Hood shrugged. “Come, come, good Madame Sheriff, be generous. Have I asked any fee for delivering the message safe into your hands?”
She sprang to her feet again, and would have been unable to hold back angry words, but her squire cut in quickly.
“My lady,” said Denis, “I think...”
She looked at him. The shadows of woodland twilight were deepening around them, but she thought he blushed furiously.
“I have come to suspect,” he went on, “I may well be wrong, in my vanity, but such things are sung of ... I have come to suspect that perhaps I was captured to make a bridegroom, and when that failed, when I would not join them —”
“When that failed,” cried the young fellow beside him, jumping up, “then you most generously thought your forty-two pounds and something might make a dower for the disappointed outlaw wench!” Midge—that was the name, Much’s brother—wrenched apart the wildflower wreath Denis had worn earlier and cast it down in a splay of torn blossoms and shredded petals.
Dame Alice watched Midge with closer attention than heretofore. The family resemblance to Much was obvious, but Midge was smaller not only in height and shoulders, but also in waist and ... so! Unusually small breasts and hips for an otherwise somewhat stocky frame, but either a young woman or a lad whose Maker had turned whimsical at the last ounce of time in the matter of sex.
Scenting the whiff of such a chance as she had hoped for in laying her plans and timing her parley, the old vixen sat again, smoothing her hackles and her skirts, and said, “To call it ransom would stink in the nostrils of God’s justice and man’s. But for my squire’s lodging and meals, since he himself testifies to their munificence, we will offer you twenty marks in silver and call you for this once no more than an exorbitant innkeeper.”
“You insult your own man’s worth!” Hood protested. “But so much I might be willing to subtract from the original sum. Shall we say two hundred and ninety pounds?”
So they bartered like a pair of merchants or moneylenders, the high sheriff of Nottingham and her archenemy the mocker of law and despoiler of honest travelers, while Sherwood forest darkened around them and the day creatures began to retire. The minstrel continued to pluck an occasional chord, and Much the miller’s son finally sat down. Hood’s captains offered several comments, Squire Denis very few except to repeat from time to time the sum total of his savings; but in the main it was between Robin Hood and Dame Alice de Flechedor.
They agreed at last on fifty pounds, to be brought to the forest’s edge and left at the lightning-scarred oak by tomorrow midday. Conquering her distaste, Dame Alice shook Hood’s hand to seal the bargain. “Now,” she said, “release my squire and let him return with me.”
The outlaw chief shook his head. “Nay, Madame Sheriff. The bargain sealed might be a trusty bond, but which of your good, law-abiding merchants would deliver the purchase before hearing the clink of the buyer’s coin?”
“I will pledge my word,” said Denis, “to deliver the ransom myself, in person.”
Hood laughed. “Your pledge will buy freedom of your limbs at any time, my lad, but here with us you stay until I have your ransom—your pardon, Madame Sheriff, the price of his board and lodging—safe in hand.”
“Very well, Master Hood,” said the sheriff, “by midday tomorrow.” In her mind she added, But your greed, Master Robert of the Hood, is like to cost you dear. No argument of mine would have stopped Denis FitzMaurice from delivering you the money, had you taken his pledge and released him with me tonight.
Aloud, she consented to remain in the glade and hear Friar Tuck sing Vespers. To her surprise, they did not make a travesty of it. Maid Marian lit two white wax candles, holding one herself and giving the other to the minstrel’s bride. Alan a Dale sang the responses in a voice better but no less reverent than the priest’s. For half an hour, they might have been any company of good Christians assembled there together, except that the best and most faithful soul among them still stood bound to an oak tree.
When Evensong had been sung, Denis said, “My lady: the lady prioress also sent back a rosary for you. It is in —”
“Keep it, Squire Denis,” said the sheriff. “Now let it be my gift to you.”
“I will treasure it, my lady.”
By this time darkness was almost complete in the forest. “You’ll hardly need to blindfold my eyes for the way back,” said Dame Alice.
