“They respect woman, my lady,” Dame Edith ventured to say.
“So they are said to boast. Should we have put our faith in that boast and sent one of our women through the woods in his place, to be ravished by the first vile rogue who took the fancy? Bring me back that letter!”
Dame Margery found it uncrumpling itself in the bed of thyme. Smoothing it as best she could, she carried it back to the sheriff, who scanned it once and twice again, anger straightening into firm, settled purpose on her brows and in the lines around her mouth.
“Very well,” Dame Alice de Flechedor said at length, “we will try Robin Hood’s boast concerning womankind. Jack the tanner’s son brought this from his father’s field?” she went on, turning to the maiden who had relayed it to the ladies’ enclosed garden. “Piers Tanner is a fair man with the bow, I think? I shall write my answer on another parchment and give Jack another arrow. Better than the one I broke,” she added with a wry smile. “Let his father shoot it back into the forest. Into the trunk of the largest tree at the forest’s edge. We will not be like these outlaws, who shoot their messages into field and town careless of anyone who may chance to be in the arrow’s path.”
CHAPTER 3
ROBIN HOOD
For a few confused heartbeats Denis thought the angel was come at last. But its features resolved into the thin cheeks and snub nose of the miller’s outlawed brat, enhanced by a haze of forest-filtered afternoon sunlight and by the euphoric sense of lying at ease on mossy ground. His left ankle throbbed, but otherwise he felt curiously at ease. He knew not how long, after all, he had dangled—far less time, perhaps, than it had seemed— nor how long he had taken recovering his senses, which perhaps had been far longer than he fancied.
Midge seemed to have washed his face and hands, but hastily. A smear of dirt lingered across the bridge of his nose. Other faces, too, loomed above Denis out of the forest shades: a great one like a giant’s, laughing to show strong white teeth framed by a bushy black beard of medium length, which, hanging upside-down in his vision, produced a momentary vertigo as if he were still on the rope’s end, until he saw that the man was merely crouching at his head; and another with hair as brown and eyes as hazel as Midge’s, but looking larger and older, thanks to a close-cropped brown beard—a brother or a close cousin, perhaps.
“So, my lad!” boomed the laughing giant. “Our Midge was afeard we’d left you aging too long, but I know good, plain, peaceful sleep when I see it.”
“Better, it appears,” said Denis, collecting his thoughts, “than you know a peaceable messenger when you see one.”
The giant stepped around to sit cross-legged hard by the squire’s side, folding his limbs to the ground with the ponderous grace of a fine charger, and laying his huge quarterstaff nonchalantly across his knees. “Well, sheriff’s squire, let’s look at this. Say one of us outlaws—me, or Much here, or Will Stutely, or even Scarlet or Robin himself with their manners as fine as my lord FitzWarin’s—was to go into Nottingham town with as many white roses and scarves and truce-tokens as you please. Would Madame Sheriff respect ‘em, do you think, or would she clap us into her dungeon, ready for hanging?”
Denis started to speak, caught himself perplexed, and finally brought out in weak protest, “If it were a high holy day, and your errand peaceable, I think my lady might respect...”
“Maybe. More likely not. Anyhow, I’d sooner trust to a good disguise. Not as I’m all that easy to disguise.” The giant laughed again and stood. “Now, Sir Squire, think you can walk?”
“Where?” Denis demanded, an image of the infamous greenwood gallows going through his mind.
The giant must have followed his thoughts, for he answered with the loudest guffaw yet. “To hearty dinner and a soft bed on the forest floor, my lad! We’ll not hang any harmless messenger, sheriff’s wight or no.”
“You mean, I take it, by the neck,” Dennis remarked; and the giant answered with an appreciative chuckle.
Wincing from a new pain in his ankle, Denis looked and saw Midge prodding it with hesitant fingers. It was mightily swollen, with ridges of flesh above and below a groove where the rope had bitten.
“Don’t worry,” said Midge. “I cut your pretty hose along the seam. Some fine maiden can sew it up again for you good as new. I think you’d best carry him for now, Little John.”
