Over the next few days the outlaws ate and rested and began to grow strong again, and to take some interest in their changed surroundings. Marian was out of danger—and as Little John had predicted to Cecily, her convalescence quickly began to chafe at her spirit. Marian and Cecily and Sibyl had been given an apartment together. Sibyl had little to say; she ate when food was placed before her, and spoke when she was addressed directly—when she noticed.
“You have a talent for playing the crabby invalid,” said Cecily to Marian, after a day or two. “Why don’t you demand that you teach her chess, as a way of passing your time?”
“Thank you,” said Marian; “I appreciate that you have our best interests at heart.”
Marjorie had come to them on the first day, after greeting her husband, demanding instructions for his care from Friar Tuck, and withstanding being thanked by Robin and Sir Richard, which she did not enjoy. Marian was settled on a low couch in the outer room while several house servants set up extra beds with feather mattresses enough for royalty in the inner chamber, which would serve as the sleeping room. Cecily sat by Marian, while Sibyl stared out the window. Marjorie’s eyes rested thoughtfully on Cecily, and she looked up.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m Cecily. I’m Will’s little sister.”
“Yes?” said Marjorie. “That has come out at last, has it?”
“I rather thought you knew,” said Cecily.
“I did not know,” said Marjorie. “But I did wonder—and your eyes did beg me, when they saw me wondering, to give nothing away, so that I had to assume there was something to give.”
“Thank you,” said Cecily.
Marjorie looked surprised. “Of course,” she said, and turned to Marian. “I have had my first lesson in poultices from Friar Tuck,” she said. “I already know a good deal about bandages and about pillows, and about broth with wine in it to make you strong again. Can I do anything for you?”
Marian smiled weakly; the journey from Sherwood had felt like centuries to her. “How are you at being snapped at, and having the pillows you’ve just readjusted thrown at your head?”
“I can learn that too,” said Marjorie.
But as those that remained began to recover, their missing comrades loomed larger in their thoughts. Without Jocelin’s skills the Sherwood outlaws might never have slept dry; they might all have perished during their first winter, for all that the weather had been comparatively mild. Gilbert had known Simon all his life; their fathers had been friends; the strips they tilled in their lord’s fields lay adjacent; they had once courted the same woman, who had married a third man. Humphrey had been teaching Bartlemey to make arrows; Greentree invalids often learnt fletching to keep them quiet—and make them useful—while their injuries healed.
There was a grisly little circle in Robin’s mind where his thoughts walked. He should have sent Harald away with the others. He had known—hadn’t he?—that Harald had not the woodscraft he needed. Robin had permitted himself to be sentimental because Harald had wished to stay, because Harald had been among the first to come to Sherwood. And it was pleasant and convenient to have someone who could tan skins and work leather at Greentree. He should have sent Harald on; he had not, and it had cost Harald his life.
And Alan’s hand. Alan was a musician, and by Robin’s carelessness he had lost his music; better that Robin had sent them on with no more than the coins that his other folk were given, with no prospects at all. And yet how could he balance Alan’s hand with Much’s life—and Marjorie’s message to Sir Richard?
“I wish there was a way to tell Red where Simon—where we all went,” said Cecily.
Sibyl looked up from the chessboard. “Red will be all right. Foxes are scavengers anyway, and some handsome vixen will find him and teach him about robbing nests and farm-yards.”
Marjorie spoke little of Alan. “It is healing perfectly,” she said once; “the wound is almost closed. But he cannot move his fingers.” Alan said nothing at all, and his lute lay hidden in the deserted Greentree.
Everyone’s temper, from sorrow and worry and the itch of healing, grew a little sharp as the days passed. Robin was pacing (jerkily, because of his foot) by the second day; his whole body felt as sore as his slashed foot and arm. “Kindly captivity is still captivity,” he said to Little John on the sixth day.
Little John had his leg propped up in the crenellation he leaned on as Robin paced the wall walk, staring toward Nottingham, invisible beyond the spur of Sherwood at the edge of Sir Richard’s grazing lands. Little John grunted in agreement; but his own restlessness had more to do with not yet being able to pace—and to the strange shyness that had come over his sometime protege. Almost he could believe she had never said those words outside the earthwork.… He pulled his thoughts away from that unsatisfactory subject for the dozenth time that afternoon, concentrating on the trees and fields before him, idly rubbing at his leg, which was still hot and sore.
“He may not even come here,” snarled Robin.
“He’ll come,” said Little John.
