There were few (if any) who would have said the Widowed Cob was a genteel sort of an alehouse and inn, and those few were certainly not among the rogues' gallery of Portsmouth that chose to regularly sip, sup, and sleep there.
Added to the roll this day? Nottinghamshire outlaws, four in number, awaiting one of their fellows traveling with a sixth, their recently forsworn enemy. This wretched locale to be their rally point.
"Well," said Much, eyeing a generous helping of sand and unknown grit a-swim in the last swallow remaining in his cup, "we may at least be reasonably sure to avoid the Sheriff by having situated our company here."
"Was it actually ale, do you suppose?" Little John asked the others rhetorically, "or merely mud-stained water?"
"It has given me twice the thirst I had coming in, if only in hopes to wash it from my mouth," Will Scarlet protested.
"You have gone soft, lads!" Robin chided them. "Soft on clear-as-crystal water from the Idle, the Trent, where they begin as Sherwood springs, untouched except by God. You, Much," he challenged his closest fellow, "have drunk more than any one man's fair share of Palestine sand in your day, and often, as I well know, with thankful heart."
"Yes, Master, but it..." Much took in his surroundings with a wary eye, "seemed cleaner, somehow. And the water it swam in, well, I needn't say it, but-more rare than Burgundy wine to a beggarman."
"So," Will noted, "as our searches have all but dead-ended us back here, it seems we may each have cause to sample such delicacy not too far hence," unable to deny to himself some growing level of fascination with the possibility of journeying to DJaq's homeland, despite the disastrous reason behind their prospective voyage.
"I'd rather eat Sherwood dirt the rest of my days, its stones my bread, than cross oceans to pick fights with the Sheriff," declared John, his voice rumbling, impassioned. It seemed for a moment as if he might pound his tankard on the bar in front of him to further emphasize his point.
Robin's head came up at this baldly stated conviction, his eyes searching John's for the full truth of it. Robin's showed a woundedness about the corners that he might have so mis-judged John's commitment to their present course.
"But," John continued, holding Robin's pleading, half hurt gaze, "for Marian...the woman you love, the Nightwatchman, friend to the gang, to the poor..." he paused, to give those words greater meaning, "and for King Richard, I will do this."
At this pronouncement of his intent to support his fellows (and, in particular, Robin), Much slapped his hand companionably onto John's shoulder, quickly retracting it at the solid, almost boulder-like resistance of John's bulk with which he met upon impact. Shortly, he shook out his hand as though it had been cramped, in an effort to return feeling to it.
"Then we are agreed?" Robin's eyes flicked from man to man, examining them for further doubts as to the inevitable turn their trip had taken, "if they cannot be found here, we are, to a man, bound for," he nearly balked at saying it, "for the war court of Richard."
"For Marian," John dissented.
As usual, Much begged to differ, "but it is Richard whose life is held cheaply by the Sheriff. King Richard whom he means to have killed. Not Marian." Quickly he back-tracked, "though, of course, Marian must be found, and rescued. Of course."
Interestingly, Robin did not reply to the argument his own declaration of Richard as their immediate objective had begun.
"She is with Gisborne we believe, yes?" asked Will, as always attempting to be rational.
"Yes," Much speedily agreed.
"He is meant to love her-the Marian he knows," Will made his case. "He will not let the Sheriff harm her."
At this Robin turned to him. "And so we are to pin our hopes for Marian's safety upon the villain Gisborne?" he asked, as though he did wish an answer, seeming to now argue with his own decision that the King's welfare was paramount, and needs must be seen to first. "That he will not let the Sheriff harm her, as he is alleged to love her? That she will come to no harm by his own hand?"
John interjected, turning the discussion's course slightly to the left, his tone equally as acidic as Robin's when Hood spoke Gisborne's name, "As we now in this alehouse pin our hopes-at your insistence-for her safety upon the last man to report in? The scoundrel A-Dale?"
"Why did you not order one of us to partner him?" Will asked, his tone more reasonable than the others' had momentarily become.
"Why throw DJaq to the wolf?" Much also questioned.
"Would you have gone with him?" Robin asked Much, receiving only a scowl in reply. "And you, Will, would you?"
"If you had ordered it," Will replied with a reflective sincerity.
Robin looked for a moment into the tankard he held, still full, knowing its contents could not slake his thirst, this thirst that seemed to have queerishly settled somewhere in his arms, his eyes, reminding him of a hunger for what was missing there; the sight of Marian, the embrace of Marian-the proximity of Marian. "DJaq has ever had an understanding of Allan. Of parts of Allan that none of us yet have managed to decode, much less demystify."
"You know," Much began, recalling an afternoon in Sherwood when DJaq had been captive in Nottingham Castle. "There was that time...I thought perhaps..." At a forbidding look from Will he fell silent.
"I have complete faith that DJaq can handle Allan," Robin announced, "but more than that, I have complete faith that should he choose to cross us again, DJaq will see into him, and perceive his treachery long before we might."
"Perhaps," Little John continued to cling to his gloom-and-doom belief where Allan was concerned, troubled that the duo had not yet arrived back at the rally point, "she already has."
Will stepped away from the bar. "Shall I go and search them out?"
Much and Little John waited attentively on Robin's answer. Would their leader agree to distrust the man who had only so recently regained it?
Robin handed his untouched tankard over to Little John. "No, Will." He shook his head. "There is time yet before our agreed-upon rendezvous. Let us not allow sour grapes interfere with our hopes for what he and DJaq may well have discovered (what we four failed in finding out): the Sheriff, his hiding place, his plans, and-above all-Marian, safe and well and yet on English shores, knowing we will come to fetch her home."
...TBC...
A/N: Oh dear! We are getting dangerously close to jumping over the Short Fic word count and into Epic Short Fic-length! Must I always and ever prove myself a liar?