Robin Hood

by DAVID B. COE

  Robin met and held her gaze. “I think when Robert Loxley gave me his sword, it was not for the sword's destiny, but for mine.”

  Marion opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment, they heard a commotion coming from near the mill house in the distance. They spurred their mounts forward and soon came to a good-sized bog. Several women stood along the edge of the water, trying to reach a ram that had wandered in and gotten itself stuck. The creature bleated piteously and thrashed about, desperate to keep its head above the rank water. Mill weed floated at the surface of the bog and Robin could see from how the animal struggled that the bottom was heavy with mud and muck. The women were trying to get a rope around the animal's neck in order to pull it to safety. But the creature fought them as well as the bog, making matters worse for itself by the moment.

  “Stop!” Marion shouted at the women, riding to the edge of the water. “You'll break its neck!”

  She leaped off her horse, started to step into the bog, but stopped herself. She searched around the water's edge, and soon spotted a hoe. Taking hold of it, she hiked up her skirt so that her legs were bare to the thighs. She waded into the water, using the hoe to test the bottom of the bog before each step. Slowly, she made her way toward the bleating ram.

  Robin had halted his horse beside Marion's and watched her as she sank deeper and deeper into the bog, heedless of her clothes and of exposing her legs. He wasn't sure whether to be amused or impressed, and in the end decided that he could be both. He certainly understood why Loxley had been so taken with the woman upon seeing her in that church in Ely. Robin had never met anyone quite like her.

  In the next moment, though, matters took a turn for the worse. Marion had nearly reached the ram, which was sinking faster and faster. But as she tested the bottom in front of her, the hoe suddenly plunged all the way into the mud, and it nearly took Marion with it. She pinwheeled her arms to keep from falling forward and managed to right herself. But the hoe was lost, and the ram nearly so. The creature thrashed ever more wildly, and now Marion was helpless to do anything about it.

  Robin threw himself off his horse and grabbed a rope as he ran toward the water's edge.

  As he ran past the village women, he shouted for them to take hold of the other end of the rope.

  He didn't pause to see if they had done as he asked. Reaching the bog he launched himself into the water, landing knee-deep in the mud and wading toward where Marion still stood.

  “I'm on the edge of the shelf,” she called to him.

  “Go back to the side.”

  She shook her head. “I can't move my legs.”

  That was an unfortunate complication. But looking at Marion, Robin could see that she was all right. She didn't appear to be in any danger of sinking deeper into the mud, and while she no longer had the hoe, he knew that she could go back to the edge without difficulty when eventually she freed her legs.

  She smiled at him, clearly relieved to see him coming toward her. She held out her arm to him so that he could pull her out.

  “Thank you, my—”

  Robin continued past her toward the ram.

  Her face fell. “—lord…”

  He pitched himself forward, diving headlong toward the ram, his arms outstretched. The creature gave one last terrified cry and then went under, disappearing from view save for its horns. Robin grabbed for them and managed to grip one and then the other. He felt tension in the rope and hoped it meant that the women had a firm grip on it. He shouted to them to pull.

  At first nothing happened, and Robin realized that he was starting to sink along with the animal, which

  continued to flail about in the muck. But then he felt a tug on the rope and a moment later he was being pulled back from the deepest part of the bog. Holding fast to the ram, he got its head above water again and dragged it along with him. Soon, he was back on the shelf. Getting his feet under him, Robin stood. He let go of the ram, which was free of the mud now. The creature made its way to the safety of the edge, heaved itself out of the water and ran back to join its flock.

  “Thank you, my lord,” Marion said archly, though with a smile. “Is it my turn now?”

  Robin waded back to where she was standing, still waist deep in the water. He took her hands in his and pulled her toward him.

  “Hold tight,” he told her.

  She wrapped her arms around him.

  Once more he called for the villagers to pull on the rope, and once more he felt himself being tugged back toward the water's edge. This time he pulled Marion with him. Within moments they were out of the bog and back on solid ground. Marion released him, though not before looking up into his eyes for just the briefest moment.

  Robin dropped the rope.

  As he did, he heard someone clapping behind him. Turning, he saw a bearded man sitting a large bay. He wore a cloak with a broad furred collar and studded riding breeches. His hair was long and unruly, and though he wore a smile, there was something unpleasant about the man's expression.

  The women, who but a moment before had been chattering excitedly about Robin and Marion's rescue of the ram, had fallen silent at the sight of this man. Marion, who had walked back to her horse, didn't appear pleased to see him either. She regarded him with poorly concealed distaste and then looked to Robin, a warning in her eyes.

  “Nicely done, sir!” the man said to Robin, smiling still.

  Marion remounted, holding her boots in her hand, her skirt bunched up so that some of her leg was still bared.

  The man, Robin noticed, leered at her in a manner that would have made even a dead husband jealous.

