“Here.” James put a hand on my shoulder and offered me the canteen. I took it and drank. It was just water, but the normalcy of it steadied me, and the three deep swallows stopped me from hyperventilating. I hadn’t realized I’d been shaking.
“Don’t think about the war, or even the battle,” he said, his hand still spanning my shoulder. “Think about the soldier in front of you. What will be your first step?”
“To not get killed,” I intoned flatly.
His expression turned wry. “I hadn’t meant literally, but I suppose that still applies.” He stood and offered me a hand up. “And it happens to be one area where I can be of some help.”
“Right now?” I asked, not eager exactly, but aware that if I was still here in thirty-eight and a half days, I was going to need some new skills in my tool kit.
“Tomorrow.” He dropped my hand as soon as I was on my feet. “Today you can exercise your sword arm by helping me put in this gatepost.”
Close combat was nothing like archery.
I mean, besides the obvious. When I was on the firing line, everything had an order—nock, draw, loose. There was nothing measured about fighting. Everything happened at once: swing of sword and spike of fear and spring of muscle.
The sword came down toward my neck, and I leapt out from under it. The weapon swished past me, but that was due more to James’s proficiency than my graceless scramble out of the way.
“Eleanor!” he barked, holding the wooden practice sword off to the side, signaling we were in a time-out. “You are supposed to be learning to block and parry. So for the love of the Lord who made you, stand fast and block my swing!”
“I’m trying!” I protested, ignoring Much’s laughter. He was sitting on the wall, watching the lesson, and the only thing he enjoyed more than my clumsy wrestling with the training sword was listening to “Brother” James struggle not to fall back into soldier’s language.
James didn’t look like a friar at the moment. He was dressed like the day before, in brown wool trousers and a linen shirt that was open at the throat and rolled up to his elbows. Sparring with me hadn’t made him sweat, but the day was sunny and warm.
I, on the other hand, was hot and sticky and seriously doubting I was cut out for this.
“Come here,” James instructed, and I did. That part was simple. “If you cannot defend against something this basic, there’s no point in continuing. Ready.” It wasn’t a question; it was a warning. He lifted his sword to make the same strike, and I really meant to stay put. But he was intimidating, even in plain clothes with just a stick, and I took an involuntary step back. He cursed. “Stand still. I’m not going to harm you.”
“I know.” But instinct was instinct.
“Your two options are to engage or to retreat. Pick one and commit to it.”
I wasn’t too proud to admit that “run away” was plan A if caught off the church grounds by anyone, especially Captain Guilbert himself. Plan B was to stay alive until I could enact plan A.
“Being where the sword isn’t seems a pretty good plan to me.”
James scowled like I wasn’t taking this seriously. “You can dodge, but don’t show fear. Any good opponent and most bad ones will hammer at that weakness.” He gestured to the spot in front of him like he was asking me to dance. “And make no mistake, Henry Guilbert is probably the best sword west of Yorkshire.”
I moved to where he pointed. “Is he better than you?” At James’s quick frown, I reassured him, “Just asking.”
“I don’t know.” His reply was matter-of-fact. “Ready? We’ll go through the same defensive sequence.” I got my practice sword into position, and he went on conversationally as we began again. “I haven’t sparred with him since we were boys. I left for the Crusade when I was twelve.”
I dropped my guard and stared at him. “You went to war when you were twelve?”
He didn’t pause his swing, saying, like it was no big deal, “I’d been a squire since I was younger than Much.”
“Yeah, but you’ve been at war since you were twelve,” I repeated, as if that would make it less horrifying. James brought his sword around and I managed to get mine over to block him.
“We had to get there first,” said James. He picked up the pace as he spoke. “The journey was its own battle, at times, as was living in the heat of the Holy Land or the muck of France.”
I figured that if James said something was uncomfortable that meant it was excruciating. “Why did you go?”
“Because that is what you do when you are full of righteous zeal and idealistic enthusiasm.” His tone said we were done talking about war, and his next swing came fast at my left side.
