A few moments later, out from the shadows of the gatehouse came some three-score men-at-arms—sheriff’s men and castle men, marching in two separate companies. In their midst strode Will Stukely, with his hands bound behind him and his head held very high; and by his side shambled an aged priest, mouthing prayers and determined to save his soul whether he would or no.
Will Stukely paid no heed to the priest, but when he was halted beneath the gallows, turned to face the sheriff, saying earnestly: ‘Master Sheriff, my Captain never yet had a man of his hanged on a gallows tree. Do not make me the first of our brotherhood to die a felon’s death.’
‘Listen to him!’ cried the sheriff, with a jeering laugh. ‘Listen to the scoundrel praying for his life!’
An angry flush rose to Will’s cheek, and he raised his head higher yet. ‘I do not pray for my life, for I would not take it as a gift from such as you! I ask only that my hands may be unbound and a good keen blade put into them; then let all your men-at-arms come upon me at once, and I will go down fighting.’
Sir Hugo looked as though, if it were for him to decide, he would grant the outlaw’s request (for he was a kindly man and disliked the whole ugly business). But it was for the sheriff to decide, and the sheriff was enjoying the humiliation of his enemy to the depths of his small black soul. He laughed gloatingly. ‘No, no, my fine-stomached gentleman! Hang you shall—and so should your hedge-creeping master if he were here! I’ll not waste my good men-at-arms upon such carrion as you!’
‘If you are afraid that I should spoil so many of them,’ said Will-the-Bowman, ‘unbind my hands and give me no weapon. Let me face your men with my hands empty but free—and if I be hanged this day, Hell may have my soul!’
‘Save your breath,’ replied the sheriff. ‘It will serve you better for your prayers!’
Then Will Stukely shut his mouth and scorned to plead any more. The old priest was hovering round him, gabbling prayers; but Will heeded him no more than if he had been a buzzing fly. He was looking his last on the world that he loved.
The light was strong now, and the low sunshine slanting under the cloud-roof lay level over the snowy countryside; and Will Stukely gazed wide-eyed out across the whitened meadowland towards the dark rim of the forest that would never shelter him again. He had forgotten bitter nights and weary marches, hunger and the smart of old wounds; and he was remembering mornings when spring ran like green flame through the forest; warm, dark summer nights, and misty autumn days on the hunting-trail; and the laughter and companionship round the camp fires when the day’s work was over… .
A very few moments more, and the noose would have been about his neck; then the palmer, who had been quite unnoticed by the gate all this while, got up and made his way towards the sheriff.
‘Good Master Sheriff,’ cried he in a trembling voice, ‘this is my mother’s sister’s son that you are about to hang. Often we played together as little lads, and now I return from the Holy Land to find him in this sorry plight. Let me bid him good-bye, I beg you, for old time’s sake.’
‘If it pleases you to speak with such as he, you may do so,’ said the sheriff, with an evil smile. ‘But be quick about it, and afterwards—we will inquire into this fondness of yours for a condemned wolfshead.’
The tall palmer bent his head submissively, and, turning, went to where Will Stukely stood ready beneath the gallows. ‘Ah, my cousin, this is a terrible thing!’ said the palmer, edging in between the captive and the still jabbering priest.
Will-the-Bowman started at the sound of the other’s voice, and wrenched himself round to stare into his eyes; but already the tall palmer had leaped behind him.
‘Your hands, lad! Hold steady!’
Will felt a sharp pain as the blade which severed his bonds also gashed his wrist; then he was free! It was all so swift that the startled men-at-arms had no time to realize what was happening. Something bright flashed out from under the palmer’s ragged cloak, and the next moment the two men had whirled round, and stood back to back, each with a naked broadsword in his hand.
Like a pack of hounds pulling down a deer, the sheriff’s men hurled themselves upon the two, who met them with flickering, deadly sword-points.
‘Keep up your heart, Will!’ cried Little-John-the-Palmer. ‘Here comes the brotherhood to our aid!’
Crouching watchful in the spinney, the outlaws had seen all that befell; and at the moment that Little John turned from the sheriff towards the bound figure of Will Stukely, they had slipped the straining hounds from the leash. As the great brutes sprang forward every man rose to his feet, nocking an arrow to his string.
