"Oi!"
She heard Allan protest, extricating a faceless pickpocket's wandering hand from near his money pouch, his own fingers twisting the theft-bent ones backward, like a man levering open a determined dog's jaws from off its prey.
"Oi! Oiii!" he shouted a second time, with far more irritation in his tone as he similarly plucked the hands of three others off her coin purse, their stealthy touches she had not even felt, much less seen their greedy fingers among the jostling press of people.
"Thanks," she said, meaning it. She was not used to moving about in this sort of an environment, too long reconciled to life in the forest, or the small villages of Nottinghamshire peasants. Her time spent in Nottingham Town, of course, had generally been in disguise, her more likely the prospective thief than the mark. And pickpocketry had never proven her strong suit, though Allan had tried his best to teach her. 'Fingers not long enough,' he had told her, not meaning his professional's assessment to sound negative. 'Height's good, though,' he had counseled. Makes gettin' away in a crowd easier. Missed that since I left off bein' a kid.'
"Give over," he demanded from her now, his eyes on her purse.
She looked at him with a wary eye that said 'what?' better than any spoken word could.
"I shall keep it for you. 'Twill be easier than swatting these insistent 'flies' away from both of us all day."
The notion was sound enough. She considered for a moment. More than did the others, she believed in Allan. Which was not to say that she felt 100% sure of him just yet, but certainly, where her money was concerned, she knew he could have had it off her in a twinkling had he taken a shine to doing so. And so she freely surrendered the coin purse with a burgeoning confidence in the man with whom she once had shared some things far more valuable. And had for awhile contemplated the possibility of sharing others.
"Perhaps," she suggested, untying the leather thong that attached her purse to her waist, "we ought give out to some of these in need, as we see them in our search. We are still Robin Hood, after all."
"Wot's that?" Allan asked over his shoulder as he broke a path through the crowd for them both with only the force of his shoulders. "'We'? Robin gone all kingly on you lot in my absence?"
"No," she replied, taken aback by Allan's assumption, not sure how to explain the gang's recently established motto to this only-just-returned outsider, and finding it hard to keep her low-pitched voice from being carried off in the surrounding din. "Not like that. Though...some things have changed."
Robin and Marian, she thought, engaged. Will and her...declared. The Sherwood band had helped a Templar find and redeem himself, rescued a Queen, sent word to Malik-Ric by the Sultan's best pigeon, stood beside a Crusader knight dying in battle far from the Holy Land's killing fields.
How would those instances have played out had pre-spying-for-Gisborne Allan-A-Dale been among them? Would the hard moments have been quite so hard? The worrisome logistics quite so convoluted? The sad events as gloomy?
Or would the good moments have been slightly dimmed? The times they successfully 'liberated' coaches in Sherwood laden with gold and booty-would those satisfying days have proven clouded by the sound of him grouching that he never personally saw any of the take?
Would Much have been happier to have Allan around to devil him by his side (on his side), or had he, perhaps, been happier in some way to gloat over the then distant man set up in the Sheriff's castle that he had always been most vocally suspicious and most disapproving of?
"No need to spread tuppence among this lot, DJaq," Allan assured her.
When she did not reply to his dismissal of the poverty she saw stretching out, seeming to peek from every crack and crevice, all around her, he stopped his forward motion, turned back toward her and placed a hand over his heart. ('His approximation of a heart', she knew Much would say. 'Blackguard', she knew John would declare, like a sound made when spitting.)
"No funny business, here," he vowed, his hand still in place. "But this lot can pick coin off trees." Quickly his hand shot out to point out to her three separate thieves among the crowd lifting purses and pocketing rings, to the rightful owners' complete oblivion.
"Already," he told her, "they had you and yours 'til I sent them packing. You just see how many of the lads rally back with us this afternoon wot still have two coins to rub together-or even empty pouch left in their possession." His mouth pulled into a near-smile at the notion. "The true poor of Portsmouth, summat tells me, ain't these blokes and kiddies skimming off the harbour's bounty."
She accepted his assessment of this place, and they proceeded back through the crowd as before. Near several lowered gangplanks they stopped, Allan trying to strategize who might be best to speak with; Robin and Much having sought out the Harbour Master and Import Taxation Officer, Little John and Will seeking the most influential figure in the Portsmouth underworld to ask similar questions of departing sheriffs and kidnapped maidens.
DJaq was not sure if she heard the voice first or saw the beggar girl from whom it came. It was a pleasant voice, as English voices went, and it more than satisfied the requirements of what the English took as good singing. The small girl was just concluding a song about meadows and milkmaids, and tall grasses best used by country lovers, when, without hardly a pause she began her next tune.
"Allan!" DJaq shouted up to him from where he had ascended the steep incline of a gangplank in hopes to better orient himself to the lay of the land. "Allan!" Across the distance she saw his light eyes they flicked down to see her, found herself thinking of how the sun on sand would flare into them far-worse (sprouting headaches, blurred vision) than into her own deeply brown ones. Thinking of how unsuited (or at least how unprepared) half the gang were for the lands of her people.
Allan squinted down at her, not really ready yet to be bothered, but he had never known DJaq to cry wolf, and so he returned with some haste to her side.
"Wotcher got?" he asked, surprised when she merely gestured to a blind beggar child singing for coin nearby where the multiple gangplanks met with the dock. Certainly, the child was pretty enough under the usual grime that such urchins necessarily wore. Her infirmity did not seem to have been the result of injury, or if it were, no disfiguring signs of the trauma remained. Her hair was Saxon blonde, and poker-straight, the thinness of her frame accenting her delicate features. Sweet enough, but hardly interesting enough to call him down from his plum vantage point to inspect. If DJaq wanted to toss her a coin of charity, it surely could have waited until he'd seen what he needed from his upper perch.
"Listen," DJaq urged him. "Listen to what she is singing. It is that song...the one where you asked me to help you rhyme something with 'bosom-fair'."
He chose to take issue with her claim. "Not tryin' to be funny, but...I came up with that one all on me own, there, DJaq."
"Lis-ten, you wooly-headed Englishman! What are the chances a song you wrote in Sherwood Forest, meant for a Tuxfarne barmaid has made it all the way down the countryside onto the lips of a Portsmouth beggar child?"
He listened. It was his song, the tune, at least, and a great many of the words. Had he been a more virtuous chap he might've felt a bit of guilt for hearing them come, as it were, out of the mouths of babes.
His words, but the name all wrong. He had crafted the song for Meggie (Old Henry's Bones, but he barely recalled her name, now.). This girl was instead singing (he craned his ear to be sure he was catching it right) 'Allan, Fair Allan'.
Remarkable, indeed. He did not wish to speculate on how she might (or might not) have re-worked the 'bosom-fair' passage.
"We must speak with her," DJaq insisted, with conviction and mounting optimism. "Surely it is a sign-a code-a message."
"Wot? You don't think it cannot just be that my talents have been discovered and appreciated here in the South?"
"What?" she asked, acidly. "By re-casting yourself in the part of the object of desire in a shoddily dashed off tavern ballad? Its crafting fueled largely by stolen October Ale?"
He interjected, "And Meggie's considerable...generosity."
DJaq's eyebrows made her point for her. "No."
"Alright, alriiight!" he gave in, motioning with his hands to show her he was going. "We will speak with the child. Perhaps she might actually benefit from some of the Sherwood charity you are so determined to distribute."
"Certainly," DJaq agreed, "for who here would be rewarding her for singing such rubbish?"
At her continued belittling of his 'talent', he shot her a petulant expression. Followed shortly by a submerged grin. It had been an uncommon good batch of ale that day.
...TBC...