Lionhearts

by Nathan Makaryk

  Whether Gilbert was truly involved with this, Quill could only guess. But it was no surprise that some gang had found profit in trying to smuggle people out of the city. It probably didn’t even matter if they could actually do it—could be they were just leading the gullible and desperate down into a cistern for a fee, and then leaving them to die.

  “We don’t have time for it,” FitzOdo growled. He snatched the wineskin and threw the man away, who recovered and ran furiously down the nearest alley. “This ought to put an end to it.”

  FitzOdo splashed the contents of the skin onto the mark of the White Hand, then drew his knife and tore a hole in the bag to empty over the door’s edges. From his belt he produced a rectangle of flint, and a single knife slash summoned a spark that found its home in the oil. The door went up quickly, and Ronnell did not need to threaten anyone else to keep them from approaching the inferno.

  * * *

  THEY SPENT THE AFTERNOON at St. Mary’s, corralling the masses, helping the clergy distribute what small amounts of food it had, and chasing off undesirables. The hours passed were marked only by the occasional toll of the steeple bells. The two o’clock hour sounded, and then some time later came two deep tones, followed by a curious long wait for the third, and then two more. Time itself had become unreliable.

  The flaming door outside the courtyard walls had burnt ferociously for some of that time, belching up a vicious black smoke that occasionally swept into the front entrance of St. Mary’s, to nobody’s enjoyment. But only the door itself burnt—the rest of the building being made of stone—and eventually it settled down to a simmering grey stream. The entirety of the church reeked of the wooden char, and FitzOdo alone seemed to remain ignorant of the offense.

  Out of that ashen wisp came a very young girl in a torn dress, who came directly for the three of them.

  “’Scuse me sir,” she said, trying to get the knight’s attention. “Are you Sir Robert FitzOdo?”

  “I am, girl,” he answered with a smile, never one to turn down any amount of respect shown him.

  “Are you Sir Robert FitzOdo?” she asked again.

  “I said I was, are you looking for me?”

  “Are you Sir Robert FitzOdo?”

  “Oh, get off then.”

  She held out a small piece of fabric. “I have a message for you.”

  The moment it was in his hand she vanished, and Quill couldn’t help but notice that she was particularly good at running without making a sound. “What’s it say?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” FitzOdo shrugged, though something seemed to pass between him and Ronnell that Quill didn’t understand.

  On the fabric was scrawled a single world.

  * * *

  “PITIES.”

  If there was one place in Nottingham that was most dangerous now, it was the northwestern slums of the French Ward. It had always been a pit of poverty and desperation, but with everyone terrified of anything French now, the borough had truly become the last option for those that couldn’t survive the rest of the city.

  The Pity Stables, or the Pities, were at its heart, and Quill had nothing but rancid memories and the taste of bile to recall his last visit there—prying chunks of desiccated hands from the wall. Despite the clamor of the city, the area around the Pity Stables was disturbingly quiet. As he stood there with FitzOdo and Ronnell, Quill had the unnerving sensation of spiders making their merriest way down his spine.

  “No one around,” Ronnell noted. “If someone wanted us to meet them here, they must be inside.”

  “We should’ve brought some more men,” Quill complained. But FitzOdo had insisted the three of them could handle themselves, and echoed that notion now by striding down the dirt slope that led to the mouth of the old stablehouse.

  “We’ll check the sides,” FitzOdo said with no other fanfare.

  “Wait!” Quill gulped. “Do you mean to just … walk in there? We don’t know who wanted us here, shouldn’t we—”

  “You wanted to do some good, Peveril?” FitzOdo rounded on him. “That comes with danger. Swallow your shit and act like you deserve half the uniform you’re pissing in.”

  With that, he peeled off to the left and Ronnell took the right, leaving the world’s most disappointing human—Quillen Peveril—to walk blindly into the open maw of this most indisputable trap.

