Post of the Month May 2008

In the small clearing, some five hundred yards from the lake, Tuck leant from where he sat on the log to prod at the fire.

Smoke lazily spiralled up into the sky. He followed its trail, up into the patch of blue between the overhanging trees. There was scarce a whisper of a breeze.

He looked around him at the camp, protected by its high almost sheer face of rock to the north-east, and surrounded by thick trees and bushes in every other direction. At this time of the morning, the shadows had moved around to give some flickering shade over part of the area around the fire. Bright sunlight spilled over the rough grass across the far side of the clearing.

There has to be a storm soon, thought Tuck, mopping his face with his scapula.

He leant over the child to check on her.

The infant lay on her back in a reed basket that Rhiannon used as a cradle, comfortably lapped around by soft blankets and covered by one. Her curled fists were up by her head, her head turned aside. The small chest rose and fell underthe blanket, the shuttered eyelids twitched but did not open. Ellie, after an unsettled day yesterday of teething and being fractious, seemed to be catching up on her lost sleep.

As we are all, thought Tuck, remembering how the infants fractiousness had disturbed nearly all of them the previous night, and how Will, never the most tolerant, had kept lifting his weary head from where he had been swaddled in his cloak by the fireside to moan at the disturbance. "The sooner she's grown, the better," had been his comment before burying his head down under his cloak in order to shut out the crying.

Timothy had already cut two teeth by the time he had been left at Thornton's gates at between five and six months old, Tuck remembered. He had not displayed them in many smiles in the first few weeks; instead he had been quiet, unsettled. Missing his mother, Tuck thought, casting his mind back. It had become quite clear that he had been with his mother up to being left at Thornton's gates. He had been a sturdy plump baby who had obviously been suckled at his mother's breast until recently. He had seemed nonplussed at first when picked up by one of the monks and had often turned his face inwards to bury it against their chest, feeling with small unsure hands, clearly searching for a breast to suckle. But he had soon learnt to latch eagerly onto a rag soaked in milk, and to chew on bread, and slowly the smiles had come as he had learned to recognise by sound and touch individuals amongst the adults that surrounded him. Tuck had soon realised that the infant, though blind, was bright, and that realisation had given him hope for Timothy's future.

Now as he watched Ellie sleep, he wondered about her future. Her future in Sherwood, her future as Robert and Rhiannon's child. Grandchild to an Earl, great-niece to the King of Scotland. Niece to Loxley, Grandchild to Ailric. What a heritage this small scrap possessed - and she as yet knew not a thing about it.

_What a blessing is innocence,_ thought Tuck.

Innoccence. When he had left the Church and gone to London - at first intending to search for Timothy but very soon giving up with a sense of real hopelessness about his quest - he had been

innoccent. Thirty four years old and an innoccent. Plunged into London during a hot sticky summer full of foul gutters and pestilence.

One of his first impressions of London had been quite a daunting one. For between St.Catherine's and Wapping he had seen the decaying corpses of executed pirates, suspended from short gallows at the low water mark until three tides had flowed over their bodies, a severe warning to any that might be inclined to follow such lawless ways. Further upriver, above the masts of the tethered merchantmen that filled every wharf and jetty, he had been spellbound by the magnificent, white stone Keep of the Tower, and beyond that, the magnificent London Bridge. Built on twelve great arches that spanned the river and topped by a street of houses and shops, the bridge had at each end a tower with portcullis, and in the centre was a third tower that controlled the drawbridge. Tuck remembered how he had stood and stared from a distance.

The arches upon which the bridge was built were quite a severe navigation hazard. At ebb tide the current swirled so dangerously through the arches that 'shooting the bridge' was only attempted by a very few experienced boatmen. Tuck remembered now the many times he had seen a barge smash into the pilings of the bridge, often drowning those aboard. He himself had run to help once on such an occasion, as he had been passing by, and with other men had lowered ropes from above to pull several survivors of the accident to safety from where they had been clinging to the stone parapets.

