The Outlaws of Sherwood (2 page)

Robin knew that any story of his own indifferent marksmanship would lose nothing in the telling. Bill Sharp would be telling it far and wide at least by the next day—and Robin thought it likely that he would have gone whining to the Chief Forester to be given permission to go to the fair after all, despite Nobble's decision, and would therefore be able to see for himself. There were those who said that Bill Sharp's real father was the Chief Forester, and not the farmer who had bred him up—and sent him off to be an apprentice forester at the earliest possible opportunity. Robin could readily believe it; it seemed to him that Bill was the Chief Forester all over again in small, for Bill was a skinny, weedy boy, and the Chief Forester was fat from many years of living off other people's labour, and eating at the sheriff's table. Robin particularly did not want to miss his first mark, with Bill Sharp watching.

But Much and Marian would be bringing their bows and would think it odd if he did not, for they were all to enter the contest. Privately Robin felt that Marian had a good chance of winning; she was one of those who always allowed for the breeze that would kick up from nowhere after the arrow had left the string. They might not like it when she proved to be a girl, but no one would notice in the crowd when the three of them signed up together, for she would be wearing boy's clothes, with her hair up under a hat; and after she won, Robin didn't think they'd deny her the prize. If he didn't enter, Marian and Much might decide they wouldn't either—he could hear Marian saying, “Oh, Robin, don't be tiresome. It doesn't matter. What is the prize—a lamb? I don't particularly want a lamb. Do you? I only came so we could spend the day together.”

Robin had not told her or Much what his life had been like since his father died; and this was only too easy a decision to keep, as he had so little time to meet with them. They knew that his father had been a forester, and a man much admired and respected by the folk who lived roundabout. Too much respected, in the eyes of the sheriff, for there were those who felt that Robert Longbow should have had the Chief Forester's post; but he had been a quiet man who never took advantage of his popularity against the sheriff. And so the sheriff and his choice of Chief Forester had let him alone—in case his popularity might prove inconvenient if anything untoward happened to him. It had been their great good luck that he had died so suddenly of the winter catarrh; but he had driven himself very hard since his wife died, and was not so strong as he had been. No one thought anything of Robert Longbow's death but sorrow to see a good man gone; and Robin had known better than to mention the unnecessary call that came one stormy midnight after his father was already sickening. When Robert came back late the next morning, he was wet through, and he took to his bed, and did not leave it again alive.

His friends knew that the Chief Forester was hardly Robin's favourite person, but they knew little more than that. Let them think the unpleasantness was minor, left over from the old romantic story of how his father and the Chief Forester had courted the same woman, and his father had won her, despite the Chief Forester's better standing—and private income. He'd bring his bow to the fair, and enter the archery contest, and try not to miss at least his first shot. Even if Bill Sharp was not there, he was always at his worst with a lot of people watching him. But he really wanted to see Marian win.

He resettled his bow on his shoulder and gave another shake to his quiver, that it would hang straight, and not tease the back of his neck; he spent far too much of his daily life walking to be comfortable with an arrow-sack looped around his belt and banging against one leg in the common manner. That done, he set off solemnly through the trees—trying to feel that his decision was not only final but a good one, and that he was pleased with it besides. It was a long way to the town of Nottingham; it was probably foolish of him to have taken the time for target practice, particularly when practice wasn't going to tell him anything he didn't already know. He tried to whistle, but gave it up as a bad job.

He knew no other life than forestry, and if he left Nottingham he would have no choice but to give up his father's holding. His father's pride in England had extended to include his pride in tenant ownership of a cottage and small bit of land—land for a garden, and the cottage large enough to have separate rooms for eating and sleeping. There was even a separate coop for his wife's chickens, built against one outside wall of the cottage, where the birds were not only out from underfoot in the house, with their dirt and their feathers, but safe from foxes and other marauders as well. It was not only Robin's mother's family who was conscious that she'd married beneath her.

