Robin Hood. Chapter 9
Around ten o'clock at night, Gilbert, who was impatiently awaiting the travelers' return, left Father Eldred in Ritson's room and went downstairs with Margarita, who was doing chores. He wanted to know if Miss Mariana wasn't worried about her brother's long absence.
"It's ten o'clock, Maggie, ten o'clock, and that young lady isn't in the house."
"She was walking with Lance along the path across the way."
"She must have lost sight of the house and gotten lost. I have to find her."
Guided by instinct, or rather by that premonition that gamekeepers acquire from living in their environment, Gilbert followed the exact path Mariana had taken to the place where she had sat. Once there, the gamekeeper thought he heard a muffled moan near a road where the foliage prevented the moonlight from reaching. He listened carefully and perceived the moans mingled with weak cries, like those of a suffering animal. The darkness was profound, and Gilbert groped his way toward the source of the moans. As he drew nearer, the cries grew clearer, and soon the gamekeeper's feet stumbled upon an inert mass lying on the ground. He bent down, stretched out his arm, and his hand touched the fur of an animal through which a cold sweat oozed. The animal, revived by the touch of this hand, stirred, and its whimpers turned into a weak bark of gratitude.
"Lance, my poor Lance!" exclaimed Gilbert.
Lance tried to get up, but exhausted by the effort, he fell again, whimpering.
"A terrible misfortune has befallen the girl," thought Gilbert, "and Lance, wanting to defend her, succumbed in the struggle. Come, come!" murmured the gamekeeper, tenderly stroking the faithful animal. "Come on! My poor friend, where are you hurt? In the belly? No." On the back? On the legs? No, no. Ah! On the head! The bandit wanted to crack your skull… It's nothing! We won't die. You've lost a lot of blood, but you still have some left… Your heart is beating, yes, I can feel it, and it's not retreating.”
Gilbert, like all the peasants, knew the medicinal properties of certain plants; so he hurried to gather some in the nearby clearings, where the darkness battled the first rays of the moon, and, after crushing them with two stones, he placed them on Lance's wound, securing them with a makeshift compress from a piece of his goatskin jacket.
“I must leave you, poor old man, but don't worry: I'll come back for you.”
Speaking thus to his dog, as he would to a man, the old woodsman took him in his arms and carried him to a more suitable place.
Having done this, he stroked his animal one last time and continued on his way in search of Mariana.
«For Saint Peter! —Gilbert murmured, exploring with clear, mounded lynx eyes—“for Saint Peter's sake!” If the good Lord crosses my path with the son of Satan who has harmed my poor Lance, I will make him dance to the sound of my dagger like he never danced before. Knave! bandit!".
Gilbert followed the path where Mariana had fled after Lance's fall, and came to the clearing near which Little John had saved the fugitive. He was preparing to explore the surroundings when a shadow, made gigantic by the oblique rays, moved on the ground; At first he thought it was that of a large tree and did not pay attention; but instinct told him that this shadow had something strange about it; He looked at it more closely and soon realized that it could only belong to a living being, a man.
Twenty paces from where he was, Gilbert saw a man standing leaning against a tree with his back turned to him and moving his arms around his head as if he wanted to put on a turban.
The ranger without hesitation placed his vigorous hand on the one he believed to be an "outlaw", and perhaps also the murderer of Miss Mariana.
-Who are you? —he asked at the same time with a voice of thunder.
The man, half letting go, half fatigued, hesitated and dropped along the tree to Gilbert's feet.
—Did you find a young woman dressed in a white suit in the forest this afternoon?
A terrible smile deformed the bandit's lips.
—I understand, you have found it. But what do I see? Are you injured in the head? Yes, that wound was made by a dog's teeth. Miserable! I'm going to check it out!
And Gilbert quickly tore off the bloody bandage that covered the wound; The man, unmasked, revealed a piece of meat falling on his neck, and, mad with pain, he shouted without imagining that he was accusing himself:
—How do you know it was a dog? We were alone!
—And the young woman? Speak miserable, speak or I'll kill you.
