Nottingham

  “She knows a lot about the castle,” Will added. “About the Sheriff, about the Guard and how they operate.”

  “I’ll earn my own keep, I won’t be a burden,” Arable said. “Even if only for a little while. I understand why you don’t trust me, but these two would be dead if I had not done what I did. And believe me, I didn’t rescue them for their sakes. I hate what they did. Roger de Lacy was like a father to me.” She stole a glare at Will and Elena, and John could swear it was true. There was hatred there, hard, but tempered. “No, I came for you, Robin. William said you were a good man, perhaps the best man he’d ever known. If I can overlook what they did and ask for your help … I don’t know how else I can prove I’m telling you the truth.”

  John didn’t have it in him to disbelieve her. If she were lying, then never had he seen honesty. “Give us a moment,” he said, and motioned for the others to join him aside the dying fire ring. He raised his hand to keep Will and Elena from following. This needed to be decided upon without them.

  They sat at the stumps about the ring. “I’m willing to believe her,” John said, drinking from his cup. He wished Tuck had made some of his hot cider this night, but the beer still warmed his belly.

  Tuck agreed. “She seems genuinely scared.”

  “That’s what troubles me,” Robin added, fingering the lip of his own drink. “Assuming this isn’t a trap, then she made this decision rashly, emotionally. In a few days when she’s no longer afraid, she’ll realize how much she’s giving up. She hasn’t thought this out.”

  “She certainly doesn’t give us much to trust,” Nicks said sadly. “She claims she has no loyalty to Nottingham, but she has even less loyalty to us. She betrayed them.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’ll betray us,” John argued.

  “She betrayed her entire life because she was afraid,” Robin sighed. “The next time someone threatens her, you think our secrets are safe? No, she can’t stay here.” He stared into his cup, but his eyes weren’t looking at anything. “And she can’t go back.”

  John’s mind reeled with what that meant. No one else seemed brave enough to say it aloud. “What exactly is it you’re talking about here?”

  Robin didn’t meet his eyes.

  This wasn’t a thing they could do. It was too dark to consider. Robin was so hell-bent on going to Nottingham tomorrow he could see no alternative. But in the grave silence, nobody else denounced it.

  “Shit.” Nicks coughed, so suddenly it made Alan drop his cup.

  “Listen,” Alan blurted out. “Maybe we’re thinking about this the wrong way? We’re only thinking of the worst-case scenario.” His hands shook as if it were his own life on the line.

  “Meaning?” Robin asked, passing his beer to Alan, who drank a gulp and recovered his courage.

  “You see her as a possible spy against us,” he looked from person to person, “but what if she were a spy for us? She knows the inner workings of the castle, she was able to get Will and Elena out with no trouble. She could get us inside, get us to Gisbourne. Or to Lady Marion. I’d trust her over Prince John any day. If she wants to help us, I say let her.”

  “What does she really know about us, Robin?” John asked. “She knows about this one camp, which we’ve never even used before. Maybe she can read our markings in the woods. But we can change our ways. That’s not worth her life.”

  “John,” Robin was aghast, “I have not suggested that. That is the last thing that I or anyone here wants. But we have to protect ourselves first.”

  “No,” Alan stated, with finality.

  “No, what?”

  “No, that’s not what we have to do.” Alan stared into Robin, his eyes wet. “It sounds fine, doesn’t it, protecting ourselves? But at the cost of someone who needs us. She came here and offered help, and you think she’s the enemy? We came to trust you, Robin, when you offered us help, even though you had only come to stop us. None of us would be here if someone hadn’t given us a chance. Your father had no reason to trust me, but he took me in. He could have protected himself, he could have turned me away. He could have turned all of us away. We can’t be afraid of the worst in each other, it only brings out the worst in ourselves. So no, we don’t have to protect ourselves. What we have to do,” his voice strained, his hands shook, “is trust each other.”

