I wasn’t sure he was joking, so I shut up. Much got serious—sort of—and answered my question. “He’s the deputy sheriff, and chief forester of Sherwood. Take anything from the king’s forest, and you better stay clear of the captain and his rangers, or it’ll be your peril. Can you really put an arrow anywhere you want?”
“What?” He’d asked the question without a bit of transition, and I still had Sherwood freaking Forest and OMG sheriff of Nottingham reverberating in my skull. Now that I was coming off the adrenaline high, a pulse throbbed in the knot on my head. “Yes. I can.”
So I wasn’t totally unequipped for the—what, twelfth century?
God. I looked around and found a rock I could sit on before I fell down.
I was on the cusp of believing something unbelievable. All this time, the infinitesimal details had been filling up my subconscious like an underground spring until denial seemed more foolish than acceptance.
Just because something isn’t proven doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
Okay, Dad. I accept the premise that I’m in the past, or maybe some parallel or pocket universe. So, what did that mean? If I wasn’t lying unconscious in the caves under the castle, had I physically disappeared in my own time? Traveled here through some dark portal? How would I get back?
Oh my God. “Can I get back?”
“Back where?”
I looked up, surprised I’d spoken out loud, and found the knight watching me with concern, and more than a little bit of curiosity.
“Home.” I stood up, relieved to find my legs steady, more or less. “I’m, um, not from here.”
“You don’t say.” He went to his horse and pulled a bundle of cloth from his saddlebag, as well as the leather canteen from his saddle. On his way back to me, he handed the bigger bundle to Much and wet a smaller cloth from the canteen. “You aren’t French, with that accent.” I winced as he dabbed the blood from my forehead. Before I could protest, he took my chin, wiped the mud from my face, then turned my head for inspection. “You’re not from the east, despite the flecks of caramel the sun has left on your cheeks.”
The color of my cheeks was now actually bright pink. I was only human and he was a knight in freaking armor who had literally ridden to my rescue. I should be allowed a blush without turning in my feminist card.
“I’m from west of here,” I said.
He looked dubious. “I suppose if you were Welsh, that would explain your terrible accent.”
“Farther west than that.”
Much gawped like I’d grown another head. “Never say you’re Irish.”
Sir James laughed. He sounded a little rusty at it, but genuine.
Finally he said, “Let’s start from the beginning. I am James Hathaway, knight of the temple, defender of Jerusalem, son of the baron of Huntingdon, recently returned from the Holy Land.” He rattled all that off very casually, and didn’t seem to expect me to comment or curtsy or anything. He gestured to the boy and said, “Of course, you’ve met Much.”
The boy touched his forehead as if tugging an invisible cap, and grinned.
“Much what?” I asked. A lame joke, but I’d had a rough day.
“Much the miller’s son,” he answered, missing the humor entirely. Or maybe it wasn’t a pun in his version of English.
“And you?” the knight prompted. “What do we call you?”
“Eleanor.” The sun had shifted from over the clearing, and the full shade, combined with my wet clothes, sapped my body heat. I folded my arms to keep the rest of it in. “Eleanor Hudson, but people call me Ellie.”
“Fitting,” said James, with a too-straight face. “Famously, the lady of Aquitaine is also not fond of doing as she’s told.”
“I’m named after her.” Which was true. Mom had won the coin toss. Eleanor of Aquitaine was married to the English king Henry the…Second, I think. Besides being the wife of two kings—not at the same time, obviously—and the mother of several more, she also ruled her own land in France, went on a Crusade, and spent a lot of time under house arrest because she wouldn’t do whatever her husband said. Basically, she was a pistol, and not a bad person to be named after.
Much’s caterpillar brows wrinkled in confusion. “But…Eleanor is a girl’s name.”
“Well spotted,” James congratulated him, taking the cloth bundle.
The mental cogs slowly turned, and Much’s face lit up with realization. “So there is no boy to take to the sheriff in Nottingham. That’s brilliant, um, Mistress Hudson.”