I squealed in surprise and jumped out of the way, but he followed through with the motion and smacked me high on my thigh with the flat of the wooden sword. Hard. Numbness spread out from the impact, and then, a second later, came a sting like a mother.
“Son of a bitch!” I cried, rubbing my leg. “You said you wouldn’t hit me.”
He didn’t apologize. “I said I wouldn’t harm you.” He didn’t lower his weapon, either. “That is why you can’t flinch from the attack. Anticipate it, and meet it.”
I wiped the sweat out of my eyes. My arms were killing me, but I got the sword up when he came at me and didn’t let up. It was hard to make my moves purposeful when I felt like I was dancing a beat behind the music and struggling to catch up. I barely made three blocks, and then took another smack, this time on my well-padded arm. “Ow!”
“Look at me,” James said, “not my sword.” At least he was sweating a little now.
“How am I supposed to block if I don’t watch what I’m doing?” I asked.
“How do you know where your arrow is going to go?” he countered as we circled each other. “You look at the bow, do you?”
“I look at the target.”
“Exactly.” He lunged. I kept my gaze on his face and caught the tiny tells that showed his intent. I knocked his blade aside and went on the offensive. I pictured where I wanted my sword to go and tried to make it a part of me, like my bow.
James went for the high slash that I always ducked. I saw his shoulders shift. When his arm went up, I stepped under it and jammed my padded forearm under his wrist so the sword couldn’t come down. My right arm was low, too close to thrust, so I went for a rising slash that would give him a bruise to match mine. With a twist of his arm, he brought his sword down and around like he was taking a golf swing. He blocked my sword, but he had to step back to do it.
Exhilarated at the tiny victory, I went on the offensive. The next thing I knew, James had disarmed me and I saw his weapon coming straight at my heart. He veered, though, and the wooden sword slid very precisely between my chest and my left arm.
Dammit.
We stood there for a moment, breathing hard—well, I was breathing hard—our eyes locked like we’d switched to a staring contest. My pride felt properly skewered, but I wouldn’t back away first.
Finally he sighed and lowered his sword. “Eleanor,” he began. With his free hand, he brushed a lock of hair out of my face. “Promise me something.”
“Yeah?” I breathed, not caring what I was agreeing to.
His hand settled on my shoulder, fingers spread, his thumb resting close to the pulse in my throat. “Please don’t get into a sword fight with anybody.”
I laughed, even though he wasn’t joking. “What about Guilbert’s challenge?”
“It won’t come to that. I’m more afraid you’ll come to trouble wandering off the friary property. You could run afoul of much worse than Henry Guilbert.”
“I’ll be fine,” I assured James.
“Eleanor.” He said my name again, and gently squeezed the shoulder where his hand rested. “You cannot even kill a rabbit without tears. How are you going to thrust a sword into a man’s flesh? Or an arrow, for that matter.”
I honestly didn’t know what I would do if it came to that. I figured I would be
prepared, and the rest would sort itself out. “What about you?” I countered. “You told me you’d had your fill of killing.”
I watched the ghost of battle move across his face and leave him weary. Dropping his hand from my shoulder, he went to collect my practice sword. “My fill and more. Which is why I ask that you please—”
Hoofbeats coming from the village made him break off. Someone was riding fast, not from the Great North Road but from the forest. James and I didn’t even exchange looks. He grabbed his real sword, and I ran for my bow and quiver, nocking an arrow as the rider came into sight.
The horse slowed to a trot, and the rider raised both hands to show he wasn’t armed. By then I’d already recognized him.
“Will Scarlet,” I greeted him by name for James’s benefit. “You own a horse?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I stole it.”
His bravado seemed thin, and his face was drawn. Something was wrong.
James was still in a battle mind-set. I heard it in his voice as he took in Will’s tension and his sweating horse and asked, “What’s happened?”
