Forbidden Forest (7 page)

“Where are you now?” asked John rhetorically, hoping to gauge his opponent's determination. If there was going to be more fighting on this day, John would have to consider his tactics.

“I am in the flood,” said the stranger, “floating along with the tide.”

He drifted on his back, beaming up at John. This was not self-mockery, not an ironic, bitter jeer at his own defeat. It was not a laugh that threatened worse violence to come. It was lively, careless pleasure in what had just passed, as though the brook, and the bush he seized to pull himself onto the bank, were all, indeed, part of a game.

John kept his staff before him, ready to parry or to strike.

Dripping water on the ground, the man in green unfastened the horn from his belt. He made a point of letting water drain from it. Then he put the horn to his lips and it gave one airy sparrow chirp. He laughed. The second note was fine, a long, sky-reaching sound that echoed from across the brook and from the vaults of the woods.

And then the echoes were not echoes at all, but the actual far-off notes of other horns, answering calls.

John sighed, and in his sweaty weariness knew that when the other outlaws closed in on this bridge they would take his life. He would bruise as many felons as he could, but his days were over.

The stranger asked John what men called him.

“John Little,” he said, resigned, but feeling the first stirrings of his returning anger. He would make these outlaws bleed!

The woodsman repeated this name with a thoughtful frown.

“And who have I had the pleasure of fighting this sunny day?” asked John, trying to match his opponent's fine humor, although he had already guessed the stranger's name. When they delve my grave out of the forest floor, John swore in silence, they will not remember me as surly or cursing. I can wear a fine smile too.

“Folk along the High Way,” said the man in green, “call me Robin Hood.”

John wondered if to die at the hands of a famous outlaw was a better death than to expire in bed under a priest's prayers. John remembered courtesy then, and in the manner of a knight, or a squire well advanced in training, he gave a fighting man's bow.

“I think your name does not suit you,” said Robin Hood.

John was about to give a sharp answer, but two men detached from the trees and hurried to Robin Hood's side. From behind, John sensed a soft whisper, a crushed leaf. He turned, and saw a third outlaw standing in the deer path, stringing his bow. Each man was dressed in rough-spun green, with worn leather and use-tarnished buckles. “Who is this?” asked a short, dark outlaw. The young man's words were slightly slurred.

“A man with a strong arm,” replied Robin Hood.

“Strong enough,” said the outlaw, smiling with toothless gums. “He's cracked your crown.”

Robin Hood nodded, laughing silently. Something in his manner began to capture John right then. John took in the way the men looked to Robin Hood for direction—not as servants, but as friends. Curiosity and the bare beginnings of hope kept John from trying to flee these green-clad strangers.

“Shall we give him a drink of water?” asked the young outlaw meaningfully.

Robin Hood smiled and shook his head. “Little John,” he said, “is our guest tonight.”

Chapter 12

Toothless Will Scathlock brought a cup of sweet wine to where John sat. John had kept his calm, marching with these men through the woods as dark gathered. He wanted to learn more about these robbers of song and tale. Now that the fire was stirred and logs split and burning, a fine example of the king's venison sizzled on a massive spit.

This meat was delicious, and John ate his fill, and still there was plenty more. John knew the stories, how Robin Hood would not dine unless he had some rich wayfarer held against his will as a guest. Each victim had to tell a story, or sing a song, and even wealthy Exchequer's men, employed to monitor the royal treasury, were released without a bruise, their purses only somewhat lighter.

John did not believe such tales entirely, and had a lingering suspicion that this evening's entertainment would be the hanging of a tall young man from the north country, his belly full of poached deer.

But among the outlaws was a burgess with an emerald ring and mare-skin leggings. Aware that John was observing him, the man gave a laugh. “I was waylaid yesterday,” said the city man, his eyes lit by the campfire. “Robbed and held against my desire,” he added with a smile.

“Drink deep,” said Will, speaking carefully to make his words clear. “We have several skins of good grape wine, and you know it turns to vinegar in a fortnight.”

