Lady Thief

by A. C. Gaughen

  “Rob,” I said soft. “You tried your damnedest to kill me, but you didn’t. You couldn’t, and I wouldn’t let you. So if this thing is always chasing you, I wouldn’t never let you hurt a family. But you will fight this. Can’t you tell me what you see, when you dream?”

  He shuddered. “Tell me what happened tonight.”

  “You’ll lose your temper,” I told him soft.

  “And if I tell you the nightmares,” he said, pulling me close and tucking his head to mine, “you might lose your love for me.”

  “Never,” I swore.

  “It’s always the Crusades,” he whispered into my ear. Despite being so much like what Gisbourne had done earlier, this made my skin blush warm and my heart beat fast. “There was so much fighting, Scarlet. So much death. And so much of it I was responsible for. And when I dream, I’m fighting still.”

  I knew that weren’t but a bit of it; he would never fear to lose my love over such a thing. I knew he fought. I knew he killed. But it were enough for now.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said, his lips brushing cold onto my cheek.

  “I’m afraid of Gisbourne,” I said, my voice twisted and small. “He threatened me, and it were pure awful, Rob. The court made their cruel words, and Gisbourne were more than bothered by it.” I shook my head. “People have talked foul about me for so long, Rob, I bare notice it anymore. But he hates it. And he makes me pay for it.”

  “People who don’t know you, Scar. Those that know you wouldn’t ever speak badly of you.”

  “You don’t think?” I whispered.

  He drew my hand up, kissing my fingers. “No.”

  I held tight to his hand but pulled away a bit, tugging him to walk. “You didn’t lose your temper,” I noticed.

  “Love,” he said soft, his thumb running over the bumps of my knuckles. “If I can keep my temper when you come to me and cry and I want to kill anyone that’s ever wronged you, trust me, I can stay calm when you just need someone to tell about it.” He pulled me closer again and kissed my temple, my cheek. “Besides,” he said, “something tells me you’re not explaining the worst of it.”

  “I just feel lost,” I said. “In skirts and trying to talk a way that ain’t natural. Trying to be something I’m not—for him.”

  He pulled me to him, hands running ’neath the guard’s cloak and over my sides, my hips. My body felt different in a dress, in the castle; my legs weren’t for running, my arms weren’t for climbing, my waist seemed important in a way it ain’t never been. In the forest, my middle were the part of me that were most soft without muscle or bone, so it needed to be protected, covered, hidden. In the castle it were on display, but it still felt like a weak spot. Vulnerable, which weren’t a thing I much liked.

  But Rob’s hands on my waist felt like a thrill, like it were close and hidden, a secret place for him to touch. I let the reins drop as he kissed me and my body sparked over with fire like dry kindling. I pushed him back a bit against a tree, my hand desperate to touch a single part of him.

  My hand slipped under his cloak, under his tunic and his shirt to bunch them up a bit. My hand were cold as it went, but I pushed it flat over his heart and let the heavy beat push warm into my hand. That was what I wanted from him.

  His hands overcame the little pins in my hair, and he ran his fingers through the long bits, through the short fluff in back, over and over again.

  I had heard enough girls—most yapping about John—say that a kiss made them stupid, blind to the world with every sense fair gone. And true, I hadn’t kissed enough to well compare, but Rob’s kiss made every bit of me thrum with life, with hot and blood. It made me feel brighter and taller and in these dark days, it were like a magic draught to shore up my strength.

  I left his lips to press a kiss by his heart. “I love you, Robin,” I whispered to him.

  His arms pulled tight round me, pressing me to him, forging us like metal. “Don’t go,” he whispered to me. “I can’t do it, Scar, I can’t send you back there to him. To more hurt.”

  Shivers ran over my spine. “I don’t want to go,” I told him. “But Rob, I want to marry you. And that’s more than the rest.”

  “He’ll never give us an annulment,” Rob breathed. “We can’t trust the likes of him.”

