The Chronicles of Robin Hood (16 page)

A company of men-at-arms, which had split off from the rest, was perilously near to their left flank. They had few arrows left, and the forest seemed yet a long way off. Glancing to his right, Robin saw that a valley had opened close to hand, running up between the shallow hills, and little more than a bowshot from the desperate band, a small, strong-seeming castle stood squarely on the green valley floor, its grey walls rising from the sheeny-darkness of its moat, among fair gardens and the trees of a little orchard.

It was the castle of Sir Richard at Lea, and Robin knew it. He knew that there would be willingly given sanctuary for him and his men behind those walls, and he knew also that if he claimed that sanctuary he might bring dire ruin upon Sir Richard, his friend. All this passed through his mind in an instant of time, and he turned his face resolutely back towards the forest, which seemed almost as far off as ever.

At that moment there came a deep, menacing hum, and a flight of arrows sped past and through the band of fugitives. All save two passed harmlessly, to spend themselves on the turf; but Diggery staggered, glancing down at a jagged tear in the fleshy part of his arm, and ran on; and in the same instant Little John stumbled, and, pitching forward, rolled over with an arrow through his left knee.

The rest stopped at once, and Robin was kneeling beside him almost before he had rolled over. Little John raised himself on his hands and looked down at his useless leg, and then up into Robin’s eyes. His face had grown suddenly very young and solemn.

‘Robin,’ he said urgently, ‘your dagger. Give me a
swift release. Do not let me fall into the sheriff’s hands.’

‘Lose my lieutenant? No, John,’ Robin said. He got up and, stooping, braced himself for a tremendous effort. ‘Up, lad!—Gilbert, give me a hand here.’

Gilbert sprang to his aid, and a moment later Robin rose upright, braced under the weight of his friend, who lay across his shoulder.

The whole halt had taken only a few moments, and the men standing round Little John had loosed only one flight of arrows against the swiftly nearing men-at-arms; yet as Robin set off again, half the distance that they had gained from their pursuers was lost. If Little John had not been brought down they might have reached the forest, but now, with the sheriff’s men close upon them, and hampered as they were by the burden of a wounded man, they could never do so.

With a shout to his men to follow, Robin turned right, and headed at a stumbling run up the valley towards that small strong castle. Now, everything depended on whether or not the drawbridge was down, whether or not those within the castle would recognize them and give them quick admittance. A very short check would be enough to bring their pursuers up with them—and they were outnumbered four to one. Breathlessly, Robin called to Alan A’Dale. ‘Alan, run—the drawbridge!’

Alan sprang forward without a word, and went speeding ahead. He was the swiftest runner of them all, and would, of course, be recognized by his father’s men-at-arms.

Robin held doggedly on, hampered and slowed down by the weight of the wounded man across his shoulders. His men closed up round him, and above the thudding
of their footsteps on the bridle-path, and the deep thrum of their bowstrings as they turned and loosed, he heard the sound of the pursuit drawing steadily nearer.

Little John heard it too, and demanded urgently: ‘Set me down, Robin! I shall be the death of all of you—better one than all!’

‘Be quiet, you fool!’ Robin gasped, and ploughed on. The blood was drumming in his ears, and he swayed as he ran; but the castle was very near now, and as he rounded the last corner of the track and came in full view of the gateway he saw that it was clear and open, though men-at-arms stood ready at the drawbridge chains. And on the drawbridge stood Alan A’Dale, with the familiar grey-mailed figure of his father beside him.

At the sight, Robin’s men set up a shout which was echoed by an enraged yell from their pursuers. Not a score of yards from the drawbridge, the outlaws turned to loose their last arrows before they ran on again. The drawbridge rang hollow beneath their feet, and almost before the last man was across, with a shrill grinding of chains, it began to rise.

Then Robin was standing in the outer bailey of the castle, and Sir Richard at Lea was easing the weight of Little John from his shoulders. Scarlet ran to his aid, and between them they laid the wounded man on the cobbles, taking care not to jar his injured knee. But Little John was past feeling any pain: he had quietly fainted as Robin carried him across the drawbridge.

Behind them the bridge rose higher and higher, chains screeching and pivots rumbling; and beyond it, on the farther side of the moat, they could hear the angry shouts of the sheriff’s men.

