The Chronicles of Robin Hood (20 page)

The snow that lay white and crisp on the road outside was churned up into a brown slush in the narrow streets, by the passing and repassing of horses and carts and men; but along every ledge, roof, and window-sill it lay as white and pure as when it had first fallen, and the grimacing gargoyles on the tower of St. Mary’s Church seemed to be wearing hoods of white fur. Will-the-Bowman made his way through the town, returning the kindly greetings of the folk he met, until he came to a certain narrow street behind the corn market, to which Black Jonathan had directed him.

At the farther end of the street was a little dark-browed smithy, wedged between a tavern and a fletcher’s shop. Will went down the street, pausing to glance at the quiver of fine clothyard shafts and the three slender peacock-flighted arrows which were so temptingly displayed just inside the fletcher’s shop; and coming to the open door
of the smithy, he looked inside. The place was empty, but seeing another door in the farther wall, which also stood open, he went across to it, and found himself looking through into a little living- and sleeping-room beyond. It was a very bare, small room, furnished only with a rough bed and table, two joint-stools, an earthenware water-jar, and a rudely carved chest, on which stood a coloured plaster figure of a saint, with a little floating wick burning in a shell full of oil before it.

A small boy was standing with his back to the door, busily belting on a long hunting-knife; and set out in readiness on the table beside him was a hunk of brown bread and cheese, and a small holly-scarlet hood. The boy was so full of his task that he never heard Will Stukely until the outlaw spoke to him.

‘Are you Hugh—brother to Jonathan the Blacksmith?’

Then he whirled round, showing a dark-skinned face so like Jonathan’s that Will would have known them for brothers anywhere, and demanded fiercely: ‘Where is Jonathan? If you have hurt my brother Jonathan I’ll—I’ll
kill
you!’ And he came rushing at Will, with the hunting-knife in his hand. Stukely caught him and held him off, looking down into his furious face and not heeding his struggles.

‘Softly, softly, little master!’ said he. ‘Your brother Jonathan is safe among friends, and sent me to tell you so.’

Hugh stopped struggling, and stood quiet. ‘Where is he, then? Why has he not come home?’

‘Listen, Hugh,’ Will Stukely said. ‘Your brother caught his foot in a wolf-trap yesterday, as he was on his way home from Papplewick. I found him and sprung the trap,
and took him back with me to certain good friends of mine in the forest; and there he will stay a few days, until his foot is healed.’

‘Take me to him!’ demanded the small boy.

Will Stukely shook his head, smiling. ‘No, you must wait here. It is too long a journey for your short legs; and ’twill be only a few days before your brother Jonathan can come back to you. Now unbelt that fearsome brand from your side and we can speak together in comfort.’ And when Hugh had obeyed him (though unwillingly) he went on: ‘Jonathan bade me tell you to take what money you need from the place where you know it is kept. And if you are lonely, you are to go to Mistress Peascod, and ask her to let you sleep with her bairns.’

Hugh stood four-square, with his legs far apart and his hands behind him, and looked determinedly up at Will-the-Bowman. ‘I be no bairn to fear the dark, and I will not sleep with bairns!’ said he. ‘I will stay here till my brother comes home.’

‘That is for you to decide for yourself,’ said Will. ‘And now, little master, I must be on my way. Is there anything else, before I go?’

‘No—except—you’re sure my brother Jonathan’s foot will heal?’ Hugh came a pace nearer, and said beseechingly: ‘He will not
die,
will he? Tall man, you’ll not let him die?’

Will Stukely looked down very kindly at the small boy. ‘He’ll not die,’ said he. ‘Have no fear of that.’

When the wood-ranger found himself out in the street again, he glanced up at the sun, where it shone above the steep gables at the corn market end; and judged that it was nearly noon. He had broken his fast early that
morning, and tramped a long way since, and now he was hungry. So he bent his steps in the direction of a certain inn named ‘Salutation’, which was well known to the outlaws, for the innkeeper was a good friend of theirs and had given them news of travellers, and aided them from time to time.

The ‘Salutation’ was in Chandler’s Street. A great bush of fir branches jutting out half-way across the street marked it for an inn; but an even better inn-sign was the savoury smell which floated forth from the open doorway and scented the whole street. Will Stukely sniffed the rich smell with pleasure as he stepped over the threshold and came face to face with the little fat innkeeper.