While Gilbert, with his hand on the hilt of his dagger, waited for a response, the outlaw surreptitiously drew his crossbow and dealt him a violent blow on the head. The old man, stunned for a moment, soon recovered, sat firmly on his legs and drew his scabbard. The outlaw received a series of such furious blows with the flat of his dagger on his back, shoulders, arms and flanks that he fell to the ground and remained motionless, almost dead.
“I don’t know why I don’t kill you, you wretch!” shouted the gamekeeper, “but since you won’t tell me where she is, I’ll leave you to your fate. Die like vermin.”
And Gilbert walked away to continue his search.
“I’m not dead yet, you vile slave of the whip!” muttered the outlaw, pushing himself up on one elbow.
And crawling on his hands and knees, he went to seek rest and shelter in the thicket.
The old man, increasingly restless, continued searching the woods, and was beginning to lose all hope of finding the girl, at least alive, when, not far from where he was, he heard one of those cheerful ballads he had once composed in honor of his son Robin.
The invisible singer was coming toward him along the same path; Gilbert listened, and his poet’s pride made him forget the anxieties of the moment.
“So that the red figure of that idiot Will, whom they so aptly call Scarlet, hangs precariously from an oak branch,” Gilbert muttered ill-temperedly. “He sings my ballad in a way that has nothing to do with the words.”
“Hey! Master Gamwell; hey! William Gamwell, don’t butcher the music and the poetry like that! Hey! What on earth are you doing in the woods at this hour?”
Recognizing the gamekeeper, Will shouted:
“Good news, my friend, good news! The young lady is safe in the hall; Miss Barbara and Miss Vinifred are looking after her; Little John found her in the woods just as an outlaw was about to play a trick on her. But are you alone, Gilbert? And Robin? Where is my dear Robin Hood?”
“Calm yourself, calm yourself, Will! Robin left for Nottingham this morning; when I left the house, he hadn’t yet returned.”
“How pale you look, Gilbert,” said another character, who was none other than Little John. “What’s the matter? Are you ill?”
“No; I’m saddened: my brother-in-law died today, and I’ve heard that… but let’s leave it at that, let’s not speak of it. Praise be to God! Miss Mariana is safe. It was her I was looking for in the woods; Judge my apprehension, especially after having just found my best dog, poor Lance, half dead.
"Lance half dead, that good dog, so…"
"Yes, Lance, an animal of a kind that's becoming rare, the breed is extinct."
"Who did this? Who committed this crime? Tell me where the scoundrel is so I can break his ribs!"
"Don't worry, my son, I've already avenged old Lance."
"It doesn't matter, I want to avenge him too. Where is the wretch who's cowardly enough to kill a dog? I'll take his measurements with my walking stick. An outlaw, isn't he?"
"Yes, I left him over there… over that way… almost dead, after knocking him down with blows from the flat of my dagger."
"I'll take his measurements with my walking stick." A few steps from his house, Gilbert stopped to listen to a mournful noise that broke the silence, and exclaimed, shuddering:
"It's Lance; perhaps his last cry of pain."
"Courage, good Gilbert, we're here; Mrs. Margaret is waiting for you at the door with a candle in her hands; take heart!"
"Before we return to the hall, you can do me a great service, my children."
"Speak, sir."
"There's a dead man in my house, help me bury him."
"We're at your service, good Gilbert," William replied; "we have strong arms and we're not afraid of the dead, the living, or ghosts."
At the front, Father Eldred praying, behind him Little John and Lincoln carrying the body on a bier, then Margaret and Gilbert, the latter holding back his tears so as not to cause Margaret's, and Margaret weeping silently beneath her hood. Finally, Will Scarlet. Such was the order of the burial that at midnight they made their way to the two trees at the foot of which Anita's murderer was to be buried.
Gilbert and his wife remained kneeling the entire time it took Lincoln and Little John's strong arms to dig the grave.
The last shovelfuls of earth were falling on the body when, for the third time, the dog's barking echoed through the woods.
"Lance, my poor Lance, Lance, we're coming with you now!" cried the gamekeeper. "I won't return without having helped you."
