by Kris Kennedy
Chapter Forty-Eight
THE MOON WAS RISING. Magdalena stumbled alone up the pockmarked road. Rippling white stripes reflected in the muddy puddles, shattering whenever she stepped directly into ones too large to avoid. Her skirts hems grew damp, then bedraggled, and still she went on.
Ahead was a bleak stony castle, a single tower surrounded by a jagged wall. One of Lord Sherwood’s untended orphan castles, miles outside the city, on this lonely road, used for hunts and secret meetings and whatever other dark purposes he might wish to conduct within its lonely, barren walls.
Maggie pulled the cloak tighter around her head and pulled it across the lower half of her face, fighting the winds that struck her head-on and tore at her cloak, wrapping her skirts around her shins so tight she almost stumbled and fell a few times. It was as if even the winds did not want her to do this thing.
Battling the elements and her own fear, she finally reached the walls that surrounded the tower.
She rapped on the gate.
A guard came out. Mistrustful eyes peered out at her from under a helm. She told him who she was.
Leaving her to stand in the winds, he went inside. A moment later, he returned, swung the rusting gate open, and ushered her inside.
SHE WAS TAKEN to the great hall. Sherwood sat there, at the high table. He was the epitome of wealth and a life of ease. His beard was neatly trimmed, he wore a velvet surcoat, and wore a multitude of rings on his fingers. All but the broken one, she noted as she stepped inside.
Sherwood got to his feet as she came forward. “Magdalena. I did not believe them. I thought it some trickery.”
Her skirts rustled as she drew to a halt. The walls of the narrow room rose twenty feet, with arched beams and a minstrel’s gallery above, a low fire trough filled with flickering flames running down the length of its planked floor. And upon the dark dais, lit by only a few candles, stood Sherwood.
“You overestimate my importance, my lord,” she said softly. “Who would use my name to engage in trickery? No one here in England knows me.”
“And therein lies your problem,” he guessed.
She nodded and came forward into the firelit room.
“How can I assist, madame?”
She looked around, not expecting to see Tadhg, but hoping nonetheless. “I…I recall you made an offer, sir.”
“I did.”
“Does it still stand?”
“Well,” he said, stepping off the dais. “I admit, I am tempted to offer you assistance, but my original offer was contingent upon you giving me something in return. Unfortunately for you, I now have what I sought.”
“I have something you want even more.”
His eyes held hers, then he blew out a breath through his nostrils, a soft, bitter laugh. “He gave it to you.”
“He gave it to me. And I will give it to you.”
His eyes held hers, then, with a faint smile, he held up his hands, open and empty. “Name your price, my lady.”
“Tadhg.”
That turned his smile cold, but did not wipe it away entirely. “Indeed? You consider that a fair trade?”
“I do.”
He dropped his hands and smiled at her. “And yet, for me to release a declared traitor, a known outlaw…that would be treason on my conscience, madame. ’Tis my duty to see him brought to justice.”
“Perhaps the riches you will incur as result of whatever you plan to do with the dagger will help to allay any discomfort the state of your conscience might momentarily cause.”
“Ah, yes. The money. Is that what you think it is about?” He came close enough to touch her, but didn’t.
“What else is there?” she asked as he circled her.
“You share Tadhg’s lack of imagination, Magdalena. Power. Power is the thing.” He brushed his fingertips across her back.
She blew out a breath as he stopped behind her. “Power then,” she agreed, forcing her voice steady as she stared at a high point on the wall. “You may have it all.”
“All of it?”
“Yes. Whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want?” came his soft reply. He lifted the veil that floated down her back and laid his hand on the small of her back, unmoving.
Tipping her chin higher, she nodded.
“And you want only the Irish bastard in return,” he finished softly. Mocking. “How loyal. How noble. How bold.” He slid his hand up her back. “Indeed, your boldness here does you justice, mistress.” He curled his hand over her shoulder. “I am aroused by the novelty of it.”
She closed her eyes. “You may have that too, my lord,” she whispered. “My body, if you wish it.”
