Maid Marian

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[1] Roasting by a slow fire for the love of God.

But as it sometimes happens, from the might
Of rage in minds that can no farther go,
As high as they have mounted in despite
In their remission do they sink as low,
To our bold baron did it happen so.[2]

[2] Of these lines all that is not in italics belongs to
Mr. Wordsworth: Resolution and Independence.

For his discobolic exploit proved the climax of his rage, and was
succeeded by an immediate sense that he had passed the bounds
of legitimate passion; and he sunk immediately from the very
pinnacle of opposition to the level of implicit acquiescence.
The friar's spirits were not to be marred by such a little incident.
He was half-inclined, at first, to return the baron's compliment;
but his love of Matilda checked him; and when the baron held out his hand,
the friar seized it cordially, and they drowned all recollection
of the affair by pledging each other in a cup of canary.

The friar, having stayed long enough to see every thing replaced
on a friendly footing, rose, and moved to take his leave.
Matilda told him he must come again on the morrow, for she
had a very long confession to make to him. This the friar
promised to do, and departed with the knight.

Sir Ralph, on reaching the abbey, drew his followers together, and led them
to Locksley Castle, which he found in the possession of his lieutenant;
whom he again left there with a sufficient force to hold it in safe
keeping in the king's name, and proceeded to London to report the results
of his enterprise.

Now Henry our royal king was very wroth at the earl's evasion,
and swore by Saint Thomas-a-Becket (whom he had himself translated
into a saint by having him knocked on the head), that he would
give the castle and lands of Locksley to the man who should bring
in the earl. Hereupon ensued a process of thought in the mind
of the knight. The eyes of the fair huntress of Arlingford had
left a wound in his heart which only she who gave could heal.
He had seen that the baron was no longer very partial
to the outlawed earl, but that he still retained his old
affection for the lands and castle of Locksley. Now the lands
and castle were very fair things in themselves, and would be
pretty appurtenances to an adventurous knight; but they would
be doubly valuable as certain passports to the father's favour,
which was one step towards that of the daughter, or at least
towards obtaining possession of her either quietly or perforce;
for the knight was not so nice in his love as to consider
the lady's free grace a sine qua non: and to think of being,
by any means whatever, the lord of Locksley and Arlingford,
and the husband of the bewitching Matilda, was to cut in the shades
of futurity a vista very tempting to a soldier of fortune.
He set out in high spirits with a chosen band of followers,
and beat up all the country far and wide around both the Ouse
and the Trent; but fortune did not seem disposed to second
his diligence, for no vestige whatever could he trace of the earl.
His followers, who were only paid with the wages of hope,
began to murmur and fall off; for, as those unenlightened
days were ignorant of the happy invention of paper machinery,
by which one promise to pay is satisfactorily paid with another
promise to pay, and that again with another in infinite series,
they would not, as their wiser posterity has done,
take those tenders for true pay which were not sterling;
so that, one fine morning, the knight found himself sitting
on a pleasant bank of the Trent, with only a solitary squire,
who still clung to the shadow of preferment, because he did
not see at the moment any better chance of the substance.

The knight did not despair because of the desertion of his followers:
he was well aware that he could easily raise recruits if he could
once find trace of his game; he, therefore, rode about indefatigably
over hill and dale, to the great sharpening of his own appetite
and that of his squire, living gallantly from inn to inn when
his purse was full, and quartering himself in the king's name
on the nearest ghostly brotherhood when it happened to be empty.
An autumn and a winter had passed away, when the course of his
perlustations brought him one evening into a beautiful sylvan valley,
where he found a number of young women weaving garlands of flowers,
and singing over their pleasant occupation. He approached them,
and courteously inquired the way to the nearest town.

"There is no town within several miles," was the answer.

"A village, then, if it be but large enough to furnish an inn?"

"There is Gamwell just by, but there is no inn nearer than the nearest town."

"An abbey, then?"

"There is no abbey nearer than the nearest inn."

"A house then, or a cottage, where I may obtain hospitality for the night?"

"Hospitality!" said one of the young women; "you have not far to seek
for that. Do you not know that you are in the neighbourhood of Gamwell-Hall?"

"So far from it," said the knight, "that I never heard the name
of Gamwell-Hall before."

"Never heard of Gamwell-Hall?" exclaimed all the young women together,
who could as soon have dreamed of his never having heard of the sky.

