Maid Marian (22 page)

I knew nothing of field work, and the thought alone made me tremble, especially when I recalled that it meant a whole day spent with John and the field-men. But Meg told me later that many women would go, that she had gone herself in the past, and ’twas not as hard as it might seem. I nodded and acted as though I believed her, but when we rose the next morning I was filled with dread, and I followed the men out with a tremulous heart.

The home farm, I learned, was the expanse of fields that Sir Thomas owned, surrounding the manor house. Thetbury’s manor house was mean in comparison with Denby Manor, but even so it was the greatest house in the village. We were, I found, to do week work there, which meant toil donated by the grown workers of every household in the village.

As this was the first day’s work of the week, it came with a wet boon, or a noon meal with ale and wine, as a gift for every worker. Since the steward would be present to oversee the wet boon, I expected to see him also at the fields, for I thought he would want to survey our work. But when we arrived there was only the reeve to place us in order. Matthew whispered to me that the reeve was a bitter man whom I should avoid, for it was his right to beat any worker he thought guilty of laziness, and for this purpose he carried a stout crabtree staff.

Nearly every face I’d seen in Thetbury since my arrival was present on the fields, both men and women, standing with scythes or long-handled rakes. I joined the rakers and was put in position, and all too soon the work began. We were to follow the cutting men and drag the newly sliced shafts of hay into hillocks. Behind we were followed by boys like Matthew, who pulled our hillocks into greater mounds which the cart could take up at the end of the day. On either side of me glowed merry faces, red with sun and the warmth of work, but happy, for they had time to gossip as they raked.

I, however, found it hard going. I struggled to do my work well, but my rake seemed to catch on every bristly stalk, and great clods of dirt clogged my tines. What I lacked in technique, I hoped to make up by the sweat of my brow and by sheer willingness, and I thought I had begun to improve, for I was never more than a few steps behind the rest of my band. But when the men were given a break, Uncle John took a moment to catch my ear, whispering loud in an angry breath.

“Get a move on there, Mary! Ye do not want to catch the mean end of the reeve’s stick, now do ye? Come on, move it faster—ye shall not go shaming the Tamworths today, or I’ll make you suffer for it later, I promise ye!”

His words brought a new sense of terror to my heart, and I moved from then on at a double-quick pace. My mind never strayed from my rake and my hay shafts, and I attacked them with a frightened ferocity, desperate to keep abreast my mates. My shoulders ached from yanking and tugging, my skin itched from loose grass and chaff, but I ignored every discomfort. This was field work, and I was coming to learn that it took far more talent and strength of limb than I had ever imagined. At last the reeve sounded his horn and all worked ceased. I followed the girls toward the manor house, jealous of their merry laughter which rose as easily as songs from the pampered, or odes from the lips of the idle.

Matthew caught up with me as we walked, to give me advice on the art of the rake. He told me then, to my despair, that the week work would continue until every one of Sir Thomas’s fields was mowed and stacked. I looked about at the vastness before me and then behind, to the paltry amount we had just finished, and felt tears rising high in my eyes.

Matthew hastened to bid me be calm, for he claimed that I’d improved already and that each day’s work would come easier than the one before. I nodded and pretended to be pleased, enjoying a moment of chat with Matthew, for he was a kind lad and meant well. Indeed, it was he who first noticed that I was the object of some attention, for he leaned in close and whispered.

“Mary, I do believe that Walter the Miller has his eye on you! Do not look now, but I’ve seen him starin’ a handful of times already this morning. I shouldn’t wonder if he’d try to sit with you at the noon meal.”

I bided my time, noting Matthew’s observation while I held my face as firm as marble. But when a moment of confusion came, I looked where he’d pointed and saw the miller, a middle-aged man with a round red face, peering my way. I nodded grimly and dashed ahead to join the girls, determined to be surrounded by them when it was time to choose seats at the table.

In the manor house we sat at long benches and waited while Sam Dell, a Thetbury cotter, filled up our tankards with fresh ale and old wine. Our group was merry on account of the wet boon, for most had ale only as a treat and drank dingy well water with all their meals. I looked more forward to the meal itself, for we were given chicken and wheat-barley bread rather than rye—a treat indeed.

I noticed the miller’s face several more times, always pointed boldly in my direction, but I shied away from every glance and prayed he would not single me out. I had no wish to cause trouble in Thetbury by declining the advances of the miller, and if he persisted I knew I would do it, for what young elm thinks the chestnut attractive when she has known the love of an oak?

