“Idiot,” Helena muttered.
John made the jump next, his bulky form hurtling toward the water like a bolt. The water erupted with his entrance, a small wave dousing Robin and Little before the big man rose to the surface. Patrick jumped next, his dive into the water barely causing a ripple. Helena followed after, splashing about below as she made her way to the surface with more than a little irritation. Adam looked to Isabelle.
“I don’t often find myself saying this, sister, but Helena is right,” he said, his voice heavy with disappointment. “We gave you our trust, our colors, and our lives. And all you gave us was a lie.”
Isabelle drew a breath to respond, even though she had no adequate response to give him, but he ran for the edge in three long strides, sailing over the cliff. She shivered in the sudden quiet, her heart hammering against her ribs and her breath coming fast as she contemplated the bobbing figures in the river far below.
I could leave now, she thought. Spare them any further danger. They would no doubt be relieved to be rid of me. Adam just said as much. Or I could turn myself over to the sheriff of York now, throw myself on his mercy to help free Mother.
But a voice grew within her, terrified and exhilarated, that wanted to follow them over the cliffs and into whatever dangers they faced next, because she’d never felt more alive than when she was on the edge with them. If she walked away now, she would never know her past. And her mother would have no future.
No, there was only one way out, and it was over those cliffs.
With one last heaving breath, she pushed off the wall of the keep, running as fast as she could over the cliff’s edge. The water hit Isabelle with an impact so forceful that for a moment the world went black, her lungs deflating as the frigid depths turned her muscles to stone. She hung there, suspended in a world without air or sound, the weight of her skirts dragging her down. The chill of the night was nothing compared to the unrelenting freeze of the river.
A strong pair of hands hooked underneath her arms and hauled her up, breaking the surface of the water with a splash. She sucked air gratefully into her lungs, her arms and legs coming to life as she fought to keep above the water. The clattering of her teeth filled her head as the world took shape around her once again, Adam’s angry face coming into focus.
“Can you not swim, either, Isabelle?” he asked, giving her a little shake.
“There are not many opportunities for leisurely swimming lessons in priory life,” she panted, shivering from the cold. “I thought I did rather well, considering.”
He sighed forcefully. “How many times do we have to save your life?”
She met his gaze, his breath warming her frigid cheeks. “You could have let me drown.”
Adam gave her a long look, his eyes as fathomless as the waters around them. His hair spiked wildly about his head and droplets clung to his lashes. “I think you’ve got more water than brains left in your head, sister.”
But he did not let her go, hooking an arm around her and keeping her close, the cold water tangling their clothes together. The others paddled around them, Helena’s lips a dark blue even in the murky light. Little John was so calm he looked as if he stood on a rock below, and for all Isabelle knew, he did. If any of them could reach the bottom, it was him. Patrick made graceful little strokes in a figure eight between them, happy as a frog. Little and Robin were nowhere in sight.
“Would you stop that?” Helena said to Patrick, her words muffled by her chattering jaw. “You’re like a bloody river otter.”
“Just trying to keep myself warm,” Patrick said placidly, daring a smile in her direction. “Reminds me of the waters in Liuerpul. Father Donnell took a dip every morning. He said the water invigorated the blood.”
“I feel as if my blood has frozen solid in my veins,” Isabelle said, shivering. Patters of rain struck the surface of the river, biting into her scalp and face as a great peal of thunder tore through the sky above.
“Where’s Robin?” Adam asked, floating away from her and taking his warmth with him. She had to stop from physically reaching out for him. “And Little? Don’t tell me he cracked his head on a rock.”
“I don’t know where they are, but if we’re meant to swim to shore, someone’s going to have to tow me,” Helena said. “I stopped feeling both my legs about five minutes ago, and these blasted coins are like mud bricks in my boots.”
A shadow detached itself from the little waves lapping against the motte, the shape bulky and rounded in the glimmering light of the fire overhead.
