The fourth and fifth foresters attacked simultaneously, their swords biting deeply into John’s cudgel. As he attempted to shrug them off and free his weapon, Robin saw the Sheriff’s nephew rise up behind him, his sword held aloft to deliver the killing blow.
It was over in a second. With a drowning gurgle, the purple-liveried man sank to his knees, Robin’s arrow quivering through his heart.
When the others saw what had happened to their leader, those who were able to dropped their weapons and fled, leaving their fallen comrades behind. John Little stood up slowly from his defensive crouch, his gaze taking in the murdered man and Robin’s shocked expression.
“Robin?”
Without a word, she turned and fled, tripping over roots and rocks in her haste to get away.
“Robin!”
John Little’s voice faded into the distance as her feet pounded the dirt. Robin ran desperately, barely noticing the tree branches that whipped at her arms and face, leaving long red streaks where they struck. She was filled with a terrible anguish—the knowledge that she had killed a man who probably did not deserve to die, and whom she had provoked to his death through intransigent pride.
Panic and shame bore her deep into the forest, until her legs gave out beneath her and she tumbled to the base of a massive oak. Curling into a trembling ball, Robin allowed dark oblivion to claim her.
CHAPTER 5
A REFUGE
TIME PASSED SLOWLY for Robin. For several days she adhered to her refuge, leaving it only when hunger and thirst compelled her to. Though the overripe berries she found made her ill, she could not bear the thought of trying to hunt; her bow and sword lay where she had cast them after waking up a murderer.
She had killed in defense—logically, she knew that. But logic could not keep her from vividly recalling the sensation of her arrow slipping through her fingers, nor the forester’s soft gasp as her shaft pierced his lungs, nor the way his eyes rolled up in his head and the blood trickled from his mouth as he died.
The memory choked Robin, drowning her in merciless recollection. She felt as though a large claw had seized at her insides and was tearing her to pieces, rending her with agony until she could only retch.
She endured like this for several days, her body foraging mechanically for just enough food to keep her alive, while her mind remained locked in endless replay.
Eventually, Robin’s spirit began to rebel against her depression, and one morning she awoke to the realization that her stomach was hollow, her limbs had grown lean, and the dead were dead and if she did not get something substantial to eat soon, she would be too.
Slowly, Robin got to her feet. She had been lying against the trunk of a giant tree, her body cushioned by a bed of moss; thick and soft, the dark green rug gradually thinned away into stunted grasses the farther it grew from the tree.
Robin looked up. A resplendent English Oak towered above her, its trunk so broad that eight men would have failed to circle it with their arms. Massive branches, twisted and gnarled with age, shot out from low on the bole. These rugged boughs supported a broad crown that stretched across the sky like a chandelier.
There was little else in the clearing—for she was in a clearing, Robin saw—save for some hardy grasses; little else could survive in the halo of shade cast by the mighty oak.
The clearing itself was vast, with its nearest edge at least a hundred paces away from where Robin was standing. Birches and pines rimmed the glade on three sides; a low wall of rock bordered the fourth.
A small path of crushed grass traced its way from Robin’s feet towards that wall. She did not remember making such a trail, but there was much that Robin did not remember about the last few despondent days. Obviously, she must have traipsed that way several times in order to have created such an imprint. Unable to remember why and curious to find out, Robin followed it.
The rock wall where the trail ended proved to be the top of a granite cliff, whose mild decline led to the verge of a winding, azure stream. The sight of the watercourse below made Robin dizzy, and she realized just how thirsty she was. Instinctively, she began to clamber down the speckled boulders and thick slabs of rock, as indeed she must have done many times over the last few days, touching the stones for balance with fingers that trembled.
At last, her feet touched down on silty soil, and Robin sank to her knees, folding her hands into a leaky cup and drinking deeply from the stream. The thin water cooled the hot thickness of her tongue and helped assuage her empty stomach. Tossing back her head, Robin poured the clear, cool water over her face, letting it trickle across her cheeks and into her hair like tears.
