The Chronicles of Robin Hood (15 page)

On the smooth turf before the northern walls of Nottingham Town, the butts had been set up, with new straw targets at either end of the long green range; and all around, close under the walls and even half-blocking the gateway, were booths and stalls and sideshows, so that the scene looked for all the world like a fair. From all Nottinghamshire and the Peak District chapmen, jugglers, and wandering showmen had gathered together to sing their songs and ply their wares among the people who came to see the sheriff’s archery contest.

Robin and his men wandered through the crowds which were already gathering, looking about them with pleasure at the gay scene which was so strange to them, used as they were to the leafy solitudes of the Greenwood. Here was a red-and-yellow striped booth with brightly gilded gingerbread and peppermint lozenges for sale. Here were drinking-booths; here an open stall on which were displayed embroidered hawking-gloves and scarlet-tufted falcons’ hoods and jesses with silver swivels.

Here was a ballad-monger; there a juggler clad in green and yellow, tossing up a flickering stream of bells and balls and freshly plucked roses. There was a dancing bear, too, and a little ragged boy who piped the tune for him to dance to. The outlaws gathered to watch him, laughing at his clumsy antics, and when his dance was done, tossed down a scattering of copper coins to be gathered up by the small piper.

On they went, looking into this stall and that, stopping to listen to the ballad-monger and watch the ragged acrobat, Robin enjoying himself as much as any of them. Everywhere they came upon other bowmen come to try their skill, but these made up only a small part of the holiday crowd which filled the spaces between the booths and jostled each other around the town gates. Worthy farmers with their apple-cheeked wives and daughters; merchants in furred gowns and their ladies in gay summer silks and satins; lean brown serfs with the soil still caked about their ankles and a few copper coins in their pockets; all had come to watch the shooting for the silver arrow, and laugh and marvel at the antics of the travelling mountebanks and buy the pretty fairings from the gay stalls. And running through and under and between the legs of the crowd were small children and large dogs—the dogs all with the centre toes of their forefeet clipped short to prevent them from chasing the king’s deer.

The shooting was to start an hour before noon, and judging by the sun that it was now not far short of that time, Robin and his band began to make their way towards the butts. The smooth green stretch of turf, which had been kept clear by several foresters, lay very quiet and empty amid the gay crowd and the gaudy fairground booths which surrounded it. A stand had been set up at one side, from which the sheriff and his guests would watch the shooting. It was hung with gay crimson cloth, its rough woodwork was bravely daubed with paint and gilding, and at the front of it, supported on two forked hazel wands, was the silver arrow itself, glittering in the sunshine, with a couple of stout men-at-arms to keep watch and ward over it.

‘There it is, lads!’ said Robin. ‘And a pretty bauble, too—well worth shooting for!’ He dropped his voice to a murmur. ‘Six of you shall shoot with me, and the rest remain here in case of any mischance.’

‘Are you expecting trouble, Robin?’ asked his tall lieutenant.

Robin shook his head. ‘No, John; but it is as well to be prepared. So you shall come with me—and Much—and Gilbert—and Hugh.’ He hesitated, his glance moving over the eager faces of his band, and then finished: ‘And you, Will Scarlet—and you, Reynold.’

The space all down the long sides of the range was beginning to fill up as the first-comers left the stalls and jugglers and came to get good places from which to watch the contest. The green-clad foresters were hard put to it now to keep the smooth turf of the range clear, and Robin and his men were pushed and jostled from behind as other bowmen came thrusting through to the front.

By dint of much good-humoured shoving and free use of their elbows, the outlaws continued to keep their places in the front of the crowd, for having come all the way south from Barnesdale to see and take part in the shooting, they had no mind to be ousted into the back rows, where none of them—save perhaps Little John—would be able to see anything.

Presently the sheriff came out from the gateway with his lady on his arm, and with them several other merchants and their wives. They mounted the wooden steps to the crimson-hung stand, and settled themselves on the cushioned bench, the ladies carefully spreading out their damask skirts. The sheriff flung himself back against the cushions, folding his hands on his stomach, and turned
to speak to the man at his left—a lean man who sat forward, gazing keenly about him, his face deeply shaded by his forward-drawn hood, who somehow did not look like a merchant.

