Title: The Prodigal. Chapter 1, "Ghost Town"

Author: DCWash

Characters: Robin, OC (Winifred), Little John, Allan.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to BBC/Tiger Aspect.

Rating: Everybody

Spoilers: None, really.

Length: 4323

Summary: Okay, so I started writing my four-part fic on Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Allan a Dale Including His Fortunes Before, During, and After the Sherwood Rebellion, and somehow wound up with this. Which doesn't even mention Allan until the very end. Which I guess makes it a preamble, or part five of a quartet, or something. At any rate, it starts to address what happens to the whole gang after Vasey is overthrown. Though other parts will concentrate on Allan, we'll also catch up with the others. This part is rated G, but I'm going to be getting into some potentially sensitive topics in future parts, so the rating for them will probably change.

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NB: "Fæder" is Anglo-Saxon/Old English for "father."

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Robin rode his high horse through the hamlet of Featherstone, straggled out as it was along what passed for a road, and thought, "What a pit!" There was a general dilapidation about the place: cottages were abandoned, fields had gone to seed. Occasionally a face would peek out of a doorframe—there usually wasn't an actual door hanging there, at most a curtain—to see who was going by, but otherwise, there were few signs of life. Featherstone had belonged to Vasey, not that long ago. He ran it into the ground and treated the peasants who lived there abominably, and as soon as word got out that King Richard had exiled the former sheriff to France, the serfs abandoned the place and lit out for Nottingham, the nearest town, in the hopes of freedom. A few had trickled back—hence the faces in the doorways—when they realized that all they knew was farming and that they had no way of earning even the piddling living they got from Vasey so long as they stayed in town. Even serfdom was better than starvation amidst strangers.

Robin continued the thought. "It may be a pit, but it's your pit now, old son, so you'd better start doing something about it." He was surprised to realize that he had never been there. He didn't have much reason to before, but now that the king had confiscated Vasey's lands and handed them over to Robin, he was going to have to make sure the cottages were habitable and the land productive.

Robin couldn't tell you what he was looking for as he went through Featherstone, except that he knew that he had found it when he came to a more substantial house than the rest of the cottages on the edge of town. There was nothing grand about it—it wasn't even as impressive as his own manor house, which he loved but would be the first to admit was fairly low down on the scale of the nobility's architectural wonders. But it was bigger than the rest of the cottages, and felt more solid. It was also in better repair, actually thanks to Robin: Winifred had refused to ask him for help but when Little John told him that Winifred had come home from her time with their gang in the forest to find a gaping hole in one wall and the roof, Robin had sent round a mason to make things right. In fact, that new masonry was the determining factor in making Robin realize he had the right place. Well, that and the bake oven out behind, now tended by a woman who must have been pushing fifty but was still only very slightly stooped.

"Ho, Lord Huntingdon! How are you? Give us a hand with this and I'll give you a current bun!" Robin was never sure how seriously to take it when Winifred teased like that. If he knew the truth, he might be surprised at how much she genuinely respected him for his character and intelligence, and for the authority his title gave him…but earl or not, a lad's still a lad, and what lad doesn't like buns?

She gave Robin an eager smile: she was pretty sure why he was there. They carried the loaves inside and went through the pleasantries—Marian was as well as ever; Djaq was out helping Matilda deliver a set of twins; here, move closer to the fire and have a warm—as Robin gave his horse a handful of hay in the stall off the cottage's main room and Winifred put a handful of something in a pot to brew.

All of that done, Winifred turned to Robin and clasped her hands together, obviously anticipating some great pleasure.

"Well, here it is. The deed." Robin pulled a small scroll of parchment out of his cloak and gave it a little wave.

Winifred's eyes flickered. Robin thought she even licked her lips. This was obviously important to her, as he expected, but she tried to tamp down her eagerness a bit.

"So, I suppose I need to sign it?"

"Yeah. Here, here, and…here."

