Robin: Lady of Legend (The Classic Adventures of the Girl Who Became Robin Hood) (17 page)

Robin struggled not to laugh as those within hearing range gasped. “Forgive me, sir, but I must disoblige you. I answer no warrants but that of my stomach, when it demands a hearty meal to fill it and stout ale to quench it.”

The Sheriff’s eyes narrowed as the crowd exclaimed again at her refusal.

“Do not be a fool. A reward like this would make you rich, with more money in your purse than some lords have in their whole coffers. Will you serve me?”

Robin shook her head emphatically. “I will not. No man shall be my master.”

“Insolent fool!” the Sheriff snapped, his face blotching purple as several people began to chuckle. “Begone, before I serve a warrant on
you!
”

With a curt bow to the Sheriff and a wave to the crowd, Robin turned her back on Darniel and strode across the range, unable to keep a smile from spilling across her face.

I wager no one has dared tell him “no” in years. Poor Phillip. He did not seem to take it very well.

Robin returned to the archer’s tent and grabbed the bag she had left there, tying it securely to her belt. When she stepped back outside, David was waiting for her, along with a horde of spectators.

“That was some masterful shooting,
Jack
,” he called to her, his eyes twinkling with merriment.

“Well, you would know,” she joked back as she worked her way to his side. Unlike most of her band, David’s archery skills were abysmal.

Robin steeled herself to battle her way through the sea of admirers, but like Biblical waters the crowd parted before their champion, allowing the two friends easy passage into Nottingham proper.

Now that the tournament was finished, Robin realized just how hungry she was. But when she and David tried to buy pasties from a baker and wine from a wine booth, neither vendor would accept their coin—it was their pleasure, they said, to gift their wares to the champion archer and his friend!

Buoyed by this unexpected generosity, the two chose to wander through the dusking streets of Nottingham, peering at shops and eating their meat pies, and passing pleasantries with those who occasionally stopped them to offer their congratulations. Once, Robin felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see a heavyset soldier looming behind her. Believing she had been recognized and was about to be arrested, Robin’s fear turned to astonishment when he instead requested some archery tips he could give his young son. Somehow, she managed to choke out an answer and wait until he had left before bursting into laughter.

“I thought for certain he had realized who you were,” David admitted, relief etched all over his face.

“So did I,” Robin agreed. “All the same, it
is
a shame that the Sheriff went to all that effort to lure me out of the woodwork, and yet he believes himself failed.”

“I suppose so,” David said.

Robin’s mouth curled into a mischievous smile. “I would not want him to think me a coward,” she continued.

“Well, it is not like you can tell him,” David insisted, beginning to grow alarmed.

“Hmm,” Robin mused, not really listening. “The Sheriff will be sitting down to supper right about now.”

She took off her quiver and handed it to David, along with the golden arrow, but retained her bow and one of her shafts. “Find the others who came with us and wait for me just inside the forest. I shan’t be long.”

“What are you planning, Robin?” David demanded, but she was already weaving through the milling throng.

It did not take her long to find a public scribe, and a silver penny bought her the use of some linen paper, a quill, and iron gall ink. The scribe was a little shocked to find that she wanted to write her own letter, since even the nobility usually dictated their correspondence; a peasant who knew how to write was practically unheard of. Another penny and she saw him shrug away his curiosity and turn to other business.

Robin sucked thoughtfully on the tip of the quill, considering what she wanted to say. When she began to write, the words flowed smoothly from her mind onto the paper, as though she were recalling the words to a popular song, rather than inventing them as she went along. With one last flourish, she was done.

Robin looked over her letter carefully, perusing its contents while the black ink dried. She felt extremely satisfied—her message was short, it was merry, and it rhymed; it would drive the Sheriff mad:

I often take ill-gotten gold

So folk won't starve or feel cold

But gold today was rightly won

When you named me your champion.

So learn this lesson well today

My warrant you will never pay

For like arrows, Robins fly free

None shall my master ever be.

