So Alan went unsteadily down the church to get his hurt seen to. In the wide doorway, Little John, ever the best surgeon in the band, was hard at work, with two or three of the younger women to help him, salving and binding up the wounds of his comrades. Clean linen and crocks of water had been brought from the nearest hovels, and one of the women had brought a little earthenware pot of salve. Hob lay full length on the churchyard path, and Little John was kneeling beside him, spreading the salve on his wound, and Alan stood quietly waiting until the tall lieutenant of the band should be free to dress his arm.
Soon the wounds of all the outlaws had been bathed and dressed, and they were sitting or lounging comfortably in the churchyard with their backs to the trunks of the lime-trees, while the villagers stood round, gaping at them in admiration.
Meanwhile, Alice had recovered, to find her father and Robin bending over her. ‘Where is Alan?’ she demanded. ‘He was here—.’
Robin aided her to sit up. ‘Alan is safe enough,’ said he. ‘He has a gash in his arm and I sent him to get it bound up. Go out to him as soon as you like, for the sight of you will do him more good than all Little John’s surgery!’
So the Lady Alice sighed, and blushed, and getting to her feet went away down the aisle with her head held very high, to join her lover in the yellow October sunshine.
Robin and her father watched her go, and then turned back to face each other.
‘I cannot find it in my heart to be sorry that this has happened,’ said Beauforest in a low voice. ‘I ever liked young Alan A’Dale, and would have given my daughter to him had I dared. But Niger le Bigot was a powerful man, and, alas! I am a weak one.’
‘And Niger le Bigot, though dead, has powerful friends,’ replied Robin; ‘so Alan must join me in the Greenwood, and the little maid also, for there will be no safety for her here, after this. Will you come too, and throw in your lot with me and my lads, or will you remain in your own house?’
‘I remain here,’ answered Beauforest. ‘I love my land and I love my serfs; besides, I am too old to learn new ways. So I must take my chance.’
‘Remember always that my men and I are your friends. Send for us whenever you have need of our aid, and we will come.’
‘I thank you for your promise,’ said the older man. ‘I shall remember it. And for the rest—you are right: there is no safety here for Alice, so I entrust her to young Alan and you.’
Robin nodded. ‘That is well said. And she shall be happy—I promise you that. There will be a merry wedding in the Greenwood before many days have passed; and my own Marian will be joyful to have her near her. Poor lass, she is as bold and hardy as any man, but it is lonely for a woman among a band of men without another woman to keep her company.’
So it was arranged, and before another hour had sped the little band were on the march again. Some of them rode the horses that had lately belonged to Sir Niger’s men; others went on foot as they had come. Grim old Watkin took Hob-o’-the-Hoar-Oak up before him on his saddle-bow, handling the wounded man as gently as ever a mother could handle her child; and Alice rode pillion behind Alan A’Dale, holding on to his broad leather sword-belt.
Up through the ploughland and pasture of the village they went, rather battered, rather bloody; and gaining the woodshore, they melted in among the trees.
Presently Alice began to glance about her a little fearfully into the forest shadows. She had never before been beyond the open rides of the chase, and the mazy deer-paths, thickets and gloomy dingles through which they rode seemed strange and terrible. She was a little afraid, too, of the outlaws who thronged about her; but when she looked aside into the face of the ragged minstrel who seemed to be their leader she knew that she had no need to be afraid. Besides, Alan was with her, and she would be safe anywhere with Alan.
On and on they went, down long forest-rides that seemed to have no end, through dense covers where she had to bend her head against Alan’s shoulder to shield her face from the whipping twigs. Then, as they passed beneath a giant old chestnut-tree, Robin Hood raised his head and gave an odd low whistle, which was answered by a shrill one overhead in the branches; and a few minutes later, pressing forward through a dense hazel thicket, they came out into a long glade below a sandstone scar.
Alice looked upward, and saw young trees on the crest of the scar, where the forest began again at a higher level, and the openings of several caves half hidden by the briars and rowan saplings and virgin’s bower that veiled the rough sandstone. On the smooth turf more brown-clad men were moving about or sitting beside two cooking fires. No one seemed surprised to see them; it was as though the men in the glade had known the exact moment that they would appear, and she remembered that whistle out of the branches of the chestnut-tree.
