Prince John looked to his mother, his lip curling. He didn’t lower the knife. “Mother.”
“Put the knife down.”
“Mother—”
“If I wanted a discussion, I would have asked you a question. Put the knife down.”
“I will punish her for what she’s done!” he roared.
Eleanor folded her hands calmly in front of her. “You will not kill her. If I have prevented you and your brothers from killing each other for the past twenty years, I will prevent you from doing this. Royal blood is sacrosanct, John. I will not allow you to kill the girl in cold blood.”
The knife lowered marginally. “You never seemed to mind murder and bloodshed when my dear brothers raised war against Father.”
She lifted her chin. “Oh, I suppose hurting her will win you a kingdom?” she asked.
His sneer folded slowly into a frown. “She must be punished. Severely.”
“Go to the window,” Eleanor said, still standing calm in the center of the room, like all the energy and life in the place were coming from her alone.
Prince John rolled his eyes like a willful child but he went. “What am I meant to be looking at, Mother?”
“Tell me what you see.”
“I see a criminal in the stocks.”
Robin.
“And?” she questioned.
He huffed out a sigh. “And a considerable amount of people around him. Servants. Lesser nobles.”
“And what are they doing?”
“I’m not a child!” he snapped at his mother, whipping his head round. “Don’t make the mistake of treating me as such.”
“You are a child,” Eleanor said, stepping forward, her voice like steel and fire. “You are a pouting bully and in danger of being held in my esteem as the stupidest of my sons. Isabel gave you such a grand opportunity tonight. A coup d’etat. An idea, by the way, that your wife stole from her.” Her long, elegant hand thrust out like a bowstaff to point at me. “Feed the people and they will love you. Helplessly and eternally. And what do you do, my stupid, stupid son? You squander the opportunity and make them hate you.”
“How dare you speak to me—”
“Silence.” She paused a moment, but he stayed quiet. “Who else do you see out there?” she asked. “Who of the highest ranking nobles beneath you—a man just beneath the shades of royalty—do you see standing beside him?”
He looked out again, resting his hands on the window ledge. His chest began to rise and fall again, and he turned from the window with a wail fit for the tantrum of a five-year-old. He grabbed the nearest table and threw it toward me, and Gisbourne grabbed my arm, pulling me out of the way. It hit the stone fireplace and shattered, and soon cloths and coins and cups followed behind, a storm of small things smashed to bits.
Gisbourne pressed me to the wall, his big body over mine as the prince raged. He didn’t look at me, his head over my shoulder, his chest breathing against mine. Soon the screams turned to words, and Prince John swore profusely, mentioning Winchester’s name several times.
Gisbourne jerked and grunted, and I knew something hit him in the back. I didn’t dare look at him. I couldn’t much confess to know anything of what was going on, but I knew he defied the prince for my life, and I didn’t want to know why. I didn’t much have space in my heart to care for another tortured man.
For a few breaths, things stopped flying cross the room and the cursing ceased. “Are you quite finished?” Eleanor asked.
Gisbourne eased up on me, and no sooner did he step away than the prince pointed to me and yelled, “You stupid bitch! You did this!”
“You will fix this,” Eleanor said. “John. John. You will fix this.”
“I will kill all of them,” he snarled.
Eleanor slapped him. “John. You will go out there and say that your orders have been wildly misinterpreted. You will say you have come to thank Robin Hood for championing the people and protecting them from the gross misconduct of those serving you. You will say he is cleared of any wrongdoings tonight or any night past; you will invite him to participate in the tournament as the people’s representative.”
I couldn’t much help myself; I gasped.
Prince John scowled. “Why would I ever do that?”
“Why would he do that, Marian?” Eleanor asked, fixing me with her stare, sharper than my knives.
“I-I don’t know, my lady.”
“Then why did you so sharply inhale?”
I looked to Gisbourne, but his face held nothing for me. “Because Rob would stand for the people, fair and true. None of these other men care a whit about the people, but Rob—he does. It would change everything.” I looked fast from the prince to Eleanor.
“Precisely. You must give the people what they want, John,” Eleanor said. “If you ever hope to be your brother’s heir.”
Prince John looked out over the crowd again, his shoulders rolling with muscle and anger. “Fine,” he grunted. “But I still get to punish her.”
Eleanor let out a breath. “You cannot kill her.”
“I won’t kill her.” He glared at me. “She fancies herself a thief. I will punish her as one.”
His eyes drifted to my hands.
I jerked back, but Gisbourne caught me, and a scream tripped and caught in my throat. He dragged me forward and I fought him hard as horror dawned sick and dark in my stomach. Gisbourne caught up some rope from the bed that had been a victim of the prince’s wrath and lashed my good arm to the chair before forcing me into it. I kicked and kicked, but he tied me to the chair, gripping my good wrist and not looking at me.
“You are certainly within your rights to punish her,” Eleanor said, raising her chin a little and folding her hands in front of her. “But you will not.”
The prince laughed. “I will, Mother.”
“Really?” she asked. “You are a prince, and you are so undone by the actions of one small girl that you will punish her severely? Richard would have been too busy to notice, much less make a spectacle of such a small crime.”
