Wild Boy (6 page)

“Rook, where did you go?” Rowan was saying with no trace of anger in her voice, only … some other emotion. Blinking, Rook tried to focus on her face, but it swam before his eyes like an oval moon in green twilight, and her mouth seemed to waver in her face as she spoke. “I thought maybe you’d been captured, maybe even killed. I was frightened. Why didn’t you tell me—”

Hemlocks seemed to be lifting, drifting, swaying, and Rook’s head felt afloat between their branches, and he blurted words he had never before spoken aloud. “A wolf roams where he will.”

Rowan’s grave eyes widened, filling his watery world. She asked him softly, “Is that what you are, Rook? A wolf?”

Even her lack of anger reproached him. He wanted to say something, explain, but his mind felt like a dead fish bobbing in a black river. He stood there.

Rowan peered at him. “Are you all right?”

Sounding as if it spoke from very far away, a strange voice said, “Rowan, he saved my life. He fought a wild boar to save me.”

Oh. It was Beau, serious for once.

Another faraway voice, Tod’s, chattered, “He could have left me in the man trap. I didn’t care then if he stank. Actually he didn’t stink as bad that day.”

“His head’s wounded,” Beau said. “He won’t let me look at it.”

Rook heard Rowan gasp, and he heard her say, “Contagion! No wonder it smells. It’s festering….”

He heard that much, but he couldn’t see anything except darkness. He felt Runkling’s tether slip from his hand, and he felt someone strong, maybe Lionel or Robin Hood, catch him as he fell.

Rook awoke to find himself lying on a soft bed of somebody’s mantle spread over—over a thick layer of fallen hemlock needles, probably, for
he looked up at hemlocks. And at someone bending over him—it was that wretch Tod, of all people. Sitting by Rook’s side with his broken leg stretched out at an awkward angle, the Sheriff’s son nodded at Rook and said, “Rowan had to go find some kind of herb or something for you, to doctor your stinky skull. I’m supposed to get the fever down. Like so.” His hand reached into a leather bucket, then came up holding a sopping wet rag with which he mopped Rook’s face.

Rook stiffened, wanting to tell the brat to stop, wanting to curse him, wanting to hit him, but it was all he could do just to turn his face away. Tod kept right on sloshing water at the side of Rook’s head, his neck, his shoulder and chest. Rook sighed and found that he had no strength for anger; he lay limp. The water’s cool touch felt good, cleared his head. Able to think a little, he whispered, “Where’s Runkling?”

“Runkling?”

“My … pig …”

“What, that suckling pork you brought us?” spoke another, deeper voice with a wink of laughter in it. Robin Hood crouched beside Tod, took the wet rag and started applying it to parts of Rook that Tod couldn’t reach. “‘Twas the tenderest, most succulent roast I’ve ever tasted, lad, but barely enough for a bite apiece. Next time—”

“Bah. Don’t listen to the lying scoundrel.” But Tod’s tone was as cheerful as Robin’s. “Runkling, come here, pig.” Tod swiveled to reach behind him, heaving something up in both hands. It squealed and kicked at the air with small pointed trotters. Tod held Runkling up so that Rook could see him, then set him back down on the ground. “Robin’s been feeding him milk and bread,” he said.

“To fatten him,” Robin Hood explained with gravest drollery. “Even Tykell doesn’t want to eat such a little bit of a runt. He looked at that so-called pig and—”

“Tykell
did
want to eat it,” Tod put in. “But Rowan told him to let it be. And he listened to her. Even this proud oaf”—he flapped a hand toward Robin Hood—”listens to Rowan. Did you know that he’s Rowan’s
father
? I can’t believe it. She’s so nice, and he’s such a smirking, stinging gadfly of a—”

“Bah,” Rook growled. He knew Tod was not speaking to him, really, just carrying on some sort of game with Robin Hood. Less than a fortnight the Sheriff’s son had been in the hands of Robin and his merry men, and already the brat was everyone’s pet. A barbed feeling in Rook’s chest gave him strength to tell Tod, “Go home if you don’t like it here.”

“I will,” Tod said. “My father will come looking for me. My father will find me.”

“Taking his time, isn’t he?” Robin Hood teased.

The boy looked Robin straight in the eye. “Likely he’s got important matters to attend to. With the king, belike.”

“Belike.” Robin’s voice turned gentle, like the touch with which he swabbed Rook’s legs. “But no need to wait for him, lad. As soon as we get you on crutches, we can guide you back to Nottingham.”

Tod lowered his eyes, silent.

“Sooth, I could carry you there now on my back,” said Robin, watching Tod.

Silence. Still staring at the ground, Tod took water from the bucket with one hand and smoothed it onto Rook’s forehead. Rook let him do this.

“Tod, lad,” said Robin, “tell me the truth.” In his voice were the power and pity that made him Robin Hood. “The day we found you on that great black brute of a warhorse, what were you doing in the forest? Were you running away from your father?”

Tod took a long breath, swallowed, then straightened and faced Robin. “I suppose so. But I wanted to go back with—with a head hanging from the saddle.”

He winced as if Robin Hood might hit him, but Robin only nodded. “You wanted to kill an outlaw?”

“Yes. To please him. To make him proud of me.”

Don’t laugh at me
, Tod’s face begged.

But Robin showed no sign of merriment, only puzzlement. “But you’re a fine, sharp dagger of a lad, bright and bold. How is he not proud of you already?”

“I …” Quite suddenly Tod reached for Runkling and held the little pig on his lap, hugging it. “I don’t know,” he said to the top of Runkling’s bristly head.

Rook hated the feeling in his chest, as if the thorny muddle there were making him bleed inside. A creature of the wild does not feel such pain. A wolf does not care what happens to others. Yet Rook could not help blurting a question at the Sheriff’s son. “What will happen when you go back?”