“I should prefer,” Denis said, mustering his dignity, “to lie here and rest a while until I can make my own way back to town.”
The brown-bearded outlaw, Much, shook his head and spoke for the first time. Even the timbre of his voice resembled Midge’s, though far deeper and gruffer. “Rob may want to hold him to ransom.”
“True,” said the giant Little John, still laughing. “Four-pence is no fair toll for a fine-dressed fellow like this. So come, Sir Squire. What kind of gentle lord is it who’s not held to ransom some halfscore times in his life? Why, by all the romances, it’s meat and drink to you! Thou’lt come to no harm, I promise thee that. Providing, of course, this be an innocent message in very truth.” He twitched the hem of his green hood, that seemed to hang heavy from his soulders. Denis understood that they had searched him while unconscious and stolen the prioress’ tablets.
He could not let that pass without protest. “Your eyes have no right to a private communication between two gentle ladies.”
“We make our own rights, here in greenwood,” Little John replied jovially, as if honor were a jest. “Well, now, how does it go? Do you pledge us your word not to try escape?”
“No,” said Denis.
“He won’t get away anyhow,” said Midge. “Not today, not on that ankle.”
“Blindfold,” said Much.
“Aye, you’ll not object to going blindfold,” said Little John. “But we’ll never mind it if you do. Pledged word or none, we couldn’t have you taking note of the way.” He produced a dirty woolen cloth that looked as though it had seen service as both handkerchief and wiper of bird droppings since last laundered.
“I’ll do it,” said Midge, reaching for the cloth. “Thy fingers be too big and clumsy, Little John.”
“If you please.” Sitting up, Denis found his lady the sheriff’s white silk handkerchief still in place round his arm. “Use this.”
“Looks thin,” commented Much.
“Not that thin.” Midge untied it and fingered the cloth appraisingly. “Not if we double it over some few times.” He did so and bound it on, first smoothing down the squire’s hair as if to make sure no strands would catch in the knot.
When Denis insisted—for the thought of being carried like an infant or a wounded man was distasteful (and moreover he wished to try his ankle so as to estimate how soon he might attempt escape)—they supported him between two of them. Little John was the strongest; but since one arm round the giant’s shoulders, higher than most men’s heads, would have made for a lopsided hobble, the two were Much and Midge.
From beneath the blindfold, Denis could glimpse a little of his own feet and the ground immediately beneath. Certainly nothing that might help him guide his lady’s posse to the outlaws’ lair, especially if his captors were taking him circuitously, as he should have done in their place. Yet though he was no forester, he had woodcraft sufficient for the hunt, or for finding his direction back to Nottingham by such pointers as sun and moss and flowing stream...
When he could escape. But that would not be within the next several hours, by the swelling and pain in his ankle.
He amused himself with cataloging the differences between his two supporters. Much, on the left, was somewhat taller and far stockier, longer and broader across the shoulders, almost bovine in his heavy stride. Midge seemed a stripling to him—(so, for that matter, did Denis)—a lightfoot colt to a plodding ox. Yet the resemblances he remembered in their faces, as well as their voices the longer he listened, were more than enough to mark them as of one family. “Midge and Much,” he inquired. “Are you brothers? Near cousins?”
&nbs
p; “Brothers!” thundered Little John, who was pacing along behind them with a stride that seemed to make the ground quiver. “By’r Lady, Sir Squire,” he added with another laugh, “we were shrewd to blindfold those sharp eyes of thine! Who knows what landmarks they’d have spied out?”
Perhaps, in deference to the difficulty of his progress, they brought him by a direct route, after all. The first indications that they were approaching camp were a pleasant fragrance of roasting meat and the sound of a ballad being sung in a tenor voice pure enough for any royal minstrel:
“‘Give him a mount,’ said Robin Hood,
‘And a saddle new.
He is our lady’s messenger —
God grant that he be true.’”
