by Lisa Hendrix
“Good morrow, my lord. You must be the knight the maid spoke of yesterday. You missed Mass, my children.”
“I found shelter too far away. Your bells failed to wake me,” said Steinarr, ignoring the servant with him as a knight would.
“Ah, but you came to pray anyway. Excellent. And now I can give you my blessing before you travel on.”
Steinarr frowned. “I fear I must be on my way.”
“Oh, please, my lord,” said Matilda quickly. Much as she wanted to avoid going inside again, it would look too strange if they refused a blessing. “It will take but a moment.”
“You cannot deny your servant a moment’s prayer.” The priest stepped around them and pulled the door wide. “Come along.”
“She is not my servant, thank the saints,” grumbled Steinarr, turning to follow the priest inside. As he passed, he winked at Matilda and plucked his knife out of her hand to slip it into the sheath at his waist. “I only carry her to my lady. Hurry, girl. Do not waste my time by standing there like a lump of salt.”
“Yes, my lord,” she said obediently as she dropped the bag into her sleeve. She started forward, but stalled at the threshold. Lust still leered down at her, now joined by Greed, who was just crooked enough to be noticed. God’s knees. She had just defaced a church, and now she was going to pray in it, while her body still tingled where Steinarr had held her.
“Go on,” said the priest’s man behind her.
Matilda forced herself inside, wincing at her own hypocrisy as she sank to her knees. They had better succeed in making Robert lord, she thought as she crossed herself and folded her hands, because this quest was going to cost her a fortune in penance.
Not long later, though, she was listening to Steinarr grumble as they left the village behind. “They always drone on so. Why did you encourage him? ”
“We neither of us can afford to refuse a blessing, monsire .” Matilda reached into her sleeve to pull out the bag. It was made of nut brown leather, thick but soft, a red linen cord wrapped tightly around the neck. She felt the bag to see what might be inside, then began picking at the knot as they rode, finally resorting to her teeth to work it free. “There.”
“Open it,” urged Steinarr. “See what it says.”
She stuck two fingers in and poked around. “’Tis in bits and pieces, whatever it is. We had better stop first, lest I lose something.”
“Wait ’til we get to the cottage, then. Come on.” He put the spurs to the stallion, and the rouncey followed. Thank the saints, she didn’t have to wrap her arms around him just now. She was not looking forward to that. Or was she?
They were soon back at the hut, and Steinarr helped her dismount. “You see what it says. I will load the horses.”
Matilda carried the little pouch over to a graying stump and tipped it out. A key caught her eye immediately; that, at least, had an obvious use. She set it aside and picked through the rest. It looked like a child’s collection of oddments: a chess piece in the shape of a bishop before a gate, a pilgrim’s token from some shrine, a chip of black stone, a scrap of cloth embroidered with a bird, and—
“A pointing hand? Monsire, what do you make of this? ” she held up the bit of carved wood.
Steinarr left the rouncey and came over to take the piece. He squinted at it. “Your hand wears a glove. There are clear seams. Someone put some skill into this.”
“It must be broken from some small statue.” She examined the chessman. “Not our bishop, here. ’Tis too large, and he is stone.”
“The wrist is cut clean, not broken.” He showed her. “It may have been carved just for this purpose. What does the rest say?”
“Nothing. I have found no words yet, excepting these.” She picked up the pilgrim token and read the Latin. “‘Edburga ad Pontem.’ Eadburgh of the Bridge. Father sometimes spoke of a shrine to Saint Eadburgh he admired.” She flipped the disk over. “‘Meridianus puteus.’ South, um, well. South-well. Sudwell.”
“There is a big church there,” said Steinarr.
“Aye, the Minster. Of course, the Gate.” She snatched up the bishop to show him. “The Sudwell Gate.”
Steinarr only looked confused, so she explained. “Long ago, one of the archbishops demanded support for the Minster at Sudwell. The parishes gather in Nottingham Town each year at Whitsuntide to carry their pence to Sudwell in a grand procession. It is called the Gate.” She pointed to the bishop again. “The gate.”