“I wish it,” he murmured by her ear, then slid his hand down her arm. “Yet I remain curious.”
“About what?” she whispered.
“How did you ever think to succeed, you here alone, me with Tadhg, you with the dagger?”
“I do not have the dagger with me.”
His hand stopped. “What?”
She turned her head and looked over her shoulder at him. “Shall we come to terms, my lord?”
They stared at each other as his eyes widened in surprise. “Perhaps you have some imagination after all, Magdalena,” he murmured. “And your boldness increases tenfold. As does my desire. State your terms.” His hand slid to her hip.
“My terms are these, you son of bitch.” The low voice broke in from the back of the hall. “Unhand Maggie, and I will kill you swiftly, rather than quartering you while you live, and feeding your parts to the dogs while you watch.”
Sherwood spun, grappling for his sword as he tried to locate the voice that had threatened him from the darkness.
It was Tadhg. Of course. Tadhg, beaten and bloody, standing in the doorway, flanked by Rowan and Fáelán. Máel was nowhere in sight.
Maggie’s knees went weak with relief. Fáelán had sworn they could get inside, but she hadn’t been certain.
“Distract him, can you do that?” he’d asked when they’d dropped her up the road an hour ago, reining their spirited horses in circles around her in the mud.
“Oh, aye, she can distract a man,” Rowan had answered, smiling lazily at her.
“That is all you need to do,” Fáelán vowed, then they’d kicked their horses and galloped off, leaving her to stumble down the moonlit road alone, hoping against hope they could do what they said.
They certainly were efficient brigands.
Now, they strode in the room, swords brandished.
Sherwood hurried to do the same.
“Christ’s mercy,” he cursed, sweeping it from its sheath, and grabbed her wrist with crushing strength. “You bitch,” he snarled, grabbing for her with his other hand as he shouted for his men, “Ernst! Belliwick! Rog—”
“Not there, sorry to say,” Rowan interrupted, shaking his head sadly. “Five of them, weren't there? Ernst and Roger and Belli—What was it? Dick? Aye, well, whatever they’re names were, they and all the others are gone.”
Sherwood blanched, then yanked Magdalena in front of him, held his sword to her throat.
“Let me go,” he ordered in a harsh rasp.
Across the room, Tadhg’s eyes met hers, red-rimmed with exhaustion and exertion, his face shaggy once again with a beard and blackened with so many bruises her heart almost broke.
“Tadhg,” she whispered helplessly. How much more could one man take? “I am sorry.”
He turned his gaze to Sherwood. “Now see what you’ve done,” he said, his voice menacingly soft. “You’ve made her cry. You’ll pay for that.”
The sound of booted feet came running up stairs, and Sherwood smiled. “You are fools if you think I would only have five men.”
“Bollocks,” someone muttered as they turned, and fighting erupted.
Sherwood swung Magdalena around harshly, moving his restraining arm from her waist to her neck, he crooked his elbow around her throat and, almost choking her, began dragging her backward toward
a door, her heels dragging as they went.
From above the grunts of men and the crash of steel, they could hear shouts come in through the open windows. The sound of galloping horses thickened as it roped into the room.
Someone called out, “The prince! Prince John is here.” And with that much warning, the prince of England, John Lackland, stepped into the room.
He took in the fighting, and as his personal guard, his mesnie, his bachelor knights spread out behind him, he scanned the room, then locked on Sherwood.
“You bastard,” he roared. “I have received word of your treachery! You mean to sell the dagger to me, do you? Or perhaps even to the French king? I will cut out your heart and roast in a fire. I will—”
Sherwood yanked Maggie off her feet, swinging her toward the back door.
The prince’s knights swept into the sea of battle as Maggie closed her fingers around his elbow and tried to yank his arm away. She kicked and pushed and elbowed, to no avail. Her feet skidded over the floor, and as the breath was almost squeezed from her, her breath constricted to nothing and her vision started to blacken.