“What wine merchant's throat did you cut to win this drink?” asked John after a long silence. The wine was warming and sweet, but he did not want to take too much pleasure in it. If he was going to be hanged, he would make his feelings known, and die sober.

Will put a hand to his own throat and gave a cough. “Are folk quick to cut a man's wind where you come from, John?”

“No quicker than in any other town,” said John, sorry at the alarm his question seemed to cause Will Scathlock. “But this is not a band of honest men, unless I am mistaken.”

“Honest men!” laughed the burgess. “Oh, no, and the saints be thanked. These are outlaws, and the best hosts a traveling merchant could ask.”

“These outlaws robbed you,” said John. “And yet you celebrate by filling your belly with red wine.”

“I have never met a finer band, in castle or in court. I was a tired and hungry man before I met these green-clad men.” The merchant struggled to his feet, helped by one of the woodsmen. “But if I don't hurry back to Nottingham this night, the sheriff's men will come hunting.”

“Grimes Black, one of my most surefooted men,” said Robin Hood, “will lead you to the High Way.”

“Did these outlaws leave your purse as big around as ever?” asked John.

The merchant laughed. “No, they took many a fat coin, and I've never spent gold so happily.”

The merchant was led away, talking merrily with his outlaw guide.

John considered what he had learned. Were the traveling burgesses of this shire moonstruck, or simple to the point of idiocy?

“Oh, we're wealthy enough, to a man,” said Will Scathlock, smiling into the firelight. “The sheriff does not keep such warm company.”

“Is this your usual hiding place?” asked John.

“We have no usual place,” said Will. “If one corner of the forest does not please us, we seek another.”

The fire spat and the meat sizzled. John knew his words were ungrateful, and possibly unwise, but he continued, “Can even a subtle outlaw escape the law forever?”

“I'd not cut a throat to take a swallow of wine with my meat,” said Will with passion. “One of the sheriff of Nottingham's men would cut a head off at a stroke, but never me.”

John parted his lips to apologize for troubling the young man.

“This mouth of mine was full of teeth,” said Will, with strong feeling. “And as fine and white a set of ivory as any archbishop might have in his smile.”

To his surprise, John felt protective toward Will, and put a hand reassuringly on the man's arm.

“And what happens to my bite?” Will continued. “In Nottingham, a brace of sheriff's men find me watching a lute player. A merry lute man, who can play ‘My Lady Hides Her Treasure' with his eyes closed.” Will gazed around at his friends. “A worthy man, by my faith. But I'm interrupted in my pleasure and dragged behind the goat stall, and sheriff's men sit on me, chest and arms, and pincer my teeth out of my head, each one. They had no fair reason, but for the love of their own spite. That right hand to the lord sheriff, a man called Henry, did the deed. He says he'll have the tooth out of every outlaw's head.”

“It pains me to hear it,” said John earnestly. “I'll beat the heads of the men who did this with my two—” John raised his fists, but then fell silent.

“Tell us a story, John,” said Will.

“I have no tales,” said John.

“Every traveler tells of ways and folk no other traveler knows,” said Will. “It is the price of meat and wine here,” he added.

“I have a gift for keeping silent when I should speak,” said John, “and speaking when I should close my mouth.”

“Sing us a song,” said Will, “or tell us a dream, or—”

“I do not dream,” said John abruptly. He recalled his dream of the tree woman all too well.

He stared at the men around the fire.
Hang me
, he thought.

And be done with it.

Robin Hood raised a hand, and one of the men slipped away from the fire. John had heard it, too, a deep, earthbound sound, soft but beyond mistaking—something was out there in the darkness.

Each man put his hand on his bow, and even John put his hand on his staff where it lay across his feet.

A guard out in the woods conferred softly with the messenger, and when the man returned he said, “A wild pig hungry, digging up roots.”

“A wild sow could tell a story, if we fed her and put a cup in her hand,” opined Will, and the men around the fire laughed.

John recognized a rebuke when he heard it.

“Tell us a story,” said Robin Hood.

Give me a tale, John breathed to whatever powers listened. A story equal to this warm fire and these welcoming faces.

