“What you did,” said Much. “Didn’t I just say that my snares work nicely?”
Robin’s band had settled, more comfortably than might have been expected, into the little hillside glen with the stream and pool nearby. The hut-cave had been enlarged enough by the first half-dozen of them that it was possible to creep out in the middle of the night without necessarily treading on any of one’s fellows. The position of the boulder-fall had made it possible to build a semi-permanent hearth for a fire, which was protected from the worst weather, and which could be prevented, mostly, from smoking in too tell-tale a fashion; and which enabled them to eat cooked food. No one remembered when the camp began to be called Greentree. One day it was merely a patched-together and unreliable temporary shelter for folk who had no better; and the next day it had a name, and had become home.
Many of the king’s deer that Robin had once earned his bread to preserve went to feed the pinched bellies of his outlaws; and as anyone’s marksmanship improved, he began to learn to set his arrows where the beast was least likely to fall and break the shaft, that the arrow might be salvaged and used again. It occurred to Robin that it might be possible to grow tired of venison; but there were rabbits as well, and squirrels and pigeons, and several of the folk that now sheltered with him proved handy with roots and herbs, and the stews then produced became savoury as well as nourishing. Much brought flour from Whitestone as his father could spare it, so that they might also have bread and dumplings. The miller was well off as Saxon yeomen went, and could spare it, and so Robin tried not to think of the debt, only too likely to prove unpayable, that his company was running up to the miller’s generosity. It was a little easier not to think about when he looked around him at the wan discouraged faces filling out, and the wary glint of hope seen in more and more eyes.
“Any man may be called merely Robin,” grumbled Much one day; “we need a better name for you.”
“Normanslayer?” Robin suggested ironically. “Deerthief? Sheriff’s-bane?—would that I were.”
Much shook his head. “My second sister’s husband’s name is Robin, and a duller stick of a man you could not hope not to speak to.”
“Speaking well or ill does not keep the rain out,” said Robin automatically. “If he—”
“No,” said Much. “We all know by now about your single-minded lust for the practical. But word’s gone out, you know, just as we told you it would. Anyone we’d want who got you confused with my sister’s husband wouldn’t come, for fear of being bored to death. You need another name. Or we need something to call you.” Much brooded. “I rather like Sheriff’s-bane.”
“I do not,” said Robin. It was a grey and louring sort of day, and a damp, sticky drizzle fell or crept through the trees. Summer had arrived, and the woods were thick with the smell of it, and the rain was warm and felt almost like sap—no less unpleasant running down the back of the neck. Robin pulled his cloak up around his head. “Robin of the Hood,” he suggested. “It rains enough here, God knows.”
“It’ll do,” said Much. “I know you too well to expect better.” Marian came to the camp at least once a sennight. She was, if anything, even more tired than Robin himself, although he never asked her if her dreams woke her in the small hours. Nor did they ever discuss her coming to live in Sherwood as Much had done, who still went outside, when it suited him, as the miller’s son. But then his father was sympathetic to his son’s cause, and Marian’s, had he known of it, would not be. Marian continued to live at her father’s house, and she learnt what people said of the sheriff, and of the small band of unusual outlaws lately gathered in Sherwood; and she brought the tales with her as she brought leather and twine and salt and pots for cooking. It was a dangerous task she had set herself, and a dangerous journey, both for herself and for Robin and his people. The strain—beginning with the fact that Marian did not permit discussion of what it was she was doing—told on both her and Robin, and they quarrelled almost as often as they met.
It had been ten days since last she had been to Greentree, and not only had the company cautiously accepted two new members, but there were two families sitting in a subdued and worn little huddle near the fire. The small available space of the glen was bursting at the edges, and Robin was twitchier even than usual. There were too many people to keep utterly quiet, and he wanted any forester so implausibly scrupulous in pursuit of his occupation (or the price on Robin’s head) as to come anywhere near the camp to hear nothing more for his trouble than the sounds all trees make alone in a wilderness. “I did not think there would be so many,” said Marian wonderingly.
“Neither did I,” said Robin grimly. He had not had the heart to send the families immediately on their way, as he usually did with the clearly unsuitable. They had been wandering too long and were too weary; each had children who were wearier yet. They would be sent on—soon; but not till they were fed and rested, and meanwhile they had, somehow, to be taken care of till they had regained their strength.
Robin, looking at the faces around the fire, and then back at Marian’s, thought there was not much difference between them. Love and fear turned in his heart, and he could not have said which was stronger; but the two of them together produced a spark like anger. “You cannot keep on like this,” he said. “It is too hard for you. It is too hard for me, watching you.”
Marian sighed; she and Robin hadn’t had their quarrel yet this visit. She pulled herself to her feet. “I will go on like this because I am the best spy you have. I cannot trust the Norman gentry any less than you yourselves do,” and Robin saw the shadow of her father on her. “You need not fear that I will be followed; the sheriff’s men wonder, to be sure, and they watch me when they have a few minutes to spare; but they will not believe anything too mutinous of a mere daughter while the father still pays his taxes and salutes the sheriff in the streets of Nottingham. And I have taken care to be seen drooping and ashamed as persons of better judgement tell me what I might have expected of such a scurrilous friend as the son of old Robert Longbow. Robert was not a bad man, you know, but his son …” She looked at Robin and half-smiled. “I will try to bring more cloth the next time I come; you are still sadly ragged.”