Much was not alone the next time; Rafe and Harald were with him—and Marian. “I wished to come before,” she said, “but Beatrix has been sick, and the world centers on Beatrix when she is sick. It would have been conspicuous had I left her.” She grimaced. “Much as I would have been grateful to. But see here: I have brought you something useful, and not in the least symbolic.” She undid the pack on her back and revealed the first fold of a long length of heavy green wool. “Is it not splendid? It is just the thing for outlaws who must sleep in the rain, and who will be tearing themselves on twigs and thorns. It is very stout stuff,” she went on, pulling it between her hands to show the closeness of the weave, and not looking at Robin. “Here are needles and thread too—although I suppose I will have to show you how to use them.”
A little silence fell, as Robin looked at Marian, Marian looked at her pack, Much looked at both of them, and Rafe and Harald looked puzzled. “What do you say, Robin?” said Much, with the air of a man who needs to bridle a horse whose ears are flat back and whose eye is rolling.
Robin swallowed. “I say—I must say—thank you. You are right that you will have to show me—us. I can sew up the holes that thorns have made, but I do not know how to cut and shape.”
“I can do most of the cutting for you,” she said, lifting her eyes at last to his, “and leave the seams for you, if you promise to have a care to sew them straight.”
And it was Marian who said, when they had come again to Robin’s camp, and Robin was trying to find out how much more of the way Much might have learned this time, “I can take us all back, Robin; you can stay here and start on some seams while daylight lasts.”
The four men blinked at her. It had not occurred to Robin to question Rafe or Harald, for a horse-coper and a leather-worker were not expected to have much woodscraft. But it had not occurred to him or to Much to look to Marian either. “You can come with us a little way if you like, and be certain I am not bragging,” said Marian. “But I know where we are and where we came from.”
“And furthermore she will do it obliquely,” said Much. “How do you do it obliquely?”
Marian stared at him. “What are you talking about? It is only that I have long preferred the company of trees. My father’s house, with Aethelreda there, runs very well without me; I spend more of my time at Blackhill than at the city house, and there is only so much embroidery I can do without going mad. I taught myself years ago, when I was still young enough to be thrashed for coming in late for dinner, not to get lost, for fear of being forbidden to go among my friends again. I cannot stop Beatrix from quarrelling with everyone, but I can get our party back to Whitestone Mill.”
“Oh,” said Robin.
“Now,” said Marian hastily, “is there anything you need at once that I might get for you more easily than some other? Leather, perhaps. It is your craft, is it not?”
“Yes, lady, it is,” said Harald slowly. He and Rafe were trying not to be dismayed that the lady with Norman blood in her was the only one besides Robin himself who could go freely through Sherwood. But the blankness of Robin’s and Much’s expressions was comforting, for there was no fear in it for the lady’s loyalty. And it was true enough that Robin’s folk would have need of friends, and a lady would be useful. “It—it would be a great boon to me to have leather in my hands again.”
“Not to mention letting you off much of the digging and the stonepiling and the getting slapped in the face by the sharp edges of things like leaves that aren’t supposed to have sharp edges,” said Much. “It’s that for you, Rafe, you know; there are no horses to trot out in Sherwood.”
“Where did the wool come from?” said Robin.
“It was a bad dye lot,” said Marian. “You will see. They were glad to have it go away at almost any price; but the cloth is good, and leaves and trees are rather streaky too, aren’t they? You’ll blend in the better for the streaks. Let me measure you across the shoulders, and I will cut out the first shirt.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Spring passed swiftly as Robin and his small band began to make, or tried to make, or blundered toward making the ways and means that would enable them to live in Sherwood; if not beyond the reach of, then relatively safe from discovery by, any of the sheriff’s men or the king’s foresters. There was a little coming and going as prospective outlaws made their final break with their previous lives—and Robin began to mutter under his breath about using the thread Marian had brought for tying to the wrists of would-be outlaws who could not go six steps from the home camp without getting lost. Marian was still his only other truly reliable guide, although Much went wrong seldom, and Rafe through sheer tenacity was learning. “An eye is an eye, isn’t it?” he said. “And I’ve a good eye for a horse. Wish trees had four legs.” Harald made a pair of shoes for Gilbert, who had none, and even spring in Sherwood is hard on bare feet.
As folk arrived after leaving their old homes for the last time, they brought bits of their lives with them; but few had more than bits to bring. Humphrey brought three good bows and the seasoned wood for four more; and the gear to make several dozen arrows. “Call it a dowry,” said Humphrey with a grin half-sheepish and half-proud. “Old Alcock’s been drunk for years,” he said; “he’ll never notice they’re gone. And if my lord does, it’ll be too late to guess the truth and Alcock will have to think up a good tale quick to save his own skin—which if you want to ask me he should have lost long ago.”
Now, how many among us can shoot what they aim at? thought Robin. About as many as can be sure of the north side of a tree. “Very well done,” he said aloud; “and the sooner you get those arrows fletched, the better. You couldn’t have chosen anything we needed more.”
But the first night that he was not alone in the little half-hut, half-cave he could not sleep, listening to the breathing of the other human beings who now shared his outcast condition. He still could not quite believe that anyone would willingly throw over a living, however meager, to live as an outlaw. “Ah, but Robin, that’s just it: we are choosing,” said Much, when Robin admitted a little of this to him. He looked at his friend a time, finding, Robin suspected, new circles under the eyes and lines in the forehead. “None of us wakes in the night speaking the name of the man he killed by accident,” he added.