A huge fire blazed at one end of the single long room, and several people were gathered as close to it as they could get. Two or three dogs lay nose-on-paws among the thickly strewn rushes, and George the Potman sat cross-legged in one corner polishing a row of pewter pots. The smell of savoury mutton pies was warm and rich upon the air, and already the trestle table had been set up at the end of the room farthest from the fire, in readiness for the meal.

Will Stukely found himself a stool and sat down with his back against the wall and his quarterstaff propped beside him. In a little while he was joined by the innkeeper, who pulled up another stool beside him.

‘You’d best not be long about your dinner, friend,’ said the innkeeper under his breath.

‘Why? You are not usually so churlish!’ replied Will, laughingly.

‘Churlish I am
not
, and well you know it. But Nottingham be no safe place for such as you, in these days. The
sheriff has some new bee in his bonnet: that the—Gentry of the Greenwood—have friends within the gates. Three times already this week have I had the ‘Salutation’ turned inside out by men-at-arms in the hope that I had an outlaw hidden up the chimney; and there’s not an innkeeper in Nottingham Town that isn’t driven half crazy by the same poking and prying! The sheriff’s men came yesterday, so they’ll not likely come again to-day; but ’tis best to be on the safe side, and the sooner you’re away out of here, the better it will be!’

‘I’ll be away as soon as my dinner be inside me,’ Will assured him, easily, eyeing the long trestle table, where the innkeeper’s daughter was setting out great dishes of hot mutton pies on the white, scrubbed boards.

But Will-the-Bowman was never to finish that dinner; for as he sat with his meal half-eaten before him, deep in friendly talk with a grey-haired old farmer who sat next to him at the table, the doorway was suddenly darkened, as three men-at-arms came thrusting in from the street.

Will Stukely, with his mouth full of mutton, looked up at their entrance, and then sat quite still, with an expression of mild inquiry on his face. He was in deadly danger, and he knew it, and cursed himself for his foolhardiness in coming to the inn; but as he
had
come, his best chance was to behave exactly as his fellow guests were behaving.

The innkeeper got up from the table, after casting one agonized glance of warning at Will Stukely, and turned to the men-at-arms, saying grumpily: ‘Oh, it’s
you
again, is it?’

‘Aye!’ agreed the foremost of the men-at-arms—a surly, red-eyed fellow. ‘It’s
us
again, come to search the house for wolfsheads, according to the sheriff’s orders.’

‘Well, don’t you go a-pulling my house out-of-doors this time, as you did last—thrusting your ugly noses into honest folks’ houses, pulling the soot down their chimneys and frightening their womenfolk and keeping custom away!’

The red-eyed man growled something in reply and turned his back on the innkeeper, to order the guests to remain where they were.

The search began. While the leader of the men-at-arms stood insolently before the door, devouring a mutton pie which he had taken from the table, and keeping a wary eye on the guests, the other two were searching the room in a rather haphazard fashion. As for the guests, they had given up all attempts at eating, and sat anxiously watching the men-at-arms. All of them, save one, knew that they were not outlaws; but at that time, to be innocent of a thing was no safeguard against being hanged for it, and every man there was feeling his neck uncomfortably tight, as though the hangman’s rope was already about it.

Will Stukely sat quietly in his place, though he longed to leap up and hurl himself upon the man who stood in the open doorway. Presently the sheriff’s men had finished searching the inn parlour and the rooms beyond. They had raked up the rushes and pulled the linen out of the mistress’s dower chest, kicked the dogs, smashed several pieces of treasured crockery, browbeaten the womenfolk of the house, and generally behaved as small scoundrels in the pay of a greater scoundrel are wont to do.

Then they turned their attention to the guests; and the keen eye of one of them chanced to fall on Will Stukely’s left hand as it lay on the table before him. The fellow glanced meaningly at his comrades, and then,
turning to a man at the lower end of the table, he demanded rudely: ‘You—old Greybeard—your name and trade?’

‘Simon Scorby,’ replied the man, ‘and I be a farmer.’

The man-at-arms turned to the next man: ‘And yours?’

‘Jon of Kirkby, master fletcher.’

‘And yours?’ The man asked the same question all round the table until he came to Will Stukely.