  John might have never been prouder of another man in his life. Alan had just shamed them all, simply by being right. “If we’re wrong, then we’re wrong.” He put his hand on Alan’s shoulder. “But at least we’ll have done the right thing.”

  Robin swallowed. “It’s a big risk.”

  “I’d rather die with people who trust, than live with people who don’t.” Alan stood. “What’s the point of any of this if we don’t take risks? What’s the point in helping people if we don’t … help people?”

  “Frankly,” Nicks touched Robin’s elbow, “if you still want us to entertain the idea of going tomorrow, then using her help is the only way I feel comfortable going.”

  Robin shook his head. “It seems too suspicious, too convenient…”

  “That’s because your first instinct has always been to doubt,” Tuck said. “But now and then, you ought to try having faith.”

  “What sort of plan do you think she’s a part of?” John laughed. “They return two of our own back to us in exchange for what? This little girl’s going to kill us in our sleep?”

  “Not kill,” Robin said. “But spy. Our only advantage has been that they don’t know where to find us. If she knows that…”

  “Fine!” Alan lurched upward ferociously. “Then we’re going to have to kill her!” He turned but lost his footing, caught it again, and barreled toward Arable. John yelled at him to stop, but Alan turned again just as suddenly, and darted back to the campfire. “We have to kill her, don’t we? Right? There’s no other way!”

  He smashed into one of the tents and emerged a moment later with a sword in his hand.

  “If she’s a spy, we have to kill her. And we don’t know if she’s not a spy, so we have to treat her like one, so we kill her.”

  “That’s enough, Alan,” John warned. The ale had gotten the best of him. He’d drunk too fast. Alan dragged the sword from the fire ring with one hand, steadying himself with the other, his eyes dead set upon the poor girl.

  “Please,” Arable sobbed, “nobody even knows I’m gone, I won’t tell anyone. I’ll leave, I won’t tell anyone, I won’t…”

  “That’s the way it’s always been though, right, Will?” Alan swung the blade in front of himself, slow, clumsily, but its tip caught the ground and it tumbled from his hands. “It’s fine to put anyone else in danger just so long as you get what you want!”

  Will didn’t know how to react. “What?”

  Alan took another step forward and his knee buckled, then he rose again, tripping forward, pushing himself back up to his feet, stomping the ground until he was next to Elena, and he reached out to touch the side of her face. “Hello, Elena. How are you?”

  She brushed his hand away.

  He spat blood into his palm.

  He dropped.

  * * *

  WHEN MARLEY PASSED, SHE’D been ill for a week, for a month, they had both known it was coming. She went quietly in her bed, made as comfortable as John knew how, though it wasn’t halfway enough. When she went, in the whenever moment after she closed her eyes, when he knew she was truly gone, John felt something inside himself break off and fall away. It was tied to every bit of him, it pulled at his face and his eyes and his name. It dragged him with it, heavy, and he was falling, sitting there in the chair beside what-was-her, he fell, a sickening lilting dive that he’d never known before. A terrifying tip into emptiness.

  As Alan dropped, John felt it again.

  * * *

  HE FELL IN TIME with John’s gut, but the others flew to action. Will dove to catch Alan, Robin called for water, and for help, and Tuck bolted into the woods, saying there were salts on the ox
cart he needed. Alan’s legs shot out, his hands slashed around and contorted, his fingers twisting into themselves, seizing. His back nearly broke as he spasmed backward. They tried to hold him down but he spat blood in their faces and broke free. Will cried out his name again and again, until a black gurgling noise came from Alan’s throat, and he kicked harder. His hands grasped for something, but found nothing. He stopped moving, only to twitch again, then stop. Then a last burst of blood and snot came out his nose, and he smashed his face into a rock. His body slumped.

  John was standing over him now, yelling something, but he couldn’t hear himself. Will looked up, his eyes begging, his face flush purple. Behind John, steel scraped stone, and Robin screamed in an inhuman roar.

  “On your knees!”