“True,” Hood agreed. “We know our greenwood like cats in the dark, but I think that what little your eyes may pick out beyond the lantern light will never help you retrace the way by daylight or dark. No blindfold for our lady sheriff this time, Will Scarlet.”
With a gesture not quite of surprise, Scathlock put away the kerchief and trimmed the small lantern. (If they could truly move like cats by night, Dame Alice mused, they should not want a lantern.)
“But,” the sheriff went on, “I do not choose to journey back as a woman alone among lawless men.”
“What, Madame Sheriff?” Scathlock cried with a light laugh. “You still do not trust us after all that’s passed tonight?”
“With my life, aye, since there’s no help for it. With my honor, I do not.”
“You touch us at a sore point of our honor, madame,” Hood protested.
“Why should I trust your honor in this matter, when you will not trust my squire’s honor where it touches your purse?”
Hood chuckled and slapped his thigh. “Well, what remedy do you suggest? Would you pass the night with us?”
“Let your women here accompany me until I am back with my own ladies.”
“Fair enough,” said Maid Marian. “I am willing.”
Little John shook his head. “Nay, Robin. Do not trust our fairest treasures within easy reach of the sheriff’s people.”
Denis said, “My lady the sheriff proposes simple prudence. Men who chafe at such a request lay themselves open to the charge that they intend the very thing she fears.”
“I am unarmed,” said the sheriff. “Your women may carry whatever weapons they choose, so long as they walk between me and their male companions. More: if you still fear so greatly that I might be able to offer some sting to Maid Marian and Dame Eleanor, let that beardless boy there—Midge, is it not?— walk between us to shield them from me as they shield me from you.”
“I do not like this,” muttered Much the miller’s son.
“And I say, what harm?” Midge demanded. “Aye, I’ll go, beardless boy that I am.”
10
The Sheriff’s Counterattack
Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck alone remained to watch Denis by the light of a small torch thrust into the ground. For a long time he gazed after his lady the sheriff and her escort-guard. His longing to be on his way with them was so intense that after they vanished from sight he felt a tear on his cheek.
Meanwhile, Scarlet produced a flask of wine and Friar Tuck fetched forth a cold roast fowl.
“Come, have a bite and sup with us,” the friar offered.
Denis blinked. “Aye, gladly, if you’ll free one of my arms and let me feed myself.”
Friar Tuck looked complaisant and might have agreed, but Will Scarlet shook his head. “Nay, not with a mere two of us to guard you in uncertain light. Hard enough to hold you as it is.” He brought his silver-mounted drinking horn from its place of concealment, poured wine into it, raised it to his lips, and swallowed thrice before going on, “Good faith, I’d not be surprised to see you wriggle out like a lizard even now. So you think our Midge so homely she could never have found a mate among her own fellows here in merry greenwood?”
“Faced with outrageous deeds, the mind seeks outrageous reasons,” Denis replied. “Perhaps she wanted a better man than any whom she could find about her.”
Scarlet glanced up sharply. “By’r Lady, boy, but thou’rt careless how thou fling thy insults!”
“Nay, let be,” the friar put in, chuckling, chewing, and speaking all at the same time. “T
he lad may have it right.”
They finished the first capon, Scarlet taking the wings and legs, holding each piece in turn daintily between thumb and forefinger, while Friar Tuck consumed the rest in large bites between swashes of wine. They were starting on the second bird when the tumult broke in—shouts, cries, whinnyings, and the distant drumming of horses’ hooves, these last less sounds than vibrations in the earth.
Both outlaws started to their feet, Scarlet dropping both drinking horn and chicken leg. Three blasts of a bugle-horn called short and clear above the din. At that, even Tuck let the rest of his chicken fall to the ground, drew his broadsword, and dashed with Scarlet from the clearing.
Denis shouted after them without result. He twisted at his bonds. Since last night this had become a natural action whenever he found himself awake and unobserved, but now he pulled with unthinking desperation, while the frenzy seemed to grow louder even as it receded farther into the distance. He wrenched and strained until he felt one wrist dampening—with blood, as he guessed—but Scarlet’s words concerning his chances of wriggling free like a lizard had been the most ironic of mockeries.
