“I know how to shoot a bow,” Will snapped back, but the large pink welt blooming on his forearm undermined his point.
“You know how to throw arrows at trees, it’s not the same. I’ll show you. Pick it up.”
Will did, exchanging an uncomfortable pout with Elena first.
“Pull it back. There, see how your elbow is pointed down at the ground? It puts the fat part of your arm in line with the bowstring. But if you rotate your elbow around to the outside—” he slowly twisted Will’s arm, “then look at the inside of your arm. See how flat it is? The bowstring can’t hit you that way.”
Will didn’t seem impressed, but he tried again without hurting himself and humphed.
“And don’t ever shoot at faeries,” Locksley said with some agitation.
“Shoot at faeries?” Tuck, quiet until now, was curious.
“Sorry—imaginary target, imaginary arrow. Don’t ever loose the string without a real arrow.”
“Why not?”
“Think of the bow, and all the energy that you’re holding in when you draw the string. When you loose an arrow, all that energy travels into your target. But if you release the string without an arrow, all that energy has nowhere to go, but back into the bow itself. Then you have a broken bow.”
Elena pointed. “That bow’s not broken.”
“Eventually you have a broken bow.”
“Eventually you’ll always have a broken bow.”
“Not if you treat her well.”
“God’s teeth,” Will laughed, “is that what they teach you in the royal archery? How to talk sweetly to your bow? Do you sleep with it and rub her every night?”
Elena laughed so hard she snorted, and met Will’s eyes for a moment. He was grinning wide but flashed her a hand gesture, tucked close to his chest, of his middle finger and thumb extended. It was a symbol meant to point out an arrogant mark who deserved to be robbed, but in this context—combined with a raised eyebrow—it roughly translated to, This guy’s a prick, right?
Elena wiggled the same sign back to him and shrugged her shoulders. Probably, it meant, but it doesn’t matter. They owed it to Lord Walter to give his son the benefit of the doubt. This younger Locksley simply wasn’t important enough to get under her skin. He was just a poorman’s dandy who couldn’t suffer to not be the center of attention for even a moment. It was no surprise—son of a nobleman, right hand of the king, he’d been told his entire life that he was important, special. No wonder he believed it. Elena, on the other hand, had been told every day of her youth she was shit. Told she was a bitch. By men like Robin of Locksley, who thought themselves taller than the world.
She had known Robins of Locksleys her entire life. They were her marks in Red Lion Square or the parlies, and their coinpurses were always lighter for having known her. Men born with privilege, with money, with title, and thought they were humble to complain about it. Elena had left the gangs of Nottingham behind, her and Will, but the instincts were still there. That street stab in the gut that tells when a person is trustworthy, or when their every word is candied shit.
And Locksley’s mouth stank of it.
When he described the king’s personal guard for a third time, how they were like brothers, it was more than Elena could stand. “What about your real family, then?” she asked through a smile. “You have any actual brothers?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said your friend is like your brother, so it stands to reason you’re familiar with having a brother.”
“No,” Locksley lied, thinking nobody could know otherwise. “No brothers.”
That legitimately shocked her, and she exchanged another glance of alarm with Will. Lord Walter had spoken sadly and often of his children, while Robin had just denied Edmond’s existence. Tells a thing or two about a man, though what exactly that was, Elena wasn’t sure. Shame, maybe. Though shame was not a river that ran deep in this particular Locksley. Pride, more likely. His reputation with his precious King wouldn’t shine so brightly next to his murderous brother’s.
That agitation got the best of her. “Oh, so you were lying to us?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
“If I said there’s nothing in the world that compares to waking up next to a handsome man, I’d be telling the truth. Right? Because I’ve experienced that. But if Alan said the same thing, it’d be a lie.”
“What?” Alan startled. “How did I get involved in this?”
“Actually,” Arthur broke in, “Alan might know that.”
