The Outlaws of Sherwood (16 page)

But Robin caught him as he went by, and was swung round violently with the wild running weight of him. “You fool,” he said to the panting boy. “Do you think to come at him with your bare hands? He would spit you on the point of his sword like the pig you call him—and you would deserve it for your foolishness.”

“Harken the shepherd, little lamb,” drawled St Clair, but he had been paying too great attention to the scene before him, and now a wiry noose was dropped round his neck and twisted tight by the strong hands of Will Scarlet. The baron made one wild backward lash with his sword, but Will yanked him round by the neck as he dodged the stroke.

“Do not kill him,” said Robin, as the baron's knees buckled. “Why not?” cried Alan, and wrenched himself from Robin's grasp and ran to his fallen enemy, and snatched up St Clair's sword. “He deserves to die.”

“He may,” said Robin, “but his death is not your responsibility.” The boy stood staring down at the baron's face, and Robin did not like his expression. “Drop it,
now
,” said Robin harshly. Alan looked up, and met Robin's gaze, and blinked; his shoulders relaxed, and he let the sword fall.

And the flower-lady slipped past Will, as he bent over the baron, and fled to her lover; and he put his arms around her, and she put her head on his shoulder and wept; but what they murmured then to each other the outlaws were careful not to hear.

The men who had followed Will through the narrow side door—carelessly left unbolted—of the chapel ushered more folk outside. The waiting-women clung to each other and looked around with frightened eyes; the sight of Alan and their lady seemed to give them no comfort. The last guardsmen were dragged out by the heels, and roped to the ones already lying outside: “As daisy-chains go, I have seen more attractive specimens,” said Much. The other Norman gentry looked as though it was all in a day's outing to be threatened by ruffians, and seemed only politely interested in their situation, and far less worried about the unconscious baron than the women were for their lady. The little nervous man looked as if he had been sentenced for execution upon the morrow, and kept up a listless, nerve-wracking keening till Will, saying, “Oh, shut
up
, man,” clouted him over the ear, and he crumpled and lay on the ground like a bit of dropped laundry.

“Have you forgotten the function of a gag?” said Robin crossly. “He was hardly threatening your life.”

“Only my temper,” said Will.

“Then your temper is far too fragile,” said Robin.

The flower-lady seemed not to notice her father's fate, if indeed the little man was her father, and now turned a radiant if tear-stained face to the other women and declared that they saw before them her own true love who she had known would rescue her from the shame of her Norman wedding.

“Faith is a wonderful thing,” murmured Much, giving a last self-satisfied yank on the prisoners' bonds.

“It is indeed,” said Friar Tuck, who had emerged from his hiding-place when the baron had been felled. “But I believe we might now, perhaps hastily—” He made little herding gestures at Alan and the lady. “And, young Alan,” he added, “if it is any comfort to you against the knowledge that your enemy still breathes, I should have refused to marry a man who killed another while he lay unconscious at his feet, however richly that man might deserve such a fate.”

Alan-a-dale at these words wrenched his eyes away from the flower-lady's face long enough to focus on the friar. He half-smiled, with an odd, old look, and said: “Just now, Friar Tuck, I have no enemies.”

He turned back to the lady and took a deep breath. “Are you
certain
?”

“A fine time to be asking that,” said Much, rather louder than necessary, and Will bit his lip to keep from laughing. But neither Alan nor the lady showed any consciousness of anyone but each other.

“I am certain,” said the lady, in a thin, clear voice. “Certain am I that you are my own dear love.” He clasped her reaching hands to his breast and knelt before her; and several of the waiting-women, who seemed to have believed their lady's declaration, sighed themselves, and clasped their own hands at their own breasts.

And then the priest and his attendants were led out of the chapel, the priest squeaking about the outrage, his eyes as large as an owl's, his hands fluttering like atrophied wings. There was a ripple of laughter around the ring of outlaws, in relief that the scene Alan and his lady were presenting to their unwilling audience was interrupted. “Come,” said Robin, firmly, and seized Alan by the shoulder. The boy unfolded himself to his feet reluctantly; and Robin and the friar, with the two lovers, went into the chapel.

