“Nonsense, Will Stutely!” Master Hood threw back his head and laughed until a tear ran down his cheek. “What, with you and Little John, Will Scarlet, Much, and my lady’s friar at my side? Never, so long as deer run in Sherwood to meet my arrows, and fair Maid Marian is my own true love! And should he—what’s the form?—put his hands betwixt mine own and swear me fealty, why, then, having a gentleman to my vassal will make of me a gentle lord, will it not? Well, lad, let’s hear your answer! Charger and arms and suit of steel as befits your station, besides a silk robe and another of velvet for dining in, Lincoln green for freely roving our greenwood, and twenty marks—nay, for a man of your rank, make it twenty-three marks a year. How say you?”
All this while Denis had stood dumb with anger, feeling an excess of blood suffuse his face with greater heat than when he had fainted from hanging too long head downward. “You began this battle because I offered you a trifling insult,” he brought out at last, “and now you offer me a great one.”
This time the growl, though rising from fewer throats, sounded more genuine; and the frowning faces, though interspersed with grinning ones, looked fiercer. Denis tightened his grip on Will Scarlet’s sword.
But once again Robin Hood laughed and held up his hand. “Nay, my merry men all! It’s to his own loss, for I misdoubt that Madame Sheriff pays him so highly or will have him outfitted and knighted so soon. But I have never liked any man less for a little sauciness.”
“Amen,” said the friar in brown velvet. “A good, sharp sauce seasons men as well as geese.”
“Prettily reminded, Father Tuck,” said the outlaw leader. “See you, Sir Squire, I keep old King Arthur’s custom here. On feast days we do not dine until we’ve seen a marvel, heard a new adventure, or found a worthy guest.”
“And am I your marvel?” Denis remarked stiffly. “Then you missed the choicest scene. You ought to have sat audience round your spring-trap.”
Not a few of the rogues laughed, so that he wondered if they had indeed watched from hiding places round the path.
“Nay, lad,” Scarlet cried from the high table, “you are our guest.”
“We have heard how you treat your guests. Tie me to a tree and I will sing you no songs, beat me and I will still refuse to dance your dances.”
“Ah,” said Little John, “thou’st heard tell how we treat some of our guests —”
“From their own lips.”
“Who would not be good fellows,” the giant finished calmly. “But not all our guests.”
Robin Hood clapped Denis on the shoulder. “As for you, fair Sir Squire, perhaps you’ll tell us some new adventure—even one of thine own, hey? Or suddenly find your pockets marvelously filled, as has befallen one or two of our gentle guests who would be good fellows.” He winked. “Or perhaps rest with us a while to be ransomed, and learn to like our company, who knows?”
The friar called down, “But all such weighty matters are best debated when bellies be full and cups refilled!”
“Friar Tuck speaks truth,” grumbled Much the miller’s son.
“Well, men,” Master Hood said with yet another laugh, “take and let him wash his hands and face. He’s already suitably attired, but you might find a festive mantle to throw across those straight young shoulders. And see you wash and garb yourselves as well.”
“And be quick about it!” added the friar.
The tiring-place was a tiny tent or pavilion pitched among the trees and well furnished with basin, ewer, towels, scented soap, and even a silver pissing pot. Two of his three chief captors stood watch over him the whole time, one in the tent with him and the other at the door; but first Midge, then his brother Much, and finally Little John took turns leaving the guard, to reappear washed and attired as finely as Robin Hood or Will Scarlet.
When Midge came back, resplendent in brown velvet breeches, Lincoln green tunic, and white silk hood, he brought a light mantle of crimson silk embroidered with birds and flowers, which he attempted to drape over the prisoner’s surcoat. Denis steadfastly shrugged it off.
“Proud squire,” Midge said at last. “Proud as your mistress Madame Sheriff.”
“Though your proud master may force me to pay for eating his stolen meat,” Denis replied, “he’ll force me to pay for nothing else.”
“Fine words you gentlemen learn to bandy about.”
