Nottingham

  “Did you ever know him?” she asked, and the Bishop of Hereford answered as if anybody cared for him to speak. Not even God listened to him. Gilbert nudged his head sideways in answer, no, and she shifted herself back down at her uncle. Jacelyn de Lacy, the only member of the late Sheriff’s family who would attend his funeral.

  “His death was a relief to my mother. I’ve never seen her happier.”

  Jacelyn spoke at her full breath, discomforting the bishop’s whispers. He made some combination of agreement and protestation to her statement, enough to diplomatically appease her without insulting the dead.

  “I think he was likely the only interesting person in our entire family. Everyone else was afraid of him, afraid he’d take his lands back, afraid he gave a shit. I’d trade any of them to have him back. Or all of them. And I never even met him in person. Only in letters.”

  Once again, the Bishop responded, unnecessarily. She’d been talking to Gilbert.

  Gilbert placed a hand on the Bishop’s elbow to lead him from the room. The Sheriff de Wendenal desires a moment of your time. The man was only too eager to oblige, to get himself out of the stink, it wouldn’t matter that Gilbert had concocted the excuse. Jacelyn wanted time with the deceased, and Gilbert had chosen to allow her that moment. She may have seen it as a kindness, which was her prerogative, but it was just a decision. He was equally likely to push de Lacy’s body off the dais so that he might delight in however she would respond. This time he’d exhibited what some would call sympathy, those that were wrong about such things. The muscles about her good eye constricted slightly, didn’t they, an acknowledgement of what he had done for her, but a far cry from a thank-you.

  The captain had naturally thought twice of her when she insisted on joining the Black Guard. “Afraid they’ll take my womanhood?” she had asked, only half of her face smirking. Still the captain resisted, uneasy that his new outfit was turning quickly into a pack of bounty hunters. Her interest, by her own admission, went only as deep as avenging her uncle’s murder. But she proved she could fend for herself, and Gisbourne introduced her to the group as Jacelyn de Lisours. She was quick to correct. “Jacelyn de Lacy. I have no interest in being a Lisours.”

  The Bishop’s mouth and body made excuses as Gilbert led him outside, under the gallows again where Gilbert traced his fingers over the same invisible sign he made earlier. Again the noise settled, but for different reasons. Ahead, a small crowd pooled at the foot of the gallows. Four Guardsmen, one at each of her compass corners, made a tight perimeter around Lady Marion.

  Two full heads shorter than any of the men around her, but she still dwarfed them, didn’t she? Her eyes locked upward at the highest beams, and Gilbert was glad she did not notice him beneath. She would see his presence here as a betrayal. She couldn’t understand why it wasn’t, which was her shortcoming, not his. Still, that disparity scratched at him, a single fingernail. Since she had arrived, she was seldom out of her room, always guarded. Her face was pale, emptier. She looked the way Locksley Castle looked now, in woman’s form.

  At a guard’s prompting she moved again, escorted away. Into the staircase upward, and the bishop as well, and Gilbert decided he’d go out to the city, didn’t he? Not a soul had the grit to stop him, if they even had wit enough to think they should. Aside from the great main gate, one postern door wound itself through the outside walls, buried amongst unimportant storage. Impossible to open from without, but perfect for slipping away.

  He felt it again, scratching at his bones, the restless buzz. It had been building in the wrinkles of his mind ever since Much went. That nameless faceless threat, the only thing he truly feared. It crept down his throat into his chest where it burned and squeezed, that need. He felt it yesterday before he slit the farmers’ calves, and the blood had calmed it, but not enough.

  Much had been a calming presence for Gilbert. There had been something uneasy within that boy, something that scratched at his bones, too. Not this, not likely, but something prayer could never touch. Gilbert had found some solace in helping him. But that was a then, and thens are poisons to nows.