“What the hell is that?” Helena asked, somehow on her guard despite the frigid temperature. Isabelle even caught the flash of a knife under the surface of the water.
Adam’s gaze narrowed as the figure drew closer. “Of course he has a boat stowed away here.”
Robin and Little pushed the small rowboat forward, swimming with long strokes until they reached the group. Robin patted its glistening hull proudly.
“Always keep one handy,” he said. “You would be surprised how much use she can be. I’ve grown rather fond of the old dinghy, I must confess. She has gotten me out of more than one sticky situation I would rather not explain to the gate guards.”
Little John held the side of the boat steady as Robin vaulted in, pulling the others in after until they were all crammed into the small vessel. Isabelle shivered uncontrollably now, her wet clothes and damp skin exposed to the whistling wind blowing the storm in from the west. She missed the warmth of Adam’s lean body pressed against her, his back turned to her now as he took a seat at the front. Helena at least looked similarly miserable in her soaked tunic and hose. Robin fished a pair of oars from beneath the plank seats and handed them over to John, who fitted them into the oarlocks and pulled them toward the shore with powerful strokes.
Isabelle surreptitiously watched Robin as the boat sailed on, all of them huddled against one another in the increasing downpour. Even waterlogged in his costume, there was an air of unpredictability about him. She could not tell if it was dangerous or thrilling, or perhaps a potent mix of the two.
“So, Alik of Arabia,” Adam said, raising his voice over the rain. “I’ve not heard tale of him.”
Robin sighed and leaned back, propping both hands behind his head as if he were idling on a summer pond and not fleeing a burning castle in a storm. “I came by a man in Lincoln who was selling Saracen swords of a fine variety. I had not seen their like since the Crusades, and a pesky nostalgia induced me to purchase one. The man was rather a crafty salesman, I think, for he also carried with him a set of robes and that fine turban. He spotted me as the collector I am and offered them up at a tantalizing discount. I could hardly turn down the opportunity for such an adventure.”
“Was it adventure that got you thrown into the dungeons?” Helena asked.
Robin waved one hand lazily. “A simple misunderstanding that would have been cleared up posthaste were it not for the inconvenient intervention of the sheriff’s men.”
Having just encountered those men, Isabelle would not have used the word “inconvenient” to describe them. But Robin seemed as much at ease dripping wet in the bow of a tiny ship as he did layered in sumptuous robes feasting on chicken in the sheriff’s quarters. She wondered if there were anywhere in England he would not look so self-assured. She could hardly say the same for herself; the wind helped shuttle them to shore but did nothing for the cold that frosted over her hair and skin. Her toes sloshed in her boots, painfully numb and inflexible, and her fingers would not bend without her knuckles cracking.
Robin and Adam hopped out of the boat as it neared shallow waters and dragged it ashore, the gentle lolling of the vessel stopping so suddenly that Isabelle still felt herself swaying to its movements. The guards seemed to have finally put out the worst of the fire at the keep with the help of the rain. Billowing clouds of smoke rose up in the distance, covering their movements as they disembarked. Robin and Little John dragged the boat behind a nearby building, bur
ying it beneath old crates.
“All in all, not a bad outing,” Robin said, wringing water from his turban and setting it askew on his head. “Shall we return to camp? I am positively famished after such an invigorating swim.”
Despite the late hour and the freezing rain pouring down their necks, the Merry Men of York threw a feast to honor the return of their wayward master. The men stoked up a blazing bonfire upon their return, the ale flowing and the bread and cheese still warm from whatever hearth they had stolen it. The nets made of leaves were thick and kept the rain from extinguishing their fire, and it was cozy enough that Isabelle could almost forget the sopping mess of fabrics still clinging to her skin.
Any merriment she might have enjoyed seeped out of her bones as the others gathered on the far end of the bonfire, turned in toward each other with no break in their ranks for her. She found her way to a secluded copse of trees and gratefully exchanged the barmaid’s dress for her Lincoln greens, but now they felt all wrong. Too tight, and scratchy, as if even the clothes were rejecting her.
