No Good Deed

by Kara Connolly

  The fist-sized chunk was hard like modern soap and smelled of herbs and sandalwood. Like James’s neck, actually. I might have gotten close enough to catch the scent while we were on the horse. Not on purpose. Well, not on purpose the first time.

  That’s what I was thinking about when a short, skinny priest came from behind the chapel, with a rake in one hand and a spade in the other. He wore a brown habit and sandals, his shiny bald head ringed by gray hair. He stopped suddenly when he saw us.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded, dropping the rake and brandishing the spade like a weapon. “Go away! There’s nothing for you here. Our tithe has gone to the cathedral in York and the sheriff has taken everything else.”

  “I haven’t asked for anything,” James said, sounding more bewildered than upset. The horse, though, gave a snort and a stamp, and James startled me by handing me the reins so he could intercept the red-faced man advancing on us with his garden implement. “What’s this all about?”

  “I know your kind.” The priest stopped with the point of the spade at the Templar cross on James’s chest. “Always ready to take and take for your holy war. Glory for the Church, glory for England, empty pockets for the people.”

  “Careful, Father,” said James. I thought for a moment he was objecting to the tirade, but then he reached out to steady the man, whose anger had left him gasping and shaking. “Come sit over here.”

  He led the priest toward a wooden bench under the oak tree and near the pig. As he went, he told me over his shoulder, “Right saddlebag.”

  I untied the flap and rifled around until I found the only thing he could mean—a leather bottle, carefully stoppered.

  The horse followed me over to the bench, where I handed the bottle to James, who then offered it to the old priest. “Take some of this. It will help.”

  The priest took a swig, coughed, and wiped his eyes. “That would bring Lazarus back to his feet.” The color returned to his cheeks, and he sat up straighter. In fact, he looked a little embarrassed at his outburst. “I beg your pardon, my lord. I was overwrought and spoke without thinking.”

  “You needn’t apologize,” said James.

  “I’ve just this morning buried a woman whose blood was too thin to survive childbed. Her husband turned to poaching to provide hearty meals for her, but the chief forester found him out and now the man is outlawed until he can pay his fine.” The priest took a smaller sip from the bottle, then gave James and me both a rueful look. “When I saw your sword and armor I simply…”

  “Snapped,” I provided, when he faltered for a word. Snap was what I wanted to do to Captain Guilbert’s neck right now. Practically taking food out of a pregnant woman’s mouth and taking her husband away?

  “Indeed,” agreed the priest. He handed the bottle back to James and, for the first time, seemed to actually see us, curiosity sharpening his expression. “I am Father Anselm,” he said, half information, half broad hint.

  James began the introductions with himself, Sir James et cetera, et cetera, and then gestured to me. “And this is—”

  “Robert,” I said, cutting him off. “Robert Hudson.”

  James gave me a questioning look, and I shrugged. I just didn’t feel like going through the whole dressed-like-a-boy, farther-west-than-Wales thing again. I wanted to stay on point, and I gestured to the priest with my eyes to indicate James should get on with it. Which he did. “I remember Mapperley being a much happier place,” he said, putting the stopper back in the bottle.

  “Our lord is away at the Crusade.” The priest sighed and set the spade on the bench beside him. I glanced at the manor house on the hill over the village. It wasn’t just larger but also more substantial: timber and plaster, wider lintel, bigger beams, two stories. There was a yard and outbuildings, too. “Without his protection, Mapperley suffers the worst of the sheriff’s tax-collecting zeal. It seems they’ve taken every hen from the henhouse.” Sounding old and tired, the man nodded to the snoring pig. “That’s the only sow in the village now. They’re going to have to send her out for breeding or there won’t be any suckling pigs for the sheriff’s men to take next time.”

  “What about—” James began, and then cut off his own question. “Never mind. You must be tired.”

  With his hands on his knees, the priest pushed himself up. “But I’m not dead yet, though it may seem so to young men like the two of you. Come inside and allow me to make up for my poor welcome with some refreshment.”

