Hawksmaid (12 page)

I
T WAS MARKET DAY
in the town nearby the Fitzwalter castle. Marian stood in a throng of people. She had been half hoping to find Scarlet juggling, as he often came here on market days. She was dressed as a boy, but this time wore no mustache, and she was listening to a minstrel who was entertaining a crowd of mothers and children. The minstrel sang:

It had only been a bit over a fortnight since the robbery of the bishop, but already the tale was being recounted in song. Part of her was, of course, relieved to hear no mention of the young lad who had actually taken the bishop's ring.
But why does Robin get all the credit?

Marian knew it was better they did not speak of her. Robin himself had grown so worried that the bishop might have become suspicious that he had insisted she lie low until he figured out how to get the ransom of five rubies and the Star of Jerusalem to the Continent.

Marian began to notice that the people seemed to have a bit more money to spend. A woman had just handed over a coin to buy some pynade—pine nut brittle—for her children. Marian could not remember the last time she had seen anyone buying sweets for a child at market day. Indeed, she could not remember the last time she had seen a sweet seller.

When the minstrel finished the song, Marian approached the woman who had bought the pynade.

“Robin Hood?” she asked. “Who is this Robin Hood?”

“He's the reason I have money to buy a fowl.” She held up a guinea hen by its legs. “And some left over to buy my children a piece of pynade. There be a reward on him by order of the sheriff now.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, don't worry. He and his band always get away. Clever lads all of them.”

Lads
, Marian thought.
What about me?

Marian made up her mind right then that she had had enough of lying low. She would seek out the boys. She had some pennies in her pocket, enough to buy a laying hen for Meg and then some left over to give to a cart driver on his way to Nottingham in exchange for a ride.

She haggled with a poulterer and managed to bargain him down a little for a hen. She also bought a bag of flour and went to the section of the village known as shambles where the butchers traded and got some kidneys for supper. Then, tucking the hen under her arm and her other bundles in a sack slung over her
shoulder, she raced the two miles back to the castle.

“I'm going to find Fynn!” she announced as she ran into the castle and handed over the bird. To Meg, Robin was still Fynn and she knew nothing of Matty as Marian. She had been reluctant to tell Meg everything she had been up to in her frequent absences. She felt that if Meg knew too much it might endanger her in some way. But the old servant narrowed her eyes and looked hard at the young woman she had helped to raise. “There's more to all this, isn't there?” Her face seemed to crumple and her eyes filled with tears. “Are you going away for good, Matty? Are you never coming back?”

“No, no, Meg. I promise I'll come back. But I—I…have to…Oh, Meg, this is so hard.” Now she was almost crying. She could not lie anymore. “Do you know that they call Fynn Robin now?”

Meg blinked. “So he is Robin Hood. It's as I guessed.” She pressed her lips into a thin line.

“He's famous, Meg.”

“And you want to be famous, too, I suppose.”

Marian looked down and felt the color creeping up. “I—I…I don't think it's that I want to be famous, Meg. But I want to be part of something. Part of something
important. Part of something that can change our country, how we live. Don't you understand?”

“I'm an old lady now,” Meg said in a frail voice, “too old to understand such things perhaps.”

“But didn't you have dreams when you were young?” Marian asked.

Meg's eyes misted over, then she looked over at Hodge who sat silently in the corner. His hands plucked at the hauberk. He no longer had the wits to even mend it. When Meg looked back at the girl she knew as Matty, she had tears in her eyes. “You go along. I'll try and look after your birds as best I can till you get back.”

Marian embraced her tenderly. “I love you, Meg.”

“I love you, too, Matty.”

“
A
ND THAT, SON,” SAID
the cart driver over his shoulder to Marian, who still wore her boy's leggings and tunic, “is what we folks 'round here call the Bishop's Tree.” He nodded at a large oak at the next bend in the road. They were heading south.

“And why is that?”

