The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley
She saw the glint of the rising blade as she took two steps forward, seized the arm, and buried her own small knife into the spot just above the forester’s collarbone.
There was a rush of crimson before her eyes, and her head spun; and she barely realised it when Little John, shaking off his last assailant like a fly, sprang to his feet, seized her round the belly with one arm, and ran.
There was dirt and blood and tallow matted in the hair of his chest; he had shifted her up and against him as he ran through the thinning crowd, dodging around knots of fighting. She came to herself half-crushed, her aching head pounding with every thump of his running footsteps; then she heard the green man’s voice, and Little John paused. Cecily half-opened her eyes, conscious of the hot, sick-making smell of fresh blood, too near and too heavy, and the sound of Little John’s heart thundering in her left ear. The right side of her face was stiff and sticky, and when she moved her right hand she guessed that the blood-smell was coming mostly from her.
The green man and Gerard in his yellow hose and the young man in the surcoat were all there suddenly; the green man was saying, “—you are a mess,” and then, “set him down; that blood’s mostly yours and the man’s he stuck the knife into.”
She was set down gingerly, and she clung to the arms that had held her, because the world was still heaving under her feet; and then a voice, not Little John’s, said, “Stand still”—and a bucket of water was thrown over them.
She gasped something, and the green man swam into focus before her streaming eyes and said, “I thought that wasn’t your blood. Scrub off with this; we can’t stand around or they’ll catch us again.” He gave her and Little John a rough length of flannel each and she rubbed her face and arms. “You’ve ruined Osbert’s second-best coat, my lad,” the green man said, and sighed. “But then my green shirt seems to have disappeared entirely. How’s the eye?”
Little John’s face re-emerged from behind the towel. There was the beginning of a fine purple ring around one eye, but the cut was on the cheekbone, a safe distance away.
“Good. Let’s go.” He set off trotting toward the road out of town. Cecily’s head was still swimming, and as she took her second step she stumbled. Little John stopped immediately.
“No, don’t carry me,” she said, and put a hand on his arm. The green man and Gerard and Osbert were already several yards away. The arm under her fingers was streaked with black grease where the fighting—and the flannel—hadn’t quite rubbed it away. “You are a mess,” she said.
“You haven’t seen yourself, my friend,” said Little John. “Can you run? We dare not stand.”
“Yes.” Cecily blinked, willing the air to stop shimmering.
“While I think of it,” said Little John. She looked up. “Thank you.”
“Oh.” For a moment she remembered the flash of the other man’s knife, of Little John’s body arching back as the man dragged at his head, Little John’s newly shaven throat white through the dirt, and the man’s bared teeth, as though he would rather use them than the blade in his hand; the arc of that descending hand broken by Cecily’s own hand, and the burst of blood.… “Oh. Brothers in arms and that.” She swallowed. Again the scene played itself over to her: the other man’s knife, Little John’s throat, the burst of blood; the knife, the throat, the blood.…
“Not quite brothers,” said Little John.
Not quite brothers. She banished the scene to her nightmares, where she knew it would find her again. Not quite brothers. “If I can lean on you we can still catch them up.”
They set off. “Marian?” said Little John. “In their waggon,” replied Cecily. And in answer to the unspoken second question: “She’s alive.”
If the green man thought it odd that the wrestler he had taken a liking to was running hand in hand with his assistant, he said nothing, and merely bundled them into the back of the waggon with orders to be quiet. “You are not to so much as put a nose out till I tell you to. It’s too obvious that you’ve been in the thickest of it, which does not go well with the picture of peaceful players making the best of their way from other people’s troubles—besides, we’ve wasted enough clothing on you already. Annie, are there any clean shirts left? Or I’ll have to hide too.”
Annie shuffled toward the rear of the waggon long enough to hand Henry another shirt; but beyond one long look, unreadable in the waggon’s shade, she did not acknowledge the two newest passengers. She went back to her place by the pallet where Marian lay, and said no word. Marian was asleep or unconscious.
