The Chronicles of Robin Hood (11 page)

Little John was the first to reach him, Peterkin was the second, and then came all the rest of the picket, including Marian. They hauled the potter off his victim, rapped his head sharply on the hard road to mend his manners for him, and sat him up against the wheel of his own cart.

Robin was by this time also sitting up, and the two surveyed each other dizzily, rubbing their heads. Then they smiled, and getting slowly to his knees, Robin held out his hand in token of friendship. Still sitting against the wheel of his cart, the potter returned his grip warmly, and nodded.

‘Wolfshead you may be,’ he said; ‘but you’re a good man to fight!’

‘So are you,’ answered Robin, ‘though you
are
only a potter!’

‘
Only
a potter?’ cried the other. ‘
Only
a potter? Now by the saints in Heaven, I am minded to give you the trouncing you deserve, for you are an insolent puppy if ever there was one!’

Robin shook his head. ‘No, no, friend Potter, for my bones are still sore from the last one. But I see you have a bow in your cart—come and beat me at the butts instead.’

Now it was the potter’s turn to shake his head. ‘I am not such a fool as to pit myself for marksmanship against the best marksman in all the North Country. If you wish to show off your shooting, go to Nottingham, good lad. The sheriff is holding an archery contest this afternoon for his men-at-arms and any other folk who like to try their skill. Go and win the forty shillings he is offering as the prize.’

‘An archery contest, eh?’ said Robin thoughtfully; and then he laughed. ‘Yes, I will go to Nottingham. I will go at once. Friend Potter, will you lend me your clothes and cart?’

‘And what of my pots, may I ask?’

‘I will sell your pots for you—as well as even
you
could do yourself, I’ll warrant!’

Marian did not like him to run into needless danger, and looking at Little John’s gloomy face, she knew that he liked it no better than she did; but they knew better than to try talking Robin out of anything on which he had once set his mind. So Robin changed clothes with the potter and climbed into the little cart. The little pony, which had stood placidly all this time, started at once when he shook the reins, and broke into a trot. So pony, cart, pots, and make-believe potter disappeared round
the corner of the road, and the trit-trot of hooves and the trundling of wheels grew quickly fainter in the distance.

The real potter, the outlaws, and Marian looked at one another. ‘The lad’s mad!’ exclaimed the potter.

Meanwhile, Robin was bowling gaily along the road in the sunshine, whistling to himself and the pony as blithely as a blackbird on a hawthorn branch.

It was yet early when he reached Nottingham, and, after leaving the pony and cart at an inn in Chandler’s Lane, he made his way to the market, carrying his wares with him in two great baskets. There he took up his pitch, arranging the pots round him, and began to cry his wares.

Soon he had attracted a large crowd and the housewives of the town began to press forward, handling the pots and admiring their shapes and the gay colours of the glaze. Robin sold cheaply, charging only threepence for five pots, and did such a roaring trade that by noon he had only five pots left. These he gathered into one of the baskets, and set out along the narrow cobbled streets towards the house of Ralf Murdoch, the sheriff.

The sheriff’s house was a fine building: heavily timbered, and gay with painted carvings above the door and windows. Robin mounted the milk-white steps to the door and beat upon the timbers with his clenched fist. When a servant came in answer to his summons, he gave her the pots, bidding her take them to her mistress as a gift from the Potter of Wentbridge.

The girl disappeared and Robin remained where he was, admiring the carved and painted garlands above the door, until a few moments later the sheriff’s wife came herself to thank him very prettily for his gift. ‘Such fine pots I never did see,’ she said. ‘Next time you come to
Nottingham, Master Potter, bring me some more, and I will buy as many as you will sell me—especially if they are popinjay blue, like the largest of those you have given me, for I do dearly love popinjay blue.’

Robin bowed pompously and pretended to turn away; then he hesitated, sniffing loudly at the savoury smell of cooking which was beginning to steal out through the doorway. The sheriff’s wife was an hospitable soul, and she said at once: ‘Will you not stay and dine with us, Master Potter? You will be very welcome, both for the sake of your pots and yourself.’

Robin bowed again. ‘I shall be very glad to dine with you,’ said he, ‘and I thank you for your hospitality, madam.’ And doffing his hat he followed her into the house.

