He threw her bow aside and struck Robin hard across the cheek. Only his grip on her tunic kept Robin on her feet. “The only dance you will be doing is a whirl with the hangman’s noose,” he snarled.
“How delightful. Do you plan then to tell everyone that your famed nemesis is really a girl?” Robin jeered, blinking back tears of pain. “What ballads they will sing of your heroism! Oh, but I suppose I shan’t be able to hear them if I am dead—well, they say there is a blessing to everything.”
“You dare mock me!” the Sheriff railed, shoving Robin to the floor, his eyes sparking hellfire.
What he would have done next, she was fortunate to never find out, because someone spoke up just then from the doorway.
“My lord?” It was the castle steward, the only man who could interrupt the Sheriff with impunity. He gazed in surprise at Darniel, who was kneeling over his prisoner with an expression of cruel retribution. “My lord, I see that it is true what the guards have been saying—you have indeed captured Robin Hood! May I offer my congratulations, sir, and shall I dispatch a courier to the King?”
Darniel’s face twisted with displeasure at the interruption, and Robin felt the grip on her collar tighten. Pulling her forward so that his lips brushed against her ear, he menaced, “One word about any of this, and I will have you drawn and quartered.”
He let her go and stood up. “Yes, send a courier. And have the guards take this varlet to the pit. He will be executed at high noon—that will give us time to announce his capture at the morning Mass.”
“Noon, sir? But it is Christmas—”
“NOON!”
* * * * *
It took no less than five prison guards to escort Robin to her cell. These were not the same guards who had stood with her in the audience chamber—the ones who had seemed to both fear and revere her. These were hard men, fit for little more than managing the underground prison.
They did not talk as they walked through the tunnels, not even to each other. The only sounds were the squelching of their footsteps and the hiss of sputtering flames as water dripped from the stones overhead to land on the torches. The touch of falling droplets was like tears on Robin’s face, mingling with the ones that came there naturally.
At last, the procession stopped at the lip of a pit. The lead guard grabbed Robin’s arm and drew her to its edge, letting his torch flare down beneath them so that she could see into the cavernous depths. The pit was deep and shaped like a jug, with concave mud walls that would be impossible to climb. The stench of rancid decay reached Robin’s nose at the same instant that she discerned the remains of what had once been a man.
“Enjoy your new home . . . while you can,” the guard taunted as another one cut her bonds. Then with a hard shove to her back, he pushed Robin into the pit.
For one brief moment she was weightless, suspended in the air like the bird whose name she bore. Then she was falling through rank darkness, her hands uselessly thrown out in an attempt to forestall the crippling force of landing.
* * * * *
Little John prodded at the fire with a stick, watching the consequential red sparks shoot into the air with disinterest. Mass was certainly over by now—it would have been for at least an hour. Robin would be on her way home. So why was he so uneasy?
Little John was a sensible man, not given to wild flights of fancy or to overindulgences of the imagination. But since the moment he had turned his back on Robin, he had felt a deep sense of misgiving. Only pride had prevented him from turning around and accompanying her to Mass.
Her. Would he ever get over the tightness in his chest each time he thought of Robin and that word?
It was only worry that his tongue would slip when talking with others, he was sure. He always had to be so careful now not to do or say anything that would seem strange or . . . improper.
How much longer could their charade last?
A dim, high note interrupted his musings. Little John leapt to his feet, listening intently.
“Is it Robin?” David asked in joyful expectation, coming up beside him.
Little John shook his head as another bugle joined the chime. “No. It must be soldiers.”
“Here? Now? But it is Christmas! No one seeks for outlaws at Christmas,” David laughed. “Besides, if they cannot find us in the daytime, surely they must know they have not the least chance of finding us in the dark!”
“They are not trying to find us,” Little John realized in sudden alarm, his heart pounding against his ribcage as the bugles sounded once more. “They are trying to ensure we do not leave. Robin is in danger!”
* * * * *
Robin lay curled against the earthen wall as far from the fetid corpse as she could get. The smell of rotting flesh choked her breath; she had already been sick two times. At least the darkness hid the sight from her eyes.
The pit was frigid and dank, but Robin tried not to shiver. Though the corpse had broken her fall, part of her weight had fallen onto her outstretched arm, dislocating her shoulder instantly. Any movement at all sent a wave of agony coursing through her body.
Still, aside from her shoulder and groggy head, Robin had managed to come through her ordeal relatively unscathed. Granted, her body felt like one massive bruise and her arms were sticky with dried blood, but she was fairly certain that the majority of it was not hers.
She tried not to think about the people to whom it did belong, but their faces kept running through her mind. Did they have wives . . . children? How many families had she destroyed tonight?
“God, if I am to die anyway, why could you not have let me fall beneath the first swordsman’s blow? What purpose did this night serve, tell me that? Tell me!” she shouted in despair.
He did not answer.
* * * * *
“Are you not due back in Hereford, my dear Bishop?” the Sheriff asked.
“I would not for my soul miss the hanging of Robin Hood,” he replied.
“To have caught that unprincipled knave at last! It is the most perfect of gifts—and it is not even New Year’s yet.”
