“To Robin Hood!” the men shouted around her, lifting their swords into the air. Allan gave her a nod, and again she blew on the horn as they called out, the sound echoing through the woods. When she blew the third and final time, just as Robin had done in the priory, the leaves rustled and carried the cry of Robin Hood until it seemed the very trees took up the call.
Isabelle stood alone beside the pile of stones marking her father’s grave, a humble resting place for such a legendary man. The Merry Men had dispersed to procure food for the evening’s feast, their mood carried along by a sense of purpose. Her mother spoke with Allan and John, both of the big men bowing their heads reverentially to the prioress. Patrick and Little gathered wood for the cooking fires while Helena and Adam filled their quivers to hunt food for the feast honoring Robin that night. She could feel Adam’s eyes on her as she stood there, a question as much as an invitation, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. She couldn’t look at any of them right now. When he disappeared into the woods with Helena, Isabelle pressed her eyes closed against the sigh that slipped out of her.
“You did well by your da, lass,” said a gruff, low voice beside her. She looked up, startled, to find Little John kneeling at the gravesite. He set a gold coin on top of the pile of rocks. “He would have been proud.”
Isabelle fidgeted with the rope that bound her habit, the ends fraying beneath her worrying fingers. “What pride is there in what I have done?”
Little John sat back on his haunches, considering her from his position beside the grave. “I knew Robin a long time, lass. Seen him through plenty of stupid stunts that should have been the end of him but weren’t. He knew the life he led. We all do.” He looked down to the stones. “I lost a sister and a mother to a bitter winter and empty stores of food, and nearly lost myself in the grief and shame. It was Robin pulled me out, and told me what he’d tell you now were he here. We go on not because we have to, but because we want to. We live the life we would have wanted for them.”
He rose to his feet, laying a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Robin would want you to go on, lass. He’d want you to find happiness.”
“But how can I go on?” she whispered, her voice catching behind a thick lump of tears. “How can I find happiness with only half a heart?”
“That’s your own path,” Little John said, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Can’t any of us walk it for you. But we’ll be beside you all along. The Merry Men stand with their own.”
“Thank you,” Isabelle said, wiping at her cheeks. “But I will not be returning to York. Or Sherwood. My place is here, with my mother.”
Little John frowned. “I thought you said you weren’t a sister.”
Isabelle shook her head. “I am not. Yet. But I intend to take my vows as soon as I am able. I may not be a gifted healer, but I can still serve the community here in other ways. And since it seems the king is set on war with the barons, the people here will certainly need our help. My mother cannot do it alone.”
Little John glanced at the prioress still talking to Allan. “I think your mother can handle herself. You sure this isn’t about something else?”
Isabelle looked down at her feet, down to the simple arrangement of stones. The lump rose again, threatening to undo her resolve. Threatening to undo her.
“This wasn’t your fault, lass,” Little John said in a soft voice.
Some small part of her could hear the ring of truth in his words, but the pain was still too great. Robin died saving her. He gave up the life he knew to protect her before she was even born. How could she face the Merry Men every day carrying that weight in her heart? It was difficult enough to look at the sadness weighing her mother down; how could she watch her father’s closest friends go through their grief knowing she was the one who caused it?
“Kirklees is my home,” she said, her voice shaky. She looked up to the big man imploringly. “I must return to the priory. Will you…Will you tell the others goodbye for me?”
“You don’t want to do that yourself?” he asked. “They’ll return soon enough, and you and your ma still have to eat.”
Isabelle shook her head. “I cannot…I have caused them enough trouble already. I should think they would be glad to be rid of me by now. Helena most of all.”
She tried to laugh, but the sound was so small and sad it turned into a sigh. Little John’s gaze on her was like being buried under all the rocks at her feet.
“Please,” she whispered. “I cannot face them. Not after all they have done for me, after all I have done. Tell Adam…Tell them all I am sorry. Please? For everything.”
