Robin’s eyes cleared long enough to stare into the face of his friend. Another stroke upon the sheriff’s tally, that he nearly caused the death of Little John. “I am glad of that small favour. And you were right to come straight on; by tomorrow I would have been walking down the main street of Nottingham, shouting your names. Where is now Guy?”
Little John lifted his shoulders. “I do not know. But the tale is that the sheriff has bought him and his men to find the outlaws of Sherwood.” After a moment he said, “We were followed out of Nottingham, I believe, but with luck we lost them in Sherwood; no one had come to the chapel by this morning. I do not know if those who followed included Guy; it would be bad luck indeed if he should have chosen our direction to start his search.”
“The sort of bad luck we need to expect,” said Robin. He had picked up his bow and quiver, which the tension of the day had caused him to have nearer at hand than was his custom at Greentree. His fingers paused over his staff, and then he picked it up slowly, turning it in his hands. “A sword, you said?”
“Aye. A long sword, such as a knight might wear.”
Robin said, with a recklessness that Little John did not like at all, “Well, I have no sword; my dagger will have to suffice.”
Little John said, “You will not go alone.”
“Will I not?” said Robin; but his thoughts were far away. “I do not care. You may come with me if you wish.”
Much approached the two of them; Little John’s hand was on Robin’s arm, but even Little John’s grip was not going to detain him long. “Where is Cecily?” he said. “What happens here? I like not either of your faces.”
“You will find me at Tuck’s chapel,” said Robin, stepping away and settling his strung bow over his shoulder; and he was gone through the gap in the trees that served Greentree as a front door—gone at a running pace that a hunted stag might set.
“What?” said Much; and. Little John told him.
He finished by saying, “Round up all of us you can, will you? And let us meet at the chapel. Robin will see Marian first, which will delay him a little—I like this mood least of any I have seen. I don’t want him left alone—even for these moments I spend in talking with you.”
“Guy of Gisbourne,” said Much, appalled; but he said it to empty air, for Little John was gone after Robin.
It was a hard journey for Little John, who had had too much of hard journeying in the last two days; but he caught up and kept pace, though he went less quietly than was his usual.
Once, when they stopped to drink at Rosebrook, Little John said, “Do you know who it is you are chasing? You cannot mean to take him as you stand.”
Robin said savagely, “I mean to take him with an arrow in the back, if I can. It will be no less a choice than he gave Marian. But I also mean to give myself as many choices as I am able; and even if he is a demon in human form, as they like to say of him—yes, I know the tales—I still believe that I know Sherwood better than he does, which may, I hope, give some length over a longsword’s reach.”
Robin seemed to flee over the leaf-strewn floor of Sherwood without ever quite setting a foot firmly down; their time back to Friar Tuck was less than Little John’s to come to Robin to give the news, and Little John had not lingered by the way. Robin said, almost over his shoulder, to his companion: “There is some method behind my passion for speed besides the love for Marian that you fear may betray me to rashness. Guy is an ill enemy—the worst, I think, that we have had, for the sheriff is only as great an enemy as he can hire other folk to be for him. I am glad now that I have been so merciless in cutting our camp down to so few; that fewer folk are now to be at risk.
“The sooner we confront him the better; I think it will not be numbers that decide the ending to this tale, but luck and perhaps some skill. Guy has the devil’s own luck; we will see if the luck that has kept us alive thus far may stand against that dark gentleman’s.”
They were now close to Tuck’s cottage, and Robin dropped to a walk. And he said then, with an expression on his face more like the Robin Hood that his people knew, “And as for meeting Guy alone—did you not leave word with Much for all of us that he could muster to meet at Tuck’s chapel, before you came after me?”
Beauty gave the single cry of hound welcome, and Tuck emerged from the chapel path into the meadow, turning to face the way Beauty stood, and said to the trees: “They have gone, they who would ask me of you; you may come out from where you watch in hiding.”
“So men did come,” said Little John.
