by Eva Howard
Stephen’s lip curled. “Really? You claim me as your son now? You could have done so when Mother died and I was all alone. Or when I came home from the war you sent me to. All I ever wanted was for you to be proud of me, and what have I got instead? You either ignore me or insult me.”
“Of course you’re my son.” The baron’s eyes were wild, flicking between Ellie, still crouched by the stairs, and Stephen in the doorway. “Don’t you see you’re committing a traitorous act? Just drop that bow and all will be forgiven.”
“No,” Stephen spat. “You’re the traitor—you killed the king, kidnapped his rightful heir, and would have sold him to the French if we hadn’t taken him. Do what I say or I’ll shoot you. Your blood runs through my veins, remember, so you know I mean it.”
The baron dropped his sword.. He raised his arms above his head, wincing with pain. His expression was murderous.
“Ellie? Can you stand?”
She got to her feet, her limbs trembling all over with relief. She slid past the baron and hurried to Stephen’s side.
“Turn around, Father.” The baron did so and Stephen carefully withdrew the bloody arrow, then threw it aside. “Now walk up the stairs.”
Slowly, radiating rage, the baron did as he was told. Stephen kept the tip of his arrow poking into his back as they wound back up. Ellie followed close behind, her own bow ready in case.
“I have always been proud to call you my son,” the baron said as they climbed. “I admit I was perhaps a little stern, but I had your best interests—”
“Shut your mouth and walk faster.”
When they reached Henry’s cell, the baron paused on the threshold. “What are you going to do with me?” For the first time he looked properly afraid.
“Don’t worry, Father. I’ll treat you with far more mercy than you’ve ever shown me. Ellie, watch him.”
Ellie kept her arrow trained on the baron as Stephen stripped the linens from the king’s bed. He directed his father to sit on the room’s plainest chair, then tied his hands behind it with a strip of bedsheet. Once they were secured, he and Ellie used the bit of uncut rope left from her climb into the tower to tie him tightly in place. The chair they lashed to the leg of a heavy dresser. The baron looked smaller than she’d ever seen him, a foolish tyrant diminished by his fear.
“You call this mercy?” the baron asked, an edge of panic in his voice. “Leaving me here to die?”
Stephen smiled tightly. “But you’ll be in these fine chambers, where the king was made your guest!” Then the smile dropped. He knelt in front of the baron and spat the next words into his face. “If I did kill you, it wouldn’t be punishment enough for all your crimes. So it’s lucky I’m not you, isn’t it? We share the same blood, but really I’m very different. I’m going to let you live. But you’ll stay here until the king is safely away.”
The baron started to retort, but Stephen cut him off by tying his scarf tightly around his father’s mouth.
“Come on,” Stephen said to Ellie, his face suddenly weary. “Let’s go.”
They went back down the stairs and into the room where Stephen had appeared. “Where’s the king?” Ellie asked as they turned into a narrow passageway.
“He’s safe for the time being. Even safer now my father’s out of the way.”
Ellie sneaked a look at Stephen’s face. He was glaring ahead, his jaw set, as if he still had his father in his sights. She gave him a nudge. “Thank you. For saving my life.”
Stephen shook himself, managed a half smile. “Thank you. I know that if I’d done this before I met you, I would’ve killed him. But I’m glad I didn’t. I tried it your way. I’ve done . . . well, I’ve done my share of bad deeds. It’s about time I made amends, don’t you think?”
She remembered what Marian had told her. “Everyone deserves a chance, Stephen. Make sure you give yourself one.”
He squeezed her hand, so briefly she wondered if she’d imagined it.
“So are you glad now that you let me join the League of Archers?” Some of the old swagger crept back into his voice. “It took a while, but it paid off eventually.”
Ellie laughed. “Yes. I suppose it did.”
23
AS THEY MADE THEIR WAY back out to the courtyard, Stephen filled Ellie in on what had happened while she was trapped in the tower. “I fetched a horse and met the rest of the League outside, like I said I would. But then I saw them fighting—your friends versus my father’s men.” He pushed open a door, ushered her through it. “I thought the worst—that Father’s soldiers were trying to take back the king. But Ralf told me you were stuck in the tower, and they were trying to give you a chance of getting out. So I went to see if I could help. And that’s how I found you. Fighting him.”
