The Outlaws of Sherwood (33 page)

Cecily looked at Marian's sleeping face, and thought that some of the lines that had been there yesterday were there no longer, and she felt a little hopeful. This left her some freedom to think of other things—like the fact that her clothes chafed her as if she had been wearing them a year. “I would
wash
,” she said gruffly; Friar Tuck looked mildly surprised. “You may borrow a change of clothes from me if you do not mind the skirts.”

Cecily ducked out of the hut with a roll of Friar Tuck's spare gown under her arm. The dogs were inclined to wish to help her at her bath in the little pool beyond the chapel; and then she had some trouble deciding how to tie (or not tie) the billows of Friar Tuck's robe so that her gender would not inadvertently reveal itself, telling herself first that it didn't matter anyway and then that it did, and then again that it didn't. Little John knew already and Friar Tuck wouldn't care. Probably. He was too busy with Marian anyway. She decided that she couldn't decide and that not deciding was best expressed by not tying. Whereupon she wadded up some of the billows in one hand so they would not catch between her legs and trip her that way (the hem ended well above her ankles) and her wet, reasonably clean, or at least less dirty, clothes in the other, and went back to the hut for breakfast. She found she still hated the feeling of skirts flapping around her, and wondered why Tuck bothered wearing them. It was not as though he did not possess several other individualistic approaches to being a priest and friar.

Little John and Tuck were in the middle of an argument; the friar was shaking his head. “I do not know if that is wise,” he said. Little John protested at once: “Would you have him not told?”

Friar Tuck stood looking down at Marian, who was lying very still. “I might,” Tuck said at last, “for he can do no good by knowing; you could wait a day, in the hope that I might have good tidings to allay a terrible tale.”

“And what if someone hears a tale of Robin Hood shooting at the fair and being wounded by Guy of Gisbourne and rescued by a tall man and a boy? And brings the tale to Sherwood? Cecil and I should be bringing our own tale by this morning. We are the only folk from Greentree who were in Nottingham yesterday, but there are those who love Robin well enough to venture into Sherwood for his sake, or the sake of news of him after what they know they saw.”

Friar Tuck took a long minute to answer. “I did not expect to be able to stop you; bad news travels fast, but not so quickly that, were it my choice, I would not risk the delay of one day. I would ask you to bear her to our hiding-place, however, ere you leave; for I do not like the risk of any man coming to inquire of me today about any belly wounds I may have seen recently.”

Cecily surprised herself by saying, “Only one of us needs to take news to Robin; and Friar Tuck should be seen about his chapel in the ordinary way. Marian should not be left alone—at very least that she might not wake in the dark and have no one to tell her where she is. I will stay if there is no reason against it.”

Little John's smile was so slight and so wry that had he still been wearing a beard she would not have seen it. “It is a good plan and a good thought, but I would rather face twenty foresters than wait in the dark for something that may not come.”

Cecily said sadly, through a mouthful of cheese (which required no chewing), “So would I. Ten foresters anyway. But you are the better tracker and the faster, and it is only sensible you should be the one to go.”

Robin had not liked the idea of Little John and Cecil—Cecily—going into the sheriff's baited trap; but it was true that since Sir Richard regained his land the air the outlaws breathed seemed thick with the sheriff's hatred, and the leaves seemed to have eyes in them, that had been their friends before.

The loss of Rafe's source of news when Lucy married and moved a town away was a severe one, and came at a particularly bad time from the outlaws' point of view; as if fate had arranged it, the pieces fit so neatly. And Rafe himself, one of the sunnier-tempered members of Greentree, had been trailing around like a lost fawn since Lucy had told him.

“I can't blame her,” he said miserably; “I couldn't marry her, now could I? Or I could, I suppose, but what man who loved a woman would ask her to live as we do?”

Robin had overheard this much of a conversation between Rafe and Simon and Jocelin; they had fallen silent when they recognised Robin's step. It might merely have been the end of the conversation anyway, but Robin thought not. What man would ask a woman he loved to live as they did? It was a thought he was only too familiar with.

