Much the miller’s son laid Robin in his grave the next morning, his horn, his bow and his silver arrow beside him. And on either side of him, he dug two other graves, one for Little John and one for Friar Tuck. Above each he placed a cross of English oak, but with no inscription, for Much could not write. The nuns sang over him, blessed them and wished them to heaven. Then they left them where they lay. As Much was about to leave, a rust-red squirrel ran along a branch above him, and dropped a nut at his feet, an acorn. He planted it in the soft, cold earth of Robin’s grave. “So I’ll always know where to find you, Robin,” he said. “I have to go now, back to Sherwood; but first to Kirkleigh.”
He was there by noon, and waiting in the shadows of the cloisters. The abbess, still exulting, did not see him until he stepped out in front of her. Then she knew him at once, and what he had come for. She tried to escape, but Much held her fast. “You ate Deadly Nightshade and you lived!” she cried.
“You killed the best heart in all of England,” said Much. “But I will not kill you here in this holy place, nor will you ever lie in sanctified ground. You lived for the devil and now you can go to him.” He took her away, far from the abbey, and hanged her from a wych elm tree, and buried her deep in the corner of a field of stubble where no one would ever find her and her body would not taint the corn.
By the time Much came to Sherwood again, there was snow on the ground. He found the house on the edge of the forest, saw the smoke rising from the chimney, saw little Martin pottering by the door with Robin’s father, and Marion chopping wood. For weeks he lived out in the cold, keeping watch over them but never wanting to make himself known, for he knew what news he would have to tell her. In the end, it was she who found him. She was out hunting early one morning, stalking a deer, when she came across him crouching over a dying fire. He looked into her eyes, unable to speak.
“I know,” she said. “I have known for weeks. If he was alive he’d have come home. I know he would.” She held out her hands to him. “Did he tell you to look after us?” she asked, smiling. “I thought so. Then come with me, Much, and do as he says.” They walked a little while together in silence. “Never tell me how it happened,” she said, taking his arm. “It’s in life I want to remember him, not in death.”
When I woke I found myself on my side in the mud, and cold; and in my hand still tightly grasped, the silver arrowhead. A jay cackled somewhere nearby and brought me to my senses. I sat up and remembered. I remembered the hurricane of the night before, sheltering with Gran under the stairs, the roe deer by the stream. But it all seemed to have happened such a long time ago. I saw about me the devastated forest, and my tree, my poor dead tree. And there were the bones in the earth beside me, and the skull I had dropped, the cow’s horn and the long curved stick. But I knew there was more, much more, that I should have remembered, but could not. I felt there was an echo of a dream inside me, but that it was unreachable now and always would be.
I struggled to my feet and looked about me. God knows how long I had been there. Clouds scudded across the sky, chasing away the storm. It felt like midday. Gran would be out of her mind with worry. I had to get back.
I buried the bones where I had found them, scooped the earth over hurriedly, and left. I took the horn and the silver arrowhead and the long curved stick with me – it seemed a pity just to bury them. I would take them home and clean them up. Maybe, I thought, maybe I could take them to the British Museum and find out how old they were. I would come back later and fill in the crater properly so that no one would ever find the bones. It was my tree so they were my bones. Later though, I would do it all later.
I was halfway down the hill when I saw the berries. There were a dozen or more, black and as big as cherries. I felt suddenly hungry. I filled my hand with them and walked on. I would have eaten them there and then, but I hadn’t a hand free to do it. Anyway, they would be good in yoghurt with a lot of sugar on top. I would save them and have a feast when I got home. I hurried on, dropping one or two of the berries as I went.
I hid my treasures away in the back of the garage before I went in. I said I was sorry I had been so long, but Gran said she didn’t know what I was talking about, that I had only been gone half an hour at the most. She rolled the berries from hand to hand, smelt them, and looked at me anxiously over her glasses. “You haven’t eaten any of these, have you?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
She took a deep breath. “Well, thank goodness for that. This is Deadly Nightshade. Atropa Belladonna. Poisonous, deadly poisonous. You’d better wash your hands, and the rest of you while you’re about it. Lord, you’re a mess. Mud all over you. Look at you. What you need it a good bath. Upstairs.”
