The Stolen Crown

by Eva Howard

  Jacob frowned. “So what do we do?”

  Ellie looked away.

  There’s only one thing I can think of. . . . But will they go for it?

  “We need help,” she said slowly. “Help from someone who knows the baron’s castle inside and out.”

  Ralf stared at Ellie, eyes widening as realization dawned. “No way,” he said. “Not him.”

  “We have to,” said Ellie. “It’s the only hope we have of rescuing Henry. We need Stephen’s help.”

  18

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’D TURN to him,” Ralf said bitterly. “After what he did to Alice.”

  The rest of the League looked equally appalled. Ellie could hardly believe she was suggesting it either. Stephen had betrayed her trust, nearly split up the League forever, nearly killed Alice. . . . If there were anyone else in all of England to turn to instead, she would. But the baron had Henry—had King Henry III—and their best chance at getting him free lay with Stephen.

  Color rose in Jacob’s cheeks. “You can’t mean that, Ellie. I don’t want anything more to do with him!”

  “Me neither,” said Ralf. “Just look at Alice’s cheek.”

  Alice herself frowned thoughtfully. “I’m alive, though, aren’t I? And it’s our fault King Henry was taken. Mine and Jacob’s. If we hadn’t been fighting, we’d have had time to protect him. So now we have to do whatever it takes to get him back.” She put her hands on her hips. “If that means asking Stephen for help, so be it.”

  Jacob ducked his head. Ralf’s mouth set into a thin line.

  “She’s right,” Margery said quietly. “You know she is.”

  Ralf looked at Ellie seriously. “You’re our leader, Ellie. If you really think we should do this, I won’t fight you on it. So?”

  “So we do it,” said Ellie. “And not just because Henry’s the king—because he’s our friend. I promised when I met him that I’d protect him. I failed. Now I have to make it right.”

  Ellie slept poorly that night. When the darkness finally thinned to gray, she left Alice and Margery sleeping in their tiny cabin in the boughs of the Greenwood Tree and rode out of the clearing on one of the horses—which had been dubbed Chestnut—toward the Wessex road. She’d told Stephen to stay out of Sherwood Forest, and remembering his pale, shaken face, she felt sure he would have done. Where would he be now? She just hoped it wasn’t far from where they’d parted.

  It was late morning by the time she was back at the bend in the road where Stephen’s Merry Men had deserted him. She rode past, looking out for places Stephen might now be living. The first village she reached barely deserved the name. A clutch of shabby buildings by the road, it was nearly lost in the straggling trees at the forest’s edge. A man watched Ellie approach from his perch on a stump in front of a muddy cottage.

  “What are you hunting, girl?” he croaked, using his pipe to point at Ellie’s bow. “These are the king’s woods, and he’ll shoot you down if he sees you.”

  I don’t think the king would mind. . . .

  “Good morning, sir,” she said. “I’m looking for someone—a tall boy of about fourteen, dressed in black. He’d have been carrying a sword. And wearing a cloak with a jeweled clasp, I think.”

  The old man shook his head. “Yours is the first new face I’ve seen today. In many days, in fact.”

  Ellie thanked him and kept on down the road. The next village was larger—a handful of houses with a church at their center, and what looked like a blacksmith’s forge at its edge—but nobody there had seen Stephen either.

  As she rode through two more villages without luck, the sky broke open at the seams. It dropped first a drizzle of gray rain, then a flood, which soaked her tunic to her body and made her horse duck his head against the onslaught.

  When she reached the next village, damp and shivering, the daylight was fading. She ate a fistful of dried meat from her pack and let rainwater run into her mouth. Then she trotted down the washed-out road to the village’s heart, where people were rushing to bring their laundry in from the rain. A woman ran across her path carrying a load of firewood, then stamped her foot in annoyance as half of it tumbled from her arms. Ellie hopped off Chestnut’s back and rushed to help her. Chestnut stood under a tree with his head down, rain running off his flanks, as they made a run for the woman’s door. Ellie helped deposit the wood just inside it.

  “My thanks to you,” the woman said, her voice almost lost in the howling wind. “Can I offer you anything? I don’t have much, but you’re welcome to a slice of bread and cup of broth.”

