Again and again the foreigners strove to break through into the courtyard; again and again they were hurled back. The defenders were fighting with the grim, desperate courage of the wild boar that had been their forefathers’ battle-crest, and already the barrier was strengthened by the bodies of dead Flemings and Brabanters; while from the arrow-slits overhead ever and anon there whistled down a clothyard shaft, to find its home in some foreign heart.
But the bravest defence could not last for long against such odds; there were English dead piled beside the Brabanters in the gateway, and many of those who still lived were wounded sore.
Once more, with a savage yell, the mercenaries charged. And in that moment came a deep whistling hum, an angry sound like that of a disturbed hornets’ nest; but it was a flight of grey-goose shafts, and not of hornets, that drove into the rear ranks of the Brabanters.
The daylight was waning fast, but the flames of the burning gate-house lit the scene with a ruddy glare and made a clear target of the men who had kindled the blaze. Many were down, dead and wounded, under that first flight, and a second followed it, before a man’s heart might pound twice, slaying their captain and spreading confusion among the rest; and almost before they could turn about to face the new menace, their attackers were upon them.
Robin could never afterwards remember much of that fight. He did not know that the struggle was long and bitter, or that the defenders of Malaset had dragged aside their own barricades and rushed out to add their strength to his. He did not know, until Sir Hugh told him afterwards, that scarce a dozen of King John’s cut-throats had escaped with their lives from that evening’s work. There seemed to be a red mist heating behind his eyes, and he knew nothing save the scarlet flash of his sword reflecting the flames of the burning gate-house and the savage joy of feeling the blade bite deep.
Then it was all over and the red mist ebbed away; the fierce joy died in him, and he found himself standing in the ruined gateway, his sword naked and blooded in his hand. Men were dousing the fire with water from the castle well, and as the flames died down the thick reek of sodden smitch filled the air. It was almost dark until someone brought a torch, and by its light he saw dead men sprawling all across the gateway and the causeway-head, English and Fleming, attackers and defenders together.
His serfs crowded about him where he stood in the gate-way, and he saw Little John bending over a fallen comrade and Sir Hugh de Staunton leaning against the wall and dabbing at a gash that had partly opened the old scar on his cheek; and he looked about for Marian, but could not see her.
But from the throng he picked out Rafe-the-Archer, chief of the few who had been left to guard Malaset while its lord was away, and demanded: ‘Rafe, where is my lady?’
Then he saw the trouble in the man’s eyes; and he knew. With a strange, cold calm upon him he followed Rafe up the narrow stone stairway that led to the archers’ gallery. The clouds of the day had begun to break up and stream away eastward before the light wind that was rising, and through their shreds and tatters the sky showed green as a witch ball and gemmed with the first stars. But the archers’ gallery was sheltered from the wind behind its frowning, arrow-slitted rampart-wall, and the torch which one of the bowmen was holding aloft burned steadily, shedding a saffron glow over stone wall and timber flooring, and the figures of the archers who had so lately defended the castle. One sat propped against the wall, while a comrade knelt over him to cut the arrow-barb from his shoulder; one stood staring out through his loophole, with his hand clenched on his bowstave so tight that the knuckles shone white. The rest stood with bowed heads around one of their number who lay still.
They parted silently to let Robin through, and he found himself looking down on Marian, with a cross-bow quarrel in her heart. Her bow lay beside her, and she was clad as the other archers, in leggings and worn leather jack; but they had taken off her steel cap, and her russet hair flowed softly round her face and shoulders, shining warm in the torchlight.
For a long time Robin looked in silence, and then he turned away without a word. They bore Marian to her bower and laid her on the bed; and Robin went back to his wounded men.
There was much to be done that night, and Robin strode from place to place, unceasingly, seeming unable to be still a moment, a man with eyes like bright, blue glass in an ash-grey face; and the men who saw him that night never forgot his look.
But in the darkest hour he went back to the chamber where Marian lay, and knelt down beside the bed; and there he remained, while the grey dawn filtered into the room and the yellow sunshine followed it and streamed down from the high window in a shower of gold that lay gently across Marian’s body.
Then he bestirred himself and got to his feet, slowly, like one who is very tired. Stooping, he kissed her on the forehead; then went quietly from the room and down the winding stair and out into the rose-garden that she had loved so well. The sun had not reached it as yet and the little grass plot was grey with hoar-frost, but in the rose-hedge the last crimson buds of summer were opening to the morning.
Robin went to the turf seat and cast himself down full length upon it, burying his head in his arms; and lying there, fell into a terrible silent grieving.
Some while after, Little John found him there, and stood looking down at him for a few moments, his own heart near to breaking, and then went quietly away again.
Three days later Marian was laid to rest among her own people in the little churchyard at Malaset. Long after the soft warm earth had been piled back into her grave, long after the sorrowing villagers had crept away, Robin stood with Little John beside him, gazing down at the newly replaced sods; while a few paces off stood Sir Hugh de Staunton, his head bent and his hands crossed on the pommel of his sword.