Tuck said, smiling, but not so comfortably as was his usual way: “They did; I grow slow and dull in the wilderness. I did not realise how the sheriff’s hatred for Robin has grown.”
“Marian?” said Robin, as Little John said, “You were not there when we bought back Sir Richard’s life from out the sheriff’s hand.”
“Marian is not well, but no more ill than when Little John left to find you,” said Tuck grimly, “—I hope. Now that my last lot of visitors is well on their way”—he and Little John turned to look at the dogs, who were untroubled by any wandering whiff of strangers—“we may go look to her again.”
The silence within was perfect as Friar Tuck drew the brush aside from the hidden earthwork; Robin was nearly stepping on his heels with impatience, and it was Robin’s hand that yanked open the low, carefully moss-grown door.
There was a brief glint in the darkness within, and then Cecily dropped her dagger-point with a sigh. “You might have identified yourselves,” she said; “I am weary of being frightened, these last two days.”
“How is she?” said Tuck; Robin had pushed in past him, blinking in the dark. “A little better, I think,” said Cecily. “She has come to herself enough to know me, once or twice.” She stooped, pulling the voluminous skirts of Tuck’s spare robe clumsily out of the way. There was the smell of flint, and then a little rush-light wavered into brightness, and Robin fell on his knees beside Marian’s pallet.
The other three drew quietly outside, and Little John touched the nape of Cecily’s neck with two fingers and said, “You have only learnt to be tired of fear in the last two days? I am a poor teacher, then.”
Cecily wondered that with all else happening she should instantly be most aware of a whisker-light touch of Little John’s hand, and she said, tiredly enough, “Nay, it is I who was the poor student, for I believed that my teacher need fear nothing, and I have learnt better.”
“I am glad you learnt, ere you died of the ignorance,” said Little John; “but—I wonder if, then, the student has no further use for a teacher so fallen from perfect strength.”
“Oh,” she said, too bone-weary to pretend: “I would far rather that I love you as I saw yesterday I do than that I had gone on worshipping you as I did not long since.” And she turned away hastily, and did not see that Little John would reach out to her; and, half-running, went to Tuck’s cottage, where she could pull on her half-dry clothes, and become a proper outlaw again. At least, she thought, fighting back tears, like this I am Cecil, with a place among friends, and a task to do. I am someone. I wonder if perhaps if I am no longer Cecil, I am no one at all.
“Marian,” said Robin; or he meant to say it, but his lips parted and no sound came. He touched her hand and tried again. “Marian?”
The light was so dim, through the brush that still hung over the opening to the out-of-doors and in the tiny flicker of flame on the earth floor, that he could not even be sure that she breathed. He seemed to have been waiting for hours, gathering up her hand between his, when he saw that her eyes slowly opened. At first it was the merest glint between the lashes; then they opened full, and cast about for a moment as if they did not know why they were being forced to look out; and then Marian turned her face a little, and looked at him. Her smile looked only wistful and drowsy, as if he had awakened her from a sweet happy dream that she was sorry to lose.
“Robin,” she said. “I am glad to see you; yet I fear you are very
angry with me.”
There was time for three heartbeats between each of her words, and when she said “angry” he had almost forgotten that she had earlier said “you.” By the time he remembered, she had gone on, and he had to lean close to hear her: “We had not parted good friends, I fear, when we last met; and I knew if you heard of yesterday it would be the worst of all.”
Robin said at random, “I am sure you should not talk so much, but save your strength”; and she smiled into his eyes and fell silent, and then he could think of nothing else to say. He remembered the many times he had told her she must not come back to Greentree and how many times she had ignored him; and how he had come to rely on that—disobedience—because he was as sure that he could not live without her as he was sure that she should not risk another journey into Sherwood.