“Then why has he not come before?” said Robin, unreasonably. “The longer Sir Richard’s gate stays closed—and I cannot believe this has gone unnoticed—the more obvious it is that he is hiding something. Or someone. We should not be placing him in this danger.…”
“That depends on what you want from the confrontation with our friend the sheriff,” said Much, who appeared through the doorway, red-faced from climbing stairs on crutches. “If you had in mind that any of us should survive it longer than the gaoling while they built the gallows to hold us all, then Sir Richard’s intervention in this matter may well be called timely.”
Robin was silent.
“Even Sherwood isn’t big enough any more,” said Much.
“I fear me that England is no longer big enough,” Robin burst out again; “and we have not even had any news.”
“That also depends on what you mean by news,” said Much. “There has not been time for an answer to any of our messages; they cannot be delivered in a straightforward manner, you know. And we have heard that the sheriff appears to be cutting down half of Sherwood with his sword; his temper has not cooled.”
“It’s really only me that puts us all in danger,” said Robin.
“There’s a price on my head too,” said Little John mildly. “And I am content to accept the kindly captivity, to keep price and head separate for a little longer.”
“You are right, of course,” said Robin; “and it is a curious sort of bragging I indulge in. But the sheriff—while he would no doubt like to hang all of you, it is me whom he lies awake nights strangling in his hopes. He would be satisfied with me: with the man whose name is cried in the streets of Nottingham as leader of the Sherwood outlaws.”
“See? Your name should have been Sheriff’s-bane,” said Much.
“The rest of you could go away—can go away as soon as we hear something from our other friends. Me he will track …”
“Are you on that old tune again?” said Will. “Quite an invalids’ gathering, aren’t we? Why is it those of us with wounded legs keep looking for stairs to climb?”
“It’s the challenge,” said Much. “Like that of knocking sense into the thick head of our leader.”
“One of the things you insist on leaving out of your calculations is that our absurd and uncomfortable life under Sherwood’s wide branches suits some of us,” said Will. “Say, Little John, if someone gave you a herd of cattle, would you go back to farming?”
“No,” said Little John immediately. “They’d get the pox, and I’d not have rent on quarter day, and soon I’d be an outlaw.”
“Nothing would drive me back to my father’s hall,” said Will; “not even a full pardon. Indeed, particularly not a full pardon, because then I’d be treated as the lord’s son again, and if you knew how boring it is, dressing up in frills and a clean shirt every day and praying that a guest will arrive some time soon with a few new jokes.… You can even get bored with hunting and hawking occasionally, without the savour of need. I know why the Lionheart went off to Palestine; he couldn’t stand it either. All those state dinners. I’d’ve followed him if I hadn’t heard about Sherwood. I wanted to stay in England.”
“But you can go home again from Palestine,” said Robin. “What you are leaving out of your calculations is that we are not going to be able to wait out the sheriff’s wrath and go quietly back to our old ways in Sherwood. We have come to our end.”
There was a little silence, and then Will said, “You can go home from Palestine if the Saracens don’t get you first, or the climate. And then it starts all over again—hunting and hawking and minstrels and feast days—and boredom. Particularly boredom.”
“We need a third choice,” said Robin. “And my eyes are blind to it.” Much said thoughtfully, “I had never gone hungry till I lived as an outlaw; but I never had a clean shirt every day either. That part sounds very nice. I do not think I would grow bored with it very soon.”
“Have Sir Richard’s servants been neglecting you?” said Will. “Tell him at once, and their tanned hides will be your new suit.”
“No; this is a new suit. You never saw this colour in Sherwood, did you?” said Much, holding out one blue arm. “It is the cleanness itself that itches, I think. It is not the same as fleas at all.” He scratched himself gently around the neck.
“You’ll be wanting a lace-trimmed shirt soon,” said Will. Little John said, “Hunger is the most boring of all, for it leaves no possibility of anything else.”
There was another little pause. “Why doesn’t the sheriff come?” said Will. “It has been nearly a sennight, and the closed gate screams for attention.”
Robin said dryly, “Sir Richard has had a rumour begun that we are threatening him—that he owes us a favour for our little job a few weeks back, but as a law-abiding citizen he does not wish to give succour to his country’s enemies.”
“I like it,” said Will. “But it won’t last.”
“I do not understand why we have been left untroubled this long,” said Robin. “It is not to the sheriff’s credit that he has even pretended to believe it.”
Again Will broke the silence: “We should perhaps shift this gloomy meeting to Marian’s chamber. She might have some better chance of convincing our blockhead leader of the wisdom of keeping his head from the block.”
Robin said dourly, “I fear that the most Marian has learnt this sennight is that the name of Robin Hood has nothing but fear and pain attached to it.”