"Indeed, no," said Sir Ralph; "but I shall be very happy to get
rid of my ignorance."

"And so shall I," said his squire; "for it seems that in this
case knowledge will for once be a cure for hunger, wherewith I
am grievously afflicted."

"And why are you so busy, my pretty damsels, weaving these garlands?"
said the knight.

"Why, do you not know, sir," said one of the young women,
"that to-morrow is Gamwell feast?"

The knight was again obliged, with all humility, to confess his ignorance.

"Oh! sir," said his informant, "then you will have something to see,
that I can tell you; for we shall choose a Queen of the May, and we
shall crown her with flowers, and place her in a chariot of flowers,
and draw it with lines of flowers, and we shall hang all the trees
with flowers, and we shall strew all the ground with flowers,
and we shall dance with flowers, and in flowers, and on flowers,
and we shall be all flowers."

"That you will," said the knight; "and the sweetest and
brightest of all the flowers of the May, my pretty damsels."
On which all the pretty damsels smiled at him and each other.

"And there will be all sorts of May-games, and there will
be prizes for archery, and there will be the knight's ale,
and the foresters' venison, and there will be Kit Scrapesqueak
with his fiddle, and little Tom Whistlerap with his fife and tabor,
and Sam Trumtwang with his harp, and Peter Muggledrone with
his bagpipe, and how I shall dance with Will Whitethorn!"
added the girl, clapping her hands as she spoke, and bounding
from the ground with the pleasure of the anticipation.

A tall athletic young man approached, to whom the rustic maidens
courtesied with great respect; and one of them informed Sir Ralph
that it was young Master William Gamwell. The young gentleman
invited and conducted the knight to the hall, where he introduced
him to the old knight his father, and to the old lady his mother,
and to the young lady his sister, and to a number of bold yeomen,
who were laying siege to beef, brawn, and plum pie around a ponderous table,
and taking copious draughts of old October. A motto was inscribed
over the interior door,--

EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY:

an injunction which Sir Ralph and his squire showed remarkable alacrity
in obeying. Old Sir Guy of Gamwell gave Sir Ralph a very cordial welcome,
and entertained him during supper with several of his best stories, enforced
with an occasional slap on the back, and pointed with a peg in the ribs;
a species of vivacious eloquence in which the; old gentleman excelled,
and which is supposed by many of that pleasant variety of the human spectes,
known by the name of choice fellows and comical dogs, to be the genuine
tangible shape of the cream of a good joke.

CHAPTER VI

What! shall we have incision? shall we embrew? Henry IV.

Old Sir Guy of Gamwell, and young William Gamwell, and fair
Alice Gamwell, and Sir Ralph Montfaucon and his squire,
rode together the next morning to the scene of the feast.
They arrived on a village green, surrounded with cottages peeping
from among the trees by which the green was completely encircled.
The whole circle was hung round with one continuous garland
of flowers, depending in irregular festoons from the branches.
In the centre of the green was a May-pole hidden in boughs
and garlands; and a multitude of round-faced bumpkins and
cherry-checked lasses were dancing around it, to the quadruple
melody of Scrapesqueak, Whistlerap, Trumtwang, and Muggledrone:
harmony we must not call it; for, though they had agreed to a partnership
in point of tune, each, like a true painstaking man, seemed determined
to have his time to himself: Muggledrone played allegretto,
Trumtwang allegro, Whistlerap presto, and Scrapesqueak prestissimo.
There was a kind of mathematical proportion in their discrepancy:
while Muggledrone played the tune four times, Trumtwang played
it five, Whistlerap six, and Scrapesqueak eight; for the latter
completely distanced all his competitors, and indeed worked his
elbow so nimbly that its outline was scarcely distinguishable
through the mistiness of its rapid vibration.

While the knight was delighting his eyes and ears with these
pleasant sights and sounds, all eyes were turned in one direction;
and Sir Ralph, looking round, saw a fair lady in green and
gold come riding through the trees, accompanied by a portly
friar in grey, and several fair damsels and gallant grooms.
On their nearer approach, he recognised the lady Matilda and her
ghostly adviser, brother Michael. A party of foresters arrived
from another direction, and then ensued cordial interchanges
of greeting, and collisions of hands and lips, among the Gamwells
and the new-comers,--"How does my fair coz, Mawd?" and "How does
my sweet coz, Mawd?" and "How does my wild coz, Mawd?" And "Eh!
jolly friar, your hand, old boy:" and "Here, honest friar:"
and "To me, merry friar:" and "By your favour, mistress Alice:"
and "Hey! cousin Robin:" and "Hey! cousin Will:"
and "Od's life! merry Sir Guy, you grow younger every year,"--
as the old knight shook them all in turn with one hand, and slapped
them on the back with the other, in token of his affection.
A number of young men and women advanced, some drawing,
and others dancing round, a floral car; and having placed a crown
of flowers on Matilda's head, they saluted her Queen of the May,
and drew her to the place appointed for the rural sports.