  “And to see Lady Marion Loxley's legs naked to the breeze was beyond my hopes this morning.”

  Robin looked to Marion, his eyebrows up, as if to ask if he had her permission to punch this lout in the mouth.

  He thought she would be scowling at the man, but really she seemed quite amused as she said, “I think you do not know my husband, Sir Robert.” She turned to Robin. “Allow me, my lord, to present the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

  Robin swung himself back into his saddle, so that when he faced the sheriff again, they were eye-to-eye. On most occasions Robin was not given to snap judgments about any man, but he had taken an effortless dislike to the sheriff. He had met men like this one countless times before—in the army, on ships, in taverns. All of them were the same, and none was worth a damn. This sheriff had already shown himself to be boorish; that he reeked of arrogance and ambition, of selfishness and pride, came as no surprise. Robin had never understood how men of this sort always managed to land themselves in positions of power, but he'd seen it happen too many times to think it a coincidence.

  Holding the man's gaze, Robin offered a slight nod by way of acknowledgment, which the sheriff returned with a sneer, apparently no more taken with Robin than Robin was with him.

  “I had the honor of succeeding to this office not long after you left for the Holy Land,” the man said. “Welcome home, Sir Robert. You make your mark quickly, saving the king's ram from drowning.”

  “What is this?” Marion demanded, her eyes blazing.

  An unctuous smile curled the sheriff's lips. “What is owed in coin I have the right to take in goods or livestock in King Richard's name.”

  “King Richard died a soldier,” Robin said. “King John is our master now.”

  The sheriff seemed surprised by these tidings, though he showed no sign of being moved by them. “That's news indeed. Long live the king.”

  “Aye,” Robin said, remembering his encounter with the new king, and thinking that John and the sheriff deserved each other. “If God wills it.”

  He reached back into a pouch than hung from his saddle and pulled out a coin. He held it up for the sheriff to see and then tossed it to the man the way he might have thrown alms to a common beggar. The sheriff caught it and looked at it.

  “Here's a ram's worth of tax for the exchequer.”

  The sheriff glared at him.
>
  “We'll meet again, Sheriff of Nottingham.” Robin smiled thinly. “I'll not forget your compliment to Lady Marion.”

  Robin turned his horse, and Marion did the same alongside. As she did, Robin glanced down at her legs. “Beyond my hopes this morning, too …” he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear.

  She followed the line of his gaze and then shot him a look that would have kindled damp wood. Husband or no, apparently there were certain lines he wasn't yet allowed to cross. Hiding a grin, Robin followed her away from the bog and the sheriff.

  THE SHERIFF WATCHED Lady Marion and her husband ride off, his sword hand itching. Without taking his eyes off the couple he bit down on the coin Loxley had given him. It seemed real enough. He pocketed it and took hold of his reins, his hands trembling with rage.

  Loxley might have been a soldier, he might have been a lord, but that didn't give the man the right to speak to him that way. He was the king's man— whichever king. This was his bailiwick, and no crusader could change that.

  He had met men like Loxley before: superior, disdainful, utterly convinced of their own infallibility. He had also brought down bigger men than Loxley, with the law if he could, with a blade if he had to. This one would be no different.

  “Aye, we'll meet again, Robert Loxley,” he said, nodding decisively. “Be sure of it.”

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  Night fell over Peper Harrow, and after an ample but simple meal like the one they had enjoyed the night before, Sir Walter retired, claiming to be unusually weary. Robin sat before the hearth again, enjoying the warmth of another blaze. He hadn't been sitting long, however, when one of the servants appeared saying that Sir Walter had sent her. Marion was on her feet immediately, but the girl explained, somewhat sheepishly, that the old man had asked not for her, but for Sir Robert. Robin thought that Marion regarded him with a touch of resentment as he stood, puzzled himself, and followed the girl up the stairs to Walter's bedchambers.

  The room was dark when Robin entered. He could barely make out the old man's bed, which appeared plain and ancient. Moonlight filtering in through the window alighted gently on the blankets and pillows so that he could see the old man was lying on his back, as still as death. He couldn't see if Walter's eyes were open or closed, and after waiting for some time for the man to speak, he began to wonder if perhaps in the few minutes it had taken the servant to fetch him, the old knight had fallen asleep. He was just about to turn and quietly let himself out of the chamber, when Walter stirred.

  “Longstride,” he said. As always he turned his head directly toward Robin. Not for the first time, Robin wondered if the man was only feigning his blindness, or if his hearing had grown so acute that he no longer needed his eyes to know what everyone around him was doing.

  “You need to know what I know,” the old man went on. “Your father was a stonemason.” Robin saw him smile in the darkness. “Is that pleasing to you?”