The sheriff was hovering on the outskirts of the fray, and urging on the men-at-arms to make an end of the outlaws. He heard a warning shout from Sir Hugo, and looking round, beheld a great pack of ban-dogs streaking towards him from the nearby spinney—great, grey brutes more like wolves than dogs, who gave tongue as they ran; and behind them a horde of brown-clad figures had risen from the undergrowth, and were loping across the meadow-land, each man with an arrow nocked to his bowstring.
The sheriff’s face grew livid at the sight, and he wavered backward towards the gates. Some of the men-at-arms had seen them now. Shouts and cries of warning filled the air, and the press around the two outlaws began to slacken as man after man turned to face the new menace, more afraid of the slavering, baying hounds than they were of the bowmen who followed.
Then the oncoming outlaws checked for an instant, and loosed. Their clothyard shafts hummed like a flight of angry hornets into the midst of the men-at-arms. Many of them fell under that first flight, and next moment the dogs were upon them, red-eyed and milky-toothed.
Before the attack of these savage enemies, the first ranks wavered and began to fall back on those behind, heedless of the shouts and oaths of their captains.
The sheriff had already disappeared through the town gates, having none of the courage of old Sheriff Murdoch. Sir Hugo strove desperately to rally his own men; but the task was hopeless, and he could only fall back with them, or wait to be torn to pieces by the huge dogs. And as the outlaws, coming on apace, halted to send another flight of arrows into their midst, the men-at-arms broke and ran.
Robin and his men swept after them, driving them like a flock of sheep. The flight became a rout, which ended only at the gates of the town, and in the forefront of the victorious outlaw charge ran Little John and Will Stukely.
At the gates they fell back, whistling off the dogs, and turned about towards the forest. They had done what they came to do, and had no wish to charge into a trap; and at any moment the men-at-arms might rally and come out upon them with the townsfolk added to their numbers. So, swiftly, and keeping a sharp look-out behind them against surprise, with the hounds padding in and out among them and Will Stukely in their midst, the outlaws returned to the spinney.
They did not go through it, but skirted its northern side, and then struck away for the forest, following the trampled maze of tracks that they had left on the outward journey.
Not until they were well in among the trees did they halt.
‘That was a close thing!’ said Robin. ‘You played your part finely, Little John; but my heart sickened when I saw you so hard pressed. Yet we could not have come to your aid sooner, lest we spoiled our own surprise and Will be hustled back within the gates before we could come up with him.’
Little John laughed and slipped off the clogging folds of the palmer’s cloak. ‘Aye, it was hottish while it lasted; but myself and Will-the-Bowman, back to back, would be a match for greater odds than those!’
Will Stukely looked round quickly, as though to speak; then one of the dogs came thrusting its head between his knees, and he bent down to fondle it. They were old friends, he and Robin and Little John, and there was no need of spoken gratitude between them.
In a short while they started out again. George the Potman parted from them and went his separate way, back towards the northern gate of Nottingham, w
hich would by this time be open for all to pass freely in and out. But the outlaws held on northward, until they arrived at last, a little after noon, leg-weary but triumphant, in the broad glade below Dunwold Scar.
11
How the King supped in Barnesdale Forest
THE FOLLOWING SPRING news came to England that Richard Cœur-de-Lion was a prisoner in the hands of the Duke of Austria. Everyone knows the story of how his prison was discovered by Blondel, his favourite minstrel, and how England paid the ransom demanded for her king.
Robin Hood and his men of the Greenwood paid their share and more than their share of that ransom. They paid it in fine pack-horses and bales of velvet and silver tissue, in bags of gold pieces, in weapons fit for a king, jewels that would have graced a queen, and silver chargers from an archbishop’s table. Half the contents of their treasure store they sent to London Town, and the officers of the treasury, when they came to open the horse-packs, wondered very much who could have sent such a gift. But the drivers of the pack-train had disappeared the moment the horses had been handed over, and so the matter remained a mystery.
