Forbidden Forest (17 page)

John wanted to laugh, despite his friend's torment. “Osric, you pretend to make coins invisible; you pretend to faint; you pretend to bleed.”

“I'll pretend to die,” said Osric.

The wound began to ooze as John carried the juggler through the moon-pale woods. He prayed to the hosts of Heaven, and to the powers of the greenwood, as the living trees closed around the three men.

“I'll need salt and water,” said John.

“I'll bring you an ocean, John,” said Robin Hood.

“I'm a tanner's son,” said John. “A man's skin is but a hide.”

“All the oceans of the world,” said Robin, “are yours.”

And so Robin Hood left John again, with Osric in John's arms. John prayed that he could find the way, and that Henry was not lancing through the woods with a new score of men.

By the time Little John brought Osric into camp, it was dark. Salt of every variety sat around in the firelight, bags of glinting white spread open, copper bowls and leather pails brimmed full. A large lick of salt, worn by the tongues of cattle, was in Edwy's hands. As he shaved the salt with a small knife into a pot of simmering water, he peered up with his one good eye and said, “As salt as any sea, John.”

Little John borrowed a needle from Carl Taw, who had been a glover's apprentice until his master had choked on a bacon rind and deputies tried to extort coins from Carl, accusing him of murder.

John waited until Osric had swallowed his fill of an entire skin of wine, dark and red. Then, with Osric singing the song of the cook and the cockerel, John cradled the wounded head and, in the firelight, washed the exposed injury with salt water.

“It doesn't hurt!” marveled Osric at first. He continued the song, about a roast bird that protested at the touch of the carving knife, stood up, and scolded the entire table for gluttony.

“I joy to hear it does not pain you,” said John.

Then, “It smarts, but does not sting.” Another verse of the song, the tune weak but steady, the roast fowl running, pursued by amazed dogs and cats.

“I pray it's so,” said John.

Then Osric, sweating and trembling, did not speak.

John sewed the scalp as his father used to mend a ragged hide. Some said that green leather would heal, like living flesh, if the tanner's stitch was smart.

John knew only that stitching this living skin was nothing he was prepared to do, even as he did it, praying under his breath for steadiness of hand and clarity of sight. And he was aware, too, of a step, and a figure kneeling beside him.

Margaret took Osric's hand. “Brave juggler,” she said quietly.

John did not know why he gave so much thought to the way her hair hung over one shoulder.

“My lady,” gasped Osric, and when he fainted this time he did not wake for hours.

Chapter 35

As Osric slept, Margaret told Little John and Robin Hood of her fears. The other outlaws listened too.

She explained the necessity of getting word to her father to stay away from Nottingham. The law was swift but inaccurate, and Margaret had heard that out of every hundred killers, only one was ever justly punished. She wondered, too, how many of the souls punished for their crimes were in truth guilty. Her father had explained to her once that sometimes it did not matter—the body on the gibbet was warning to future felons. Henry would be waiting all the while for Margaret or her father to slip into his grasp, and he would extort as much gold from them as he could.

Why did Sir Marco smile so brightly? Margaret wondered. He had an accent that told of far-flung places, courts of high honor. There was a radiant, worldly quality about him that won her trust. Bridgit, however, sat with folded arms, and when the Florentine spoke she gave him a long sideways glance.

“The road is not fit for honest travelers like William Lea,” said Little John. “Henry may well send a few deputies after him and bring him back like a prize ram.”

“I will find him first,” said Marco. And when no one spoke, he added, “I'll go and stay with him as he does his business in London, and keep him safely away from Nottingham.”

“Oh, please do!” exclaimed Margaret.

Robin Hood turned to Little John. His tone was light, nearly ironic, but his phrasing serious. “What say you, John?”

Margaret wondered if she had made a blunder, and the figures around the fire were silent.

A muscular man with black hair cut off short around his head said, “Our contest was never finished.”

Margaret studied the bright faces ringing the firelight. She understood now that she had made a mistake in eagerly agreeing to the knight's suggestion—there was something between this knight and the rest of the band.

