The Bride-Price (Part One)

Fiction: A tale of Robin Hood. ~1900 words.

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I have always loved the Robin Hood cycle (rest assured, there will be gushing historical nerdery in the end notes.) Robin’s adventures were both irresistible and formative reading for me, and it’s past time that I took a stab at one myself. The story of Allan a-Dale and his bride is an old tale; not as old as many of the rest, perhaps, but old all the same. But you haven’t heard me tell it yet…

<On to Part Two>

It was springtime, and the sun had waked, and thrown back his tired grey cloak of threadbare cloud, and begun to smile down on Nottinghamshire again. He smiled on the bare-foot and bare-armed lasses hauling linens and buckets for the great wash; and he smiled on the men driving the sheep to be washed likewise before the shearing; and he smiled on the sparrows in the furrowed fields, and the foxes in the rolling hills; and he peeked through the fingers of Sherwood’s fresh-leafed sentinels, and he smiled down warm and welcome upon Robin Hood.

Bold Robin Hood had wintered with the King’s deer among bare branches and snowy coppices, as he always did, for he had no other place to lay his head; as a budding yeoman he had proved his skill in shooting a stag, and for his pride and skill alike been outlawed for life. So it was that he and his merry men lived now by robbery in the Royal Forests at Sherwood and Barnsdale, roving at will as a scourge upon arrogant barons, and usurious abbots, and most specially upon the Sheriff of Nottingham. Oft was Robin heard to say that his respect was all for God, and much for His laws—and much for men, and none for theirs. And oft were the humble folk of Nottinghamshire heard to say that no better man, nor leader of men, could be found between Holy Island and the North Sea. It was for the loyalty and love which he inspired that his own men had remained with him through the bitterest depths of Epiphanytide, when even the King’s foresters had sought softer and warmer nights within walls, and there was no plunder to be had on the forest highway.

The winter, however, had now passed, and the greenwood come alive again. Robin Hood sat at his noon ale in dappled oaken shade, with his great yew longbow unstrung and his famous horn hung loosely by his side. He was listening to the birds’ Regina Caeli in the brush and thinking over his own Easter duty when his ears caught the strain of another song, some ways off.

“My lady-love is ’rayed in pearls,
In cloth of gold from distant shore,
And tho’ she don the silk of kings,
My lady-love, she shineth more.”

“Such a song-bird would I give much to see,” said Robin to himself, leaving the remnants of his meal beneath the tree and scarcely remembering to string his bow. He caught up with the melody as the forest-road crossed a stream, where its bubbling accompaniment served the song so well that he crouched rapt behind the trees and now forgot the bow altogether.

The strolling singer was a pretty lad, armed with a longbow as well as his harp, and clothed in opulent quantities of Lincoln scarlet. Joy and longing suffused his song, and they showed so openly in his face that none might doubt him a true lover, though he be the son of the most undeserved riches in all England. Robin listened with tears in his throat. It was only when the young man had passed from his sight that he thought again of banditry.

“Robin Hood, thou woman’s heart, letting so fat a minnow escape thee!” he said, slapping a hand against his thigh. “Faith, the minstrel hath paid fairly for his passage today, but I shall recall him.”

Indeed, a full day had not passed before he had cause to remember his promise. The very next morning, as Robin walked beneath the greenwood trees with two of his lieutenants—his vain nephew Will, called Scarlet, and slight Not-Much the miller’s son, dubbed Much in turn—he spied the same young man along the road ahead. Heartbreak was in his sluggish step, and sorrow in the miserable drab in which he was now clad. “Well! Robin Red-breast hath changed his feathers,” said the outlaw, amazed. “Would thou hadst seen him yesterday, Scarlet, for he would have rivalled thee. It is the very man, all the same.”

“Shall we invite him to table, uncle?” asked Will. For the outlaws of Sherwood were as fond of feasting as any men, and always in return for some contribution from their guest of honor.

“Nay, not without proper introductions made. I would speak with him first,” said Robin, ere he withdrew into the forest to set his stage.

When Will Scarlet and Much appeared in the clearing with the stranger between them, they found Robin sitting on the twisting roots of a great oak, as if he were the King of the Elves come to hold court on the carpet of little bright flowers. He had changed his every-day Lincoln green for a jerkin of scarlet, and fetched stout Little John to stand as bailiff; and he had his bow in hand. As they stood before him, he raised it and loosed an arrow through the minstrel’s cap, leaving it pinned to the bark of a tree.

“Mean’st thou to frighten me, villain?” said the young man, unbothered.

“Nay, fellow, I mean to test thee.” The eye of Robin Hood encompassed the visage red with weeping and the clothes rent with anguish, and perceived beneath them the form of a youth who was not merely reckless with grief, but habitually brave. “Tell me, what money hast thou in hand?”

