by Eva Howard
“So be it,” said Stephen. “It’s always been me against you, after all.”
They circled each other, Stephen with his blade raised, Ellie sighting down her bow. She caught Ralf’s anxious expression and wasn’t surprised to see him worried—Stephen had proved in the fight when they rescued Tom that he was more than skilled with his sword. He’d seen battle, she knew, and not just skirmishes with the baron’s guards—proper war, with hundreds of clashing knights. But she knew his weaknesses now too. He was reckless and he was arrogant. He was strong, but he didn’t have her speed. And he didn’t have his friends watching from the sidelines: Margery gripping the ends of her red hair, Jacob wearing a face like stone. Ralf with his arm around Alice, who watched Stephen with a malice that said she wished she were the one in the fight.
I can win this, Ellie thought.
Stephen lunged. The blade sliced close, nearly biting her arm, but she sidestepped just in time. Stephen struck again. Margery sucked in a breath as Ellie dodged. This time she stumbled a little, and Stephen surged forward to take advantage, striking quick and lower than she expected. She jumped over the swinging curve of his sword. Sprinting back a few paces, she recovered, and resighted her bow. But Stephen didn’t stay still long enough for her to use it. The longbow was designed for distance; to hit a target close by was harder than it looked. What’s more, Ellie knew that once she fired a shot, she would lose precious seconds reloading—precious seconds that Stephen could exploit.
Yet she wouldn’t have wished for any other weapon in her hand. The bow had once belonged to Robin Hood. It had served him well, and she believed it would take care of her, too.
Stephen caught the front of her jerkin in a shallow swipe, but his shout of triumph cut off as she ducked behind him, leaving his back exposed. He spun around just in time, but she could see from the twist of his mouth that she’d shaken him. His determination was now tinged with frustration.
Getting to you, aren’t I?
The rest of the League watched in perfect quiet as Ellie and Stephen almost danced on the road. The thrusts of his sword met the empty spaces where she’d darted out of the way. His sweeps were becoming wider, his footwork sloppy. He roared in frustration and lunged at Ellie—with such force that, as she nimbly dodged the blow, his own momentum carried him forward.
Ellie whipped around.
Now!
She fired. Her arrow shot clean through the fleshy part of Stephen’s sword hand, between thumb and index finger. A fine spray of blood fizzed up. Stephen gave a hiss of pain. His sword fell with a clatter and he clutched his wounded hand to his chest. Ralf ran to collect his sword. The fight was over.
Stephen breathed heavily. His face was hard and proud. Ellie couldn’t fault him for lack of bravery.
“That’ll heal quickly,” she said. “I missed the muscle and bone. Just wash and bandage it. That’s what Sister Joan taught me.” She lowered her bow and held out a hand. “You’re not in the League of Archers,” she said, “and you never will be. But if you stay out of our way, we’ll stay out of yours. Agreed?”
Stephen glared at her. He seemed too stunned by his defeat to speak.
Disappointed, Ellie let her hand drop. “Come on,” she called to her friends. “Let’s go home and talk to Marian and Tuck. We need to find a way to rescue Tom.”
They began to make their way to the horses. Then Margery screamed.
Ellie whirled around. Stephen had retrieved his bow and had an arrow leveled at Ellie’s face. He means to kill me. The thought broke on her like a sweat.
He let the arrow fly.
Ellie bent out of his way one last time, the arrow flying so close she felt its breath on her hair. She heard the horrible slick sound of its tip meeting flesh, and the soft thump of a body falling to the earth.
Ellie turned. Alice lay on the ground, red running from her cheek into the dirt.
“Alice!” Ralf howled. He fell to the ground beside his sister.
Margery gave a terrible sob. “Is she . . .”
Ellie dropped down beside Ralf. To her infinite relief, Alice groaned and clutched at her face.
“Wait,” she soothed, pulling Alice’s fingers away. The arrow had left a long score across her cheek. An inch to the right, and it would’ve gone into her eye. She would have died like a rabbit, out here on the road. Ellie felt light-headed at the horror of what had so nearly happened.