He paused, panting, and stood quiet for a moment. The clamor and hubbub, while far from subsiding, seemed to be pulling ever farther away, leaving him isolated in a harder silence than if the forest had been void of all human noise whatever.
Something crashed through the undergrowth behind him—some beast roused or frighted by the tumult and fleeing in the opposite direction. The torch, while it burned, should keep him safe from wild animals. He stared at it, estimating how long it might continue to burn before leaving him in darkness. Next he tried to gauge its distance from the nearest leaves and branches. As long as other folk were present, such a doubt had never troubled him, while the forest grew green in a summer untroubled by drought; but now memories returned of the visionary flames as he had watched them yesterday afternoon, dancing upside down through the trees.
He set to work again at his ropes, more craftily this time, thinking each move through as he attempted it, testing the actual pressure of constraint against his hopes that it had loosened by even so little. After long efforts, he had just succeeded in touching one knot with the tip of his right forefinger...
When Much the miller’s son returned.
“What is it? In God’s Name, what’s happened?” Denis cried more as to an ally than a captor.
But Much made no reply. His face ugly with rage, he strode across the clearing, stopped in front of Denis, and slowly raised one fist.
Though his height was less than the squire’s, Much’s hands were as large, his shoulders nearly as broad as Little John’s. Deliberately, he drew his fist back, his knuckles on a line with the captive’s head.
“Much! Hold your hand!” a woman’s voice ordered. “Squire Denis is not to blame.” The lady Marian had returned, looking pale but carrying her lantern steadily.
“Wanted her to go with his sheriff, did ‘a not?” Much’s voice was almost a growl.
“For the love of God!” Denis felt himself trembling as if with an ague, and could not stop. “Strike me if you will, but tell me what has happened!”
“The sheriff has Midge,” Dame Marian said tonelessly. “She played her part very well. She bore herself with all her accustomed pride but made no other move, until we thought no harm of her for this night. Then she told one of us to hold her horse’s head and Midge to hand her up into the saddle. Ah, but that woman is quick when she wishes! She had Midge up with her, athwart her saddlebow, the dagger dashed from Midge’s hand and the horse’s reins pulled free from Robin’s own grasp, all within two heartbeats of time, and away to her own people, shouting the retreat. We could not shoot in the darkness, nor at women. God’s Holy Blood!” Dame Marian’s voice rose on a sudden note of pain. “They will be halfway to Nottingham by now, and Robin giving chase on the extra horse that broke free in their flight!”
Denis whispered, “Not Midge?”
Much stood looking from Denis to the lady Marian and back, flexing and unflexing his huge hands the while. “Cave, my lady?” he said at last.
“Yes, to the cave. Alan or my friar will carry word to those still in Oakglade.”
“And him?”
“Bring him, but bring him safe,” Dame Marian said firmly. “Do not lift one finger against him in anger or vengeance.” She stood back with the lantern and waited, gazing at the ground.
In striving to free himself Denis had so strained and tightened the knots that Much drew his knife and sawed them through. Denis stood quiet, feeling the ropes fall loose, and watched the miller’s son resheathe his blade in order to have both hands free for retying the prisoner. During that atom of time, as Much took his hand from the knife’s hilt, Denis sprang.
It was an attempt foredoomed. Denis was quick, lithe, and no weakling; but his powers were blunted by a day and a half of constraint following severe ordeal, and the desperation that was his chief weapon did little to clear his brain—while Much was strong as any three ordinary men, agile for his bulk, a seasoned wrestler, and had obviously been hoping for the chance to vent his fury. Even so, there were two separate occasions when the squire came near to breaking free.
The lady Marian stepped well clear of them and said nothing until the miller’s son had Denis down in a hold for which he could not recollect the countermove, even had he not felt Much’s knife drawn again and pricking the back of his neck. Then she reminded Much in impartial tones to do their hostage no more harm than unavoidable.
