I cannot help grieving that amongst all the changes which have taken
place,--amongst all the worlds, if I may so call them, which have come
and gone in the lapse of time, the forest world should have altogether
departed, leaving scarcely greater or more numerous vestiges of its
existence than those that remain of the earth before the Flood. The
green and bowery glades of the old forest, their pleasant places of
sport and exercise, the haunts of the wild deer, the wolf, and the
boar, the fairy-like dingles and dells, the woodcraft that they
witnessed, the sciences, and the characters that were peculiar to
themselves, have now, alas! passed away from most of the countries of
Europe, and have left scarcely a glen where the wild stag can find
shelter, or where the contemplative man can pause under the shade of
old primeval trees, to reflect upon the past or speculate upon the
future. The antlered monarch of the wood is now reduced to a domestic
beast, in a walled park; and the man of thought, however much he may
love nature's unadorned face, however much he may feel himself cribbed
and confined amongst the works of human hands, must shut his prisoner
fancies within the bounds of his own solitary chamber, unless he is
fond to indulge them by the side of the grand but monotonous ocean. The
infinite variety of the forest is no longer his: it belongs to another
age, and to another class of beings.
In the times I write of, it was not so, and the greater part of every
country in Europe was covered with rich and ancient wood; but, perhaps,
no forest contained more to interest or to excite than that of merry
Sherwood--comprising within itself, as the reader knows, a vast extent
of very varied country, sweeping round villages, and even cities, and
containing, in its involutions, many a hamlet, the inhabitants of which
derived their sustenance from the produce of the forest ground.
The aspect of the wood itself was as different in different places as
it is possible to conceive. In some spots the trees were far apart,
with a wide expanse of open ground, covered by low brushwood, or the
shall shrub bearing the bilberry; in others, you came to a wide extent,
covered with nothing but high fern and old scrubbed hawthorn trees; but
throughout a great part of the forest the sun seldom if ever
penetrated, during the summer months, to the paths beneath, so thick
was the canopy of green leaves above, while those paths themselves were
generally so narrow that in many of them two men could not walk
abreast.
There were other and wider ways, indeed, through the wood, some of them
cart roads, for the accommodation of woodmen and carriers, some of them
highways from one neighbouring town to another: but the latter were not
very numerous or very much frequented--many a tale being told of
travellers lightened of their baggage, in passing through Sherwood;
and, to speak the truth, no one could very well say, at that time, who
and what were the dwellers in the forest, or their profession; so that
those who loved not strange company, kept to the more open country if
they could.
Nevertheless, it was a beautiful ride across almost any part of the
woodland, offering magnificent changes of scene at every step, and the
people of those times were not so incapable of enjoying it as has been
generally supposed; but still, with all the tales of outlaws and
robbers which were then afloat, it required a stout determination, or a
case of great necessity, to impel any of the citizens of the
neighbouring towns to make a trip across the forest in the spring or
autumn of the year. Those who did so, usually came back with some story
to tell, and some, indeed, brought home stripes upon their shoulders
and empty bags. The latter, however, were almost always of particular
classes. Rich monks and jovial friars occasionally fared ill; the petty
tyrants of the neighbouring shire ran a great risk, if they trusted
themselves far under the green leaf; the wealthy and ostentatious
merchant might sometimes return rather lighter than he went; but the
peasant, the honest franklin, the village curate, the young, and women
of all degrees, had generally very little to relate, except that they
had seen a forester here, or a forester there, who gave them a civil
word, and bade God speed them, or who aided them, in any case of need,
with skilful hands and a right good will.
Thus there was evidently a strong degree of favouritism shown in the
dealings of the habitual dwellers in the greenwood with the various
classes of travellers who passed through on business or on pleasure.
But, nevertheless, it was the few who complained, and the many who
lauded, so that the reputation of the merry men of Sherwood was high
amongst all the inferior orders of society at the time when this tale
begins.
So much was necessary to be said, to give the reader any idea of the
scene into the midst of which we must now plunge, leaving Barnsdale
behind us, and quitting Yorkshire for Nottingham.
It was about two o'clock, on the second of May, then, that a party of
horsemen reached a spot in the midst of Sherwood, where the road--after
having passed for nearly two miles through a dense part of the wood,
which the eye could not penetrate above fifteen or twenty yards on
either side--ran down a slight sandy descent, and entered upon a more
open scene, where the trees had been cleared away not many years
before, and where some two hundred acres of ground appeared covered
with scattered brushwood and bilberry bushes, sloping down the side of
a wide hill, at the bottom of which the thick wood began again,
extending in undulating lines for many a mile beneath the eye of the
traveller.