  As if to recap his entire life, Quill’s mind flailed to understand how he’d arrived at this point, at this time, with this little to call his own. His was the weakest claim in the legendary Peveril family, dwarfed by the enormity of his father and siblings. His fate would be immortalized not by the annals of prestige, but by the shit-covered stables his feet were inexplicably moving him toward.

  He wondered where he’d gone wrong. He thought perhaps he should have made some friends in life, rather than revel in criticizing those that might have become them. He wondered if Jacelyn de Lacy knew that he admired her—despite her behavior when they arrested Will Scarlet—and wished she had escaped the Nottingham baileys with him. She’d know what to do in a situation like this.

  “Well, this is a stupid way to die,” he announced loudly to the murderers waiting on the other side of the stable entrance. Having failed to come up with any of a thousand obvious alternatives, he marched himself inside.

  His eyes needed a moment to adjust, but there was no hiding from the assault on his nose. The acrid stink of metal was in the air—copper—causing his eyes to tear up. There was no one else inside, despite the valuable shelter it offered the poor. Once the glow of the outside world had softened and he could open his eyes against the sting, he made sense of the image before him, knowing immediately that it would haunt him the rest of his days.

  Yes, there was another hand nailed to the back wall of the Pities.

  And a handswidth away from it, the arm from which it had been taken. This, too, was pinned in place with knives. Two of them. But the arm ended at the elbow.

  The upper half of that severed arm was also there, pinned, again separated by a small gap of bare wood.

  Beyond that, the torso.

  All four limbs were accounted for, but certainly not intact. Each had been cut into pieces, splayed out, and nailed against the wall. Reassembled in this grotesque spectacle.

  The head wore a hood, though it did not conceal the face. The long greyhound features were Derrick’s, the third member of FitzOdo’s regular trio.

  Derrick had not simply been killed, he’d been segmented.

  Quill did not have to count them to know there were exactly eight arrows that pierced the center of Derrick’s chest. Eight arrows had become a slang in the streets after the archery tournament, a sign of the Robin Hood. He deserves eight arrows, one might say. Or one could flash a hand signal of eight to point out someone suspected of working with the traitors.

  But these eight arrows had rings of white painted about them, a color that had not been used in the tournament. That same white paint was used for a handprint on Derrick’s left breast, as well as the only thing in the room more prominent than the grisly display.

  Spanning Derrick’s arms from fingertip to fingertip—painted in large white letters with the central O making a ring around his decapitated head—was the word IMPOSTOR.

  “Holy God Almighty,” came Ronnell’s voice, cracking. He stumbled in from the right entrance, his hands limply out as he took in the entirety of his friend’s brutal murder.

  FitzOdo had entered as well but said nothing, a grim alarm on his features. His eyes turned downward and his head cocked, aimed at the ground before Quill’s feet. The straw there had been brushed aside, where in equally large letters was again painted the word IMPOSTOR. Quill was practically standing upon the second white handprint. He stepped to the side, fear finally lancing him through, wondering if they were all about to meet similar fates.

  But nothing came, just the eerie sounds of the city outside, and the calm stupor of the Pities.

  Ronnell was crying, ugly, heavi
ng gasps that begged for pity.

  But Quill’s mind was finally working.

  “Why call Derrick an impostor Robin Hood?” he asked at last. “What does that mean?”

  “There’s no meaning to it,” FitzOdo said softly. “Gilbert’s a madman.”

  Madman, yes. But calculating. This was the very definition of deliberate.

  The second word, IMPOSTOR, on the ground before him.

  Three times the little girl had asked “Are you Sir Robert FitzOdo?”

  FitzOdo was supposed to be standing where Quill was now.

  He raised his eyes to find the Coward Knight had already come to the same conclusion. Despite some smarter version of himself begging not to, Quill felt the missing puzzle pieces fall into place and demanded, “Why are they calling you an impostor Robin Hood?”

  FitzOdo pulled steel.

