“Robin keeps insisting on clothing the ones who need it worst first,” said Much. “I’ve told him that that colour really doesn’t suit him, but he won’t listen.”
Robin stood up beside Marian. “Truly you must not risk yourself this way. I know I say this to you every time, but I cannot help it. If anything should happen to you—”
She laid a hand gently on his lips. “Nothing will happen to me, barring an inconvenient tree limb falling on my head, or that Beatrix contrives to fall ill again. You have other, better things to concern yourself with.”
Robin smiled beneath her fingers, and took her hand in his own and kissed it. “No,” he said.
She held his hand a moment longer when he would have released hers. “Thank you,” she said, and then she turned and was silently gone. A baby cried, and Robin returned to his present responsibilities with a shudder. “A crying child’s voice will carry half across England. Is there still no news?”
Much shrugged. “I’m sure Jocelin is running his feet sore even now, but it’s only been three days, and it’s not so many towns that will take families who have so obviously run away from their last places—particularly farm families without town skills. It will take time.”
“Time which we will not have,” said Robin. “We must split the camp. If they are caught here, not only are our heads forfeit, but likely their own as well, for being found with us.”
Much nodded. “That’s true. There’s shelter at Growling Falls, and it’s an easy way from here, and we could still feed them and keep an eye on them.”
“There will be shelter, you mean,” said Robin. “We’ll start on the roof tomorrow.” The child wailed again, and Robin grimaced.
“Or perhaps tonight,” suggested Much. “There’s a good moon for it.”
It would be at least another day and more likely two before, in conscience, the families could be shifted to Growling Falls. In conscience? thought Robin. How does my conscience feel about not moving them? There was no news from Jocelin; the only news was of the sheriff’s braggadocio, and how he would have Robin Hood’s head on a pike before the season was passed. Robin had spoken to the baby’s mother, but colic was colic; and even once they were resettled at Growling Falls they would eat as much as they did at Greentree, and how much they ate was—as people who have not had enough to eat for months will eat.
Not for the first time, it occurred to him that Much could run their company, particularly now that it was more or less going, now that there were at least three or four of them who could be trusted not to get lost, now that there were folk to hunt and dig and cook as well as plan. If he gave himself up into the hands of the sheriff’s men, much of the enthusiasm for tracking the others down would evaporate, and they might not be in much danger. He knew however that he was not capable of giving himself up in cold blood; and his thoughts went round in a circle not so dissimilar to the one he had been caught in on the day he was to meet Much and Marian at the Nottingham Fair. He recognised the similarity, and decided that he was not in a very good mood.
The path took a sharp bend and dived over the stream Robin could hear through the trees. There was no proper bridge, but only a great log, wedged on either end where it lay on the land by stout pegs hammered into the earth and braced with stones. Beneath ran the stream, deep enough here to be treacherous, deep enough to give a man a thorough wetting if he tried to wade across it. The log bridge had been set there by the king’s foresters years ago, but it was the only dry way to get across the stream for some distance in either direction. Robin should have had all his wits about him for so public a crossing, but he did not. He stepped up on the great treetrunk, still preoccupied; steadied himself momentarily; and began to walk across.
He didn’t go very far. There was a man—a very large dark-bearded man—standing in the middle of the narrow way, leaning on a long blackthorn staff. Robin, suddenly aware of the unmoving shadow that stood in his way, paused and looked up, thinking: how stupid can a man with a price on his head be? I never noticed the fellow; and he is a bit large for overlooking.
“I’m a stranger here, to be sure,” said the shadow, “but it seems to me that you show scant courtesy; for I was already a quarter way across this slender bridge when you jumped on the far side and strode toward me.”
Robin didn’t like the man’s tone, and he was a shaggy and draggled-looking figure besides; arrogance did not sit well on him, or so he told himself, to drown out the lecture his better judgement wished to give him on caution. What if the man had been a forester? The man was not a forester, that’s all; and Robin now wanted to get past him and forget the whole incident as quickly as he might. He looked up into the man’s eyes—and quite a way he had to look up to do it—and his voice was not friendly as he said, “Very well, I was in a hurry and was not paying attention, and I did not see you. As you apparently stopped to watch me, for you are still only a quarter of the way over and I am more than half, I suggest that you go back and let me by, and then you may cross at whatever leisurely pace seems best to you. You may even sit be-straddle and dangle a hook for fish if you will, so long as you have an eye out for other travellers who may, like me, wish to proceed at a normal pace.”
“No,” said the stranger. “I like not your plan, and I seem to have forgot my fishbait. You shall give way before me and prove that the folk here are not the knaves they seem to be.”
Robin’s nerves were still jumping from the quick, awful wash of fear when he had first seen the stranger and had not known if he faced a doom brought on by his own carelessness; and his temper, never slow to follow up an opportunity, would not now allow him go the long way back to the far shore and let this unpleasant giant past. “I shall not. I say that the folk of your county must have thrown you out for your manners, and you come here to plague us.”
Something flared in the man’s eyes at these words, and he uttered a sharp bark of laughter that had no humour in it. He said, “Then I shall have to make my own way—as I have often done in this life.” And, as if he thought of using it to clear his present path, he took a fresh grip on his staff.
“A brute and a bully you are,” said Robin angrily, his temper gone for good, and, instinctively, one hand strayed toward the quiver on his back.