The sheriff was in a bad temper, having just been worsted in a business deal; but surly as he was by nature, even he could not turn away a guest simply because of his own ill humour, for such churlish conduct would not look well in the Sheriff of Nottingham. So he grunted out a half-hearted welcome and, turning on his heel, left his wife and Robin to follow him into his hall, where the long trestle tables were already set for dinner.

Being only a potter, Robin did not sit among the sheriff’s friends at the high table, but among the men-at-arms and poorer folk farther down the hall. Little he cared, for the men-at-arms were better company than the fat merchants; and so he made a very merry meal and ate heartily of the sheriff’s roast beef and crusty bread, washing it down with draughts of ale out of a horn mug.

When the meal was over the diners got up, pulled each a forelock to the sheriff’s lady, and drifted out in ones and
twos and little groups towards the archery-butts outside the town walls. Presently, the sheriff joined them with his lady, and Robin found himself standing quite close to them, with the rough walls of Nottingham behind him and a long space of smooth turf in front, blocked at either end by the hundred-paces-distant straw targets. Many of the townsfolk had gathered there to watch, some had brought their bows, meaning to compete for the forty shillings.

The first man-at-arms stepped out to shoot, and Robin watched him closely as he nocked his arrow and loosed; but the ari’ow sped down the range and missed its target altogether. Another man came forward, and again Robin watched; but as the afternoon wore on, and men-at-arms shot against townsmen, and townsmen against men-at-arms, he began to lose interest, for the marksmanship was poor, and not a single shaft struck within an arrow-length of the mark.

‘It seems to me, Master Sheriff, that these men of yours have little skill with the bow,’ said he at last.

‘Perhaps
you
could do better?’ grunted the sheriff, peevishly.

Robin nodded. ‘I could—easily.’

Sheriff Murdoch stared at him scornfully for a moment, and then, turning to a yeoman standing near, bade him bring two or three bows for the potter to choose from. When the bows were brought Robin tested them, and at once laid two of them aside; the third he tested again, shaking his head gloomily.

‘Indeed, you’re but a poor weapon,’ sighed he. ‘But since there is no better to be had, I must do the best that I can with you.’

A little, merry-faced man brought him a quiver, from which he chose the best arrow. Then he stepped out into the open, ignoring the good-natured jeers of the onlookers, and bending the borrowed bow, nocked his arrow to the string, and loosed well above the target to allow for the bow being a much less powerful one than he was wont to use. The shaft soared away like a giant bee in the sunshine, and everybody heard the clear ‘thwack’ as it struck the straw target scarcely a hand-breadth from the central peg. A ragged cheer went up from the onlookers, and Robin strolled down to the target, and plucking out his arrow, turned about to shoot back. There was no jeering this time, and a moment later a yell broke from yeomen and men-at-arms alike, as the arrow thudded into the second target. It had split the peg in three!

There was no more shooting after that, for no one could hope to equal the potter’s marksmanship; and so he was adjudged the winner, and hustled along to where the sheriff’s wife waited to give him the prize. Doffing his hat, with its jaunty pheasant’s feather, he bowed low to her as she put the little jingling bag into his hand, and she smiled and said: ‘Never did I see a potter the like of you!’

‘Humph!’ said the sheriff gruffly, as though it hurt him to give praise. ‘How did you learn to shoot like that, my man?’

‘Why, my father was a forester, and I have handled a bow since I was scarce as tall as a clothyard shaft is long,’ replied Robin. ‘And indeed I have shot with Robin Hood himself, before now, respectable potter though I am.’

When the sheriff heard this his eyes glistened in his fat, ruddy face, for he had long wished to have the hanging of the famous outlaw; and he said: ‘Robin Hood, that rascally wolfshead? And do you know where Robin Hood is now?’

‘Aye,’ answered Robin. ‘He is in Clumber Forest, not a dozen miles from here, and but ten of his band with him, for the rest have gone north to their summer quarters.’

Sheriff Murdoch began to fairly tremble with eagerness, and putting a hand on Robin’s shoulder, he said: ‘Good Master Potter, will you lead me to the lair of this wolfshead?’

Robin pretended to consider deeply. At last he said: ‘I do not like to betray a man who I have shot with, and yet—I seem to have heard of a reward on his head?’