  FIFTY-THREE

  ARABLE DE BUREL

  BELVOIR CASTLE, RUTLANDSHIRE

  SUNDAY, 22ND DAY OF MARCH

  SOMEWHERE, SOME STUDIOUS SCHOLAR—who had not spent the majority of his life in fear of losing it—had probably calculated the precise distance to the horizon. Whatever number that was, it was exactly how far Arable could see in every direction. Belvoir Castle stood atop a large rolling pinnacle in a countryside that otherwise stretched flat for miles and miles. From above, she could discern the very geometry of the land, of fields parceled out with neat, clean edges, which she found somewhat comforting. When pulled far enough back, she thought, any single thing must seem terribly cute—and not worth any of the worry of those whose noses were constantly shoved into the dirt of it.

  Far to the west, at the mercy of the clear morning sky but just barely hanging onto the world, were a few dark specks that marked the city and castle of Nottingham.

  She might just be able to flick it, and knock it over the edge of the horizon and into whatever waited on the other side of the sky.

  A male voice came from not so far away, but still too close. “That’s Nottingham.”

  “Yes thank you for explaining that to me.”

  The view might have been beautiful if not for his presence. The black tendrils of his approach wrapped through every joy she might find in the scenery, tainting it. She had avoided talking to him, ignored his requests, hated even that he formed them as requests, as if to imply he was the reasonable one.

  Until now, it was thankfully easy to keep him at bay, with all the insanity of the last few days. Bannermen from across Huntingdonshire answered Lord Robert’s call to join the Earl Ferrers in his attempt to reclaim Nottingham Castle. Arable had volunteered herself to those arranging the daunting mechanics of this, such as organizing the camp followers and mobilizing enough food to keep them alive. Once Lord Robert’s battalion was assembled, they marched north alongside the Derby host to join even more companies in the heart of Rutland, and Arable had simply vanished into the work.

  Now they were met here, dozens and dozens of households arranged into terribly cute little squares, their encampments surrounding the hill of Belvoir Castle. Most of the fighting men were young farmhands—too weak to have joined the war and far shy for the title soldier—but they were the best that could be scavenged. At Belvoir they awaited the last promised companies to join them before marching on to Nottingham.

  The city to which Arable had sworn she’d never return.

  That alone ought to be enough for her to pull her hair out, to scratch her face to putty. But instead she also now had to deal with this, the man who begged her ear.

  “I don’t blame you,” Lord Beneger de Wendenal said, as if there were any part of her that was worried that he blamed her. “And I understand why you don’t want to talk to me. But I’m hoping at least you’ll stay, while I talk.”

  She considered leaving immediately, for the sheer spite of it. She could climb down into the dank wine cellars beneath the castle’s surface and enjoy a better view than any that contained him. But walking away now would only mean delaying this, and if it had to be done, then she could endure it. She’d suffered worse.

  They were on a wide triangular stone battlement, across which the early morning sun cast his shadow near her feet. Even that was too intrusive for her taste. When it was obvious she was not going to leave, she heard his lips part.

  “Do you know the story of this castle?” he asked, and she instantly rolled her eyes. “It’s pronounced beaver, but it’s spelled like belle voir, French for beautiful sight. William the Conqueror stood here, where we are, and said, ‘Quelle belle voir!’ And so the name was chosen, but the English … well we don’t care much for the French, do we? We kept the spelling, but without all those nasty French sounds. So, Beaver Castle.”

  He had probably hoped to lighten the mood.

  When Arable finally answered him, she ground her voice into rubble. “Say what you came to say.”

  He inhaled, his feet shuffled. At last his voice returned, quieter. “I was told you were with William, in the end. If you ever find it in your heart, I would like very much to hear about that time. I had not seen him for several years, and did not even know he had returned. And so close to home. I don’t know what my son’s final days were like, and it eats me. It eats me as much as it did then, with George, and Hugo.”

