Scarlet

  Every bit of me hollered to run away and go nowhere near the castle, and I did nothing of the sort. It were unbelievable foolish to not trust one’s own bits; this were the sort of stupid muck that you got into by caring ’bout other people. I were haunted by the feel of my hand on Ravenna’s all night through.

  I waited by the side of the road until I saw Tuck’s wagon round the corner, just like we planned. I hopped up beside him when he slowed. “Robin thanks you for this, Tuck,” I told him.

  He nodded. “I do love Robin, but I’m doing this for those twins. You just make sure it runs like sunup and sundowns, Scarlet.”

  My stomach pushed into my pipes. “Yes.”

  “And I’m sorry already for having to hit you around in a bit.”

  I nodded and put up my hood, and we rode to the castle in quiet. It were strange; the pitch of the wagon were gentle and fair even, and for a breath I felt like this might have been the way of my life, if I were a boy in true, if I hadn’t had the cursed luck to ever be born a girl.

  The guards stopped us at the gate, and they inspected Tuck’s barrels. This weren’t the hard part, ’course. This were the “no yap, no trap” part, and all I had to do were keep my mouth shut.

  They let us pass, and the slow and easy pitch of the wagon continued. We rolled through the lower bailey, and there I slid off the wagon. I went quick to the air vent, trusting that Rob, Much, and John would uphold their own parts.

  With a twist and a jump I slid down the vent, bringing dry dirt in behind me. I dropped to my feet; my knee hit a touch hard and smarted, but it weren’t broken. I stood, running for the twins’ cell.

  “You’re too late,” Godfrey told me, his voice something mournful.

  Ravenna were gone.

  Chapter

  Eight

  Godfrey, what have they done with her?”

  He hit the bars. “Nottingham came down here after you left, and he saw her. He said she was pretty and then she was just gone. Goddamn you, you coward! You could have fought him off last night; you could have taken us then. This is your fault!”

  My hands shook as I picked the lock. Tears were pushing at my eyes and I felt like retching. “I’ll get her free,” I promised him. My voice were a bare squeak. Christ, and the sheriff just lost his mistress to the birthing chamber, if that Alice lass the day before were such.

  The door swung open and he charged at me, slinging a punch across my face. I didn’t even bother fighting back. I hit the bars and he hit me again. I fell, and he kicked me. “Goddamn you, Will Scarlet!” he spat.

  He stepped back, and I reckoned he were done. I got to my feet. I could bare see straight; my eyes felt like they were rolling loose, and every time they rolled, gunpowder went off in my head. I went to the next cell, and it took me a few minutes too long to pick the lock on that.

  “What’re you doing?” the prisoner asked. “Get the lad out of here!”

  “We can take six,” I told him. “So we’re taking six.”

  I opened four more cells, and by then the pain didn’t feel so god-awful. On my face, at least. There were a sickness I felt that retching wouldn’t cure. Godfrey were right. It were my stupid plan, and I failed them both.

  Rob and John came into the prison to meet me. “What’s taking so long?” Rob asked. “Where’s Ravenna?”

  Godfrey shoved me from behind, and I fell to my knees. “Ask this miserable vermin!” he roared.

  Rob picked me up. Not by the arm, like he’d do with a lad; he took one of my hands in his and with his other arm caught me up by my waist, pulling me to his side and a bit behind him. His voice were steel and his arms sure felt like it. “Do that again, Godfrey, and I’ll lock you back up myself.”

  “Nottingham has her,” I told him. My voice felt like I swallowed rocks. “Nottingham wants her.”

  “Which one of you is actually the Hood?” one of the prisoners asked, confused.

  “Me,” Rob said, lowering his hood.

  “Your Grace!” several cried.

  John started tossing out the robes he and Rob were wearing. “Let’s go.”

  “Like hell,” Godfrey snarled. “I’m not leaving without Ravenna.”

  “We’ll get her out,” Rob told him. “We need a plan first, though.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll stay. I can’t leave her here. You lot get them out and get back in to help, however you can.”

  “Not a chance,” Rob told me, his hold on me tightening, his ocean eyes locking on me and washing out the rest.

  “Don’t be a fool, lad!” one of the prisoners told me. “You took too many blows to the head already.”

  I glared at him from under my hood, but Rob just held on to me and pulled my hood back, looking full at what Godfrey’d done. Rob’s grip felt full to bruising, and for a moment I didn’t stop him. Any pain at that moment made the sickness feel a little less sick.

  “You need to get them out of here, Rob,” I reminded, trying to shake loose of him.

  “Not before I kill him,” Robin growled.

  I saw Godfrey step back.

  “You did this to her?” John roared, pushing Godfrey back from me.

  “Her?” Godfrey cried. “That’s a bleeding girl?”

  “We need to go!” I yelled, pushing at Rob’s chest.

  Rob didn’t budge, his fingers iron bands strapped round my own. “Only if you’re coming too.”

  “Fine!” I snapped. I turned to Godfrey, shaking Rob off. “I’ll get her out or I’ll die trying, Godfrey.”

  Godfrey’s face twisted but he nodded, and he finished putting on the robe.

