“We’re all Robin Hood,” the girl interrupted his thoughts.
“Oh hush!” He waved her off. “Let me try it in silence first, before I ask you questions.” The short one had the wild haggard look of a starved hermit, albeit a very angry one with war paint crusting at the edges of his face. The other was a solemn man—Scottish, maybe—with a nasty swath of red scabbing across his forehead. He was the only one of the three who would not look John in the eye. The least likely choice, he considered, which probably made him the leading contender.
“This is not a game,” the woman tried again, and John answered by snapping his fingers at the Guardsman behind her, who knocked the back of her head just hard enough for her to recognize how much harder he might do so next time.
The three of them were in a line, on their knees, hands bound behind their backs. They’d been brought up here to the Sheriff’s office, after John’s late evening of minor drinking and betting on where the catapult strikes would land next. “We have to enjoy our situation,” he’d explained to his cajoling guests. “Otherwise, we become prisoners.”
He bit his lip and gave them a second look. What subtle tells might lie in their clothing? Would darker skin imply time spent outdoors, or would the forest’s canopy keep their skin protected where a city dweller’s might tan? The woman, he considered her again. She was far dirtier than the other two, and she appeared to have two straight scars down her cheeks. There was a story there, he knew. Usually meant they were like unbroken colts in bed. She was pretty, too. He knelt to get a better sense of her—then realized he’d had these very same thoughts before.
“You recognize me now?” she asked, a half flinch backward at the Guardsman who’d pushed her. “I was at the council in Huntingdon. My name is Lady Arable de Burel.”
“I remember,” John said with a slight curiosity. “You caused a bit of a commotion. That was well done. I did enjoy that. But a lady with no family nor lands is hardly a lady, no? And you’re saying you’re also Robin Hood?”
“Anyone can be Robin Hood,” answered the short hermit. “But if you’re looking to use that name to punish someone, then you can punish me. I’m the Robin Hood that killed Sheriff de Lacy last year. In this building. Snuck right past this room and up the stairs. Name’s Will Scarlet.”
John didn’t know if he was supposed to be impressed by that. “Oh,” he said instead. “My, you sound dangerous, Scarlet.” He looked at the sullen one and asked, “What about you, which Robin Hood are you?”
The question bounced off his face and landed forgotten on the ground.
“Ah, you’re the mute one.”
“We have been kept in shackles for over a day,” the woman, Arable, complained. “We only turned ourselves in that we could speak with you, because we have urgent news that will stop this siege and end this war. Every life lost today was done so needlessly.”
“We don’t take commands from prisoners,” William Brewer interrupted. “Assassins, in particular.”
“No need for excuses,” John calmed him. The crack crack crack of boulders crashing through the stone battlements outside was all the explanation necessary. “You know, there was a time when I quite enjoyed the idea of a Robin Hood running around. But not one of you is the Robin Hood I actually met. And your rebellion in Huntingdon announced that you want to overthrow my brother, Richard the King. That’s treason. So I can’t think of a single reason why I would believe anything you’ve come here to tell me.”
John preferred it when women—particularly those with pretty faces, and particularly particularly those with mysterious scars—batted their eyes at him and bit their lower lips. So it was a little unarming when Arable flared her nostrils instead, cocked her head in annoyance, and said with half-bored eyes, “Your brother the King is outside, you fucking idiot.”
Well, at least he had his answer. By the wild-eyed stupor the other two men gave her, leaning away as if to save themselves, John knew he’d found the real Robin Hood.
“We both know that’s the King of France out there,” John returned carefully, dismissing the Guardsman who was silently asking if he should club her unconscious. “My brother is still in an Austrian prison.”
“You honestly think that?” She was undeterred. “You think France has costumed ten thousand men and banners to match half the counties in England, and hoped you wouldn’t notice the difference?”
“Oh, I know some of them are real,” John laughed. “Everyone at your traitor’s council would naturally back Philip when he came for my head. But the bulk of that army is French, dear, come to put a child on the throne so he can be France’s puppet. The English traitors out there seek to profit from that arrangement. If Richard had miraculously escaped from prison and brought his army home, do you really think his first act would be to march here and wage war on his brother? That’s the thing about a lie, it’s not a very good one if it unravels the first time someone asks the word why.”
“He thinks you’re the traitor,” came Scarlet. “He thinks you’ve claimed the castle for your own power in his absence—so yes, first thing he does when he comes home is remind the people who’s in charge. It’s what I would do.”
“Ah.” John snapped his fingers, having realized the game. He turned to his advisors, the few who were still left at the periphery of the room. “This is all for their benefit! You’re hoping to plant a little seed of doubt in one of their minds—turn them against me. Which is, after all,” he smiled wide, intentionally making light of the otherwise sound strategy, “what I would do.”
“Send them away,” Arable said, all too quickly.
John was practiced at not showing any surprise, but he had no immediate answer for this.
“Send them all from the room, see if our story changes.”
“So you can overwhelm me?” John tried to laugh. “I have no doubt you’d love to be in a room alone with me.”
