Robin Hood (26 page)

As the boys continued to parade him through the
camp like a trophy, Robin spotted Marion. She stood at a fire of her own, a low, broad bed of embers burning in a shallow trench. There were several boys gathered near her, and all of them appeared to be ill or injured. Several bore bandages; one stood on a crutch. A number of the boys, all of them coughing, were huddled by the fire. Four or five pots boiled there, steam rising from them in great clouds. Marion had the boys leaning over the pots, their heads covered with animal skins, so that they could breathe in the steam. Robin assumed that she was boiling herbs.

While the sick boys breathed in Marion's concoction, she had turned her attention to a wounded child. She was bent over him, dressing a small wound on his arm with medicine from a vial and a bandage seemingly made from leaves and moss. The other boys watched her closely, not the way they would a distrusted stranger, but rather as they might their own mothers.

The boys who carried Robin let out a shout, announcing their arrival to those who hadn't yet noticed. Marion looked up and, seeing that they carried a man on their pole, regarded them with alarm and disapproval. A moment later—Robin saw it happen—she realized who it was they had captured and her expression changed. She still looked concerned, but there was a hint of amusement in her eyes as well. Robin couldn't say that he blamed her.

The six who carried him finally stopped walking and dumped him unceremoniously in the middle of the camp. They milled around him for a moment or two, and Robin continued to pretend that he was unconscious.

One of the older boys walked over to them, carrying himself with the confidence of a war commander.

“Good work, men,” he said, stopping in front of Robin. “Has he spoken?”

One of the other boys shook his head. “Let him hang a little, Loop. He'll taste better.”

The other boys laughed. A number of the younger ones crept closer to Robin and reached out to poke his shoulder, his back, his leg. Robin opened one eye and let out a low growl. The boys jumped away again, squealing happily.

Marion joined the group gathering around Robin, a smile on her face as well.

“He were spyin', Loop,” one of the boys who had captured him said to the leader.

Marion looked down at Robin, an eyebrow raised. Robin smiled weakly, admitting his guilt.

“Spying!” Marion said. “Why, I'm ashamed of you, Robert!”

“A good day to you, Lady,” Robin replied.

The one named Loop turned to Marion. “Do you know him?”

Marion gestured toward the boys with an open hand. “Sir Robert,” she said, as though making formal introductions, “the runaways of Sherwood.” She indicated Robin. “Boys, Sir Robert Loxley, my husband.”

For the first time, Loop appeared frightened. “Untie him!”

But Marion held up a hand, stopping them. “Oh, I think spies must not be let off so easily.”

Robin gave her a wounded look. “That was unkind.”

Loop's eyes widened as he finally seemed to understand the significance of what Marion had said. “You were a crusader?” he asked, sounding awed.

“For ten years,” Robin said. “Thirty-five in the army.”

“Hear that boys?” Loop called to the others. “You bested a crusader!” The younger boys beamed; the older ones looked at them with renewed respect. Loop pointed to his army. “My men are good fighters,” he told Robin.

Robin considered them. “They move silent, like creatures of the forest.” Looking up at Loop again, he added, “But it's only a worthy skill if you live as men, not as common thieves and poachers.”

Loop's face fell. “We're soldiers,” he insisted, sounding terribly young.

“True soldiers fight for a cause,” Robin said. He paused, cast a quick look at Marion. “Besides, you have many skills left to learn.”

“Like what?” the boy asked, a challenge in his voice.

Robin grinned. “Knots!”

Saying the word, Robin rolled onto his knees and got to his feet, pole and all, in one seamless motion. The boys gaped at him, too surprised to move. Gripping the pole in both hands, he lifted it free of the vines tied around his ankles. With the pole out of the way, the vines were so loose that he was able to step out of them with ease. Still gripping the wood, he spun, so that the pole made a swift arc. Several of the boys jumped back, just out of the way, and the stick smashed through a water gourd hanging from a nearby branch. Drops of water and shards of the gourd flew in all directions.

“Because that would have been your head,” Robin said to the startled Loop.

He let go of the pole, allowing it to slip through his fingers and fall free of the ropes binding his wrists. And as with the ties at his ankles, this made the knots loose enough that he could simply throw
them off. Catching the pole in his hands before it hit the ground, he gripped it like Little John would his stave and quickly backed Loop against a tree trunk, trapping the lad there with the end of the pole pressed lightly against his chest.

“And that, your breastbone,” Robin went on.

He did all of this in mere seconds. Every person there stared at him, awed, shocked to silence. Even Marion. She eyed him as if he was a stranger, looking both impressed and a bit frightened. She caught his eye, and Robin gazed right back at her, letting her see that this was as true a part of him as the rest of what she had come to know these past few days. He could be a leader, as her husband had been. He could rescue a ram and steal grain back from the Church. And he could fight.