“She has not,” said a new voice. Little John turned around as Cecily emerged into the sunlight.
Robin smiled for the first time.
“I dare you to repeat those words to her,” said Cecily.
“I dare not,” said Robin. “She might grow warm, and her fever is not long gone.”
“Look,” Will said quietly. There was that in his voice that made them all turn quickly around.
A little train of riders was cantering out of the forest on the road to Sir Richard’s castle.
“Shall we go down and see what may be happening?” said Much after a few minutes, while everyone’s eyes burned with the strain of trying to identify the riders. There was always the possibility that they had nothing to do with Nottingham or the sheriff, though no one believed this. From such a distance the riders were still mere spots, bouncing to the horses’ rhythm; but there was a purposefulness about the horses’ gait, and the party clung too close together to be friends coming for an idle visit.
Robin shook his head. “Not just yet. Or at least I do not wish to: I would rather see what I am looking for first. The gate has been closed this long; we need not fear surprise.”
So they all stood and stared. Slowly they became aware of heightened activity below them, and voices shouting. But Sir Richard’s voice was quite calm when he joined them on the wall walk. “You are observing our approaching guests?”
“Did you know they were so close?” said Robin.
Sir Richard shook his head. “I have been hearing since the afternoon we waited for the litter and the horses to carry you here that the sheriff of Nottingham was hiding behind the next tree, and I fear I had become somewhat jaded. Certainly I heard the message that he was setting out for Mapperley this morning, but I credited this report as I credited it yesterday and the day before. I have wondered daily—hourly—why it is that no one from the sheriff has come to inquire why our gate is closed.… I will, however, remember to give Philip a nice young colt for his efforts—and an apology. I fear I was not polite to him this dawn.”
It was hard for Cecily to remember that less than a fortnight ago she was serving guard duty as a young outlaw named Cecil. She could remember quite clearly, as she braced against the trunk at her back and sighted an arrow along a forester’s cap, and held her breath as she waited for him to pass under her without looking up, that she had thought then it was hard to remember her previous life as a person named Cecily in long skirts. It was probably the constant ache in her shoulder that made her philosophical, and the loss of sleep it compelled, as she could do nothing but be philosophical—or join Marian for some one-armed pillow-hurling—till it healed. But she wondered if whoever it was that she was would stay herself long enough for her to get accustomed again to living in her skin? When she lived in her father’s house she had wanted nothing more than to shed that skin permanently; she’d come even to hate it when it became something to be sold to a cold-faced Norman lord. She looked away from the riders and down at her hands, opened the fist of her good hand and stared at the callused palm.
“Why do they never look up?” she had whispered, in her last life, as Cecil, to her teacher, Little John, after the seventh or twentieth king’s forester had crept by beneath them, looking searchingly into every bush and shadow.
Little John shrugged. “It is enough for us that they do not.”
“For so long as they go on not doing it,” said Cecily, peering the way the man had gone. “Surely even foresters must learn eventually that Robin Hood’s outlaws like climbing trees?”
Little John said dryly, “The trouble they do not see may not see them. The chances of being gored by a boar one has not seen are still a good bit higher than the chances of being shot by a Robin Hood one has not seen. I have not a high respect for the men we watch for, but I believe they know that to live and let live works better on outlaws than on wild pigs.”
“So long as you are not a Norman with a fat purse,” said Cecily. “Just so,” said Little John.
The riders grew steadily closer to Mapperley’s walls. The sheriff was learning to look up at last.
Little John shifted beside her, leaning on the stonework as he eased his leg. She had without meaning to chosen the gap in the wall nearest his to look through. She remembered her words to him outside the earthwork where Marian lay, and wondered that he would still speak to her after she had betrayed herself so; but events had crowded upon them. She had tried to give him as little opportunity as she could, since they came to Mapperley, to snub her. And it was easy enough, for she slept with Marian and he with the other men. She thought longingly of guard duty, which had been boring and cramped often enough at the time. As she watched the approaching riders she could hear Little John’s breathing, sense the bulk of him against the stone—she felt she could discern the human shadow that touched her from the cold hard edge of the shadow the stone threw.… What nonsense, she said to herself.
The riders pulled up to a walk to blow their horses.
“That’s the sheriff in front, right enough,” said Sir Richard. “He always did ride like a sack of meal; no horse can put up with it for long.”
She could see the wink of pale faces as they looked up to the high walls of the castle, and she wondered if they could see their watchers, unmoving against pale stone. Robin Hood’s outlaws had not lived in Sherwood long enough to train their hunters to look up into the trees; and now they never would.
Little John sighed extravagantly: the frustration of a strong man who watches his enemy approaching and can do nothing.