“You could’ve killed her!” Ralf screamed. His face was twisted with rage. Margery was weeping, Jacob gawping at Stephen in disgust.
Stephen himself was as white as a ghost. “I didn’t mean . . . I thought . . .”
“Go,” Ellie growled at him. “If you ever set foot in Sherwood Forest again, I really will shoot you—and not just to wound. Do you understand me?”
He nodded, turned, and ran off down the road.
17
RALF RIPPED A STRIP OF fabric from his tunic and pressed it to his sister’s cheek.
“Are you okay, Liss? Does it hurt?”
“Of course it hurts,” Margery sobbed. “She got shot in the face with an arrow!”
“Quiet, Margery,” said Jacob from where he hovered nervously behind them.
“It’s true,” Alice croaked. She propped herself up on her elbows. “I’m all right, Ralf, honest. I feel like I’ve stuck my head in a wasp’s nest, but I’m okay.” Some of the tension went out of Ralf’s shoulders.
Ellie stood a little way apart from them. All she could think was that Stephen might have fired the shot, but ultimately it was because of her decisions that Alice was wounded on the ground, lucky to be alive. She’d brought a wolf into their midst. It had been with the right intentions, but he’d proved a wolf all the same.
“I should never have brought him to camp,” she said abruptly. “If I hadn’t insisted you let him stay . . .”
“We shouldn’t have left the League of Archers,” said Jacob. He turned anguished eyes on Ellie. “I’m so sorry. He just seemed . . . well, I got him all wrong. Can you forgive me?”
Ellie felt all the wrongs of the last few days righting themselves, felt the weave of the five of them resetting around her. It was like coming home to a place you thought you’d never see again.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she told Jacob. “I missed you, you know? You too, Alice. So much.”
Jacob looked at her almost shyly from under his lashes. “Am I . . . can I still be in the League of Archers?”
Alice got up carefully, pushing Ralf aside as he tried to help her. The bandage made a grimy stripe across her cheek. “And me, Ellie?”
Marian’s words crossed Ellie’s mind, the words she hadn’t dared believe at the time. Your friends will come back to you. They will. And you just have to open your heart enough to forgive them when they do.
“Of course you’re in the League. Both of you. Always.”
For a moment the five of them stood quietly in the road. It didn’t feel right, with Alice so newly hurt, but happiness bloomed in Ellie like snowdrops in midwinter.
“So what now?” Jacob asked, turning to Ellie eagerly. She was pretty sure that right now he’d put a jug on his head and sing a song if she asked him to.
“First we take Alice to Marian. Then we rescue Tom.”
The baron wouldn’t get away with this. Not while Ellie was alive to stop him—and while she had the League of Archers back by her side.
Alice was a very bad patient. After insisting all the way back to the Greenwood Tree that she didn’t need any further nursing, she was finally cowed by Maid Marian, who took one look at her and hustled her into the hospital tent. She made no mention of why Alice had been away, or why she’d come back.
Jacob didn’t get off so easily. His shoulders had climbed higher and higher with tension as they got closer to camp, and he dismounted from the horse he’d shared with Ralf as if he wished he were invisible. When Friar Tuck saw him, he gave a great “Hah!” and charged across the clearing. Minutes later Jacob was
hard at work replenishing the store of arrows he’d helped Stephen steal.
Ellie and Ralf joined Alice in Marian’s hospital tent. She cleaned the wound with boiled witch hazel and laid a clean strip of linen across it. Then she pulled out a pot of thick, smeary balm. The smell of it made Ellie’s eyes water. “A gift from Sister Joan. It’ll sting, but it should stop the scarring.”
Alice ducked her head away. “I want the scar.”
Marian raised her eyebrows, then laughed. “Spoken like a true outlaw.”
Tuck peeked his head into the tent. “Jacob and Alice aren’t the only defectors from that fool boy’s gang—half the camp is back, led by the Galpins.” He smiled wickedly. “It looks like the baron’s son wasn’t the leader they hoped he’d be.”
