She got up abruptly. A dinner in consequence of a king’s visit would go on for hours, however unprepared poor Sir Richard was to entertain such a guest. The Lionheart would have brought enough of his own minstrels and his own sweetmeats to turn any meal into a feast; so much generosity—to a nobleman—might be expected of him. She did not think the outlaws would hear their fate till tomorrow at earliest; she also knew how feasts could go on for days, particularly when there were politics being passed with the plates. She wondered how Sir Richard had dealt with the problem of seating the sheriff of Nottingham and his party; and for all her own troubled future, she did not envy the master of Mapperley.
She went to the door that led into the hall. Darkness had fallen, but torches had not yet been lit here, with all the attention centered upon the king. The first royal page-boy who stubbed a toe would set up a howl that would get them lit, but she was not a royal page-boy and had to grope her way—rubbing along the corridor with her right side, in fear of bumping her left—to the stairs that led to the battlements Robin had been pacing a few hours earlier.
She was staring so fiercely at nothing that she did not hear him coming up behind her till he spoke; and with the drag of his wounded leg he was not so quiet as he used to be.
“I hope you see no one else coming to join the party.”
For a moment she thought the voice was only in her own head, the product of the concentration of her thoughts; then she turned and saw Little John’s outline against the evening sky. He limped forward and leaned on the wall with a sigh. “A glorious company we shall look,” he said, “shambling on half-healed legs, or cradling some other wound. How is your shoulder?”
Cecily tipped her head in a half-shake, which was what she had developed over the last week to take the place of a shrug. “It is, as you say, half-healed, which is an improvement.” One keeps searching for ease, she did not say, and not finding it, till the memories of no-pain seem only like daydreams. “Think you then that the king will call for us?”
“I do not think of it one way or another. Robin and Marian—and Much and Tuck and your brother—think so.”
“Then you do not think so.”
“You are too sharp for me.”
She could not see his face. “It comes of having sat at my father’s table too long and listened and not been allowed to speak,” she said.
“Whereupon you learnt to guess what was not said by the shadow it cast,” Little John said softly. “You are right. But Much and Will talk enough for several men, and I have been most often allowed silence when I wished it.”
Cecily said, remembering, “I knew that Will was thinking of going away when he stopped protesting. My father thought that he had given up, and was pleased. He is a stupid man.”
Little John said, “You do not think Robin is a stupid man.”
She almost laughed. “No. He may be the most terrifying person I have met—because you believe what he tells you even when you know better. And yet I think he would quench that fire in him if he could—perhaps because it throws such dark shadows around the things he does not say. Much isn’t stupid either—or even my brother. But I think they are a little—flame-blinded. And I think the Lionheart will not care for a fire that does not burn to the king’s laws.”
“Aye,” said Little John.
There was a silence, till Cecily said curiously: “Why do you follow him? Robin, I mean. I …” She stopped.
“You,” said Little John. “Why do you follow?”
I asked first, she thought, and sighed, and shifted her shoulder. “I follow because I had so few choices. I thought of them all while I was locked up in my room, before I ran away. I should have been thrown out of a convent, if I didn’t go over the wall first; I was too wild—wild with the life I’d led, or not led. I don’t sing or anything, and I’m not pretty, or—or tractable. And … after I’d followed Will …
“But I don’t think I ever believed this life would last. I was hoping to wear myself out somehow, to resign myself finally to the convent—to have something to tell over to myself during long hours on my knees. My father would pay, even now, I think, what would be necessary for some sisterhood to take such a fallen creature as I am—hoping that singing Lauds in the middle of every night would keep me docile enough during the days not to get into any more trouble that would embarrass the family.” She paused. “And I’ve woken up every morning since I ran away hoping that I might have one more day of it—even these last days. I think I shall not go to bed tonight at all.”
She stopped, dismayed that she had let herself go on in such a way. While she was trying to compose an apology that would sound unpremeditated, Little John said, “You forget that I am the only other member of our band who has a price on his head. I killed one of the men who came to turn me off my land because I could not pay the Norman tax that was killing me.” A little breeze moved down the wall walk, whispering of ghosts and old promises. “I will not say that I did not know my own strength, for I knew it very well; it is the one thing I have always known. You cannot be as large as I am without knowing that everyone else is smaller. I could have hit him less hard, and I did not, and he died. So I, too, had a secret; one known in Sherwood, but one that I could have carried outside perhaps even less well than Cecil might have carried his.”
He moved his leg again as Cecily rearranged her elbow. “I too have awakened every morning praying that this life might go on a little longer. I believe in Robin, but I do not believe in what he believes in. I do not believe in the justice of kings. He does not truly believe in it either; but it is a shield against what you called a fire. And he does believe in justice.”
“Do you know him so well?” said Cecily.
“I was one of the first,” said Little John. “As there are but twelve of us at the end. I remember how he did not believe that what we were doing would last one more day. I would not want to be believed in the way the folk who came to him believed in him. Perhaps that is why I do not. Perhaps that is why he believes in justice.”