“Ellie, please,” I said.
“That’s brilliant, Mistress Ellie!”
James didn’t point out that it was his idea. “The question is, what do we do with you now?”
I had no idea, but as grateful as I was for his help, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to answer the question for me. “Who says you have to do anything with me?”
“I said it,” he answered, shaking the bundle loose. “In front of God, Guilbert, and everyone.” The cloth turned out to be a worn and faded black cloak, which he draped around my shoulders.
“I’m filthy,” I protested, because accepting the cloak seemed to be accepting too much—his help, his protection, or maybe just the fact that I needed it.
“This has seen worse.” James wrapped the cloak around me with practiced efficiency, arranging the folds so my arms were free. The fabric was soft and warm and smelled of leather and damp wool and, faintly, of incense and desert spices, as if the man’s recent history was woven into its threads. “There. I was chilled just looking at you.”
“Thanks.” I glanced up and offered the best smile I could muster. It was more of an apologetic grimace. He’d been beyond helpful, and I hadn’t been overwhelming with my gratitude. “For everything.”
“You are welcome.” James gave the fabric a final adjustment and stepped back. The air seemed a little cooler when he did, and I was glad for the cloak. “Well, Mistress Hudson?” he asked. “Do you become a lady again and allow the sheriff’s trespasser to vanish from the world?”
Good question. What next? The logical thing would be to retrace my steps, which meant going back to the castle, then under it. But after all his trouble to keep me out of the dungeon, it seemed ungrateful to turn around and go straight there. Also, as much as I wasn’t really a planner, under the circumstances I could use to regroup and assess my position.
“I have no women’s clothes.” It wasn’t my biggest obstacle, but I was starting small.
“I have sisters!” Much exclaimed. He had two settings—silent and observant, or bursting with enthusiasm. “They have clothes.”
This seemed like as good a place to start as any. A bath, clean clothes, a new identity, and I’d be able to sort out what was happening and how to fix it.
James rubbed his jaw. I wasn’t sure when I’d mentally dropped the “sir.” Probably about the time he was inspecting my face for freckles. “Better we stay out of Nottingham town until Master Hudson is back to being a mistress.”
“Helena lives in Mapperley,” Much said, undeterred. “We can go through the greenwood to get there.”
“I thought you said the greenwood was full of cutthroats and thieves?” said James.
“Usually,” said Much, not sounding worried.
“Wait, cutthroats?” I interjected, worried enough for both of us.
Much went on like he hadn’t heard me. “But the sheriff hanged some, and that always makes them lie low for a bit. And you have your sword. I have my slingshot. And the mistress has…”
He trailed off and they both looked at me. “And I have no bow,” I complained to the universe.
Much inhaled loudly, the way he did before his exclamations, but James spoke first. “If you did have one you would be in worse trouble with Guilbert than you are now. It’s illegal to carry a bow and arrow into the king’s forest.” He anticipated my question. “Because the only thing you’d have call to shoot is one of the king’s deer.”
“What about a c
utthroat?” I asked. “What if I wanted to shoot one of them?”
I’d probably short-circuit before I could override my safety conditioning. It was a rhetorical question, and James treated it like one.
“A good reason not to linger.” He stepped to his horse and collected the reins. As Much went after his pony—which had wandered a bit in search of clover—the knight swung smoothly into the saddle, then rode over to me and offered me his hand. It was a long, long way up to the back of the horse.
Well, here goes nothing. I grabbed his hand and he pulled me up behind him. I couldn’t believe how effortlessly he lifted me, or how gracelessly I sprawled across the horse’s butt. It sidled under us as I tried to get a leg over to the other side. The whole thing was like straddling a sofa made of muscle, six feet off the ground.
