“This better work,” Arthur grumbled, both to David and himself. “We’ve wasted enough time in the city already.”
His friend grimaced, but in agreement. “Better than going back empty-handed, innit?”
“Not if the Guard’s built a dozen outposts before we get back there.”
“Will says this is the best way…”
David was a smart man, and he knew how to end a damn sentence. When he didn’t, it meant there were plenty more words bouncing ’round his head than could fit in his mouth.
Instead, his lips pursed.
They were too close for any secrets to fit between them. “Say it.”
David sighed. “Are you worried about him?”
Somewhere, a bubble of children’s laughter died away. “I’m only worried if he doesn’t get what he needs. With enough men, we’re back to making a difference out there, sure as shit. That’s what Will’s good at. Stumbling about trying to keep families fed? That’s not him. We need to get him what he needs, because right now all’s he got is you and me. And we’re not enough.”
“And Stutely,” David added, glancing to be sure the man was out of earshot.
Arthur didn’t lower his voice. “As I said.”
David twisted, probably hoping for a distraction. But it was just them and the cold air and the city of Nottingham sprawled out in every direction. “You said he walked into that knife.”
“He did,” Arthur answered, having thought good and long about it already. “But that’s just the burnt trees, right?”
No response.
“Just like Marion said before we split,” he explained. “She pointed at the burnt trees and said that was proof we’d failed. But Will points at the healthy ones, says they’re proof we haven’t. It’s easy to see the burnt ones. Will’s here, and he’s fighting, and he’s on the rise. He walked into Zinn’s knife, sure, that’s the burnt tree. He’s damaged, no doubt. But he’s still standing where any other man would’ve given up ten times over. That’s his forest. Ignore the scorch marks, find the forest. That’s where—”
Before he could say more, the tower of St. Peter’s filled the air with a deep song. Stutely’s whistle followed soon after, and Arthur looked to David in the hopes of him having some sort of final advice on how this was going to happen. Instead his cheeks just puckered in and he shrugged, picking up his ends of the ropes.
They had wanted a net, but all they’d been able to scrounge from the docks were three stretches of thick mooring rope. To the ends they’d tied small sacks with a single good-sized rock each, which they intended on dropping from the rooftops to tangle around the horses’ reins and force its driver to stop. It wasn’t a great idea. But it was the best of their other terrible ideas, because it hopefully kept their faces from being seen and they didn’t aim to pick any fights.
Arthur gathered his ends of the ropes in his arms and walked across a narrow wooden bridge that spanned the street below. He lost his balance near the middle but caught himself. Which was probably a bad sign. He knew he’d die in some stupid manner someday, and this would have been perfect. Surviving this bridge meant his eventual real death would be even stupider than this, which was a tall fucking order.
Once situated, he and David shuffled down the rooftops on either side of the road, holding the three heavy ropes between them, suspended over the open street. They didn’t need Stutely’s whistle to hear the cart below, the clip-clop of the horses, the snapcrack of iron-rimmed wheels finding the occasional stone. The ropes were getting heavier, the cart was almost beneath them, and then David nodded at him furiously and they dropped the ends one by one.
It could have gone better. Arthur dropped the first rope when David dropped the third one, so both swung down and crashed against the building beneath them rather than falling evenly into the street. But the middle rope found its home, landing across the horses’ harness and flinging the reins from the driver’s hands. One of the rock sacks yanked and lodged itself into the gap between the cart and a wheel, grinding its motion to a halt and bringing a flurry of shouting from the men below.
Arthur and David both pulled back hard and away and ran to a better vantage, on their respective rooftops, hoping they weren’t seen. There were only two men at the buckboard of the wagon, its open-top cart laden high but covered in canvas. Probably not a carpentry wagon after all, Arthur thought. Something secret. Something expensive.
With a small thak!, an arrow sprung into the canvas of that pile, and all eyes came up. On a third rooftop, across the way of Bridlesmith, stood a tall figure in a sharp, slender coat making a grand flourish of nocking a new arrow to his longbow.
