“He says the barony will pass to my younger brother,” James said, in his not-rising-to-the-bait voice. “Same as it would have if I’d never returned to England.”
I took advantage of their sparring to slowly get to my feet. I wasn’t above sneaking away. I hadn’t taken more than a step, though, before Guilbert, without even looking, shot his hand out like he was going to grab me by the scruff of the neck. I reacted instinctively, jabbing my elbow in his undefended torso, nailing him in the diaphragm and knocking the air out of him. He doubled over and I was free.
“Chapel!” ordered James. “Go!” Without questioning, I ran for the church.
Leaping over the little stone wall of the friary, I raced down the trail to the churchyard, low tree limbs catching at my hood and my hair. When I burst into the lane, I didn’t waste time with the gate but vaulted over the fence, which would have been much more impressive if I hadn’t immediately tripped on a gravestone and hit the ground in a skid.
When I pushed myself to my feet, I heard someone coming down the trail, hoped it was James, and was wrong. How had Guilbert gotten his wind back so fast?
Father Anselm was tending his flowers, and it was a wonder I didn’t give him a heart attack. The ancient priest closed his dropped jaw, looked me up and down—my jeans were torn at both knees, and blood dripped down my shins—assessed the situation, and said, “Into the chapel, young Robert. Get to the nave.”
I figured it was some medieval tradition, like tagging home base, and I limped the way he pointed. Guilbert came over the fence like I had, with James on his heels, both looking like there had been a scuffle for the lead. My sneakers hit flagstone, and I blundered through the chapel door. In the sudden dimness, I nearly brained myself on a support column, then stumbled into the slanted beams of sunlight coming through the high, narrow windows of the sanctuary.
I stopped and propped my hands on my thighs, catching my breath in the tiny nave of the tiny chapel. Guilbert burst in with James so close behind that when the captain spun and slammed the door shut, it sounded like it hit James in the face. Guilbert put his shoulder to the timber to hold the door closed, then shot home the thick bolt.
My hopes did a roller-coaster drop at the sound. That was not the sound of safe on base. Did I have to tag up? Yell “Not It”?
James shouted something I couldn’t hear, but I bet it wasn’t very friarly. Guilbert yelled back, “This doesn’t concern you, James!”
Sweat had broken out as soon as I’d stopped running, and it stung my skinned elbows and knees. “It’s going to concern him a lot if you kill me inside a church,” I said.
Guilbert turned from the door. “I’m not going to kill you,” he said, too dismissive to be reassuring.
I backed up a step. “Maim, then.”
“I’m going to do what I should have done from the first,” he said, still advancing. “See you behind bars in Nottingham’s dungeon.”
“You can’t.” I retreated to the altar, my stomach heaving at the thought of rats and chains and God knows what.
Guilbert took the first of the three shallow steps, his gaze relentlessly, coldly furious. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Your sheriff was in the wrong today.” At the priory, I’d seen the tic in his jaw that said Guilbert disagreed with his boss’s actions. “It wasn’t even profitable for him. It was just petty, and you know it.”
“What I know is this,” he said from the second step, so icily our breath should have fogged the air. “I’ve one man who broke his arm when his horse threw him, and another swollen like a…a…”
“Turnip?”
I winced as soon as the word was out of my mouth. Guilbert’s hornet stings disappeared into a furious flush. “Is this naught but a game to you?” he demanded.
I dashed to put the altar between us. “Okay, okay! That wasn’t funny. I’m honestly sorry your men got hurt.”
He braced his feet, poised impatiently for me to go one way around the altar or the other, and I realized I’d cornered myself. “I am through with warnings and second chances. Now, come out and face your charges like a man.”
“Why?” I demanded. “So you can put my head on a spike like poor Lord Ethyl Stone?”
“Sir Aethelstan was a traitor,” snapped Guilbert. “He was part of an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy against the king.”
“Was his trial as big a joke as mine?” I asked.
His face hardened into cold inscrutability. “There was overwhelming evidence against him.”
“From the sheriff? Pardon me while I laugh.”