  William’s brothers—who had gotten themselves killed trying to escape from Arable’s household sixteen years ago. That accident sparked Lord Beneger’s rage and led him to decimate their family, their estate, their lives. She’d been fleeing his vengeance ever since.

  “I’m thankful to you, Arable. I am. I know how much you meant to William … back then. There was a time when I would have liked very much to call you my daughter one day. William spoke of you often after the war, even though he knew it would infuriate me.”

  She didn’t want to know that. She’d written her history already, and it involved a William who had abandoned her. She didn’t need anything to soil those years.

  “I know you must think me cruel. But your father was my friend once, you might remember. When Raymond betrayed his king, he betrayed our friendship, and he was responsible for the deaths of my sons.”

  “He wasn’t there,” she said shortly. “They died on their own. And it was an accident.”

  “He swore to protect them.” The voice took an edge. “That means there should have been no accidents. Raymond swore to protect them as his own, he embraced me in his arms, he swore to God that he’d see his own children harmed before mine. But those were empty words, and he marched himself to die in Nottingham, and George and Hugo suffered at his neglect and died for nothing. For nothing.”

  Arable swallowed. Her eyes were focused on the distant black speck, and she could see nothing else. “And what did my family die for?” she demanded.

  “For your father’s betrayal, for his negligence.” As if they were nothing, as if it were obvious. As if it were the color of the sky, he described. “Raymond swore harm unto his before mine, and so I took that payment. I did not come here to apologize for that. You should know better as a traitor’s daughter than to think you are owed anything for his crimes.”

  Flick flick, the city off the horizon.

  “But that was a long time ago. And as I said, I’m thankful for whatever company you gave William in his last days.”

  “You don’t get to thank me for that. It wasn’t for you.”

  He inhaled sharply as if to respond, but let it lie. “Fair enough.”

  The wind picked up a bit, but Arable did not avert her eyes from the single point she’d chosen to look at. She breathed in as the cold gust swelled around her, a massive blanket that cared nothing for their troubles.

  “I understand you’re with child.”

  With effort, she refrained from reaching down to touch her belly. Her bump was still slight, but it was a difficult thing to ignore.

  “You have to understand.” His voice was strained now. Disgusting, that he had the gall to display any sort of emotion at her. “I have no family
left. My sons were taken from me, my wife died—well, you remember that. I never remarried. I have nothing to carry on my name. When my days are done, the name of Wendenal goes with me. You cannot imagine that burden, and what it has done to me, what it has done to me…”

  His noise trailed off, his breath turned erratic, until he seemed to control himself.

  “Everything I went through when I learned William died, all that grief and loss, moving from thinking your family is secure to having nothing … well, the opposite of that happened when I learned I had a grandchild.”

  Her skin shrank. To think he had any sort of possession of her baby was a new hell.

  “I want to take care of you, Arable. I want to bring you to our home, I want to give my grandson everything in the world, everything. I want to repay you, for your loss, for what you’ve been through. Please let me do that.”

  She despised herself for hesitating. But she had felt those changes in herself lately, too. The shift in her own mind, some primal need to protect her baby—her daughter—no matter the cost to her. A life of comfort in a respected house would afford her daughter every opportunity that Arable should have had. Compared to fleeing through the woods and getting caught up in everybody else’s battles, there should have been no choice at all.

  “You want to repay me,” her mouth said, of its own, and she wondered where it was going. “For the loss of my family. My father, my mother, my brothers. My cousins, our attendants, our bannermen, their families, their fields, their futures … you want to repay me for that? As if I alone suffered? And by accepting your coin I say it’s all even? You want me to speak for the hundreds of lives you ruined? How many of my family members did you hunt down? Have you killed my brothers? I honestly don’t even know the full extent of what you’ve done to my family, do you understand that?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “All this, you did it because two of your children made a mistake. You ruined generations of people as your repayment. And you think my repayment can be counted in gold crowns? I could live for a hundred years in your estate, my children could live for a hundred more, and your debt would not be paid.”