Hooded

by H. J. Mountain

  Will does not turn; I am left looking at the back of his dark reddish locks. I do not mind, when part of me does not feel here at all.

  “There was no castle there,” he says with a kind of disbelief. “Then it was. I never seen anything like it.”

  “Harvole wasn’t such a fool.”

  “What happened to the old man?”

  I shake my head. Thinking of the great cat that took him – and then, with a sigh, of Wolf, who vanished near under its clutches into the weeping wood.

  He shifts his shoulders to face me. His maroon eyes sharp with intent, like the first time I saw him in our carriage on the Sherwood road.

  “I got something to ask you.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  He blinks. Sighs. “I don’t know why.”

  “They talk you into it?” I nod to the others.

  “No actually.”

  “Then why.” For some reason, even after everything that has happened, this matters to me: some understanding, some connection with him.

  “Fine, princess. We were running, like we do. I figured we had no place else to go.”

  “That’s it?”

  His eyes avert. “I kept thinking of something you said to me in the tavern.”

  I wait. Surprised a little that anything I said could have such an effect on him.

  “Because your mind is shut. Some reason that got to me.”

  I look at him. “So you changed it?”

  He frowns.

  “Whatever did it,” I say, “thank you.”

  “What happened in that place?”

  I hesitate, trying to conjure the right combination of words to begin to explain: the Burnt Man, the orbs, the black lion, all of it. My arrow bursting the anima…in the end, there seems only one way to say it.

  “A ritual of transformation.”

  “The alchemist…you saw it?”

  My wrist throbs. “I ended it.”

  There is no disbelief on his face now. He looks younger than ever I have seen him. “Will you tell me about it, princess?”

  “Don’t call me that, Will.”

  “Brya.”

  “Or Robyne.” An arrow of air slices through my clogged-up throat. “She said my name is Robyne of Locksley.”

  We are both quiet for a while. Finally he says, “Should never have robbed you.”

  “So you admit it’s wrong?”

  “No. Just would have spared me a lot of trouble.”

  I meet his stare. He is, I think, an odd being, an honest thief. “But what would you have without trouble, Will Scarlett.”

  He scowls at the name. Then smiles and reaches back to lift my hood over my hair, giving shelter to my face.

  “Just stay out of our greenwood, Robyne of the Hood.”

  **

  When we reach it, late in the morning, the camp is deserted. The hutch has been burnt to a crisp. The air still reeks of charcoal.

  Will and Little John, Tucker and Murphy, leap down from their rides. For a moment I am rigid. Part of me cannot help recoiling at the thought that the Master somehow came here. That He did not perish in the violence of the chamber. That He is still with us…

  But then I see it. A flag planted in the earth: the red-and-blue colours of the Lord Sheriff of Nottingham. I think of what Marian told me before we parted. How she left a marker on the road. They would come looking for her.

  So they must have.

  The boys race in and out of the hovel, then to the slope and back. Panicked. Shouting. For Marian is not the only one gone. So are Pelaw and Slate and the dark-haired girl with the melody.

  “Your friend did this, didn’t she?” Will says, spinning on his heels and coming towards me, the colour up in his face.

  “My friend was your hostage, Will.”

  “Because she came looking for you!”

  “I can help you find them.”

  “I know where they are.”

  “Will.”

  “Go!” he says. He glances at Sara. “For her. And for you as well. Go back to where you belong.”

  I almost argue further. But it is true. I need to get Sara to a place where she can rest. I need to get her back to her brother.

  We part ways toward the southern edge of the camp. There are few words. Sara is quiet. Watchful. I wonder if this is just her way. Murphy offers a habitual wink, Tucker, a silent bowed head. Little John engulfs me, briefly, in his giant frame. Like the others, he is distracted by whatever they must do next. I think how the melody girl looks much like him. I squeeze him harder.

  Will is gruff. He stands aside. Finally, he approaches.

  “I’ll come back,” I say. “I’ll help.”

  “Don’t. I’m starting to think you’re a curse.”

  “What will you do?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Take care.”