“Oh God’s teeth,” moaned Scarlet. “Is every possible thing we can say a trick now? I promise you we’re not clever enough for that. Fucking look at us!”
He tugged on his restraints, a look of genuine agitation pumping into the veins of his forehead, his arms.
What game were they playing after all? John worried. It is the liar who says he has nothing in his hand. They were here before him, as they wanted. They’d turned themselves in, as they wanted. Whatever John’s next move was, it was very possibly exactly what they wanted as well. They were a puzzlebox, for certain, and probably one that had either no solution, or many that were equally disastrous.
“Give me the room,” he commanded. For fear of alarming his allies, he added, “I won’t waste your time with this prattle. You all need your rest, I’ll handle these children.”
He stood his ground as they moved past him—the brothers Worcester, his nephew, the bishop, the new Sheriff, the castellan, their subordinates. Some made gracious exits, others were a bit too silent, but one by one they left until there was nothing but John and three strangers, bound to each other and the pillar in the room, kneeling, and scheming.
“You know, the real Robin Hood was a loyal kingsman,” he told them, recalling Locksley’s obstinate love of Richard. “And here you are, ready to abandon him and give the country to France. What has Philip offered you? I’ll double it.”
“Nothing,” she said, her face tired. “We are loyal to Richard still, because he’s right there.” She turned her head pointedly at the window, then back again. “We were on your side, too, you might remember. That was the point of the council—not to be disloyal to Richard, but to be loyal to you. I don’t know what’s possessed you to think France has come for you, but you’re mistaken. And that mistake is quickly turning you into England’s most incompetent villain.”
Villain. That was theatrical.
But there was nobody else around. There was nobody for her to perform to.
She didn’t honestly think this would work?
“And you want me … what, you want me to open th
e gates to welcome my brother in? You think I’ll surrender the whole castle based on your little lie? Oh dear.” He swallowed. “Is my reputation truly so rank that you think I’d fall for any bit of this?”
“Get out there!” Scarlet yelled, hot and fast. “Look for yourself! He’s right on the other side of the walls!”
“So Philip’s crossbowmen can take my head off as soon as I peek out?” He laughed. “No thank you. I’ll tell you what—if his armies retreat, I’ll allow your king inside the castle walls, alone, unaccompanied, that I can look on him with my own eyes. If he is who you say he is, he should have no issue with this, no?”
The captives looked at each other, a look of doubt shared between them.
“Exactly,” John finished.
“That’s an unreasonable demand, and you know it,” Arable grumbled.
“You like games, then?” Scarlet asked.
John didn’t answer, but was intrigued just enough to let him continue.
“What if we’re telling the truth? Think of it like a war game, a riddle. If you were outside an ally’s castle but he didn’t believe it was you, how could you prove yourself? You wouldn’t go into their castle unattended, not against an army full of half-dead Guardsmen eager to make a name for themselves, no. What’s your next choice? Tell us what the safe option is. You clearly won’t trust anything we suggest, so we’ll take your suggestion instead. Figure it out, you’re such a fucking clever fellow.”
“Now you want me to do your work for you.” John picked up another piece of the bread from the table. Perchance it would do the same damage to a skull that a real rock might. “But you’re going about this the wrong way, all of you. Well, the two of you who are talking, at least. The grim fellow, he’s here for … what? Decoration?”
“What do you mean the wrong way?” Arable asked before the mute could respond.
“Well, you’re telling me what to do and how to do it,” he answered, looking around the table for something sharper. He might need to hurt them, intimidate them, maybe torture one of them to discover what they were hiding. “But that’s not how you sell an idea. You have to make me feel something first. Either you make me feel good, then provide me something to make me feel that way again—or you make me feel bad, and then offer the remedy. Now it just so happens that I’m an unfeeling monster, and you’d be unsuccessful even if you weren’t the worst con artists in the world. But you have told me one important thing. Your presence here alone means that Philip wants the siege to end quickly, which means he’s worried he can’t win. Which means that I can win, and am thus even less likely to take your—”
“Holy fuck!” Will Scarlet interrupted, and John realized with a small surprise that he hadn’t been interrupted by anybody in a very long time. “Shut the fuck up!”
“You need a why?” Arable pushed. “Because it will save hundreds, maybe thousands of English lives. Englishmen are killing Englishmen out there. You’re worried about the King of France? Well he’s sitting back laughing while we kill each other right now! You’re making a bloodbath of your brother’s return home—the return that you claim you wanted!”
That was curious. He stared at her, wondering what her feeble little world and its feeble little players were like. A small sense of jealousy there, for her horizon that was within her reach. John wished he could be so small.
“Arable,” he said. “That means plowable, doesn’t it?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Who cares about lives, Arable? Who cares about your hundreds or thousands of lives? Those aren’t the stakes I deal with. Oh, certainly, I understand why you might care, since you’re one of the lives in question. But if you want me to explain myself, don’t pretend we play at the same table. At the level of princes and kings, we don’t gamble for mere lives, we gamble for the very breath of the country. That’s what I’m betting on. Lives … lives are just currency, we trade them like you might trade shillings. Everybody dies. Usually in some wretched way or another. At least in a battle, they’ll die with some dignity. You want me to sacrifice England for a handful of people who will just go and die somewhere else anyway? What would be the point? Why would I risk myself for something so insignificant?”