I washed everything in the bath, my hands first, then my treasures. There was a lot of mud in the bath by the time I had finished. So I ran it out, and ran another one. Then Gran called upstairs and told me to turn it off, that what with the electricity off, all the hot water we were going to get for a while was in the tank; and what was I doing having two baths anyway? So I washed the rest of me in the basin and scrubbed my treasures till they were as clean as I could get them. I put my tongue out at myself in the mirror. “Idiot,” I said to me. “You could have killed yourself.” Once in my bedroom, I hid away all my treasures, the stick behind my cupboard, the arrowhead and the cow’s horn under my shirts in my chest of drawers.
Every day after that I took a spade and went back to the woods to fill in the crater left by my tree. It was a mammoth task of shovelling and hacking and shovelling again, but after a week or so I had filled it right in and stamped it down. I was sure now that no one would ever find the bones again. They were safe, safe from the timber men who would, no doubt, soon be moving in with their heavy machinery, and safe from grave-robbers.
But the bones would not leave me alone. Night after night I lay there and could think of nothing else. Something was unfinished, not right. The bones would not let me sleep. On just one such sleepless night when Gran had gone up to bed and the house was quiet, I got up and spread my treasures out on my duvet in the moonlight. That was when I thought of it. I was the grave-robber. My treasures had to go back. Then the bones would let me sleep.
It was a starry night, crisp and cold. I pulled my coat on over my dressing-gown, stepped barefoot into my Wellingtons and fetched the shovel. The stream runs louder at night. It was all I heard as I ran through the woods, back to where my tree lay, its bark covered in frost. I dug deep and buried them all together, the stick, the horn and the arrowhead. I covered them in and left them quickly, before I could change my mind. I stopped, because I heard something that was not the stream. The trees seemed to be whispering in the wind. But there were no trees, and there was no wind.
“Son of Marion,” came the whisper again, “son of Robin. God bless. God bless.” And then I remembered my dream, every bit of it, and I have never forgotten it.
I have never forgotten the place either, but I might have, had I not planted the acorn. It was an acorn from my tree, from Robin’s tree. I cleared a space over his grave, as Much the miller’s son had done before me. I nurtured the green shoot into a young oak sapling. I let no seed grow nearby. I let no tree take its light.
Five years on, and it’s twice my height already. Five hundred years on, and it’ll be the most magnificent tree in the whole forest, just as it always was. Robin will like that. I know he will.
A young girl faces an impossible task, to save her beloved France from tyrants. To free her country, Joan will lose everyone she has ever loved …
OUT NOW
About the Author
MICHAEL MORPURGO OBE is one of Britain’s best-loved writers for children. He has written over 100 books and won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Whitbread Award. His recent bestselling novels include Shadow, An Elephant in the Garden and Born to Run.
Michael’s stories have been adapted numerous times for stage and screen, and he was
Children’s Laureate from 2003 to 2005, a role which took him all over the country to inspire children with the joy of reading stories.
Other Books by Michael Morpurgo include:
Sparrow – the story of Joan of Arc
Little Manfred
Shadow
An Elephant in the Garden
Running Wild
Kaspar
Born to Run
The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips
Farm Boy
The Butterfly Lion
Copyright
First published in 1996 as Robin of Sherwood in Great Britain in paperback by
Pavilion Books, London House, Great Eastern Wharf, London SW11 4NQ
Published in 2001 by Hodder Children’s Books, a division of Hodder Headline
Limited, 338 Euston Road, London, NW1 3BH
This edition published as Outlaw – the story of Robin Hood by
HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2012
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB
The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
SOURCE ISBN 978-0-00-746592-7
EPub Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN 978-0-00-746594-1
Michael Morpurgo asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
OUTLAW. Copyright © Michael Morpurgo 1996. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Outlaw: The Story of Robin Hood Page 10