In the quiet, evening-shadowed bailey of the castle, Sir Richard’s men-at-arms and the panting outlaws stood and looked at each other. Then out from the doorway of the bower stairway came a tall woman in a gown of faded golden damask. She halted and looked at each of the outlaws in turn, questioningly. Forth from among his comrades stepped Alan A’Dale, saying: ‘Mother—don’t you know me?’ and took her in a fierce hug.

She held him off, half laughing but near to tears, and looked at him. ‘Know you?’ she exclaimed. ‘You have grown since I saw you last, little son of mine, but I knew you. Yes, and so did Diccon. He saw you at the butts this morning, and came back and told us that you were there.’

‘Aye.’ Sir Richard turned to Robin, who was kneeling over his wounded leiutenant. ‘He told us Alan was with a party of bowmen, and I guessed the rest; so I had a watch kept and the drawbridge manned, lest you should run into trouble, being young and—foolish—and have need of sanctuary.’

‘And it is as well for us that you did so,’ said Robin, looking up from his examination of Little John’s wound; ‘for being young and—foolish—we ran into trouble, as you see.’

The drawbridge had been slammed into place and made secure; and very clearly in the new silence they heard the enraged shouting of the pursuers, balked of their prey. Nobody paid any attention to them.

Diggery was sitting on a bench in the guard-room doorway, while a grey-haired man-at-arms bent over him, examining the wound in his arm; and the little wizened archer of the morning had come up to Alan, and was wringing him by the hand and smiling all over his
weather-wrinkled face, while he exclaimed over and over again: ‘Aye-e, Master Alan, but I be that glad to see you home again!’

Little John had been carried into the great hall and laid on a low bench before the fire. He was beginning to revive, and as he stirred and tried to sit up, Robin bent over him, pressing him back with a gentle hand, saying: ‘Lie still, old lad.’

Sir Richard, standing at the foot of the bench, asked: ‘Will you cut out the barb, or shall I?’

‘I will do it,’ replied Robin, ‘if your lady will bring me warm water and fresh linen.’

The Lady Elizabeth, Sir Richard’s wife, had followed them into the hall and was standing beside him. ‘I will bring them at once,’ she said, and turning, disappeared into the shadows, while Robin drew his knife and bent to cut away the blood-soaked cloth of Little John’s hose from around the place where the arrow-shaft was embedded in his knee.

In a few moments the lady of the castle was back, with a bowl and ewer in her hands and clean white bandage-linen folded across her arm. Then Robin set to work; and Little John lay very stiff and rigid while Sir Richard steadied his knee, watching the sure movements of Robin’s hands as he cut out the torturing barb.

The operation was but half completed when young Alan, who had remained with the rest of the outlaw band in the guard-room, came into the hall and up to his father. ‘The sheriff has come up, sir,’ said he, ‘and he is dancing and bellowing with rage on the farther side of the moat. He demands that you deliver up to him the wolfsheads you are unlawfully sheltering.’

‘Does he so?’ said Sir Richard. ‘Then I had better go out to the ramparts and speak with the fellow, before he bellows himself into a fit of apoplexy! Alan, come here and take my place: see, hold the leg steady—thus.’

Alan came round the bench and did as he was bid, and Sir Richard strode from the hall.

Standing on the farther bank of the moat the sheriff was shaking both fists in the air and shouting lustily, demanding that Sir Richard should come out to him, while Guy of Gisborne stood beside him, as silent as the sheriff was noisy. Then the head and shoulders of Sir Richard appeared over the wall of the archers’ gallery, close beside the gatehouse; and the sheriff redoubled his shouting. ‘Traitor! Caitiff!’ bellowed he. ‘You have a score or more of desperate robbers within your walls—villains and cut-throats all! I charge you now, yield them up to me within the hour, if you do not wish to hang beside them!’

‘I am no traitor, but a loyal knight to the king, as you well know!’ shouted back Sir Richard. ‘And it’s sick at heart the king would be, if he could know how his brother misrules in his absence! I do not deliver up to you a single one of the men now sheltering within my walls.’

While the sheriff was yet spluttering with rage at this reply, Guy of Gisborne cut in smoothly: ‘Perhaps you do not know that the leader of these men is the notorious Robin Hood himself?’