  John turned to see Robin take up the dropped sword and aim it at Arable’s neck, who had knelt to the ground, cowering in horror.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “I did nothing, I swear,” she gasped, staring at Alan’s body.

  “We tried to help you,” Will bellowed, still clutching Alan’s doublet, “and you came here to kill us?”

  “I didn’t do it, please believe me!”

  Elena was doubled over, clutching her stomach. “We trusted you!”

  “What did she do?” John asked. He couldn’t keep up. He didn’t know what was happening. Everybody seemed to know something he didn’t.

  “She poisoned him.” Robin shut his eyes. “It’s in the drink. It was in my drink. I gave Alan my cup.” He tried to raise the sword up, but instead took a step back and let it sink into the ground. “She was trying to kill me.”

  Arable bawled. “I don’t know what happened to him…” and her words jumbled together, indistinguishable from each other.

  “I knew we shouldn’t trust her.” Robin was pacing, then turned on Will. “I told you not to bring her here! You brought an assassin into our camp. This is on your head.”

  “Don’t you dare—”

  “I say we kill her,” Elena straightened, her fury larger than her little body. “Kill her right now. We swore it, didn’t we? We swore that whoever is responsible for killing one of our own will pay in kind!” She lost control of herself by her final words, wailing them out as she keeled over again.

  Will stood straight, his face deathly blank. His voice was dry. “She’ll be dead before he’s cold.”

  He moved with purpose and took the sword from Robin, who didn’t even flinch at its loss. Arable made a noise, not a cry or a scream, but it came from her soul.

  John couldn’t tell which of them moved first, but he found himself standing in front of her, protecting her. “Wait!” he pleaded as Will circled around him.

  “Please listen to me,” Arable cried, clutching at John’s back. “Think about this. I couldn’t have poisoned him. I was standing there the whole time. I never came anywhere near him, please help me!”

  “Put it down, Will!” John yelled, but his friend’s face was emotionless.

  “Get out of the way.”

  “She’s right. She was never near the cups!”

  “She was out of sight for a while when we arrived, waiting for us to introduce her,” Elena sneered. “Before we even got to the campfire. She must have snuck around and poisoned the beer then.”

  Will nodded, his eyes passing right through John. “Now get out of my way.”

  John looked around desperately for help. Robin’s mouth was open, but he didn’t seem interested in intervening. Nicks and Peeteys were positioning themselves behind John, but he did not know their intent. John had seen this chaos before. The panic. The too many of peoples who didn’t know what was happening. It was Locksley Castle, burning.

  “Let me think this through!” John yelled.

  “Think it through?” Will moaned. “Alan’s dead!”

  “Wait, just wait!” John didn’t have an answer, but he had the questions. “If she poisoned the beer, as Lena said, then we’d all be dead, wouldn’t we? Wouldn’t we?”

  “He drank the most,” Nicks answered.

  “Good God,” Peeteys cut in. “Are we all poisoned?”

  “Please somebody kill her,” Elena cried.

  “We’re not all poisoned,” Robin’s voice was unusually crisp, “we would have felt something by now. And it started directly after he drank from my cup.”

  “Only Robin’s cup had poison,” John repeated, slowly. “And Arable was never near it.”

  Robin squinted. “That’s right.” He looked back at the cups by the fire, the empty cask on the ground. “She wasn’t.”

  The world held its breath. Every one of them replayed the last few minutes in their heads, from the moment Tuck opened the cask. John couldn’t remember, his brain hurt to even try, there had been too much happening at once. Robin, on the other hand, had a queer calm to him now, and he looked up and breathed heavily.

  “She wasn’t.”

  Step by curious step, all eyes watched Robin as he picked a careful path that circled around them. “You know, Will,” he asked, casually but precisely, matching his movements, “when you showed up here, you said hello to me. As if you expected to find me here. But the last you knew, I had left to go back to the war.”

  He finished the circle, side by side with John, in front of Arable. Then, with sudden violence, “Why weren’t you surprised to see me, Will?”