There was silence again; twilight was passing, and night crept close around them; and Cecily found herself thinking that perhaps—perhaps it would never be dawn again. She said, almost idly, “Why did you follow me up here?”
Little John said nothing for so long that she thought she had not asked the question aloud. But at last he said: “I would like to say that I decided when I saw you leave that I, too, wanted to breathe free air. Perhaps it is that I have never lived within the shadow of such walls before, but I find the weight of them almost stops my breath, and I long for the sound of trees, or at least the touch of wind on my face. I could say that, for it is true.” He stopped, musingly. She looked at him sidelong; despite the darkness, she could still see the line of his profile, and she already knew his face by heart, though till less than a fortnight before she had known him only bearded.
“It seems to me that one of two things may happen by the king’s coming,” he said. “One of them is that I shall be hung by the neck till dead. I do not think the king will find that he needs to see us to pass that judgement.”
Cecily shut her thoughts off ferociously.
“If I am lucky I will be sent off to the Holy Land to kill Saracens till they kill me; which will not be long, for I am not much of a fighter. I am only large.” He paused again. “As it seems, then, that my future is like to be short, perhaps some things do not matter as they might, like the fact that you are daughter to a lord. I followed you up here tonight to tell you that I love you, for I would not be shamed by the courage of your words to me as you left Marian’s bedside a few days ago at Tuck’s chapel.”
Cecily, who had often felt that her love was rather a devilish thing, looking to unseat or upset her, burst out: “My courage! Dear God, you cannot love me if you say so! It is courage that keeps me silent, that I would not be a burden to you! Is it not pity you feel?”
“Never pity,” said Little John with such simplicity that she could not help
but believe him. “But allow me some little time to understand why my best student drew me so; I have never been a boy-lover. I was not the one of us wearing a mask.”
“Were you not?” said Cecily with some irony.
“You are still a lord’s child,” said Little John, “and my family has been free for less than a generation; and my first act was to lose our holding.”
“But—” Cecily began; but Little John put out his hand, and at the touch of his fingers she fell silent, and she shivered as she had shivered on the morning they went to the fair. Little John said, puzzled, “Are you cold?”
“No,” she said. “I want to put my arms around you and hold you so hard you scream for mercy, and I have only one arm to do it with.”
“Ah,” said Little John, and came to her, and stooped, and kissed her; and her one good hand reached up to pull down on the nape of his neck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It was Robin himself who came to find them a little while later with the message that the king’s command had come—already. The two of them stiffened and fell apart as the future presented itself to them again after only a few minutes’ happiness. It’s not fair, said a little voice in the back of Cecily’s mind; they might have let us have one night. But another little voice said: You have had many nights. You are luckier than you deserve. The first little voice said unkindly: What would you have done with your night anyway? He cannot touch your left side and you cannot touch his right. The second voice said, Come to that, where there’s a will there’s a way.
Cecily pulled her clean tunic as straight as she could over her bandaged shoulder, and Little John gave his leg one last hard scratch.
“You look like you are expecting nothing less than the gibbet,” said Robin dryly; Little John looked down at him. Robin was carrying a lit torch; its approaching glow had given them some warning that their warm darkness was about to be invaded.
“So do you,” said Little John. Robin smiled; and went first to lead the way.
Robin and Rafe carried Marian again; Tuck brought up the rear. There were only the twelve of them together, plus Tuck himself and Brown-eyes. Brown-eyes had so disdained any contact with the castle dogs that he had been permitted to stay with his master. Tuck curled his fingers in the dog’s ruff, not from any sense that he could prevent Brown-eyes from doing anything he might choose to do by physical strength, but just for the comfort of his being there. Brown-eyes, like most of the rest of them, still limped; but also like the rest of them—Tuck thought—he looked a formidable enemy. Brown-eyes had only to bare his teeth to prove his potential dangerousness; something else clung around the human outlaws, something that Tuck, who had become a hermit to get away from such things, could almost smell hanging in the air.
No one wore anything that might be considered a weapon; even the short daggers they cut their meat with had been left behind. Alan and Marjorie held hands; Little John and Cecily walked side by side. When the torchlight fell briefly on Cecily’s face, Tuck was saddened by the look he saw there. For all our words we aren’t expecting much, are we? he thought.
There was a roar of noise and a dazzle of light when they crossed the courtyard and the squire who had brought them—one of Sir Richard’s, who looked as anxious for them as they felt for themselves—pushed the heavy doors open. Men in Sir Richard’s and the sheriff’s and the king’s liveries stood inside; and beyond that was the Great Hall where their fate awaited them. Perhaps it was the unfamiliarity of the noise, and the knowledge that they would have to stand alone in that great bright room and be stared at by many strangers’ eyes, but that fate in prospect felt as merciless as the falling edge of Guy of Gisbourne’s sword. Cecily wanted her knife in her boot-top just for companionship. As they paused on the doorstep she took a deep breath and tried to settle herself as for combat, or for being knocked down by another tricky blow from Little John that he hadn’t taught her yet.