Denis sat on the pavilion’s one chair, feeling a sudden rush of amusement so strong that in the first onset he forgot even to be amazed by it. Assuredly a manifestation of the relieved well-being that could come as the giddiness following battle began to wear off. “Yes, I am rather quick this afternoon, am I not? No doubt my wit has been fertilized by the unusual wash of blood that bathed my brain an hour ago.”
From the pavilion doorway, Little John looked on and laughed.
CHAPTER 4
THE MERRY GREENWOOD
The squire’s appetite had returned by the time they led him back to the high table, where they sat him between Little John and Master Hood himself. The presence of the lady Marian at Hood’s other hand, lending a seemly grace to the rude company, went far to soften the natural apprehension of the captive guest. The miller’s two sons served like gentle pages at the high table, presenting meat and replenishing cups with wine as well as ale.
Having seated him beside their leader, the outlaws were prudent enough not to allow Denis his own knife. But they furnished him with a dainty little blade, almost a toy, though sufficient to cut his meat so that he could eat politely, with three fingers. The lady Marian and Will Scarlet likewise followed the book of courtly manners, dipping their bread and meat morsel by morsel into the sauces, and frequently rinsing their fingertips in the rose-scented water of the fingerbowls. Robin Hood sometimes copied them but oftener followed the general custom of lifting his joint of fowl or cut of meat or manchet of bread whole to his mouth.
Five more tables, with a dozen outlaws at each, had been set up around the glade. While the outlaws at the three lowest boards served themselves, the two tables nearest the dais boasted servers like those at the head table. Sharp-faced Will Stutely presided at one of these middle tables; at the other, the gently born and bred Dame Eleanor de Gracey, who had eloped to the greenwood as the minstrel’s bride. The minstrel, Alan a Dale, sang and danced between courses and often during courses as well, alighting only now and then to share a few bites from his lady’s silver trencher or a sip from her goblet before leaping up to warble anew.
The minstrel’s lady, whom Denis had not noted at his initial reception, was scarcely less beautiful than the lady Marian, but of a fragile loveliness. Her veins showed delicately blue through skin white, almost, as alabaster. Her hair was neatly wimpled, but the soft blue eyes set very wide beneath all but invisible brows suggested tresses of the palest gold. Accustomed to worshipping his lady the sheriff, whose long hours in the saddle had made her brown as the lady Marian, Denis found that lily-white beauties with timid eyes stirred in him only the kind of artistic but dispassionate admiration that one might feel on beholding a tapestry well woven. He had sometimes worried, listening to his fellows enumerate the charms of pale fair women ... but such musings hardly befit his present situation.
No more than three other women besides the ladies Marian and Eleanor were in evidence among all the men. These other three sat at the lowest tables, so that he could see little save their Lincoln green gowns; but they looked to be such broad and buxom females as one encountered selling geese in the market place and ale in the taverns, and as one would expect to find filling the places of camp followers and outlaws’ wenches. They traded slaps with a will among the rough fellows round them: the lower tables seemed little interested in their minstrel’s songs today.
As though in deference to the sensibilities of their guest, Alan a Dale sang no ballads of his master, but confined his repertoire to lays of Arthur, Alexander, Achilles, and other olden heroes, interspersed with courtly rondels of anonymous lovers.
Deni
s refrained, after all, from eating the king’s venison, for the outlaw cooks sent forth an astonishing array of other dishes, prepared in some forest kitchen apart from this glade. Boar, squirrel, and cony were carried in; trout, roach, salmon, and tench; game birds large and small; capon, goose, beef, and even a swan—more than enough to sate his still somewhat battledazed hunger. The profusion of meats was greater than at the lady sheriff’s own table except during the most abundant Yuletides.
Her cooks were more skilled, however. Though Master Hood’s used spices aplenty, they blended them inexpertly. Nor did they attempt to garnish and decorate any dishes save the boar’s head and the swan before bearing them to the table. They presented the other meats all but naked in their own juices, and their single attempt at a fancy cake, in the form of a tower— though a brave ambition for rustic pastry-cooks—was lopsided, its garrison mere crude stick-figure men at arms.
