Olde Robin Hood Page 3

  "Go," she directed him, her face serious and sure. "Go to your father now."

  The words cut through the shock.

  Robin took off across the grassy expanse, dropping the flowery bough, ripping off the hawthorn circle and not bothering to see where it landed. He tossed the golden arrow in his quiver, its value now meaningless. Confused voices followed him. All the celebration, all the colors and laughter, became a sea of chaos as he fought his way through. He lost Much. He did not care. What had happened to his father while he had been here reveling in the May Games? His long legs ate the road between the festival and his home, stretching as far and as fast as they could.

  Smoke curled on the horizon as he neared the farm. Robin doubled his pace. He burst into the clearing. There were horses. And men. The Sheriff's men. The thatch on his father's house was on fire. There was a single nobleman with blond hair and a black surcoat. The Sheriff. The actual High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and the Royal Forests was in front of his father's house with all of his guards.

  The Sheriff turned and dropped his cold, blue eyes on Robin as he approached.

  Robin ran up to the man, falling to his knees in exhaustion. "Please, sir," he begged, gasping as he pointed at his home. "What is going on? My father?"

  "The man inside was caught poaching the king's deer," the Sheriff replied, calling out the crime loudly so all could hear. "This outlaw's buildings and lands are claimed by the Sheriff of Nottingham in the name of King Henry III!" The Sheriff shouted, his voice escalated. "As is right and good, we take all the belongings of Adam Hood and shall turn them over to the crown where they may be given to those who abide by his laws!"

  The world spun.

  The seriousness of the charges suddenly explained everything.

  "Is he alive?" asked Robin, the ash catching in his throat.

  "He's inside," replied the Sheriff with an uninterested sniff. "If he can crawl out to the forest, he shall live to see another day."

  Robin felt the weight of the purse he had just won, the prize he had hoped would turn their fortunes around. His father had said he might make a meal to celebrate the May Games. Was this what he had done? If Robin had not hoarded his penny and gone to the archery tournament, would his father have been driven to hunt the king's deer that day? Was he, Robin, responsible for what was happening? Had reaching beyond his station to win fortune for the Hood family called down the wrath of God?

  A cold chill gripped him. He had tried to change their fate. No one but the Almighty had the power to change a man's fate. This was the price a man paid for interfering in the divine plan. It was his fault. He needed to get rid of the offending money. Robin held out the purse. "It is all I have. Please, sir, he is my father. Let me go in. Let me save him."

  The Sheriff looked down at him, at this peasant he had dismissed, with sudden interest. The gathering villagers began whispering words of: "Let him go in" and "Show mercy."

  "And where did one such as you come by such a purse?"

  "I won it at the May Games," Robin replied, the soot stinging his eyes, the tears threatening to spill out.

  The Sheriff leaned over and swiped it out of his hand. He opened it up and counted it, and then placed it in his waistband. "You may go in and get your father," he replied, motioning to the people to acknowledge his benevolence. The crowd murmured their words of thanks. It seemed to fuel the Sheriff. "And because I am a forgiving man, I shall even give you a five-minute start to escape into the forest, for those who are criminals are not welcome here in Barnsdale. Let those who look on know I am not without mercy. Go in! Get your father!"

  Robin ripped off his quiver and bolted to the door before the Sheriff changed his mind. The soldiers around him laughed as his feet could not keep up and he tripped. Coughing, he dashed into the room.

  It was filled with smoke. Embers fell from the ceiling. There was his father, lying prone on the floor. And there was blood. So much blood. Robin gathered him into his arms. His father's frail body felt like a fallen sparrow.

  "Fly, little Robin..." Adam whispered. "This is just punishment for my sins."

  Robin swept away a piece of fiery straw that landed on his father's shirt then realized that though his father made to clutch at his tunic, his father's hand was missing.

  Vomit boiled in his throat. There was no time for horror. There was no time for thought. There was no time for anything except to get his father out of the building. Robin scooped him up. The wooden beams crackled with the flames. Blinking and lungs aching, Robin stumbled out of the house. He deposited his father on the grass beside his discarded quiver. They both wheezed and coughed.

  "Let this be a lesson to you all!" said a guard, addressing the gathering onlookers. "Those who would break the Forest Law and poach the king's deer will answer with their body!"

  Robin tried to lift his father to carry him away, but his father fought him.

  "Run..." commanded Adam Hood. "I am not long for this world. Run, Robin, before they kill you, too!"

  The roof of their home collapsed.

  Tears stung Robin's eyes as the death rattle shook his father's chest.

  Then he was gone.

  Adam Hood was gone.

  And there was nothing he could to do bring life back into the emptiness.

  Robin stood up, horrified.

  Robin looked at the blood on his hands.

  His father's blood.

  Detached, as if flying above, he observed the soldiers rounding up people he and his father had known all their lives. Being allowed to go in and get his father was the Sheriff's way of sending a message, his way of striking fear into their friends' hearts. Anyone who hunted the king's deer would become wretches like the two men they saw before them, the disgraced family Hood. They were examples of what happened to men who broke King Henry's law.