Ellie went to the tent flap. Sure enough, villagers were streaming back in, all of them carrying bundles of belongings or children too small to tramp through the woods. Some of the little ones were already spreading out around the clearing, laughing and climbing over the tree’s great roots. But the adults looked wrung out, as if they hadn’t put their loads down once since they left the Greenwood Tree. Jacob ran to greet his parents. The returning villagers were happily reunited with those who’d stayed; only Donald, sitting on a log, looked sour to see the clearing fill up again.
With Alice attended to, Marian came to join Ellie. She gave her a knowing smile. “It’s very easy to mistake force for bravery. I don’t think they’ll be doing that again. I’m so happy for you, my dear.”
Ellie smiled back—but although things were slowly coming right, guilt still ate away at her. “I should have left Stephen in Nottingham,” she sighed. “Then Alice wouldn’t be hurt. Tom wouldn’t be kidnapped. Jacob wouldn’t feel so guilty—”
“A little guilt won’t kill him,” Marian interrupted tartly. “It isn’t bad for a person to reflect on their mistakes.”
She cut a look to where Alice sat on the edge of the bed, poking at her wound. Marian turned away just a bit.
“You were right to give Stephen a chance,” Marian continued more softly. “You didn’t make him do the things he did, and you couldn’t have foreseen them.” Her eyes went far away, and she worried the plain nun’s ring she still wore on her finger. “Stephen is a troubled boy—you can see it in his eyes. I have sympathy for him still, despite all he’s done. To grow up with the baron for a father, to be sent off to war so young . . .”
“We’ve fought too.” It was Ralf, come over to join them. His face was sour. “It didn’t make us like he is.”
“You’ve seen fighting, Ralf,” said Marian, “but you haven’t seen war, and I pray to God you never will. Nobody comes through it unchanged. I was the ward of King Richard the Lionheart in my youth, remember, and I saw what the Crusades did to him—”
A groan came from the other side of the tent.
“It’s Tom’s uncle!” called Alice. “I think he’s waking up!”
They hurried over. Marian grabbed a skin of water and swept to the man’s side. He was clutching the sheets, his limbs stirring.
“All right, it’s all right,” she said soothingly.
Slowly his eyes opened. He looked around the room, his expression one of alarm. He tried to sit up but slumped down again. “What is this place?” he rasped.
Ellie rushed to help Marian prop him up.
“You’re safe here,” Marian said. “Please don’t be frightened. You’re in Sherwood Forest, in the Greenwood Tree, under the protection of the League of Archers.”
The man’s eyes went wild. “What? No . . . I can’t . . . the king! Where is the king?”
“Here, drink this.” Marian held the water to his lips, but with a surge of strength he dashed it from her hand.
“Tell me where the king is!”
“The king is dead,” Ellie said as gently as she could.
The man looked at her in blank horror. He clutched his gray hair with his hands. Ellie glanced at Marian, who seemed as uncertain of what to do as she.
“He was poisoned,” Ellie pressed on. “At a banquet at Nottingham Castle. I’m sorry, was he a friend of yours?”
The man slumped back. He drew in a long, shaky breath.
“Praise be to God. You speak of King John, do you not?”
Ellie and the others nodded.
“My name is William Marshall. I am regent to the king, who is yet too young to rule. I was traveling south with His Majesty to his coronation when we were attacked. I need to find him. . . .” But the speech had worn him out. He dropped onto the pillow, his breathing fast and shallow.
Shock ran through Ellie like fire. Ralf put a hand to his mouth.
“The king was with this man?” said Alice in a strangled voice. “But that means Tom—”
“Is the king of England,” finished Ellie in awe.
“Good Lord,” whispered Ralf.
They stared at one another for a moment, utterly shocked. Marian recovered first, hurrying to fetch Marshall more water. She helped the man drink, while Ellie and Ralf gathered pillows to prop him up so he could sit. All four of them waited in silence for him to continue his story. At last he put the empty skin aside.
“He told us he was called Tom Woodville,” said Alice. “His . . . His Majesty did, I mean.”
The man gave a rueful smile. “The Woodville family are good friends to the old king,” he said. “His true name is Henry—or King Henry III, as he will soon be crowned.” He leaned forward urgently. “And he must be crowned soon! It’s vital that the French have no chance to interfere—or, even worse, the barons. It’ll be civil war otherwise. Where is His Majesty? I must see him immediately. We have no time to lose.”