He sighed, his brows coming down in a deep furrow, but he nodded his agreement. Isabelle fled his side, waiting until she was deep within the sightless embrace of the trees to give release to the tears made of her heart and her bones, the tears that dissolved everything within and left her hollowed out. The tears that made her nothing more than a vessel for boundless grief.
Isabelle waited until the snores of the sisters in the dormitory took on a deep, even rhythm before slipping out of her room. She crossed the long hall with quick, efficient steps Patrick would have envied. Not that she needed to bother with such stealth, considering most of these sisters slept like they were hibernating for the winter. She did not begrudge them their rest, though, after a long day caring for the sick and starving who had flooded their halls since the king and his barons officially declared war on each other. Marien and Isabelle had worked hard to regain the trust and peace of the sisters who remained after Catherine’s death—those whose beds had not been mysteriously vacant the morning after the mercenaries departed. It had taken hours of prayer and nights of tears and weeks of scrubbing to clean the dark stains from the cloister walls, but Isabelle had gladly gotten on her knees to scour those stones. When her hands worked, her mind did not.
She found her way to the stairwell leading down to the cloister, a light mist falling across the grass and turning it to icy shards in the cold. A whisper of fabric was her only warning as a shadow appeared beside her, and she had her knife drawn and raised before the soft scent of lemon verbena and mint gave her mother away. Marien raised a delicate eyebrow at the long blade hovering inches from her throat. Isabelle sighed, lowering the weapon and shaking the tension out of her limbs.
“Must you sneak up on me like that?” Isabelle asked in a whisper, glancing about the empty walkways. “One of these times I might actually hurt you.”
“I should hope whoever gave you that knife taught you better than that.”
Isabelle cut her eyes to the glittering courtyard, not wanting to think about Patrick or Adam or the others. She tucked the knife back into the holder she had fashioned for it on her belt. She still wasn’t as efficient with the knife as she was with her bow, but she used the time after matins to practice when she could not get back to sleep. No one would catch her unaware ever again.
“Where are you heading at this early hour?” her mother asked.
“To the chapel,” Isabelle said. “I could not sleep.”
“Ah, that is a shame,” her mother said with a small sigh. “I was rather hoping you were attempting to sneak out of the priory.”
“Mother!” she said in a shocked whisper. “It is not safe, you know that.”
“It is not safe anywhere in the country now, my child,” her mother said sagely. “Not with a war on. Do you know, my father told me the rebels have invited Prince Louis of France to invade the country? They would rather a foreign prince take the throne than give up everything to the king’s mercenaries. Imagine that, a Frenchman on the English throne.”
“He cannot be worse than John Lackland,” Isabelle said bitterly before she could catch herself. She glanced at Marien as they began walking toward the chapel side by side. “Not that I care a fig for the political machinations of the king.”
“Yes, I know,” her mother said with a nod. “As you vehemently insisted to my father when he visited last month. What was it you tol
d him? That you would sooner set yourself alight on a sacrificial bonfire than take up a claim to the Huntingdon title or the Scottish throne? I do not believe a woman has ever spoken in such a manner to my father. Other than myself, of course.”
“I do not want anything to do with the nobility,” Isabelle said, thinking back to that first meeting with her grandfather. He was an imposing man, built with the same steely gaze and intractable will as her mother. He did not take kindly to her words, though she could have sworn he fought back a smile when she spoke them. “I have seen the damage such power and entitlement can cause.”
“You have seen the worst it can do, but that does not mean all men wield it with such brutality.” They reached the chapel entrance, the smell of melted candle wax filling the space. Her mother turned to her. “There are those that can do great good. My father is one. You could be another.”
Isabelle shook her head, approaching the bank of prayer candles the sisters kept at the back of the chapel. A half-burned taper stuck out of a cup of sand at her feet and she extracted it to touch its wick to another candle’s, sharing the flame between them. The little flare sputtered and grew to life, and she buried the taper in the sand, crossing herself and offering up a short prayer before facing her mother.
