“This knight has too little coin in his purse,” said the big man after a silence.
The Florentine fingered the slack leather bag at his belt. “Times are not easy for a wandering knight. Even I, Marco di Maggi, have to go hungry.”
Robin Hood probed the fire with a stick. “Little John has been with me many round seasons now,” he said. “Will Scathlock sees with his eyes, and John sees with—” Robin looked over at his friend and smiled. “He sees.”
“I think it unfriendly, the way he looks at me,” Marco said, setting down his cup.
“We would not mistreat a guest,” said Robin Hood.
“Where are your companions, knight?” asked Little John.
The Florentine rose to his feet, knocking over his cup.
“I am alone,” he answered.
“Where are they hiding?” insisted Little John.
“My honor demands I ask your apology,” said Marco di Maggi, “if you call me a liar.”
None of the men and women sitting around the fire stirred. Will Scathlock poured another cup of wine and offered it up to their guest.
“I will fight you, sword to sword,” said the Florentine knight.
“Or match one of John’s stories with one of your own,” countered Robin.
Marco di Maggi accepted the wine. He gazed around at the curious eyes, and then took his seat again. “It will not be a fair contest,” he said.
Two or three voices called out reassurance.
“So this is how you toy with a guest,” continued the Florentine, adjusting his belt and its empty scabbard. He looked off into the woods, then smiled, shrugging.
One of the sentries off in the dark gave a whisper, and the small crowd of listeners stirred, hands reaching for staves and longbows. The captive knight’s hand paused halfway down his leg.
A burst of wings; whirring, high-pitched flight overhead; and the pale body of a grouse burst across the firelight.
Folk gave quiet, relieved laughs, and the Florentine joined them.
“Pray begin your story,” said Robin Hood.
“This story is from my hometown, far away,” said Marco di Maggi when silence had returned. “It is called ‘The story of the Woman with Two Mouths.’ It is a story of a woman with a mouth in her belly.” He shrugged apologetically. “It is a story, and it is true, both. She lived in a fine house in Castellina, a town of liars and bandits.” He put his head down, and raised it again. “Bandits of no honor,” he corrected himself, “unlike this fine band.”
The fire flared, and light and shadow chased themselves around the ring of expectant faces.
“This woman was stabbed by accident, in a fight in a wine house,” said the knight. “She was so injured, the surgeon offered her soul to Heaven. But she did not die. She lived! But the wound in her belly, here—” He touched his side and paused, listening to the silence of the forest.
“It did not close up,” he continued, “and all her life I have been told her sisters and daughters could peer within. They could see the humors moving about, and the blood sinking from her brain to her belly, all scarlet and green. She was known all over the land, and Il Papa, the lord pope, said that someday he would like to see her in her home and bless her insides.”
The Florentine took a long drink of wine.
“One day a thief broke into her house, running from the captain of the guard. He carried a pearl in his hand that he stole from a contessa. The thief was mad with worry, and behind him were the guards, pounding at the shutters.”
The exertion of putting all this into English, or the anxiety that his story might not please, made the knight slump and make a gesture as if to say, It is the best I can do.
“Tell us what happened!” cried a voice.
Marco’s eyes brightened, and he offered a polite bow. “The thief was in a panic like this—” The knight made his eyes bulge, and thrust out his tongue momentarily. “He saw the woman in her nightdress, this famous wife and mother. He said, ‘Excuse me, good woman, I pray you,’ and he thrust the pearl into the side of the woman, all the way in beside her spleen. And his hand stuck! Inside her belly, his hand was sticking.”
The knight threw his whole heart into the part now, acting out with theatrical gestures a man with his hand stuck next to a spleen, terrified as the guard broke the shutters. The guard stormed into the room and, the Florentine said, the thief was arrested and taken to the castello with his hand still trapped in the woman’s interior.
“The greatest surgeon in Firenze was called to assist, and two important doctors visiting from Bologna. They all pulled on a limb, each doctor holding a leg, the surgeon clinging on to the arm that was not stuck, all of them pulling, and pulling—”
The Florentine nodded to himself, as though imagining the scene to his own satisfaction, unable to put it into words.
