Wild Boy

by Nancy Springer

  “Mayhap and perchance,” Robin agreed with a gentle nod. “Let’s get you out of here, lad.” Robin beckoned Lionel to the other side of the trap. Looking at Lionel’s full-moon face, Rook saw bad memories shining plainly there.

  “My father will find me,” the Sheriff’s son told Robin. “He will come and save me and kill all of you.”

  “Quite so. Certainly,” said Robin kindly. “We’re going to spring it now, lad. It’ll hurt.”

  Rook hoped the brat would scream. No, he hoped he wouldn’t…. He wanted to watch in scorn, but found that he had to turn his face away. Heard a gasp, but curse the boy, he was brave. The trap made more noise, squealing as it opened, than he did. It screeched, reluctant to release its prey, and then Rook heard rather than saw how Beau and the others lifted the boy out of the trap and laid him on the ground. Then the trap closed with a clang. Robin and Lionel had let it spring shut so it would harm no one else, but the very sound hurt Rook. He winced.

  After that, he could look. Rowan knelt by the boy, busy with bandages, stanching his bleeding. “What’s your name?” she asked him.

  Panting, he told her what he had refused to tell Robin. “It’s—it’s Tod.”

  “Tod.” Robin Hood stooped to lay his mantle over the boy. “It’s a good name for you. You’re a proper young fox, giving us the slip.”

  “My curse on you,” the boy whispered.

  “Young spitfire, you’re welcome to curse all you like. How bad is it, Rowan, lass?”

  Her careful fingers traced the line of the boy’s leg. Gentle, she was so gentle, yet Tod gave a choked cry and fainted again.

  Rowan said, “It’s a clean break.”

  “Shall we set it now? Get it over with?”

  She shook her head. “His pulse … he’s too weak. Too cold from this rain. He needs shelter. A fire.”

  “Carry him to the oak?” Robin’s great, hollow oak provided the nearest thing to a roof in Sherwood Forest.

  “Too far.” Deep in the back of Rowan’s level voice Rook heard a quiver of fear. He stared at the boy’s face, wet with rain and maybe tears, death white.

  “Where, then?”

  Rowan bit her lip, and Rook could guess her thoughts. There was the rowan hollow, but the rain poured there the same as anywhere else. There were the tors, with their shallow caves, but they stood steep, forbidding, and too far away from this woodland. This stand of trees, Rook knew, straggled at the very farthest outskirts of Sherwood Forest. Beyond it lay only wasteland, rocky meadow where furze and nettles grew, where goose girls jostled with goatherds and shepherds, cowherds and drovers and swineherds for pasturage of a sort. Where no folk dwelt except—

  Rook heard his own throat make a kind of whimper. Every head swung to look at him. Except the boy’s. Tod lay as motionless as if he were already dead.

  Rook tightened his lips, then growled, “Bring him. Follow me.” Turning sharply away from them, he trotted off toward the edge of the woods.

  Five

  He had not been back there since. Had stayed far away. Had faced the sight of flies emptying his father’s dead eyes, but he had not been able to face that other emptiness.

  Till now.

  With his hard back daring the others to question his leadership, Rook led them through the fringes of the forest, loping between scattered groves and thinning woods onto rocky waste amid clumps of gorse. Only once did he glance behind him. Rowan trotted close by, with the others following. Beau blundered along by Robin Hood’s side, still without speaking. Lionel walked, his strides so long he did not have to run to keep up. With no more difficulty than if he had been cradling a baby, he carried the Sheriff’s son in his arms.

  “Not far.” Rook flung the words over his shoulder at Rowan even though he saw no doubt in her rain-streaked face. It was he who doubted. As recently as today’s dawn he had known how to feel, whom to hate. But now—what was this sour porridge of emotions in him, making him feel half sick? He ran across a meadow so familiar from another life that it felt stranger than a dream, and his head swam.

  And there, sheltering beneath a crooked crab-apple tree, almost as solid as a father it stood.

  “A hut!” Rowan murmured.

  His old home. Empty.