On bitter reflection, the squire understood that he might as well have partaken of the venison as of anything else, for all was certainly either poached or pilfered or purchased with stolen money. Nevertheless, he made what gesture he could by steadfastly limiting himself to the ale and refusing the wine, which flowed more freely at Robin Hood’s first three tables than the lady sheriff could afford to serve it at her single highest.
Friar Tuck ate and drank most abundantly of all, with meat in one hand and winecup in the other throughout the entire meal, even when the others were resting between courses.
Midway through the meal Master Hood and five of his best bowmen, one champion from each table, took half an hour for an archery contest, with flower wreaths and willow wands as their targets. They shot in pairs, each loser literally buffeted out of the competition by his better. One fellow had to be helped back to his table afterwards, where he spent the remainder of the meal with his head down in his arms while his comrades poured ale over him from time to time. Unsurprisingly, Master Hood won, claiming the lady sheriff’s golden arrow yet again. Denis gathered that they kept it as a mock prize for all these private contests of theirs. Aside from that insult to his lady, and from the possible implied threat to himself in the buffets, he found the spectacle clownish, predictable, and tedious, though he applauded politely, along with everyone else. The friar alone did not applaud, but munched and swilled on right through the contest, getting a broad smear of grease down his velvet habit.
At some point during the archery competition, observing that the outlaw who shared Stutely’s trencher seemed disproportionately broad across the chest, Denis began to wonder if the band were quite so overwhelmingly masculine in its numbers as at first appeared.
The late midsummer twilight was falling, sooner in forest than open field, and Midge had lighted three wax candles on the high table, when a horn sounded from the southwest—four short blasts. Denis had no knowledge of the outlaws’ particular bugle calls, but this signal could not mean danger; for though the company pricked up its senses, it seemed to do so with pleasurable anticipation. A few moments later, a young outlaw in well-worn workaday attire tumbled into the glade, landing with a somersault before the high table and presenting his greenwood lord with a parchment rolled around a clothyard shaft.
Thanking him courteously, Master Hood took the arrow, untied the red silk string, unrolled the parchment, and read it slowly, holding it near the candle. Giving yet another great laugh, he handed the missive to his lady. The other outlaws waited in expectation, more quiet than they had been since the actual loosing of arrows at wands and wreaths. Friar Tuck stopped chewing.
The lady Marian rose and read aloud in her clear, low-pitched voice that sounded for a heartbeat like the sheriff’s own:
“‘To the outlaw Robert of the Hood: We accept your conditions for a parley, but we will not dine with you. We will attend on you one hour before tomorrow’s Vespers, half a bowshot within south Sherwood west from the lightning-scarred oak near the edge of Piers the tanner’s field.’ It is sealed and signed by Dame Alice de Flechedor, high sheriff of Nottingham.”
The outlaws cheered. Denis started to his feet, but his left ankle gave way beneath him and he fell back on his chair. For several minutes no single voice of protest, however wrathful, could have been heard through the clamor of raucous halloos, drumming feet, clanking ale cups, and barking hounds.
“Well, lad!” Robin Hood shouted as the riot began to subside. “So it seems your dame may not be entirely unworth that fine loyalty of yours!”
“You are using me to bait a trap for her!”
“Are we, truly, think you?” The outlaw leader took a fistful of strawberries from the silver bowl before him and popped half of them into his mouth at once. “How better, Sir Squire, to discuss the terms of your ransom?”
Denis considered the table knife they had allowed him. Tiny as it was, it could nevertheless slit a throat or open a vein. Pretending to subside, he selected a pomegranate from the dish that Midge had just set down between him and Little John. Next he carefully wiped the miniature blade with his napkin and lifted the fruit as if to peel it.
His first thought had been that by doing away with himself he could leave Master Hood with an empty trap. But no—they need simply guard their silence concerning his death. Moreover, suicide was the unamendable sin.
So he cast the pomegranate down on Stutely’s table, both overturning a goblet and splashing gravy—and in the sudden diversion he seized Robin Hood round the neck and pressed the tiny blade to his throat.
“What hey?” said Master Hood, making no other move than to roll his eyes toward the attacker. “Good faith, but the gnats and midges are fierce tonight.”
