Hooded

by H. J. Mountain

  “What happened? Who did this to you?”

  “I don’t know.” And then: “I never saw their faces.”

  The girl comes around to face me again. “Come! Let’s go inside. You need warm water and a dressing for this. You need to change.”

  All of which sounds pretty wonderful. But I need to go now to have any hope of finding him: the robber-villain from the forest road. Maroon Eyes. He knew the lion’s cloth. I have to believe it.

  “No,” I say. Firm. “I cannot go back in there. Not yet.”

  The girl’s delicate features tense up. “Why not?”

  I do not wish to lie to her, even if I cannot offer the truth. “Because it happened in the castle. I ran from there.”

  The girl swallows. She nods, as if this does not shock her. She places a hand on my wrist. “Drunken men make cruel bastards.” She speaks with a ferocity I do not anticipate. It makes me wonder what she has experienced herself. “Sober ones also sometimes.”

  “What are you doing here so early?” I ask, trying to move the subject away from my tortured memories of the chamber.

  She pauses, debating whether or not to allow me this evasion. She does. “I planned to go for a ride.”

  “You’ve a horse?”

  “I take one of father’s.”

  I nod towards the door, the guard out of sight beyond it. “They will let you?”

  The girl flashes the mischievous look I remember from the dance. “A silver coin tends to appease that one.”

  The opportunity is too much to resist. “May I ride with you?”

  Her lips press together. Not convinced. “You are hurt. It would not be wise.”

  “I am well enough to ride. And I cannot well stay in this stable all day.”

  At that, she smiles. “True enough. You know yourself. But at least let me bring you a new dress and jacket. The hour is fresh and you are…underdressed.”

  For some reason my cheeks warm. “You would do that?”

  “If in exchange,” she says, “you tell me your name.”

  “Brya of Gisbourne.” Tentatively I offer my hand.

  The girl takes it in hers. Without hesitation, she tells me: “I’m Marian of Satherowe.”

  ***

  I wait in the stable until Marian’s return. I hear her exchange words with the guard before she enters the gate. Wolf has warmed up to her already. He bounds over to sniff the bag in her hand. From it she pulls out a brown jacket and scarf and a grey dress. I take the garments into the stall and undress. I have undone my torn blue gown when there is a tap on the stall door.

  “Pardon. I brought some water and balm. May I?”

  My body tenses. I feel naked. I very nearly am. But my back also feels punctured. Hot needles prod at my shoulder blade, at my ribs, at the very base of my spine. The prospect of relief trumps my shyness.

  “Alright,” I say softly.

  Marian steps inside. I stand with my back to her, my arms up over my naked chest. The cool dawn breeze makes the hairs on my neck stand on end. Teasing over the swollen nature of the blood there. Marian is quiet. I try to imagine what she is thinking. I worry that she is staring at the ugly birthmarks on my neck. I wish they were covered.

  Then I feel a touch. Faint as air. Damp cloth shivers me. The balm stings. It sinks into a burn. I gasp. A little dizzy. Her fingers are gentle. The sting eases into a duller ache. I can manage it. I breathe out. Her hands move down my back. She applies the balm slowly, carefully, until each wound left by the searing liquid has been soothed.

  “Thank you,” I whisper – the physical effect so strong that the words rush out of me.

  “It is nothing. Will you turn?”

  That tension again: an anxious pull in my stomach. Slowly I do as she asks.

  “Here.” Marian reaches up with the watered cloth. She runs it along the cut on my throat. I grimace. Her face pinches, as if she feels the rawness.

  “This will heal.”

  I sigh. It should not matter, with all else, but I am gladdened by the thought that my neck – mottled as it is – may not be scarred forever by the gift from the scaled creature.

  “Either way, you will still be pleasant on the eye.”

  She seems to realise her words. She steps back. I look away: suddenly aware of how I am alone with her and how my untied dress falls down at my waist. She can see so much of me, even with my arms tight across my chest. This girl with her cropped dark blonde hair and her wide bright eyes.