When we’d eaten, we all were released for the day, and I went home with a joyous heart while John and Matthew went to their own fields. All afternoon long I indulged myself in complaining to Meg of my morning troubles, and she, as always, listened with grand sympathy, for Meg had a most gentle heart.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
we took to the home farm again, and the next, and the next. On the last day Matthew was called to the fore to join the men with their scything work. He paused on his way to tell me of it, hefting the awkward weight of the scythe as he told me he thought it his father’s doing that he was put to work with his elders.

“He says if I go up to work with the men they’ll push me to do more with each stroke than I would with the rakers. He says men always respond to a challenge, that they take greater strides in competition than they would have the will to do otherwise.”

“Yes, ’tis true,” I laughed, waving him off. “Men and dogs, I think, both do it.” He ran froward with a nervous smile and took his place ahead of my band, and I was left to think for a moment on what he had said.

There was wisdom there, I reasoned, that stretched beyond the haying field. All that morning I allowed my mind to dance its way through Uncle John’s notion, and as I did my thoughts, as always, turned to Robin. I considered how our life had been and how our companionship had pressed us both to strive and advance. In our arguments he’d made me defend my position better by fighting ably for his. He’d pushed me to learn to spar with a cudgel, to speak for my views, to even walk fifteen miles in a day. As I worked with my rake I let my mind spin like a slow millstone over this thought, cracking and rumbling till the stuff of my reason seemed light as dust.

And that very night as I lay on my patch of straw, the dark seemed to open in a tunnel above me, the way the clouds can sometimes do when they part to let the sun beam through. Robin, I saw, had done far more than encourage me to reason and give voice to my thoughts. Nay, indeed, his influence was far greater than that.

Since I’d arrived in Thetbury village, I’d been plagued by the memory of my two great failings, or what I saw as my very worst hours. The first was when I was set to wed Stephen and had failed to settle on a plan of escape, for in the end I’d left myself at the mercy of my own indecisions. My second shame was my flight from Sherwood and the haphazard way I had followed my fate. I am a woman who values more than anything the well-laid scheme, the artful program. And yet, at my own most crucial hours, I had been too immobilized by fear to settle on a course.

I’d always longed to strike at life with great cracks and blows, but when I stood with the staff in my hand I fretted too much over what stroke to take. Robin threw his own life down in a rush, caring little for perfection, but with a bliss I envied deeply. Like a flash in the dark it all came clear—the greatest thing Robin had shown me was how to live free from worry. “You paralyze yourself with fear, Marian,” he’d said. “Life is to be lived, not shied from.”

Robin was bold and daring and wild—this, I saw, was what he had that I’d never managed to find for myself. With him beside me, I too could be brave and flee Warwick Castle or learn how to fight. I could face the queen’s chill blue eyes, or Lady Pernelle’s grasping hands. I could even be brave enough to fall in love.

Love. With a stifled moan I opened my eyes to face the darkness and felt ashamed at my own cowardice. For I had fled the nest of love. I had been too afraid to see what would become of Robin and the queen, and I had fled. When life had appeared too chaotic and chancy, I went my own way to save myself. Now I feared I had lost what was best of me as part of the bargain.

’Twas pitiful to look back on it now, to recall how my heart had contracted and tremored in the face of danger—the very same danger I was sure Robin had looked dead in the eye and had a laugh with. I was sunk in regret, for I now saw that whatever Robin had hidden that morning, it did nothing to excuse my flight. I ought to have waited to hear him out, I ought to have had some faith in him. Perhaps I was hard on myself that night; perhaps I was not hard enough. But however it was, I awoke the next day feeling that I had slumbered in a cocoon and now emerged as a new-winged creature.

My first thought was that I should make haste to Sherwood to find my friends and rejoin them at once, but the morning news made me reconsider. The battle between Prince John and the queen had heightened, and Gil the Carpenter said there was fighting now near Nottingham town. He also brought word that King Richard was expected to return by Christmas, to sit once again on the throne of England, and ban his young brother from raising such armies.

I heard this news and thought hard on it, for if it were true that they battled in Nottingham, Robin most surely would have moved his men to a different forest or a remote hill town. And so I decided to remain where I was rather than chase them about the countryside. I tried not to fret and told myself that Robin lived on, believing for once more in hope and good wishes than in my own apprehension.