“Perhaps we should have Christmas gifts from now on,” the Bishop joked.
“Indeed! But come, I believe I promised you a feast. Let us go and rejoice as no men have done before and revel in the capture of that thief!”
* * * * *
Robin did not remember falling asleep, so when she awoke, it was in sudden panic. How long had she been insensate? The pit was as dark as ever; there was no way to tell if she had been unconscious for five minutes, or five hours.
At least the dizziness she felt had abated, that was something. But she was still so tired. A deep, dragging weariness weighed her down, and forced her eyelids closed in spite of her best efforts to stay awake.
When she awoke once again, the pit felt different; Robin realized that she could discern the slime-encrusted walls and the heap of rotting flesh. Looking up, she saw orange light splayed across the ceiling in the corridor above, growing steadily stronger. Someone was coming.
Robin pushed herself to her feet with her good hand, biting back a moan as bruises left in one position too long made her nerves scream and her shoulder blaze. She fought against the pain, determined that when the guards arrived, they would find her standing and composed; she would face Death with her chin held high.
Two shadowed figures appeared at the top of the pit—but only two. Not an execution party, then, Robin sighed in relief. The first shadow squatted down by the edge of the pit to see her better, directing the light from its torch into the hole and allowing Robin to see its leering visage.
“Well, well, we meet again . . . Robin Hood,” Guy of Gisborne mocked, his scarred features turned hellish by the torchlight. “At last, you are in the kingdom you deserve.”
“Hello, Guy,” Robin replied, sitting back down despite the pain that the motion caused. She would not do this cur the honor of standing. “Have you come to ensure that I am still alive? What a pity to see that you still are
—although you do look a sight better than the last time I saw you. That scar I gave you does wonders for your complexion. Of course, the darkness aids a great deal as well.”
Gisborne laughed, which surprised her. She had hoped to make him angry. “Even you cannot vex me now, Robin. Your wings are clipped. In a few hours time, you will sing your tune for the hangman’s noose.”
Had he really said . . . hours? Relief filled Robin, contrary to his intent. She had yet a while to live!
Emboldened, she retorted: “Really? How interesting. I seem to recall that the last time the Sheriff attempted to hang one of my men, it did not go so well for him.”
Gisborne’s smirk was savage. “He will succeed with this hanging, never fear. You will not be executed in the town square—your gibbet will be the castle wall itself. No one will be near enough to save you, but all will be near enough to see your end.”
How astute, she ruefully acknowledged to herself, but what Robin said aloud was, “Do you really think that will stop my men from rescuing me?”
Gisborne laughed in contempt. “My men have been combing the forest ever since your arrest—your people will have gone to burrow like the vermin they are. By the time they learn you are here, it will be too late.”
Robin flinched, her relief disappearing in an instant. She had known in her heart that there was no chance of rescue, but to hear Gisborne actually say it was a crippling blow. Still, she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing how deeply his words had struck her.
“Poor Guy—after all this time, you are still searching for us? What a pity you did not think to remember the way to our camp when you chose to leave,” she taunted, hoping to mask her distress with a jeer.
“I remember,” he hissed, his glare darker than the shadows of the pit.
“Then why have you not told the Sheriff?” Robin asked, surprised. Guy did not answer her, but someone else did.
“Because I will not let him.”
Robin squinted up at the second man, trying to make out his face in the flickering torchlight.
“Who are you?” she queried.
“John of Nottingham. You knew me as Johnny.”
“Johnny?”
“Silence, boy!” Gisborne growled.
“My father and I,” Johnny continued, ignoring his father’s command, “do not get on well. I do not approve of his thirst for power, nor the means by which he obtains it. But power is meaningless without someone to leave it to, and I am my father’s only heir.”
“I will beget another, just you wait and see. Then you will regret all the times you have defied me!”
Johnny shrugged. “Perhaps. Until then, our accord stands—I do not inform the Sheriff that you are pilfering from his coffers, and you do not divulge the location of Will’s home.”
Robin could scarcely believe what she was hearing. This was young Johnny, Will Stutley’s best friend, who had so meekly followed his father away from their camp without even a word goodbye? Yet there was nothing meek in his tone now. And if what he had said was true, then out of love for his friend, this boy—no, man—had defied his father and saved Will and the entire camp from capture at the Sheriff’s hands.
“It is a shame that you left. You would have made an excellent Merry Man,” Robin told the youth. It was the highest praise she could think of.
Gisborne spat.
“Do not insult my son. Merry Man—Merry Woman is more like it,” Gisborne sneered. Robin froze. Had the Sheriff told him her secret? She would have thought him too proud, but—.
“Fair-faced youth—you are not even a man yet, are you? It is said you have never possessed a woman, not even the one it is rumored you love.” He laughed in disdain. “Oh, the Sheriff was in a rage when he heard that you had stolen away his bride-to-be. For that insult, he was prepared to have you flayed alive; I fail to understand why he has now changed his mind. Personally, I was looking forward to hearing your agonized screams.”
“Funny, I am sure there are many who would say the same thing about you. How did you get the Sheriff to dismiss your warrant?” Robin demanded caustically.