The heads that had begun to poke up all along the top of the wall craned over farther than ever; the dogs that had been running among the legs of the crowd were hastily caught by their masters; small children were swung up on to their fathers’ shoulders, so that they could see over the heads of the people. Then a man-at-arms stepped out to the front of the stand, and raising a bugle-horn to his lips, blew a sharp, strident blast.

‘Those of you here who have come to shoot for the silver arrow,’ shouted he, ‘take your bows and come forward.’

Instantly the pushing and shoving began again as the bowmen thrust their way clear of the crowd and stepped out into the open range, there to be met and shepherded into a space that had been fenced off like a cattle pen, towards one end of the butts. With them went Robin, followed by his chosen six. The rest of the brotherhood remained where they were, leaning easily on their ready-strung bows, yet alert for any sign of trouble.

The bugle-horn sounded again, and the first man stepped out to shoot. He shot badly, and withdrew, crimson with confusion, before the derisive hoots of the crowd, to make way for the second bowman. This was a little wizened man, with a ragged thatch of tow-coloured hair straying out from beneath his hood; but he raised his bow and loosed with an ease that could scarcely have been bettered by one of Robin’s men; and the arrow snored away down the range to thud into the target not much
more than a hand-breadth from the peg. Three times the little man loosed, and though his second and third shots were not so true as his first had been, they were still fine shots. Then he stepped aside, and went to collect his arrows, which had been plucked from the target by one of the foresters who were keeping the score.

‘That was a fine archer, John,’ Robin said in a low voice, to his lieutenant. ‘I would that we had him with us!’

‘Maybe we shall, one day, Master,’ said Little John idly, turning to look at the next man who had stepped out to shoot. But Robin was still watching the little archer as he walked away; and then he saw a strange thing, for as the man passed his own little band of bowmen, he turned his head suddenly, and hesitated, as though he were going to speak to one of them, and then continued on his way; and at the same instant Alan A’Dale looked up, saw him, and looked away again at once, but even at that distance Robin had seen the quickly hidden recognition in Alan’s face.

A man-at-arms stepped out next, stringing his bow as he did so, and he, too, shot well; but after that, for a while there was no shooting that was worth the watching.

At two hours past noon the archery ceased for a while, the crowd broke up and scattered, the richer people in search of the inns and taverns of Nottingham, the poor folk settling themselves below the town walls to stay their hunger on black bread and strong yellow cheese, and—those of them who were lucky—fat bacon.

The sheriff and his guests disappeared through the gateway, to dine on cold mutton pasties and many-coloured marchpanes among the roses in the sheriff’s garden; and sprawling on the grass below the town walls,
a little removed from the rest, Robin and his band lazily talked over the shooting of the morning, while they ate their dinner.

At last the bugle-horn recalled them to the butts, and after more pushing and jostling and thrusting, when several straying dogs had been removed from the range, and a little boy who was discovered asleep in the shade of one of the targets had been returned to his mother, and the sheriff and his fine guests had once more settled themselves upon the stand, the shooting started again.

The long, hot, summer afternoon wore away, as man after man stepped forth and loosed his three arrows. The shafts hummed drowsily as they flew down the range, and the ‘thwack’ of those that reached the target sounded sharply on the warm air. A brimstone butterfly danced like an enchanted primrose-petal above the heads of the crowd, and a cuckoo called softly and repeatedly from the woods over towards Linden Lea.

The shadows were already beginning to lengthen when at last the turn of the seven outlaws came to shoot. Young Gilbert went first. He loosed well and smoothly, and his third shaft struck within three-fingers of the peg. Robin nodded his approval, and Reynold took the boy’s place.

Each of the outlaws shot their best that day, and Robin watched each in turn, with pride. Slim young Gilbert; square built, grizzled Reynold; Will Scarlet, jaunty in his homespun as ever he had been in velvet; small, brown, wiry Much; Hugh Greenleafe, square and ruddy; and lastly the huge, loose-limbed Little John. Each raised his bow, bent it, and loosed, all in one smoothly powerful movement; and as arrow after arrow thudded into the inner circles of the target, the onlookers pressed forward,
murmuring among themselves in admiration, for never before had they seen such marksmanship as this.

