by Anna Burke
The chapel door opened and shut behind her. Dammit, she swore, profaning her mind still further.
“Marian?”
She squeezed her eyes shut and willed Alanna to leave her alone. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work. The minstrel knelt on the stone beside her and placed a warm hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Of course. I just felt the need—”
“To bruise your knees? I’ve never seen you here on your own before.”
“I pray,” said Marian, doing her best to sound indignant instead of guilty.
“And I come for the acoustics.” Alanna sang a few bars of Marian’s favorite ballad. The music swelled in the still air, and even the swallows stopped their swooping to listen. “See?”
“Keep singing.”
Alanna opened her mouth. Honey poured from her throat and filled the church with golden light. It soothed the ache inside Marian. Nothing that pure could be a sin. Then again Alanna sang, not like an angel, but like a pagan goddess of old. Her voice carried timbres and melodies that invoked heartbreak and ancient forests, craggy heights and gentle rivers, love and loss and everything in between, all of it holy, all of it true in a way Marian felt to her marrow. A tear ran down her cheek as the minstrel finished her song.
“Now, why are you really here?”
Marian thought of Linley and the betrothal she yearned to be free of, but some of the song still lingered in her chest. It urged her to speak truth.
“I saw you.”
Alanna raised her brows. “I see you right now.”
“I saw you and Willa. At the priory. In . . . in the kitchen.”
“Ah.” Alanna drew out the word in a long breath and rearranged herself to sit cross-legged in her minstrel’s breeches. “Marian—”
“It’s wrong. What you did.”
“Perhaps.”
“I would never. I don’t want that.”
“Am I saying that you do?”
“Willa said—”
“Willa says a lot of things, usually without thinking, first. Whatever she said to you, put it from your mind. You know your own truth.”
Marian chewed her lower lip until it split. Blood trickled from the cut and down her throat, metallic and calming. You know your own truth. It sounded so simple, and yet . . . “What if I don’t?”
Alanna’s brown eyes caught hers, and she couldn’t bear the compassion in their depths. She stood before Alanna had a chance to answer. “I should go.”
“Marian—”
“Thank you for the song.” She fled down the aisle and past the stone pews until she burst out into the green stretch of grass in the churchyard. A startled lamb leapt out of her path. Alanna didn’t follow.
She kept running. The dirt road that led toward the fallow fields reserved for the autumn planting tumbled out before her feet like unspooling yarn. Peasants stopped to watch her, and it occurred to her that her flight would arouse questions she would later have to answer, but she didn’t stop until she came to the brook by the common fields with the stand of willows. Two women harvested willow withies further upstream, but they did not approach Marian as she sank beneath the shelter of the trailing boughs.
Truth. What good was truth? And how could Alanna be so calm about her own truth? Didn’t she worry what others might think, or what could happen to her and Willa if their truth was discovered? Men were punished for such transgressions. Marian had never heard of a woman being hanged, but there were other consequences. Spiritual consequences.
Then again, she thought as she pulled apart a willow leaf, a priest would urge her to focus on the duty she owed her father, which of course meant Linley. The thought of the older man touching her sent a shudder of revulsion through her body. Linley repulsed her far more than Willa and Alanna. Why couldn’t he have been old, but kind? That she could have dealt with. Instead, he watched her like a cat with a mouse, and she knew he would expect her to share his bed. Gone would be slow, sunlit mornings with Emmeline and Henri.
The leaf disintegrated beneath her assault. When Willa married, she could continue seeing Alanna and her husband would be none the wiser. She would get to have love and passion and station so long as she wasn’t caught. And even if she were caught, the worst that would happen would be a few years of penance, the shame of her peers, and separation from Alanna.
The last thought stopped her cold. Yes, Willa could have everything, but that also meant she had everything to lose. Marian had seen the way the women looked at each other: like the other was bread and salt and air. The emotion that strangled her breath this time was not desire.
Want, yes, and hunger, and envy.
