Forbidden Forest (20 page)

“If you want any coin from us you'll have to wait until harvest,” said the innkeeper. “We're poor folk until then.”

“Do a sheriff's man and an outlaw take from the same purse?” asked Henry, with something like real surprise.

“Indeed, if you'll forgive me,” said the innkeeper. “We of Saint Felix stay well away from both. But if you are lawmen, then I'm a griffin.”

Henry and Little John had to share a bed, a flat pallet stuffed many summers ago with summer grass, but now worn as hard as earth. It was usual for travelers to share a bed, although not always comfortable, and John lay listening to the deep, ragged snores of his companion. The rain hammered at the shutters outside, and a trickle of water began to drum in a corner of the room. Henry had drunk currant wine, gooseberry wine, blackberry and rowan wine, and then, announcing that grape wine was all that suited him, drank a seeming hogshead of that.

When he spoke in his sleep he was arguing, whining, telling a dream combatant, “Put it down, please. No, please put it down—don't hurt me.”

John rose from the pallet and stepped softly to the shuttered window.
Go back, go back
, said the water streaming from the eaves.

Henry sobbed in his sleep.

The guttering rain warned John, but it did not say where he should go. Back to Sherwood Forest? Back to Lord Roger? Or all the way back—to York, to the streets of his childhood, where he had cured hides with his father, scattering dog dirt on the toughest ox hides to help soften them into leather.

John opened the shutters and breathed the fragrance of wet leaves. He knew that what he had in mind was wrong, even sinful. But he considered Margaret in Henry's grasp, and Osric in pain yet again from another beating—or dead. John knew the countryside suffered under Henry, with no one strong enough to break him.

Forgive me, Heaven, prayed John, for what I am about to do.

Forgive me; and whatever happens to me—keep Margaret safe.

Chapter 42

Rain fell over the priory roof in the darkness. It made a soothing whisper, but Margaret was not asleep.

She knew that somewhere in the darkness Little John was hiding from Henry and his fellow deputies, and Margaret prayed that Saint Christopher—himself a giant—might protect the young man. And let her see him again.

The sound of horses had awakened her. Two horses were somewhere outside, their hooves scuffing the gravel beyond the priory walls. Only two mounts, not enough to be a gang of deputies this time of night. And yet her pulse quickened.

What would she use as a weapon, if she needed one? Her hand found a silver pitcher and an earthenware jug. She imagined swinging the jug, breaking it over a deputy's head. But then she put it down, unable to breathe.

She heard something. A voice.

A voice from the rain outside touched her, a male query: “Are we here?”

She was out of bed, hurrying into a mantle.

A fist knocked on the door, and she hesitated. Surely, she thought, this was how Henry would arrive to capture her at last.

Bridgit was awake, using a bellows on the embers in the brazier, the coals brightening. “Only a heathen would be out in such weather,” said Bridgit. “Or a devil.” She called after Margaret to wait, but it was too late.

Something very like a familiar voice had reached Margaret yet again. She wasn't certain. She did not want to give in to hope—fear of disappointment made her caution herself. But she could not keep her feet from racing into the dark outer rooms.

Sister Barbara, fully dressed and carrying a smoking tallow lamp, was already at the heavy door, asking who needed Christian refuge on this wet night.

“A knight of his word,” said a familiar foreign accent, “bringing a traveler from London.”

Sir Marco stood aside with a smile, and William Lea stepped into the shifting circle of lamplight, his eyes searching, afraid to have faith in this unfamiliar place, and afraid to believe that what was happening could be trusted.

And then he saw Margaret and she was in her father's arms, his muddy cloak enclosing her, his arms wrapping her, a thankful prayer on his breath.

Chapter 43

When the two men left the inn the next dawn, John paused before climbing onto the heavy-boned horse. The previous day's journey had made him stiff and sore in hip and thigh, and Little John relished a moment longer on his two feet.

The innkeeper held the cob steady, unnecessarily—the horse was well-mannered and resigned. But the man was eager to give the best possible last impression, offering them a gift of dried fish, knotted into lengths like rope. “So you will think well of us on your way back,” said the innkeeper.