Traders, peasants, beggars, thieves, herders and livestock all jostled through the busy city streets. Shops along the sides of the main shopping streets opened at the front to sell goods directly to passers-by. St Paul’s Cathedral, with its towering wooden steeple. Smithfield, regularly filled with the roars of crowds, regal fanfares and rowdy games, and all manner of public gatherings including executions. The annual cloth fair at St Bartholomew's.

Tuck remembered it all now in the green peace of Sherwood, as though it had been a dream.

The apothecary's, on a small lane which had led off from the street of Cloth Fair. A narrow, dim poky building of wattle and daub, crammed between two-story builds on either side. The first time he had seen it, Tuck had been given the impression that it was being squashed.

Myles Godefroy had been the apothecar, looking for someone to work in his shop. Tuck had demonstrated his skill at recognising the many different kinds of herbs and plants, constructed a few simples, and Godefroy had hired him. Tuck had worked from dawn to dusk except on the Sabbath, eaten with the Godefroy family in their cramped living quarters behind the shop and had slept on a straw mattress under the counter of the shop.

For the first time in his life, he had earned wages - for the first time he had a few coins a week that were his to with as he pleased. After having his shoes resoled as they had worn bare with the walk from Nottingham to London, he had not known what to do with these coins. He was fed and had a roof over his head. He had all he needed to survive, to be content.

Finally, he had spent his Sabbaths wandering around London after attending Mass, looking for worthy causes; beggars who were crippled or blind who begged for alms, and had dropped his coins into their bowls. Every time he had come across a blind youth he had thought of Timothy. He had begun to talk to some of the beggars whom he regularly gave a coin to, asking them if a young blind man fitting Timothy's description moved in their circles. But he had never met with any luck, and eventually had given up.

Slowly, his life had evolved from searching to Timothy in his sparse spare time, to actually living his life in this crowded, noisy city. And all the time he had struggled with the sharp decline of his faith.

He glanced up as with a rustle of bushes, Much entered the camp, dishevilled and sweating. When he saw Tuck, he smiled and held up a brace of hares.

"Poached them from the poachers," Much said. "I know where they lay all their traps."

He leant curiously over the sleeping Ellie in her rush basket, stroked her cheek with a grimy finger, then settled himself crosslegged down by the fireside to skin the creatures.

"Where are the others?" he asked as he set to skinning the creatures.

"Naz went for a scout-around, I think," Tuck said. "John and Will and Alan went to gather wood whilst it was dry as there's the hint of a storm brewing."

"Be a while yet." Much glanced an experienced eye up at the patch of sky through the trees.

"Aye." Tuck with a sigh leaned over the reed basket to check on Ellie who still soundly slept. "Rhiannon and Robert are down by the lake."

Much just nodded pensively.

Tuck glanced sideways at him, seeking to find where his thoughts lay. "So you were teased about the lass you met. Don't pay any mind to it. They've all met lasses at your age and were teased for it; it's turn and turn about. Come some years, you'll be teasing some young lad."

Much coloured. He did not like to admit that only a few weeks back he had teased Matthew of Wickham when seeing him out walking along a trackway with a girl. The thirteen year old had shot him a furious flushed glance whilst the girl had giggled slyly behind her hand.

He looked up curiously at the friar as he tumbled the jointed rabbit into the nearby empty cookpot for Tuck to brown for the next meal. "Were you ever teased over a lass, Tuck?"

Tuck chose his words carefully. "Yes, I was. You see, I was like this," he patted his stomach, "and the lass was as thin as a rake. We must have looked...amusing together," he smiled at Much and bent to see to the cookpot to hide the sudden tremble he felt within him. Fortunately Much did not seem in an observant mood. He seemed to think that Tuck had been teased over the lass in his youthood, before he had gone into the Church.

Much smiled, heartened by the fact that even Tuck had been teased over a lass. "But she didn't mind, did she?"

"No; no I don't think she did." Tuck poked at the rabbit joints watching them cook in their own fat. "She never said anything, anyway."

Much was curious. "What was her name?"

Tuck added a handful of barley to the cook pot. "Anna," he said quietly at last.