At last the ransom was paid, and the king came home. And many indeed were the tasks that he found awaiting him. In his absence his brother John had been hard at work, tightening his hold on the land by every means in his power, with the intention of wresting the Crown from the true king.
Hubert Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had done his best to keep England safe for her king, but it was little enough he could do against the wild young man who was the king’s brother. In their greedy questing after power, John and his many followers had crushed and trampled the people beneath ruthless feet, and Richard Cœur-de-Lion found that he had come home to an England in which many of the barons and almost all the churchmen were in revolt against him and eager to set his brother on the throne, while honest folk had grown sullen and bitter with long oppression. It was a land in which men had given up hope, and women were always afraid.
King Richard set grimly to work to right matters. With a merciless hand he rooted out the nests of robber barons: slowly, surely, he won back for England the freedom that had been reaved from her.
Summer came, and the king paused from his labours, knowing that he had done well. Much was still wrong with England, yet much had been set right, and for a little while he could rest. So, being in the north at the time, he took up his abode for a while in Nottingham Castle, where Sir Hugo de Razeby made him very welcome, both because he was the king, and for the sake of an old friendship between them.
With the king in the castle, and his Court spilling over into all the best inns in the town, Nottingham was very gay that summer. Knights’ Ladies and Merchants’ Ladies sent to London for silks and samites and cloths of gold and silver, wherewith to make them new gowns, while their husbands flaunted themselves abroad in furred velvet and the latest long-toed shoes; and even the little Italian greyhounds were tricked out with silver bells on their collars.
During the daytime the narrow streets were as gay as the alleyways of a fairground, for even the poorest people seemed to be in holiday mood; and when darkness fell, every window in the great keep of the castle shone yellow as wild wall-flowers above the huddled roofs of the town. Then the strains of viol and lute would float down into the narrow streets close beneath the castle walls; and the humble folk, catching the faint thread of music, would raise their heads to listen, and say to each other that the king was making merry.
On one such evening the king sat in his usual place at the high table in the castle hall, with Sir Hugo beside him, among the Lords of his own Court and the Great Folk of Nottingham. It was a still, hot night, with no breath of wandering air to stir the flames of the wax candles or set the torches flaring in their wall-sconces. Supper was over, and the cloths would soon be drawn from the long tables; and gentle-folk, burgesses and men-at-arms, having eaten and drunk their fill, sat peacefully in their places, listening to the plaintive notes of the lute, as a tall, hungry-looking minstrel sang the woeful tale of Elain, the Lily-maid of Astelot.
The king sat with one elbow on the table and his chin cupped in his palm, gazing idly before him down the length of the hall, past the knights and their ladies to where the men-at-arms and castle archers crowded the lowest table.
His thick brown hair was encircled by a jewelled fillet; a huge emerald burned like a green flame on his forefinger, and the Leopards of England shone golden across his scarlet surcoat, A very gallant figure he made, sitting there, with his strong face lit by the glow of the candles on the table before him, with his dark eyes and wilful mouth, and straight black brows frowning a little. He seemed to be listening to the sad tale of the Lily Maid, but in reality he did not even hear the voice of the minstrel, and before the tale was ended he turned to Sir Hugo, saying in his quick voice: ‘I watched your archers at the practice butts this morning, my friend.’
‘Well, Sire?’
‘No, ill!’ retorted the king, his mouth twitching into a half smile that robbed his words of some of their harshness.
Sir Hugo’s plump face looked like that of a hound puppy that has been slapped when it expected to be petted. He shrugged helplessly. ‘Nay, Sire, you’re too hard upon them.’
‘Am I? Perhaps so. They are as good as others of their kind; but I have heard that Sherwood breeds the best archers in all broad England, and I expected better marksmanship than any I saw this morning.’
A lean, hawk-nosed old knight, sitting farther down the table, broke in with a laugh: ‘Tell the king that Robin Hood has the pick of the bowmen in these parts, and leaves only the dregs for service with the Crown!’
Sir Hugo flushed angrily, and made no reply; but the king turned to the latest speaker, demanding quickly: ‘Is that true, Sir Ranulf?’