  Realization began striking in flashes as he dropped back down into his body. His father was dead. Their farm was no more. Charges of poaching the king's deer. And his father's final word: "Run."

  Robin picked up his quiver, turned, and raced towards the forest edge only fifty yards away.

  "Take flight, little bird!" shouted a guard. "We enjoy the chase, and shall hunt you down like the deer your father killed!"

  The cool shade of the forest gathered him in.

  His heart pounded, the air stabbed his lungs. He ran through the trees as if chased by wolves. He darted off the road and into the fern-covered underbrush and waited. Silently, he listened, hoping the choking sobs threatening to erupt from his throat would not give him away.

  But the Sheriff was true to his word. He gave Robin his five-minute start.

  First came the hooves and snorts of the horses, then the rattle of chainmail. The Sheriff's men had slowed their mounts to a walk and were scanning the forest for movement.

  "Anything?" asked one man.

  "Brat must've got off into the forest."

  "Those murderers and thieves that live here will do away with him faster than we ever could."

  "Nothing for him to come home to now," said the other. He raised his voice so Robin might hear. "He’d better know every resident of Barnsdale is to shun the boy, lest they call the wrath of the Sheriff upon their heads."

  "Who do these peasants think they are? Killing the king's deer?" mused the soldier. "They have a forest full of rabbit and squirrel."

  "King Henry gives them protection, gives them work, and land to farm, and they think they're entitled to poach animals he has husbanded and kept at his own expense."

  "You hear those peasants, you'd think they're starving to death. They have all that land to grow food for their families."

  "Lazy. If they just worked a little harder, they wouldn't be complaining when their larders run bare."

  "I see their types, hanging out in the taverns, spending pennies on drink and song."

  "And they get upset when we uphold the king's law."

  "They pass along that kind of thinking," said the guard.
"It's what they're bred to believe, those peasants. Like the king owes them a damned thing."

  Robin looked down at his tunic, clammy and viscous and covered in scarlet.

  "That whelp of his won't even see that it was his father who brought all this down upon them himself. It was his father breaking the law who forced our hand. He'll be blaming the Sheriff for his father's sins."

  Robin heard one of the soldiers sigh. "Night will be falling. Best get back. I hear these woods are haunted."

  The guard brayed into the forest. "You had better not show your face in Barnsdale again, Young Hood! If you do, the same fate that met your father shall be rained down upon you! You are an outlaw! You live outside the law! Beyond the pale! You shall never again be allowed to live within the protection of the Archbishop of York! Banished from the hearts and minds of all the law abiding citizens protected by the Sheriff of Nottingham! No longer a citizen of our good King Henry! May death come to you quickly!"

  Robin waited until the sound of the horses was far away. And he continued to wait, just to make sure no one had stayed behind. He waited until the forest returned to the normal rhythms of bird calls and buzzing insects.

  And then he curled onto his side and wept until he had no more tears.

  And then he wept some more.

  The sky had turned purple by the time his body stopped quaking. Night was coming. Night was coming and he was destitute. The thoughts came, but they were numb, as if they belonged to someone else.

  An instinct to survive spurred him to his feet, but was followed by hopeless resignation. A man on his own in this forest stood no chance. He had a quiver full of the twenty arrows he had won in the proudest moment of his life; a yew bow; his knife which his father had pressed on him that morning; a useless golden arrow which would arouse suspicion if he tried to trade it, if it was not stolen from him by the first highwaymen he encountered; and that was all.

  An owl hooted.

  Robin clutched his tunic tight around himself. He would freeze. He had no flint. He did not have a cloak. He closed his eyes. "What shall I do? I am lost."

  The leaves of a great oak shivered as if they held a comforting answer to his question.

  It caused him to look up.

  He had been told tales by the fire of the spirits who lived in Barnsdale forest. In the rising moonlight, the trees almost seemed to have faces, seemed almost to come alive.

  "What shall I do?" he asked again.

  A ghostly owl swooped down from the branches and landed on a mossy stump.

  She considered Robin slowly and blinked before turning her head.

  And then she flew towards the heart of the woods and landed on a branch, waiting.

  A chill sped through Robin's veins.

  There were tales that the old gods and goddesses could take form as a bird or fox, old gods and goddesses worshiped by the Romans, and the pagans and the druids before.

  The God preached by the priests of his people had hidden His face.

  Such a God caused good men like his father to die for having the audacity to not starve to death.

  His father's body was so frail and light in his arms.

  This God allowed houses to burn.

  This God placed those born with gold in seats of power where they could hand out life or death on a whim.

  Robin could still taste the ash in his mouth.

  The wind swept through.

  Rage replaced the crushing despair and it roared with fury.

  Even here in this forest, the land around him was set aside as a playground for anointed kings while subjects starved.

  He hated King Henry and the God that willed it.

  Even as it tumbled in his head, it rang blasphemous.

  The charge of treason rang in his soul as his mind spun with thoughts, unwanted and unwilled. Grief shook his body once more.