  If he had stayed, it would have been one of Marion’s men, wouldn’t it? When he couldn’t keep the buzzing at bay anymore, he would have killed one of them. Gilbert stopped midstep, curious. Perhaps that was why he had left them. But that would mean terrible things, it would mean he wanted to protect them, it would mean …

  Gilbert shook it off. It didn’t matter. Out to the city, as he had once done so often, to relieve the world of one more nothing man.

  * * *

  SLIPPING ONTO THE STREETS of Nottingham felt like sliding back to sleep after being roused. He fit into them perfectly, an intoxicating sort of comfort. He remembered every step from a few lifetimes ago, taking Walnut Tree Lane toward the wharfs. It was narrow, with a thick gullet in its center beaten with the leaking slop and filth from surrounding windows. Another day might have tempted him east to the Alleys, to catch up with some of the Red Lions that hadn’t gone to ground. Though they might not have the easiest time understanding why he came dressed in Guard blues, like some cock-hungry ferrers. The irony, of course, was that a real-life Ferrers was actually in the Guard with him, but he doubted the Lions would appreciate the distinction. So no, today, the Raff Yard would do, wouldn’t it?

  The last grasp of town before rock pushed up into castle, or crashed down into the river. Here were the poor souls who lived off the scraps of the wharfs, in every way. A muddy pit of poverty. He stowed himself behind a netted array of barrels just after Canal Street to remove his tabard and doublet, stripping all the way down to his britches and boots. The cold air was tight on his skin, but refreshing for the alertness it forced on him. He rolled his uniform into a ball and tucked it under the ropes that lashed the barrels together, and smeared himself with whatever black slurry he could find on the ground.

  The Raff Yard was the same as it had ever been. He took a quick glance around, then closed his eyes to remember what he had seen. A man with a furious mane of hair and vacant eyes. A tall gaunt worker beating the ground with a thick club. A skinny mother prying open her naked child’s hand. A dozen others like these, the desperate. But, fortunately for them, memorable. He gave another look, and then a third, keeping track of anyone who stood out. Finally, on his fourth pass, he looked specifically for anyone whose face he had not noticed, for those that were the most forgettable of the forgotten.

  Gilbert settled on a man who sat curled up against the rockside, absently brushing dirt off his cheek. These were all nothing men down here, but Gilbert had made a deal with himself once upon a time, to never make it easy. That which he chose to do had no limitations, but this … this was something he did not choose. And for it, for being a slave to this drive, he had made rules to abide by. When his heart sang for blood, he would only take that which would never be missed. There was no joy in sitting in filth, to wait amongst this human herd. It was a punishment, which he put upon himself, which he deserved, didn’t he?

  Time rolled on, the cold burned his open back, he hooked the tips of his fingers between his thighs and calves to keep them from going numb. The nothing man continued contributing nothing to the world around him, until at length he pushed himself to his feet and ambled off toward the river. Gilbert followed in as inexact a manner as was prudent, pausing to do nothing several times and blend in. He followed the other down toward the water and the rocks, and privacy. He swarmed up and plunged his good fingers into the man’s throat from behind, high up where the neck met the jaw, and then wrenched the man’s head sideways, flinging him off his feet. A moment later, atop him, his good hand clenched tight around the man’s apple so that he could make no noise. The man’s eyes were wide and black and red and bulged as Gilbert squeezed.

  The familiar rush warmed him, a thousand pinpricks across his flesh. Not too fast, now, let it last. He released his grip, enough that the man could gasp quick broken gulps of air. Gilbert placed the tip of his knife ju
st under the man’s nipple. The nobody’s hands flailed at Gilbert, so he plucked one from the air and slid his knife through it, high near the wrist, between the bones, all the way through. The man would have screamed but Gilbert covered its mouth again, and watched as the blood came, beautiful and dark, out of the wound and down the skin, coating it, staining it. Black at first, and crimson when it thinned, and hot over Gilbert’s fingers. He let it flow down onto his palm, dripping beautiful down his own arm. Its eyes were tight and wet now. Gilbert breathed in deeply, then exhaled and pushed the knife down into the soft of the neck, down toward the heart, and was welcomed by a red spring that leapt at his command, cascading down both sides of the body with godlike orchestration. It pooled in the pores of the skin and the rock, and disappeared into the earth. Gilbert shuddered, lightly at first and then uncontrollably, his body heaving, his extremities going numb and then limp, and finally his mind dripped empty, so wonderfully blank, into milk.