  “No,” I told him, gripping him tighter. “We can’t. But God knows I weren’t meant for him, Rob, and we’ll get this annulment somehow.”

  I nudged his face with my nose until he brought his mouth down to mine for another kiss like magic potion. I needed some unholy kind of strength and courage to walk away from him.

  He broke it off with a heavy sighing. “I love you, Scarlet. Go on, now, before you steal my sanity too,” he said.

  “Too?” I questioned.

  His grin by the moon were wicked and handsome. “Thief of my heart.”

  I tugged him close and kissed him once more. “Thinking better of walking me back?” I asked him soft, a little sad.

  He sighed ’gainst my mouth. “You’ll be faster on the horse, and honestly, I don’t think I can watch you walk back into that castle.”

  “They just let me come and go. It’s mad,” I said, smiling.

  His thumb ran over my cheek. “You’re a noblewoman. They can’t keep you out. Or in.”

  I shrugged. “I were a noblewoman before, they kept me out just fine.”

  He laughed. “Yes, you were very clear about that fact before.”

  Rob kissed me once more and helped me on the horse—it weren’t half as easy in skirts—and stood back ’gainst the tree as he spurred on the horse. I watched Rob as the horse trotted on, his white shirt bright in the moon and standing like a light in the trees.

  Soon the forest covered him up, and I went back to Nottingham, alone.

  Chapter Eleven

  The morning were bright and cold, fierce and harsh. The castle’s deer park to the west had been cleared and made into tourney grounds. The field were clear of snow and tree bits, and horses were all round the grounds, stamping the hard earth and pluming white breath like smoke from their nostrils, their backs steaming with heat in the cold like they were ghost horses.

  I were tucked in a great big chair plush with cushions, fur wrapped about me and servants with hot wine at the ready. And yet just across the grounds in fair shaky stands that weren’t never cleared of snow there were the people of Nottinghamshire, shivering in their boots and bare coats.

  How had I gotten to this side of the ground?

  The knights went to their places, and I watched. Their phantom horses wheeled in the back part before the run. The flag dropped and the riders spurred forward. The horses stretched, their legs massive and corded round with muscle and power, and the knight rode it, a chipmunk on the back of a dragon. But the knights did have their own kind of grace. It weren’t much in the way of valor to play at fighting like it weren’t something that the people at their sides had to do every day for their food and life, but the knights were a grand vision. Their armor were fitted in a way that made steel mock the way the body could move, but still, the shining plates twisted and moved together and made the knight a faceless thing, a warrior.

  And when they crossed, their heavy lances looked not for each other, like a sword might, but for the blank open space in front of a man’s chest. That were the spot the lance longed to fill, a hard strike dead center. It were a strange game. In a knife fight, I worried first about what my opponent might do with their weapon, but it weren’t so in a joust. It were as if you had to forget that the other might strike you; he became nothing more than a place to land your lance, and you had to trust that you would either strike first or your stance would hold you through a blow.

  I liked that. You weren’t never fighting an opponent. You were made to hit a target, and forget all else.

  Sitting back, I thought I’d do fair well in a joust.

  The crier, a silly little man that kept yelling titles and such, rapped his stick on the ground twice but didn
’t shout. I looked up and noble ladies ushered the queen mother to sit between myself and Isabel.

  I stood double-quick and curtsied, though Isabel just gave a nod to the queen. The queen sat and her ladies tucked furs about her, and then with a wave of her white hand they left and found other seats.

  Feeling foolish, I got back into my chair, pulling my legs up beneath me and my fur over me.

  “How are the fights?” the queen mother asked.

  “Dreadful,” Isabel said. “I so wish during these times of war that England’s noble sons would not so mock the practice of it. Why, it is as if they spit upon Richard’s Holy Crusade.” I saw her cast her eyes slight to the queen.

  “Hm,” the queen said. “My lady Leaford, what do you think of the practices of tournaments?”

  “I think it’s foolish and lovely,” I said overquick. There were probably a better answer, but it weren’t in my head.

  “Oh?” she said. “Please explain.”

