The Outlaws of Sherwood (6 page)

He led Much most of the way back to the mill again, trying not to let it dismay him how long a lead Much needed before he began to recognise where he was clearly enough to make his own way. He promised to meet Much again in another two days.

Much was not alone the next time; Rafe and Harald were with him—and Marian. “I wished to come before,” she said, “but Beatrix has been sick, and the world centers on Beatrix when she is sick. It would have been conspicuous had I left her.” She grimaced. “Much as I would have been grateful to. But see here: I have brought you something useful, and not in the least symbolic.” She undid the pack on her back and revealed the first fold of a long length of heavy green wool. “Is it not splendid? It is just the thing for outlaws who must sleep in the rain, and who will be tearing themselves on twigs and thorns. It is very stout stuff,” she went on, pulling it between her hands to show the closeness of the weave, and not looking at Robin. “Here are needles and thread too—although I suppose I will have to show you how to use them.”

A little silence fell, as Robin looked at Marian, Marian looked at her pack, Much looked at both of them, and Rafe and Harald looked puzzled. “What do you say, Robin?” said Much, with the air of a man who needs to bridle a horse whose ears are flat back and whose eye is rolling.

Robin swallowed. “I say—I must say—thank you. You are right that you will have to show me—us. I can sew up the holes that thorns have made, but I do not know how to cut and shape.”

“I can do most of the cutting for you,” she said, lifting her eyes at last to his, “and leave the seams for you, if you promise to have a care to sew them straight.”

And it was Marian who said, when they had come again to Robin's camp, and Robin was trying to find out how much more of the way Much might have learned this time, “I can take us all back, Robin; you can stay here and start on some seams while daylight lasts.”

The four men blinked at her. It had not occurred to Robin to question Rafe or Harald, for a horse-coper and a leather-worker were not expected to have much woodscraft. But it had not occurred to him or to Much to look to Marian either. “You can come with us a little way if you like, and be certain I am not bragging,” said Marian. “But I know where we are and where we came from.”

“And furthermore she will do it obliquely,” said Much. “How
do
you do it obliquely?”

Marian stared at him. “What are you talking about? It is only that I have long preferred the company of trees. My father's house, with Aethelreda there, runs very well without me; I spend more of my time at Blackhill than at the city house, and there is only so much embroidery I can do without going mad. I taught myself years ago, when I was still young enough to be thrashed for coming in late for dinner, not to get lost, for fear of being forbidden to go among my friends again. I cannot stop Beatrix from quarrelling with everyone, but I can get our party back to Whitestone Mill.”

“Oh,” said Robin.

“Now,” said Marian hastily, “is there anything you need at once that I might get for you more easily than some other? Leather, perhaps. It is your craft, is it not?”

“Yes, lady, it is,” said Harald slowly. He and Rafe were trying not to be dismayed that the lady with Norman blood in her was the only one besides Robin himself who could go freely through Sherwood. But the blankness of Robin's and Much's expressions was comforting, for there was no fear in it for the lady's loyalty. And it was true enough that Robin's folk would have need of friends, and a lady would be useful. “It—it would be a great boon to me to have leather in my hands again.”

“Not to mention letting you off much of the digging and the stonepiling and the getting slapped in the face by the sharp edges of things like leaves that aren't supposed to have sharp edges,” said Much. “It's that for you, Rafe, you know; there are no horses to trot out in Sherwood.”

“Where did the wool come from?” said Robin.

“It was a bad dye lot,” said Marian. “You will see. They were glad to have it go away at almost any price; but the cloth is good, and leaves and trees are rather streaky too, aren't they? You'll blend in the better for the streaks. Let me measure you across the shoulders, and I will cut out the first shirt.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Spring passed swiftly as Robin and his small band began to make, or tried to make, or blundered toward making the ways and means that would enable them to live in Sherwood; if not beyond the reach of, then relatively safe from discovery by, any of the sheriff's men or the king's foresters. There was a little coming and going as prospective outlaws made their final break with their previous lives—and Robin began to mutter under his breath about using the thread Marian had brought for tying to the wrists of would-be outlaws who could not go six steps from the home camp without getting lost. Marian was still his only other truly reliable guide, although Much went wrong seldom, and Rafe through sheer tenacity was learning. “An eye is an eye, isn't it?” he said. “And I've a good eye for a horse. Wish trees had four legs.” Harald made a pair of shoes for Gilbert, who had none, and even spring in Sherwood is hard on bare feet.