‘This is true, at least, Sire.’ It was yet another man that answered—a quiet-voiced man with the livid scar of an old wound on his cheek. ‘That the finest bowmen in all the forest country follow Robin Hood; but that is because he trains his men as a wise falconer trains a gyre-falcon, and not because they were skilled above the usual run of archers when they came to him.’
‘This Robin Hood,’ said the king. ‘I have heard whispers of his name before to-night.’
‘What did the whispers tell you, Sire?’
‘Aye, Sire.’ It was Sir Ranulf again. ‘You’ll have heard a pretty tale, I’ll be bound!’
The king looked from he of the hawk nose to he of the scarred cheek, and he thought that the scarred knight had much the truer face.
‘I have heard that with his hundred men he holds sway over the whole of Sherwood and Barnesdale, even as far west as the Peak,’ he said. ‘I have heard strange tales of the king’s authority being set at naught, and of men snatched from the very gallows’ foot, and of daring robberies and fat manors raided; and of wrongs righted and kindnesses done to the poor. Tell me, Sir Ranulf, and you too, Sir Hugh de Staunton, are these tales true?’
‘True enough!’ growled Sir Ranulf. ‘The rogue has more effrontery than any other wolfshead that ever I heard of. Nothing is safe from him, and nothing sacred to him; and he has made his name a terror through the whole north country.’
‘But only to such as deserve it,’ said Sir Hugh, very softly—so softly that the king feigned not to have heard him.
‘It would seem that this is no ordinary outlaw,’ said Richard. ‘Tell me, Sir Ranulf: is it true that he robbed you of three hundred pounds last year?’
‘Yes, curse him!’ replied the hawk-nosed knight. ‘And if I ever catch the rogue!——’
‘But you never will,’ said Sir Hugh. ‘And I, for one, would be sorry if he were taken.’
The king turned to him. ‘Perhaps you have never suffered at his hands?’
‘I have never suffered at his hands, Sire, because I am not over-rich, and because my serfs are well fed and happy.’
‘The other tales were true, then, Sir Hugh?’ demanded the king. ‘The tales of wrongs righted an
d kindness to the poor folk?’
‘They were true. Robin Hood is a good friend to the poor, and no honest man ever had cause to fear him.’
‘You would seem to be a staunch friend to this outlaw!’
Old Sir Ranulf cut in with an ugly sneer: ‘Why, it would ill befit Sir Hugh to speak ill of his own kinsman!’
The king raised his brows. ‘What does that mean, Sir Hugh?’
‘Robin Hood is kin to me by marriage. His wife Marian is my cousin,’ replied Sir Hugh de Staunton, levelly.
Sir Ranulf laughed harshly. ‘Yes—he stole her from her rightful bridegroom on her wedding-eve—this honest outlaw!’
‘He did not. She fled to him of her own free will!’ The younger knight never raised his voice, but the scar on his cheek changed suddenly from white to painful, fiery red. The king saw that in a moment there would be a violent quarrel between the two, and there had been enough quarrelling lately in England; so he turned the conversation in a safer direction.
‘It is in my mind that I should much like to meet this Robin Hood,’ said he. ‘Tell me, where shall I find him, Sir Hugh?’
‘Not in Sherwood at this time of year, unless he were to come south on a raid.’
‘Where, then?’ the king demanded quickly.
‘If you would meet with Robin Hood, Sire, you must go north to Doncaster. Take one or two of your lords with you, lodge there for the night, and next morning take the road that runs north through Barnesdale Forest. Go clad as monks, for it is against churchmen that Robin’s hand is heaviest; and if you do this you will surely meet with Robin Hood.’
The next day three black Dominican Monks—seemingly an abbot and two lesser brethren—rode out from Nottingham by the northern gate and headed for Doncaster. They lodged in the best tavern in Doncaster that night, and next morning set forth once more, by the York road.
The two brethren were inclined to grumble, for they regretted leaving the ease and comfort of Nottingham Castle, and thought the king was on a fool’s errand; but Richard-the-Abbot, riding a little ahead of them, was in a holiday mood, and his eyes danced in the shadow of his sable cowl as he watched the sunlit road ahead.