Ignoring him, Will addressed me with his answer. “John the Smith,” he said. “Little John, you call him. His son has been taken for poaching. The sheriff is going to pronounce sentence at Edwinstowe, where the boy’s family can see.”
“Poaching deer?” asked James, with that same clipped authority.
Will flicked a blazing look his way. “Do you think I would be coming to you over a few partridges?” To me, he said, “The boy’s a young fool, only two and ten, thinking he can provide for all his sisters while his father is outlawed. John snuck back with some game every now and then, but after he brought his share of the roast goat—”
“Little John took the goat to the village?” I asked.
The outlaw gave me a dry look, more like his usual self. “Thanks to your sermon, yes. He was hailed as a hero, which suited John just fine, and young Jack got the idea that if a goat was good, a deer would be better. So I lay this at your door, Robin of the Hood.”
That was nice of him, but I could feel plenty guilty without any help. I slung my quiver and adjusted it to make sure it didn’t highlight my chest. I’d bound everything up tight, but it was what it was. “Where’s Little John now?” I asked.
“Headed to Edwinstowe,” Will answered. “I think he’s going to do something rash and violent. That’s what John does.”
I was about to do something rash. Violent, however, remained to be seen. Stepping up onto the wall, I gestured for Will to bring his horse closer so I could mount behind him. “Hold up a moment,” said James. I glanced down at him, expecting an argument. “Shouldn’t we have some sort of plan?”
“Plan?” I grabbed the hand Will extended to pull me up. “I thought you’d know me better than that by now.”
I settled behind the saddle and found the right angle for my bow. A glance over my shoulder showed James loping toward the horse pen, with Much sprinting after him.
“Your cher ami looks different out of uniform,” said Will.
“You have no idea,” I replied, thinking of the armor and all that. But Will interpreted it differently and laughed. “That’s not what I meant,” I blurted.
“If you’re defrocking a cleric, little Robin, you’re a bigger sinner than any of us.”
“Just ride,” I told him, and held tightly to his belt.
The village of Edwinstowe lay at the intersection of two roads through Sherwood Forest. It was big enough to rate a tavern inn, but small enough that the hundred or so people in the village green seemed like a crowd. Nottingham soldiers watched the roads into town, but Will and I hadn’t had any trouble blending in with the folk arriving from scattered farms to see what was going on.
“We won’t have such an easy time getting out again,” Will murmured from behind his mug of ale. The tavern was standing room only, even at the tables outside.
James and Much would be coming along at any moment. We’d left the conspicuous warhorse in the woods and split up there. James had gone full Friar Tuck—his rough wool habit done up properly, rope belt in place of his sword, cowl draped over his shoulders—but he still walked and talked like a Sir James. Whereas no one looked twice at the overdressed William Fitzwhatever and his servant boy.
Will checked out the crowd without looking like he was doing anything other than checking out the ladies, not a few of which were looking him over in return.
I had my game face on too, and all my calculations were going on behind it. “Isn’t it weird that Guilbert didn’t put any of his rangers on the roads into town? People who would recognize me by sight, I mean.”
Because of the crowded tavern yard, I’d spoken in French to foil eavesdroppers, but there was so much gossip and chatter going on, it was hard to hear anyone who wasn’t speaking in your ear. But Will replied in the same language, the better to tease me. “Maybe you have an elevated idea of your importance to the dashing captain.”
I thought about the look on Guilbert’s face when I’d called him a coward, and how he must have heard by now that certain chapel poor boxes and pantries were a little fuller than they were a few days ago. “My importance, probably. Robin Hood, on the other hand…”
“Robin Hood, did you say?” said a man at a table near us, in thick English. I jumped, but he wasn’t talking to me. He drunkenly thumped his ale onto the rough wooden table and leaned on his elbows to tell the man across from him, “That’s the cause of this, you know. You think His Honor the sheriff of Nottingham would haul his bony ass up here over a poacher if he weren’t…weren’t…”
“Mad as a hornet?” his companion quipped.
