“Oh it’s not my council,” Marion said, pulling back. Being mistaken for Lady Magdalena was bad enough, but this was a misassociation she certainly could not abide.
“We’re weary from the road,” her grandmother smiled, hiding her fatigue, “and anxious to settle in. There will be time enough for us to talk later. Give us the shortest version you can, dear—how have you been?”
What a question.
Marion had never been particularly close with her grandparents. There was love there, yes, but its interest reached no further than the most cursory information. It was the same with her parents, who had done nothing to hold her hand through life. Marion wasn’t bitter, as it had afforded her the independence she felt had defined her, letting her become her own woman. But there were times when she felt desperately disconnected from the prestige of her family. Her grandfather was the Earl of Essex, her father the castellan of London, and Marion was an outlaw in the forest.
“How have I been?” she echoed the words. She had spent the winter hungry and frozen, in constant flight. She had buried friends, been abandoned by others. She incited a grassroots rebellion, and watched it fail miserably. She had arranged her own marriage to William de Wendenal when he became Sheriff, only for him to die at the hands of her only love, Robin of Locksley. How could she describe that epic expanse in her soul? The guilt of his death, the caustic reality that she could have done more? Her mourning, her failures, her tenuous scratching at the world?
“No matter,” Rohese answered her own question, when it grew obvious Marion would not. “We’ll speak at dinner. You’re welcome to call on us at any time, you know.”
Once they ambled off, escorted to find their room by one of Lord Robert’s men, Marion finally exhaled.
“Well at least we have one real attendee outside of my wife’s family,” Robert said. “So this wasn’t a complete waste of time.”
Marion watched them suffer the climb up to the Heart Tower. This visit would be brief, and utterly inconsequential to their lives. The summation of everything Marion had ever done amounted to no more than idle small talk to them. “Are my people secure here, Robert?” she asked, still watching them. “You wouldn’t cast them out now, would you?”
“Of course not,” he answered, his eyebrows a question mark. “And they’re not your people anymore, Marion, they’re Huntingdon’s.”
“Even if I were to leave?”
She could feel him hesitate. “Are you thinking of leaving?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, which was the truth. In many ways, she’d finally succeeded in what she’d long sought—she’d found a safe harbor for her refugees. How long would she have to suffer Lady Magdalena’s dominance to pay for that? There was little else for her to accomplish in Huntingdon, aside from that penance. And if Robert vouched for their safety, then the only thing keeping Marion here was a few friendships, and painful memories.
If she wanted to continue to try to make some sort of difference in the world, it wouldn’t be in Huntingdon, or at the countess’s failed council full of absentee spectators.
She wondered if her grandparents could be bothered to let her accompany them to York, and their meeting with the Chancellor’s brother.
She wondered what more she could do, were she not so confined by the walls she’d built around that thing she called her life.
TWENTY-NINE
CAITLIN FITZSIMON
WEST OF NOTTINGHAM
GOD’S TITS, MEN WERE ever the dumbest of beasts.
Caitlin smashed the palm of her right hand across Skinny Pink’s face, startling the merry diddy out of his lopsided smile and causing him to drop the longbow in alarm. “Maybe someday the Sheriff’ll throw a contest for chicken dobbing,” she yelled at him, “and then you’ll be the pride of Nottingham. But you hold a bow ’bout as well as your liquor. Give it up.”
“You’d be surprised,” Ricard the Ruby raised his flaring eyebrows one by one, “at how good a lover a chicken can be. You could probably learn une chose ou deux.”
“Maybe I could!” Caitlin laughed, never shy to take as much as she dealt. “You, on the other hand, never gave ‘learning things’ a try, did you?”
That was met with cackles and catcalls, and Ricard laughed out a few more barbs in French, taking the longbow from Skinny Pink and passing it to the next Lion cub.
