“Just you?”
Pat pat. “Just me. The others didn’t know.”
Caitlin took a full breath. “I hear the woman was raped. You do that?”
“Wha—?” His face keeled up, a seemingly genuine confusion across it. “No, no. I just … I just killed her. Both of them, in and out, fast. On my own. I don’t know why.”
She exhaled. “You don’t know why.”
His body slumped, heaved, slumped. “I don’t know why.”
She’d been pulling her punches before, but this time she followed clean through. Her momentum was almost too much to stop, and Dawn Dog had to take her weight even as he flinched from the shock of the sudden violence. For a bear of a man, he could be surprisingly weak. Nobody would ever call the Dawn Dog a hard woman.
She could see it in Will Scarlet’s face, through the blood and bruises, that this was the hit that mattered. His adolescent spark was gone, replaced with fear, cowardice in his eyes, his jaw quivered and blood drained from his burst lips. “I wanted to kill them…” The words were nearly indecipherable, bubbling through his breaths. “I wanted to kill them for being alive. For being happy and alive. Sometimes I want to kill everyone, I want to kill everyone who isn’t dead.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t fair…” tears came down, following the path of the blood down his cheeks, “… it isn’t fair that they’re alive, and she’s dead…”
His breath choked, his shoulders seized. Cait signaled for Dawn Dog and Ricard to let him go, and then Will Scarlet wept on the floor, oblivious to their presence. Silently. He did not wail, his body just crunched into a ball and he moaned out whatever breath his body could take.
Eventually he slowed, he held his head in his hands and breathed in deeply, bringing himself back to reason.
“Grief is a bitch,” Caitlin said, knowing from experience. “But so am I. You can’t kill anyone you want, whenever you want. This happened before you came to Nottingham, so you’re lucky. If you’d done this after we’d met you, I’d carve you in half, from asshole to throat. Unless you admit to it, right now. Don’t make me ask twice. Anything else you done I should know about?”
He shook his head and squinted. One of his eyes was now swollen shut, and he had to twist to see her with the other. She stood up again and clenched her fist, but his hand raised limply to defend himself. “Nothing, no, no…”
“What about the hands in the stables?” she asked.
“The stables?” His hand fell. “That’s not you? Heard about them, yes … thought it was Freddy…”
She repositioned her fist, but he didn’t move at all. He had nothing left in him to lie, and she believed him. It was a stretch to think Scarlet was behind the behandings, since the first had happened before he came to the city, but it was worth asking. Someone else was out there soiling Robin Hood’s name, but Alfie had already dismissed that. Probably just another rival, trying to make hell for them, better ignored.
“Alright, your men, then?” Just to be sure. “Do I need to ask them a few questions, too?”
“No no,” he said. “They’re not like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like me.” Will Scarlet’s arms seemed useless to him, they tried to do something but flopped around instead. “They’re good people. They’re not like me. They’re not … they’re not broken.”
Cait exhaled heavily, as if the utter truth of it had swept through the cave tunnel and taken away all the tension and danger. She nodded solemnly to Dawn Dog and Ricard, for both of them to leave. They eagerly scooped up two of the three lanterns from the floor to hobble back down the tunnels to the Lions Den. They did so silently, they made haste.
“I haven’t told Alfred,” she said, once she was alone with him. “And I’d rather not. He has a soft spot for you, fool that he is, but because of it he’ll treat you far harsher if he finds out. He’ll kill you, I mean.” She spelled it out, realizing he was in no condition to put two and two together. “I’m willing to keep this secret, if you’re willing to keep a different secret in exchange. I’ve got a task for you I’d prefer he not know about.”
Scarlet snorted, black goop shot from his nose. “You want me to do something behind Alfred’s back?”
“Quit drooling, this secret’s nothing compared to yours. Just a difference of opinion between me and him on how to proceed on something, so I’d rather have you take care of it so we don’t have to argue about it no more. If he finds out you did it at my command, he’ll only be upset at me for all of thirty seconds. So don’t pretend you can use this as leverage on me, you shit bag.”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” lied the shit bag.
“Yes you were. If you weren’t, you’d be too daft to be here at all.”
He had no clever retort, just a slight catch in his breath. “What’s the job?”
“Gerome Artaud, the saint of a trademaster you’ve been following—apparently the only man in Nottingham with no vices. We would’ve preferred to blackmail him, but since you can’t find any dirt on him, we’ll have to get what we want in more creative ways.”
Scarlet nodded. “You want me to threaten him?”
“Not good enough. He’s clearly not very imaginative, so he needs proof of what we’ll do to him.” She bent lower to match his eyes, making sure he felt every word that followed, as something that could just as easily happen to him. “Take a finger. Let him pick which one, then take a different one. Pull the fingernail first. Then flay it to the bone, draw it out. But cut it clean off and burn the nub when you’re done. Don’t want him to die of the rot.”
With only one lantern left, his face was half-black, shadows filling the sockets of his eyes like his blood in the crags of the ground. “And this would make us square?”
“It would mean I don’t have to put you down, at least.” She wiped her hands on his shirt. “If Alfie finds out you did it, you say it was your idea. You know him, he means too well sometimes. He’s not like you. He’s not like us.”