A hogshead of ale was abroach under an oak, and a fire was blazing
in an open space before the trees to roast the fat deer which the
foresters brought. The sports commenced; and, after an agreeable series
of bowling, coiling, pitching, hurling, racing, leaping, grinning,
wrestling or friendly dislocation of joints, and cudgel-playing
or amicable cracking of skulls, the trial of archery ensued.
The conqueror was to be rewarded with a golden arrow from the hand
of the Queen of the May, who was to be his partner in the dance till
the close of the feast. This stimulated the knight's emulation:
young Gamwell supplied him with a bow and arrow, and he took his
station among the foresters, but had the mortification to be out-shot
by them all, and to see one of them lodge the point of his arrow
in the golden ring of the centre, and receive the prize from the hand
of the beautiful Matilda, who smiled on him with particular grace.
The jealous knight scrutinised the successful champion with
great attention, and surely thought he had seen that face before.
In the mean time the forester led the lady to the station.
The luckless Sir Ralph drank deep draughts of love from the matchless
grace of her attitudes, as, taking the bow in her left hand,
and adjusting the arrow with her right, advancing her left foot,
and gently curving her beautiful figure with a slight motion of her head
that waved her black feathers and her ringleted hair, she drew the arrow
to its head, and loosed it from her open fingers. The arrow struck
within the ring of gold, so close to that of the victorious forester
that the points were in contact, and the feathers were intermingled.
Great acclamations succeeded, and the forester led Matilda to the dance.
Sir Ralph gazed on her fascinating motions till the torments of baffled
love and jealous rage became unendurable; and approaching young Gamwell,
he asked him if he knew the name of that forester who was leading
the dance with the Queen of the May?

"Robin, I believe," said young Gamwell carelessly; "I think they
call him Robin."

"Is that all you know of him?" said Sir Ralph.

"What more should I know of him?" said young Gamwell.

"Then I can tell you," said Sir Ralph, "he is the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon,
on whose head is set so large a price."

"Ay, is he?" said young Gamwell, in the same careless manner.

"He were a prize worth the taking," said Sir Ralph.

"No doubt," said young Gamwell.

"How think you?" said Sir Ralph: "are the foresters his adherents?"

"I cannot say," said young Gamwell.

"Is your peasantry loyal and well-disposed?" said Sir Ralph.

"Passing loyal," said young Gamwell.

"If I should call on them in the king's name," said Sir Ralph,
"think you they would aid and assist?"

"Most likely they would," said young Gamwell, "one side or the other."

"Ay, but which side?" said the knight.

"That remains to be tried," said young Gamwell.

"I have King Henry's commission," said the knight, "to apprehend this
earl that was. How would you advise me to act, being, as you see,
without attendant force?"

"I would advise you," said young Gamwell, "to take yourself off without delay,
unless you would relish the taste of a volley of arrows, a shower of stones,
and a hailstorm of cudgel-blows, which would not be turned aside by a God
save King Henry."

Sir Ralph's squire no sooner heard this, and saw by the looks
of the speaker that he was not likely to prove a false prophet,
than he clapped spurs to his horse and galloped off with might
and main. This gave the knight a good excuse to pursue him,
which he did with great celerity, calling, "Stop, you rascal."
When the squire fancied himself safe out of the reach of pursuit,
he checked his speed, and allowed the knight to come up with him.
They rode on several miles in silence, till they discovered
the towers and spires of Nottingham, where the knight introduced
himself to the sheriff, and demanded an armed force to assist in
the apprehension of the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon. The sheriff,
who was willing to have his share of the prize, determined to accompany
the knight in person, and regaled him and his man with good store
of the best; after which, they, with a stout retinue of fifty men,
took the way to Gamwell feast.

