Until now, he might have answered a sentry’s challenge by explaining that he was restless, strolling in the night to relieve sleeplessness, innocently revisiting an equine friend as they had seen him doing in the daylight hours. Untethering the equine friend was hard evidence of more culpable intentions, so he could afford no further delay. As quickly as was compatible with stealth, he led Nippet deeply in among the trees.
An owl hooted. Denis shivered, wondering if it were a true owl or a sentinel who had espied him. Leaving the cage of glowworms in the crotch of a tree, he led Nippet in another direction. For a while, the pale, living radiance of the glowworms might distract attention.
If there was pursuit, it moved as stealthily as he. For what seemed half the night he worked his way perforce at random, feeling each step in the deep darkness, probing each new piece of ground with his toe before resting his full weight on it. Needing both hands, he could not finger the olivewood rosary; but he remembered it safe in its velvet pouch beneath his belt (only two beads cracked in last night’s struggles), and he prayed God’s Holy Mother, whose mercy had saved so many from her Son’s strict justice, to guide him.
At last the moon rose high enough to lend him sufficient light for mounting Nippet and—what was even more important—to show him his direction. Guessing the direction he believed his captors to have taken him blindfold to Oakglade, he thought the path should be somewhere south of his present location. And he knew that Nottingham lay east of Sherwood and south of most of it. So he struck forward to the southeast.
Mother Mary was with him, or with Midge, and just as he felt near despair, he suddenly came out upon the path.
Should he hold Nippet to an amble or put him into a gallop? Thus far, stealth appeared to have served them well, unless all this time Robin Hood’s foresters had been trailing them unseen. But speed was the reason he had brought the horse.
Clouds were starting to drift across the moon. Within a few hours another summer rain might fall, and meanwhile the light would be chancy until dawn, which he thought must be near. His very heartbeat seemed to urge, Nottingham, Nottingham, Nottingham. And not even Robin Hood could have sentries posted everywhere along the forest’s paths. If they were watching him, keeping him in sight until the rest of their mounts could be brought to the chase, then let them strike now or miss their chance! He leaned forward and nudged Nippet’s flanks with his heels.
But drew back on the halter within a few strides. Loud as the rouncy’s hoofbeats sounded at an amble, they fairly thundered at the easiest gallop.
No pursuer had sprung forth, no arrow or spear come hurtling after him by moonlight, so he must be unobserved. But for how long, at the din of a full-stride gallop? Or if Nippet should make a single misstep, strike a single hole in the darkness ... Having made his decision to break parole, he must not risk sacrificing his honor for nothing. With an immense effort, and alert for the first sign of outlaws, he proceeded at an amble.
With summer sunrise coming before moonset there should have been no dark before dawn, but clouds blackened the sky and rain began plashing down. Denis put Nippet into an easy trot, trusting the rain’s patter to cloak the sound and the horse’s feeling for packed ground beneath his hooves to keep them on the path.
As the sky greyed towards dawn, he thought he could glimpse open fields and began to think himself safe.
“Halt!” came a gruff voice. “Who goes there?”
Warily, Denis pulled up. This near the forest’s edge, with the situation at a crisis, it might be either Robin Hood’s sentinel or the sheriff’s. “Who challenges?”
“Ranger.”
That was no identification. Not a few once-honest rangers had turned renegade and thrown their lot in with Robin Hood, not a few outlaws who had followed other trades before running to the greenwood now called themselves rangers. Walking Nippet slowly forward, Denis demanded, “In whose service?”
“By Christ His Cross!” The man stepped into the path. “Yon sheriff’s man, be ye not?” He leaned on his quarterstaff and seemed, in the weak light, to wear a grin.
“As you are your master’s faithful man.” Little doubt now, but still one hope. “Let me pass in friendship today. Robin Hood has given me safe conduct.”
“Eh?” The outlaw stood straighter, planting his feet half a yard apart. “Robin set ye free? By night, in rain, and wi’ no saddle?”
