Nottingham

  “What did they tell you about him?” Robin asked.

  “Your father started this war, Robin. These outlaws, your father’s outlaws … this was his plan all along.”

  “You didn’t know him.” Robin paced the room now, back and forth in front of the crumbled walls and the moonlight. He shook his head—he almost wasn’t even speaking to William anymore.

  William had to find the words to go back, to let Robin see. He could explain this all perfectly well, if he only had the right words, but it had gotten too complicated. Too personal. “Forget it. It’s not important. Let’s just remember what we’re here for, alright? You’re going to ride for the shore. You’re going back to Richard.”

  Robin’s lips bulged forward, as if they would not let him utter his next words. At length he swallowed and looked William in the eye with a newfound certainty. “I’m not.”

  “You can’t wait for me forever.”

  “I’m not waiting.” Robin’s eyes were strained, he closed them slowly. “You’re going to see this through? Fine. So will I. I can help. I can still effect a peace on my end.”

  “Peace is not possible anymore!” William blurted, and it echoed through the hall. “Nottinghamshire cannot have a peace until your outlaws are gone! All of them! There’s no way around this, I’m sorry. Are you going to tell me where their camp is, or not?”

  Robin shut his lips tight.

  “I thought you would be happy to help,” William said. “I could have gotten this information from Marion, but I didn’t want to put her through that.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Robin said. “Don’t you dare threaten her–”

  “I’m not threatening her! Listen to me, Robin! You can’t help these people!”

  “I can, damn it! I have to.”

  They stared at each other. The sun had gone down. Their breath turned to steam, alternating clouds that pulsed through the room like a heartbeat. William couldn’t believe what he was forced to say.

  “Robin, if you choose to join them, I can’t … I won’t be able to protect you.”

  Robin stood still, and William was terrified of what his answer would mean. He could hear his own blood pounding in his ears. He squinted to keep his eyes dry.

  Please don’t do this.

  “What’s the price of your peace, William?” Robin’s voice was tiny and hurt. “Would you kill me for it?”

  How the hell did it get this far? What had happened to him in the last month? Good God. William’s heart could have dropped out of his chest. Am I in danger?

  The question hung heavy in the air. “Would you kill me for it?”

  William was chilled by his own response. “Would you make me?”

  Robin shook his head. His body was in shadow. “Give me more time.”

  “I can’t. Your charge is to return to King Richard.”

  “I disagree.”

  Such a simple phrase, but it was insubordination on the light side, treason on the heavy. Just like his father. “Are you leaving your post?” William had to speak fiercer to keep his voice from trembling. “Are you deserting your king?”

  Robin met him in fury. “Are you?”

  And then there was nothing left to say. He couldn’t convince Robin. He couldn’t force him to leave, not without violence. William’s mind was drawn to remember the knife he concealed in the dirt outside.

  “Out of respect,” William forced himself to say, “I’ll let you go. But if I ever see you again…”

  “Don’t be silly.” Robin backed up, into pitch black. “You won’t see me coming.”

  Then, elaborately and deeply, he bowed to William, his face glancing a streak of moonlight as he dipped. “King William, Sheriff of Nottingham.”

  “King Robin,” William choked.

  But Robin clicked his teeth as shadows devoured his features.

  “Robin Hood.”

  And then he was gone.

  PART VI

  THE DAMNED CONSEQUENCES

  THIRTY-NINE

  MARION FITZWALTER

  THE OAK CAMP

  THE TUNE WAS SLOW and sad. Slow, because Tuck could barely pluck out the notes with his swollen, broken arm. Sad, because that’s all they knew.

  Now is the knight gone on his way,

  The game he thought, full good.

  And when he looked on Bernesdale,

  He walked on, Robin Hood.

  And when he thought on Bernesdale,

  On Scarlet, Much, and John,

  He blessed them for the best company

  That e’er he had come.

  “Take thy bow in hand,” sang Robin,

  “Late Much shall be with thee,

  And so shall William Scarlet,

  Let no man die for me.”

  The fire was dying but nobody could be bothered to add a log, or to stoke its embers. It left a low smolder that changed directions at its own whim and burned the eyes, so each of them kept their face turned away.

  Marion almost had not come to the Oak Camp at all. She had doubted her ability to control herself, certain she would burst into tears or fury upon seeing them. In the end she was glad to visit one last time, even if just to say goodbye. They had planned a short service for Much in the morning, which would be more terrible to miss than to endure. But she could not help them anymore. It didn’t matter that Will and Elena had acted on their own, disappearing after Bernesdale. Everyone associated with this group was a traitor now in the eyes of Nottingham.

  That judgment included Marion. She had traveled to the castle, ignorant of everything, and luck alone had put her in the company of William de Wendenal. He ushered her safely away again, warning that the Captain would likely arrest her on sight. Whatever fleeting power she once held was gone, and she had no idea how deep was the hole into which she had fallen.

  “Why are you singing about Robin still?” grumbled John Little, looking up into the sky.

  “The people like him,” Tuck explained.

