The Outlaws of Sherwood (32 page)

Mary had finished one side, bending under Little John's long arm to prick the last holes; Little John thrust the pole into the loops and tightened the lashings. Cecily got up to let Mary begin the other side. She should take the needle away from Mary and do the work herself, but she was tired—so tired. As if Mary knew what she was thinking, she looked up and smiled; and Cecily smiled gratefully back. She drank a dipper of water herself, rolling it carefully around inside her sore cheek, and, seeing Henry staring at her, scowled right back at him. His face fell a little more, half-puckered, like a disappointed child's. “At least eat something—or take food with you,” he said, trying to sound bitter and sounding only unhappy.

Little John looked up. “So long as we stay with you we endanger you. You saved our lives; we know that. The only thanks we are able to offer you is to leave you as quickly as we can. The hair on my nape tells me we are followed even now; and we cannot trust that no one noticed our leaving with you. I have found that what you most want to be overlooked will be seen, even if many other things are happening at the same time. There is something terribly attractive about any action that one wants not to be observed.” He got up to reach for the other pole. He found a knot on it that was liable to catch on the blanket; Osbert offered him his short knife. The blade twinkled briefly in Little John's hand, and Cecily remembered again, with a shock like a kick, the twinkle of a blade in her own hand that had not been only a nightmare, and her stomach roiled, and she thought she was going to be sick. She sat down abruptly, till the curtain of red before her eyes faded.

Henry said, “Your lad is weak with weariness and hunger; he will be no good to you if he collapses.”

“I am not,” said Cecily, but her voice sounded not only weak but petulant; and she would not explain the nightmare. Let them think it was hunger.

Little John said with great gentleness: “This is what it is to be an outlaw.”

The pot over the fire had begun to steam. Annie dug in a sack brought off the waggon, and dumped some wooden bowls and chunks of bread on the ground near the fire; the loaves thumped together with a noise like stones. Annie dropped a chunk in each bowl and began to pour the soup over it; she came very deliberately to Cecily's side with the first bowl and offered it to her as if she was expecting refusal. But Cecily took it, hoping Little John would wait long enough that the broth could soften the bread; her jaw wasn't up to much chewing. She looked into Annie's face, trying to smile, and saw there, quite clearly, kindness, and then she was suddenly even more tired, and the tears prickled behind her eyes.

Henry got the second bowl.

Cecily stabbed at the bread with her finger, willing it to crumble; Little John took his bowl with a grave “Thank you,” and began to eat at once. Cecily picked up her bowl and was going to go to Marian, but a gnarled little hand pressed down on her shoulder and dark wrinkled skirts whisked past her, and Annie was squatting by Marian with a bowl and a spoon.

Little John was finished too soon; Cecily gulped the broth and stuffed the sticky bread into a pocket for later, and rose to her feet. She did not know if she was merely infected by Little John's anxiety, but she found that she too was restless, and did not after all wish to stay by this quiet fire and drowse and nurse her bruises. Little John bent to pick up the two poles of Marian's rough litter, and Henry said, “Wait—I almost forgot.” He reached an arm around the corner of the waggon's canvas door, and pulled out a little bag. “This is yours,” he said, and held out—Cecily's hat. She looked at it in amazement. “You dropped it when you dropped your tunic,” he said. He shook it, and it jingled with the coins Little John had earned as a wrestler, a few centuries ago. “Take it.”

Cecily shook her head, and Henry took a step toward her. “No,” said Little John. “We'll not take it. It is little enough to give you for our lives; but at least it may go some way to buying you a new shirt and jacket.”

Henry said uncomfortably, “I do not care about that; the shirt was old, and Osbert ruins his coats as often as anyone could do it for him. You may have need of money.”

Cecily shook her head again, but no words came to her. Again it was Little John who answered: “What lies next before us has little to do with money.”

Henry dropped his outstretched arm, and Cecily turned away and seized her ends of the poles; she was at Marian's feet, that Marian's head might ride the higher. They lifted Marian smoothly; she was surprised again at her friend's light weight, though she knew the weight would become that of millstones and mountains before the night was out. She tried to fix it in her memory that she had initially thought Marian no great burden, so she might think of it later.