“No, I…”
“So if you don’t have any brothers, you don’t know what it’s like to have one. Therefore, you’re a liar. Lessin’ you were lying about not having a brother. But why would somebody lie about that?” Elena repositioned to throw Locksley an obvious glare, but all she got was John Little’s prickly face and an elbow in the ribs.
Wait, his face said. He would understand soon enough.
“We’re almost there,” Locksley chimed in shortly after, upon sight of a notable copse of hawthorns. “Another hour and you will all, delightfully, become my father’s problem.”
If he’d been aiming for comedy, he’d missed. Elena felt herself sour to him further. All day they had assumed his intentions, if not his words, were kind. Lord Walter had taken people in to help them, while it seemed his son was only interested in getting rid of them. He had no interest in lending a hand, he just wanted his father to wave a wand and fix it. He thought they were incapable of anything on their own.
For as long as people had used words as insults, they told Elena the things she could never do. They told her since she was a girl, she couldn’t fight. They told her since she was poor, she would always have to follow orders. They told her since she was pretty, she would have to use her body. She’d denied all of that. She’d refused to be someone else’s plaything. That wasn’t the way to find freedom, not out of the streets, not out of a life. Not by someone else’s charity—she’d worked to earn Walter’s hospitality. You can’t climb a ladder by clutching onto those higher and hoping they drag you a few rungs before shaking you off. Doing so would mean she would never belong where she had arrived. It was simply another form of possession.
Robin of Locksley thought they were skivers. Boot-clingers.
He’d learn.
Elena urged the horses faster.
* * *
A FADING AMBER LIGHT cut through the shafts of trees to show the burnt husk of Locksley Castle. Her stone walls still stood, mostly, though every window or doorway was scorched black. Grey dirt and weed surrounded everything, what once was tall grass. Here and there, ivy tendrils crawled their way back up into the cracks, the earth itself not satisfied that the structure still stood. Lower walls had crumbled, a few taller sections had collapsed. There was no sign of any door, shutter, or banner. Anything consumable had been taken by flame. The sun bit harshly onto what remained, giving an orange glow as if the embers still lingered.
Locksley had stopped a dozen or so paces back, hands limp at his side. Elena had her own solemn memories of this place, which she wrestled down. She wanted to focus on watching the son’s reaction. If anything could slap the arrogant smirk off his face to reveal the actual human beneath, this would.
“Not quite home sweet home,” John apologized.
“Yes, Locksley Castle!” Will burst in. “Thank you so much for the fine accommodations!”
Locksley closed his eyes. “What happened here?”
Eventually Tuck, with his usual blend of kindness, “Something that shouldn’t have.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you,” John huffed, descending from the wagon. “Thought this would be better seen.”
Locksley moved slowly, placing his steps to the entrance with care, as if he were remembering each one. Against her will, a part of Elena felt sympathy for him. A small part, a pinkie, or the useless wattle of skin at the elbow. The Robin of body parts. They all had mourned this place in their own time, and come to
terms with it. They’d had to, such was the way with grief. It consumed your thoughts like a fire, but once there was nothing left to burn, all that remained were scars. Robin of Locksley was still made of kindling.
This may have been his home by birth, but it had been Elena’s by choice. Whatever memories came as his hands brushed the blackened rock archway of the empty main door, they were not what rose in Elena’s mind. She had found Lord Walter at this door once, propped open with a candlestick, sideways, a bitter wind whistling through. Elena had asked what he was looking for and Walter startled, then clutched Elena’s shoulder.
“I know it’s pointless,” Walter had confessed in a weak voice, “but some nights I keep an eye out for them.”
She’d felt dumb to say it out loud, but had nothing else to offer. “Your sons.”
Walter had nodded, after a long pause. “Robin. Edmond.” Both names stung, in different ways. “And Helen.” Elena had left him to the cold and the wind, having nothing else to say, not knowing what she could say. Later in her own bed, she curled up against Will tighter than normal and realized she shouldn’t have left at all. Instead, she should have bundled up in the whistling wind, cracked the door a little further, and said, “I’ll watch with you.”