The other rumour he had heard of late, one he could not decide whether to hope for or not, was that the Lionheart was coming home to England. Richard was a Norman and spoke English like a Frenchman, but he was king. Would he uphold the laws of England or would he be careless of the rights of the English so long as his fellow Normans were happy? Whom would he believe, the sheriff of Nottingham or Robin Hood? Was it, Robin thought dismally, a question worth asking?

It was not just that he was the king. Everyone loved Richard Lion-heart, even outlaws hiding in the king's forests. He was tall and blond and heroic, and he had been fighting for the Holy Land, a cause that the Saxons—except perhaps when there was a sheriff leaning on them too heavily—could love too. Almost everyone seemed to forget his Norman blood when they spoke of him. Maybe Robin had once felt that way too, long ago, when he was still a king's forester himself. But he did not forget it now, just as he feared that if the king did decide to hear the sheriff's complaint of them as true and serious, his outlaws would give up in despair that the Lionheart had turned against them, before any one of them was taken.

Robin had an uneasy day while Little John and Cecily were at the fair; he half-imagined he could hear the crowd from the heart of Sherwood. He listened to his imagination and it sounded like an angry crowd, shouting of cruelty and disaster … and then he cursed himself for a fool and was more uneasy than ever. It was not surprising that Little John and Cecily did not return that night; the fair would go on till evening, and if Little John was keeping in his role as a wrestler, he would have proven a popular contestant.

But as the next morning drew on toward noon, Robin gave up all pretence of not being anxious.

It was past noon when there was the cry from the nearest guard that someone bearing news approached. Robin's heart tried to rise and sink simultaneously when he saw Little John come toward him, obviously hale and—when he got a little closer Robin saw some of the bruises, and that the shirt he wore was not his own; it looked like it might fit Friar Tuck. The cut on his cheek did not look like the kind of thing a wrestler should have received. “Where is Cecily?”

“With Marian.”

“
With Marian?
”

Little John hesitated, and Robin took him by the arms and shook him. “Speak, man! What has Marian to do with the news from Nottingham?”

Little John sounded as if he were reciting a speech he had memorized; maybe he was. “At the shooting contest at the fair, one archer stood out among them all as the best. As the final arrow struck the target, a man leaped from the sheriff's tent and challenged the winner, naming Robin Hood. As the crowd had done among themselves already.”

“And?” said Robin violently, as Little John paused; but he knew already the end of the story.

Little John's voice was flat. “This man called himself Guy of Gisbourne, and he drew a sword on the archer, who had no sword, and the crowd pressed around the two of them in anger, for they had liked it that Robin Hood should win the sheriff's contest, and did not like Guy. But Guy … wounded the archer with the point of his sword.”

“Marian,” said Robin. “She lives?”

“She lives,” said Little John. “She is with Friar Tuck, who would have had me stay the news for a day; he hopes that Marian may rally and we be sure of her by tomorrow. Cecily is with them.”

“Is Cecily hurt?” Robin asked; but his lips moved stiffly over the name. Marian was lying wounded by the closing of the sheriff's trap.…

“No,” said Little John, and touched his purple cheek. “Not to signify. Bruises. There's less of her to resist when a nailed boot steps on her. There was quite a mix-up at the end, when we were getting Marian away.” Little John paused.

Robin looked at him, his eyes dark with visions of the day before; of the day to come; of the woman who lay under Friar Tuck's roof.

“Will's little sister saved my life,” Little John added as if inconsequentially.

Robin's eyes cleared long enough to stare into the face of his friend. Another stroke upon the sheriff's tally, that he nearly caused the death of Little John. “I am glad of that small favour. And you were right to come straight on; by tomorrow I would have been walking down the main street of Nottingham, shouting your names. Where is now Guy?”

Little John lifted his shoulders. “I do not know. But the tale is that the sheriff has bought him and his men to find the outlaws of Sherwood.” After a moment he said, “We were followed out of Nottingham, I believe, but with luck we lost them in Sherwood; no one had come to the chapel by this morning. I do not know if those who followed included Guy; it would be bad luck indeed if he should have chosen our direction to start his search.”