He remembered seeing her, with her curling hair drawn back smoothly as a lady’s should be, in her long amber gown that fell so beautifully around her feet, so near the sheriff, so near mortal danger: danger that he knew she faced for his sake. She had known what she faced and why, but she had known from the beginning, from the first day when she and Much had found him hiding near the place where they had played as children. She had known and had dealt with the knowledge; he had known, and had refused to know, and had left her to bear the weight of responsibility alone, accusing her, to spare himself, of an idealism that in truth none of his band had been guilty of, Marian least of all. He had let her come to him because he wanted her to, while he soothed his conscience by listening to his tongue telling her to go away.
He looked at her, pale and hollow-cheeked; her eyes were sunken as from an illness of many months, and her rich hair was lank and dull; and he thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he knew his heart was breaking. “My dear,” he said, crouching beside her, “I am so sorry.”
Some look he could not read flitted across her face. “A sore belly seems to make me deaf,” she said. “You cannot be apologising for my arrogance and stupidity.”
Robin laughed a little, but the laugh made his throat hurt. “No; I do not apologise for your arrogance and stupidity, but for my own.”
Her eyes drifted shut, and for a moment he thought she was gone from him, and he stared at her breast till his eyes, now accustomed to the shadows, saw the faint rise and fall of her breathing. But after a few minutes her eyes opened again and she said, “Thank you. We do not make it easy for ourselves, you and I, do we?”
“No,” he said. “I love you, Marian.”
She gave a tiny gasp, as if she would chuckle and had not the strength. “Well, my love, this wound of mine is worth something after all, to have forced those words out of you after so many years I have longed to hear them. But please, my dearest love, let us learn to be a little softer? I do not like the thought that crisis is our only chance of contact. First you must promise to say what you have just said to me again when I am well.”
“I promise,” said Robin, “if you promise that Robin Hood will not go again to Nottingham Fair.”
“It is an easy promise to make,” said Marian, “for I have learnt my lesson. I learnt many things, suddenly, when I felt my own blood sliding between my fingers. But there was a time not long ago when I thought that all you would ever let me have of you was your legend—and—and I might at least use that to some effect.” She stopped talking and Robin thought she would spare him the rest; but after a little pause she went on: “I have never made you understand, I think, how the folk outside Sherwood see you; you are too preoccupied with keeping your own folk safe. It was—it was the one thing I could give you, that some of those people should see you as they wished to see you.” She paused again, and sighed. “And I liked the idea of doing something stupid and violent. I was feeling stupid and violent.”
Robin was silent. Marian’s fingers curled weakly around his. “I am weary, Robin, but I am determined to stay alive. Tell me that I have something to look forward to, besides the dangerous and lonely business of the burnishing of a legend.”
“Marry me,” said Robin. “Stay with me, never leave me. Come with me to the ends of the earth—which I fear will soon be all that’s left safe from the sheriff of Nottingham. Will that do?”
“Yes,” said Marian, and closed her eyes, and they sat thus for some time.
Robin stirred and looked up as Tuck appeared hesitantly at the door, with a bucket in one hand and a cup in the other. “You should not be tiring my patient,” he said, but his voice was kind.
“He does not tire me,” said Marian; “I feel stronger now than I have ever felt.”
“Ah,” said the friar. “I am of course pleased to hear this, but I would prefer you to remain lying down for some while yet till you accustom yourself to all your new strength.” He knelt beside Marian and offered her the cup, sliding his hand under her head to make her drinking easier. “That was not water,” she said.
“Some of it was water,” said Tuck. “Some of it was not. You might sleep now.” She closed her eyes as if the lids were of stone, and Tuck dipped a cloth in the bucket and began to wash her face. “Let me,” said Robin.
“Very well,” said Tuck; “but then you have to go away, for I will not have you here when I change the poultice. You can call Cecil, who has a steady hand and eye for the work, as I discovered this morning. A lad of many parts, that one.”
Robin felt as clumsy and uncertain as if he had spent months crouched in a small dark cave, when at last Tuck forced him gently outside. Cecily was hovering not far away and came forward when she saw him. “Tuck wants you,” he said. She nodded. “He calls you Cecil.”
She nodded again, and gave a flickering smile. “Does it matter? At least now.”