Little John’s heart ached for Robin; he longed to comfort him, but he knew that not even he had the right to break in upon him in his grief; so he waited, dumbly, patiently, like a great hound, his eyes fixed on his master’s face. And presently, Robin lifted his head and turned to look away—north-eastward, towards the dim blue shores of Barnesdale Forest.
‘John,’ said he, speaking slow, and very quietly, ‘I am through with respectability. It is the Greenwood again for me, old lad.’
‘And what of Malaset, Master Robin, and what of Locksley?’
For a little while Robin made no reply; then said he: ‘They will go to Sir Hugh, for he is nearest kin to Marian; and all will be well with the manor in his hands.’ He turned to the knight standing near: ‘It is a sorry heritage, Hugh; and a hard task you will have, to build it up again.’
‘Never mind for that,’ said Sir Hugh, quickly. ‘But need you leave it? Need you go back to your old landless ways? Stay here and build the manor up again yourself.’
Robin shook his head. ‘You can do that as well as I; and there is work waiting for me in the Greenwood.’
The two looked each other levelly between the eyes, and Sir Hugh understood. With tyranny and injustice rampant once more, and the king’s hired cut-throats roaming loose through the land, there was need of Robin Hood again in his old haunts and his old way of life.
‘Then it is good-bye?’ asked Sir Hugh.
‘God speed,’ replied Robin.
They struck hands, standing there beside Marian’s grave; and Sir Hugh Staunton turned and strode away.
‘You’re going at once, Robin?’ asked Little John; and his voice was harsh with grief as he laid a heavy arm across the other’s shoulders.
‘Aye, at once. Do I travel alone, John?’
‘No,’ said Little John. ‘Not alone. I have been your man for thirty years, Robin lad, and I am your man still.’
‘So be it then. You’re a very faithful friend, Little John, and I never needed your friendship more than I need it now.’ He turned away, and without one backward glance towards the quiet place where Marian lay, he strode out of the churchyard and headed for the ruined castle gateway.
The sun was still high in the heavens when the
two rode out from Malaset for the last time. Robin was mounted on a tall black hunter; buckler and bowstave were strapped between his shoulders, and he wore his old, weather-stained leather jack, and a light steel cap upon his head; and he looked neither to right nor to left as he rode. Half a length behind him, on a heavily built mare, rode Little John, also in buff and steel, with a bundle of faded Lincoln green on the saddle before him.
And the villagers, watching them go, knew in their hearts that they would not see Robin of Barnesdale again.
Skirting the northern side of Locksley Chase, they took to the waste that lay between it and the distant verge of the forest. The bracken was a tawny sea that flowed against the horses’ legs as they passed; and the scent of frost was in the air, and the scent of sunshine, and the little moorland pools reflected the milky blueness of the autumn sky.
It was a fair and joyous world, but the two who rode through it that blue-and-golden noontide had no eye for the moorland pools nor ear for the plover’s calling.
On they went, riding steadily north-east through the sunshine until at last the dun shadows of Barnesdale Forest closed about them, and Locksley and Malaset knew them no more.
13
How Robin fought Guy of Gisborne
NOT LONG WAS Robin alone with Little John in the Stane Ley; for the very day after they rode away from Malaset came Martin-the-Ploughman and Rafe-the-Archer, eager to take service with him.
Robin sat in his old place on the turf-hummock between the spreading roots of the lime-tree, and looked at the two who stood sturdily before him with their small supply of worldly goods in bundles at their feet.
‘It is a hard life that you will have, if you follow me,’ he told them, ‘And Sir Hugh de Staunton is a good master and will treat you well. Will you not go back to your homes, and serve him?’
‘Us knows Sir Hugh for a good master,’ said Rafe. ‘But us wants no other master than you, Robin of Barnesdale.’
So they remained in the glade of the giant lime-tree, and the brotherhood had begun to grow again.
As the news of Robin Hood’s return to the Greenwood spread out through the countryside, men gathered to him as they had done in days of yore, and amongst them came a handful of the old brotherhood that had been disbanded sixteen years ago. Many of the original outlaws had taken wives and settled down, some were too old to take to the old life of the wilderness again; some were dead, and some overseas fighting with the armies of King John in France. Will Scarlet had died gallantly at the siege of Chaluz on the same day that Richard Cœur de Lion had died. Roger Lightfoot and George-a-Green had fallen side by side, each with a French crossbow quarrel in his heart. Ket-the-Smith had a fine smithy down Birkland way, and was in no mind to turn adventurous again. Hob-o’-the-Hoar-Oak had gathered together a fat little farm over towards Lincoln, and was too old for further service.
But Arthur-a-Bland came, and Brand, and Will-the-Bowman, greyer and more grim and soldierly than ever. One morning the little band awoke to find Much-the-Miller’s-Son in their midst—browner, smaller, more gnarled and bent of shoulder even than they remembered him, but bright-eyed and wiry as ever. One evening Gilbert walked into camp and sat down beside the fire as though he had never been away: Gilbert, tanned by foreign suns, and with the scar of a pike wound livid on the brown skin of his forearm. So it went on.
