The Chronicles of Robin Hood (19 page)

‘I follow my old master,’ said Diccon.

And Robin turned to Simon the Squire, saying: ‘Simon D’Aubernoun?’

‘Aye, Simon D’Aubernoun,’ said Sir Richard, ‘what of you? You can go to some other knight and serve him till you are of an age to win your golden spurs. Men will soon forget that you were once squire to Sir Richard-at-Lea.’

‘But
I
should not forget,’ answered Simon D’Aubernoun. ‘And I would be Sir Richard’s squire still.’ He looked very earnestly at his master, who returned his look, half smiling, but very kindly, for there was a great fondness between the knight and his squire.

Then Robin got to his feet and stood looking round at the faces of his men in the firelight. ‘Lads,’ cried he, ‘here be four new members for our band. Make them welcome to the Greenwood and this brotherhood of ours.’

Instantly the outlaws set up a cheerful shout, and scrambling to their feet, came crowding round the four new-corners, to strike hands with Sir Richard and his squire, to thump the little archer on the back, and bend the knee to the Lady Elizabeth.

When at last everybody sat down again, and the fire was stirred into a blaze and fed with fresh beech-logs against the night-time chill (for it was now very late) the four new-corners had been absorbed into the brotherhood. Sir Richard and his lady sat on either side of Robin Hood; Diccon had been swept off to the farther side of the fire, there to sit between Alan A’Dale and Will-the-Bowman; and Simon the Squire came with his slow smile to sit beside Little John and inquire about his wound.

They were a right merry party in Dunwold glade that night, and it was late indeed before at last the fire was raked out and scattered, and the last weary forest-ranger dragged himself unwillingly to his bed of fern.

THE YEARS WENT
by and Robin Hood and his men still ruled the forests of Sherwood and Barnesdale. There were some new faces round the camp fire in the evenings now, and certain of the old familiar faces were gone, for the life of a wolfshead was at all times an uncertain thing, and in their ceaseless fight against tyranny the brotherhood sometimes suffered losses.

There was another sheriff of Nottingham—a leaner, younger man than Sheriff Murdoch had been, but every wit as much a creature of the barons; and against him and his kind Robin still waged warfare on behalf of the weak and defenceless. Many were the ventures undertaken by Robin of Barnesdale and his outlaw band; many
the wrongs righted or avenged in those years; and the names of Robin Hood himself, of Little John and Scarlet and the other leaders had become household words, to be whispered at the ale-house door on summer evenings, and round the cottage hearth on winter nights when the bitter darkness seemed to press in against the warmth and shelter of the fire-shine.

So the grey winters passed, and the green summers; and there came a certain Christmas night. A bitter cold night it was, and the light covering of snow lay smooth in Dunwold glade (save where it was marked by the footprints of the outlaws and their dogs), sparkling faintly in the starlight. Hard frost had bound up the little stream with scalloped borders of ice, and in the deep blueness of the night sky the stars hung low, pulsing with frosty brilliance. On every side the forest stretched out darkly, frozen in its winter sleep, silent save when a hunting owl cried in the starry darkness. But in the main cave of Dunwold Scar, shut off from the winter night by a deerskin apron across the narrow entrance, was light and warmth and laughter—for was it not Christmas night?

On the raised stone hearth in the middle of the cave the cooking fire blazed high, giving out a fierce heat which all but roasted the assembled outlaws, as well as the great joints of venison which sizzled on spits around it. Firelight flickered redly through the cave, mingling with the glow of candles from the kissing-branch which Marian had hung from the rocky roof just within the cave.

As she sat tending sundry pies among the hot ashes, Marian sometimes glanced up at the kissing-branch, for it had cost her much time and trouble to make, on Christmas Eve, and she was proud of it. Little John had
made her five hoops of green willow and bound them together into a globe, and Robin had brought her mistletoe from a certain oak tree in Clumber Forest; but she herself had bound the sprigs of rosemary closely round the willow hoops, and hung the little, red, long-biding apples in their midst and the mistletoe below, and set the candles in place among the evergreens. Now it hung there, glowing and sparkling in the light of its own crocus-flamed candles. And it was beautiful.