Anna. Dark eyes, and a mane of dark hair to match. She had had a stubborn jaw and a small snub nose that only served to draw attention to her eyes and away from her smile, which Tuck had been convinced was her best feature. She had been thirty when he had met her; small, slim, frail - more like the body of a little girl than a woman. Hardly any breasts or hips. Not that Tuck had ever looked at a woman's breasts and hips and thought about them much before. But Simon of Tuckenby the man had looked and wondered.

Six months of knowing her and walking with her and talking with her in friendly companionship, around the Smithfield and in the countryside outside the city walls, and he had realised she scarce ate. It had been that way for ten years, she had told him. Since her husband had died. She had often come to the apothecary off Cloth Fair Street, seeking a remedy for her lack of appetite.

_"Something that will MAKE me want to eat again."_ Tuck remembered what had been almost her first words to him that hot summer's morning when she had faced him across the desk in the apothecary and explained...

He had not realised then the immense and bewildering complexity behind that simple statement....

He became aware that Much was watching him, and pulled himself out of his thoughts. "More wood," Tuck said, nodding at the pile by the fire.

Much half raised himself to obey, casting more on, then sat with one knee drawn up hugged to his chest. "Oh, I can't help it, I can't." Tuck presumed he was talking about the girl he had met. "Even if they tease me. She was nice."

"There'll be others," Tuck said wisely.

"Not like her," Much stubbornly insisted. He was silent. "I'd've like to have brought her to camp," he said at last.

"You know the rules," Tuck reminded.

"Wouldn't have hurt."

"Could have. You bring her to camp and then she goes on to Nottingham. Sells our location for a price to say, one of Gisbourne's men. We help people away from our camp; we don't bring them to it."

Much scowled. "Naz brought the Earl."

"That's a different matter," Tuck answered.

"Is it?" Much resisted.

"Aye, and well you know it. The Earl can be trusted, and the soldier with him was blindfolded."

Much picked disconsolately at the grass before him. "One rule for Robert, another rule for the rest of us."

"You know that isn't true. And for the love of sweet Mary, if you're that frustrated, go find yourself a village girl or two to visit. Might put you in a better frame of mind, if nothing else." Tuck was suddenly minded of Timothy at age fifteen, coming back from supposed "errands" to the village of Felden, flushed of face and over bright of eye, making sudden, delighted, contented smiles at nothing for no reason that most could see. But it had been clear to Tuck at least what the youth had been up to, and wisely he had decided to let Timothy explore that avenue of life for himself and say nothing.

Tuck had learnt over the years that sometimes it was best to say nothing.

Much sat and stared into the flames of the fire, rubbed a bloodstained hand across his face. "I just liked her, that was all. I helped her, and I wanted to help her more."

"That's sometimes the way with us," Tuck said gently. "We come across people travelling through the forest we help. Some strike at our hearts and minds and leave an impression. Like the mother walking to her brother's in Lincoln with her baby in her arms after her husband and other children all perished in a cott blaze. The young lad looking for his sister. The lost infant we found who had tumbled into that stream and drowned and whose parents we tried to find so they could bury their child. We help them, and we wish we could follow them on their journeys to continue helping them. But we can't. We must let them go and they must continue their journeys in life without us. It's a part of life, a rule of living in the forest. No matter how much that lass struck at your heart and mind, she has her own journey to continue away from here and away from you."

Much rested his hand on his chin and stared into the fire in thought.

"There's some wortes stored in the cave," Tuck said at last, "could do with some of them for the cookpot."

Much rose, then paused and looked down at the friar."Tuck....did you have to let that lass of yours go to continue her journey?"

"Aye," Tuck replied with more calmness than he felt. "Aye, that I did."

Much gave him a slight, half-curious smile, and turned to cross the clearing to the cave. Tuck watched him go and was given to pensive thought of his own.

Ellie stirred in the makeshift cradle beside him, half waking, upon the verge of crying. Tuck rocked the reed basket with a hushing noise and looking down upon the child placed a finger to his lips, almost to himself, almost in a vow made silently upon the knowledge his lips would not impart, not yet. Some things were too sacred, too secret, for even the innocence of sleeping babes to know.

Will lay on his back the length of the log seat by the cookfire. A few knots and bumps prodded at him but he wriggled himself down into a comfortable position and once settled, stared up at the sky above him that was fringed with the branches of the trees that surrounded camp.