“I am ready,” said Marco. “To fight, or to ride.”

John reached for a stick that jutted out from the fire and held up the blazing kindling, examining the sputtering flame. He turned his head, as though listening to the whisper of the fire, and no one made a sound. Then he thrust the stick back into the fire. “Some say the word of a prince,” he said, “is stronger than the oath of a harvester.”

The knight made an open-handed gesture—what was John trying to say?

The tall outlaw continued, “I think a word between friends is equal to a king's oath.”

The Florentine had appeared ready to dispute whatever was said, but at John's words his features softened. He looked down into the fire. “You remind me that I am a man of honor,” he said.

“And a friend,” added Little John.

“Not yet a friend, I fear,” Marco corrected him, “until I win your trust.”

Robin Hood smiled. “Little John sees into your heart, knight.”

“Then he sees a man,” said the Florentine, “who hires his sword to any lord with gold, and a dangerous enemy.”

Margaret sought the words to protest—this was not the man who should ride off after her father. But the knight was already asking for the help of the folk around the firelight, and the black-haired man came to his aid, helping the knight strap on a boiled-leather chest piece. The young man with the squinting eye led a charger near to the fire, and Marco spent a long time adjusting straps, cinching leather.

Little John helped him into the saddle, and the knight's silks were brilliant in the firelight.

“I swear,” said Marco firmly, “that I will give my life to protect William Lea. Upon my honor.”

He said this to Little John, the fire alive in his eyes. Then Will Scathlock laughingly remarked that Marco would ride off into the embrace of the nearest tree if he was not shown the way.

Grimes Black soothed the charger, leading the horse along a path that had to be followed by memory—the starlight was not bright enough, and the moon had not risen.

Osric opened his eyes.

An owl skimmed the darkness over the smoldering fire.

Little John offered him a cup of wine. “Good red sweet wine,” he said, “the gift of a castle seneschal not one week ago.”

Margaret soothed the juggler's face with a wet cloth.

Osric tried to indicate with his smile that he was reassured, but his lips were stiff and his tongue unsteady. “The sheriff's deputies are angry.”

“Aren't they always displeased about something?” asked John.

“Henry and his hirelings want Robin Hood's head,” said Osric.

The big outlaw sensed even worse trouble. Since his forced visit to the greenwood, the lord sheriff had seemed to tolerate Robin and his band—although the lawman's deputies had been a source of concern. John had always believed that the sheriff himself would eventually be forced once again to resume the persecution that would bring down the outlaw and all his friends. John had dreamed of a few more months of this, a year or two of freedom. He had prayed for it—knowing all the while that it couldn't last.

“We have always lived with danger,” John offered with a feigned carelessness.

“We will not be safe here,” said Osric in a steel whisper that chilled John.

Osric put a weak hand on Little John's sleeve and added, “The day is near when our story is done.”

Chapter 36

Little John led the way, early morning light lifting a mist out of the woodland, Margaret and Bridgit following.

In the wake of Osric's warning, Robin and John had agreed that Margaret and her servant should go to a place far out of danger. Although she was reluctant to leave their company, Margaret felt the shift in the band's mood, the way laughs were forced, and the whetstones brought out to whisper against knives.

Now deer browsed in the low-hanging branches among the rough-hewn stumps of oaks. The king's men had sold wood to lords building manor houses, the giant oaks contributing their branches to the barons' drinking halls. The occasional scattering of dew raining down from the trees beaded on Margaret's cloak.

She knew that she was unthinkably far from home. They were perhaps three hours' walk from Nottingham—if either she or Bridgit had been able to follow such a bare wrinkle of a trail. They had left Osric sleeping, sweating with a light fever, and as Margaret followed her lofty friend, she breathed a prayer to Saint Bride, who watched over every Christian's health.

When Margaret asked where they were going, John seemed surprised, as though he expected her to know without being told. “We have a sanctuary for you in the village of Blackwell.”