“From the monks of Rufford Abbey—” He brought himself up sharp. “Stop changing the subject.”
Like hell I would. “What about the hanged men?”
“Those sentences I did oversee,” Guilbert said. “Since I was the one who found their victims in the forest, an extra smile opened in each of their throats.” I tried not to picture it, but how could I not? He saw my reaction and pressed on that nerve. “Would you like me to describe how they left the women?”
“Then you should be chasing men like them, instead of stealing from nuns. It just makes you as big a bully as your sheriff.”
“What does that mean?” he demanded. “That word, ‘bully’?”
“Someone who beats up on people weaker than him because he’s too much of a coward—”
I had barely gotten the word out before Guilbert was over the top of the altar. I was so surprised that I froze, screwing my eyes closed, waiting to be skewered, or maybe I’d just be collateral damage to the wrathful bolt of lightning about to smite Captain Sir Henry Boots-on-the-Lord’s-Table Guilbert. The flash didn’t come, and the captain grabbed the shoulder of my tunic and pushed me against the stone wall.
“Call me a coward to my face, thief.”
Clearly I’d hit a nerve.
“You are kind of proving my point,” I wheezed.
“I am not thrashing you.” But he did let up a little on his grip. “I am taking you to Nottingham for judgment.”
But I was in the chapel. Was he disobeying the rules, or was I missing the magic phrase? Not It? Ollie ollie oxen free?
Oh, wait. I knew this—
“Sanctuary,” I blurted. “I want to claim sanctuary.”
Guilbert cursed in French, and let me go. I sagged against the wall, knees shaking. I realized the loud banging I heard wasn’t just my heart in my ears. It was James trying to break the door down.
“I am no bully,” Guilbert said, drawing back his shoulders and reining in his temper. But it still simmered under the surface. “I may be bigger, but only a fool would think you are weak.”
And only an idiot would forget his layer of cool was merely the ice cap on his temper.
“Thank you, I think.”
“We’re not done.” His unchecked anger had been a swinging broadsword, easier to dodge. The focused intensity of his sharp gaze pinned me to the spot and made me squirm. “Forget about the thievery. This is between you and me. When your sanctuary is done, if you haven’t disappeared into the wind, Master Hudson, we will meet over swords and see who is the coward.”
He turned with finality and stalked toward the door. I peeled my tongue off the suddenly dry roof of my mouth and said, “You—”
I was going to say, again, “You can’t,” but over his shoulder he gave me a look that cut me off. “Why. Not?” he asked, very deliberate.
My brain was empty except for “I don’t know how to sword fight.”
Up went one hateful brow. “Then you have forty days to learn.”
I slid down the wall, too exhausted to do more than that. My bloody knees poked through my jeans and my elbows hit the stone, but I didn’t even feel it.
Relief, though…that I did feel when James appeared in front of me. “Eleanor, I’m sorry. He should never have taken me by surprise that way.” He made an efficient battlefield examination for bruises where Guilbert had grabbed my shoulder, then the scrapes on my elbows and k
nees. “This is my fault.”
“No, it’s not. I wasn’t paying attention, either.” My aches and stings were minor. James was going to have his own. There was a red lump on his jaw about the size of a fist. “It takes a real gentleman to punch a friar.”
“Or a woman,” he said, in a deadly sort of voice.
Face your charges like a man, Guilbert had said. Chauvinist. “Not to defend him, but he doesn’t know I’m a girl.”
“Then he must be blinded by anger.”
That might have been a compliment if he hadn’t said it with a don’t-be-stupid look. I dismissed both the comment and the look. People saw what they expected to see. “I hope you at least got a punch in,” I said, starting to my feet.
James showed me his bruised knuckles. “I hit him first.” He turned his hand and offered it to me. I took it and accepted his help up. “What happened?” he asked as I dusted myself off.
With a heavy sigh, I gave him the short version. “I sort of called Guilbert a coward and he challenged me to a duel.”
We’d started toward the door, but at that, James stopped in a pool of sunlight in the middle of the chapel. “That is a poor jest, Eleanor.”