  Solid, because Father had built it out of the stones of the waste, corbeling them inward one on top of the other in a dome shaped like a beehive to form both walls and roof of stone, with a hole at the top for the smoke to go out and daylight to come in. A sturdy, well-built hut, yet it stood abandoned, as Rook had known it would. No one wanted to chance living here, for Jack Swineherd had died a foul death, and evil men had thrown his bones somewhere unburied. Surely he had left behind a restless, angry spirit.

  Rook considered, as he stopped beside the hut’s low doorway, whether something of his father lingered here. The thought added itself to the emotions churning in him. He did not know whether to hope he might meet with his father’s ghost, or fear it.

  “A fine hut,” said Robin Hood with a quiet, questioning glance.

  Rook offered no explanation, just dropped to his hands and knees to crawl through the doorway’s stone arch, slipping into the hut like a fox into its den. Inside, his father had dug away the ground to make a hollow almost three feet deep, and because the hut stood atop a well-drained upland, worms and water did not gather there. Large enough for a man to lie down in, the hollow also made the hut tall enough for a man to stand up in, and no commoner could ask for more. A lord in his drafty castle could not lie so snug as a swineherd in this hut.

  It took Rook’s eyes a moment to comprehend the dimness within, but his hands rested on sheepskin beds, and he knew at once that all was well. Nothing had been touched except by mice and such.

  Someone crawled in beside him—Rowan. She turned to crouch at the doorway, and two pairs of hands passed the Sheriff’s son in to her headfirst. She cradled the boy under his shoulders and eased him to the sunken floor, shifting him to one side so that rain would not find him through the smoke hole. “He’s barely breathing,” she said, her voice stretched to a taut whisper. “He needs warmth.”

  Rook had already found kindling in the accustomed place. Squatting like a squirrel, he arranged straw and twigs in the circle of fire stones, then reached for a rock that jutted to form a shelf—yes, flint and steel still lay there. Rook took one in each hand and struck them together shrewdly, raining a shower of sparks on the dry tinder.

  A few sparks caught. Rook saw smoke, then a glow as feeble as the hurt boy’s pulse. Blowing on it would be too much, would put it out. Rook fanned it with his hand and gave a gruff call to a pair of enormous feet standing outside the doorway. “Lionel, bring firewood.”

  “Firewood? But my dear little lad, it’s all soaking wet.” Lionel’s tone revealed how much he detested being wet. “Might I remind you it’s raining hard out here—”

  “Pigsty,” Rook said.

  “I am not a pigsty! You’re the dirty one.”

  Beau broke her unnatural silence. “Mon Dieu, Rook, what you talk about?”

  “Pigsty?” came Robin Hood’s cheery question. “Where—oh! I see it! In the copse.”

  “That other hut?” Beau asked. Footsteps moved toward where the pigsty hid amid trees, a beehive-shaped stone shelter just like this one, except with a larger entry and no smoke hole. With fodder stored overhead instead. Rook hoped the others would find some fuel in there. Dry sticks left from leafy branches once put in there for fodder and bedding, perhaps. Or the wood of the fodder shelf itself.

  Orange light made Rook blink as his fire put out tiny flames. He fed it kindling a little at a time until it blazed more strongly and he felt its warmth on his wet skin. Only when he felt sure the fire would not go out did he look at the Sheriff’s son.

  Gray eyes looked back at him. The boy lay conscious, watching him with a quiet, wary stare, like a fox cub. By the boy’s side sat Rowan, cradling his broken leg in her healing hands. She could not make it mend, Rook knew, but her to
uch eased the pain.

  “What now?” Rook asked her.

  Before she could answer, there was a slight scraping noise. A bundle of firewood landed beside Rook, and then Robin Hood slipped in to bend over the Sheriff’s son, his broad shoulders crowding the hut to its limit. “Better, lad?” he asked.

  “Go suck eggs.”

  Defiant, even now? The boy had to have heard the scare stories folk told of outlaws. How they would steal children from cottages, roast them over flaming bonfires and eat them.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” the boy said, his voice as thin as straw and not much stronger.

  “Good, lad.”

  “We ought to get the wet clothes off him,” Rowan said.

  They maneuvered around one another in the confines of the hut, Rowan steadying Tod’s leg and Rook edging out of the way as Robin bent over the hurt boy. But when Robin reached to pull off Tod’s soaked jerkin, the boy clamped his skinny arms across his chest. “Don’t.”

