Such words uttered in the hearing of the sheriff’s squire could have placed them in his power. His heart nearly burst when he thought of how, all unsuspecting, they had put their faith in his promise never to repay their kindness with betrayal. That vow, at least, he would keep forever.
“The tanner’s family sheltered me for an hour this morning,” he said, swinging his purse. He had brought five shillings and eight pence, that being all of his money he could readily lay hands upon without raising questions. “I should like to go and reimburse them somewhat.”
“Sheltered you from what?” she asked suspiciously. “This little rain?”
“From your comrades.” At last, a safe time and a safe listener for his confession. “Robin Hood did not set me free in exchange for you. I escaped.”
She nodded. “I never thought it sounded like Robin’s style. How did you get yourself untied?”
“I pledged him my word not to escape.”
“Ah!” said Midge. “Well, that trick won’t work with him more than once, so you’d best go back now. I’ll be safe from here on. You can give Piers’ family a few pence on your way back.” She turned to leave him.
Still limping, he hurried around in front of her. “Midge. You don’t understand. There’s only one way in which I can repair even a small shred of my honor. I am going back with you.”
She stared at him. “Then you’re a great fool, Squire Denis.”
“And your prisoner.”
“Maybe you think we can just start all over again from before Madame Sheriff snatched me up onto that thundering great horse of hers? Go home! I don’t want you. Go back home to your lady sheriff.”
Kneeling in Midge’s path, he drew his sword and held it out to her with the flat resting horizontally across his open palms. She walked around him and continued towards the forest.
He stood, ran after, and caught up, heading her off once again. “We will decide it by contest of arms!” he persisted, finding the sword still in his hand.
“That we will not! What, after you knocked sword from Robin’s own hand Sunday?”
“We both know that was only because he allowed me to! Some sort of ritual, I gather. Some polite prelude to the invitation to join his band.”
“Would you join us after all? Is that it?”
He stiffened. “Never!”
“Just as well, because I think they wouldn’t have you now. Listen!” she went on, lowering her voice. “There’ll be someone watching us from just inside yon forest there. Go home while Piers Tanner and Jackie be still watching us this side.”
“Your weapon, then—the quarterstaff,” he babbled, catching the end of hers before she could walk on. “Jack! Jack the tanner’s son!”
Jack started towards them at a trot. Denis resheathed his sword and threw his purse down in front of the boy. He had meant to give Midge the greater part of the money, but exhaustion and desperation were straining his senses to a curious quiver, so that he seemed to glimpse the overview with dizzying clarity but lose all proportion in the details. “Would you be so good as to fetch me a quarterstaff?” he shouted to the tanner’s son.
Jack reached the purse, gathered it up, examined its contents, opened his eyes extremely wide, nodded, and scampered off.
“How much was in your purse?” said Midge.
“Five shillings eight pence.”
“Generous pay for an hour’s shelter and a quarterstaff!”
“Is no one but Robin Hood permitted to be generous? Or is my money tainted more by dishonor than his by robbery?”
“And we could have cut your staff ourselves.”
“From the forest? Where one or more of your comrades watch and wait for us?”
“I won’t fight you!” She jerked the end of her staff from his hand and began running towards the greenwood.
Hindered by his limp—even without breaking any bones, the outlaw sentry’s thwack had left an awesome bruise—he did not catch up until they were within twenty yards of the forest. Even as he clutched her wrist, he glanced around and saw the outlaw who had stepped a little out from beneath the trees. Hood must have changed or reinforced his guard since dawn. This time the man was Midge’s brother Much.
“Leave her be now,” said the miller’s son.
Ignoring him, Denis turned back to Midge. “I should prefer to return as your prisoner, but if you will not take me, your brother may.”
She stared back at him. Muscles moved at the ends of her jaw, below her ears. “Much!” she called to her brother. “Lend him thy staff.”
“Let be,” Much repeated.
“Thy staff, brother, or we wait till Jackie brings him one.”
Much scowled, but flung his quarterstaff to the ground midway between himself and the squire.
