“I treat everyone with respect, Scarlet,” he told me, and the way he said it sounded fair insulted.
“Yeah, but there’s no bowing and kissing hands, and you even talk different. You think rich folk don’t understand plain speaking?”
He chuckled. “Of course they do. But they also understand speaking in a gentler fashion.”
“And you think common folk can’t speak gentle?”
He laughed outright. “You’re sort of proving my point, Scar.”
I glared. “Would you then assume, because I can speak in a light and lofty manner, that I was born of noble blood?” I asked, aping his “lady.” More than that, aping the life I didn’t have no more—and it tasted like a mouthful of salt. “Talking this way or that don’t make you no better. And you act like it do.”
His eyes squinted like he could see straight through me. “You act like I’m doing an unkindness.”
“Ain’t you? To common folk? You think you’re some outlaw, Robin Hood, but you were born noble and you won’t change that none.”
“I am who I am, Scarlet. It’s no secret I was born noble, and that’s part of the reason people look to me as a leader. It’s my birthright to protect them.”
I tugged my shoulders, pulling my knees under to stand up. “True enough. Still don’t mean noble folk are any better.”
“Never said they were. I’m doing all this for the common folk, Scar, not the nobles. And when did you become the moral compass of the band?” he asked.
That stung. It weren’t meant to, but it did. I took the bag of jewels he’d left. “John, want to come with me to Nottingham to sell these off?”
“We can wait till tomorrow,” Rob said.
“Don’t want to,” I said. “John?”
“Sure,” John said, running over. “I’ll even carry the bag, m’lady.” He gave me a big, lord-like bow.
“I’m courteous to common women too, Scar,” Rob yelled as I walked with John.
I waved a hand, not looking round. Rob weren’t neither. But he didn’t want to cop to that, and I didn’t want to fess that I were a little jealous. He weren’t all “courteous” to me. You make me watch you like a hawk, and I don’t want to. He wouldn’t never say that to a gentle lady.
“You’re frowning,” John told me.
“Rob’s so high and mighty,” I said. “Rubs me wrong.”
“He’s an earl, Scar. We can’t forget that.”
“He won’t let us.”
“Come on, now, you follow him for the same reason I do. He’s a good leader and he’s that despite hard injustices. He came home from the Crusades and found he had no home. That’s hard enough.”
“It’s stupid. Men think they are their title, and women can’t even hold one till they squeeze onto their husband’s.”
“I thought all this was arguing against noblewomen. Change of heart?”
“No. I don’t like that Rob thinks he’s better than us, and I don’t like how women get nothing for their own selves.”
“Rob is better than us, Scar. Better than me, for sure.”
I pushed him. “Don’t say that. Why, because he’s noble? You’re just as good as he is.”
He gave a little when I pushed him, and he rocked back and then forward. “You saying you wouldn’t take the chance to be a noble?” he asked. “All silver spoons and ‘yes, milady’s?”
My cheeks flushed dark. “No. I wouldn’t. And what do that have to do with being better or worse?”
He shrugged. “Everyone wants to be wealthy, and landed, and titled. That’s why they’re better—because they have what everyone wants.”
Before I could stop myself, I stamped my foot like a child. “It ain’t better, being wealthy, landed, titled. If I had a choice, I’d choose to be just as I am. Over and over again!” I shouted. Only, that didn’t quite strike true in my chest. Seeing that lady, seeing Rob’s smiles, it all made me wonder. If he had known me back then, before the thieving and the scars and before my soul turned so black, would I have earned his smiles?
Would that have made that whole awful life worth it?
“No, I’d take it in a heartbeat,” John kept on. “Chests of jewels to shower on all the ladies in the kingdom. Bribe one of them to marry me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Come off it, John. You needn’t bribe any girl, and you’re a fine enough man as it is.”
He caught me, pulling his arm round my waist. “Now, who could resist you when you say something like that?”
He pushed me up against a tree and tilted his head like he were going to kiss me. I tried not to laugh as I put a hand over his mouth. “John,” I stopped him.
