Free Forbidden Forest by Michael Cadnum

John the men looked to. As seasons passed it was often John who offered reassurance when Robin was off on yet another adventure. John woke often during the dark forest nights, listening, trying to decide if the sheriff’s men finally had found them, closing in around the outlaws with drawn swords.
    One evening an ivory merchant was captured and led into the heart of the woods. The prisoner laughed with relief when he discovered he was the captive of Robin Hood.
    â€œAnd you,” the thankful merchant said, turning to the giant woodsman, “you must be the other outlaw everyone is talking about. I have even heard of you in songs, unless I’m mistaken.”
    John had not left the woods for a town or city for so long that he had forgotten all about market-day rumors and minstrel ballads.
    â€œWhat sort of song?” asked Robin Hood.
    â€œI have no voice for singing,” said the merchant, accepting a cup of red wine. “But the verses tell of Robin Hood and Little John.”
    â€œAnd what else do they say?” asked Robin with a knowing cheerfulness.
    The ivory merchant’s face fell. “If you’ll forgive me,” he said.
    â€œPlease go on,” said Robin Hood, his face bright in the firelight.
    â€œThe songs say,” offered the merchant in a tone of regret, “that the king’s men seek to put your heads on the castle wall.”

Part Two
    THE WHEEL OF HEAVEN

Chapter 14
    It was market day in Nottingham, and the parish was thronged with dairymaids and wagoners, the smell of salt cheese and yeast in the late morning sun.
    A pie man had set up his stall in Saint Giles’s Lane, and his cry of “ Hotte pyes, hotte ” was drawing a crowd of farmers and their wives, in town for the events of the following day. A dyer’s apprentice who had raped a child was to be wheeled the next afternoon—his body broken up by the town’s executioner, using the city’s venerable wheel.
    Farthings tinkled, changing hands.
    Margaret Lea turned to her attendant and said, “Buy a fine fish pie for Father.”
    â€œNone of these pie men roll a decent crust, my lady,” said Bridgit. “They use brown flour and rancid lard, or I’m a heathen.”
    â€œIt would please him very much.”
    â€œYour poor, dear father,” said Bridgit, “deserves better pies than the leather and whiting-head slabs these men serve up.”
    In church that morning Margaret had followed the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, the prayers Father Joseph had recommended for a bride-to-be. She had added her own prayers for her betrothed, Sir Gilbert, asking Heaven that the distinguished knight might be made kind and merciful. And now, as usual, Margaret and her servant were enjoying a stroll through the busy market.
    â€œI know you’ll wring a good pie out of him, Bridgit,” said Margaret.
    â€œIt will be a challenge, my lady,” said Bridgit, “but I’ll undertake it to please you.”
    Bridgit told Ralf the pie man that his pies had forever contained more scales than meat, and she would see the sheriff have him pilloried as a cheat. Sometimes a dishonest hawker of wares was sentenced to a day in the public stocks, if his infractions were extremely minor. Out-and-out thieves were hanged.
    â€œThere’s not a bone as big as a fly’s hair in any of these pies,” Ralf protested loudly, so the gathering folk could hear.
    â€œDidn’t I choke just a fortnight past,” retorted Bridgit, “on a spiny backbone that caught in my throat?” Bridgit was both serious and good-humored. The truth was, Margaret had seen Bridgit crunching up fish heads, fins, and tails when she was hungry.
    Ralf stood on his tiptoes and readied a counter to this last assertion, necessary with so many alert faces alive to the entertaining possibilities of a street squabble. “It would take a bone as wide as me,” said Ralf, “to