“It wouldn’t be that kind of gate,” said Steinarr, frowning. “It would be gata. Road.”
“Oh. Well, Father enjoyed his plays on words.” She quickly explained about Head-on. “Gate or road, Father traveled it as pilgrim one year and took Rob with him as page.”
“Robin would know the place then.”
“Aye. Now I think of it, he does carry a pilgrim’s token for luck. I never looked closely, but I think it is like this one.”
“So, Sudwell it is. Come. We will work out the rest of it along the way. We have already wasted too much of the day.”
“Hardly wasted, my lord. We have our next riddle half solved, and I have a knight pledged to me, while you have somehow gained a noble lady as servant.”
“Perhaps you are right.” Grinning, he went back to the packing. Matilda scooped up the items and returned them to the little purse, which she added to her scrip with the other clues. Excited, she hurried to carry out items for Steinarr to add to the rouncey’s load.
“I should not have bought so much,” he muttered a few moments later as he tied the hide in place over the loaded packsaddle. “I will trade some off along the way. We need to travel more lightly now.”
“At least you intended to feed me well as you seduced me,” she said with a lightness that was only partly forced.
He leaned forward to eye her around the pile of gear. “Do you forgive me so quickly, then? ”
Did she? Or was there anything to forgive? She had taken every bit as much pleasure from their encounter as he, and at least now she knew what it could be. Even if she ended up married to Baldwin, she knew.
“It is not a servant’s place to forgive her betters, my lord,” she said, an answer that avoided an answer, because she didn’t have one. “How far is it to Sudwell? ”
He tucked a last strap-end under as he considered. “Two days, if the weather holds.” He laced his fingers and bent for her foot. “Up with you, Marian. We ride.”
ON THE MORNING of the third day after Steinarr left, Hamo and Edith came to Ari as he hacked at the turf.
“We must ask a favor, my lord.”
Ari laid aside his mattock, and swiped the sweat off his forehead on his sleeve. “What is that?”
“Goda has the squinacy,” said Edith. “And now young Robin’s throat aches, too.”
“I heard the child crying as I rode in this morning.” Ari glanced over at Robin, who sat propped up against the tree, whittling a piece of birch into a new ladle for Edith. “But he looks well enough.”
“He does now,” said Edith. “But he keeps asking for aught to drink. And you see that.”
Robin touched his neck and cleared his throat.
“See. It begins to hurt him. He’ll be getting the squinacy, too. And I have no myrrh to give them ease, and I’ve found little yarrow. I need someone to—”
Hamo cut in. “We were wondering if you would do us the great favor of making the ride to Retford to see if you can find some herbs and simples, my lord. It would be a great boon. We have the coin for it and ’tis market day, but my pony is lame and it will be too slow by wagon. I cannot spare a man so long. One of my own men, I mean.”
“One who knows what he is doing, you mean,” said Ari, laughing. “I will go, and happily before your collier’s work breaks my back.”
“That will not happen, my lord. You have a strong back and a good arm and a willingness to use them.”
“That may be, but I can stand the rest, nonetheless. Tell me what you need, and you will have it by t
he end of the day.”
After several days staked out in the clearing, his horse was as pleased with the ride as Ari, and it wasn’t long before they were cantering down the long, gentle slope into Retford. From the height, Ari could see the tents and stands of the market in the square and the bloodred clay in the River Idle that gave the ford its name.
He paid a boy to watch his horse and quickly located a man with dried herbs and medicines displayed in baskets. He rattled off the list Edith had given him, bargained to get what was available at a fair price, and put everything in the pouches the old woman had sent along and rolled them in a bundle to carry.
Cheek by jowl with the herb merchant, a woman sold fat lamb pies heavy with pepper and cinnamon. He laid out a farthing for one, then carried it through the market, looking for the sake of looking.
