In a Dark Wood Read online

  “You know full well what they call me. I am Robin Hood.”

  21

  The forest seemed to take a step closer to where Geoffrey stood, holding the bridle of his horse. The great oak creaked, and leaves fluttered to the ground like parchment torn to pieces and scattered.

  An acorn fell to Geoffrey’s feet and spun, a lifeless knuckle, food for magpies, and Geoffrey’s throat was tight. He thought for an instant of escaping through the forest on the horse, but he remembered the death of his father, stabbed by a broken branch, and stood still in the rising wind.

  He would rather die where he was. He gripped the hilt of his sword, whose pommel was imprinted with a lion. He wanted strength to flow into his body from the long shaft of steel, from the hilt, shaped like a cross, and from the emblem of the lion, the most fearless of all creatures, put on earth to remind man of his own frailty.

  “I am not surprised,” said Geoffrey at last.

  “You knew who I was.”

  “I guessed. I wasn’t certain.”

  “We can be certain of very little.”

  “I could have held you in the castle, but I wanted all of you, all your men, everything that is yours.”

  Robin Hood laughed. “I have nothing.”

  “You have me.”

  “You are not the sort of man I expected.”

  Geoffrey was not interested in talk. In his last moments as a breathing man he wanted silence, so he could beg Heaven’s forgiveness for all his sins, his grimy, loathsome lusts and fears. Habit, however, the lifelong practice of conversation as a game, made him ask, “And what did you expect?”

  “A much different man.” Robin Hood walked to one side, appraising the sheriff. “You are not what I expected at all.”

  “I disappoint you?”

  “I am difficult to disappoint.”

  “How fortunate for you.” Geoffrey hated this trading of conversational taps, like pokes with wooden swords, playful and idle, like two pages waiting for their masters to arrive. When his throat was cut, he would experience blinding agony. And yet the years of idle talk carried him forwards. “Most people live lives disappointed in, if nothing else, themselves.”

  “Is that how people live in their silks and splendid slippers, disappointed in themselves?”

  The man was gloating, savoring his victory. Geoffrey stared straight ahead. He would give the man no pleasure. And yet, the man was unarmed. Geoffrey glanced at him. The man’s hands were on his hips as he appraised the sheriff, smiling, enjoying his prize.

  Could he stand to run a man through, even now?

  Geoffrey took a deep breath, into the deep bottom of his lungs. No, he could not use his sword on this man, but this man did not know that. Geoffrey drew his sword, and the gray light made the blade a hard shaft of the winter to come.

  “Come now, my lord sheriff. You are not meant for fighting.”

  As if this man could see into his soul!

  “Besides, it would be unwise.”

  A figure was in the clearing suddenly, without a sound: a man shaggy with ragged clothing and twigs that clung to his stockings and sleeves. The man was panting, but his eyes were as bright as knife cuts, and he held a sword.

  The newcomer was huge. He stepped slowly across the complicated roots of the oak and took his place beside Robin Hood. The sword he held was evil with tarnish and hacked and broken along its length so that it resembled a half-thawed icicle more than a span of steel. But the sword was steady in a great fist. The man’s knuckles were black with humus and wood grime, and the man’s beard tangled with pine needles and earth.

  Geoffrey looked up into the swordsman’s eyes. So, he thought, this is my death.

  Strangely he was calm. It was a weird calm, in which each thorny twig snared in the sleeves of the giant was clear, each whisper of each falling leaf precise and individual. He eyed this huge adversary, who looked like a man shaped out of the forest floor itself, just as God had formed Adam out of clay, and said quietly, “Let me die with my sword in my hand. It will appear more honorable.”

  “Die? My dear lord sheriff, we will not kill you!” said Robin Hood.

  A feeling like sorrow swept Geoffrey.

  “You are our guest!” said Robin Hood. “We will hurt you in no way.”

  The giant did not smile, and the leaves behind Geoffrey whispered, branches moved aside, and bushes shrugged, to show figures everywhere, six, seven men, each holding a bow with an arrow ready-nocked.

  “Ransom,” said Geoffrey.

  “You are,” said Robin Hood, “a guest.”

  “You have disgraced me.”