Dropping to Nippet’s neck, Denis jabbed his heels in hard. The horse sprang forward, jerked up at the outlaw blocking their way. Denis jabbed again, shouted and clucked. The rouncy lunged on like a charger. Whether knocked aside or jumping, the outlaw cleared their path, but struck at them a great wallop with his heavy staff. It caught the rider’s leg and thwacked Nippet’s haunch. The steed screamed and tore onwards pell-mell.
For some moments Denis could do little save cling fast in pain and hope the blow had not broken his leg. Happily, Nippet kept to the path. They burst out from beneath the last overarching trees and felt the full, blessed drive of undeflected drizzle.
One arrow, then another, whirred past. Let this one not be another such marksman as his master, and let the rain quickly wet his bowstring! They must make a fine moving target, dark against the open grey fields, but Piers the tanner’s yard loomed ever nearer—its stench could never have been more welcome to any man’s nostrils—and beyond that, surely, no outlaw dare give chase today.
12
The Sheriff’s Prisoner
After a night of broken rest, the sheriff of Nottingham lay long abed. She thought she had slept little, but her maiden Elaine du Ruisselet woke her, more than an hour past daybreak, by coming in with the news:
“My lady! My lady! He is returned! Squire Denis is returned!”
Dame Alice sat straight up and drew the bedcurtain back with a swish. “Safe? Unharmed?”
Maid Elaine nodded eagerly. “He is returned with your horse, my lady, and begs audience with you.”
“Begs!” But perhaps that choice of word was Elaine’s. “Send him to me at once! And throw me my mantle.”
She saw that he had taken time to change into his best clothes, wash his face and hands, and comb his hair; but his eyes were haggard, he walked with a limp in his right leg, his forehead showed a cut and his left cheekbone a purple bruise, and a day-old stubble darkened his chin. He aproached to within three paces of the bed and knelt tenderly on one knee.
“Rise!” she said. “Elaine, bring him a chair! Dame Margery, fetch him ale! No, wine! Aye, send down for the best Burgundy. By God, he deserves it! So, Denis, you have escaped them!”
Still kneeling, he shook his head. “No, my lady. They set me free in exchange for the miller’s daughter.”
After several ounces of time, she said, “Look at me and repeat that.”
Lifting his head, he repeated, “They have set me free in exchange for Midge the miller’s daughter.” He looked her straight in the eye and spoke very evenly, and yet she felt sure he was lying. But why should a young man who had never, so far as she knew, uttered a falsehood since attaining the age of reason suddenly begin now, like an accomplished old fox, and deny himself the glory of a successful escape?
Dame Alice shrugged in her mind and said, “So Robert of the Hood shows a grain of sense at last, does he?”
“Did you not expect him to, my lady?”
“I hoped ... Aye, though God knows they have given me little enough cause through the years, I did pray that this time they would show sense, for your sake, even after so foul a beginning.”
“They love her very much, my lady.”
“Do they? So much that they have made another gallows-clapper like themselves out of her. Now sit, Denis,” she went on, nodding at the light chair Elaine was placing for him, “and counsel me whether you truly think we owe these lawless rogues any debt, that we should return them their half-wild cub.”
“My lady!” He started to his feet so suddenly that his right leg buckled. Blinking and catching his breath, he steadie
d himself against the bedpost. “You pledged your word to set her free! They tried to say that you had not, but I vowed to them —”
“Suppose we could tame her?” Dame Alice cut in, thinking she glimpsed some reason for his behavior. “Even, perhaps, to making a young gentlewoman of her?”
He dropped onto the chair at last and sat staring down for a moment. “Aye, but would she stay?”
“Go and put it to her.”
“Is she ... in a dungeon cell, my lady?” His voice held a note of fear that satisfied her she had guessed aright.
“No. She is chained, because you were bound, but she is in the large room at the top of the east tower. You assured me they had treated you with courtesy and fed you well, so I have done the same with her. Dame Edith is her guard.” The sheriff drew her ring of keys from beneath her bolster, found the right one, and presented it to him. “She is a wild little creature and might overpower her gaoler, so Dame Edith has only the key to her door, not the one to her chains. You may have the task of unlocking them, if you so choose.”