Denis picked it up and held it before him as he had watched the peasant combatants do. Midge laughed at his stance and gave him a light crack on the crown.
He retreated two steps, studying the way she held her quarterstaff and revising his own grip accordingly. He’d had vague plans of a short, token resistance and speedy capitulation, but the first blow stung his fighting instincts into play.
He came at her meaning serious battle. Their staves struck together twice, causing the wood to shudder in his hands. Then Midge dodged his next onslaught, darted behind him, and slipped a smart thwack to his posterior.
He whirled, face burning, and she was ready with another blow to his head.
He staggered back, feeling the cut above his eyebrow reopened and blood trickling down. But he came at her once again, and now they crashed staves together four or five times without damage.
Then, thinking he saw his chance, he raised his quarterstaff, sliding left hand back towards right in the same motion so as to bring his weapon down for a quick blow to her shoulder.
She sidestepped, eluding his blow and simultaneously lofting her own staff for a third crack to his brow.
This one brought a momentary flash-spangled darkness and a humming in his ears that threatened briefly to smother all other sounds. He kept to his feet, with difficulty, by leaning on his borrowed quarterstaff as on a tall crutch. When he judged he could stand without it, he let it fall at Midge’s feet.
“Very good,” he said deliberately, with a slow testing of his head from side to side. “You have won. I yield myself your prisoner.” He became aware of Jack the tanner’s son, arrived at last with his father’s quarterstaff, standing a short distance away to watch agape. “Excellent fellow, Jackie!” he called, trying not to sway. “But take it back now, we no longer have need of it.”
“And take Master Squire back with it, Jackie,” said Midge.
“But you have won. I am your prisoner —”
“And I’ll not have you!” she cried. “Go home. I command it! If you’re my prisoner I have the right to command you, have I not?” She tossed the quarterstaff he had used back to her brother and turned once more for Sherwood.
Denis drew his sword again and jumped after her. “My weapon now!”
Much said, “Squire’s sword against untrained girl’s?”
“I am dazed, staggered, limping, and weary. A fair enough match.”
Midge drew the sword she had brought from the castle armory, a light, narrow blade suited to her strength, but strong and supple; old, but with only a few nicks. “Leave us be, Much. He’s gone clean daft and nothing else will satisfy him.”
She held her sword as clumsily as Denis must have held his quarterstaff, and came at him with as much misguided energy. But where she had been able to deal him actual taps, he dared not even attempt to draw blood, for in his unsteady state and her inexperience, what he meant to nick might all too easily slice deep, and a deep slice could prove as fatal as a decapitation, though not as fast.
His exertions at a familiar exercise cleared his brain somewhat. Backing against a tree to compensate for his limp and forestall another such dodge behind as she had used in the earlier fight, he feinted and parried fo
r several rounds until—apparently feeling false confidence—she lofted her blade with a flourish like that of a silly eight-year-old page at play. He promptly struck the weapon from her fingers.
She turned to look where it fell. He held his blade to block her from recovering it. Disarming his opponent was the best way to win this contest. “Now!” he panted. “I have won, and I command that you guide me back to Hood your master.”
She gave him a stare, walked around his blade, picked hers up and slid it back into its scabbard. Still out of breath herself, she said, “Go home, Squire Denis.” Then she turned away from him and started threading her way between the trees.
“I’ll follow you!” he shouted, lurching forward. “If you run, I’ll wander till your comrades find me!”
Much the miller’s son stepped across his path, looking burlier than ever. “You be daft,” he told Denis. “Go home to yonder castle.”
Already Midge was lost to sight. In a moment her brother, striding quickly, likewise vanished amid the thick greenwood foliage of summer.
Pushing forward in the direction he had last glimpsed them, Denis wandered.
14
The Greenwood Assizes
Sometime after the drizzle stopped and the clouds broke, Will Scarlet and a companion called Gilbert found Denis and accepted his sword. “Don’t bind me,” he said. “Would I have come back if I meant to fly again?”