He opened his eyes. “What?” he asked, my hand still on his mouth.
“Do you know how many girls I’ve heard you say that to?”
He grinned. “Don’t mean it’s not true.” He kissed my hand and I pulled it back. “Can I kiss you, or not?”
I put my arms round his neck. “’Spose you can, but I don’t reckon you want to.”
“I don’t?”
“You just like to shine on someone, John.”
“Yeah, and I’m looking to shine on you for a while,” he told me, mushing his nose against mine.
I shrugged. “But not forever. I’m not that sort, John. ’Sides, I think I like you better without all the courting.”
He laughed. “Really?”
I nodded, craning up to kiss his cheek and pulling out of his arms. “Let’s go, you big lug.”
We managed to fence most of the jewelry before dark and got out of the market before the gates closed in Nottingham. I wedged the purse into the back of my vest, along with some bread and dried meat wrapped in muslin that I’d swiped.
“How much did you end up getting?” John asked.
“For the jewels? You were right there!”
“I meant, how much did you steal?”
I blushed a little. “You saw me stealing?”
He chuckled. “No. But that doesn’t mean you weren’t doing it. Every now and again I’d see you someplace I didn’t expect.”
“What does that mean?”
“That you were thieving, I reckon.”
I shrugged. “Some bread. Some meat. Coin besides. Let’s stop by Edwinstowe and give it to Lena and the others. Do you know where they’re staying?”
He nodded, stepping closer, his shoulder rubbing mine. “So, what about your story?”
“My story?”
“You know about my family. What’s your story?”
“I don’t, you know. Much whispered it to me once, that they died in a fire. I don’t know the whole story.”
He looked down. “My father was a blacksmith. I was born down in Locksley, you know. I knew Rob as a boy. Well, I met him, really. But we moved a lot, wherever the trade was best. We came to Nottinghamshire not long after the sheriff took over the Huntingdon lands. The sheriff ordered a hundred swords from my father and then wouldn’t pay the price for them.
“My father wouldn’t give them over when he wouldn’t pay, and he sent me to market to fetch a price for them. It wasn’t like we could sell them in Nottingham, so I went up to Newark at the Trent. I had to stay there the night.” He shook his head. “I tumbled my first girl that night.”
I stayed quiet.
“I’d spent every day of my life with my family, Scar. I could look at my little sister and guess her thoughts in a blink. With that kind of closeness, I thought I would have felt it, had some sense that they were in trouble. That they had passed. But I didn’t feel anything. My little sister and baby brother died, crying for . . .” He trailed off, and I weren’t sure if they cried for him, for help, for their lives, or for what, but it felt terrible. He swallowed, and it looked like he were choking down his own heart. “And I was with a girl.”
I weren’t the sort for much touching, but I couldn’t help it. I put my fingertips on the inside bit of his hand. It didn’t feel so strange, so I slipped them down more. His fingers cur
led on mine, and without meaning to, I were holding his hand.
He stopped, tugging my hand so I were pulled against him. I looked up. He held our hands between us like a dressed duck. “I don’t tell girls that story, Scar.”
“I won’t tell.”
“I know. But Bess and Ellie and them—I don’t tell them, all right?”
I bit my teeth into my cheek a little. Were that meant to be a good thing? I didn’t like holding secrets. I had enough to hold on to. “All right.”
He tugged my hand again, and we started walking. I pulled my hand out. He didn’t need it no more, and if you weren’t careful with things like that, it could go on and on, never letting go of the hands. “So, what about your story?”
I shrugged. “Got lots of stories.”
“How’d you start thieving?”
Shrugged again. “Same way most do, I figure. Needed something I couldn’t pay for.”
“What was the first thing you stole?”
The answer to that were only a single question away from Joanna. “I don’t remember.”
“Sure you do.”
“I thought you said I wouldn’t have to answer no questions with you.”
“You never have to. I was just curious.”
“It were medicine,” I told him. “From the monks, for a cough.”