“God, my God, have mercy on me. I am truly sorry, forgive me,” she whispered.
Several minutes passed, during which time Robin stared unseeing at the bank across the stream. Finally, she shook her head hard and forced her weary mind to consider her predicament.
By now, the foresters who had survived the fight would have borne their tale to the nearest village, and from there word would have spread to watch for the hooded lad who had killed Sheriff Darniel’s nephew. Disguised as she was, Robin would not get very far down the road toward London Town before the Sheriff’s soldiers would surely halt her for questioning. Their methods of inquiry were rarely gentle, and her true identity would be quickly discovered. Most likely she would simply be returned home to marry Darniel, but the soldiers might decide to ask the foresters if they could identify her; if they did, she would be hanged for murder.
Taking off her hood and resuming her normal appearance was hardly an option, either. Assuming that Robin could find a peasant willing to trade her tunic for a dress, Lord Locksley was sure by now to have men searching everywhere for his tall, blue-eyed, blonde daughter—he might even have posted a reward for her safe return! No one would think twice about returning an errant young lady to her father, especially if gold was involved. She would be dragged back home to marry the Sheriff or dragged off to the gallows as soon as she left the forest, depending on her attire. Neither option held much appeal.
I could just stay here, Robin thought, gazing up at the rocks that hid the glade from view. The soldiers will cease to hunt me after a while, and my father in time will give up his search; then I can continue on to London Town as I had originally planned. Until then, I can live here. There is water, and I am well able to hunt for food. As for shelter, there is plenty of wood, and time enough yet to construct one before the rains start in earnest. I can survive.
Filled with determination, Robin began the climb back up the cliff.
Her weapons lay where she had left them, a few cubits away from the base of the oak. For a moment, Robin just stared at them, a farrago of emotion warring within her. At last she picked up her bow stave, running her hands over it to warm it up.
She did not have the strength to hunt far, so Robin found a nearby tree to perch in and waited for something to wander by. She waited until the sun was beginning to set. Just as she was about to give up the hope of any dinner, a roe pricket poked its nose out of a bush. Robin’s trembling muscles caused her to miss her first shot, but she gritted her teeth and got in a swift, second shot just before the frightened deer could bound out of range.
The deer she had managed to take down was small—perhaps thirty pounds—but it was more than enough meat for one person. The delight of knowing she would soon have a full belly was tainted, however, by the memory of John’s warning against killing the King’s deer.
“As a noble and a cousin to the King, I have the right to hunt in this forest,” Robin reasoned defensively, startling herself with the sound of her own voice. She fell silent, but her thoughts continued:
But I am not just a noble anymore, am I? I am an outlaw, and as an outlaw, I have no rights. Not even the right to food, for though beggars may plead for a pittance or scrap, even that is barred to me now. It seems, then, that for me to survive, as a consequence of having committed one crime, I must now commit another!
&
nbsp; This terrible irony weighed down on Robin, and it took nearly all of her strength to lift her sword and hew off a slab of the roe’s rump, and then carry it back to the clearing.
It took her longer than usual to start a fire, but soon the smell of roasting venison was permeating the air, lifting Robin’s spirits more than she would have thought possible. Later, as she tore the half-cooked meat from its skewer and consumed it ravenously, the warm flesh did much to soothe the ache in her chest.
If I am to stay here, Robin decided that night as she lay upon her bed of moss, watching the stars glister through the branches of the oak, I must be able to defend myself—and to do so assuredly, so I will not panic and kill someone again.
Her aim with the bow was good; she would make it perfect. The sword that Will had given her glistened in the moonlight. She would teach herself to use it. Never again would she be helpless in the face of an attack. Never again would she kill someone when she could disarm or disable. Never again.