Gisborne bit at the change in subject. “Any warrant can be forgiven . . . for the right price. I just had to pay the Sheriff’s.”
“And the price?”
“You,” he sneered
So that was what inspired our last run-in, Robin realized. I should have guessed.
“The Sheriff must have been so disappointed when you failed,” she goaded. “I am amazed to discover that you are still around.”
“I have other uses. Someone has to recollect the taxes your men so disobligingly steal. And the Sheriff knows that my means are . . . effective.”
Robin spat. The satisfaction it brought her was worth the pain in her swollen cheek. “You and Darniel deserve each other.”
“Tsk, tsk. Compliments will get you nowhere.”
Before Robin could think of a retort, the thin notes of a distant bugle filtered through the dungeon walls, announcing to the town, “All is well!” The notes seemed to startle Gisborne from his verbal sallies.
“Come,” he ordered his son. As he turned away, he flung one last taunt at Robin, “See you in a few hours.”
Gisborne disappeared into the tunnel, taking the light with him. Johnny lingered a moment longer, his face inscrutable. Robin opened her mouth to say something—what, she had not as yet decided—when he, too, turned on his heel and left, leaving her alone in the darkness once more.
CHAPTER 23
THE COMING OF DAWN
SOMETHING in the air roused Robin and alerted her to the arrival of day. It wasn’t anything definable—the pit was just as dark as ever, and she could hear no distant sound; yet Robin knew that at that moment, dawn was stretching across the land like a hangman’s noose, reaching forth slim tendrils of light to choke the life from her . . . .
Stop that! Robin ordered her mind. Just . . . just stop that.
But panic had her in its grasp, and she felt like she could not breathe. With a sob, Robin buried her head in her knees. God, I am not ready to die.
Something skittered through the silence—a pebble kicked across one of the puddles in the dungeon tunnel. Robin looked up. Torchlight flickered against the ceiling, and the faint patter of footsteps grew into echoing drumbeats as several guards drew near. This was no gawking foe—this was an escort. The Sheriff must have changed his mind and decided to have her executed at dawn. Or perhaps he wished to continue his earlier interrogation . . . the thought made Robin shudder.
What if I just refuse to get out? she pondered as the guards tossed a rope ladder over the side of the pit. But when it came down to it, she would rather stand on the castle wall with a noose around her neck and have one more moment in the light—and be able to glimpse the distant trees of her Sherwood home one last time—than to spend her remaining hours moldering away in this abyss.
Robin stood with aching slowness and wrapped her good arm through a rung on the hempen ladder, grasping its side firmly with one hand. “Pull me up,” she called, not quite able to keep her voice steady.
She expected a taunt or a challenge, but none came as the ladder gave a sharp jerk and began to rise. The motion sent a wave of nausea and pain coursing through her, and it took all of Robin’s strength and resolve to maintain her grip on the rope and not fall. The pit was wider at the bottom than at the top, and the ladder swung back and forth like a pendulum, threatening to dislodge her; it nearly succeeded, too, when her feet slipped off their rung and she went into a dizzying spin, her boots scrabbling for purchase against the slimy walls. The soldiers dragged Robin over the lip of the pit not a moment too soon; her good hand seized spasmodically and let go of the ladder, its strength gone.
With nary a moment’s respite, Robin was pulled to her feet and herded through the tunnel, her escort as silent now as it had been before. The only sound she heard was the pounding of her heartbeat—like time, it was speeding up, speeding towards the end . . . .
“Stop,” came the leader’s imperious command. He handed his torch to another guard and cracked opened the prison door, peering outside. Whatever he saw must have satisfied him, because he opened the door just wide enough to slip through and then closed it firmly behind him. The low murmur of voices seeped through the stone, and a minute later the guard returned, tucking a weighty bundle inside his tunic; as it settled against his chest, Robin thought she heard the dull chink of shifting coins.
At his curt signal, Robin was thrust forward and out the door. Pain blinded her—one of the soldiers had unwittingly shoved against her shoulder—and for a moment, Robin’s world went black. With a burst of sheer will, she shoved the darkness away. Only then did she notice that none of the guards had followed her through the doorway and into the castle corridor; the door’s solid bulk was closed against her back.
Just then, someone stepped forward from the opposite wall, and Robin forgot all about the guards.
“John!” she cried in disbelief, her knees growing weak. Only the presence behind Little John kept Robin from flinging herself into his arms. Instead, she reached out with her good hand and clasped his forearm as tightly as he did hers, trying to convey with her fingertips what it meant to see him again.
“I brought Will Stutley,” Little John said in a strangled voice. “He knows the castle layout; he knew that we could bribe the guards. The others wanted to come, too, but we thought—I thought—that the less the better. Just in case we could not get out of here alive.”
“You should not have come,” she whispered, unable to keep tears of relief from spilling down her cheeks.
“A simple ‘thank ye’ will suffice,” Will Stutley grinned. “But ye can say it later. Fer now, I would rather ye focus on gettin’ us out o’ ’ere alive.”
“I thought that was your job,” Robin replied with a ghost of her old smile, sniffing back her tears.
Robin: Lady of Legend (The Classic Adventures of the Girl Who Became Robin Hood) Page 28