Robin Hood

by DAVID B. COE

  “Robert is dead, Marion.”

  She spun toward him, feeling the blood drain from her face. “Who says so?”

  “Robert,” the old man said levelly. “He told me himself.”

  “In a dream?” Marion demanded, her voice spiraling upward. She rarely allowed herself to grow angry with Walter. He had been so kind to her; he had cared for her as if she was his own daughter for all the years Robert had been away. But this was too much! Frightening her so with his superstitions and foolish pronouncements.

  Sir Walter shook his head slowly. “No. A visitation in my sleep. I've lived long enough to know the difference.”

  “Well, he didn't tell me!” Marion could hear the petulance in her own voice, but she couldn't help herself. Her entire body trembled and her stomach felt hollow and tight.

  Walter reached out a hand, searching for hers. Reluctantly, she grasped it.

  “I'm so sorry, Marion. I brought you here to know what I know. Your husband is not coming home.”

  He pulled her close to him and embraced her. Marion resisted, not yet ready to credit what he was telling her; not yet ready to give in to the grief that threatened to overwhelm her.

  “And this is why you thought to instruct me about your last resting place?” she asked in a softer voice. “Because your son will not be here to be instructed?”

  Walter swallowed, then nodded. His dead eyes brimmed with tears.

  Marion bent and kissed his forehead. “Then I grieve for you. But do not grieve for me yet. I also know what I know. Sir Robert Loxley will ride out of Peper Harrow once again and through the streets of Nottingham with me at his side. May the forest gods grant me that, or I swear, I'll go and live in the greenwood if they will have me.”

  Sir Walter pulled her close again, and this time she returned the old man's embrace.

  Come home to me, Robert, she pleaded silently. Come home to this man who loves you so.

  * * *

  ROBIN AND HIS companions rode at a leisurely pace through the rolling hills of the English countryside, the fields and farmlands bathed in the deepening glow of the late day sun. The road they followed skirted the edge of a grand and ancient forest, its shadows darkening by the moment. The air was still, and a thrush sang from within the wood.

  Robin kept a wary eye on the line of trees, and glanced back at the others periodically to see that they were keeping watch, too. Little John rode at the rear, holding his stave across his legs and checking the road behind them now and again. This was good land, their ride thus far had been uneventful, but none of them had any doubt that Godfrey's men would be coming for them.

  They stopped with the sun still up so that they would have time to set up camp before darkness fell. While Allan and Little John gathered wood for a fire, Robin and Will wandered deeper into the forest to hunt for their supper. They returned just as the first stars appeared in the sky, carrying a brace of rabbits. Little John grinned at the sight, and took it upon himself to prepare the meat, making it clear that he didn't trust Robin or Will to do so without ruining their meal.

  Naturally, Will took offense and insisted that he and John cook the rabbits together. For his part, Robin had other matters to which he needed to attend.

  As the last light of the twilight sky gave way to the bright glow of their fire, Allan pulled out his lute and began to play. Will and John skinned the rabbits. And Robin, his back to the others, pulled out a different sort of loot: the spoils from the forest road in France. They had gathered the coins and jewels of the dead hastily before riding on to the coast. Now, Robin took it upon himself to divide what they had found as evenly as he could into four piles.

  Allan began to sing.

  Sadness, sadness,

  Can only lead to madness.

  You have to count your gold.

  The living king of sermons.

  Was delivered from his evil,

  But he couldn't talk his last,

  Because God took out his throat.

  God's crossbow took out his throat.

  “By Christ!” Scarlet said, glancing over at his friend. “Can you not sing a happy tune? We've made England with our hides and gold intact.” He turned back to the rabbit he was skinning. “Sing a foot stomper about adventure and daring and courage, and how handsome I look in armor.”

  “What about a song called ‘By the Grace of God Go I’?” Robin said, without looking up from his work.

  Little John shook his head, a grin on his face. “No. Sing something about a woman. A large woman.”

  Allan laughed at that and began to play something new, a song they had learned in France from some of the other soldiers. It was a somewhat less pious piece than the first one Allan had played, concerned as it was with the generous assets of a serving girl. Little John laughed out loud and began to sing along, as did Will.

  Robin distributed the last of their riches and covered the piles with his cloak before turning to the others.

  “I'm done,” he announced.

  Immediately, Allan stopped playing and they all turned their attention to Robin. He lifted his cloak from the piles and the other three gathered closer, gazing at the loot, eyes wide, mouths open.

  “The money is divided,” Robin said. “And so should we be.”

  “Where will you go?” Will asked.

  “I think there is something we owe for such good fortune. I mean to give it back, Will.”

  “How so?” Little John asked.

