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

Grinding the Ghost by Clayton Emery

When it comes to creating an authentic atmosphere for the historical mystery Clayton Emery ranks with the best in the genre. He shares with writers like Britain’s Paul Doherty a lack of squeamishness in portraying the grislier side of medieval life, with all its sights, sounds, and smells. In this new adventure of Robin Hood, the outlaw and the ever-astute Marian have got to solve a traditional whodunit...

“Unclean! ’Ware! ’Ware the leper!”

Robin and Marian needed no more warning. They backed down the narrow road to a trough where an ash had toppled, slid under it amidst brush. Robin drew a cross in the dirt with his right toe. “Hie then! Get yourself by and gone!”

Husband and wife watched the pathetic figure straggle past. Clad in a hooded robe gray with filth, the leper hobbled on crippled feet. A tin bell atop his tall staff clanked mournfully. “Unclean! Unclean! ’Ware the leper!”

Shuffle, shuffle, the unseen feet plodded through new-fallen leaves of oak and ash and beech and elm. Robin and Marian waited until the pariah was out of sight, then took to the road again.

“There but for the grace of God,” Robin breathed. “They should be cast away from decent folk altogether.”

Marian asked. “I don’t abide the notion sick people have sinned, you know. It doesn’t take the wrath of God to unbalance your humours.”

“Only God could curse you with leprosy.” Robin swung his bow as they walked. He kept an arrow crooked alongside in case they flushed game. “It’s the worst fate there is. You’re neither alive nor dead, wandering like a ghost, yet shackled with worldly woes.”

“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.

Robin descended the stairwell. The cellar was dank, the walls slimy stone. Slivers of light from cracks between the floorboards added to the dungeon air. Millpond water trickled through the foundation and made a gutter of mud. Stripes of flour matched the cracks overhead.

A torch of folded beech bark was stuck in the mud. Robin Hood picked it up, fanned it brighter. He flinched as something flittered overhead like an errant autumn leaf, then skittered up the stairway. A bat in the daytime: a sure sign of death.

By the light of the new-broken hole in the floorboards and the torch, Robin traced the millworks and the miller’s unfortunate path.

Outside, Robin had seen, was a spring-fed millpond shored by a stone-and-mud dike. Alongside the building, nestled in a pit, was a mill wheel ten feet high. A wooden sluice channeled water that overshot the wheel and filled its deep buckets, so both the force and weight of the water turned the wheel. The millshaft passed through the stone wall and ended in an oaken crown wheel with cogged teeth like a whale’s jaw. This vertical wheel, or gear, turned a matching horizontal gear. Its post rose through the ceiling and turned a grooved millstone of granite. Atop that sat a stationary stone surmounted by a hopper.

The miller had only to lean out the window and open the sluice gate to start all these shafts and wheels spinning, and thus the millstones grinding. He filled the hopper with grain, where it settled between the millstones and was sheared to flour that trickled out the grooves onto a catchboard. The miller swept the flour into sacks. For his services, he got a sixteenth of the flour, while the owner, the lord of the manor, got two sixteenths. Thus millers tended to be the second-richest men in the community.

This miller had valued his money over his mill.

Hosea of Long Valley Screed had been bald and near-toothless, with the paunch of a rich man. His weight had been his undoing, it seemed. A rotten floorboard had shattered and dropped him into the cellar. Half-impaled on the horizontal gear, one fat knee had jammed where the gears closed. Under the terrible power of the millwheel, wooden teeth had rent skin and flesh, then snapped.

Trapped, Hosea had bled to death. In agony, to judge by the lines etched in his face. He lay propped against the descending post, arms outspread. Blood had spattered gears and posts and miller. Its coppery stink compounded the fug of mud and moss.

Spooked, the outlaw wondered that the torch stayed lit: It should extinguish near a corpse. Robin crossed himself and muttered the Lord’s Prayer to quiet the miller’s soul.

“Rob?”

“H-here, Marian.”

His wife tripped down the stairs, ducking to admit her back quiver. “They hunt hard money. They’re not after us.” Ofttimes, sheriffs or barons or forest rangers imposed bounties on Robin’s outlaws, usually two pounds, same as for a wolf’s head. The church always rescinded the bounty, yet rumours persisted and inflated it to ten pounds, fifty, five hundred.

Marian assessed the scene. “The price of sloth, poor man.”

“Aye. He neglected his mill and it killed him.”