  But like the acorn, once the seed was planted, the conclusions he was coming to were mighty.

  He rejected everything that would cause the death of a good man like his father.

  Beyond the pale, beyond the fence marking the bounds of the king's deer, the woods ran wild. It was beyond the king's law. Was it beyond the so-called heavenly King's law, too?

  The owl waited.

  And she blinked.

  She brought solace when everything else had abandoned him.

  A message from the old forgotten gods who had heard his pain.

  Robin looked up into the tangled web of branches, to the emerging stars and all their mysteries.

  Perhaps he would stay here. He would become a face in the trees, living as a spirit among the green, among the gods of those who lived in this land long before invading kings. Before the Normans, or Saxons, or Danes, or Romans. He would return to the gods of the Britons. If they were not kinder, at least they might be fair.

  He stepped forward.

  Ancient leaves and fallen twigs crumbled underfoot. Each step broke him from his past life and brought him one step closer to his new.

  The owl still waited on the branch for him, waited for him to make his choice.

  She bobbed her head and took off again, then paused for Robin to follow. Once more she flew, but this time, Robin did not hesitate.

  Deeper and deeper into the forest, the owl guided Robin, her silent form cutting through the night. Finally, in front of a hidden, sandstone cave, the owl took off. But as she soared into the sky, she presented him with a parting gift.

  A long, flight feather circled lazily and landed at Robin's feet.

  Robin bent down and picked it up.

  And he vowed, with this owl's gift, he would fletch an arrow to bring down the Sheriff of Nottingham.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Robin woke to the sound of the song thrush. The darkness inside the cave was not touched by the dim sun. His spirit was not touched by the light of a new day, either. His body was cold and ached. His heart cried as everything that had happened returned. The May Games, his win, the face of Maid Marian and all the joys he had been told to remember — now it was replaced by the memory of his father dying in his arms. The flashing image interrupted every thought, the visceral sensation of his father's skeletal frame, his stump of a hand trying to clutch at Robin... It ripped Robin's soul raw.

  He swallowed the tears and stared at the cavern's entrance, knowing he would have to enter the world.

  But to do what?

  All his life, he had lived in Barnsdale. He had planned on farming the land and tending a small flock until the end of his days.

  But everyone knew him as Adam's son, and now everyone knew of his family's disgrace.

  To the north was York. The journey there was easy. The stories of what happened to his father had most likely already flown through the villages like birds on the wing. Anyone who helped him would be made an example of, and he was done with subjecting himself to the king's brand of justice.

  He turned his mind in the other direction. To the south, only a day's ride, was Nottingham. It was separated from Barnsdale by Sherwood Forest, though. The Great North Road was a treacherous journey, the woods filled with brigands and rogues. Only the rich who could afford an armed guard traveled that way. Robin had never been. The poor people who knew him, who could identify him, they would not make that trip. He would be a stranger. Perhaps once he arrived, he could hide in the city as a journeyman or merchant.

  The more he considered it, the more he convinced himself it made sense.

  But a little voice in his mind also mentioned he could just as easily go east or west and avoid all his troubles.

  Which was when the voice of truth spoke.

  The Sheriff would be there in Nottingham.

  And perhaps...

  On some moonless night...

  Robin might be able to repay him.

  But first, he had to leave the cave.

  He stared at the daunting light.

  If he did not act swiftly – find food and water – he would die.

  A par
t of him wondered if that would be so terrible.

  A part of him thought of the knife he carried at his side...

  A part of him thought how he could make it all go away...

  He wiped his face with his fists, pressing his palms against his eyes.

  He had been guided here. He had to trust.

  He would not allow the Sheriff to steal from him today.

  He would live to spite him.

  Moment by moment, he would fight.

  He would not die.

  He would not give the Sheriff that victory.

  Never again.

  Crawling out, Robin emerged into the forest. He stood and brushed off the leaves and dirt, and strapped his quiver across his back. There was no sign of another human soul as far as he could see. As he stretched his arms, his joints popping and creaking, he regarded the trees. Their burls and knots almost seemed as if they were watching to see what he would do next.

  A kraa interrupted his thoughts.

  The owl who guided him last night had vanished, her otherworldly presence gone. But in the morning hours, the day had brought him another guide.

  A raven waited.

  He cocked his inky head and croaked to Robin.

  There was an intelligence in the bird, a sympathy of an understanding soul.

  Robin wondered if he was going mad.

  It was madness.

  But the raven hopped off to a branch deeper in the woods and when Robin did not follow, the raven came back and called again, before flying off to the same place.

  Robin took a deep breath. "Old gods, protect me," he muttered. "Let me know if this bird is not your messenger."

  The raven called once more.

  A wind picked up, pushing him like forceful hands.

  Robin knew, almost instinctually, this would be the last chance. "I am coming!" he replied.

  He trotted after the bird, who gave a chuckle of approval and then flew off. Their game of follow-the-leader continued through the morning.

  Robin tried to keep his bearings. He knew they were traveling south. But he was beyond any place he had ever been before. Then the sun hid beneath a gray sky and he was lost.