  “Just trying to help you”—Robin lifted Tod’s arms with one hand and tugged the jerkin off with the other—”get dry and warm—”

  Robin faltered to silence, staring at the boy’s thin body. Even in the dim orange firelight, Rook could see also: Tod’s narrow shoulders were striped with welts, his bony ribs mottled with fresh dark bruises.

  Between clenched teeth Robin breathed, “Who has done this to you?”

  Tod said nothing.

  “Your father?”

  “He—he beats me only to toughen me.”

  The look on Robin’s face made Rook grab one of the sheepskins and cover Tod with it, not so much for warmth as to hide the marks.

  Robin said, “That makes as much sense as stripping the bark off a young tree. To toughen it.”

  “Father, hush,” Rowan said.

  Tod’s eyes widened and shifted to stare at her.

  Not hushed at all, Robin demanded, “Does he beat your mother as well? To toughen her?”

  “Father. Either be quiet and help me set his leg, or go away.” Rowan spoke with the authority of a healer. Robin Hood set his lips in a line like a bowstring and said nothing more.

  “Rook,” Rowan said, “come here. Help us.”

  Rook found himself holding the Sheriff’s son down while Rowan and Robin peeled the bloody wrappings away from the boy’s mangled leg. Knees on Tod’s shoulders, hands leaning on his arms to restrain him, Rook felt him shaking. It should have been a pleasure to watch a Nottingham suffer, but Rook felt far away, and staring into Tod’s upside-down face made everything seem like a bad dream. Rook heard his own hoarse voice as if it belonged to a stranger. “He’s biting his lip.”

  Blood stood on the boy’s mouth and chin. Robin looked, then without a word he undid his hunting knife from his belt and placed it, tough leather sheath and all, between the boy’s teeth.

  “We’ll set it as quickly as we can,” Rowan told Tod. Her shadowy gaze shifted to her father. “Ready? Take hold.”

  The Sheriff’s son was brave, Rook knew by now, but brave can do only so much. Tod arched his back, straining, writhing. He screamed—by all the world’s suffering, how he screamed—then went limp. Rook closed his eyes.

  “Thank the Lady he fainted,” Rowan murmured.

  She and Robin were binding the splints on. Rook lunged for the doorway, scrambled out and ran in the pouring rain toward the forest. He barely noticed Lionel and Beau calling to him from the shelter of the pigsty. And he had not yet reached the forest before he fell to his knees and vomited. Although there was not much in him to vomit. He had not eaten.

  The rain cooled the boiling porridge of emotions in him somewhat. He turned his face to the sky, let the rain wash his mouth, spat, then got up and started walking toward another place he remembered as if from another life.

  Six

  It took him several days. First he had to find a young tree, not too thick, with two sturdy branches jutting about at the level of his shoulders. Then he had to cut it and trim it into a shape like a slender cross, after which he had to sharpen the upper end into a rude spear. He carried this weapon at the ready as he stalked toward the place he remembered.

  Perhaps he should have told Rowan he would be away for a while…. But no, foxes and deer did not need to seek anyone’s blessing or say-so. Wolves roamed at will. And so would he.

  Slipping through the tangled shadows of Sherwood Forest, Rook expected to meet swarms of Nottingham’s men-at-arms in search of the Sheriff’s missing son. But in fact he saw only one bored patrol riding through a beech glade.

  Other than that, he encountered the usual presences in the forest: frightened peasants poaching firewood or meat, nervous travelers, knights errant and wandering friars, the king’s foresters, bounty hunters, Robin Hood’s merry men, and other outlaws not nearly so merry or kind. Rook knew when any of these folk were near, but few if any of them were aware of the wild boy.

  Rook ate what little he could find as he traveled, only enough to stay alive. Mushrooms. Bilberries. Little bony fish that tasted muddy: dace, chub, perch. Still, eating took time, sleeping took time, stalking and walking took time, days of sunshine then cloud again and rain and then more sun.

  He found the wallows at last by the prints of many two-pointed hooves leading there. Rain had freshened the mud, and now a warm afternoon sun glowed down between trees busy growing roots and nuts and acorns for pigs to eat. It was a fine, fine day to be a wild hog. Standing behind a mighty oak with roots dug bare by pig snouts, Rook scanned the sows and shoats lying in the wallows with their long legs and their pointed heads stretched out, mud crusting their dark bristles, many of them asleep. If Rook wanted to take a treat of meat back to Rowan, all he had to do was sneak up and grab a young pig. Getting covered with mud was a small price to pay for roast suckling pork.