“Naught but five silver coins, to carry me God alone cares where—and a ring, but it does me no good now. I would thank you robbers to rid me of it.”

“For thy sake, I hope that is true. Search him, Much.”

The search returned only a small leathern purse, containing five coins and the ring as he had said. From the size against Much’s small calloused palm, it seemed a woman’s ring, the metal delicate and pure. “So thou spoke truly,” said Robin, wondering. “And what of thy fine scarlet, which thou wore but yesterday?”

“I made alms of it, and the rest of my money besides,” the youth said disdainfully. “I have my harp and my bow left to live by, but I wish nothing else, for all the world is dead to me.”

“Is it, now! Good fellow, it strikes me that such ready passions must have some deep root. Tell us thy tale.”

“Listen well, then—for it is just as you say.” He held his chin high, and spoke with a trembling indignation that did not diminish his eloquence. “Allan a-Dale is my name. Seven years have I waited to marry, in faithfulness and purity. For seven years worked to pay my father’s debts, so that I could come honestly to the girl I love and offer her a worthy living, though she hath sworn in love she should have me all the same. At last, all was fulfilled. I went down yesterday to Nottingham thinking that it should be my wedding-day. And her uncle—why—”

Allan ground his teeth, and spat at the grass beside his feet. “He hath no regard for her happiness, nor yet for justice, only for his own security! To settle some favour he owes, he hath promised her against her will to some white-haired husk of a knight, to shut up a precious bloom in stone walls and make a vulgar transaction of her youth and beauty. And they are to be married today! Oh!—by my life!—that I had it in my power to call down curses on the head of the Sheriff of Nottingham!”

Much and Will Scarlet looked darkly to each other, and then to Robin. “Might not we be that curse, master?” asked Little John, his voice low.

“We shall see,” replied Robin Hood in a murmur. For though his heart was pleased by any opportunity to torment the notorious Sheriff, his years outside the law had labored—albeit with difficulty—to knock a sense of guile into his head. Then said he, aloud: “’Tis a stirring tale, young Allan. What wouldst thou give me, were I to deliver thy love to thee?”

“I have no money, as thou well know’st,” said Allan. “But I would stake my life that thou art Robin Hood. Wouldst thou accept my service as thy sworn man in return for her hand, I would pledge my loyalty to thee for all my days. I can shoot straight and true, and sing for my supper besides.”

“Thy singing I have heard, to thy benefit, but never yet have I seen thee shoot,” said he. “Aye, in truth, I am Robin Hood. I make thee this offer: Will Scarlet shall return thee thy longbow, and thou and I will each choose targets. Should our arrows both hit true, it shall be as thou sayest. However, as thou mak’st so free with thy life, we shall indeed add it to the stakes. If I should miss thy target, I shall rescue thy love for no greater reward than the ire of the Sheriff of Nottingham, and glad enough I will be. But if thou shouldst miss, thy life be forfeit.”

“I accept thy terms, and gladly!” Allan said.

The targets were chosen, and Allan’s bow returned. Robin Hood was to aim for a flittering leaf high in the boughs of the oak, which Little John had marked in crimson at the youth’s direction. All stood in silence as he nocked his green-fletched arrow and drew the string until the yew groaned—then let fly.

The leaf vanished in the blink of an eye, burst to shavings by Robin’s arrow. Allan a-Dale congratulated him graciously before turning to his own mark: a slim trunk of alder, its distinguishing ribbon barely visible across the distance. He nocked an arrow of his own and drew it back fast and sure, with all the strength of youthful fury. Before anyone knew he had loosed it, it was gone. Will Scarlet set off for the target in haste, and returned in leisure with but half an arrow and a shred of ribbon, which the shot’s power had forced him to cut from the the alder tree.

Young Allan fell to his knees, and then and there made his vows to join the brothers of their robberly order: to keep practice with the longbow; to answer the call for aid in time of need; to leave no man destitute, but have mercy upon the poor and faithful and true; to behave in all ways as befits an Englishman; and to accept the words of their master Robin Hood as were they law.

As he rose, Robin clapped him joyfully about the head. “There! No more Allan a-Dale shalt thou call thyself, but Allan at-Wood. And now thou’rt of my men, thy life is mine, and I will thank thee to think of it a sight more carefully,” said he. “Where is thy love to be wed?”

“Not five miles hence, in the church of St. Mary,” said Allan. “A mass is to be sung with all ceremony, and my lord the Bishop of Hereford hath been well compensated for his travel.”

“The Bishop of Hereford!” cried Robin, stroking his beard. “Well! That at least shall ease our negotiations with Father Tuck.”

<On to Part Two>

The second and third part of “The Bride-Price” will follow in due time. While you wait, perhaps you’d like to peruse the Fiction Directory and see what catches your fancy?

As always, thank you for reading.