Forbidden Forest (13 page)

Osric halted and removed his hood, his thin, suntanned face alight with concern. He walked back to stand nearby. “A good woman should never hide, except from harm,” he said.

“Why are we going to a place you will not name?” she said.

Bridgit returned to her side and took her hand. “The less we know, my lady, the less we can tell our pursuers if we are caught.”

The sound that approached through the forest behind them could not be mistaken: the rhythm of hooves, the musical chiming of chain mail, the crisp sounds of spear shafts jostling against shields.

“We are going to the Trysting Oak,” said the juggler.

Margaret had heard of this landmark but thought it was mythical, a meeting tree in a song.

“There,” Osric continued, “we have friends.”

Margaret felt a giddy sensation fill her, half fear, half wonder.

Horsemen were approaching.

Osric whispered a few words to Bridgit, and the woman nodded. Then he left them, running easily. Margaret felt defenseless without him.

“My lady,” said Bridgit, “we must do as the coney before the hounds.”

A thicket is no easy place to seek refuge. Hazelwood saplings cracked and wrenched around them, but at last the two women were concealed.

Henry rode into sight on a scarred charger, a horse too veteran to serve a knight, and gouged it with his heels. The horse's flanks were runneled with old spur cuts. “Stick your spear points into the bushes,” Henry said. “Prick them and they'll squeal.”

Margaret dared to peek out from her hiding place, but she only peered with one eye, as though the sight beam from two open eyes might alert the hunters to their prey. The sheriff's men rode into the recesses of the woods, leather creaking and horses snorting.

Henry lifted a skin of wine to his mouth and drank. It was an effort of some skill, Margaret thought as she watched, to not spill a single squirt of the red liquid.

“You aren't one of those flea wits who believe there are devils and elves in the woods?” asked Henry, turning to a young deputy.

“I know nothing of the woods,” the youth replied.

“The forest is a waste,” said Henry. “Full of rotten oaks and boggy trails, and nothing else.”

Margaret and Bridgit lay still, pressed between the saplings.

The two women held their breath as Henry's war-horse bruised the forest floor nearby with its worn hooves. Henry lanced a berry bush, and leaves and twigs rained down a handsbreadth from Margaret's eyes.

The blue-gray spearhead on its ashwood shaft dug deep into the bark of an oak tree, and Henry's voice high above them was loud. “I was too full of kindness,” he said to the horse and to the air around him. “I should have skinned them with my knife.”

Chapter 25

Until that moment Margaret had strained to hold the belief that the law remained her friend.

She thought that if she could stand before the lord sheriff, the law would be logical and full of mercy. But as she listened to Henry cursing, his voice farther and farther away, she felt like the roebuck pursued by hounds, and she knew the dogs were very hungry.

A far cry echoed. “He's running!”

“There—by Jesu!” rang Henry's voice. “There's the juggler—put a lance in him!”

“Heaven help poor Osric,” breathed Bridgit, rising from beneath the juggler's cloak.

Margaret added, “Amen.”

Osric's instructions had been direct and simple, and the two women followed the deer trail as it wound past the stone shaped like a fat miller, past the tree scored by lighting with a mark like a shepherd's crook, into a clearing.

A grandfather oak lifted branches into sky. Margaret thought for a moment that a green-clad shadow slipped from among the massive roots of the oak where they spread across the ground. But there was no footstep, no welcoming voice, and Margaret was at once convinced that she was mistaken.

A sweet, metallic tone lifted far behind her in the woods. A hunter's horn. The magic of this note made it distinct, and yet so brief it was easy to mistake for an unearthly birdsong, or a trick of her own hearing. Was there an answering note, and yet another slender, breath-quiet answer to that?

But no one approached.

“In the songs, the men in Lincoln green spring with a laugh from the heartwood,” said Margaret.

“Spring with a merry laugh, my lady,” corrected Bridgit.

They were alone, until the sound of hooves and jingling chain mail began to grow louder through the forest.

Margaret stood
full styf
.