  But it wasn’t hunger for meat that had sent him here. It was a different hunger. An aching hunger the Sheriff’s son had put into him, making him burn and churn with hate and love, vengeance against Nottingham, longing for a … a dead swineherd.

  Year after year Father had come here to capture the young wild pigs for fattening, taking the dog—Rook blinked in surprise at himself, that he had almost forgotten the brindle dog. It had been a companion, a playmate of sorts, and it had helped to keep the wild boars at bay in the spring and herd the shoats in the fall. But the king’s foresters had come and cut off some of its toes, laming it so that it couldn’t chase deer. One day the dog had not come home. Maybe they had killed it outright.

  Maybe it had been caught in a man trap.

  Like Father.

  Remembering Father was thorny hard and hurtful, but looking at the sleeping pigs eased Rook’s tangled feelings somewhat. Just standing in this place gave him some small peace. He began to notice birdsong, felt liquid notes cleansing him, a rainbow shower amid sunshine. Breathing deeply of the moist mud-scented air, he seemed to take in something of his father’s spirit, something quiet, brown, accepting …

  No. He would never accept.

  Confound the Sheriff’s son. Hand of justice put him in the trap for me; why did I let him live? What is wrong with me? Am I a coward? Am I—

  “Mes yeux, Rook,” said a voice behind him, “why you run away?”

  He jerked around. There stood Beau, her grin flashing white, her hair hanging like a black-and-yellow flag. He had been forgetting to listen for danger, he had not heard her approaching, and now—

  Pigs screeched and scrambled up, startled by Beau’s voice. Mud flew as sows and shoats darted in all directions like a sudden ambush, all the king’s men shooting all the king’s arrows—but these were arrows bigger than Rook and Beau put together. And with a scream more like a roar, something massive and dark thundered toward Beau.

  There was no time to think. Rook reacted, leaping to shield Beau, spear pointed toward the danger, even before he fully comprehended the charging boar, before he really saw the black bristles standing on the razor neck and back, the frothy flash of tusk
s that could tear him wide open, the crescent red raging eyes. The wild boar hit his spear tip at full speed, its hurtling weight staggering him back, back—but as Rook fell, somehow he remembered to plant the butt of the spear in the earth, and he threw himself on it to keep it there, to keep a few feet of spear between him and death. Only the crossbar stopped the boar from charging right up the length of the spear to slash and trample him.

  The boar roared, swerved, sidestepped, still trying to get at Rook even though there was a foot of sharpened wood inside him. The spear must not have pierced his heart, and its green wood couldn’t stand up to the boar’s strength for long; it would break. Rook’s pulse roared in his ears, the boar screamed like an evil spirit, everything was screaming, echoes between the trees, piglets, Rook’s muscles, his panting throat—and Beau, screaming as she leapt at the raging boar, dagger in hand. The boar swung its head to slash at her. She sprang aside just in time and leapt like a squirrel onto the boar’s back, where its tusks could not reach her. Gripping with her knees, she rode its bruising backbone as it plunged worse than a bucking pony. The dagger flashed in air—a bright steel knife with a filigree hand guard, a weapon worthy of the high king’s page boy. The dagger plunged, lifted, plunged again.

  The boar did not seem to mind being stabbed at all, but the sudden weight on his back maddened him. He writhed, squalled, bent double trying to slash Beau, reared so that Rook caught a glimpse of his heaving hairy belly. But Rook leapt up with him, hanging on to the butt of the spear. His only chance was to keep hold of it. He saw Beau still on the boar with her knees clamped behind its shoulders and one hand clinging to an ear as she stretched forward with the other, trying to slash the beast’s throat.

  “Eye!” Rook yelled, panting so that he could barely get the word out. “Stab—eye!” Beau’s dagger was not long enough to kill the boar unless she struck through its eye straight into its brain.

  She heard him, and she tried. But it was like trying to stab a sixpence hung by a string in a high wind. Her dagger struck cheekbone, then air, then—