‘Aye, and so were wold Much, as you spoke to by the felled tree.’
‘And I think,’ exclaimed Kay triumphantly, ‘that this next big tree which we are coming to will be the stronghold of Robin Wood!’
They were coming to the monarch of the forest.
It was a lime tree as great as that which used to grow at Moor Park in Hertfordshire, no less than one hundred feet in height and seventeen feet in girth, a yard above the ground. Its beech-like trunk was embellished with a beard of twigs at the bottom, and where each of the great branches had sprung from the trunk the bark had split and was now discoloured with rain water or sap. The bees zoomed among its bright and sticky leaves, higher and higher toward heaven, and a rope ladder disappeared among the foliage. Nobody could have climbed it without a ladder, even with irons.
‘You think well, Measter Kay,’ said Little John. ‘And there be Measter Robin, atween her roots.’
The boys, who had been more interested in the look-out man perched in a crow’s nest at the top of that swaying and whispering pride of the earth, lowered their eyes at once and clapped them on the great outlaw.
He was not, as they had expected, a romantic man – or not at first – although he was nearly as tall as Little John. These two, of course, were the only people in the world who have ever shot an arrow the distance of a mile, with the English long-bow. He was a sinewy fellow whose body did not carry fat. He was not half-naked, like John, but dressed discreetly in faded green with a silvery bugle at his side. He was clean-shaven, sunburned, nervous, gnarled like the roots of the trees; but gnarled and mature with weather and poetry rather than with age, for he was scarcely thirty years old. (Eventually he lived to be eighty-seven, and attributed his long life to smelling the turpentine in the pines.) At the moment he was lying on his back and looked upward, but not into the sky.
Robin Wood lay happily with his head in Marian’s lap. She sat between the roots of the lime tree, clad in a one-piece smock of green girded with a quiver of arrows, and her feet and arms were bare. She had let down the brown shining waterfalls of her hair, which was usually kept braided in pigtails for convenience in hunting and cookery, and with the falling waves of this she framed his head. She was singing a duet with him softly, and tickling the end of his nose with the fine hairs.
Under the greenwood tree, sang Maid Marian,
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat.
‘Come hither, come hither, come hither,’ mumbled Robin.
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
They laughed happily and began again, singing lines alternately:
Who doth ambition shun
And loves to lie in the sun,
Seeking the food he eats
And pleased with what he gets,
then, both together:
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
The song ended in laughter. Robin, who had been twisting his brown fingers in the silk-fine threads which fell about his face, gave them a shrewd tug and scrambled to his feet.
‘Now, John,’ he said, seeing them at once.
‘Now, Measter,’ said Little John.
‘So you have brought the young squires?’
‘They brought me.’
‘Welcome either way,’ said Robin. ‘I never heard ill spoken of Sir Ector, nor reason why his sounders should be pursued. How are you, Kay and Wart, and who put you into the forest at my glades, on this of all days?’
‘Robin,’ interrupted the lady, ‘you can’t take them!’
‘Why not, sweet heart?’
‘They are children.’
‘Exactly what we want.’
‘It is inhuman,’ she said in a vexed way, and began to do her hair.
The outlaw evidently thought it would be safer not to argue. He turned to the boys and asked them a question instead.
‘Can you shoot?’
‘Trust me,’ said the Wart.
‘I can try,’ said Kay, more reserved, as they laughed at the Wart’s assurance.
‘Come, Marian, let them have one of your bows.’
She handed hum a bow and half a dozen arrows twenty-eight inches long.
‘Shoot the popinjay,’ said Robin, giving them to the Wart.
He looked and saw a popinjay five-score paces away. He guessed that he had been a fool and said cheerfully, ‘I am sorry, Robin Wood, but I am afraid it is much too far for me.’
‘Never mind,’ said the outlaw. ‘Have a shot at it. I can tell by the way you shoot.’
The Wart fitted his arrow as quickly and neatly as he was able, set his feet wide in the same line that he wished his arrow to go, squared his shoulders, drew the bow to his chin, sighted on the mark, raised his point through an angle of about twenty degrees, aimed two yards to the right because he always pulled to the left in his loose, and sped his arrow. It missed, but not so badly.
‘Now, Kay,’ said Robin.
Kay went through the same motions and also made a good shot. Each of them had held the bow the right way up, had quickly found the cock feather and set it outward, each had taken hold of the string to draw the bow – most boys who have not been taught are inclined to catch hold of the nock of the arrow when they draw, between their finger and thumb, but a proper archer pulls back the string with his first two or three fingers and lets the arrow follow it – neither of them had allowed the point to fall away to the left as they drew, nor struck their left forearm with the bow-string – two common faults with people who do not know – and each had loosed evenly without a pluck.
‘Good,’ said the outlaw. ‘No lute-players here.’
‘Robin,’ said Marian, sharply, ‘you can’t take children into danger. Send them home to their father.’
‘That I won’t,’ he said, ‘unless they wish to go. It is their quarrel as much as mine.’
‘What is the quarrel?’ asked Kay.
The