  My stomach growled. Both James and the priest politely ignored it. “Let me tie up the horse,” James said, and the priest nodded and went around the other side of the church, picking up the rake along the way.

  James turned to me immediately with a question. “Robert?”

  “My brother’s name.” It was the first boy’s name to come to mind, and I was used to turning when I heard it. And using Rob’s name invoked my brother somehow, like wearing his team jacket to tournaments. But that wasn’t what James was really asking. “I didn’t feel like explaining…everything.”

  His laugh startled me. It was genuine, but so was his disbelief. “You haven’t explained anything, Mistress Eleanor Hudson of West-of-Here. You dropped quite literally out of the sky, you barely speak French or English, and what you do say is nonsense. You are either the most helpless creature in England, or the most adept fabulist I’ve ever met.”

  A burst of anger burned off the fog that had settled when the adrenaline of my escape wore off. “I am not helpless,” I blurted. James’s amusement deepened, and I hurried to add, “I’m not a liar, either.”

  “I believe you.” He loosened but didn’t drop his folded arms. “But that doesn’t say what you actually are.”

  An anachronism. A fish out of water. An archer without a bow.

  I sighed the last one aloud, feeling so sorry for myself I almost missed the reflexive flick of James’s gaze to his saddle. I didn’t turn around, but I pictured that mysterious bundle that was too short for a spear or a lance, too thin for a sword…

  I gasped. “You have a bow.” I was an idiot. I’d ridden all the way here with it jabbing me in the hip and not realized.

  I spun and started poking around the wrappings. “Is it a longbow? Can I see it? What’s it made of? Oh my God, I’ve never seen anything but reproductions—”

  James’s hand landed on top of mine, stilling my efforts to unknot the cords that bound the weapon tight.

  “That belonged to a fallen comrade.” He stood behind me, not touching anything except for my hand, but I could feel the vibration of his voice from the back of my neck to the crook of my knees. “He carried that all the way from his native Wales, and I brought it home because I couldn’t bring him.”

  I spread my fingers over the cords like an apology. “I’m sorry,” I said, without turning around. I’d crossed a line, and it made a heavy lump in my throat. “That was rude of me.”

  James let that sink in silently. Satisfied I wasn’t going to rip into the binding like a wrapped present, he stepped back. “You were carried away by enthusiasm. All is forgiven.”

  The comment was wry, but the forgiveness was genuine. I turned to face him, explaining, “I just thought you were keeping it a secret because I’m a girl.”

  I was starting to get awfully familiar with his “be serious” look. Before he could say anything, though, the sounds of an escalating ruckus reached us from farther into the village.

  Father Anselm marched out from the chapel door. “Do I hear soldiers in the village or have I gone completely mad?”

  That was it—horses stamping and gruff voices shouting. I couldn’t understand a word; I just knew it sounded like trouble. There was a crash—something being overturned or a door being kicked in—and then the wail of a frightened child.

  James moved fast, taking me by the shoulders and lifting me away from his horse so he could swing into the saddle without kicking me. I was staring up at him before I knew what had happened. “Stay here,” he
ordered, in a voice that was used to obedience.

  Had the past few hours taught him nothing about me?

  The priest pulled me farther out of the way as James spurred his horse toward the muddy lane we rode in on. Father Anselm pointed across the graveyard. “We can cut through this way.” After about twenty feet, he waved me on. “Don’t wait for me, boy.”

  I took him at his word and ran between the headstones and wooden crosses. There was a low stone wall on the other side, easily hurdled, and then another side lane. On foot I could make a straight line behind the huts and houses that faced the village green.

  The villagers were mostly clustered around their front doors, trying to stay out of the way of Nottingham’s soldiers. No one noticed me, but I easily recognized the colors of the tunics from the castle. These weren’t Guilbert’s rangers. The men on horseback pulled on the reins and turned clumsily, while those on the ground hulked around, shouting and shoving. This was the chorus I’d come in on.

