Nottingham

  “Please hear me out.” His face softened. “You should know that I do not come to you lightly, and I realize what I ask of you is no small thing.”

  “You haven’t told me what that thing is,” she laughed, because she did not know how to react to him at all. On another day she might have appreciated his concern. It was rare for a Common Guardsman to speak so gently, when they were normally prone to pawing at her and boasting of things they would like to do to her. The things they were like to try now, without the protection of either Roger or William.

  Marshall swallowed. “Do you know about what happened to Morg?”

  It took a moment for Arable to even wrap herself around the question, it was so far removed from herself. But yes, she had been there in the dining hall that night.

  “Morg never meant to kill that boy, but truth be told I’m glad he did,” Marshall said. “We’re all safer for it.”

  Arable pursed her lips and nodded, though she didn’t necessarily agree. Morg had always been a sweetheart to her. But when a man chooses to show one side of himself to the world, she had learned to be wary of the one he hid.

  “He’s still in prison.” Marshall glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “He can’t stay there. He’s being held with the same people he arrested. It’s not safe. Even if he were wrong to do what he did, he doesn’t deserve to die down there.”

  Arable suddenly wondered if there was a reason nobody else was nearby. “I don’t know why you’re talking to me. I can’t do anything to help you, I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve talked to Sheriff Wendenal, but he won’t listen to me, and neither will Captain Gisbourne.” That caught her attention. William now shared the same moral compass as Gisbourne. “They think Morg is safe, but they don’t know the prisons as I do. There aren’t enough men in there to protect him, and the Derbymen won’t let anyone in that’s not one of their own. They think we’ll try to let him loose.”

  “But you are trying to let him loose?”

  “I’m not asking much, I’m not, I swear.”

  “That’s not what you said a moment ago.”

  “I just need you to get something to him, that’s all, it’s as simple as that.” Marshall twitched, matching her tiniest movements, apparently desperate to keep her here. “Nobody would ever suspect you. You could say you need to scrub the cells or collect laundry, them Derbymen won’t know the difference.” His hands trembled. “The key to each cell hangs on a ring just outside the block’s entrance. All you need to do is get it into his hands. He’ll get himself out. Just tell him to meet me at the Rabbit. I’ll be there waiting for him, after I get the key from Gisbourne.”

  Arable’s thoughts reeled, trying to find some advantage to this offer. “You’re taking an awful risk in telling me this,” she said. “What if I were to turn you in?”

  “As I said,” he gulped, “I’m out of options. Please, I can’t risk getting the key from Gisbourne unless I know you’re willing to help.”

  Two more Guardsmen were within eyesight now. She lowered her voice. “I’ll think on it.” She hoped that would appease him. “Talk to me again in a week.”

  “It has to be tonight,” he whispered, harsher now, his own eyes locked on the approaching men.

  “Then my answer is no.” She peeled herself away. “I’m sorry.”

  She bit into the wind and left, pushing past the two Guardsmen without even looking back to see if Marshall was following her. At the end of the walkway a stair led up into the bottom level of the barracks hall, where she risked a glance behind. Marshall had not budged, and his body had a defeated sag to it.

  She ascended inside, her eyes numb from the sunlight. Nottingham was too dangerous for her now, with no allies. Marshall and the Guard, they were remnants of her old life, trying to entangle her, to keep her from leaving. She had to look no farther than the scars on her cheeks to witness the dangers this place held for a woman on her own. It was an option, her last option, to return to the kitchens and ask humbly for forgiveness. Mistress Roana would understand and take care of her, but Arable couldn’t do that. She only became Roger’s serving girl as a disguise. If she went back to the kitchens now she would be a servant in heart as well as in title. It was a smothering sort of obscurity—she would disappear into it and never crawl out again.

  Fortunately, she didn’t need to.

  A new life. She steeled herself, ignoring the foreboding weight of those words.

  She continued straight through to the top floor of the barracks and out to the battlements on the opposite side. Again the chill wind bit into her cheeks, but it kept her alert, it kept her body feeling. It was a late morning, and Lady Margery d’Oily would still be in the large bedroom of the upper keep.