Chapter Nineteen

T
HE SUMMER LEAVES
changed from green to gold, and still the news did not improve. I resolved again to stay as I was while the world of the nobles settled itself, content for the moment to be Mary Cox of Thetbury village. In the autumn we had more work than before, for after the week work to harvest Sir Thomas’s home farm grain, we had our own to sickle and thresh. The whole family went to our fields at harvest, and I bundled sheaves like Ruth in the Bible, struggling to bind off my bundles and feeling my arms ache in much the same way. I nearly wept, truly, when the priest came past to collect his one sheaf out of every ten, as was his due. I had few quarrels with God’s church, but I resented losing one of my bundles to feed the bishop, when I knew ’twould be a greater charity to take it home to our own barn.

The threshing was horrid, for the chaff and dust made a cloud in the air and settled in hair, in eyes and noses, and itched beneath our very clothes. At times I felt half blind from dust and was often chastised for clearing my eyes, when I ought to be tossing up shovels of wheat to let the loose chaff fly off in the air.

We wasted no portion of our grain, for even the rye straw was gleaned and bundled for bedding and strewing on the floor in winter. Meg and I brewed barley ale and sold it in skin sacks on market days, and even the chaff was saved up in sacks to feed to the oxen over the winter. As the days grew cooler, John and Matthew went regularly into the woods, taking with them the wood penny as payment to Sir Thomas for collecting dead wood from his forest.

When at last our family threshing was done, Meg and I hauled the newly bare kernels to the mill, bringing with us the precious two shillings eightpence we would pay the miller to grind our wheat. The mill, Meg said, was owned by Sir Thomas, but Walter the Miller rented it from him for twenty shillings a year. ’Twas illegal, she told me, to grind one’s own grain, for as part of Sir Thomas’s agreement with the miller all Thetbury grain had to pass beneath his stone.

This bitter news and the loss of two shillings eightpence put me in no mood to smile at the miller, no matter how obliging he tried to be, for the family funds had become my own, and I felt in my heart that we were being cheated. Meg laughed when I told her so and said I would weep to witness the spring when our taxes were paid and see what a lot of shillings were owed to Sir Thomas as tallage for our strips of land. And then there were the hens and eggs at Easter and the Lady Day tallage, and tithe to the church if any animals were born in April and May.

“And if you were to wed, Mary, my girl, we would owe another tax to Sir Thomas then, called the marchet.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ve no plans to marry, so you may at least keep the marchet money until Janey goes.”

“I wouldn’t be too hasty,” she said, with a coy look, “I’ve heard many a man in town ask after you, and John tells them freely that you’ve never been wed.”

I blushed for a moment, an appropriate gesture for a maid, though Meg couldn’t know why I truly reddened. For not only had I in fact been wed, but my heart belonged fastly to another and while he lived I could not be made to darken a church door with any man of Thetbury.

N
OT ONE WEEK LATER
as I carried a noon meal out to Uncle John and Matthew, down in a waste field slaughtering hogs, I happened to see a most curious thing. The day before we’d heard news that Sir Thomas was coming to pass his annual night in Thetbury Manor, and I’d had my eyes turned sharply for him, for I wished to spy him before he saw me. So as I walked I kept on the lookout, and I hadn’t very long to wait.

I saw a crowd gathered on the main road and slipped in behind those in the back so I could peer round without being seen. There came Sir Thomas, apple round as ever, but with him came a velvet-decked lady. Without thinking of my own disguise, I threaded my way through the crowd of villagers to where I could see the dame’s face as she passed. And who do you suppose the lady was? None but Lady Pernelle of Sencaster.

She and Sir Thomas were waving to the crowd with such exaggerated condescension, it made me almost laugh to see it. If they only could have known that in honesty and manners these villagers were far more noble than they! For that one moment I understood Robin’s inherent dislike of the Norman tribe, for having played Mary Cox the Saxon for so long, I’d come to feel like one myself and fostered a native’s rigid hatred for the ruling class.

The irony of this made me chuckle, for I recalled that as a noble lady, near a lifetime ago, I’d ridden through Thetbury village myself. But I was not a noble now, and from my low position on foot I could see the conceit of these two rulers much better than I ever had while I was seated upon a horse.

Lady Pernelle! I was so astonished, I scarcely knew what to think at first. Sir Thomas, I recalled, was her cousin, and perhaps they were close friends as well. But then I turned round what Robin had said so long ago, before I knew what the kiss of love was, when I was so desperate to avoid being wed. “Perhaps she wants to help her cousin keep his post,” he’d said, or something to that effect. But why, I had argued, would she care so much for her simple cousin?