  It was true that the commoners liked the stories of Robin Hood. But that, too, would have to end now. It was one thing to spread scandalous stories of barely gentlemanly conduct with traveling ladies—it was quite another to idolize an assassin. The public already attributed Roger de Lacy’s murder to their fictitious Robin Hood, not knowing Robin had abandoned them. Marion wondered if Tuck could insert Robin’s departure into the lyrics. He’d have to find an elegant rhyme for “your fastest fucking horse.”

  John coughed. “You should be singing about Much.” It wasn’t a suggestion, and there was no point in arguing with him. For some, grief was a boulder cascading down the side of a mountain. There is no stopping it, no slowing it, and no telling how much damage it would do along the way. All one can do is stand aside and help pick up the pieces when things begin to settle. “There’s some generosity, I think, in that his parents weren’t alive to see this happen.”

  Tuck let his fingertips brush the lute’s strings. “Did you know his parents, John?”

  “I did not.”

  “Nor I,” Tuck admitted. “I think the only person who knew them was Much, and he never spoke of them. Which means they’re gone now, too. So yes, I’ll be singing a song about Much. So that people don’t forget.”

  “You mentioned Will twice,” Alan’s voice cracked. The young man had spent much of the last few days on his own, vanishing into the woods for hours on end. Every time he returned, it was as if there were somehow less of him. “But what about Elena? Why don’t you sing about her?”

  Tuck nodded. “The song’s not done yet. Perhaps you could help me with some of it?”

  But Alan just shook his head and swatted at the smoke.

  Marion did what she could to visit each campfire, to give heartfelt apologies, to explain that they would need to disband. Some of the women treated the news like a death sentence. Mothers like Amelia and Fionne had long sacrificed everything for their children, and had nothing left to give. Marion did what she could to help, but a handful polit
ely declined her company. That, perhaps, stung the greatest. For all her best intentions, she had let them down. Lord Walter’s death was indeed for nothing.

  Before she found a bedroll for the night, she visited with Friar Tuck in his tent, sharing the glow of the last wedge of a fat candle. She had leaned on the man for sound wisdom over the years, but rarely for advice on faith.

  “Funerals and weddings make everyone devout.” Tuck warmed his fingertips over the waning flame. “Something about lives coming together or being pulled apart makes most people pray harder, to seek guidance.”

  “They’ll come to you,” Marion said, “but what can you do? How can you ease this pain?”

  “I listen,” he smiled. “Grief is the only thing I’ve ever known that grows smaller by being added upon.”

  She reached out to him. It couldn’t be easy, to put aside his own mourning, to ignore his broken arm to heal others.

  Upon being touched his eyes sprang up to hers, the wrinkles in his face all sharpened. “Funerals and weddings, I see them as uniquely human milestones. The Lord can nurture love in a man’s heart, but it takes two people pledging themselves to another to make a wedding. The Lord can put reason in a man’s mind, but it is always the man who abandons it when he takes a life in wrath. Funerals and weddings aren’t holy moments. The Lord is only a bystander to these. They are proof we can do things, great or horrible things, completely without Him. Those aren’t the days to praise Him, they’re the days we should fear Him, and the gifts He’s given us.”

  He blew out the candle.

  * * *

  TUCK KEPT THE FUNERAL service short and humble. He read from Romans and called for silent prayer three times—once for each soul that had not returned. The longest, of course, for Much. There was some less-than-silent shuffling during the silences for Will and Elena. There were those who blamed them for what would come next. Marion had few arguments why they were wrong, but that did not lessen the blame on her own shoulders.

  Some were already gone. The widow Fionne and her daughter Maege had been seamstresses for Walter of Locksley, and had mended every torn shirt and cooked many meals without complaint. They slipped away at the end of the funeral with the rest of their family, without even giving farewells. Marion wondered if they were afraid someone would try to stop them. Gilbert with the White Hand had vanished like a ghost. Perhaps he was never even there at all.

  Others wavered, half-packed, unsure what to do or where to go. The kindly Amelia feared for her children. “Whatever it is that started in Bernesdale, we all know it won’t end there. We can’t fight. What do we do?” Her husband Baynard had been Lord Walter’s chamberlain, but was arrested on the day of the fire and never heard from since. Her oldest boy Norman was Much’s age, and the comparison terrified Amelia. Her little girl El was too young to understand any of it. Marion asked her to have faith, to pray, but her words tasted hollow.

  A flurry of ravens tormented the group with their ceaseless cawing, as if even the Sherwood would no longer tolerate their lingering.

  * * *

  “WHO DO I PRAY for?” Marion asked Tuck, watching another family disappear past the treeline. “I want to pray for Will and Elena, to give them whatever peace is left. But Roger de Lacy had a wife, he had family. Do you suppose they pray for Will to suffer? Whose prayer speaks loudest?”

  Tuck shook his head. “That’s not how prayer works. At Bernesdale, when they broke my arm, I prayed for myself. For myself. My face was in the dirt, praying I would get out of there alive, and I didn’t even see what happened to Much. Do you suppose what happened to Much was my fault, because the Lord was taking care of me instead of him?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Of course not,” Tuck said firmly. “You’re asking the same questions every man and woman has ever asked. But prayer is not for asking things from God. Not as I see it. Prayer is for giving. It’s for offering yourself to God, for devoting yourself to whatever it is He wants of you. And whatever that is, all we can do is accept it. Through prayer we are closer with Him, which gives us strength. But that’s only half of it. We give God strength as well, when we give of ourselves, unselfishly. Why ask Him for His help, when you can give Him yours instead?”