At the far edge of the square, a simple tavern had taken shape with tables and rough-hewn benches, and next to it, a group of players was in the middle of a mystery play. As saints and demons frolicked across the big wagon that served as the stage, Ari paid for a cup of wine and settled down to eat his pie and cheer and jeer with the townsfolk. The mood grew more somber as the story played out, however, and by the time the Resurrection unfolded, even the drinkers were grave and repentant and ready to disperse.
“More wine, my lord? ” the tavern keeper asked, a note of resignation in his voice.
Ari tapped his cup and laid another coin on the table. “Your drinkers have lost their thirst.”
“Aye. I should have chased those fool players away when they came along,” said the man, motioning a wench over to pour. “They properly belong beside the church, but I thought they would draw more people and I let them stay. Instead, they have driven all away.”
“ ’Tis a shame you do not have a good storyteller to bring them back. Someone who could spin the tale of”—he grabbed at the first names that came to mind—“Robin and Marian.”
“Robin and Marian? I do not know the tale.”
Neither did Ari, but the pleasure of storytelling lay in the spinning of new thread. “Likely not, because the sheriff does not want it told. Robin was banished from his home by the sheriff himself for suspicion of killing one of the king’s deer, though it could not be proved. He lives in the shire wood as an outlaw.”
“An outlaw is not the proper hero for a tale.”
“But this is no ordinary outlaw. He steals only from the very richest on the road, tax collectors and noblemen and fat abbots and bishops, and lets all others pass.” That was Steinarr’s way, and Jafri’s as well, when he turned to robbery as sometimes he must to live. “In fact, there was a very fat abbot riding to … to Saint Mary’s Abbey. He wore the finest velvet and silk, ripped from the toil of the peasants who worked the abbey lands.”
A man on the next bench turned to listen. “I know the very sort.”
“Sadly, too many do. But this abbot, Hugo by name, was of the worst sort, and so full of himself that even as he rode the forest road, he draped himself in velvet and golden chains and rings. When Robin spied the glitter of those riches, he could not resist the lure, and so he rode ahead and climbed into the branches of a great tree to lie in wait for the bishop to pass.”
Another man sat down nearby to listen, then a pair of women carrying baskets, then the players themselves, as Ari spun out the tale of Abbot Hugo’s humiliation at this Robin’s hands. “And so he crawled back home in naught but his braies, and Robin sold his jewels in Lincoln and returned the silver to the men who had truly earned it. And that was the end of that.”
“But what about the Marian you spoke of, my lord?” asked the man on the bench.
“Ah, you are right, I forgot to tell of Marian. ’Tis a shame my throat is so dry.”
The tavern keeper, who still stood absorbed in the story, suddenly realized he had trade again. He called to the wench, who quickly began circling through the crowd, pouring as quickly as she could dodge the many too-friendly hands. The tavern keeper leaned over with a grin as he refilled Ari’s cup with wine. “No charge for you, my lord, so long as you keep talking.”
So Ari talked, telling of how Robin rescued a fair maid from a ne’er-do-well lordling and carried her off to safety in the forest. But when he reached the part where, by all the rules of good storytelling, he should have Robin and Marian fall in love and marry, he thought of Steinarr—who was, after all, the real outlaw—and stopped.
“Did Robin marry her?” asked one of the women, her eyes glittering with excitement.
“Not yet,” said Ari, “Though I think he will in the end. And his men do as well.”
“What men?” called someone in the crowd.
“Others outlawed by unjust lords, banished for the smallest of crimes. For not paying the lord’s due for a daughter’s marriage. Or … or for getting sick and not being able to do the boon work.” That set up a grumble. Every peasant in England had similar complaints and fears, and Ari knew it. The story would ring true to them, little though the local nobles would like him telling it.
“The first of those to join Robin was, um, John. John Little,” he added, recalling the name of the man Steinarr had tried to rescue. Perhaps his name could live on, though the old man hadn’t. “Robin called him Little John, and here is how they met. One day as Robin Hood was walking through the woods, he came upon a huge rock of a man standing on a narrow bridge, holding a staff …”
He kept the crowd entertained, making up more adventures for Robin Hood and his men until his practiced eye told him he had just enough time to get back to the colliers, have a quick meal, and head into the forest for the night. With a stretch, he rose. “I must be away, friends.”
