“Beau did?” Beau could barely shoot the tree she stood under.
“Sacre bleu, it surprise me too!” Beau flashed her brilliant grin. “Maybe the denizens send the stag, yes?”
Rowan said, “I doubt it.”
Lionel asked quietly, “You saw them? You spoke with them?”
“Yes.” Still seated by the ashes of her fire, under the struggling rowan tree, Ro gnawed at the food Etty had given her. Her arms, sore from making need-fire, ached so badly, she could barely lift the meat to her mouth. Nevertheless, she tore at it with her teeth. When had she last eaten? As she swallowed, her stomach began to ache almost worse than her arms.
Lionel prompted, “And?”
“And what?”
“The denizens. What did they say to you?”
“The usual. They vouchsafed me riddles.”
“They did not tell you where Robin Hood is?”
“No. But ...” Rowan hesitated only a moment; she knew she owed her friends the truth. “But they did tell me one thing plainly. They told me to go back to the rowan grove.”
No one gasped, but no one spoke either. The silence screamed.
Rowan said, “I will not go back. I cannot. I must go on. But if any of you wish to turn back, you should do so.”
Silence lasted just a moment too long before Lionel grumbled, “Don’t talk nonsense, Rowan. How would you get where you’re going without us?”
“I told you before, I will crawl if I need to. Go back if you judge that is what you should do.”
“I’m the one who put this maggot into your mind,” said Etty grimly. “I’m coming with you.”
“Of course I’m coming,” Lionel said. “I’m too big for anyone to harm me.” Not true—they all knew he lived in dread of combat, for if he injured his hands, he might not be able to play his harp anymore. No one smiled.
Beau glanced from Rowan to Dove and back again. “I go with you,” she said.
“For Ro’s sake or for the pony’s?” Etty teased.
“Both!”
“Thank you.” Rowan nodded to them, then turned to the one who had remained silent, who usually remained silent. “Rook?”
He said, “I’m going back.”
He, the one who respected the aelfe the least, and common sense the most? Those words from Rook took Ro’s breath away.
Lionel began to bluster. “Rook, how can you—”
“Let him be.” Rowan regained her breath and her voice. “I said if anyone wanted to turn back, they should. Go with my blessing, Rook.”
With both hands, softly, slowly, Rook drew from under his jerkin the thong from which hung his strand of the gimmal ring. The silver circlet swung in the air, glinting, until he cradled it in the palm of one hand.
Was he—did he mean to take it off? Was he leaving the Rowan Hood band? Forever?
Rowan’s heart squeezed. Please, Lady, no, this was all her fault. This could not be happening.
Rook looked at Rowan, a long, level gaze. Then he turned to Beau, to Etty, and finally to Lionel. He said, “I swore my loyalty to all of you on this.”
And without another word he placed the silver ring back into his jerkin, over his heart.
Then he turned, and empty-handed—Rook never carried a bow and arrows, or even so much as a quarterstaff—with no weapon but the knife at his belt, he walked away. Southward.
Quickly. Rook moved like hawk shadow in the woods. In a moment he was gone from view.
Silently the remaining four prepared to venture northward onto the open moors. Trying not to look like outlaws, Beau and Etty wore the archil tunics over their kirtles. All of them lashed their bows and arrows onto Dove’s baggage behind the saddle. As befit a horseback rider, Rowan wore Etty’s helm, trying to imagine she looked like a squire even though Etty’s cloak covered the rest of her. Once Lionel had set Rowan in the saddle, he helped her arrange the cloak to conceal the outlaw weapons behind her saddle as well. Then, being a minstrel despite having no bright-colored clothing, he took his harp out of its bag and carried it in his hand.
From atop Dove’s back Rowan looked at all of them: a wolf-dog who followed her when he cared to, and the friends who followed her because they had so chosen—Etty, Beau, Lionel.
But not Rook.
Lady be with Rook.
Ready? her glance questioned the three who remained. They nodded.
Nudging her heels against Dove’s side, Rowan rode out into the open. Lionel strode past her to lead the way. Beau walked beside Rowan on one side, Etty on the other.
