“Well.” She set her jaw, swung her right leg over Storm-cloud’s back, and stepped down from the saddle. Her left foot stuck for an atom of time in the stirrup, but her long skirts, she hoped, hid that unwonted awkwardness; and otherwise she landed lightly.
He presented a clean kerchief of faded scarlet silk. “You see, madame. Washed in the clear, flowing stream and dried on a fragrant mulberry bush especially for your visit.”
“You chatter.” She submitted without another word to the stipulated indignity, but drew back when she felt a rope brush her hand. “I agreed to go blindfold. I will not be bound.”
“No, madame, but you must be led. If not by rope, then by your hand in mine.”
“In that case, I will hold the rope.”
She suspected that he led her by a route needlessly long and roundabout. Twice she walked into a tree or bush. Scathlock did not laugh, but she could sense his grin, and sniggers all around them added to the testimony of rustlings and footfalls that many rogues hedged her in. She clenched her jaw the tighter and refused to grope, walking on with back held straight and right arm swinging lightly at her side.
At last they halted. The lead-rope going limp in her hand, she dropped it and forestalled Scathlock by snatching the kerchief from her own eyes before he could touch it.
They stood in a tiny artificial clearing, made by felling a few trees. The trunk of one lay there still at length; and behind it, as at a table, sat the sheriff’s archenemy. Aye, it was he. He would not befuddle her again, as when he had played the butcher, or hid in Guy of Gisbourne’s horseskin, or come disguised to her archery contest.
Nor was he at any pains to mask himself now, sitting with hood pushed well back on his shoulders and face fashionably shaven.
A fat friar flanked him on the left; a wide-faced, broad-chested man on the right; and Little John, whom she hated almost as bitterly as she hated his master, stood above them, emphasizing his giant’s height. On the near side of the felled tree trunk stood a knee-high stump. Hood rose and motioned her to accept it as her chair.
She ignored his gesture. “Where is my squire?” she demanded.
“Safe.” Hood sat down again, though she would not.
“I will see him for myself.”
“If you trust us so little, Madame Sheriff, how dare you come here at all?”
“You may have him ‘safe,’ Robert of the Hood, as you would have a side of venison ‘safe.’ I will see and speak with him for myself.”
The broad-chested man started to his feet. “We be no false murderers!”
“Indeed?” Her lips felt drained. With effort, she kept the angry tremor from her voice. “How do you name the deaths of Sir Roger of Doncaster, William a Trent, Freeborn Forster, Kenneth de Vieuxbois, and John Acherley?”
“Requiescant in pace,” murmured the friar.
“Executions, Madame Sheriff,” Hood replied with a bland smile. “Like the deaths of Jack Thatcher, Tom of Gisbourne, Mary Beecham, and others I could name.”
“Pax eis,” the friar murmured again.
“John Thatcher and Tom of Gisbourne were notorious outlaws, robbers, rioters, and murderers—Tom of Gisbourne one of your late rival’s band. And Mary Beecham was her husband’s poisoner. Whereas Sir Roger of Doncaster and the others I named died in pursuit of their duties under the laws of England. Now I will see for myself that my squire is whole and unharmed, or I will walk away from you into the king’s forest you have usurped—aye, perhaps I could not find this place again from field or path, but I have woodcraft enough to find the town’s direction from this place—and we shall try whether you keep your famous boast, or put an arrow into my back.”
Hood laughed and slapped his thigh. “Lady, lady! Well, it’s no more than we foresaw. Come on a little way farther, then, and see him for yourself. Nay, Will Scarlet, no need to bandage her eyes again for this short stroll.”
CHAPTER 9
THE PARLEY
He rose and led the way. He was taller than all his companions save Little John. The friar was almost a dwarf beside Robin Hood, and the stocky man not much more: the sheriff herself stood taller than these two; tall, indeed, as Scathlock called Scarlet.
She remained confident that other outlaws moved with them, heard but unseen except for the occasional leg or elbow or bowtip that slid into view and quickly out again. They walked twenty yards and she began to hear the notes of a harp plucked very softly, a murmur of voices, and a hint of low laughter. Twenty yards more, and she caught sight of another, larger clearing ahead of them.
