Maid Marian (9 page)

At last he stopped and sat beside me, and for a strange moment we both sat in silence, unsure what topic to introduce. I recalled my day and Ellen’s story and thought a compliment might make some amends for my offense of the morning.

“Ellen told us today how you managed to wed her to Allan a Dale. It seems she’s indebted to you for her every happiness.”

He laughed. “I trust Allan will take full responsibility for keeping her happy. I did it to please him, if you wish to know how it truly was, but I am glad to hear that she is well pleased in the bargain.”

“I was surprised to hear that you found such ways to help the poor beyond a simple donation of pennies.”

“If you think the donation of pennies so simple—”

“Nay, good sir, you mistake my meaning.” I softened my tone. “I only meant that you had done good in an unusual way, and I was curious to hear of it.”

“’Twould be far better to have funds to give. The sheriff of Nottingham and the bishop of Heresford seem bent in competition to see which of them can squeeze the most out of the laborers here. ’Tis a sad affair, I tell you truly, to see the bishop’s man taking off a wife’s last chicken or sack of grain.”

“Indeed, taxation is a vicious thing. But if you had seen King Richard’s army as he left on crusade and known what funds it took to raise it! The taxation must be hard to witness family by family, but it is, I think, a necessity if we wish to have our land defended and well ordered.”

The instant the words had fled my mouth, I regretted them. Surely the perplexed look on Robin Hood’s face meant he had no wish to enter into this conversation, for he looked as if he struggled to reconcile something at odds within himself.

“Forgive me,” I said. “You must think it bold for a woman to speak of such matters.”

“If I did, Lady Marian, I would think that boldness a virtue rather than a fault. Nay, in the common turn I do not discuss such things with any person, man or woman. I find I need time to form my thoughts. This much, though, I’ve thought out plainly. I’ve naught to say against King Richard, for if he deems the holy lands to be in peril of falling to infidels, then I say too that he is right. But the taxation you may witness here has little to do with armies and order. The housewife’s hens are sold at market to buy another jewel for the sheriff’s cap and do little to keep her safe at night.”

“But, even so, the king must allow his barons some benefit from the odious task of collecting the tax. Much as I know he receives from his lords, he cannot take all or his own barons would surely rebel against his crown. Indeed, perhaps the fault may lie not with the percentage of the tax he takes, but with his desire to raise so much. Surely, he need not have traveled off on crusade before he had lived one full year with the crown on his brow, although I do think that if he were going, he needs must have taken the fullest army he could muster. And that required a drastic increase in the amount of the tax.”

He turned to face me and spoke low, but I had the sense that this control of voice took great restraint, for he certainly felt for the subject with passion.

“This increase in tax has broken men’s backs. I have seen families in winter without clothes to wear, banded twenty in a home to share wood for heat. Know ye, Lady Marian, that in this time of year most laboring people eat but one meal a day, and that of vegetable pottage only, as their grain is all gone? This time of great work, with plowing and sowing, is done by those almost too weak to stand, but too hungry to do otherwise. How can you say that this must happen for the king’s crusade, when in Nottingham town sits a fat sheriff in silk and velvet, drinking Gascon wine and dining on pasties stuffed with suet and raisins? Who takes the last pennies from a villager’s store to buy red-dyed linen trappings for his horse? I say to you that the king’s war may be well or may be not, but the freedom he allows his barons and lords is not well at all. Were he here, no doubt, he would rein them in and cut their gluttonous behavior back.”

I found this surprising, for I had no such notion that King Richard would restrict his barons were he nearer. If they were happy and gave him no grief, I was persuaded that he would be pleased and might be inclined to give them more freedom in the control of their lands rather than less.

“And so, as he is not here to do so, you undertake this task for him?”

“Someone must,” he grumbled, and soon he rose again and disappeared into the dimming light of evening.

I
FOUND MYSELF,
on the following day, thinking often of Robin Hood, tracing back through our debates to follow a path not taken, an argument missed in the flash of the moment. I wished more than anything for a second chance to argue things out with him, for I had very few worthy opponents, and I loved a debate as nothing else. I feared, however, that he took our disagreements more personally than he ought, for after each he seemed compelled to pace a while about the camp, as if he needed time in which to compose himself enough to return.

Annie and I spent this day helping Ellen collect small twigs and branches for kindling fires, and this time, since we knew the tale, her prattling did not bother our ears. She was, indeed, a cheerful soul who loved nothing better than to recant every particular of her wedding day, and we were willing to nod and smile through a second day’s telling of her blue gown and the early rose. Without giving her tale a whit of attention, we murmured at all the proper places, though, in truth, she did not even need that slight encouragement.

That night Robin Hood’s band returned early, for they had intercepted the page and seized the contents of his prized satchel. Annie and I went running to meet them along with the men remaining in camp, our mouths full of praises for their brave deeds. Robin Hood, smiling broadly at his success, thrust a sack brimming with letters in my direction.

“Your mail, Lady Marian, has arrived.”

I smiled and thanked him and was desperate to ask what had become of the page, but I dared not risk offending him while the precious letter lay in my hands. I held my tongue and contented myself with pawing through the leather bag until I found a piece of parchment addressed to Lady Pernelle of Sencaster, sealed with the royal mark of three stacked lions, swimming in wax.

Taking the letter near the fire to warm the seal, I gently pried the wax oval back and unfolded the stiff sheet. I let my eye pass over the start, filled with salutations and courtly niceties, but when I saw the letter’s purpose, read its message once and twice, I sat back, hardly noticing that the letter had fallen to my lap. In another moment Robin Hood came close to peer at me, for I suppose my face had gone so white he may have feared for my life or wits.

“What is it, Lady Marian? Does it bear bad news?”