These veterans formed the core of a new brotherhood which was growing up around the trysting tree. Slowly it grew, but surely, until, within two years of his coming back to the Greenwood, Robin had some four-score men at his command. They were strongly armed and true-hearted, these men of the new brotherhood, as the men of old had been; and the folk of all the forest country were in sore need of such aid and championship as theirs. King John was dead, it is true—dead of poison at Newark; but the new king was only a child, and the wrongs that John had brought about were unrighted. Flemings, Brabanters, Saxons, and Poitevins still roamed the country—a vast, marauding army. Cottage homes and stately castles alike were plundered and left in smoking ruins by these king’s men; and the prints of their mailed feet on the land were ruined homes and dead men—aye, and women and children too.
Against these foreign hordes Robin and his men made constant war; they hung about on the flanks of the king’s armies, like a grey wolf-pack, cutting off raiding parties; harrying the foreigners by every means in their power. And many the poor knight and yeoman and humble serf, and many the anxious woman, who had cause to bless Robin Hood and his men during those troubled years.
Robin seemed to love fighting now, more than ever he had done in the days of his youth. In the hot excitement of danger, in the giving and taking of blows and the pitting of his wits against the cunning of his enemies, he could forget his loneliness and loss. And at that time he had as much fighting as even he could wish for. Nor were the king’s mercenaries his only foes… .
Roger of Doncaster had been turned out of his lands by King Richard, in the same year that Robin had received his pardon. He had fled from the country, to Normandy, where he had other estates to live upon; but when John came to the throne he had returned to his English lands, and sat there, like a bird of prey, gathering about him a band of hired robbers and cut-throats who drifted from the king’s service to follow him for the better pay he offered.
Robin was yet in Malaset in those days, with Marian beside him; and Roger of Doncaster heard tales of their happiness and prosperity, and his old jealousy grew strong within him. He had not dared to pit himself against Robin Hood in the open, knowing that the other had a strong following among the poor folk, well-trained men-at-arms in his castle, and powerful friends among the knights and lords of the countryside; but he waited, biding his time and nursing his jealousy until it grew bitter as gall within him.
For twenty years and more he brooded on his hatred against the man who had taken Marian from him and spoiled his greedy plans for possessing himself of her wealth and lands; and now that Robin had taken to the Greenwood once more, he bethought himself that the time for him to take his revenge had surely come.
To this end he made common cause with Sir Guy of Gisborne—long since turned out of his stewardship of Birkencar by a new Abbot of St. Mary’s—and between them they plotted Robin’s downfall. Several times during the years after Robin’s return to the Greenwood did those two comrades-in-evil send their Poitevin cut-throats to ambush him in the woods. They might as well have tried to net a peregrine falcon as it stooped between them and the sun. No man ever yet found Robin of Barnesdale in his own forest, when he was not minded to be found. Only, as they returned from their fruitless expeditions, would an arrow humming from the depths of some thicket show them how near they had been to their quarry.
Things went on in this way until a certain day in early autumn, seven years after Robin had come back to Barnesdale. It was a very still day, golden as the first days of autumn often are, with the weary green of late summer still to be seen among the gold, though the first hoar-frost rimed the grass in the shadow of rick and tree and hedgerow. In the open country the last of the harvest had been got in, and apples were red on the trees in garden plots; in the depth of Barnesdale Forest the dun leaves had begun to fall and the brambles were laden with berries that were still green and crimson.
A few miles to the west of Barnesdale Bar, Robin and Little John were making their way along a forest path just broad enough for them to walk abreast. Both were clad in tunic and hose of well-worn Lincoln green, Little John with the hood of his capuchin pulled over his head and its liripipe jauntily a-swing as he walked, Robin with a wild swan’s flight-feather as jauntily stuck in his close velvet cap.
Little John carried his seven-foot bowstave, and had deadly clothyard shafts in his quiver; but the bowstave in Robin’s hand was that of a small birding-bow, and the arrows thrust into his belt were light, slender things, little more than half a clothyard; for although their ways lay together until the bridle-path branched, they were not bound upon the same errand.
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On they went, walking shoulder to shoulder in companionable silence, until the path dived into a thicket of hawthorn, spindle, and wayfaring trees, all gay with ripening autumn berries, and emerging into a little clearing beyond branched to Wentbridge and Barnesdale Bar. An elder-tree grew just where the track divided, and a speckled thrush which was feasting on its dark berries flew off with a loud alarm-note at their approach, but waited to scold at them from a safe distance. Little John scolded back, then laughed softly in his throat. ‘Nay, Brother Throstle, why so churlish?’
The two men parted; a moment later both had sunk into the forest, and in the little clearing the thrush had returned to his interrupted feast among the laden branches of the elder-tree.
Robin left the path within a bowshot of where it branched, and struck south-east through the forest towards a certain tract of heath-land that abounded in plover.
Little John followed his path for a mile or so, then he too struck away into the forest, heading northward for Pomfret Town.
The day before, Barnaby and a young wood-ranger named Andrew had set out for Pomfret to gather tidings of a certain wealthy silk merchant who would soon be travelling the Selby road. Now, Little John walked the same way; and in a certain glade some miles south of the town, Andrew was to meet him at noon, with any tidings that had been gathered during the night.