“I hope it is.” I faced him, wary that James wasn’t laughing. “He’s not serious about dueling, is he?”
In the diffuse light, his eyes were more gray than blue, and his manner matched. “If you called him a coward, I would say he’s deadly serious.”
“He called me a thief.”
“You did intend to steal the animals from him,” he pointed out.
“But I didn’t do it.”
James adopted a pulpit tone that resonated through the chapel. “But I say unto you that whosoever looks on a goat to steal her hath committed theft already in his heart.”
I gave him a narrow-eyed stare. “Are you seriously misquoting the Bible at me right now?”
He gazed back, unintimidated. “If the sin fits…”
Grumbling, I started for the door. “No wonder I haven’t been to church in ages.”
“You’ll make up for it over the next forty days,” he said, almost conversationally.
That was worth stopping again. “What does that mean?”
James stopped, too. “You claimed sanctuary. But if you set foot out of the church grounds for the forty days it lasts, then that protection is forfeit.”
“Wait. Forty days?” I stared at him, but he was not joking. “I’m stuck in here?”
“The grounds extend to the churchyard and the friary,” he said. “And nothing prevents you from leaving. But then you will have to immediately answer Guilbert’s charges.”
“But I have things to do!”
James looked at me quizzically. “Like what?”
Well, I knew what I had to do first. “I have to get the sisters’ goats back.”
He folded his arms and stared down at me like I was being pointlessly stubborn. “Perhaps you should be more concerned about facing Guilbert over swords in forty days’ time.”
“I am.” Definitely. I was, however, more concerned about finding a way home long before forty days were up. But just in case…“I should probably learn how to sword fight. You’ll teach me, right?”
James rubbed a hand over his face in a frustrated but resigned way. “Yes, of course I will teach you the sword. As for the other matter…” He sighed. “Please keep me in the dark, so I won’t have to lie about it if asked.”
“That’s fair.” And smart, since he was such a bad liar.
I had never thought of myself as a rule breaker before. Maybe because in sports, that’s called cheating. But this wasn’t sports, and I regretted nothing. Okay, I felt bad the horses had gotten stung, and I was kind of worried about the forester with the broken arm. But I probably wouldn’t have cared much if it had been one the sheriff’s brutes. If it had been the one who’d pushed the goat-keeping novice, I might have even relished it.
Maybe I really was a bad influence on myself. The moment I’d grabbed my bow and gone after Guilbert and the confiscated livestock, I’d stopped asking myself What Would Rob Do, and only done What Ellie Would Do.
My arrow split the bark beside Will Scarlet’s ear. Before he could do more than flinch, I put another shaft on his other side so he’d know the first one hadn’t been a miss.
“Stay put,” I said from the other edge of the clearing. I had a third arrow ready to fly. “You too, Little John, or I’ll give Will a new feather in his cap.”
The big man had gotten halfway to his feet. Seeing me at full draw, he considered his chances of jumping me without my skewering his friend, then sank back to his seat against the tree.
Will, irrepressible, just grinned. “Well done, Mistress Hood. The last time we met in the woods, you sounded like a boar hunt on two legs.”
“You’re lucky Captain Guilbert went after me and not the livestock, because you left a trail of goat droppings like Hansel and Gretel.”
“Like who?”
“It doesn’t matter.” It was hard to be intimidating when someone was openly laughing at you. “Where are my goats?”
“The better question,” said Will, getting slowly to his feet, “is whether you’re prepared to shoot me over a few farm animals.”
“Do you want to risk it?” My arm was getting tired. Even a half-drawn bow is heavy.
“Fortune is a lady, and I’ve always been good with the ladies.”
I hadn’t forgotten about Little John, but I hadn’t thought he could reach his stave—not until it hit my heels, sweeping my legs out from under me.
I hit the ground and my fingers let go. The shot went straight up, and it was going to come down sometime, which was one problem. The other was Little John, who jumped to his feet, swinging his stave. From the trees came a whir and a ffft, and a rock that smacked the big man between the eyes and felled him like a tree.
