“He brought five shillings eightpence,” said Midge. “He gave it all to Jackie the tanner’s son for loan of a quarterstaff.”
Little John gave a great guffaw. “Sir Squire’s generosity caps thine own, Robin!”
“But saved not even enough to pay his toll and lodging fee to us,” Will Scarlet said with a sigh, apparently forgetting his role as the prisoner’s advocate.
“Have done with all these games!” cried Stutely. “The man is our sworn enemy, the high sheriff of Nottingham’s retainer, who broke his pledged word to us and our master!”
Stutely’s leman rose as though speaking for the jury. “We do not need to hear more, Robin. He’s guilty as the devil.”
The jurors had not deliberated among themselves, but none of them protested. Rather, grunts and rumbles of approval rose both from them and from the onlookers. Robin Hood shrugged, looking faintly whimsical.
Above the general noise, Stutely demanded, “Hang him at once, Robin, before —”
“At least allow me to pass down the sentence, Will Stutely,” Hood broke in on a mocking note. “There’s no such great hurry after all, if Madame Sheriff supposes he has deserted her for us. And morning’s the proper time for a hanging. Now, at once, is the proper time of day for dinner.”
To this there was even more enthusiastic common assent than to the jury’s verdict.
But Dame Marian cried, “Robin, this is monstrous!”
He shrugged once again, still more elaborately. “My own dear love and truest lady, the Court has spoken.”
“It’s a good lad,” growled Much the miller’s son. “Pity to hang him. But greater pity to let him help hang us.”
Midge at one side was clutching the prisoner’s arm almost painfully. The lady Marian at the other side had laid her arm across his shoulders. He noticed that the lady Eleanor had absented herself from the minstrel’s table and vanished, as though in distaste at the proceedings.
Dame Marian spoke in a clear voice, directing her words to the condemned man and her stare to Robin Hood. “Forgive him, Squire Denis,” she said, sounding as though she herself would not. “There is no cruelty in him, but he holds the lives very cheap of men who have the misfortune to live within the Law.”
Denis replied, “Would it profit me anything to withhold my forgiveness? But one request. Let me write a farewell to my good lady the sheriff, and pray you leave it pinned over my heart.”
15
Midge
Squire Denis had written two farewells. As Midge looked on, he read the first one over silently, shook his head, and handed the parchment back to Alan for rubbing clean and using again. Instead of which, with a nod, Midge slipped it from the minstrel’s hand and hid it in her tunic as she went to fetch another sheet.
Having fetched and delivered it, she crept away fasting while the tables were being readied anew for dinner. Sitting down alone beneath her favorite lime tree, she brought out the parchment and stared at his words. Many of them were crossed through with one, two, or three straight lines, and she could not tell why. All his letters were so neat and perfectly formed, bolder and straighter than those beneath the pictures in the book copied by monks, that Dame Edith had shown her in the sheriff’s tower in Nottingham castle.
She sat there all through dinner hour. When she heard the afternoon sports beginning, wrestling and quarterstaves, swordplay and shooting at targets, all just as usual, she put his parchment back in her tunic and returned to Oakglade.
They had tethered him between the same trees as on Monday, hands behind but feet free so he could walk around in little circles. Only now he was sitting with his back to the tree and his eyes closed. She hated it that they had bound him again.
Skirting the glade, she came up to his tree aslant. Alan a Dale sat only thirty yards away, singing as usual to everyone who wanted to come and listen while they rested from their exercise. This afternoon he was singing his ballad about Robin and Guy of Gisbourne in Barnsdale. His voice carried very clearly over thirty yards.
“John’s bow it broke and loosely shot,
His arrow flew in vain,
And it met one of the sheriff’s men —
Good William a Trent was slain.
“It had been better for William a Trent
To hang on the gallows-tree
Than there to lie in Barnsdale wood,
Slain by an arrow free.”
She had never heard Alan call William a Trent ‘good’ before, only ‘proud’ or ‘fat.’ And that verse about a gallows-tree was completely new. “I’ll shoot him!” she whispered. “What does he mean, singing that?”
Denis opened his eyes and looked up at her. “I imagine he means it as some sort of consolation. No, don’t shoot your minstrel. You might challenge him to a bout of quarterstaff with you.” He started getting to his feet.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “Keep your fine courtly manners for ladies like Marian and Eleanor. Don’t start treating me like them now. It makes me uncomfortable.”
“Then do you mind if I stand and walk a little for my own better comfort? No, pray do not help me up,” he added, as she bent to do so. “I am not entirely incapacitated—it was a simple passing weakness earlier today, nothing more.” Gaining his feet, he grinned at her. “Besides, I think you gave me a lusty bruise this morning, which makes sitting for very long less than pleasant.”
“I’ll bring pillows,” she said, and hurried away to get them before he saw the redness she felt rushing to her face.
When she returned with two of Maid Marian’s own goosedown pillows, Denis was still standing, back against his tree and eyes closed again, while Alan finished the long Guy of Gisbourne story:
“Towards her hold in Nottingham
The sheriff led the way,
Herding all her company,
Not one behind did stay.
“Thus they quit them, blow for blow,
Beneath the greenwood tree.