But she hadn’t. She’d left.
That night, the wind had beat the doors so hard Elena thought they might break off. The image of them gone now made it seem they had, and carried Walter away with them.
“There’s so little left,” Locksley commented, as if his grief were limited to furniture and tapestries. The walls wore black rectangles where once they had hung, scorch marks and stains, piles of unrecognizable debris. Locksley mourned them with the specificity of a tax collector.
It disgusted her. She’d missed one night with Walter and still regretted it. Robin had missed so many more, and apparently didn’t care what his absence cost. He didn’t even have a good reason. No grand cause had dragged him from home—he couldn’t even bother to call the war important.
They kept walking.
“Any number of travelers had their pick of the place,” John explained. “Even the rocks.”
The dining hall was a tomb. Some tables hadn’t completely burned, their brittle wooden timber lying askew, twisted chandeliers on the ground, echoes of movement scurrying underneath the rubble. Rats or rabbits. Part of the roof had collapsed. The tall broken windows here faced westward, letting in red fingers that pierced through and left an empty black between.
This was where Elena and Will had first met Lord Walter. A year after leaving the Red Lions to make their own life, a year of discovering the world beyond the reach of Nottingham. But after a year they were tired and hungry, and followed the rumors of a generous nobleman looking for talent she and Will could provide. They had never thought of themselves as poor, but arriving empty-handed made it impossible to pretend they were not beggars. Elena didn’t quite know how to beg, and she’d only gotten on one knee before Walter picked her up. He asked her how she was best suited to help, then made both of them promise to never drop to a knee again.
“Not just to me,” Walter had smiled, “but to any man. You kneel to show that you are less of a man. I don’t allow half men here.”
“I’m not a man at all,” Elena had replied.
“Good on you.” Lord Walter had smiled. “A wise choice.”
A month later, there’d been a cripple at the castle who was missing a leg and was too weak to use crutches, pushed around in a small wheelbarrow by his wife. Walter nursed him to strength again, and found him suitable jobs that restored his dignity. In poor taste, Elena reminded Lord Walter of his own words. “I thought you said you didn’t allow half men here.”
“Luther is ten times the man of any I’ve ever met. You could get on my shoulders, and I on King Richard’s, and we’d barely reach Luther’s knees.”
Before that, Elena hadn’t even known the cripple’s name. That night the dining hall had smelled of cheeses and wine, of heavy roasted boar, and of people. Tonight it carried sulfur on the cold wind.
Three months ago, it had carried fire.
The memory of the sheriff’s men in this place was not a kind one. They had arrived unannounced, and old instincts told Elena and Will to hide. The familiar blue tabards of the Nottingham Guard had always meant trouble, and usually a night or two locked up in Sinner Mary’s. The Nottingham Gords had a smaller presence outside the city, but there was still no avoiding them. That night in Locksley, the gords and their captain had been greeted kindly, stabled, fed. John Little had even encouraged Elena to help tend to their belongings, insisting that they were “people too.”
Ultimately, he was right. But they were the terrible type of people.
“My father?” Locksley asked, at last.
Nobody spoke, which was all the answer he needed. A bird flew through the hole in the roof and burrowed into a nest high above, some twigs fell silently down and were absorbed by the ash.
Will said it. “They burned him.”
“That’s not how it happened.”
Tuck’s words hung gravely in the air, hoping for help, but no one else spoke. Elena wasn’t interested in telling the story, but she also didn’t want Tuck to water it down with any religious bullshit. “I can tell it.”
Locksley turned to her. “You were here?”
“Of course,” Elena said sharply. And you weren’t.
Tuck, of course, tried to keep it calm. “Robin, your father was one of the finest men I’ve ever known. Foolish, to be so fine in a world such as ours.”
“What happened?” was what Locksley asked, though the proper response should have been Thank you, or Rest his soul, or better yet I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m so very very sorry. Some apples fall from the tree, roll down the hill, land in a cart, and are sent a world away.