  “I never do,” he says, his Maroon Eyes gone hard again.

  I do feel a pang, leaving him, but that is all. Perhaps my heart has suffered too many deeper blows to feel anything more.

  The ride back is slow. I can only hold the reins with one hand, and Farragut seems to sense the wounded nature of his cargo. Sara holds onto my waist. She asks me again of her brother. I tell her he is safe; he is at my family home. Even as I speak these words, they pull at my gut. Unravel me like threads.

  I envy her this return. This reunion.

  For, it is not my family home. It is a place I have lived in many years, but that is all. They took me in, the Gisbournes, but they are not my flesh and blood. Those are now all gone. My mother: who had a good soul. My father: who did not. And my brother: who perished before he could begin to know who he was, and certainly before I could. Burned away by the liquid fires of the anima.

  We are perhaps an hour from Wormsley Wood, and Sara is asleep against my back, when I glimpse a creature ahead on the roadside. It is tracking the ditch. At first glance, I think it another, but enlarged, fox. I expect it to turn and see us coming and bolt away. And it does – at least, the first two parts.

  Only it bolts towards us. Taking a shape I know well. Altered only by the pronounced limp in its back left paw. Farragut quickens at the sight. They run to meet one another: a reunion of their own.

  “This is Wolf,” I tell Sara, as she stirs and I dismount. The grey hound leaps to place his filthy front paws on my shoulders, ruining further Marian’s fine dress, which is probably already past salvation. He licks at my face. Tastes of mud and ditch-water. I let him. His dog eyes are shiny-bright.

  I wonder that he has a story to tell, too. Perhaps as wild as mine, though never to be heard, of how he bested the beast of the weeping wood.

  ***

  We cross the wide fields where Beatrice, Guy, and I had been walking when the scream burst from the greenwood, when Mutch came tumbling out of the trees, the life nearly shaken from him. Was that really but a few days ago? It feels like months – years. Like I see it from across a chasm of time but also distance.

  Sara’s head turns against my back. She is looking that way too.

  “Will they come back?”

  Her voice has a pleasantly low quality, one that belies her tender age and frame.

  I cannot but think of what I saw in the final fire. Vesilly’s sinking face. Mortain’s body pulled apart like so many worn ropes. The great rampant power of the anima unleashed. No man could ever return from such destruction. This, I am certain.

  Yet why does my flesh creep a little?

  Why do I gaze into the deep shadows of the greenwood, and in them imagine a shape, far away and yet closer than I can say, taking form – a not-quite living thing, twisting and tearing at itself, ripping at the fabric that separates death from life?

  Why these blackened thoughts?

  “No,” I say to her, and we ride on. Because hope is vital: there is strength in it, even when life’s lesson is that hope is a fragile thread, set upon always by the fires and furies beyond.

  19.
/>
  The courtyard of Gisbourne House is quiet. The house is, too. After we leave Farragut in the empty stable, we stop in the main hall. The banquet table is unset, the fireplace woodless. Sara keeps glancing at me. I do not know what I expected, but I expected more than this heavy silence. It is eerie. Not a bit like home. Not anymore. The marks in my neck feel tight. Strangled.

  Then: footsteps from the stairwell. He comes round the corner, oblivious. Head down, dragging his feet, left arm tucked in a sling. I had forgotten how small he is.

  He does not see us yet so I am rewarded with a rare moment of comprehension. When he lifts his neck and his shaggy hair falls away and he discovers our presence. There is fleeting shock. Widened eyes. His mouth in an O. But almost at once it transforms into a combination of wonder and joy: the elation of a young soul being reunited with their most cherished kin. He runs across the stone floor – nearly tripping twice and making me wince in expectation of the inevitable fall – and throws himself into his sister.

  “Y-y-your h-h-hair?” Mutch says, after their embrace and he has hugged me and is looking at the two of us, but mostly at Sara.

  “I lost some of it,” she says, matter-of-factly.

  “Th-they h-have g-good b-b-b-bread h-here.”