It was not an agreeable journey. There was very little room even on the floor; Little John sat down as best he could, bending his back as if it hurt him and folding his long legs up like the incongruous limbs of a child’s jumping jack. Cecily curled up beside him. She was stiff and sore also, but there was less of her to fold. She leaned against Little John; there wasn’t room not to. The motion of the waggon was slow and rough and noisy; the wooden wheels ground mercilessly through every rut, the wooden frame groaned, and many of the obscure bundles stowed in the waggon ticked and jangled and mumbled together with every lurch. Cecily’s head throbbed, and with the noise, the cramps in her muscles, and the unsteady movement, she began to feel rather sick.
She tried to find a more acceptable position, and Little John’s voice from the almost-darkness next to her whispered, “Are you as uncomfortable as I am?”
“I must be,” she whispered back. “It’s not being able to see, not knowing what’s happening, that’s as bad as the bruises.”
“Aye,” he agreed.
She turned round a little, and had the misfortune to knock her swollen jaw against a shadow that unexpectedly proved solid. She hissed involuntarily. Little John touched her shoulder.
“You’re hurt.”
“Just clumsy,” she said, trying to feel the place; it felt unpleasantly hot and squashy.
“Show me.” He raised his hand and almost put her eye out when the waggon rolled into another rut.
She took his fingers and guided them to her jaw. He touched her so lightly she barely felt it; her jaw felt cold and numb in waves at the same time as it was hot and swollen. She tried to press her teeth together against whatever was rising in her throat, without involving her jaw muscles. “Somebody’s foot,” she said.
“It’s not broken, I think,” he said.
“One casualty is enough,” she said; Marian, lying several feet away, was invisible in the darkness.
Cecily eventually found a different, marginally less desperately uncomfortable way to curl up, and the rocking and creaking of the waggon began to blur together, and it occurred to her that she was mortally tired.
She woke up because the waggon stopped; and as she heard Little John catch his breath she realised that she’d been dimly aware of his steady, slightly raspy breath over her face as he, too, slept. Her head (the sound cheek down) had come to rest on his knee, and slid down to be cradled by the curve between his hip and half-drawn-up leg. As she tried to sit up, his arm fell away from her shoulders.
“Ho there,” came a soft voice from outside. “We’ll stop here, I think. Anyone want to stretch his legs?”
Cecily half-fell into the green man’s waiting arms. Even Little John needed a steadying hand. Mary tied up the canvas curtain, and Annie stood up and hobbled toward the light, twilight now, just enough daylight left to scratch a hasty campfire together without the aid of a lantern.
“How is he?” said the green man.
Annie shook her head, and Cecily blurted, “Not—dead?”
Annie looked at her with what might have been sympathy; it was hard to tell. Her face was a network of wrinkles, and she looked happy and sad and angry and abstracted all at once. “Nay—not dead. Not yet. But not good.”
The young man whose second-best coat Cecily ruined had laid aside the coat he had been wearing and was plying his flint. A small blaze of dry grass lit Henry’s frown. “I—”
Little John said, “We
Henry said, half-dignified and half-annoyed, “I’m not trying to turn you out, man; have some supper with us, and we’ll talk.” He paused and looked at Little John. “Well, no. We probably won’t talk. I’ll talk, and your lad will burst out occasionally, and you’ll say as little as you can. But we’ve come this far. I demand as payment for the trouble you’ve given us—there’s a ruined coat and lost shirt between us, as you should remember—that you stay a little longer and eat with us.”
“But—” began Cecily.
“I don’t think another hour will make much difference to your friend one way or another,” said Henry. “If he’s not dead yet he’s not for dying at once; and before you start dragging him off through the trees, he might be grateful to lie quietly for a little time.”
“We are on the track for Sherwood,” said Little John, having recognised some landmark Cecily did not know. He sounded almost accusatory.