The number of the journeyers was five; and they pulled in the rein to
let their horses drink at a clear stream which crossed the road, and
bubbling onward, was soon lost amongst the bushes beyond. Four of them
were dressed as yeomen attached to some noble house; for although
liveries, according to the modern acceptation of the word, were then
unknown, and the term itself applied to quite a different thing, yet
the habit was already coming in, of fixing a particular badge or
cognizance upon all the followers or retainers of great noblemen, as
well as of kings, whereby they might know each other in any of the
frequent affrays which took place in those times. Sometimes it was
fixed upon the breast, sometimes upon the back, sometimes upon the arm,
where it appeared in the present instance. Each of the yeomen had a
sword and buckler, a dagger on the right side, and a bow and a sheaf of
arrows on the shoulders; and all were strong men and tall, with the
Anglo-Saxon blood shining out in the complexion.
The fourth personage was no other than Ralph Harland, the stout young
franklin, of whom we have already spoken. He, too, was well armed with
sword and buckler, though he bore no bow. Besides the usual dagger,
however, he wore, hanging by a green cord from his neck, a long,
crooked, sharp-pointed knife, called in those days an anelace, which
was, I believe, peculiar to the commons of England and Flanders, and
which was often fatally employed in the field of battle in stabbing the
heavy horses of the knights and men-at-arms.
The horses of this party were evidently tired with a long, hot ride,
and the horsemen stopped, as I have said, to let their beasts drink in
the stream before they proceeded onward. As they pulled up, a fat doe
started from the brushwood about thirty yards distant, and bounded away
towards the thicker parts of the forest, and at the same moment a loud,
clear, mellow voice, exclaimed--"So, ho, madam! nobody will hurt you in
the month of May! Give you good day, sirs!--whither are ye going?"
The eyes of all but young Harland had been following the deer, and his
had been bent, with a look of sad and stern abstraction, upon the
stream, but every one turned immediately as the words were uttered; and
there before them on the road, stood the speaker. How he came there,
however, no one could tell, for the moment before, the highway was
clear for a quarter of a mile, and there seemed no bush or tree in the
immediate neighbourhood sufficiently large to conceal a full grown man.
The personage who accosted them was certainly full-grown, and very well
grown, too. He was in height about five feet eleven, but not what could
be called large in the bone; at least, the proportion of the full and
swelling muscle that clothed his limbs made the bone seem small. His
foot, too, was less than might have been expected from his height; and
though his hand was strong and sinewy, the shape was good, and the
fingers were long. His breadth over the chest was very great; but he
was thin in the flank, and small in the waist; and when his arm hung
loosely by his side, the tip of his middle finger reached nearly to his
knee. His countenance was a very fine one; the forehead high and broad,
but with the brow somewhat prominent above the eyes, giving a keen and
eagle-like look to a face in every other respect frank and gentle. His
well rounded chin, covered with a short curling beard, of a light brown
hue, was rather prominent than otherwise, but all the features were
small and in good proportion; and the clear blue eye, with its
dark-black eyelashes, and the arching turn of the lip and mouth, gave a
merry expression to the whole, rather reckless, perhaps, but open and
free, and pleasant to the beholder.
In dress he was very much like the foresters whom we have before
described; he wore upon his head a little velvet cap, with a gold
button in the front, and a bunch of woodcock's feathers therein. He had
also an image, either in gold or silver gilt, of St. Hubert on
horseback, on the front of the cross-belt in which his sword was hung.
The close-fitting coat of Lincoln green, the tight hose of the same,
the boots of untanned leather, disfigured by no long points, the sheaf
of arrows, the bow, the sword, and bracer, were all there; and,
moreover, by his side hung a pouch of crimson cloth called the
gipciere, and, resting upon it, a hunting horn, tipped with silver. As
the fashion of those days went, his apparel was certainly not rich, but
still it was becoming, and had an air of distinction which would have
marked him out amongst men more splendidly habited than himself.
Such was the person who stood before the travellers when they looked
round, but taken by surprise, none of the party spoke in answer to his
question.
"What!" he said, again, with a smile, "as silent as if I had caught you
loosing your bow against the king's deer in the month of May? I beseech
you, fair gentlemen, tell me who you are that ride merry Sherwood at
noon, for I cannot suffer you to go on till I know."
"Cannot suffer us to go on?" cried Blawket. "You are a bold man to say
so to five."