The words did not at that moment penetrate the squire’s consciousness as deeply as the aroma. He had determined that though he must accept a place to rest, he would have none of the outlaws’ poached venison or stolen ale, nothing but a cup or two of clear water. He now began to regret his resolution and next, as the savory smell grew stronger, to rejoice that he had resolved it privately, without as yet mentioning it to his captors; and that he had made it a mere resolution, not a formal vow.
“So now is he gone on his way.
This game he thought full good.
And when he looked on Barnsdale fair,
He blessed bold Robin Hood.
“And when he thought of Barnsdale free,
Of Scarlet, Much, and John,
He blessed them for the best company
That ever he was in.”
The singing stopped, to be replaced by a general cheer as of many score voices, chiefly male. The thought that this cheering was connected more than coincidentally with his own arrival caused Denis additional apprehension.
“You can take the blindfold off now, my lord,” Midge muttered in his ear, at the same time releasing his right arm.
He fumbled gingerly for a few ounces of time, remembering that it was his lady the sheriff’s silk; but whereas the band was fairly soft across his temples, the knot in itself was tight. So he slipped the whole up over his brow, letting it fall loopwise into the crook of his arm as he looked about with a catch in his breath.
Surely this must be the fairest secret glade in Sherwood, by both Nature’s art and man’s. Robin Hood might not have the full sevenscore followers allotted to him in popular report, but Denis estimated about three score in evidence, besides twenty hounds or more, and the open space accommodated all of them comfortably, as in a great hall, with room left for the fire over which two deer were roasting.
The robber baron had his high dais as well, spread over with cloth of silver, raised two feet from the ground beneath an immense and ancient oak at one end of the glade. Such an oak it must be as the ancient heathens had worshipped; but even its branches apparently did not suffice, for above the table stretched a canopy of green velvet embroidered in gold. The four gilded poles that supported the canopy rose from grassy slopes which, protruding a little from beneath the cloth of silver, suggested that the dais had been either fashioned from or covered with earth.
A cloth of milk white linen fit for a church altar covered the table, and spread over the cloth were silver plate, golden goblets, rare crystal fingerbowls, and Denis even saw a linen napkin in the lady’s hands.
Of all those seated at the high table, it was the lady of the greenwood who first drew the beholder’s eyes. Not only for the polite reverence that was any high-born lady’s due (for this must surely be that mysterious gentlewoman rumored to have joined the band), but also for the amazing apparition of grace and gracious beauty in the midst of all these ruffians and murderers. Her surcoat was of costly blue silk, her long kirtle beneath it pure white. Her honey-brown hair flowed loose, like a maiden’s, uncovered save by a wreath of pale pink primroses. Her eyes were clear blue; and only her skin, sun-browned though clean, bore testimony to the circumstances of her life.
At her left sat a tonsured friar, round of form and round of face, whose habit looked as though it had been cut from brown velvet. To the friar’s left was a grinning man clad chiefly in scarlet silk, with golden hair, short golden beard, and a peacock feather in his scarlet hat.
On the lady’s right hand, the third man at the table must be Robin Hood himself, the outlaw king holding sovereign sway over all this greenwood court. Garbed in tunic of dark green silk and hooded mantle of Lincoln green, with a minimum of embroidery, he made at first glance a less striking figure than the others. Yet when he rose to his full height and doffed his hood, he drew attention like the first new spark of fire struck in the dark night of Holy Saturday.
Great pity, came the grudging thought, that such a yeoman should be such a murderous rogue!
“Well found, my good lads!” said the outlaw leader. With a half bow that had in it something of both the coarse and the courtly, he added, “Welcome, gentle worthy squire, to our greenwood cheer. We assume you to be gentle and worthy, even though the sheriff’s man.”
“If I am worthy,” said Denis FitzMaurice, “it is because I am my lady the sheriff’s man.”
A buzz started up amongst the threescore outlaws, but their ruler silenced it with a raised hand. “In so far as Madame Sheriff is a lady, we will allow that. But if you’d be advised, lad, choose any other fair dame in the wide world to be your liege lady. Our own Maid Marian, say?” He indicated the lady at his side.