“And in dying, killed the mill.” Marian wrinkled her nose, sniffed at the man’s face. “Drunk, too. That helped. Though he smells...”

“Like a brewery?”

“No. Like a vineyard. Where would a miller get wine this time of year?”

Robin nodded upwards. “I dislike that floorboard.”

“Eh?”

He raised the torch to examine the splintery ends of the plank framing the hole. Snapped off clean against the joists, the boards were punky gray along the bottom from rot, but the middles were pale yellow. The outlaw pulled out his Irish knife and tapped. “That heart is sound as Little John’s arm. It shouldn’t have broken.”

“He had a heavy tread.”

“No. I could rear a war-horse atop oak this thick.” Handing Marian the torch, he picked up fragments of floorboard, moved under the square hole for light, and fitted them together like a puzzle.

“A small horse, perhaps,” offered Marian. “Maybe he shouldered a hundredweight of grain while standing in the wrong spot?”

More head-shaking. The outlaw plucked something feathery from a splintered edge. “Fibers. A rope was wrapped around this board. But that wouldn’t break it even if someone yanked hard.”

“Someone down here?”

“Where else?” Robin took the torch, prowled the cellar floor. Grit clung to his deerhide boots. The gutter of mud and blood marred the middle, but the rest of the floor was sand stained dark by oak-leaf tannin, striped light by flour. Half-hunched, Robin searched, then grunted. Marian joined him.

Twin footprints faced a corner. Robin dabbed at a white jot in one heelprint. “Bat dung. Fresh, just this morning. And the edges of the footprints are still sharp.”

Marian peered around her husband’s shoulder. “Why face the corner?”

“There’s a woman’s question,” Robin jibed. He leaned over the footprints and sniffed in the corner like a hound. “He drained his bladder.”

“Oh.” Marian rubbed her nose. “So someone was down here.”

“Someone with narrow feet and good shoes.”

The outlaw crossed to the corpse. One leg was folded under the body, so Robin whispered another prayer as he wiggled the tom shoe off the leg mangled in the gears. It jiggled sickeningly. “His ankle’s broken.”

“A lot of him’s broken, poor man.”

With Marian holding the torch, Robin compared the miller’s shoe against the footprints. Almost twice as wide. Marian murmured, “Fat men’s feet spread to bear their weight.”

As Robin replaced the shoe, the hole was eclipsed by a frowning head. The steward called down, “If you seek to rob the dead, I’ve already searched him.”

Marian countered, “Where is the priest?”

The frown deepened. “Father Peter’s so old he’s abed most of the day. They’ll fetch the corpse to him. I said a prayer of contrition, but Hosea had too many sins for one Hail Mary to absolve.”

Floorboards creaked, shoes scuffled. Four villagers clattered down the narrow stairs toting a wide plank. It was grim work to pry Hosea’s body from the gears. They roped the corpse to carry it up sideways. Robin and Marian followed, blinking in the daylight.

Still within the mill, a wise woman loosened the knots in Hosea’s clothing, sprinkled salt on his chest, and saw he was lugged out the door feet-first, precautions to keep his spirit within his body. Outside, women wailed in sympathy for the new widow. Villagers pressed forward to touch the corpse’s brow, encouraging their children to do the same, to prevent nightmares. The woman in the silk robe swooned and had to be supported by both elbows.

The Vixen of Sherwood, nodding to herself, then shoved through the crowd, grabbed the young widow’s left hand, and clapped it on the corpse’s face.

Shocked, the girl bleated. Women stopped sobbing to buzz at their neighbours. Men grunted. Marian ignored them. Still clamping the girl’s hand, she watched the miller’s mutilated leg. Then she hemmed, begged pardon of the wife, and returned to the doorstep.

“What was that all in aid of?” asked her husband.

“Tell you later.”

The steward ordered the bearers to move on. Fuddled, sobbing, mumbling, the villagers trailed after the bier. Hosea and his wife and neighbours would spend the night on vigil in the chapel. The only one remaining was the wise woman, who washed the threshold to banish contamination.

Inside, the evening sun slanted sharp and golden through western windows. Clouds of dust danced in the sunbeams. The two servants idly tapped walls. The steward folded his arms as if to butt the intruders out the door. “Are you finished prying then? There’s nothing for you here.”

He was surprised at Robin’s mild inquiry. “How are you called, good sirrah?”

The steward blinked. “Sir Luther, Martin of Lincoln.”

“Luther, you seem a smart and capable man. We’ve somewhat to tell you.”