Chapter Nine
Robyn sighted down the arrow, aware of John’s eyes on her. When she loosed it, taking the pheasant before it had a chance to pump its wings, he let out a low whistle of approval.
“You weren’t kidding. Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
“My brother.”
“And where’s your brother now?”
“Dead.”
John didn’t say anything to that. He nodded, as if confirming something, and scanned the forest for signs of human activity before retrieving the pheasant. Robyn watched him and marveled at the way he moved silently over the ground. She accepted the bird and checked her arrow for signs of damage before wiping the blood from the head and shaft and replacing it in her quiver.
“What did you do, then, before you came here?” he asked Robyn.
“I was a fletcher.”
He nodded again. “You’ll be wanting those feathers.”
Robyn tucked the pheasant into her game bag. The thought of roasted fowl made her mouth water, and she absentmindedly eyed the surrounding forest for mushrooms and young green onion shoots.
This was farther into Sherwood than she’d ever been. John seemed to know where they were going, but Robyn didn’t like being entirely at his mercy, and the reappearance of the Rainworth river ahead was more reassuring than she cared to admit.
Dark and swollen with the recent rain, the water raced past the banks, carrying leaves and branches. John knelt on the rocky bank and scooped a handful of water into his mouth. Robyn set her pack and bow down and cast a furtive glance around her as she did the same.
“You look too much like a woman. It’s not a problem, necessarily, but the trouble is you don’t look like the kind of woman who enjoys snapping a few necks before breakfast if you take my meaning.”
“It would be hard to miss your meaning, good sir.” Robyn tried to banish that image from her mind. “So, what should I do?”
“That’s up to you. You might pass as a youth, with a little work, at least from a distance. It’s easier that way. Less chance of an unpleasant encounter.”
Robyn didn’t need to ask for clarification. “Do I have to shave my head like yours?”
“No, but you can’t have hair past your waist, either.”
“It isn’t that long.” Robyn pulled her braid out from her tunic. It lay in her hands, dark and heavy with sweat.
“Cut it and keep your hood up. Nothing I can do about your face.” John gave her a critical look. “I suppose I could break your nose, but I don’t think that will do much either. You’re too pretty.”
“Thanks?”
“It’s not a compliment. Pretty faces get remembered.”
Robyn tried to remember the last time anyone had called her pretty. Gwyneth, maybe. Barring that, she tried to recall the last time she’d felt anything besides tired. She pulled her knife out of her belt and sawed at her hair, watching the fat locks fall into the water. John didn’t comment at the hack job, nor did he offer to help.
“Is this better?” Her hair felt odd, floating several inches above her shoulders, and she shook her head experimentally.
“Better. Do you mind?” He knelt beside Robyn and pulled the top portion of her hair back and secured it with a strip of leather pulled from his own hair. The end result kept the hair out of Robyn’s e
yes and was so unlike anything that any self-respecting woman would wear that Robyn figured she would pass on that assumption alone.
“Try not to wash your face too much, if you can. You don’t have my build, but you’re broad enough in the shoulders. And keep your hood up.”
“I will.”
“What’s your name?”
“It’s Robyn. Like I told you.”
“No. It’s Robyn Hood. That hood needs to become as much a part of you as your bow. Do you understand? There are a hundred youths in Sherwood, but if a forester gets wind of a woman with an arrow that doesn’t miss, you’re worse than dead. There’s a clearing downstream that I found when I first came here. It will do as a camp, for now.”
Robyn shouldered her pack again and stood, staring downstream. Midge’s home lay that way, and beyond Midge, beyond Papplewick, lay Nottingham and the narrow house she had shared with Gwyneth and the baby.
John clapped a large hand on her shoulder as he looked down at her. “Whoever you’re missing, let them go.”