Her teeth chattered mercilessly, and she was sure she would not be warm ever again even if she stepped into the heart of a bonfire. She stood there a while longer, shivering and rubbing the wool of her sleeves vigorously against her arms to try and bring some life back to her skin. She could not face the carousing men and their gleeful fire just yet, for she didn’t trust herself enough to keep her composure.
I deserve their scorn and more, she thought, crouching into a ball and laying her cheek on her knees. If they knew what I was planning, they would have left me to burn along with the keep. A liar who would betray her own father.
Her father. Robin Hood. Robert of Huntingdon. Her mother’s husband. For the thousandth time since leaving Kirklees, she wished her mother were there. She wished she could ask how they met, who he was, what it was that had drawn Marien to him in the first place. They seemed like opposite ends of the world—Marien so calm and collected, Robin a carousing force to be reckoned with. But she had never known her mother to make a poor choice, and so there must have been something in Robin that attracted her to him. Something that made her give up whatever life she had before to protect his secrets.
She could just see him through a small break in the trees, moving among his men with masterful ease, slapping them on the back and raising pints in their honor, all with a mischievous gleam in his eye. Those sparkling blue eyes that seemed to capture everything at once and make a farce of it. He had exchanged his white robes for the Lincoln greens, but they made him no less fascinating. He was not a tall man, but he filled the camp with his voice and his presence, goading Little John into a pitifully off-key rendition of “The Milkmaid’s Lament” as the other men in the camp covered their ears and pitched their empty mugs at the pair.
She turned her head away, curling more into herself and her misery. She had never been part of something so powerful, a bond that carried the Merry Men through the hardest times and lifted them up in brotherhood. And now she never would be, not after the lies she’d told. And certainly not after she lured Robin to Kirklees.
You could tell him the truth, said the practical voice that always sounded suspiciously like her mother. He is the outlaw Robin Hood. If anyone could save her, he could.
She had just played a part in his rescue from the bowels of one of the country’s strongest keeps, after all. If they could free Robin from York Castle, perhaps they could free Marien from Kirklees. Her mother could join the Merry Men, and they could live in Sherwood as a family, finally together.
But there was no mistaking the cold certainty in the Wolf’s eyes. He would tear this country apart and burn every tree to the ground to find Robin, no matter who got in his way. If he was willing to hang her mother, what would he do to the Merry Men? To the people like Thomas who protected them? What would he do to her friends? Whatever answers Isabelle could fathom, none of them boded well for her or her family.
“Isabelle, love,” someone said, giving her shoulder a gentle shake.
Isabelle started awake, her back aching and a crick in her neck. For a confused moment she could not place where she was, or how she had gotten there. A blanket covered her shoulders, tucked in at the edges to protect her from the chill. Except it was not nearly so chilly now, with faint sunlight streaming in through the trees above. She turned her head just as Robin sat back on his heels, smiling at her.
“Care to take a walk with me?” he asked.
Isabelle rose slowly, working out the kinks of a night spent sleeping curled in a ball. Robin looked resplendent, his eyes bright and his face fresh in the late-morning light. The sun burnished his hair to a dark auburn flecked with bits of gold, and in the full light of day, she could easily see the sharp, aristocratic lines of his hooked nose and lean jaw. He carried a longbow with him, and a great curved horn hung from his belt, the end capped in silver and gleaming white. The same horn Little John had blown when she met him.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her thoughts still thick with the cottony web of her dreams.
“To see a few old friends,” he said, slapping her on the shoulder. “Come along, the day is far too bonny to waste under the trees.”
She followed him out of her sheltered copse, the clang of swordplay reverberating throughout the camp. The Merry Men filled the trees with their fighting, paired in groups of two or three or four, each carrying their weapon of choice and taking turns in the ring while others called their encouragement. She spotted Adam and Little sparring in the thick of the group, Patrick and Helena standing on the sidelines calling out suggestions, mostly for Little. Helena caught her eye and turned her back resolutely, continuing her conversation with Patrick. The Irish boy met her gaze for a moment before turning to Helena to reply. Somehow she preferred Helena’s scorn to the deep disappointment etched on Patrick’s face.