After a moment Robin stepped back and lowered the stave. “There's much I can teach you.” He said. “You can find me in Nottingham.”

Loop stared at him for another moment, still impressed. Then he nodded, smiling faintly.

H
e and his riders reached the outskirts of Nottingham just as night fell. Stars spread across the velvet blue sky, from the darkness of the east toward the waning fiery glow at the western horizon. From the rise where they halted their mounts, he could see a bonfire burning at the edge of a broad field. People converged on the blaze from other fields, and from the town at the base of the hill—it seemed that some sort of celebration was just beginning.

Good. That would give him the opportunity to approach unseen. William Marshal twisted around in his saddle to face the leader of the small escort that had ridden north with him.

“Wait for me here,” he said.

The man nodded. Marshal rode alone toward the fire.

A
S HE AND
Marion returned to Peper Harrow from the forest, Robin managed to shoot and kill a wild
boar. That boar now turned on a spit over a great bed of coals not far from a blazing bonfire. Will Scarlet turned several birds, including Robin's pheasants, on small spits nearby. Villagers had brought cheeses and breads, greens and roots, mead and wine. King John wouldn't have thought much of the feast they were preparing, but in his brief time here, Robin had yet to see the people of Nottingham this excited. Everywhere he looked, people grinned and laughed. Robin could see, though, that Marion had been right the other day. There were few young men left in the town and fewer boys.

Allan had brought his lute and was tuning its strings. Robin saw Friar Tuck and Little John approaching, each carrying stone jars, and John rolling a keg in front of him with one foot. When they finally reached the fires, Tuck sat down behind Allan and took up a double-sided drum.

Little John hefted the keg. “Come, Allan,” he said. “I'll get them drinking if you'll get them dancing.”

Allan smiled and began to play a lively old drinking song. The friar beat the drum in time, and around them people began to clap their hands. Robin wondered when they had last enjoyed such an evening in this town.

Robin had joined Sir Walter, who sat bathed in the glow of the bonfire, a huge grin on his lined face, one hand slapping his thigh in time with the music.

“Music. Laughter. The crackle of a bonfire.” He paused, sniffing the air. “And a roasting pig!” he said, delighted. “That unmistakable sound of people about to eat.” He turned his grin on Robin. “You have returned life to us.”

“And the fields planted.”

Robin looked up to see that Marion had emerged from the darkness to stand with them. She held out a hand to him.

“As lord and mistress, it is expected that we dance,” she said. “They will wait until we do.”

Robin looked over to where Allan and the friar were playing. The townspeople were milling around the musicians and clapping, but they had yet to start dancing. And, in fact, many of the villagers kept glancing toward the two of them, clearly waiting. It would still take him some time to get used to being lord of the manor.

He looked up at Marion once more, took her offered hand, and let her lead him over to the bonfire and the musicians. Her hand felt warm in his and he was conscious suddenly of the firelight shimmering in her hair. He sensed that every pair of eyes was trained on them, but he didn't care. In that moment, all that seemed to matter was the music and the fire and the woman beside him.

Marion took hold of his other hand, nodded to him once, and they began to dance.

N
OBODY APPEARED
to have noticed the sheriff as he rode up to the field, dismounted, and approached the fire. He had gotten himself a tankard of ale, but still no one spoke to him. Now, watching through the flames as Loxley and Lady Marion danced in the firelight, he raised his cup, trying to join the spirit of the evening.

“Well,” he said, “here's to…” He trailed off. No one seemed to hear him. They didn't even seem to know he was there. He lowered his cup slowly, the smile he had fixed on his lips giving way to a scowl. Grumbling to himself, he took another drink and watched.

L
ITTLE
J
OHN HAD
the keg tapped and was filling cups and tankards as quickly as they were handed to him, and occasionally draining and refilling his own.

Allan had finished his first song and was playing another one, as Tuck continued to beat on the tabor drum, occasionally taking time out to drink his honey mead. Scarlet began to sing.

Robin had never thought much of Will's singing voice, but tonight he sounded sweeter than usual. Although that might have had more to do with the woman dancing with Robin, than with anything Will had done to improve his singing.

Once he got started, Robin realized that he liked dancing more than he thought. Then again, that might have been Marion's doing, too. The townspeople around them had joined in the dancing almost as soon as Robin and Marion began. They laughed and clapped hands, and shouted greetings to Sir Robert and Lady Marion as they spun past. Robin barely noticed them.

He did spot the Sheriff of Nottingham lurking at the edge of the firelight, a tankard in one hand and a piece of roasted fowl in the other. The sheriff appeared to be watching them dance. Robin thought that the man looked covetously at Marion, but that might have been a trick of the light, or of his own imagination. A moment later, the sheriff turned and walked away, melting into the darkness. And good riddance to him.