Denis saw at once that Dame Edith was taking her unaccustomed duties seriously. The passage around the door was crowded with her mattress, mending, embroidery, harp, Book of Hours, and so on. Someone had already brought her the news of his return, but not of what had passed in the sheriff’s bedchamber. How could anyone, when none had left there before him and he had limped straight here? She greeted him warmly, this kind old dame of fifty-some winters, and heard his errand with surprise but with no questions voiced.
It was harder than he had foreseen to keep up the pretense for another hour with his soul near bursting to confess aloud— to go about like a leper, ringing a bell and crying, “Untrue! Untrue!” for the leper’s “Unclean!” to warn honest folk away. With his dearest friend, Tom Courtland, he had been abrupt to the point of rudeness, lest he break instead and bare his conscience. By doing so prematurely he would expose and nullify the falsehood upon which depended Midge’s freedom.
Dame Edith unbolted the door, unlocked it, and stood aside to let him swing it open. He entered eagerly yet timidly, remembering how she had blamed Will Stutely’s malice on the dungeon cells of Nottingham castle, and fearing how he might find her now, even here in the chamber at the top of the east tower.
On bright days, when enough sunlight flowed through the deepset window slits to prick out the foliage and fanciful beasts painted on the walls, this chamber could be pleasant. Today, because of the rain outside, it was grey and gloomy. Midge stood on a stool at one of the windows. She wore a brown kirtle over a long chemise of unbleached linen, very good quality garments for borrowed prison dress, but drab as the weather. A simple green fillet held back her short hair, which had been washed, for strands of it floated lightly about her head.
The iron gauntlets and chain showed dark against even the brown of her kirtle, and the fetters on her ankles, hidden by her skirts, made a terrible sound when she climbed down from the stool and took a few dragging steps towards him.
He hastened forward, caught her manacles, and fumbled for the lock.
“So you’re here,” she said, speaking low. “Of all Robin’s clever tricks, this was one I never thought to see!”
“How ... How have you been?”
“But your Madame Sheriff’s going to hang me anyway, isn’t she? Is this the day already? Have you come to see me hang?”
“Midge, don’t!” Choking a little, he got the first gauntlet unlockd and reached for her other wrist. “My lady the high sheriff of Nottingham keeps her word. You are a free woman.”
“No thrilling rescues? No clever ruses and surprise attacks? Robin Hood just ... quietly trusted your sheriff and sent you back in trade for me?”
“Holy Mother of God!” It was more than half a prayer. “I stand here taking off your chains, do I not?” He unlocked the second gauntlet. She shook her wrists completely free, swung the chain, and cast it across the floor.
He glanced around. Dame Edith had left the door widely ajar but retreated from sight, as though taking her lead from the sheriff’s own absence. “Will you be pleased to sit down?” Denis asked Midge. “Or shall I grovel at your feet as you stand?”
“I’ll sit. But you’ll still have to grovel. I can’t hold my feet up very high, or very long. I can only just swing my legs up onto that bed if I do it as fast as I can.”
Her cell was furnished with a good bed, chair, table, ewer and basin, the footstool she had at the window, pillows and cushions and a harp. She sat on the chair, twitched up her skirts, and pointed one toe. He was relieved to see linen wrapped around her ankles beneath the iron.
“You will not have to hold them up.” Sitting on his knees before her, he lifted her right foot to rest midway on his thigh as he unlocked the gyve.
“I’ve eaten—alone—and lain on yon soft bed, and come near smashing yonder fine harp time after time, and almost plucked tunes out of it between whiles, and watched sky and fields and forest—what I can see of them when I get up on the footstool—and told my beads, and looked at some very pretty pictures of Hellmouth and devils in Dame Edith’s book,” said Midge. “I haven’t had sports to watch like we gave you, nor big, friendsome feasts. But I’ve had this whole room to drag my chains around in.”
“And some use of your hands the whole time,” he pointed out.
“And we did not promise to hang you up by the neck in three days.”
