by Anna Burke
Foolish, her uncle would undoubtedly agree. She could almost hear his gruff voice lecturing her as he swung a bag of rye meal over one shoulder. “Your father would never have stood for this. First Michael, now you. Have you no respect for his memory?”
He’d take the deer regardless, she knew, as he always did. Besides, it wasn’t her father’s memory that drove her out of the shop and into Sherwood, time and time again.
Robyn wiped another drop of sweat from her brow and glanced around the woods. Nothing moved besides the occasional bird and skittering squirrel, but the hair on the back of her neck prickled uncomfortably.
A branch broke further up the trail. She spotted a large, twisted oak a few yards off the path that promised some protection from prying eyes and made her way toward it as quickly as she dared, her thighs burning with the effort of crouching low to the ground beneath the deer. Around her, a chorus of birds rose in alarm. Michael had taught her the meaning of the more important of the forest’s bird calls, and right now, this was the only one that mattered. Fear soured her mouth and her heartbeat pounded in her throat as she laid the deer down in the bluebells and pressed herself against the trunk of the tree. Slowly, her hands shaking with barely suppressed panic, she slipped the bowstring out of the pouch at her belt and strung the bow. The wood felt smooth and warm, and the leather grip, dark with oil from her brother’s hands, calmed the worst of the shaking. Her fingers brushed the feathers with a fletcher’s care as she loosed an arrow from her quiver and willed her heart to slow.
The unmistakable sound of footsteps drifted toward her on the breeze. She recognized the tread; this was someone who was comfortable in the woods, and who knew how to avoid the reaching roots and low-hanging snags that tangled the inexperienced. She was lucky that branch had snapped at all, given the ease with which this person trod the forest. Luck is for the rich, she reminded herself, and willed the stranger to keep walking. The bowstring hummed very faintly against her forearm as she nocked the arrow. Don’t look this way. Don’t stop.
The penalty for poaching the king’s deer was death. Pheasant, hare, or smaller game demanded lesser punishments, but Prince John loved his deer, as reportedly did his brother, King Richard, assuming he ever made it back from the continent.
There is no difference between a man and a deer, she told herself. They are both just skin stretched over organ and bone. Accidents happened all the time in the forest. Outlaws roamed these woods, like the bastard Siward and his band, who made a habit of stealing sheep from those who most depended on them and raping any woman they caught alone. No one would think to trace a dead forester back to her.
The footsteps drew parallel with her hiding spot, then paused. She heard the rustle and creak of leather boots and jerkin as the stranger knelt and ran a hand over the leaves near the ground, and in that soft rustle of bluebells she realized her mistake.
Blood.
The man exhaled in a short burst, and Robyn thought she could hear the pieces falling into place in his head as he took another step and knelt again, this time closer, perhaps to examine the soft imprint of a booted sole in the deep loam of the forest floor.
I have no choice, she realized, and with the certainty of that thought held firmly in her mind, she moved out from behind the tree and leveled the arrow at the man’s heart. He looked up from his crouch, and she watched surprise registering across his broad, weathered face. She might have faltered, then, if he had been anyone else.
Clovis.
Her vision narrowed to a howling tunnel as his expression twisted from surprise to malicious satisfaction. She remembered the way he’d jerked the rope that bound Michael’s wrists as he led him to the gallows, forcing him to stumble up the steps, denying him what little dignity remained in those last few minutes of his life. She remembered, too, the roar of the crowd around the platform: a hundred people watching, a hundred people who could have stormed the gallows and cut Michael down, and instead did nothing.
Her bowstring twanged. The arrow sprouted from Clovis’s leather jerkin almost of its own accord, and silence filled her ears as the shaft buried itself almost to the fletching. Clovis’s eyes widened as he tilted forward, and he collapsed into the blue sea of flowers, driving the arrow the rest of the way through. The metal arrowhead glistened redly in the morning light from the exit wound along his spine.
“Collect your arrow, little bird,” Michael’s voice whispered in her head. “Don’t leave any signs behind.”
She took a step toward Clovis, then another. Her head spun as she watched his body twitch once, twice, and then lie still as the life leaked out of him into the earth, just as Michael’s had leaked down his leg. You left piss behind, she wanted to tell Michael as she stared down at the warm corpse at her feet. Piss, and me.
The minutes trickled away from her as the birdsong returned, but she couldn’t make herself touch the body. Leaving the arrow in him wasn’t an option. Her arrows were recognizable to anyone who knew what they were looking for, and too few people bought them to rely on numbers. Take it, she urged herself, but she couldn’t shake the memory of Clovis laughing as he gave Michael one last shove, even though the man lay dead at her feet.
He will never laugh again. The thought did not bring her the relief she’d hoped for. Clovis still laughed in her mind’s eye. He would always be there, laughing, and Michael would always trip, and he would always die, no matter how many times she killed this man. The unfairness of it wrapped around her chest like a vise.
“Don’t move,” said a voice from behind her.
Robyn froze. She could hear the man edging around her, his breath coming quickly as he fought what she could only assume was a strong urge to shoot her then and there. She caught a flash of red hair, followed by pimples that glared angrily even from her peripheral vision. Not a man. A boy.