  They were fine words, but for another time. A panic swelled in her, born of exhaustion, at the idea of giving any more. For once, she would have preferred one of Tuck’s empty, pretty stories. She would have liked to simply hear it was going to be alright, even knowing that it wouldn’t be.

  * * *

  “I WANTED TO SAY goodbye,” Alan said softly, standing with his pack slung over a shoulder. It was a fine day, with clear skies that bathed their field in even light, marred only by a small lump in the ground with a crude cross. “I wanted to say thank you.”

  Marion would have thanked him in return, but she was too weary. “You’re not going off on your own, are you? You’re valuable, Alan. Find a group, go with them. They could use you.”

  Alan just balled his face up and shrugged his shoulders, over and over until he had decided that was his answer.

  “Alan?”

  “I’m no good at it,” he scoffed. “Not without Will. I’m just playing at it. I never really knew what I was doing.”

  There was indeed little about Alan that could be called brave. But he had lived at Locksley. He’d been part of the group since before the fire. He had heart in him, perhaps too much. Perhaps that was what called him away now.

  “I’m sorry about them,” Marion said. “I know what they meant to you.”

  “I could have left earlier, you know. I wanted to, I was going to. When we had that Guardsman here, Jon Bassett? He said I could go with him, he said it would be safe for any of us. It would have been safe.”

  That seemed like a lifetime ago now. “Why didn’t you leave?”

  Alan’s eyes were wet. “Will. Elena. They were here.” Marion’s heart ached for him. “Now they’re gone, and now it’s not safe anymore.”

  She met his eyes. Alan seemed so young at times, so unsure of his place in the world. He had never found his own strength. “What will you do?”

  Alan watched a bird fly from one end of the field to the other, then he just shrugged. “I’ll work. I was good at that.” His arms opened for an embrace, and Marion stood and gave it to him. “It was silly of us, thinking this would last? That we’d get away with it?”

  But he didn’t wait for a reply, he turned sharply and started away, glancing sheepishly over his shoulder after a few paces to see if anyone else was watching him leave.

  * * *

  “AND WHAT ABOUT YOU?” John Little asked, his face stone and serious. It was no surprise he would stay the longest, doing his best to see everyone off safely, including her.

  “I don’t know,” Marion answered, searching for anything to inspire some small cheer within him. The muscles in her cheeks strained to remember how to smile properly. “I could go to Sheffield and wait, but I wonder if there’s any point. I worry that they’re waiting for me. I think the safest thing would be to go home, back to Essex, and hope that none of this follows me there.”

  “But you won’t do that,” John predicted, “until you know you’ve tried your last here.”

  That time may have already come and gone. A crippling fear suggested she still had every opportunity to make things even worse. If every one of her choices so far had brought them to this point, she should have the wherewithal to realize her choices weren’t helping anyone.

  “Where will you go?” she asked him back.

  “Don’t worry about me.” His answer was quick, and it brought tears to her eyes. Because she knew he had no other answer. He would stay until everyone else was gone, and then it would just be John Little alone in the woods, with nowhere to go, until the snows buried him.

  FORTY

  WILLIAM DE WENDENAL

  NOTTINGHAM CASTLE

  WORDS WERE IMPORTANT.

  William always preferred to think he was fairly
good with words, better at least than average. He selected his words with care and tried to stay away from vagueness or exaggeration. He was no wordsmith, of course. Meeting an expert like Roger de Lacy reminded him of how pedestrian he must sound, and he was never able to craft a sentence together to make it sound like art. Still, he was careful not to misspeak, at least.

  So when he said, “I am surrounded by enemies,” it was not a clever turn of phrase. Coming from a man who had literally stood in the center of a foreign city and held his blade against a swarming mob, he knew precisely what those words meant.

  And frankly, he would trade Nottingham for Acre.

  “This was suicide,” he said, taking a rare chance to breathe, his face pressed to the fresh air slipping through the crenel in the cold stone walls of the keep’s staircase. He felt Arable’s hands on his back, patting him, rubbing back and forth as if she could abate his woes the way one pets a dog. “I should have left with Robin. Once I realized he wouldn’t help me … I didn’t think this through.”

  “You’re doing the right thing,” she whispered, petting him again.

  “It would have been the right thing if Robin had helped me.” He slapped the stones. “If I had apprehended his group, I might have had a shot at this. I couldn’t imagine he would choose not to help.”

  “You can still do this.”

  “I don’t know that I can.” William glanced down the staircase, but he had not heard anything. He just wanted to twist away, so that she’d stop petting him. “Nobody believes de Lacy appointed me his successor, and why should they? A sudden reappointment the same night he’s murdered? It was stupid. I didn’t think it through. I look like a damned collaborator! Nobody believes it, they’re dying to challenge me on it.”