  In the endless amount of time before he would need to move again, Gilbert was small and safe and warm. His bones couldn’t itch because he didn’t have any bones. Even the constant torture of his left hand disappeared into the red milky nothing.

  But even in that white painless perfection, one small black pebble nudged him. An almost nothing, but it was there, and his soul blinked, and the world and its pettiness slowly drew back to life. That black pebble had cut it short, it had been so much shorter than before, but that made no matter now, did it? There was a body underneath him that he would need to dispose of. He was too cold, and the Guard would be looking for him soon. None of these worried him, for they were simply tasks for him to check off a list. Pebble or not, there was nothing he couldn’t accomplish now that the buzzing was gone, and to prove it he sprang to his feet and heaved the body over his shoulder.

  A short run down the rocks and into the shallows of the river brought him to a cutaway in the northern slope, just large enough to conceal the body until he had time to come back later with a horse and take it out of the city. It was light as air as he flung its limbs over itself, and Gilbert cut off a cluster of nearby bramble to cover the face. He washed clean in the water and left.

  In the Raff, he noticed an old woman standing in place, turning slowly as though one foot were stuck, squinting, looking, searching. His satisfaction of doing the thing wavered, and for a moment the black pebble burrowed through his brain again. He couldn’t avoid wondering if the old woman was looking for a man who would never come back.

  Gilbert slapped his own face. He was better than regret, he couldn’t be bothered with such a pedestrian attitude. It made no sense, why it would come now, why it had come in the white, for such a trivial act. He’d done far better things, things that would brand him a traitor to many, and never felt that pebble’s touch. Not an inch of him regretted delivering Jon Bassett to the Red Lions. The boy had screamed and squealed as the Lions spit him and strung him. He’d begged and cursed Gilbert in the same breath as they teased his life away in the tunnels beneath Nottingham.

  Retrieving his clothes from the netted barrels, his thoughts flirted back toward Locksley Castle, imagining Lord Walter’s face churning and charring black in the fire. Gilbert rewatched himself light the torch he had used, walking through its halls, setting anything he could find ablaze. Every living soul had run out to the stables, trying so desperately to put out the flame that the Guards had started, and Gilbert had chosen the opposite. One thing burning wasn’t nearly as interesting as everything burning. It was as much wood as stone in that place, and roof and timber both begged for flame. He had split the oil casks and thrown them against the walls of the dining hall, watching the fire writhe forward, burning hotter and deeper, brighter. That had been the longest his mind had ever disappeared, a wondrous unending mute, nothing but the warmth of the blaze on his face, and the more he fed the flames the longer his solace lasted. At one point he had thought himself wincing from the heat, only to realize he was smiling, wide and childish, uncontrollably.

  They had blamed the wind. They thought the fire jumped from the stables and took a miraculous turn on the breeze to find itself inside the castle, because it was the only explanation they had. And he’d never thought twice on it, never suffered the same sickening sense of consequence he felt now over a nothing man.

  What it meant, he couldn’t fathom, he didn’t want to, he walked faster. He looked down to discover he was clawing at his glove with the other hand, fresh blood staining it from within. White and red. It didn’t matter, he had more gloves, didn’t he?

  When he made it back to the castle gates, he had but to gesture and the Guards opened the side gate for him. They were nothing men, too, safe until Gilbert’s bones started itching again. Not five seconds after he passed, the gate screamed open again, and he turned to see Jacelyn de Lacy walking briskly behind him.

  She had followed him. Her good eye bored a palpable hole into Gilbert’s own. She overtook him but did not stop staring, twisting her face around. Perhaps she had only now seen him. Or perhaps she had witnessed everything. Perhaps she was doing something guilty herself and was worried he had seen her.

