The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley
The king said to Sir Richard, “I want a small chamber where my newly reinstated vassals and I may speak of their duties.”
Sir Richard rose that he might himself lead them. Several of the king’s men seated at the high table stood to follow, and the king nodded to them. The sheriff of Nottingham sat at the bottom of that table and stared before him, blankly, like a blind man; as the outlaws followed Sir Richard and the king, Cecily looked into the sheriff’s face. It was grey, as grey as Marian’s had been when Cecily had caught her in her arms on the day of the fair.
Sir Richard led them to his own private chamber: the room where Robin, not yet of the Hood, had sold him his last arrow as a free man, before the fatal meeting with Tom Moody on the way to another Nottingham Fair, a year and a half ago. Sir Richard stood aside at the door, to let the king and his guests go in alone, but the king gestured that he should join them. The lord of Mapperley looked surprised, and hesitated near his own door, like a servant expecting to be sent on some unnecessary errand, just to make him go away.
Some of the king’s servants appeared with chairs from the dining hall; Marian subsided into one immediately, but while the king indicated they might all sit down, none of the rest of Robin’s folk chose to do so. Even Much dug his crutches hard under his arms and stayed upright. The king’s men all sat—carefully at a little distance from the outlaws, where they had been at pains to instruct the servants to place chairs—but the king himself did not, choosing to prowl up and down the room, between his courtiers and the outlaws; and both sides wondered what was to happen.
The last servant left, closing the door behind him, and the gracious room was suddenly a prison. The hope Cecily had felt a few minutes before was too stubborn to die at once, but it felt itself beset.
The king said without preamble: “You are now mine, to do with as I choose; and what I tell you, you must obey.” No one said anything; one or two of the king’s men looked relieved. “I might have you ordered hung out on Sir Richard’s gibbet at dawn and it should be done; if for no other reason than that you are only twelve and I am king, and those around you would do my bidding.” He looked at the outlaws, catching everyone’s eyes in turn. “I might at least hang those two of you with the blood of king’s men on your hands: Robin Hood and John Little.”
The silence stretched out, like a midwinter night, cold and hard. The Lionheart stopped his pacing, and stood with his hand on Sir Richard’s desk. “I will not have outlawry running over this country while I am doing Christian business in the south. It is not enough that you have now sworn to me; you must be disposed of somehow—disposed of in such a manner that you will not be tempted to take up your old ways in the green and roofless halls of Sherwood. Your deaths are one such way of certain disposal.” Silence fell again; the king picked up a leather pen-holder and examined it as if it were a doubtful peace-offering from a treacherous knight.
“But I have other plans.” He set the pen-holder down. They all stared stoically at him. “The sheriff of Nottingham is a fool and a lout; and a cruel and greedy fool and lout. Him I am tempted to hang as I am not tempted to hang this company. I think I will not. I am not yet sure, but I think I will not. I have already given my Regent my opinion of his Regency, that he has not found time from his other pleasures to attend to the matter of the sheriff of Nottingham long since. Perhaps I spare your sheriff because I do not trust the strength of Sir Richard’s gibbet, which is old and long unused. Perhaps I. spare you because I do not know of a gibbet long enough for twelve at once and would not humble your loyalty to each other by hanging you separately.
“You are doughty fighters and I have need of such. I would have your services as soldiers when I go south again, which shall be as soon as I can raise the money.… I go from here to my tax assessors.” His smile turned wry. “You will be guests of my court, with the rest of my army, till we set sail. It will be some little while; you will have the time to heal and grow fit.
“And for the breaking of the king’s laws,” he said softly, “this shall be punishment enough, for I see you love England very much: that it will be years before you see her again.” He did not say, if ever, yet the outlaws heard the words nonetheless. “I will not let any of you go who can still march and fight till the Holy Land is freed.
“Alan-a-dale.” Alan straightened his back as his name was called, but his eyes held no spark of interest. “You are a minstrel.”
“It is likely I am one no more,” said Alan, raising his bandaged hand. “Not unless I can learn a way to hold down four strings with two fingers.”
“A soldier who no longer bears arms is still a soldier,” said the king. “Your wound was honourably received and you need have no shame of it; and I do not permit you despair. You can write, can you not?”
“I can,” said Alan, surprised.
There was a pause, but the king now had Alan’s attention. “You I will permit to stay here in England; I will make you scribe to the new sheriff. For this much I promise all of you: that there will be a new sheriff of Nottingham before I leave Mapperley. Alan-a-dale shall write to his new master’s orders, and eat and sleep easily, and rest that hand, and stretch the stiff tendons till they become supple, and play the lute again. If your master is not too demanding, you may, in your free time, write poetry.”
Alan did not quite smile.
“And the lady Marjorie will doubtless be useful in such a household as the new sheriff will have.”
Marjorie’s face was blank as she glanced at Alan.