“Don’t worry now,” came his voice like a wolf howl, every vowel long and elaborate. “We’ll only be a minute then!”
That there, that’s their Robin Hood.
At that came a loud crack followed by an even louder dull thud, and Arthur whirled his attention back down below. A second crack and thud, muffled only slightly by the useless protests of the wagon drivers, and then a third. It was damn dark down there but finally Arthur saw it. At the rear of the wagon were two more bodies. The first was someone massive, and the crack was the sound of an axe he brought round hard to bury longways into the spokes of one of the wagon’s wheels. The second man was smaller, but strong enough to wield a thick log as a battering ram into the back of the axe’s head, splitting the wood into sinew and freeing the axe again. After the third spoke splintered they barked at each other and vanished into the nearest alleyway.
And oddly, didn’t steal a thing.
Arthur glanced back at the shadow of the archer, who was bowing to the men below. “On your way then, gentlemen!”
And he turned and loped away south, bounding over the rooftop to vanish into the night. The whole thing had been done in thirty seconds.
The drivers shouted another unkind thing or two as they finished clearing the mooring rope from their horses and prompted them forward. But when the rear wheel turned, its three damaged spokes took the brunt of the wagon’s weight … they cracked, the iron rim buckled and deformed down with a piteous groan, and would never turn again.
David had taken the opportunity to dart over the wooden bridge and join Arthur on his rooftop. He seemed eager for them to escape, but Arthur wanted to see what came next. He expected the axemen to be replaced with an army of Robin Hood’s gang, tearing the canvas off whatever it was hiding, hauling away that treasure in armfuls. But instead, what unfolded was nothing out of the ordinary. Some curious onlookers edged closer. Some offered to help, others seemed curious as to the cart’s contents. A patrol of gords came by shortly enough and enforced a space around the cart, one of them ambling away with little urgency to bring more help from the castle. There was no fighting, very little yelling, and exactly zero thieving.
“What the fuck was the point of that?” he asked David.
“Just a test for us, maybe? See if we do as we’re told?”
Arthur hated things he didn’t understand. Admittedly, that usually meant he hated most of the world.
* * *
THEY HOLED UP FOR a fourth night in the crawlspace—filthy and narrow—within the second story of a wooden structure off Plumptre Street that seemed bone eager to collapse in on itself. This was one of those driftwood deathtraps built in the odd gaps of the alleyways, clearly constructed by hands that were not only unskilled, but likely now unfingered. This crooked pea-closet was Zinn’s “home,” though it seemed more likely to be just an architectural mistake. The walls on opposite sides, which could be touched simultaneously, were littered with nails that held all manner of odds and ends. No doubt all stolen. Two tiny straw mattresses on the ground took up the entirety of the room’s footprint, but Zinn’s place was apparently a shelf halfway up the wall just wide enough for her to lie down. Not that she was ever there.
Its claustrophobic confines were too small for even one man’s musk, but all four of them were fucking contributing now. Zinn had insi
sted they wait there until she heard if the Red Lions had been satisfied with their performance. Arthur filled Will Scarlet in on their night’s adventure, but he seemed disinterested, lying on his back across both mattresses. The bandages across his chest stretched as he breathed, and the blood spotting on them seemed fresh.
Whenever they left their crannyhole to piss or shit, they were always watched by either the hawk boy, the bread boy, or a third one that Arthur dubbed dog scabs. All three refused to ever speak a word to them, and Arthur was goddamned sick of it. Though he couldn’t prove it, he had a gut feeling their wooden cage was the same one that had blockaded the alley plaza on their first day. He bet there was some hidden latch in the room that would cause the skinny wall to swing outward, as it had let those boys disappear into its cracks. If he opened it up, he’d still be able to see a puddle of his pride in the middle of the square alley where he’d stripped “down to his ‘billies’” at Zinn’s bidding.
