Which would be no fun at all,” said Much; “and there has to be some fun in exchange for all the long boring hours lying on tree limbs never designed for the support of human flesh.”

Nottingham was so loud with talk of Sir Richard that as the day of confrontation grew near, the outlaws of Sherwood felt they could almost hear the distant murmur of many voices from the isolation of Greentree. Even the foresters were more active, as if the sheriff's excitement at the prospect of a final stunning blow against that last strong Saxon lord in his jurisdiction was infectious.

Little John and Cecil had a brisk set-to with four men in an area of Sherwood Little John had chosen for its comparative safety from the depredations of sheriff's men and foresters. Cecil, as a new member of the band and one of the youngest, was obliged to spend much of his time washing dishes and hauling wood. The hero-worship he was developing toward Little John was magnified by the fact that it was a tremendous treat for him to escape the grisliest camp chores and go scouting—like a real outlaw, as he felt, although he was very careful that Robin should have no complaint of his dish-washing and wood-hauling. But Little John continued to deal with him as if with an infant Little John was merely too polite, or too obedient to Robin's orders, to leave behind; and Cecil resigned himself as best he could to his master's always selecting the least dangerous territory for guard duty when the infant was accompanying him.

But it was Cecil who gave the alarm: Cecil who, in Little John's words, was halfway up a tree while Little John was still turning to look. Cecil gave the low whistle Robin's folk all knew as warning, and as Little John wriggled an inch or two farther along his branch to bring Cecil's tree into view, he saw Cecil drop on the heads of the foresters. It was neatly done; the man Cecil landed on fell to the ground at once and lay stunned; and Cecil had felled a second with his staff before the other two knew he was there. Little John by this time was out of his own tree and halfway to the fray, cursing (silently) the impulsiveness of children; and as the two remaining men turned to make short work of the boy, who had used the only good staff-blow thus far in his repertoire and was now faintly nonplussed by its demonstrated effectiveness, Little John's readier staff caught one of the two under a shoulder-blade and spun him round, and cracked his head against a tree. The other one, gaping, made a fatal error in judgement and failed to decide which enemy to meet first, with the result that he was lifted off the ground and thrown to one side by the combined strength of Cecil's one good blow, reapplied with vigour, and another swift stroke from Little John.

“You damned young idiot!” Little John said. “What did you mean by that show?”

Cecil set his jaw. “I gave warning and attacked. We are near Greentree here; we are not merely to watch; we are
supposed
to attack. I did as I should.”

“You did not wait to see if I would aid you!”

“Wait!” said Cecil, with scorn. “I knew when I whistled it would make them pause just a moment, and I wanted them to pause under my tree. And they did. I knew you would come.”

They were patting down the unconscious men for anything worth stealing, or any broken bones; automatically they took the arrows from the quivers of the two men who carried them; Robin enjoyed shooting the king's deer with the king's foresters' arrows, despite their shorter length. “You did
not
know I would come,” said Little John, pausing over one man's purse, which contained a few small coins. “You did not wait for the counter-sign.”

“Pfft,” said Cecil, flaring up. “What do you take me for? I told you why I could not wait; they would have moved on.”

“I might have been asleep,” Little John went on doggedly, returning the purse to its place untouched. He remembered Robin's tales of his days as a king's forester, and this man's face did not look as if it belonged to a bad man.

“Not you,” said Cecil, as if it disgusted him to have to make any answer to such a suggestion. “If you had sent me out with—with Aymer, I would have waited for the counter-sign.” Aymer's skill with longbow and quarterstaff had led Robin to make one of his few mistakes in accepting someone into his company; a mistake corrected barely a sennight before, when he was sent on to follow up news of work in a small Northumbria town. “Where his opinion of himself can get in someone else's way,” said Robin. “Maybe the weather will dampen him a little,” said Much.

Little John almost smiled. “Aymer. Mmph. You have learnt flattery somewhere. Promise me that you will wait for the counter-sign if you are sent out with anyone else. I ask you this, I, Little John, who never sleeps.”

“Or Robin,” said Cecil, ignoring the sarcasm.

“Or Robin, who, as leader, certainly never sleeps. Promise.”

“Or—”

“Only Robin or me,” said Little John firmly. “Promise.”

“I promise,” muttered Cecil. “I fear I have dislocated this man's shoulder.”

Little John felt the arm delicately and agreed. “Leave it for now. We'll try to carry him a bit gently. We don't want to risk him coming to himself now by trying to snap it back; they'll all have headaches enough later without giving any a second knock.” He stood up and gave the sharp burst of short whistles that Robin's other scouts in earshot—were there any—would know meant help was asked.

“You know,” said Cecil demurely, still sitting on the ground, “you wish to punish me for doing exactly what you would have done in my place.”

Little John looked down at his pupil. If Cecil had looked up he would have seen a real smile on his teacher's face. “Not with Aymer.”

Cecil did look up then, but Little John had pulled his face into its usual long lines again behind the disguising beard. “Come,” said Cecil. “Confess.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind. That was a nice stroke you made, taking down the second man.”

“Thank you,” said Cecil. “I have an excellent teacher.”

“A good thing too or he would never keep up with you,” replied Little John in a tone of voice that would have terrified Cecil less than a fortnight earlier. “But it is time you learnt a few more basic strokes; if these fellows were anything but mutton-heads they would have blocked so plain a blow easily. And perhaps in the lessons your teacher may also knock a little sense in that hot head of yours.”