Over Alan’s shoulder, as they reined up, she saw a tall woman coming towards them over the grass—a woman in a green kirtle, who walked with a lithe, free step, and carried her head as though her coiled russet hair were a queen’s crown.
Robin had already dismounted, and now he came to Alice and lifted her down. The tall woman came up, and he touched her shoulder with a smile, saying: ‘Look, I have brought you a companion, sweetheart. Take her away and make much of her, for she is very tired.’
Marian turned to the girl and took both her hands in her own. ‘Welcome to the Greenwood, little sister,’ said she. Then to Robin: ‘Hob is wounded, and Diccon and George—and Alan also. Alice shall rest on my bed, and I will come back to attend to their hurts.’
‘Their hurts have been attended to already,’ said Robin, laughing. ‘And Little John will be direly offended if you interfere with his surgery!’
‘I would not offend Little John for all the world!’ smiled Marian. ‘So—come, Alice, we will leave these menfolk to themselves.’ And putting her arm round Alice, she led her away in the direction of her own small cave.
Robin and young Alan watched them go in silence; and then the outlaw chieftain turned to his newest recruit. ‘Now let us find Friar Tuck, and bid him put up the banns for your wedding. And after that—supper; for you’re as hungry as myself, I’ll warrant!’
Some days later there was a wedding in the glade below Dunwold Scar. Robin Hood gave the bride away, and Little John stood beside the bridegroom as his best man. The outlaws stood reverently with bared heads, and even the great ban-dogs gathered round with pricked ears and tails gently waving. And so, kneeling before Friar Tuck, with the golden leaves of the beech-trees drifting down around them, Alan A’Dale and Alice de Beauforest were made man and wife.
8
The Shooting for the Silver Arrow
BLUE SUMMER DUSK was deepening over the Stane Ley, and high overhead in the great trysting lime powdery-winged night-moths were already hovering among the honey-scented lime-blossom. Supper was over, and the cooking fires had been allowed to die down into red embers, for it was a hot July evening, and the outlaws who sat or sprawled around them had no need of banked-up fires to keep them warm. Robin sat beside one of the fires, with Marian at his side, and Breon, the largest of Friar Tuck’s ban-dogs, lying with its head on his knee.
Marian had a puppy in her lap. Four of its brothers were sleeping cuddled against their mother among the roots of the lime-tree; but this one, the finest of the litter, Friar Tuck had given to her for her own. It had enormous paws, and a little, warm, rough tongue that was licking Marian’s fingers. It was being very good just now, because it was half asleep, but since morning it had chewed its way through Alan A’Dale’s best shoes, a new pair of buckler straps, and Little John’s cap.
Alan had been rather put out by the loss of his shoes, but he was a good-natured lad, and had quickly got over his annoyance. Now he was standing on the edge of the fire-glow, rocking gently backwards and forwards on his heels as he strummed at a well-worn lute. He had a warm tenor voice and a knack of picking up the tune and words of a song after one hearing, so that if, as sometimes happened, a wandering minstrel came their way, after he had gon
e Alan could always sing his songs. But the song he was singing now was well known to all the outlaws and well loved by all—a merry lilting tune called ‘The Woodstock Rose’, in the refrain of which they all joined.
In the middle of the song the bushes parted at the near end of the glade, and a weary figure came forward into the firelight. Alan broke off his singing between one note and the next, and everyone turned to face the new-comer, who sat down by the fire with a blissful sigh. It was Hugh Greenleafe, one of the younger outlaws.
The boy had begged leave a few days before to go south to visit his father, a yeoman farming his own land hard by Nottingham Town, whom he had not seen since he joined the outlaw brotherhood three years before. Robin had warned him against running into trouble himself or bringing it upon his father, before letting him go; but he had been anxious about the boy none-the-less, and was very glad to see him safely back again. ‘Well, Hugh,’ said he, ‘what of your father?’