* * * * *
Robin soon discovered that it took completely different muscles to wield a sword than it did to bend a bow. She dropped the hefty weapon with a groan, rubbing her aching arms and flexing out her back.
It was never this difficult when I was learning with sticks, she reflected wearily. If only she could remember everything Will had shown her! She had not been allowed to attend his lessons, of course—she never was—but after he had finished the two of them would go to the stables and he would show her all that he had learned, eagerly demonstrating the latest pass or riposte. Laughing, they would leap over stacks of hay, startling the horses with their clacking staves and stopping only when their weapons broke or when the hostlers came to chase them off. They had been very young.
That all ended the day Robin’s father entered just in time to see her knock Will’s stick from his hand and level her rod at his throat, crowing triumph. Tight-lipped with anger, Lord Locksley had taken them inside the house, whipped them both, and forbidden Robin to ever touch a weapon again. Then he had broken her practice bow in front of her. Robin did not speak to her father again for nearly a month.
“It is not fair,” she had complained to Marian, picking up chips of stone from their bedroom floor and flinging them at the horn-covered window. “Father did not care when Will taught me to shoot. Why should he care about us crossing sticks?”
Marian, no more than eight at the time, just stared at her sister with large, limpid eyes. Darah answered instead.
“A lady may take up shooting for sport, or for the good of her figure,” the housekeeper said, sniffing her contempt. Clearly she did not think that such pastimes suited young ladies, in spite of society’s permissiveness. “No woman has any business picking up a sword, or pretending to. That is what men are for. Your father was quite right to punish you.”
A handful of pebbles hurled in Darah’s direction illustrated what Robin thought of that reasoning.
For three weeks, Robin refused to go outside and play. Instead, she watched from her window as Will practiced his archery—something the law required all boys to do once they reached the age of seven. Jealousy colored her vision; whenever Will came to visit, she refused to see him.
To add salt to her wound, Darah saw in Robin’s prideful confinement an opportunity to reinstate her lessons in ladyship, and undertook the task with enthusiasm. Robin, however, had no desire to be polished and at best ignored her attempts, and at worst actively sabotaged her plans.
One day, after handing the girl an embroidery frame and coming back an hour later to find it still untouched, Darah had announced in resignation that if Robin would only devote as much time to her finishing as she had to her archery, she would be the finest lady in all of England.
The next day, Robin sought out her father at breakfast.
“What is it?” he asked gruffly, peering at her over an upraised pasty.
Robin took a deep breath. She was uncertain what she would do if her father refused her proposition—she dared not think that far ahead.
“I want you to let me practice archery with Will again,” she explained in one explosive breath.
Lord Locksley’s brows knit together and his expression darkened. Robin plunged on: “I will do everything that Darah tells me to do. I promise I will learn how to be a lady and the duties of a housemistress and such—I will not even tease Darah about it—if you will just let me practice again.”
Lord Locksley frowned. In truth, he had almost forgotten about the “swordfight,” and he disliked how the situation was reasserting itself. Robin was only twelve, and the precocious bravery a boy would have shown in facing him thus had no place in a woman. However. Darah had been nagging him for years about the girl’s inclination for the longbow and her distressingly poor progress in the art of running a household. As long as Robin did not bother him, he did not care much what she did, and he routinely told Darah as much. Of course, finding her practicing swordplay was another matter entirely.
Yes, the girl had grown too wild. She needed to be taught her place in the world—a place devoid of quivers and bowmen’s staves. A little lesson in humility would not go amiss. Even if she passed his test, the bargain he had in mind would please both Robin and Darah, and either way his world would return to the quiet norm he was accustomed to and liked . . . .
Robin’s hands clenched into fists, but she hid them within the folds of her skirt. She wished that her father’s face showed what he was thinking. Hers was like an open book, but her father’s furrowed features were stoic and unreadable.
At last he spoke, his words startling Robin so that she had to work quickly to recover her aplomb.
