Robin: Lady of Legend (The Classic Adventures of the Girl Who Became Robin Hood) (25 page)

“You are a hero,” Little John insisted.

But looking into the eyes of the families clustered by the fire, Robin did not feel very heroic.

* * * * *

Robin supposed she should have seen it coming. A man would have known
exactly
what was going on when some of the new, unattached girls who had sought haven in the Sherwood with their fathers or their brothers began to take it in turns to bring Robin her meals. They would have seen the truth behind the shining eyes, the giggling whispers, the innocent run-ins or the earnest greetings. But Robin, consumed with her own secrets, failed to recognize theirs until it was almost too late.

“Are ye sure ye will ne have more stew, Robin?” a girl named Valerie asked for the third time in as many minutes. Robin let out a deep sigh of impatience. It was one thing to be proud of one’s cooking, but honestly—how much did these girls think she could eat? She had already had her fill and then some, but still they pestered her to have more. A serving rotation had been Marian’s idea, since she hated to stand in line, but now Robin was beginning to yearn for the days when each person had obtained their meal for themselves.

“No, thank you,” she repeated, struggling to stay polite. “Truly, I cannot swallow another spoonful of your excellent repast.”

“Oh, but—”

“If he does not want it, I do!” Shane exclaimed, jumping up and snatching the bowl out of the woman’s grasp. He gave her a dazzling smile.

Flustered, but unable to protest, the girl stalked away. Shane watched her go, a trifle disappointed. He looked down at the soup in his hands. “Does anyone want this?”

When they shook their heads, he collapsed back down onto a log with a sigh, setting the bowl aside. His eyes never strayed from Valerie as the girl returned to her friends (the young women immediately huddled together, conferring urgently).

“Let us have a song, Allan!” Shane suddenly cried, leaping back onto his feet. “One that will set our toes to tapping and our feet to dancing!”

Allan, a slim slip of a boy, obediently picked up his lute and drew his hand across the strings, causing a cascade of tones to thrill through the air. Allan was one of the band’s more recent additions, and though shy and quiet most of the time, an emboldened self seemed to spring from within him whenever he was called upon to sing. Suddenly boisterous and jolly, his voice—a surprisingly rich tenor—would surge forth as strong and pure as a stream born of melting snows.

“Nonny, hey Nonny, beauteous and bonny, come and dance with me
. . . .
We will spin through the meadows and romp in the shadows beneath the greenwood trees . . . .”

The transformation Allan’s voice wrought in her band never ceased to amaze Robin. For the moment forgetting all their worries and cares, her people would grab as partner whoever was close at hand, dancing merrily with them in the twilight. Against the blaze of the fire, their silhouettes flickered black and red, accentuating their movements and making her dizzy just to watch them.

“Come on, Robin!” Marian called, appearing suddenly from out of the sea of dancers. “Dance with me!”

“I do not dance—” Robin began, but Marian would hear no protests. Seizing hold of her sister’s hands, she pulled Robin into the cavorting circle. Robin had to move then, or risk being crushed by the prancing feet and flailing arms. One moment she was dancing with Marian, the next Will had her by the waist and was spinning her in circles—Shane caught her by the arm then and began to perform a high-kicking step that she did her best to mimic; David seized her by the shoulder and they capered around each other, clapping to the beat. For one brief instant, Little John held her—his arm was wrapped in hers and they were dos-á-dosing around each other, and Robin could not remember why she had ever hated dancing before—this was wonderful, this was real, this was
right
—and then suddenly Little John was gone and she was dancing with Valerie.

Robin’s mind was still whirling from her brief moment with John, and maybe that was why she did not realize the impending danger until it was almost too late. Before she could register what was happening, Valerie had the edges of Robin’s hood wrapped in her fingers and was pushing it back, stretching onto her tiptoes as she did so to kiss Robin squarely on the lips.

It was Robin’s instinctual reaction that saved her—a split second before Valerie would have pulled down the hood and Robin’s disguise along with it, she caught the girl’s wrists and flung her away from herself in harrowed disgust.