“I know.” Will shivered. “The real Robin Hood was the same way.”
Pat pat. She froze until he stared back at her. “Alfred Fawkes is the real Robin Hood. That’s the last time I tell you.”
Pat pat. “Got it. Sorry.”
“Don’t bring your men on this, either. I need David focused on teaching us archery. You’ll do this alone.” He nodded, and at last she helped him find his footing. “Get gone. Clean up. I’ll get you details shortly.”
His shuffle down the tunnel was piteous, but Caitlin felt nothing for him. Will Scarlet was a weapon too dangerous to use, he was a knife whose handle was wrapped in iron barb. Rather than wait and see what more damage Scarlet could do before the greenbeard job was ready for him—as she’d been doing for weeks—she could simply use him to expedite it. This job would take care of the Artaud problem, the greenbeard problem, and the Scarlet problem all at once. It was something of a shame there was only one person around to enjoy what she’d done.
“Sorry I didn’t let you in on that,” she said to Rob o’the Fire, still watching from the dark cranny on the other side of the cesspit. “I hope watching was something, though.”
“It wasn’t the worst,” he said. “But yeah, I would’ve liked to give him back just a little of what he gave me.” Even as he spoke she could hear the wheeze in his lungs, the lingering damage Will Scarlet had done him that first night. How Alfie had not seen the danger immediately was absolutely beyond her. But that was why a good man like him needed a hard woman like Cait.
“Pushing hard on the trademaster then, eh?” Rob asked, coming closer to look at Scarlet’s blood on the cave wall.
“Don’t see another way.” Cait scraped her boot on the ground. “We need Artaud to get mead to the greenbeard, so we can get all the access we want to the Trip, and wrap that up. It’s been dragging on too long.”
“Yeah. But it’s just … I mean, cutting off his finger? I don’t want to second-guess you none, but he
hasn’t crossed us, right? Why so bloody?”
“Don’t worry, those were just threats for Scarlet. He’ll barely even touch Artaud. Just going to scare him enough to know we can get to him, so’s we can make some proper demands.”
Rob inhaled deeply, trying to figure it out. “What? So Scarlet … isn’t going to hurt him?”
“He’s going to try.” She looked him square. “But I’ve got a job for you, too.”
THIRTY-NINE
MARION FITZWALTER
HUNTINGDON CASTLE
WITHOUT VOMITING EVEN ONCE, Marion continued from where they had last left off. They had been discussing peerage and precedent, and the inequity of noncommensurate taxes. It was a tricky thing to focus on such ungodly boring topics while Prince John was electrifying the room with his presence. His arrival was the greatest gift she could have hoped for—after all, she didn’t need to convince her grandfather or Henry de Bohun of anything if she could win the prince instead.
He was dressed simply and might have easily passed as any commoner, but there was an indefinable quality that drew one’s eyes to him. His skin and his red-brown flop of hair were visibly healthy, his eyes bright and alert. Prince John carried himself like a man who was always slightly amused at a world that could never touch him. He’d always been that way—their mutual family had put Marion in the room with him half a dozen times over the years, though they rarely interacted. But whether seated on a dais or skulking in a corner, John was a man with only one foot in the world, judging every little thing for its audacity of existence. In a lesser man it would have read as brat, but in him it was a welcome strength, a cult of leadership.
Marion was doing her best to describe the advantages of levying a carucage tax over the geld, fully aware that the room was more interested in whether the prince would eat a grape or a fig first. But she didn’t care. She was still going through with her plan, and the prince was the best audience imaginable.
Friar Tuck entered at the edge of the room—as requested—and Marion interrupted herself. She turned to a young man with a stiff moustache who had barely said a single word the whole council, the man-who-was-not-Eustace-de-Vesci. “Oh, I’m sorry, before we continue, would you mind if I borrow your chair?”
He perked his head as she motioned for him to exchange places with Tuck.
“He has an injured arm, you see, I’d appreciate if he could have your seat, thank you.”
“Oh, of … course…” the man stalled, clearly wanting to ask why an injured arm would necessitate his seating comfort. But Tuck gave an exaggerated wince as he massaged his elbow, and the man-who-was-not-Eustace-de-Vesci toddled sheepishly to his feet, looking for another chair elsewhere that Marion had ensured would not exist.
“Thank you. As I was saying, regardless of one’s support of Chancellor Longchamp, we have identified multiple exemptions he’s given for the geld that were unquestionably … well, unquestionably questionable.”
And so they went into it again, her slow process of getting these messengers to admit to the existence of obvious facts without pledging any official stance. It was all the same infuriating neutrality they had shown in the morning, despite the prince’s presence.
But earlier she had waded in hypotheticals, and this time she posed a specific opinion quickly. When she asked for anyone to agree with her, they of course remained silent. So she turned sharply to the friar, who was sipping glibly from his predecessor’s wine goblet. “What do you think, Tuck?”
“I agree with you entirely,” he said without hesitation, folding his arms. The man-who-was-not-Eustace-de-Vesci’s mouth gaped open, still standing awkwardly to the side where he had found no place to sit.