“You mean about to be killed by him.” She stopped short as they passed a huge window with views onto the hillside that stretched beyond the tower. Something glittering had caught her eye.
“What is it?”
“Oh,” Ellie breathed. “Look.”
Coming over the hillside, armor shining in the late sun, a vast regiment was marching on the castle.
Stephen swore. “It’s the French, it must be. Coming to collect Henry.”
Guilt seized Ellie’s guts. Henry should be long gone, riding with Stephen and the League toward the safety of Maid Marian and the Greenwood Tree. Instead they’d stayed to save her. “Your father’s plan—it could still work!”
“We won’t let it,” Stephen said grimly. “We can’t. If France gets hold of England’s heir, France gets hold of England. Who knows what kind of power they’ve promised my father in return?”
They ran the rest of the way, bursting into the courtyard. It was a mass of brawling bodies—soldiers, servants, guards, all of them fighting with whatever they had.
“There they are!” Stephen grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the center of the fight, where the League stood in tight formation. Backs in and weapons out, they defended themselves against a knot of the baron’s men.
A soldier with a blond beard was laughing at Alice, half his size and swiping at him viciously with her knife. “Look at the little girl go,” he yelled at his friends—then screamed as she sliced him with a shallow gash beneath the armpit. Before he could strike back, Ellie shot an arrow into his arm, firing as she ran toward her friends. Relief colored her friends’ faces when they saw her, just briefly, before they were absorbed by the battle again. Behind Jacob, shielded from attack, was Henry, still clutching the cloak around his face.
But did the guards know who he was? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that the League had started this brawl for her, and now they couldn’t get clear of it. She fired another arrow, reloaded.
“Stop,” Stephen cried, grabbing the arm of the guard menacing Jacob. “Stop fighting these . . . these peasants, and start getting the rest of them under control! That’s an order!”
“We need to go,” Ellie said when she reached Ralf. “The French troops are on their way—we need to get Henry away from the castle now!”
“These aren’t no peasants,” one of the guards said to Stephen in an ugly, coarse voice. “These are the League of Archers! Your friends.”
“In the name of my father,” Stephen growled, “stand down.”
Another guard sneered at him. “We take orders from Lord de Lays, not his runaway son. There’ll be a reward from the baron for capturing the League of Archers—and a bigger one for recapturing the king!”
They know. . . .
Ellie saw the dangerous change in the other soldiers’ faces at his words. A few of them had looked uncertain when they saw Stephen, but the promise of money—the kind you get when you take down a band of outlaws and reclaim a kidnapped king—had made up their minds.
She hurried back a few paces until she was at range to use her longbow. The rest of the brawlers started to quiet, all of them realizing now what they were seeing in the center of the courtyard: the baron’s men fighting the legend
ary League of Archers.
Stephen, realizing that his orders were useless, struck at the man who’d shouted him down, blade singing. Margery mirrored Ellie on the other side, wielding her bow to strike where her friends most needed her. Ellie shot arrow after arrow, barely pausing to check where her shots fell, disarming the baron’s men and beating them back from hurting the rest of the League—or Stephen, who’d downed one guard and was fighting a second.
Alice screamed as the blond-bearded guard took her under his arm in a choke hold. Ellie stopped him with an arrow just below his throat, serious enough to scare him, but not deadly. Alice rolled free and came up in a crouch, driving her knife into the leg of a man who’d just punched Ralf to the ground. A man who’d lost his weapon was fighting hand to hand with Jacob, who kept swiping at him with a stolen shield, still trying to keep Henry behind him.
Ellie reached for another arrow and found that just one remained: The stolen silver arrow rattled lonely in her quiver. She nocked it to her bow and ran to Jacob’s side to help defend the king.
A hunting horn split the air. Everyone turned toward it. Over the drawbridge came galloping a legion of knights in glistening armor, filling the courtyard with shouts and steaming horses.
