She waited.
“I did plan—for a few atoms—to turn the knife against myself.”
She exhaled slowly. “That would have been wasteful. And almost as foolish as killing Robin Hood.”
He looked up again.
“Had you killed Robin, Little John himself might have sided with those who demanded revenge on the sheriff’s body, even at the cost of Robin Hood’s own law.”
“So William Stutely hinted,” Denis said, implying that he would not have trusted Stutely’s word unsupported.
“They are wild and rough,” the lady went on, “but not quite so wild and rough as they would be if left to their own lawlessness. We hold them in a kind of check, Robin and I and my good Friar Tuck. But Robin came to them first, so perhaps I ought to say that Robin alone holds them in check, while my chaplain and I somewhat hold him.”
The sudden merriment of her smile encouraged Denis to respond, as if in jest, “And who, my lady, holds your good chaplain in check?”
“Ah!” She clapped him on the shoulder. “But Friar Tuck is no mere glutton and wine-bibber. He is the spirit of plenty! He nobly crams his belly, like the kings of ancient times, that the rest of us may eat and drink in comfortable abundance.”
Unsure whether she were jesting or serious, Denis responded, “In that case, my lady, it is clear that the charm works well.”
“It does, sir.” She glanced around. “Ah, there goes Will Scarlet in now to make his confession. Mass will be sung within this half hour.” She touched his shoulder again. Her fingers were long and brown, her rings simple gold and silver bands, only one set with a pearl. “It is good,” she said, “that you conquered that temptation to suicide.”
She left him feeling as though he had somehow been shriven without a priest. This was as well, for—whatever Dame Marian said—he could not think of her friar as a worthy cleric. Clinging, however, to the arguments of those who held that by God’s grace no unworthiness in the minister could taint the sacrament for true worshippers, he hearkened reverently to Tuck’s Mass. Though the outlaws mocked holy things by forcing captured churchmen like his grace of Hereford to sing Mass while bound to trees, their own friar intoned the prayers soberly enough. He stuttered over some few passages and hastened through others, but no more than many an honest parish priest. Alan a Dale stood as server, singing the responses in his pure voice; and the few men who chose not to listen went apart and disappeared in the woods or else sat dicing quietly at a respectful distance.
The table on the dais had been turned into Friar Tuck’s altar, and the other two tables at this end of the glade taken down. The three lower boards still stood from yesterday, bearing not only their own remains of dinner but also those deposited on them from the higher tables. After Mass, the dispersing worshippers helped themselves from this unkempt larder and broke their fast informally. Denis sat and watched and began rubbing his wrist bonds against the gnarl of a hard old tree root, a surreptitious activity which he suspended as soon as he saw Midge striding toward him with a drinking horn in one hand and half a cold meat pie in the other.
Squatting, the young outlaw set his burden down well out of the way and delivered a playful shove to the captive’s shoulder. “Come then, sit up and let’s have a look.”
Denis bent forward, his brain in a momentary whirl. With his hands freed for the purpose of eating, would he have time to overpower Midge, seize his knife, cut the leg tether, and get a fair start?
All these thoughts proved useless, since it turned out that Midge was merely testing the ropes, not loosening them. “Right!” said the young outlaw. “Just a tiny little bit of fraying, nothing to worry our heads. Not unless Will Stutely finds out. I wouldn’t go on risking that, not in your place. You don’t have enough chance to make it worth it.”
“You are not in honor bound,” Denis replied, only half aware of the wordplay.
The young outlaw laughed and offered to hold the horn so that Denis could drink.
He leaned away and shook his head. “I prefer to fast rather than to be hand-fed.”
Midge sat back on his heels, his expression fading in an instant from laughter to something that looked very much like hurt. “As you will,” he said, raised the horn to his own lips, and swallowed twice. His Adam’s apple was small and neat, no more than a trifling reminder of the first man’s original sin. He stood, added, “Wait for dinner, then. It won’t be long today,” turned, and strode back into the middle of the clearing. Denis watched him studiously until he joined a small party around the lady Marian and went off somewhere with them.
