Nottingham

by Anna Burke

  “It is now.”

  “What did your mother call you?”

  “A mistake, more often than not.”

  “You’re incredibly vexing.”

  “You’re incredibly lovely.” Robyn bit her lip, but there was no taking the words back. Words, like arrows, could not be recalled.

  “Do you really think so?” Marian tilted her head and shifted her weight toward Robyn ever so slightly. Robyn had seen the same gesture from women countless times before, usually where her brother was concerned, and had scoffed at how easily men were moved by it. Now that she was on the receiving end of it, however, she found herself struggling to catch her breath.

  “Well, especially compared to the way you looked at first,” she said, hoping to regain some of her leverage. “Your nose is much smaller than I recall.”

  “Yes, well, it’s amazing what river mud can do, isn’t it?”

  A vivid memory of Marian in the river further spurred her heart rate. “Perhaps it will be all the rage at court.”

  “Or perhaps they’ll be talking about the youth who won the archery contest, only to give his prize away to a beautiful widow.”

  “Is she beautiful? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Hmm.”

  “M’lady, are you jealous?” Robyn found herself desperately wishing this was so.

  “Just curious. Are you always this generous to strangers? Or is the widow special?”

  “I am sure she is special to someone.” Talking about Gwyneth with Marian made her jittery. They belonged in different worlds, and she wanted to keep it that way.

  “Of course.”

  “You must have someone. Special, that is,” said Robyn when Marian didn’t say anything more.

  “Oh, I think I might,” she said, her smile cutting and her expression impenetrable from beneath her lashes.

  “Is this why you wanted to see me again? To ask about the fletcher’s widow?”

  “No.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “Which is funny since you haven’t fooled me at all.” Marian moved closer as she spoke, silencing Robyn’s protest with the heady force of her proximity. I’m a woman, Robyn reminded herself. She doesn’t want me, she wants the person she thinks I am. That didn’t stop her from wishing fervently that Marian would close the remaining gap between them. “I wanted to thank you again for saving my life.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s something to me. And, as I am already indebted, I wanted to ask you for another favor.”

  “A favor?” Robyn couldn’t take her eyes off Marian’s lips. “I think I should remind you that I’m an outlaw,” Robyn forced herself to say. “I am in your debt for your silence, if nothing else.”

  “I gave you my word I would say nothing.”

  “Words are . . .” Robyn made a vague gesture that she hoped conveyed her ambivalence toward oaths. Marian caught her hand and laced her fingers through Robyn’s.

  “My word means something.”

  “Yes, m’lady. I won’t forget that.”

  “Will you help me then?”

  I should say no, Robyn reasoned, her mind coming up with a long list of all the things that could possibly go wrong by agreeing to involve herself with Marian any further. Then again, when was the last time things had gone right, despite her careful planning?

  “I’m yours,” she said, hoping Marian didn’t understand just how much she meant it.

  “My friend, Will, is at the convent in Edwinstowe.”

  “Will?” A deep suspicion filled her, fueled by Marian’s amused smile.

  “I think you’ll find Will interesting, and perhaps the two of you will have more in common than you think.”

  “And what am I to do with him?”

  “Whatever you please, although I had hoped you might see fit to take him with you.”

  “With me?”

  “Into Sherwood.”

  “You do realize that Sherwood is a dangerous place, don’t you?”

  “Not half so dangerous as life at court.” She slid her hand out of Robyn’s and took a step back. “If you ever wish to see me again, you can find me when the Lady Emmeline is in residence at Harcourt. Do you know it?”

  The Harcourt estate, small as it was, bordered the region of Sherwood that Robyn and John had taken to haunting. She nodded, her mind already concocting reasons to venture near the manor. “Does that mean, m’lady, that you wish to see me again?”

  Marian touched the tip of the broken arrow tucked into her belt and smiled as she backed away. “I would have thought that much was obvious, Robyn Hood.”