They’d left the city for this, walked for a full hour upstream by the Trent to find some secluded wooded area long and flat enough to have their hand at archery practice. They weren’t doing nothing illegal, but still it was best to be safe from curious passersby. Caitlin didn’t like it one damned finger, but she’d long learned that liking things held little parley with doing them. Traveling in groups larger than three was always dangerous, especially in daylight, as any roving gord was certain to whet his lips at the sight of young men with clipped ears.
But Alfie had made his mind up on this one. He was determined that one of them would win the Sheriff’s archery contest.
“It’s our way out,” Alfie had insisted, in the privacy of their cave beneath Crof’s Plaza. “Out of these tunnels. We’ve been driven underground, and we can’t crawl out again without braving something ever larger. This could be our chance. Think of the prizes—not just the coin, but the land! Something beyond the dirt that we make ours.”
He had traced his finger across the ceiling of the sandstone, letting a small crumble of pebbles follow his fingertip’s path. “I’m sick of the tanner’s stink down here, sick of living like gongfarmers. I’ll leave Red Fox and Robin Hood behind and become Lord Fawkes, wouldn’t that be something?”
“They’ll never let it happen.” She shook her head at him.
He had let his hand drop gently, his fingers intertwining with hers. “I do what I can to keep the boys brave, but … but I don’t know what other choice we have. I just … I just don’t know.”
“Lord Fawkes,” she used her cruelest tone, the one they used in front of the Lions but rarely for each other, “I will not let you sacrifice yourself for them. You don’t owe them a goddamned thing. You organized the Red Lions when they were leaderless, you pulled the gangs together, you ended the petty territory skirmishes, you.”
It was an exaggeration, as she’d done as much or more to restructure the Lions than anyone, but neither did she have a man’s need to be congratulated about it all the time. “They’d be nothing without you. Don’t you worry your damned head about what more you should be doing for them. You’ve done enough.”
“Enough?” His whisper had brought his head into hers, their foreheads touching.
Caitlin knew what he meant.
Enough didn’t mean hiding in tunnels. Enough didn’t mean being rounded up in the streets and mutilated. As Red Fox, Alfie saw himself as a failure. But as Robin Hood he’d found new strength. And admittedly, the idea of a piece of land for themselves, or a building in the city … well, that could be the start of something huge. And so they were here now, out in the daylight a few miles west of Nottingham, shooting arrows at trees and—very occasionally—actually hitting them.
Most of her cubs didn’t have a lick of talent at archery, which didn’t surprise her in the least. Knives and clubs were the weapons of the street. Hell, they didn’t even own any bows. It had taken the gang a week just to procure a full quiver and the two longbows they now took turns at. They were losing arrows at a worrying pace, as half their shots went careening in laughably wrong directions—so much so that it was too dangerous to even keep a few men at the far end of their range to collect the arrows back. Even those that found their mark would oft splinter or break against the tree’s hard bark.
“We should have made a straw box,” David of Doncaster complained. The only one of Will Scarlet’s men who wasn’t a useless skiver, David had immediately become their longbow trainer. His own skill was practically offensive for making it seem so easy.
“You should have told us to make one,” growled the Dawn Dog, struggl
ing desperately to keep his arrow straight as he pulled the line back across his chest.
“I…” David’s mouth waggled, aghast at Dawn Dog’s terrible form, “… you’re right. I should have. I was not prepared for … I should’ve asked how comfortable everyone was first. I just assumed that … I assumed the average level of training…”
“You’re saying they’re a cross cudgel sorry lot of shit,” Caitlin helped him out, heaving herself toward Dawn Dog and snatching the arrow from his hand before he lost it. “You can go on and say it, no point in finding a fancier way to say they’re all helpless.”
“Not all helpless,” David defended, but he was right. Alfie, for instance, had proven unnaturally canny at slinging arrows, despite his insistence he was as new to it as anyone.
“Of course I’m good,” he had scoffed, “I’m Robin Hood.”
“Ricard’s got an eye for it as well,” David added, “and Clo.”
