Some mornings later, Robin sat in his old place between the great roots of the lime-tree, while the brotherhood squatted three and four deep in a wide half-circle around him.
The king had given back to Sir Richard the lordship of Linden Lea; he had bestowed on Robin Hood the lordship of Locksley and Malaset, for Marian’s father was lately dead. He had set right many other matters of a like kind; and bidden them wait three days, that their pardon might be proclaimed throughout the north country. Then he had returned to Doncaster, guided through the forest by a royal escort under the command of Little John.
Now the three waiting-days were over, and it was time to set out into the future. Robin had already shared out the contents of the treasury amongst his band, as best he might, and all of them would have money in their pouches with which to start their new lives. Now he looked round upon them, rather sadly.
‘So, here’s an end to our wolfshead days,’ said he at last. ‘We have our freedom to go and come as we will, and now our ways part.’ Suddenly he rose and flung out his hands to them. ‘Lads,’ he cried, ‘you who have been my brothers-in-arms—it has been a good life, this of the Greenwood, that we have lived together; and let us not forget it quite, when we be law-abiding subjects of the king.’
‘We will not forget,’ they answered. ‘We will never forget.’
Many of them were in tears. They were free now, with no price on their heads, free to come and go as they would; and they were sad, because it was the end of the brotherhood, because it was good-bye. They would gladly have followed Robin still, but they knew he was no rich lord to support a host of henchmen; and even now, in their sadness, they were beginning to remember—some of them—well-loved plots of earth and valleys of dear remembrance, to which they would go back now, as free men; while others were beginning to feel the call of new adventure.
So they struck hands with Robin for the last time, bade farewell to old comrades, and whistled their dogs to heel; and in ones and twos and little groups they strode away into the forest, some heading for well-remembered villages that seemed to call them home, some outward bound to seek their fortunes in the ranks of the king’s army.
Robin stood leaning on his bowstave, to watch them go: Much back to his mill, Friar Tuck to his hermitage, Will Scarlet marching gaily south to join the king’s archers, Peterkin to the nearest hedge-tavern, with his bundle of balls and daggers under his arm.
The Lady Elizabeth took a tender farewell of the two younger women before she mounted her waiting horse and rode south beside her husband, with Diccon at her stirrup, and Simon the Squire trotting half a length behind.
Alice clung to Marian when it came to parting, weeping bitterly and swearing to come and see her often and often; then she tore herself away, and forgot her tears, to go with Alan to the little forest manor at Newstead, of which he had so often told her.
Marian stood very still beside Robin, and in a little while he turned from the deserted glade to look down at her with a rather sad smile.
‘It is only you and I now, sweetheart,’ said he.
‘You and I, and one other,’ she replied. ‘Look behind you, my Robin.’
Wondering, he did as she bade him, and saw a gigantic figure standing a few paces off at the edge of the glade, waiting patiently to be noticed.
‘John,’ said Robin, very gently, ‘I had thought you half-way to Cumberland before this!’
Little John came to him slowly. ‘And why should I be for Cumberland, Robin?’
‘Because it was from Cumberland that you came when first you joined our band, and often I have known you homesick for your native fells; so now that the band is no more, where should you go, save back to Cumberland?’
Little John set a huge hand on Robin’s shoulder, and shook his head slowly. ‘I go where you go,’ he said simply. ‘We be brothers—you and I.’
‘We be brothers—you and I,’ answered Robin. ‘That is a true word, Little John. We ride for Locksley together, then, the three of us.’
So in a little while they set out, Robin riding one of their two remaining horses, with Marian on the saddle-bow before him, and John, mounted on a raw-boned mare, half a length in the rear.
Behind them the Stane Ley was silent and deserted. Soon the little wooden cabins and the turf-roofed stables would fall into decay, and brambles and virgin’s bower and many-tendrilled ivy would cover the ruins, fresh grass would spring up through the black scars of the cooking fires; and the Stane Ley would be just as any other of the many glades of Barnesdale Forest.