"God's my life," said the sheriff, as they rode along,
"I had as lief you would tell me of a service of plate.
I much doubt if this outlawed earl, this forester Robin,
be not the man they call Robin Hood, who has quartered
himself in Sherwood Forest, and whom in endeavouring
to apprehend I have fallen divers times into disasters.
He has gotten together a band of disinherited prodigals,
outlawed debtors, excommunicated heretics, elder sons that
have spent all they had, and younger sons that never had any
thing to spend; and with these he kills the king's deer,
and plunders wealthy travellers of five-sixths of their money;
but if they be abbots or bishops, them he despoils utterly."

The sheriff then proceeded to relate to his companion the adventure
of the abbot of Doubleflask (which some grave historians have
related of the abbot of Saint Mary's, and others of the bishop
of Hereford): how the abbot, returning to his abbey in company
with his high selerer, who carried in his portmanteau the rents
of the abbey-lands, and with a numerous train of attendants,
came upon four seeming peasants, who were roasting the king's
venison by the king's highway: how, in just indignation at
this flagrant infringement of the forest laws, he asked them
what they meant, and they answered that they meant to dine:
how he ordered them to be seized and bound, and led captive
to Nottingham, that they might know wild-flesh to have been destined
by Providence for licensed and privileged appetites, and not for
the base hunger of unqualified knaves: how they prayed for mercy,
and how the abbot swore by Saint Charity that he would show them none:
how one of them thereupon drew a bugle horn from under his
smock-frock and blew three blasts, on which the abbot and his
train were instantly surrounded by sixty bowmen in green:
how they tied him to a tree, and made him say mass for their sins:
how they unbound him, and sate him down with them to dinner,
and gave him venison and wild-fowl and wine, and made him pay
for his fare all the money in his high selerer's portmanteau,
and enforced him to sleep all night under a tree in his cloak,
and to leave the cloak behind him in the morning: how the abbot,
light in pocket and heavy in heart, raised the country upon
Robin Hood, for so he had heard the chief forester called
by his men, and hunted him into an old woman's cottage:
how Robin changed dresses with the old woman, and how the abbot rode
in great triumph to Nottingham, having in custody an old woman in a
green doublet and breeches: how the old woman discovered herself:
how the merrymen of Nottingham laughed at the abbot:
how the abbot railed at the old woman, and how the old woman
out-railed the abbot, telling him that Robin had given her food
and fire through the winter, which no abbot would ever do,
but would rather take it from her for what he called the good
of the church, by which he meant his own laziness and gluttony;
and that she knew a true man from a false thief, and a free
forester from a greedy abbot.

"Thus you see," added the sheriff, "how this villain perverts
the deluded people by making them believe that those who tithe
and toll upon them for their spiritual and temporal benefit are not
their best friends and fatherly guardians; for he holds that in
giving to boors and old women what he takes from priests and peers,
he does but restore to the former what the latter had taken from them;
and this the impudent varlet calls distributive justice.
Judge now if any loyal subject can be safe in such neighbourhood."

While the sheriff was thus enlightening his companion concerning
the offenders, and whetting his own indignation against them,
the sun was fast sinking to the west. They rode on till they
came in view of a bridge, which they saw a party approaching
from the opposite side, and the knight presently discovered
that the party consisted of the lady Matilda and friar Michael,
young Gamwell, cousin Robin, and about half-a-dozen foresters.
The knight pointed out the earl to the sheriff, who exclaimed,
"Here, then, we have him an easy prey;" and they rode on manfully
towards the bridge, on which the other party made halt.

"Who be these," said the friar, "that come riding so fast this way?
Now, as God shall judge me, it is that false knight Sir Ralph Montfaucon,
and the sheriff of Nottingham, with a posse of men. We must make good
our post, and let them dislodge us if they may."