“And so the king’s justice has come to this: that a man shall be rewarded for the taking of another man’s bride by an honourable post suitable to his skills. Your friends will think of you from Palestine, and envy you. Perhaps, if your master is very kind, and you have time and more to write poetry, you will also write a letter to your friends. War does upset the mails; but perhaps the letter will arrive, and your friends will read of spring in England, or of the satisfactoriness of the year’s harvest—or of comfortable daily household details they will not be able to understand.” The king paused again.
“I will do as the king wills,” said Alan slowly.
“But?” said the king softly. “An outlaw so newly escaped from the gibbet, and ungrateful already?”
Alan flushed. “Forgive me, sire, I did not mean ungratitude.”
“But,” repeated the king. “I will hear your but.”
Alan looked around a little wildly. “You offer me a reward beyond my deserts. But—for you ask—you would separate us from our friends, to take that reward. Robin Hood and his company gave us each other, and for this we owe these people our lives.” He looked at his hand. “My wound may have been honourably received, but it was not—intelligently received. Had I been trained as a—a soldier, I would not now be unable to play my lute.” He looked at Marjorie; she was smiling at him, and when he reached his good hand to her, she took it in both hers. “I would never have been a splendid addition to your army as a soldier, majesty, but—but I can write, here or anywhere. In Palestine. Cannot the king’s army use another scribe?”
The king said, “I could make you a scribe for the king. But everyone concerned with the king, you know, must expect to pick up a sword or a bow now and then; even my cooks know what to do with a knife besides chop vegetables.”
Alan hesitated, looking at Marjorie; and Marjorie said, “And what of me, majesty? I can chop vegetables at least, though I know little enough of the other uses of a knife.”
“I would not part a husband from his wife,” purred the king, “unless they themselves should wish it.”
Marjorie laughed, a surprising sound in that room. “Nay, majesty, if my Alan is to go to Palestine, I come too. There are no estates to manage between the two of us; no convenient reasons for us to separate. I have learnt things, these past months, that I had not expected ever to learn—about what it is like when you have not enough to eat and your neck is stiff from sleeping in the damp. I had not thought that these
“I write a fair hand too, majesty, unless you would rather have me chopping vegetables. And the heat will be a change from Sherwood.”
The king smiled his discomfiting smile. “I did not anticipate finding the king’s mercy so … instructive.
“Tuck.” Tuck started. “You may go or stay as you choose. I do not demand your presence in my army; you were once a wandering friar, I believe, as friars are; but perhaps you feel your wandering days are over, and that all your desires center upon a new roof for the chapel you tend.”
Tuck said, stuttering a little: “I had thought so, sire, but I was perhaps mistaken. I nursed the sick once long ago in the land of the Saracen, for the heat and the plague-ridden air did not seem able to grip me, and I spent years there unscathed. I came home at last, for I missed the green grass here too heartily; yet now I think I would miss my friends more.”
“Good,” said the king. “I would have wished you to answer so; my army has need of your skills. But till a few minutes ago I would not have expected such an answer.…
“Much.”
Much jerked his eyes away from the empty chair with the cushion on the seat that his leg was begging his dignity to reconsider. “Sire.”
“You, too, have been sore wounded—more sorely than my new scribe. Your father, I think, would be glad to see you back at Whitestone.”
Much blinked. This was more surprising than the king’s knowledge of the roof of Tuck’s chapel. “I—that is—are you asking me? My father would take me in, sire, but he has little need of me with three sons-in-law—any one of whom has several inches on me in height and length of reach. And that was before—this.” He glanced at his leg. “I will not be carrying many bags and bales in the near future.”
“Nor swords and bows either,” said the king. “Of the two, I think you would make a better miller than a soldier.”
Much said nothing.
“The prospect does not please you? What a stubborn and perverse folk outlaws are. To stay in England and see the turn of her seasons, to eat bread that never has weevils in it, while your old comrades fight for their lives in the heat and dust of the Holy Land? That leg will trouble you your life long, I think; you would be better in England, where when winter bites you would have a warm hearth to sit beside. Old wounds ache strangely in the south, they ache and gape and do not heal.
“Still you say nothing? Perhaps you think, like those who have already spoken, that you would miss your comrades more. Perhaps you wish a choice?”
This time the king let the silence stretch out; and at last Much said, grimly, “I would, majesty. I would have a choice.”
“You can write figures neatly in columns that other scribes may read?” the king said. “I have heard that the old miller at Whitestone by Nottingham is so odd as to keep his accounts written down in figures, and I know you are that man’s son. Can you do accurate sums?”
“I can,” said Much, a little dazedly.
“Then you shall be marshal, and keep accounts for the king’s army, and for the sparing of your life and your comrades’ you shall tell me when my other marshals would cheat me. Do you like this choice better?”
“I do,” said Much. “If I must look forward to spending most of my time hence sitting down, then I am grateful for a function that does not necessarily include Saracens or angry farmers chasing me.”
“Gilbert, Rafe, Bartlemey; I offer you no tricky choices. Do I spare you, I wonder, or merely work the king’s whim upon you? And Sibyl … I plan to take you south, too, to satisfy the king’s whim. Blind eyes to certain things have long precedent, in other armies than mine; and I am not, perhaps, very particular about certain things that do not seem to me to be critical.