By sliding his grip down Much’s arm, Denis managed an awkward genuflection to the lady of the greenwood. “Your pardon. I honor and reverence all ladies.” To Master Hood he continued, “But to each man his own first loyalty. And if you think my lady worthy of worse followers, I think yours worthy of better.”
The disapproving buzz was slower to start this time. The lady Marian followed his meaning and did not seem displeased, for she chuckled; but of the rest, only the man in scarlet and the minstrel showed immediate recognition of the slight intended.
Even Robin Hood stood frowning for half an ounce of time before his brow cleared. “Ha!” he cried then, with delighted laughter. “An insult! By Our Lady, a very proper, courtly insult!” Putting one hand on the table, he vaulted over in a single leap, upsetting no more than one goblet, and landed lightly on the greensward below the dais. “What shall it be, my saucy bold fellow? Swords, I think. Scarlet, my lad, lend him thy sword!”
“No!” cried Midge. “Robin, he’s still too weak and his ankle —”
“It is nothing,” said Denis. Such a statement, made under such circumstances, did not count as a lie. “Give me a sword, and set my back against a tree, and try how long I will stand!”
It had been rather a sudden development, but not wholly unexpected. At least it gave him a final chance to avoid the temptation of accepting dinner at their hands. He felt no hunger now, only a tense yearning to prove his mettle.
The man clothed in scarlet, obviously to match his name, tossed his sword down to Midge, who put it into the squire’s hand, letting his own fingers linger a heartbeat’s space on hilt and fist. Much and Little John positioned Denis with his back to the minstrel’s linden tree, while the minstrel arranged his little, velvet-cushioned stool beneath the squire’s left knee. Then Midge, Much, John, and the minstrel joined the crowd of outlaws who had cleared a wide circle for the combat and then hemmed it in to look on.
Robin Hood waited some paces away while Denis swung the borrowed blade to get its feel, finding it graceful and well balanced. Denis was wary, anticipating a surprise rush; but his opponent stood back until he brought Scarlet’s sword to rest in an on-guard position and nodded.
Two summers ago, at the time of the Barnsdale offensive, Denis had been ill of a fever and judged unfit to join the posse. Hence, this was his first battle in earnest, whereas the outlaw leader had had some years’ experience of serious combat to sharpen his native ability. Nevertheless, for the first several strokes aimed and dodged, Denis surprised himself. His long hours of training and practice told well. Being in a s
ense rooted to the spot severely limited his attack, but Robin Hood took little unfair advantage—once or twice skipping out of harm’s way, but never using his mobility to reinforce his own offensive. Had his strength been full and his leg whole, Denis thought at the outset that they would not have been ill matched.
But gradually he understood that the outlaw also fought under a handicap, though self-imposed: politely holding back in order to match his opponent’s impaired powers. This was more gentility than the squire would have expected in the rogue. Had Master Hood pressed his attack freely, being in the very prime of his strength, with senses sharpened and sinews hardened like those of a wild beast of prey ... By little and little, as Denis tired and Hood came on, it grew obvious what the outcome must be, doubtful only whether the outlaw ruler meant mercy or death.
Then with a desperate parry Denis sent Robin Hood’s sword spinning from his hand.
The squire would not have taken base advantage of an unarmed opponent even if he could, and so he was affronted to hear a collective growl rise from the assembled rogues, as though they would rush forward to seize him with dishonorable but outlaw-like intent. Robin Hood, however, instead of retrieving his sword, laughed and held up his hand to quiet his followers. “Nay, lads, nay! He has a brave, stout heart!” Turning back to Denis, “Well, Sir Squire, how say you? Here’s always room and welcome for one more stout heart among my merry men.”
“What?” said Denis.
“As to your future knighthood,” the outlaw went on with an airy wave, “never fear. We’ll horse you and arm you soon enough, and find some good old knight to give you the accolade. We number one or two such among our well-wishers.”
“Beware, Robin,” said a tall, swarthy man who sat near the dais. “Bring a gentle knight into the band itself, and he’ll try to wrest leadership away from you.”
The Gallows in the Greenwood Page 3