‘Well enough,’ answered Hugh with a smile. ‘The lambing season was good this year, and in his field-strips the wheat stands thick and heavy in the ear.’
‘You were not seen by anyone except your father?’ questioned Robin.
‘No, Master, I took good care of that. I came and went again under cover of the darkness, and lay close in the house during the one day that I was there. And when my father’s cronies came in to gossip over their ale in the evening, I lay hid in the apple-loft over their heads, where I could hear the talk and laughter without being seen—with a mug of ale to myself.’ He chuckled. ‘Little did they think, those respectable yeomen, that there was one more than usual in their company that night!’
‘Did they speak of anything that was interesting?’ asked old Watkin, from the other side of the fire, and another man called out: ‘Aye, tell us, Hugh lad, what was the latest talk of Nottingham?’
There was a rustling and an upheaving in the warm shadows, as men drew closer in and others came drifting across the sward from the second fire, drawn by the prospect of news.
Ket-the-Smith, who was one of the cooks for that day, had left his place as soon as Hugh arrived, and now came back, carrying a wooden platter piled high with the remains of supper. This he gave into the new-comer’s hands, saying: ‘Eat up, lad. You’ll be hungry, I reckon,’ and went back to his seat on the turf.
Hugh fell to, for he was indeed hungry, talking while he ate, telling what he had gathered from the talk of the farmers in his father’s kitchen, and other things also which his father had told him during the day they had been together. A few of the outlaws were Nottingham men, and several more came from one or other of the villages that lay close around the town; so they listened eagerly to the talk of their home countryside, as Hugh retold it between mouthfuls of cold venison. He told of births and deaths and marriages, of who had been taken for poaching the king’s red deer; of a calf with two heads which was supposed to have been born on one of the farms; of a fight in the fish-market on the last Saturday but one; and, lastly, he told of a great archery contest which the sheriff was planning, to take place on a certain day of the following week.
‘Is it open to all corners, this archery contest?’ cut in Robin, quickly.
‘Yes—and with a silver arrow barbed and flighted with good red gold, for the victor’s prize.’
‘Hugh,’ said Robin, ‘would you like to shoot for that silver arrow?’
‘That I would, Master Robin!’ Hugh replied eagerly.
Robin turned to a shadow that was taller than the rest, and asked: ‘Would you like to, Little John?’
‘Aye, gladly!’ exclaimed Little John.
‘Then so you shall.’ Robin looked round him at the crowding shadows of his men, and demanded gaily: ‘Who’ll come with us, lads? Who’s for Nottingham and the sheriff’s archery contest?’
‘I’ll come, Master!’ cried Much-the-Miller’s-Son.
‘I’ll come, Master Robin!’ Gilbert-of-the-White-Hand leaned forward into the firelight.
‘And I!’ added Will Scarlet.
‘I also, Master Robin!’ That was Alan A’Dale’s voice.
‘And I!’—‘And I!’—‘And I!’ All round the low fire voices answered him, laughing and eager.
‘You babes!’ said Marian’s voice out of the darkness. ‘Because you can shoot farther and straighter than the sheriff’s bowmen, you must needs be showing off like so many foolish little children!’
Robin laughed. ‘Sweetheart, you would not begrudge us a little harmless junketing?’
‘Harmless!’ cried Marian, half-exasperated, yet half-laughing, too. ‘Harmless! And I suppose when you are all hanged in a row before the gates of Nottingham, like so many maggot-pies on a forester’s barn-door, no harm will have been done—and Alice and I may laugh and be glad because we no longer have to fear for your safety!’ Then she relented suddenly. ‘No, I did not mean that. Go and enjoy your shooting, and bring the silver arrow back with you.’
Five days later a little band of yeomen came striding blithely down the road from Worksop towards Nottingham. There were three-and-twenty of them, and they seemed a sturdy lot, clad in stout russel-cloth garments of many colours, each with a well-stocked quiver at his side, and a bowstave of red Spanish yew strapped across his shoulders. Their shoon were powdered white with the dust of the summer highway, for they had come a long distance, and all of them carried wallets or bundled kerchiefs which hinted at bread and cheese and perhaps even cold bacon.