Marian stood, a little shakily, on her own feet; Robin offered her his arm. She was dressed as an outlaw; they all wore the dark leather and rough wool they were accustomed to, though all of them (particularly Much) were cleaner than customary. They had not discussed what they should wear to face the king—with the considerable stores of Sir Richard’s wardrobes at their disposal, they might have chosen almost anything. But what they were all wearing when they trailed in to Marian’s chamber to stare at their supper and find it hard to eat was their old garb, patched extensively from Sir Richard’s goods, but their own old clothes nonetheless.
Tuck’s gaze lingered on each in turn. It was hard to remember his first sight of some of them: of Will Scarlet, who had become Will Brown and Green; of Little John, almost as tall as one of the friar’s gateway oaks; of Cecily, who had been Cecil then; of Robin, wary and half-hostile even as he came to ask the friar a favour. Robin caught Tuck’s eye and said, “Now is your opportunity to ask for a new roof for your chapel.”
Robin and Marian went first, Robin adapting his pace to hers; the others followed equally slowly. When Robin and Marian reached the dais where the Lionheart sat with Sir Richard at his right hand, they paused, and the others could see Marian gathering her slight strength for an obeisance to the king. But the Lionheart stood up and came forward, startling them; the other outlaws fanned out behind Robin and Marian, and all halted.
“You need not make me any bows,” said the king. “I know of your wounds, and I do not wish to compel any of my subjects to unnecessary pain.” No one said anything. Cecily thought: His English is better than Aubrey’s.
The Lionheart stepped down from his dais, as lightly as a boy on holiday stepping outdoors with a sunny summer day beckoning him on. Robin and Marian held their ground, but whether deliberately or because Marian was not sure she could step backward without losing her balance, it was hard to tell. “But I will ask of you something I value most in my subjects.”
The hall fell silent as soon as the king rose. The tumult had subsided when the outlaws passed the threshold, but new excited whispers had run round the room. When the Lionheart’s foot touched the floor, the hush became so profound that the scuffling of the dogs among the floor-rushes for scraps sounded loud; and when a hawk, disturbed by the sudden silence, stirred on its post behind its master’s chair, the tiny chime of its bells was shocking.
The Lionheart was half a head taller than Robin or Marian, but he did not come so close to them that they must tip their heads back to look at him. He was smiling a little, the smile sitting both easily and uneasily on his long hard face: the face of a man who is a staunch friend but a stauncher enemy. “I ask,” he said, and he did not need to raise his voice for the whole hall to hear him, “for your fealty.”
A good many breaths hissed through teeth; the restless hawk spread its wings and cried out. The king did not appear to notice. He looked into Robin’s face; and Robin realised that this man meant what he said. “You, called Robin Hood, outlaw of Sherwood Forest and leader of outlaws, breaker of the king’s laws and the king’s peace, do you now pledge me, your king, your fealty?” He held out his hands, and Robin placed his between them and spoke in a voice as clear as the king’s: “I swear.”
“Marian of Trafford, and sometime outlaw of Sherwood, loyal friend of the outlaw Robin Hood and breaker of your proper obedience to your lord your father, do you now pledge me, your king, your fealty?”
Marian’s voice rang out: “I swear.”
“John Little, called Little John, outlaw of Sherwood, do you pledge now your fealty to me your king?”
But Little John looked down upon the king in silence, and did not at once place his hands in the outstretched ones of the Lionheart. “My lord and majesty does not speak all my crimes aloud,” Little John said in his low rumble, so that those sitting at the far end of the hall could not be sure of his words. “Does he still wish my fealty?”
“He does,” said the Lionheart, his outstretched hands steady; whereupon Little John laid his in them, and said, “I swear.”
Cecily was as surprised by the touch of the king’s hands as she had been by the colour of his eyes; she would have expected royal flesh to be cold and stiff, more like metal than human skin; instead his hands were warm, and cradled hers almost tenderly. He had stepped close to her, and held his hands lower than he had for the others, that she might not trouble her shoulder. His blue eyes held hers as if he knew her and would remember her; as if he knew exactly from whom he was asking fealty, and that she, Cecily of Norwell, was the specific person who had given it.
When he came at last to Tuck his smile grew a little. Brown-eyes examined him with interest, as if he might be a new sort of thief or blackguard it would prove his duty to chase. “I do not name you outlaw, Friar Tuck, for the friars have long been called to befriend those who are in need of friends when other folk shun them. I think not a few of those standing with you this evening owe their lives to you; and as you choose to stand with these your friends who are outlaws, will you also swear fealty to me?” And Tuck drew his cold fingers out of Brown-eyes’ fur to lay them between the king’s and say, “I swear.”
The Lionheart turned away, moving quickly now, as if the ritual of fealty had given him new energy. He remounted the dais, where he stood looking out across the hall. His expression was the one he had worn when he first rode across the bridge and under Sir Richard’s portcullis; he smiled, but he looked as if he did not greatly like what he saw. And for the first time since the king’s banner had snapped out flat in the wind that afternoon, Cecily felt a real hope rise up in her heart; for he had looked more kindly upon the outlaws of Sherwood when he asked for their fealty.