• • •
“I would love to get you behind a long bow,” Robyn said later that day as she watched John bring his ax down on the body of a fallen oak, hacking off some of the smaller limbs with long, even strokes that sent wood chips flying. His muscles bulged beneath his threadbare tunic. Robyn had a bow stave curing in the shop that would make a perfect weapon for his frame, and her mind turned over the gentle curve of the notch and the smoothness of the grip. John could punch through plate mail with a bow like that.
“I’ve never been much of a shot.”
“You wouldn’t need to be,” she said, still dreaming of wood polished smooth and oiled.
“You going to gather wood or just stand there?”
“I need to tell you something.”
John wiped the blade of his ax on his leggings to remove the worst of the sap and tucked it into his belt. “I’m listening.”
“There are people I have to take care of.”
Haltingly, she told John about the events that had led her into Sherwood, and the responsibility she still had to Gwyneth and Symon.
“The sheriff of Nottingham wants to marry your sister-in-law?” John asked when Robyn finished.
“I’ll kill him first.”
“I brought a case against my husband, once. The sheriff laughed me out of court. Didn’t believe a . . . woman,” he said, biting off the word with venom in his voice, “my size was capable of fearing a man like Peter.”
“Peter was your husband? What happened to him?” She thought she already knew the answer.
“He came at me when I had a hammer in my hand. That’s the thing about oxen,” he added with a glint in his eyes. “They don’t know their own strength.”
Robyn didn’t need to ask whether Peter had survived the encounter. John’s presence in the woods, combined with the satisfaction on his face, told her everything she needed to know. A blow from John’s hammer would split a man’s skull like a pumpkin. She just wished she could do the same to the sheriff.
“I need to keep hunting. Gwyneth and the baby need meat, and without me . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence.
John thought for a moment, his eyes narrowing. “Coin is easier to smuggle into town than meat.”
“I don’t have coin.”
“True. But there are all kinds of things to hunt in Sherwood.”
• • •
“Are you out of your mind?”
Robyn flinched as Midge’s voice cut shrilly through the forest. Their meeting was not going as well as she had hoped.
“You’ll like him.”
“I thought I told you to stay away from outlaws. What about Mary?”
“Midge, I am an outlaw.”
“Take me to this friend of yours.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Robyn, I won’t be able to sleep at night thinking about you running around the woods with some vagabond blacksmith. It’s bad enough that I have to deal with Gwyneth—” Midge cut herself off and glanced up at Robyn guiltily.
“What about Gwyneth?”
“She’s . . . She misses you, Robyn. I don’t know what you expected. I keep telling her you’re in a better place now, but it seems I’m lying.”
Robyn stared at her cousin, torn between exasperation and disappointment. She’d made her meeting with Midge by the skin of her teeth, leaving John back at their camp, and the last thing she wanted was to get Midge more involved in her crimes. “Midge,” she began, but Midge shot her a look full of disgust.
“What are you doing, Robyn? How is this helping? How much longer do I have to keep lying to everyone? And what happened to your hair?”
Robyn opened her mouth, shut it, and gave up. “You want to meet him? Fine.” She turned, leaving Midge to follow or not as she chose, and stormed off through the woods.
What did Midge expect her to do, find a new life for herself without leaving the forest? She couldn’t just saunter into a new village, expecting to find work, without questions being asked that she didn’t have answers to. Besides, she couldn’t leave Gwyneth until she knew Gwyneth was going to be okay without her. That was the one thing she’d promised Michael.
“Robyn, wait,” Midge called out from somewhere behind her, but Robyn didn’t slow. Midge would keep up or she wouldn’t.
John’s arm across her chest stopped her before she burst into the clearing. She paused, panting, glaring up at the big man as the sounds of Midge’s clumsy pursuit drifted through the leaves.
“I take it that is your cousin, making more noise than a boar in rut?”
Robyn looked over her shoulder, still leaning on John’s arm, and nodded. No words could possibly prepare John for Midge.
“Robyn,” Midge shouted, stumbling to a halt in front of them. Her eyes widened as she took in John.