12
How Robin came back to the Greenwood
AT FIRST IT seemed very strange to Robin to find himself Lord of the Manors of Locksley and Malaset, where he had spent so much of his boyhood on his uncle’s farm, and stranger still to be the master of that strong grey castle, standing guard over its quiet dales between Barnesdale Forest and the Peak. Yet he had ever loved Locksley village, and now it seemed to welcome him home again.
The folk were old friends, most of them; the younger men had been boys with him, the ancient ones had been cronies of his uncle Stephen, who was now dead; even the dogs were the descendants of those he had known in boyhood. And he had other friends too, dumb yet faithful, to make him welcome: the grinning gargoyles above the west door of the church, the great tithe-barn where the white owls nested and reared their young every year, a certain hollow lime-tree on the borders of Locksley Chase; these, and many more.
Within the castle he was not so happy. Used as he was to the broad glades and leafy ways of the forest, he felt caged and shut in by the strong grey curtain-walls; and the stars which had been his friends when he slept beside his fire in the Stane Ley seemed less friendly when seen through the window-embrasures of the great keep. But to Marian, the Castle of Malaset was very dear, for it was her home; and as time went by Robin came to love it also, at first for Marian’s sake, but later for its own.
During the last years of the old lord’s life, he had sadly neglected his possessions, and all that he owned had fallen into decay; and now it fell to Robin and his Lady, with the faithful Little John to aid them, to set matters right, both within the castle itself and throughout the demesne and manor. The hovels of the villeins were put in good repair, and the neglected land slowly put to rights; new trees were planted in the chase, where old ones had fallen, and long-derelict wind-breaks replanted with hawthorn and quickset. Robin—ever a farmer, even after his landless years of outlawry—planted willows in the wet bottom where nothing else would grow, and bought new oxen to replace the worn-out beasts in the plough-team; and above all, he made friends with his serfs and villeins, so that they worked for him willingly and gladly, as they had never done for Fitzwater.
Inside Malaset Castle the same thing was going on. Stables and kennels were put into repair, guardroom and armoury set to rights. There were several casts of hawks in the mews, where there had been nothing for many a long day save a crazy goshawk in perpetual moult.
Little John descended upon the men-at-arms in the guardroom, denounced them for lazy slovens and good-for-nothings, and set about driving into them the discipline that the brotherhood of the Greenwood had learned so well. They grumbled for a time, sullenly resentful at being roused out of the lazy ways they had drifted into when the old lord was in his dotage; but Little John’s good-tempered friendliness—and the strength of his right arm—soon won them over to his way of thinking.
Meanwhile, Marian was replenishing the store-rooms, and caused the faded walls of the bower to be painted lime-leaf green and flecked with golden stars, made friends with her house-varlets and hand-maids, and set to work on the herb-plot and garden that had been left to run riot since she went to Robin in the Greenwood. She had a way with plants, as she had with people, and under her skilful hands the tiny rose garden below the south tower soon began to bloom again.
The great Castle of Malaset was fully awake once more, and full of a coming and going of servants and men-at-arms, as it had be
en in older days. Robin kept open house, as the Saxon gentry had always done; and many were the guests who found warm shelter and a good meal beneath the smoke-blackened roof of his great hall.
Sir Richard-at-Lea came sometimes, and sometimes Alan A’Dale; more often Sir Hugh de Staunton would ride over from his own manor to spend a few days hunting with Robin in Locksley Chase. Often a weary knight-errant would claim hospitality, and almost always there were guests of a poorer sort—men-at-arms and archers tramping home from service overseas, brown-skinned sailor-lads bound from one port to another, dusty palmers from the Holy Land, yeomen on a journey, pedlars and friars and strolling minstrels. All these were sure of a welcome, and help if they had need of it; but most welcome of all, by far, were stray members of the brotherhood, who sometimes came to sit at Robin’s table. They would come quietly and sit among the men-at-arms far down the lower tables, but none ever came that his old leader did not at once recognize. Then Robin would go striding down the hall to wring his hand, bid him welcome, and demand his news. So Robin of Barnesdale never quite lost touch with his old life or the men who had lived it with him.
