The sword in the stone (19 page)

The Wart said: "I want to go too. You see, I am fond of Cavall." Robin looked at Marian triumphantly. "There!" he said. Marian kissed them both, and they blushed.

"Very well," said Robin. "We won't make a fuss about it, but we will talk about plans. I think it is pretty good of you two to go in for it, without really knowing what you are in for, but it won't be so bad as you think."

"We shall come with you," said Marian. "The whole band of us will come with you to the castle. You will only have to do the going-in part at the end."

"Yes, and the whole band of us will account for those stinking griffins of hers afterwards. That at least we can do."

"Are there griffins?"

"Indeed there are. The Siege of Air and Darkness is guarded by a circle of fifty griffins and fifty wyverns, day and night. We'll have a pitched battle with those on the way back, and slay them all."

"But we shall have to creep past them on the way there, or they will give the alarm and the boys won't be able to get in. It will be a terrific stalk."

"Hurrah!"

"We shall have to wait till night."

"Please, Robin Wood, we only consent to enter this enchantress'

palace and to rescue Friar Tuck for you, if you promise that we may help in fighting the griffins afterwards."

"Well, Marian?"

"Drat them," said Marian. "It's blackmail. But still, they are lambs." The boys passed the morning pleasantly, getting accustomed to two of Maid Marian's bows. Robin had insisted on this, saying that no man could shoot with another's bow any more than he could cut with another's scythe. For their midday meal they had cold venison pattie, with mead, as also did everybody else. The outlaws drifted in for the meal like a conjuring trick. At one moment there would be nobody at the edge of the clearing, at the next half a dozen right inside it: green or sun-burned men who had silently in materialized out of the bracken or the trees. In the end there were about a hundred of them, eating merrily and laughing. The food was dished out from a leafy bower, where Marian and her attendants cooked. The outlaws usually posted a sentry to take the tree messages, and slept during the afternoon, partly because so much of their hunting had to be done in the times when most workmen sleep, and partly because generally the wild beasts take a nap in the afternoon and so should their hunters. This afternoon, however, Robin called the boys to council.

"Look here, Kay and Wart," he said, "you had better know exactly what we are going to do. My whole band of a hundred will march with you towards Queen Morgan's castle, in four parties. You two will be in Marian's party. When we get to a certain oak tree which was struck by lightning in the year of the great storm, we shall be within a mile of the griffin guard. There we shall meet together as a rendezvous, and afterwards we shall have to move like shadows. We must get through those griffins without an alarm. If we do get through them and if all goes well, we others shall surround the castle at a distance of about four hundred yards. We dare not come nearer, you see, on account of the iron in our arrow-heads, and from that moment you will have to go alone.

"Now, Kay and Wart, I must explain about iron. If our poor friends have really been captured by fairies (I mean by Good People) and if Queen Morgan the Fay is really the queen of them, we have one advantage on our side. None of the Good People can bear the touch or the sight or even the closeness of iron. The reason is that the Good People spring from the days of flint, before ever iron was invented, and all their troubles have come from the new metal. The Roman cohorts had steel swords (which is even better than iron) and that is how they succeeded in driving the old folk under ground.

"This is the reason why we, with our steel arrow-heads, tonight must keep well away for fear of giving them the uncomfortable feeling. But you two, with an iron knife-blade held close in your hands, will be safe from the Queen of Air and Darkness so long as you don't let go of the blades. All you will have to do is to walk the last distance, keeping a good grip on your iron: to enter the castle in safety: and to make your way to the cell in which our prisoners are confined. I shall give you extra knives to carry to Friar Tuck, to Wat and to the Dog Boy, and an iron collar for Cavall. As soon as the prisoners are in possession of this iron, they will be able to walk out with you.

"When you have walked out again and joined our band we can make our way home happily in triumph, and slay those griffins on the road.

"Do you understand this, Kay and Wart?"

"Yes, please," said the boys. "We understand this perfectly."

"There is one more thing. The most important of all is to hold on to your iron, but the next most important is not to eat. Anybody who eats in a you-know-what stronghold is compelled to stay there forever, so, for all sake's sake, don't eat anything whatever inside the castle, however tempting it may look. Will you remember this?"

"We will remember," said the boys.

After the staff lecture, Robin went away to give his orders to the mere men. He made them a long speech, explaining all about the griffins and the wyverns and the stalk and what the boys were going to do. As soon as he had finished his speech, which was listened to in perfect silence, an odd thing happened. He began it again at the beginning and spoke it from start to finish in the same words. On finishing it for the second time, he said, "Now, captains," and all those hundred men split into groups of twenty which went to different parts of the clearing and stood round Marian, Little John, Much, Scarlett and Robin. From each of these groups a humming noise rose to the sky.

"What on earth are they doing?" asked Kay.

"Listen," said the Wart.

They were repeating the speech, word for word. Probably none of them could read or write, but they had learned to listen and to remember. This was the way in which Robin kept touch with his raiders by night, by knowing that each man knew by heart all that the leader himself knew, and why he was able to trust them, when necessary, to move each man by himself.

When all the men had repeated their instructions, and everyone was word perfect in the long speech, there was an issue of war arrows, a dozen to each man. These arrows had bigger heads, ground to razor sharpness, and they were heavily feathered in a square cut. There was a bow inspection, and two or three men were issued new strings. Then all fell silent.

"Now then," cried Robin cheerfully.

He waved his arm in a generous gesture, and the men, smiling, raised their bows in salute. Then there was a sigh, a rustle, a snap of one incautious twig, and the clearing of the giant lime tree was as empty as it had been before the days of man.

