Dr Ivanhoe had some good stuff in her syringes. Stress and pain felt distant as Little John spent the evening watching a Nottingham Penguins ice-hockey playoff from his huge silky bed. And since room service was free he had a giant lobster sharing platter as a starter, followed by roast lamb and two slices of Swedish Princess cake.
‘How are you feeling?’ Dr Ivanhoe asked, when she came back after 10 p.m. with a special bandage for his burnt foot and crutches so he could hop about on the good one.
‘Full,’ Little John said, as he flicked marzipan crumbs off his stubbly chin.
Ivanhoe gave him another shot of pain relief and he slept like the dead.
Ten hours and sixteen minutes later, Little John opened one sticky eye and looked off the side of the bed at a large yapping dog.
Except …
His brain struggled to process, because the dog had a metal head and a multicolour paisley-patterned body, and there were little hydraulic whooshing noises as it bounced on its front legs, yap-yap-yapping.
Little John wondered if all the sedatives had fried his brain, as he reached out. The robot dog gently nuzzled his palm. It had no mouth, but a vibration unit in its nose buzzed, tickling his hand.
John always had trouble finding well-fitting clothes, but the tracksuit and Sherwood Castle polo shirt someone had placed at the end of his bed while he slept were spot on. And while sportswear wasn’t his style, he felt a little thrill because the tracksuit had a designer logo his dad could never afford.
‘You’re awake,’ Sheriff Marjorie said brightly. ‘Good morning.’
Little John knew her gravelly no-nonsense voice from TV news, but glanced about in a state of confusion until he realised it was coming out of a loudspeaker in the dog’s back. He also realised the dog must have been set to alert Marjorie when he woke up.
‘Is this two-way?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Marjorie said. ‘Come and join me on the roof deck for breakfast. Take a left from your room and out through the sliding doors at the end of the hallway.’
Little John slid his feet into some pool shoes. He started down the hallway on two crutches, but before reaching the glass doors he’d realised he could walk without them if he stayed on the ball of his left foot, keeping weight off his burnt heel.
The sedatives were still having some effect, so he felt more confused than nervous when he stepped out onto a large roof deck, then jumped as a shotgun blast came from the same direction as the blinding morning sun.
‘Steal my plums and see what you get, you yellow swine!’ Sheriff Marjorie shouted, before taking another blast at the birds in the canopy.
A young lady in a Sherwood Castle golf caddy’s uniform obediently held out another loaded gun, but Marjorie just shoved the empty gun into her chest.
‘Buzz off, I need privacy,’ the Sheriff told the girl, as she turned and saw Little John hobbling towards her, squinting into the sun.
‘Hello,’ John said weakly, as he looked across a linen-covered outdoor dining table with six chairs. There were jugs of coffee and juice and mounds of fruit and whipped cream, all covered by glass domes to keep flies off.
‘The tracksuit fits,’ Marjorie said happily, as she signalled for Little John to sit down. ‘We guessed your size. 3XL.’
Sheriff Marjorie was a sturdy figure, almost as tall as Little John. She usually appeared on TV in dark-coloured trouser suits with her hair up in an austere bun. But in her own home at ten on a Sunday morning the hair was down and she wore furry Pikachu slippers and a Sherwood Castle guest robe.
‘Tuck in,’ Marjorie urged. ‘I’ve got your favourite breakfast things. Steak and scrambled eggs. Waffles with strawberries and whipped cream …’
As Little John sat, he wondered why the most powerful person in the county knew what he liked for breakfast. He also got a weird sense that Marjorie was nervous, rattling her cup as she poured coffee from the insulated pot.
‘You’re obviously confused,’ Marjorie said. ‘Let me start by saying you have no reason to be fearful. The castle is my territory. Gisborne won’t crack a fart without my permission once he steps outside of Locksley.’
There was a metallic ring as Little John lifted the steam-filled dome over strips of medium-rare steak. He put some on his plate, though his appetite was weak after stuffing himself the night before.
‘It’s usually best to tell a story from the beginning,’ Marjorie said. ‘Do you know that your father, Guy Gisborne and myself were childhood friends?
John chewed steak and nodded. ‘You started Captain Cash together. My auntie always teases my dad about how rich we’d all be if he hadn’t sold his shares to you in the early days.’
‘Pauline Hood was in the year above us!’ Marjorie said, nodding fondly, before going back to her story.
‘The only thing Ardagh Hood, Guy Gisborne and I really had in common was that we were outcasts. The brainy lumbering girl, the quiet serious boy who liked to read and the loner who dressed in black and freaked people out with bloody teeth stolen from his father’s dental surgery.
‘We had our fallings-out, but drifted back together because there wasn’t anyone else. From Elementary School Eight through Locksley High, right up until I moved to the capital to work for King Corporation.’
Little John nodded. ‘You helped me because my dad is an old friend?’
‘Not entirely,’ Marjorie said, as Little John again sensed nervousness. ‘When I came back to run for sheriff, I naturally wanted old friends at the core of my campaign. Guy Gisborne was easy to persuade. He knew a friendly sheriff could make his dodgy dealings easier.
‘I made your dad a generous offer. King Corporation was funding my campaign for sheriff, and in return I would give them the juiciest public contracts. But your father had a trusted reputation in the community. I offered him a lucrative contract running Locksley & Sherwood Healthcare’s computer systems, if he spoke at some meetings and helped get local businesses behind my campaign.’
Little John smiled as he spooned cream onto a waffle. ‘My dad’s too straight to agree to anything like that!’
‘I mistakenly assumed that by age twenty-six, your father would have become more realistic about the way the world works,’ Marjorie explained. ‘But Ardagh was furious with me. He ranted that I was nothing but a pawn. He said he’d rather starve in a gutter than feast on King Corporation’s scraps.’
‘We never starved,’ Little John said drily, as he folded the waffle and stuffed it in his mouth. ‘But I’ve eaten more Great Value tinned macaroni than I’d care to remember.’
Marjorie sighed. ‘Ardagh worked harder than anyone to start Captain Cash. There was some bitterness that he sold his share to me before things took off, but on a personal level your father and I stayed friends.
‘To help Ardagh calm down, I asked the waiter for a second bottle of wine. We teased one another about the paths our lives had taken and dug up stories about old times. We woke in the same bed with dreadful hangovers …’
Little John made an eww face as a half-chewed strawberry dropped off his tongue.
‘And nine months later, you popped out,’ Marjorie finished.