  “Fighting like this is beautiful, in a fashion,” I said, slow now. “No one is hurt for true, and there is grace and power in it. The horses, the riders, I even like the armor.”

  “But you said foolish too.”

  I swallowed. Fool tongue. “Yes, my lady queen. These ain’t—” I coughed hard, blood rushing my cheeks. “These aren’t the men that would ever be called upon to fight. There is a war and they are not part of it. And the men that watch them, shivering from the far side, will fight and die as soon as King Richard has need of them. And yet they do not have the money to practice, and not the money to protect themselves from such fates.”

  She pulled her fur closer to her neck, and its hairs stood tall like the animal had its hackles up. “Such a difference is not just in the poor and wealthy, Lady Marian. It is strange as a mother to see one son play at war while the other wipes blood from his face each night. But I can see the beauty in a joust as well, and as a mother I wonder if this is what young men see when they dream of war. We women often don’t see what the appeal is, but they crave it.”

  “You know yourself in a fight,” I told her. “There’s no lying about your skills. About what you can do. It’s a good feeling.”

  “You can’t feel if you’re dead,” Isabel said. “There’s nothing good about fighting.”

  “Then you utterly mistake the role of women, Isabel. We fight for different things, but women are the most natural of fighters.” The queen inclined her head to the princess. “Something I have liked about you from the first, Isabel, is that you have defiance and pride within you. That is a form of fight.”

  Isabel’s cheeks went to blush but I weren’t so sure she liked the compliment. “In my experience women don’t get to fight for what they want,” she said, her voice low and careful. “We don’t understand war because we are not allowed to.”

  “You can always fight for what you want,” I told her, overfierce, sitting forward. “Always. People try to take that from you no matter your station, but you can always fight.”

  She gave a snort. “If I were some peasant heathen I’m sure I could,” she said.

  “I ain’t no peasant,” I said hot.

  “Just a heathen, then,” she said, peering past the queen to smile tight at me. “How does Guy put up with you?”

  It took me a moment to remember Guy were Gisbourne’s given name.

  “I’m not a heathen,” I ground out, careful to say the words right. Christ, I were out of practice with this. “And you bare seem to know what the word means. I make no apologies for the way I talk—I only started doing it because nobles and men with power and heavy fists don’t bother with a lowborn churl, and I chose safety over fancy words when it came to the streets of London. And I don’t look the part of some noble truss, but I spend my life trying to help people that can’t help themselves. People hurt by the cruelties of their lords. Say that I’m a heathen like I don’t serve God, but all you’re doing is making yourself look the fool.”

  Her face went fair sour. “Oh, this is how you help people? From up here on your high chair in your expensive furs, watching your husband tilt?”

  “Perhaps I ought to be lower,” I told her, standing. I dipped to Eleanor. “My lady queen.”

  I heard Isabel make some tittery noise behind me, but I turned my cheek from her and walked down from the dais.

  Stepping from the stage for nobles felt good, but there weren’t nothing normal about walking through people in skirts, in fine clothes, watching them step away from me to let me pass. I couldn’t fade to shadows; I couldn’t not be noticed. I hated it.

  “You look a little lost.”

  I turned to see Much steps from me. He smiled under a big farmer’s hat in his crooked, half-sure way, and I hugged him.

  He hugged me tight with a laugh. “John and Rob are awfully boring without you around.”

  I mussed his hair with a laugh. “I’m certain they are. So what do you reckon, will someone make me a widow today?”

  We went and leaned on the fencing that were meant to keep the common folk from the grounds. We were low, back, and to the side, and from there the whole thing looked vicious and fierce, less like a game and more like gods stomping about for notice.

  “I doubt it,” he said, honest as ever. “Gisbourne is a very good fighter.”

  I rubbed my still swollen lip. “I know.”

  “He slept, you know,” Much told me. “Last night, whole way through.”

  This thrilled my heart like a holy fire. “It’s fair strange, talking about Rob like he were an infant or such.”

  “It’s good news.”