  Sara smiles at this. It is the first smile I have seen from her, and I sense it is a rare, special thing. But she needs medicine. Care. We both do. I find Anna at work in the kitchen. She almost matches Mutch’s stunned expression, taking in my mud-spackled face, my tattered dress. She says the Lord and Lady have not yet returned from Sherwood castle, or Guy and Beatrice. She never asks what happened to me, though I know she is curious and concerned, and for that I am grateful.

  Anna helps me to prepare a bath. I leave Sara there, resting in the hot waters to which I added a poultice of mint-leaves and rosemary, and go to my bedroom. I peel off my clothes. Stand for a while naked. Taking in the sudden strangeness of my body. Its new marks and aches and wounds: the scratch across my belly, the blue-ish bruise in the shape of a horn on my upper thigh. They are like the contours of a map. A place I knew once but cannot remember.

  I pull on a clean robe. Lie down on my bed. It feels much smaller. So does the room.

  I mean to rise, to bathe. But my hurt body sinks into the straw. At one point I hear Mutch talking with Sara. Anna’s voice, gentle; she will prepare some food. These are sounds that reassure me. They tell me the hour is safe enough for me to close my eyes.

  Yet it takes a long time to let go. Because I am terrified of what will happen if I think of her. So I cling to the living. Guy. Marian. What will I tell them? How can I begin to explain what happened to me in that castle? My mind searches for a story I can offer, something that will give me time to try to make sense of it all – if that is even possible. I am still searching when I succumb to the exhaustion.

  I have a dream almost at once. My body has been set alight. Covered in dark greenish fire. I leap into a lake but it does nothing to quench the flames. And it is full of leeches. They attach to my skin. Grow fat on the heat of my blood.

  I wake up scratching at my body. A bolt of pain shoots from my swollen wrist, making me wince. I wish I had wildroot to dull it. This thought steals me back, before I can stop it, to my mother in the weeping wood. When she applied the burnt root to my broken limb. The care in her touch: the love in it, even as she was dying.

  Like a rain of stones the sadness crushes me. Buries me down and runs hot tears over my face, their salt bitter on my tongue. There is no turning inside of me. Nothing to protect me from this, not a little bit. I lie there, trapped in the agony.

  From somewhere inside the burial a memory surfaces:

  She is working at her table. A lit cauldron issuing a deep wood smell, as I come around to see better, my legs a little unsteady.

  “Careful, Brya,” she says. “Hot.”

  Perhaps it is the warning. Or it is the colourful mists spilling from the bowl. But I am drawn to it. Without thinking I press a palm to the side of the cauldron. The heat is furious. I snap my hand back but it is too late. My skin is raw-red, and I am yelping at pain that seems to have turned my flesh inside out.

  She seizes me up in her arms – for a moment, I fear, in anger that I did not listen, but she thrusts my palm into a bowl on the table of cold, silted water and holds it there. Through my tears I watch as dusts gather and cool. They begin to numb my pain, until I can breathe. But my palm is a terrific, stained thing, and I am suddenly afraid that it will always be this way.

  “Will it heal?”

  “Not all things do,” she says, and I am terrified.

  Then she leans into me. Her eyes so close I can see myself in them: a small white moon of a face that is gazing at her with everything in the world at stake.

  “But this may do, my foolish girl. This just may heal in time.”

  And the strangest thing is, I believe her.

  *

  I am placing logs when I hear the horses and the carriage come to a halt on the stone of the courtyard. It is near dusk. I have bathed. Floated for a long time in the steaming waters, which work a slow prayer upon my beaten body. I tried to eat, with Sara and Mutch, who tore into their stew. Following their example, I discovered the glimmer of an appetite. They both fell asleep almost as they put their spoons down. They share Mutch’s bed – Sara’s body between her brother and the door.

