Chapter 5
Hudson farm 7am the present
That night my dreams were troublesome and tiring, I dreamt I was being chased, and no matter how hard I tried I couldnt lose the guy who was following me. I wove through dark disserted streets, down allies, over walls through houses. But he was always there. Once I turned around to fight, but he vanished only to reappear behind me. Running again I reached another wall, no problem, it was small I could hop it easily. I grabbed for the wall only to see it grow taller, too tall to reach.
"Okay." I said walking backwards so as to get a run up. I looked over my shoulder to see my pursuer stood a few feet away, dressed in a black sweeping clocke with a hood over his head, oh great I was being chased by lord Voldermort. Sprinting towards the wall a jumped and pushed a foot against the wall to hoist myself, but as before the wall grew and I grabbed for it only to miss. Give me a brake I thought agitated, my fingers grazed the wall as I slid down and when I hit bottom I slipped, and what do ya know, I fell into the hooded wonder.
Cackling he reached down to grab me, shaking me he said "Robin, Robin."
"No geroff." I moaned resisting.
"Robin, Robin, you need to get up." My demon scolded, huh?
"Work Robin," Oh no he was gunna put me to work, I've already got one job where I'm worked half to death.
"Robin!" and in one vigorous shake, I was brought back to reality "You're going to be late for work." Said my mum clearly annoyed with me.
Oh.
"Robin, you can't keep caring on like this, you're going to get fired one of these days." Mum said standing up and looking disapprovingly at me.
Well maybe if she'd gone and married someone who wasn't a direct descendant of Robin Hood as well as her, then this wouldn't be my destiny, and I wouldn't
have to stay out all night trying to steal money to give to the poor, only for it to be a trap in which I'm fighting for my life. Let's see her get up at six am after that.
"Yes mum." I said sitting up and pulling my hair back off my face, big mistake.
"Robin." My Mum said in her concerned voice, her hand flew to her mouth and she looked horrified "what's that on your forehead?" I got out of bed and looked in my mirror. Yikes! She was referring to the bump on my head I received last night when I passed out; it had turned into a very nasty burse over night.
"I dunno Mum, must have banged my head or something, anyway." I said trying to change the subject; it was hard keeping this stuff from her, she was in many ways, a mind reader." I best be getting ready, so." I said holing open my door.
"Robin are you sure it's ok? Maybe we should do something; I think I have some cream in the first aid cupboard that should bring that down." Mum said walking towards me hand outstretched.
"Seriously I'm fine, gotta go to work." I said indicating to the door again.
"Alright," Mum said though it was clear the conversation was far from over, and she walked out of the room.
I headed to my bed, yawn.
"But don't even think about going back to sleep, your late remember." she called.
Maybe her telepathy isn't such a good thing after all.
Dressing simply in a white strappy shirt and dark blue jeans (my work uniform) I straightened my hair then arranged it so that my fringe covered my hideous burse. I headed out the house and waved to my dad and Joey as I went up the lane to work. I worked in a posh ish cafe in town, one where all the Have Not's who were heading up the wealth ladder came to eat, not your typical Ian Beal style local café. The walls were white and red (probably English pride) immaculate rounded tables and shining posh garden party style chairs filled the main room the till hid the door to the kitchen when one of us was stood there in perfect alignment. Red candles sat in white candle sticks and red blinds created a warm summer's look all year round, and hid the outside world.
Will's mum Carrie was just flipping the closed sign to open as I approached the door.
"Sorry I'm late." I said just as she said,
"You're late."
I put on my apron and stood behind the till.
"Doesn't matter, the boss isn't here yet, and I won't tell." Carrie said with a smile. And we got to work.
The day went by without anything interesting happening and I practically ran through the door in my haste to leave at four o'clock. I had to show the guys the disk. When we had first decided to go along with what the old woman had told us, about our destinies, we found that we had a problem. Where could we meet without Baxter finding out? No mine, Will's and John's houses wouldn't work because we weren't the only people living there, Mark lived on his own but it was way too small and beside this wasn't some after school tea party, it was serious. So we were stumped, in the end it was John who solved the problem.
Two months ago
"This is it?" Mark asked, looking up at an old style Victorian house that had been converted into two offices ten years prior. Like most of the town, it was in a bad way, smashed windows, graffiti, over run garden, tiles missing off the roof, that sort of thing.
"Well yeah," Said John "It needs a bit of work." looking a bit sheepish John went to open the door.
"Maybe its better inside," I said optimistic, this place had good bones.
As John opened the door we were met by the stench of rot and sick and I don't wanna think about what else, the hallway consisted of one door that lead of to the downstairs offices and a staircase that lead to the upstairs one, two bags of rubbish assorted cola cans and dead rat eeeke. I tried not to gip and suggested that we take a look at upstairs first, maybe it wouldn't be so bad up there, I had optimistically thought. We climbed the rickety stairs to the second floor office that we would use (for security reasons.).