Nonplussed by their casual affront to authority, the knight waggled both hands. “I’ve no time to dally with wastrels. Tell me where he kept his money or get ye gone.”

“Oh yes, his fortune...” Robin stroked his beard. “Where have you looked?”

“Everywhere!” The knight gestured, making dust swirl. “There isn’t a lot to search, but it must be here. Hosea, honest fellow, wasn’t one to bury anything in the forest, not fat-as-butter he. And there are prying eyes throughout the valley.”

Robin only nodded. Marian said, “Have you asked his wife?”

“Yes. She claims not to know. She may not. Her husband was old but no dotard. Elgiva spent money faster than the man could make it, questing after fancy gowns to lord over the parish.

“But then his fortune may not be here,” he corrected with a sigh. “Our good miller hauled his share of flour to Werchesop every fortnight. Mayhaps he banked his coin with some Jew or Roman, though we’ve found no tally sticks, either. And traveling, he’d need worry about thieves, of which we’ve plenty on the roads hereabouts.” He glared at Robin.

“Fear more the men of law and God who rob you. You can’t call them to court.” The archer scanned the main floor, crowded with baskets and sacks of grain, the loft heaped with sacks of milled flour. “Let me see...”

Handing Marian his bow, he mounted the staircase to the loft, walked to a corner where three sacks sat alone. Humming, he moved two sacks and pulled out the cornermost one. Rat-gnawed brown flour trickled out. People below watched in wonder as Robin thumped the sack on the floor three times, then hoisted it, felt the bottom, and chuckled. He untied the top, shot in his arm to the pit, and pulled out a dusty round something he blew clean and tossed down to Luther.

It was a purse chock full of silver: pennies, shillings, half-crowns, and a few crowns.

“How...?” began the knight.

Robin descended, brushing his arm. “Men hide things in familiar places. A cordwainer favours a money belt, a crofter a false bottom in a chest, a tailor secret pockets. Millers hide their money in flour. It wouldn’t be in the grain down here, for it’s yet to be milled, so it must be above. The largest heap of sacks belong to the village, those six to his lordship, which leaves three the miller’s fee. Any coin would be in the hardest-to-reach sack. Simple.”

“Simple,” muttered Luther. “Withal, I promised you a sixteenth part, so we needs count it.”

Robin waved a dusty hand. “No need. Send to the alehouse and we’ll be quits.”

“What?” The knight laughed. “Better, dine with me at the hall. It’s not often I entertain such a distinguished — bowyer.”

“Done!” said Robin.

Long Valley Hall was indeed an old Norman hunting lodge, a singlestory stone hall with the kitchen and solar at the back. On benches at a long plank table, Robin and Marian partook of a fine harvest meal: liver from pigs and cows gone to slaughter, a plentitude of rabbits killed by scythes. Many, many pots of dark foamy stout were fetched from the alehouse.

Sir Luther’s wife, Lady Arelina, was cool towards the strangers until Marian whispered that they too were gentry, Sir Robert Locksley and Lady Marian. (She omitted that they were also nobility, the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon.) The two knights soon discovered they had both besieged Acre, and talked long of famine, pestilence, Saracen ambushes and torture, diseased prostitutes, raving madmen, mountains of rotting corpses, sun so strong it seared a man’s hand to touch his own armour. It bemused the women that the men laughed so often.

“This is fine stout.” Robin reached for more drink and missed the pitcher. “It’s got body. But what I meant to tell you, Luther, a long time ago, was... what? Oh, how curious is this mill... miller’s death.” He explained what they’d found poking in the cellar.

Trying to refill Robin’s tankard, Luther emptied the ale on the table. “Oops. I dislike it, Robin. Bits of rope and narrow footprints and bat dung. It seems a lot of mugger-hug — hugmug — hugger-mugger. I found a hole and a dead miller. His footprints in the — what do you call it — flour. It seems very simple, like you finding that — purse.” A servant had to refill their tankards.

“It’s sup-supposed to.” Robin gestured and knocked his tankard into his lap. “Oh my. Someone with narrow feet — tiny little feet — made it look that way. But I’m guessing. I’m wet, too.”

Luther dropped his voice to a slurred whisper. “It’s not fay folk, is it? Good. ’Course not. But who could sunder an oak board by yanking a rope? Not me. And how could they know Hosea, bless him, honest fellow, would fall in the hole? How drunk could a man be to not see a hole at his feet? Too drunk to work. If I had a hole here now, I could see it. Right there, like. And t’weren’t a wide hole. Narrower than his fat belly. He would’a stuck fast. An assas... assas... a killer would needs jump on his shoulders to punch him through.”