‘One hundred golden nobles,’ said Murdoch; and added unwillingly: ‘If you help me to take him, you shall have twenty for your trouble.’

‘Twenty-five,’ said Robin briefly, in the manner of a tradesman closing a bargain.

Murdoch swallowed, and grew purple in the face. ‘Twenty-five,’ he agreed at last; so the matter was settled.

Robin slept in the sheriff’s house that night; and next morning took a courteous farewell of Mistress Murdoch, and, fetching the pony and cart from the inn where he had left them, drove blithely away. With him went the sheriff riding a black horse, and twenty of the men-at-arms trudging in the dust behind.

Out through the north gate they went, and took the Doncaster road; but soon after the road ran into the forest Robin got down from his cart, and leaving it and the pony in charge of one of the men-at-arms, struck off down a bridle-path, followed by the rest. Soon he left the path also and took to the forest, leading the sheriff’s horse by the bridle.

They went on and on, through tangled thickets, down
long glades, across boggy clearings, by narrow deer-paths so faint that none but the trained eye of a forester could follow them, deeper and deeper into the heart of the forest. Sometimes a jay screamed harshly overhead; once a red shadow slunk away into the undergrowth at their approach, and a little farther on a late-hunting owl swept across their path, making the sheriff’s horse snort and whinny with terror.

By now they had come to the oldest part of the forest. Here the trees were hoary with age and crowded in upon each other, grey with lichen and twisted into uncanny shapes, seeming, in the half-light, to stretch out clutching hands; and the little band of men-at-arms began to mutter together and glance uneasily over their shoulders into the crowding shadows behind them. None of them had ever been as deep as this into the forest, and they liked it not at all.

Sheriff Murdoch did not like it either, and at last he spoke uneasily: ‘This is a strange, uncanny place that you have brought us to, Master Potter!’

‘Would you expect a wolfshead to have his lair on the high-road for any chance corner to find?’ asked Robin grumpily; and they went on again in silence.

The forest began to open out again, becoming greener and more friendly, so that the sheriff and his men breathed more freely and glanced less often behind them.

At last they came to the head of a long glade, and here Robin halted them. He seemed to be listening for something, and when the harsh honking of a carrion-crow sounded three times from a nearby thicket, the men-at-arms could not have known that it was made by Little John and that it meant: ‘Who goes there?’ Nor could
they know, when the potter gave an odd, shrill whistle in reply, that it meant: ‘It is I, Robin.’ But they did think he was behaving very oddly, and suspicion began to dawn on them that they had walked into a trap.

Robin turned to face them, laughing, and taking his horn from under his cloak wound a gay call, ‘Tan-tan-tar-tran-tan,’ and under the horrified eyes of the sheriff and his followers, seemed to melt into the forest. In terror they turned to fly, but it was too late; before they had stumbled twenty paces, before the sheriff had even managed to turn his terrified horse, they were surrounded by tall, green-clad men who suddenly appeared between the trees, and closed in on them.

Robin’s voice sang out cheerfully from somewhere ahead of them. ‘Take their weapons away, lads, but don’t hurt them overmuch.’

The twenty men-at-arms stood no chance against four-score forest-rangers. In a few moments they had been disarmed and taken prisoner. Then Robin turned to the sheriff, who had been pulled from his horse and now stood fuming between Will Scarlet and grim old Watkin, with his arms twisted behind his back.

‘You’ll not see your hundred gold nobles
this
time, Master Sheriff!’ said Robin. ‘And indeed you may think yourself lucky if you go home with your head still fixed to your fat shoulders!’

The sheriff was purple with rage, but to do him justice, he was no coward.

‘You—you tricked me!’ he spluttered.

‘Yes,’ Robin nodded, ‘I tricked you very prettily. Now I shall have you stripped of those fine clothes of yours, and any money you have in your wallet, and perhaps the
memory of your loss may make you more cautious another time!’

The sheriff looked at his men-at-arms, as though hoping they would rescue him; but they were as helpless as he, each man in the grip of two burly forest-rangers. And seeing no help for it, Sheriff Murdoch stood still while Little John took from him his wallet and the gold chain from his neck and the gold ring from his finger, then stripped him of his rich black furred gown and velvet cap. When it was done he stood miserably in nothing but his shirt and hose.