Lionhearts

by Nathan Makaryk

  Within, she took the cup of wine from whatever capitulating nobleman was in front of the King, and wordlessly turned it over to spill into the dirt at their feet. Soon enough the room was empty.

  “We need to change,” she said.

  If there was any justification to all this, it was to place her in this exact spot, for her to say those exact words, and she would not leave King Richard’s command tent until he dealt with the enormity of her demand.

  “Who are you, again?” Richard joked, in French.

  She changed languages, her first and final concession. “I said, cousin, we need to change.”

  “What are we changing?”

  “England.”

  And she told him why. She told him everything she’d told the others at the council in Huntingdon, and everything she’d learned since. She finally had the words that had just been whispers back at Locksley Castle, and now she could scream them. It was not enough for Richard to return, if the country just limped on as it always had. Its people needed protection beyond the unbridled whims of their masters. The earls and barons of England needed to be held accountable, as did her kings and princes—and Lady Marion Fitzwalter was not going to leave the room until her cousin, her King, who had finally returned, agreed to actually make it better.

  At some point in her tirade, his face softened. His defenses lowered, he started genuinely listening, and he asked her to slow down. “Tell me more.”

  * * *

  MUSIC PLAYED THAT NIGHT. Not just in King Richard’s camp, but all throughout Nottingham. The city streets that had been black as pitch the last few nights now glowed, pouring their warmth up to light their stone and timber faces. A celebration of victory was shared by both sides—though Marion wondered how many truly understood the details. It didn’t matter. They were alive, and King Richard was returned to them, and that was enough to be joyful. All the death and animosity of yesterday was forgiven now. Amongst all the other things they discussed, Marion had also persuaded Richard to be lenient to John’s allies—who had only been following orders, and genuinely thought they were defending their country from the French. It was the first war in history, she reckoned, where there had been no losers.

  None save the dead, of course. And those that mourned them.

  She returned to Huntingdon’s campsite to find its main tent bustling more than she would have expected. It was almost too full for her to even approach, but she found her way within and spotted John Little in the throng.

  “What is it?” she asked, managing a path close to him.

  “Oh, Marion.” He embraced her with both arms. “They found Lord Robert.”

  Her heart leapt at his maddeningly vague words. “Alive?”

  “Alive, yes, sorry!” he chuckled, realizing his mistake. “Though maybe just barely.”

  Marion ground her jaw and stared at him. My but she loved John Little, but he had a talent for sharing emotions before facts.

  “He’s in the corner.” John gestured. “How did it go with the King?”

  She paused, touching his shoulder as she thought on that.

  “It went well,” she said, and felt the awesome relief of being able to say it aloud. John’s face lit up, his cheeks drawn tight in an expansive smile, and he turned away to hug the nearest people he could find, whether they wanted it or not.

  There was a cot in the rear of the tent, and decency kept the crowd a few feet away from its occupant. It pained Marion that there were no better accommodations to be given him, but half the city had become a hospital and still there was not room enough. Robert lay propped up on the cot, looking anything but comfortable. His face—his face—she gasped, was a mess of black and purple, bloated around his eyes and lips, which had split wide and wore open wounds. Marion might not have recognized him at all if she’d not been told who he was.

  She knelt beside him and put her hands to her face by instinct, then second-guessed herself. Certainly he would not want to know how wretched he looked, and she shouldn’t be the one to reveal it. Instead she clamped her lips tight and craned her head into his eyeline, giving a disapproving frown.

  “That’s not the face I sent you off with,” she grumbled. “What did you do with your old one? I thought it looked better on you.”

  “Sorry, my lady,” the earl whispered, the tips of his lips curling slightly upward. “I think it may still be attached to that knight’s fist. I’ll retrieve it for you if you ask me to, but maybe not until tomorrow?”

  “Shhh.” She placed a hand on his chest. “You did it.”