‘I know it well enough,’ replied Sir Richard. ‘Have you anything else to say?’

‘Nothing, my friend, save that the day may come when you will bitterly regret your refusal!’

The sheriff struck in again: ‘If you do not deliver up
these men, we shall lay siege to this castle, and have them out by force!’

Sir Richard leaned farther out over the coping of the rampart, shaking his head and smiling gently. ‘It is not lawful for such as you to lay siege to a knight in his own castle, and well you know it!’ said he. ‘Send to the king’s brother for the Royal Warrant, if you like; and in the meantime I bid you good-night!’ And he stepped back and was at once hidden from view by the rampart wall.

On the farther side of the moat, the sheriff and his men stared at each other blankly, while Guy of Gisborne gnawed at his lower lip and frowned blackly at the walls of the castle. They knew that what Sir Richard had said was true. It was unlawful for anyone not holding the Royal Warrant to lay siege to a knight in his own castle, and they dared not risk bringing down upon themselves the wrath of John, the king’s brother, who was ruling the country so harshly during Richard Cœur-de-Lion’s absence on the Crusades. They could send and beg the Royal Warrant, to be sure, but long before it could be granted, the outlaws would be safe in their forest stronghold again.

Then Guy of Gisborne shrugged his shoulders with an ugly laugh, and putting his hand on the shoulder of the enraged sheriff, drew him away. As they moved off, with their disappointed men-at-arms and foresters trailing sulkily behind them, the heads of the sheriff and the manor steward were very close together, as though already they were hatching some evil plot between them.

The great hall of the castle showed a merry scene that night. Torches flared in their iron sconces against the
walls, and on the open hearth a fire of spitting pine logs sent its red and yellow many-tongued flames leaping half-way to the dim roof. All down the long tables the forest rangers sat among Sir Richard’s men-at-arms, supping right royally, and drinking deep of the nut-brown ale which stood in leather jacks ready to their hands.

At the high table across the far end of the hall sat Robin, between Sir Richard and his lady, and with them Alan A’Dale, and Sir Richard’s squire, a pleasant, dark-eyed lad named Simon D’Aubernoun. Little John sat at the high table also, by right of being Robin’s lieutenant; he sat sideways on the bench with his wounded leg stretched out before him, and he was weak from loss of blood, his usually brown face very white in the torchlight, and though he looked about him gaily, laughing often at some jest of the young squire who sat beside him, he did little justice to his supper, for he was feeling sick and ill with pain.

Robin seemed as merry as any man in Sir Richard’s hall that night, but in his heart he was anxious and ill-at-ease; and presently, seeing the Lady Elizabeth deep in converse with her son and not likely to overhear him, he turned to Sir Richard, saying: ‘I wish that I and my men were not under your roof to-night, for I very much fear that your sheltering of such as we will bring trouble upon you.’

‘If it should be so,’ said Sir Richard, gravely, ‘it cannot be helped—and who has a better right to give you aid and shelter than I, who am your friend?’

‘True. But I have no wish to bring ruin upon my friend. And indeed, I would not have led my wolfpack to your gate, but would have held on towards the forest, which
is a more fitting sanctuary for such as we, if Little John had not taken an arrow in his knee.’

‘You could never have gained the forest, with that young giant to carry,’ said Sir Richard, glancing down the table to where Little John sat with his platter of food untouched before him. ‘You did the only thing that there was to do; and if trouble should come of it, I shall bear it gladly, for your sake, friend Robin. And if the worse befalls, I can always follow Alan’s example and join myself to you in the Greenwood.’

‘And what of your lady wife?’ questioned Robin.

Sir Richard smiled. ‘You have already two ladies in your band. Could you not make room for a third?’

‘Willingly!’ replied Robin. ‘But nevertheless, I and my lads quit your roof to-morrow, for the longer we remain here, the greater will be your danger.’

And in that determination he remained firm, despite all that the good Sir Richard and his lady could say to make him change his mind.

ON THE MORNING
after the shooting for the Silver Arrow, Little John was flushed and restless, and when Robin examined his wound it was red and angry.

They were in the great hall of the castle, where, after the custom of those days, everybody but the Lord and Lady of the house had spent the night wrapped in coarse rugs and coverlids upon the deeply rush-strewn floor, with the dogs curled up among them.