Finished with her right foot, he put it down and took her left onto his leg. “Only because you counted as an outlaw. But now my lady the sheriff offers you full pardon and a place among her gentlewomen.”
“What?” said Midge.
He repeated it, staring at her foot. Strange, that after meeting his lady’s gaze to tell her a mortal lie, he could not look at Midge while speaking the truth.
She began to laugh. “What, live here bowing and scraping to my lady sheriff that almost hanged me? While she goes about to hang my brother and all my friends?”
“Well, I have done my utmost for you,” he replied, forgetting for a heartbeat that the suggestion to domesticate Midge had come from Dame Alice. The injuries to his forehead and cheekbone throbbed with a new rush of blood to his face. He eased the gyve from her ankle and laid it down with elaborate care.
She lifted her feet from his thigh and stood up. “Mark you. I want the clothes I was brought here in. And a knife, good as my old one that she struck out of my hand. And a stout quarterstaff, and a good bow with a quiverful of arrows. And a nice little sword.”
“With the buckler, I suppose?”
“Aye, and the buckler with it. And you walking beside me to the edge of Tanner’s field. To guard against trickery.”
“There will be no trickery.”
“I’ll trust you for that, Sir Squire, but not your Madame Sheriff.”
“Think what you will.” He sighed and got to his feet. “I had meant to escort you back in any case.”
“By Heaven, she demands an armory!” said the sheriff. “Her life is not enough, but she must have the weapons to help her take our lives?”
“Only to defend herself on the way back,” Denis replied wearily. “There will be the length of Nottingham between us and the forest, and not all of the townspeople are well affected toward the outlaws.”
“We will deliver her back to Sherwood with an armed guard, and myself at its head.”
“With all respect, my lady, it is you whom she chiefly mistrusts. She will have no escort but me, afoot, and she insists on going fully armed.”
“She makes very bold for a wild outlaw girl whom nothing but your word prevents me from holding and hanging at my will.”
“Perhaps that is why she trusts me and no one else, my lady. And not even me, unless she carries weapons of her own.”
Dame Alice drummed her fingers loudly and rapidly on the arm of her chair. “Well, the knife we will allow. And the quarterstaff. And even the buckler—or a full, long shield if she prefers to lug it along. Not the sw
ord, and most certainly not the bow.”
Denis said, “Consider, my lady. Hood’s outlaws never show any lack of weapons. Once back in the forest she can have her pick of stolen arms from his armory. So let her have all that she asks for now. She will not turn them against us between here and Sherwood, since none of us means her treachery. As for the cost, I will pay it out of my own purse.”
Dame Alice gazed shrewdly at her squire, wanting to ask him many questions. But he had lied to her once already this morning. Of that she felt sure. Well, she could only trust that his reasons were good. “Very well,” she said at last. “But go fully armed yourself, with her. And see you go no farther than Piers’ tanyard. If they fear further treachery, so can we.”
13
Contest of Wills
Rain or none, Midge refused to stay in the castle a moment longer than needed to change clothes and choose weapons. Tempted to remain in his best garments, Denis considered the weather and made another hurried change, this time into his brown and russet hunting attire.
They walked in silence to the edge of the town, muffled in undyed cloaks from the wool of black sheep, still greasy with the natural wool-fat which helped keep the heavy drizzle from themselves and their weapons. These cloaks had also the advantage of keeping them comparatively anonymous to such townspeople as braved the weather to go abroad.
Piers and his son Jack, who were out toiling despite the drizzle, straightened to wave their hands and call a greeting. Like many of the humble with little to lose from Robin Hood’s occupation of the forest and perhaps an occasional something to gain from his method of tithing, they lived so far as they were able in a state of cautious neutrality. Their secret sympathies might lie more with the outlaws than with the sheriff, but Piers and his family, who had succeeded Little John’s kinsman Arthur a Bland in the tannery and were relatively prosperous in their trade, had been ready to take Denis in when he fell at their door, exhausted with weariness and pain, and to turn Hood’s sentinel away empty-handed, with a reminder of that time they had hidden a comrade of his.
The Gallows in the Greenwood Page 11