  “You’re very kind, but no,” said Ellie. “I wonder if you can help me, though. I’m looking for a boy a little older than me, with red hair and dressed in black. . . .”

  “And wearing a fancy cloak, too, if I remember right.”

  Ellie grinned in relief.

  “That sword he carried makes him hard to forget. Is he from the new king, do you know? Or the baron?”

  “He was once,” said Ellie honestly, “but he’s on his own now. Do you know where I could find him?”

  The woman shook out her wet hair. “I don’t, I’m afraid. I saw him passing through just before this rain came down.”

  Ellie turned this over. “Maybe he ran for shelter.”

  “Could have done. If he did, he’d likely be in there.” She pointed at a stone building down the way, as tumbledown as the rest but a little larger. A wooden sign bearing the words THE MERRY MINSTREL and a painted flute hung over its door.

  “Thank you!” Ellie said, leading Chestnut toward the tavern. She could hear the thump and clamor of the crowd even before she entered the Merry Minstrel. She tied Chestnut under the shelter outside and paused to twist her hair under her cap and draw up her collar, just in case anyone recognized the outlaw Elinor Dray. Then she opened the door.

  Hollers and laughter hit her like a hot wave. The tavern was barely as large as the abbey kitchen, with tables and chairs crammed against the walls. But nearly every seat was empty. The crowd was instead gathered around a table at the very center, where two men sat across from each other, faces red, elbows planted hard on the tabletop—arm-wrestling. One was an older man with a nose like a rook’s beak and a shock of silver hair. His skin looked tough as leather. Across from him, his back to Ellie, was a boy dressed in black, with a tumble of autumn-bright hair.

  Stephen!

  Ellie pushed through the eager crowds. The older man was big. But every sinew of Stephen’s neck was taut with effort. Their hands, locked together above the center of the table, trembled back and forth. Stephen’s was bound with a bandage, but he seemed untroubled by the wound Ellie had given him. With a roar he slammed the man’s arm onto the table.

  The noise in the room doubled. Some cheered in triumph, others groaned with defeat, money changing hands as the spectators made good on their bets. A round man with a hairless round face like a toad’s grabbed Stephen’s arm and held it high. “Another victory for the boy in black!” he croaked. Stephen turned slightly, and Ellie glimpsed that familiar, infuriating grin. “But!” The toadlike man stuck up a finger. “Will another contender end his winning streak? Place your bets! Next contender up!”

  The men looked among themselves. A couple were shoved forward to the seat opposite Stephen but refused the challenge.

  Impulsively Ellie raised her hand.

  The toad-faced man squinted at her. Then he threw his head back, roaring laughter. “Place your bets, men! Somebody’s daughter wants to try her hand!”

  Laughter filled the tavern. “Good luck, lass,” a man with a scrubby beard told her. “We’ll make sure he don’t hurt you!”

  Ellie ignored them. She pushed through the grinning men, hooked her bow and quiver on the back of the chair across from Stephen, and sat down. He started. His pale-blue eyes went wide, the grin slipping off his face like butter sliding across a hot pan.

  “You?” he growled. “What are you doing here?”

  “I need to talk to you
.”

  He gave a scornful laugh. “What’s left to say? You told me you didn’t want to see me again. So why don’t you get lost?”

  Ellie placed her elbow on the table, hand open. “All right, then. How about this—if I beat you, you’ll listen to me?”

  Stephen narrowed his eyes. He put his own elbow on the table and gripped her hand. “Fine.”

  He bore down on her palm, hard. But Ellie was ready for him and pressed back. The crowd roared in anticipation. “Bets are closed on this one,” someone yelled. “Odds are too heavily in favor of the boy in black.” But as soon as Stephen’s fingers had wrapped around hers, Ellie could tell she had a chance. If Stephen had been fresh—if he hadn’t just wrestled several of the strongest men in this tavern—perhaps he would have beaten her right away. But he wasn’t.