“Robyn?” His voice rose an octave and he flushed a maroon that rivaled the color of his hair.
“Cedric,” she said, searching for words that did not come. Of course it would be Cedric. He was the only forester who still purchased his arrows openly from her, and he had made his intentions toward her clear with each tortured glance from his cornflower blue eyes.
“You shot him.”
She shrugged, unable to speak. She and Gwyneth had laughed at his bumbling attempts at courtship and the way his boyish voice cracked whenever he spoke to her. Laughing at him was easier than resenting him, for they relied more heavily on his patronage than Robyn cared to admit. Now one of her arrows, sister to the ones in his quiver, had killed one of his fellows, and all the laws of Nottingham dictated that he bring her in for justice.
“Why?” he asked.
She shrugged again, helplessly, then pointed at the tree. He would be able to see the deer from here, and even Cedric could put two and two together.
“Stand up,” he said, clearly forcing himself to speak more firmly than he wanted to.
“We were hungry, Cedric.” She did not try to hide the pleading note in her voice. His weakness for her might yet save her life, her pride be damned, but she would shoot him, too, before she let him take her back to Nottingham. “You don’t know what it’s been like since my brother died.”
“You should have come to me. You know I would have helped you.”
“What could you have done?”
Sweat broke out on Cedric’s brow as he looked back and forth between her and Clovis. “You could have married me.”
She flinched at his honesty. True, she could have married Cedric, leaving the bed she shared with Gwyneth and the baby for his and letting him rub the stubble of his sparse beard against her face as he grew to slowly hate her for her silence and for her indifference, but then again starvation was a surer way to die.
Lie to him, little bird.
“I still could,” she said, but the words sounded forced even to her own ears and she saw the doubt in his eyes.
“Why’d you do it, Robyn?” he asked again.
“You know n
o one will buy from us.”
“Then take a rabbit, or a bird, or Christ, some mushrooms. But a deer?” He lowered his bow. “Do you want to hang? And Clovis . . . Clovis.”
“Clovis was a brute.”
“Clovis was a forester. And a good man.”
She laughed bitterly. The sound echoed in the forest, silencing the birds. “My brother was a good man.”
“Michael was a poacher.”
“And you’ve never hunted a deer in your life?”
Cedric’s face turned the same shade of red as his pimples. They both knew he had. He’d brought Robyn and Gwyneth gifts of game this past winter once or twice when Robyn had been close to giving up, and none of those gifts had been sanctioned by the king.
A distant shout interrupted Cedric’s reply. His shoulders stiffened, and Robyn’s fingers spasmed on the bow. I could shoot him too, she thought, but she discarded the notion as soon as it crossed her mind. Clovis she would murder again, but Cedric had been kind to her. Please, Michael, if you’re up there, put in a good word for me, she prayed, meeting Cedric’s eyes. He closed them in frustration, and when he opened them, she knew her prayer, or at least the threat of blackmail, had found its mark.
“Go,” he said. “I won’t tell them it was you. I swear it on my life.”
There was no time to thank him—nor to wrench her arrow from Clovis’s torso. She could see the flicker of movement through the trees heralding the arrival of more men, and the only thing that would keep her out of the noose at this point, even with Cedric’s head start, was speed. She raced off back the way she had come, feet flying over the familiar trail and toward the dark, tangled depths of Sherwood Forest.
• • •
Robyn surveyed the open stretch of moonlit ground between the trees and the mill. Going home to Gwyneth, who was no doubt beside herself with worry, was out of the question until she was sure Cedric would keep his word. That left her aunt and uncle. Robyn didn’t want to bring trouble down on them any more than she did Gwyneth, but no forester alive stood a chance against Aunt Mildred when she was in a temper.
The burble of water drowned out the murmur of the forest and made it impossible to listen for sounds of pursuit. Her body ached from running and from several hours spent perched in a tree overlooking the trail back toward home, and the thought of doing any more running tonight made the muscles of her legs quiver in protest. Most of the family would be asleep at this hour, but Robyn knew that Midge slept lightly. She mimicked the cry of the small white-faced owls that lived in the mill’s rafters.
Nothing. She whistled again, this time louder. Long minutes passed, and she was just about to make a dash for the darker shadows along the riverbed when the cottage door creaked open and a slight figure slipped out, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders. One last whistle drew her cousin to the edge of the woods, and then Robyn risked a whisper.
“It’s me.”
“Robyn?”
“Keep your voice down.”
Midge reached out blindly, and Robyn caught her hand, pulling her into the trees.
“What are you doing here?”
The memory of the arrow protruding from Clovis’s back caught up with her at last and she sank to her knees to vomit the remains of her breakfast into the dirt.
“Come inside,” Midge urged when Robyn finished retching.
“It’s not safe.”
“Any safer than us standing out here? Don’t be a fool, cos.”
Robyn allowed Midge to lead her across the rutted yard to the mill, where the familiar smells of baking bread, herbs, cabbage, and mutton pies overwhelmed her. Midge poured her a mug of ale and tore off a sizable hunk of bread from a cooling loaf.
