The Outlaws of Sherwood (7 page)

Many of the king's deer that Robin had once earned his bread to preserve went to feed the pinched bellies of his outlaws; and as anyone's marksmanship improved, he began to learn to set his arrows where the beast was least likely to fall and break the shaft, that the arrow might be salvaged and used again. It occurred to Robin that it might be possible to grow tired of venison; but there were rabbits as well, and squirrels and pigeons, and several of the folk that now sheltered with him proved handy with roots and herbs, and the stews then produced became savoury as well as nourishing. Much brought flour from Whitestone as his father could spare it, so that they might also have bread and dumplings. The miller was well off as Saxon yeomen went, and could spare it, and so Robin tried not to think of the debt, only too likely to prove unpayable, that his company was running up to the miller's generosity. It was a little easier not to think about when he looked around him at the wan discouraged faces filling out, and the wary glint of hope seen in more and more eyes.

“Any man may be called merely
Robin
,” grumbled Much one day; “we need a better name for you.”

“Normanslayer?” Robin suggested ironically. “Deerthief? Sheriff's-bane?—would that I were.”

Much shook his head. “My second sister's husband's name is Robin, and a duller stick of a man you could not hope not to speak to.”

“Speaking well or ill does not keep the rain out,” said Robin automatically. “If he—”

“No,” said Much. “We all know by now about your single-minded lust for the practical. But word's gone out, you know, just as we told you it would. Anyone we'd want who got you confused with my sister's husband wouldn't come, for fear of being bored to death. You need another name. Or we need something to call you.” Much brooded. “I rather like Sheriff's-bane.”

“I do not,” said Robin. It was a grey and louring sort of day, and a damp, sticky drizzle fell or crept through the trees. Summer had arrived, and the woods were thick with the smell of it, and the rain was warm and felt almost like sap—no less unpleasant running down the back of the neck. Robin pulled his cloak up around his head. “Robin of the Hood,” he suggested. “It rains enough here, God knows.”

“It'll do,” said Much. “I know you too well to expect better.” Marian came to the camp at least once a sennight. She was, if anything, even more tired than Robin himself, although he never asked her if her dreams woke her in the small hours. Nor did they ever discuss her coming to live in Sherwood as Much had done, who still went outside, when it suited him, as the miller's son. But then his father was sympathetic to his son's cause, and Marian's, had he known of it, would not be. Marian continued to live at her father's house, and she learnt what people said of the sheriff, and of the small band of unusual outlaws lately gathered in Sherwood; and she brought the tales with her as she brought leather and twine and salt and pots for cooking. It was a dangerous task she had set herself, and a dangerous journey, both for herself and for Robin and his people. The strain—beginning with the fact that Marian did not permit discussion of what it was she was doing—told on both her and Robin, and they quarrelled almost as often as they met.

It had been ten days since last she had been to Greentree, and not only had the company cautiously accepted two new members, but there were two families sitting in a subdued and worn little huddle near the fire. The small available space of the glen was bursting at the edges, and Robin was twitchier even than usual. There were too many people to keep utterly quiet, and he wanted any forester so implausibly scrupulous in pursuit of his occupation (or the price on Robin's head) as to come anywhere near the camp to hear nothing more for his trouble than the sounds all trees make alone in a wilderness. “I did not think there would be so many,” said Marian wonderingly.

“Neither did I,” said Robin grimly. He had not had the heart to send the families immediately on their way, as he usually did with the clearly unsuitable. They had been wandering too long and were too weary; each had children who were wearier yet. They would be sent on—soon; but not till they were fed and rested, and meanwhile they had, somehow, to be taken care of till they had regained their strength.

Robin, looking at the faces around the fire, and then back at Marian's, thought there was not much difference between them. Love and fear turned in his heart, and he could not have said which was stronger; but the two of them together produced a spark like anger. “You cannot keep on like this,” he said. “It is too hard for you. It is too hard for me, watching you.”