This news gave her no joy. Margaret had heard of Blackwell. It was a village where, as rumor had it, a stray pig had recently killed and eaten an infant boy—Nottingham folk could talk of nothing else. Pigs were dangerous to swaddled infants in every town, but Blackwell was Pigwell, as far as Nottingham was concerned.

The old sow even ate the toenails—that's what Margaret had heard.

“You take us to a village,” said Bridgit, “no citizen of Nottingham would send a dung fly to live in.”

John gave a gentle laugh, but persisted in leading them on. He guided them along a boggy stretch of the woods, the earth here flat brown peat and stunted grasses. The earth was spongy underfoot, the ancient bog dry only on the surface. The trees here were slim, and not tall, but their writhing, gnarled branches made Margaret believe they were centuries old.

Their footsteps made little noise, but neither did the step of an armed man who appeared suddenly across the brown blanket of bog land.

John froze.

The stranger stepped from a thicket of willows.

He was dressed like one of the outlaws. But then the dark, fine leather of his belt, and the new leather of his quiver, and his high ox-hide leggings, barely scarred with brambles, made him look like another sort of man entirely. He carried a crossbow and wore a short sword.

He was standing erect and still, and Little John took one pace from the path and leaned on his staff.

The two men eyed each other, a stone's throw apart. The stranger made a point of adjusting his belt, as though he had no greater concern than the fit of his equipment. He slipped a bolt from the quiver at his hip.

“Take three strides off the trail, both of you,” whispered Little John. “Margaret, put your hand into your mantle, like you're reaching for a weapon.”

A long, sunny moment, the bog land golden in the sunlight. Margaret reached into her mantle, surprised at how it felt to stand like a woman braced to withdraw a heavy blade. It gave her an odd pleasure. She waited like someone accustomed to such danger, although her heart hammered.

After an endless moment, the stranger turned. Without any nod or gesture, he melted into the stunted woods.

“A royal forester,” said John, answering Margaret's query. “He protects the king's land from poachers.”

“Is he—” She did not know how to phrase the question politely. “Is he an enemy of ours?” Ours. She was surprised at her choice of words.

“Indeed he is,” said John. “But alone like that he is outnumbered.”

“Surely he sees that Bridgit and I are—”

“Outlaw women,” said John. “He has good reason to be afraid.”

Later, as the trees closed in again, John held up a hand.

He knelt and, using his staff, lifted a screen of alder branches from the ground. The artfully arranged branches shed leaf mold and twigs as the big outlaw lifted the cover like the giant page of a book. The exposed pit was deep. Sharpened stakes gleamed at the bottom, thrusting up out of the shadows.

“The royal foresters set two kinds of mantrap,” John explained. “One is a snare, with a noose that closes around your foot and leaves you dangling. And there is this sort, a hole with ash-wood stakes.”

The sight gave Margaret a dull, sick feeling.

“Never,” cautioned Little John, “try to find your way alone.”

As they left the woods, a peasant gathering firewood was reaching up into a tree to disentangle a dead branch that had fallen only partway. Margaret was relieved to see that such customs continued even so far away from Nottingham: peasants were allowed to gather firewood from the ground, and from living trees, but only by hook or crook. Cutting wood from a living tree was a crime.

The village they reached at last was a scattered assortment of cottages, cooking smoke shrouding the dark fields, the clouds hovering low, nearly to the treetops. The houses were pale under dark thatch. In most villages near Nottingham, many of the buildings were decayed, the wattle and daub collapsed, doves nesting in the ruins. But the cottages here were well kept. A house cat sat on a high doorsill, licking its whiskers as they passed.

John stopped and gave a great sigh. “I thought we would have better luck today,” he said.

A ram lifted his head from behind a wall, showing off his set of curved, flint-gray horns. Villages often let a ram or even a bull roam free, servicing the breeding livestock and, incidentally, guarding the village from strangers.

“It's Old Fred,” said Little John.

“I've never,” said Bridgit with a laugh, “heard of an outlaw afraid of a sheep.”