She considered that a moment. “I…think so? Your words are strange, but the tone sounds right.”
“And where do you fit into things?”
“Oh, I was supposed to marry James’s older brother. Then, after he died, our relatives expected me to marry James. But then my uncle died in Jerusalem and I became a ward of the crown and, well, you know the rest of that sad tale.”
I choked on my porridge. I would never have thought…They acted way more like siblings than sweethearts. “You were supposed to marry James’s brother? And now James?”
“Well, no, because he doesn’t want to leave the Templars, so now I’m supposed to marry some horrid Norman in Prince John’s court, whose first three wives all died trying to birth a son.” She shuddered and stirred her breakfast. “But I have a plan in the works. I’ve appealed to my godmother.” She broke off and glanced at Elsbeth, who had been not at all listening to our conversation. With a shrug, she finished, “It may come to nothing, but one never knows.”
There was a commotion from the trees downhill. I heard Will’s fake birdcall, though, and as the three of us jumped to our feet, I reassured Isabel and Elsbeth, “They’re our guys. Or at least, it’s Will.” I grabbed my bow and quiver, which I automatically kept beside me now. “Stay here and I’ll check it out.”
I jogged to the path that ran diagonally downhill into the trees. Little John was there, standing with one arm akimbo. Much came out of the woods a moment later, a bunch of rabbits hanging over his shoulder and his slingshot in his hand. He joined John and me, and the three of us watched Will ride into the camp with a man hog-tied over his saddle.
I meant to utter a quip, but all I managed was “What the hell, Will?”
“This fellow was nosing around,” he said. “It wasn’t hard to spot him in those clothes.”
“You should talk,” growled Little John, and I snorted.
James followed Will out of the trees, obviously continuing an argument he’d already started. “What’s the point of a hidden outpost if you bring every hapless stranger into it?” He dismounted, and I noticed he was carrying a knapsack and a lute. “What do you plan to do with him now?” he asked Will.
Will swung jauntily down from his horse. “That all depends on how he behaves himself. He says he wants to talk to Rob.”
“Get him down from there, Little John,” I said, recognizing the captive’s clothes. Or the orange tights, at any rate. “I think I know who he is.”
“I want to talk to Robin Hood,” said the man, his voice muffled by the bag over his head.
“Of course you do,” said Little John, easily off-loading the man one-handed, as if he were a sack of grain. “So you can run to the sheriff and collect the bounty on Rob’s head.”
The man landed orange-tights-first. He wriggled to a sitting position, hands still tied, head still covered. “I don’t need the outlaw’s bounty,” he said, his accent thicker than it had been in the village. “I need his help.”
Will hit Little John on his good shoulder. “Do you see what you and that son of yours started? Now everyone wants Rob’s help.”
“I’m glad you find this amusing,” said James, taking the reins of the horses.
Much piped up with “I thought it was funny.” James gave him a stern look and handed over both horses.
“Give it a rest, you guys.” I crouched in front of the man and pulled the bag from his head. “I am so sorry about that.”
He was definitely the man who’d abetted me in Edwinstowe. When I’d very quickly cataloged his outfit, I’d only seen the bright colors, but there was a bit of theatricality to them. Adding in the lute, which I assumed was his, and his lovely speaking voice, I figured him to be a performer of some kind.
As he sat on the ground, hands and feet tied, the troubadour drew himself up straight, looking rumpled but dignified. “I commend your leadership. Your man’s loyalty makes him enthusiastic in his defense of you.”
“Um, thanks.” Yes, definitely a performer. I ignored Much’s snort and Will’s rolled eyes.
“Your pardon if I do not rise,” said the stranger.
“Let him loose.” They all gave me doubtful looks. Even Much. “What is he going to do? He’s armed with a lute, for heaven’s sake. Besides, he had a chance to turn me in yesterday and didn’t.”
John was the one who crouched and cut the troubadour free. The man gained his feet, rubbing the circulation back into his wrists. “Thank you. And I assure you all, I neither need nor want the sheriff’s coin.”