Robin waved his pot and almost clopped his wife in the jaw. Marian wrestled it away. “Right-o. I love you so, Marian. You’re so beau’ful it pains to look at you. Hunh? Oh, agreed, agreed. Can’t prove what I didn’t see, or what I did see. But if it was delib — delib — real, who profits by his death? Had he enemies?”

“Doesn’t every miller?” Luther laughed. “They’re all skimmers. Hosea was the worst thievin’ bastard o’ all, bless his soul. But whyn’t ’hey turn the mill upside down after his purse?”

“His wife — widow — interests me,” said Marian suddenly. “ ‘Dimples in the chin, devil within.’ ”

“May married to December,” put in Arelina. “ ‘A man who takes a young wife buys himself a peck of trouble.’ ”

The men gaped as if the women had just descended from Heaven. Robin fumbled with a knife to cut bread, had it taken away. He used a crust to sop ale off the wet table. “Who’s miller now, with the harvest ’pon you?”

Luther waved a hand. “A young scalawag on the Poulter there. Seymour, journeyman to his father. ’E comes often, helps repair and such, carts flour home. We’ve good soil in this old riverbed.”

“Was he around today?” asked Marian.

“Nay, not for weeks. I’d know if he were ’round. Everyone in the valley knows ’im. Speakin’ of which, I better dispatch a rider t’ Carberton t’ fetch him.” He pushed at the table to rise, snagged his heel on the chair leg, crashed back down. “Well, it’s too late anyway.”

Marian persisted. “Would this Seymour know he’s to assume the milling?”

Luther shrugged muzzily. “I s’pose so.”

“Is he young?” asked Marian.

“Aye,” said Arelina. “Handsome in a callow way.”

Robin laughed. “Are you thinking of marrying again, Marian? Marry, Marian marryin’ again!” He and Luther hooted.

“No, but I wonder how big this Seymour’s feet are.”

“I thought women cared about the size of a man’s somethin’ else!” roared Luther, and they laughed until their sides ached. “Ah, Robin. I’m glad you came. You’ve saved me hardship, findin’ that purse. ’Twere marvelous how you done it.”

Robin roamed the room after a full pitcher. “ ’Twasn’t me, ’twas one of my men. An idiot to boot. Much the Miller’ Son. He’s a miller’s son, son of a miller. We met him on the King’s Road one day, decided to play with him. It were a slow day. Told him to produce his silver — millers always have money — or we’d string him up. But he fooled us. He said t’was buried in the flour. He dug around — quite an act for an idiot — and whipped big handfuls in our faces. Poof! Ay, it stung! Then he whacked us with a cudgel till our bones ached. Bunged my knee for a week. But he used his head, thick as ’twas. When his father died, the bailiff turned the gristmill... over to someone else and threw Much out. We came... fetched him... What is it, Marian?”

His wife crooked her little finger to her mouth. “What my husband would call a harebrained scheme.”

Robin tried to whistle, fizzed instead. “Someone’s in for it.”

“Aye,” said his wife. “You. Would you become a miller?”

“What? You’re potted, Marian!”

“No, I’ve got a plan. Are you game?”

Luther and Arelina looked perplexed. Robin thought, shrugged. “I’ve been a butcher and a potter, why not a miller? Hoy, we’re dry! Send for more stout!”

“No!” pronounced the women.

Early the next morning, Elgiva was pitched out of her home.

“Oh, please, please, kind sir, you can’t do this! You can’t!”

Young and slim and pretty, the widow tried every charm to make Luther relent. She hung on his arm, wrung her hands, cajoled, pleaded, sobbed. But the steward coldly told her the gristmill was property of the duke, his to mete out. She was finished. From the loft, the two servants carried down Elgiva’s chattel: a chair, two carved and painted chests of clothes, a triptych of Christ on the Cross, an effigy of Saint Audry, an iron pot and a spoon. They laid it outside the door.

Elgiva turned bitter. “You’ll be sorry, Sir Luther! I’ll tell Lord Lancaster what you’ve done at the manor court! He won’t like it! Hosea, honest husband, was a good miller and I a good miller’s wife! You can’t cast us out — and I want my fortune!”

“You’ll get that once we find it,” Luther lied. He pulled the half door shut and rode off with the lord’s huntsman. Elgiva’s curses echoed across the valley.