Finally I got upright and gingerly took hold of the back of the knight’s belt. He grabbed both my hands and put them around his waist, pulling me forward into the space between the back of the saddle and the widest part of the horse’s rump. It was more secure, more comfortable, and more awkward. It made me wonder—strictly as a matter of curiosity, him being a knight, and social customs and all—if he’d had other women ride with him this way. It didn’t really matter, except I couldn’t help thinking they probably smelled a lot better, even in the Middle Ages.
“Hold on,” said James, which I was already doing. He was really solid, even allowing for padding and armor, which I guess was why he could pull me up so easily. I tightened my grip, and he sort of wheezed. “I mean, hold on to the horse with your legs.”
“Oh.” I knew that. I didn’t slack my arms, though, and was glad I hadn’t when he kicked the horse into a canter. Much trotted behind on his pony and the three of us were off to Mapperley, and God knew where—or when—that was, or whether we would get there with our throats intact.
The path through the greenwood was about one horse across, though it widened and narrowed with the terrain. There were some hills and gullies, and at least one outcropping that would make a good place for an ambush, but nothing happened except for a fox bursting out of the underbrush, startling me so much I nearly fell off the horse.
“Don’t worry,” Much assured me. “The bandits are much worse north on the highway, where it goes through Thieves’ Wood.”
I couldn’t imagine how that got its name. “Do cutthroats really…” I drew my finger across my neck in the universal sign for dead-as-a-doornail.
“As often as not,” chattered Much. “The men, anyway. The women, they—”
“Much.” James snapped off that branch of unpleasantness. The boy didn’t seem to take it personally.
I wondered if the hanged men outside the castle gate were the thieves Much had said were caught and executed. Even so, leaving them there seemed…well, medieval.
“Whose head was on the spike?” I asked.
Much didn’t have to ask which head. I took that as a good thing. “Sir Aethelstan, baron of Leas.”
I had loosened my hold on James as the ride got smoother, but I still felt him tense up, though he didn’t turn around.
“What did he do?” I asked, since James didn’t. Maybe he already knew. He’d said that he was newly back in the area, but he seemed pretty savvy about the general situation.
Much was happy to gossip about poor Sir Aethelstan. “Well, he was executed for treason,” he said. “But mostly it was because he was Anglo-Saxon.”
“Is that important?”
“Not now that he’s dead.”
I twisted more fully around so I could see if Much was being sarcastic. He was not.
James spoke without turning. “You certainly ask a lot of questions.”
That was because I had a lot of questions. “I don’t want to break any more laws I don’t know about.”
My answer must have satisfied him, because he filled me in on the baron. “It’s important that he was convicted of treason, because his family loses the title and the land.”
“Let me guess.” After all, I’d seen this movie—and all the other ones like it. “Now the sheriff of Nottingham gets it.”
“No, it goes back to the crown. But the sheriff can appoint a loyal Norman to manage it and collect the taxes.”
“Convenient.”
Much piped up with “That’s why Sir James is—”
What Sir James was would remain a mystery, because the knight interrupted, pointing out, “There’s Mapperley.”
I knew he was changing the subject, but I didn’t care because I was so ready to be off the horse. Summer-camp trail rides had not prepared me for staying on the back of a freaking warhorse on a rutted track through the woods with nothing but my thighs to keep me from sliding off like a pat of butter on a hot ear of corn.
Well, there was James, but I had to let him breathe occasionally.
I had a loose grip on him as the track emerged from the woods at the bottom of sloping open fields. I could see a cluster of thatch-roofed cottages and the stone tower of a Norman-era church about midway up. Slightly uphill from that was a larger house made of timber. The high-rent district, I guessed.
“How many people live here?” I asked.
Much counted on his fingers and came up with “About threescore, I’ll bet.” About sixty people, I translated. “My sister married the baker. She always makes the best pies. It’s not market day, but maybe she’ll have some anyway.”
He kicked his pony into a trot and went around us, heading up the track that ran between the divided fields. I tried not to groan as James spurred his horse to follow. I was aching in areas I didn’t even know could ache.