“If I had waited for the counter-sign and they had moved on, I should have missed my leap, for I do not leap well either,” said Cecil. “Do not think that I am not grateful that they are mutton-heads,” he added, a little sadly.

Little John gave a snort that might have been a laugh, and then several of Robin's folk faded out of the trees around them, and the carrying of the victims to safer—that is, more confusing, or so the outlaws hoped, from a forester's point of view—territory began. “We heard the warning whistle, but we were at some little distance,” said Bartlemey, who was the first to appear; “and I see you needed no help. You the glory and we the brute work,” and he smiled at Cecil, because he remembered his first weeks as an outlaw, and had learnt a bruising lesson or two from Little John himself.

“Don't give him any encouragement,” said Little John; “he should have waited. An outlaw interested in glory will have a short life.”

Bartlemey winked at Cecil, who smiled sheepishly and looked side-long at Little John, who was bending over the man with the dislocated shoulder. “Take his feet,” he said, addressing no one in particular, but it was Cecil who jumped forward. “If we are lucky, and these men run to type, they will not remember exactly where they were when the wrath of God fell upon them from above; but we had best tell Robin to set an extra watch this way for a little time to come.”

It was hard to go quietly through trees anyway, and, Cecil thought, the sweat running in his eyes, impossible to go quietly while carrying half a man; but Little John made no protest about the noise they were making. He was intent on where they were going, and Cecil, trying not to stumble, was glad merely to hang on and follow. The other men seemed to recognise where they were when Little John stopped and they all lay their burdens down; only the man with the injured shoulder had the luxury of being carried by two pairs of arms. Cecil looked around, trying to behave as if he didn't feel entirely lost; Little John was frowning. “It is curious there are foresters this way at all, but perhaps the weight of the sheriff's frustration is making even the Chief Forester a little cleverer.” He turned to Cecil. “Rip off a bit of this man's tunic and bind his eyes; if he wakes while I set his shoulder, we will get away before he figures out which hand can pull the bandage off for him. Now kneel on his chest and hold that other hand down—and watch that he doesn't kick.”

There was a very unpleasant noise, the man cried out, thrashed briefly, and went limp again. “That will do,” said Little John; and they headed back to camp.

Little John ended his description of the day's events by reporting that Cecil had addressed himself to the experience of his first face-off with the king's foresters “with what I am forced to call glee.”

Cecil, who knew he was being reprimanded, flushed to the roots of his ugly hair. The hat had finally come off a few days after the episode with Sir Miles, and the ragged mop then revealed was striking in its awfulness even among the outlaws, who were not noted for personal or sartorial elegance. “He must have chewed it off,” Much said to Robin.

“Yes,” said Robin. “It's a pity one can't offer to—er—tidy it for him. But I was challenged by him before on less pretext, and am not anxious to repeat the performance—particularly after Little John has had a fortnight's training of him. He's also our most reliable dish-washer if not disturbed. The hair will grow out.”

“He's an odd young one,” said Much. “He seems to have hated growing up a young lord much worse than Will did.”

Meanwhile Cecil had scraped what was left of his hair into a short tail that looked like a small thornbush at the nape of his neck, from which little scraggly wisps escaped and were relentlessly pulled behind his ears and, whenever he was near water, plastered in place. As he bowed his head under the weight of Little John's words, tufts of hair were sticking in all directions from his hairline.

Looking at the thornbush with some sympathy, Robin said, “He is obviously the most promising pupil you have had; I can't recall your ever maligning any of the others for gleefulness.” Cecil looked up, blinking in surprise, and Robin smiled at him. “You don't know Little John as I do. The more somber he gets, the better pleased he is.” A number of things passed very quickly across Cecil's face, and his eyes turned to Little John; but Little John, at his most inscrutable, was rubbing grease into a leaky boot.

“But I take the warning seriously about the extra watch,” said Robin a little later. Cecil had gone off with a sigh in answer to a summons from Matilda; and Marian had just heard the tale of the day's doings—from Robin, because Little John had responded only in a grunt when applied to. “He's sulking because I've ruined his authority with Cecil,” Robin said cheerfully. “The boy did very well today, but Little John thinks praise is bad for the young.”

“As I recall,” said Little John, “the reason you prefer me to do the schooling of him is that you felt I was most likely to keep him in line.”

“I wouldn't want him to think that he was
not
supposed to knock foresters on the head when the opportunity presents itself,” said Robin. “One does wish—cautiously, of course—to encourage certain attitudes. I didn't invite Cecil to join us for his services only as a dish-washer.”

There was a glint of teeth in Little John's beard, but he did not reply.

“The forest is as busy as an ant-hill someone has just stepped on,” said Marian. “I will be glad when the affair at hand is over—if for no other reason,” she went on, as she saw Robin's mouth open, “than that I do not like to think of Sir Richard lying awake nights and knowing there is no hope for him.”

Robin was not distracted. “Perhaps you should stay away for a time—at least till this business is over.”

There was a little silence, and all the things that had lately grown harder and harder for them to say to each other hung in the air between them; Marian felt that she looked at him through a curtain. “I have heard,” she said, her voice light and easy, as if nothing dismayed her and as if her heart did not hurt in her breast, “that young Richard has been packed off to the Lionheart's army; let them do with him what they can. But I hear too that the boy is shaken, at last, by the events he brought upon himself—and upon his father. The one virtue he does not lack is courage, so perhaps he may make a soldier.”