Maid Marian

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"Breach of the king's fiddlestick!" answered the baron.
"What do you mean by coming here with your cock and bull, stories of my
daughter grievously bruising the sheriff of Nottingham? You are a set
of vagabond rascals in disguise; and I hear, by the bye, there is
a gang of thieves that has just set up business in Sherwood Forest:
a pretty presence, indeed, to get into my castle with force and arms,
and make a famine in my buttery, and a drought in my cellar,
and a void in my strong box, and a vacuum in my silver scullery."

"Lord Fitzwater," cried one, "take heed how you resist lawful authority:
we will prove ourselves----"

"You will prove yourselves arrant knaves, I doubt not," answered the baron;
"but, villains, you shall be more grievously bruised by me than ever was
the sheriff by my daughter (a pretty tale truly!), if you do not forthwith
avoid my territory."

By this time the baron's men had flocked to the battlements,
with long-bows and cross-bows, slings and stones,
and Matilda with her bow and quiver at their head.
The assailants, finding the castle so well defended, deemed it
expedient to withdraw till they could return in greater force,
and rode off to Rubygill Abbey, where they made known their
errand to the father abbot, who, having satisfied himself
of their legitimacy, and conned over the allegations,
said that doubtless brother Michael had heinously offended;
but it was not for the civil law to take cognizance of the misdoings
of a holy friar; that he would summon a chapter of monks,
and pass on the offender a sentence proportionate to his offence.
The ministers of civil justice said that would not do.
The abbot said it would do and should; and bade them not
provoke the meekness of his catholic charity to lay them under
the curse of Rome. This threat had its effect, and the party
rode off to Gamwell-Hall, where they found the Gamwells
and their men just sitting down to dinner, which they saved
them the trouble of eating by consuming it in the king's
name themselves, having first seized and bound young Gamwell;
all which they accomplished by dint of superior numbers,
in despite of a most vigorous stand made by the Gamwellites
in defence of their young master and their provisions.

The baron, meanwhile, after the ministers of justice had departed,
interrogated Matilda concerning the alleged fact of the grievous
bruising of the sheriff of Nottingham. Matilda told him the whole
history of Gamwell feast, and of their battle on the bridge,
which had its origin in a design of the sheriff of Nottingham
to take one of the foresters into custody.

"Ay! ay!" said the baron, "and I guess who that forester was;
but truly this friar is a desperate fellow. I did not think
there could have been so much valour under a grey frock.
And so you wounded the knight in the arm. You are a
wild girl, Mawd,--a chip of the old block, Mawd. A wild girl,
and a wild friar, and three or four foresters, wild lads all,
to keep a bridge against a tame knight, and a tame sheriff,
and fifty tame varlets; by this light, the like was never heard!
But do you know, Mawd, you must not go about so any more,
sweet Mawd: you must stay at home, you must ensconce;
for there is your tame sheriff on the one hand, that will take
you perforce; and there is your wild forester on the other hand,
that will take you without any force at all, Mawd: your wild
forester, Robin, cousin Robin, Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest,
that beats and binds bishops, spreads nets for archbishops,
and hunts a fat abbot as if he were a buck: excellent game,
no doubt, but you must hunt no more in such company. I see it now:
truly I might have guessed before that the bold outlaw Robin,
the most courteous Robin, the new thief of Sherwood Forest,
was your lover, the earl that has been: I might have guessed
it before, and what led you so much to the woods; but you hunt
no more in such company. No more May games and Gamwell feasts.
My lands and castle would be the forfeit of a few more such pranks;
and I think they are as well in my hands as the king's,
quite as well."

"You know, father," said Matilda, "the condition of keeping me at home:
I get out if I can, and not on parole."

"Ay! ay!" said the baron, "if you can; very true:
watch and ward, Mawd, watch and ward is my word: if you can,
is yours. The mark is set, and so start fair."

The baron would have gone on in this way for an hour; but the friar
made his appearance with a long oak staff in his hand, singing,--

Drink and sing, and eat and laugh,
And so go forth to battle:
For the top of a skull and the end of a staff
Do make a ghostly rattle.

"Ho! ho! friar!" said the baron--"singing friar,
laughing friar, roaring friar, fighting friar, hacking friar,
thwacking friar; cracking, cracking, cracking friar;
joke-cracking, bottle-cracking, skull-cracking friar!"

"And ho! ho!" said the friar,--"bold baron, old baron,
sturdy baron, wordy baron, long baron, strong baron,
mighty baron, flighty baron, mazed baron, crazed baron,
hacked baron, thwacked baron; cracked, cracked, cracked baron;
bone-cracked, sconce-cracked, brain-cracked baron!"