“You’re members of Robin Hood’s band, are you not?” said Henry, with badly feigned innocence. “I thought you’d be pleased.”
“We can take he—him to Tuck,” said Cecily to Little John.
“Friar Tuck,” said Henry. “Yes, I can take you very near his dwelling; we have met with him ere now and he has always been most kind. Indeed, he gave us some salves for bruised muscles that are the best I’ve ever used.” He grimaced. “I have lately needed to use them more than I care for.”
Little John was silent.
“I can get nowhere with you, can I?” Henry said sadly. “Probably you will not even tell me if you are the one named Little John?”
Little John said slowly, “Is he so famous, this Little John, that he stands out in the tales of Robin Hood’s outlaws?”
Henry said wistfully, “He stands out at least by reason of being as tall as a well-grown oak.”
Mary, and the young man Gerard of the yellow hose, and the waggon driver, who proved a young woman in a faded blue skirt, were pulling a variety of goods out of the waggon, and unpacking with the absent-minded briskness of long familiarity. Annie crouched by the little fire, feeding it slowly with twigs, while Mary arranged a frame over it so that a pot might hang suspended. Osbert disappeared, carrying a bucket.
“We might bring our—friend—out of his dark bed, and let us see what food and fire may do,” said Henry. Little John and Cecily exchanged glances, and then Cecily, being closer, stepped up into the waggon again. She heard Marian murmur and stir, and she made her way by touch back to where she lay. “Marian,” she whispered.
“Nay,” Marian said clearly, “’twill do you no good, sirrah, for my heart is already given, to the outlaw of the greenwood.”
“Oh dear,” said Cecily. Little John had followed her, and was stooping at her shoulder. “What do we tell them?”
“We tell them we want a sling,” said Little John. “Stay here with her.”
Cecily knelt, helpless and uncomfortable, at Marian’s side. She thought to check the sash she’d wrapped around the wound, but as her fingers touched the rough, crusted cloth, Marian shivered and cried out, and Cecily jerked her hand away. She tried to take hope from its stiffness; perhaps the wound had stopped bleeding. She touched one of Marian’s hands; it felt hot and strange, and it skittered away from her fingers, though Marian did not cry out again.
She could hear a muted argument going on outside. She closed her eyes a moment. Her nap had not refreshed her, and she felt as if her limbs were made of old and rotten wood: creaky and unreliable. She moved her jaw experimentally; that, she thought hopefully, was maybe a little bit better.
The waggon dipped protestingly under Little John’s weight. He was carrying a long folded cloth. “Take her shoulders—gently.” Marian bucked once against the hands upon her, and then went limp, and they eased her onto the blanket. They half-carried, half-slid her along the crowded floor of the waggon, trying not to jolt or bend her; eased her out the door and onto the greensward. The blanket ends were bunched and sticky in Cecily’s fingers in her effort to keep the heavy cloth pulled taut.
Osbert was stripping the leaves off new-cut ash poles and Gerard was untwisting a piece of rope into twine. Mary came forward with a thick needle, to start holes for the twine, and they began to rope the poles to either side of the blanket without disturbing the occupant. Cecily noticed that all the players kept stealing sidelong looks at the face of the person they thought was Robin Hood, and she wondered what they thought. Robin and Marian were much of a size, and the leather tunic Marian wore disguised her lighter shoulders and her breasts; her hands were as sinewy as any archer’s; and her face was grimy, and genderless in the tension of pain.
Henry was standing, arms folded, looking upset, to one side, doing nothing to help or to hinder. Cecily picked up the dipper from the bucket Osbert had filled at the spring she could hear close by, and knelt by Marian again. She sprinkled water on her hot face, and dribbled a little of it at her lips. Marian’s glazed eyes opened and seemed to try to focus. Cecily said hesitantly, “Can you sit up?” She slid a slow arm under Marian’s shoulders. Marian grimaced but did not protest; and Little John knelt at her other side and supported the small of her back. Her right hand—the one farther from the wound—came up to steady the cup Cecily held before her. She drank, and sighed, and her eyes rested on Cecily. “Don’t try to talk,” Cecily said hastily; a bit of a smile crossed Marian’s face, and her lips shaped silent words that might have been “I won’t.”