Will took the knapsack, opened it, and rooted around with more curiosity now than suspicion. He pulled out a canister sealed with wax. “What is this?”
James took it, examined the seal and the design on the canister, then sniffed it. “Spices from Constantinople.” Will had pulled two similar packages from the bag, and James’s brows rose. “These are worth more than the prices on all your heads combined.”
We all looked at the stranger, who looked expectantly back at me. “Well, you said you had a sad tale to tell,” I said. “I guess now is your chance, Alan-a-Dale.”
He frowned, confused. “That is not my name.”
“None of us goes by his real name here,” said Will, handing the man his lute.
I gestured toward the fire circle. “As-salaam-alaikum.”
He accepted my greeting and my implied welcome. “Wa-alaikum-salaam,” he replied.
I had now exhausted all the Arabic I knew, but the look on James’s face was priceless.
“Wonderful,” muttered Little John. “Another language I don’t understand.”
“Don’t worry, Little John,” I said. “We’ll stick to English.”
“No offense, Rob,” he said dolefully, “but I don’t understand you half the time even when you do.”
I let them go ahead of me toward the fire. Will had shifted into his role as host—he flirted with Isabel and Elsbeth and welcomed to his camp the same man he’d trussed up and thrown over his saddle. He was nothing if not adaptable.
James had hung back with me. “You speak Arabic?”
“That’s my whole vocabulary.” I looked up at him and asked, “You didn’t think to mention you’re supposed to marry Isabel?”
I’d finally managed to unravel his composure. He opened his mouth, then closed it, scowled, then cleared his expression—but he couldn’t do anything about his blush. “I’m a member of a holy order of knights. I’m not supposed to marry anyone.”
Well, there was that. I pieced a few things together and suddenly didn’t feel so bad about getting friend-zoned last night. “Not even with special circumstances? Like your older brother dying?”
His eyes narrowed. “I begin to think you are a witch.”
I was pretty sure he was joking, but still. “I’m not. I think Isabel just enjoys having a friend to talk to about…life.”
“Isabel has always enjoyed talking.” He said it affectionately, though, and turned to go up the path.
“James,” I said, and he turned back expectantly.
Don’t say anything stupid, Ellie.
“What are you going to do?”
Instead of answering right away, he reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear. “I don’t know yet. But I have a feeling it’s the least of your problems, Eleanor of West-of-Here.”
That was not necessarily true. What if the thing I was supposed to do was get them together, like maybe they were my eleventy-times great-grandparents or something. That would make my crush colossally…weird.
“I’d kind of just like for you to be happy, James.” I went past him on the path, pausing when I was eye level. “Even if you don’t think you deserve it.”
Then, before I could explode with awkwardness, I rushed ahead to the fire circle, where Alan-a-Dale was waiting to tell his story.
—
“I was born the fifth son of a minor noble and great merchant in Constantinople,” Alan began, as he tuned his lute. The morning had clouded over, so
the fire made a welcome bubble of warmth as the seven of us—eight with Much’s sister Elsbeth—gathered around it.
“When my father wished to expand his empire,” he went on, “he sent my brothers and me out in all directions—east to Persia, south to Egypt, west to Macedonia. Me, he sent to Spain, where I found a comfortable place managing his trade interests there.”
He began to play a romantic tune. I leaned my folded arms on my knees as I listened. “While traveling north from Granada, I met Jocasta, the most beautiful girl in Seville. Hair black as a raven’s wing, and cheeks like a crimson rose when she blushes. She is the daughter of a wealthy Norman who married a Spanish woman in order to trade with the Moors who rule Castile. Our passion flourished in the midst of the turmoil in Spain, proving love is stronger than war.”
Across the fire from me, Much wrinkled his nose and his sister sighed. Alan-a-Dale strummed a new, harsh note.
