The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley Page B

and responsibility of my own deeds,” Robin smiled.
    â€œI would trust no babe to bring me news of the Chief Forester; a babe would get lost in the forest, or mistake the Chief Forester for a fat, stupid old man.”
    â€œI can promise not to lose myself in Sherwood; but for the other, it may be a hard task.”
    â€œI have great faith in you,” said Robin.
    The Chief Forester and the sheriff of Nottingham had shaken themselves out of their winter sleep and begun to readdress the tiresome question of the new band of outlaws infesting Sherwood. This band had, unfortunately, survived the winter; the weather had taken care of certain similar questions in years past. But the Chief Forester was, from the outlaws’ point of view, the lesser evil, for the king’s foresters were largely taken up with their legitimate business. It was the sheriff of Nottingham who had more leisure, money, and a wider scope to expend on whim and personal vengeance. This had initially been to their advantage, for while the sheriff could be relied on to bestir himself against any probable threat to his own comfort, and local outlaws of all styles and political persuasions must be numbered on such a list, Robin Hood’s company had not, at first, directly troubled him. (Indeed, he had grown a little tired of the Chief Forester’s fixation on the subject. The Chief Forester, thought the sheriff, suffered a slight excess of self-importance.)
    So while the sheriff had not been idle in pursuit of these outlaws, his harassment was irregular, as if he was not entirely convinced that he needed to care that they existed; or as if he was still hoping, if he tried very hard to forget about them, that his forgetfulness would have the salutary effect of making them forget to believe in themselves, whereupon they would burn away like fog in sunlight, and stop troubling him. “He believes his own lies,” said Much; “chief among them that he is the law, and not merely the bully with the biggest stick, in Nottingham.”
    But Robin’s folk had grown harder to ignore. They grew less and less inclined to remain quietly in the heart of Sherwood, nursing their subversive notions—and eating the king’s deer. They had begun preying upon the high roads. There was even talk of some kind of spy network among them and other subversives in other parts of England, where local malcontents might go and begin new lives, and cheat their rightful Norman overlords of rents and taxes.
    By the time of the spring fair in Nottingham there was a lively new topic of gossip among the small farmers and merchants who set up booths. Robin Hood had already become quite a favourite among them; more and more of them had friends or relatives who had been assisted, or thought they had been assisted, by some member of the Sherwood outlaws (Robin would have been astonished at the amount of philanthropy he was responsible for at several retellings’ remove.) The conversations went: So, had everyone heard of this Robin Hood and his band of folk in Sherwood Forest? Yes, yes, of course everyone had heard. Well, the latest was that they were not merely offering a helping hand to those cheated by greedy Normans—they were now robbing the greedy Normans directly. Pause for appreciative laughter and the rubbing together of hands. Was this not the classic end of thieves? Was this not how the Normans must be treated? Did it not seem as if this Robin Hood was—well—some instrument of fate?
    The preying upon the high roads had begun as the longbow practice abruptly became rather successful. After lengthy moaning and groaning and the rubbing of pulled muscles, accompanied by lingering reproachful looks at their leader, suddenly there were half a dozen outlaws capable of hitting what they aimed at—capable of knocking a deer down from four hundred yards’ distance; capable of putting an arrow through a forester’s hat from the same