  I shivered. “It’s perfect news.”

  “I’m scared for you, Scarlet,” he told me, nudging closer. “Those bruises aren’t all from Rob that night, are they?”

  “No.” I slung a grin his way. “When were I ever afraid of a little bit of purple?”

  “I’ll find a way to help,” he promised. “I’ll find a way to make sure you’re not alone.”

  “I’m well enough, Much. Needn’t fret,” I told him. “Are the menfolk well?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Hugh Morgan’s trying to make one of the knights wed Aggie after some improprieties, which is entertaining, but the food is almost gone. We won’t last till Christmas, much less the rest of the winter.”

  “You should see the feasts they have here. It’s enough to make you sick.”

  He smiled at me. “It doesn’t take much to make you sick, Scar.”

  It were meant to be funny, so I laughed.

  “What’s it like, being one of them?”

  “A noble?” I asked. He nodded. “I’m not, I don’t think. I don’t talk right. I for certain don’t look right. They all think I’m off and mad and contrary.”

  His grin sloped sideways in a silly way. “You are all of that.”

  “Are we talking about me?” John asked, coming up my other side and wrapping his arm round my back. “Look at the little lady we have here,” he laughed, looking at my clothes. “Where’s your knife?” he asked.

  I frowned, shrugging him off, but I showed him the one I hid along my back.

  Much laughed. “But where’s your second knife?” he asked.

  Leaning on the rail again, I said, “My boot. But ladies ain’t supposed to show their ankles.”

  John guffawed at this, leaning beside me and tucking his hat down low, and Much did to match. I wouldn’t never tell them as much, but with them on either side were the closest I felt to right in the past days.

  Thoresby were next up, and getting himself onto the horse he looked frail and old. He weren’t—he were bare older than my father, and I remembered my father strong and young. But his armor were too big and his face were too grave, and my chest were strapped tight with fear for him.

  The herald blew his horn and called out Thoresby’s name, and Wendeval’s came up behind it. I sucked in a breath.

  “Not good?” John asked, raising his brow to me.

  “If you knew how to joust,
he would be a fair likeness to you,” I told him. “I saw Wendeval last night. He’s a big bruiser.”

  John scowled. “I’m not just a bruiser,” he muttered.

  The horn blew again and the horses launched forward. Thoresby didn’t sit well, didn’t hold the lance well, didn’t move well. “Christ,” I hissed. “It’s a damn wonder he’s riding in a straight line.”

  “And this is our champion,” John said.

  I hit him.

  They crossed lances, and Thoresby’s lance glanced off Wendeval’s shoulder, shooting up and launching from his hand.

  Wendeval’s lance struck Thoresby’s ribs, ringing with the impact but glancing rather than holding. His lance dropped, and pages ran out to get the fallen weapons.

  The riders trotted back to their places and were handed up another lance.

  “He’s going to lose,” John said.

  “Shut it,” Much snapped at him as the horn blew.

  John shrugged, and my fingers curled into the wooden fence as the horses’ strides shook the ground. Wendeval’s form were stronger, better, his arm high and lined to his shoulder, his body balanced over the horse.

  Thoresby, if anything, looked worse.

  Several more pounding hoofbeats and they met on the field. Wendeval leaned out and struck, his body like a strange, stretched version of John throwing a punch. Thoresby moved late, the lance hurtling toward him overfast, like he were fixed and couldn’t much move.

  The ball head of the lance struck dead in the center of Thoresby’s armor, not with the clangs that the glancing blows made but with a low, hard boom.

  The horse thundered on, but Thoresby were still, hanging in the air for breath after breath as his horse charged forward without him. Then his body twisted, light flashed from his silly, useless armor, and in a spinning mess he clattered to the ground, a still, twisted heap.

  I ducked under the fence and ran.

  Thoresby weren’t moving when I got out there, a healer a breath behind me. Thoresby’s arm were tucked under him at an ugly angle, and he uttered a groan.

  My heart lurched to life in my chest. Jesus. He were alive.