“The Nottingham Guard came in search of debtors,” Elena answered. “It was well known Locksley was a haven for those fleeing the beggar’s debt. I suppose the gords thought it would be an easy sweep, but they had it wrong. Lord Walter had already paid every penny owed. Except his own. He was the only person here they had cause to arrest.”
“And he fought back,” John added, with pride. “He gave them a round chase, he had a spirit to him you wouldn’t figure for a man of his age. Your father was sharing a bottle of wine with the Captain, then he broke it over the table and attacked him with it!”
“What?” Locksley seemed astonished.
Tuck bobbed his head. “He ended up in the stables. Some guard went in after him, and came out a moment later with blood pouring from his nose!”
“Your father had quite an arm for horseshoes!” Both John and the friar were now delighting in the story. It wasn’t a story that should be delightful.
“Well, nobody wanted to step foot into the stables after that.” Tuck smiled, all crooked teeth and scraggly beard. “The Captain tried to talk him out, but he flat refused.”
John nodded, but his smile waned. “We thought maybe they’d give up and go about their business. Until someone had the good idea to … to smoke your father out.”
Locksley closed his eyes and squatted down into the dirt. He traced his fingers through a pile of it, the ash clinging to his skin.
“You know those stables. There was naught but one entrance and one window up high. Someone lit up the end of a fresh spruce, and it gave up a thick heavy white smoke. They pushed it in through the front door with their toes, see, like this.” John imitated the guards, his hands over his face to protect from flying horseshoes. “And then ran back again as little pups. The smoke poured out the window as we watched, and we thought he’d give up. He should’ve given up. This wasn’t worth it. We yelled for him to leave.”
John paused, so Elena leveled her eyes on Locksley. “The smoke turned black.” It was a sight and a feeling Elena would never forget. It was like the whole world had just flipped over to let them fall into the sky.
Tuck continued. “Once the fire caught
, there was nothing anyone could do. Lord knows we tried. And not just us. The guards, the captain too. Every man and woman was rushing off for water, or hacking away at the stones to make another exit for him. There was no use. The doors were a wall of fire, the stones were too thick, and the black smoke … it ate everything. It was morning, but the sky was pitch as night. It was an accident, Robin.”
“The man who put that fire in the stables didn’t do it by accident,” Locksley growled.
“No, he didn’t. But we let him, and that’s our burden, too. It should have just been smoke. Alan swears there was nothing close enough that could have caught fire so, unlessin’ the devil himself had a hand in it. Which he may have. The fire rode the air, it rode in the smoke, and we were too worried about the stables to notice when it spread. It spread so fast. It spread so fast.”
“It wasn’t the devil,” Elena broke in, hating the friar’s easy excuses. “It was men. The choices they make, the things they do. And the things they don’t.” Those words were for Locksley, and she let him know it. Lord Walter had been part of this family, but his son was as welcome here as the fire.
“Accident or not, they did not come here to kill your father.” Tuck measured his words with care. “But that’s not the story that spread. People simply heard that the Sheriff was burning down houses, even of noblemen like your father, of those who didn’t pay their taxes. No arrest, no punishment, just the torch.”
“That’s why we can’t find another home, Robin,” John added gravely.
Tuck folded his hands. “We tried. No lord will take any refugees, for fear we can’t pay our way. And we’re certainly not the only ones out there, either.”
“You were all there,” Locksley’s words were deliberate, “and nobody helped him until it was too late?” Silence. “He was fighting, and running, an old man, your lord, and you watched it happen.”
“That’s right, Locksley,” Elena snapped, furious at the accusation. “We were there. At the very least, we were there. I know my regrets, but I know that I tried like hell to stop what happened here.” She and Will had left their hiding place as soon as the black smoke erupted. They’d gathered well water. She’d worked side by side with the gords. She was there, for every devastating beat of it. “And where the hell were you?”
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