Well, here at last was the answer, riding plainly before me. For as I watched, Lady Pernelle’s horse stepped into a puddle and stumbled. Sir Thomas, all concern, reined in until their steeds were shoulder to shoulder and took her hand gallantly in his. These were no simple cousins; this was plain when they turned and smiled at each other’s eyes. Nay, indeed, these two were lovers.

T
HE FIRST FROSTS CAME
late in November, and from that day forward our lives were focused on the hearth and on drying wet clothes before we took cold. This, without question, was the most miserable winter I had ever passed, for we all five were crowded about the fire from morning till night, sucking in smoke as if it were ether and propping our shoes up on log rounds to dry.

I had a great deal of leisure in which to sit and think, for we scarcely found words enough to pass the time from waking till breakfast, and after that the little house fell into ponderous silence, ideal for thought. I had a number of things to consider. First and foremost, I began to believe in the days before Christmas that I had committed a great wrong in fleeing Sherwood Forest for Thetbury, a wrong not so much against Robin and the band, but against what was best for my own course. For now I’d transported from forest to village, but to what purpose, I wished to know.

I regularly awoke on my pile of straw wondering what I was about living there—did I wish to remain there the rest of my days? And if I did not, why stay at all? As near as I could tell I was learning little beyond raking and churning, so why was I content to remain in this place? Was it merely because I knew not what else to do? In Sherwood, at least, I had been near Robin and Annie both. Here I felt deathly alone.

If these questions hadn’t been enough to occupy me, I still had Lady Pernelle to consider. And the longer I let her face float through my mind, the more certain I became that something sinister had happened to Hugh. I remembered my distress at the mixed reports concerning his death and that the queen herself had deigned visit to tell me of it. This last had been stuck like a thorn in my mind all these years and remained there still, hardened fast. Taken as one, these matters made me crumple my brow and wonder what cause Lady Pernelle might have had to execute her own son and heir.

She had been regent to Hugh, I knew, and ruled Sencaster in his stead while he studied in the king’s court in Anjou. Hugh’s death made it possible for her to rule on, now as regent to young Stephen, but was that cause enough to warrant a killing? I had heard, of course, of the penchant young nobles often had for begrudging their widowed mothers their dowers; perhaps Lady Pernelle thought Hugh might grow to be one of those sons who shuns his own mother. Given what I knew of Hugh’s temperament, it was easy to imagine such a circumstance. But would even that drive a mother to kill her own son? I had seen from Meg what strong love a mother could bear her children, and I would have doubted the possibility, had I not already learned to mistrust Lady Pernelle.

Fortunately for all in Thetbury, the slow pace of winter was pricked with holy days here and there, each one glinting like a half-rainbow in the midst of a hailstorm. Beyond food and drink and meeting with friends, the mass days were thrilling for the news that was spread, giving us items to plumb and mine as we suffered the hours by our hearthside. And the news of this winter held a special interest, for much occurred that altered the face of our world.

King Richard was expected, as I have said, to return in time for a holiday court—but he did not come. Instead the queen held Christmas court in London, still enforcing, I supposed, her bargain with the English nobles to restrain Prince John from raising an army.

Soon after this came the woeful news that the king had been sailing, indeed, for our land, when he was shipwrecked off Istria, a port town of Italy. From there he had fled over land to Austria, where—horrible but true—he was taken prisoner by Leopold, the duke of that country. This duke handed Richard at once to his liege, Henry Hohenstaufen, emperor of Germany, who imprisoned our king and kept him trapped as bait for a terrific ransom.

The next report held more news of Prince John, for once the prince heard of Richard’s capture, he fled to Normandy to declare himself Richard’s heir and require oaths of loyalty from the Norman barons. This was a devious thing to try, and so we were not so surprised to hear soon after that he had joined forces with Philip of France and was attacking lands held by his own brother.

The queen, of course, was frantic over Richard and sent English nobles, the bishop of Ely included, to plead his case with the Hohenstaufen without delay. Around me the villagers thought all this incredible and swore in anger at the German ruler, but I looked at their poor faces and felt a great terror on their behalf. I knew the German ransom would be more than dear—it would be the most our land could afford. If these villagers felt their taxes now, they should be nearly killed by a tax for the king’s ransom.