I said nothing, only held the letter out to him, but he would not take it. His eyes moved quickly from letter to ground, and he said with a harsh voice, “I cannot read it, so do not give it to me.”

I blushed at my mistake and fumbled with the sheet before me, sorry to have given him pain. “It says,” I said, lowering my face under pretense of reading again, “it says the queen grants her permission for me to marry Sir Stephen of Sencaster, Lady Pernelle’s only living son.”

He sat beside me and fiddled a moment with a tear in his legging.

“Forgive my ignorance, Lady Marian, but does this truly come as a surprise? You told me yourself you were sure the queen meant to marry you to some noble man. Is this Sir Stephen so very bad?”

“Nay, you misunderstand my reaction. ’Tis not Stephen—he is but a boy, no more than twelve or fourteen at most.” My hand fluttered above the sheet in an effort to make him understand. “I told you I was wed before. But I did not tell you that it was to Hugh of Sencaster that I was married, Lady Pernelle’s older son. Hugh died in the court of Anjou and on his death Lady Pernelle sought to have that marriage annulled, meaning that I lost my dower, my right as a widow to part of Hugh’s property. The queen agreed and sided against me, and I was left without. I barely regained my own lands.”

“So it seems to you as if Lady Pernelle wants your lands attached to hers at all costs?”

“I do not know, it seems so strange. After she was so cruel to me at court when Hugh died, I am stunned to hear she should want me back. Perhaps there are no marriageable ladies available now? But they cannot be in a rush to marry Stephen away, so young as he is. I do not know what to think.”

“Has she no other reason to want your lands in particular? Are they adjoining hers or of some special value?”

“They are near hers but do not touch. And I do not believe they are of any significant value beyond the grain they grow and the lambs they support.”

Again Robin Hood’s face looked queer. “Do you manage these lands yourself, Lady Marian?”

“Nay, since I was a child they have been governed by my regent, a Sir Thomas Lanois. ’Tis strange, but I know little of him. He is cousin to Lady Pernelle. I believe she appointed him when I was still married with Hugh.”

“Perhaps all she wishes is to let this Sir Thomas remain where he is. If you were wedded to another man, he would give Sir Thomas the boot, would he not?”

“Yes, I suppose you are right. But Stephen is her only remaining son. Would she waste his one chance at marriage to keep her cousin in his place? Perhaps, perhaps she would. I honestly cannot venture to guess what Lady Pernelle has in mind. She is an enigma to me.”

I fell into a deep reverie, lost in my own thoughts of Lady Pernelle and her odd behavior, for truly, with all the guesses I’d had of the contents of this letter, its actual information was some I had never imagined. Robin Hood wandered off, seeing, I supposed, that he could not assist me, and I was left alone to ponder. But my thoughts were old; they stayed to their path and cycled round, never providing anything fresh, never reaching a finishing point.

At last I grew frustrated and shook myself, forcibly occupying the paths of my mind with the task of resealing the letter and placing it back within its bag. This I took to Robin Hood and thanked him again for having brought it to me.

“Pray, do not thank me more, Lady Marian. My rugged ears cannot take such soft words.” The sack was given to Will Stutley with orders to lead the page to his road and send him lightly on his way. “Perhaps a bit of sport will suit you this evening,” Robin Hood said, turning back to grin at me. “I will take care to place you close to the action, so your weak Norman eyes may make it all out.”

For once a distraction did seem welcome, and I smiled and thanked him for it. And so, while the venison cooked and the pullets turned helplessly on their spits, garlands were hung on far-off trees as targets for the archers. Closer to us, men warmed up their wooden cudgels by knocking them in practice against their neighbors’. Soon regular matches began, and Robin Hood, scarcely able to keep his seat, shouted out encouragement and advice.

“There y’are now, Little John! Excellent parry, Gilbert! Watch your crown as you go, we want no broken pates this evening. Keep the feet moving, Little John, or he’ll knock you o’er, you bet he will. Go on, Gilbert! More force into that crack and you’d have had your man down flat already.”

I watched their sticks flying and knocking, one against the other, and sat amazed. So fast they moved and with such surety! Rap, rap, rap—each knock with the cudgel was strong enough to break a bone or stun a man, if the placement were good.

When they had finished, and Little John had succeeded at last in tripping Gilbert to the ground, Robin Hood glanced at me and grinned.

“If I knew no better, I would say you were enjoying yourself, Lady Marian. But I thought you did not like viewing sport?”

“Well, perhaps you were right,” I said, laughing, “when you said there was no better in all of England than in your grove. I do not believe I have ever witnessed sticks flying so fast.”

“And you may never again, that is the truth. But now we shall have some shooting, and that’ll be less pleasing to you, as the target must be a good twenty yards off. But you may trust that when I shoot, I’ll hit the mark, and you can envision it in your mind’s eye and cheer for me all the same.” He grinned wickedly and strode off, flexing his bow as he went, preparing it for the confining string.

In honesty, I did not know what to make of Robin Hood. He seemed so foreign to what I knew, and yet I found myself fascinated by his manner, charmed by his odd ways. I knew that tomorrow Annie and I must be gone, riding home to live as we had before. Robin Hood would recede then to memory and to legend, and I would be a solitary bird once more.

He shot his arrows like a cocky fellow, looking at me with a saucy smile before loosening his bowstring. Every arrow found its mark—this I knew from the cheers around me—and Robin Hood shot as long as they cheered, until no more arrows remained in his quiver. When the men brought forth Robin’s targets, all stuck with goose quills, I saw in amazement that he had not used the garlands of ivy the others shot at, but a peeled stick no thicker than my thumb, which was bound to the trunk of a far-off tree.