Details grew ever more distinct as they approached. Though seemingly a natural glade, this one was larger than the first, and situated on the bank of a pool formed by one of Sherwood’s streams. Two women and two men waited here, obviously at their ease although they fell silent and looked up at their master’s coming.
One of the men sat on a rock beside the pool and continued plucking his harp softly from time to time, as though unthinkingly, throughout most of what followed. One woman sat on the mossy ground beside him, leaning her wimpled head against one arm on the rock and trailing her other hand dreamily in the water. The second woman stood leaning against a tree halfway round the glade. The second man crouched beside a tree on the near side, his back to the sheriff, half hidden from her view.
Both of the men and also the dreamy woman wore ragged green like that of Scathlock, Hood, and all their companions save the brown-frocked friar. The standing woman wore a white linen gown which, though simple and innocent of all ornament save a little colored embroidery at neck and wrists, looked of finer quality than her companions’ attire at its erstwhile newest. She was crowned with a garland of wildflowers, below which her hair flowed loose like a maiden’s (which was doubtless mere pretension); and her left hand rested on the upper tip of an unstrung longbow.
Eventually, just as the sheriff was about to demand aloud what trickery this was, she noticed the stout hemp ropes encircling the old oak tree beside which the smaller man crouched. She quickened her steps, actually jostling Hood out of her path, rounded the oak, and found her squire.
He stood bound fast to the tree, the rough ropes fraying the blue surcoat and saffron-colored breeches of which he had been so proud these past two years. Curiously, on his head was a wildflower garland much like that of the white-clad woman.
“My lady!” he cried. It moved her to hear those words uttered with true respect, after enduring the outlaws’ mockery for so long; but the anxious tone of his voice moved her still more.
“Have they injured you, Denis?”
“No, my lady,” he replied, though she thought his glance flickered downward for an atom of time.
“Maltreated you?”
“In all fairness, my lady, they have wined and dined me royally, and laid me on a soft bed for the night.”
“Made you uncomfortable in any way?”
That he could not well deny with the ropes about him, but he explained. “No more than they found necessary. I have all but escaped them once or twice.”
“Aye, that he has,” Hood affirmed, chuckling. “A promising puppy you have here, Madame Sheriff.”
“What have you done to him, then?” she demanded. “Decked him out as some heathenish sacrificial victim?”
Denis blushed and shook the garland from his head. The lad beside him caught it and looked ready to replace it, but instead squatted again, holding it carefully.
“He came to us wearing flowers,” said Master Hood. “Perhaps my friends meant to restore him in the same condition.”
“He came through the king’s own forest,” said the sheriff, “wearing the messenger’s white badge of peace, which even you ought to have respected, at least upon a holy day.”
“Well, well,” Hood remarked cheerfully, “what’s done can’t be undone, but it may perhaps be mended. Shall we sit and discuss it, Madame Sheriff?”
He chose a mossy place beneath a beech tree and sat, one knee comfortably crooked between
his clasped hands, the other leg asprawl. Most of his comrades, even Little John, likewise seated themselves. The minstrel and Lady Eleanor de Gracey— for it was certainly she, though Dame Alice had seen her no more than twice or thrice before her elopement, so close had her father used to keep her—vacated the rock beside the pool to find places for themselves nearer Hood. Only the May Queen, the broad-chested man, and, perforce, the squire remained on their feet. The sheriff, sensing that to stand would put her at some disadvantage, as if she were a vassal recognizing reverence due to this self-styled monarch of outlaws and court of murderous clowns, sat on the minstrel’s rock.
“You have surrounded yourself with counselors enough, Master Hood,” she observed, “after denying me my four.”
“Oh, yes!” he answered easily. “Allow me to present them. Yonder stands our dearly beloved Maid Marian. Beside her, our good chaplain Father Tuck. And here, Alan a Dale, the best minstrel in three shires, and his bride the ever-fair Dame Eleanor. For the rest of these sturdy rogues,” he went on, pointing to each in turn, “my trusty captains Little John, fine Will Scarlet, and strong Much the miller’s son. And there beside your good squire, the miller’s younger brat, our little Midge.”