  “We should go,” I say. She nods and moves to the door and I dress quickly. The gown is simple but elegant, more fit for a dance than a ride into the forest. It is snug too. Marian is shorter than me, so her dress barely covers my knees. It leaves my neck and its marks exposed, so I tie the scarf round, out of long habit as much as anything else. But it feels good to don something new. Like the balm, it gives the illusion of a beginning. A dream that I might shed the horrors of the night before.

  8.

  We gather pace on the southward road from Sherwood Castle. This, after the young stable guard demanded to know who I was, and Marian slipped him a coin, telling him I was the daughter of Lord Anson Gisbourne and we would return in an hour or two and, anyway, who was he? I said nothing. I did not want to risk giving away – to the guard or Marian – that I might not be back quite so soon.

  Not if I would find Maroon Eyes and learn of the lion’s-cloth.

  Marian’s stead is a great grey named Orion. He and Farragut compete. Each one nudging their nose ahead, pulling at the reins so that Marian and I have to dig our ankles in to remind them this is not a hunt or a race. Wolf does not help our efforts to restrain them. He weaves either side, jeering on the horses. My body throbs from the motion, echoes of the wounds from the chamber. Gradually the cool wind on my face and the morning birdsong and the changing light work their wonders, until I can breathe almost fully again. The pain: a dull ache that I can live with because I must.

  The road bends at the edge of Sherwood Forest. We slow. I am glad to no longer be in sight of the great castle. That it can no longer sight me back.

  “Who taught you to ride?” Marian asks, while the horses trot. “Your father?”

  “Lord Anson did a little, when I was young. Mostly Guy taught me.”

  His name sparks a pang in my ribs. Has he discovered yet that I am not in my bedroom?

  “Guy of Gisbourne?” Marian wears a crooked smile. “I met him last night.”

  “You did?”

  “He with the eyes like the morning sky? He told me he wishes to become an officer of the Sheriff’s guard. The dreams boys have.”

  I frown a little that Marian knows something about Guy that I do not. His hopes for the future. Even – silly as it is – that she knows his eyes so well.

  “Though he seemed worried last night,” she adds, “as though he were waiting for someone.”

  I picture him so. Waiting, as I asked him to, in the alcove off the banquet hall. I could have returned. No matter the dangers that lurk in those walls, I could have gone to find him. Yet I did not. It troubles me.

  Marian is looking over, awaiting a reply. “He is your brother?”

  “No. Not by blood. The Gisbournes…adopted me.”

  “Oh. I did not know. May I ask, what of your family, your parents?”

  Behind Marian stretch barley fields, glossed with the night’s rain. On my side of the road the forest rises. Tall oak trees loom with ancient splendour. I will have to enter their world soon. But I must do it alone. I cannot bring Marian into the perils of Sherwood: the realm of low-men and robbers and perhaps far worse hosts than that.

  “My father was a soldier of the crown. He died when I was a babe. My mother…”

  I cannot finish. Not after last night. After it all came back to me.

  “It is alright.” Marian reaches into the gap between us. Finds my left hand. “You do not have to tell me anything.”

  Her touch reassures. As she lets go, I swallow the lump in my throat.
“What of you, Marian?” I think of the balm she applied to my back, the one that seems to have soothed the burns. “How do you know of medicines?”

  She shrugs. “I suppose I have always been curious about the trees and plants and herbs around us. How they hold secrets, if we may learn them. I would speak to father’s servants, people of our village. They know a great deal. More, I am sure, than we high and mighty ever imagine.”

  She speaks with a passion that I like. “You spoke of your father last night, as if he disapproves?”

  She tilts her head. “He says I am headstrong. As if that were some grave sin. I do not follow his rules well enough. A daughter’s duty, after all, is not to say but to obey.”

  This reminds me vividly of Lady Ariel. “I imagine he does not approve of your hair.”

  Marian frowns. “You do not like it?”

  I startle. “No, I do. I meant only that it is unusual.”

  “Perhaps that is why I cut it so.”

  “Well,” I say, feeling bold. “It suits you.”

  “Thank you, Brya.” She looks across. Her eyes are wild. “Come. There is somewhere I would show you.”