None of them looked back.
The sky felt like a great blue eye watching them, Rowan thought, as they traversed the windy brow of the first rise, the next, the third. They passed plovers shrieking and trembling on their nests amid the heather. They passed bony, spotted cows grazing on the new furze while the cowherd, a boy almost as rawboned as the cattle, gawked at them. From distance to distance they passed cottages built of turf and thatch. A man yoking his oxen stared at the travelers as they walked by. A gaunt old woman watched them from a cottage doorway as a dirty child clung to her skirt. A goose girl peered at them from a meadow, and her geese, great gray snake-necked birds, opened their snapping bills to bark like dogs.
Growling, Tykell turned toward the geese.
“Ty,” Rowan commanded. “Let them alone.”
But as if he were deaf, the wolf-dog stalked toward the barking birds; he killed rabbits, he killed squirrels, he killed partridge—why should he not kill a goose?
“Tykell!” Rowan hated to speak to him so sharply, but it was necessary. “Let them alone! Do you hear me?”
Ty stopped where he was, but he would not look at her. Overhead a magpie flew, laughing, a bird of ill luck.
“Onward,” said Rowan wearily.
As the day wore on, they saw many a magpie fly. But they also saw meadowlarks soaring and heard them sing. The spring air blew sweet with the fragrance of wildflowers: cowslips, bluebells, a promise of butter-cups and wild roses to come. And celandine—but no, Rowan thought, celandine would never froth and flow and quiver on the meadows as commonly as cowslip; celandine, like the silver valley lily, was a woodsy flower. And although the very brightest of starflowers, celandine was shy, blooming sparsely in secluded dells.
There was beauty under these open skies, but Rowan found it a shiversome beauty, too naked.
Toward sundown Lionel bartered with a cottage wife, trading venison for hen’s eggs and barley cakes. The band of travelers chose a hollow in which to camp, and there they sat and ate the best meal they’d tasted in many a day. But it was as if a ghost sat with them. They did not speak.
At twilight Tykell gave Rowan a look over his thickly furred shoulder as if to ask, “By your leave?” Because he had not come over to her to have his head patted and his ears rubbed, she knew he was annoyed with her. Sighing, she told him, “Go ahead; go hunting.” Geese should be safe in their pens now, chickens in their coops, sheep in their cotes. The wolf-dog slipped away to wander the night.
Still the others sat without saying a word.
Until full dark had fallen. Then a voice spoke. “I hope Rook has something to eat.”
Rowan blinked, realizing it was Beau. She was not used to hearing Beau speak so simply and without foolishness.
“A pox on Rook! The traitor,” Lionel complained so fiercely that Rowan knew he shielded pain with the hard words.
Etty said, “Lionel, please don’t be more of a nitwit than necessary. Rook—”
“Is a traitor and a fool.” Yet Lionel began strumming his harp, as if to comfort himself.
Rowan said quietly, “We know Rook is no fool.”
“Then how can he believe himself to be still loyal to the band?”
They fell silent again, for they did not know the answer to that question. In this too-open place, darkness seemed to press in from all sides, held back only by firelight and the soft notes of Lionel’s harp.
In the morning, when they a
woke, Tykell had not returned.
Rowan had long since learned that she had to trust the wolf-dog to go about his own business as he saw fit, and find her when he wanted to. But this time, Rowan sensed, it might be a long while before she saw Tykell again, if ever. In her heavy heart she knew that the wolf-dog, like Rook, had turned back to Sherwood Forest.
“Surely we will encounter him along the way somewhere,” Lionel said as they made ready to travel.
Rowan answered only, “I hope so.” She did not speak her more true thought: that Lionel had said the same about Robin Hood.
Twelve
Toads take everything,“ Rowan said. ”I was just starting to hope we might reach it by nightfall.” She pointed toward Barnesdale Forest, no longer a low lavender blur on the horizon, but now a blue-brown mass not too far ahead.
However, between Rowan’s band and Barnesdale Forest ran a river that cut through the moorlands like a knife. A river swift, deep, steep of bank.