Meantime, the new miller scooped water from the sluice and lugged buckets to the cellar. Robin mopped the gears clean, but could not wash out the bloodstains. “Proof enough he was murdered.” He crossed himself.

In the village, Marian tended the outlaws’ original business. Every autumn, before winter rains made roads impassable, they circumnavigated Sherwood Forest. This fief lay just within its ragged northern border. They renewed contacts in the villages and dispensed hard-won coins. Outlaws could not survive without the support of common folk, and both groups ofttimes needed to hide out, to borrow food or money, to ask favours or justice or succor. The Fox and Vixen of Sherwood toted up who was still alive, still on their side, still reliable. Marian reiterated that any “beggars” who braved the dark winter forest to fetch news to the Greenwood would receive coin, food, and protection.

Marian asked other questions, too. About millers, and young wives, and journeymen, and lepers, and wine.

Having cleaned the machinery, Robin fetched tools and whittled new teeth for the gears. By noon, he could open the sluice gate. Water rushed and splashed, the wheel buckets filled, and slowly the ponderous wheel turned. Excited as a child building a sandcastle against the tide, Robin ran downstairs as the rumbling wheel gained speed. In the dim light, he watched the gears tunk smoothly, heard the millstones grind overhead.

Alone, he crowed, “Brilliant, Master Robin, sterling! Very clever work, I must say!”

Chuckling, Robin leaned out a hand, grabbed something moving, snatched his hand away, lost his balance, and flopped on the muddy floor.

Swearing, he swiped muck off his trousers. “Pride goeth before a fall, Master Robin, and it serves you right.”

In the dimness, he’d leant against the thick millshaft that connected the waterwheel and crown wheel. “Fool, that turns too!... Oh... Turns.”

But the fleeting thought was erased by a new distraction. A noise.

Groaning.

Robin cocked his head. Tolling steadily, every few seconds, came a low moan. Like a dog in a trap, or a cow with a full udder.

Holding his breath, Robin tiptoed, squatted, peered at the revolving gears and rotating posts. He couldn’t locate the sound. But for the first time, he noticed how the machinery seemed alive. Like a great horse or dragon, leashed and harnessed, but poised to turn on its master at the first chance.

The groaning rang on and on. Real but untouchable.

Like a ghost.

Robin Hood fled up the stairs.

Later that afternoon as Robin filled the hopper and scraped flour into sacks — and tried to ignore the groaning — a young man knocked at the threshold.

Red-eyed Elgiva was just behind him. Handsome in a soft, beardless way, the lad was proud in his neat yellow smock, sky blue hose, and round hat.

His feet, the outlaw noted, were narrower than his hands.

Seymour, journeyman miller to his father Uland in Carberton, was earnest and sincere, solicitous of Elgiva’s plight. Luther had cast her out without a penny, and what might she do to gain back the knight’s graces. Seymour could help her mill. The job should rightfully have gone to him anyway, since he’d spent years repairing the gristmill, and had been Hosea’s trusted friend. Was Robin capable to mill, and might he need a journeyman?

When his talk availed nothing, Elgiva loosed her tongue. “You shouldn’t even be here! It’s not right and it’s not fair! You come out of that accursed forest, a murderin’ outlaw with blood on his hands, and take work away from decent folk! You’ll be in strife when Lord Lancaster comes through! He’ll set dogs on you and your strumpet wife—”

Seymour jumped in. “And you’ll ruin this mill with your meddling! Already you’ve thrown the wheel out of kilter or neglected to grease somethin’! It never did groan like that before!”

Robin opened the door wider to let the sound travel. “Perhaps the mill mourns a master done wrong. Perhaps it cries for vengeance. What say you?”

The two young people shut up, turned white as ghosts. Seymour’s hands shook. Elgiva backed away.

From the lodge, two horses danced down the valley. As planned, the huntsman had watched for Seymour and fetched Sir Luther. They reined in before the mill, hooves throwing mud. The knight nudged his bay palfrey sideways, swiped Seymour across the shoulder with a quirt.

“Get ye gone, wastrel! I’ve appointed this man miller and not you, and I’ll stand no gainsaying my decision! Now hie yourself back to Carberton before I whip you out of the valley, and never come back! And you, trollop, get out of my sight!”

Luther ordered the huntsman to escort Seymour home, at the end of a rope if necessary. After a hasty and tearful farewell, the boy shouldered his satchel and scampered up the road, while Hosea’s widow hiked her skirts and pegged for the village.