“Now her father wants to strengthen his ties to the nobles here in England. He has betrothed Jocasta to an English baron. I followed them here, offering wealth, treasure, trade, whatever he wanted, if he would allow Jocasta and me to wed. She begged her father not to make her marry this aged English lord. But my gifts and his daughter’s pleas meant nothing. He sent me away.” Alan plucked a jangle of strings. “He kept the bejeweled necklace and a dagger of Toledo steel I had offered, which is inconvenient to me, as innkeepers would rather have copper than turmeric as payment.”
“Poor Jocasta,” sighed Isabel.
“Poor Alan-a-Dale,” murmured Will. “Toledo steel…”
“So I have traveled north to Nottingham disguised as a Spanish troubadour.” Alan played a flourish on the lute. “It has not been unprofitable. I witnessed the feats of Robin Hood. And I have information to trade for her, no, his assistance in saving my lady from this loathsome fate.”
There was a moment of disbelieving silence, at least in my head. “You want me to help you rescue your girlfriend.”
He nodded. “Jocasta is coming to Nottingham in but a few days to be wed.”
“And…she wants to be rescued?” I asked, just to be sure.
“Of course. She begged me to save her from this marriage so that we could run away together.”
“Well, who is she marrying?” asked Isabel, sounding more practical now.
Alan crossed his ankles to sit straighter on the rock where he’d perched. “His name is Lord de Corsey, and he is the new baron of Leas.”
Much and I looked at each other, his wide-eyed expression of horror not at all subtle. Mine probably wasn’t either. Fortunately, Isabel burst out, “De Corsey!” sounding just as appalled.
Will raised his brows. “That ugly, is he?”
Isabel’s cheeks were bright-red flags of outrage. “He’s a worse toady than the sheriff. And an extortionist. He made all the old baron’s yeomen farmers pay to stay on his land when Prince John awarded it to him. All without bothering to come down from York. He just sent his soldiers.”
“That was him?” exclaimed Little John.
“Yes.” Isabel saw my frown and explained further. “De Corsey is a member of the prince’s inner circle. Prince John relies on him for funds that—”
“I get it. He’s Team John, not Team Richard.” Which made no difference to me. The guy was a scumbag, from the grave pissing to the threats so filthy I couldn’t even translate. I wouldn’t let a dog go into his house.
“So what’s this information you have to trade?” I asked Alan, like I hadn’t already decided to help him.
“Two things.” Alan plucked one note on his lute. “Prince John will stop at Nottingham Castle on the journey to his hunting lodge. The sheriff is at pains, they say, to find the money to host him and his retinue and to hold a feast while they’re here. At which this humble minstrel has been hired to play,” he added with a slight bow. “Which is how I come to know this.”
James held up a hand to pause things, and he, Will, Isabel, and I leaned in to consult. “How do we know this man is telling the truth?”
Will added, “That story is direct from any love poem. Tragic love stories always soften women’s hearts.” He looked at me, implying I would likely be swayed by a love story, or that the troubadour thought I would.
“The royal visit is no lie,” Isabel said. “That was the sheriff’s excuse to steal the goats, as well as wringing every last coin from every pocket and larder in the shire.”
“And it explains his crackdown on crime,” I said. Still, I felt like I was missing something. “But all this for a party?”
Isabel sat back before she answered me. “Well, his entourage will be a hundred people or more. That’s not counting servants, horses, and his personal guards. And then there will be all the nobles and barons in the shire, who come for the feast but will also have to be lodged overnight, because of the travel.”
That sounded like a hell of a party to have to foot the bill for. But it also meant a lot of traffic, which meant opportunity.
But getting back to the problem of our guest, I said, “In any case, he’s not lying about de Corsey coming to Nottingham. Much and I met him on the road.”
James looked at me sharply. “When was this?”
“Um…when I was in sanctuary and not leaving church property,” I said. There didn’t seem any point in pretending anymore. Anyway, Isabel knew when it was, because the priory had been the recipient of my ill-gotten gains. But she wasn’t going to tell James that, and neither was I.
I broke up our huddle and turned to the waiting troubadour. “What’s the second thing?”