“Will of Norwell … Will Scarlet. If I wished to punish you, in the sense of a judge sending an outlaw to gaol, I should send you home to your father and elder brother. Their tutelage, I believe, you find so little to your liking that even the rough tutelage the Saracens will offer you is preferable. I wonder, therefore, if exile from England is enough for you?” The king paused, looking measuringly at Will. Will met his king’s gaze forthrightly; the aristocratic air that had never quite left him, despite so many months as an outlaw, was very much in evidence. “But I think,” the king said slowly, consideringly, “that some punishment—some anxiety beyond the prickling of the nape that every soldier must have—shall come to you nonetheless.
“John Little …” But the king turned his eyes to Cecily, who stood at Little John’s side. “I guess you would go with him, my lady, would you not?”
“I am ‘lady’ no more,” said Cecily; “it is a title I gave up when I left my father’s house, and called myself Cecil, and cut my hair. Yes, majesty, I would go with you to the Holy Land to stay near Little John; without him I would still go—if you let me—to be near my comrades.”
Will made some gesture, quickly suppressed, but not so quickly that the king—and Will’s sister—did not notice. The king let a little pause establish that he had noticed.
“I shall not call you lady, as you ask,” said the king; “but I do not think I can call you Cecil either. But you and Sibyl will not be the only beardless young men in my army.
“Little John, does this satisfy you also? Is this reward, or the king’s whim?”
“I do not ask reward,” said Little John. “It is more than I hoped for.”
“But you—like so many of your comrades—do not sound glad of your unhoped-for reward.”
“Majesty, you are playing with me,” said Little John heavily. “I would not be parted from this woman, as you know or guess; and yet is it not the worst nightmare of all to be in mortal danger that your lover shares? For so it shall be in your army.”
“A philosopher,” said the king. “I am not sure I approve of a soldier philosopher. I might suspect such a man to be led by his thoughts to wonder if it matters which army wins the war.”
“You do not know him,” Cecily said sharply; “or you would not suggest that he might behave dishonourably.”
“He has king’s money on his head for some act someone found dishonourable,” said the king in his purring voice; “but perhaps you know him better than this someone.”
“I know him as well as anyone may know another. Well enough to say what I have said—whatever circumstance may seem to be set to the contrary—and to know the truth of it.”
“Hmm,” said the Lionheart. “A philosopher and a fire-eater. I had not thought of this either, when I planned what to do with my outlaws.”
“Marian of Trafford.”
Marian raised her head; her face was pale and her skin damp. “I am no fighter,” she said, “no soldier. I have killed the king’s deer many times, for arrows go where I choose to send them, and my friends were hungry. But I have loved that archery best when I drew against a straw target that did not fall and bleed when my arrows struck it.” She stopped, panting a little; but the king remained silent. “And I have found,” she went on, “that I like even less the other side of soldiery; for I have never disliked anything so much as I have disliked this hole in my side.”
“It is a discovery that comes to many soldiers,” said the Lionheart. “’Tis where much of the best of my taxes comes from, for when my good soldiers come home to England they become my good farmers and burgesses.” He paced the width of the room and back. “But to you, too, Marian of Trafford, I give a choice; and yet what I ask of you might be a thing more hard than soldiering.” He stopped, turned, and faced her. “I would make you the new sheriff of Nottingham.”
The king’s men stirred; they calmed themselves at once, but the looks on their faces faded more slowly.
“It would be easiest,” the Lionheart said dreamily, “if I ordered you married to the present sheriff, had him quietly assassinated, and ignored the resulting situation while his relict took capably over.”
There was an appalled silence.
“I th
His advisors all went limp in their chairs.
“Many of my best soldiers, you know, do not survive their wounds, to become my good farmers and burgesses—and sheriffs.
“It would not be easy to make Lady Marian a sheriff; but I am the king, and I would think of a way.” Marian opened her mouth, licked her lips, and closed it again. “Speak your mind,” said the king. “I am, as I have said, finding this meeting very instructive.”
“Such an offer—suggestion—choice—leaves me very little mind to speak with,” said Marian, at a loss. “Why do—why does the king think to—to award me such a role?”
The king smiled a carnivorous smile. “I cannot think of better training for important administrative matters than the double life you have led in the last nineteen months. That you did lead it is proof that you could be successful in the situation I now suggest.” He added, “Sir Richard made an elegant tale of the buying back of his estates, my lady, in which. you were significantly the heroine.”
“It was not a role I enjoyed,” said Marian.
The Lionheart’s eyebrows rose. “I have not and will not speak of enjoyment to any of you. I spoke of punishment—punishment to fit your crimes against the king’s peace; punishment to fit my needs, and your abilities.”
“You have also spoken of choice,” said Marian.
“So I have. May my new sheriff be so sharp with those who wish to curb the king’s taxes.
“Robin Hood.”
Robin met his king’s eyes. Survival, as a soldier of the king in the Holy Land, is what he would hope for, survival as his reward, if he could seize it—to see England again. To see Marian again.