“It be where Robin Hood done robbed the Bishop of Hereford.”

Marian tried to sound surprised. “He stole money from a bishop?”

“Yes, indeed. And some say a ring as well. Quite a lad, he and his merry fellows. They don't keep nought for themselves. They gives it to the poor. And not just money, but they say that Robin be one of the best archers in all England and he takes deer regularly from the royal forests and finds a way to get it to the people. A fortnight ago, my wife and me enjoyed our first venison in over four years.”

“My! And what thinks the sheriff of all this?”

“Hah! He done put a bounty on him. But the sheriff will never catch him. Robin and his lads are too clever.” The cart driver paused and then in a somewhat more reflective tone continued. “They say that desperate times breed desperate men. But you know, I think it is the sheriff and that bully Sir Guy of Gisborne who are the desperate ones. From what I hear, Robin and his band never seem desperate. Even when they're robbing the rich, they joke and make merry.”

Marian smiled but remained quiet.

They went on for a good while and then came to a fork in the road.

“Well,” said the driver, “I fear 'tis time to part
company, lad. But 'tis not so far to Nottingham. You watch out for the sheriff's foresters and don't go poaching no deer. Leave that to the likes of Robin Hood.”

“I carry only my merlin, sir,” Marian said, and looked at Marigold, who perched on her shoulder.

“A pretty bird she is, too. But mind you do not set her to hunt in these parts either. They'd as soon shoot her down as anything else. It's a time of tyrants, you know. They'd put an arrow through a baby if they thought they could shake gold out of it.”

“Thank you.” She reached into her pocket for a few pennies.

“Keep your money, son.”

“Thank you again.”

She bade the cart driver farewell and set off toward Nottingham. Soon she encountered the fringes of the great woodlands of Sherwood Forest. Then she heard the rushing of the creek that was not far from the blasted oak. The rush of the creek grew louder with each step. As she broke out of a thicket and reached the bank, she gasped. The water was high and furious. How would she ever cross it without drowning? She did know how to stay afloat—she had learned from
the boys—but this looked dangerous. It was the end of winter and, of course, with the melting snows the water would be high. She should have thought of this before.

Just then the roar was broken by a very loud crack. She felt Marigold tense on her shoulder. Something was crashing through the woods. A boar? A forest warden? Matty quickly crouched behind an immense rotting tree stump. The sound came closer, and with it a song. Not just a song. A hymn.

It was Friar Tuck! He was about to wade across the creek. “Tuck!” she cried, and bounded out of the bushes. “Carry me across, will you!”

“Marian, what are you doing here? I thought you were to lie low until we got…er…certain things figured out—the gobbets and all.”

“Yes, and all! The ‘all,' if you remember, is largely my doing.”

“Oh, of course, my dear. I don't doubt you.”

“So don't you think I should be in on the planning?”

“And to that end I am to be your beast of burden and carry you across these raging waters, I suppose?” One eyebrow arched like a leaping minnow.

“I am not a burden. I weigh but eight stone. And you are no beast.”

Friar Tuck sighed deeply. “How can I resist such honeyed words? Of course, my dear. Hop on my back.” Marian did just that.

“And, Tuck, one thing. Perhaps 'tis better not to call me ‘my dear' when I am in the clothes of a lad.”

The friar cautiously dipped his sandaled left foot into the creek, and continued until the water was above his knees. “Ooooo!! Freezing my backside and my front side and everything in between!” he yelped. The waters swirled around him, and the skirts of his cassock spread out like a rumpled lily pad, but he continued to make his way through the boisterous waters as if he were walking across a pond on a windless summer day.

They had just reached the midpoint of the creek when Robin appeared from behind a screen of alders on the opposite side.