“At least you have not brought that foul villain William Stutely.”
“Ah, my poor lieutenant Will Stutely!” Hood answered with a mock sigh. “Stutely has hatched some trifling grudge against Squire Denis and might have prejudiced our bargaining.”
“I bloodied his nose,” Denis said, quietly proud, “last night in my near escape.”
This time Hood was not the only outlaw who laughed, and those who did not guffaw outright, chuckled or grinned. “You see, Madame Sheriff,” said the chief outlaw, “we leave you one counselor, perhaps your best and most closely interested in this matter.”
“Unbind him, then.”
“Aye, gladly, if he pledges us his word not to try another escape!”
“My lady?” Denis asked hopefully. “Shall I pledge it, at least for the duration of this conference?”
Little John shook his head. “Nay, Robin. Let mistress and minion both free of their limbs, and who knows but we’ll soon see a knife at thy throat again, like yesterday.”
The sheriff weighed all this, including the giant’s last words. They would be two against nine; but she did not think that Dame Eleanor would count for much in the action, and with a sudden move to snatch a hostage—especially if it were one of the outlaws’ women ... As a woman herself, Dame Alice could convincingly hold a cord about Dame Eleanor’s neck, threatening to tighten it while her squire made good his escape, after which she could take her departure with impunity, or else prove the hollowness of Hood’s vaunted chivalry toward all womankind. But could she rely on Squire Denis to obey her command if it meant deserting her? And even if she could so perplex his loyalty, could she command him to break his own word?
She was a shrewd old vixen, grown skeptical in the ways of the world; and she would not scruple to break an oath for the sake of some greater good. But Denis FitzMaurice was young and full of knightly ambition, the kind who in an earlier age would have chased away his youth in quest of the Holy Grail. To his vision, there might be no greater good in the world than one’s word of honor, no greater sin than breaking it. He might perhaps break it in obedience to his liege lady—but at what cost to his spiritual ideals!
Yet she herself was an opportunist. She could weigh such niceties now, but at the first chance that offered, she would forget them in the heat of battle. “Pledge nothing, FitzMaurice,” she warned him evenly, “unless you feel greater loyalty to your own word than to your liege lord.”
He sighed and a look of patience came back into his face.
“To business, then,” said Hood. “I think we are agreed, my wise counselors and I, that for such a liegeman three hundred pounds is a moderate ransom enough.”
“I have told them, my lady,” said Denis, “that I am not worth above forty-two pounds, one mark, three shillings, six and a half pence.”
“Pshaw!” said Scathlock. “So fine a squire would be worth a thousand marks at the very least, but since he’s not yet knighted we’ll accept six hundred as a special favor.”
“Forty-two pounds, one mark, and so on,” said the sheriff, “is all the money he has in fund against horse and arms for his knighthood, all his careful savings since he was a page. You’d beggar him. You with your boasts of robbing the rich and giving to the poor!”
“We don’t ask the fee of him, Madame Sheriff,” Hood pointed out, “but of you.”
“You think less of him than you pretend, if you suppose he would rest easy until he had repaid me his ransom money to the last penny.”
Hood sidestepped this point. “In addition to the funds you control as high sheriff of Nottingham, my lady, you hold in fief the fair manors of Flechedor, Barnwell, and Roecourt.”
“Which I must manage with all due economy. You reason less like the yeoman whom all confess you to be, Master Hood, than like a poor, unlettered peasant. The mayor and town council hold the purse strings of the Nottingham town treasury. What funds I control as sheriff must go for the upkeep of Nottingham castle and the maintainance of law and order throughout the shire. Flechedor, Barnwell, and Roecourt must not only support themselves, but also help to defray my official expenses.”
“Including your prize golden arrow?” Scathlock inquired.
“Paid for, every penny, out of the revenues of Flechedor.”