CHAPTER TEN

Little John and his folk were already at Greentree by the time that Robin and his company, including the newlyweds, returned at dusk; the former were looking very pleased with themselves. The latter looked mostly tired. Robin felt bone-weary in a way that he rarely did; and yet the day had gone, over all, smoothly. But he found himself often and uneasily looking over his shoulder at Alan-a-dale, leading his lady, back again upon her white horse.

Marian was at Greentree too, and she came to Robin and touched his cheek, and smiled into his eyes, which unreasonably made his anxiety over the unlikely burden his outlaws had taken on by listening to Alan's story more sensible than the taking on itself was. Even Much's sense of romance had little to do with young lovers too innocent to come in out of the rain; and Alan's megrims had grated on Much as severely as on anyone.

“I will leave Little John to tell you what a fine haul he has made,” said Marian; “I see that you too have been successful.”

The flower-lady was flowing off her horse into her husband's arms. “I guess we must claim success,” said Robin. “Those two are wed, and none of us is the worse for it except a few bruises.”

Marian said gently, “The horses can be made useful. Except the white palfrey; she is much too conspicuous.”

“And the baron's stallion,” said Robin. “We couldn't travel far enough to make the risk worth selling him, for all the price he would bring.”

“Sell him?” said Little John. “I know a few farmers who would give us a winter's food for the covering of their mares.”

“And what of the farmer whose ill luck led one of St Clair's men past his field on the day St Clair's stallion was settling his mares? No. We'll take the stallion and the palfrey near the baron's lands and release them. We can take the others to the horse fair in Nottingham. Rafe, I don't want you seen abroad again so soon; that was a near thing for you less than a month ago. Have we any other horse-coper?”

There was a silence, and Edward said, “I know one end of a horse from another—pretty much.”

Marian laughed. “Sell them to me. I will make a very handsome story to my father's friends of the young man who pretty much knew one end of a horse from another who sold them to me. Our man at Blackhill can sell them again. Our steward can use the money; there's a certain outbuilding that needs repair. The rumour is that outlaws have been using it, if you can believe it. And our steward is fond of me, and will make no inconvenient protests.”

“I will make the inconvenient protests,” said Robin. Marian had her mouth open to reply before he went any further, and there was the beginning of a general furtive movement from those of the outlaws nearest at hand to become less so. It was common knowledge among them that the Blackhill steward knew perfectly well who Marian's friends were, and he and the woman who looked after the house agreed placidly when Marian's father or other folk commented on the amount of time she spent at the country house. But it was a sore point with Robin, and any reference to Blackhill was likely to start a row. But there was a timely interruption.

“What say you, that you would release my Lily?” said the clear, carrying voice of Alan's new bride. She stepped into the circle of firelight, and very lovely she looked, her bright skirts shades of gold in the glinting light, and her pale hair tawny. The upward-flung shadows made her eyes huge and dark, and her cheekbones showed as clean and pure as the edge of a chalice. “Why must I lose my Lily? She is my only friend here, but my dear husband, for I come with no other, nor my portion either.”

There was a dismayed silence. “We cannot have the keeping of beasts, as we live,” said Robin; “and I fear you must resign yourself to the way we live—for now, till we can make other arrangements for you and Alan, away from Sherwood.”

The small chin came up. “I resign myself to nothing but what my husband tells me. Lily will be no trouble; I will comb her myself.”

“Combing is the least of it,” said Robin. “We have neither fodder nor stabling for her. We live as you see us—we barely have shelter for ourselves. When it rains, we usually get wet.”

Involuntarily she glanced at the sky, in which stars were beginning to appear, and then looked down again at Robin, who had not moved from his seat on a convenient log-end. She was frowning, and it occurred to him, tiredly, that she was accustomed to men standing when they addressed her, and calling her “my lady.”