God have mercy on the souls
Of all this company.”
The squire must have sensed her coming. “Is that you, Midge?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“Yes.”
“I suspect that today your minstrel somewhat softened the lines pertaining to my lady the sheriff? I thank him for that.”
“I wasn’t listening. Devil take him! I’ll go tell him to sing somewhere else or be quiet for one evening.”
“Do not invite the devil any nearer than he is already,” Denis said, as if it was a simple request like, Let’s have a drink of ale. “Your good minstrel may as well sing where he sits as anywhere else. His voice pervades the clearing, except when harsher noises drown it. And I do not think it would sweeten your comrades’ temper to be deprived of Alan’s songs for the evening.”
“You ought to have better things for your thoughts.”
He opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her. “Then stay and converse with me awhile, Midge.”
She had planned to do so anyway, but when he asked her like that, she lost her words for a moment. So she knelt, placed the pillows ready for him, and rolled her haunches to a seat beside them.
“Thank you graciously,” he said, “but one would suffice. Take the other for yourself.”
“I don’t want it. I like sitting on plain ground. I like to feel earthy stuff beneath me.”
He smiled and began to ease himself down.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“I have been searching for the consolations of faith and philosophy. Thus far, with singular lack of success. I could wish Stutely had prevailed in his demand for instant execution, as in all else.”
“I meant, your head and cuts and all.”
“Oh, that. Vastly improved, I thank you. The cordials have quieted the deep ache, and expert bandaging has soothed the sting.” Reaching the pillows, he leaned back, stretched out his legs, and went on as if trying to make sport of it, “Nonetheless, they are marks I shall carry to my grave.”
He shook his head. “I cannot allow that. Do you still scorn to be treated as a lady?”
“I’m no lady, I’m the miller’s brat, and it’s all my fault.”
“Well, I won’t deny you a certain share of the blame, as I would if we were using courtly manners. But not the greatest share, by any means.” He portioned it out like a scholar. “The chief responsibility for the sentence of death probably lies with Will Stutely. Nor did Will Scarlet notably enhance my cause in the popular opinion, though he may have acted in sport rather than in malice. The highest authority here, of course, rests in Master Hood himself. Ultimately, however, it is my own actions that have worked this final result.”
“And your sheriff’s,” she said bitterly.
“No. No, my lady the sheriff has acted throughout all this broil with loyalty, shrewd courage, and knightly honor. I have been false to everyone, but she has continued true to her word and to me.” After a few heartbeats, he added in a wondering voice, “Me ... I ... It seems unreal somehow—paradoxical?—that a man in my place should still use those terms. Does it not?”
Her heart broke. She knew it—what she heard and felt inside couldn’t be anything else. “You great fool, why did you follow us back into greenwood? I told you not to! We were both of us safe, and I told you and told you—you silly great fool!”
“I begin to think that you are right,” he agreed quietly. “So here it is demonstrated. Whatever your share may have been in starting all this, you are blameless for the final outcome.”
“Listen,” she said. “You were right. I did trap you for my bridegroom.”
After gazing at her for several heartbeats, he remarked, “That was a very direct and forthright method.”
“Well, how else could I go about to marry a gentleman?”
“True. Me in particular, or would any gentleman have done?”
“You. I’ve watched you these three years. Whenever I could, since before I came to join Much here in greenwood. Whenever you rode by our mill, and on market days sometimes, and feast days in your lady’s courtyard...”
“Thank you for telling me this,” he said without any sound of mockery or bitterness. “It helps. Somehow, it helps. Will you promise not to try it again, on one of my friends?”
She shook her head. “I promise.” Then: “Squire Denis, marry me now!”
“What?”
Alan a Dale was singing something that could have been a love ditty. She was aware of it with only half an ear. “Father Tuck will read the words over us for our asking.”
“For one night? No. I will not rob you of your precious dowry for the sake of a single night.”
“If I untied you, would you escape?”
“I should like to, greatly.” He sat pondering. “But could I slip past Robin Hood’s foresters a second time, with all of them on the alert? And they might be needlessly brutal when they caught me. But if you could persuade them to unbind me for the night, when I have no doubt but that they’ll set a heavy guard round me in any case...”
She touched his shoulder. “Let me marry you. They’ll trust you in my arms unbound, right enough.”
“You heap temptation on temptation.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Allow me to treat you courteously thus far: not to cheat you of what may help you get a better and more permanent husband.”
She blinked back tears and swallowed hard. “You think I’m a maiden, don’t you?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her.
“Well, I’m not. I don’t even have as much right to be called one as Marian does. She’s wedded to Robin. I’m like to be like Elsie and Meg, fair game for all of them!”
“And their boasted respect for womankind?” he said low, in an angry voice.
“For women’s lives. And for maids—till they make their first choice—at least when Robin or his captains be at hand to enforce it. And for true married wives, and widows. They’re not so respectful if you’re neither maid, nor wife, nor widow. Marian orders them off, but she can’t always be everywhere. And Much keeps them shy, and going about like a boy in breeches and cropped hair helps, too. But it won’t work forever.”