"What do you mean," said the baron, "bully friar, by calling me
hacked and thwacked?"

"Were you not in the wars?" said the friar, "where he who
escapes untracked does more credit to his heels than his arms.
I pay tribute to your valour in calling you hacked and thwacked."

"I never was thwacked in my life," said the baron; "I stood
my ground manfully, and covered my body with my sword.
If I had had the luck to meet with a fighting friar indeed,
I might have been thwacked, and soundly too; but I hold myself
a match for any two laymen; it takes nine fighting laymen
to make a fighting friar."

"Whence come you now, holy father?" asked Matilda.

"From Rubygill Abbey," said the friar, "whither I never return:

For I must seek some hermit cell,
Where I alone my beads may tell,
And on the wight who that way fares
Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs,
Levy a toll, levy a toll,
Levy a toll for my ghostly pray'rs."

"What is the matter then, father?" said Matilda.

"This is the matter," said the friar: "my holy brethren have held
a chapter on me, and sentenced me to seven years' privation of wine.
I therefore deemed it fitting to take my departure, which they would
fain have prohibited. I was enforced to clear the way with my staff.
I have grievously beaten my dearly beloved brethren: I grieve thereat;
but they enforced me thereto. I have beaten them much; I mowed them
down to the right and to the left, and left them like an ill-reaped field
of wheat, ear and straw pointing all ways, scattered in singleness and
jumbled in masses; and so bade them farewell, saying, Peace be with you.
But I must not tarry, lest danger be in my rear: therefore, farewell,
sweet Matilda; and farewell, noble baron; and farewell, sweet Matilda again,
the alpha and omega of father Michael, the first and the last."

"Farewell, father," said the baron, a little softened;
"and God send you be never assailed by more than fifty men
at a time."

"Amen," said the friar, "to that good wish."

"And we shall meet again, father, I trust," said Matilda.

"When the storm is blown over," said the baron.

"Doubt it not," said the friar, "though flooded Trent were between us,
and fifty devils guarded the bridge."

He kissed Matilda's forehead, and walked away without a song.

CHAPTER VIII

Let gallows gape for dog: let man go free. Henry V.

A page had been brought up in Gamwell-Hall, who, while he was little,
had been called Little John, and continued to be so called after
he had grown to be a foot taller than any other man in the house.
He was full seven feet high. His latitude was worthy of his longitude,
and his strength was worthy of both; and though an honest man by profession,
he had practiced archery on the king's deer for the benefit of his
master's household, and for the improvement of his own eye and hand,
till his aim had become infallible within the range of two miles.
He had fought manfully in defence of his young master, took his captivity
exceedingly to heart, and fell into bitter grief and boundless rage
when he heard that he had been tried in Nottingham and sentenced to die.
Alice Gamwell, at Little John's request, wrote three letters of one tenour;
and Little John, having attached them to three blunt arrows, saddled the
fleetest steed in old Sir Guy of Gamwell's stables, mounted, and rode first to
Arlingford Castle, where he shot one of the three arrows over the battlements;
then to Rubygill Abbey, where he shot the second into the abbey-garden;
then back past Gamwell-Hall to the borders of Sherwood Forest,
where he shot the third into the wood. Now the first of these arrows
lighted in the nape of the neck of Lord Fitzwater, and lodged itself firmly
between his skin and his collar; the second rebounded with the hollow
vibration of a drumstick from the shaven sconce of the abbot of Rubygill;
and the third pitched perpendicularly into the centre of a venison pasty
in which Robin Hood was making incision.

Matilda ran up to her father in the court of Arlingford Castle,
seized the arrow, drew off the letter, and concealed it in her
bosom before the baron had time to look round, which he did
with many expressions of rage against the impudent villain
who had shot a blunt arrow into the nape of his neck.

"But you know, father," said Matilda, "a sharp arrow in the same place would
have killed you; therefore the sending a blunt one was very considerate."

"Considerate, with a vengeance!" said the baron.
"Where was the consideration of sending it at all?
This is some of your forester's pranks. He has missed you
in the forest, since I have kept watch and ward over you,
and by way of a love-token and a remembrance to you takes
a random shot at me."

The abbot of Rubygill picked up the missile-missive or messenger arrow,
which had rebounded from his shaven crown, with a very unghostly
malediction on the sender, which he suddenly checked with a pious
and consolatory reflection on the goodness of Providence in having
blessed him with such a thickness of skull, to which he was now indebted
for temporal preservation, as he had before been for spiritual promotion.
He opened the letter, which was addressed to father Michael;
and found it to contain an intimation that William Gamwell was to be
hanged on Monday at Nottingham.