The morning’s activities consisted of cleaning up after yesterday’s feast and preparing for today’s, while those outlaws not busied in either readying the tables anew or cooking filled their time with practice at archery, swordplay, wrestling, and quarterstaves. Watching them across the glade, Denis ached for exertion. He could have defeated most of the swordfighters easily, but even being drubbed by some peasant champion’s quarterstaff might have offered welcome relief from pacing a circle six strides in diameter.
Much, Little John, and two others came about midmorning to escort him, with elaborate and possibly even excessive precaution, on a necessary errand, which, in addition to the obvious service, provided some small variation in the general tedium. For the rest of the morning, weary with too little sleep, too little exercise, too much hunger and thirst and anxiety, and the monotonous rhythm of rubbing away at his ropes, he dozed frequently and sometimes long. His next relief from the strained tedium came when Nick Shore the barber finally worked around to him.
Hood bent old King Arthur’s custom this Saint John’s Day by accepting the promise of his Vespers parley with the sheriff as token in advance of the requisite marvel, visitor, or new adventure, and beginning dinner shortly before noon. They took Denis back to the high table, somewhat to his surprise, and freed his arms. It was a minor liberty considering that they bound both his legs to the bench, revised the seating to place him between Little John and the lady Marian, and naturally allowed him no knife whatsoever. At every course Midge put before him a trencher of meat already cut into tiny morsels. Otherwise, the meal progressed much like yesterday’s, except that, starting earlier and being charged with anticipation of the evening’s parley, it ended by midafternoon, when Denis was returned to his trees and his tethers, where he soon fell into another deep drowse.
He woke an indeterminate time later, to see Stutely coming towards him. His muscles tensed and an unpleasant taste shot into his mouth; but while the sharp-faced outlaw lieutenant was still several paces distant, the miller’s younger son hurried forward from somewhere to cut him off.
“Nay, then, Will Stutely,” Midge said in a bantering tone. “He’s more my prisoner than anyone’s. My brother Much’s and mine and Little John’s.”
“And precious little pain you take to guard him!”
“Not escaped us yet, has he now? But go argue it with Robin and Much and John!”
Stutely scowled and turned away. Midge came on, knelt beside Denis, and then sat back on his haunches, quivering a little.
“That was a near thing,” said Midge.
“Probably not. I seem to have slept too much since dinner to have done any great damage to your hemp. But if Stutely is of the opinion that you are taking little pain to hold me here, he should try this himself for a day.”
“He has tried your sheriff’s deep dungeon cells in Nottingham castle,” Midge said softly, “for a day and a night.”
“Ah.” Denis considered the sun-dappled forest greenery about him, the birdcalls, the breezes scented with wildflower blossoms ... the caterpillar inching up his surcoat—well, at least it was not verminous. This would be a poor occasion, he decided, to argue the justice of William Stutely’s imprisonment and near execution. He inquired, “What o’clock is it?”
“Another hour, and we’ll be setting out for our parley.”
“What? Are you not to hold it here?”
“No. We would have if Madame Sheriff had agreed to come and dine today in our company. Since she didn’t...” Midge shrugged and grinned. “Stop worrying. Robin’s not planning any treachery. Some harmless trickery, maybe, but only to build up your ransom, not to hurt anybody. Especially not a woman, not even if she is sheriff.”
“What sort of trickery?”
“Oh, no more than to wear our old ranging clothes and look drab beside you for the bargaining.”
“My garments,” he observed ruefully, for they were his second best, “are rapidly growing bedraggled and forest-stained. But I will not be the first who has borne testimony as to your actual wealth.”
“Ah, but there’s no witness like one’s own experience, and Robin can play beggar most convincing when he’s of mind to do it.”
“I dare say. Would you be so kind as to pluck off this caterpillar that has almost reached my shoulder?”