Too late. The French were here to take Henry.
The League had failed. Ellie had failed.
And when the king was taken and the baron freed, what would happen to them all?
We’ll go down fighting, that’s what. She raised the silver arrow, steeling herself to end the first person who tried to lay a hand on Henry.
But when she glanced back at the king, he was no longer hiding behind Jacob. His hood was thrown back. And he was . . . smiling.
So was Ralf. He grabbed her arm. “Look, Ellie! Look at what they’re carrying!”
Over the knights’ heads colorful standards whipped in the air. They bore three lions on a scarlet background. Ellie gasped. It was the royal coat of arms and these were King John’s knights.
No, not King John’s anymore. King Henry’s.
The soldiers surrounding the League fell nervously away. Ellie spotted two familiar figures riding with the knights on a pair of dark horses—Friar Tuck and Maid Marian.
“We’re here!” Ellie called to them. “And the king is safe!”
Marian leaped gracefully from her horse’s back and plunged through the throng to Ellie. Her eyes shone and she clasped Ellie tightly to her chest. “I didn’t doubt you and the League could save the king on your own,” she said, “but William Marshall thought you might need some help. We rode to Nottingham for the king’s forces.”
“I’m so glad you did!”
A pure-white charger cantered through the knights. On it rode a woman in a blue velvet cloak. Her oval face was framed with long brown ringlets and topped by a small golden crown. “Henri!” she cried in a French accent, sliding down from her horse, her arms thrown open wide.
The young king gave a wordless cry and ran into her embrace, burying his face into her neck. For the first time he looked as young as he had that first day, when Ellie opened the door to his coach.
Alice was gawping at the lady. “Who is she?”
“Queen Isabella,” Marian said. “Henry’s mother.”
“And she’s still got her circlet,” said Ralf, grinning at Ellie.
Queen Isabella released her hold on Henry and touched his bandaged arm. “Is the hurt bad?”
Henry shook his head. “I’m fine, Mama. Far worse would have happened if not for my new friends.” Then he was leading the queen by the hand toward Ellie and the League of Archers.
A hush had fallen over the courtyard. A number of the castle servants knelt as the queen walked past them. The soldiers took off their helmets and bowed their heads. Ellie felt her friends gather behind her, suddenly wondering how she should greet a queen.
Isabella stood before them. All the songs were right, Ellie thought: The queen was beautiful, even more so than she’d seemed from afar. Her eyes were gray and serious, and red at the corners in a way that made Ellie think of her own mother—she must have passed sleepless nights worrying about her son. Her skin was as smooth and fair as fresh cream.
Ellie dipped into an awkward curtsy. Alice and Margery did the same, while the boys bowed.
“These are my friends, Mama,” Henry said eagerly. “They’re outlaws who fight back against injustice and try to take care of the poor. They’re brave and good, and they live without blankets or walls in the woods. And they saved me from Lord de Lays.”
Ellie found herself blushing. Who would have thought a lowly ex-novice would receive such praise from a king?
Henry beamed at his mother. “They’re called the League of Archers.”
24
QUEEN ISABELLA SMILED, HER EYES filled with warmth. “Your good deeds have reached even my ears,” she said, her accent rolling the words musically. “I heard that you were young, but I did not think . . .”
She lifted a hand, indicating that they should rise. Ellie could feel hundreds of pairs of eyes upon them.
Queen Isabella moved closer, as if she were going to tell them a secret, then spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “I can never repay you for what you’ve done,” the queen said. “For saving the king. Saving my son. Not just his life, but countless others that would have been lost to civil war if the baron’s plans had succeeded.”
Henry put a hand on her sleeve; she leaned down so he could speak in her ear. When she straightened, she leveled her gaze on Ellie.
“Henri tells me you’re the leader of this League of Archers.”
Ellie cleared her throat. “I am, Your Majesty.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dray,” Ellie said, curtsying again. “Elinor Dray.”
