Lionhearts

by Nathan Makaryk

  This will be like watching a gladiator fight, Quill reveled, unable to contain his excitement. Not the sort between two matched foes, no—the sort where a lion is unleashed upon some starved criminal. He had never understood the attraction of watching a man broken on the wheel until this moment, when the victim deserved every ounce of what was coming to him.

  Sadly, Wendenal was only here to take Ferrers’s title, not his life.

  “This is unmannerly,” Ferrers was saying, still retreating. “You should recuse yourself, Lord Wendenal.”

  “My son had left to war,” Beneger continued, driven, riven, “to put himself in harm’s way, for our king. I begged him to stay, do you understand me? You can’t know what it is to die every day, as a parent does. I begged him not to put me through the daily horror of wondering at his safety. Do you understand that word? Begging? It’s a word with which you will soon become uniquely acquainted.”

  “I am the Earl of Derby,” Ferrers flustered, backed into a corner. “Lord Wendenal, I grant you an allowance for not—”

  “You grant me nothing!” he exploded. Quill found himself in awe of the raw emotion. He mouthed the lord’s words as they were spoken, in the hopes of memorizing them more accurately later. “There is only one thing from you that I desire, and I will take it, do you hear me? I will rip it from you, I will tear it out of you, you cannot grant it to me or bargain it to me because it is not a thing in your power to give.”

  “Guardsman!” Ferrers shouted at Quill, waving his hand limply. “Escort Lord Wendenal out of this room.”

  Quill chose to momentarily become fascinated by a mote of dust instead.

  “So imagine my joy when I learned my son had returned safely from the war. Not only alive and healthy, but as a leader, as the High Sheriff, of all things. As my sheriff.”

  Ferrers tried for a softer tone. “Your son was, indeed, a remarkable man.”

  And Beneger met him with fury. “My son’s character is not yours to judge!”

  He’d backed the man into a corner, and his voice held the reckless abandon of one on the edge of violence, but Beneger was clearly no slave to fury. Quill was glad for it, lest he himself accidentally become an accomplice to an assassination.

  But Ferrers seemed to recognize that same absence of violence, and he recouped his nerves. The young earl straightened himself against the wall. “You have yet to state your point in being here.”

  “My point?” Lord Beneger cracked the air. “My point is at the end of the sword I will bury in your stomach!”

  But Lord Beneger de Wendenal carried no sword. If his point was simply to swear empty threats, then Quill had sorely miscalculated.

  “I came here to Nottingham to see my son, to swear my fealty to him. So imagine how I would react to find that he had been murdered, and in his place I find a Ferrers.”

  “A Ferrers,” the Sheriff said slowly, “to whom you owe fealty.”

  Beneger suffered a slight hesitation.

  “You have traveled far, Lord Wendenal,” Ferrers started casually, moving away from the corner and back to his desk by the tall windows. “It must have been a great distance indeed. Your son was murdered nearly two months ago, after all.”

  Lord Beneger startled, turning as if looking for a weapon. “I do not answer to you!”

  “For someone who has only just arrived at the scene of a four-month-old crime, you seem unusually confident of its details.”

  “The details are obvious,” Beneger countered, stalking Ferrers’s path across the room with only his eyes. “William should have been safe here. He was home. Protected by a hundred men. I’ve played this game far longer than you, so don’t insult me by pretending you invented its rules. The man responsible for a death such as this is always the next one to sit in the chair.”

  “I’m sorry, what? To sit in the stair?”

  “The next to sit in the chair.”

  “Ah.” Ferrers frowned sadly, as if to agree. “As you say, you’re more familiar with it all than I. So you should know that politics is a far more dangerous place than wartime will ever be. For men such as us, that is.” He fussed about absently with a ledger at his desk, smoothing over its leather cover with his fingertips. “But whether you like it or not, your son was murdered by a common criminal. I had nothing to do with his death.”

  “Go and lie, child.” Beneger smiled. “Every lie is one more piece of your tongue I’ll cut out before I’m done.”