As folk arrived after leaving their old homes for the last time, they brought bits of their lives with them; but few had more than bits to bring. Humphrey brought three good bows and the seasoned wood for four more; and the gear to make several dozen arrows. “Call it a dowry,” said Humphrey with a grin half-sheepish and half-proud. “Old Alcock's been drunk for years,” he said; “he'll never notice they're gone. And if my lord does, it'll be too late to guess the truth and Alcock will have to think up a good tale quick to save his own skin—which if you want to ask me he should have lost long ago.”

Now, how many among us can shoot what they aim at? thought Robin. About as many as can be sure of the north side of a tree. “Very well done,” he said aloud; “and the sooner you get those arrows fletched, the better. You couldn't have chosen anything we needed more.”

But the first night that he was not alone in the little half-hut, half-cave he could not sleep, listening to the breathing of the other human beings who now shared his outcast condition. He still could not quite believe that anyone would willingly throw over a living, however meager, to live as an outlaw. “Ah, but Robin, that's just it: we
are
choosing,” said Much, when Robin admitted a little of this to him. He looked at his friend a time, finding, Robin suspected, new circles under the eyes and lines in the forehead. “None of us wakes in the night speaking the name of the man he killed by accident,” he added.

Everyone was too tired come nightfall for many second thoughts. With the basic requirements of survival to attend to, which were daily urgent enough, Robin compelled—or was compelled to compel—practice sessions in woodscraft and archery. “If we had a smith among us, perhaps it would have been swords, but it is just as well it is not, because I know nothing of swords except that you should hold on by the end that isn't sharp. And we cannot afford to let anyone live among us who cannot sometimes bring home meat to feed us.” Humphrey was a decent archer, about even with Robin himself; and Rafe, again, learned quickly. These two and Much he took aside and had practise further, with his father's longbow. “You must be mad,” said Much, when he drew it the first time; “Good God,” said Humphrey when he did. Rafe lost hold of the string altogether and put his wounded fingers in his mouth without saying anything.

“It is not possible to be accurate with anything so big and stiff,” said Much,

“It is,” said Robin; “my father did it. We have need of some edge over those who would pursue us. I have it in my mind that the longbow shall be that edge; it is little enough. I know something of bow-making; you and I, Humphrey, must see what we can do.”

Humphrey looked thoughtful. “I might make another visit to Alcock's armoury after all. There are untrimmed lengths that might answer, or discarded ones that no one has looked at closely.”

“Let us wait on that till we hear if there is any gossip about the six strong men who bound the heroic Alcock hand and foot and stole his twenty best bows from under his helpless eyes,” said Robin. “There are other armouries and other bow-makers.”

“To what purpose?” said Much. “Your father was an extraordinary man; we're all superlatively ordinary. Even if we could learn to draw such a thing as this longbow of yours, we are supposed to be woodsmen, are we not? We'll be whacking the ends of our bows off at every tree.”

“The bow will be the size of the man,” said Robin, “no more.”

Much sighed. “Then I am the wrong one to complain, I guess, as mine will be the shortest in the company.”

Marian, when she heard, liked the idea. “I have heard that the Welsh have been using longer bows than ours for some time; and they are not a tall people. May I try?” Robin handed her the longbow; she pulled it, but her eyes widened. “Ouch,” she said. “I will have to begin carrying a wolfhound under each arm at home to develop my strength.”