Valerie fell to the ground; the men nearest to Robin were staring. Snatching at her slipping hood and feeling like she was going to be ill, Robin turned and ran out of the circle. Behind her, she heard someone call, “Do not bother with him—he is saving himself for the Lady Marian!” and thought that it might be Shane.

* * * * *

“You certainly know how to make an exit,” Marian told her sister the next day, once Robin finally heeded her pounding and let her into the cabin. “Poor Valerie is quite distraught.”

“Oh,
Valerie
is distraught?” Robin seethed, her voice rising slightly as she shut the door. “
She
kissed
me
—which, by the way, is an experience I would like to forget, thank-you-very-much—and she almost gave away who I truly am as well!”

“Just because you have no clue what to do if a woman kisses you, does not mean she jeopardized your identity. Lots of men would have reacted the same way. Although running away was perhaps a bit much,” Marian added thoughtfully.

In irritation, Robin yanked off her hood, revealing her thick yellow braid. “
This
is what she almost did,” she announced hotly.

Marian’s eyes widened in surprise. “You mean you have not cropped your hair yet? Robin! Of all people, how could you be so foolish?” she scolded. “Think of all your hard work, and all it would take is some rogue knocking your hood from your head to destroy it! You have gone to such lengths to disguise your voice and amend your habits, why in the world have you kept your hair this long when it is the one thing you could easily change?”

“It has worked brilliantly for me!” Robin answered with vehemence. “It has let me slip into and out of Nottingham more than a few times . . . and it helps protect my head against buffets from John’s quarterstaff!”

“It is too risky, Robin. If you intend to keep up your charade, you must cut it.”

Robin turned away, but as much as she tried to resist the truth of Marian’s words, she knew that her sister was right. She had kept her hair long as her one vanity, not for any of the reasons she had listed—those had merely served to excuse not shearing it.

“Let me do it,” Marian told her, her eyes softening a bit at the look on Robin’s face. “I promise to be quick.”

Robin tried to think of some argument she could give, some further reason not to cut her hair . . . but Marian was right: it was too risky. Valerie had proven that. With a nod of surrender, Robin dug beneath her bedding for her dagger and handed it to her sister with great reluctance. Marian took it, but hesitated; even she seemed loath to cut the golden locks.

“Just do it,” Robin whispered, her eyes closed tight.

The blade began to saw at her braid; as the heavy strands fell away, Robin felt some vestige of the woman she had been—Robin of Locksley, daughter of Sir Robert of Locksley; a noblewoman—to which she had so stubbornly clung, fall away at last.

Finally, the shearing blade grew still. Tentatively, Robin shook her head—wisps of gold fluttered around her neck, and her head felt strangely light. She touched the bottom of her hair—the ends curled up softly around her fingertips, freed of the weight that had dragged them down for so long.

Robin turned to her sister. “What do you think?”

“You will pass,” Marian said thoughtfully, looking her over. “Although I doubt there is a prettier boy in all of Nottinghamshire. You had better get used to the girls wanting to steal a kiss.”

Robin blanched.

* * * * *

After Marian left, Robin sat for a while turning over her hood in her hands. It made her feel peculiar to know that she did not need to wear it anymore to protect her identity. She reached up to touch her short hair. How would her people react to seeing her with her head uncovered for the first time?

Part of her wanted to get it over with, to face their startled exclamations and thus free herself of her hood’s shadowy confines, but she was not quite ready to cast her namesake aside. At last, she pulled on her hood with a sigh.
I will go without it tomorrow,
she promised herself reluctantly.

True to her word, Robin deliberately left her hood aside the next morning, stepping into the sedate bustle of the camp with her head completely unadorned. She felt highly self-conscious, and waited expectantly for someone to notice her newly cropped curls.

Expectation soon turned to astonishment, however, when for the first time in over a year, no one raised their arm to her in greeting, nor came up to her to share some tale. In fact, no one gave her more than a passing glance, clearly dismissing the youth with the shaggy gold hair for just another recent arrival.

Marian was right
, Robin thought with wonder, gazing around.
People really do see only what they expect to see!

