The Once and Future King

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 outlaw threw down his bow and sat cross-legged on the ground, drawing Maid Marian to sit beside him. His face was puzzled.

‘It is Morgan le Fay,’ he said. ‘It is difficult to explain her.’

‘I should not try.’

Robin turned on his mistress angrily. ‘Marian,’ he said. ‘Either we must have their help, or else we have to leave the other three without help. I don’t want to ask the boys to go there, but it is either that or leaving Tuck to her.’

The Wart thought it was time to ask a tactful question, so he made a polite cough and said: ‘Please, who is Morgan the Fay?’

All three answered at once.

‘She’m a bad ’un,’ said Little John.

‘She is a fairy,’ said Robin.

‘No, she is not,’ said Marian. ‘She is an enchantress.’

‘The fact of the matter is,’ said Robin, ‘that nobody knows exactly what she is. In my opinion, she is a fairy.

‘And that opinion,’ he added, staring at his wife, ‘I still hold.’

Kay asked: ‘Do you mean she is one of those people with bluebells for hats, who spend the time sitting on toadstools?’

There was a shout of laughter.

‘Certainly not. There are no such creatures. The Queen is a real one, and one of the worst of them.’

‘If the boys have got to be in it,’ said Marian, ‘you had better explain from the beginning.’

The outlaw took a deep breath, uncrossed his legs, and the puzzled look came back to his face.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘suppose that Morgan is the queen of the fairies, or at any rate has to do with them, and that fairies are not the kind of creatures your nurse has told you about. Some people say that they are the Oldest Ones of All, who lived in England before the Romans came here – before us Saxons, before the Old Ones themselves – and that they have been driven underground. Some say they look like humans, like dwarfs, and others that they look ordinary, and others that they don’t look like anything at all, but put on various shapes as the fancy takes them. Whatever they look like, they have the knowledge of the ancient Gaels. They know things down there in their burrows which the human race has forgotten about, and quite a lot of these things are not good to hear.’

‘Whisper,’ said the golden lady, with a strange look, and the boys noticed that the little circle had drawn closer together.

‘Well now,’ said Robin, lowering his voice, ‘the thing about these creatures that I am speaking of, and if you will excuse me I won’t name them again, is that they have no hearts. It is not so much that they wish to do evil, but that if you were to catch one and cut it open, you would find no heart inside. They are cold-blooded like fishes.’

‘They are everywhere, even while people are talking.’

The boys looked about them.