The Outlaws of Sherwood

by Robin McKinley

  Cecily turned on her teacher then, turned with the sharp litheness of an enemy. His hands dropped, and she took two steps backward, away from him. “Would you so freely have taught me to use a staff, and to throw larger opponents, and to leap out of trees upon them, had I been Cecily—Lady Cecily of Norwell—these weeks past?”

  Robin turned away. There was a little silence, and Little John said, heavily, “No. I would not.”

  Cecily gave a little shiver, and faced the fire again, and to it she whispered, “And what has become of the only lady of Greentree who could string her own bow?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Will. “’Twas but a fortnight ago I told Reda there were promises I wish I had had the chance to make. If it is revenge you have wanted, you have had it, for not a day has passed since I left our father’s house that I have not thought of you; particularly after I heard that you were gone too, and no one knew where.”

  “Marian half-guessed,” said Cecily. “Marjorie has half-guessed too, I think.” She was a slight figure, her shoulders slumped, staring into the fire. She raised her head at last, and looked straight at her brother for the first time. “I have thought of you every day too,” she said; “I have thought, every time I fled from you, of how much I missed you.…” Her voice trailed away, and Will held out his arms, and Cecily went to him. They stood silently, and he stroked her ragged hair, and she sighed and leaned against him as if exhausted.

  Much said, “One mystery solved. Might one ask how”—to Little John—“you came to so—er—upsetting a discovery?”

  Cecily stirred in her brother’s arms and Little John looked thoughtful. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think I’ll tell you.”

  Cecily backed away from her brother, looking down at her tunic. “It’s true, it only works if you pretty much look like a boy in the first place.” She caught her brother’s eye. “But I have always been a good archer, haven’t I?”

  Will put an arm around her again, as if to reassure himself that she was real. “I should know; I’m the one who got whipped for letting you use my old bow.… But how could you not tell me? How could you let me go on thinking … Did you really believe I would try to have you sent home?”

  She lifted her shoulders. “Would you not?”

  “No. I would not have sent you to Sir Aubrey.”

  Robin said, “Will is tactfully not mentioning that he thought of trying to rescue you when he heard that you had locked your door and refused to come out and say your wedding vows.”

  Will looked uncomfortable. “Will is also tactfully not mentioning that he believed that his sister was planning to go through with it, which is his bad reason for abandoning her.”

  Cecily smiled a dismal little smile. “You could not have rescued me,” she said. “And I knew what you thought. You thought I was like the rest of the family after all.… I misjudged you, too; I did not think you would act so quickly.”

  “Still …” began Will. “Then—but—”

  “But by the telling I would still have lost my teacher,” said Cecily, “and without my teacher, I would have lost my place. Is it not so, Robin Hood?”

  Robin looked at her thoughtfully. “I cannot answer that honestly,” he said. “I—there is some truth to what you say. If that does not satisfy you, then you must go on thinking of us what you will. But whether your means were fair or not, you have bought and served your apprenticeship, and proved your place among us. I was blind to why you reminded me of Will; but do you think, these last weeks, if I had decided that you must leave us, that I could not have forced you to listen to me?”

  Little John, watching her standing next to her brother, half-glowering in the old Cecil manner and half-comforted by Robin’s words, saw for a moment what it had been like for her as Will’s little sister. Some of what she was good at, and some of what she was bad at, as his pupil, came clear to him in that moment; and something else came clear to him too, but he set it aside so quickly that he allowed himself not to recognise it for what it was.

  “And,” added Robin more lightly, “you pass the basic requirement, which is to be a better archer than your leader.” Cecily stopped glowering to look surprised. “Come now, that’s the most open secret here, that I am the worst archer of us all.”

  “And speaking of archers,” said Little John, “the sheriff’s contest is tomorrow.”

  “Which we are all staying very far away from,” said Robin. “Why do you bring it up?”

  “I think,” said Little John slowly, “that it is not wise that we do not go.” There was a rustle from several of the other outlaws. “There are currents in Nottingham that I do not like, that I think we would do well to watch; and they will be well worth watching at such a grand event.”

  Robin frowned. “We have no one to spare,” he said. “You know how tight-stretched we are now. Those coming off watch are tired; I would not ask anyone to risk it.”

  “I have not had a hard sennight,” said Little John; “it has just happened that way. I could go.”

  “You know since Lucy married that wine-merchant that Rafe’s news of the town has been thin,” said Much. “The thinness shows especially now, since we bought Beautement off.”

  “You are too visible,” said Robin to Little John.

  Little John shook his head. “Not on fair day. I will go as a wrestler; there will be other men as big as me.”

  “Do you know how to wrestle?” said Much.

  “Yes, small man, I do. I once earned a few coins at it. I can probably do so again.”

  Robin stood in troubled thought.

  “Besides,” said Little John. He rubbed his well-forested chin. “I thought to shave. No sensible wrestler would wear a beard; and I have worn this one since before there was a price on my head. I will put a little colour on my face, and no one will notice that I had a beard very recently.”

  “You would be better not to go alone, even so,” said Will slowly.