  “Then I have no fear for my tongue. No, it was Captain Gisbourne’s mismanagement of the situation that led to your son’s death, though I do wish I could have prevented it. Gisbourne cannot be punished, sadly, as he was killed by the same man who killed your son. I suppose perhaps you owe him for that.”

  The accusation was stunning, and brought a grave silence. Quill marveled at the rebuttal. Ferrers had transformed from a cowering creature into one masterfully claiming dominance with every nuanced movement. The elevation of his desk, the sun at his back, his distracted mannerisms, all spoke to a strategic superiority. He made his opponent repeat his words as if he spoke unclearly. These were simple tricks that most amateur debaters knew, but Ferrers was effortlessly using them in the face of violent threats. It was a revelation to watch in action. Quill hated to admit the man any respect, but there was no denying an expert his craft.

  Quill had bet on the lion, of course, and somehow he was going to lose that bet.

  He eyed the door, wondering about his own chances for an unnoticed exit; but the door laughed at him, having quite rudely somehow moved clear across the room.

  “I don’t know how else to tell you this, Lord Wendenal.” Ferrers looked genuinely sympathetic. “Your rage is entirely misplaced.”

  The painful part was that this was true. Ferrers had benefitted from William de Wendenal’s death, but he had certainly not orchestrated it. Quill might have mentioned as much if he were not now actively pretending to be tapestry.

  Beneger laughed. “Your family has been grasping for Nottingham for decades. My first sons were killed by your father’s greed, and my last son was killed by yours.”

  “Oh yes, Lord Wendenal, your tenacity in the sport of revenge is the makings of legend. You blamed the Burels for the deaths of your sons, and have since extinguished every trace of their lineage from England. Those that did not die by your own hand have been chased into obscurity and poverty. So ask yourself, why would I risk angering a man with a reputation such as this? And to achieve … what?”

  He spread his arms out open to the room. Wide and empty, its corners cluttered with dirt and cobwebs shining in the sunlight.

  “This? This tenuous position as Sheriff? I am not so ignorant as I am young. I claimed this title as an emergency measure, with Chancellor Longchamp’s blessing, which was within my right as the Earl of Derby. But my stay here shall be temporary at best, lasting only until the Chancellor deigns to appoint someone more appropriate. This is my great prize?” he whispered, his voice dwarfed by the emptiness in the room.

  Quill tried to watch Lord Beneger for his reaction, but the man was unreadable.

  Ferrers kept pushing. “For this sliver of bureaucratic semipower, I have risked the wrath of the most vengeful man in England? This is the grand scheme you think I’ve concocted?”

  Quill rarely doubted his own assessment of a man, but he found himself swayed. Perhaps the young Ferrers had the makings of a Sheriff in him after all.

  “Even a halfway clever man would realize that he’d have to kill you first in order to make a plan such as that work.”

  “But you’re not a clever man,” Beneger responded, grasping for straws, his voice weak.

  “Nor am I a guilty man. In the matter of William de Wendenal’s murder, that is. You came here looking for answers, and I have them. They’re not the ones you came for, but they’re true. They’re delicious and true and far more interesting than the predictable power play you’ve written, casting your favorite villains in familiar roles. You pri
de your righteous revenge, Wendenal, but you see enemies where there are none.”

  “I see enemies where there are enemies.” Lord Beneger’s voice faltered. His eyes shone, not with fury anymore. There were tears there. “I see murderers where there are murderers.”

  “What exactly did you think would happen here?” Ferrers continued, tapping at his desk. “You haven’t touched me, so you’re sane enough to know you can’t. If I had confessed to all your ridiculous fantasies, even then you wouldn’t kill me, would you? You’d be imprisoned, executed for treason. Your lands would be claimed, your remaining family decimated.”

  Quill was wondering the same thing. Perhaps Lord Beneger didn’t care. Perhaps he had lost so much that it didn’t matter. Perhaps he wanted Ferrers to attack first. Or—most likely, he realized—perhaps he simply hadn’t thought it out. Beneger had simply come to confront the man he thought killed his son. He wasn’t trying to expose him, or depose the title. There was no plan at all. He was just reacting.