Her anonymity tickled Robin’s humor, and she decided to see how long it would last before someone would recognize her. For the better part of the day, she worked at various tasks around the camp, marveling at how its inhabitants would pass her by without a second glance. Once, when Little John was walking just a few yards away, she deliberately dropped the bundle of wood she had been carrying, attracting his attention. While he did pause and stare at her for a long moment as she gathered up the logs—puzzling perhaps over a certain familiarity—in the end, he could not make a connection and moved on.

By afternoon, the fun was starting to wear thin. When the scent of roasting venison began to fill the camp, Robin betook herself to the oak tree to await the meal, collapsing down onto her habitual spot.

“Boy.”

She nearly looked up, but refrained at the last moment; Little John was looming before her.

“Boy, I suppose you are new here so maybe no one has told you, but that there is Robin Hood’s spot. He will not thank you for usurping it.”

She quirked an eyebrow and smiled.

“Perhaps he does not understand,” Nicolas suggested, coming up beside John. Speaking slowly, as though she were a simpleton, he reiterated: “You—are—sitting—in—Robin—Hood’s—spot.”

Still, she did not answer. By now, Lot had joined them. “What is this?” he demanded. “Does this young whippersnapper need to be taught some humility?” He cracked his knuckles menacingly.

Robin could not refrain from laughing any longer. “Peace! Do you know me so little that I can sit right before you and you can talk to me, and yet you do not recognize me?”

They gawked at her. “Robin?”

Now that they thought to look, they recognized the firm yet pale jaw line of their friend, the dancing blue eyes behind the wafting bangs, the slightly crooked nose, and the high cheekbones. But for the first time, they could also see an aureole of hair curling upon her neck, and a face unmasked by shadows.

“I have never seen you with your hood down before,” Lot apologized. The others grunted their assent. Robin’s hood was so much a part of her that seeing her without it was like seeing a king without his coronet—odd, and slightly disconcerting. And though they had always known that Robin was young, it was startling to see the proof before them that the man who lurked beneath the hood, the bane of the purloining rich, was just a slim-faced lad!

“Sorry, Robin,” Little John told her abashedly, sinking down beside her. “I did not realize that you were you.” This strange sentence just made Robin laugh harder, and Little John look more rueful.

“Trouble yourself not a whit!” Robin told him cheerily, seizing the excuse to buffet Little John lightly upon his arm as the others returned to their places. “I am well pleased to find my seat defended so loyally against usurpers!”

At her impish grin, even Little John had to laugh.

CHAPTER 16

GUY OF GISBORNE

TIME PASSED, and winter did too. In spite of having had nearly twice as many people to feed this year as she did last year, no one in Robin’s camp had starved . . . though there had been some nights when everyone had been very hungry indeed.

As with last winter, there was one red hart that eluded everybody’s efforts to bring it to table; Robin for her part was certain it was the same deer. Over the summer, the stag had grown into a sage ten-pointer, and as she watched it leap away from her questing arrow, some part of her was glad that the brave hart had escaped yet again. Like Robin, the stag’s continued reign in the forest depended on dodging the hunters who sought to bring it down. Fortunately, with the Sherwood in full awakening and animal life beginning to burgeon as much as the flowers, there was now no need to chase after such evasive game.

With a contented smile, Robin unstrung her bow and strolled through the blooming forest, breathing deeply of its warming mists and sweet perfumes. It was barely past noontide, and though she would eventually have to find another contribution to the evening meal, there was no need to hurry.

She came upon a river and hopped happily across, taking care not to slip on the spray-drenched stones. She pranced merrily onto the bank and into the greenwood, thoroughly enjoying how the lush green grasses muffled the sound of her footsteps into silence—such a difference from the crisp crunching of winter snow! As she meandered among the trees, Robin sought out the most sun-drenched paths, rejoicing in the warm rays that fell upon her face. She still wore her hood up at times, partly out of habit, and partly to maintain the expectations of her reputation, but today she had let it slip back completely so she could fully bask in the sun’s radiance.