Scarlet and another outlaw, George a Green, soon arrived. In the first moments after hearing Dame Marian’s news, Denis had been ready to welcome kicks and blows; but now, judging that he had bruises enough, he offered no further resistance, which could have served symbolic purposes only. Nevertheless, Much knotted the ropes savagely. The lady Marian seemed not to notice (as how would she, for the shadows, and the crowd of men between her and the prisoner, and whatever fears must occupy her for her outlaw lover’s safety), and in the bitterness of his soul Denis did not appeal to her. When he was bound foot as well as hand, Much threw him over one shoulder and carried him like a sack of flour.
They omitted to blindfold him, and he interpreted this as a sign that he was a dead man but for the final formality. No doubt that would await their master’s personal supervision. Would the actual death come on their stolen greenwood gallows, or would they hang him there only afterward, for his lady to find?
Yet all the while his mind digested hard thoughts, his eyes made the most of their chance, furtively picking out here an odd-shaped root, there a twisted branch or a bole with markings like a goblin’s face, flickering in the brief illumination of lantern and torchlight.
He could not be other than proud of his lady the sheriff. How generously she had risked her person by coming among these lawless men, how strategically bided her time, how boldly seized her moment! It must have been her intent all along to take her own hostage in order to effect a trade. Could any liege ever prove worthy of such a sovereign lady?
But, Midge...
Yet whom else could she have taken?
But Midge!
Friar Tuck, Alan a Dale, and the lady Eleanor were already at the cave. They sat in candlelight, the minstrel holding his lady close with an arm about her shoulders, the friar drinking wine and comforting them both. “By’r Lady!” Tuck observed, glancing at Denis as the miller’s son deposited him on the cavern floor. “Knot thy rope that tight round a man’s neck, and there’d be no need for noose and gallows to do their work.”
The lady Marian gazed down and said wearily, “Loosen his bonds, Much. No tighter than need be.”
Denis did not omit to thank her, the more so as she herself laid aside her own worries long enough to tear strips from her gown and bandage his wrists and ankles before Much began retying him.
Before the operation was complete, two more outlaws had come, two of the large number for whom as yet Denis could match no names to the
faces. They brought food, drink, and weapons to add to the stores already in the cave. Stepping around Much and over Denis, they settled near the back and began dividing meats and pasties. As Much reknotted the last rope and Denis, thanking him courteously for leaving him as much ease as possible for a prisoner in his position, began inching his way towards a place where he might sit with the cavern wall for a backrest, Will Stutely and his leman arrived. In contrast to the earlier pair, who had stepped over him as a mere practical matter, Stutely leered down as though plucking a personal triumph from the general disaster. Denis considered that all faces tended to a diabolic appearance when lit from below while shadowed from above, and tried to ignore Stutely’s threatening grimace.
All the outlaws save the lady Marian supped as they waited, Friar Tuck encouraging the few who needed encouragement to keep their strength up like good soldiers. Even Dame Eleanor took a few morsels from her lover’s hand, a few sips from his cup. Denis continued refusing food but finally let the friar persuade him to drink a little wine, Will Scarlet holding the horn.
Apparently no other outlaws save the principal ones were expected in this cave. The band must have many similar dens scattered throughout Sherwood and Barnsdale.
The lady Marian paced near the entrance for a long while, left her lantern and slipped outside for a longer, then at last returned to sit near the prisoner, her head in her arms.
It was not much later that Robin Hood arrived, followed by Little John, who stood at the cave’s mouth holding the reins of a horse that stamped and whinnied outside.
“Mocked!” was the outlaw chief’s first word. “By Christ on the Cross!” he went on, striking the cavern wall hard with his palm. “She turned her horse at the town’s edge and mocked me! Me!”
“Well?” Denis flung back. “Have you not mocked her often enough?”
“Silence him,” said Hood.
The Gallows in the Greenwood Page 9