  Before I can say anything she kicks at Orion and we are off again, cutting across the fringes of dewy fields. We come around a hill and down a slope to a tree-lined stream. The waters run quick over the rocks, bursting white foam. Marian dismounts from Orion and I follow suit. The horses and Wolf patter to the river’s edge. Dip their faces to drink. Marian and I take seats on a flat rock that hangs over the water. She reaches down and unties her shoes and slips off her socks. She lets her feet hang into the stream. I wonder how cold it runs.

  “How is your back?”

  “Better,” I say. The pain is low enough I can almost deny it. “Your balm is remarkable.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “What is this place?”

  “Downstream it runs near enough past my home,” she says, nodding across the fields. “This is one of my favourite spots. I’ve come here as long as I remember.”

  It is a lovely place. Birds flitter from the trees down to the moving water. The stream itself is almost crystal clear. I can see the green and black stones of the riverbed. My eyes trace the waters upriver, away from the risen sun, where it curves round the hill.

  “Does this stream pass into Sherwood Forest?”

  She nods. “I believe it comes from as far as the great hills to the north. Though I have never journeyed so far to see it myself.”

  “Would you like to?”

  “Today?” She teases.

  “One day. Do you wish to travel, I mean, to see places farther away?”

  “I would.” She speaks wistfully. “My father prefers I stay safe at home, of course, until I am safely married.”

  Her words steal me back to Guy’s proposal. How I could not give him an answer. “Yet you ride away like this morning?”

  “Sometimes I feel like I have to.” She dips her feet deeper. Flicking her ankles to cast ripples across the surface. Suddenly she looks up. Her golden brown eyes fix on mine. Her voice is resolute. “I do not know what happened last night, Brya. But when you are ready, you can talk to me about it. I would help in any way I can. I hope you know that.”

  “Thank you,” I say, touched by her kindness. But I have to glance away, my thoughts turning from this sunlit spot back to the shadows and dust of the chamber. To Vesilly’s ghost white face and curved blade. The Burnt Man stood in the shadows, the glimmer of furnace light from his hood. Otherworldly.

  I cannot stop myself from shivering.

  “Marian, have you heard anything of girls disappearing? Being taken?”

  She frowns deeply. “Yes. I heard of one.”

  I wait.

  “It was some months ago. She was the daughter of the blacksmith from the village. She was–”

  “In the greenwood?”

  Marian nods, surprised.

  “I know of one also. A girl named Sara from the village near our home. She was taken from the greenwood two days past.”

  “I’m sure the Sheriff is searching.”

  I take a breath. “I think there were men in Sherwood Castle who took her.”

  Marian is still. “The men from last night?”

  I nod. “I did not see their faces.”

  Marian’s face seizes with urgency. “Then let us return to the castle, Brya. We will speak with the Lord Sheriff. My father knows him well. We can begin a search for these men at once.”

  “They are already searching,” I say, with frustration, thinking of the party Guy joined. “But they look for the wrong men.”

  Her eyebrows dip as she reads my expression. “Do you trust the Sheriff and his men?”

  “I do not know.” I almost say about our encounter in the Sheriff’s room. How he forced his kiss upon me. But I do not feel able. “Do you?”

  She pauses. “He can be a…brazen man. You must trust your own judgment.”

  I let her words settle. Ahead, a blackbird descends to the riverbank. It hovers over the grasses. Is it watching us? Marian and I, sitting like this, her feet in the water and mine curled underneath me.

  “You seem wise for sixteen years old,” I say, allowing myself a smile as I guess at her age.

  She leans into me. I am struck by the clarity of her eyes. The softness of her lips.

  “I am seventeen, thank you very much. Come now! Try the river. There is no better healer than running water.”

  Good company perhaps, I think.

  So I undo my shoes and socks and sit to the very edge. Letting my feet drop to the water beside hers. It is cold. A wisp of chill licks up my ankles and calves. It is not an unpleasant shock, but it makes me gasp. Marian chuckles. Close to me: her warm autumnal eyes, her shoulder against mine. We are both looking at the river. The water dances under our gentle kicks. So clear I can still see to the very bottom.