It was one of those rare contented moments of peace. The camp was secure and so he allowed himself the luxury of relaxing. The weather held. There was food simmering in the cookpot nearby. Even the baby was quiet. Will hoped for some shut-eye himself. He closed his eyes and drifted.

There came a shove on his legs, pushing them aside from the log, and John satwhere they had been.

"Oi!" Will objected, sitting up.

John merely laughed at him. "Disturb your rest did we, Scarlet?"

"We'll make you a rush cradle like Ellie's that you can draw up to the fire of an evening," Alan added where he stood by the fire with an armful of the firewood they had been out gathering. "I could sing you a lullaby."

Will glared at him. "I'll put a bleedin' bucket over your head first!"

"Best get that firewood stored away in the cave," John directed, settling himself down on the log with a sigh and indication whatsoever he was going to help the minstrel.

Will sneaked a look at the bandage around John's thigh. No fresh blood marked it and the stitches clearly held, but the wound was obviously still sore, and though John had not complained whilst they had gathered wood, he had limped.

"C'mon, Much." He rose and gathered up a bundle of the wood whilst addressing the lad sitting by the cookfire. "Give us a hand with this." He shot a closer look at the lad's face. "What's up with you now?"

"Looks frustrated, to me," John observed where he sat. "Needs a woman."

"Yeah?" Will looked at Much. "Want to borrow one of mine?" He shot Much a teasing grin and loped off towards the cave with Alan and the firewood.

Much shot a dark look at Will. He was tired of his jokes, but the past had taught him already that any reply would make Will continue with his teasings rather than stop.

John reached for the aleskin by the log, took a draught and then leant to look at Ellie who lay in her rush basket between him and where Tuck knelt by the cookfire adding shallots to the cookpot. The infant was asleep, her head turned aside, her fair eyelashes shuttering her eyes. Her eyelids twitched as though she was dreaming, and John wondered what babies, so small and unformed by experience, dreamt about. She did not stir. She was used to male voices around her.

John looked across at Tuck. "Much brought the food?" John asked, nodding towards the cookpot.

"Aye, the rabbits," Tuck replied, staring down into the cookpot he prodded the content of with a wooden spoon.

John regarded Tuck curiously. "Looks like his mood's rubbed off on you," John observed.

Tuck rubbed his sweating face with the edge of his scapula and sat back from the smoke of the cook fire. "No. He just set me thinking about things, that's all. Things I hadn't thought about for a long time."

He did not volunteer any more information and John did not pry. He drank from the aleskin again and fell to watching the smoke rise from the fire and curl up into the clearing. "It's that lass he met, isn't it," he said at last out of the silence.

"Think he doesn't like being teased about her," Tuck said.

"Aye, well," John had had initially some sympathy but Much's continually miserable face in camp was beginning to grate on him, "he'll need to get a grip on himself and stop moping. He's not a child to be mollycoddled."
Tuck rose to his feet with a sigh and a creak and stretched. "Where did you go to gather the wood?"

"Over near Sedgeley way." John stretched his injured leg out before him and examined the grimy bandage. "Some walk. But it wouldn't do for this leg to get stiff. Best I walk around on it."

"See any villagers?" Tuck asked.

"No." John took another drink.

Tuck pondered. "Wondered how Meg was faring. She's near her time. Must be."

"She's got people there to look after her," John replied. "Adam's family."

"It's not like her own family though, is it." Tuck added more wood on the fire and wrapping a cloth around the iron handle of the large cookpot, shifted it to sit upon barely warm embers to finish cooking. "You'll go and see her after she's had the child?"

John thought of seeing Meg, of seeing a proud mother with a squalling bundle in her arms that was Adam's child. Adam's child, not his. Nothing to do with him. Much as he had liked Adam and had encouraged Meg to make this match with Adam....the child was nothing to do with him.

"Maybe," he answered. Tuck raised an eyebrow to himself as he leant over the cookpot, but did not reply.

