Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

“I know that.” Marian was dressed like her husband, in a tattered shirt and trousers of green — they had yet to switch to winter brown — with a laced deerskin tunic and tall greased boots. A soft hat with a jaunty pheasant feather spilled over her dark hair. Both carried bows and quivers, a knife, a satchel of provisions. “I’ve seen many at the leprosarium in the caves under Nottingham Castle. For their suffering, they should be pitied.”

“I’ll pity ’em. From a bowshot away.”

They saved their breath for walking, and soon breasted a rise that revealed their destination. Long Valley Screed was a fertile pocket torn from the tree-covered hills, almost bluffs, so sheer shelves of yellow sandstone were exposed. Only the east side lay open. Perched on a knoll to the north was a small hall, more hunting lodge than manor house, the Duke of Lancaster’s. Elsewhere, cottages and byres lay higgledy-piggledy amidst fields of barley, rye, and wheat that shone red-gold in the late-afternoon sun.

Robin instinctively nocked his arrow. “Something’s amiss.”

“Aye.” With no threat of rain, everyone from priest to crofter should have been harvesting. Instead, the rabbits and crows had the fields to themselves.

Robin Hood pointed across the valley where a bright stream spilled from a cleft in the hillside. “There. At the mill.”

“Woe betide the miller.”

Woe indeed. The whole village of two hundred had gathered outside the gristmill.

Marian stopped to watch the women. One — pretty, Saxon, blond, and slim — wore a gown of red sarcenet and taffeta that marked her from her drab neighbours like an oriole over ouzels, though she was dusty as any from winnowing. She wept uncontrollably.

The men clustered at the door, peeking in. They hushed and stared at Robin. Two greeted the tall archer by name, though he didn’t know theirs. “Hail and met well. What transpires within?”

“Our miller’s dead,” said a man with salty beard and a cast in one eye. “Fell through the floorboards into his own works.”

“It’s a shilling that killed him,” said another elder.

“A shilling?” asked the outlaw. “How’s that?”

“Old Hosea’d pinch a farthing till it squealed. Our carpenter, Geoffrey, told him a mote a’ times the floor was rotten from damp. Offered to replace his floorboards at a shilling apiece. Hosea saved himself some coin, then paid in blood.” Other men muttered about Hosea’s parsimony.

“Speak not ill of the dead, lest they long for company,” Robin advised. “Now excuse me.” He pushed past.

The gristmill was small. Centermost were two round millstones supported by posts above and below, and a hopper to feed them. Round about were a workbench of tools, a corner fireplace, a stair up and down, sacks and baskets of grain heaped high. A loft ringed the room, one side the miller’s quarters, the remaining space stacked with sacks of flour. Out two small windows, shutters wide, Robin saw the great mossy millwheel had stopped.

By the twin millstones was a squarish hole in the floor. Robin peeked through and found why the mill was silent.

Up in the loft, three dusty men moved sacks of flour to thump the walls. Two wore tabards of coarse linen, the third a knight’s surcoat of lawn, all red with King Richard’s three lions barred by French fleur-de-lis. Two servants, then, of the Duke of Lancaster, and the steward knight who maintained the fief in the lord’s absence. They’d undoubtedly come to collect the heriot and mortuary, the death taxes.

The steward rubbed his nose, sneezed, clapped hands over his ears to keep out evil spirits. He was square-cut, clean-shaven, stern-faced. “Begone, villein! No one’s to enter, by order of the duke!”

“No villein I, but a free man,” Robin called up. “I see your miller’s dead.”

Accustomed to obedience, the knight turned imperious. “Free man or no, hie your arse out yon door or I’ll spank it along! We’ve business to attend! Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Martin of Lincoln. Your delving has yet to turn up any silver, I’d guess.”

The steward leant on the railing, brushed his breast. “You wear the green of Lincoln, I see, but then so does the devil and Robin Hood. And only that wolfs head and Welshmen carry bows taller than their heads.”

“Take me for a bowyer then,” — Robin smiled — “late of Wales and fetching this oddity along. In my travels, I’ve seen something of coin and hiding spots. May I help ferret out your lord’s tithe? If he lacks his share, so do you.”

The steward sneezed again. He studied the outlaw and the woman who came in after him. “Very well. If you find it, you’ll receive a sixteenth. If not, I’ll scourge you for intruding. Strikes you fair?”

“Let us conjoin and see what we strike. I’ll begin below.”

“Below? But—”

“Wait here, will you, uh, Matilda?” Marian would see the knight did nothing untoward, like rouse his followers to capture a wanted outlaw.