  Robin's hand moved to the hilt of Loxley's weapon. “The sword,” he said. “Its inscription entices something in my memory. Maybe it is just a trick of my imagination. I don't know.” He took a breath, knowing how the others would react to what he had in mind. “I intend to deliver it to its rightful owner, to fulfill the request of his dying son. To repay good luck with bad grace is to invite darkness.”

  John regarded him for several moments, firelight shining in his dark eyes. “Well,” he said at last. “I'll go with you.”

  Allan gave a decisive nod. “And I, Robin.”

  “Yes,” Will said.

  But Robin shook his head. “No. Tonight is our last in company. Tomorrow we must go our own way. Pack up your share. We eat and sleep. Will, you have the first watch.”

  Will and Allan both looked like they might argue further, but Little John stopped them with a sharp look and a shake of his head. He turned his attention back to the rabbits, and after a few moments, Will did the same. Allan took up his lute again, but he didn't sing, and the tune that he played was slow and somber.

  They cooked and ate their meal in silence, and bedded down soon after. A chilling mist had risen in the wood and Robin pulled his blanket up around his neck, positioning himself as close to the fire as he dared.

  The forest seemed unusually still this night. As he lay huddled in his blanket Robin heard no owls, no wolves; only the occasional pop of the fire and the slow settling of the coals. Robin knew that he had been right in what he said. After their escapes from the stocks, the others would be safer on their own rather than together. Godfrey wanted him. But he couldn't help thinking that the road to Nottingham would seem longer without his companions.

  He stared at the dying flames and he waited for sleep to take him.

  ROBIN WASN'T CERTAIN what had awakened him. Something off in the deep of the wood, perhaps. He had heard a nightjar close by, and then had noticed snoring. Will's snoring. Some watchman. He looked up through the branches to see if he could spot that bird, but there was nothing there.

  Cursing Will's carelessness under his breath, he sat up and rubbed a hand over his face. The moon had risen, and that cold mist lingered around the camp. Will had not only neglected the watch, he'd also neglected the fire. It was damn cold.

  He got up, grabbed a thick bough from the wood pile, and threw it onto the fire. Sparks flared, twisting upward into the darkness …

  And illuminating the faces of six men standing in a circle around Robin and the others. Startled, Robin shout
ed a warning, then leaped back just in time to avoid a sword blade as it whistled past his face.

  Robin drew his sword just in time to block the man's next assault, their blades meeting with a loud clash. He heard the others shouting as well, heard swords drawn and the whoosh of Little John's stave as it carved through the night air. But he kept his eyes fixed on the man in front of him.

  The man attacked again, their swords meeting once more and the two of them coming face to face. The man's gaze flicked toward something behind Robin and to the right. Robin pushed the man away, swung his sword back in a tight, quick arc, plunging it into the chest of a cutthroat who had snuck up behind him, and then pulled it free so that he could meet the next assault from the first attacker.

  The man's eyes widened slightly and he backed away, giving Robin an opportunity to check quickly on his friends.

  Little John was swinging his stave so fast that it was a humming blur in the moonlight. He hit one man in the ribs, the bones popping like the campfire, and then hit another in the skull. This man dropped to the ground and lay utterly still; Robin thought it likely that he was dead before he hit the forest floor.

  Will and Allan fought back to back, their swords dancing and ringing against those of their foes. In moments, they had dispatched both men.

  Before long, only the first swordsman and one last cutthroat remained standing. The men shared a look and then bounded away from the camp and through the wood like startled deer. Robin ran after them, his sword still in hand. He heard a bow thrum and saw an arrow bury itself in a tree just beside the first man. The men kept running, but Robin closed the distance quickly. The cutthroat looked back at him, fear in his eyes. Just as he did, he tripped a line Robin hadn't seen. Robin heard something that sounded like a tree falling. Leaves flew into the air and a crude gate of sharpened wooden spikes snapped up from where it had lain hidden on the ground.

  A hunter's trap. The cutthroat couldn't stop in time. He ran into the gate at full speed, impaling his chest on the spikes with a sharp, liquid grunt, and then hanging from them like a string puppet.

  Robin, with Will right behind him, continued on after the swordsman, but they soon lost sight of him among the trees. Robin slowed then stopped. Will halted next to him.

  Robin spat another curse, and then he and Will walked back to the cutthroat. Robin would have liked to question the man, but just as they reached him, he gave one last gasp and was still, blood dripping down the spikes and trickling from his mouth.

  Allan and Little John had stopped next to the man, too.

  “Careful where you step,” John said, admiring the trap.

  Robin stared off through the trees, hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of the man he had been chasing. “One of them got away. He was on the road in France where Loxley died.”

  “They work for John?” Allan asked.

  “No, not John,” Robin said. “I saw his face at the dock when he realized that Richard was dead. He was more surprised than anybody.”

  Will looked from Little John to Robin. “Who else would benefit from Richard's death?”

  “The French would benefit from Richard's death,” Robin said. “No leader. No army. They can walk in.”