"I am a bold man," replied the forester, "as bold as Robin Rood; and I
tell you again, good yeomen, that I must know."
What might have been Blawket's reply, who shall say? for--as we have
before told the reader--he had some idea of his own consequence, and no
slight reliance on his own vigour; but Ralph Harland interposed,
exclaiming, "Stay, stay, Blawket, this must be the man we look for to
give us aid. I have seen his face before, I am well-nigh sure. Let me
speak with him."
"Ay, ay, they show themselves in all sorts of forms," answered his
companion, while Harland dismounted and approached the stranger. "One
of them took me in as a ploughman, and now we have them in another
shape."
In the meanwhile, Harland had approached the forester, and had put into
his hand a small strip of parchment, in shape and appearance very much
like the ticket of a trunk in modern days. It was covered on one side
with writing in a large, good hand, but yet it would have puzzled the
wit of the best decipherer of those or of our own times to make out
what it meant, without a key. It ran as follows:--
"Scathelock, number one, five, seven, to the man of Sherwood." Then
came the figure of an arrow, and then the words, "A friend, as by word
of mouth. Help, help, help!"
This was all, but it seemed perfectly satisfactory to the eye that
rested upon it, for he instantly crushed the parchment in his hand,
saying, "I thought so!--Go on for half a mile," he continued; "follow
the man that you will find at the corner of the first path. Say nothing
to him, but stop where he stops, and take the bits out of your horses'
mouths, for they must feed ere they go on. Away!" he added; "away! and
lose no time."
Ralph Harland sprang upon his horse's back again, and rode on with the
rest, while the forester took a narrow path across the brushwood, which
led to the thicker wood above. They soon lost sight of him, however, as
they themselves rode on; but when they had gone nearly half a mile,
they heard the sound of a horn in the direction which he had taken.
A moment or two after, they came to a path leading to the right, and
looking down it, saw a personage, dressed in the habit of a miller's
man, leaning upon a stout staff in the midst of the narrow road. The
instant he beheld them he turned away, and walked slowly onward,
without turning to see whether they noticed or not. Harland led the way
after him, however, for the path would not admit two abreast, and the
rest followed at a walk.
They thus proceeded for somewhat more than a mile, taking several
turns, and passing the end of more than one path, each so like the
other, that the eye must have been well practised in woodcraft which
could retrace the way back to the high road again. At length they came
to a little square cut in the wood, about the eighth part of an acre in
extent, at the further corner of which was a hut built in the simplest
manner, with posts driven into the ground, and thatched over, while the
interstices were filled with flat layers of earth, a square hole being
left open for a window, and one somewhat longer appearing for the door.
Here their guide paused, and turning round, looked them over from head
to foot without saying a word.
"Ha! miller, is this your mill?" said Blawket, as they rode up.
"Yes," answered the stranger, in a rough tone, shaking his staff at the
yeoman; "and this is my mill-wheel, which shall grind the bran out of
any one who asks me saucy questions."
"On my life, I should like to try!" cried Blawket, jumping down from
his horse.
"Hush--hush!" cried Harland; "you know we were told not to speak to
him."
"And a good warning, too," said the other. "You will soon have somebody
to speak to, and then pray speak to the purpose."
"Ah! Madge she was a merry maid,
A merry maid, with a round black eye;
And everything Jobson to her said,
The saucy jade she ask'd him, 'Why?'
"'I'll deck thee out in kirtles fine,
If you'll be mine,' he said, one day;
'I'll give you gold, if you'll be mine.'
But 'Why?' was all the maid would say.
"'I love you well, indeed I do,'
The youth he answered, with a sigh;
'To you I ever will be true.'
The saucy girl still ask'd him, 'Why!'
"But one day, near the church, he said,
'The ring is here--the priest is nigh,
Come, let us in, Madge, and be wed;'
But then she no more ask'd him, 'Why?'"
So sung the miller, with an easy, careless, saucy air, leaning his back
against the turf wall of the hut, and twirling his staff round between
his finger and thumb, as if prepared to tell the clock upon the head of
any one who approached too near.
There was no time for any farther questions, however: for he had
scarcely finished the last stave, when the forester whom they had first
met appeared from behind the hut, with a brow that looked not quite so
free and gay as when the travellers had last seen him. "Come--come,
master miller," he said, "you should have to do with corn. Get some
oats for these good men's horses, for they must speed back again as
fast as they came."