At some point, either minutes or hours later, the room’s door creaked open and the air shifted, and Zinn vaulted up to her little shelf, dangling her feet over its edge.
“Welcome back,” David said.
“This is my room.” She tilted her head at him in offense. “You don’t get to welcome me back.”
In a slightly better world, Arthur leapt to his feet, wrapped his fingers around Zinn’s throat, and popped her head clean off like a fucking grape. In the unfortunate world he actually lived in, they fucking needed her.
“Do we have our meet?” Stutely asked from the ground.
“A meet?” she repeated, as if it was just a casual thing that had slipped her mind. “Depends.”
“On what?” Arthur asked.
“You might try a little patience.” She swung her legs back and forth. “The whole world isn’t waiting to do what you want it to.”
“You’re a fucking philosopher,” Arthur balked at her. “Depends on what? What’d the bossman say?”
“The bossman?” Zinn mocked his choice of words. “You sure think you’re important, doncha? I’ve already explained this, but I kind of enjoy it so I guess I’ll try it again. You’re nobody.” Her shadow wiggled about on her little perch, proud of herself. Thin slivers of moonlight played over the erratic features of her face, making her even more goblinlike than normal. “You’re nobody! That feels great, don’t it? I’ll explain it as many times as you want. You’re nothing. You’re not even nothing. When nothing feels awfully down on itself, it cheers itself up by reminding itself that at least it ain’t you.”
“Get on.” Arthur closed his eyes.
David, of course, was laughing.
“Depends,” Zinn relented, “on whether or not you know why they had you do that thing tonight.”
“I don’t have a fucking clue,” Arthur snapped, but caught himself. David clicked his tongue as if he was a horse that needed calming. Arthur hated that he was right. “I don’t know. You attacked a wagon and didn’t take anything from it. Seems like your version of Robin Hooding ain’t exactly the same as ours.”
Zinn’s nose twitched. “How many wheels did they break?”
Arthur looked at David, wondering if this was some sort of puzzle. “One.”
Little bitch clicked her tongue, imitating David. “Uh-huh.”
“So what?”
“Out of how many?”
Arthur blinked, hoping she might disappear while his eyes were closed.
“Fack me.” David rolled forward to his knees, and snapped his fingers. “One in four.”
“What?”
“One in four,” he repeated. “Same as the king’s ransom. It’s a … it’s a message, then, right? One in four doesn’t sound so bad, but it’s as good as everything. Wagon with three wheels is as good as one with none. And taking one in four as a tax … that’s as good as death.”
“Look at you.” She rolled her tongue over her teeth. “Only half as stupid as you look.”
“Thanks.”
But Arthur felt a tap at his boot, and looked down to see Will Scarlet shaking his head, small. He mouthed something meaningless, then again, and on the third one Arthur made sense of it. Bread boy.
Bread boy?
Bread boy.
“That’s not all,” Arthur said, just as he pieced it together. He craned his head up at Zinn’s perch. Bread boy. “It’s a message, alright, but that’s just half of it. That crippled wagon needed to be guarded. More gords came from the castle to watch it, even more to unload it all into another wagon, and keep people at bay. That’s a lot of men.”
Zinn raised her eyebrows, waiting for Arthur to finish it.
“A lot of men that weren’t somewhere else. The wagon was the distraction.”
“There you go!” Zinn’s voice was as condescending as possible. “Get some sleep then. You get your meet with the bossman tomorrow night.”
There wasn’t much more to talk about after that, and one by one they shuffled around the tiny space to find their way into some comfortable positions to nod off. Arthur replayed the events of the nonrobbery in his mind, wondering exactly what else the Red Lions had been up to while Bridlesmith Street was full of gords that night.
Though one detail stuck with him, which he didn’t feel like voicing in front of the little bitch. For a city full of patrols, their mysterious host had known exactly when and where to hit that carpentry wagon when nobody was watching. Tenth bell, on the dot. Might’ve been a lot of careful planning for that … or might be they had some eyes inside the Nottingham Guard.
