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“The gold’s there for the taking!” Raneth’s excitement spread to Wilf and Arthur. Even Dav, thinking of that flashing sun-bright coin, felt a reckless surge of greed.
Naught was ever there for the taking, though, not in his experience. If the sheriff didn’t have guards, the mayor did. If no guards kept vigilant watch, it was a trap designed for Robin Hood and his men, like that prize of the golden arrow at the May Day competition for archers.
Easy coin motivated people into evil, as Dav knew with a heart-wrenching regret. Greed had motivated the woman he had loved. She’d conspired with her lover to murder her husband and blame Dav. Only a twist of Faerie magic that banished lies had prevented him from being arrested.
The sheriff’s swift justice had killed her lover and seen her hanged a month later.
In the weeks since, waking in the deepest dark, he caught a vagrant whiff of the lavender she’d worn, or he felt the silken slide of her skin. Her whispers wafted across his face. He kept his eyes tight shut, rolled to his other side, and jerked the blanket around his ears.
In the daylight, he never spoke of what haunted him.
As a barricade against those nightly memories, he sought company more than usual, which brought him to this campfire with these young outlaws, three lads still new to the band. Arthur had come in early spring, Raneth after May Day, and Wilf a fortnight later.
Dav reckoned he needed to speak some sense into their over-eager minds. “You can’t just march into the mayor’s home and demand he turn over his strongbox.”
“We won’t do that,” Raneth scoffed. “We sneak in at night, when he’s snoring his bloody head off.”
“And his wife?”
“She’ll be in another room, trying to get some sleep. With all the noise he makes, they’ll never hear us downstairs.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Dav countered.
“Aye, `strooth.” Wilf punched his friend high on the arm. “She could stuff her ears with wadding. Wouldn’t that be a sight! Goodwife Herend in her cap with wool sticking out her ears!”
All three lads guffawed. Even Dav grinned at the image.
“Better than them gargoyles they’ve carved into the church!” Arthur stuffed fingers in his mouth. He stretched it wide, bugged his eyes, and waggled his fingers. The grotesque face set them off again.
When they settled, Dav tried another bit of sense. “You can’t know where the mayor keeps his strongbox.”
“I can and do,” Raneth boasted, a boast that quickly turned into a complaint. “Didn’t I clerk for him? Months and months I kept his ledgers and strongbox. Didn’t I lock it in the cabinet every night and bring it out every morning? Didn’t I count out coins for what he had to pay? Didn’t I count in the coins that came from merchants and the guilds? Didn’t I write his letters and keep all his papers in that cabinet? And then he kicks me out after May Day! All `cause I laughed at the sheriff’s fool plan to capture Robin Hood with a painted arrow. Was that enough? Nay, it weren’t. He had me in stocks for three days!”
“That was the sheriff, wasn’t it?” Arthur chimed in. “That’s what you said when you came in. The sheriff put you in the stocks for three days because you laughed at him.”
“Mayor Herend agreed with him! I didn’t do anything but laugh!”
“I don’t see you wanting revenge on the sheriff,” Wilf pointed out.
“I didn’t give him years of my life. I worked three years for Mayor Herend, and he just kicks me out, like I’m a worthless cur!”
The lads fell silent. Raneth scowled mightily over his grudge. Wilf watched him, waiting.
Jack Greenleaf stopped by their campfire. “I’m heading for the North Road. Arthur, you got anything in the offing?”
“Nah.” The red-headed outlaw climbed to his feet, a tall lad with his man height already. If he grew more, he’d top Little John. “Need help?”
“Get your bow. Ellen’s got a sack for you.”
Arthur grinned and trotted off. Before he followed, Jack quirked an eyebrow at Dav, who shrugged a shoulder and sipped the fragrant tisane Melly had shoved into his hands when he went begging at the cookfire.
Wilf nudged Raneth. “When you think we can do it?”
“Now, wait on,” Dav countered. He’d walked to camp on this Saturday for a respite from work. The brewer wouldn’t need him until Monday noon. “Look you two. You can’t just rob the mayor. You need to think this through. For one thing, how are you going to get into that cabinet? Didn’t you say he locks it? That strongbox will be locked, too.”
“I know where he keeps the key to the cabinet. The key to the strongbox is with it.”
“He’ll have moved the keys or moved the strongbox. You can’t know—.”
“He never moves anything,” Raneth claimed. “He’s set in his ways, he is. He’ll think he and his money are safe.”
“He’ll have a guard,” Dav warned. “You’ll have to watch the house for nights on end.”
“Nay, he won’t have a guard. He won’t hire one until the guilds make their yearly payment at first August. Then he’ll send their tithe to the sheriff, for the Pipe Roll. That goes to the Exchequer for Michaelmas. But all that happens in August, and this is only July.”
The information swirled through Dav’s mind. He winced. With Robin, Will Scarlet, and Little John on an unknown venture to Barnsdale and Much mired up in his own trouble, Dav felt beholden to stop this wild plan. He dug out his strongest argument. “We don’t touch Nottingham. That’s Robin’s orders. Anything on the roads, sure, but not in the town proper. I’ve good work at the brewery there. I don’t want to lose it.”