  He returned an ugly cackle and a chunk of black snorted from his nostrils. “Oh, I didn’t do anything. I was just along for the ride, and came out none too well for it. Arable went into the castle, she’s the one that did it.”

  Marion turned, hoping perhaps Arable was nearby, but found only Friar Tuck. “Anyone else?” she asked him, afraid of the answer.

  “Not yet,” Tuck said, bowing his head.

  Marion returned her attention to Robert. She tried not to imagine how he’d received those injuries. He’d gone into the city in her stead, refusing to let her risk herself. It was possible that the Delaney brothers and Arable had been killed long before they accomplished their mission, and that the war had ceased entirely on its own. Perhaps it was Will Scarlet who had stopped the war, or Prince John had come to his senses without any help at all, and the only thing Marion had contributed was to make the pile of the dead a little higher.

  Cold fingers entwined with her own, and she was pulled from her dark thoughts.

  “I know what you’re doing,” came Robert’s coarse voice. “Don’t. It’s not on you.”

  “It is on me.” She squeezed his hand. “But that’s alright. That’s the point. I want it to be on me.”

  It was Robert who had taught her that, after all. And Amon, misguided as he may have been. Marion’s burden was that of leadership now, which meant she needed to feel every loss, every injury, in order to know the weight of her every decision. The moment she grew numb to the consequences of her actions would be the day she turned into the very thing she fought against. She would not play with people’s lives the way others move numbers in a ledger.

  Which reminded her. “I spoke with the king, Robert, and he was interested in our ideas. We can make some progress, real progress, on all the things we wanted.”

  “That’s good.” He smiled. “While we were sneaking into the city, you were trapped talking politics with the King? Sounds like you had it worse after all.”

  She had to blink away a tear, just at the joy of seeing his humor intact. “Well, since you won’t let me join you on your mad adventures, then I can at least handle the big things.”

  His fingers stretched farther, taking her wrist. “That’s a deal. You manage the king parts, I’ll take care of the getting-our-face-beaten-in parts.”

  She laughed for him. “That’s a deal.”

  “And no more Robin Hooding,” he added, with something more serious in his eye.

  The name no longer brought the immediate pain it once had. Now it was just a stone in her belly. She pursed her lips, refusing to let another tear come. “Agreed. You know, when Robin died we realized the best part of Robin Hood was that it didn’t matter who he was. That anybody could be Robin Hood.”

  Robert’s thumb traced her wrist, back and forth. “But?”

  “But you know what the worst part was?” She looked into him. “That anybody could be Robin Hood.”

  Bruised and beaten, his eyes were gentle, and he understood. Some instinct recognized that private smile and Marion wanted to lose herself, but modesty forced her to withdraw her hand. She was all too aware of the number of eyes on them, and the impropriety of their closeness. She would have liked to kiss that hand, to touch his face, but not with an audience. There was too much at stake, she chided herself, to follow such adolescent urges. She wasn’t quite sure where she stood right now, but she had the ear of the King—and it would do poorly for h
er to be too friendly with a married earl.

  On the other hand, she considered, who the fuck cares?

  She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, holding his head softly with both hands. His skin was puffy and swollen, his lips thicker than before, her nose scratched against a hard scab, and she didn’t mind any of it one bit. Robert did not flinch in shock, nor smile his way through this one. His other hand floated up to find the fabric of her dress, pulling her gently closer. Marion didn’t know what this meant, and didn’t want to know. For the moment, it was what her heart wanted, it was a thank-you, it was relief and celebration. Yesterday none of them had any reason to think they had any future at all, so today they could all of them live as if the future was anything they wanted it to be.

  And at last—at last—they were in a position to actually build that future, rather than simply survive it.

  The war was over, Richard was returned, and there was no need for anyone else to die in Nottingham.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  WILL SCARLET

  NOTTINGHAM

  “ARE WE LEAVING NOTTINGHAM?” Elena asked. She hugged her knees to her chest, rocking forward and back beside Will on the gentle wooden slope of the rooftop, keeping him company as he watched the ramshackle buildings of Plumptre Street across the way.