"They will find oats enough in the hut, Robin," replied the other; "but
I will do your bidding however, though I be a refractory cur."
Almost at the same moment that the above reply was made, the young
franklin was speaking likewise.
"Go back again faster than we came?" he said. "I shall not feel
disposed to do that, unless----"
"Unless I show you good cause," interrupted the forester. "But I am not
going to do that. You shall stay with me for a while: these men may go
back again, for we do not want them. Let them return by Mansfield; that
is their only chance of finding those they seek. The Southwell and the
Winborn side I will answer for. You know me, Harland, I think; and if
you do, you know that my word is not in vain."
"I believe I do know you," replied Ralph Harland; "and I will trust
you, at all events. But why should I stay, and not go with them, if
there is a chance of finding the people that we want on the Mansfield
road?"
"Because the chance is but a small one," replied the forester, "and
because there is something for you to do here, which, I fear me,
is better for you now than anything that can be done for you
elsewhere.--Quick! slit open the bag with your knife, careless miller,
and let the horses feed out of it on the ground. I want the men to get
back quick. Hark ye, yeoman! Is your name Blawket?"
"The same, Master Forester," replied the yeoman. "What of me?"
"Why, this," answered the other. "I have heard of you from Scathelock,
and know you are a faithful fellow. You must return to my good lord,
your master, for me. Tell him that I will meet him between Bloodworth
and Nurstead, the day after to-morrow, by three in the afternoon. Let
him bring his whole company with him, for I have tidings to give which
it imports them much to hear."
"Find some other messenger, good forester," replied the yeoman. "My
lord sent me to seek for Richard Keen and Kate Greenly, and bade me not
come back without having found them."
"Pshaw!" said the forester, "did I not tell you you would find them on
the road to Mansfield, if at all? If they be not there, they have given
you the slip, and are in Nottingham by this time. Away with you, Master
Blawket, without more words! Give the man a cup of wine, miller; his
stomach is sour with long fasting."
"I know not," murmured Blawket, hesitating still, but feeling an
authority in the forester's speech, under which his own self-confidence
quailed. "But who shall I say to my lord sent me back with this
message? I must give him some name, good forester."
"Well, tell him," replied the person he addressed, with a smile upon
his countenance, "that it is Robert of the Lees by Ely, sent you."
"Tell him Robin Hood!" cried the miller, with a loud laugh.
"Do as I bid you," rejoined the forester. "Say Robert of the Lees: by
that name will he know me, from passages in other days; and hark!" he
continued--"be sure the Earl of Ashby comes with him, and utter not
one word of what that foolish miller just now said."
"I understand--I understand!" cried Blawket, with a much altered
manner--"I will do your bidding, Master Robin of the Lees; but this
horse eats so wondrous slow."
"He will soon be done," said the forester. "Give him the wine, miller.
We have no cups here; take it from the stoup good Blawket, and hand it
to your comrades."
A large tankard of wine which had been brought from the hut went round,
and then a minute or two passed in silence while the horses finished
their corn. When it was done, the four yeomen mounted, and at a word
from the forester, the miller led the way before them at a quicker
pace, leaving his leader behind with the young franklin.
When they were gone, the forester took a turn backwards and forwards
before the hut, without speaking; then pausing, he grasped Harland's.
hand, saying, in a tone of stern feeling--"Come, Harland, be a man!"
"You have bad tidings?" asked the young franklin, gazing with painful
earnestness in his face. "Tell me, quickly!--the worst blow is past.
They are not on the road to Mansfield?"
"There is scarcely a chance!" said Robert of the Lees; "I believe they
passed some two hours since, and----"
"And what?" demanded Ralph, in a low, but eager tone. "And Richard of
Ashby is at Nottingham, waiting for them."
Ralph Harland cast himself down upon the ground, and hid his eyes upon
his hands; while the stout forester stood by, gazing upon him with a
look of deep sadness and commiseration, and repeating three times the
words, "Poor fellow!"
"Oh, you cannot tell--you cannot tell!" cried Ralph Harland, starting
up, and wringing his hand hard; "you cannot tell what it is to have
loved as I have loved--to have trusted as I have trusted, and to find
that she in whom my whole hopes rested, she whom I believed to be as
pure as the first fallen snow, is but a wanton harlot after all. To
quit her father's house, voluntarily--to fly with a base stranger--the
promised bride of an honest man--to make herself the leman of a knave
like that! Oh, it is bitter--bitter--bitter! Worse than the blackest
misfortune with which fate can plague me that I can never think of her
again but as the paramour of Richard de Ashby! Would I had died
first--died, believing that she was good and true!"