Robin stood staring as if at nothing, and she made to go by him, when he said quietly: “It mattered to Marian, what name they used.”
Cecily wanted to say, but Friar Tuck doesn’t want to kill me. Then she thought of Little John’s face tipped back, with the early sun on his beardless skin, saying, “You have no call to complain about my appearing suddenly different”—it had been but yesterday morning. And she remembered that only an hour ago she had told him she loved him. “I will tell Tuck my name,” she said, and ducked under the low lintel.
Robin found that he was breathing rather too quickly, as if in anticipation of—of what? What he most wanted was to sight down a bowstring at Guy of Gisbourne’s heart. But he felt, meanwhile, like a man waiting for the herald to call the beginning of the contest; like someone who has come to the city gates too early and found them closed, and now waits impatiently for the first trace of dawn in the sky.
He walked slowly down to the little pool beyond the chapel, and there found Little John hurling pebbles; he, too, seemed preoccupied with some thoughts of his own, and needed an effort to turn and acknowledge Robin’s presence. “I feel like a hawk with my hood still on,” said Robin. Little John grunted. “If there was a cloud in the sky, I would be happy to think that there was a storm coming to blame for the prickling of my skin.”
“You too?” said Robin.
“Aye. And it was my idea that I should come with you to prevent you from doing anything rash … and I cannot sit still, nor begin to give good advice.”
“I hate the thought of waiting like a child in a cradle for Guy of Gisbourne to come and find me,” said Robin. “I must decide which way is likeliest and go to find him—and yet I do not want to leave Marian, though staying will draw Guy near her.”
“He may think his job is already done,” said Little John, “and have gone on.”
Robin shook his head. “I doubt it. The sheriff would not have gone to such lengths as to hire such a one if he were the sort to leave before he brought Robin Hood’s own head to the sheriff’s table.”
Sweetheart gave the single long cry of a friend approaching, and Much and Rafe appeared, looking warm. Much took a quick look at Robin’s face and arranged his own to placidity, trying to disguise the hastiness of his brea
thing. Rafe hung a little back. “Marian?” said Much, speaking to the air somewhere between Little John and Robin.
“She is not worse,” said Robin; and at that moment all three dogs bayed and went on baying. Tuck and Cecily burst out of the earthwork and began feverishly pulling the brush down that concealed it. As Robin turned toward them, Simon appeared as if by magic at Tuck’s elbow. Tuck turned away, rubbing his hands along the generous folds of his friar’s robe with a hard, set expression on his face so unlike him that he might have been some other friar. Simon and Cecily finished their business hurriedly and melted into the undergrowth as Little John, Much, and Rafe had already done. Robin began to make his way round the far side of the pool, to come upon whatever might appear from that direction; the dogs said that was the direction to look.
There were the delicate but purposeful crunches of outlaw feet on dry leaves all around Tuck’s clearing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The dogs had gone on baying, their attention focussed on a lesser-used trail somewhat north of the small side-path to Tuck’s chapel from the main way to Nottingham. Tuck tried to look like a peace-loving man of God as he went toward the dogs; he tried not to scuttle as well. But his heart misgave him before he saw the troop of heavily armed men collecting around one man at the edge of his clearing. They fanned out, ignoring him, having identified him, looking for someone else who would be a greater threat: a war party, looking for war. Their leader ignored them as they ignored Tuck: a well-trained war party, with a leader who had confidence in them as did they in him.
This leader was a tall man, not so tall or broad as Little John or Will, but with heavy, strong bones visible in his face and in the width of his wrists; and there was no ounce of unnecessary flesh upon him anywhere. The tough, sinewy outlaws would look soft next to this man. And no ounce of unnecessary kindness lay in his heart, either, thought Tuck, looking into the narrow, level-eyed face. He was dressed in hard-worn but supple leather, and the mail-shirt that showed beneath the cloth surcoat was dark with use and careful oiling; neither leather creaked nor chain clashed as he moved.