“The sort of bad luck we need to expect,” said Robin. He had picked up his bow and quiver, which the tension of the day had caused him to have nearer at hand than was his custom at Greentree. His fingers paused over his staff, and then he picked it up slowly, turning it in his hands. “A sword, you said?”

“Aye. A long sword, such as a knight might wear.”

Robin said, with a recklessness that Little John did not like at all, “Well, I have no sword; my dagger will have to suffice.”

Little John said, “You will not go alone.”

“Will I not?” said Robin; but his thoughts were far away. “I do not care. You may come with me if you wish.”

Much approached the two of them; Little John's hand was on Robin's arm, but even Little John's grip was not going to detain him long. “Where is Cecily?” he said. “What happens here? I like not either of your faces.”

“You will find me at Tuck's chapel,” said Robin, stepping away and settling his strung bow over his shoulder; and he was gone through the gap in the trees that served Greentree as a front door—gone at a running pace that a hunted stag might set.

“
What
?” said Much; and. Little John told him.

He finished by saying, “Round up all of us you can, will you? And let us meet at the chapel. Robin will see Marian first, which will delay him a little—I like this mood least of any I have seen. I don't want him left alone—even for these moments I spend in talking with you.”

“Guy of Gisbourne,” said Much, appalled; but he said it to empty air, for Little John was gone after Robin.

It was a hard journey for Little John, who had had too much of hard journeying in the last two days; but he caught up and kept pace, though he went less quietly than was his usual.

Once, when they stopped to drink at Rosebrook, Little John said, “Do you know who it is you are chasing? You cannot mean to take him as you stand.”

Robin said savagely, “I mean to take him with an arrow in the back, if I can. It will be no less a choice than he gave Marian. But I also mean to give myself as many choices as I am able; and even if he is a demon in human form, as they like to say of him—yes, I know the tales—I still believe that I know Sherwood better than he does, which may, I hope, give some length over a longsword's reach.”

Robin seemed to flee over the leaf-strewn floor of Sherwood without ever quite setting a foot firmly down; their time back to Friar Tuck was less than Little John's to come to Robin to give the news, and Little John had not lingered by the way. Robin said, almost over his shoulder, to his companion: “There is some method behind my passion for speed besides the love for Marian that you fear may betray me to rashness. Guy is an ill enemy—the worst, I think, that we have had, for the sheriff is only as great an enemy as he can hire other folk to be for him. I am glad now that I have been so merciless in cutting our camp down to so few; that fewer folk are now to be at risk.

“The sooner we confront him the better; I think it will not be numbers that decide the ending to this tale, but luck and perhaps some skill. Guy has the devil's own luck; we will see if the luck that has kept us alive thus far may stand against that dark gentleman's.”

They were now close to Tuck's cottage, and Robin dropped to a walk. And he said then, with an expression on his face more like the Robin Hood that his people knew, “And as for meeting Guy alone—did you not leave word with Much for all of us that he could muster to meet at Tuck's chapel, before you came after me?”

Beauty gave the single cry of hound welcome, and Tuck emerged from the chapel path into the meadow, turning to face the way Beauty stood, and said to the trees: “They have gone, they who would ask me of you; you may come out from where you watch in hiding.”

“So men did come,” said Little John.

Tuck said, smiling, but not so comfortably as was his usual way: “They did; I grow slow and dull in the wilderness. I did not realise how the sheriff's hatred for Robin has grown.”

“Marian?” said Robin, as Little John said, “You were not there when we bought back Sir Richard's life from out the sheriff's hand.”

“Marian is not well, but no more ill than when Little John left to find you,” said Tuck grimly, “—I hope. Now that my last lot of visitors is well on their way”—he and Little John turned to look at the dogs, who were untroubled by any wandering whiff of strangers—“we may go look to her again.”

The silence within was perfect as Friar Tuck drew the brush aside from the hidden earthwork; Robin was nearly stepping on his heels with impatience, and it was Robin's hand that yanked open the low, carefully moss-grown door.