“There was a woman in the woods,” he began, and then he looked away from the fire.

Where did these words come from? What power gave him this speech? John did not trust his tongue. He would not say another word.

He spoke.

“She was driven away by the gossip of her neighbors, and hurt by the lies of men and women both,” John continued, without intending to. The men leaned closer to the fire, eyes bright. “She fled into the woods, which had always frightened her.”

John told the story of a woman harried by hound and cutthroat, hunter and miller, every hand against her as she fled. He told the tale of a woman feeling her feet spread, green and rooted, and her arms uplifted, forking, her body breaking into leaf. “To this day a man seeking refuge in the woods could climb her unaware, and sleep safely in her arms.”

When he was done, John sat in silence.

“Such good company deserves a better story,” John said at last, his eyes downcast. A strange feeling warmed him. In some way John could not understand, his companions had drawn this story forth from him. John had never experienced this power to tell a tale so keenly before.

“A finer story I've never heard!” said Will.

“Nor I,” said Robin Hood.

That night John woke with a start to the sound of a guard murmuring, Robin Hood whispering, a sound of concern.

John reached and found his staff. These outlaws could not post enough wood-wise guards, John feared. Surely the sheriff, or Lord Roger and his hired swords, had followed him here.

Surely trouble was closing in through the forest.

John rose, staff in hand, and found Robin Hood far from the lingering glow of the embers.

“Will Scathlock went out when the moon rose,” said Robin. “To see if he could find us eggs from a rich man's henhouse.”

John listened to the night stillness of the forest.

Robin added, “He has been gone too long.”

Chapter 13

Grimes Black led the way, and John followed.

The big man had asked for the privilege of repaying Robin Hood's hospitality by helping Grimes find Will, and Robin had agreed. Grimes followed the all-but-invisible traces Will had left on the forest floor: the scant smudge of wet footprint, the subtlest scent of crushed leaf. When the ground was muddy, the surefooted Grimes bounded from the roots of trees, scurrying over logs and fallen branches.

John stayed right behind the woodsman, unable to see more than a shadowy figure ahead. From time to time Grimes looked back, his face pale in the crosshatched moonlight from above, and John whispered reassurance: “I'm still here!”

They knelt at the edge of the woods. A stone wall ran across the pasture, the rocks shining in the light of the moon. The night was lifting and a wind stirred the oaks behind them. The stars to the east were dim, and the first birdsong of the day began somewhere off over a clump of thick-walled houses, the sort of dwellings that might have armed retainers, even a knight and aging squires, men with hungry swords.

A water-well lay before them, a ragged oval half-hidden by nettles. Many farms had old wells, abandoned and forgotten, newer wells closer to home having been dug. While some landowners boarded up these places, weather and time broke down such protection, exposing the shafts to the sky. John knew no one, including himself, who could swim, and to fall into a well was to face all-but-certain death.

John cocked his head, listening.

He put a hand on Grimes's shoulder.

A splashing, quiet but insistent, rose up out of the dark opening in the field.

Dawn edged upward out of the east.

John lay down among the prickly nettles, and when he saw the reflection of the water, far below, he saw something else too.

The dark water tossed. Someone struggled, clinging to the dark side of the well.

“Who is it?” queried Will's voice, shuddering and breathless with the watery chill.

John identified himself, his own name echoing from the well shaft.

“I'm clinging to the moss!” said Will, with something like a chuckle. “I wasn't looking—” he gasped. He forced the words with a terrified laugh. “I wasn't watching where I was going!”

“I'll go find a rope,” said Grimes.

John stood. “We don't have time,” he said. “Will is close to drowning.”

Grimes put out a hand to prevent John from what he was about to do, but John did not hesitate.

“Don't try it!” cried Will from below.

The stinging, bristling leaves of the nettles annoyed John's bare hands where the fringe of vegetation grew over the lip of the well. He lowered himself into the cool darkness, gripping the edge of the opening, where the old stones were loose. Bits crumbled off, raining down into the interior.