  * * *

  “DOES IT EVER OVERWHELM you?” Arable asked. Roger de Lacy sat on the thick wooden table he used as a desk, cracked and flawed, both of them. He rocked back and forth, arms cupped around his knees. He looked like a child, despite the grey hair he could try to hide and the responsibilities he couldn’t.

  “Of course not,” he mumbled, his eyes focused on something out the window, far off but moving, a bird crossing the sky. “Nobody has ever been overwhelmed by anything. It’s the sort of thing people say that doesn’t make any sense. Overwhelmed. What would it take to actually overwhelm a person? How many troubles can a man have before they ooze out of his ears? Would my chest rip open and all my difficulties pour out, onto the ground, for me to simply lace myself up again and go about my day? To be overwhelmed would imply there exists a point that man cannot possibly take any more, and, were he given even the tiniest of troubles further, he would cease to be, or explode perhaps. Astonishingly, this has never happened. That is our strength—mankind, that is. We can always take more. Even at the edge, when you feel the cliff crumbling beneath your feet, when you think you’re falling, you’re not. You’re floating. You’ve just never felt it before. We can always take more, Arable. There is no such thing as being overwhelmed.”

  There were tears in her eyes, and she felt a strange sort of humility.

  He turned and winked. “I am, however, absolutely and utterly whelmed.”

  * * *

  MARGERY WAS INDEED IN the high keep’s master solar, but she was not alone. Her husband, the squirrelly Earl Waleran de Beaumont, was pacing in circles about a tall-back chair whereupon sat their recently arrived son. The younger Waleran was a rugged and charismatic man who would have been attractive if not for his pervasive sense of entitlement. Arable guessed that his moniker, the Young Bear, was one of his own devising.

  “Where are your manners?” Margery snapped, and only then did Arable realize she had barged into the room without having knocked. She had been enveloped in her thoughts, and flustered to find an apology. But Margery abandoned her with a flick of her wrist and continued in conversation. “I think it’s a terrible idea, positioning yourself in the very role with which you do not wish to be associated.”

  “It will make him look like a hero,” the earl said to his fingers.

  Margery leveled her eyes on her husband. “It will make him look like a captain.”

  “I am a captain, Mother, and it would serve me well to be the captain who captures this infamous Robin Hood.” The Young Bear spoke distinctly and did not fidget like his father, nor did he seem afraid to contradict his mother. “I don’t see how anyone would think poorly of me for doing so.”

  Arable found a discreet position to wait. Whatever mild friendship she shared with Margery in private was nothing she would recognize in front of her family.

  “You should be on the balcony with the Sheriff Wendenal,” Margery was saying, “so the people will identify you with that level of prestige.”

  “The people don’t know who I am,” her son countered, reaching out for a glass of wine on the table beside him. He held it by its rim but did not sip, tilting it back and forth as he watched the liquid roll. “If I stand next to Wendenal, nobody will notice me. At leas
t on the gallows they’ll see me wield authority, and they’ll call out and cheer when we put Robin Hood’s men in irons. At a moment such as that, I will have their love more than Wendenal ever will.”

  Arable’s mind fluttered. For some reason, the earl was under the impression his son would be appointed the new sheriff by Prince John. But Arable knew better.

  “You’re not allowed to be stubborn with me,” Margery took the glass from her son and set it down again, “as I was the one who taught you the talent.”

  “By such reasoning I should not be able to disagree with you, either,” he returned, “as you constantly teach me how to be disagreeable.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. You’re just like your father, you like to move words around until they sound like wit, when you frankly have nothing worth saying.”

  She should help them, Arable realized. Her fate was now entangled with theirs, after all. But the last few weeks had been full of William’s politics, and she fumbled to keep track of whose lies were whose. She needed a moment to clear her head, but they kept speaking.