And that, well that was something maybe even more valuable than what they’d come for.
“I like your hair.” David’s whisper broke the silence, defending Zinn against an insult that nobody had spoken.
“It’s not for you to like,” she hissed at him, slipping her head over the lip of her shelf to give him a full snarl.
David just shrugged.
“But thank you,” she finished. Leaning in a shaft of moonlight peeking through the hovel’s slats, she combed her fingers through her hair, which was shorn significantly shorter on the right side. Dirty and dark, it fell just past her shoulder on the left side but was—
“Damn,” Arthur cursed when he saw it. “What happened to your ear?”
She flicked her hair to tumble back over the scar. “Remind me to tell you when I give a shit. You’ll know it because my foot will be two feet up your asshole.”
“Oh, come on,” David whispered. “We won’t tell anyone.”
Zinn hissed back, “It fell off when I was fucking your mum.”
She said it through a giggle, and David cackled and kicked his heel into the wall. He caught Arthur’s eyes and pointed at Zinn above, gesturing with his eyebrows to express exactly how impressed he was with her. Arthur wondered if David would still enjoy her so much if he’d been the one who had to dress down to his fucking billies.
“Does that even work?” Stutely asked at full volume. “‘When she was fucking your mum?’ I don’t think the joke works that way.”
“Shut up, Stutely,” Arthur said, and twisted to find a more comfortable position.
“It’s just … she’s a girl. And she’s what, twelve? She couldn’t … we shouldn’t…”
Zinn cut him off. “Shut up, Stutely.”
FIFTEEN
MARION FITZWALTER
HUNTINGDON CASTLE
SATURDAY, 18TH DAY OF JANUARY
MARION AWOKE TO THE sound of work. Hammers, saws. Guilt.
Face wet from her own drool, she had not budged from the position in which she first tumbled off to sleep. The room was pitch black, but its window gave a dull glow behind thin curtains, which she pushed aside to reveal the castle’s courtyard below. An army was at hand—people wrapped in heavy coats to fight against the night’s cold bite, working by firelight to prepare for Marion’s group. There was no sign yet of dawn in the sky, which meant the castle’s complement had worked through the night.
She heaved off to the doo
r and pulled it, pushed it, only to discover that it was—against all logic—locked. She shook her head. There were still cobwebs in her thoughts, she couldn’t quite think straight, and she fumbled about to see if there was a lock on her side. But the door clicked and opened on its own.
“Lady Fitzwalter,” came a voice from the other side. “Do you require anything?”
“Out,” was the only word she could form. “Was this locked?”
“We did not want anyone to disturb you,” said the young man, a fragile-looking thing with a shaven head.
That didn’t seem to explain anything, but Marion dismissed it. Her mind was still grappling with why it was expected to exist at all.
“I can get anything you need, if you’ll let me.”
“I need out of this room,” she repeated, perhaps a bit too sharply. “I need to help outside.”
“Of course, if you’ll follow me.”
He set down the hallway at an unusually delicate pace, which Marion only followed until they descended the stairs and exited the Elder Hall. The moment she was in the castle’s great courtyard she mumbled a thank-you and surged forward into the business at hand.
A number of makeshift structures were half-erected, covering the makings of bedding and an area for the infirmed. There were huge baskets of clothing being sorted, and cookfires smoking. An impressive endeavor, and it was beyond humbling to realize how much work had been done in expectation of their arrival. Huntingdon was alive, while Marion had been asleep.
At the center of the commotion was a tent that appeared most important. Halfway there, she was intercepted by the countess of the castle, Lady Magdalena de Bohun. “My dear Lady Marion!”
Marion stumbled her momentum to a stop and curtsied a greeting. Lady Magdalena had exchanged her earlier attire for something more fit for labor, her hair now collected in a tail, her face flush and sweaty.
“I hope you are somewhat recovered,” the countess said expectantly.
Marion let out one coarse laugh. “I had hoped I’d be fully recovered, but I shall settle for somewhat.”
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