His temper flared then, and hers flared right back, and Much told them, half in alarm and half in amusement, to keep their voices down.
“And do you think you may tell me what I will and will not do, for our friendship’s sake—or for aught else, perhaps?” said Marian. “Do you think that you have either the right or the wisdom to preach so to me?”
“Had I wisdom I would have eluded Tom Moody yesterday, and we would not be speaking so now. But, yes, I tell you you put yourself at risk needlessly—”
“Needlessly? And how do you mean ‘needlessly’? Have you further decided the future of the Saxon race on our green island that it does not include the small measures that each of us Saxons may take? Even to the needless risk of helping a friend?”
“It is not seemly—”
Much said hastily, “I don’t think you want to talk about seemly, Robin, unless you really want to be thrown head-first into the fire. But—”
“A bow!” cried Robin in frustration. “A few feet of ash-wood bent and bound in such a way as a Welshman once showed my father would hurl an arrow farther than his old bow ever could. For this—”
“We haven’t got an army to throw the Normans out of England,” Marian put in, her cheeks flaming from Robin’s last remark. “The only thing we have to fight with is symbols. You are become a symbol, or you will—”
“If you will,” murmured Much.
“And, I thought, a symbolic prop might be of help to you,” said Marian, and the anger seemed to drain out of her. “Besides putting you in a better humour. I was wrong.”
“Did you know what she was about last night?” said Robin. “No,” said Much. “But I wouldn’t have told you even if I had, you know.”
Robin looked from one to the other. “You have discussed this revolutionary force between you before.”
“Yes,” agreed Much, “but only because you refused to join in the discussions. We have not kept you out.”
“And I have developed some taste for theory—and will-o’-the-wisps,” said Marian.
“If you mean to reproach me,” said Much, “I don’t blame you. But—”
“But there is Norman blood in my veins, and your friends are not sure of me,” said Marian. “I have never gone cold or hungry, that is true. But you do not know, because I have not told you, what it is like to have a half-Norman father who despises all things Saxon, including his wife, who I believe died of it; including his own tainted blood and his daughter’s. He believes that he would have done much greater things in his life had he had the good fortune to marry a Norman woman; unfortunately no Norman woman with the dowry his estates needed would have him. I have quite a romantic view of the Saxons, you know,” she said with a bitter smile; “I blame all my faults on my Norman blood, and my virtues on my Saxon. I like Much and his notions.”
Robin said, trying to sound patient, “But you have just admitted to a ridiculously romantic idea of the Saxons; we will not prove any better than the Normans at close inspection.”
“I disagree with you there,” said Much.
“I did not say ridiculous,” said Marian. “I said romantic. I will settle for the truth; and I find myself quite anxious to seek it.”
“You’re both hopeless,” said Robin, hopelessly. “The king will catch us if the sheriff should fail to; and then the Saxon race can be symbolically and romantically hung by the neck till dead.”
“If you want to talk romance,” said Much, “do you really think the Lionheart is going to win Palestine? But it’s a glorious idea, and he’s the only Norman I’ve ever thought of liking. If he came home and tried ruling, I might pay attention.” There was a rather implausible owl-hoot from outside, and Much’s head snapped around. “If he can’t get it better than that, he might just as well shout,” he said, and got to his feet to let the next member of the Saxon revolution indoors. “You know, Robin, you can ask Marian to promise not to do it again; after all, your father had but the one bow.”
Robin made an inarticulate sound and stood up; Much threw up his hands in mock terror and said, “See here, you aren’t going to start on me. Besides, you’ll make a bad impression on my friends,” and opened the door.
Robin was embarrassed to discover that by the end of that first evening he was involuntarily feeling a reluctant hope for Much’s plan of a few stalwart outlaws harassing the Nottingham sheriff and his fellows from a base hidden in Sherwood Forest. It was perhaps as well that he decided to think positively, if for no other reason than that his was one voice against several, all of them good talkers. Much himself was better than good; he was inspired. “Do remember that we are starting small,” said Robin, amused, at one point, when Much was outlining a grand idea for releasing all the prisoners in the sheriff’s gaols. “You will soon have us believing we can walk on air and pick locks with our fingers.”
Much had been right that his friends would be glad to meet Robin; and they seemed to accept Marian as well—perhaps because she proved as fanatical as they were, he thought. But he found also that he was a little ashamed of himself for pouring water on the fire of their enthusiasm, when the bottom of that enthusiasm was that they were keeping him alive—they who could earn a welcome purse of coin instead by turning him over to the sheriff’s men.
That first even there were seven of them: Robin himself, and Much and Marian; the leather-worker, Harald; Jocelin, a carpenter; and Simon and Gilbert, both yeomen under the same Norman lord. The hours passed swiftly, and Robin’s head swam with talk and smoke—which refused to rise and go through the hole in the roof as it should, but preferred to snake around nose-level through the room—and exhaustion. He was still tired from the day before; and his nerves were pulled their tightest besides at the knowledge that for all the days that remained to him the threat of that purse of coin would follow him. He also had small patience with theory, however finely and logically it went together; and half to keep himself awake and half in pursuit of some small shadowy thoughts of his own, he began to draw bow-shaped marks on Much’s hearth with a piece of charcoal. “You get to clean that off again,” said Much, when he noticed; “my father is a tidy man and my sisters are worse.”