Midge plucked it off and tossed it lightly into the grasses. “Well, now, what about that hangnail?”
“I contrived to bite it off this morning, while under the supervision of your brother and friends.” Then he noticed that Midge had drawn a knife and sat paring his own nails. Delusive hope, as at this morning’s discovery of Friar Tuck in the bushes, stirred once more in the captive’s breast, and he added, “I think, however, that I feel another one.”
“Let’s look.” Thrusting the blade down into the mossy ground between them, Midge pushed him forward. “Well, this light’s none too good. Which finger?”
“The right thumb,” Denis replied in some abstraction, staring alternately at the knife and the many outlaws who moved in the glade and cast frequent glances in his direction.
He felt Midge investigate each thumb in turn before finding a wiggle at the nail of the left (not the right) one and picking up the knife. The squire tensed, holding his breath, hoping against expectation ... and expectation proved correct. The young outlaw had no disguised purpose of setting him free at the eleventh hour, only of excising the new hangnail, which operation was completed with one deft, painless flick.
Denis might have pushed back suddenly, to pinion Midge and attempt wrestling the knife into better service against the rope; but brother Much was watching them directly just then. Besides, he did not think that Midge would have taken it without an outcry.
“There,” said Midge, sitting back happily. “Tiny little thing, but we got ‘n.”
Disappointment lent Denis courage to ask a question that had long been crowding the other concerns in his mind. He drew a deep breath and said, “Midge ... forgive this if I should be mistaken ... Are you a woman?”
Midge returned the knife to its sheath and gazed at Denis. “How did you finally see it?”
The squire let out a long sigh before answering. “Your fingers, for one argument. Compared with the fingers of a woman, those of a man are blunt and clumsy. For another argument, your elbows.”
“My elbows?”
“They strike your hips. Our chests being longer, the elbows of most men barely reach the waist. For a third argument, I could scarcely fail to notice how you have never accompanied your brother, Little John, and the others on certain necessary errands. And then there is the smooth delicacy of your throat —”
“Oh!” she cried with a little laugh. “So my throat’s delicate, is it? Next thing I suppose it’ll be, if your arms were free you’d have ‘em around me.”
He sighed again and leaned back. “No. I might wish for that. But if my arms were free, I would escape.”
“You’d try,” Midge corrected him, standing up. “So it’s just as well you’re tied.” Denis was not sure, but he thought there was one tiny catch in her delicate throat at the word “well.”
CHAPTER 8
THE MEETING
At an hour before Vespers, Dame Alice of Flechedor, Barnwell, and Roecourt, high sheriff of Nottingham, entered Sherwood forest at the lightning-scarred oak and rode west in as straight a line as the trees allowed. She wore hunting dress of leather and linen, and she rode her dapple-grey stallion Stormcloud, who could run, at need, like his namesake before the wind. With her, bravely, rode Dames Margery and Edith, as well as her old captain Sir Hugh of Doncaster, and Thomas Courtland, who was fellow squire and close friend to Denis FitzMaurice, and who led an extra horse, the brown rouncy Nippet. Riders and mounts alike were uneasy, surrounded by outlaws suspected but unseen, birdcalls and rustling twigs any of which might be the secret signals of lawless ruffians.
Half a bowshot’s length within the forest, they were greeted by a clothyard shaft that plunked into a young lime tree near Sir Hugh’s head, causing several of the horses to shy and snort until brought back under control. Dame Alice signed a halt and stared up into the trees.
“I am come as agreed!” she shouted at the invisible archer.
“Not as agreed,” came back a voice. “You were to come alone, with one attendant lady at most.”
“I am alone as an unarmed knight is called naked. Would you deny me my closest counselors and guard of honor?”
There was more rustling in the upper branches, as if two outlaws moved together for consultation. At length the first voice replied, “Well, we will allow both ladies to come with you, if both men go back to town.”
Dame Margery looked nervous and Dame Edith closed her eyes. The sheriff weighed matters rapidly.