This was emphasized by a sharp flight and a sturdy thunk. Clorinda Rose, lowlife whore that she was, tied up in sashes and belts that squeezed her waist tight for every man to slaver over, was apparently a born archer. She whipped her head around to make eyes at Alfie, letting her goddamned fountain of blond hair splay around her like a fucking cat thrown against a wall.
Of course she’d be good at it, Caitlin cursed to no one, just one more thing for her to try to have in common with my man.
Some days Caitlin fantasized about coming across Clorinda in the tunnels all alone, and smashing the girl’s skull against a hard wall or strangling her with her own hair. Clorinda Rose had the big sultry eyes and perky little breasts that made men swoon, and Alfie was just as man as anyone. But it wouldn’t matter how lithe her hips were if Caitlin chose to break her cock-gobbling jaw off.
She was just Alfie’s favorite diversion lately, but this Clorinda was the hundredth Clorinda in a long line of Clorindas who had come before. They flirt and they fuck and they’re forgotten about, having never left anything more memorable than an itch between a man’s legs. Caitlin had suffered them before, and this one was no different than the rest, no matter how many of her giant empty doe eyes she batted at Alfie. It didn’t matter how many times she sucked his cock, because Alfie’s heart was Cait’s.
Outwardly, Cait made sure to never show any spite at Clorinda for fear of it reeking of jealousy. Cait had long been accustomed to being the ugliest and the heaviest girl in any group—which, for social reasons she would never understand, meant she wasn’t allowed to complain about it.
“I’d say the day is a waste,” David was saying. “I hope there’s more to this plan than hoping one of you is genuinely the best archer in Nottingham.”
This was confirmed by a grand slap on his back as Alfie joined them. “Mark my words, one of us here will legitimately win the Sheriff’s prize! But there’s legitimate…” he gave a wink, “… and then there’s legitimate.”
They didn’t have to be the best archers in Nottingham, they just needed to be the best ones to finish the tournament. The attendance roster would be public, which gave them seven days to track down their most talented competitors. The next week would be full of “accidental” street brawls resulting in dozens of bruised ribs, twisted draw fingers, and the like. For anyone they missed, there would be plenty of opportunities between competition rounds to whisper gruesome threats into other archers’ ears, until the thought of winning was too terrifying to risk. It wasn’t a sure thing, but the more Lions in the rosters the better—not just to give themselves better odds, but to put some muscle behind those whispers.
“We were hoping more of us would pass as decent,” Cait grumbled. “But then, I also assumed anyone who tries to call himself Robin Hood ought to have a half a knack for this.”
This remark she aimed across the glade at Will Scarlet, who had come along for seemingly no reason. He sat, digging holes in the ground with his knives, continuing his career of being utterly useless. At least he’d finally cowed—his need to be combative faded into obedience, which he apparently thought was supposed to be impressive. Theirs was hardly a unique tale. The Red Lions had long grown bigger by absorbing their rivals rather than fighting them. Scarlet’s men were just another acquisition, now smoothing out after their bumpy start.
Alfie squinted. “Only one of us needs to win, the rest just need to get in.”
“But they’ll have to be good enough to get in.” David chewed at his lip, as if he were afraid to give the bad news. “Contests like these, there’s usually some sort of qualifier. They won’t just let anyone onto the field, or the thing would last for hours, and be boring as all get out. There’ll be a test at the sign-ups to weed out the raff. And quite frankly, we’re the facking raff.”
“Well,” Alfie leaned back, watching with interest the flight of a bird from the nearby trees, “who is in charge of these sign-ups?”
Cait groaned, already hating her life so much more.
“You know I hate talking to him,” she explained as calmly as she could.
“But he likes talking to you,” Alfie sang, leaning farther backward, as if he were waiting for her to say yes to save him from falling.
“My father,” Caitlin explained coldly to David, “is the master-at-arms of the Nottingham Yard.”
“Fack me.” He whistled. “That sounds useful.”