“Do any of you wish to be present for the exchange of verbal pleasantries that is sure to occur when I decline to raise my gate to my impetuous guest?” said Sir Richard. “To—er—allow for a certain hesitation in the walking speed of certain of our number, we might have need to begin our descent soon.”
“That’s us,” said Much. “Will and Little John and me, we go first, so you can’t get ahead of us.”
There were a great many folk trying to look casual in the general vicinity of the gate when Sir Richard arrived, the other outlaws among them—including Marian, who had got out of her bed to sit in a chair by the window for the first time the day before. She had persuaded a couple of the junior squires to carry her out in a sedan-chair. All the younger squires and page-boys loved her, and loved the story of the Nottingham Fair, which she had refused to tell them, which made them only worship her the more. She looked thinner and frailer than she had ten days before, but there was some colour back in her face, and her chin set with its old familiar arrogance when she caught Robin’s eye. “Should you—” he began.
“Don’t even bother to say it,” she said.
He looked at her a moment, and then moved near her to take her hand. The junior squires glowered in the background.
The porter had descended from his little chamber, and bowed to Sir Richard. With a straight face he said, “My lord, the sheriff is come to visit his good friend Sir Richard of the Lea, and is saddened by the shut gate, and wishes to inquire of Sir Richard what possible hurt he anticipates from the peaceful land and folk of England that his good friends meet with so chill a reception?” The man paused and added with a grin, “He also wishes to request your porter’s head on a silver plate for not opening the gate at once upon his herald’s declaration of his visit. This tale of threatening brigands is all very well, but can’t I see he’s the sheriff?”
Sir Richard strolled in the most leisurely manner toward the gate, perhaps to give everyone an opportunity to find a good view of the subsequent proceedings. Robin, without a word, caught Marian up in his arms and went gently up the narrow stone steps to the second floor of the gate house, where they could watch through the barred windows there; the others followed. Tuck looked anxious, Rafe eager, and Sibyl looked animated for the first time since Eva’s death.
They could hear Sir Richard’s voice clearly, though it sounded a little hollow; and clearly they could hear the sheriff’s reply—or rather, they could hear what he instructed his herald to say. The ditch before the gate was a narrow one; they heard most of what the sheriff bellowed at his herald before the herald opened his mouth, and they could see the expression—and the colour—of the sheriff’s face: the former choleric and the latter maroon. He dispensed with his herald’s services after the first exchange; he all but danced in his rage at the edge of the ditch.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if he fell in?” said Marian.
“I have heard of your traitorous behaviour!” he howled. “I heard it, but I did not yet believe it—”
“Of course not, his history of kindly and honourable dealings with Sir Richard being borne so strongly in his mind,” said Robin.
“I could not believe that a lord of this land—”
“Even a Saxon,” said Much.
“—would give succour to a band of common rabble—”
“Definitely Saxon,” said Much.
“—indeed, I wonder that I do not find you with your throat cut by this rabble, and all your goods stolen—”
“As we have often stolen yours,” Will said cheerfully.
“I cannot understand how you would come to so low a choice as this, to turn your back on the law of this good land, the king’s law, to give comfort to the king’s enemies—”
There had been some confusion in the bailey yard, but few paid attention, most eyes being riveted upon the spectacle the sheriff of Nottingham made, shaking his plump fists at a cool and unreachable Sir Richard. But Sir Richard paused in the middle of explaining his attitude toward rabble and the king’s law, and toward a sheriff who would hire a notorious ruffian like Guy of Gisbourne for any purpose whatsoever and then speak to another man of his decision to harbour cutthroats. “He is not mincing words, our lord, is he?” murmured Will. But there was a certain electricity apparent in the pause, and people began to look behind them. The few watchers left on the south wall were obviously looking intently at something, and there were cries and pointing fingers.
Those in the gate house could not guess what was going forward; they could not see to the south. But now some of the men with the sheriff were looking south; and the news, whatever it was, went quickly from mouth to mouth. The sheriff’s fists dropped, and he, too, looked south, facing away from those in the gate house, so they could not see if he watched in hope or in fear.
It seemed a long time but it was not when a gaily caparisoned rider cantered up to Sir Richard’s gate. The sheriff’s men parted before him like cheese from a knife. Two men rode with him; one carried a banner, the second, some kind of long horn. The second raised his instrument to his lips and blew a brief, merry ta-ta-ta; and at that moment the wind caught the banner and snapped it out flat, that its device might clearly be seen by all.
And the herald shouted: “King Richard the Lionheart is come to visit his liege lord Sir Richard of the Lea.”