  I felt guilty for watching them, and retreated to the great hall, and considered the fireplace. I did not know if I were ready to light a flame, not with the burns upon me and those all-too-fresh in my mind. But a spring chill grew as the day ends, so I begin to lay kindling underneath the chopped oak. All the while I am drawn to a compelling question. Whether I should gather the flint to make a spark. Or whether, as my fingers drum on my thigh and my thoughts lift like steam toward my bedroom upstairs, to the pocket of Marian’s jacket and the cloth bearing the face of the black lion, I need the flints at all to turn these logs alight…

  The horses interrupt my wonder. I hurry to the doorway. Guy beats me to it. He must have seen Farragut because he is sprinting. He sweeps me up, lifts my feet off the floor. Holds me like that without a word between us. I take in the smell of his skin and sweat. His warmth.

  We break from the embrace once Beatrice and Old Carter and Lord Anson and Lady Ariel come inside. Our reunion is a messy one. While Old Carter sets about the fire and Lord Anson simply pats my hand, Beatrice is frantic, one moment hugging me; the next firing pointed questions my way. Lady Ariel insists on knowing exactly where I have been since the tavern in Nottingham. Did I understand the trouble I had caused by disappearing?

  I cannot focus. Not when I keep looking at Guy, who is watching me closely. He does not ask any questions. And I think I know why. For him, there is one unanswered above all the others.

  “Do you have any word of Marian of Satherowe?” I ask, when I finally get a word in edgewise.

  Guy nods. “She is with the Sheriff’s men. Last night they saved her from the clutches of outlaws.”

  I feel a deep relief at the news that Marian is safe. “And the outlaws?”

  Guy frowns a little at my inquiry. “They are in our custody.”

  Our. Something about that word on his lips cuts through my relief.

  “Brya!” Lady Ariel says. “If you do not start explaining yourself, you will have more to worry about than outlaw vermin!”

  So I tell her the best story I have. After Nottingham I went in search for Guy and the sheriff’s men. I got terribly lost. I was a girl far from home, after all. Yet I was fortunate. I found Farragut beyond the town. The thieves must have left him. Then on the road to home I met a girl. The one who was taken from the greenwood. Sara. She was badly hurt. I brought her back. She is resting upstairs.

  For reasons I do not fully comprehend, I say nothing of the weeping wood, or the dark castle, or the Burnt Man. It is as though I do not trust everyone in this room.

  “But what happened to your face, Brya?” Be
atrice shrieks.

  “The fight in the tavern…” I say, looking away.

  Lady Ariel is glaring at me. I do not know if she can tell I am lying, or if she simply despises what I have done. “Do you see what happens when you disobey me? Truly, your behaviour is abhorrent.” I think of her and the Sheriff in their clutch. But I bite my tongue. “Bringing back these…strays…and running off to Nottingham, cavorting in a tavern, like a common…well, no child in my house –”

  “I am not your child.”

  Her cheeks redden in shock. “How dare you?”

  “Mother. Enough.” Guy comes forward, putting himself between us. Beatrice starts to ask yet another question, but he shoots her a glance and she stops mid-sentence. “It is late. Let us take some rest. We may speak again on the morrow.”

  “Thank you,” I tell him, once he has walked me to my bedroom.

  He nods. Reticent.

  “I am sorry.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “In the tavern, for leaving you like I did. I lost my head.”

  “It’s alright.”

  “No, it’s not. By the time I came back you were gone.” In the candlelight of the corridor, his eyes betray a deep distress: the kind that Guy almost never has or shows. “I have been searching ever since. I cannot tell you the thoughts I had. That…I would not find you again.”

  I hold his hands. “I am here.”

  There are footsteps on the stairwell. “Come inside,” I say. We step into my bedroom. For a moment, we stand there, one hand still interlocked. His eyes move around, searching my face, then down.

  “Your neck.”

  “What is it?”

  He lifts his hand as if to touch me there, but stops short. “The birthmarks on your neck. They look darker.”

  Part of me wants to shrink away. “It is just the poor light.”

  Guy nods. But his gaze lingers, as though he is disturbed even by this trick of the shadow. I wonder that it is not a trick at all.

  “I’m sorry for how I left you in the castle.”

  He waits, as if expecting me to say more. Then he shakes his head faintly. Almost to himself, he says, “It is late. Perhaps we may speak again in the daylight, Brya.”