Robin led her out to the main road, whistling a soft, cheerful tune as they went, his step quick and light despite the muck created by the previous night’s rain. Isabelle moved at a considerably heavier pace, her heels squishing into the mud and splattering her hose with flecks of mud.
“You’ve lost the bow I gave you,” he said, breaking the long silence between them.
Isabelle looked up, startled out of her own swirling thoughts. “Pardon?”
He glanced at her empty shoulder. “Your favorite bow. It’s gone. And your quiver, too, by the looks of it. Don’t tell me you’ve gambled it away as part of your new outlaw life?”
“No, it was taken—” She turned to him sharply. “How do you know about my bow?”
He arched a brow at her. “I carved it myself, didn’t I?”
Isabelle shook her head. “No, a traveling peddler gave it to me.”
“Oh, you mean the traveling peddler who always has a special little treat for his special little dolly girl,” Robin said, his voice shifting and his shoulders curling over as the muscles in his face tightened and relaxed into a mountain of wrinkles that made him look considerably older. He hardly looked like himself. In fact, he looked rather like—
“You are Old Man Peddler?” she asked incredulously, rocking back on her heels. “The batty old fool always clanging his pots about?”
Robin relaxed his face, his expression returning to normal, if a bit indignant. “I never thought of him as batty, really. Just a bit eccentric.”
“A bit?” she said. “You were always pinching my cheeks, calling me dolly girl. And asking about Mother. It was quite off-putting. I thought you were a hundred years old.”
“With all the vim and vigor of a spry young man,” Robin said wistfully.
“With all the vim and vigor of a perverted old man.” Isabelle resumed walking, struggling against the rising tide of emotion within her. “All these years, and it took the Wolf for me to truly know you. Why such secrecy? Why did you never tell me the truth?”
Robin’s expression grew serious. “If you had met the Wolf, you would not ask.”
“I
have met the Wolf.”
Robin’s eyes cut to her. “I believe it’s time you told me the truth of why you are here.”
Isabelle’s heart lurched guiltily at that, and so she deflected with a question of her own. “Who is Robert of Huntingdon?”
Robin’s forehead crinkled as his eyes widened. “I’ve not heard that name for many a year now.”
“Is it really you?” Isabelle leaned toward him, intent on the answer.
Robin did not reply for several moments, his gaze lost somewhere in the murky middle of the horizon. She began to think he would not answer, when he spoke in a soft, almost regretful voice.
“I suppose at the very least I owe you the truth.” He took a deep breath. “Once upon a time, in another life, I was Robert of Huntingdon. Eldest son of the Earl of Huntingdon.”
“Earl?” Isabelle gasped. Thomas had said he was a hoity-toity person in the nobility, not a full-fledged earl. She shook her head. “Thomas said King John sent the Wolf to kill you before I was born. Why?”
He waved a hand. “It’s a rather boring tale of the intricacies of inheritance law and the importance of feudal standing.”
“I would rather welcome being bored for a change,” Isabelle said pointedly.
Robin sighed. “Couldn’t we talk of something else? Perhaps how lovely the day is, or the curiosity of grass growing?”
Isabelle leveled him with a look, and Robin sighed again. “You look just like Marien when you do that. Very well, the boring parts it shall be. Sixteen years ago—could it really be sixteen? It feels like only yesterday.”
“Perhaps to you,” Isabelle retorted. “It has been a lifetime for me.”
Robin tilted his head. “A fair point. An Isabelle-lifetime ago, King Richard the Lionheart sat on the throne, and his sniveling little brother John Lackland wanted it. Richard was always away, fighting some war or another, and John had nothing better to do than fritter away his brother’s winnings in gluttony and convince himself he would be a better king. So he formulated a plan to stage a coup and take the throne.
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