  He couldn’t be right, John thought. There was another solution. Those Bernesdale boys, Geoffrey and Thomas. They had been there when the beer was poured, and then run off. That was it.

  But Will hadn’t moved.

  Nor had he let go of the sword.

  No.

  John couldn’t believe it, but not because it wasn’t true.

  He couldn’t believe it—he knew—because he simply didn’t think like that.

  Not like that. Not like Will Scarlet.

  Will wet his lips, and let his eyelids drag down. Every bit of the fury he had a moment ago seemed to drain from his body. He no longer looked the boy John knew, his face had aged a decade in only a few moments. Quite carefully he knelt, placing the sword on the ground, as if he were afraid to damage the grass that pierced through the gathering frost. When he stood again, there were tears in his eyes.

  “Lord Gisbourne came to me in my cell.”

  No.

  They’d chosen to risk everything, even after everything Will had done, to dive into danger to save their tortured little souls, all while Will had been planning this.

  John didn’t want to hear any more, it was too terrible.

  Will spoke deliberately, but his voice strained at the effort. “He told me you had returned.” Every sentence was an eternity. “He offered me my freedom, both mine and Elena’s. If I came back and poisoned you.”

  John stopped breathing.

  Will looked up at John, a desperation within him, then over to Robin. “But I told him no, Robin.”

  Just as slowly, he turned around, perhaps the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  He repeated, “I told him no.”

  And across from him, in the same moment that John realized it himself, came Elena’s response, choking on her own tears. “I told him yes.”

  My Elena.

  It shouldn’t have been possible, that the world could continue to be, after such a thing. It should either be done with and end, all of it, or let them start anew. Anything would be better than plodding forward from here.

  “I didn’t mean to kill Alan,” she cried still, as useless a thing to say as ever.

  “No,” Robin huffed. “You meant to kill me.”

  “You’refuckingrightImeanttokillyou!” She turned savage, eyes blood red, swinging wildly at Robin but stumbling to the ground. “You never drank from your cup, why didn’t you just fucking drink it? Why did you give it to Alan?”

  Will seemed incredulous. “You’re blaming him?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to take effect for hours.” She turned back to him, the rage gone, her face
pleading for understanding. “I don’t know what went wrong.”

  “Lena, why?” Will tore at himself, his face riven. “Why, Lena?”

  “Because he was right.” Again she tried to touch him, and again he skipped away, turning and wringing his hands. “Gisbourne was right. He was right that Robin is to blame for all of this! The Sheriff and Robin are the same, they’re both using us! He doesn’t care about us, about what we’re doing out here. He pulled us back, he wanted us to be nothing. He was working with William the whole time! He’s the reason Much died. We said the Sheriff deserved to die. Why wouldn’t Robin deserve the same? He’s brought all this pain upon us, and then we sing songs about him. We should be singing songs about you.” Her voice broke, she swallowed against tears. “The people should be singing about Will Scarlet.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Will growled at her, at the world. “You’re working with the man who killed Much! Didn’t you see Gisbourne was trying to manipulate us? You’ve done exactly what he wanted!”

  “They were going to hang us,” she broke down. “I wasn’t going to let you die.”

  “I do not accept Alan’s life as a trade for my own.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him—”

  “I don’t accept Robin’s life either!” He pounded at his chest, hard enough to bruise. “We made our decision. We knew the consequences. I did, at least. I was willing to die for it, to die for what happened to Much. I should never have let you come.”

  “You deserve better.”

  A third time she reached for him, instinctively, and he swatted her away, striking her forearm. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Don’t touch him,” John echoed, in instant reaction. He didn’t say, Don’t hit her. He didn’t even think it.

  Elena clutched her arm in pain, but fought through it, focusing on Will. “You should be leading us, not this stranger! If one of you two had to die, why should it be you?” Elena withered, collapsing down to the ground. “You’re better than him.”