“Very well. On one condition—you beat me at this craft of yours. Three arrows. 100 paces. If you win, you may recommence your archery practice. But win or lose, you begin lessons with Darah immediately and without complaint. Is that satisfactory?”
“Yes,” Robin said in a voice faint with disbelief. “Oh, yes.”
Out on the archery range, Robin watched nervously as her father inspected his arrows with careful attention. Covertly, she wiped her sweaty hands on her skirt and then rubbed at her bow, trying to keep it warm. Since her father had broken her old bow, the practice stave she was using was unfamiliar to her. It was oak, rather than elm, and slightly too firm for her—she would need all her strength just to draw it.
Her father thrust the heads of his arrows into the ground and took up his stance. In a blur of motion he shot. All three arrows landed so close to the center of the target that from a distance they blurred into one.
“Oh my,” Robin said faintly, before she could stop herself. She would never have guessed that her reclusive father possessed such fine aim. Indignation quickly replaced disbelief—her father had tricked her! Well, she would show him what Robin Ann Locksley was capable of!
Swiftly, she plunged her arrows into the ground. Taking careful aim, she shot her first shaft; it landed in the middle of her father’s small cluster. Her second arrow also landed within that clump. As Robin raised her third arrow, her arm began to shake. The strain of bending the bow back a third time was incredible, and it took all of her strength to keep her aim steady. When at last she let go, she knew that she had shot wide. Not by much, but enough.
Without looking at her, her father walked off. Robin slowly sank to her knees, the longbow clutched convulsively in her fingers. It was all over.
The next morning at breakfast, Robin stared glumly at her lap rather than risk meeting her father’s eyes. She did not even look up when the servitor came in with their food. Only when Will nudged her to eat did she reluctantly glance up and see that rather than the plate of stew she had been expecting, the servant had brought the oaken longbow instead.
“I–I do not understand,” she stuttered. “I lost.”
“I am aware of that fact,” Lord Locksley said dryly. Robin quickly shut her mouth. “You will keep your end of the bargain?”
“Oh, yes!” Robin cried. In that mom
ent, she could have hugged him, but he had never permitted that sort of thing before. She gave him a blinding smile instead.
Lord Locksley looked at his daughter, puzzled. “I cannot understand why this means so much to you, Robin. But you have always asked for little enough. Keep your promise, and I shall keep mine. Mayhap you will grow out of this foolishness. One can hope, anyway.”
Robin did keep her promise. She endured Darah’s lessons, if not enthusiastically, then at least with good cheer. Some of the lessons, like how to sew a wound, she even found interesting. Who knew that embroidery could be put to such use? In time, she even became what some might call accomplished, although she never thought of herself as such. Becoming a lady was just the price she had to pay for the hour of freedom at the end of the day, when she could take up her longbow in her hand and send arrow after arrow whistling through the air like a redbreast’s sweet song.
She had never played at swords again. Until now.
Robin gazed at the blade in her hand. Welts were beginning to form along her fingers and on the pad of her hand; their angry red stare mocked her. The sword was simply too heavy—it was meant to be wielded by a man, not by an eighteen-year-old girl. Well, a twelve-year-old girl had not been meant to wield her old longbow, either, but she had learned. She would learn this, too. Ignoring the way her muscles seized up as she lifted the sword once again, Robin got back to work.
* * * * *
The deer Robin had killed lasted her for half a week, and would have lasted longer if not for the warmth of the day and various unwanted scavengers, which rendered it unfit for consumption by the fourth day.
By this time, however, much of Robin’s strength had returned, and she had begun to explore her surroundings. One of the first places she examined was the rock cliff leading down to the stream, which turned out to be pocketed with various caves that stayed very cool, even on the hottest of days. These hollows would be better than a larder for storing her food, and a few rocks placed over the entrance would protect her meat from any interested creatures.
Robin: Lady of Legend (The Classic Adventures of the Girl Who Became Robin Hood) Page 5