Will and Alan came back over to the fireside and Will suddenly cocked his head, listening. "Someone's comin'." They all stilled their movements and listened, but without apprehension, as the low murmur of two voices in conversation could be clearly heard.

"Only Robert and Rhiannon," Alan observed, breaking the silence in the clearing.

John looked round as there came a rustle of bushes and Robert and Rhiannon entered the clearing. Their hair was damp, their clothes had the look about them of being struggled hastily on over damp skin. John flung a knowing look at Will and got a like look in return.

"She's not stirred," Tuck told Rhiannon as she left Robert's side and crossed to the fireside ahead of him to the rush cradle to look in.

Robert reached the fireside. "Everyone here?"

"Everyone except Nasir," Alan replied, idly stirring up the fire with a long stick.

"We said noon," John glanced up at the sky, a trifle uneasy.

"Well, Naz is a law unto himself." Tuck was already spooning stew out into wooden bowls.

Robert rested his hands on the top of his stick and listened to the forest around him. "He'll come."

He turned his head to focus on the movements of his wife over by Tuck's voice. There came the clatter of a wooden spoon in the cookpot, then a restive wail and Rhiannon's voice instantly soothing their child. Robert smiled and moved across the fireside to stand beside Rhiannon. He traced his fingers along the line of Rhiannon's cradling arm to find their child. Ellie's shape squirmed and wriggled there, small arms waving, legs kicking. Robert's hand explored her moving shape, the lines of her limbs, and finally traced the curves of her face as she screwed it up and let out a restive wail.

"Woken up with a vengeance," Robert said amusedly.

"Teeth again," Rhiannon sighed, smoothing down her daughter's fair wispy hair. "Tuck, have you a crust?"

Tuck had been drying out crusts of bread in an old cook pot set on some embers and then placed aside to cool. He held out one to Ellie; she grabbed it and immediately began to chomp on it, quietened.

"Come, let's eat," Tuck said. "We'll save some for Naz."

They sat around the cook-fire and ate in silence, whilst above them the tree branches rustled with an occasional breath of air and the heat entwined with the smoke of the cook fire.

The rabbit meat was stringy, but Robert was hungry. He pulled the meat from the bones with his teeth, and kept his head uplifted to listen to the forest around him, ever alert for what could be the approach of Nasir. Around him sounded the scrape of wooden spoons against wooden bowls, the slosh of liquid moving inside aleskins as someone lifted one to drink from it. Beside him on his left came the movements of Ellie struggling in Rhiannon's arm, complaining and restless. Little hands tugged at Robert's sleeve, pulling at the material on his upper arm. Feeling the grasp, he set down his empty bowl, reached out and found the small fingers which clutched at his.

He ran his hand along one chubby arm to find the child's face and mischievously tickled the small nose with a fingertip. Ellie, now distracted, chuckled and cooed, and her small fingers grappled with his hand, guiding his fingers towards her mouth.

"Take her if you've finished your meal, Robert, whilst I eat; she keeps grabbing for my spoon and this stew is hot," Rhiannon said.

Robert lifted his child from Rhiannon's encircling arm. He stood Ellie on his knee, and held her against him for support. Ellie pushed against his chest with her hands and strained backwards away from him. Robert explored the angle of her neck and head and found she was tilting her head back.

He lowered his head and gently rubbed noses with her, making her chortle, then kissed her hot cheek. Small fingers touched his jaw, grabbed his nose, and a handful of his hair.

"She'll be hard to stop when she starts walking," Tuck said amusedly from across the fireside.

Robert laughed, supporting a wriggling Ellie as she grabbed his hand and guided his index finger into her mouth.. "She's hard to stop now!" He stopped short as Ellie chomped down hard on his finger. "Ouch!" he exclaimed more in surprise than actual pain.

"What is it?" Rhiannon asked.

Robert ran his fingertip along the front of Ellie's lower gums, finding a small hard line sprouting from one of the tooth buds; Ellie chortled as though she knew what she had done, and waved her fists triumphantly at Rhiannon. "She's cut a tooth."

"What? Where? Let me see!" Rhiannon leaned, prying her own finger into the child's mouth. Peering in, she glimpsed a small white line bisecting one of the front lower tooth buds. "You're right. I can see it," she told Robert.