Halted on a hillside, they studied the gray water. This was a gray day altogether. Sky the color of Rowan’s borrowed cloak cast darker shadows on the hillsides. And in the river ran water a colder gray, the color of steel, but swelling like a warrior’s muscles.
“No more than a stone’s throw wide, but fit to drown us just the same,” Lionel said. Having once spent some unintentional moments in just such a river, he knew the power of water running wild during the springtime rains.
Etty asked, “Have you crossed this torrent before, Rowan?”
Two years ago, Etty meant, when Rowan had fled through these same lands on her way southward to Sherwood Forest.
“I must have.” Ro frowned, thinking. “But it’s hard to remember those days.” Bad days, desperate, starving, grieving days just after her mother’s death.
Mother. Dead.
At the thought, her heart burned with the sting of the names branded there.
Guy Longhead. Jasper of the Sinister Hand. Hurst Orricson. Holt, also Orricson, brother of Hurst.
The others were watching her.
“I think it gets shallower somewhere,” she mumbled. Blurrily she seemed to recall wading across, wet to the waist.
“La, see, the fleur-de-lis,” said Beau, pointing at spears of green thrusting up from the river’s verge, not yet in bloom.
“Ding-dong Belle, it’s called iris flower,” Lionel grumbled. “What—”
“You no call me Belle! No ding-dong. Sot-head, fleur-de-lis means shallows upstream. Maybe a crossing.”
“She’s right,” Etty said. “The irises grow in shallow water, and then the bulbs get washed downstream.”
They turned upstream, with the river to their left, keeping their distance from its muddy verge.
The gray sky darkened, threatening yet more rain.
“There,” Lionel said, pointing ahead with one hand, “a ford.”
A place where the banks of the river lowered, and the river widened and ran more shallow, and folk waded across, fording the river for want of a bridge. A cart path ran down to the ford, disappeared into the water and reappeared on the opposite side, by a copse of poplars.
Up until now Rowan and the others had stayed away from trodden ways, where too many eyes might see them. And where they were more likely to meet with brigands, or some lord’s men-at-arms, or bounty hunters, dangers of all sorts.
Rowan scanned the cart track as far as she could trace its path northward, on the far side of the river, and southward. “No one in sight,” she murmured.
“Mon foi, then let us, how Euripides say, seize the moment?”
“Carpe diem,” Etty murmured. “Seize the day. And I don’t think it was Euripides. It was ...”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lionel grumped. “Let’s go.”
They headed at a fast walk down the hill toward the path and the ford. Rowan started to gather up the gray cloak to keep it from trailing in the water. Riding Dove, she would get her feet wet, nothing worse, but the others would be soaked to their chests, chilled, on a day with no sun to warm and dry them afterward. They were likely to take ill with the coughing sickness, and it could kill them as readily as an enemy’s sword.
“Somebody get up here with me,” Rowan offered as the path turned to mud. “Beau, climb on.” Her thoughts ran as swift as the river. “Etty, you wait here, Beau can leave me on the other side and bring the pony back for—”
These plans remained incomplete.
“Halt!” bellowed a man’s deep voice. “Stop where you are, or die.” Out of the poplar grove on the far side leapt a great gray warhorse carrying an armored knight, his lance upright at his side, his broadsword flashing, the visor of his helm down to hide his face. His steed’s next galloping stride sent it into the river, splashing toward Rowan and her band across the ford. So huge was the horse that the water barely reached its belly, but sprayed higher than Rowan’s head.
They stopped where they were, indeed, for terror froze them. They stood like wood.
But then the burning heart of anger in Rowan flared forth in words. “Halt yourself, brute!” she screamed like a hawk at the knight bearing down on her.
The knight yanked on the reins. His charger plunged to a stop in midstream. His lance, pointing skyward in its holder by his stirrup, swayed like a pine tree in a storm. “You’re no squire!” he roared. “You speak with a damsel’s voice. Why do you wear a helm?”
“Because I so choose.” Seldom had Rowan spoken so fiercely.