“If anyone asks,” said John in a low voice, leaning down from the saddle, “tell them Robin Hood and Little John were your guests last night.”

The innkeeper's eyes grew round. But then with a sly cock of his head he said, “But I think I did guess, by my faith.”

“Did you?”

“Robin Hood I would not have known,” he said. “But no one in the kingdom could mistake you, Little John.”

“How much farther?” asked Henry in a cadaverous voice.

John shook his head—he didn't know.

“My skull is packed with gravel,” Henry moaned.

The previous night's rain had passed, leaving the sky empty blue. Over the hours of hard road, riding into the north wind, John felt his body grow cold to the marrow with the chilly weather and with doubt. Such wind made no reassuring murmur, and the only birds he saw were sparrows, struggling to keep a perch on bobbing ditch weeds, their feathers awry with the breeze. Henry huddled in his woodsman's cloak, looking like any traveler—or any outlaw.

Henry was already weighing the leather sack of wine, sloshing it, looking at John with an unspoken offer. The innkeeper had filled it that morning from a pipe of wine “shipped all the way from Honfleur, not a fortnight past.” Henry drank and coughed.

“This good wine is fit for Holy Mass,” Henry said.

John took a taste, and the red wine was as good as the drink Robin Hood had taken from a royal chamberlain last Saint Stephen's Day.

Little John tried to assuage his private fears that the trap might fail. What was John to do if Grimes had not reached Lord Roger's manor? Or if Lord Roger was out riding the hills, not to be reached? Or—and this was very likely—Lord Roger got Grimes's message, and did not believe it? John could imagine his laugh, and see his skeptical smile as he cautioned the outlaw to run back to Sherwood Forest before a hound lapped him off the floor. If Red Roger and his men did not mistake Henry for Robin Hood, the trap would fail.

The sunlight was weak, each breath of cold wind harsh. The road was too empty. Congregations of blackbirds gathered along the water-filled road ruts and scattered only as the two approached. It had been a long time since John had realized how lone and bereft a traveler could feel. There were no other folk on the High Way, neither tinker nor carter.

Dark gray sheep grazed on either side of the road by late morning, the field as close-cropped as any penitent's scalp. A peasant near the road labored with a hack, a crude hoe with a large, irregular iron blade. The wind was growing calm, and the sky was more than blue—a deep, perfect void.

John wished the peasant a good morning. But as he spoke he ran his eye over the hills, the line of royal forest, the green carpet of sheep-cropped field. It was the absence of life that caught his attention.

“See what's there,” Robin Hood had taught Little John. “And what isn't.”

The hedges were too silent. The starling and blackbird were still. The rooks in the spreading oaks were high up in the branches, as though something had passed beneath them, sending them scrambling higher for safety.

The peasant wore patched leather shoes and a tattered tunic, shiny with soil. He did not speak. He lifted his eyebrows, and sent a message with his glance at Little John:
danger
.

Henry rode over to the man and aimed a kick at the peasant's head, his foot barely missing. “Who do you think you're looking at, you turd hoggler?” demanded Henry, knocking the peasant to the ground.

Men of such a lowly order in life rarely looked travelers directly in the eye—it was considered impolite. Henry tried to straddle the peasant with his horse, attempting to force the animal to tread on the cowering field man. “You have no business,” said Henry, “lifting your ignorant eyes at us.”

“No, my lord,” said the peasant's muffled voice, “indeed I do not.”

The horse was nearly as upset as the field man, the steed rolling its eyes, unwilling to step on the quivering human figure. John seized the bridle and pulled Henry and his mount back into the road.

“Our apologies, good man,” said Little John. “My companion has all the sense of a goose.”

“Why do you waste apologies on this land man?” demanded Henry heatedly. “He needs a lesson in keeping to his station.”

There was a sound, the sort of tiny
tick
a blade makes grazing stone.

The peasant had dropped his hack. Now he leaped to his feet and ran. He was careful to keep away from the puddles as he leaped low rills and culverts across the green.

Henry observed this and gazed around at the sunny forenoon. The anger vanished from his eyes, and was replaced with a keen suspicion.