The two parties were now near enough to parley; and the sheriff
and the knight, advancing in the front of the cavalcade,
called on the lady, the friar, young Gamwell, and the foresters,
to deliver up that false-traitor, Robert, formerly Earl
of Huntingdon. Robert himself made answer by letting fly
an arrow that struck the ground between the fore feet of
the sheriff's horse. The horse reared up from the whizzing,
and lodged the sheriff in the dust; and, at the same time,
the fair Matilda favoured the knight with an arrow in his
right arm, that compelled him to withdraw from the affray.
His men lifted the sheriff carefully up, and replaced him on
his horse, whom he immediately with great rage and zeal urged
on to the assault with his fifty men at his heels, some of whom
were intercepted in their advance by the arrows of the foresters
and Matilda; while the friar, with an eight-foot staff,
dislodged the sheriff a second time, and laid on him with all
the vigour of the church militant on earth, in spite of his
ejaculations of "Hey, friar Michael! What means this, honest friar?
Hold, ghostly friar! Hold, holy friar!"--till Matilda interposed,
and delivered the battered sheriff to the care of the foresters.
The friar continued flourishing his staff among the sheriff's men,
knocking down one, breaking the ribs of another, dislocating
the shoulder of a third, flattening the nose of a fourth,
cracking the skull of a fifth, and pitching a sixth into the river,
till the few, who were lucky enough to escape with whole bones,
clapped spurs to their horses and fled for their lives,
under a farewell volley of arrows.

Sir Ralph's squire, meanwhile, was glad of the excuse of
attending his master's wound to absent himself from the battle;
and put the poor knight to a great deal of unnecessary pain
by making as long a business as possible of extracting the arrow,
which he had not accomplished when Matilda, approaching, extracted it
with great facility, and bound up the wound with her scarf,
saying, "I reclaim my arrow, sir knight, which struck where I
aimed it, to admonish you to desist from your enterprise.
I could as easily have lodged it in your heart."

"It did not need," said the knight, with rueful gallantry;
"you have lodged one there already."

"If you mean to say that you love me," said Matilda, "it is more than I
ever shall you: but if you will show your love by no further interfering
with mine, you will at least merit my gratitude."

The knight made a wry face under the double pain of heart and body caused
at the same moment by the material or martial, and the metaphorical
or erotic arrow, of which the latter was thus barbed by a declaration
more candid than flattering; but he did not choose to put in any such
claim to the lady's gratitude as would bar all hopes of her love:
he therefore remained silent; and the lady and her escort, leaving him
and the sheriff to the care of the squire, rode on till they came
in sight of Arlingford Castle, when they parted in several directions.
The friar rode off alone; and after the foresters had lost sight of him
they heard his voice through the twilight, singing,--

A staff, a staff, of a young oak graff,
That is both stoure and stiff,
Is all a good friar can needs desire
To shrive a proud sheriffe.
And thou, fine fellowe, who hast tasted so
Of the forester's greenwood game,
Wilt be in no haste thy time to waste
In seeking more taste of the same:
Or this can I read thee, and riddle thee well,
Thou hadst better by far be the devil in hell,
Than the sheriff of Nottinghame.

CHAPTER VII

Now, master sheriff, what's your will with me? Henry IV.

Matilda had carried her point with the baron of ranging at liberty
whithersoever she would, under her positive promise to return home;
she was a sort of prisoner on parole: she had obtained this indulgence
by means of an obsolete habit of always telling the truth and keeping
her word, which our enlightened age has discarded with other barbarisms,
but which had the effect of giving her father so much confidence in her,
that he could not help considering her word a better security than
locks and bars.

The baron had been one of the last to hear of the rumours of
the new outlaws of Sherwood, as Matilda had taken all possible
precautions to keep those rumours from his knowledge, fearing that
they might cause the interruption of her greenwood liberty;
and it was only during her absence at Gamwell feast, that the butler,
being thrown off his guard by liquor, forgot her injunctions,
and regaled the baron with a long story of the right merry
adventure of Robin Hood and the abbot of Doubleflask.

The baron was one morning, as usual, cutting his way valorously
through a rampart of cold provision, when his ears were
suddenly assailed by a tremendous alarum, and sallying forth,
and looking from his castle wall, he perceived a large party
of armed men on the other side of the moat, who were calling on
the warder in the king's name to lower the drawbridge and raise
the portcullis, which had both been secured by Matilda's order.
The baron walked along the battlement till he came opposite
to these unexpected visitors, who, as soon as they saw him,
called out, "Lower the drawbridge, in the king's name."

"For what, in the devil's name?" said the baron.

"The sheriff of Nottingham," said one, "lies in bed grievously bruised,
and many of his men are wounded, and several of them slain;
and Sir Ralph Montfaucon, knight, is sore wounded in the arm;
and we are charged to apprehend William Gamwell the younger,
of Gamwell Hall, and father Michael of Rubygill Abbey,
and Matilda Fitzwater of Arlingford Castle, as agents and
accomplices in the said breach of the king's peace."

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