He played the next note up the scale. “You will help me, then?”
The others glanced at me for my answer, and I gestured them back into the huddle—John and Much, too, since it concerned us all. “I can’t let this girl be forced to marry against her will.”
James gave me the frown I was used to by now. “If it’s her father’s wish that she—” He stopped; my glare dared him to finish that sentence. “I’m saying only that you know nothing about this fellow and— Stop looking at me like that. I haven’t said no.”
“Very well,” said Will. “We know that Rob wishes to help the lady. What say the rest of you?”
Isabel was quick with her opinion. “I’m sure you know what I think.”
Much said, “I’ll do whatever Ellie wants.”
Little John went next. “I’m with whatever Rob is planning.”
“Then we are agreed,” said Will.
As I turned again to face him, Alan-a-Dale stood and looked at me expectantly. “We’ll stop the wedding,” I told him. “And if Jocasta wants to marry you, we’ll help you.”
He burst into a grin, and looked a lot younger. A lot younger. The mustache was deceptive. “Thank you, Lady Robin,” he said, bowing to me with a flourish. “A million thanks.”
“Well,” I said, uncomfortable with the dramatics. “We haven’t done anything yet.”
“But I will give you the information I promised anyway.” He paused, prolonging the moment, then shifted his lute out of his way and leaned forward to tell me, “There is an assassin in Nottingham town.”
The reaction to Alan-a-Dale’s announcement was clearly not all that he’d hoped for. Will and Little John looked blank and then bored. Isabel glanced at James for his reaction, which was impossible to read due to his game face. Unless you counted that he was wearing his game face. Much and I were the only two who got worked up. He was all about the drama of it, and I was freaked because of Ellie’s Second Commandment: Don’t change history.
Once Alan-a-Dale got on with the details, though, it was pretty anticlimactic.
“Imagine a shadowed tavern,” he said, “and a humble troubadour sleeping near coals, exhausted from having sung for his supper and a space in the rushes. Two voices wake him.” He waited until all of us leaned in slightly to hear him. “He hears one whisper. Poison…”
“That’s it?” I asked, when he trailed off after a few more useless,
vague tidbits.
That was it. Will rolled his eyes and James fired off questions, and Alan changed neither his demeanor nor his story—though by the fourth retelling he’d dropped the melodramatic reenactment.
Not that I didn’t admire his spirit, but I was beginning to think that Alan’s story about running his father’s shipping concerns in Spain had gotten some dramatic embellishment as well. He wasn’t stupid, though, and he finally twigged to the idea that his information wasn’t the coin he thought it was.
“You’ll still help me?” he asked earnestly. “It is only days until this bishop arrives to wed this malvado to my beloved Jocasta.”
“Of course,” I said, speaking for myself, at least. I’d given my word. But even if I hadn’t, I remembered de Corsey’s vile language, and how once a woman was married to him, she’d be completely at his mercy.
James took my arm and said to Alan, “If you’ll excuse us for a moment—”
He tugged me out of earshot, and I gestured to Little John to watch our guest. “Has none of you thought,” said James, once Will and Much joined us, “that this complete stranger might not be as genuine as you think?” He turned to me. “Will had the right of it. This tale is tailored for you, Eleanor. To appeal to your”—he searched for a word and settled on—“reckless compassion.”
I couldn’t argue with that description, or that the troubadour would have me pegged from the events in Edwinstowe. So he had a point.
“Maybe he’s an assassin,” said Much, sounding bloodthirsty.
I glanced back at Alan, wondering what he was telling Little John that was earning him so much side-eye. My instincts said he was too earnest to be deceptive, but while I’d risk myself on my gut feeling, this affected all of us. “He doesn’t need a scheme to get into Nottingham Castle—he’s been invited to play at the festivities when Prince John is here. He could get near the wedding party with the same excuse.”
Will said, “I searched him for weapons before bringing him here, and we all searched his belongings.”
James seemed at least willing to discuss the idea. “This won’t be as easy as walking in and walking back out with the girl.”
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