“You believe yourself superior to me,” said Henry, “possessing a wiser heart and a keener eye—don't you, John?”

Little John made no response, aware of the spreading silence of the grazing land around them.

“I myself know who stabbed Sir Gilbert with a pretty knife,” said the deputy. “I saw who did it with these very eyes in my head.”

John could not keep the eager curiosity from his voice. “Every outlaw in the woods knows you're a worthy opponent.” The truth regarding the murder, John knew, could place Margaret beyond all harm.

“Do they indeed?” asked Henry, boyish in his willingness to believe. Then he sighed.

“It was Lionel the shield bearer who took his master's life because the worthy knight tossed a pair of weighted dice.”

John smiled. Once word of Margaret's innocence was spread, no deputy could lay hand on her.

A small sound—a tick, a pebble grating under a heel—made John straighten in his saddle. Henry heard it, too, but without any show of anxiety. He groped for his sword.

A head bobbed from behind a stone wall. A shoulder showed for an instant over a hedge. Shrubs trembled. Spearheads glinted. John's stout-legged cob shied at movement from behind.

The first spear cracked into the small of Henry's back.

It knocked him off his mount. The sheriff's man tried to reach around and seize the weapon, but another spear struck his head, knocking the helmet awry and sending blood down his features. Henry staggered to his feet, and then each new spear drove air from his body, gushes of wordless sounds, until the sheriff's man collapsed on the road, face down in the mud. His attackers finished him, wrenching their spears and plunging them in again, wetting their spearheads with crimson.

Heaven forgive me
, prayed John, aghast at the sight of bright lung blood spraying from Henry's lips. Then, as a spearhead stabbed into Henry's neck and another gouged the deputy's face, John could not stand it any longer.

He rode his mount into the knot of armed men, striking about him with his staff. One spearhead ripped his mantle, and a spear shaft grazed his head, half stunning him for an instant.

“Robin Hood is dead!” cried a spearman, rising up from Henry's crumpled form.

Chapter 44

The spearmen formed a circle around Little John. Each spear was held in gloved hands, each man leather-armored, the brass studs and fittings polished. Several of the spears were winged—fitted with a metal flange so the head could penetrate only so far into man or beast.

Nine spearmen, thought Little John. Only nine, and a mangy bunch they were too, swollen with drink, panting with effort. In other circumstances John would have pitied them. These were not sharp-eyed poachers like Tom Dee. Tavern louts, bullies, strong-arm robbers—these were the best Red Roger could get.

The nobleman rode from across a field, his red silk sleeves brilliant in the light. He made a wide circuit, leaped a wall, and let his horse slow to an easy pace. The bridle fittings were polished brass, and a yellow hemp rope hung coiled from the saddle. Red Roger parted the spearmen, and took a long moment to let his horse exhale and inhale, a man kind to his mount.

He spoke softly—John had almost forgotten how quietly he could speak. “I knew you'd come back to me, John, even after all this time.” His lean features were more gaunt, but he still gave that thin smile, like a priest with a regretfully sinful flock.

“I gave your man Grimes a gold mark,” Red Roger continued. “More money than he will see in ten years. And I let him go.”

Red Roger stayed on horseback, using the butt of a spear to lever Henry's body slowly, laboriously, onto his side, and then all the way over. The deputy's face was white and inert in the noon sun, and John offered a silent prayer for his soul.

“Mine was the thrust that killed him,” said a corpulent spearman. “I win the purse of coin.”

Red Roger gazed at Henry, peering down, prodding with the shaft of his spear. Then he looked up, his eyes meeting John's gaze. When he spoke, it reminded John of a holy man about to deliver a Lenten homily, frowning to let sinners know that sobering words were about to follow.

“Who is this man?” asked Red Roger quietly.

“I killed Robin Hood!” insisted the burly spearman.

John kicked the cob hard, and the broad-chested horse lurched into a spearman, knocking him down and planting a hoof on the man's chest. Then the horse stumbled, knocked over another spearman, and slipped, a hoof seeking solid footing and finding only scrambling arms and legs. It fell, rolling, dumping John.