  “Consider the alternative, Mother,” the Bear was saying. “If I am not the one to arrest the outlaws at the funeral, it will be another. Who? Captain Gisbourne will be with his men, guarding the city entrances, so the honor will fall on some other contingent. The Yorkies, feasibly. How will that look when I take the Sheriff’s seat, if we needed York to capture this criminal for us? It makes Nottingham look weak, and it will make me look weak.”

  “You assume too much.” Margery scowled, staring at her husband. “You put all your faith in John’s empty promises.”

  “Prince John gave me his word,” the earl grumbled from the window, “that he would name my son as Sheriff. He signed the edict. I wish to God he’d simply sent it rather than wait for the funeral to announce it, but it’s no matter.” Arable had that edict, tucked beneath her straw mattress, the letter that could undo William’s claim. But it did not have the young Waleran’s name on it …

  “Our son shall be Sheriff, regardless of where in the hell he stands during the funeral.”

  “A promise Prince John made when de Lacy was still alive,” Margery bristled, “but much has changed. Have you met with him yet?”

  The earl snorted. “I tried. He’s a very busy man.”

  Arable’s silence wasn’t helping anything.

  “The prince sent the edict,” she blurted out, before she could think through the ramifications. “It arrived a month ago, the day that de Lacy was killed.”

  “What?” Margery startled, as if Arable had suddenly appeared out of a puff of smoke.

  “He sent it?” The earl descended on her. “But if my son was appointed as Sheriff, what in the hell is Wendenal doing here?”

  “The prince didn’t appoint your son,” Arable said. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “That letter was from the prince?” Margery’s face was ever sharper. “Not from the Chancellor? Roger told me…” Her eyes closed, an unfamiliar wash of defeat sank into her face. “He told me nothing, he let me assume what I wanted. Damn him and his pride.”

  “This makes no sense.” The earl started twirling his fingers again, closing the shutters as if there were spies listening in.

  “You idiot,” Margery turned on her husband, her wrists clattering with jewelry as she waved her finger in the air, mocking him. “Prince John had no intention of appointing our son. He sent a letter, and Wendenal was appointed as Sheriff. It’s no more complicated than that. William de Wendenal has been the prince’s man all along.”

  The earl sat down. “My God.”

  “You and your damned conspiracies,” Margery seethed. “They blind you to the simple truth! Wendenal is marrying the prince’s cousin, for pity’s sake, and you think they’re not in bed together? You think they didn’t plan all of this?”

  “Do you suppose, then,” the young Waleran looked gravely to both his parents for an answer, “that Prince John was behind the assassination as well?”

  It lit a chilling possibility in Arable’s mind. Might the prince have orchestrated de Lacy’s death, appointing Gisbourne to replace him? Her mind raced to shuffle through the logic of it. She fought to keep the panic away. Prince John was only a single story beneath them.

  The earl spoke through his teeth. “You’re right, son. There is too much coincidence to pretend otherwise. De Lacy’s death must have been Prince John’s doing.”

  “Then what was the point of coming here?” the Young Bear fumed. “You told me I would be the Sheriff in Nottingham. I made considerable arrangements to leave my post at Warwick. Am I supposed to simply return and pretend this never happened?”

  “Do not use such a tone with us,” Margery scolded him, “when you had as little to do with earning this title as you did with your current one.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Quiet!” the earl shouted, a paralyzing intensity about him. “Let me think this out! Prince John has betrayed me, that much is certain—”

  “He did not betray you. You aren’t important enough to betray. He simply ignored you, as one does a fly.”

  “I don’t care what you call it, Margery! We made a deal, and he chose to break it. He chose that. He knew we would all come here, thinking he would keep his word.” He chomped his jaw shut, quickly, then took a half step back. “I don’t think we’re safe here.”

  Margery laughed, but it seemed hollow.

  “If Prince John wants control of Nottingham for himself, he would do anything to secure it. And he knows my plans are not in line with his. His first step would be to remove any threat to his power here. My God, son, that’s why he wants you on the gallows the day of the funeral. A few phony accusations, and he may hang you alongside his outlaws as a conspirator!”

  The young captain’s mouth dropped, he turned to his mother for appeal. Her own jaw had done the same.

  He pivoted to his father. “I’ll summon my men.”