Tod met his eyes without hesitation. “He will beat me for taking the horse. That’s all.” Tod reached for the cloth, and Robin gave it to him. Tod dunked it in the bucket, lifted it out and held it so that cool water dripped into Rook’s clotted, knotted mane of hair. Rook closed his eyes.

N
o,” Rook said.

“But Rook, I have to cut some of your hair anyway to drain the wound and bandage it.” In the orange campfire light, under the towering darkness of the hemlock trees, Rowan looked as steely as Rook had ever seen her. “Toads take it, Rook, any dolt knows too much hair saps your strength if you’re sick. I am going to cut it all off.”

Rook had not told her, yet somehow she knew: He felt as weak as a butterfly. But just the same, he mumbled, “
No
.” Rook had not combed or washed or cut even the forelock of his hair since the day his father—since that day. The day that had made him an outlaw, a wolf’s head, a wild boy of the woods. Confound it, Ettarde had always been wanting to cut his black clotted hair, or comb it or wash it, and he hadn’t given in to her. And now Rowan—he had never thought Rowan would turn against him so. Defiance gave Rook enough strength to sit up, although his head spun with the effort and the stench of his own contagion filled his nostrils and made him nauseous. “A wolf doesn’t …” He blurred the words, and stopped himself from saying more, but Rowan heard.

“A wolf?” She leaned closer to him, kneeling, her face level with his. “Rook, you are not a wolf. You are a person, a swineherd’s son.” His face must have changed when she said this, for her voice softened. “Tod told us.”

Rook turned his head, and yes, there was the Sheriff’s freckled brat sitting nearby with his broken leg stretched out, holding Runkling on his lap. Scratching the little pig along the backbone and behind the ears. Runkling lay snoring with pleasure, his eyes closed. Rook noticed what long eyelashes the shoat had. And he noticed Tod’s silence, and the look in Tod’s eyes. Tod met Rook’s glaring stare with—was that pleading? The young snot had not begged when he was dying in the man trap, yet he was begging for something now?

Rowan added, “My father was friends with your father, Rook, did you know that?”

“I knew him well,” said Robin Hood’s voice out of the hemlock shadows. “Everyone knew Jack Pigkeep. A man of few words, wisely spoken. A man with a strong back, a brave arm and a generous heart. I should have guessed before now that you are his son.”

Painful memories twisted in Rook’s gut, made him bare his teeth in a snarl.

Rowan repeated, “You are his son, Rook. Would your father want you to act like a wild beast?”

“Don’t speak of him!”

Silence. Silence so deep, Rook could sense the breathing of dozens of outlaws all around him, in the shadows amid the sheltering trees.

“All right,” said Rowan softly. “But would a wolf wear a strand of my ring, Rook?”

It was as if the contagion had put poison into Rook’s heart; he wanted to snatch the silver strand resting on his bare chest, tear it off and fling it away. But he had strength only to turn his face away from Rowan, trying to lie down. He wanted to be let alone. He wanted to rest. The poisonous feeling passed through him and left him feeling watery, with no retorts in him.

Rowan’s gentle hands were yet strong enough to hold him where he was, sitting upright. “You are not a wild beast,” Rowan said. “You are one of us.”

Undeniably so. Yet Rook shook his head as if he felt flies bothering him.

An outlaw called from the shadows, “Rowan, he’s not in his right mind. Do you want us to hold him down while you cut—”

“No!” A fresh jolt of rage gave Rook strength to shout even though Rowan waved the outlaw’s offer away. “No, I’ll die first!”

Rowan appealed, “Rook, for the love of mercy …”

“
Sacre amour
of the toad, Rook,” came Beau’s mocking voice, “for what is to be so stubborn? Here.” She strode out of the shadows to kneel facing him, beside Rowan. “Look.” She pulled her dagger, seized a long hank of her own hair with her other hand, and sliced. Her bleached-blond tresses fell away, leaving black stubble. “See?” She sliced again, laying more long, bleached hair on the ground at her feet. “Is not so hard! Rowan, you do the back?”

“You want it all off?” Rowan’s face looked as if she were studying some new creature she had not seen before.

“
Mais oui
, of course.”

Between the two of them they finished the job quickly. On the ground lay a mess of long blond curls, all that was left of Beau’s former life as the high king’s page boy. On Beau’s head stood stubble as raven-black as Rook’s long tangled mane of hair. She flashed Rook her most shining glance, gave him her most dazzling grin. “Now you do it. And then we be twins, yes?”

Rook saw one of Rowan’s rare smiles quirking at the corners of her mouth as she studied Beau. “Twin brothers?”

“Your turn,
mon frère
.” Beau offered Rook her dagger.

He stared at it. Filigree hand guard. Carved hilt. A crystal globe of chalcedony in the pommel. The dagger with which she had killed a wild boar and saved his life.

And now she was trying to save him again. Let him cut his black tangled mane of hair himself. Save his pride.

She continued to offer the dagger with patience as unusual, coming from her, as her silence. No one spoke. The only sound Rook heard was Runkling snoring, still being patted by that proud brat—

Brat? Who was being proud now?

Rook blinked, then shakily reached for the dagger. He fumbled his fingers onto the filigree handle and lifted the blade to his hair, but his hands wavered so much, he knew he was as likely to cut off an ear as not. He lowered his hand and passed the dagger to Rowan. “You do it,” he mumbled.

He noticed that she said nothing either to scold him or praise him. Silently he thanked her for her silence as she started to shear away the long tangles. Her touch could not have been more gentle.

Bracing himself with both hands to stay upright, Rook found it difficult to remind himself that a creature of the wild does not need friends.