“It’s not. Every advantage you’re thinking of right now has two disadvantages that come with it. I mostly try to forget that he exists.”
David made a face. “Not the most generous of fathers, eh?”
“Oh he’s got plenty to give,” Caitlin spat back, feeling the old familiar suffocating anger, “as long as you’re a young girl who doesn’t know how to say no.”
She spat at the ground and twisted, hoping to shake the fury off. She could tell by David’s reaction that he’d misinterpreted her, but she didn’t give shit one. Her father may have never touched her personally, but the same couldn’t be said for her childhood friends. The mighty goddamned Simons, they called him. In charge of training boys to become men. How many would still respect him if they knew he had a thing for little girls? By God’s cunt, they’d probably like him all the more.
David of Doncaster whispered an apology and wandered off, back to teaching the cubs how to hold a bow without hurting themselves.
She’d lived with her father in the castle as a child, even until womanhood. Then a drunken gord had been dared to flirt his way into her dress, and she’d been young and stupid enough to let him. Her father moved her into the city after that—paid for her housing, her food, wanted to provide her a safe life outside of the castle. Said he didn’t trust his own men around her, and he didn’t even see the damned irony in that. Nor did he see the insult. In all her life, she’d never had to suffer a man’s lustful looks, or unwanted advances. Didn’t understand that it hurt when he insisted she was beautiful, since he was the only man who’d ever said as much. Even Alfie could admit it wasn’t her body he loved.
Unbeknownst to The Simons of Nottingham, Cait had found her real family in the city—her lion family. Someday, undoubtedly, he’d learn everything about her … and no matter how soon or far away that was, every day brought it closer.
If she was lucky, they’d all be caught trying to travel back into the city today, each of them thrown into separate cages, and she’d never have to talk to her father again.
Alfie touched her shoulder.
“Yes, I’ll talk to him,” she answered. Each word felt like a knife. But of course she would do it. Her father, as blind to how she felt about him as he was to his own indecency, insisted on visiting her every few weeks. She played along, teased information from him they could use, happy to take his coin and spend it on whatever hell the Lions could throw back at the Nottingham Guard. “But you have to wrap up the other side of the Trip to Jerusalem. We need to finalize things with the greenbeard.”
“I know,” Alfie said, tying his fingers into her hair. “If something goes wrong at the
tournament, we need that as a back out.”
“We were hoping for a trial run,” she scolded him, but he just met her seriousness with raspberried lips. “Zinn’s pups have been going every day, but they have a long way to go still. And the greenbeard wants more. We need to make a deal with the dockmaster.”
“He won’t deal.” Alfie clicked his tongue. “And we have nothing else on him.”
“Then it’s time for a different kind of deal,” she said, drawing out her words. “Make sure he knows exactly what’s at stake.”
Alfie’s face was a statue. Breaking windows and bruising ribs was one thing—both were fixable. Even blackmail was a gentlemanly sport, given a victim that’d brought his woes upon himself. But weeks of tailing the impossibly virtuous Gerome Artaud had given them no leverage to use. They’d run out of options, and ideas. If they couldn’t get what they needed from the dockmaster by playing nice, then it was time for the opposite. Alfie hated that, she knew. Always preferred clever tricks over violence, but he was a fool to think that both didn’t have a time and place.
“We don’t do that,” he said, and gave her a kiss. A moment later he rejoined the others in a burst of showmanship, donning the grandstanding gangmaster act he was so good at. His show of confidence was all that kept the Lions going at times, most of them unaware how close they all were to ruin.
Clorinda Rose let loose another shaft that found its mark, and she gasped in feigned surprise, putting her hand to her breast and then onto Alfie’s chest, purposefully tripping over her own feet to let him support her. Cait had nothing to fear from the harlot, but still she said, “Just die,” out loud for the fun of it, and damned if it didn’t make her feel better.
THIRTY
ARABLE DE BUREL
HUNTINGDON CASTLE
Lionhearts Page 29