“What happened?” asked Will Scathlock.
“They pulled.” The knight held up both hands. “And when they had the thief all the way pulled out—there was no pearl. The pearl was left in the woman, and there it is still, to this day, giving her good health and good fortune.”
Robin Hood laughed.
“That was a good story, knight,” he said at last.
Heads nodded, and a voice remarked that a pearl dissolved in wine was the most reliable medicine.
All eyes turned to the big man who sat leaning against a tree.
“It’s your turn, John,” said Robin Hood.
Chapter 29
John stepped close to the fire, pausing before he spoke.
The entire band was alert, awaiting the signal.
The fire spat and whistled, dry pinewood rich with oils. Such a fire was often unwise, the scent of pine smoke alerting royal foresters. Oak wood burned cleanest, but pine was merry. And tonight the outlaws wanted to be found. Despite his misgivings, John saw the point of such fragrant, far-reaching smoke.
Let the hunters, he thought, close in on their quarry.
The wind eased through the branches overhead, and John heard all he needed to know about this knight from Florence: great danger.
Where was the knife secreted, John wondered, the one the wind warned him about? Somewhere in the knight’s silk garments, or in the leather of his leggings. Will Scathlock and Alan Red, two of Robin Hood’s most careful men, had disarmed this man-at-arms, but John knew that neither he nor Robin could turn their backs, even with all these capable hands to protect them both.
Somewhere out there a band of men were hiding, closing in. John was surprised: this time Red Roger had hired masters at their craft—they were almost silent.
Almost.
The seasons with Robin Hood had taught John to use a yew longbow, and while he had not mastered the weapon, he could bring down a hart at one hundred paces, a clean shot through the neck. He could hide his tracks almost as well as Grimes Black, and he could weave a rain shelter from dock leaves and alder as well as any of the others. Robin’s band was a collection of poor folk, some driven from their lands by lords eager to turn the fields over to sheep, others fugitives from the sheriff’s men—many missing a thumb or an eye, the result of a royal forester’s cruelty or a lawman’s ugly zeal.
Robin Hood’s outlaws waited, cups in their hands, and the Florentine knight sat with his hands clasped.
John wished this life with Robin Hood could go on forever, the willow and the beech their lasting refuge. Robin Hood had taught him to love the very names of the trees, the black poplar and the silver birch, the wych elm and the lime.
“Once a noble lord looked out over green and forest,” began John. “And he wanted whatever he saw. Whenever sight flowed from his eyes, he wished sight could cling, and claim, and carry. A cart of minted coin, a wagon of rich fabric—nothing was safe from this nobleman. What hunger is to the harvester, greed was to this proud lord.”
Marco di Maggi flicked his hand and looked around: what a weak story this was going to be!
“This lord wanted people,” John c
ontinued, “as well as gold. When a strong young man came into his sight, the noble wanted that young man’s endless loyalty. This lord was subtle, and he was silken in his voice. He could win killers to his art. And one day he sent the young man to the High Way to steal, and the young man’s friend was killed, with a spear in his back.”
Marco shook his head and folded his arms. He looked at the gathering and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, This is nothing compared to a story about a woman with a door in her gut.
“Now this lord searches the kingdom for rich jewels and new-minted silver, but he hunts above all the young man who would not stay at his side. And he hunts another outlaw, a man who does not steal but gives, putting ale in the cups and venison on the trenchers of the poor. This lord would see the heads of Little John and Robin Hood on pikes. And he will not rest until he does.”
John fell silent.
“I win the game,” said the knight.
“Our guest wins the storytelling contest,” said Robin Hood. “And Little John wins the knife with the crimson handle, the one peeking through the seam in Marco’s legging.”
“So you treat a guest as a sheriff does,” said the knight, tossing his wine into the fire. The red wine steamed as it struck the flames.