“There,” the knight sighed. “He’s driven out, but Elgiva must stay till we find the money. I hope your wife knows what she’s about.”

“She always does,” Robin smiled, “better than I.”

“What you’re about or she’s about?”

“Either. I’m married long enough not to argue. I’m broke to the yoke.”

Luther nodded, “You and me both. Lean into the harness and avoid the goad. You’ve got the mill turning. Good. But what’s that benighted groaning? It sounds like—”

He stopped.

“I’m glad you needs spend the night and not me.” The knight pelted away, leaving Robin to his haunted mill.

That evening, Marian returned from the village with their supper. Robin showed off his work, and she congratulated him, but added, “Why does it moan so? It sounds like a thirsty ox. Or—”

Robin raised a hand to stop her. His elation at fixing the mill had evaporated. He leaned out the window and dropped the sluice gate. Gradually the mossy wheel rolled to a halt. The silence was brittle after the unceasing groans.

They kindled a fire outside and ate supper there. “So what of your day, Marian? What have you gleaned?” Glad to change the subject, she caught him up on their outlawry business, but had little else to add. Robin was too tired to note his wife was deep in thought.

They slept outdoors.

Marian left before dawn, toting a satchel and bow, no hint of her destination. Her departure might have miffed Robin had he not done the same so often.

Robin fell to milling and found he liked it. Once he’d loaded the wooden hopper over the millstones, there was little to do except scoop flour from the cupboard. He replaced the missing floorboard with another plucked from the loft. Prowling after work, and grumbling at Hosea’s laziness, he hauled sacks away from the walls, dug out rotting sprouting mouldy grain and pitched it to the birds. He put down pallets and restacked the bags. He stomped so many rats and mice that he turned to the village and traded a silver ha’ penny for a big brindled cat. He tested the scale and its iron weights, one against another.

He’d have loved the work if not for the infernal moan. In desperation, he fetched lard from the village and greased every moving part. Nothing diminished the groaning, though while smearing the big crown wheel he made a curious discovery. He thought to tell Marian later.

But Marian didn’t return that night, so he paid a penny for bread and meat and beer at the alehouse, then slept under a bush. Another day found the harvest in full swing, men cutting, children stacking, women winnowing. Wagons heaped high rolled to the mill door. Robin fed the hopper and stitched sacks.

Yet the villagers couldn’t quite believe Robin Hood the Outlaw had turned Robin the Miller. And when they drew close enough to hear the groaning, they froze. Some prayed, some feigned deafness, but no one lingered, and eventually none would pass the door. Robin missed Marian.

At supper, the new miller got his wife back. She was puffy and dusty but bursting with news.

“Remember that leper we passed the other day? I learned in the village he hobbles through here every fortnight!”

They braised pig’s heart and trotters over the fire, stuffed with fresh rye bread. “So? Any beggar must. Friar Tuck had a regular circuit. And a leper cadges coins quick, because no one wants him to dally?”

“No, no, no.” Marian waved a greasy hand. “Remember Sir Luther said Hosea, may he rest in peace, fetched his grain to market every fortnight? The village women told me he would leave Thursday forenoons, spend Friday at the market, then return Saturday to make Mass Sunday. The leper passed through midday Thursday, then left the valley Saturday in the forenoon. Do you see? Hosea leaves, the leper arrives, the leper goes, Hosea returns.”

“Every fortnight? That’s curious, I guess.”

“There’s more! I’ve been from the Poulter to the Ryton. A fox crossed my path so I knew I’d have good luck! I asked of the merchants, the bailiffs, and the midwives. No one in either town ever sees the leper! Only Long Valley Screed sees him!”

“Well...” Robin chewed slowly as his mind worked. “He could cut over the hills. Hard with rotten feet, though... Maybe they won’t admit the bugger to those towns, or threatened to kill him...”

“Mull it over,” said his wife. “Oh, and tomorrow you go roving. I need you to track something.”

Robin recoiled in mock horror. “Not I! My tracking days are done. I’m a miller now!” Marian shoved him, but he bobbed back up like a hedgehog. “Oh! I found something! Come see!”

He plucked up a firebrand and shivvied her inside, then down. By flickering light, Robin laid his wife’s hand on the thick shaft that connected the millwheel and gears. “Feel? Where’s it gone? Ah, here! See? More rope fibers! What does that tell you?”