  “Robin, it can't be the French,” Will said.

  “Why's that, Will?”

  Will had been staring at the ground, as if still thinking it through. But now he looked Robin in the eye. “The one you shot in the face,” he said. “He's English.”

  He was right, of course; Robin was annoyed he hadn't realized this himself.

  But that was beside the point. If the assassins weren't working for John, and they weren't agents of the French, who was he working for?

  Robin and Little John shared a glance, the big man looking every bit as troubled as Robin felt.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Daylight poured into the throne room of the White Tower through high arched windows, flooding the chamber. John sat upon his throne, resplendent in a robe of embroidered blue velvet, toying with an emerald necklace, and wearing the golden crown of England's kings. His mother, Eleanor, stood to the king's left, eschewing the throne beside him, and looking austere in a simple blue gown and white wimple. William Marshal stood before the throne dais looking every bit the warrior in his armor, his sword hanging from his belt, the white in his mane of hair illuminated by the sun, accenting his age. To the king's right sat Princess Isabella, looking lovely in a satin dress that shone like pearls. She said nothing, but watched the others with a wary eye.

  Godfrey chose to do the same, at least for the moment. He stood in a shadowed recess to the side of the thrones where he could see and hear everything, but where the others were less likely to take notice of him. For now he would play the role of spider, and allow Eleanor and William to buzz around the king's head, harrying him. He was sure it wouldn't be long before they managed to get themselves tangled in John's pride and stubbornness and uncertainty. When they did, Godfrey would be ready.

  Guards stood at attention on either side of the dais, a trio of Eleanor's ladies stood off to the side, as did the exchequer and other members of the Privy Council, who attended the king and hung on his every word, as bound to him as the dogs leashed and held by John's sentries.

  “Richard's army is coming home,” John said, still playing with the necklace, and sounding both bored and petulant. “To keep it together costs money. Marshal, you speak for the money.”

  “I do, Sire, and there's not much to speak of.”

  Marshal didn't flinch from the truth. Godfrey had to give him that. But the great knight was too used to serving men like Henry and Richard. The truth wouldn't get him far with John.

  “But to disband the army,” Marshal went on, “could cost more than to keep it.”

  Godfrey suppressed a smile, amused by what he saw on the king's face. John was as easy to read as a child. He heard the truth in what Marshal was telling him. Whatever else John might have been, he wasn't stupid. He had too much of his father in him to be oblivious to what was happening to the realm. But while he already knew much of what Marshal had told him, he didn't wish to admit as much, either to the knight or to himself. And he surely didn't want to acknowledge it in front of his mother.

  Isabella, on the other hand, appeared puzzled by what Marshal had said, and unlike John's wife, the Countess of Gloucester, whom she had displaced, she had just enough nerve and confidence to inject herself into the conversation despite her ignorance.

  “Pourquoi, Chancellor?” she asked. Why, Chancellor?

  Godfrey could see that the question itself infuriated Eleanor, who had yet to accept this woman as a proper consort for her son. She glared at the girl, as if she might will her from the chamber with her eyes. William appeared to be just as offended by the presence of the French princess. His eyes flicked in her direction for an instant, but he refused to dignify her question by answering.

  All of this Godfrey saw. All of it worked to his benefit. For he could see as well the resentment building in John's eyes: anger at his mother for not honoring his decision to throw Isabel aside and take this French princess as his wife; distrust of Marshal, who John believed remained more devoted to Eleanor and the memory of Richard than to the current occupant of the throne. Godfrey understood all of this, Marshal none of it; which was why the old knight didn't stand a chance.

  “As Your Majesty understands,” Marshal said, “it would put a rabble at loose in the kingdom looking for a paymaster. At the same time, your lands and castles over the water will look ripe for picking and your alliances for unpicking.”

  “And yet the cupboard is bare,” John said, sounding bitter. And this, too, Godfrey understood. How much of England's treasure had been spent to fund Richard's ill-fated crusade and to ransom the Lionheart from Trifels?

  Marshal, however, had yet to learn the mind of his new liege, and so stepped right into a snare of his own making. “King Richard's campaigns were costly,” he said. “And the e
xpected rewards, unfortunately—”

  “What is that to me?” the king demanded, his ire suddenly bared. “My brother's troubles are over. You are my minister now, not his. And you tell me I am destitute.”

  Once more, Marshal appeared offended, even hurt. He had served two kings prior to John, and Godfrey would have wagered the worth of John's crown that neither man had ever spoken to Marshal in this way.

  Right then, Marshal knew that he would have no influence with this king. Godfrey saw the realization hit him, smiled inwardly as the man seemed to sag. But still Godfrey waited. William Marshal was too resilient and wily a warrior to be dismissed so quickly. And at the moment, he was doing more to destroy himself than Godfrey could have done.