Mary had finished one side, bending under Little John’s long arm to prick the last holes; Little John thrust the pole into the loops and tightened the lashings. Cecily got up to let Mary begin the other side. She should take the needle away from Mary and do the work herself, but she was tired—so tired. As if Mary knew what she was thinking, she looked up and smiled; and Cecily smiled gratefully back. She drank a dipper of water herself, rolling it carefully around inside her sore cheek, and, seeing Henry staring at her, scowled right back at him. His face fell a little more, half-puckered, like a disappointed child’s. “At least eat something—or take food with you,” he said, trying to sound bitter and sounding only unhappy.
Little John looked up. “So long as we stay with you we endanger you. You saved our lives; we know that. The only thanks we are able to offer you is to leave you as quickly as we can. The hair on my nape tells me we are followed even now; and we cannot trust that no one noticed our leaving with you. I have found that what you most want to be overlooked will be seen, even if many other things are happening at the same time. There is something terribly attractive about any action that one wants not to be observed.” He got up to reach for the other pole. He found a knot on it that was liable to catch on the blanket; Osbert offered him his short knife. The blade twinkled briefly in Little John’s hand, and Cecily remembered again, with a shock like a kick, the twinkle of a blade in her own hand that had not been only a nightmare, and her stomach roiled, and she thought she was going to be sick. She sat down abruptly, till the curtain of red before her eyes faded.
Henry said, “Your lad is weak with weariness and hunger; he will be no good to you if he collapses.”
“I am not,” said Cecily, but her voice sounded not only weak but petulant; and she would not explain the nightmare. Let them think it was hunger.
Little John said with great gentleness: “This is what it is to be an outlaw.”
The pot over the fire had begun to steam. Annie dug in a sack brought off the waggon, and dumped some wooden bowls and chunks of bread on the ground near the fire; the loaves thumped together with a noise like stones. Annie dropped a chunk in each bowl and began to pour the soup over it; she came very deliberately to Cecily’s side with the first bowl and offered it to her as if she was expecting refusal. But Cecily took it, hoping Little John would wait long enough that the broth could soften the bread; her
Henry got the second bowl.
Cecily stabbed at the bread with her finger, willing it to crumble; Little John took his bowl with a grave “Thank you,” and began to eat at once. Cecily picked up her bowl and was going to go to Marian, but a gnarled little hand pressed down on her shoulder and dark wrinkled skirts whisked past her, and Annie was squatting by Marian with a bowl and a spoon.
Little John was finished too soon; Cecily gulped the broth and stuffed the sticky bread into a pocket for later, and rose to her feet. She did not know if she was merely infected by Little John’s anxiety, but she found that she too was restless, and did not after all wish to stay by this quiet fire and drowse and nurse her bruises. Little John bent to pick up the two poles of Marian’s rough litter, and Henry said, “Wait—I almost forgot.” He reached an arm around the corner of the waggon’s canvas door, and pulled out a little bag. “This is yours,” he said, and held out—Cecily’s hat. She looked at it in amazement. “You dropped it when you dropped your tunic,” he said. He shook it, and it jingled with the coins Little John had earned as a wrestler, a few centuries ago. “Take it.”
Cecily shook her head, and Henry took a step toward her. “No,” said Little John. “We’ll not take it. It is little enough to give you for our lives; but at least it may go some way to buying you a new shirt and jacket.”
Henry said uncomfortably, “I do not care about that; the shirt was old, and Osbert ruins his coats as often as anyone could do it for him. You may have need of money.”
Cecily shook her head again, but no words came to her. Again it was Little John who answered: “What lies next before us has little to do with money.”