Below them, the gathering sprang into turmoil, but those on the high dais sat or stood as though frozen. The giant John and Much the miller’s son hovered at his back and side, but were shrewd enough to see without verbal warning that even could they move more quickly than Denis, any jar to his arm might drive the blade to its length in their master’s throat. Will Scarlet had started to his feet. Friar Tuck clamped his teeth down overhard on a goose’s leg bone. The lady Marian quietly laid one hand on Robin Hood’s arm.
The leader himself seemed very little discomposed. “Nay, my lads, make no move,” he ordered them with no sign of perturbation. He then took another fistful of strawberries and inquired, “Well, stripling?”
Denis received the disheartening impression that he did not enjoy quite the advantage he had hoped to gain. Confused, he held to his uppermost thought. “I want your solemn vow that no harm will come to my lady the sheriff. Nor to any of her attendants. Neither from you nor from any of your followers.”
“Coercion!” cried Scarlet. “Why should we bow under to —”
But Robin Hood chuckled. “Hold thy peace, Will Scarlet! Why should we scruple to swear to our own intentions? I have never harmed woman in all my life, Sir Squire, and I never will. Neither I nor any who can call themselves true followers of mine! If Madame Sheriff brings men at arms, and if they make the first move, why, then, I trust you’ll kindly permit us to defend ourselves. But whosoever touches a hair of any lady’s head, even by mischance in the thick of treacherous battle, that man swings from our own greenwood gallows.” He put several berries into his mouth.
“Aye,” said Stutely, speaking from the shadows below. “So there’s no danger to this sheriff of Nottingham—not while Robin Hood lives.”
Feeling deflated, Denis allowed his guard to slip as he turned to frown at Stutely. The moment his blade no longer rested directly in the hollow of Hood’s throat, Little John struck down his elbow and Much caught his other arm from behind.
“No scuffling on the dais, lads,” Master Hood said cheerfully. “Or as little as need be. Take his stinger but leave him use of both arms. Unless you’d like to wrestle with them on the ground below us?” he offered Denis.
“No, I thank you, I fear my left leg is still a trifle unreliable for the best sport.” Spreadeagled between the miller’s barrel-chested elder son and the giant, De
nis salvaged what dignity he could by speaking in courteous tones and opening his own fingers before John could pry them apart, to let the knife clatter down among the broken meats. Little John scooped it up and they released his arms.
Friar Tuck threw the goose’s leg bone down to the hounds and commenced to crack walnuts with a little ivory-handled mallet.
“Friend or foe, we’ve never liked any man the less for a show of spirit, have we, lads?” Robin Hood went on. Alan a Dale struck a chord and perhaps two thirds of the assemblage raised a cheer, though it did not sound heartfelt.
The minstrel sang them a ballad of their master’s exploits and their own. Denis paid little attention to the words. He found he could eat no more, not even a berry or a nutmeat; but when Midge poured wine into his goblet unasked, he drank first and only afterwards tasted what it was and remembered his resolution.
The long ballad, or set of ballads, came at last to an end. The outlaws applauded their own deeds lustily, while the minstrel bowed and flourished as if their enthusiasm were entirely for his prowess. Hood’s cheers were among the heartiest, louder even than Little John’s, rousing Denis from his own unenviable reverie. The friar alone did not applaud, for now he sat snoring with his head down on the half-cleared table.
Wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, Robin Hood turned again to his prisoner and said, “Well, gentle sir, now’s as fair a time as any to ask your word of honor that you will make no attempt to escape our hospitality.”
“Your man Midge would not accept my word of honor.”
“Not on my own authority alone!” Midge protested in his husky voice.
Robin Hood ruffled Midge’s hair. “Aye, there’s a prudent whippersnapper. But give your word as gentleman and squire to my gracious Maid Marian and me, and we’ll all rest content.”
“Then I must disturb your rest, for I will not give you my parole.” On the contrary, Denis added in his own mind, I will attempt escape at the first opportunity I can find or make.
The Gallows in the Greenwood Page 4