Lowering his sword, the knight actually sketched a sort of bow at her from his saddle. “I beg your pardon, damsel, for my mistake. I thought you a squire, and I have taken a vow to challenge any man of warrior blood who seeks to cross this ford.”
Ettarde spoke up. “You bear no pennon upon your lance.” Even though she stood ankle-deep in mud, she sounded imperious. “No plume to your helm, and no device.” Instead of showing an emblem, the knight’s shield gleamed entirely black. “What is your name and who is your lord?”
In the middle of the rushing river, his gray warhorse surged like a spirit of the gray water, while he controlled it with one hand on the reins. Swinging the steed toward Ettarde, he retorted, “I have also taken a vow to reveal my name and allegiance to no one.”
Vow? Nonsense. Rowan started to tremble, more fearful now than fierce, but she kept her voice hard. “Then you’re a brigand.” Plainly this was a robber knight, taking what he would from travelers who had to use this ford—the only way across the river.
“Nay, I rob no one. I take only a fair toll from those who pass this way.”
Toll? Fair? To whom?
“And,” added the knight with the black shield, “it is for the sake of honor that I engage them in combat.”
Honor? He might like to call it that, as he liked to call thievery a toll, but plainly he spoke in threat. Still, Rowan kept her voice edgy and flat, like a dagger. “Very well. For what price may we cross?”
“What have you to offer?”
“Little enough.”
“Why, then, I fancy some fun with you. Yon varlet shall cross swords with me. You.” The knight raised one gauntleted hand to point at Lionel. “Prepare to fight.”
“Me?” yelped Lionel. “But I’m a minstrel!” He held his harp in front of him as if it could shield him.
“No common minstrel grows so tall. You are warrior thewed, and I will battle you. Provide yourself with a weapon.” The knight sent his charger at a splashing trot toward them.
“I have no sword!” Lionel cried.
“You shall have one of mine.” Parlous great hulking clodpole, he wore a spare sword at his right side; Rowan saw it slapping his leg as he approached.
Lionel tried again. “But I have no horse!”
“I shall dismount to fight you. And you may have my shield, if you like.”
“How very generous of you!” Lionel sounded ready to laugh, cry or scream. Tall and strong he might be, but he stood small chance against this bulky oaf all armored like a beetle in
breastplate and greaves and chain mail clanking from his helm down over his gray woolen tunic to his knees.
“Lionel,” Rowan ordered, “run! Go back, join Rook.”
“I can’t just leave you!”
“We’re all going.” Already Dove, shying, had leapt away sideward. Rowan turned the pony to flee—
She gasped. Necessarily she halted Dove, for her path of retreat was blocked.
“Sacre bleu!” Beau exclaimed. “Another one!”
Down the hillside toward them strode a great bay warhorse bearing a knight much like the first, except that instead of flourishing his sword, he couched his lance. Spurs clashing, he urged his steed into a ramping trot. His armor clanged, his chain mail rang like war bells. He bore a large white shield blazoned with a black X. One of Marcus’s knights? But if he recognized Etty ...
He seemed not to. “Out of my way, churls,” he snapped at Rowan and the others from behind his lowered visor.
“Gladly!” Lionel spoke for all of them as they scrambled aside from the path and away from the river.
The newcomer knight roared to the first, “Ho, you at the ford, knight with two swords!” He made a mocking jingle of it. “I have heard of your renown, and I have come to knock you down. Couch your lance!”
Doing so, the other one replied, “Prepare to die.”
Thirteen
At first Rowan thought she would not mind watching.
These were knights, after all. Like the knights on horseback who had invaded her mother’s forest, set fire to her mother’s cottage. Henchmen of a heartless lord, or brigands with no loyalty but to themselves, let them battle all they liked.
From a safe distance up the hillside—although truly, no distance seemed safe—unable to cross the river while the combatants held the ford and the path, Rowan and the others saw the warhorses thunder toward each other. Each knight aimed the steel tip of his lance at the other’s helm, and each aimed true; with a hundred times hammer force, steel struck steel.
But the helms withstood the blows, the lances glanced off and the knights reeled but kept their seats.
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