Henry said, “And will you not tell me even at parting—are you Little John?”

Little John said quietly, “Yes, I am he.”

“And”—more wistfully—“is that Robin Hood?”

Cecily was staring at Marian's face, remembering how pretty she had always thought her, how gay and strong she had always been; she had been equal to anything the boys might do, equal as if she gave it no thought; she did what she chose. While Cecily, a few years younger, stumbled in her wake and loved and envied her. The matted hair curled around her forehead now, the smears of mud and blood on her face made' her nearly unrecognisable; and never before had her cheeks been hollow. “The shooting you saw today was Robin Hood's shooting,” said Little John, in a tone suggesting that Henry was foolish to ask.

Henry understood what he was supposed to understand, and he looked a little embarrassed, but he said, “We are not entirely unknown in this area. If you ask the tavern-keeper at the inn on the road to Smithdale he will get word to Henry who leads a troop of travelling players. We usually winter with Sir Michael, at Highwall.” Henry almost smiled. “And we could still use a strong man. But remember that there is always a place with us for someone who needs it.”

Little John nodded. “We will remember; and I shall tell Robin, and he will be grateful, as we are grateful to you now. Forgive us for leaving you with so little courtesy.”

Henry shrugged, and the last anger smoothed out of his face. “Of course. Go with our good wishes.”

But Little John was only half-listening to Henry. Cecily heard it too, a far-off confused sound which might have been horses galloping. Without another word Little John turned so that he led them, the litter between and Cecily behind, and they plunged into the trees.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Marian moaned and stirred. Cecily tried to make her bent elbows take as much of the jolting as she could, but it was not easy. They trotted on for some time, Little John apparently smelling his way, for it was soon too dark to see clearly; but he rarely stumbled or swerved. Cecily panted in his wake, expecting at any moment to have to beg humiliatingly for a pause to breathe; and her feet went on picking themselves up just high enough to avoid being tangled by roots and rocks. But perhaps he knew her limits—or his own; for she never came quite to that point, and they walked and trotted and walked again into the dark hours.

They stopped once, to drink at a stream. Little John said briefly, “Stonebrook; we're above the Small Falls here,” and Cecily suddenly understood where they were, and that they were quartering their way through a small corner of Sherwood—and with some chance of coming to Friar Tuck before they fell down with exhaustion.

When they went on it was at a gentler pace, but they still covered much ground. Cecily's shoulders ached and her finger joints were on fire, and she had blisters starting. They stopped a second time and Cecily offered Little John half her bread, but he shook his head. “I've eaten mine.”

It was full night now, and as Cecily slumped against a tree and ate her bread in ragged mouthfuls Little John paced carefully around them, peering at the sky where the trees would let him. “Do you know where we are?” Cecily asked, and realised she was too tired to care overmuch what he replied. She still could not chew, and had to hold the hard bread in her mouth till it began to disintegrate on its own.

There was a glint of teeth in the shifting starlight. “I hope so. I dare not wait till dawn, for Marian's sake if not ours. If the breeze has veered much, I could be leading us past Friar Tuck. I would be happier if the moon would rise, but wishing will not hurry her. And here I should be finding one of our marked trees, and I am not.”

Cecily, on the ground, had a slightly different angle of sight, and her eyes had grown accustomed to the shadows of the trees. “Yes, you are,” she said dreamily. “There. Perhaps the last storm displaced it.”

Little John followed her pointing finger, and there indeed was the little device of braided twigs that the outlaws sometimes used to mark a path. It had broken off and fallen from its high place into a bush, and there lay almost hidden but for the rustle of evening wind across the shadows.

“Ah.” Little John heaved a sigh that told Cecily he was more worried than he was admitting.

They arrived at Friar Tuck's cottage soon after; there was one long questioning bay from one of the dogs, but they knew most of Robin's band. Little John and Cecily were old friends, and the dogs came up to thwack their thighs with their great brutal tails. Tuck knew his dogs' voices and recognised the single query that meant the arrival of a friend, and his door opened before Little John and Cecily had got close enough to knock.