There were a few quickly stifled titters from the folks clumped around, and a few warning shushes. Will and I exchanged looks. Mine was sort of a “see,” and his was more of a “whatever.”
The joker continued, in a not-too-worried tone, “My money says it will be the stocks for the lad.”
“What money?” said another man. “The sheriff took all your money.”
More laughter, but it was commiserating. “The smith’s family is no better off,” said a woman who was coming around with refills. “They can’t pay a fine. Not with John the Smith down for an outlaw these past five months. It’ll be the stocks for the lad, if he’s lucky.”
A moment of grim silence as that sank in. Then a new voice chimed in, more resonant than the others, with a bit of an accent—rounder on the vowels, softer on the consonants. “Then this troublemaker I’ve heard tell of…he’s not just a fanciful tale?”
“Hardly. My own pa was at Nottingham Castle and saw him shoot a plum, naught but the size of a baby’s fist, from atop the miller’s son’s head.”
The target in my trial kept getting smaller each time Much brought the tale back to me, which he did after every visit to town. He enjoyed the celebrity.
“And the Marian Sisters at Northgate Priory have plenty of goat cheese again.”
There was a good bit of snickering at that. The man with the accent—was it Spanish? Mediterranean maybe?—went on to ask, “So it’s true that he is in love with a lady there?”
Will gave my shoulder a hearty slap, and I jumped. I’d gotten much too involved in listening to my own press. “Boy,” he said, in a theatrical voice, “go stable my horse. I think I’ll stay and see how the story of this young poacher unfolds.”
That was my cue to leave. I murmured something that at least sounded like “Yes, m’lord,” then ducked out of the pub’s crowded yard, grabbed the reins of Will’s horse, and headed one lane over. At the intersection I saw two of Sherwood’s forest rangers. I turned like I was fixing something on the horse’s saddle, and the pair rode by without pause.
I didn’t have to loiter long before Much came down the lane, his sturdy little horse hitched to a stolen pony cart. He didn’t stop as I slipped away from the wall, tied Will’s horse to the back of the cart, and slid my quiver and bow from underneath the empty grain sack
s. All those spy movies were good for something.
After putting up my hood, I slouched, and carried my bow like a walking stick. My quiver, banging against my thigh underneath the cloak, gave a convincing hitch to my step as I joined the flow of traffic headed for the town green. It wasn’t rock-concert ground-seating crowded, but as tall as I was, I could only just see the ginormous oak tree, which a lot of kids had climbed for a good view, and the church steeple roughly fifty yards away.
Where the road split to circle the green stood a big stone cross, raised up by three steps. Some people had climbed the steps for a better view of the proceedings, but there was still room and I claimed it.
Now I could see that roughly in the center of the green was a permanent structure that held the village’s stocks and enough room for public speeches. The sheriff of Nottingham was already addressing the public. I didn’t try too hard to translate his English to my English. The gist was clear.
Also on the platform was an older man, stiffly resentful and not trying to hide it. His clothes looked high-quality, though less ornate than the sheriff’s, and the expensive dyes had faded. A local lord, maybe?
There was no sign of Guilbert, and I didn’t see any of the rangers on the green, just the guards in Nottingham livery. Two of the sheriff’s soldiers stood with him in front of the crowd, and between them was a wiry boy with red hair. The kid was white-faced and his hands were curled into fists to hide their shaking.
The sheriff lifted a hand for silence, his fur-lined cloak framing him. The crowd responded to the dramatic picture and finally quieted. “A boy of your village, Jack, the smith’s son, has killed one of the king’s deer. You all know that is the same as if he’d stolen from King Richard himself. The punishment must be accordingly severe.”
“Your Honor,” said the other man on the platform with forced politeness. “Perhaps we should let the boy say how he came to shoot the deer.” With approval from the sheriff, the man turned to Jack and gave him a significant nod. “Go ahead, lad.”
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