I distracted myself by taking in the lay of the land. I didn’t know much about agriculture, other than what I had picked up by osmosis, growing up in Indiana. It was obviously spring—like it had been when I’d woken up that morning—but there were far fewer rows of tender green sprouts than empty stretches of umber soil, when it should be the reverse.
The grassy meadow to the west was sparsely dotted with sheep, and the livestock pens weren’t exactly bustling, either. There were people in the fields, doing…field things. As we rode by, some stopped work to lean on a hoe or a rake, but all of them watched with curiosity and suspicion. Mostly suspicion.
That feeling of fallowness continued into the village. The only children playing were toddlers too young to work at planting. A few skinny chickens scratched for bugs in the lane. Housewives hung out their wash, and quickly called their kids in when they saw us at the edge of town. Mapperley was not a place full of pies and happiness.
James looked at me over his shoulder. “Put up the hood on that cloak, and don’t speak. This is not the welcoming Mapperley that I remember.”
Much and I exchanged a look at James’s expense. I wasn’t the one with the performance SUV of a horse, armed and emblazoned with God’s insignia. The knight really had no idea how conspicuous he was.
On the other hand, I was a wanted, um, man. I pulled the hood up to cover my filthy hair and shadow my face, which probably only looked sketchier.
“Is this normal?” I asked Much. “The empty livestock pens and barns?” The village itself wasn’t shabby, but I’d expected more…bucolic bounty, I guess.
“Those that can’t pay their taxes in money have to pay in kind,” he said. “Wool or goats or chickens. Grain and herbs.” Much wrinkled his nose. “The king is welcome to my beets.”
James reined in where the lane split off at a large oak tree. “Much, perhaps you’d better go ahead of us and warn your sister of company. Come find us here, if she’s agreeable to helping.”
“She will be,” Much answered with certainty.
“Do it anyway,” said the knight. “Better not to surprise a village so wary of strangers.”
“Yes, sir,” said Much. He slapped the reins over his pony’s rump and headed toward the other side of the village green.
The “here” where we would wait was the village church. Following the turnoff took us
down a grassy path that ran in front of an oak-shaded churchyard. In the middle of the yard was a stone chapel—the nave with its tiny arched windows and pitched slate roof abutting the square tower I’d seen while riding in. On the far side was a graveyard set off by a low stone wall and dotted with daffodils lit up by the slant of the afternoon sun.
Someday they would sell picture postcards of whatever was left of the chapel and people would make charcoal rubbings of the gravestones’ inscriptions. Today the headstones were pale and straight, and the dark patina of age had barely begun to touch the church walls. There was also a pig snoring under the oak tree.
“What’s the matter?” asked James, sounding genuinely concerned. He was waiting for me to get off the horse, but I hadn’t moved.
“Nothing,” I not quite lied. “I just keep forgetting how far from home I am.”
He gave me a quick, studying look, and then swung me down from the horse. That sounds way more graceful than it was. My legs were rubbery and numb, and I felt like I was walking like a cartoon cowboy.
James’s descent was better managed. One thing I hadn’t appreciated the first time I saw him dismount was how hard it was to maneuver around all the stuff buckled and tied to the saddle—scabbard, saddlebags…some long, wrapped bundle that was too small for a lance. I hadn’t investigated during the ride because I’d needed both hands to hold on, but I poked at it curiously while James was turned around. The horse was more attentive and swatted me with its tail.
James straightened his surcoat and his sword belt, then turned back to me. “I intend to talk to the village priest and hopefully draw out how things in Mapperley got to this state. You—”
“I know, I know.” I raised my hands in surrender. “Don’t speak.”
One corner of his mouth turned up in what passed for a smile. “I was going to say, you can find the rain barrel and wash your face and hands if you want.” He held out a lump of something he’d taken from one of the saddlebags. I accepted it warily. “Don’t waste it. I brought that all the way from Constantinople, and once it’s gone, it’s soft soap from then on.”
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