  Their eyes met over their locked hands. Stephen looked determined and a little worried. She was sure he could feel the strength in her arm—strength she’d gained from climbing, from shooting, from carrying wood for fires and for building shelters. All the softness of her life at Kirklees Abbey had been burned away, leaving something hard and unyielding behind. Stephen’s larger build might defeat her in the end, but she could hold him for a few minutes at least. The crowd seemed to sense the match was closer than they’d first thought, their roars becoming more excited. If Ellie could throw him off guard, she might even win.

  “Remember Tom?” she said through gritted teeth, her words hidden under the crowd’s whoops and cheers. “The boy your father kidnapped?”

  Stephen grunted. “What of him?”

  “He isn’t really Tom Woodville. He’s King Henry of England.”

  Stephen flinched. His arm wavered a moment.

  “You must know what that means,” she pressed in a hard whisper. “Your father will be rewarded by the French lords he’s working for. He’ll become even more powerful.”

  Stephen pressed on her hand so viciously, she nearly lost the fight right there. “Tell me why I should care.”

  Ellie’s arm felt like it was on fire. She could feel sweat breaking out all over her body. “When you joined the League,” she panted, “you said it was to get revenge against him. Didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I did. And then you kicked me out.”

  Ellie bit back the stream of retorts that rose at that. “Do you still want revenge?”

  Stephen’s arm was slackening. He still held her off, but he wasn’t concentrating on defeating her. He was too interested in what she had to say. And just as well—Ellie knew she couldn’t last for much longer.

  “Then help us get a revenge he’ll never forget,” she said as steadily as she could. “Stop your father’s plans. Help us rescue the king.”

  A fine sheen of sweat broke on Stephen’s forehead. He looked soft and searching for a moment, then his eyes hardened.

  “No,” he snapped. “I’m not like you. I don’t help people. I just disappoint them.”

  The last was said with such disgust Ellie nearly lost her grip. She knew she had to think past her anger toward him, past Jacob’s shame and Alice’s injury. Marian had said Stephen couldn’t help being troubled, that everyone deserved a chance. . . .

  “That’s not true,” she said. Her arm was almost numb now. “You saved us that day. The day with the . . . the flaming arrows. We would’ve been captured otherwise. You saved Jacob’s life, too, when we held up the carriage. Don’t you see,” she rushed on, “this is your chance to make amends for the rest of it? For trying to kill me. For hurting Alice.”

  He suddenly bore down so hard on her arm she wanted to scream, a fiery hatred in his eyes. Then he yanked his hand free.

  Ellie slumped against the table. Her fingers were red raw. Stephen rubbed his own hand, his expression bleak—and Ellie knew, as certainly as she’d known anything, that the hatred he had was turned inward. On himself.

  “A draw?” said the toad-faced man in mock alarm. “You couldn’t beat a girl?”

  “Not this one.” Stephen scraped back his chair, wiping the sweat from his face.

  A tall man grabbed at his shoulder. “I had good money riding on you,” he growled. “Money on you winning the next five matches. Why’d you go soft on us?”

  Wearily Stephen flipped him a coin. “My apologies. Buy yourself a drink.”

  He picked his way to a table in the corner of the tavern. Ellie grabbed her bow and arrows and followed. They sat down opposite each other once more, a serving woman bustling around them with bowls of stew and cups of wine. “On the house,” she said. “Nothing gets them drinking like a bit of competition.”

  They ate in silence. The stew was turnip and some kind of meat Ellie couldn’t identify, but after a day spent on the road it filled her up well enough. She felt strange sitting there with Stephen, eating supper at a table—it was like a glimpse into another life she might have led, one far removed from fighting and stealing. She stole a glance at him. The first time they met, that day at Nottingham Castle, he’d been so confident, his every move full of swagger, with a smile that came and went like sunshine on a cloudy day. Now, picking at his food, he looked sad and tired.

  She put down her spoon. “Stephen, you talked about disappointing people. You didn’t just mean the League, did you?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” he muttered. He fiddled with a loose thread on his black jerkin, the pattern embroidered on it now tattered.

  “I think you were you talking about your father.”

  He pushed away his bowl and stared through the window at the darkness and rain. “I didn’t always know what he was. I thought he was worth impressing, once. A long time ago.”