“Will you be back, monsire?” asked the tavern keeper as the crowd groaned.
“Perhaps.”
“I am here each market day, and I will trade you all you can drink for stories whenever you please.”
“That will have him back, for certs.”
Grinning, Ari turned toward the familiar voice. “What are you doing back? Did she tire of you already? ”
“No. I am selling a few things we don’t need. What story have you been inflicting on these poor people?”
“Nothing you know.” Ari moved off, wanting to get Steinarr away before someone mentioned the names he’d been using.
But the tavern keeper swooped in to grab his cup. “He has been telling us of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, my lord.”
Steinarr’s face went grim. “What?”
“Of the outlaw, Robin Hood, and his lady love, my lord,” said the tavern keeper. “Have you not heard the tale?”
“No. I have not. Come, friend. Tell it to me as we walk.” Steinarr clapped Ari on the shoulder like a friend, but his fingers bit into Ari’s shoulder as he steered him away from the tavern and toward where the stallion and rouncey stood tethered on the side of the green. “What are you doing? ”
“Whiling away an afternoon.” Ari jerked out of Steinarr’s grip. “So I used their names. ’Twas in sport.”
“You’ll have Gisburne on us,” growled Steinarr.
“But you—” He glanced around to make sure Marian wasn’t near. She wasn’t, but he switched to Norse anyway. “You’re working for him. Aren’t you? ”
“No. The pig’s hole lied to me.” Steinarr quickly explained the changed situation. “He’s likely hired others to hunt them as well.”
Ari groaned as what he’d just done hit him. “And here I am … Balls. I’m sorry. But ’twas only a tale told in a village market. Surely it will go no further.”
“With good fortune.” Steinarr poked Ari in the chest with each word. “But do not repeat it.”
“No. No, of course not. What can I do to help?”
“Keep the boy out of sight, and do what you can to get him fit to travel. Once we find the treasure, I’ll be back to take him to the king. He must be ready to ride hard.”
“I will do what I can, but healing lies in the gods’ hands. Where is Marian?�
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“Using the garderobe.”
“So, with these new plans, are you still keeping your vow to Robin, or are you swiving her?”
Steinarr folded his arms across his chest. “And you call me crude.”
“You are swiving her, aren’t you? You swore you wouldn’t.”
“I swore a lot of things.”
“You never break your word. You bend it, but you never break it. There is something about her, isn’t there? ”
“There are many things about her, but I’m not going to discuss any of them with you. Now, here she comes.” Steinarr grabbed him by the shoulder again, this time to spin him around to face Marian, who was walking toward them across the green. “Keep your mouth shut.”
“Never fear.” Ari swept off his coif and bowed. “Good day, fair Marian.”
Two passing cottagers gave him a puzzled look, and Steinarr growled at Ari’s ear, “She’s a servant, ass.”
“But a fair servant, and worthy of a little fawning from a poor knight.”
“You are not a poor anything, my lord.” She dropped in courtesy. “I did not expect to see you here. Is all well?”
“I came in to buy a few herbs for Edith. Goda has the quinsy.”
“Poor thing.” Her brow wrinkled with worry. “Robin will get it, too. He always does. Does Edith have myrrh? It helps.”
Ari patted the parcel he carried. “Right here.”
“I wish we could take the time to—”
“We cannot,” interrupted Steinarr. “But Edith will see to him. Come, we can make another league at least before sundown.”
“You already found someone to buy the extra things? ”
“Aye. And got more than I paid in Nottingham Town.”
“Perhaps you should become a merchant,” said Ari, and laughed when Steinarr told him to tup himself in Norse.
“It is not that long. You know,” he said, considering as he watched Steinarr help Marian up behind the saddle. “You could take my horse for her. You’d travel faster, and I could make do with the rouncey.”