"It is a hard case," said the forester, "and I grieve for you deeply;
but there is a harder case still than it,--that of her father, I mean.
To you, she can be nothing more--she has severed the tie that bound you
together; but she is still his daughter, and nothing can cut that bond
asunder, though fallen and dishonoured.--It were well if we could
separate her from her seducer, Ralph, and give her back to her father's
care. This is all, I fear, that now remains for us to do.--Had I known
this two hours earlier," he continued, "the nose and ears of Richard de
Ashby would by this time have been nailed to the post where the four
roads meet; but the runner Scathelock sent me last night, fell lame on
the other side of the abbey, and I did not get the news till about an
hour before you came. The scoundrel, in the meanwhile, skirted the
forest by Southwell at ten o'clock this morning, so that it is all too
late. The time of punishment for his crimes, however, will come: we
need not doubt that; but the time for preventing this one, I fear, is
past."
"But how--but how can we punish him?" cried Ralph Harland, eagerly; "if
he be in Nottingham town, how can we reach him there? How can we even
make him give up the wretched girl, and send her back to her father!"
"We cannot do it ourselves," replied the forester, "but we can make
others do it. Did you not hear the message I sent to the good old Lord
of Monthermer?"
Ralph Harland bent down his eyes with a look of bitter disappointment.
"If that be your only hope, it is all in vain," he said; "the
Monthermer is linked to the Earl of Ashby by a common cause; and in the
great movements of people such as these, the feelings, and even the
rights of us lesser men are never heeded. The old Earl, good as he is,
will not quarrel with Richard de Ashby for John Greenly's daughter,
lest it breed a feud between him and the other Lord. There is but cold
hope to be found there."
His companion heard him to an end, but with a faint smile upon his
countenance. "I asked the Earl of Ashby, too," he said; "perhaps we may
do something more with him."
Ralph Harland shook his head. "Not till you have got his neck under
your baldrick," he said.
"Perhaps I may have by that time," replied the forester; "I mean," he
continued, in a serious tone, "that I may by that time have a hold upon
him which will make him use his power to send back this light-o'-love
girl to her father's house. I know old John Greenly well, and grieve
for him. Once I found shelter with him when I was under the ban of a
tyrant, and no one else would give me refuge.--I never forget such
things. He is somewhat worldly, it is true; but what host is not? It is
a part of their trade; they draw their ale and affection for every
guest that comes, the one as readily as another, so that he pay his
score. But still the man has not a bad heart, and it will be well-nigh
broken by his daughter's shame."
"She has broken mine," said Ralph Harland.
"Nay--nay!" replied his companion; "you must think better of all this.
You loved her--she has proved false. Forget her--seek another. You will
find many as fair."
"Ay," replied Harland, "I shall find many as fair, perhaps fairer; but
I shall find none that had my first love--none with whom all the
thoughts of my early years were in common--none with whom I have
wandered about the fields in boyhood, and gathered spring flowers for
our May-day games--none with whom I have listened to the singing of the
birds when my own heart was as light and tuneful as theirs--none for
whom I have felt all those things which I cannot describe, which are
like the dawning of love's morning, and which I am sure can never be
felt twice over. No--no! those times are past; and I must think of such
things no more!"
"It is all true," said Robert of the Lees, "but the same, good youth,
is the case with every earthly joy; each day has its pleasure, each
year of our life has things of its own. As the spring brings the fruit,
and the autumn brings the corn, so every period of man's existence has
its apportioned good and evil. I have ever found it so, from infancy
till this day, now eight-and-thirty years, and you will find it
likewise. You will love another--differently, but as well; with less
tenderness, but more trust; with less passion, but with more esteem;
and you will be happier with her than you would have been with this
idle one; for passion dies soon, killing itself with its own food;
esteem lives, and strengthens by its own power. Shake not thy head,
Ralph. I know it is vain to talk to thee as yet, for sorrow and
disappointment blind a man's eyes to the future, and he will look at
nothing but the past."
"But of the Earl of Ashby," said young Harland, little cheered, to say
the truth, by his companion's reasoning; "how can you get such a hold
of him as will make him constrain his own kinsman to give up his
paramour?--Alas! that I should call her so!"
"Take your bridle over your arm," replied the forester; "come with me,
and I will tell you more. You want rest, and food, and reflection; but
nothing can be done before to-morrow, so we shall have plenty of time
to discuss the means, and to arrange the plan."