  Little John looked at Will, and then at Cecily, who was staring fixedly at her toes, and back to Robin. He said, “Cecily could come with me, as my assistant; she could carry my cloak, and collect the coins. We will look very ordinary that way.” He looked back at Cecily, who appeared to be chewing on the insides of both cheeks. “We are accustomed to each other, and that will also show to our advantage. She will understand what to do when it needs doing.”

  Cecily looked up at last, but now it was Little John who would not look at her. She risked a glance at Robin, who was watching her quizzically. She dropped her eyes again at once.

  “Very well,” said Robin. “I do not like it, but I see we may have a need of it. Stay as far from trouble as you can; I do not like sending anyone to Nottingham on the day the sheriff hopes to spring the trap for me and mine.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cecily pulled a blanket from the heap folded up at the front of the little half-cave and went off into the fringe of forest between Greentree and the first guard post to find a suitable tree to sleep in or under. She had spent most of her nights over the last several weeks curled up against Little John’s back, but she was too astonished at her luck of being chosen by her hero to accompany him to Nottingham on the morrow—however logical a choice it was—to risk forcing any decisions about potentially sticky topics. She told herself that he had chosen her because she, like he, had had a comparatively easy sennight—he should know, they had spent most of it together—but that got her no farther forward about anything else, and she could argue meaning both ways.

  The men who were regularly paired for guard duty often slept together; Eva and Sibyl slept together—even Alan and Marjorie had slept with the others after their wedding night. The little turf hut given over to them that first night was too necessary for its original purposes. Robin had reluctantly compromised his rule about (even relatively) permanent structures to let them build it—if you could call dirt, stone, turf, and a few wood braces building; Jocelin denied it was anything of the sort—after nearly everything
they owned was chewed up by non-hibernating mice and other uninvited visitors during their first winter. Even now there were a good many tunics and blankets that were a trifle scalloped around the edges. Cecily was wearing one of the former, and one of the latter was over her arm as she meditated on her choice of trees.

  She thought of the delicate flush on Marjorie’s cheekbones once after she and Alan had been away from Greentree on no particular errand for a little time: “Just for a walk,” she had said, somewhat anxiously, to Matilda, upon their return. “We—we see so little of each other because there is always so much work to do.” This had been only ten days or so before. Cecily had been scrounging for more to eat; she and Little John had come in from a double term of watch after their relief had been disabled by a forester’s arrow in the hand, and she had felt as if she could eat the bark off a tree. Matilda was cutting bread for her, and Cecily had clearly seen the odd, kindly, wistful little smile that had crossed Matilda’s face. “Do you think I am going to scold you? I had a young husband myself once.” To Cecily: “No, you may not eat a raw turnip. Here, Marjorie, now you’re back, start peeling these, and chop this lad’s fingers if he gets in your way.”

  There is no reason I should remember that just now, Cecily thought, and stalked into the shadows.

  Little John was never very communicative, but he was as silent as a stone the next morning. Cecily crept back into the camp before dawn and was heating water for one of Sibyl’s curious herb infusions over a tiny corner of the banked fire she’d kicked and blown into life. Simon was on duty nearby; she’d seen him when she creaked down from her tree. The best tree in the world was not meant for sleeping in, and she’d made a good bit of noise in the process of trying to wake her muscles out of the knots they’d twisted themselves into overnight. Simon had not been by last evening when she and Little John had crashed into Greentree; perhaps it was her own anxieties that made her think that his face was too blank and the question he did not ask about why she had spent the night in a tree was too loud.

  She poured the water, arranged some bread near enough the embers to scorch but not catch fire, and looked up at Little John. She was so accustomed to his step, to his bulk, that it took a moment to notice his face; and when she did … It was, she thought, rather like the moment it took to realize one had cut one’s finger as one stared dumbly at the first drop of blood on the knife-blade. You know it is going to hurt quite a lot in a minute.

  He squatted down beside her without a word. This was not unusual, but his not meeting her eyes was, and her heart rose up in her throat for a moment in fear that he planned to tell her she could not go with him today. His lower face looked unnaturally pink from close at hand. Most of the men had beards kept cut off short near their chins; a few, like Robin and Will, kept themselves shaved by every day or two begging a little hot water from the pot of it Matilda, and now Marjorie, usually kept simmering. “It’s not the knife against my skin I dislike,” Much had said once; “it’s Matilda’s ironical eye.”

  “If I could grow anything that looked like a beard,” said Robin, somewhat indistinctly, through shut teeth, “I would probably forego this bit of self-inflicted misery. But one’s vanity reveals itself in strange ways.” Little John’s face looked rather peeled. They passed the infusion between them as they had many times before, and shared the crunchy bread. Cecily’s heart slowed down to its usual pace, and she thought, I could follow him if he tries to leave me behind. Last night he asked Robin to let me go with him; they will not miss me here.