But it suited their rude humor to tie his hands loosely behind him and lead him backwards, the ambulatory equivalent of mounting a victim to face the horse’s tail, a prank they dearly loved. Riding backwards might have been easier than walking; but, though Gilbert prodded him now and again, Scarlet graciously led a soft pace, with a pause at every stumble.
Their arrival in Oakglade was greeted with raucous hoots and coarse jests from all, it seemed, of the outlaws there assembled for dinner. The squire felt as if something burst at last in his chest, closely followed by something in his head, and he sank down in a faint.
When he woke, he was lying unbound on soft greensward, with a pillow beneath his head and Dame Marian, Dame Eleanor, and Midge bending over him. In contrast to this seemingly tender treatment, a man’s voice was maintaining somewhere above and to the distant right, “And I say, hang him at once, before Madame Sheriff comes beating Sherwood to save him alive.”
Though athrob with both dull aches and sharp, darting pains, his head was cleared of what he now recognized to have been a frenzy near madness. “My lady Marian!” he whispered, tears welling up at the understanding, “my lady the sheriff will think I have turned outlaw and come to join Robin Hood’s band.”
“Is this true?” Dame Marian murmured with a glance at Midge.
“It could be,” said Midge. “He told her Robin set him free for my sake, and Jackie the tanner’s son and his father, they both saw him chasing off after Much and me into greenwood. Like as if he was mad.”
At a nod from Dame Marian, Dame Eleanor left them and glided elsewhere ... to explain to Hood, Denis supposed, why there was not so great need of haste. The other two women remained, Midge tending his small, surface injuries and Dame Marian giving him a cordial heavy with herbs to lessen headache. The midday sun struck rainbows from the crystal drops all about them, brighter than dew at dawn.
The smell of roasting venison permeated the air, as usual at this hour of the day. The boards had already been lifted to their trestles and set with platters of broken meats. (Where would the outlaws have dined had the morning’s drizzle continued?) But over his nurses’ shoulders Denis glimpsed the high table and the two just below the dais on either side being cleared of their platters, goblets, spoons, and napery. At the first this puzzled him. Then, as various members of the band moved into place, he saw that they were setting up a mock tribunal.
Hood sat as chief justice, alone at the high table. Alan a Dale sat at his accustomed secondary table, with writing tablets before him, to act as clerk. Friar Tuck sat beside him, even now eating a pie and swigging from a little flask. The two Wills—Scarlet and Stutely—also sat at the minstrel’s table, laughing and talking together.
The dozen outlaws gathering at the other cleared table must be the jury, though Stutely’s leman made one of their number. Much and Little John looked like officers of the Court: the miller’s son stood scowling at one side of the dais, while the giant, wearing sometimes a serious face and sometimes a sportive, strode back and forth on the other side between the minstrel’s table and the dais mound.
Those of the band who did not take their places near the dais gathered as onlookers in a semicircle, sitting on benches, stools, cushions, or the ground. Eventually, when all had settled and many showed signs of restiveness, Hood called down, “Let the prisoner be bound over to the Court now, for the sooner it’s done, the sooner we sit to meat.” Most of the outlaws cheered.
Dame Marian stood and said quietly, “Let a chair be placed for him, Robin, and let him not be bound. He is weary and weak, and we two women will stand guard beside him.”
Much the miller’s son disappeared for a few moments, returning with a light, backless chair in gilded wood, which he set midway between the minstrel’s table and the jury’s. Pushing himself to his feet, Denis politely declined the ladies’ support and walked unaided, if somewhat shakily, to the little chair. It had a velvet cushion embroidered in gold.
“Well, Sir Squire,” Robin Hood said cheerfully, “do you accept the authority of this our greenwood Court?”
Denis eyed the jurors. Most of them looked as though they were drawn from the lowest of the band. They could not be called yeomen, scarcely even peasants—rather, vagabonds and cutthroats whose present status as greenwood outlaws seemed, if anything, a minimal rise in the world.
“They’re churls!” Midge whispered at his ear. “They’re never your equals. Say you want twelve good gentlemen to try you.”