  “I’m leaving Nottingham,” he answered her, picking at another clump of dirt caked into his boots. “But you? You’re dead.”

  She snorted and flicked her braid over her shoulder, the one with the twine in it. Even when she was alive, she’d never let him get away with using facts against her. “You’re dead, too, lover. Sooner you come to terms with that, sooner we can get back to having some fun.”

  She nestled closer to him, slipped her hand down his chest, under his belt, her cold fingers finding him waiting for her. That satisfied hum she always gave.

  “Go away,” he told her, and himself, and stood. He didn’t want to wait any longer, but he had yet to see any sign of Arthur, or Arable, or Zinn. He’d been waiting here, watching Zinn’s hovel on Plumptre Street, for a day. Surely Arthur would return here if he were freed. Surely Zinn would show up here on her own. As of yet, neither had.

  It was possible they were still locked up in the castle. Will had become an object of fascination after returning with the news that King Richard was really King Richard. Every prominent man in the castle wanted to speak with Henry Russell to learn what had happened, as the prince returned to his seclusion in the tower. One by one he spoke with them in the Sheriff’s office, and piece by piece the castle crumbled into chaos as John’s allies dissembled around him. Somebody probably was supposed to remember that Will was a criminal, that he should have been on a noose. Somebody probably was supposed to guard him, and lock his door between visitors. Instead, while the castle reeled in relief at the prince’s surrender, Will Scarlet just walked the fuck out of Nottingham Castle’s newly opened gates like he was going for a Sunday stroll.

  But in so doing, he’d left his companions behind.

  “I have to know they’re alright,” he said.

  “Suit yourself,” Elena cackled, tied a noose around her neck, and jumped off the edge.

  He gave one last hard look at Zinn’s door before resolving to climb down. He didn’t even know if there was any point in waiting. Arthur would probably want to return to Marion anyway, just like he’d wanted ever since they came to the city. As Arable had described it, the rest of their old group was doing “just fine in Huntingdon.” Marion had been right all along—she’d brought her people safety, while Will’s ideas had descended into a spiral of failures. Stutely had abandoned them, and David was dead. Nottingham had beaten them all senseless, broken them.

  Will couldn’t stay in the city … but neither could he go back with the others.

  “They can’t domesticate you,” Elena said, next to him again, sharpening a blade.

  There was no life for him in Huntingdon, no honest life.

  “That’s not who we are,” she said, firing an arrow off the rooftop. It struck a man in the chest below, who screamed, and Elena shot him again.

  He shook it off and descended by the wooden scaffolds on the edge of the building. He’d hoped to see John Little and Tuck again after all this, he’d wanted them to say they were wrong about him. He wanted to tell them the unlikely story of the time he walked between two armies, side by side with the prince to meet the King—the true story of how the gangling runt Will Scarlet ended the war. But after that, what place was there for him in the real world? Not at dinner tables and castles. Not policy and politesse. Not for Ten Bell Will.

  His skills mingled less than kindly with others.

  “Where are we going?” Elena asked, tiptoeing along the roof across the street.

  “You know where we’re going. You’re in my head.”

  “I know,” she said, walking backward in front of him now, her hair undone and wild, half flowing over her face. “I just like talking to you.”

  “You don’t get the things you like,” he told her. He had to be firm with her, it was the only way. “Not anymore. Not since you killed yourself.”

  “I fucked Rob o’the Fire.” She touched herself between her legs. “And he was better than you.”

  The plank eventually turned to splinters in his hands, shredded scraps of wood, his palms bled and blistered. He had found the wood on the ground, he had beaten the stone wall beside him until he couldn’t hear her, couldn’t think of her, but never until he couldn’t remember her.