  Little John stood up; now he did let his eyes rest briefly on Cecily’s anxious, upturned face; but his expression was unreadable. It wasn’t just the beard, she thought, and sprang up. He picked up a bundle and set off in the direction that would bring them at last to Nottingham. She hurried to walk beside him, where he could not help but notice her, and he said no word suggesting that she remain behind; he said no word of any kind. She had soon to drop back for the sake of making her way neatly through the tree limbs and vine leaves that clutched at them. Perhaps it was her own oppression of spirits, for he was often silent. But his silence on this day weighed on her heart.

  In walking they were a good match, for her legs were long, and she’d always taken strides as long and quick as she could as a kind of protest against being compelled to wear skirts. Walking with her brother had been good practice, for he was nearly as tall as Little John. What Little John had had to teach her was to walk quietly. She was not a bad pupil—in this or in anything else he had chosen to teach her—but her mind tended to wander from the immediate repetitive question of where to put each foot, while Little John, it seemed to her, never stepped absent-mindedly on a twig. Perhaps his feet had their own eyes. She’d complained once to him—weeks ago—that he must be made of air, not flesh, for no one so large could walk so quietly. That had been before he had begun to teach her how to throw an opponent bigger than herself with her hands instead of her staff, and before she’d found out how heavy he could be when the lesson was going against her.

  “Flesh enough,” he’d said at the time, “flesh and blood and bone. Or did you think that was Much last night whose blanket you were stealing? I learnt to walk quietly because I needed to learn so badly. Have you not noticed how noisy squirrels are, and how quiet the deer?”

  “I am not a squirrel,” she’d said, a trifle sulkily.

  “No,” he agreed. “You cannot leap half so far.”

  But Little John’s bare chin was sunk upon his breast this morning, and she could think of nothing to say; the best she could do was to walk as silently as she was able, to remember past lessons as perfectly as she could, as an indication that … her thoughts stopped here. It was hard not to keep glancing at his face when the undergrowth permitted; when his profile appeared over his shoulder as he held a whippy branch back for her to grab. His beard was the sort that grew up within a couple of fingers’ breadth of his eyes, and it was nearly black, darker even than his dark hair. Now she had discovered that he had cheekbones and a chin; and there were long deep lines on either side of his mouth.

  Humphrey almost challenged them when it took him a moment to recognise the tall smooth-faced man walking beside Cecil. “Wrestling, eh?” he said, looking at Little John’s shoulders. “Nay, I’d not willingly stand up against you. Drink some ale for me, though, will you? I don’t miss much, living in trees; but I miss the good ale.”

  They had come most of their way to Nottingham without a word between them. Little John paused, and caught one of Cecily’s sidelong looks. He put a hand to his face. “I feel a draught,” he said ruefully. He let the bundle down off his back. “Time for the rest of our disguise, I think.” He knelt, which then put him well below Cecily’s eye level as she stood beside him, to untie the bundle; hesitated; and looked up at her. “You haven’t said how I look.”

  She was silent a moment, looking down, and he began to smile, as if involuntarily. The lines around his mouth looked suddenly merry, and his smile was nothing like what it had been behind the beard. “That bad, eh?” he said.

  She shook her head; the throb like a cut finger had been hurting all morning, but it was nothing she wished to tell him about. “I don’t know. Different.”

  He stayed as he was a moment longer, head thrown back, eyes holding hers. There was a little gap in the trees where he had chosen to stop, and the early sun was on his face. “You have no call to complain about my appearing suddenly different.”

  She smiled a little. “No. I didn’t say anything about that.” He sank back on his heels, and began to pull at the knots of his bundle. “Was it so awful—what you ran from?”

  She sat down beside him; he’d never asked her about her history before. She had, in fact, dreaded that he might, because she had not wanted to do any further lying; the essential lie of her name and her gender was hard enough to bear. She’d thought daily of what would happen when she was finally discovered, for it never occurred to her that she would not be discovered. Even
if the laces on her tunic had not chosen to give at the same moment that the thin-worn spot on her shirt had decided to tear, she would not have been able to avoid her brother forever. To make herself sleep at night she had told herself the story of the lady This or That, who’d led her husband’s knights into battle while he was away on the Crusades; led them and won, too. She knew several stories like that which had come to her father’s castle. They were always her favourites, and she believed them fiercely while her father and her brothers scoffed at them as minstrel’s fantasies.

  Somehow they rang hollow to her at midnight in Sherwood. She had been grateful and ashamed at once for the natural reticence of the outlaws, their easy willingness to leave someone so visibly troubled by memory kindly alone. She had never understood why they had trusted her when she was so mistrustful herself; how had Robin known that her guilty secret was no threat to them? She had wanted to confess during every sleepless night she had—had occasionally gone so far as to creep out of the cave and look for Robin, who seemed to her never to sleep at all, but to spend the nights investigating the corners of Greentree, or whittling by the fire, or going on long mysterious walks through the trees. But she never had. The thought of Marian always stopped her.

  She found herself choosing words carefully, for fear of saying too much, even now. “It seemed so to me. I had enough to eat, and I know that that … makes me different from most of us. But I could not eat it. You had your livelihood taken from you; my life was to be given to someone I hated.”