It was not difficult to learn where the Sheriff was taking supper. Robin had been to the Guild Hall only once before, when another Sheriff had governed the shire, but she remembered the conventional layout. Two long tables stretched the length of the hall, with a shorter one upon a dais near the back. That was where the Sheriff would be sitting. It was perhaps twenty paces from the front door. There was one small window near the roof to let the air pass through. It would be more than big enough for her purpose.

Robin ducked behind a stall and rolled her letter around her arrow, tying it into place with the yellow ribbon the herald had given her. Taking out her dagger, she chopped off the arrow’s head so it would do little harm if she misjudged where it should fall—she would be shooting blind, after all.

The guard stationed by the door gazed about with a bored countenance, his eyes taking in and passing over the scarlet archer who had just stepped into the street—merely one of the hundreds who had flocked into town for the tourney. In that brief moment of inattention, Robin strung her bow, nocked her arrow, and sent the clothyard shaft soaring through the Guild Hall window.

Then she took off running. Behind her, the guard gave an inarticulate shout of surprise and pursued.

* * * * *

Robin dashed through the streets, the shouts behind her growing louder as more guards joined the pursuit. People turned to regard her with various imprecations as she darted around them, but no one tried to stop her forward progress.

As she neared the edge of the town, the crowd began to thin, and Robin risked a quick glance behind her. She was perhaps twenty rods ahead of her pursuers—it would have to be distance enough.

Jinking between several houses, she found herself in a small, abandoned alley. Hastily, she dropped her bow and reached into her sack, pulling out the shapeless dress she had bought in case of this very situation. As swiftly as she could, she drew the garment over her head, pulled out her braid and tucked her hood into her sack. At the last second, she remembered she was still wearing the false eye-patch and tore it off.

The pounding of feet signaled the soldiers’ arrival. Trying to appear nonchalant, Robin stepped in front of her bow, trusting to the growing darkness and her skirts to hide the weapon.

“Where did he go?”

“He just disappeared!”

“You! Woman! Did you see a man run by here?” the Guild Hall’s guard, no longer bored, demanded of her crossly. The soldier was panting heavily and clutching at a stitch in his side. “He was dressed all in scarlet, with a patch over one eye and a bow in his hand.”

“Scarlet? A man? No man has passed by here, sir,” Robin averred, remembering almost too late not to deepen her voice. She cowered away as if the guard frightened her.

The soldier took in her disheveled appearance, and a look of scorn stole over his face. “I doubt that,” he mocked, but he had no time for a woman and hastened down the street, beckoning the others to follow him.

Robin waited until the sound of their footsteps faded away and then picked up her longbow, checking with her fingers to see if it had come to harm when she had dropped it. Relieved that it had not, she ambled off in the direction of Nottingham Gate, feeling utterly invisible in the skirts that lapped at her ankles.

The gate porter peered down at her from his perch, intrigued by the sight of a woman exiting the city alone with a longbow in her hand.

“Halt a moment, maid. How comes ye to be carrying a weapon like that?” he called.

“Me man forgot it, the drunken sot. Forgot me too, come to that.”

The porter smirked. “How foolish of him! Surely ye need ne hurry back to such a man? Come join me up here for a while, and I will show ye how to properly work a shaft.”

Robin shook her head. “Nay, sir, I am already well learned on that score. Besides, me man will be desiring me presence.”

“I am sure he wol,” the gatekeeper laughed, waving her through. With a smile concealed by the darkness, Robin walked through the gates and out of Nottingham, a free woman.

CHAPTER 11

A LESSON IN POWER

FOR THE NEXT few weeks, the people of Nottinghamshire talked of little else but the exceptional tournament . . . and the arrow that had fallen through the Guild Hall window to pierce the Sheriff’s mutton supper. Though the enraged Sheriff had threatened to execute any person who relayed the incident, the tale had still gotten out and by the next evening, the entire town had known that not only had the Sheriff failed in his ploy to trap Robin Hood, but he had not even recognized the bold outlaw when he had stood before him to receive his prize!