“Little, I fear.” Marian shivered. “Engines are a mystery to me.”

“Then understand this!” He explained his idea.

Marian nodded, but still shivered. “Brilliant, Rob. Very clever. May we leave now?”

The firebrand popped a knot and extinguished. Smothered in gloom, the outlaw raced up the stairs.

“It was clever to find that rope trick. Mayhaps you can turn miller if outlawry becomes unwelcome.”

“Or illegal?” joked her husband. They were back in the forest, a half-mile along the road to Carberton. Brush tickled at their elbows. “Outlawry and milling have much in common. I — Hark! There’s your track!”

The outlaw squatted, moved a fresh oak leaf. “There’s a toe print. And see that line where the brush is swept back? No deer made that — it’s from a man’s shinbone.” Marian agreed, though she saw none of it.

Robin slid through bracken after the faint trail, halted at a forked oak. He plucked away a broken branch with withered leaves to expose a bundle in the tree’s crotch.

“Ha! Show this to Will Stutly, who claims I can’t track a bleeding bull through a king’s ball! And here...”

He stooped and uncovered a staff hidden under leaves. A clank made him turn, and he yelped. Marian had pulled down the filthy gray robe. A tin bell dropped out.

“By my faith, Marian! Don’t touch a leper’s robes!”

Marian batted the robe flat. “Fret not. If I’m right, this be all of the leper.” From her satchel she drew a redware crock and soaked the robe with a whitish liquid reeking of musk: tallow. She stashed the garment back in the tree, replaced the camouflaging branch, flicked back her tresses, and smiled. “Done.”

Gingerly, Robin plucked an ash leaf from her hair. “What about the leper?”

A smug smile. “If I’ve guessed right, there’s no need for the leper anymore. But if I’ve plotted aright, we shall see him anyway.”

“As you say, dear.” Robin pushed brush aside with his bow. “I needs get back anyway. Wheat’s to be winnowed this morn. And I needs rig a barrel trap to drown rats. And did I say I tested the weights? One was shinier than the others, heavier by half, what Hosea used to measure his share.”

“Next you’ll be curing chin-cough holding children over the hopper.” Marian laughed. “You’ll make a burgher yet.”

“And you an obedient goodwife?”

Marian laughed again.

Three days later, Marian called through the window. “Rob! Honey! Will you fetch more wood?”

Robin topped off the hopper, then crossed to the window. Marian didn’t want firewood. Any call was a signal to come watch. He chuckled. “Clever thing, my Marian.”

Shuffling on crippled feet, shrouded by a hood, down the muddy road into the valley came the leper, clinking his bell and uttering his lament. “Unclean! Unclean! ’Ware the leper!”

Close by the road, Marian tended a fire under a cauldron, pretended to stir washing. As the leper came abreast, she turned her back so as not to breathe contagion.

But once past, she snatched up a firebrand, flitted up behind the leper, and set fire to his robe.

Tallow-soaked wool ignited with a ripple. The leper whirled at the heat and smell and smoke, then shrieked. He dropped his staff and ran flat out. Marian ran hard behind him.

Robin pelted out the doorway. “What the bloody living hell...?”

When the flaming leper had run a hundred feet, Marian caught up and hooked his foot with her own. The man slammed down. Kicking, she flipped him over, rolled him in the dirt, and snuffed the fire.

Robin arrived just as Marian jerked back the hood. Revealed was Seymour, journeyman miller.

“A real leper can’t run,” Marian panted. “Their toes are the first things to rot off.”

Robin stroked his beard. Seymour wept.

The Vixen of Sherwood poured herself another tot of stout and saluted the men who scooped flour into sacks.

“I saw right off he weren’t a real leper. He wasn’t crippled, nor did he stink of corruption. But some poor souls pose as lepers because they feel unclean, or wish to suffer penance. Or they have some rash like eczema, or Saint Anthony’s fire, or scrofula, so are branded lepers. But I said nothing, for it wasn’t my business.

“Until I heard that Hosea, rest his merry, drove to market every fortnight, and during his absence, this leper passed through. Yet no other village saw him. Thus, someone donned a leper’s disguise just for Long Valley Screed.

“Elgiva is young and pretty, but shows a venal streak. I suspected her right away. That’s why I forced her hand onto the corpse to see if it bled at its murderer’s touch. She passed the trial of bleeding, but only because she didn’t kill with her own hand.