  “Is that why you went to the Crusades?”

  He didn’t seem to have heard her. “Nothing worked. None of it. Everything I did to make him proud, he acted like it was nothing. So I became a squire. I thought I was ready. That I’d make him glad I was his son.” He gave a laugh, as cold as winter snow. “I loved it at first—the armor, the knights, everyone looking forward to glorious victory. What an idiot I was. I had no idea what I was getting into. I saw . . . I saw terrible things. . . .” He seemed to see them then, like ghosts hovering just beyond her shoulder. He seized his cup and gulped down half of it. “Then we were captured, my knight and I. That prison—my God. I thought I’d died and been sent to hell. And when I managed to escape, when I found my way back to England, do you know what my father said? That I was a coward for running away. He told me he’d rather I’d died on the battlefield than skulked home like a whipped dog.”

  Ellie stared at him in horror. She thought of her mother, who used to sing to her when she scraped her knees. And farther back, of her own father. His face was fading, but she could still see it sometimes, right before she fell asleep. He used to lift her onto his shoulders when she cried, to make her laugh. She couldn’t understand a father who would send his child away to war, then have no sympathy for what he’d endured, but mock him instead. She thought of William Marshall lying wounded in the clearing, and Stephen’s strange reaction to him. Little wonder he had been so horrified, had wanted to stop them starting a hospital. Every day he would be faced with a terrible reminder of the Crusades.

  “It’s your father who should be ashamed,” she said. “Not you. For sending you to battle, for trying to kill Marian. For using Henry as his pawn.” She leaned forward to make him look her in the eye. “Help us, Stephen. Do the right thing, and you’ll prove to your father you’re the better man. Because you can be. You are.”

  Stephen pushed back his chair and turned away from her. Ellie knew it would take him more than a moment to decide. But time wasn’t on their side. She just had to hope he’d make the right decision. And quickly.

  19

  TAX DAY AT THE CASTLE de Lays had a funereal air. The baron’s courtyard was as crowded as if it were a holiday, but everyone’s head was down. No laughter broke the air, and what talk there was sounded subdued. People clutched sacks of grain or led animals on ropes, wa
tching with hungry eyes as the baron’s well-fed men looked over their spoils. Everywhere was a feeling of defeat.

  Because they didn’t have grain or animals they were prepared to hand over, the League were carrying stacks of firewood to give to the baron as tax. Hidden among them were their bows and arrows.

  Stephen was with them. In the end it hadn’t taken him long to decide whether he would help them rescue King Henry from his father—just a short solitary walk and a small cup of weak ale. Instead of the stolen jeweled cloak, he wore a shabby brown one, the hood up to cover his red hair.

  “I still don’t trust him.” Ralf was looking straight at Stephen, not making any effort to lower his voice.

  Stephen said nothing. He’d given the League a quick nod of greeting when they met at the edge of the baron’s lands that morning, and barely spoken at all. His eyes kept skating over Alice’s cheek, then darting away.

  “Well, I do trust him,” Ellie insisted. Maybe if I keep saying so, he’ll live up to it. “Remember, we’re not using violence,” she continued, looking at him pointedly. “Remember the plan. Stephen will distract the baron, then come and meet us in the courtyard.”

  They filed with the rest of the crowd into the baron’s great hall, keeping their hoods pulled up close around their faces. The room was huge, the ceiling supported by columns of wood, with straw scattered over the stone floor. The smells of smoke, sweat, and charred meat swept Ellie back to the first time she was here—as the baron’s prisoner, alongside Maid Marian. And the second time, when she and the League had rescued Marian from his grasp. Her heart beat faster. The League had nearly died that day. They’d escaped only because they’d taken the baron by surprise, and because Friar Tuck and an army of villagers had come to their aid. Would they be so lucky today? The baron must know we’re coming, she thought grimly. He must realize I wouldn’t just let him take the king.

  The League joined the line of villagers waiting to make their payment of grain or animals. The line snaked toward a long table where, on a high-backed chair, sat Lord de Lays. Beside him was a rotund man with a circle of hair around a bald spot, like grass around a lake, his nose bent over a pile of parchment.