“There’s cheese, too,” she offered. In the dim light of the low fire, darkness carved new hollows out from Midge’s round cheeks and tamed the wild abundance of hair that escaped the confines of her braid to curl perpetually around her ears. Robyn took the block of hard cheese in silence and downed the ale, thirst taking precedence over hunger.
“Should I get my father?” Midge asked.
Robyn shook her head. Uncle Ben would wake soon enough, followed by her aunt and the rest of their brood. Now that she was here, she found she wasn’t quite ready to face him, not with the severity of her crimes hanging over her head.
“Did something happen to Gwyn? I thought she was better.”
Robyn shook her head.
“The baby? Robyn, you’re scaring me.”
“Cedric caught me.”
“Cedric caught you what?”
Robyn forced the words out one by one, her earlier bravado evaporating like mist over the morning river as she stumbled over the grisly details. When she finished, Midge didn’t speak. Instead, she took away Robyn’s cup, grabbed herself one, and filled them both with her mother’s supply of strong ale.
“I don’t know what to do,” Robyn said when Midge sat back down at the table.
“Cedric promised you he wouldn’t say anything.”
“What if he changes his mind, or the others realize he is lying?”
“He cares for you. He’s helped you before.”
“That was before I shot a forester. And even if he never says a word, what then? He’ll always have that over me.”
“Cedric’s too sweet to use it against you.” Midge wrapped the end of her braid around her finger and tugged at it periodically in agitation.
“He’s still a boy. Who’s to say he stays sweet?”
“What were you even going to do with a whole deer, Robyn? I thought you promised to stick to small game.”
“I didn’t plan on it, but it practically walked into my arrow and Gwyn—”
Midge laid her hand on Robyn’s, cutting her off. “Don’t worry about Gwyneth.”
“How can I not?”
“Because right now you have to worry about yourself. My father will take care of Gwyn and Symon.”
“But—”
“She’s family, Robyn.”
Robyn hesitated. If Cedric betrayed her, as she had to assume he might, the sheriff’s wrath would fall on all he perceived had thwarted him—her uncle included.
“Why don’t you sleep here tonight?” Midge said, oblivious to Robyn’s growing panic. “We can figure out what to do tomorrow. If Cedric hasn’t said anything by this point, he isn’t likely to before morning. It’s not like there is any other way they can trace you.”
Cold fear spilled over Robyn. The arrow.
“What?” Midge’s eyes widened in alarm.
“I left the arrow.”
“Well it’s not like they’ll know it’s yours.”
“They will if they take it to the guild.” Her arrows bore her mark, unless by some slim chance the shot had damaged it.
“Say you sold it to somebody. The only people who know you’re a fair shot are me and Gwyneth.”
Robyn let the words soothe her. Maybe Midge was right. Maybe Cedric could be trusted to keep her secret, at least for now, and she could return home. And if Cedric gives you away? What will happen to them then?
She knew the answer. Her nephew would grow up haunted by the crimes of his family, and Gwyneth would end up marrying the loathsome sheriff to save her son or even worse, because the sheriff held Robyn’s life over Gwyneth’s head as a bargaining chip. Better Robyn had died in the forest than leave them to that fate.
“I could marry Cedric.” The words left poisonous fumes in her mouth. “He would see to it that Gwyneth was taken care of.”
Midge held her eyes. “You could,” she said, but her tone contained all the doubts that clouded Robyn’s mind.
As much as she wanted things to be different, Robyn knew she could not marry a forester. Foresters had killed her brother, and even if it bought Gwyneth time, it still might not be enough to protect her from the sheriff. She would have thrown her life away for nothing. Robyn wished she could go back to that winter day before the sheriff’s door. Instead of begging him for mercy, she w
ould thrust her knife through the place where he should have had a soul. She’d let herself believe that she could save them and that she had choices. She knew better now. There were no choices for people like her when men like the sheriff made the rules.
“No,” Midge said, narrowing her eyes at Robyn. “I know that look, and whatever you’re thinking, stop right now.”
There was no other way, though, was there? She’d known that since she looked up and saw Cedric standing over her in the forest. She’d known it all her life really, ever since Michael had laid that bow in her hands and she’d felt the arrow sing to her as it left her fingers.
“Midge,” she said, “I need you to do something for me.”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“I know I’m not going to like it.”
“I need you to visit Gwyneth tomorrow. Don’t tell her you’ve seen me, but you have to find a way to steal my good tunic. The yellow one,” she added in case Midge didn’t remember.
“I can give you one of—”
“I need you to take my tunic and dump it in the river. Get it good and muddy.”
“No.” Horror laced her cousin’s words as understanding dawned across her round face.
“You will then go back to Gwyneth and tell her that you saw my clothes in the river on your way home to the mill. She will know it is mine when you show her, and she will assume that I’ve drowned.”
Midge clapped a hand over her mouth. “You can’t do that to her,” she said into her fist. “Robyn, that’s—”
“People need to see Gwyn upset. Cedric has to see Gwyn upset. He’ll think I’ve drowned myself, and everyone else will just think I got unlucky, even your parents.”