Last of all, that afternoon, Robin Hood himself took his bow and moved out on to the range. Every eye was upon him as he raised his bow and nocked the arrow to his string. The bowstring hummed its deep music in his ear as he loosed; the shaft droned away down the sunlit range, to hang quivering in the target, a finger’s breadth from the peg. He drew and loosed again, and his second arrow grazed the peg on the other side. An utter silence had fallen on the crowd, and they scarcely breathed as he bent the great bow for the third time. Every eye followed the flight of that third arrow as it hummed on its way, burning like a streak of fire as the sun caught it, to thud into the target. Then a roar went up from the crowd: the ladies in the stand leaned forward, clapping their hands, and even the sheriff sat up and snorted with approval. Robin had done the thing that he had done once before in that same place—he had split the peg!

The crowd had surged forward and were spilling out on to the range. Two foresters, having examined the target, went up to the stand and spoke in the sheriff’s ear. The sheriff, in his turn, spoke to his lady wife, and she rose from the cushioned bench, shook out her skirts, and took up the gleaming gold and silver arrow from the place where it had rested all day.

Robin found himself being hustled towards the steps of the stand. He mounted them and dropped on one knee before the sheriff’s lady, who bent forward, smiling very prettily, with the silver arrow in her hand. He looked up at her, and as he did so, the low rays of the westering sun slanted in under his hood, lighting up his lean brown face
with its glare; and the man in the deep hood, who had been standing beside the sheriff, leaned forward suddenly, to stare at him with fixed intensity. Robin caught the sudden movement out of the corner of his eye, and looking round, found himself staring into the narrowed dark eyes of Guy of Gisborne, steward of the Manor of Birkencar.

For a moment the two men looked into each other’s eyes, with hatred like a naked sword between them; and then Guy of Gisborne laughed exultantly, and cried out: ‘You were ever a fine bowman, but I think you have loosed your last arrow—
Robin Hood
!’

In an instant Robin had sprung to his feet and turned to leap down the steps. Behind him he heard a bellow of astonished rage from the sheriff, and the voice of his old enemy shouting to the men-at-arms to take him. At the foot of the steps he turned about to face their attack; his broadsword glittered in his hand, and he knew that his own men were closing up behind him, the six who had shot with him being quickly joined by the rest, who came thrusting through the crowd, their strung bows across their shoulders, their good blades naked in their hands.

The whole crowd was in an uproar around the outlaws, and the sheriff’s men-at-arms and archers came closing in on their flanks. They withdrew steadily: a little band of grim-faced, desperate men, their broadswords biting deep. The sheriff’s men dared not shoot in that crowd, and press inward as they would, they could not break through the menace of those leaping sword-blades; and the outlaws, in close formation, retreated steadily, slipping away as it were from between their fingers.

The sheriff shouted to the crowd to stand firm behind
the wolfsheads and cut off their escape; but the townsfolk misliked the look of those leaping blades, and in their hearts most of the country people were in sympathy with the outlaws; and so, instead of hampering their retreat, they parted to let them through, huddling back upon each other like frightened sheep.

In a few moments more the forest-rangers were clear of the crowd, and with the men-at-arms pressing round them like hounds about their quarry and outnumbering them four to one, they sprang back and turned to run. Weaving from side to side as they ran, they sped over the turf. A flight of arrows hummed after them, but none found a mark; and the fleet-footed men of the forest were drawing steadily away from the full-fed men-at-arms.

As they ran, they slipped their bows from their shoulders, and when they turned again, two hundred yards nearer the forest, each man had an arrow nocked to his string. The deadly clothyard shafts hummed away like a flight of angry hornets, and several of the men-at-arms dropped and rolled over.

The rest came on at an increased pace, pausing to loose, and then running again. The outlaws continued to fall back in good order towards the distant forest, turning to loose their flights of deadly arrows, falling back, turning to shoot again. Several times a forester or a man-at-arms fell, but so far the outlaws were unscathed, for in a running fight of this sort, marksmanship was not so sure as it was at the butts, when men had time to draw and loose in comfort at a fixed mark. Slowly the dark rampart of the forest drew nearer, but would the little band of desperate men gain the shelter of the trees before it was too late?