They were happy years, those at Malaset. Robin and Little John laboured hard to make the manor prosperous and keep it so. Marian worked as hard as either of them, for it was no easy thing to be the Lady of a great Manor. But all three of them loved their task; and they had their pleasures too: days of hunting and hawking in Locksley Chase, with the russet leaves lying thick underfoot and the frosty distance as blue as wood-smoke; long winter evenings when the wind roared against the ramparts, and the great hall was a place of warmth and flickering light where guests and men-at-arms and dogs crowded to the blazing fire while some wandering minstrel plucked his lute and sang to them of love or war or hunting.
Best of all, perhaps, were summer evenings in the rose-garden. Marian loved the rose-garden better than any other place in the castle, and because she loved it, Robin loved it too. It was but a tiny square of turf in the sunny corner between the great keep and the south tower, a turf seat starred with speedwell and wild thyme, pansies and gilly-flowers underfoot, and a thick hedge of roses all around—white roses that smelled like honey, crimson roses whose scent was dark and warm like their own petals, tiny pink single blossoms that Marian used for distilling rose-water. That was all, but the rose-hedge seemed to shut out the world, so that the little grass plot within was enchanted ground, like the centre of a fairy ring; and here Robin and Marian would often sit of a summer evening, while the yellow sunshine gave place to blue dimness, and the gay butterflies of the day-time to pale-winged night moths.
Sixteen years slipped away; happy years for the folk in Malaset, but hard ones for England.
Richard Cœur de Lion was dead before the ramparts of Chaluz, and his brother John now ruled in his place; and oppression and injustice were let loose in the land once more. For if John had been a brutal tyrant during the years when Richard was crusading or in prison, he was far worse now that he himself was king; and he had not been long on the throne before he made himself the most hated king that England had ever known. The poor folk had always hated and feared him for his cruelty and ruthlessness; but now the clergy and the barons were coming to hate him too—the clergy because he refused to obey church rulings and gave their fat possessions to prelates whom he brought in from overseas; the barons because he wrested from them their ancient rights and forced them to pay out most of their wealth to keep him in money for his constant wars. The few barons who yet clung to him for hope of power were behaving much as they had done when King Richard was abroad, wrenching from the poor all that they possessed, and making honest folks’ lives a burden to them; and between them and those lords and barons who were turning against the king there began to be constant quarrels and small private wars.
Little cared King John for the misery of his people; and he brought in foreign mercenaries to hold down and quell their growing discontent. But slowly, as the years went by, the wrath of the English was growing stronger than the tyranny of their king.
In the spring of 1215 the barons gathered at Brackley in Northamptonshire, and there they drew up a Great Charter of Englishmen’s rights, knowing that if they could but force the king to sign it and abide by his signature, it would break his tyranny for ever. Far and wide they sent, summoning free men to join them, and from far and wide free men answered the call. Then, having sent word of their coming to the king, they marched south under the banners of Fitzwalter, William Marshal, and Stephen Langton; a great and glorious army of lords and barons, knights and squires, each with his following of fighting men. And with them marched Robin Hood and Sir Hugh de Staunton.
It was in the chill dawn of a May morning when Robin marched out of Malaset, with Little John beside him, and close on a hundred fighting men at his back. He looked back once, and saw Marian standing high above him on the ramparts, her crimson kirtle gay in the first sunshine, and the wind teasing her hair from beneath her wimple. She flung up her hand to him, and he waved back; then he turned his face towards the high moors.
He never saw Marian alive again.
Hugh de Staunton was waiting for him by the Mark Stones a few miles west of Mansfield, with a goodly company of men-at-arms, and they went on together to join the gathering of the barons’ army at Brackley.
Southward rolled the host, down from Northamptonshire into the rich valleys of Buckinghamshire, and up over the rolling Berkshire Downs, pennants streaming, weapons and armour glinting in the warm spring sunshine, shields and surcoats and horse-trappings of blue and crimson, green and gold, sable and silver, all powdered over by the great rolling dust-cloud stirred up by the horses’ hooves and the feet of marching men.