There were no gentle outlaws in the woods, she realized. There never had been. Like the promised joys of a wedding, they were sweet fantasies, airy legends, fit for little children and their nurses.

The sheriff's horsemen closed in, crashing and cursing, losing and finding the trail, growing closer with each heartbeat.

Part Three

LITTLE JOHN

Chapter 26

Little John and Robin Hood stood in the shadow of the trees, watching a cart creak slowly by on the High Way.

It was loaded with flour sacks and made its way through Sherwood Forest, the solid wooden wheels following the ruts in the road. The carter leaned forward, reins in hand, and the driver strode along beside the oxen, snapping a long lash over their file-stubbed horns.

“
Ree
, now,” said the driver, using the ancient command to angle the beasts to the right, enabling the team to avoid a great puddle in the road. “
Ree
and steady,” said the driver in a calming singsong. Although neither carter nor driver knew they were being watched by two men in green under a spreading ash tree, the two workers spoke just a little too loudly, their laughs too sharp, aware that this part of the forest belonged to men beyond the law. Even though most reports described criminals harmless to common folk, no city dweller was at perfect ease on the tree-dark road.

The two outlaws listened as the sound of the squeaking axle and the groaning ox yoke diminished along with the gentle encouragement of the driver. The sounds were gradually lost in the muted hubbub of birdsong, the croon of doves, and the brash chatter of the wood tit.

Little John heard something far off. He knelt and put his hand on the forest floor.

“Trouble?” asked Robin Hood.

John noted the tone of hopefulness. Robin Hood grew restless without at least some minor adventure each day, and in his boredom he would leave his men and fade off toward the city, or into the countryside with its hamlets and manors.

“One of our men, running hard,” John guessed.

The day was about to change for the worse. John could hear it in the sparrows'
chick, chick
as the birds bathed in the road ruts. He could hear it in the all-but-silent padding of the running leather-soled feet. Robin would be pleased, while John himself would be as happy to spend the day sewing the rent in his leggings and keeping the cooking coals aglow.

Grimes Black, the best game stalker of all the men, hurried along the High Way and ducked into the trees.

“A knight-at-arms,” panted Grimes, “is on his way.”

“We've had a bishop's clerk to dine recently,” said Robin with a laugh. “And a castle seneschal, but no worthy knight. John, how long has it been since we had a man-at-arms?”

“What sort of knight?” asked John.

“A foreign knight, in silk and yellow leather,” said Grimes. “Armed with a hunting lance. He left the High Way at the Bishop's Cross, and rode into the woods.” Most trained men of fighting age had left on King Richard's crusade, leaving England open to the services of a few foreign knights from Savoy, Saxony, and other far-flung countries. These knights had varying reputations, and were considered about as trustworthy as pickpockets.

“A hunting knight!” exclaimed Robin Hood. “We'll have fresh venison tonight.”

“And a band of men,” said Grimes, “are following behind him.”

Robin met John's glance.

“They're armed with spears and shields,” Grimes continued. “Riding with muffled hooves, well behind the hunter, a mile or more—we could not stay to count them.” Horsemen sometimes wrapped wool or leather padding around their mounts' hooves to silence their approach, a ploy that deceived no observant woodsman.

“Red Roger is among them,” suggested Little John.

“It may be so,” said Grimes.

In the many seasons since Little John had joined the outlaws of Sherwood Forest, Red Roger had probed the woods once or twice each summer, sending men disguised as rich chamberlains or archbishop's stewards. Once captured by Robin Hood, these men drank and dined like any of Robin's guests, but had to be disarmed sometime after midnight as they crept toward Robin Hood's sleeping place. One recent visitor—a scholarly, well-built man with a rare book of Latin poems—had been intended for Little John himself. John broke the man's arm as he bent to his task just before dawn, a bull skinner's knife in his fist.

The sheriff's men seemed nearly oblivious to Robin Hood's presence in the woods these days. Robin's enemies were the royal foresters, leather-clad men protecting the king's land from poachers, and the outlaw aristocrat from the north, Red Roger. A hereditary lord, Red Roger resented the operation of a more cunning, lighthearted yeoman outlaw, even one some thirty miles away. And the recent attack on Little John was proof that, despite the passage of time, the aristocratic robber had not forgiven John for his sudden and violent departure.