"Wait. If I'm going to put my name to a thing, I want to make sure I know what I'm getting into." She took the document and squinted…stretched her hand out to arm's length…leaned to get a better light from the fire.... Robin was inclined to take it and read it to her but he knew Winifred was proud of her literacy and chose not to interfere while she slowly mouthed the Latin words to herself.

She sighed, nodded, and grinned in satisfaction. It was all as they had discussed, only now—almost--official and legal.

Winifred started searching for ink, and found a feather, and sharpened the point, and signed here…here…and here. So did Robin.

"Ooh, wait. Doesn't it need a seal?" she said. Robin, with a flourish, presented his signet ring and a stick of red wax. Winifred pulled a brand out of the fire and held it with one hand while Robin held the wax over it so that the melted wax dripped on the parchment next to his name.

"Robin is this…is it real? I mean, do I really own it?"

Robin was so worn out with surveys and deeds and lawsuits about land that he was tempted to wave his hand and airily say, "Oh, do any of us really own any land? What's ownership, anyway?" but thought better of it. He knew what she was getting at—that the law was murky about women owning property.

"I…think so. I did the best I could to get it all straightened out.

"Besides, the way I understand it, legally, the only one who could have any standing to raise an objection is me, and the only one I could sue over it is you. And I'm the one giving it to you in the first place." He saw no point in raising things out of their control: of Vasey still lurking in France, or of what heirs could or would or might have done, either the heirs of hers that were lost or the heirs of his that had yet to be born.

Winifred nodded. She trusted him, and knew that "the best he could do" would be the best anyone could do. She couldn't ask for more.

Robin tore the sheet into three pieces, each with a signed and sealed copy of the deed. "This one's for you…this one's for me…and this one I'll file at the castle for safekeeping."

And that was that. The two and a half hides her husband had fought in Tripoli to earn, that she had hung onto with her fingernails while Vasey pecked away at its edges, taking an acre here and an acre there until it was all gone…it was restored. Two and a half hides, plus another couple of virgates of Robin's own inheritance that he insisted she take as compensation for her help feeding and fighting for the gang in Sherwood Forest. (She had refused at first, partly because she didn't feel her relatively short time with the gang warranted payment, but also because…Bloody hell, what am I going to do with thirty acres of fenland two counties away?—a thought she kept to herself.) Winifred had her manor back. She beamed at Robin, and she beamed at the parchment, and she clapped her hands together.

"Well now! How about that bun?"

Robin pulled a stool up to the fire and, finally, took off his damp cloak. "The bun would be lovely, but I've actually got some more business I'd like to discuss with you."

"Really? (Here you go. Those buns are best when you've drizzled honey on them, but I'm low on honey—you can put some in your peppermint tea or on your bun, so long as you promise not to make a mess, but not both.) Oh? And what kind of business can I help you with?"

"Things are finally getting to the point where I know what's what enough to start settling up with the lads."

Winifred nodded, but didn't say anything.

"It's been pretty overwhelming! Figuring out what was mine to begin with, and getting it back, and then figuring out what Vasey owned…. It was easy enough with Much, since I knew from the start that I wanted to give him Bonchurch, and you…well, that was all spelled out in a deed already, but the others…. And I don't want to evict people just so I can give their land to my friends…."

Winifred though he sounded a little guilty. Well, maybe he should feel a little guilty. After all, it was going on six months now since they had laid siege to Nottingham and the king had exiled Vasey, and except for Much, the whole gang was still at loose ends, and John hadn't even really left the forest. That's why she just nodded again—silence would make him stew more than words would.

"But I've got this idea for John. And that's what you can help me with."

Winifred pricked up her ears. John was an old friend. The younger people had somehow gotten it into their heads that she and he had courted in their youth and she let them continue with it rather than give a full explanation of complicated village relationships thirty years ago. She was rather afraid Robin's notion would involve John becoming the overseer of her property, or, worse, marrying her.

"Your father was the royal forester in Sherwood, wasn't he?"