“I will not trust my women where you will not trust my men.”
“Oh, Madame Sheriff, we honor all women! Be sure you and both your fair dames will be safe among us.”
Dame Margery fumbled with the prayer-beads at her girdle.
“I will come with you completely alone, according to what you call alone,” the sheriff bargained, “if my guard of honor abides me here, all four of them. And you must give them weapons to hold during their wait, for as you see they came unarmed. We were ready to trust you so far, but you will not trust us.”
Another rustling pause in the treetops, while Dame Margery rattled her rosary, Sir Hugh squinted methodically in all directions, and Thomas Courtland rubbed his horse’s neck in short, quick strokes.
At last: “You’d drive a pretty bargain, Dame Sheriff.”
“It is what I came to do.”
“Your ladies may await you here, but your men must go back.”
Dame Alice looked at each of her companions in turn. Except for Dame Edith, each of them returned her gaze. They were nervous but steadfast—Dame Edith no less than the others, despite her closed eyes, as the sheriff sensed well.
“All four may go back if they themselves so choose,” Dame Alice called to the unseen outlaw spokesman, “or all four must remain, the men to guard the women and the women—if your boast be true—to guard the men. And to prove you will not attack them, you must lend them weapons of defense.”
“We will not desert you, my lady,” whispered Squire Thomas, and Sir Hugh nodded grimly.
“If they do attack,” the sheriff murmured to her captain, “retreat! The women first, and do you guard their rear as long as you are able, but follow them close.” They were mounted on the fastest and surest-footed horses, after Stormcloud himself, of the castle stables.
In the trees above, the outlaw laughed; and in the next ounce of time a short sword and a long, rusted mace fell through the branches to land on the forest floor several yards in front of the sheriff’s party. Dame Alice nodded and rode forward, followed by Sir Hugh and Squire Thomas. The men stopped on reaching the weapons and dismounted to gather them up. It was obvious that the outlaws, armed with bows and lurking high in the trees, risked little; yet the feel of any weapon in the hand lends some reassurance, and the two men saluted her before they remounted. She saluted them in return and rode on, knowing they would wait for her if they could, and believing that for once they were at least in no more danger than she herself.
A rustling overhead accompanied her progress, and scarcely was she out of her attendants’ sight—which happened soon in Sherwood’s thick summe
r foliage—than a youngish outlaw leaped down from the trees to land before her a little to the left.
He wore torn and dirty Lincoln green, but his tattered hose had once been fine scarlet silk, and the hood he doffed to her, though worn and faded, was of green velvet lined with the same silk as that of his hose.
“William Scathlock, called Scarlet, is it not?” she said coldly.
“At your very good service, ma dame.” Scathlock flaunted traces of courtly manner and language.
Dame Alice was not deceived, nor was she in any mood for courteous pretense. “At your outlaw master’s, rather.”
“At both your service, madame, to bring you together for your mutual profit. Now, madame, if you will be so gracious as to alight and allow me to blindfold you...”
She stiffened and glared down at him.
He covered his eyes in mock fear. “Ah, good Madame Sheriff, how can you be called disarmed and weaponless so long as you can flash those orbs unveiled at a man?”
She snorted and gauged the distance between her foot and his chin. A huntress and a dancer all her life, on taking up the sheriff’s duties in her own person she had also begun practicing for an hour or three daily in the tiltyard until she was strong as a squire to bear arms and strike blows. Yet she guessed that Scathlock had not come alone. Peering round again more sharply, she saw two more sturdy rogues in ragged green, lounging as though idly on their longbows. Their appearance when they might have remained concealed was show of force enough.
“Had we meant you treachery, madame,” Scathlock went on, “we should have little need to beg that you dismount and be blindfolded.”
“And my horse?”
Scathlock bowed again. “Will be safe, madame. We would not be so ungentle as to make you walk back from our forest to Nottingham. Young Dick there can lead this fine stallion back to your guard of honor, there to await your return.”
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