The prince rolled his eyes. “Fine, Mother. I won’t hurt her.”
She nodded and stepped toward the door, and my blood rushed fast and cooling like summer rain. My breath came again.
The door shut and I looked to the prince, who hadn’t unlashed me from the chair.
He were studying me close, looking at me in a way I didn’t much like.
“Let me see her broken hand,” the prince said, and Gisbourne looked at him.
“My lord?” he asked.
“Let me see her hand,” the prince repeated, and Gisbourne took my hand, unwrapping the bandages, tearing it off where he needed. Gisbourne showed it to him and stretched it out painful. I screwed my eyes shut, desperate not to make a noise.
“Mother’s right,” he said. “Taking the whole hand would be too noticeable.” He chuckled. “How many times has she run from you, Gisbourne?”
He hesitated.
“Gisbourne?” Prince John asked.
“Too many,” Gisbourne said.
“Yes, but twice she made promises, yes? Once to be trothed to you, and then to be your wife, and she ran from you.” Prince John said it like it were a delicious secret, something he loved. “Two fingers, then.”
Prince John went and got the knife, and my heart ran fast and slipshod in my chest. He went to the fire and put it in the low, hot part of the flames and my feet scraped on the ground, trying to find a foothold to push, to kick, to fight.
I didn’t move an inch.
Breath rushing faster, I looked to Gisbourne, but he wouldn’t look at me. I jerked at my bonds until my skin tore and bled, and Gisbourne clamped his hands down on me.
I knew Rob were out in the courtyard below the window. I knew if I cried out he’d hear me, and he’d know, and he’d fight and he’d hurt to try and help me when he couldn’t.
The prince turned toward me, holding the knife, hot and glowing dull. “I can’t stop you,” I tol
d him, trying to keep the tremble from my voice at how fast my breath were coming. He smiled at me. “But I swear, if you do this, I will visit this back upon you tenfold. Christ may well have turned the other cheek, but I won’t. Remember this act, because you’ll be cursing it for a damn long time to come. I will make you pay for what you do, your Highness.”
“Rruff,” he barked at me. “Your pup has quite the mouth on her, Gisbourne. Hold her hand flat.”
“Not her ring finger,” Gisbourne said harsh and low as the prince gripped the two smallest of my fingers. “That ring will stay in place.”
The prince chuckled and moved to my pointing and middle finger, and I shuddered.
With one last look out the window, I shut my eyes again and curled my lips over my teeth.
Water washed down my face, but I never once cried out. It were some sort of judgment from God, for I felt every cut and crack as they did it, but when it were done, and Prince John pressed a knife hot from the fire to sear the wound shut, only then did my world go black.
Chapter Seventeen
I watched the fire die, shaking with cold and pain in the chair, the lot of which made me feel thin like worn-out rags, like wind would pass through me and not notice me there.
Gisbourne hadn’t moved in the bed. I didn’t much think he were asleep, for something still crackled in the air like he were watching me.
I wanted to push open the shutters and let the cold in and wait for the sun to rise—it couldn’t be much longer—but I couldn’t move. I could bare think. Words and notions crossed my mind like whispers.
Robin were to compete.
Thoresby.
Sacrosanct.
Eleanor.
They’d never let Rob win.
This last bit made me shut my eyes against it every time. He were the best archer in England, I fair thought, and it were an archery contest. They wouldn’t never let him compete without a way to keep him from winning.
I couldn’t turn my thoughts to my hand.
I hadn’t changed clothes from the day before. Gisbourne must have dragged me here after I passed out; I had woken up in the bed in the middle of the night. I woke to pain, brutal and awful, and I cried out before I knew better of it. Gisbourne were awake, watching me in the bed beside me, and he just stayed there as I struggled to get up, staggered like a drunk, and collapsed into the chair. He didn’t say a word.
Tears stopped and started and I weren’t much aware of either part. I crushed my head into my knees and struggled to think of anything that were light and lovely and safe. I tried to think of the first kiss Rob had ever given to me, at the edge of Nottingham when everything felt, for a moment, like glittering light and sun.
It twisted dark, and all I could see were flames flickering into demons and frost stealing over to freeze the world, and Rob withering and dying like crops in winter.
Moments and decades passed all at once till the sun rose and Gisbourne rose with it. His eyes were dark and his face worn as he stared at me.
“I didn’t intend for this,” he said. That were all, and then he turned to his manservant and readied for the melee.
I wouldn’t let Mary touch me when she came. Pain were spreading through me like a spider’s web and I didn’t want to move, much less to change and dress. Gisbourne told her to just bring me a heavy cloak, and she obeyed.
It took me several moments to stand on my feet, but I weren’t never going to miss this day.
Gisbourne strode off to the fields, and I followed slow behind, pulling myself tighter with every step.
I would get to the tourney grounds.
I would sit there and stare at the prince.
I wouldn’t never be defeated by such a coward.
I would cheer for Rob with my heart and soul.
My whole body were shaking by the time I made it outside, and the cold rushed around me like a bear hug. It made it easier to breathe, to think beyond the pain, and I loved it.