"Whoa." said Will as we opened the door; wall to wall rubbish filled the room. Cobwebs hung like Christmas decorations about the room, Mark turned the wrong way and walked into one enormous web, needless to say the spider the size of your hand that had constructed it wasn't very happy. This place is beyond repair, I thought.
"John, this is it?" I asked.
"I said it needed a bit of work." John said defensively.
"The garden, needs bit of work, the hallway needs a bit of work, this." I said indicating to the room, "Needs the whole of the British army. I dread to think what downstairs looks like!" I said, noticing Will slipping out, hand over his mouth.
"I know it's bad but we don't have much money, an old friend of my dads sold it us so we can fix it up and then rent out the flat downstairs to pay for the office and pay for our project." John said who was a builder so it was easy for him to say that.
"Fine, ok." I said. "We best get to work then."
"Argh," Yelled Will, who after gipping in the corner had to go out for some air or else be sick.
We ran out of the room to find Will on the stairs, or rather, in them. His bottom half was completely hidden after one of the rickety stairs collapsed underneath him. He grinned up at us and said,
"Stairs need fixin."
Laughing we pulled Will out of the hole in the staircase and I thought to myself, you know what, this could work. And it did, after two weeks the house was bare, no rubbish, no spiders, so sick, no mysterious bags, no broken furniture. The roof had been fixed, the garden cleared and the stairs mended. We worked pretty well as a team and between work, our families and helping the poor. We got the place looking more than descent. With John handling all the heavy lifting and building (Being very strong and a builder.), Will doing half the building, work on the furniture and gardening (being a trainee builder and green fingered.) Mark installing all kinds of technology, most of it invented and built by himself (being a technological wiz/ genius) and me decorating and helping out with a bit of everything (being the leader I don't have any special talent that will help rebuilding a house, unless someone wanted me to hang pictures up by shooting arrows into the wall).
And soon enough the place was in such good shape we started showing people around interested in the office downstairs. Because people are generally nosey and while we were playing estate agent people asked what it was we did upstairs, we had to think of some sort of story. In the end we decided on decorators and even put up a sign advertising "Sherwood Decorators, of Sherwood House" That way we might even make some money by doing a few jobs.
The present
As I arrived at Sherwood House Mr. Jacubs (A forty year old accountant who bought the office down stairs, a plump bolding man with a tendency to ware ill fitting suits.) was coming out of the door.
"Miss Hudson!" He said when he saw me. "Miss Hudson I need to speak to you."
"I'm sorry Mr. Jacubs but I'm a bit busy right now."
"Your staff are arguing again Miss Hudson." He continued as if I had not spoken "They are far too loud they'll scare away all my customers' one of these days."
"Well have they?" I asked.
"I beg you pardon." Mr. Jacubs said confused.
"Have they scared away your customers, Mr Jacubs?" I asked.
"Well no, but I, they will." He stuttered clearly shocked by how I'd talked myself out of a scolding, a new skill I've gained over the past few months courtesy of a certain ancestor.
"Well, like I said, I'm busy Mr. Jacubs, I'll be sure to tell them to be quiet." I said and headed up the stairs, not fast enough as I still heard his little comment.
"Teenagers, who does she think she is, youngster like her running a business." He had no idea.
Opening our door I stepped into the reception area John and Will had built, to give us a bit more privacy and so that if anyone came to see about decorating, or like Mr. Jacubs, was just to be nosey, they didn't walk straight into the main room. On the reception desk was a bell, Mark had connected a speaker system to so that we could hear it in the back room when we were working.
Our office is, let's say, abit different from most offices. In the centre of the room was a medium sized meeting table on which sat a projector which shone on the back wall, a small both stood in the far corner, on the desk inside it were various papers of schematics and diagrams and half constructed inventions littered the floor and desk. On the wall were plans for jobs we had pulled, framed newspaper articles talking about our work and the odd photo of Robert Baxter.
Computers hummed and Mark's (Who hated filieing and did it all day at his job) robotic filieing system buzzed merrily, he really was quite a genius. Between the hours of four and eight pm we could be seen running around the office working on missions or processing information. Or at least we would be seen if it wasn't for Mark's holographic blinds, projecting upwards an illusion of a typical decorator's office fooling the outside world while letting in light and allowing us to look out the window without being seen. It all looked pretty professional, until you added four useless teenagers to the equation. Mark and John were indeed arguing when I walked into the office.
"All I'm saying is it's not my fault." John said, he was sat at the meeting table eating a sandwich.
"Well who was the one who told me about the wallet?" Asked Mark who was wandering the room stopping only to write something on the note book he recently had taken to carrying around.
"Will, not me." John said.
"Argh great," Mark said stopping scribbling something out on his paper and walking again.
"Hi guys." I said.
"Hi Robin," They coursed.
"Mr. Jacubs is complaining about the noise apparently you were arguing." I said my voice dripping with sarcasm looking at them both. They looked up.