“To what purpose?” he murmured. Gentlemen ... Scarlet, perhaps; and the minstrel had the manners, if not the birth. But they, as it appeared, had been assigned other roles to play in this; and if there were any other gentlemen in the band, they wore their disguises well. The jurors already seated might count as peers for a renegade from honor. Aloud, Denis said steadily, “Master Hood, I am flattered. I think you do not often give those who fall into your hands the benefit of a trial.”
“Oh,” Robin Hood said with a wave of his hand, “we hold our greenwood assizes as often as the need arises. Far oftener, Squire Denis, than your Madame Sheriff would bind any of us over for trial. Now then, Master Stutely pleads the Court’s case and Master Scarlet kindly consents to plead yours. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Tired and aching, Denis sat gratefully on the little gilt chair with its velvet cushion. The lady Marian stood at his right; Midge knelt beside him on the left.
Hood gave his high table two raps with a nutcracking mallet. “Well, well, Master Stutely, don’t waste the Court’s good time.”
Stutely rose and stepped forward to a central position. “The Court, my lord, wastes all our time. Yonder fine lordling pledged his word not to escape, then broke it and escaped. Send him back to his liege lady on our gallows, and be done with him.”
“Brief, pithy, and to the point,” said Hood, nodding in approval—of the sentiment or only of its pithy expression, Denis did not greatly care at the present. “Master Scarlet?” the outlaw justice went on with undimmed relish.
Will Scarlet rose and strutted into the central place, puffing out his chest, hitching back imaginary lawyers’ robes, and shoving Stutely to one side. “M’lord. With all due respect, I beg the Court’s gracious indulgence to argue three several points. As, firstly, to wit: the accused did ever and always consider himself to have been unjustly seized and constrained in defiance of the ancient common law appertaining to messengers, emissaries, and envoys. In this we hold him to have some grounds for complaint.”
Many of Scarlet’s words were difficult to hear for the laughter that greeted his mockery of
the legal profession. Several of the jurors, however, looked more bored and hungry than amused. One had a finger to his nose.
“Secondly,” Scarlet continued, “he is a squire and gently born, and as such may well consider promises pledged to yeomen and peasants less binding than promises pledged to other gentlemen.”
By the angry grumble that replaced much of the laughter, Denis was not the only person present to take offense at this argument.
“And third,” Scarlet went on blandly, “he did return of his own will, making me a most solemn protestation that he did not plan to run away again in the near future.”
“Master Hood,” said Denis, “I should like to address one of these points.”
Midge touched his arm, but Robin Hood nodded and said,
“That may be allowed, I think.”
Denis stood to make his statement. “My word is my word. I consider it pledged to you or to the lowliest vagabond in your pack equally binding on me as if I had pledged it to the king himself.”
Someone in the audience behind him hooted. Many more, including several jurors, echoed this example. Robin Hood rapped his nutcracker mallet and said:
“Aye, perhaps, but you broke it nonetheless.”
“No!” cried Midge, jumping to her feet. “That he did not! See you, Robin—he only took a wider prison! You gave him freedom of his limbs, and he exercised it as far as Nottingham castle for half a day, but he came back again. It’s clear he still considered himself our prisoner the whole time!”
Denis looked at her with admiration. The argument was almost ingenious enough to salve his own conscience. If only he himself had had such a thought in mind from the moment of pledging his word!
“Robin,” said the lady Marian, “remember this: he brought Midge safely back to us, with no more blood spilled.”
“A telling point,” the outlaw chief agreed. “Which puts me in mind that we made some talk of ransom two days ago. Fifty pounds, as I remember, was the sum Madame Sheriff and I agreed upon, and had your word that, if freed, you yourself would deliver it to us in person.”
“Forty-two pounds, one mark, four shillings, three and a half pence only were mine to offer, and most of that sum lies for safekeeping in my lady the sheriff’s own coffers. I could hardly have obtained it today without waking her suspicion. My lady kept her word and released her hostage. She would not have done so had she known you did not in fact release yours in free exchange.”
The Gallows in the Greenwood Page 12