Her reaction was unique, perhaps he’d genuinely hurt her. There might even have been tears in her eyes, though he’d done nothing other than try to expand her perspective.
“What’s the point?” she asked, her voice choking. “Why are you doing any of this in the first place if there’s no point? Why do you care if Philip runs England—if that’s what you really think is going to happen—if life and death are so meaningless to you? Why did you even wake this morning, if the world is such an inconvenience? Why would I…” she faltered, bit her lip, looked down and then up again, “… why would I bring my daughter into this world if all I thought about was how she was going to die? I want her to live, I want her to love every bit of this world that you seem to despise. I want her to do better than I did—better than you did, most of all. I want her to meet whatever bitter thing it was that turned your soul so callous, and I want her to laugh at it. To laugh it right out of existence, and replace it with joy, and fascination, in every single second of her life. In the good and the bad. I want her to hurt when others hurt, I want her to care when others care, I want her to feel—everything, everything there is to feel. Delight and loss and misjudgment and forgiveness, every emotion we don’t even have a name for … to keep her from becoming you. You’re right, you shouldn’t be king. Because you’re the worst of us. I want my daughter to see you as I see you—as a warning!—while she’s still young enough to choose to become something better. And to help shape the world into something where men like you are no more. Not because we’ve killed them all off, no, but because no little boy would ever choose to grow up and become you. A world where it wouldn’t even make sense for someone like you to exist in the first place.”
Of all of it, John was oddly insulted by this one phrase. “What do you mean, men like me?”
She chewed on that a bit, before deciding. “Spectators.”
He’d never been called that before.
She leaned into it. “Audience members.”
Nor that.
“How am I an audience member?” he asked, worried she’d mistaken him for some other handsome prince. “I’ve rallied half the country to my side to defend ourselves against a foreign threat. You think that’s an example of inactivity?”
“How many children do you have?” she asked.
Probably a litter of bastards, but he knew what she meant. “None.”
“And why not?”
His mouth opened, but it was such a ridiculous—
“That face, right there.” She thrust her chin forward at him. “That shrug. That’s what makes you a spectator. For you, the world is just a thing to entertain you as your years pass by. You’re a bystander. What a tragedy, that you have the rare power to improve people’s lives, but you’re too selfish to even understand why you should do so. Of course you don’t have any children, because you think this world is for you. But you’re wrong. It’s for my daughter. And as soon as she’s born, it will be for her daughter. You think you’re so enlightened, to play at the big table, to proclaim that lives have no value—but you’re the reason why they have no value! Because spectators like you are in control.”
Her mouth opened again as if she had more to say, but she shook her head and seemed to give up. She wasn’t even talking to him, he thought, not really. She was reacting to something else, maybe a lifetime of something elses. A long history of spectators and bystanders in her past, but not John, no. An audience member, as she had described it, would never have lifted a finger to begin with. But still, John’s feet carried him slowly to the window. The army’s campfires littered the northern hill as far as he could see. Of its own will, the first bit of his resolve cracked and raised an eyebrow at that enemy with renewed curiosity.
What if she wasn’t lying?
<
br /> What if that truly was Richard?
What if he was making it worse?
“I would need you to prove it,” his lips said. He stared into a world that waited on him.
“Go out and meet him then,” Scarlet answered.
“You know I can’t.”
“Send someone else. Someone who will recognize King Richard.”
As if he had not thought of that days ago. “There’s nobody I could send that could not be bought with enough coin.”
“Then it has to be you.”
If he left the castle, and it was Philip, he’d be killed. “You know I can’t.”
“Hey!”
John turned to realize the mute redhead had finally chosen to speak, and it was just possible that John had never seen a man so full of fury in his entire life. His words clawed their way from his throat, one at a time, with nearly insurmountable difficulty.
“My best friend died for you yesterday. He saved a lot of lives doing so, and he had no power, no name, no money. Don’t you fucking dare complain about the things you can’t do. Quit your whining and figure your shit out!”
John probably should have been insulted, but the man had an accidental point. If there was anyone in the world who could outsmart this problem, John was certainly the one to do so. And even though the key words—no power, no name, no money—came from the redhead, it was Prince John Lackland, unwitting heir to England’s throne, who took those pieces and turned them into a plan.
SIXTY-SEVEN
CHARLEY DANCER
THE KENNELS, NOTTINGHAM CASTLE
THE DOGS BARKED, BUT Charley Dancer touched his fist to the cold cage bars, and their bared teeth and riot quickly turned to whimpers and wet noses on his knuckles.
“You remember me,” he cooed, slipping his hand between the iron to stroke their ears. He’d often taken his dinner down here when he wanted to get away, and would throw scraps to the hunting dogs. Back when he was a Guardsman. Dogs didn’t care what was happening now, or what had happened since. They welcomed him back blindly, slapping their tongues into his palm, letting him grab back and tug them around playfully. Good girls.
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