Will had his own bow in hand by then, and he aimed for the brush, where Much was reloading his sling. I grabbed a heavy-tipped blunt out of my quiver, nocked it, and loosed it at barely a quarter draw. The blunt hit Will in the ass, which had to hurt like hell. His shot went wild, and so did his language.
Rolling to my feet, I grabbed another shaft, a white-fletched sharp, and laid it across the bow. The outlaw limped in a circle, trying to walk off the sting. “Merde! That hurt! And it’s going to leave a bruise,” he added, craning his neck to check for damage.
“You’ll live.” I was shaking with adrenaline, but I managed to keep my voice steady. I hadn’t expected a fight. Well, I had a little bit. But there’s expecting and there’s that just happened.
Little John groaned on the ground as Much came into the clearing, still spinning his sling and eyeing Will with extreme dislike. “Meet Much,” I said, regaining my poise. “The first of my merry men. He can hit a gnat at fifty paces with that thing.”
Will raised his hands in surrender. “Put the sling away, lad. I call a truce.”
Much looked at me, and I nodded. But he kept his sling loaded, and I had an arrow still in hand.
A bird called from the trees over the hill. Will wet his lips and answered with a similar trill. At my inquiring glance, he explained, “That’s the all clear.”
“To who?” I asked, watching him try to pull John to his feet.
“Some friends.”
I gave up watching and went to help. Will and I each took one of Little John’s big hands and leaned back, hoisting him up. The man pulled down his tunic, recovering his dignity despite the lump coming up on his forehead like a unicorn horn. “Thank you kindly.”
“Um, Rob?” said Much. I turned and saw his nose twitching like a rabbit’s. “I’m reckoning I know where the goats are.”
I sniffed tentatively, wondering what he smelled that I didn’t. All I got was wet mulch and sun-warmed wood…and roasting meat. “Oh no. You didn’t.”
Will bowed and swept one arm toward a slight path through the trees. “Would you care for some luncheon?”
Dammit, Will Scarlet! Forgetting caution, I started down the trail, quickening to a trot as the smell got stronger. I glimpsed an almost invisible sentry, who let me through, so I figured Will must have been right behind me and given him some gesture.
On the other side of the hill was a sort of semipermanent camp made up of woven twig shelters. A few of the residents were hard-looking men, but the rest of the outlaws ranged from a boy as young as Much to a man who needed a walking stick. They all stood as I approached.
In the center of the camp was a fire pit with a small haunch roasting on a spit.
“You ate them?”
“Quiet, lad,” warned one of the outlaws. “If you call the foresters down on us, we won’t be thanking you.”
“Those were the nuns’ goats,” I said, still outraged, but quieter about it. Will, I noticed absently, didn’t correct anyone about my gender.
Little John folded his arms, gruffly shamefaced. “We didn’t roast all of them.”
“The others are in the stewpot,” quipped some joker in the band.
I heard bleating coming from nearby, less a call for help and more of a complaint that help hadn’t come quicker. None of the outlaws moved, but I kept my bow and two sharp arrows ready. “Much, would you reclaim the priory’s property, please?”
Much jogged off. One of the scarier outlaws moved as though he would follow, but Little John stopped him with a raised hand. “Let them have it,” he said. “It’s for the nuns.”
“It?” I echoed, horrified. “There’s only one goat left?”
Will shrugged. “It takes a lot to feed a man John’s size.”
I glared at him. “You are a…a wastrel.” His brows rose, but I moved on to Little John. “And you should be ashamed of yourself. Outlawed for taxes, and now you’re stealing from the poor and pushing around people smaller than you. Which is everyone.”
The big man’s ears reddened. “We stole the goats from the sheriff.”
“If you’re going to steal from the sheriff, shoot his deer, don’t take the sisters’ milk goats.” Much was headed back, leading a goat by a tether. I jerked my head toward the path and the boy made his way out of the camp. The goat trotted nimbly behind him, unaware how close she had come to being cabrito.
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