Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock (large screen ebook reader txt) 📗

but so also is Robin: it is the false word that makes the unjust distinction. They are twin-spirits, and should be friends, but that fortune hath differently cast their lot: but their names shall descend together to the latest days, as the flower of their age and of England: for in the pure principles of freebootery have they excelled all men; and to the principles of freebootery, diversely developed, belong all the qualities to which song and story concede renown.”

“And you may add, friar,” said Marian, “that Robin, no less than Richard, is king in his own dominion; and that if his subjects be fewer, yet are they more uniformly loyal.”

“I would, fair lady,” said the stranger, “that thy latter observation were not so true. But I nothing doubt, Robin, that if Richard could hear your friar, and see you and your lady, as I now do, there is not a man in England whom he would take by the hand more cordially than yourself.”

“Gramercy, sir knight,” said Robin—— But his speech was cut short by Little John calling, “Hark!”

All listened. A distant trampling of horses was heard. The sounds approached rapidly, and at length a group of horsemen glittering in holyday dresses was visible among the trees.

“God’s my life!” said Robin, “what means this? To arms, my merrymen all.”

“No arms, Robin,” said the foremost horseman, riding up and springing from his saddle: “have you forgotten Sir William of the Lee?”

“No, by my fay,” said Robin; “and right welcome again to Sherwood.”

Little John bustled to re-array the disorganised economy of the table, and replace the dilapidations of the provender.

“I come late, Robin,” said Sir William, “but I came by a wrestling, where I found a good yeoman wrongfully beset by a crowd of sturdy varlets, and I staid to do him right.”

“I thank thee for that, in God’s name,” said Robin, “as if thy good service had been to myself.”

“And here,” said the knight, “is thy four hundred pound; and my men have brought thee an hundred bows and as many well-furnished quivers; which I beseech thee to receive and to use as a poor token of my grateful kindness to thee: for me and my wife and children didst thou redeem from beggary.”

“Thy bows and arrows,” said Robin, “will I joyfully receive: but of thy money, not a penny. It is paid already. My Lady, who was thy security, hath sent it me for thee.”

Sir William pressed, but Robin was inflexible.

“It is paid,” said Robin, “as this good knight can testify, who saw my Lady’s messenger depart but now.”

Sir William looked round to the stranger knight, and instantly fell on his knee, saying, “God save King Richard.”

The foresters, friar and all, dropped on their knees together, and repeated in chorus: “God save King Richard.”

“Rise, rise,” said Richard, smiling: “Robin is king here, as his lady hath shown. I have heard much of thee, Robin, both of thy present and thy former state. And this, thy fair forest-queen, is, if tales say true, the lady Matilda Fitzwater.”

Marian signed acknowledgment.

“Your father,” said the king, “has approved his fidelity to me, by the loss of his lands, which the newness of my return, and many public cares, have not yet given me time to restore: but this justice shall be done to him, and to thee also, Robin, if thou wilt leave thy forest-life and resume thy earldom, and be a peer of Coeur-de-Lion: for braver heart and juster hand I never yet found.”

Robin looked round on his men.

“Your followers,” said the king, “shall have free pardon, and such of them as thou wilt part with shall have maintenance from me; and if ever I confess to priest, it shall be to thy friar.”

“Gramercy to your majesty,” said the friar; “and my inflictions shall be flasks of canary; and if the number be (as in grave cases I may, peradventure, make it) too great for one frail mortality, I will relieve you by vicarious penance, and pour down my own throat the redundancy of the burden.”

Robin and his followers embraced the king’s proposal. A joyful meeting soon followed with the baron and Sir Guy of Gamwell: and Richard himself honoured with his own presence a formal solemnization of the nuptials of our lovers, whom he constantly distinguished with his peculiar regard.

The friar could not say, Farewell to the forest, without something of a heavy heart: and he sang as he turned his back upon its bounds, occasionally reverting his head:

Ye woods, that oft at sultry noon Have o’er me spread your messy shade: Ye gushing streams, whose murmured tune Has in my ear sweet music made, While, where the dancing pebbles show Deep in the restless fountain-pool The gelid water’s upward flow, My second flask was laid to cool: Ye pleasant sights of leaf and flower: Ye pleasant sounds of bird and bee: Ye sports of deer in sylvan bower: Ye feasts beneath the greenwood tree: Ye baskings in the vernal sun: Ye slumbers in the summer dell: Ye trophies that this arm has won: And must ye hear your friar’s farewell?

But the friar’s farewell was not destined to be eternal. He was domiciled as the family confessor of the earl and countess of Huntingdon, who led a discreet and courtly life, and kept up old hospitality in all its munificence, till the death of King Richard and the usurpation of John, by placing their enemy in power, compelled them to return to their greenwood sovereignty; which, it is probable, they would have before done from choice, if their love of sylvan liberty had not been counteracted by their desire to retain the friendship of Coeur-de-Lion. Their old and tried adherents, the friar among the foremost, flocked again round their forest-banner; and in merry Sherwood they long lived together, the lady still retaining her former name of Maid Marian, though the appellation was then as much a misnomer as that of Little John.

THE END.