“I rejoice,” said Robin Hood, “that we took no puddings from the tables of Nottingham’s sleek town council. Nevertheless, Madame Sheriff, if I reason in this matter like a poor, unlettered peasant, you have known only the inconvenience of the well-fed, not the bite of hunger and cold that comes with poverty as the peasants know it.”
“Aye,” growled Much the miller’s son.
Dame Alice replied, “We have known such hunger in time of famine, well enough.”
“My lady,” Denis put in, “had you come to dine with them today, you should have been served French wines, ten kinds of meat stewed in rare spices from the Orient, figs and dates from the Holy Land—all on silver plate, with linen napery, and your hosts themselves dressed in finery that puts ours to shame.”
Dame Alice eyed their present threadbare green and cocked one eyebrow. “Such reports we have also had from his grace the bishop of Hereford and other guests of yours.”
“Aye, Madame Sheriff,” Hood replied without blushing, “and you might have put their truth to the test for yourself, had you accepted our full invitation. You see us now in our workaday rangers’ garb.”
“Put on to deceive me, if you could.”
“In like manner as any shrewd trader. Aye, our guests have tried often enough to deceive us, my lady.”
“We have the custom,” Tuck the outlaw priest reminded her piously, “of returning to each of our guests exactly so much coin as he assures us is in his purse before we open it.”
“I can give them the lie there,” said Denis. “I named the exact sum in my purse, even one penny more than they first found, and they have not returned to me a farthing.”
“Wy, my pretty lad, in your case the purse did not match the testimony of the garments!” Hood said jovially. “But you’ll have your five pennies and three farthings back whenever you leave us.”
“Provided you first have his forty-two pounds,” Dame Alice said with pointed sarcasm.
“Three hundred,” said Little John. “And we’ll have them from you, Madame Sheriff, whatever arrangements you make among yourselves afterward.”
“Forty-two pounds, one mark, three shillings, six and a half pence,” said Denis. “Counting the five pence you had of me yesterday and the five due me today, if my lady will graciously advance them—forty-two pounds, one mark, four shillings, four and a half pence. By your own rules, you have no right to ask more than that.”
“They have no right to ask a farthing!” Dame Alice cried, jumping to her fe
et. Controlling her anger, she sat down again and turned back to Hood. “He was a messenger bound on a peaceable errand, traveling a common right of way on a Sunday and the eve of a high saint’s feast day. By no code of war or chivalry had you any right to take or hold him to ransom!”
Friar Tuck rolled up his eyes and said, “God’s poor must eat on Sundays and saints’ feast days, as well as any other time.”
“And so they eat at the tables I spread for them in my courtyards on every feast day in Christian custom,” said Dame Alice. “So they are eating even now at Flechedor, Barnwell, Roecourt, and in the yard of Nottingham castle itself. Openly and without fear. And lavishly as my private purse allows.”
“My lady,” said Denis, “my bed last night had goose-down pillows, sheets of mingled linen and silk, and a pavilion over all to keep out the wind and the rain.”
Hood laughed. “Cry truce to all this trifling! Madame Sheriff, I pay my tithe as any good Christian, only I heed the Book and pay my tithe directly to the poor—less our Father Tuck’s portion, of course—going through no other churchman. Like all good Christians, the more I receive, the greater is my tithe to holy charity. But you put me in mind of another point. Good friar, the lady’s missive! I marvel, Madame Sheriff, you did not ask for it before now.”
From the folds of his habit, Tuck produced the Prioress of Kirkly’s reply to Dame Alice and tossed it to Scathlock, who carried it to the sheriff and knelt while presenting it. She took it with no similar mockery of courtliness.
“It is all innocent enough,” said Tuck. “Your prioress counsels you to more austerity than I hold wholesome for body or soul, but otherwise it is free from any taint of heresy.”
“I rest the easier,” said Dame Alice, “knowing it has the approval of so orthodox a divine.”
“Forgive me, my lady,” said Denis. “I could not stop them from reading it.”
“The fault is not yours, my good FitzMaurice.” She smiled at her squire, then frowned at Master Hood. “Did you think I was hatching some plot against you with a holy churchwoman? Is this your pretext for taking my messenger and holding him to ransom?”
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