  But the clarity changes. Even as I am watching the sunlight play under the surface, a shadow forms. Darkness like ink spreads in the depths. From a small nugget it grows into a black canvas. I want to pull my feet free but cannot lift them. Even though it feels like this shadow has the power to grasp my ankles, to drag me under.

  The black canvas begins to take shape. A castle. A fortress. Smoky vapours surround it. The moat: a sickly ring of fetid waters. Its turrets scrape into jagged spikes. From on high, a hooded figure stalks the twisted windows.

  I hear something, too: screams from the darkness behind its walls. They fill my blood with dread.

  I look up. Marian is staring at me. Nervous anticipation lights her golden eyes. She does not see what I see in the river. She does not hear what I hear.

  Something is very wrong with me.

  When I glance back the waters are clear again. The black castle is no more. But it has carved a place in my head.

  “I am sorry.” I pull my feet from the river. “I must go.”

  “Why?” Her eyes cloud with worry. “What is it?”

  “Marian, will you do something for me?” I ask as I gather in Farragut’s rein.

  “Brya? I am sorry if I…”

  “It is not you, Marian. But I have to go now. Will you please give Guy a message for me?”

  She sighs. She does not hide her frustration. Her disappointment. “What is the message?”

  “Please tell him that I am well, and that I will return this afternoon.”

  “Where are you going?”

  I mount Farragut and call Wolf to our side. Marian stares at me. From her saddlebag she hands me a small fine bow and a quiver with half a dozen arrows.

  “Do you know how to use this?”

  “I am not skilled, but yes. Guy has taught me. Are you sure?”

  “You can return them to me.”

  “Thank you, and for this morning. I will not forget it.”

  “Nor I,” she says, in a tone I cannot decipher.

  I wish dearly to stay longer. But the castle in the river haunts my thoughts. Those screa
ms behind the walls, the twin of Sara’s muffled cries in the slab. I tap Farragut’s neck and he launches into a run alongside the stream.

  I look back. Marian is stood at the water’s edge. The sunlight catches her short, golden-brown hair. She turns away before I can wave farewell.

  *

  It is near an hour’s ride to the place where the outlaws lay in wait for us yesterday morn. There is no obvious sign to say as much and the night’s rains have left dozens of brownish puddles in the road, but I remember the spot. The way a great swollen oak leans to the left on the forest-side. Near where the one villain dropped from the trees with a slingshot. Moments before, I made my move against Maroon Eyes. Turned with a speed of thought and muscle that I did not know I possessed.

  Yet that turning had come again in the chamber. When I fought back. When I threw my blade at Vesilly and it spun in the dusty air, as though yoked to my own arm. All the while, that strange heat coursing in my blood: what was it inside of me?

  The questions do not stop. Yet I cannot begin to answer them. I must start with what I have: the lion’s cloth.

  Wolf sniffs the edges of the path. Farragut trots, awaiting command. It would not be wise to charge headstrong into Sherwood Forest. As far as I know the wood stretches for tens of miles in every direction ahead of me. And after the night’s downpour I do not know if even Wolf will be able to find a scent. Muddy footsteps will have vanished in the leafy floor of the greenwood.

  Then I catch glimpse of a shred of dark blue in the thicket beside the bent oak. Farragut leads us to the path-side. My eyes were sharp to pick it out. It is a thread of fabric. Tangled on thorn bushes that spring from the ditch.

  I revisit the robbery in my mind. The seventh member – the little one who dropped from the trees – wore a blue cloak. I lift the fabric from the thorns and call Wolf over. He raises his muzzle to the offering. Sniffs it once. Twice. He barks. A sharp light fills his amber eyes. Before I can speak he breaks into a run, crossing over the ditch, and racing into the woods. I kick at Farragut to give chase. Like that I am born inside a blur of leaf and shadow into Sherwood Forest.

  **

  Only the trees can slow us down. They close in to stay our charge, until we hit a clearing or open slope, when Wolf and Farragut kick on again. The pure rush of the ride fills me too. Air whips round my cheeks. It tastes of spring and the memory of recent rain. I search for any shapes of men but there are none: only the three of us and the greenwood and the blue-grey sky.