The king met them at Runnymead, in a smouldering rage that boded ill for the charter. June had come, and his bright silken pavilions were pitched in a meadow that was gay with clover and lady’s-smock, the Thames ran sparkling at the field’s end, singing blithely through the brown-flowered rushes on its banks, and cuckoos shouted from coppices far and near. But the king’s brow was black and sullen, and though he signed the charter with as good a grace as possible, it was only fear of the barons massed in arms against him that made him do so. And the ink was scarcely dry on the parchment before he was thinking how he could most easily break the promises that he had made.
The barons knew King John of old, and their knowledge had not taught them to trust him; so a large part of the host remained in the south to keep watch and ward over the charter that meant so much to Englishmen; and among those who stayed were Robin and Sir Hugh.
But King John’s treachery was swift, and it was yet early autumn when news reached them of foreign hordes in the king’s pay landing at all the north coast ports: of Flemings, Saxons, and Brabanters pouring through the north country, pillaging and burning as they went.
Then the northern barons hurried north again to defend their lands, Sir Hugh among them; and with Sir Hugh, Robin and his men took the York road once more.
On a misty October day when the golden bracken was deepening to russet, the two little companies left the Sheffield track and swung up into the high moors between Sherwood and the Peak. At their head marched Robin, the grey milky light glinting on his ring-mail; and his face was grim and set beneath his steel cap. They had passed through three burned-out villages that morning—silent villages with dead men and women lying among the blackened ruins of their homes, and his heart was sick in his breast with fear for Marian, alone in Malaset with only the serfs and a handful of men-at-arms for its defence.
Little John marched beside him, scarcely less grim than he, and on his left strode Sir Hugh de Staunton, his face bleak, and the old scar on his cheek leaden-grey with weariness. The three had marched their men forward relentlessly on that long road from London, and there was not a man in the ranks behind them who was not utterly worn out. But they held on doggedly, the weary miles paying out behind them; and now only the last lift of the moors lay between them and the end
of the long forced march, and they pressed forward with their eyes straining ahead of them for any blur of smoke against the evening sky.
On they went, up and over that high moorland crest, and dropped down on the farther side, following the sandy track that wound down towards the wide dale of Malaset; and as the track dropped more steeply valley-ward, Robin lengthened his stride and the weary men behind him quickened almost to a run.
Where the track swung round a last shoulder of the moor, the Lord of Malaset came to a sudden halt. The dale opened before him—quiet farmland between the high moorland fells and the dark verge of Locksley Chase where the evening shadows were already gathering like smoke among the trees. A mile away across the fields the village lay very quiet too, with the quietness of desolation upon it; nothing moved save the faint smoke that drifted upward from the blackened ruins of its homesteads. Beyond, the great keep of Malaset stood upreared against the evening sky, seemingly untouched by the desolation below it, but in the fading light the open ground before the castle was a-swarm with figures, and even as Robin watched, red fire sprang up from the timbers of the gate-house, and a distant uproar came faintly to his ears.
He gave one sharp, savage cry, and began to run, slipping his bowstave from his shoulders as he ran. Little John and Sir Hugh were beside him, and the rest came storming at their heels. Across the farmland they raced, weary men who had forgotten their weariness, over crisp pasture and frost-hardened plough, and came at last into the blackened ruins of Malaset village, each man freeing his bow as he ran.
King John’s mercenaries had gained the causeway after a hard fight for it; they had stormed the gates, and now a mortal struggle was raging around the burning gate-house where the little, gallant band of defenders stood at bay behind their hastily-flung-up barricades. The marauders had thought to gain an easy victory, for serfs and villeins and a bare handful of men-at-arms were no match for close on two hundred heavily armed soldiery. But the Englishmen were strengthened by the knowledge that they defended their own womenfolk, their own children—for the villagers had all flown for shelter to the castle as soon as warning of the raid came to them, and now the inner bailey was full of children and dogs and cattle, while in the outer court the women toiled to and fro, tending the wounded, carrying sheaves of arrows to the few bowmen in the archers’ gallery, aiding their menfolk at the barriers.