Well, now. This was going to be interesting after all.

"Mmm. Under-forester, actually. And under-huntsman and under-lots-of-other-things, I believe. He's the one who did all the work, at any rate."

"That's what I thought. Well, now the king has named me royal forester. And there's no way I'm going to be able to look after Sherwood and look after my own estate as well."

"Of course not." She wasn't being sarcastic.

"I was thinking John might be the man for the job, but I wanted to see what you thought first. You know more about what's involved than I do."

"Well, John knows the forest better than any man out there, that's for sure, unless you count me." Just as she wasn't being sarcastic before, Winifred wasn't bragging now—it was a simple statement of fact. "On the other hand…." She furrowed her brow in thought. "…first of all, Sherwood's awfully big. He can't be the only one you hire. And (he'll shoot me for saying this) it's heavy work, what with all the timbering and all, and he's not getting any younger."

"But there may be a way to work around that last part. Look, I might be remembering this wrong, but I think the way my father handled it was this." Winifred was becoming more animated with the memories. "My grandfather, not my father, was first named under-forester, for services he gave King Stephen during all that mess with Queen Matilda or some such. As he got older, he handed off more of his duties to my father, along with more of his pay, until eventually my father was doing almost all the work and getting almost all the money and my grandfather was taking what amounted to a small pension. And then—and I'm sure I do remember this rightly, because it was such a big day in our house—it came to the point where the two of them went before Henry, when his court came to Lincoln I think it was, and made it official: my father got the title of under-forester, and the same pay he'd been getting from my grandfather, and my grandfather got a royal pension. Then, as my father got older, he kind of did the same thing. I was in Tripoli by that point so I don't know the details, but since he didn't have a son to pass the job to, he hired lads from the area to help out, paying them out of his salary. And then of course Vasey was named royal forester and Fæder died and Vasey kept the pay that would have gone to a new under-forester for himself and the whole place went to the dogs…but! There's no reason why you and John couldn't make something similar work out!" Winifred was warming to her subject. "Yeah. I can see this working! Are you thinking of giving him land, too?"

"Actually, I was thinking of this instead of land. If he had land, he'd have to farm it, or find somebody else to farm it, and from what I hear, he was none to great at that even back in the old days. Plus, the main point of owning land is so that you have something to pass on, to build a little dynasty with, you know?" Yes, Winifred did know, and it was a sore subject, which Robin had forgotten for the moment. "But John doesn't have any children except for the one son who's moved away, and I honestly can't see him having any more at this stage, can you? So I'd think regular cash in hand, for the rest of his life, might be more welcome. It's a fair bit of money, really. Probably more than he'd make from the land."

"Mmmm. There is one other thing, though." Winifred poured them both some more peppermint tea. Robin wondered if he'd look too greedy if he had another bun. Winifred passed him the plate without his asking. "There is a law enforcement component to this job. Do you think John's up for that? Can you honestly see him bringing in poachers for judgment, or shooting arrows at people to keep them from felling trees? I seem to recall my father locking somebody up in a wood hut overnight once, when I was a girl. (La, it scared me so, I was awake all night fearing the bogey-man was going to break out of that shed and come and get me!) But back then, the 'royal forest' was only woodland, and the king hadn't declared every little farm and hamlet in the area to be under his forest law. So Fæder never had to worry about arresting a man for snaring rabbits in his own garden or the like."

Now it was Robin's turn to nod. "I think…" he said as he stared into the fire, "…I think there's a way to work around that." Winifred thought it best not to ask how a former outlaw, now a mighty earl, would "work around" the kind of law that allowed the king to trample a man's wheat field just so he could chase another boar, or that forbade a crofter from putting up fences to keep the deer from eating his crops.

They fell into the proverbial companionable silence for long enough that Winifred began to think Robin was hypnotized by the fire. And she did have things to do….

"To do the job, would he have to live in the woods like your family did?" For Robin, it was a way to go through the back door to what he considered "Item Three on the Agenda," a matter that he knew would require some delicacy of approach.