“Well then at last we are getting somewhere!” Marion clapped her hands and considered the matter settled, moving on to the next. She stole a moment’s glance at Prince John, whose pursed lips and half-cocked eyebrow seemed to indicate he knew exactly what she was doing. And, perhaps, even approved.
Another few minutes passed as she detailed more of the Chancellor’s actions, two otherwise unconnected land seizures he had demanded in very different counties. “These are nearly identical issues, don’t you agree?”
She posed the question to a disheveled young page who was certainly not Saer de Quincy. He of course refused to either admit or deny any equity between the two events, but Marion swatted away his protest. “Never mind. Could you stand, please? I’m afraid I need your chair as well.”
The page’s lips trembled, but any objection disappeared at the sight of the mighty John Little rounding the corner, who had every intention of sitting in the page’s chair regardless of whether or not it was vacant. The young man barely got out of the way before John dragged the chair sidelong, lowered his frame into its seat, and sighed tremendously at the relief.
“What do you think, John?” she asked before he was even settled.
“Whatever it is you want me to think, Lady Marion.” His smile split across his face. “I’m so very comfortable.”
“Excellent!” She turned to the disposed page and summoned all her derision into a single smug grin. “Well then, we’ll no longer need you here at the council at all.”
The page’s cheeks twitched. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m not interested in your opinion—or lack of one—and so I’ve replaced you. This man now represents Earl Saer de Quincy in your stead. I’m removing you from the chamber.”
She nodded toward an exit, where Nick and Peter Delaney—along with their unreasonably athletic shoulders—suddenly stood in wait and moved into view.
“You can’t do that!” the useless man protested. “I’m here as a witness, to report on the findings of this council and report back to Winchester!”
“Curious how quickly you object,” Marion kept her tone as cold as winter iron, “when the thing being taken is yours. But don’t worry, your earl will get his report. John, when the council is over, do me the favor of riding to Winchester and let Saer de Quincy know that everyone here has rallied their strength behind me.”
John Little answered by way of popping a fig into his mouth.
“You’re insane!” The page folded his hands in acquittal. “You can’t keep me from telling my master the truth.”
“I can’t,” Marion admitted, “if he chooses to come visit your prison cell here. Otherwise, I think it would be quite easy.”
She snapped her fingers and the Delaney brothers moved, to the obvious horror of more than a few at the table. They were at the page’s side in seconds and did not hesitate to nudge his knees out from under him, catching him at the elbows to drag him away.
“That’s enough,” came a grumble—at last—from Henry de Bohun. His family members seemed far more alarmed that he chose to speak than at the display itself. Marion enjoyed her first victory, but braced herself for the next part. “Your point is made, you’ve been anything but subtle at it. Can we dispose of the cheap theatrics and return to policy, then?”
“You use the word we, Earl,” Marion rounded on him, “as if you have been participating. But you have remained silent through every question of policy, just as you remained silent when you watched me start taking chairs. So why do you speak up now?” She took in each of his family’s faces, noting curiously that the Earl of Warwick, Waleran de Beaumont, was missing from the room.
Henry de Bohun’s answer came slowly, scraping along the floor. “Because this council is dipping dangerously into the territory of being a farce.”
“As is the country,” Marion agreed. “But rather than merely take chairs, Longchamp takes titles. Land. This is not an empty exercise, it is happening all around us already! Men of worth are being replaced with Longchamp’s corrupt lackeys, while we sit by and do nothing! I wonder how many more chairs I could have taken before someone else stopped me? But Lord Henry de Bohun was wise enough to see the danger, anticipate where it was headed, and so he spoke up. Why then are we afraid to do the same against the Chancellor?”
<
br /> The silence that followed was different than the silence they had given her all morning. One was the simple silence of abstinence—but this was a silence that comes with the axe, at its height, ready to fall. At the next table, her grandfather and grandmother watched with extreme scrutiny, but did not look away.
“I was seconds away from dragging this man into a prison cell,” Marion continued, hitting her consonants like an expert swordsman, “and every one of you made it possible. By staying mute in the face of oppression. But when one voice speaks up…” she dared the room to look away from her, “… the injustice stops.”
A few seats down from Hereford, Lord Robert bit off a smile that his eyes could not hide.
“You cannot equate the two,” old Lord Henry objected, before the gravity of her point could sink in. “You act as if there are only two choices—such a simplistic polarity of thought is the cause of our problems, not the solution. You would protect us from the lion by feeding us to the bear. It is perfectly possible to object to the Chancellor’s activities without demanding his head in payment. I do not agree with an inch of his decisions, but nor do I think it wise to abandon King Richard to this Austrian prison. I shall joyfully support our beloved prince, but only upon his rightful ascension. Politics is not all or nothing, my dear girl, something your grandfather should have taught you.”
That chilled the room a bit, as eyes careened from one esteemed earl to another. But Marion refused to let it rile her, nor would she let the focus be stolen from her. She was nobody’s dear girl.
“You may be right,” she said casually. “If we had all day, we could potentially find a happy middle ground. But keep in mind that every minute you waste pontificating about it, one more of my men will be sitting in a chair. Who will agree with you when you’re the only one left?”
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