Free The Chronicles of Robin Hood by Rosemary Sutcliff Page B

now, one of them carrying a bowstave and the other a sheaf of arrows, they came across the glade to their master.
    ‘Here be the gear, Sir Richard,’ said the elder, ‘and not a cock-feather out of place.’
    The knight glanced at the weapons and then back to the outlaw chief. ‘Friend Robin, you have refused to let me repay my debt, but you will not refuse my gift?’
    Getting up, Robin put out his hand for the bowstave and bent it against his instep. ‘I will not refuse your gift,’ he said, smiling. ‘I accept it gladly, for its own sake and for the sake of the giver.’
    Later that evening, when dusk was creeping up the Stane Ley and the owls were crying softly in the shadows, the outlaws settled down to their supper. Sir Richard sat with Robin Hood beside the largest of the camp-fires, feasting royally on roast venison and peacocks which had been poached by Simon-the-Fletcher from the poultry yard of Sir William de Trumpington. And next day, in the full glory of an early summer morning, he set out for Linden Lea once more.
    It was some years before he and Robin came together again, but Sir Richard remained a loyal friend; and indeed, the day came when without his aid the outlaw brotherhood would have fared ill indeed.

5
How Marian came to the Greenwood
    IN THEIR CAVES at Dunwold Scar the outlaws sat or sprawled around the fire. The spitting pine logs burned with clear red and saffron flames, sending up thick curling feathers of smoke that found their way out through a cranny in the rocks overhead. Outside, the cold February rain drenched down, turning the forest tracks into icy quagmires and every leaf on the holly bushes to a spouting water-chute. But within the great central cave of the many that honeycombed the sandstone scar, there was warmth and shelter, dry sand underfoot and warm, high-piled bracken for bedding, and the saffron flicker of firelight on the faces of the men and hounds gathered about the rude hearth.
    Scarcely a man sat idle, for there were always many tasks to be attended to when ill weather closed the roads and hunting trail alike. Some of them were making new clothes or mending old ones; others were refurbishing their weapons. Will Scarlet was building himself a short birding bow; Little John, with a pot of glue heating in the fire beside him, was mending his fishing tackle; Robin himself was burnishing the red rust-blotches from his steel cap.
    As they worked, the outlaws talked among themselves and to their guests—for they had, guests that day, as they often did in bad weather—a quiet palmer who had been found trudging along the sodden highway by Will-the-Bowman; a burly man-at-arms with a damaged knee that needed resting; and last, but assuredly not least, a very small man with a snub-nose and sloe-black eyes set very wide apart in his tanned face, who now sat in his shirt and scarlet hose, holding out a tattered particoloured surcoat to dry before the fire. He had pushed his fantastic red and yellow fool’s cap back from his forehead, and every time he moved his head to look from one speaker to another, the tiny silver bells along the flaunting cockscomb rang very sweetly. He seemed a quiet little man, and though he sat there fully an hour, he had scarcely spoken; yet his face was alight with interest, and his bright black eyes flickered ceaselessly from face to face of all the outlaws scattered around the fire.
    Presently Ket-the-Smith turned to him, saying: ‘Now, Master Fool, how about a song? A song of love, or a song of battle—who cares, so long as it be a merry one?’
    The little man shook his head and laughed. ‘I am no minstrel, to sing you songs. A juggler am I, and my nameis Peterkin. But if you are minded to see some juggling, the best juggling in all the North Country… .’
    ‘Lads!’ cried Ket, looking round about him. ‘Here is Peterkin the Juggler. He says he will juggle for us. Shall we take him at his word?’
    ‘Yes,’ cried the outlaws; ‘let us have