Oh, God!
Ellie glanced at Ralf. He looked like he might be sick. The air in the tent felt too close, too hot. Here at last was the answer to Tom’s—no, Henry’s—secret, the reason why the baron had been so keen to capture him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice ragged. “We tried to keep him safe. But this morning he was kidnapped by Lord de Lays.”
William Marshall gaped at her in horror. He flung off the sheets and tried to climb out of bed. Marian took him by the shoulders, pressing him back down.
“Let go of me—I must retrieve the king!”
“You’re far too ill to do anything of the sort,” Marian said. “Perhaps when you’re strong enough to overpower an old woman, we’ll reconsider.”
Marshall’s eyes fell on Ellie. His body was weak, but his gaze was strong, holding her in a grip of steel. She could imagine him fiercely defending the young king’s interests at court. She braced herself for a torrent of rebuke.
“You are Elinor Dray, are you not?” the man said shortly.
Ellie nodded in surprise.
“And you are Maid Marian?”
Marian nodded.
“I’ve heard of the League of Archers, Elinor Dray. I know you saved this woman from within the baron’s own dungeons. You made fools of him and his men, and stopped them from murdering a fine woman.” His breathing was rough again, his skin a terrible gray. “You must do the same for the king. You must save him, do you understand? All England depends on you.”
Later, when Marshall was sleeping again—a true sleep, Marian said, the kind that would help him heal—Ellie and the League gathered in the topmost platform of the Greenwood Tree, out of earshot of the villagers milling below. Ellie quickly filled Jacob and Margery in on what they’d heard inside the hospital tent.
“He’s the king?” squawked Jacob. He clutched his sandy hair. “But . . . I told him off for taking too much stew!”
“He’ll make a good king, don’t you think?” Margery kept saying, her hands clasped together. “Brave, sympathetic to outlaws—and he never complained about sleeping outside, even when we didn’t have enough blankets.”
“I’d have given him mine,” Jacob said sorrowfully, “if I’d known he was the king. More blankets and more stew.”
Alice scoffed. “Oh, don’t be
ridiculous, Jacob. He’ll have all the blankets and stew he wants once he’s back in his own castle. It’s a good thing for royalty to live like we do for once.”
“It’ll probably make him a better king,” reasoned Ralf. “Though I expect he’ll pass a new law against blanket hoggers.”
Jacob scowled.
“But what does the baron want with him?” wondered Margery. “He’s not—he’s not going to kill him, is he, like he did King John?”
“I don’t think so,” said Ellie quickly. “He managed to make John’s murder look like an accident. If Tom—I mean, Henry—dies too, things will look really suspicious. No, I think he’s got something else planned.”
“I bet he’s still working with the French,” Ralf said. “He’ll hand Tom over to them.”
“Henry,” corrected Alice. “We’d better get used to his proper name.”
Ellie stared upward, letting the shifting leaves settle her thoughts. “So he kills the king to make way for his son, who’s young enough that he’s easy to capture—and boss around. But what next? What would the French give him in exchange for the heir to England’s throne?”
“Not just money,” Ralf guessed. “He’s got enough of that—and enough villages to steal from if he needs more.”
“Power, then,” said Ellie. “Maybe they’d give him some extra baronies. They could offer him the whole of the north.”
They looked at one another with wide eyes. Ellie imagined the baron’s cruel rule reaching beyond the village, a black cloud spreading over the land.
“Whatever he’s been promised, he’s not having it.” She slapped her hand on the platform for emphasis. “We need to get Tom—Henry, I mean—out of the castle. If we wait too long, they could take him to France or anywhere. William Marshall said there will be civil war if he isn’t crowned soon.”
Alice raised an eyebrow. “So we’re breaking into the baron’s castle again?”
“We got Marian out,” reasoned Ralf. “We can get Henry out too.”
Ellie nodded. “But it’ll be different this time. The baron will be ready for us. He’ll be expecting us to come.”