“Who was it?” he whispered, looking so fierce she was sorry she’d explained. “Stutely again?”
“Nay, the other Will, Will Scarlet, and I was willing enough for one time. But he’s a popinjay, and I wouldn’t have him for husband. Stutely’s never looked at me that way, Our Lady be praised!”
“I had some thoughts of begging you to loosen me so that I could get near and strike him down for you,” Denis confessed. “As my last deed. Even at the cost of lying slain in the greenwood by sword or arrow. Which seems a less desirable death than the gallows, according to your minstrel. But you were willing with Scarlet?”
She nodded. More than willing, she remembered; and in some ways she had not been disappointed. She tried to smile. “Anyway, you see. If your honor’s tainted, so’s mine. But I’ll have no more of him. And Little John’s like the giant Magog beside me, and Much my own brother, Robin and Alan already wedded with their own brides, Father Tuck true to his cloth, and all the rest of them coarse, vile oafs, all dirty and rough and half of them readier to beat you than lie with you, but for Robin.”
“Yet you would not stay with the lady sheriff?”
“Not to live like a little caged bird, feeding off crumbs from her hand whilst she went on about hunting my brother and all my friends. Aye, for they’re still my friends, Robin and John and Alan and our friar. Even Will Scarlet.”
Denis sighed very softly. “Then bring Father Tuck and let him read the marriage over us soon. I had feared a very long night, but now it may prove too much shortened already.”
16
The Message
The sheriff of Nottingham had dismissed her women and now sat in an upper chamber brooding over ale with old Sir Hugh her captain and young Thomas Courtland, the dear friend of her former favorite. Her heart felt cold as the ale, which had lain chilling in the deepest cellar; and her stomach felt crammed, not with the broken meats and bread of dinner, but with ashes like those that lay dead and dry on the hearth, unswept except by the occasional drafts and winds that came in at the high window. Her thoughts, like the old, matted, boneful rushes on the floor, waited to be thrown on a fire and replaced with new.
That Denis FitzMaurice, of all her men, should have left her to turn outlaw and live renegade in the greenwood under her husband’s murderer! Yet the report Jack the tanner’s son had brought them of his behavior at the forest’s edge admitted no other explanation. Save one, and that one Sir Hugh had laughed to scorn.
The old captain was silent now, it being against his nature to speak without cause. Thomas Courtland was silent because he was already half drunk. Dame Alice was silent for grief and smothered rage. So they sat drinking, alone but for the pages who refilled their vessels from time to time, until the last bars of sunlight—for the afternoon’s weather had been fair after the morning’s rain—were gone, and twilight deepening thick in the upper chamber. And still they sat, until they could hardly distinguish one another’s faces across the table (Courtland, indeed, had sprawled forward to bury his head in his arms), and the two little pages seemed mere shadows in the murk.
“Please, my lady,” said Page Garin, “shall we strike a light?”
She made no answer. After a few ounces of time he repeated the question.
“Well, Sir Hugh?” she said.
“Let’s to our beds, my lady.”
“Nay. Or go if you will. I mean to sit up a while longer.”
Thomas Courtland snored drunkenly.
A light moved up into the narrow passage, and Dame Edith appeared at the open doorway, guiding the tanner’s son, who carried yet another arrow with a parchment tied rollwise around the shaft.
“What message does that outlaw send me now,” said Dame Alice, “unless to gloat over gaining my best squire for his pac
k? No, I will not read it. Give Jack a penny and let him carry it back.”
“My lady,” said Dame Edith. Her hand on the child’s shoulder, she started turning him away.
“Wait.” The sheriff stood. “Come in first and light a rushlight for us.”
Dame Edith entered the room. Page Garin hurried to fetch one of the thin tallow dips, feebler and duller than wax candles, but also thriftier. Lady and page met at the table, where Dame Edith touched the tip of her rush to the tip of his, which he then set on the board near the sheriff.
The tanner’s boy had tagged along behind Dame Edith. As they turned to go, Dame Alice caught Jack’s shoulder. “Stay. Give it here, after all.”
Solemn-mouthed, he handed it over to her. She untied the string and unrolled the parchment. She recognized Fitz-Maurice’s neat script, and the first two words below his greeting had been “I am,” but the “am” was lined through and replaced with “was.”
“Bring me more light,” she ordered. “A lamp—nay, by the Rood, a full branch of wax candles from the chapel!”
Both pages ran to fetch them. Dame Alice sat again, steadying her arms on her chair; but she could not wait for the candles. Beckoning her woman to bring the second rushlight nearer the first, she bent and squinted closely at the parchment. Many more words were lined out, but what remained said:
“To the Most Gracious Lady Alice de Flechedor, High Sheriff of Nottingham: Greetings.
“I was no longer worthy to call myself your servant, but ever true to you in my heart. Yet the miller’s daughter is innocent in herself, guilty only of bad company. For her sake I broke my word, lying first to the outlaw and afterwards, most kind and gracious lady, to you: for in order to escape I vowed to him that I would not attempt the same, and later swore to you that he had set me free. I pray you forgive, and have Masses sung for my soul, and as for any of my money that remains —”
The Gallows in the Greenwood Page 13