“Why—?” he began, and saw the litter. “Come in,” he said. “I will risk a fire.”

He had one ready laid for such an extremity, and it caught and flared up at once. Cecily shivered; it was her thoughts that made her cold more than the gentle air—or a reasonable fear of the conditions of Tuck's roof and fire-hole, despite Jocelin's attentions—but cold she was. Tuck knelt by the litter, which they had laid upon the floor as they could, and hissed between his teeth. “Marian,” he said. “What happened?” He began to raid a small cupboard as Little John told him.

“Guy of Gisbourne,” said Tuck, dismayed; “that is the worst news yet. Folk see things so differently.” He had knelt again, and was delicately cutting at the sash around Marian's body.

“All who were there today, save us two, I think, believe they saw Robin Hood,” said Little John.

“Ah,” said Friar Tuck. “I believe you, and yet that is not what I meant.”

Cecily was foggily aware that Tuck was saying something important, but she could not make herself understand. “What do you mean?” she said.

“There is water in that tun by the door. Bring me some,” said Tuck; and when she had done so, he said, “Have you asked Robin Hood who he is?”

Cecily said, puzzled, watching Tuck's deft hands, “No. I would not.”

“Have you asked yourself who he is?”

Cecily said slowly, “He—he is our leader.”

“The leader of a band of outlaws,” said Friar Tuck, “who live leanly in Sherwood. And did you hear the folk today talk of this Robin Hood whom they saw shooting his arrows into the target better than anyone else?”

“They spoke of him—as if he were not human,” Cecily said, thinking of the woman selling trinkets. “She said he was one of the Old Ones, come to save England.”

“Robin Hood would not agree, I think,” said Friar Tuck, laying back the clotted cloth; Marian gasped and murmured, and one of the dogs whined outside the door.

“No,” said Cecily, shocked.

“I would not agree with either Robin or your fairground tale-teller,” said the friar. “And Marian, I guess, agrees with me, or she would not be here.” He added softly, “But, my dear, was it worth your life to make the tale come true?”

“But—” said Cecily, and could think of no words to follow.

Friar Tuck said kindly, but with some humour, “Ask me about the meaning of life, or anything else you choose. Tales are as much the necessary fabric of our lives as our bodies are. There are blankets in that chest; pull them out and lie down beside it; there is just room for you, I think, as you are the smaller. Little John, I will trouble you to help me bring my mattress here by the fire, and then if Cecil will let you have any of the blankets, you can sleep too. There should be space enough where the mattress lay, although I may require you to keep your feet tucked up.”

“They will look here,” said Little John.

“Not tonight,” said Friar Tuck. “Only an outlaw could find his way to me on a night with no moon. I will not let you move her further tonight anyway; tomorrow we will decide what to do—early tomorrow, I promise you. Perhaps we should all four—and the dogs—go to ground in the little bolt-hole you and Robin arranged for me after the good baron had cause to hate me. Perhaps I will merely send you. I have not decided. Go to sleep.”

Cecily said, struggling to keep her eyelids open a minute longer, “You—say—four—of us. Then Marian will live through this night.”

There was a pause long enough to notice, before Tuck said, “I believe so. In all events, you can do nothing about it; you have done your turn, and it is now mine. Go to sleep. I dislike repeating myself.”

Smells haunted Cecily's dreams: bright sharp smells of green spring and bitter herbs, and grim smells of blood and death, but nothing woke her for several hours, till her stomach observed that she was now smelling
food
, and then her eyes came stiffly open.

“Good morning,” said Friar Tuck as she sat up. “It is a fine morning, and the dogs are disturbed by no far-off rumble of armed men coming this way. There is bread and cheese and ale on the table and stew on the fire.”

“How is Marian?” said Cecily; her voice sounded as rusty as a neglected byrnie.

Tuck shook his head, but his face was not gloomy. “I do not know yet. I may know today; perhaps not till tomorrow. I believe she will live if she can, and that is a great thing.”