  This was often Quill’s blindspot. He forgot that other people sometimes made choices based not in strategy, but in irrational emotion.

  “I don’t care,” Beneger finally answered.

  “Really? So why haven’t you killed me yet? If you are certain I have done you this great wrong, why talk at me like a woman?” Ferrers finally turned vicious. “Why not wrap your hands around my neck and snap it? It is not much of a neck.”

  And Lord Beneger did.

  Like a crossbow bolt held at tension and finally released, he closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye. The contents of the table scattered in the air and held there as Lord Beneger grabbed Ferrers by the lapels, both barreling over the table’s edge and onto the ground, Ferrers’s skull meeting stone with a dull, terrifying crack. Beneger wrapped his fingers around his prey’s throat and squeezed, the veins in his arm leapt to attention, both men’s faces turned purple.

  Later, Quill would recall that he could do nothing but stare.

  “You murdered my son!” Wendenal screamed, spit raining down onto the Sheriff.

  But Ferrers did not fight back. In barely audible, strangled gasps, “I did not.”

  “You murdered my son!”

  “On my life,” the last of his air creaked out, “I did not.”

  “You murdered my William!” Beneger’s voice was barely human. He put all his weight down into it. “You murdered my boy!”

  Quill had to fight the lump in his throat, and the tears in his eyes, to stop it. “He did not! Your lordship … your lordship, he did not.”

  Lord Beneger’s face snapped up, as if Quill had appeared out of nowhere. His grip did not lessen.

  Quill shook his head, slightly, then more vigorously.

  No.

  And Beneger collapsed, releasing his hold on the Sheriff, whose skinny frame rolled over in agony. Ferrers sputtered for air, the greasy squeak of his breath matching his convulsions on the ground.

  Quill talked, he wasn’t sure why. “There are many solid reasons for you to break that man’s neck, your lordship. But in the name of justice, the murder of your son is not one of them.”

  Ferrers, snake that he was, had been with Quill and the rest of the Black Guard when they were ambushed outside Bernesdale. Ferrers had ridden hard back to the castle, but was too late to stop Robin Hood. Everyone knew the story.

  Quill’s heart went out to Lord Beneger, rolling on the ground, wrought to the edge of his reason. His fists curled up and pawed at his own face. “Who, then?” he asked, his eyes closed.

  “Robin of Locksley,” Quill answered. “Robin Hood, as they called him. Son of a minor lord, took to leading a band of outlaws in the Sherwood. He snuck into the castle and killed Sheriff de Wendenal in his office. On the very eve of Sheriff de Lacy’s funeral, who died the same way.”

  “He doesn’t sound like a common criminal.”

  “Better than most, perhaps. He used terror to his advantage. But he was caught, and hanged for his crime. It was witnessed by hundreds of men and nobles alike. I saw it myself.”

  Locksley had not said even a single word on the gallows. His once-handsome face had been swollen and nearly unidentifiable. There were no sympathetic demonstrations or disputes in the audience. When Locksley’s body dropped, there was applause all around.

  “How?” Beneger asked, a shudder taking over his breath. “How did William die?”

  Quill couldn’t answer. He hadn’t been there.

  “He fought,” Ferrers whispered, his voice coarse as two stones scraping against each other. “He fought as well as any man ever has. If he had not, we would never have caught Locksley at all. But his wounds were grievous.” He coughed, straining his bruised neck. “He died as well as possible, given those circumstances.”

  “That’s good.” Beneger’s chest shook up and down. “That’s good. That’s how a man should go. I had feared it was a knife in the back.”

  “Impossible.” Ferrers put a hand on Beneger’s shoulder. “Your son was too clever for that.”

  Beneger slapped the hand away, startling Ferrers and Quill alike. “I swear … I swear upon everything … I swear if you’re lying to me, I’ll come back here and throw you out that window.”

  Ferrers gave the portal an idle glance. “This is only the second story.”

  “Then I’ll wrap a rope around your neck first!” Beneger screamed, his voice failing him by the final words.