“You are among friends,” said Robin Hood.
“I challenge you to combat,” said the knight. “You, Little John. Steel or staff; it doesn’t matter which.”
John put up a hand for quiet.
The night birds were hushed. A distant brook ran fast, then altered its course minutely, a footstep parting the water.
“You cannot stay here, Robin Hood,” said Marco abruptly. “Men are coming for you, to kill you, every one.”
“We know that,” said Robin Hood quietly.
“No, you do not understand,” said the Florentine, gesturing helplessly, as though English could not communicate the urgency. “You, Robin Hood, and you, Little John,” added the knight, in a tone of near sorrow, “are dead men!”
Robin Hood gave the signal then, a low whistle that was answered by a sentry off in the forest, and another farther off.
The hunters carried lances and swords but wore only leather armor—no chain mail. They crawled along the damp ground, hoisting their heavy bodies over tree roots as big around as oxen. Their leader gave a hiss, and pointed silently. Firelight snapped and flickered through the trees ahead—Robin Hood’s camp.
Their leather had been oiled so it would not give off the usual creaks and grunts of bull-hide armor, but even so they could not be perfectly quiet. A hilt caught on a sapling, and a puddle gave an oozy, squelching whisper as a knee sank into it.
But these were skilled men, and after every crushed leaf, after every drowsy songbird struggled higher up its hazel branches, the hunters waited, still and patient, for the quiet to resume.
The dark-armored band of hunters reached the place where, if there had been a sentry, he would have been peering, listening. Here were a sentry’s footprints, and here a splash of urine on a mossy tree—a sentry had relieved himself. The damp bark was still warm.
The lead hunter rose from his crouch.
They broke through the forest and dashed into the clearing, the snapping bright fire gleaming on their weapons.
No venison roasted on the spit; no blankets were spread. The ground around was scored by feet, but only the blazing fire gave any sign that a camp of any size had been here, and the top layer of wood on this pinewood fire had just been added—it was barely charred.
The hunters knelt, studying the ground. Soon the signs—spilled wine, shivers of kindling—showed how many had eaten here.
“Fifteen,” said a voice. “Maybe twenty. Not many more.”
The lead hunter slipped the hood from his head, and a flash of a red silk tunic brightened the half-dark. “They are watching us,” he whispered. “Even now. I can smell them!”
“My lord,” said one of the men, “I think they are far away by now.”
“I trusted a Florentine knight,” said Red Roger, “to carry out my orders!”
“There’s nothing more we can do, my lord,” said Lord Roger’s man, his voice strained with unease.
A whip-crack projectile flashed through the flames. An arrow instantly buried itself in the side of an oak, its head so firmly in the pith of the tree that the shaft did not tremble.
None of the hunters spoke for a long moment.
“Fifteen or twenty,” said Red Roger, his voice taut with feeling. “How many women?”
“My lord,” said the man, “we are only seven men, and tired.”
“It’s a hay cutter’s weapon, the longbow,” said Lord Roger. “A weapon for cowherders.” He said this last loudly, his words echoing faintly through the woods.
But two of his men were fleeing already, into the growing dark.
They were joined by two others, then by all of the men, until Lord Roger was alone.
The nobleman stepped to the arrow imbedded in the oak, and wrenched at it.
He tugged hard.
Chapter 30
“I shall confess to you before you kill me,” said the knight, in a tone of jaunty resignation. There was the faintest twinkle in his eye—as though he did not expect violence to follow.
It was morning, and the outlaws had established a new camp. It was the usual loose arrangment: hide canopies, sentries already finished with the first watch, new guards taking their place. A fresh deer carcass was laid out, butchered by Edwy, peering with his one good eye. A brief rain filtered down through the leafy canopy, sparkling in the sun as daylight at last defeated cloud.
Sir Marco had outfitted himself with care, polishing the fine leather armor, the cuir-bouilli that was much lighter and stronger than most metal armor. “I was paid in gold coins,” said Marco, as though prompted by an inner need to confess. “With more money to follow if we brought back John Little’s skin, and Robin Hood’s, stretched over a shield.”