“I told you to lie low,” he called to Marian, then turned and raised his horn to blow. A shaft of sunlight fell upon him and Marian felt her heart race. It seemed as if Robin had grown taller even in the brief time since she had last seen him. His hair brushed his shoulder in burnished curls, and his cheeks bristled with the stubble the same color as the hair she had spotted on his chest that day she had tried to fix his cloak. From his belt hung a good broadsword of well-tempered steel. He was a gallant sight. She had to admit she was very glad that today she was not wearing a false mustache.

As Friar Tuck set her down, the others came out of the woods. It was a strange moment, for here she was, looking like a boy with her shorn hair and dressed in leggings, and yet the boys she knew had become men.

“Now, Friar Tuck, I didn't know you were a fisherman,” Robin said.

“Well, I do believe I fished up a fine lass and not a fish, Robin.”

F
RIAR
T
UCK
, M
ARIAN, AND
Robin made their way back to the blasted oak. Marian stood up in the charred hollow. There was tension in the air. She looked at the others—Rich, Scarlet, Little John. And then everyone turned their gaze expectantly toward Friar Tuck. The jolly demeanor he had displayed earlier as he and Marian crossed the creek had vanished. His face was somber.

“What is it? Have they killed King Richard?” she asked.

Robin looked at the friar. The monk shook his head. “No, no. Nothing that bad. At least not yet. But they
now know the rubies are missing.”

“But how?”

“I am sorry to say that the first thing that the abbess did was to go to that creek bank in Barnsdale and look for them. She found them missing.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I have my ways. A man of the cloth hears many things both in confession and out. Of course, now the prince, the sheriff, Gisborne, and the whole lot of them are worried for precisely the reasons they should be—that someone will use them to ransom the king. They wanted to use the rubies instead to bribe someone to murder Richard.”

“In other words, it's a race,” Marian said succinctly.

“Truly a race between us and them to get the rubies and the Star of Jerusalem into the right hands,” Friar Tuck said gravely.

“We should get them now. And deliver them as quickly as possible,” Marian said.

“Easier said than done,” Robin replied. “Those forests are heavily patrolled, more so than when we first hid the gobbets.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Marian said, “But don't you see, I might be able to use my
hawks to retrieve them.”

“Brilliant!” Rich said. “Absolutely brilliant!”

“Marian, that is the perfect solution. And when the birds get them, you can tell them to bring them here. You can do that, can't you?” Robin spoke with mounting excitement. “And then we can leave immediately for the Continent.”

It was something in the way Robin said “we” that set off a small alarm in Marian's head. “We? You mean me as well?” The boys exchanged nervous glances. A deep frown creased her brow. “You mean I'm not going with you?”

“Of course you're not going with us,” Robin said, almost crossly.

“What do you mean ‘of course'?” She felt her temper rising. “Why am I to be excluded?” Robin started to speak, but Marian interrupted. “I'm sick of being left out, left behind. I'm sick of this stupid country and this stupid prince! I'm not just a girl anymore. You have to understand that.”

Robin looked startled. The saddest part was that she had thought Robin
did
understand. She recalled not just his words when she had come up with the plan for taking the ring from the bishop but the look in
his eyes. That gaze of profound respect as he had said “She knows her business. We do as Marian says.” How could things change so quickly?

“You were never
just
a girl,” Robin said. His eyes, deep blue like twin seas, seemed to engulf her. “But now you are a woman.”

They all looked at one another. No one knew what to say.

“She's right,” Robin said, breaking the silence. “She's our strategist. It was Marian after all who devised the plan for robbing the bishop. Without the Star of Jerusalem we would not have enough ransom to speak of, and, needless to say, without her we wouldn't have the rubies either.”

Marian could not help but wonder if he was recalling that time years before when they had cut her out of the tree house building scheme, and Robin had come to apologize for his “beastly” behavior.

A welter of emotions boiled up within Marian. Her eyes met Robin's, and she saw not just his trust but something more. An overwhelming joy swept through her entire being.
He loves me and I love him. I love him!
She almost reeled.
I would die for him, but I will not stay back for him…and he no longer wants me to.