Ballads about the daring archer’s latest coup quickly spread throughout the shire, and Phillip Darniel—rightly feeling himself to be the laughingstock of the entire county—coldly decided that he had had enough. Putting aside his prodigious pride, he rode out in company to London Town to beg the King for help in ridding Sherwood of that loathsome outlaw, Robin Hood.

“Ne only did the King refuse to help,” Eadom the innkeeper boasted to his guests shortly thereafter, when several members of Robin’s band stopped by the Blue Boar Inn for tidings and refreshment, “but he—that is, the King—he said that if the Sheriff could ne catch Robin Hood—heed this!—that he would need to find another sheriff who could! That set ourn Sheriff off right quick, ye can be sure, in a mood as dole as a midwinter sky.”

Those present had laughed then at the foolish man who sought to capture the bold archer, but humor soon turned to frustration as Phillip Darniel began to send every soldier he could spare into the forest to hunt down whatsoever outlaws they could find.

Fortunately for Robin and her band, their camp was located deep within the heart of Sherwood, and though the Sheriff could order his men into the forest, he could not govern how far they ventured therein. As it was, no soldier dared to tramp too far within the Sherwood, lest night should fall before they could return to the High Road; they knew that with their senses blinded by darkness, and their disadvantage compounded by the unfamiliar terrain, those who hunted outlaws could easily become their quarry’s prey.

This wariness served the soldiers well, for though some of her men begged permission to shoot down the invaders, as long as the soldiers maintained their distance from the camp, Robin’s edict against killing remained firm. Only to defend their lives would she permit her men to fight, and that was not needed . . . yet.

So for a fortnight, Robin’s band reluctantly laid low, waiting for the sounds of the soldiers’ horns to fade away. Finally, after three days of silence, Robin decided the servicemen had gone and that it was safe to venture through the forest once more.

“But what if there are still some of the Sheriff’s men lurking about?” Nicolas demanded, catching her arm as she was about to leave. “At least take one of us with you.”

“Nonsense,” Robin told him briskly. She was itching for a bit of freedom, and there was only so much of
men
that a girl could take. “Look, if I get into trouble, I shall sound my horn, all right? Three blasts, so you will know it is me.”

“I like it not,” Nicolas asserted, but he reluctantly let her go. As she strode away into the trees, he shouted after her, “Remember, three blasts! We will be listening.”

Robin did not even hear him—her mind was already skipping away from the camp and into the vastness of the forest, her body following only a little slower behind. With every step she took, Robin felt the cares of her leadership and responsibilities falling further away, lifting a weight from her shoulders that she had not even realized was there.

With a happiness that was almost giddy, she plucked a pied daisy from the ground and weaved it through her hooded hair, behind her ear. There it adorned out of sight, its unseen presence buoying Robin’s spirits—she had almost forgotten what it felt like to enjoy girlish fancies. Putting on that dress in Nottingham had made her realize that she missed skirts and loosed hair more than she would have thought possible. Living in a camp full of men had certainly been educational, but while she insisted that they abide by some standard of hygiene, their appearance was hardly that of the dapper young men who tended to inhabit lords’ halls. Not that she missed the company of lordlings, but sometimes it was nice to look on a handsome youth, and to feel handsome herself. Such a self-discovery amused her.

Imagine what Darah would say, to find me pining after such things!

With a laugh, Robin plucked the flower from her hair and let it flutter to the ground.

She spent the rest of the morning meandering through linden groves and stands of fragrant pines, through goldenrod thickets and through carmine meadows, letting each place breathe its life and peace into her soul. How she loved this border of the seasons, when spring merged with summer and filled the air with the sumptuous scents of flowers and sun! What other time of the year was the greenwood so bursting with brilliance?

Unbidden, the words to her favorite childhood ditty weaved through her head: “For the sun is shining bright, and the leaves are dancing light, and the little fowl sings he is near . . .”