  “Of course. But we mean you no harm.”

  “No harm! You disgrace me in the eyes of men, trap me, hold me—you’d be merciful to kill me here and now!”

  Robin put forth his hand and moved Geoffrey’s sword aside as if it were a hanging branch from a tree. “I will take your sword,” he said, closing his hand over Geoffrey’s. “Because if you do one foolish thing, there will be seven arrows in your throat.”

  His hand was empty. Geoffrey flexed his gloved fingers. Where was Henry? Where were the men armed with lances? They are taking too long, Geoffrey thought, and soon these forest-colored men will slink back into the woods with their prize.

  “I offer my compliments to you,” said Geoffrey. “And to your men. I had heard that you were cunning, but I had no idea.”

  “You flatter me, good sheriff.”

  “By ransoming me, you will destroy my reputation among common folk, and you will earn yourself a fat sack of gold.”

  “We would not dream of ransoming a guest,” said Robin Hood, and he gestured to the shadowy bowmen. Two or three dropped back into the forest, and the sheriff was nudged from behind with a fist, a gentle prod, the sort of encouragement a peasant would offer an ox. “And as to the common folk, don’t worry about your reputation among the good field folk of this shire. They already despise you.”

  “I am sorry to hear this. But I will be even sorrier when Sir Baldwin hears of this and tells the king.” Geoffrey stopped himself. Why enhance their pleasure?

  But to stop them from hurrying into the woods, Geoffrey added, “Since I am forced into your company, I might as well tell you what leeches you all are, draining the blood from the High Way, asking mock tolls, as if the road were yours!”

  “You flatter us, my lord sheriff. And don’t bother looking round like that. No one is coming.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Your good man Henry and I drank together last night.”

  Geoffrey’s knees weakened.

  “He took somewhat more than I did, and I believe he is still asleep somewhere in the castle.”

  “I am not surprised,” Geoffrey said, trying to convince himself. “I was testing him.”

  But Robin Hood was gone, into the trees like the shadow of a falcon, and Geoffrey was left alone with only the giant and a young man with no teeth as companions. The young man with no teeth nudged Geoffrey as he had before, with his fist, only this time the fist touched Geoffrey’s ribs through his cloak. “Hurry, now,” said the young man through sloppy lips. “We have much sport in store.” The words were mushy: “Shport en shtore.” The young man was unshaven, and lean and brown, as if all the fat had been rendered out of him over a fire.

  The giant gripped Geoffrey’s arm.

  “And one thing more, and it please Your Lordship,” said the loose lips. The stink of ancient sweat and months of fires and deer fat and pine sap rose round Geoffrey, and he was blind, hooded like a raptor on its way to a hunt.

  22

  “Of course, it’s a hardship climbing over logs you can’t see,” said the loose mouth. A hand closed round Geoffrey’s, and he was helped to his feet. “We’ll try to keep you from stumbling again.”

  The young man was difficult to understand, like a drunkard, but he talked all the more because of that, as if more words were necessary to nail down meaning. “Most of us had to learn
to be invisible the hard way, which is by being seen and chased. No one knows how to live as well as a man who has nearly been killed, says Robin.”

  A branch stabbed Geoffrey’s side and snapped.

  “Only a short way now, but look out—we’re coming to a stream. Be careful of your feet. There are rocks here to step on if you—”

  Geoffrey was soaked. He interrupted his own prayer to the Queen of Grace to curse the lips, eyes, and reproductive parts of the young man.

  “We aren’t doing it on purpose, Lord Sheriff. If you wore one of these more often, you’d be better at this.”

  “I should have practiced,” snarled Geoffrey.

  “Yes, it would have been happier for you if you had, because Robin says that practice is the key to the future.”

  “Is that right?” asked Geoffrey with elaborate courtesy. “And what other wise things does he offer his disciples?”

  “Oh, we’d not be disciples, in so many words, my lord sheriff. Only fellow dead men in a second life.”

  Geoffrey’s feet clattered over flat, loose rocks, and somewhere high overhead a squirrel scolded. The open air of the stream was swallowed as they half dragged Geoffrey over logs so rotten the stink of wetness rose with each sinking step. Moss fur was at his fingertips, and mud built up under his nails, making his fingers feel large and numb.