There were many such gay companies coming down the roads and forest tracks that morning from Worksop, Mansfield, Kirkby, and Woodstock, and a score of Sherwood Forest hamlets scattered between Clumber and the Peak, all drawing inwards towards Nottingham and the sheriff’s archery contest, all eager to take home with them the coveted silver arrow.
On the smooth turf before the northern walls of Nottingham Town, the butts had been set up, with new straw targets at either end of the long green range; and all around, close under the walls and even half-blocking the gateway, were booths and stalls and sideshows, so that the scene looked for all the world like a fair. From all Nottinghamshire and the Peak District chapmen, jugglers, and wandering showmen had gathered together to sing their songs and ply their wares among the people who came to see the sheriff’s archery contest.
Robin and his men wandered through the crowds which were already gathering, looking about them with pleasure at the gay scene which was so strange to them, used as they were to the leafy solitudes of the Greenwood. Here was a red-and-yellow striped booth with brightly gilded gingerbread and peppermint lozenges for sale. Here were drinking-booths; here an open stall on which were displayed embroidered hawking-gloves and scarlet-tufted falcons’ hoods and jesses with silver swivels.
Here was a ballad-monger; there a juggler clad in green and yellow, tossing up a flickering stream of bells and balls and freshly plucked roses. There was a dancing bear, too, and a little ragged boy who piped the tune for him to dance to. The outlaws gathered to watch him, laughing at his clumsy antics, and when his dance was done, tossed down a scattering of copper coins to be gathered up by the small piper.
On they went, looking into this stall and that, stopping to listen to the ballad-monger and watch the ragged acrobat, Robin enjoying himself as much as any of them. Everywhere they came upon other bowmen come to try their skill, but these made up only a small part of the holiday crowd which filled the spaces between the booths and jostled each other around the town gates. Worthy farmers with their apple-cheeked wives and daughters; merchants in furred gowns and their ladies in gay summer silks and satins; lean brown serfs with the soil still caked about their ankles and a few copper coins in their pockets; all had come to watch the shooting for the silver arrow, and laugh and marvel at the antics of the travelling mountebanks and buy the pretty fairings from the gay stalls. And running through and under and between the legs of the crowd were small children and large dogs—the dogs all with the centre toes of their forefeet clipped short to prevent them from
chasing the king’s deer.
The shooting was to start an hour before noon, and judging by the sun that it was now not far short of that time, Robin and his band began to make their way towards the butts. The smooth green stretch of turf, which had been kept clear by several foresters, lay very quiet and empty amid the gay crowd and the gaudy fairground booths which surrounded it. A stand had been set up at one side, from which the sheriff and his guests would watch the shooting. It was hung with gay crimson cloth, its rough woodwork was bravely daubed with paint and gilding, and at the front of it, supported on two forked hazel wands, was the silver arrow itself, glittering in the sunshine, with a couple of stout men-at-arms to keep watch and ward over it.
‘There it is, lads!’ said Robin. ‘And a pretty bauble, too—well worth shooting for!’ He dropped his voice to a murmur. ‘Six of you shall shoot with me, and the rest remain here in case of any mischance.’
‘Are you expecting trouble, Robin?’ asked his tall lieutenant.
Robin shook his head. ‘No, John; but it is as well to be prepared. So you shall come with me—and Much—and Gilbert—and Hugh.’ He hesitated, his glance moving over the eager faces of his band, and then finished: ‘And you, Will Scarlet—and you, Reynold.’
The space all down the long sides of the range was beginning to fill up as the first-comers left the stalls and jugglers and came to get good places from which to watch the contest. The green-clad foresters were hard put to it now to keep the smooth turf of the range clear, and Robin and his men were pushed and jostled from behind as other bowmen came thrusting through to the front.
By dint of much good-humoured shoving and free use of their elbows, the outlaws continued to keep their places in the front of the crowd, for having come all the way south from Barnesdale to see and take part in the shooting, they had no mind to be ousted into the back rows, where none of them—save perhaps Little John—would be able to see anything.
The Chronicles of Robin Hood Page 11