Marian sighed; she and Robin hadn't had their quarrel yet this visit. She pulled herself to her feet. “I will go on like this because I am the best spy you have. I cannot trust the Norman gentry any less than you yourselves do,” and Robin saw the shadow of her father on her. “You need not fear that I will be followed; the sheriff's men wonder, to be sure, and they watch me when they have a few minutes to spare; but they will not believe anything too mutinous of a mere daughter while the father still pays his taxes and salutes the sheriff in the streets of Nottingham. And I have taken care to be seen drooping and ashamed as persons of better judgement tell me what I might have expected of such a scurrilous friend as the son of old Robert Longbow. Robert was not a bad man, you know, but his son …” She looked at Robin and half-smiled. “I will try to bring more cloth the next time I come; you are still sadly ragged.”

“Robin keeps insisting on clothing the ones who need it worst first,” said Much. “I've told him that that colour really doesn't suit him, but he won't listen.”

Robin stood up beside Marian. “Truly you must not risk yourself this way. I know I say this to you every time, but I cannot help it. If anything should happen to you—”

She laid a hand gently on his lips. “Nothing will happen to me, barring an inconvenient tree limb falling on my head, or that Beatrix contrives to fall ill again. You have other, better things to concern yourself with.”

Robin smiled beneath her fingers, and took her hand in his own and kissed it. “No,” he said.

She held his hand a moment longer when he would have released hers. “Thank you,” she said, and then she turned and was silently gone. A baby cried, and Robin returned to his present responsibilities with a shudder. “A crying child's voice will carry half across England. Is there still no news?”

Much shrugged. “I'm sure Jocelin is running his feet sore even now, but it's only been three days, and it's not so many towns that will take families who have so obviously run away from their last places—particularly farm families without town skills. It will take time.”

“Time which we will not have,” said Robin. “We must split the camp. If they are caught here, not only are our heads forfeit, but likely their own as well, for being found with us.”

Much nodded. “That's true. There's shelter at Growling Falls, and it's an easy way from here, and we could still feed them and keep an eye on them.”

“There will be shelter, you mean,” said Robin. “We'll start on the roof tomorrow.” The child wailed again, and Robin grimaced.

“Or perhaps tonight,” suggested Much. “There's a good moon for it.”

It would be at least another day and more likely two before, in conscience, the families could be shifted to Growling Falls. In conscience? thought Robin. How does my conscience feel about
not
moving them? There was no news from Jocelin; the only news was of the sheriff's braggadocio, and how he would have Robin Hood's head on a pike before the season was passed. Robin had spoken to the baby's mother, but colic was colic; and even once they were resettled at Growling Falls they would eat as much as they did at Greentree, and how much they ate was—as people who have not had enough to eat for months will eat.

Not for the first time, it occurred to him that Much could run their company, particularly now that it was more or less going, now that there were at least three or four of them who could be trusted not to get lost, now that there were folk to hunt and dig and cook as well as plan. If he gave himself up into the hands of the sheriff's men, much of the enthusiasm for tracking the others down would evaporate, and they might not be in much danger. He knew however that he was not capable of giving himself up in cold blood; and his thoughts went round in a circle not so dissimilar to the one he had been caught in on the day he was to meet Much and Marian at the Nottingham Fair. He recognised the similarity, and decided that he was not in a very good mood.

The path took a sharp bend and dived over the stream Robin could hear through the trees. There was no proper bridge, but only a great log, wedged on either end where it lay on the land by stout pegs hammered into the earth and braced with stones. Beneath ran the stream, deep enough here to be treacherous, deep enough to give a man a thorough wetting if he tried to wade across it. The log bridge had been set there by the king's foresters years ago, but it was the only dry way to get across the stream for some distance in either direction. Robin should have had all his wits about him for so public a crossing, but he did not. He stepped up on the great treetrunk, still preoccupied; steadied himself momentarily; and began to walk across.