  It was like being lost in a gigantic, wet tapestry, wandering up and over the individual fibers of the cloth. There was no sound but the rasp of three men breathing and the brush of feet though ferns. Geoffrey felt himself slipping, and he put a hand out to a tree wet with slime, and then another hard and scaly as a snake. Flakes of tree hide came off under his fingers, and he cringed, staggering forwards.

  “Not too much farther now, my lord sheriff, and then you’ll enjoy the most welcome feast you’ve ever had, and there can be no question about that.”

  “No question at all,” said Geoffrey through clenched teeth.

  “We all have something in common now, my lord sheriff, and that’s the truth on it. We all thought we were going to be dead, but we’re alive, and that’s the great wonder, by the Mother of God.”

  The strange, clumsy words had sounded very nearly pious, and Geoffrey groped past a tree before he asked, “When did you think you would die?”

  “Many times, and it please you, so many times, but most especially when your own men caught me for a chicken thief, although I was innocent as a cow’s knee, and it please you.”

  Claims of innocence always made Geoffrey suspicious. “Perhaps you had decorated your fingers with hen feathers to amuse your friends.”

  “No, my lord sheriff, I was as bare of even a speck of hen dirt as anyone since Adam, and your men held me to the ground, as Heaven is my witness, and pulled my teeth with a smith’s tong.”

  “Ah.”

  “And I saw myself dead and gutted, my lord, in pain though I was, except they left me to swallow blood and be rescued by Robin and taken to the greenwood, where I still am, by the grace of our Lord.”

  “I see,” said Geoffrey, stumbling.

  “And you thought you’d be dead, under the Trysting Oak, didn’t you, my lord? Oh, you put on a good show, but I saw that shiver down your back when I stepped out behind you. I saw those neck muscles thinking on their future, which they thought would be primarily shortened by a bit of forester’s steel.”

  Mollified by the slim compliment that he had “put on a good show,” Geoffrey said, “I did wonder about my future.”

  “Wonder! There was naught but a certainty what you were thinking, and we all saw it. But don’t think twice. We’ve all been afraid before and lived to tell the tale.”

  Before he could muster a response, there was a familiar voice, and for an instant Geoffrey was glad to hear it. “You’ve arrived at last,” said Robin Hood.

  “And a most perfect companion he has been,” said the toothless one.

  The hood was tugged free, and Geoffrey blinked.

  The giant was still at his side, a full head taller than Geoffrey, who had always been vain of his good height. No doubt, thought Geoffrey, this man’s tongue has been pulled out. A great fire crackled round a log like the legless carcass of a horse, a huge, misshapen chunk of wood. Glistening faces studied him, pausing over simple tasks, mending a stocking, hammering a metal bowl with a stone, rubbing a bowstring with wax. The boughs of pines suggested a roof, and the arcing, blackened ribs of a boar suggested a previous meal.

  “We are pleased to welcome you,” said Robin, removing his cap in a graceful bow. He was in different clothes now, but they were, if anything, more ragged than his potter’s garb. He wore a stained leather jerkin and a tattered skirt that once had been green.

  Rude tents stretched over bedding. Straw scattered among trees had been squashed into mud. To Geoffrey’s horror he saw that some of the dirt-black faces were those of women. A grease-shiny hand searched a head for lice, and another used a knife to squash a tick that had fled a fold in a cloak.

  “Your companions were never introduced to you, a lapse for which I apologize,” said Robin Hood. “The young man with the willing tongue is Will Scathlock. The large man at your elbow is Little John. Over there is Much, son of a miller, and I would introduce all the rest, but I fear you might misuse the information. Many of these people have families somewhere, some of whom pay us a visit sometimes. We look like animals, but we are not.”

  It was the point in a conversation at which the guest said something like “Oh, no, you look nothing like animals,” in the time-honored exchange between self-deprecating host and courteous guest. Geoffrey simply stared.

  “Please sit and let us entertain you. We want nothing more than to serve your pleasure.” Eyes everywhere glittered with interest, and every face seemed to know everything about him, as if he had been there many times. “You see, we have a place prepared for you.”