  • • •

  John favored Robyn with a puzzled glance when she slid into step beside him.

  “Where did you go?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Where’s Midge?”

  John pointed toward a group gathered around a pair of jugglers. Midge watched with a rapt expression a few feet away. “She knows you and I are leaving, and I’ve told her when and where to meet us next. Don’t say good-bye. You’re being watched.”

  Robyn forced herself not to look over her shoulder. “Who?”

  “A forester.”

  “Where?”

  “Ten paces away to your left.”

  Keeping her hood over her face, Robyn turned just enough to glimpse a whey-faced man with a constellation of pimples across his cheeks. “God’s nails,” she swore. “Cedric.”

  “Pray tell, who is Cedric?”

  “He’s the one who saw me kill that forester.” She stole another glimpse. A frown wrinkled his brow as he studied her, but she did not see any flash of recognition. Suspicion, yes, and something bordering on understanding, but he had not yet put two and two together. If she lingered here much longer, however, he would.

  “Then it’s time for us to get the hell out of here.”

  “Yes.”

  “We need to lose him,” said John. “Follow me.”

  He made a show of laughing at the jugglers, then waded through a flock of sheep. Robyn dodged around the animals and followed. John’s quarterstaff cut a swathe just wide enough for her to slide into his wake as he used the sturdy oak to prod drunken men and women out of his way. A few looked as if they might protest, but after glancing at his face turned back to their companions. They wove through the crowd like a tapestry needle: back and forth, pausing to admire a black colt, savoring the smell of a pie-seller’s wares, and always moving. When Robyn at last dared to glance behind her, Cedric was gone.

  They joined a group of villagers departing Nottingham for the forest road. John made small talk with a man leading a donkey laden with hides, while Robyn let a girl of six or seven touch the arrows in her quiver.

  “Are you the archer?” the girl asked. “I saw you.”

  “I am.”

  “I’m going to be an archer someday.” The girl’s tangled brown hair escaped her kerchief and reminded Robyn strongly of Midge. Her younger brother bounced alongside her.

  “I’m going to be an archer too. And kill infidels.”

  “No you’re not,” said his sister. “Da says you’re going to be a farmer.”

  Robyn smiled as they argued back and forth. Had she and Michael ever been that young? It hurt to think about, but the hurt felt good. When it came time for her and John to part ways with the villagers, she knelt before the siblings.

  “Take care of each other,” she said. “And take these.” She pulled two wing feathers she had meant to use for fletching from her belt pouch. The children accepted the goose feathers with reverence. She wished she could give them something more, but they smoothed the striped feathers with their plump, strawberry-stained fingers and gazed up at her with adoration.

  “Make some friends?” John asked as they turned down a narrow track.

  “They were curious.”

  “Hmm.” He measured her with his brown eyes. “This is a good spot.”

  “For what?”

  John pointed at the road a
long the River Leen, partially visible through the trees. Robyn nodded her understanding as the muscles in her stomach clenched.

  “What about Cedric?”

  “Trust me. We won’t be the only highway robbers on the hunt today.”

  The sunlight felt suddenly oppressive. Speaking about stealing and actually doing it were, Robyn reflected, very different animals. Poaching did not have immediate human consequences. She did not have to look anyone in the eye as she slit a deer’s throat or broke a rabbit’s neck.

  On the other hand, Midge’s family needed money, and so did she and John. The world was inherently unfair; Michael had understood that when he first went into the woods, and nothing that had happened since had changed Robyn’s mind. She needed to make her own justice. Today, that meant taking coin from those who had it, to give it to those who did not.

  She remembered how it had felt to kill Clovis. He’d been so still when she left him. Empty. And yet, the part of him that she hated, the part of him that had taunted Michael at the last, lived on inside her.

  That knowledge did not undo the momentary exultation that had come with the snick of her bowstring as the arrow took him in the heart.

  “I’m ready,” she said to John.

  “I know.”

