"Clayton Emery - Robin & Marian - Floating Bread and Quicksilver" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

Floating Bread and Quicksilver
a Robin Hood & Marian Mystery
by Clayton Emery

"Rouse, rouse!" Pounding at the door shook the
cottage. Moaning on the sea wind came the doleful
cry. "A boat's come back empty! Rouse!"
Robin and Marian were off their pallets instantly --
sleepy outlaws didn't live long -- with bows in hand.
Their host, the fisherman Peter, unbarred the door.
Sea wind, cold and salty, swirled in their faces and
made the fire in the hearth gutter.
"What's happening?" asked Sidony. A barrel-shaped
woman with a face like a dried apple, she was
bundled in wool with a scarf over her head. Five
sleepy-eyed children clustered around. "Whose
boat?"
"Gunther's! Both him and Yorg are missing!"
"Oh, my!" The fishwife put a gnarled hand to her
mouth. "And Lucy and Zerlina so young to be
widows!"
Robin Hood shrugged on his quiver, an instinct
when trouble portended. He and Marian were
dressed alike, in tattered wool of Lincoln green,
laced deerhide jerkins, and soft hats sporting spring
feathers. The outlaw chieftain and his wife stepped
outside the tiny cottage.
With food lean in the Greenwood and a long winter
over, they'd taken a holiday of sorts, walked from
Sherwood east and then north, followed a Roman
road through Lincoln, across the Humber, to the
high cliffs at Scarborough, which Marian had never
seen. They'd dawdled on the way back, followed the
coast dotted with black wrecks, out to buy dried
herring for Lent and "to smell the salt air".
They had salt air aplenty, for the wind never quit. It
pulsed and blustered and boomed and tickled, never
still. Sea and wind and clouds were half the world
for tiny Wigby, sixteen cottages almost
overwhelmed by wide Humber Bay, roiling with
waves driven from the turbulent North Sea, called
the German Sea hereabouts. Behind the village lay
sandy dunes with grass atop, and a forest, The
Wolds, like a fog bank in the distance. A long way to
haul firewood, the outlaw thought.
Against a cloudy red-streaked sunrise, villagers
clustered at the high tide mark, an undulating wave
of seaweed. Men and women were almost identical
in salt- and scale-streaked smocks, shabby wool
hose, and pitchy half-boots. Hats were tied under