Many of the outlaws were gathered close around the fire, scorching themselves at the cheerful blaze and from time to time turning the sizzling joints on the spits, watched by the great ban-dogs who lay, nose on paws, among them. Others were moving hither and thither, making last-minute preparations for their Christmas feast. Fine linen had been brought from the store cave and spread upon the rough boards which served the outlaws for a table, and upon its snowy whiteness was set out a vast array of foodstuffs. The last withered apples of the year (carefully stored in bran to be eaten at Christmas time) were piled high in coarse wooden trenchers, rubbing shoulders with wheaten bread on a great dish of solid silver. Brown ale foamed in leather jacks, and there were all manner of pies and pasties in bowls and platters of cherry-wood and earthenware, pewter and horn, and gleaming silver.

The week before Christmas was always a busy one for the three womenfolk, baking and brewing for close on a hundred hungry men; but every year, when Christmas night came round, and they saw the brightness in the faces of the outlaws gathering to the feast, they knew their labours had been well worth while.

Only one of the brotherhood was not present in the great cave that night, and that was Will Stukely, Will-the-Bowman, who had gone to visit an old friend in Papplewick and was not yet back, though he had been expected for an hour or more.

Preparations for the feast went on apace, and Will Scarlet had taken the first great joint from the fire. He was shouting to Watkin to bring him a dish for it, when the deerskin apron over the cave entrance was pulled aside, and in the opening appeared the powerful figure of Will-the-Bowman, supporting a young man, hardly more than a boy, who sagged heavily against him with an arm across his shoulders.

Will Stukely came in slowly, letting the deerskins fall behind him and shutting out the bitter night; and as he and his companion came into the glow of the firelight, it could be seen that the boy was grey and shuddering with cold and exhaustion, and that his right foot was swathed in bloody rags.

Instantly, room was made for them beside the fire, and as the stranger sank down with a sigh of relief, holding out icy hands to the blaze, Robin came quickly to him, stepping over men’s legs and hounds’ bodies.

‘What have you done to your foot, lad?’ he asked.

The stranger raised a thin, gipsy-dark face to his, and replied: ‘Got caught in a trap, Master.’

‘Aye,’ said Will. ‘Some fool set a wolf-trap out in the open ride, and the boy here walked into it. Lucky I came upon him.’

Robin was already beginning very gently to unfasten the ragged neckerchief from round the wounded foot.

‘It was very lucky you came upon him,’ he agreed.
‘The forest is no place to be out in all night in this weather—especially in a wolf-trap, which is an ill thing at any time!’

He lifted the last bloodstained fold of the bandage and laid bare an ugly, jagged wound where the iron teeth of the trap had bitten deep into the boy’s ankle and instep.

A gasp came from Much-the-Miller’s-Son, who had risen to look over Robin’s shoulder.

Preparations for supper had quite stopped, and everybody was watching. Then Marian came through the crowd, carrying clean linen and a bowl of water, which she set down at Robin’s side. ‘Poor lad!’ she said softly, and the young man looked up at her with a quick, grateful smile.

Robin began to bathe his guest’s wounded foot, talking quietly as he did so. ‘I cannot help hurting you a little, for it is an ugly wound, and wolf-traps are seldom over-clean.’

‘I shall not mind a little pain, Master,’ said the stranger, ‘if you can only make me able to travel.’

‘You’ll not travel on that foot for several days,’ said Robin bluntly.

‘But I must! Indeed and indeed I must be in Nottingham Town by noon to-morrow!’

Robin heard the desperate note in the young man’s voice, and looked up from his surgery, asking kindly: ‘Why so?’

‘Because of Hugh, my brother. I
must
return to him.’

Robin Hood moved a little, so as to get a better light on his task. ‘What is your name?’ he asked.

‘Jonathan—Black Jonathan men do call me, because I be dark o’ face, and also a blacksmith by trade.’

‘Then, Black Jonathan, do you tell me the whole tale from the beginning, and why you must return by noon to-morrow to this brother of yours.’

The boy Jonathan winced as Robin’s searching though skilful hands hurt his wounded foot; then he said: ‘So be it, Master. My brother Hugh and I were left alone in the world when our father was hanged two years ago for shooting the king’s deer—for our mother died long since, God rest her soul. And so each of us be all the other has, and we be dear to each other accordingly. Well, ye see, Master—I be courting a maid over to Papplewick Village, and ’tisn’t often as I can take a day off from my trade, save at Christmas and Easter, so I set out this morning to visit the lass. I promised Hugh as I’d be back before dark, to make merry with him, and I sent him in to Mistress Peascod over the way, to spend the day—she be always glad to have the little lad. He’ll not begin to worry for me overmuch before the gates are shut for the night, and when once they
be
safe shut he’ll not be able to get out until morning; but he’ll worry sorely; and to-morrow, if I do not come early, he will set out in search of me—and he is but eleven years old and not learned in the ways of the forest. So ye see, Master, I must get back somehow, before harm comes to him.’