"Hmmm? What? You know, I haven't thought about it. Of course, we were there for other reasons besides my father's work, you know. Complicated reasons. I don't know that John would have to live in the woods. At least not all year round. Why do you ask?"

"Well, like you said, he's not getting any younger. The thought of him living there, all alone, especially in winter…it bothers me. What if something happened? What if he hurt himself chopping wood, or his cabin caught on fire while he was asleep? Nobody would know. At least, if he made his house in Locksley, nothing like that could happen."

"And his old house is right on the edge if the woods," Winifred replied. But her eyes narrowed. She had a feeling where this conversation was going, and she didn't like it. Not one little bit.

"Yeah, we could look after him there. All of us."

"Robin…."

"…Marian could pop round with a poultice when he gets one of his colds…."

"…Robin…."

"…he could tell the children ghost stories in winter…."

"…Robin!" This fantasy of his was getting alarming.

"…and if you moved to Locksley, too…." Robin was about to say something about John maybe combing the dried leaves out of his beard but was interrupted.

"Robin, you just this minute gave me title to land in Featherstone! Why would I want to up and move to Locksley?"

Robin knew better than to say what was within his heart. What he felt, deep down, was that John and Winifred settling down in Locksley for he and Marian and Will and Djaq and whoever else to look after would be a step toward making the world right again. The way it was supposed to work, you were supposed to take care of your parents when they got old. It was their payback for taking care of you when you were young. And, in return, as you aged, you were supposed to be able to start taking it easier, to hand off your duties and your hard work to your children so that you might reap the reward of ease. Or at least, that was how it was supposed to work. But recent events meant neither Robin, nor Marian, nor Will or Djaq, nor, he supposed, Allan, had parents to take care of—in Will and Marian's case, the loss could be laid directly at Vasey's feet. At the same time, John and Winifred had each, separately, lost their children because of Vasey, and now, as they were getting to the point in life where they should be putting their feet up and telling their grandchildren tales, one was burrowed away in a damp forest and the other hauled sacks of bread for miles to make a little money. It wasn't right. If he said as much, though, he knew all he'd get from Winifred was a tirade about how she wasn't old, how she could look after herself, how she could still climb to the top of Brigand's Bluff faster than you can, young man…. All of which would be true, but wouldn't be true forever. He didn't even think that the argument that it would be good them—the younger generation—for Winifred and John to move to Locksley would work.

"You can live in one place and own land in another. I do. And it's not that far away. It's, what, a thirty-minute walk?"

"If it's not that far away, why should I move? Why not stay here and tote my bread to Locksley to sell like I've been doing? No. There's no reason for it! It's my home! My community!"

"And there's no reason to stay here. Winifred, look around you. It's a ghost town! There's no community here to be a part of!"

"And what about my ovens?"

"I'll build you a new oven."

"And a house? Where am I supposed to live? I'm too old to be a boarder like when I was an apprentice. Djaq living here is making me mad enough as it is; God knows what it would be like to have to be…gracious… to a bunch of strangers. And you!" She shook a finger at Robin. "I know you're going to say you have plenty of room, but no you don't!"

"I've got a nice cottage all lined up for you. Two rooms." Two rooms in a house was something of a luxury. That's what Winifred had here—a main room with a hearth in the center, a good-sized stall for the animals where Robin's horse was even now munching hay, a small room on the other side that was once for the children but now was where Djaq slept, and Robin's mason had added a little alcove for a bed in the main room so Winifred could have both the warmth from the fire and a curtain for privacy. She doubted if Robin's cottage could top that. Still….

"I don't want to push anybody else and I can't think of anything else for it. You said yourself, you don't want to evict people just so you can give their land to your friends."

"It belongs to a nice young couple with a growing who want a bigger place.. No pushing involved."