He didn't go very far. There was a man—a very large dark-bearded man—standing in the middle of the narrow way, leaning on a long blackthorn staff. Robin, suddenly aware of the unmoving shadow that stood in his way, paused and looked up, thinking: how stupid can a man with a price on his head be? I never noticed the fellow; and he is a bit large for overlooking.

“I'm a stranger here, to be sure,” said the shadow, “but it seems to me that you show scant courtesy; for I was already a quarter way across this slender bridge when you jumped on the far side and strode toward me.”

Robin didn't like the man's tone, and he was a shaggy and draggled-looking figure besides; arrogance did not sit well on him, or so he told himself, to drown out the lecture his better judgement wished to give him on caution. What if the man had been a forester? The man was not a forester, that's all; and Robin now wanted to get past him and forget the whole incident as quickly as he might. He looked up into the man's eyes—and quite a way he had to look up to do it—and his voice was not friendly as he said, “Very well, I was in a hurry and was not paying attention, and I did not see you. As you apparently stopped to watch me, for you are still only a quarter of the way over and I am more than half, I suggest that you go back and let me by, and then you may cross at whatever leisurely pace seems best to you. You may even sit be-straddle and dangle a hook for fish if you will, so long as you have an eye out for other travellers who may, like me, wish to proceed at a normal pace.”

“No,” said the stranger. “I like not your plan, and I seem to have forgot my fishbait. You shall give way before me and prove that the folk here are not the knaves they seem to be.”

Robin's nerves were still jumping from the quick, awful wash of fear when he had first seen the stranger and had not known if he faced a doom brought on by his own carelessness; and his temper, never slow to follow up an opportunity, would not now allow him go the long way back to the far shore and let this unpleasant giant past. “I shall not. I say that the folk of your county must have thrown you out for your manners, and you come here to plague us.”

Something flared in the man's eyes at these words, and he uttered a sharp bark of laughter that had no humour in it. He said, “Then I shall have to make my own way—as I have often done in this life.” And, as if he thought of using it to clear his present path, he took a fresh grip on his staff.

“A brute and a bully you are,” said Robin angrily, his temper gone for good, and, instinctively, one hand strayed toward the quiver on his back.

“And a coward I call you,” said the stranger, his brow lowering in a terrible frown; “for you would shoot me with your arrows when I have naught but a staff to defend myself with.”

Robin's common sense tried to make him say something conciliatory; what came out was a snarl: “A coward I will not be called!”—and he ran freely back to the far side of the stream, but with his hands shaking with rage. He cut himself a sturdy oak staff that might hold against seasoned blackthorn, and trimmed it, taking a few deep breaths to steady himself. The stranger had not moved from his place a quarter way across the log bridge.

Robin left his bow and arrows hung on a tree limb, and went to meet his challenger. He was, or had been, good with a staff, for he was quick and light on his feet, and vagrant breezes had less effect on staves than on arrows. But he had not practised with a staff in many long months, and his footwork would avail him little whilst he stood on the narrow curved back of a log bridge; and he knew besides that he would be no match in physical strength to the giant before him.

But he stepped up on the log nonetheless, and held his staff warily, and advanced against his enemy; and his enemy straightened up and moved forward to meet him.

Robin feinted and, as the stranger lowered his staff to parry, raised his own in a lightning stroke to smash the stranger across the brow; only the quickest shift on the stranger's part saved him from a blow that would certainly have landed him in the stream. “You strike well,” he said, surprised; and, surprising Robin, his voice sounded almost pleasant. He began an attack of his own, but deft and wise though he was, Robin parried ably, and threw the blows back upon him.

They stood so for many long hard minutes, neither moving but for the rare half-stagger as his opponent drove past his guard and rapped him with his staff; for they were better matched than they appeared. Robin was the smaller by a good deal, and, as he soon knew, the less practised, but he was strong and wiry—and stubborn; and he had the knack of the thing besides. The stranger was just the littlest bit slow, and never quite managed to deliver a blow that had his full strength behind it.