Rowan Hood Returns

Table of Contents

 

THE TALES OF ROWAN HOOD

 

ROWAN HOOD, OUTLAW GIRL OF SHERWOOD FOREST
LIONCLAW
OUTLAW PRINCESS OF SHERWOOD
WILD BOY

PHILOMEL BOOKS
A division of Penguin Young Readers Group
Published by The Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England.
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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England.

Copyright © 2005 by Nancy Springer.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Springer, Nancy. Rowan Hood returns : the final chapter / Nancy Springer.
p. cm. Sequel to: Wild boy, a tale of Rowan Hood.
Summary: When she finds out who murdered her mother, Celandine,
Rowan Hood returns to her former home to seek revenge.
[1. Revenge—Fiction. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 3. Elves—Fiction. 4. Robin Hood
(Legendary character)—Fiction. 5. Great Britain- -History -Richard I, 1189-1199—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S76846Rr 2005 [FIC]—de22 2004020319

eISBN : 978-1-101-12779-7

O
n a stony slope above the Nottingham Way, Rowan gathered coltsfoot with her dagger, harvesting the hardy flower roots and all. Nearby, her bow lay at the ready, strung, with short flint-tipped arrows close at hand. Her wolf-dog, Tykell, lay nearby also, basking in the first warm sunshine of spring.

But not at ease. With his head lifted, he tested the messages in the air as Rowan worked. And she also kept watch. As she dropped each plant, yellow sunburst blossom and hoof-shaped leaves and root, into her sack, she scanned the heathery wasteland, careful never to stray too far from the edge of Sherwood Forest. The sheriff's men had caught her out here in the open once, but they would not catch her again—

“Tag. You're It,” said a man's soft voice close to her ear, directly behind her.

Rowan barely kept from screaming out loud as she leapt up and away, turning in midair, landing in a fighter's crouch to face—

A tall man in stagskin boots, brown woolen leggings and a green jerkin. A handsome, grinning man with blond curls out of control beneath his cap, his sky-blue eyes twinkling bright with fun.

“Father,” Rowan gasped, straightening, panting to regain the breath he had startled out of her. “Toads take it, you scared me inside out.”

Tykell, who knew Robin Hood well, yawned and wagged his tail.

“Shame on you,” Rowan told the wolf-dog, “in cahoots with this scoundrel.” To her father she complained,
“Must
you practice your stalking on me?”

Chuckling, Robin Hood hugged his daughter and kissed her on the side of her head, on her smooth brown hair drawn back into a braid. “Just keeping you sharp and wary,” he told her.
“Must
you venture out here?”

“It's where the coltsfoot grows.” The open, stony upland ran along the forest like a yellow river, furze and coltsfoot both in bloom, while the budding oaks of Sherwood Forest towered above, kingly trees crowned with mistletoe. Rowan turned her head to scan the Nottingham Way, which curved outside the forest at this point, downslope from where she stood. Seeing no one there, she breathed out.

“Well, it's not much safer in the forest,” Robin admitted, standing back from her and scanning for danger in his turn. “I came looking for you, lass, to tell you that the merry men and I will be on the move for a while.”

Rowan nodded, knowing this was the most dangerous time of the year for Robin and his comrades. With the warmer weather of early spring, the ground had softened to provide good tracking for outlaw hunters, but the trees were not yet in leaf to provide concealment for the outlaws. The king's foresters and other bounty hunters were swarming Sherwood Forest in pursuit of human prey.

But last year Robin hadn't gone on the run. Rowan asked, “Is it worse than usual this spring?”

“Yes, because the winter was harsh.” Beyond being the most dangerous time of year, this was also the hungriest season—for all common folk, not just for outlaws. Peasants gathered lamb's lettuce and other greens at the edge of the forest, but it was no use trying to trade them meat for bread or cheese; they had none. They had used up all their stores of grain over the winter. Their starving cows had not yet freshened to give milk. Sometimes desperate peasants ventured into the forest, trying to hunt game for meat. And they were clumsy about it, getting themselves caught by the foresters and frightening the deer, making the outlaws' lot even harder.

“We still have stores of dried fish,” Rowan offered, “and walnuts and such.”