Robert laughed and stroked the soft warm dome of his daughter's head. "Ellie, you're turning vicious!" He laughed again as he felt the small hand encircle his index finger and bring it into the soft surrounds of her mouth where the one hard little tooth stump worked happily away against his fingertip.

He suddenly lifted his head as there came a rustle of the bushes surrounding camp. "There's Naz."

Even as he spoke, the Saracen arrived.

"What took you so long?" Will demanded as Nasir crossed to the fireside where everyone sat.

Nasir shot him a look but did not reply to the question. He laid the two snared rabbits on the hearth by Tuck, then crouched by Robert and laid a hand on Robert's shoulder. "Gisbourne has fined Maybury," he said quietly.

"Bastard," muttered John, "what for?"

"Does he ever need a reason," Rhiannon said.

Robert shifted Ellie to his other arm and laid his free hand over Nasir's. "You went to Maybury, Naz?"

"No. I was found by Wulfstan of Maybury. Geoffrey sent him into the forest to try and find us....tell us. Ask help of us."

"How much is the fine?" Robert asked.

"Two shillings."

"John and I took money to the people of Maybury not a week since, to buy grain from old Eli at Rufford," said Robert, "can they not use two shillings out of that?"

"They spent all you gave them on the grain," Nasir replied. "They cannot meet this fine. And their tools will be impounded if they do not pay the fine in full at Nottingham in two days time. Furthermore, they are to pay a third of their crop. It is punishment for cutting down a tree that was rotting in one of their fields."

Will let out a hiss of disapproval through his teeth. "And they think we're made of money? What do they think - they think that we have some sort of bleedin' treasure chest hidden away in the forest that we can dip our hands into every time they need some money?"

"We can't allow Gisbourne to impound their tools," John pointed out, "or they'll never avoid famine come the winter."

"They'll have it hard as it is by giving up a third of their crop," Rhiannon added, taking a protesting Ellie from Robert.

"But we've not got two shillings," Robert said uneasily. "Will has a point - we do not have a fathomless money chest sitting here in the forest."

"You're forgetting the merchant I robbed a couple of days back," Tuck said, and removed the leather purse that was attached to his belt. He came over, and taking Robert's hand, placed the purse in it.

Robert explored the soft rounded shape of the leather bag, weighed it in his hand, then tipped out some of the coins into his hand. He felt over surfaces of the small thin coins in his palm, tracing the embossed crosses with a fingertip. He smiled in recognition. "Silver pennies."

"Near to three shillings in there," Tuck said with satisfaction.

Robert grinned, still feeling over the coins in his palm. "Tuck, you're a marvel. I'd forgotten."

"Call the Lord a marvel, not me," Tuck said, "He knew what was needed and provided me with the means to help. All things become clear in time."

"Best get that money to Maybury, then, if they've gotta deliver it to Nottingham within two days," Will said, casting a weary eye at the rest of the company.

"I'll go," Alan offered.

"No. No, I'll go." Robert rubbed a tired hand across his face. "I'll take the route along the stream and then North along the deer track. I shouldn't meet anyone along that way."

Will did not question Robert's ability to find his way to Maybury but felt the need to point out something. "Take you all afternoon an' most of the evening to get to Maybury an' back, walkin' and following that route. Be quicker if Alan went straight across Sherwood with the horse," he glanced across at where the
creature was cropping the grass across the clearing, "you may be able to guide yerself, but you can't guide yerself on a horse."

Robert in turn did not question that fact. Things that he could not do due to his blindness simply did not enter into the equation of things, and it was more that he did not even consider them in the first instance rather than consider them and accept gracefully that he could not do them. Born blind, those things had never entered into the equation of things to begin with. However, adjusted as his friends were to his blindness, he still occasionally needed to remind them of that fact.

"Yes, I know," he replied Will calmly without a trace of irritation, "but a horse would be noisier and leave yet more tracks leading from this camp, and that we can do without. In fact, we need to rid ourselves of the horse. It was useful to carry John to this camp when he was injured, but we have no more need for it now, and its tracks and the noise it makes could lead people this way. Much," he spoke across to where the youth sat by the fire, "whilst I'm gone this afternoon, I want you to take the horse near to the Lincoln Road and loose it. Then erase all of its tracks leading from camp."