  Ferrers put his hands up mildly, as if granting Beneger the permission. But the matter was plainly over. At the door’s crack, the tiniest noise caught Quill’s attention, and he noticed a gathering of bodies down the hallway. They were still as stone, some in Derby green and others in Nottingham blue. All waiting to know who would walk out of the room alive.

  “I forgive you your grief,” Ferrers was saying. “And I hope you appreciate the mercy I give you by not throwing you in a cell for attempting to kill me just now.”

  Beneger simply snorted.

  Ferrers, for the first time since asking for his help and not receiving it, looked at Quill. There was no way to ignore that the offer of amnesty had not included him.

  “Hello,” Quill imagined himself later explaining to the Sheriff, “I brought the man who strangled you into your office. My mistake. I thought Sheriff-killing was an acceptable pastime here in Nottingham.”

  Fortunately, Ferrers did not seem concerned with punishment yet. “In the interest of honesty, I should admit to one thing. Locksley was not alone the night your son was murdered. His companions, regrettably, escaped.”

  “What of it?” Beneger asked.

  “So Locksley did not act alone. In fact, he was once friends with your son. I’ve long had my doubts … given the violence of his death, I’ve often wondered if Locksley was really the one who held the knife. Whereas Will Scarlet—the man who now calls himself Robin Hood—well, he was infamous for that very type of attack.”

  “You’re saying my son’s murderer is still alive.” Beneger’s tone was a dog’s ear, raised at the dinner bell.

  “We have no idea where he is, though,” Ferrers said, waving ambiguously at the outside world. “He disappeared after that night. We hanged Locksley publicly, for the people. To put an end to the name of Robin Hood, as it were.”

  He tapped his finger on the desk, nervously.

  Not nervously, Quill noted. Not the man who had reacted so calmly earlier. This was another practiced tic.

  But Beneger de Wendenal bought into it. “What is it?”

  Ferrers’s laugh was embarrassed. “It was not so tidy as that.”

  “Robin Hood still shows up all over the place,” Quill spoke up. “We think Will Scarlet’s not the only one using the name, too. It’s become something of a symbol for the discontented masses. Of which, there are many. They might even be working together, then … both adding to its reputation.”

  Beneger closed his eyes. “The reputation of the man who murdered my son.”

  “As I sa
id, it was not so tidy.” Ferrers chose to return to the shadows against the wall. “I have a crew hunting them down. Sir Robert FitzOdo from Tickhill, and his men. I’ve given them special license to investigate anything related to Robin Hood. But they, ah … have yet to capture anyone.”

  “Then your man is incompetent.”

  “You are correct about that, at least,” Quill tried to joke. FitzOdo would be more at home with a yoke around his neck than at the head of an investigation. He was a brute of a man, but many in Nottingham still knew him as the Coward Knight for his shameful service in the Kings’ War.

  “As are you,” Beneger continued, letting the light shine on his face. “When you hang a man in public, you glorify him. The people know his name because you told it to them. If you want to dissuade them from repeating these acts now, you have to make such behavior unforgivable. You have to shock them. You made Robin Hood a martyr when you should have made him a monster.”

  “You’re very right, I do not contest that.” Ferrers bowed his head. “I wonder if I might be able to persuade you, perhaps, to speak with FitzOdo? To guide him, as it were? You do have a talent for building such a reputation of violence, perhaps you could lend a hand.”

  Quill watched the puzzle pieces fall together too late, not fast enough to wonder if Ferrers had planned it. It was as swift and impressive as an expert swordsman parrying one oncoming attack into another opponent’s chest.

  “I’ll do better than that,” Beneger swore, and the walls of the room itself might have obeyed his command at that moment. “I’ll find these animals myself and I’ll do what you’ve failed to do. I’ll find the man who killed my son, and I’ll destroy him. And I’ll put an end to anyone else claiming to use that name for their own. When they realize what the ramifications are, there will be nobody in Nottingham who will so much as whisper the name Robin Hood.”

  PART II

  TOO MANY KINGS

  EIGHT