He chuckled. “You don’t go halfway, do you? Awfully brassy of you to steal first from a monastery.”
I smiled, but it were less for him naming me brassy and most because he didn’t ask who were coughing.
Lena were at the Morgans’, a farming family in Edwinstowe, and they welcomed us in as soon as they saw us darken their door.
“John Little,” Matilda Morgan greeted, wrapping him in a hug. “My dear boy, how are you?”
“Very well, Mistress Morgan. And you look lovely tonight.”
She blushed. “Little charmer.” She let him go and saw me, and her mouth went flat like a toad’s. “Will.”
I tipped my hat to her. “Hullo, Mistress Morgan.”
She looked behind her, and I saw the three curly-headed ninnies she liked to call daughters. “Keep to yourself, Will,” she told me.
I ducked my head, but I felt anger twist in me. John were the swiver, not me. Just because her daughters liked who they thought I were didn’t make it my fault. And I knew for a fact that John ain’t always been a gentleman with Aggie Morgan, her redhaired oldest.
He smiled at her, and she giggled.
I tugged my hat down and went to the hearth, where I saw Lena. I thought she were sitting with Mr. Morgan, but it were Mark Tanner.
“Will Scarlet,” Lena greeted, jumping up. She hugged me and pulled me down next to her.
Mark shook my hand. “Will,” he said.
“Mark,” I said. “Didn’t know you were staying here too.”
“Oh, I just came to call on Lena.”
My mouth opened, but just then John came over, trailing the girls behind him. I pulled a little closer to Lena, but they crowded around us.
“Did you give it to them yet?” John asked.
I flushed, but I reached round behind me to pull out the food. I passed the meat to Lena and started to hand out the rolls, but Matilda pushed past her daughter. She grabbed the meat and threw it back in my lap. “No,” she snapped.
“Mother!” one of the girls cried.
I blinked. “What?”
“I know what you are, Will Scarlet, and how you come by your ‘gifts.’ We are a good, Christian family. God, and not a thief, will provide for us.”
I knew my cheeks were red as my name, and I couldn’t think of a word to say. “But—” I tried.
She cuffed me on my ear. “You heard me. Shame on you, and shame on Robin for letting you do it.”
I shrank back, holding my head in shock.
“Steady on!” John said, jumping in front and pushing between me and her. Lena’s arm came around me. “Will’s only trying to help.”
“We don’t need help,” she said. “Certainly not from the likes of him.”
“Will isn’t like nobody,” John said. “And he works harder to save our people than anyone else.”
“It’s noble of you, John, but I think he should go. Now.”
I weren’t waiting around for her to kick me out. I were already on my feet and past Mark Tanner, running out the back door and not waiting for John.
I bundled up the food and left it for George and Mary and little baby Robin, and I went back to the cave. Rob and Much were there, so I climbed the trees, going up over the cave without talking. I don’t think they even saw me.
“Rob!” John called, crashing through the forest. “Much, have you seen Scar?”
“No, why?” Rob called, standing straight, his bow in hand.
“Mistress Morgan tossed her out for stealing.”
Rob’s face went flat and hard, and I felt sick. “She stole from the Morgans?”
John scowled. “Of course not. She brought them food for caring for Lena, and they practically tossed it in her face.”
Rob sighed. “Because she stole it.”
I pushed my cheek against the tree.
“She’s probably just run off for a while,” Much said. “She does that.”
“I know, Much. But she can’t run off every time someone says or does something.” Rob shook his head. “Or she can, but if she wants to do that, we can’t count on her as part of this band.”
I opened my mouth to tell them I were there and hadn’t run nowhere, but it didn’t come out.
“We can always count on Scar,” Much defended.
“I’ll admit, I’ve called her a coward in the past,” John said.
I hugged my knees.
“But we can count on her,” he continued. “She’s allowed to be hurt.”
“She’s not a coward,” Rob said. “I have never and will never accuse her of that. She’s as brave as they come—but her first instinct is to hide from us. To hide from me.”