  They waited by the road in the shade of a chestnut tree. Robyn mulled over her conversation with Marian as villagers strolled homeward. I’m yours, she had told her, and there had been a truth there that sent a ripple of fear through her mind, followed by a recklessness that should have terrified her, but did not.

  “This one.”

  Robyn jerked herself out of her thoughts. A man led a packhorse with empty panniers. He hummed to himself as he walked, and a woman in a yellow dress ambled alongside him with her arm looped through his. Both seemed to have difficulty walking a straight line, but Robyn noticed the short sword at the man’s hip and the long knife the woman carried. Drunk, perhaps, but by no means easy prey.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Look at his purse.”

  The dark leather at the man’s belt bulged. Robyn thought she could make out the press of coin against the sides, and hunger stirred within her.

  “Follow my lead. I’ll do the talking for this one. You just keep an arrow on the woman.”

  “The woman?”

  “Trust me.”

  “But—”

  “Chances are she’s more dangerous than him by half, but he’ll want to protect her.”

  John strode into the road at an easy pace, twirling his quarterstaff. “By God’s balls,” Robyn swore under her breath as she fumbled an arrow to her bow and followed.

  The man stopped humming when he saw them. Robyn had expected the woman to shrink with fear, for the cut of her clothing suggested she belonged to the merchant class, but all she did was tighten her grip on her companion as she stared at the tip of the arrow.

  “Good afternoon,” said John. “It seems you did well for yourselves.”

  “Good afternoon,” said the man. “And God bless.” His face whitened around his lips.

  “I’m not sure God would bless me, and I don’t think today that he has looked too kindly on you,” said John.

  “What do you want from us?” said the woman.

  “Your purse looks heavy. We’ll be taking half of it.”

  Half? thought Robyn. The man seemed to share her confusion. He dropped a hand to his waist to pat the contents.

  “Half is the price you might have paid for a guard. As it is, you’ll find you attract less attention without it, which amounts almost to the same thing. Give it here or we’ll shoot your wife.”

  Robyn forced herself to meet the woman’s eyes. They were a light shade of hazel, more green than brown, and they stared at her with muted fury. Could I shoot her if they call our bluff? She didn’t know. Nor did she know if John was truly bluffing. Did he expect her to take this woman’s life over a few coins?

  “You don’t have to do this,” the woman said to Robyn.

  “Your purse, man.” John’s voice cracked like a lash. The man groped at the strings, not daring to take his eyes off Robyn’s bow, and let it fall to the ground.

  “Kick it over here.”

  The man obeyed John’s order. Robyn saw sweat darken the sides of his tunic. She kept her arrow level on his wife and reminded herself of Midge’s family, and tried not to think about how much these people might have needed the profit from their wares.

  John tipped half of the contents of the purse into his belt pouch. When he finished, he tossed it back. The man trembled as he stared at it, and Robyn saw fear, gratitude, and frustration twist his features. They might have taken everything. Most thieves would have, from his coin to his horse and possibly even the boots from his feet. His wife, too, could have suffered a different fate, though Robyn didn’t think any man who tried to force her would get far. The set of her jaw suggested a generous capacity for violence.

  “Safe travels,” John said. “And Godspeed.”

  Robyn backed off the road, still keeping her arrow on the woman. Only when the trees were shielding them did she remove it and shove it back into her quiver.

  “What now?” she asked John.

  “Now we run.”

  Behind them, the couple sent up the hue and cry, and answering shouts echoed through the forest. Robyn wasn’t concerned. Her feet carried her down the game trails and into the wild heart of the woods, and each step felt like flying.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Twilight settled over Harcourt like a shroud of velvet, the stars pricked out in careful needlework against the violet sky. Marian and Alanna edged along the manor wall, hands tracing the wood as they tried to avoid notice.

  “Who is at the gate?” Marian asked again, quietly.

  “Rourk.”

  “And will he let us pass?”

  “He will if he knows what is good for him.”