“You're marvels, you youngsters. But keep your fish. And keep yourselves safe.” Robin hugged Rowan again, this time in farewell, then held her at arm's length by the shoulders to look at her. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“You'll be able to find me if you need me?”

The
aelfin
blood in Rowan gave her certain powers: to comfort and heal with the touch of a hand, to sense the presence of hidden sweetwater, and lately, to similarly sense where in Sherwood was Robin Hood.

“Of course,” Rowan repeated. “Be more mindful of yourself, Father, to come to no harm.”

“I will, with the blessing of the Lady. Until we meet again, then.” Robin Hood bent to kiss her once more, this time on the forehead. Then, turning quickly, he strode into the forest.

Rowan blinked, sighed, looked all around her for any sign of danger, then bent to her task again, gathering coltsfoot.

The first flower of spring, coltsfoot. A goodly plant, the dried blossom good for tinder to start a cooking fire, the whole green plant or the dried leaves good for boiling into a tea that would clear the head of phlegm.

Rowan's eyes did not clear. They filled with tears.

Remembering: a day in early springtime when she had gathered coltsfoot, then returned home only to scatter the golden blossoms on her mother's burned, dead body.

“Toads take it, what's the matter with me?” Rowan grumbled at herself in a whisper. “That was two years ago.”

It didn't matter. Even the sunny air felt dark with the memory of that day. And now with new grief, her father's going away—though of course she had put a brave face to that. In a sense, Rowan realized, she had lied to Robin. In truth, she did not feel as if she was going to be all right “of course.” All day she had been feeling an inner darkening, a chill in her bones, an inkling of—what? Some new peril?

Not peril exactly, but ... foreboding.

Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, Rowan straightened to look around again, at the hazel, elder and blackthorn bushes edging Sherwood Forest, then the uplands, prickly with furze, then the stony meandering of the Nottingham Way—she saw no one on that road, not even a tinker in his donkey cart or a black-robed Wanderer plodding, though she traced its course almost to the horizon. There in the distance, soft hills billowed the color of a rock dove. Rowan heard jays confabulating in the oaks, saw plovers flying in the blue sky—the day could not have seemed more peaceful. Yet within herself she felt a storm building, and she didn't know why.

That morning, as she had left her rowan grove, the slender trees had whispered and sighed to her:
Good-bye, good-bye.
As if she might never return. As if she might die.

Something was going to happen.

Rowan felt a trembling urge to flee into the forest, hide somewhere, or better yet, find Father and go with him.... But she shook her head at herself and bent once more to gather coltsfoot. “No use running from it, whatever it is,” she remarked to Tykell.

Panting a white-fanged grin at her, the wolf-dog waved his plumy tail amid dried stems of last year's thistles, rattling their sere heads.

Behind the rustling of the thistles, Rowan heard another sound, a kind of tapping or clattering. Something with hooves moving on stones. Tykell lay calmly panting, so it could not be anything dangerous. Deer, perhaps, venturing out of the forest to feed on scant new grass. Two summers ago, when first she had found her way to Sherwood Forest, Rowan would have stalked the deer, shot one and shared the meat with the other members of her band. But now her injured legs would not let her hunt deer. She remained bent over her work, eyes on the stony ground, as the clattering sound grew nearer.

It wasn't deer. Something larger.

Galloping toward her!

Jerking her head up, Rowan gasped and snatched for her bow and arrows. A horseman! Or not a man, but a young squire on a white pony—bad enough. Some lord's henchman in the making. Half-helm shadowing his face, quilted tabard armoring his chest, shield riding like a full copper moon on his arm, short sword lashed to his left leg. In a moment he would draw the weapon and, if she let him near her, he would lop off her head and tie it by the hair to his saddle, then ride to Nottingham to collect his hundred pounds of gold, or whatever bounty was to be got for a dead outlaw these days.

In one quick movement Rowan nocked her arrow and leaned her weight into the horns of her bow, bending it almost double. There was nothing she, a healer, hated worse than killing, but she'd done it before, to survive. Or to help a comrade survive. On that day they'd captured her, she had killed three men so that Beau could get away. Then Nottingham's men had overpowered Rowan and roped her arms to her sides, but perforce they had let her weapon lie; the bow and short flint-tipped arrows, gifts of the
aelfe,
had burned their fingers like fire, and they could not touch them.