“Let me steal my way to Red Roger,” said John earnestly.

“So you can beak his bones?” asked Robin Hood.

“Starting with his skull,” John said, smiling grimly. Red Roger would be easy to hunt down—he was a manipulator of men and tirelessly greedy, but he knew next to nothing of the woods.

“We'll make a game of it, John,” said Robin Hood cheerfully.

Everything was a game to Robin, thought John. He made a sport of life. Not many seasons ago Robin had brought the sheriff of Nottingham himself, against his will, to dine in the wood. The outlaws still were still abuzz with the memory of this adventure. In John's eyes this was typical of the breathtaking risks Robin lived for.

While John would run with Robin with the last breath in his body, he wished the outlaw leader would stand and fight some day. It would be much less dangerous than this constant dash into the woods, this merry daring, always just barely escaping the sword.

More than that, John wished he could show some manly cunning of his own. Wily poachers, stealthy foresters, and outlaws who turned to smoke before the law were masters in Little John's world. When will I, John wondered, prove as smart as I am strong?

“Let's see what Red Roger has planned for us today,” Robin Hood was telling Grimes, and the muscular arrow smith was nodding, happy to hear his master turn threat into sport once more. “We'll study Roger's pretty rules, and beat him at his game.”

Again, thought John.

He smiled ruefully. Robin Hood was always running such risks, going off on his own disguised as a tinker, a minstrel, a wandering simpleton. Someday, thought Little John, I'll play a sport of my own making.

Just a quiet, well-knit game.

And finish off Robin Hood's enemies.

Chapter 27

The big hart's coat was wet.

His pace was unsteady, his ebony antlers gleaming. He struggled forward, a long, loping course, up the meadow toward the forest. His breathing was loud, and he was bleeding from a dark gash along his ribs. His forelegs crumpled and he fell, his heavy body crashing into the wet earth.

The beast tried to rise, bellowing windily with the effort.

A horseman burst from a wall of shrubs. He dug his bright spurs into the flanks of the bay horse, the fittings and buckles of his saddle girth and bridle bright in the sunlight. His lance rocked with the steed's steady progress. The hunter's blond leather body armor was spattered with turf as he slowed, turned in his saddle. He looked back and raised one gloved hand.

In his wake a dozen men in leather armor pulled at their reins, scabbards slapping, lances glinting in the sun. A red silk sleeve waved in return, and the armed men spun around and worked their mounts back, downhill into a wall of wind-stunted pines.

The solitary knight corrected the course of his mount with a nudge. The hart was on his feet again, scrambling unsteadily up into the bed of a stream. Again he was down, and as he worked to regain his footing, the horse came on harder, coursing full strength toward the shuddering beast.

The horseman had guessed right. Now he was gaining on his quarry. He crouched low over the horse's mane, the lance locked under his arm. The shadows of the oaks flowed over the horse and rider as the hart leaped a fallen tree. The deer froze, confused, then dodged one way and then another.

A man-shaped shadow stepped from the surrounding oaks and into the sunlight. He was very tall, with sandy hair and a short, sand-colored beard. Little John reached out as the bay horse flung by, and with little apparent effort seized the horse's bridle.

The mount danced, snorting and foaming, kicking at the air. The man-at-arms nearly tumbled, and cursed in a language that was not English.

The rider lashed at the stranger, stabbing with the lance but missing by a wide margin. Little John waited, the bridle in one hand. His companions gathered, until they surrounded the sweating horse. Then Little John plucked the hunting lance from the horseman's grip and broke it across his knee.

The knight drew a broadsword, the blade whispering from its scabbard.

“I'll have you arrested, each one” he said with a distinctly foreign accent. “I have the king's leave to hunt here, outlaws.”

Little John took the other man's leg and wrestled him from the saddle. The knight flailed, his broadsword cutting the air. Three men, garbed in oak green and dove gray, were on him, pressing him to the moss.