  I found Much standing between a mounted soldier and the open door of what I guessed was his sister’s house. There was a girl my age in the doorway, with a toddler clutching her skirts. It looked like the soldier was going to have to go through the scrawny miller’s son to get to his sister and niece.

  In the middle of all this, James cantered into the village green. “Stand down,” he ordered. “Harm anyone here and you will answer for it.” The way he said it, I totally believed that the hand of the Almighty would come down and smite any offenders on the spot, and some of the soldiers looked really nervous, like they were thinking the same thing. But James was one and they were a dozen.

  The soldier in front of Much yanked his horse around to face the knight. “We are charged with the pursuit of a knave wanted for trespassing, vandalism, and unprovoked assault on the castle guards.”

  Those lying bastards.

  “We have the full authority of the reeve of Nottingham to search all dwellings and outbuildings.” The soldier turned his attention back to Much. “So move aside, boy, or we’ll run you over.”

  All this just for being somewhere I shouldn’t have? That was insane.

  Much didn’t budge. His little niece was wailing. The village looked like a tornado had gone through it. All the clean linens hung to bleach in the sun had been trampled into the mud. A horse’s ass had knocked over a vegetable cart full of what little the villagers had to eat.

  The sergeant posted horsemen in front of James, and his foot soldiers rushed at Much, picking him up and moving him out of the way. Another reached for his sister in the doorway. I didn’t wait to see what would happen next.

  “Stop!” I shouted, pushing out from behind two female villagers. It would have been much more impressive if I hadn’t gotten tangled up in the cloak I still wore. I flailed my hands free and said again, “Wait. I’m the one you want. Leave these people alone.”

  Everything came to a screeching halt. I think even the baby stopped crying. No one had expected surrender. Least of all me.

  All that, and I’d ended up back where I started, only far worse off.

  The guard at the city gate waved the soldiers through. Nottingham town wasn’t walled, but the only bridges over the hell river were guarded, and the castle was protected on one side by the drop of the cliff. The legitimate approach involved a steady uphill course through the streets of the town, toward the gate towers I recognized.

  The townspeople mostly stopped what they were doing to watch us go by, although some fell in behind, following us. As we neared the castle bridge, Much turned his head to tell me, “Don’t worry. Sir James will be there to stand up for us.”

  “I’m not worried,” I lied as we passed under the hanged men and the iron portcullis. Sir Aethelstan stared sightlessly through milky, dead eyes.

  I told myself I’d be okay. No one could prove I’d done anything wrong because I hadn’t. I would remain free, and I would figure out how to get home, and then I would go to the tournament and shoot the best medal round of my life and come out of this whole experience with a medal and story I could never, ever tell anyone.

  In the castle bailey, the soldiers stopped in front of the timber steps that led up to the central keep. I let them drag me off the pony, and didn’t protest until they led Much away in a different direction. “Hey!” I yelled, craning my neck to see where they were taking him. “Where are you—”

  A soldier’s big hand shoved me between the shoulder blades. I stumbled and, with my hands tied, I braced for impact with the ground, but someone caught me easily and set me back on my feet. I opened one of my squeezed-shut eyes and looked up into the inscrutable face of Captain Sir Henry Guilbert.

  “I did warn you the soldiers would be rough,” he said.

  Jackass. “Is this torture in Nottingham? Having to listen to Captain Guilbert say ‘I told you so’?” My body ached, I had new bruises on my arms and shoulders, and my wrists were rubbed raw. But all I could think was that this guy’s job was basically to take food out of the mouths of mothers and babies, and I let contempt curl my lip. “I thought you were supposed to be eating dinner.”

  He raised his brows. “And I thought you were supposed to be dying of a brain fever.”

  Before I could say anything stupid—or stupider—James shouldered through the guards to my side, stopping when he saw Guilbert. They looked at each other over my head and the captain tsked. “I thought better of you, James.”

  He was not having it. “And I thought better of you. This is not the Nottingham I remember.”

  Everything droll vanished from the captain’s face. “You’ve been gone a long time.” His gaze flicked to me. “And I did tell you so, boy. Don’t blame me that you didn’t listen.”