  Geoffrey sat on a deer hide, and a hand with nails black as claws handed him a goblet. The silver was dusky, and the mouth of the goblet was bent oblong, but the red wine was good, stolen, no doubt, as pavage from a merchant.

  “We have been waiting for you for a long time,” said Robin Hood. “Because in a way you belong here.”

  “As happy as I am to be here,” said Geoffrey—and in truth, he was happy to be anywhere—“I don’t know why you feel I belong with you.”

  “Oh, you don’t, actually.” Robin’s eyes twinkled as he sat and poured himself wine from a chipped clay pitcher. “We belong with you, in your chamber, between your sheets. But since you would not have us, we must have you.”

  “What did you do to Henry?”

  “Nothing. He reeled from your chamber, already forgetting what you had told him to do, and I finished him off with a few pitchers of new ale.”

  “It was that simple?”

  “As easy as the telling of it.”

  “I trusted him.”

  “Don’t think about it. We would have had you one way or another.”

  23

  It was probably still day, but it made no difference here. The fire was bright, and a buck was brought, hanging from a pole, its antlers dragging twin lines in the earth. The beautiful eyes looked into Geoffrey’s. A single spot of ripe blood over the animal’s heart showed where an arrow had hissed and taken the world away from the deer.

  The deer is me, Geoffrey thought, and when the gutting knife glinted in the firelight, Geoffrey could not watch. Never before had the carcass of an animal shaken him like this. “You serve good wine,” said the sheriff.

  “Only the best,” said Robin.

  “My men would have devastated this little band.”

  “They have done their best already. Shorn ears, chopped hands, gouged eyes.” Indeed, even as he spoke, the pink bud of a clipped ear protruded from lank hair in a nearby tent, a sleeve fell away to expose a stump, and a sightless eye pursed itself tighter.

  “Tell me,” said Geoffrey. “Where did you get the pots?”

  “Ce
rtainly you don’t think I stole them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I bought them from a traveling potter. I paid him well, and he was pleased to be rid of his wares.”

  Yet another deer sizzled over coals, and Geoffrey made a sour smile. “You help yourselves to the king’s livestock.”

  “We would be very hungry otherwise,” said Robin Hood.

  When a slab of venison steamed before Geoffrey, and his glass had been filled, Robin Hood said, “What entertainment would you like? A battle with quarterstaffs perhaps? We are the best in the shire at staff-battles. It is, after all, the weapon of the peasant, and most of us are common.”

  “I think not, but thank you.”

  “An archery display!” said Robin Hood.

  “No, I have seen enough of that.”

  “Then a story.”

  “Very well. A story.”

  “Little John,” called Robin Hood, “tell us a story.”

  The huge shape of a man detached itself from a tree, and the great tree-colored figure stood before them.

  “We want a story, Little John.”

  The giant looked deep into Geoffrey’s eyes, as if reading something there.

  “And since we avoided a fight today, let it be a story of battle,” said Robin Hood. “Let there be swords in it, and blood.”

  Little John’s eyes glittered in a face like a mossy bole. He closed his eyes and stood unmoving for a moment. Then his eyes opened again, and he slowly raised his arms. The forest itself seemed to grow silent, and only the fire whispered.

  “Kanut was a warrior,” said Little John, his voice deep and clear. “He was a mighty swordsman. No one could defeat him in battle. His sword flashed like the noon sun, and blood pattered on the ground like piss.

  “One day Kanut’s lord commanded him to travel to a distant land where they needed the service of his sword.” Somewhere a hand stroked a lute, a discordant, quiet sound. Little John stared hard into Geoffrey’s eyes, then raised his arms again. “A distant land, where he was to rescue the countryside from a monster.

  “Kanut set sail across the sea in a storm, the water black and tossing, and gulls wheeling across the sky. When he arrived, he knelt and thanked Our Lady for his safe passage. The shore was a waste of sand and seaweed. The sky was the color of iron, and the farms were a tangle of weeds. Kanut walked the road with his sword in his hand, because the wind stank of death. There was silence, except for one sound: the sound of a woman weeping.