‘Piers Cobbold, master thatcher,’ said Will, easily; and the next instant the hand of the sheriff’s man came down on his shoulder.

‘Liar!’ said the sheriff’s man. ‘You’re one of those accursed wolfsheads that follow Robin of Barnesdale!’

Up sprang Will to his feet. ‘’Tis
you
that are the liar!’ cried he. ‘An honest thatcher am I, of Birkhampstead Village!’ But he knew that he had made a fatal mistake. What a fool he had been to claim thatching for his trade, he thought, as the three men-at-arms flung themselves upon him.

Two of them contrived to hold him, despite his frantic struggles, while the third dragged out his left arm and looked at his hand.

Now the harsh reed which thatchers use in their trade leaves many small scars on the palms of their hands. On Will Stukely’s palms there were no such scars; but on the side of his forefinger was a patch of hardened skin, almost a corn, and this was the unfailing sign of a bowman, for it was caused by the chafe of the arrow as it flew from the bow—not occasionally, on Sundays at the practice butts, but many times a day, every day, year after year.

‘So, Master Thatcher!’ cried one of his captors. ‘That corn did not grow in a day!’

‘Aye!’ cried another, dragging the hood back from Will’s face. ‘And I know this rogue! Three years ago we met at the shooting for the Silver Arrow. Well do I remember him, for he almost split my head in two!’

Will Stukely ceased to struggle; then, as the grasp of his tormentors slackened a little, he twisted round, like an eel, diving under an unwary arm, and snatched up his quarterstaff. ‘Aye!’ he cried, whirling it before him. ‘Wolfshead I be! And I follow Robin of Barnesdale! Now take me if you can!’

Kicked-up rushes filled the air; benches and stools went over. The guests hastily got themselves out of harm’s way as the trestle table went down with a crash, and a terrified dog ran howling into the street.

Will Stukely put up a desperate fight for life and freedom, and none of his three attackers was swift or bold enough to break through the whirling defence of his quarterstaff. Slowly and steadily he moved back towards the open door; and escape seemed very near, when he caught his heel against an overturned bench-end. He staggered, and half fell; his quarterstaff flew wide, and in that unguarded instant one of the sheriff’s men brought his own staff down in a glancing blow on the side of the outlaw’s head. The next moment the fight flowed over him.

Struggle as he would, he was but one man against three. They jerked him to his feet and twisted his arms behind him; and there he stood, drawing his breath in great gasps, while the blood from his broken head trickled down his temple and cheek.

He had left his mark on the sheriff’s men: one of them nursed a broken elbow; one was still dizzy from a blow on the head, and the tally of bruised ribs and shoulders
was hidden beneath their buff jerkins. But now they had him at their mercy.

‘Ho! Landlord!’ cried one. ‘Bring stout cords here to bind this fellow’s wrists!’

The innkeeper, who all this time had stood watching miserably, began to rummage about in a helpless sort of way, looking in every place where he knew there was no cord, in the vain hope that if only he could delay matters long enough, something unexpected would happen to save Will Stukely. At last the sheriff’s man lost all patience and swore that if cord was not found at once they would begin to wonder whether the landlord were not a secret friend of the outlaws.

At this, Will Stukely raised his bleeding head slowly, saying: ‘He is no friend to we of the Greenwood; nor did he know me for what I am—or he’d have given me no place at his table, I’ll warrant!’

The innkeeper, who had his head inside a wall-press at that moment, while he dragged a length of hempen cord from within it, puckered up his face woefully when he heard this; and as he handed the cord to the man-at-arms he tried to catch Will’s eye and send him some signal that he was not to lose hope. But the outlaw’s head was turned away, his eyes on the free sunshine beyond the doorway, and he did not see the innkeeper’s signal.

So they lashed his hands cruelly tight behind him, and thrust him out into the street and away towards the sheriff’s house.

In the parlour of the Salutation Inn the landlord and his guests looked at each other among the overturned benches and scattered remnants of the mutton pies. There was not one soul there but was in sympathy with the
outlaw, yet none of them had dared to lift a finger on his behalf for fear of the sheriff and the power of the barons; and now they were ashamed.

The master fletcher shook his head. ‘Fine-looking chap, too,’ said he, dismally.

‘Aye,’ rejoined he of Kirkby, ‘and by this time to-morrow he will be carrion outside the Bridlesmith Gate!’