“She married the miller for money, then found love when Seymour came to make repairs. But everyone knew Seymour, so he couldn’t visit with Hosea gone without creating talk. Thus he adopted a disguise — perfect, because people would shun him. He wore it again today, since Luther forbade him to return.

“Elgiva schemed to keep her money and position, yet gain a new husband — Seymour, next in line to be miller. One night she unbarred the door, admitted Seymour, and hid him in the cellar. Hosea, bless him, had no need to go down there. Seymour waited so long he had to splatter the corner.

“That day at dinner Elgiva gave Hosea brandy — his breath smelt of wine. ’Twas his favourite drink, so say the villagers, but she usually denied him. Once he was tipsy, she hied to the village to winnow, which she’s always shunned as beneath her. That left Hosea ‘alone’ to have his accident, thanks to Seymour.”

“But how?” demanded Luther. “He’s a skinny titch! He hadn’t the strength to manhandle a fat tub like Hosea!”

Robin bounced a sack to settle the flour. “Easy enough if you know how. If you’re a miller. All he needed do — wait, I’ll show you. I’d like to see myself.”

The outlaw-turned-miller propped the sack on the catchboard above the new floor plank. He kneaded a corner of the sack into a ball and tied it off with twine. “That’s Hosea’s foot.” Robin then caught up a rope and skipped down the stairs.

The only sound was the rumble and creak of the big wheel outside, the muffled tunking of gears below, the grinding of millstones. And the infernal groan.

Coming from below, Robin’s shuttered voice was startling. “Here we go! Hosea, poor fool, is drunk, staggering round and round. I’m Seymour. I see his outline against the light. Quick like, I—”

Through cracks in the floor, Luther and Marian watched the outlaw’s fingers work. He poked a slipknot up past the new plank, winkled it across, pulled it back down, shoved the noose up again to encircle the floorboard. Deftly, he flicked the slipknot over the balled “foot” on the flour sack. Then his hands disappeared.

Another pause, then, “Here comes the good part!”

Suddenly alive as a snake, the rope slithered around the plank, tightened, snatched the sack off the catchboard. The floorboard creaked, groaned, bent — and shattered. The sack was sucked down as if by a whirlpool.

They heard the bag tear. Flour fountained out of the hole.

The great millwheel shuddered to a halt. Sneezing resounded below.

Marian and Luther pattered down the stairs to find Robin Hood pale brown with flour. The shorn sack was jammed in the gears. The rope was wound around the millwheel shaft.

The dusty outlaw wiped his eyes, wheezed, “That’s the link Luther and I missed. We wondered how little Seymour could break a board and drag a fat miller through the hole. But he was a miller too.

“Remember, a man hides money where he’s comfortable? Seymour figured how an engine can kill a man. This millshaft pulls hard as a yoke of oxen. He had only to slip the noose over Hosea’s foot and tie on here. I found rope fibers on the shaft. And Hosea’s ankle was broken.

“Once Hosea crashed onto the cogs, he was stuck, probably stunned. Seymour shifted his leg between the gears, then watched his rival bleed to death. And having finished an honest day’s work, he donned his disguise and fled back to Carberton, there to await word of the tragedy in Long Valley Screed.”

Robin grinned. “His bad luck, though. He passed my wife, she with the eyes of a hawk.” Marian smiled.

Dusty as any miller, Robin Hood led them upstairs. He closed the sluice gate, clumped back down, tugged the sack from the gears, checked that no teeth were broken, and clumped back up.

Luther paced around the fresh hole. “To think I’d have left it an accident, and given Seymour the mill! Now we’ll hang both of them! So we’ll need another miller... You, uh, wouldn’t want the job?”

“Third time’s the charm, eh?” laughed Robin. “No, I—”

Surprised, he stopped. He’d miss milling. It was safe, sedate, useful, satisfying. He imagined a life tending the millworks and bagging flour, meeting neighbours day in and out, working a lathe or saw in winter, growing fat and bald. No more campfires or smoked venison, no more birdsong, no more, dappled light illuminating his greenwood cathedral...

“No, I’m afraid not, but thank you for the kind offer. I’ll return to what I know.”

“And that is?” smiled the knight. Marian giggled.

Robin scratched his grayed beard. “What did I say I was? Ah, yes! A bowmaker!”

Chuckling, he leaned out the window and jerked open the sluice gate. Slowly, slowly, the millwheel turned. Slowly the millstones began to grind.

But no one spoke. They listened. And heard nothing.

The groaning was gone.