Little John said nothing. He had crouched in the dark forest under a rowan tree and watched his former master. The sight of Red Roger had chilled him. The lean, monkish face was thinner than ever, and the eyes were fierce. Surely, thought John, Red Roger will never rest until Robin Hood and I are dead.
“I am from nowhere,” the knight was saying. “I speak with this accent, it’s true, but I win my wages now serving English lords. I care nothing for justice. I fight for whomever hires me.”
Robin smiled. “You are a man without law.”
“Like you,” said Marco. “I know that you will take me into the darkest part of the woods to stick a blade between my ribs. I would do the same.”
John did not respond. Robin Hood was waxing his bowstring, and glanced up with a concerned smile. “We treat a guest with honor, man-at-arms.”
“You cannot keep stealing from proud, wealthy men,” said Marco, “and giving the silver to peasants. It shows a spirit of adventure,” said the knight, with an unyielding cheerfulness. “City men dislike it, and true robbers hate it.”
Robin Hood laughed.
“What will keep me,” queried the knight, “from telling every man I see what Robin Hood looks like, how he lives, how many swords he owns? I will tell them Little John is a great big ox.” There was something trusting in his challenging tone, as though in truth he did not fear for his life.
“You tell a worthy story,” said Little John. “The woman with a secret mouth.” John could not suppress his curiosity. “Was it true?”
The knight gave a quiet laugh. “Little John of the woods. Every traveler is afraid of you, and yet you are caught by a little tale around a fire”
John was annoyed for an instant.
“They’ll catch you,” said Sir Marco. “The law, or Red Roger and his men—one or the other. As Red Roger will catch me, and bleed me hollow. That is, unless you ask a well-trained man-at-arms to join your band.”
Little John and Robin Hood shared a glance.
“A knight will not find enough
work among us,” said Robin Hood at last, “to keep his sword sharp.”
“I will surprise you,” said Marco di Maggi, a strain of hope in his voice.
“I have no doubt,” said Robin Hood, “that you would surprise all of us—with your stories.”
“You will need someone of my fighting craft,” said the knight.
John could hear no voice of caution in the birdsong, no murmur of warning in the rustling chestnut tree.
Grimes Black kept three paces back from the knight, his hand on the hilt of his sword. He was the only one of Robin’s men who could take the proper stance when an opponent’s sword flashed. Grimes was missing one eyebrow, where a sword tip had evidently scored his face years ago, and yet his history was shadowy. During blade practice, Grimes always knocked the weapon from his opponent’s grasp. All the other outlaws made do with zeal and arm strength rather than skill, having never studied the weapon in a castle. John’s weapon of choice remained the quarterstaff.
Now Grimes spoke up. “My sword against his, for the right to dine with us each night.”
“A contest!” exclaimed Robin Hood. “What do you think, John?”
“My opponent,” said the Florentine knight, “is not prepared for a joust à outrance.” Such a joust was a contest that used weapons of war. Men often died at such sport. “I will kill this dark, brave little man.”
Every man and woman in the kingdom relished a contest. Two roosters fighting or two hounds, two men wrestling for the title of best in the shire—it didn’t matter; any fight drew a crowd. Even the king’s law acknowledged trial by combat. Heaven strengthened the arm of the just and weakened the sinews of the sinful.
And so Robin Hood’s band formed a ring, clearing a wide space as Grimes Black made passes in the sunlight with his sword, and the knight swung his arms the way a woodcutter does getting ready to wield an ax on a cold morning.
In dismounted battle men usually carried a shield: either a small, round buckler, or an even smaller target shield. The sound associated with such a sword fight was the hammer of sword steel against shield, a steady bang-crash that could go on for a long time, until both combatants were exhausted. This morning a shortage of proper armor required the swordsmen to fight exposed, except for Sir Marco’s well-crafted boiled-leather piece and a corresponding battered breastplate on Grimes.
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