Exhaustion at day's end did provide a thankfully dreamless sleep for most of the little band. Robin, who dreamed more than the others, had something else to be grateful for: a marked lack of philosophy. Robin was much better at choosing hidden spots for secret meetings than he was at getting through the meetings themselves; no longer at the miller's clean hearth, he drew plans for huts and trenches in the dirt with a stick while the conversation went on without him. He did not wish to be either a king or a king-maker, and did not see that kings or philosophies kept the rain out. He said this latter so often that Much threatened to carve it in wood and hang it around his neck on a thong. Much missed the tale- and future-glory-spinning by an evening fireside; since he had left the mill for Sherwood, he spent his days doing the work of two or three people and therefore was one of the first to fall asleep at night. But Robin was happiest building huts and digging trenches, and it was hut-building and trench-digging that were important now.

The passing months were hard ones and grew no more easy; for as the green young outlaws grew a little older in skill and experience, the tale of their existence gained momentum. The tale had been launched by the sheriff's reward for the taking of Tom Moody's murderer, and it had lost nothing in the telling as the first weeks passed and the murderer was not taken. If Robin had not gathered a band of outlaws around him, the tale-tellers would have had to invent one for him. But the band did exist, and none of its members was taken either—the tale-tellers did not have to know how close one or two of Robin's dumber and more eager folk occasionally came—and this, too, improved in the retelling. There had been outlaws around Nottingham and in Sherwood before, but this sounded like something new—outlaws who believed in king and country, and good English law; who merely rebelled against the heavy hand of tyranny. The outer reaches of Sherwood became positively thick with people who, for practical or impractical reasons, wished to find these honourable outlaws; and some of them, too many from Robin's perspective, penetrated deep into the forest whose vastness was to be his and his people's security. The foresters and sheriff's men were avoided. If they were a dangerous problem, at least they were a straightforward one.

But other men came too, and a few grim and weary women, to seek just that haven that the tale-tellers had made of Sherwood and of Robin. And they were a much more complicated problem. The first few self-chosen outlaws were all Much's friends; their loyalty to Much's cause was not questioned, only their adaptability to the hard facts of their new life. The folk who came searching for Robin now were unknown. But their usual method of search was merely to plunge as far into Sherwood as they could get and then, completely lost, to wait hopefully to be rescued by the intrepid new scourge of Norman corruption. Robin could not ignore them, for it was on his head as certainly as the sheriff's reward that they were there at all. And so they were rescued and brought, if not to the home camp, at least somewhere that they might meet a slightly-built, ordinary-looking young man who spoke to them courteously. They tended to be surprised when Robin introduced himself. Some realised, or were persuaded to realise, that life as an outlaw was not the answer to their troubles. Some stayed.

The ones who did not stay were led back to one of the public ways through Sherwood, and given enough food to see them to the nearest town—and sometimes a coin, even if only a farthing. Much observed the first act of alms-giving with an ironical eye; he himself had brought the outlaws' first earnings back to Sherwood from the sale of some arrows Robin had made from the materials Humphrey had brought. The money was to have gone to buy more materials for more of those desperately-needed arrows to keep the outlaws fed. “I saw the extra loaf of bread in that parcel, too,” said Much. “Fortunately my snares are working nicely, and I also brought flour.”

Robin hunched up his shoulders and scowled. “The man had been wandering for days; you could see his ribs through his shirt. What would you have me do?”

“What you did,” said Much. “Didn't I just say that my snares work nicely?”

Robin's band had settled, more comfortably than might have been expected, into the little hillside glen with the stream and pool nearby. The hut-cave had been enlarged enough by the first half-dozen of them that it was possible to creep out in the middle of the night without necessarily treading on any of one's fellows. The position of the boulder-fall had made it possible to build a semi-permanent hearth for a fire, which was protected from the worst weather, and which could be prevented, mostly, from smoking in too tell-tale a fashion; and which enabled them to eat cooked food. No one remembered when the camp began to be called Greentree. One day it was merely a patched-together and unreliable temporary shelter for folk who had no better; and the next day it had a name, and had become home.