"And I wish," said the abbot, "father Michael were to be hanged with him:
an ungrateful monster, after I had rescued him from the fangs of
civil justice, to reward my lenity by not leaving a bone unbruised
among the holy brotherhood of Rubygill."

Robin Hood extracted from his venison pasty a similar intimation
of the evil destiny of his cousin, whom he determined, if possible,
to rescue from the jaws of Cerberus.

The sheriff of Nottingham, though still sore with his bruises,
was so intent on revenge, that he raised himself from his bed
to attend the execution of William Gamwell. He rode to the august
structure of retributive Themis, as the French call a gallows,
in all the pride and pomp of shrievalty, and with a splendid
retinue of well-equipped knaves and varlets, as our ancestors
called honest serving-men.

Young Gamwell was brought forth with his arms pinioned behind him;
his sister Alice and his father, Sir Guy, attending him in disconsolate mood.
He had rejected the confessor provided by the sheriff, and had insisted on
the privilege of choosing his own, whom Little John had promised to bring.
Little John, however, had not made his appearance when the fatal
procession began its march; but when they reached the place of execution,
Little John appeared, accompanied by a ghostly friar.

"Sheriff," said young Gamwell, "let me not die with my hands pinioned:
give me a sword, and set any odds of your men against me, and let
me die the death of a man, like the descendant of a noble house,
which has never yet been stained with ignominy."

"No, no," said the sheriff; "I have had enough of setting odds against you.
I have sworn you shall be hanged, and hanged you shall be."

"Then God have mercy on me," said young Gamwell; "and now, holy friar,
shrive my sinful soul."

The friar approached.

"Let me see this friar," said the sheriff: "if he be the friar
of the bridge, I had as lief have the devil in Nottingham;
but he shall find me too much for him here."

"The friar of the bridge," said Little John, "as you very
well know, sheriff, was father Michael of Rubygill Abbey,
and you may easily see that this is not the man."

"I see it," said the sheriff; "and God be thanked for his absence."

Young Gamwell stood at the foot of the ladder. The friar approached him,
opened his book, groaned, turned up the whites of his eyes,
tossed up his arms in the air, and said "Dominus vobiscum."
He then crossed both his hands on his breast under the folds
of his holy robes, and stood a few moments as if in inward prayer.
A deep silence among the attendant crowd accompanied this action
of the friar; interrupted only by the hollow tone of the death-bell,
at long and dreary intervals. Suddenly the friar threw off
his holy robes, and appeared a forester clothed in green,
with a sword in his right hand and a horn in his left.
With the sword he cut the bonds of William Gamwell, who instantly
snatched a sword from one of the sheriff's men; and with the horn
he blew a loud blast, which was answered at once by four bugles
from the quarters of the four winds, and from each quarter came
five-and-twenty bowmen running all on a row.

"Treason! treason!" cried the sheriff. Old Sir Guy sprang to his
son's side, and so did Little John; and the four setting back
to back, kept the sheriff and his men at bay till the bowmen came
within shot and let fly their arrows among the sheriff's men, who,
after a brief resistance, fled in all directions. The forester,
who had personated the friar, sent an arrow after the flying sheriff,
calling with a strong voice, "To the sheriff's left arm,
as a keepsake from Robin Hood." The arrow reached its destiny;
the sheriff redoubled his speed, and, with the one arrow in his arm,
did not stop to breathe till he was out of reach of another.

The foresters did not waste time in Nottingham, but were soon at a distance
from its walls. Sir Guy returned with Alice to Gamwell-Hall; but thinking
he should not be safe there, from the share he had had in his son's rescue,
they only remained long enough to supply themselves with clothes and money,
and departed, under the escort of Little John, to another seat of the Gamwells
in Yorkshire. Young Gamwell, taking it for granted that his offence
was past remission, determined on joining Robin Hood, and accompanied him
to the forest, where it was deemed expedient that he should change his name;
and he was rechristened without a priest, and with wine instead of water,
by the immortal name of Scarlet.

CHAPTER IX

Who set my man i' the stocks?----
I set him there, Sir but his own disorders
Deserved much less advancement.--Lear.