The queen raised her hands to her head. Carefully she lifted the golden circlet from her hair and laid it in Ellie’s hands. Ellie didn’t think she’d seen anything lovelier—it was made of three bands of gold, intricately wrapped around one another, glowing in the chilly sunlight. She looked up at Isabella, wondering why she’d given it to her.
“The bishops await us in Gloucester,” the queen said, “where my son will be crowned king. But these last few weeks I’ve learned it can be dangerous to wait. Let us put everything in order now. Elinor Dray, will you do us the honor of crowning our new king?”
Margery gasped. The rest of the League was grinning, watching Ellie with round eyes. Ellie flushed hot and nodded, wishing fiercely, more than she had in years, that her parents were alive. That they were here to see this: their daughter, in a muddy courtyard on a cold day, with the queen of England’s crown in her hands, the country’s new king before her.
Ellie saw her breath mist the air, smelled the ordinary smells of sweat and dung and mud, and knew she would remember this day until she died. All who hadn’t dropped to their knees did so now—Tuck and Marian, the League. Guards and soldiers and servants. Stephen. Last of all the queen herself. Only Ellie and Henry stood in a sea of bowed heads.
The young king’s face was solemn and shining. After a long, charged moment he grinned. She grinned back and stepped forward. He stood proud and straight as she carefully placed the crown on his head.
“God save the king!” cried Friar Tuck’s baritone. “God save King Henry!”
The whole courtyard seemed to exhale. Suddenly everyone was cheering and scrambling to their feet, people dabbing sleeves and aprons to their eyes, turning to embrace their neighbors. Ralf’s arm was around Ellie’s shoulder, pulling her into a hug.
At length Henry raised a hand, and quiet spread through the crowd. “As your king,” he said, “I make my first proclamation: The League of Archers are hereby pardoned. Maid Marian and Friar Tuck, too! They are no longer outlaws, or enemies to the Crown. The families sheltering in Sherwood Forest are free to stay there—or to return to their homes—whichever they choose. They are under my protection.”
Joy rose in Ellie like water bubbling up from som
e hidden source. Her friends’ stunned, happy faces mirrored her own.
“We did it,” Alice said in a low, unsteady voice, like she couldn’t believe it. “It’s all because of you, Ellie. You’re the one who saved the king.”
“It was all of us,” Ellie replied. “Always.”
A commotion stirred at the other side of the courtyard. “Get your hands off me before I remove them myself!” came the baron’s furious voice. He was dragged before Henry, struggling, between two of the king’s men. His eyes were lit with rage, but the fire went out of them when he saw Henry wearing the circlet, Queen Isabella beside him.
“Lord de Lays.” Henry’s voice was quiet, but it cut like a knife. “What should I do with you? You kidnapped me. You plotted to hand me over to France. You drove people from their homes, you taxed them into your dungeons or the grave, and you gorged yourself while they starved.” Henry’s head dropped a little, as if he suddenly felt the full weight of his crown. “For your crimes you deserve a traitor’s punishment.”
The color drained from the baron’s face. He sagged forward and the two knights had to hold him upright.
The traitor’s punishment, Ellie knew, was death.
“Wait!” It was Stephen, pushing through the crowd. He stepped between his father and the king and dropped to one knee. “Your Majesty, my father’s crimes are great. But I beg you to show him mercy. To give him . . . a second chance.” He glanced at Ellie, caught her gaze. “People can change if you let them. I should know.”
Henry looked from Stephen to the baron, his eyes thoughtful. “I know what it is to have a bad father,” he said. “Everyone here knows what King John was like. But I cannot allow Lord de Lays to go unpunished.”
Panic flashed across Stephen’s face. “Please, I beg—”
“But I will not order his death. Not for his sake, but for yours. And mine—I’ve been king barely a minute and would rather show mercy today.”
Stephen let out a long breath.
“But I’m taking his title away,” said Henry. He turned to the baron, whose cheeks were starting to fill with color. “From this day forth you’ll be no more a baron than the poorest soul in your dungeons—which will today be emptied. Take my mercy and leave. You are forbidden to ever set foot on English soil again.” A smile ghosted over his lips. “Perhaps the French king will have you. You have always been a friend to him.”