“Look at you here,” Wilf sneered, “big man playing at outlaw.”
“Shut it, Wilf. Dav’s a friend.”
The smirk didn’t fade. Dav glared until Wilf’s head dropped, but he didn’t think the youth was cowed.
“Hie you, Wilf,” Raneth said, “you’ve been here nearly as long as I have. You know Dav’s our eyes and ears in town. And he’s right. We need a plan, a good one. I want my own back against Mayor Herend. He owes me. He didn’t pay me for those last months that I worked for him. I deserve those coins. We take a few more, and he gets what he deserves.”
“You gotta take some coins for those three days of rotten cabbages and turnips and onions thrown. We’ll take all he’s got. That’ll teach him. And we gotta do something to the sheriff. He’s the one what stuck you in the stocks.”
“You’ll have to get past the guards on the town gate first,” Dav warned.
These two hadn’t been at camp long enough to gain a healthy fear of Robin’s dictates, especially when Robin was gone. Dav had already put in more effort than he’d intended. He watched them, rattling off ideas fast as a chick after bugs in the grass.
With a mental shrug, he stood, stretching out his legs. “That stew Ellen’s cooking smells about done. You tell me if you come up with a good plan. I’m not heading back into town until Moon’s Day.” Then he walked away, shaking his head.
He didn’t want any responsibility for these two unlikely outlaws. They had all the enthusiasm for easy pickings and none of the wariness that would keep their necks unstretched. Matched to their eagerness, he felt an old man.
From what he’d heard around camp, Raneth had trained as an abbey clerk. He’d never explained the reason he’d walked away from his prayers and toil for the Lord, but Friar Tuck had shared enough about the old abbot that no one had questioned his leaving. The mayor had snapped Raneth up when he left the holy life.
Wilf was an orphan, raised by a distant relative who herded pigs. He didn’t look strong enough to tackle the bigger boars, but the details of his former life remained his own, unshared with the camp. Nobody questioned him. A man’s reasons were his own.
Youngest in the camp save for the boy Tod, the lads had bonded over chores. The last two months of walking Sherwood’s paths had stripped the fat from Raneth’s chubby body and firmed up Wilf’s wiry strength. Nearest them in age, Arthur à Bland was tasked with teaching them to whittle arrows and fletch them. Much drilled them with knives. Will Scarlet had convinced Dav to teach them wrestling moves.
Yet for all their talk, Dav never expected the lads to have a plan by the next morning. They came to him as he stretched his long length by the fire.
It was a decent plan, built on their original wild talk. From somewhere Wilf had heard that the mayor’s son and family were traveling to York, leaving the house empty save for the elderly mayor and his wife. The servants slept in the attic. Raneth had remembered the scullery door could be jiggled open. A simple plan, in and out, quick and quiet, always wise. Dav swallowed hard and nearly choked.
He doubted the scamps would heed an order to lay off the plan should Robin himself demand it.
With his knives, Much could dampen their enthusiasm ... but Dav hadn’t seen Much for days upon days.
He tried a little caution. “What about the town gate? You were three days in the stocks, Raneth. The guards might remember you.”
“I’ll wear a hood,” he retorted. “And dye my hair. Melly will know how to give me red hair.”
“He can wrap up his arm, like it’s broke,” Wilf added. “The guards will look at that, not his face.”
“What about you, lad?”
“Uncle never let me loose when we went for market day. No one will recognize me.”
Dav couldn’t think of any other problems. “When?”
Wilf slung an arm across his friend’s shoulders. “Now. Tonight.”
“Now’s best,” Raneth agreed, all serious. “We should do it before any collections come in and the mayor hires guards. The moon’s a thin crescent, enough for us to see what we’re doing but not so bright that other people can see us. It’s summer, so Mayor Herend will head for his bed not long after Compline. But we’ll go on the morrow. After the Sabbath. The servants will be sleeping deep after their half-day off. No one will expect anything.”
“That’s right enough. We go in quick. We leave quick.”
Dav found himself offering a bit of help. “I’ll be at the brewer’s. You come late afternoon, and I’ll find you a safe spot out of the way until it’s dark enough.”
Wilf danced a jig. “It will be easy.”
“We’ll be flush with coin,” Raneth crowed.
“You going to help us break in, Dav?”
He looked under his brows from Wilf to Raneth. “Sounds like you don’t need me for that.”
“We could always use a big braw wrestler.”
“Aye,” Raneth added. “You can boost us over the wall that’s back of the house.”
Dav shook his head. Robin’s orders were to keep his hands clean. Since the winter scare, when he’d nearly been arrested for murder, he’d avoided trouble.
Robin had said, One braw man among our men is enough. They’ve never had a good look at Little John. As the big man grinned, Robin added, Let’s keep the guards guessing.
So he said nothing more to the lads.
“Coward,” Wilf said, but the word lacked heat.
“I’ll show you later,” Dav said and hauled them off to practice escaping an arm around their neck.