  “We must leave as soon as possible, if not sooner.”

  Both went to action, gathering their belongings, as Margery stood baffled between them. “We can’t leave now, we can’t leave before the funeral.”

  “It’s not a funeral for de Lacy,” the earl warned her, “it’s a funeral for us.”

  “That’s ridiculous. We can’t leave now.”

  “Don’t question me on this, Margery!” The earl was suddenly invigorated, and whatever strength he lacked before came now with precision. “You have no idea the people we are dealing with, and what they will do to accomplish their goals. I misjudged Prince John. I thought he would be on our side, but he is something else, something else entirely. He has set a trap for me. Look at this place, this grand bedroom! They’ve been begging us to stay.”

  Margery wilted, and Arable knew why. She had grown somewhat fond of Nottingham—she’d confided as much in their private talks. The work she had done to revive the markets, the subtle politicking she had done with both de Lacy and William, she was watching it unravel uselessly through her fingers. “We can’t leave…”

  “We can and will,” her husband spat.

  “We can’t leave…” she repeated, sharper, “because if you’re right, they won’t let us leave.”

  The earl froze midstep, more alarmed than ever. “We must take that chance. Son, make as little noise at this as possible. Discretion is our only ally now. We go one by one, and leave what we can. If anyone hears we are trying to depart, Wendenal may expedite whatever plans he has for us.”

  “I can help,” Arable said, rising to action. She could move about the castle as she wished, and could safely burn whatever few bridges she still had here. “Just tell me what you need.”

  Margery’s eyes flared wide, drilling into her. She said nothing, just continued with that crazed withering stare Arable could not understand. The earl looked and sighed. “God’s mercy.”

  “What is it?” Arable asked.

  Margery signaled to her son to do
something, but Arable could not tell what. “We cannot let you go, girl, surely you see that.”

  For a moment, Arable wasn’t sure Margery was addressing her at all. She had not called her girl since their first meeting. “Let me go? Why would I go? I’m here to help.”

  “Don’t play coy, you’re Wendenal’s whore.”

  Arable gasped.

  “You’ve been playing me all along, part of whatever plan this is. You’ve known about this letter for a month, and said nothing! I offered to take you in. What a fool I was to trust you, but that is a mistake I can correct now.”

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. They had to understand she had nothing to do with this. Except she had, she had lied to Lady Margery. Lied about the letter.

  “No, that’s not true,” she stammered. “William and I are over, you have to take me with you. Please, you don’t understand.”

  Lady Margery curled her lips back, showing her teeth. “Don’t you cry at me, you insipid little cunt. You appealed to my feminine softness once with that appalling act and I assure you that it will not work again. I think perhaps I’ll cut your tongue out. I’m sure its loss will be mourned by half the men in Nottingham.”

  All of Arable’s words rushed away, she choked and keeled down to her knees, gasping for air. Lady Margery knelt, her face suddenly terribly close and wretched.

  “Now then, what do you suppose we are to do with you, Miss Burel?”

  “We don’t have time for this, Mother.”

  “If we leave, she’ll go straight to Wendenal.”

  “I won’t,” Arable said, but it bubbled and caught in her throat.

  “Just pack your things,” the captain took control. “I’ll handle the girl.”

  Lady Margery pursed up, her face sour. At length she squinted at Arable, the crust in her wrinkles flaking. “Aren’t you lucky, dear? My son has a soft spot for pretty faces. Be sure that we never see yours again.”

  Arable searched the man’s face for any sign of compassion, but he merely frowned. “Listen to me, then. You’re to stay in this room for the rest of the night. By morning they’ll surely know we’ve left anyway, and then you can do as you wish. But I’m leaving one of my men outside the door until then, to tell any visitors my family is quite indisposed. In the morning, he’ll catch up with us in Warwick. His name is Kendrick, and he is not a kind man. If you so much as touch these doors, I give him full authority to do anything he wishes to you. For your sake, you should hope he kills you at the end of it. However, stay inside and quiet until morning, and you have nothing to fear. Tell me that you understand.”