  Not guilty, never guilty. He dug the nail of his good hand into his forearm as punishment for thinking the word. When he pulled it away he left a dark purple dent. He wondered whether he would choose to do something about Jacelyn de Lacy, but no thought came to him.

  In the long room off the side of the barracks’ dining hall, Captain Gisbourne asked where Gilbert had been, of course, but only because he had to. The man’s mind was elsewhere. Jacelyn’s half face answered before Gilbert could.

  “He was with me. We heard about a man in town who claimed to have information on the outlaws, but he was only selling lies. We made an example of him.”

  She never looked at Gilbert, even after the captain thanked and dismissed them. Whatever she meant by it, it was for her own sake. Gilbert’s interest in owing her anything was nonexistent. Favors and thank-yous are only a polite version of slavery.

  * * *

  THE REST OF THE day slid by in an unmemorable blur, soft and smooth like river water over rocks. By nightfall he could have forgotten about the body by the river. If he closed his eyes, who was to say that the body would even be there anymore? A thing thought, a thing said, and a thing done could go the other way—a thing unsaid, a thing forgotten, a thing that never was. All that remained was that damned pebble, that thing he could not name.

  He ignored it, it was past, and Gilbert needed to tend to the now. Which led him to invite Jacelyn to take a walk with him late that night. It was unlikely she would describe it as an invitation, being woken with a knife at her lips and all, but those were the silly sort of differences that weren’t worth grieving over, were they?

  The deepest wine cellar had but one way in or out, which was a long journey for any noise to get back to the world. Gilbert had already left himself a candle burning on the table.

  You watched me today, don’t pretend that you didn’t.

  It was cold down here and Jacelyn’s hot breath came out in thick fat clouds. Gilbert breathed his own air down through his nose, and drew close to the flame. He placed the tip of his knife one finger above the candle’s pulse, slowly twisting its point to heat it evenly.

  It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other whether you ever walk out of this wine cellar. There honestly isn’t a single part of me that gives the first shit about your life. I’d wager you feel differently. So you have from now until my blade is hot to make me trust you.

  It was disappointing, wasn’t it, that she didn’t even look at the knife. She didn’t gulp or gasp or pucker like a person ought to.

  “You’re going to kill me?” She smirked halfway into a laugh. “Look at me. I’ve been half dead my whole life. That’s not killing, that’s mopping up.” Gilbert tested the tip of his knife against the tabletop and watched the burn it made, wondering how to deal with her unexpected apathy. “So you kill transients by the river. You th
ink that’s the worst secret I’ve kept?”

  When the tip was hot, Gilbert placed the blade down long enough to peel off his glove. In the candlelight the hand looked worse than ever, swollen and slimy, massive cracks winding through the twisted scar tissue. Alternating soft and stone patches, a history of pain. Without breaking eye contact with Jacelyn, Gilbert placed his own wrist over the fire, the very base at the palm, the sting was an old friend, an old enemy. He had saved this spot in his wrist for a long time. The smell of burning flesh was one that compared to nothing else. When he felt his skin churn into char he pulled his wrist away and plunged only the tip of the dagger into the wound, and his vision went white and every nerve in his body ripped open, cleansing him, erasing what he had done that morning. Reborn out of the pain, and the white faded to black and his head was on the table.

  “Here’s what I want to know,” her voice was the only thing in the world. “If you’re going to kill, why not kill someone who deserves to die? They’re everywhere, you know.”

  The words struck him as clearly as the pain. The pebble, the guilt, wasn’t about killing the nothing man. It was about wasting his time on the nothing man. He had left Marion’s men because he was done wasting time, which was their chiefest of skills. His rules had protected him, true enough, but they’d also hampered him. His bones would itch again, and soon, and here in the Black Guard he could put its relief to better use than nothing men.

  Though whether he’d do so alongside the Guard, or upon them, was the curiosity.