Then the suffocating arm around her throat suddenly went limp, and fell away.
She collapsed to her knees, gasping for breath.
Sherwood’s body lay behind her, crumpled and spurting blood from a six inch gap that swept the front his throat like a ruby-red necklace. It soaked his tunic in a red sea. Beside his body stood a pair of boots.
She tipped her spinning head up and peered into Máel’s dark eyes.
“Get up,” he ordered, reaching for her hand, and spun her behind him, to the wall, then waded into the fight.
Magdalena scrambled backward on her hands and heels, to the wall, as Tadhg came toward her through the fighting. A soldier stepped in front of him and Tadhg lifted a boot and planted the bottom of it in the man’s stomach, then shoved. The man went flying back and Tadhg disarmed him as he went, wrenching the sword from his grip before advancing in a relentless march toward her, pushing men out of his way, slicing with cold steely strokes, men dropping in bloody waves. He reached her and turned to stand before her huddled body.
From across the wild sea of fighting, Fáelán caught Tadhg’s eye. “Go!” he shouted, sweeping his sword before bringing it down on someone’s head. Blood sprayed. “Take her and go!”
Tadhg shook off a soldier and moved back into the fight.
Fáelán bashed through the fighting and grabbed him and shoved him backward so hard Tadhg staggered
“Go,” Fáe snarled. “You think we came here to watch you fight? Always showing off. For God’s sake, go save one of us. You’re the only one who can.”
Tadhg pushed back against him. “Not on your life—”
“Then on hers.” Fáelán flung his arm out, tossing the ruby dagger into Tadhg’s hands, then shoved Tadhg backward again to the wall and turned back to the fight. “There are horses in the back.”
Tadhg grappled to catch the dagger. He stared at it, then cursed brutally and whirled to Maggie.
“This is the last time we run, lass, I swear it,” he vowed hoarsely, grabbing her hand. “But this time, we have to run like hell.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
THE FIGHTING ABATED when everyone realized Sherwood was dead, but that wasn’t immediately helpful for Fáelán and the others. Indeed, they were being backed into the corner, Sherwood’s men and the prince’s men slowly congealing like pus around a wound, when yet another shout came through the open window, along with the sounds of galloping horses.
From his vantage point on the dais, unencumbered by sword or blade, Prince John looked wildly toward the door as William, Marshal of England, strode in.
Sixty years old, weathered like an oak tree, sturdy like one too, he looked over the sea of fighting and barked an order.
All the men, John’s and the baron’s, ceased in a heartbeat. In the sudden silence, there was only the harsh sound of men breathing fast and hard, the steely sharp scrape of a sword tip swiping the floor or some overturned vessel.
“Where is the prince?” the Marshal asked tonelessly.
From the dais, Prince John made a distressed sound. “Finally, Marshal, you show up somewhere you are actually needed.” He pointed wildly at the bleeding body of Sherwood. “Sherwood was trying to start a rebellion.”
“Was he?” the Marshal said slowly. “How like you he is.”
“Watch you tongue, old man,” John snarled. “It is by my efforts he was stopped.”
“Indeed?” The Marshal examined the frozen sea of battle, honing in on Fáelán and the others by the far corner, then looked back to the prince. “Word has arrived for you from the French king.”
The prince started, and a guilty flush rose up on his thin cheeks. “What does it say?”
The Marshal made a show of innocence. “How would I know? ’Twas for you. Here.” He held up a sealed fold of parchment.
John hurried off the dais and snatched it, examined the seal, then broke it with bony fingers, and leaned down to the ruddy light from the trough fire to read. His hand began to tremble, but a moment later, he looked up with a grin.
“Come,” he waved to his men. “We have bigger deeds to manage.” He strode out of the room, pausing to hiss in the Marshal’s ear as he passed by, “Time to start watching your tongue, Pembroke, ere you find yourself with a new ruler, and new rules.”
“It will be a cold day in hell when you rule me, my lord,” he replied with a low, mocking bow.