  There were other sounds behind his heartbeat, behind his labored breaths, and if he waited long enough he might recognize it as singing. The city was celebrating the peaceful ending to a relatively short siege, and the return of King Richard meant a return to normality. Will both envied and despised these people, since it took so little to please them.

  * * *

  AS MUCH AS HE hated to go back there, he took comfort in knowing it would be the very last time. He took the long path, down by the southern wharfs on Leen Side, and then a serpentine route through Dodson Yard, then The Peach and the Pear, around and between Severn’s and Ten Bell, where he’d scrapped a hundred times, a hundred years ago, with poor Freddy Fawkes. He glanced down Knotted Alley to see if any young lovers were tying their ribbons together, wondering how long it had been since his own had been cut down and stolen away on the bottom of someone’s boot. He wasn’t normally one for nostalgia, but then he was never one for swearing absolutes, either.

  And Will would never, swear to God, return to Nottingham.

  “That’s where we met.” Elena pointed at a stone wall, which was not where they met. She ran to it at full speed, diving at the last second to meet it face first, her neck snapping.

  He walked faster, and took a direct path for the caves just north of Red Lion Square.

  The squeeze was not as difficult as it had been even two months ago, meaning he was skinnier now than he realized. He didn’t need a lantern on the inside, he just kept his hands out to the cavern walls, knowing the long slope down, and where it led.

  “Maybe we can find your ear down there,” she said. “Maybe I can find a real man to fuck, too.”

  He punched the wall, didn’t care at the torn flesh on his knuckles. They were raw and cramped already from the war, and nobody cared what happened to them, to him.

  The light that crawled up the tunnels was brighter than normal, orange eating up the ripples of the cave’s sides, drawing him in. When he made the last curve that brought him into the foot of the Lions Den, he knew why. The Red Lions were gone, which apparently meant it was time to burn them and their things. If any had survived after mobbing the siege ladders, they weren’t here now.

  Alfred’s piecemeal throne was ablaze in the middle of the room, an earthy smoke blooming upward to disperse against the ceiling of the cavern, whisking away into little eddies that revealed the many wormhole openings that led to the world above. Around the effigy were a dozen children, laughing and t
ossing things in, daring each other to get closer, pushing the weaker ones and cackling when they ran.

  “I dare you to sit on it,” Elena said, pulling her shirt off over her head, dancing in silhouette.

  His presence did not go unnoted. The shit rolled downhill as each skinny gang child found someone skinnier and younger than himself to do the dirty work of telling whoever was in charge that Will was here. Eventually the lowliest little waif was found, who kicked up a pout about having to leave the fire, and slumped off as if every footstep held all the world’s unfairness. Scarlet admired that little waif. He, too, had been the bottom of the chain once upon a time. That little skiver had an entire unspoilt life ahead of him, full of poor decisions to leap into, and opportunities to demolish. Elena raised her glass to the little man. “Make a mess of it, life,” she said, and downed the drink.

  “Oh no,” she continued, coughing blood into her palms. “This happens every time…”

  Will looked elsewhere. The shadows of the dancing children painted the walls in profane caricatures. Most of the room’s previous decorations were gone—stolen, probably—and replaced with giant lumpy drawings of hands in white paint. The “Children of the White Hand,” Arable had described them, though Will doubted they’d last long. After a pillar like the Red Lions was toppled, it would probably be a year of in-fighting before the gangs were ever organized and stable again. Part of him wanted to stay and pick up those pieces. He knew how to use that chaos to his advantage, it was where he was comfortable.

  Elena slipped her hand into his and squeezed it. “But I’m here.”

  “But you’re here,” he said back to her.

  This was his last night in Nottingham.

  When the waif returned he had a visitor in tow, and it was exactly who Will had hoped it would be. Zinn wore a long split coat now over her normal ragged outfit—just reminiscent enough of Alfred Fawkes to invite comparison, but still distinctly her own. Elena nodded in approval. “She knows what she’s doing.”