"Well." Mark said thinking up a lie "It was like this..."
"Were sorry," John said cutting him off. "Were just a little pissed off about last night."
"Yeah" Mark said "I should have seen it coming, so stupid."
"It's no ones fault, we were tricked, and next time we'll just have be more careful." I said smiling at them both. They agreed and got on with what they were doing.
"So next time keep the noise down, because Mr. Jacubs recons your scaring away his customers." I said walking to Mark.
"Mr. Jacubs doesn't need our help scaring away customers." John said balling up his sandwich wrapper and throwing it into the bin "Watching through the blinds with those beady eyes and running out side every time someone walks down the path."
"Yeah," Mark said and then he imitated Mr. Jacubs low grumble "A customer, a customer!"
Laughing we didn't hear Will come in; he looked around at us shaking his head and smiling he went and sat down next to John.
"Hey guy's." he said emptying the sheets of paper from his bag.
"Hey Will." We coursed back at him. Will then picked up the Locksdale Inquirer, our local paper, and began to read.
"Nothing in here about us today," He said turning the pages.
"Really?" asked John reading over Will's shoulder.
"Baxter will wanna keep this one quiet though won't he?" I said sure the tycoon would find the whole thing too embarrassing.
"Robin's right, he can't exactly publish an article in the paper saying, well we almost caught Robin Hood and 'his' outlaws, but my useless soldiers let them get away, curse you Robin hood!" Mark said.
Smiling at the thought John said,
"What did you think o' them squad members then?"
"What the 'elite' fighters?" asked Will with a grin "Pathetic." and the two friends high fived.
"They're children," I said deep in thought about last night.
"Like taking candy from a baby." said John laughing.
"No I mean their children, some as young as us and all of them fighting for Baxter." I said.
"Well, like you said, were no older than them, and what are we doing?" said Will making a point.
"We don't have a choice." I said.
"It's sick how Baxter's using teenagers to fight his battles, and all the time making it seem like a noble course." said Mark "I mean have you seen the posters he's put up?"
"This one?" asked Will opening up a two page spread in the middle of the paper.
The advert showed four teenage boys dressed in regulation squad member gear laughing and enjoying themselves, behind them stood Robert Baxter smiling approvingly in a farther like way behind all of them was the British flag. The words above this read "Baxter's army, turning our lads into men." It was all very war time propaganda.
"This is ridiculous!" I shouted snatching the paper up "Its unbelievable, who'd be stupid enough to believe this?"
"It's working though." said Will grimly "I over heard two fourteen year olds talking about joining up."
"John add this mess to our list." I instructed fuming.
"Bring down Baxter's army of stupids." said John writing on a sheet of paper.
The phone rang and Will jumped up and put it on speaker. "Sherwood decorators, how can I help?"
"I would like to know when you will be able to decorate my 'piggy bank'?" asked a timid woman's voice. This might seem a strange request to an outsider but to us it made perfect sense, it was a secret code, only the most trustworthy people knew it, Piggy bank ment money. I recognised the voice, it was Ms Evans from Pontifact road one of the people we were going to give the money from Baxter's wallet to. She was asking when we would be delivering the money; rent day was in three days.
"Tell Ms Evans we had a little problem, but not to worry she'll be getting her money." I said and while Will gave her the message John asked,
"How?" He was concerned we wouldn't be able to find enough in time, we didn't have the money to give to them on our own, and we could barely afford this place.
"I don't know yet, but I'll think of something." I reassured my friend.
"Its too bad things didn't turn out differently yesterday, you know, no money, no jewels, nearly being killed" said Mark this triggered my memory, the disk.
"Guy's I forgot to tell you, I did manage to find something yesterday in Baxter's office." I said.
"How much?" asked John.
"No money" I said pulling the disk from my pocket "This."
"Put it in." Will said stepping away from the phone, his face glowing at the sight of a mysterious disk so I walked over to the projector and put it in.
From his computer Mark tried opening the file.
"Its password protected" said Mark.
"Now what?" John asked.
"Try 'with wealth come's power." I said "Locksdale upper class motto." I explained to two of my confused friends, the two that hadn't attended Baxter's school. Since they owned the school the Baxter's got to choose the motto.
"Were in." said Mark, relived it worked we looked in earnest at the screen.
It wasn't a power point or word document explaining Baxter's latest scheme as I had hoped, but it was just as good. It was an invertation. Or the original for other invites which Baxter had obviously sent it out, it invited the lucky resipitant to a briefing of Mr. Robert Baxter's new proposal which he claimed would "Change Locksdale as we knew it." it would take place at the time of two thirty tomorrow. Well that settled it, we definitely had to make an appearance, an opportunity had come knocking and who were we to ignore it? We'd just found a way to not only learn vital information on what our wealthy enemy was up to, but also to get enough money to save the people of Pontifact road.
"Looks like we got a party to crash boy's" I said grinning from ear to ear.