John snarled something indecipherable and swept out of the hall, his men in his wake. The Marshal turned to the room and the frozen scene of battle, Sherwood’s men with their swords, the cluster of outlaws backed to the door.
He descended the stairs at a measured pace, his bootheels scraping on stone. He kept his eye on Fáelán until he hit the floor of the hall, then turned his chin over his shoulder and said quietly to his men, “Disarm them.”
They moved toward Fáelán and his brothers, and the Marshal made a sound. They stopped short.
“Not them. Them.” He pointed to Sherwood’s men.
Sherwood’s soldiers’ jaws dropped, but the earl’s men simply reversed course and began taking weapons off them.
“Just disarm them and let me question them, then they may go free,” the Marshal ordered. He looked down the shadowy hall and nodded at Fáelán.
In the corner, Fáe released a long breath, then looked behind him and tipped his head the barest inch to the side.
Rowan straightened his spine as he sheathed his sword. Máel kept his out. At another glance from Fáelán, they spread out and began examining the riches of Sherwood’s abode, while the soldiers were tied up in ropes and marched out of the hall.
The Marshal picked his way over to Fáelán, who was wiping down his blade while his men went over Sherwood’s house, stripping it down of anything of value. As the Marshal watched, Máel shoved a golden goblet into a bag.
“Shopping, are you?” the Marshal asked.
Fáe glanced at his men, then went back to wiping his blade. “Paying them for a job well done.”
“It was well-done,” the Marshal agreed. “Why are you not taking anything for yourself?”
He shrugged. “None of it appeals. In any event, they render to me a quarter of their haul, so I will be recompensed.”
The Marshal nodded somberly as he watched the outlaws. “I never thought I’d get word from a Rardove about treachery lurking in the royal family. Last I looked, the Rardove’s were committed enemies to the English crown.”
“Look again: they still are.”
The Marshal grunted softly. “Then why did you send word for me to come here, telling of some joined treachery between Sherwood and the prince?”
“Because I do not like any of you. The more mayhem between you all, the better for me.”
“Ah. So I should still fear your outlawry?”
“You should fear everything about me.”
Their eyes me
t. “I wonder how the prince found out what Sherwood was planning?” the Marshal mused.
“Aye, I wonder,” he said softly.
Fáelán almost thought he saw the earl smile.
The sound of thundering hooves drew their attention to the window, and stepping nearer, they watched the prince’s men gallop off, their horses throwing clod of mud in the moonlit night.
“What was the message you delivered?” Fáelán asked. “What’s made him ride off like he’s been stung by a bee?”
The Marshal flicked the tip of his drawn sword impatiently as he took a turn around the sacked room. “’Twas a missive from the French king Philippe.”
Fáelán looked up slowly. “What did it say?”
He swung about. “You think I read the prince’s messages?
“Nay. I think you order your men to.”
That earned another reluctant smile from the grey-bearded Marshal. “The French king reports King Richard has been captured en route home from the Holy Land. He will be ransomed back to us for a kingly, beggaring sum, no doubt.”
Fáelán smiled and resheathed his blade with a steely swipe. “So my brother was right.”
The Marshal looked at him sharply. “So you have seen Tadhg?”
“What makes you say that?”
The Marshal gripped his arm. “He was here, wasn’t he? Where is he now?”
Fáelán just looked at him.
“I swear to you, Rardove, I wish him no ill will. Indeed, the opposite, I intend to reward him greatly, for I, too, have had word from the king. Your little brother is held high in high esteem by our king.”
“He isn’t my king.”
“I need to find him, greatly. He has…something Richard greatly desires.”
“Does he?”
The Marshal’s gaze grew close. “Do you know what he intends to do with it?” He dipped his stocky frame forward and lowered his voice. “The treasure he carries?”
Fáelán glanced at him, then whistled through his teeth. The others, in this room and up in the musician’s gallery above, turned. Fáelán lifted his arm and made a swirling gesture with his finger, and Rowan and Máel, laden with Sherwood booty, began making their way out the door.