“Why shouldn’t I hide?” I called. “When with every odd breath you tell me how fast you want me out of this band.”
I hopped lower in the trees, standing, staring defiant at him. Water were in my eyes but I didn’t much care.
“Christ, Scar, you’ve been here the whole time?” Rob asked.
My face went wobbly. I had to ask it, and I couldn’t shake or shiver none. “Do you want me to go, Robin Hood?”
His jaw moved like he were chewing it over. He heaved a sigh and threw his bow across his back, climbing up the tree. He came up beside me and I didn’t dare blink. Tears would have gone every which way, and I weren’t never going to cry in front of Rob. “Go up,” he told me.
I climbed, blinking and wiping my mug on my sleeve. I climbed faster than Rob, even though my shoulder set to an awful aching. I waited for him on the branch that were highest I could sit on.
He came and sat beside me.
“Yes, I want you to go,” he said, and I thought I heard wrong. I looked at him, and more tears jumped out. “I want you to go, Scar, if you can’t trust me. If you can’t let me in, then you have to go.”
“I trust you, Rob. I always have. I don’t even want to, but you’re just . . . you. It’s terrible. Do you have to know the whole awful story for you to trust me?”
“No. Sometimes I worry that I don’t know you at all, though.”
“You don’t trust me.”
He sighed. “I want to. But we both know you lie to me.”
I hung my head. “I can’t lie to you, I don’t think. I try not to talk ’bout things, though.”
“I know. Why is that?”
“Telling secrets ain’t done me no favors in the past.”
“Who was she?”
“Who?”
“The girl in London. The one you don’t want to tell me about.”
I swallowed, but her name bubbled up in my throat. “Joanna,” I said. “My sister.”
He closed his eyes. “She protected you.”
I nodded, tears tripping down my nose.
“And you stole food for her.” He sighed. “What happened to her?”
“She caught sick. She kept coughing,” I said. I hugged my arms over my stomach. “I stole food, and medicine, milk and water, and some Scottish whisky—and nothing worked. She coughed blood everywhere.”
“Consumption?” he asked soft.
I curled up a shoulder. “Don’t know. Never had a name for it.”
“She died.”
I nodded. “The day after, I met you, and I let you catch me.”
He pulled back. “Let me catch you? You didn’t let me.”
I pushed water off my face, not looking.
“But that’s foolish. Why would you ever let me catch you?” He stopped moving, and I didn’t look, but I could feel his sorry stare. “Because the punishment for stealing is death, and you thought I was a high lord. You thought if you just stole from me, you would die. And you’d be with her. And you’re so pious, you’d never take your own life.”
I sniffed back tears. “Don’t think I count as pious, quite.”
“But that’s it, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “You didn’t do what you ought,” I told him. “Prison were a bit of a different matter than dying. I never want to die the way she did, diseased and slow, even if it would get me back to her.”
“Christ,” he murmured.
“I just left her in the room we rented,” I told him. It were like the dam had cracked and a geyser were shooting out, and for once all I wanted were to talk about Joanna. “She were like stone in the bed, and with blood all around. Her hair didn’t even look like hers, where it were still on her head. I didn’t—I didn’t know what to do.” Tears kept falling. “I left her there. There weren’t nowhere for her to be buried. I wrote her name in a book and left it on her bed so they might find our kin, but I never checked. I just left.”
“You lost everything you had, Scarlet. No one could judge you no matter how you reacted.”
“It were worse than letting her die. I left her alone.”
“Where did you go?”
I wiped my eyes. “Church. I sat there and cried and all the saints were fair glaring at me and it were raining something awful. A candle knocked over and a bit of the wall caught fire. I put it out, but I ran. I couldn’t do nothing but run. I figured it were a sign from God that I weren’t welcome nowhere on earth. So when I saw you, it seemed like another sign.” I shook my head, and more water ran out. “But then you didn’t let me die. You made me come with you, and you made me watch how many other people were hurting, and you make me fail every day when I can’t fix it.”
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