  Robin took a breath and nodded. Then, realizing the man could not see his gesture, he said, “Yes, it is. A mason …”

  He trailed off, silenced by the onset of a memory …

  HE IS IN Barnsdale, his childhood home. In the village center. The cross of the Celts stands in the middle of the square, gleaming in the sun beneath a sky of purest blue. He feels himself rising and falling. He is being thrown. Exhilarated, scared, laughing. He soars up toward the blue, falls back. And is caught in strong arms, only to be thrown again. Rising, falling, laughing until he can't catch his breath.

  Finally, those powerful arms catch him one last time and set him on his feet. Robin looks up into the clear blue eyes of his father. He knows those eyes. He has seen them reflected in a looking glass, and in the gleaming armor of the knights who sometimes come to his town. They are his eyes, too. Clear and blue and honest.

  His father kneels down before him and grips his arm gently. “Always keep this day in your memory, and in your heart.”

  The cross behind his father has a small gap, a single spot where one last stone has yet to be set. His father leads Robin to the base of the cross and trowels cement into the gap where this last stone will be placed. He takes hold of Robin's hand and presses it into the wet cement, making an imprint. He smiles at Robin, who smiles back. Then the stonemason presses his own hand into the cement beside Robin's imprint.

  Two other men, standing with a cluster of soldiers, separate themselves from the group and join Robin and his father next to the cross. They press their hands into the cement, too.

  The older Robin, the man in a darkened bedchamber in Peper Harrow, who is watching his childhood self and wondering at this long-forgotten image from his boyhood, knows these men. He can almost name them, but that knowledge flutters just beyond his reach, like a butterfly on a summer day, and then it is gone.

  Robin's father now walks to where the last stone rests, a chisel nearby. Robin follows, and so sees the words carved into the stone on one side. Words that Robin has committed to memory with his father's help.

  “Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions.”

  His father hefts the stone, carries it to the cross, and sets it in the gap, the inscription facing in, so that only those who have come to witness the completion of the cross will know that it is there. The words, resting forever beside the handprints.

  The stonemason turns to his son and smiles, and Robin grins back at him, thinking what a wonder it is to have a father who could have fashioned such a great cross.

  ROBIN STOOD IN the darkness of Sir Walter's room. My father was a stonemason. These words echoed in his mind, like rolling thunder on a summer evening. Such a small thing, and yet he knew so little of his family, of his past, that it seemed huge, like a man's sword in the hands of a child.

  “But he was more than that,” Sir Walter said from his bed. “He was a visionary.”

  “What did he see?” Robin asked in a hushed voice.

  “That kings have need of their subjects no less than their subjects have need of kings. A dangerous idea! Politics!”

  Robin had said much the same thing to Marion earlier this day, and hadn't known at the time what to make of his own words. Had those been his father's words, sent to him across time and over miles and through the boundary between life and death, between thought and memory? Or did such sentiments simply run in his blood? Was he finally learning what it meant to be a Longstride? Strange that the lesson should only be brought home now, when he had taken on another man's name.

  Robin looked at the old man, eager now to know the rest of the stonemason's tale. “What happened to him?”

  “Put out your hand.”

  Slowly, Robin reached toward the bed. Walter groped for his hand for a moment before finding it. He gripped tightly; there was strength still in those old fingers. Robin stood just by the bed now. Looking down into Walter's rheumy eyes, he saw that they looked almost white in the moonlight.

  “A blind man can see things in the dark,” the old knight said. “Do you understand me?”

  He swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Close your eyes,” Walter told him. “Leave the remembering to me.”

  Robin did as the old man said, waiting for whatever Walter had in store for him. Suddenly he felt the old man's body convulse, as if Walter had been struck by lightning. The old knight's grip tightened painfully on Robin's hand, until Robin felt that his bones were being ground to dust. At the same time, Robin doubled over, as if he, too, had been struck. He wanted to cry out, to ask what was happening. But in that instant, he saw.

  THEY ARE BACK in Barnsdale. Robin, his father, other men. Soldiers. So many soldiers. The cross looms above them. Dull now, almost gray, beneath a brooding sky. The soldiers hold his father, pinning his arms. Robin is yelling for them to let his father go. Tears stream down his face and he struggles to break free of the hands that hold him back. He wants to go to his father, to help him get away from the soldiers. But he's held fast and so can only watch.

  A
soldier steps to where his father is held, a sword in hand. And with a single powerful stroke, he cleaves the mason's body. Blood blossoms from the wound. His father's legs buckle beneath him, his head lolls; only the grasp of the other soldiers keeps him from collapsing to the ground. A scream is ripped from Robin's throat. Then the world begins to spin. The blood, the soldiers, the cross. And all is black.

  ROBIN OPENED HIS eyes in the darkness, his hand still in Walter's crushing grip. He remembered it all. The memories coursed through him, as though a dam had cracked and given way. Walter dropped his hand, and Robin staggered briefly before regaining his balance. His chest ached with the memory of that sword stroke. His head spun, as it had when he was boy. When he had witnessed the murder of his father.