Even walking toward the grounds, I could see what difference a day had made. The place were overrun, packed with common folk everywhere you could look. Children were hoisted on shoulders and people pressed together in a crush, wedged together to get a glimpse of the people’s champion.
Guards appeared to escort me into the nobles’ dais. One reached out to cup my elbow and help me along the path, and I wondered how rough I looked. My hand, still tucked safe in the sling, weren’t bleeding through; save for any sign of it that showed on my face, no one should be able to tell what had passed, and I were glad for it.
It were the first time I wanted to hide their cruelty. I didn’t want them to use me to hurt Rob; I didn’t want him for one moment to take my pain and make it his. And I hated that in so doing, it seemed like I were ashamed they’d done it.
I slid into a chair, feeling more like the washing run over a washboard than a whole girl. A trumpet sounded and the contestants were led into the arena—it had been rearranged from the day before into one wide space, the grounds for the melee, a mock battle where all the men fought in chaotic hand-to-hand combat.
A mock battle they were placing Rob dead in the center of.
Robin were one of the last to enter, and the whole place broke open with cheers and noise and sound. He were tired, that were fair clear, his face shadowed and dark. He walked cross the arena and his eyes set to searching the nobles.
He were looking for me.
His eyes moved past me, then roved back, his face folding into a frown, looking me over like a mother searching her cub for scratches. I met his eyes and smiled at him, but it felt weak and sad on my mouth.
His eyebrows wove together like knitting and he looked more worried ’stead of less.
The prince stood and spoke, but I didn’t hear it. I weren’t sure if it were the wind and where he stood that carried his voice off, or if it were the awful pounding in my hand that rang back through my skull what made it hard to hear. Didn’t matter none; I knew he were saying something about fight, fight, fight, someone will win when you are all mock dead.
The fight didn’t start just then. The players vanished from the field like smoke, and I shut my eyes for a moment, trying to breathe as pain rushed over me in a wave. Time dipped and swung, and I weren’t sure how long they’d been shut when someone called to me and touched my arm.
It were close enough to my hand that it felt like a knife, not a finger, and I fought back a howl as I turned to the source.
Eleanor’s blue eyes, made fierce and cool by the white, white skin around them, stared at me from her seat beside me.
“What did he do to you?” she said soft. She blinked, and it felt like whatever tether had bound us in her eyes were broke. My eyes slipped back and her next question sounded far off. “Marian, what happened?”
I heard her voice, murmured to her ladies near her, and soon I opened my eyes into leaping fire.
For a breath, I thought I were back at the monastery and the pain had come from Rob, but then the threads of reality braided back together and I saw a brazier fire had been brought on the dais before us, the guards banking the coals to lower the flames. Were I too cold? Were that what were wrong?
“Marian,” she said quiet, only to me, and her hand slipped along mine, fishing into the sling. I hissed; it felt like it were a hundred times too big, too sore, too everything.
She saw the red starting to bloom on the bandage, and she fixed my cloak to lay over it. I twisted as my blood pulsed double-hard in my hand.
“Hush,” she said to me, and her hands were gentle on me. “You are strong, Marian. You are well and strong.”
Something cold fell on the bandage and I wrenched at the weight, but didn’t yell. I tried to look past the fire to the field, to Rob, to see if he noticed, but I couldn’t see past the flames.
The cold sank through the cloth and began to ease the pain, and I were only just aware of myself. My chest were heaving like iron bellows and I were half out of my chair. I straightened, raising my head up
to look out on the field.
The melee were on in full. Most were mounted; I reckoned that losing your horse were probably the first round of elimination. I saw Gisbourne, all in black on his huge white destrier, slashing with his broadsword. He looked like a demon.
Rob were half swallowed. He were on a farm horse, a head and hands shorter than the rest of them, but he were charging through more men than Gisbourne. And every hit he made were followed by cheers like an echo.
Watching him made everything hurt less. He were handsome beyond measure, his face carved stone and living all at once. His body moved with a grace that made me admire every bit of the fighter in him. He were trained for this, the act and practice of war; built for it, honed by it.
And haunted by it.
Part of me cheered with every strike of his sword; part of me mourned.
The main battle line broke as victors like Robin, Gisbourne, and more crossed through to the other side where the infantry would have lain in wait if it were a battle in true. Their horses galloped free and were wheeled back by their riders, ready to clash again.
A great horn sounded, and the horses slowed, halting and turning toward the ends of the arena.
The first round were done.
Nobles stood from their chairs quick, drawing close to the huge braziers as servants hurried to fill wine glasses and offer food, like a moving banquet set in the snow.
Eleanor waved her fingers and her ladies drifted in front of us, blocking out everyone else with carefully turned backs and angled bodies. She handed me a cup of wine and I drank it fast, eager to put off the shivers and pain both.
“Your husband did this, or my son?” she asked.
There were dregs of something in the wine and I spat it out, not caring a whit if I looked like an ill-mannered heathen. “You really thought he’d let me go?” I asked her. I looked to her, to her face like white stone and her eyes of cold water, and I stared down the great Eleanor of Aquitaine. “You left him full of fury and me lashed to a chair. If you didn’t know how that would end, you didn’t want to know.”
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