“That is not the life for me,” she said simply, her voice hushed and reverential in the hallowed space. Without Sister Catherine there to scold her, the elegant beauty of the place made it a refuge. “And I should think you of all others would understand, as I know Grandfather asked you to return home and you refused.”
Marien gave a noncommittal murmur, lighting her own candle and pressing her hands together in brief prayer. Isabelle wanted to ask what she prayed for, if they prayed for the same thing, but she stayed quiet until her mother was finished. When her mother faced her again, she looked at Isabelle with one of her searching gazes, the kind that could pierce right through every defense Isabelle put up. Her shoulders tensed against the intrusion.
“I took my vows, and I cannot betray them,” Marien said. “My life is in my work, and these women need my guidance. This winter will be harder than ever on the people here, and it is our duty to care for them. And while I know you have a good heart, my child, I also know it is not here in Kirklees.”
“That is not true,” Isabelle said, turning toward the nearest pew. She sat down, folding her hands in her lap. “You cannot deny I have dedicated myself to my duties more than ever.”
“Yes, I know,” her mother said, taking up a seat beside her. “You have been the soul of piety and devotion.”
Isabelle gave a small sigh, the edges tinged with irritation. “So why do you deny me the right to take my vows and become a sister?”
“Because I do not think you actually want to be a sister,” her mother said.
“Of course I do,” Isabelle countered, though she could not bring herself to look at her mother as she said it. “What else would I be?”
Her mother took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “You have not touched your bow since you returned,” she said in a soft voice. “You do not shoot, you do not hunt.”
Isabelle’s jaw tightened. “I have not felt much like killing lately.”
Her mother paused for several moments, letting the hush of the chapel envelop them. When she spoke again, she laid a strong hand over Isabelle’s own. “I miss him, too.”
A wave of emotion built in Isabelle’s chest, climbing up her throat with a ferocity that threatened to split her apart if she let it past her lips. She curled her hand into a fist under her mother’s soft touch and clenched her teeth together, pressing it back down into her stomach. Marien gave a soft sigh.
“Isabelle, you cannot bury these feelings until they choke you.”
“I am not burying anything,” Isabelle snapped. “I am fine.”
“No, you are not,” Marien said, just as firmly. “You are angry and heartbroken and scared, if you would just let yourself feel it.”
“I do not want to feel it! I cannot bear…” She swallowed hard against the lump that stuck steadfastly in her throat. “I am fine.”
“Is that why you will not even say your father’s name?”
Isabelle looked to her mother in surprise. “I do not know what you mean.”
Marien met her look straight on. “I see you picked up some of Robert’s more irritating qualities. He was always most stubborn when he was wrong.”
“I am not…” Isabelle took a deep breath, struggling for control. “What good would it do to speak of what has already passed? I only wish to move forward.”
“Well, you certainly cannot do that by standing still.” Marien brushed a lock of Isabelle’s hair back behind her ear as she always did when her daughter was discomfited. “I understand grief, dearest, but what you have taken upon yourself is far beyond that. It is almost as if you believe you do not deserve to be happy.”
“How can I be happy? Knowing what I have done?”
Marien frowned. “What is it you have done?”
And there it was, behind her teeth, filling her mouth with the bile of recrimination. She couldn’t hold it back any longer, couldn’t bury it under the routine of chores or the fatigue of labor. Salty tears rose up in stinging waves, filling her head with their roaring.
“It is my fault,” she whispered, her voice thin and high. “If I had been paying closer attention, if I had gone with you to the infirmary, if I had realized the full extent of Sister Catherine’s betrayal, he would still be here. And if I had never existed, you would never have come here and been torn from the love of your life. How can I be happy?”