Much shrugged. "Aye," he mumbled. "I'll take it there. No tracks will be left that could lead anyone to the camp."

"So I'll go," Robert confirmed. He placed the money purse inside his own at his belt, and reaching for his guiding stick lain beside him, rose to stand. "I want to talk to Geoffrey, anyhap. If Gisbourne's been sniffing around Maybury recently, I'd like to know more. Could be we'll find out something more about the Lincoln outlaws."

"Want one of us to come with you?" John asked, coming across to Robert as the company all rose from the fireside.

Robert laughed, reached out and found John's arm as the big man's presence loomed before him. He patted the arm he had found. "Well, you'd slow me down considerably, judging by that limp I hear. No, stay you here."

"Goin' to be a storm," Will said, wandering across, casting an eye up at the sky through the treetops.

Robert turned to his right away from John and found Will's form. He ran his hand over the outline of the man's shoulder. "I know, I can smell it in the air. It'll be a while coming, though, methinks. There's scarce a breath of wind to push it along to us. So it'll take its time to get to us." He clapped Will on the shoulder and turned to his right again, and found Rhiannon there, with Ellie in her arms. "If the storm is fierce, I'll wait it out at Geoffrey's. It matters not how late the hour before I make the return journey." He put his hand under Rhiannon's chin and leaned in to kiss her mouth, and then bent his head to kiss the top of Ellie's head.

"Yeah, it's not as if you can't walk back to camp through the night, is it," Will said wryly.

Robert laughed and slung his long-bow over his shoulder. "Admit it, being blind can be advantageous."

He bent his head to plant a kiss on Rhiannon's lips once more. Rhiannon laid her hand against the side of his face, pausing him as he lifted his head from kissing her. "If the storm be fierce, then spend the night at Maybury," she told him quietly undercover of Will and John's banter with each other.

Robert found her face again with his hand and stroked a thumb across her scarred cheek. "I will, but you know I'd rather be with you," he answered softly undercover of the others' talk around them also.

Rhiannon looked up into his face, into the eyes that roved past her as though she were not there. Yet as his fingertips caressed her cheek, his other hand lain gently on the head of their daughter, she knew that she and Ellie were his sole focus at this brief moment in time; he had them captured wholly, beautifully, suspended somehow so vibrantly in his web of hearing and touch, and there was a sudden wish within her that she could freeze this moment, as she often wished when she and Ellie were close to him.

"I know," was all she replied softly, but the answering stroke of her fingers to his cheek spoke her feelings a thousand times more.

Robert smiled at her, then turned briefly in the direction of the others. "I'll try and beat the storm. Stay vigilant here."

"God speed, Robert," Tuck said as he headed away across the clearing.

"See you back here this evenin', storm willin'." Will said.

Robert grinned. "You'll see me before I see you, that's for certain," he flung back over his shoulder at the little company gathered behind him in the clearing.

They listened to the rustle of the bushes as he moved through them, the sound of the stick hitting lightly against the ground, swishing from side to side over the long grass, hitting bracken and shrubs - and then the sounds faded.

Ellie let out a wail at the disappearance of her father. Rhiannon shushed her soothingly and carried her over to the log by the fire, where she sat and nursed the child.

"Well...." Will wandered back over to the fireside too. "That's that, then, innit. For the moment. Wait till he gets back and see whether Geoffrey's got any more information about those Lincoln outlaws."

John looked across at the Saracen. "Do you reckon that's why Gisbourne was visiting Maybury, Naz?"

Nasir shrugged. "Wulfstan said it seemed but a visit determined to find laws broken by the village and nothing more."

"Gisbourne's getting picky," Alan observed where he stood by the fire, breaking up long branches to build up the fire.

"Or getting nervous," Tuck pointed out. He looked round at the assembled outlaws. "Haven't you thought? - he could be doing the rounds of all the villages checking on them because he's heard that the Sheriff is on his way back to Nottingham."

***************************