The baron was inflexible in his resolution not to let Matilda leave
the castle. The letter, which announced to her the approaching
fate of young Gamwell, filled her with grief, and increased
the irksomeness of a privation which already preyed sufficiently
on her spirits, and began to undermine her health. She had no longer
the consolation of the society of her old friend father Michael:
the little fat friar of Rubygill was substituted as the castle confessor,
not without some misgivings in his ghostly bosom; but he was more
allured by the sweet savour of the good things of this world at
Arlingford Castle, than deterred by his awe of the lady Matilda,
which nevertheless was so excessive, from his recollection of the twang
of the bow-string, that he never ventured to find her in the wrong,
much less to enjoin any thing in the shape of penance, as was
the occasional practice of holy confessors, with or without cause,
for the sake of pious discipline, and what was in those days
called social order, namely, the preservation of the privileges
of the few who happened to have any, at the expense of the swinish
multitude who happened to have none, except that of working and
being shot at for the benefit of their betters, which is obviously
not the meaning of social order in our more enlightened times:
let us therefore be grateful to Providence, and sing Te Deum laudamus
in chorus with the Holy Alliance.

The little friar, however, though he found the lady spotless,
found the butler a great sinner: at least so it was conjectured,
from the length of time he always took to confess him in the buttery.

Matilda became every day more pale and dejected: her spirit,
which could have contended against any strenuous affliction,
pined in the monotonous inaction to which she was condemned.
While she could freely range the forest with her lover in
the morning, she had been content to return to her father's
castle in the evening, thus preserving underanged the balance
of her duties, habits, and affections; not without a hope that
the repeal of her lover's outlawry might be eventually obtained,
by a judicious distribution of some of his forest spoils among
the holy fathers and saints that-were-to-be,--pious proficients
in the ecclesiastic art equestrian, who rode the conscience
of King Henry with double-curb bridles, and kept it well in hand
when it showed mettle and seemed inclined to rear and plunge.
But the affair at Gamwell feast threw many additional
difficulties in the way of the accomplishment of this hope;
and very shortly afterwards King Henry the Second went to make
up in the next world his quarrel with Thomas-a-Becket;
and Richard Coeur de Lion made all England resound with
preparations for the crusade, to the great delight of many
zealous adventurers, who eagerly flocked under his banner
in the hope of enriching themselves with Saracen spoil,
which they called fighting the battles of God. Richard, who was
not remarkably scrupulous in his financial operations,
was not likely to overlook the lands and castle of Locksley,
which he appropriated immediately to his own purposes, and sold
to the highest bidder. Now, as the repeal of the outlawry would
involve the restitution of the estates to the rightful owner,
it was obvious that it could never be expected from that
most legitimate and most Christian king, Richard the First
of England, the arch-crusader and anti-jacobin by excellence,--
the very type, flower, cream, pink, symbol, and mirror
of all the Holy Alliances that have ever existed on earth,
excepting that he seasoned his superstition and love
of conquest with a certain condiment of romantic generosity
and chivalrous self-devotion, with which his imitators
in all other points have found it convenient to dispense.
To give freely to one man what he had taken forcibly from another,
was generosity of which he was very capable; but to restore
what he had taken to the man from whom he had taken it,
was something that wore too much of the cool physiognomy
of justice to be easily reconcileable to his kingly feelings.
He had, besides, not only sent all King Henry's saints
about their business, or rather about their no-business--
their faineantise--but he had laid them under rigorous
contribution for the purposes of his holy war; and having
made them refund to the piety of the successor what they had
extracted from the piety of the precursor, he compelled them,
in addition, to give him their blessing for nothing.
Matilda, therefore, from all these circumstances, felt little
hope that her lover would be any thing but an outlaw for life.

The departure of King Richard from England was succeeded by the episcopal
regency of the bishops of Ely and Durham. Longchamp, bishop of Ely,
proceeded to show his sense of Christian fellowship by arresting his
brother bishop, and despoiling him of his share in the government;
and to set forth his humility and loving-kindness in a retinue of nobles
and knights who consumed in one night's entertainment some five years'
revenue of their entertainer, and in a guard of fifteen hundred
foreign soldiers, whom he considered indispensable to the exercise
of a vigour beyond the law in maintaining wholesome discipline over
the refractory English. The ignorant impatience of the swinish multitude
with these fruits of good living, brought forth by one of the meek who
had inherited the earth, displayed itself in a general ferment, of which
Prince John took advantage to make the experiment of getting possession
of his brother's crown in his absence. He began by calling at Reading
a council of barons, whose aspect induced the holy bishop to disguise himself
(some say as an old woman, which, in the twelfth century, perhaps might
have been a disguise for a bishop), and make his escape beyond sea.
Prince John followed up his advantage by obtaining possession of several
strong posts, and among others of the castle of Nottingham.