"Come with me," said Marian, touching the boys on the shoulder. Behind them the bees hummed in the leaves.

It was a long march and a tedious one. The artificial glades which converged upon the lime tree in the form of a cross were no longer of use after the first half-hour. After that they had to make their way through the virgin forest as best they might. It would not have been so bad if they had been able to kick and slash their way through it, but they were supposed to move in silence. Maid Marian showed them how to go sideways, one side after the other; how to stop at once when a bramble caught them, and take it patiently out; how to put their feet down sensitively and then roll their weight to that leg as soon as they were certain that no twig was under the foot; how to distinguish at a glance the places which gave most hope of an easy passage; and how a kind of rhythm in their movements would help them in spite of all these obstacles. Although there were a hundred invisible men on every side of them, moving towards the same goal, they heard no sounds but their own.

The boys had felt a little disgruntled at first, at being put into Marian's band. They would have preferred to have gone with Robin, and thought that being put under Marian was like being entrusted to a governess. They soon found out their mistake. She had objected to their coming, but, now that their coming was ordered, she accepted them as companions in war. Nor was it easy to be a companion of hers. In the first place, it was impossible to keep up with her unless she waited for them —

for she could move on all fours or even wriggle like a snake almost as quickly as they could walk — and in the second place she was an accomplished soldier which they were not. One of the bits of advice which she gave them before talking had to be stopped was this: Aim high when you shoot in war, rather than low. A low arrow strikes only the ground, a high one may kill in the second rank.

"If I am ever made to get married," thought the Wart, who had doubts on this subject, "I will marry a girl like this: a kind of golden vixen." As a matter of fact, though the boys did not know it, Marian could hoot like an owl by blowing into her fists, or whistle that shrill blast between tongue and teeth with the fingers in the comer of the mouth; could bring all the birds to her by imitating their calls, and understand much of their small language — such as when the tits exclaim that a hawk is coming; could hit the popinjay twice for three times of Robin's; and could turn cartwheels. But none of these accomplishments was necessary at the moment.

The twilight fell mistily — it was the very first of the autumn mists —

and in the dimity the undispersed families of the tawny owl called to each other, the young with 'keewick' and the old with the proper 'hooroo',

'hooroo'. Proportionally as the brambles and obstacles became harder to see, so did they become easier to feel. It was odd, but in the deepening silence the Wart found himself able to move more silently, instead of the reverse. Being reduced to touch and sound, he found himself in better accord with these, and could go quietly and quick.

It was about compline, or, as we should call it, at nine o'clock at night — and they had covered at least seven miles of that toilsome forest

— when Marian touched Kay on the shoulder and pointed into the blue darkness. They could see in the dark now, as well as human beings can see in it and much better than townspeople will ever manage to, and there in front of them, struck through seven miles of trackless forest by Marian's woodcraft, was the smitten oak. They decided with one accord, without even a whisper, to creep up to it so silently that even the members of their own army, who might already be waiting there, would not know of their arrival. They crept.

But a motionless man has always the advantage of a man in motion, and they had hardly reached the outskirts of the roots when friendly hands took hold of them, patted their backs with pats as light as thistledown, and guided them to seats. The roots were crowded. It was like being a member of a band of starlings, or of roosting rooks. In the night mystery a hundred men breathed on every side of Wart, like the surge of our own blood which we can hear when we are writing or reading in the late and lonely hours. They were in the dark and stilly womb of night. Presently the Wart noticed that the grasshoppers were creaking their shrill note, so tiny as to be almost extra-audible, like the creak of the bat. They creaked one after another. They creaked, when Marian had creaked thrice in order to account for Kay and Wart as well as for herself, one hundred times. All the outlaws were present, and it was time to go. There was a rustle, as if the wind had moved in the last few leaves of that nine-hundred-year-old oak: then an owl hooted soft, a field mouse screamed, a rabbit thumped, a dog-fox barked his deep, single lion's cough, and an aery-mouse twittered above their heads. The leaves rustled again more lengthily while you could count a hundred, and then Maid Marian, who had done the rabbit's thump, was surrounded by her band of twenty plus two. The Wart felt a man on either side of him take his hand, as they stood in a circle, and then he noticed that the stridulation of the grasshoppers had begun again. It was going round in a circle, towards him, and as the last grasshopper rubbed its legs together, the man on his right squeezed his hand. Wart stridulated. Instantly the man on his left did the same, and pressed his hand also. There were twenty-two grasshoppers before Maid Marian's band was ready for its last stalk through the silent forest.

The last stalk might have been a nightmare, but to the Wart it was heavenly. Suddenly he found himself filled with an exaltation of night, and felt that he was bodiless, silent, or transported. He felt that he could have walked upon a feeding rabbit and caught her up by the ears, furry and kicking, before she knew of his presence. He felt that he could have run between the legs of the men on either side of him, or taken their bright daggers from their sheaths, while they still moved on undreaming. The passion of nocturnal secrecy was a wine that triumphed in his blood. He really was small and young enough to move as secretly as the warriors. Their age and weight made them lumber, in spite of all their woodcraft, and his youth and lightness made him mobile, in spite of his lack of it. It was an easy stalk, except for its added danger. The bushes thinned out and the sounding bracken grew rarely in the swampy earth, so that they could move three times as fast. They went in a dream, unguided by owl's hoot or bat's twitter, but only kept together by the necessary pace which the sleeping forest imposed upon them. Some of them were fearful, some revengeful for their lost comrade, some, as it were, disbodied in the horrible sleep-walk of their stealth.