‘I’ll take word to the little chap to-morrow early,’ Will Stukely said quickly to Robin.

‘Will you? Good man!’ Robin turned back to Jonathan the Blacksmith, who sat looking swiftly from one to the other. ‘Listen, Jonathan,’ said he, ‘you’ll not be able to travel on that foot for some days. Bide quiet here with us, and Will Stukely will take word from you to your brother to-morrow morning, and see that he comes to no harm.’

Jonathan hesitated, glancing from Will to Robin and back again. ‘I’d be grateful,’ he said. ‘Hugh’s over-venturesome for a youngster; but I be main sorry to put you to so much trouble.’

‘Nay, there’s no trouble,’ said Will-the-Bowman gruffly, beginning to pull gently at the ears of one of the great hounds.

Robin finished his surgery and sat back on his heels. ‘That should make your foot more comfortable,’ said he. ‘And now for our Christmas feast. Black Jonathan, you have been sent to us to be our guest, and it is good to shelter a guest on Christmas night, in memory of that night when Our Lord and His Mother found shelter in a stable, between an ox and an ass. So you shall sit in the place of honour at our feast.’

So presently, the outlaws were settled around the spread cloths, and Black Jonathan sat between Robin and Marian in the place where the high table would have been had they been gathered in the hall of a castle instead of an outlaw stronghold. The great joints of venison smoked on their chargers, and in the midst of it all, wreathed round with bays and rosemary, and set on a charger of silver-gilt that had once belonged to His Grace the Bishop of Hereford, was the boar’s head.

The outlaws feasted royally, they and their Christmas guest; and as for Black Jonathan himself, he did his best to forget his worry for the small brother at home and the throbbing pain in his foot, and played his part in the general merry-making.

Later, when the last vestiges of the feast had been hastily cleared away, all the outlaws gathered close to the fire, enjoying the warmth and light and shelter all
the more by reason of the bitter cold which they knew lay beyond the deerskin apron over the doorway. Outside in the starry darkness wolves howled in the distance, and the outlaws hunched their shoulders and glanced behind them into the shadows, and drew closer in to the fire.

Alice had put fresh candles into the places of the burned-out ones on the kissing-branch; and a pile of old, lichened beech branches stood ready to keep the fire blazing.

Then Alan A’Dale struck up an old, old Christmas song; and the next moment a hundred voices joined in, ‘Blow, Northern Wind, send thou me my Sweeting.’ For a while they sang loudly and merrily, passing from one snatch of a song or carol to another. But there came a moment when they fell quiet, and Marian’s sweet, high voice soared up alone, like a lark into the sunlight. ‘The Seven Joys of Mary,’ sang Marian, and then a soft lullaby, ‘Lullay my Liking.’ And the brotherhood of outlawed men listened to her singing, many of them thinking of homes and loved ones whom they had left behind; but the sadness that came upon them with the singing of that old Christmas lullaby was a gentle sadness, and almost at once they were merry again.

Long before daylight next morning Will-the-Bowman set out for Nottingham. The snow was crisp underfoot, and not deep enough to clog his steps, and when presently the sun came up and he could see his way to travel more swiftly, he strode blithely southward through a world in which the shadows of the trees were blue as wild hyacinths across snow that sparkled in the thin winter sunlight. The criss-cross tracks of birds, and the heavier trails
left by fox, wild-cat, and rabbit showed everywhere on the whiteness, and once he came upon the deeply-printed tracks of the wolf-pack that the outlaws often heard howling in the long winter nights.

He travelled swiftly, striking through the forest to join the Nottingham road, and strode along the deeply rutted way twirling his quarterstaff and whistling as he went, like any country fellow looking forward to a pleasant day in the town. The sun was not yet high when he reached the gates of Nottingham and strode through, whistling still. The lounging men-at-arms at the gate-house gave him only a casual glance as he went by, for though he was not disguised there was nothing in his russet-brown tunic and warm hood to set him apart from any other countryman who passed through the gates that day.