Marien sat in stunned silence, her deep blue eyes sweeping over her daughter’s face, contorted in agony. The words sat like a stone in the pit of Isabelle’s stomach, the cancer she had carried for weeks. But her mother reached out, touching her cheek, her lips lifting into a smile so warm it erased the tired lines from her eyes and mouth.
“Isabelle, my dearest heart. Your father was not the love of my life, and neither was I the love of his. You are the love of our lives. I will always love Robert, but the love we felt for each other was a drop in the ocean of the love we have for you. And there is no hellfire we would not walk through, no trial we would not endure to see you safe. And happily so. Never doubt that. Your father and I made a fine match, but we were not whole until you.”
Marien reached for her then, and at her mother’s knowing touch, Isabelle could no longer deny the tears, or the pain that rushed them to the surface. Marien enfolded Isabelle in her arms, laying her cheek against her daughter’s head as Isabelle’s grief washed through her and out of her, pouring onto the stones of the empty chapel.
At first she cried for her father, for the family she would never have and the small collection of memories she would treasure; but as those tears were exhausted, a melancholy settled in her, a restlessness of spirit that had nothing to do with Robin’s death. It was the same selfish thought that had plagued her since her time in Sherwood, that insinuated itself into her mind when she was most tired and least guarded against it. She shifted uncomfortably in her mother’s embrace, as if she could shrug it away. Marien sat back again, regarding her daughter with a keen eye.
“Do you know why I have never let you take the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience?” she asked.
Isabelle slouched into herself. “Because I am not yet worthy.”
“If Sister Catherine was deemed worthy, you certainly are by a thousandfold,” her mother said dryly. “But that is not why. I have not allowed you to take your vows because I want it to be your choice. You have had so few of them in your short life, and many were forced on you. But this one does not have to be. You said it so eloquently yourself: The constraints of our past do not have to define our future. The Wolf is gone. Sister Catherine is gone. And much as it breaks both our hearts, so is your father. You are no longer bound to this place, to this life. You are free.”
Isabelle dropped her eyes to the candles, the
flames low and fat in the cold air. “So you wish me to leave Kirklees?”
“Of course I do not wish such a thing,” said Marien, an edge of reprimand to her tone. “Were my wishes the only ones to be considered you would have stayed a little girl, my shadow companion. But my greater wish for you is that you find your place in the world. If that place is here, in Kirklees, the sisters will welcome you into their ranks with open arms. But if it is not, if another calls to your heart, then you must go.”
Isabelle twisted her fingers, unwinding them in a slow gesture of doubt. “Even if another place called to my heart, which I will not admit that it does, it hardly matters. The Merry Men do not need me. They need strong leaders like Adam, and strong bow arms like Helena’s. I would only get in the way.”
“I would not be so sure of that,” said Marien with a hint of a smile. “I have seen my fair share of hooded figures about the priory when they think they are being discreet. The sisters have not had to refill supplies in the village for weeks because someone keeps leaving mysterious donations of food and clothing.”
Isabelle frowned. “Why would they do that?”
Marien nodded toward the chapel doors. “Perhaps you should ask him yourself.”
Isabelle twisted in the pew, her heart leaping painfully in her chest at the tall, lean figure filling the chapel opening at the edge of the candlelight. Marien leaned forward and pressed a kiss against her temple, smoothing one hand down her hair and giving her a gentle smile.
“I love you, my infuriating daughter,” she said, giving her another kiss. “Find the place that calls your heart.”
Marien rose and swept out of the chapel, briefly touching Adam’s shoulder before disappearing. Isabelle stood and skirted the pews to the center aisle. Adam gazed up in bemused wonderment at the sturdy wooden arches holding the roof of the chapel aloft.
“Huh. I guess I won’t burst into flame upon crossing consecrated grounds again. That’s one in Patrick’s favor.”
His voice sounded deeper and richer than she remembered. The memory of him had been soft and regretful, the thought of his smile or the feel of his arms around her. This boy who stood before her was real, and rough with that realness.
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