“As I see you?” she said, haltingly, and Robin felt a faint stab of remorse that he had misinterpreted her frown. “But this is—but a camp. A temporary thing. Alan said that Sherwood was now our home. You must have a—a house?” She drew her skirts closer around her; already the hems were draggled and dirty. Her eyes grew even larger as she looked at Robin. “You do not—live—here?”

Robin stood up. His right hamstring was extremely sore where one of the guards had kicked him. “My lady—we are outlaws. If we had a house we would not long survive, for we would be soon taken from it. This camp is a temporary thing because we live temporary lives.”

“Alan said—” she whispered. And silence fell. No one moved. Then she turned abruptly and went off into the shadows, toward the tiny turf hut that the outlaws (on Marian's suggestion) had hastily cleared out, that Alan and his bride might have it this first night.

The hut usually held what goods and tools as the outlaws possessed that were not in such constant use as to render a place to store them unnecessary. Everyone was zealously wishing for the weather to remain fair overnight, that the heap of miscellaneous objects now reposing at the edge of the glen would not demand to be suddenly transferred into the hut-cave some time during the small hours—which would then oblige half the company to sleep in the rain instead. Everyone else might sleep through the sound of rain beginning to fall, but Robin would not, so there was no hope there.

“I don't think she'll appreciate the flowers you hung over the door,” said Much to Marian.

“Poor little girl,” said Marian.

“Or the luxury of privacy,” said Little John.

“Luxury?” said Much. “On your wedding night, maybe. But I wouldn't want to make a habit of it. Too many draughts. Temporary living has a lot of cracks in it.”

“Bartlemey and Rafe can take the stallion and the—and Lily to where they may be released. Tomorrow,” said Robin. “Who knows? Perhaps his stallion's recapture will make the baron somewhat less thirsty for our blood.”

“You're dreaming,” said Little John. “He was, as I understand it, rude enough when you parted him from his bride; he did not yet know that he was parted from much of his substance as well. That glad surprise awaits him yet, unless Will does not know how to tie knots.”

“Or unless you do not,” retorted Will. “I guess you overlooked a kitchen maid who ran round with a paring knife as soon as she saw the back of you, and there has been a rescue at the chapel this very eve.”

“The maidservants were all in fits,” Little John acknowledged. “They were the hardest to tie up, 'tis true, for they feared the wrong things; I shut two or three in wardrobes and threw the keys in the pond. But I think Alan's lady has given us a good portion, if you reckon what we brought away with us.”

“I doubt she'll look at it that way,” said Marian.

“She will if Alan tells her to,” said Robin.

By the time a week had passed, the tale of Roger of St Clair's humiliation had spread far and wide, and the outlaws had brought a good bit of it back to tell at Robin's fireside.

“I hear we're all seven feet tall,” said Much, “instead of only the one of us. And as this was told by one of the guards at the chapel, I find myself wondering what he might have made of Little John.”

“I hear Little John threw wardrobes full of maidservants into the lake—alone, and with his bare hands, you understand—and miraculously none was drowned,” said Marian. “It is fortunate that I am so well disciplined to keep my face ladylike, that is to say, blank, for such a terrible story should, of course, make a lady blanch. John, however—our steward at Blackhill—laughed when he heard, and said he could use that man on our holding, did he want to cease to be an outlaw.”

“Have you maids that want a wetting?” said Much.

“I do not think that was what our steward had in his mind, but as you ask, I can think of—”

“Robin,” said Bartlemey, who materialized out of the leaves and branches just beyond the fire-niche. “There's a young lad making his way here.…” He ended as if he didn't mean to end, but could not decide how to go on.

“And?” said Robin.

“Well—he looks angry and exhausted, and I think his clothes were good once, but they don't fit him very well and I do not think they belonged to him when he put them on. And he plunges through the forest like a blind thing and yet he looks like he will come on here; our usual ruses he ignores as if he did not notice. We could spring a snare on him, of course. And yet—I do not think we need fear him, but I have no cause to say so, except his face bears the anger of hard usage and not of arrogance.”