  He turned away and I inhaled to get the last word, but James stopped me with one steely-eyed glance. I pressed my lips together. He gave me a “that’s better” look and settled his sword. “The sheriff has blood in his eye. If you won’t allow me to speak for you, then at least say as little as possible,” he said.

  I shivered and looked around the muddy courtyard. The townspeople who’d followed us to the castle jockeyed with each other for a good view of me and the knight. There were guards behind me, and Guilbert stood a little in front, all facing the raised stone…well, I’d have called it a terrace if it had been a fancy house and not a big stone tower, so instead I went with “dais.” On it was a backless chair…and some disturbingly dark stains. I’d seen this movie, too, and it usually ended with some lord from the north with his head cut off.

  “This is crazy,” I said. “All this for a…a trespasser?”

  “It isn’t that you got in. It’s that you got out.” James stood to my immediate left, speaking low for my ears only—like he was a lawyer, except one wearing armor and a sword. “The castle belongs to Prince John. The sheriff keeps it for him, and you made him look foolish and unprepared. Your ballad-worthy escape will not reflect well on him.”

  The noise from the crowd shifted as two guards came onto the platform, and then the man I remembered from my arrival, the one with the fancy velvet tunic trimmed in fur. He was the only person in the courtyard not muddy to the knees. Medium brown hair, medium height, medium build, neither really young nor really old—he was distinct because of the meanness in the pinch of his thin lips and the calculating look in his narrowed eyes.

  A herald in front of the dais said, “Attend the reeve of Nottingham!”

  The sheriff swept over to the backless chair and sat on it like a judge’s bench…or a throne. The guy had a sense of his own importance and a sense of drama, too. He gestured to the herald who swiftly ordered, “Boy, give your name.”

  It took me a second to realize he meant me. God, my mouth was dry. “Robert Hudson.”

  “Robert, son of Hood,” the herald intoned, “you are here to answer to the charges of trespassing, espionage, and attack on a soldier of the crown.”

  “Espionage?” The charges had escalated to absurd. I wanted to ask w
hat kind of medieval crack he was smoking, but James murmured, “Careful, Eleanor,” in my ear. With superhuman effort, I reeled myself back in. “I wasn’t…Just let me explain.”

  “Your Honor,” James prompted.

  “Your Honor, let me explain,” I repeated, then started my refrain. “I was confused and lost…”

  His Honor the sheriff waved me silent. “I will save time, since the day grows long,” he said. “The only explanation for your actions is that you are a spy.”

  My mouth opened but only a strangled sound came out. James straightened, and a wave of excitement rose from the attentive townsfolk, but the sheriff spoke over it. “You were discovered coming from the understructure of the castle. Then, rather than be caught, you attempted to commit suicide by casting yourself from the castle bridge.”

  “What?” I caught myself before I laughed, because it wasn’t funny. It just became worse and worse as the accusation rolled around in my head, gaining momentum. How did you disprove a complete logical fallacy? “Where is the evidence? You can’t just say I’m a traitor.”

  The sheriff tsked. “Babbling madness again. A trial by ordeal will prove your guilt.”

  A hot-cold wave of nausea swept over me. “What is that?” I whispered, looking up at James. He didn’t look at me, which meant it was bad.

  “Your Honor,” James said, sounding like he’d just been biding his time until now and was ready to unroll that long list of titles I couldn’t remember. “I question the call for any trial beyond this hearing. As Sir Henry will attest, my companion voluntarily agreed to present himself to answer to the charges. Hardly the act of a guilty person.”

  Guilbert shot James a suspicious look as soon as he used his title, and his expression didn’t lighten after being put on the spot. But he turned to the sheriff and said, “That is true, my lord.”

  The sheriff, however, had reddened at the word “question,” and he snapped at the soldier on the dais with him, “And where was he apprehended?”

  “Evading arrest in a village on the road to York, my lord,” said the guy, like I had done something to him personally.