There was another reason Robin would not leave Nottingham, nor voluntarily give up his loosening hold on his father's land: Marian. And he could not help it that he often recalled that his gentry-bred mother had chosen to marry a mere forester with no prospects. But while the present Chief Forester remained, there was no chance of marriage for Robin, neither to a member of the gentry nor to the humblest village girl, who would never contemplate sleeping apart from her chickens were she so fortunate as to own any.

Robin knew the Nottingham woods hereabouts so well he did not need to think about where he was going, and his feet carried him responsibly forward while his mind was elsewhere. But he was not in the mood for any meeting with his fellows, and he was snapped out of his reverie by the sound of voices: one of them Tom Moody's, the Chief Forester's great friend and crony, and another Bill Sharp's.

Robin stopped, but it was too late, for they had seen him. There were half a dozen of them together, and they sat and watched him so expectantly that he wondered if they had been waiting for him, and what they intended to do.

Bill stood up to his full if insignificant height, and leaned casually against a tree by the narrow, tree-crowded path. Robin, if he continued, would have to pass so near him their sleeves might brush; and there was no graceful nor inconspicuous way to leave the path altogether. The others sat where they were; Tom had a very large grin on his face. There was what appeared to be the remains of a meal spread out around them; one or two were still chewing, and Robin could smell the sharp tang of the ale in the small open cask that lounged on the greensward among them.

“A very good day to you, Master Robin,” said Bill, his arms folded across his negligible chest, the sole of one foot cocked nonchalantly against his tree. “I'm afraid I can't suggest that you join our feed—I fear there is little left but crumbs.”

Tom stood up, and Robin recalled that Tom was the only forester his father, who could see goodness in almost anybody, had called bad. Tom was still grinning; there were small strings of meat caught between his teeth. He shot the king's deer for his own belly whenever he chose, and the Chief Forester looked the other way—so long as he got a haunch of it. “Perhaps young Robin would like the crumbs—he's a little too thin, don't you think, lads?” He reached out as Robin stood hesitating a few paces from where Bill leaned against his tree, and seized his arm.

Robin could not stop the spasm of disgust that crossed his face as the man's fingers touched him, and he jerked himself free with an unnecessary violence—a violence that he knew at once had cost him any chance he might have had in escaping this meeting without some kind of skirmish.

Tom laughed, for he knew it too, and it was what he wanted; and he was pleased that his prey had proved so easy to bait. He pawed at Robin again, circling the young man's upper arm with his thick fingers. “Too thin, eh, lads? Too thin to do a
man's
work as a forester?”

Robin flushed but stood stiffly and said nothing, hoping against his better judgement that Tom might yet let him pass.

But Tom only stretched out his other hand, and pulled one of Robin's arrows half out of the quiver—by the feathers, Robin knew, and he gritted his teeth, for he could not afford damage to even one of his arrows—and then let it drop again, and Robin heard the protest of the other stiff pinions as the dropped shaft forced its way downward. “And certainly too thin and weak to draw a man's bow like a man.”

He laughed again, and the hot foul wash of his ale-smelling breath over Robin's face brought all the young man's frustrations to a boil. Tom knew as well as he himself did that he could not easily draw his father's bow, which was a hand's-length longer and better than a stone heavier to pull than the plainer, lighter bow he carried. He kept his father's bow in what had been his father's room, carefully wrapped and stored against damp and rodent teeth; and occasionally he took it out and practised with it, when no one was near. But he could not bear it that this man should gibe at him so, now, and just before anger stopped thought altogether he said to himself: They are here to trap me—well, let them do their worst. And then the anger overcame him, and he snarled at his tormentor: “I can draw a bow as well as you, or any other fat forester who can barely sight down his arrow for fear of stinging his paunch with the released string.”