While John was conducting his operations at Nottingham, he rode
at times past the castle of Arlingford. He stopped on one occasion
to claim Lord Fitzwater's hospitality, and made most princely
havoc among his venison and brawn. Now it is a matter of record
among divers great historians and learned clerks, that he was then
and there grievously smitten by the charms of the lovely Matilda,
and that a few days after he despatched his travelling minstrel,
or laureate, Harpiton,[3] (whom he retained at moderate wages,
to keep a journal of his proceedings, and prove them all just and
legitimate), to the castle of Arlingford, to make proposals to the lady.
This Harpiton was a very useful person. He was always ready,
not only to maintain the cause of his master with his pen, and to sing
his eulogies to his harp, but to undertake at a moment's notice
any kind of courtly employment, called dirty work by the profane,
which the blessings of civil government, namely, his master's pleasure,
and the interests of social order, namely, his own emolument,
might require. In short,

Il eut l'emploi qui certes n'est pas mince,
Et qu'a la cour, ou tout se peint en beau,
On appelloit etre l'ami du prince;
Mais qu'a la ville, et surtout en province,
Les gens grossiers ont nomme maquereau.

[3] Harp-it-on: or, a corruption of , a creeping thing.

Prince John was of opinion that the love of a prince actual and
king expectant, was in itself a sufficient honour to the daughter
of a simple baron, and that the right divine or royalty would
make it sufficiently holy without the rite divine of the church.
He was, therefore, graciously pleased to fall into an exceeding
passion, when his confidential messenger returned from his
embassy in piteous plight, having been, by the baron's order,
first tossed in a blanket and set in the stocks to cool,
and afterwards ducked in the moat and set again in the stocks
to dry. John swore to revenge horribly this flagrant outrage
on royal prerogative, and to obtain possession of the lady
by force of arms; and accordingly collected a body of troops,
and marched upon Arlingford castle. A letter, conveyed as before
on the point of a blunt arrow, announced his approach to Matilda:
and lord Fitzwater had just time to assemble his retainers,
collect a hasty supply of provision, raise the draw-bridge, and drop
the portcullis, when the castle was surrounded by the enemy.
The little fat friar, who during the confusion was asleep in the buttery,
found himself, on awaking, inclosed in the besieged castle,
and dolefully bewailed his evil chance.

CHAPTER X

A noble girl, i' faith. Heart! I think I fight with a familiar,
or the ghost of a fencer. Call you this an amorous visage?
Here's blood that would have served me these seven years,
in broken heads and cut fingers, and now it runs out
all together.--MIDDLETON. Roaring Girl.

Prince John sat down impatiently before Arlingford castle in the hope
of starving out the besieged; but finding the duration of their supplies
extend itself in an equal ratio with the prolongation of his hope,
he made vigorous preparations for carrying the place by storm.
He constructed an immense machine on wheels, which, being advanced
to the edge of the moat, would lower a temporary bridge, of which
one end would rest on the bank, and the other on the battlements,
and which, being well furnished with stepping boards, would enable
his men to ascend the inclined plane with speed and facility.
Matilda received intimation of this design by the usual friendly channel
of a blunt arrow, which must either have been sent from some secret
friend in the prince's camp, or from some vigorous archer beyond it:
the latter will not appear improbable, when we consider that Robin Hood
and Little John could shoot two English miles and an inch point-blank,

Come scrive Turpino, che non erra.

The machine was completed, and the ensuing morning fixed for the assault.
Six men, relieved at intervals, kept watch over it during the night.
Prince John retired to sleep, congratulating himself in the expectation
that another day would place the fair culprit at his princely mercy.
His anticipations mingled with the visions of his slumber, and he dreamed
of wounds and drums, and sacking and firing the castle, and bearing off
in his arms the beautiful prize through the midst of fire and smoke.
In the height of this imaginary turmoil, he awoke, and conceived for a few
moments that certain sounds which rang in his ears, were the continuation
of those of his dream, in that sort of half-consciousness between
sleeping and waking, when reality and phantasy meet and mingle in dim
and confused resemblance. He was, however, very soon fully awake
to the fact of his guards calling on him to arm, which he did in haste,
and beheld the machine in flames, and a furious conflict raging around it.
He hurried to the spot, and found that his camp had been suddenly assailed
from one side by a party of foresters, and that the baron's people
had made a sortie on the other, and that they had killed the guards,
and set fire to the machine, before the rest of the camp could come
to the assistance of their fellows.

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