  Marian chewed her lip. She’d trusted this part of the plan to Alanna, something that now seemed misguided at best and suicidal at worst.

  “And why will he let us out?”

  “Because I’ve seen what he gets up to with the priest.”

  “What?”

  “Shh,” Alanna said, turning and pressing her fingers to Marian’s lips. “Trust me, you don’t want the details.”

  Marian tried not to think about Father Derrick and his quivering jowls as she followed Alanna toward the gate.

  “Gate’s closed,” said the bored-looking youth in the gatehouse. Then Alanna lifted the edge of her hood and he straightened, swallowing nervously.

  “Tell anyone you’ve seen us, and I’ll have to go to confession,” Alanna said, her melodious voice poisonously sweet.

  “Right. Hang on.” The boy didn’t even glance at Marian in his haste to open the smaller door in the gate to let them pass. Marian stifled a smile at his expense, even though her heart threatened to leap out of her throat. Sneaking past the manor gates at nightfall wasn’t something she did. Ever. Alanna grasped her hand and pulled her over the threshold and out onto a road already lit by the rising moon.

  “We’ve miles to go,” Alanna reminded her.

  Marian settled more deeply into her cloak and wished for a moment she had stayed behind. Alanna could have easily taken the journey to the priory alone. The chance that Robyn might be there, however, had been too much for Marian to resist. Fear and longing needled her at the thought. Robyn was a woman. A woman passing as a youth, not particularly well, but still a woman.

  And I am not doing anything wrong. She was allowed to make new friends, and Robyn had saved her life. The warmth that filled her chest when she thought of Robyn could simply be the thrill of the danger she posed. Outlaw. Sheriff’s daughter. Their worlds should never have collided, and yet they had met twice now as if it had been preordained. Or Robyn could be a test of faith.

  There was a temptation there that she didn’t have a name for. The outlaw’s quick smile and wary eyes met hers each time she blinke
d, as if she’d stared into the sun and couldn’t shake the afterglow. That in itself was no sin. Even flirting, though thrilling, had just been a game. Neither expected anything from the other. No harm had been done.

  It’s Willa’s fault. She put these doubts in my head. And now here she was on her way to make sure Willa had arrived safely at the priory, where she would meet Robyn, and Marian might never see either of them again. I should be going with them. She tried to stifle the thought as a tide of panic followed it. Leaving meant giving up everything, and there was still a chance she could convince her father to change his mind and betroth her to someone else, or let her join the priory. You’re a coward, she told herself. Perhaps she was a coward. Perhaps this was an opportunity she was foolish to pass up, but she was not Willa, and her father was not a duke. He was the sheriff of Nottingham and Marian was his only living heir. He would never stop hunting for her. His pride would not allow it. And even if she could somehow find a way to evade him, what would she do in the forest? She could not wield a blade, and while she’d shot a lady’s bow on the hunt, she had no illusions about her usefulness to a gang of outlaws or about how long she would last. Besides. They wouldn’t want the sheriff’s daughter in their ranks. That would get them hanged for certain.

  They eased into a steady pace, keeping their eyes on the black shadows of the forest around them. Every cracking branch sounded louder than normal, and every shadow seemed to reach for her. She kept Alanna’s hand clamped firmly in her own.

  This is madness, she told herself as they walked. Madness, and it is all my fault. How would Emmeline react when she found that both Alanna and Willa had vanished in the night? Would she believe that Marian didn’t know anything about their whereabouts? For that matter, could Marian stand to watch Emmeline grieve for a friend who was very much alive and well? Although perhaps “well” was a stretch. She considered the reality of what she’d set in motion. Willa and Alanna would be on their own beneath these trees with no walls to protect them and no roof over their heads. Robyn, too, was out here in this unforgiving darkness, listening to the rustling of leaves and the quick footfalls of the forest creatures going about their business, each noise a possible threat. Outlawry had seemed simpler back at Harcourt as she lay awake at night beside Emmeline remembering the curve of Robyn’s lips.