Now Tom let go of Robin and his own face began to flush up with anger, and Bill dropped his crossed arms and stood warily, and the other four men stopped chewing and got to their feet. What they thought of doing or might have done Robin did not know; but anger still darkened his mind and while it did he felt no fear. “If you choose to doubt me, then I will happily meet you at the Nottingham Fair later today, for I go now to that place that I may see how I fare at the archery contest. And I will say that I will shoot far more handsomely than you, whose greasy hands will let his bow slip, and mayhap his arrow shall pierce the sheriff's hat where he sits watching the performance, and then you shall win a prize specially for you, and yet like not what you might have chosen.”

The seven men stood for a moment like a tableau in a Christmas pageant; and then Tom said thickly, “We shall not wait for the fair; we shall have our shooting match here. And by my faith, if you do not shoot as you choose to boast you can, be sure that I shall take great pleasure in basting your ribs till your sides are as red as any flayed deer's.

“Come,” said he, turning on his heel. “What shall we use as mark?” He spoke, not to Robin, but to his friends; yet even they quailed before the fierceness of his gaze. Bill backed cautiously away from him, as if Tom might order him strung up kicking for a more challenging target. “There,” he said, and Robin's heart sank in him as Tom pointed. “See the gnarled oak tree, two score rods distant, I judge, or thereabouts? And see the crotch halfway up that tree, and the small black burl beneath the crotch? At that we shall aim.” He strode over to where his bow and quiver lay, next to the small open cask on the ground, and he snatched them up, tumbling the quiver through the loop on his belt, his knuckles white where they held the bow.

“As the challenged, I go first,” he said; but Robin was too sick to protest that it was not this test he had offered as challenge; nor, he knew, would a protest have done him any good. At such a range he would be lucky if his arrows did not bounce—if they struck the correct tree at all. The anger that had borne him up drained away as suddenly as it had risen, and he was cold and weary, and knew he had been a fool. He wondered if Tom meant to kill him after. There was no doubt that Tom was the better archer, any more than it was uncommon knowledge that Robin was not the archer his father had been; Bill had made his ears burn often enough on this subject—for all that Bill himself could barely hit the broad side of a barn at six paces. Robin thought sadly that he had not known the old wound could still hurt so sorely.

Robin turned heavy eyes to Tom as the bigger man took his stance and pulled his arrow powerfully back—but he noticed that the man's hands were not quite steady. With anger? Robin thought. Or with ale? Either way he will take joy in beating me senseless.

“Three arrows each we may try,” Tom said between his teeth, and let go his first shaft. It flew straight, but a little awry, for it buried itself at the left edge of the burl, and not the center. The second struck so near to the first that their feathers vibrated together; and this second one was nearer the burl's center. But the third, which should have struck nearest of all, went wild, and sank in the trunk a finger's-breadth from the burl. Tom threw his bow down savagely and turned to Robin. “Let us see you shoot yet half so well,” he said threateningly.

Robin slowly moved forward to take his place, slowly unslung his bow, bent it to slip the string into its notch, and pulled an arrow from his quiver. But his hands were steady as he drew the bowstring back and sighted down the arrow.

His first arrow struck the far right side of the treetrunk, a good hand's-breadth from the burl. There was a snicker behind him. It might be Bill; he doubted it was Tom. And yet his arrow was, for him and indeed for most archers, good shooting. It was not for his archery that Robin's father had called Tom Moody bad. He notched and drew his second arrow, and it flew beautifully, to strike at the veriest right-hand edge of the burl; and yet it was nearer the mark than only one of Tom's, and Robin had already shot two.

He fitted his last arrow to the string, staring at his hands, which went fairly about their familiar work without acknowledging the trouble that they and the rest of Robin were in. The arrow was his best; from the same fine-grained bit of pine he had made a half-dozen arrows Sir Richard had paid handsomely for, so handsomely that Robin had let himself keep the last, the odd seventh, in the wistful hope that so excellent an arrow might have an effect on his marksmanship. When he raised the bow, for a moment his eyes clouded over, and he could not see the tree he was aiming for; and he wondered, as his arrow quivered against the string, if he would ever shoot another after Tom and his lads got through with him.