“It was seeing you, well-clothed and fed, and hurrying to your business with such firm purpose that you did not see me, that brought a sudden blackness to my mind, and I challenged you.”
Hurrying to my business with such firm idiocy, thought Robin; I suppose such preoccupation does make me look honest, for only an honest man could afford it. He undid his damp leather wallet from his damp leather belt, and opened it. “It is your own fault that it is wet,” he said to the man on the ground, “but the bread’s made of the miller’s coarsest meal, and should have held up to its soaking pretty well.” He held it out to the stranger, noticing for the first time how hollow the man’s eyes were beneath the weariness, and how his ragged clothing hung over a frame too thin for its great bones.
The man looked at the wallet and then at Robin, but he made no move to touch the food. “I thank you, but I do not ask for charity,” he said, with a slight return to his old threatening manner. “I would ask, if you will or can give it, a direction to this outlaw, Robin Hood—or perhaps the information that you are a sheriff’s man, and will clap me in irons.”
Robin grinned. “I would like to see me try it. It’s not charity—may I say that the temper you wanted to apologise for is showing again, even if you have not the strength to back it just now? Take the food, or I’ll stamp it into the mud.” He found himself growing embarrassed. “You see—I am Robin Hood. It’s your first wages, if you like, although we cannot pay wages, and we have yet no spoils to divide, as successful outlaws are expected to do. But if you think I look well-clothed and well-fed, you will be better off with us than without us.”
But the man only went on staring. Robin took a step closer. “Take it,” he said, “or I’ll drip on you.”
The man reached up and took the wallet, but then he bowed his head, and still he did not touch the food. “I do most humbly beg your pardon,” he said to the ground.
Robin, putting on his boots and grimacing at the clammy feel of them, said, “Yes, as well you may, but don’t go on about it, if you please. I think we might as well go back to Greentree, where we—live. I can bring you in and get dry too.”
The man broke the bread in half, and offered half back to Robin, who, after looking at the set of the stranger’s mouth, accepted it. The man thoughtfully ate his half, looking at the stream. “Would you wish me, for my first command, to fall off the bridge into the water?”
“It’s an idea,” said Robin. “But while I am considering it, you could tell me your name.”
The man climbed slowly to his feet again, and Robin wondered how he could not have noticed before how very thin he was, and how worn his clothing. “For the size of our holding, my father was called Little; and so I became John Little after him, or Johnlittle, as it amused those who looked up a certain distance to see my face to call me.” He paused; his beard made it hard to read his expression. “But that was when I had a home and a holding, and friends to call me by name.”
“We shall baptise you again as you enter your new life,” said Robin, tipping his own head back to look up the certain distance. “I call you Little John, and so you shall be known from this day forward.”
“So then I shall,” said he, and, ignoring the bridge, waded into the stream, and crossed so to the other side. He was wet to the neck when he came up on the opposite shore.
CHAPTER FIVE
Robin lost count of how many bowls of stew Little John ate that evening; it might have been six or seven. That was besides the half a pie and the ends of two almost-stale loaves (nothing edible in Greentree lasted long enough to get really stale) he’d eaten when they first arrived.
When the two of them squelched back to camp, they headed at once for the fire. All the children were lingering significantly in its neighbourhood, where the big pot that was one of the Sherwood band’s dearest possessions sat on its short iron legs and steamed; its aroma said, vegetable soup, heavy on the turnips and too few marrow bones. The old woman who was tending the fire looked at Robin and then at his companion; and her face went abruptly blank, and her cheeks hollow, as if she were sucking in at the corners of her mouth. She turned and busied herself at the woodpile, and threw several good chunks on the fire, that it would blaze up better, to cook the soup faster or to cause wet clothes to steam dry more quickly.
One of the children went up to Robin and grabbed a corner of his shirt. She squeezed it disbelievingly, and looked up into his face with an expression of deep disapproval. This was a child who had been thrashed by her mother the day before for playing in the pond, and getting her only whole suit of clothes wet.
“You’ll get no soup,” she said with profound certainty. Someone behind them chuckled, and there was a rustle, and utter silence fell.
Robin said mildly, “There was a little trouble about a bridge that was too narrow. But all has ended well, and I wish to introduce you to our latest member: I give you John Little, henceforth to be known as Little John.”
Much appeared from wherever he had been and said, “A little trouble, say you?” He lifted one of the staff-flayed strips of Robin’s tunic. “And with, we understand, a little man.” He gazed up at the newcomer looming over Robin’s shoulder. “Be it so; I would not cross your judgement.” He dropped his eyes to Little John’s staff—Robin had lost his green oak to the stream—and said, “I am sure you will be a very useful man to have around. With your little staff. I welcome you.”
Little John’s mouth stretched and curled as if he were not accustomed to smiling; and he said, “I shall try to be useful. And your name, my new friend?”
“Much,” said Much. “Much of Whitestone Mill, as I was; although the person of that name seems to be gaining some notoriety of late, and I believe I shall start leaving him at home in Sherwood.”
The outlaws were lucky in their first winter. Snow fell rarely, and only a little of it sifted through the many branches and stubborn brown oak leaves of Sherwood to cover the ground. The center of Greentree’s glen gleamed white in the sunlight occasionally; but what snow there was melted quickly. Thanks to Harald, by the time there was ice underfoot everyone had shoes stout enough to walk without fear of frostbite, and a leather tunic to cut the winter wind. As the season stayed mild, the animals the outlaws depended on for food and clothing were in good condition, and most of them continued to stray through the forest as they did during the rest of the year, and did not take hibernation too seriously.