So on the one hand she could stay here in her old home, the one her husband had built and added to himself and was so proud of, in the company of a handful of squatters, and hope Featherstone became a real village again sometime before she died. On the other hand, she could move to Locksley, where her friends were, where she was happy in her youth, where there were enough people to provide her with a living as a baker, and where everybody would treat her like the enfeebled elderly lady she most definitely was not.

Robin moved in for the kill. "I'll find you some tenants to farm your land. All you'll have to do is collect the rent. They can pay you in grain for your bread…."

Winifred murmured, "This place is full of ghosts…." Robin had meant the term figuratively; the way Winifred looked, he wondered if she meant it literally.

But she took a deep breath, drew herself up, and said. "No. No. I can't. What if he comes back, and I'm not here? I can't have that happen."

"Winifred," Robin said gently, "I pored through the records. I couldn't find a thing. I didn't see where he was hanged, or even outlawed. Dunstan's just…gone."

Robin was a bit puzzled. Winifred always spoke of her youngest child in the past-tense. The story in the villages was that he had grabbed his late father's sword and run off into the night to avenge his sister's death while he was still so young his voice had barely broken, and that he hadn't been seen since. Robin had always wondered if that was why Winifred treated him and the others the way she did—she hadn't quite finished raising her children when they were taken from her, so she turned to the gang and picked up where she left off.

But no. Winifred was shaking her head. "No. I know Dunstan's gone. God forgive me, but I've given up on him." Not quite, not really, there was still half a glimmer of hope she'd see him again. "He's dead; I know it. You may not have found a record but, knowing Vasey, he thought killing just another peasant didn't warrant an official record. No, I mean Allan."

Ah. Of course. She and Allan had started off on the wrong foot when Winifred joined the gang but that had reversed itself as time went on. Maybe she thought he needed more mothering than the others.

"Winifred, if he didn't come back from Christmas…then I don't think he's coming back." Robin tried to be gentle again. This time it was as much for himself. Allan was his friend, his comrade, his brother-in-arms. He missed his company. And he felt guilty. Nobody could talk to Allan about it, but he was obviously having a hard time adjusting to a life as an ex-outlaw. Nobody could talk to him, but everybody could talk about him. He was more temperamental; when he did drift through the area, it looked like he wasn't taking as good care of himself as he used to; Marian suspected he had arrived at their wedding feast already drunk, which worried her much more than it angered her. No, nobody knew exactly what was going on, but Robin felt responsible anyway.

"I know." She reached out a sympathetic hand to Robin. "But the thing is, I told him…I told him when he left the last time that if he ever needed a place to come home to, he'd find it here. He laughed it off, but…the thought of him dragging himself back, and finding this place empty…." Her voice wobbled a bit. "I don't want to be another one to let him down, that's all."

Robin took that as a reproach. "Winifred, really, I'm doing the best I can!" he pleaded. "But I don't know how to help! Much knows farming and Will knows carpentry and now there's John with the forest, but what can Allan do? I mean, literally: what can he do? I thought maybe I'd gotten some town properties out of all this, and that Alan could have a little tavern in Nottingham or something, but no." He shook his head in despair. And guilt. Allan was the one who most desperately needed a reward for his work in the gang, and the one who had gotten the least out of it.

"Now Robin of Locksley, Earl of Huntingdon, Royal Forester of Sherwood, you listen to me!" Winifred had snapped back into her mothering mode. "Whatever is going on with that boy is not your fault. It's not your fault! Not directly, at any rate. The day's going to come when he shows up at my door, and I'll bring him in and dry him off and warm him up, and we'll have a good laugh, and then I'll move to Locksley and bake my bread, and cakes for your babies, and he'll…he'll marry a rich widow or something and lord it over the rest of us and make us call him Sir Allan. He'll be all right. He will."

She sounded so sure it cheered Robin up somewhat. He'd remember it, later, and remember how Allan had originally thought Winifred was a witch. No, she wasn't a witch. A seer? Maybe. But one of those that gets it almost, but not completely, right; whose prophecies come somewhat, but not entirely, true.