“Is this him?” she asked, puffing herself up like an angry hedgehog.
“Midge, this is John. John, this is my cousin, Midge.”
Midge stalked around them and looked John up and down. Twigs clustered in her hair, making her look half wild, and despite her ire Robyn felt a surge of affection for her cousin.
“Pleasure to meet you, miss,” John said.
Midge scowled. “I didn’t bring enough ale for three.”
“John can have my share.”
“Are you a poacher too?” Midge asked, ignoring Robyn. “Or a murderer? Heretic? What?”
“Murderer. Poacher too, I guess, these days, and I can’t say I have much faith left.”
Silence fell around them, and Robyn waited for her cousin to blow her top. Midge, however, seemed to take this news in stride. “Who’d you kill?”
“A wife beater.”
Midge cocked her head, looking for all the world like a disgruntled owl. “Did he deserve it?”
“There is no doubt in my mind.”
They ended up letting Midge drink all the ale. She blinked at them out of bleary eyes, light from their small fire flickering over her face and shimmering off the grease stains from the ducks they’d roasted over the coals. The meat and ale had gone straight to her head, and she lay with her head in Robyn’s lap, blinking at the flames.
“You’re too tall,” Midge said to John. “I’m going to call you Little John.”
“Will that make you feel better?” John asked her.
“Yes.”
“Then call me whatever you like.”
“Robyn wrote a song about me,” Midge said, hiccupping. “Sing it, Robyn.”
Robyn stroked her cousin’s hair, feeling a smile creep onto her lips. Drunk Midge was her favorite Midge. She cleared her throat and sang the first verse.
“Midge, Midge, last and least
Barely a smidge of flour and yeast.”
Midge hummed along, then broke in, adding a second verse in a warbling voice.
“Midge, Midge, last of her brood,
Tiny and fearsome and always quite rude!”
John let out a
low laugh. “Is your cousin always this charming?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“I like you.” Midge waved her hand at John. “Little John. Keep my cousin safe. She’s horrid to look at, but we’re all quite fond of her.”
• • •
Robyn and Little John, for Midge did not forget the nickname she’d bestowed upon him, accompanied Midge closer to Papplewick than Robyn had dared venture since her flight. Midge picked at John like a woodpecker after a bug deep in the bark of a gnarled oak, teasing out tidbits of information as her short legs struggled to keep pace.
“Do you miss working in the forge?”
“Sometimes.”
“How many burn scars do you have?”
“I lost count at forty-two.”
“Can I see them?”
“Here.” John rolled up his sleeve, revealing a forearm corded with muscle and riddled with smooth ridges of puckered skin. Midge tucked an errant strand of hair behind one ear and leaned in closer to look. Her chin barely came past John’s waist, forcing her to keep her head perpetually tilted up, and Robyn saw the smile that hovered around John’s lips as he looked down at her.
“That one looks like a wolf’s head.”
“So it does.”
“And this one, maybe a cat?” Midge leaned closer, frowning as her small hands traced a scar at the base of John’s wrist.
“If you say it is a cat, then a cat it must be.”
“We’re almost at the road,” Robyn said, interrupting Midge’s exploration.
Midge shot her a glare. “I can see that.”
“Be careful.” Robyn touched Midge lightly on the shoulder.
“Can I see you next week?”
“Only if you bring enough ale for the rest of us,” said John.
“And don’t take any chances,” Robyn told her cousin. The woods here were carefully coppiced and crisscrossed with trails. New shoots sprang from the bases of trees harvested last fall, and their straight and slender limbs obscured her view. Anybody could be out here harvesting fallen branches, plants, mushrooms, and herbs, not to mention the ever-present foresters. The chances of Robyn running into someone she knew were far too high for comfort. She missed the darker, wilder woods, where the foresters rarely ventured and the trees grew wide enough to hide her and her bow. She hugged Midge, torn as always between anxiety and loneliness at the prospect of watching her cousin walk away.