  I broke away from them like I were supposed to. The only reason I didn’t run hell for leather were because I knew Rob would get pinched coming after me, and he wouldn’t even care. My face felt wet in the open air and I weren’t sure if it were blood or tears.

  I kept an eye on them, moving at an equal pace but staying far ahead. When I got to Tuck delivering barrels in the upper bailey, he started yelling at me for running off. He slapped me around, making sport of it when I tried to defend myself, and everyone were watching, never noticing my boys climbing into the empty barrels.

  When he pushed me back to the wagon, I sat there, letting the pain wash over me again and again. We got to the guards and I were only a bit aware of Tuck passing them a small barrel of wine for their enjoyment, for which they waved us through ’stead of checking barrels.

  Once we hit the woods, I jumped off the wagon and bolted. I went to the only place I knew for sure that no one could follow me, the one place only I could climb to.

  I went back to Major Oak. She were covered over with ash and black, but then again, so were I. I climbed up careful, staying to the thick roots of the branches, like the tree were glass and snapping a twig would bring the whole thing down. I hid up high in the cluster of branches where my hammock used to be, high up and alone in the sky, and I curled over my knees and let rivers spit from my eyes. I failed Ravenna just like I failed that crying girl at the castle, just like I failed Joanna. I wanted to help, and all I did were push more girls into horrible scrapes.

  I stayed at the treetop for hours. When I ventured down, I found Rob and John both sleeping as high as they could get. Whether it were to protect me or cage me in, I weren’t sure. I tried to move past them, but Rob woke up.

  “Scar, you can’t go alone.”

  “I can.”

  “Let me look at your face, Scarlet.”

  I turned toward him. “There. Look.” I knew it were bad, but it weren’t like he fancied my face anyway; might as well let Godfrey muck it up.

  “Christ, Scar. Why didn’t you fight him? He said you didn’t even fight him.”

  I shrugged. “It’s my fault his sister’s suffering a fate worse than death. Me taking a punch makes him feel better, so be it.”

  “You didn’t deserve it, Scar.”

  “Yeah I did.”

  “Why, because we stuck to the plan? Many things you can do, b
ut seeing the future isn’t one of them.”

  “I should have known better. Shouldn’t have let them stay there all night. You’re coming up with the plans from now on, you know.”

  “You saved Godfrey, Scar.”

  “And I might as well have killed Ravenna.”

  “You think I haven’t made mistakes?”

  “Not like this.”

  Rob swung closer to me. “What do I have to do to convince you you’re not some gutter rat, Scar? You deserve better than all this.”

  I shook my head, slipping down through the branches. He shouldn’t say that to me. I were a rat. I were a thief, a liar, a no-good sort. Even Rob, a hero to be sure, looked at me and saw nothing but tar and scars. He shouldn’t make me believe he thought different when he already said his piece.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No one’s coming with me, Rob.” I dropped to the ground, and he dropped right behind me. “I’ll knock you out if I have to.”

  He kept on, and I swung around to backhand his mug, but he caught my arm, grabbing the other arm and hauling me against him, my back to his front. “And I’ll truss you up if I have to.”

  I whipped my head back but he dodged it, and I tried to kick him but he moved.

  “Christ, Scar, quit fighting me!”

  I stopped, but angry blood were roaring through me.

  “This well may be one of the worst nights you’ve had, Scar, but we can’t win all the time. If we could, we’d be the ones in the castle.”

  “I will make it right!”

  “Scar, you can’t—”

  “Do you know what he’s doing to her?” I snapped, bucking his grip again.

  “Do you?” he asked. “Do you? Is that what all this is about? Some London lord hurt you like he’s hurting her?”

  Joanna’s voice saying good-bye and shutting the door rattled through my head. Never since had I felt as awful and helpless as when she left on her own two feet, night after night, to do the things I wouldn’t never speak of. Not to anyone. Never to Rob.

  I shook my head, more to get it out of my head than to answer him. My eyes squeezed tight, and water slipped out. I hit him in the gut. “Stop guessing things! You know nothing ’bout my life, Robin Hood, and you know nothing ’bout me!”

  “Scar,” he murmured, soft in my ear. He pulled me down to the ground, still holding me vise-tight. “Scarlet, what happened to you?”

  “Nothing,” I fessed. “Nothing never happened to me. It all happened to her. She took it all on and I didn’t help her none.”

  “Who, Scar?”

  I shook my head again. Her final good-bye were the worst by far, when she didn’t want to go willing, when she were taken from me, hurting and in pain. I could see Joanna, pretty blond hair and happy blue eyes, and it were like the vision turned to ash in my head. Her skin went gray and pale, her hair lost its light, and her eyes went dark—blood on her sheets and her mouth and her hands from all her coughing.

  “I left right after Richard conquered Acre,” Rob whispered against my head.

  I stopped moving, confused. “What?”

  “When I got the news, about my father. It was right after Acre, and I wanted any excuse to leave.” He shook his head against mine, and I were quiet, waiting to hear. “We had thousands of prisoners. The negotiations had gone on too long, so they weren’t the enemy anymore. They were our prisoners, but they were men and women and children that we spoke with. We ate with. And then Richard ordered us to kill every last one of them, and we did. I played dice with a boy not much younger than myself one day, and the next I took his head off with one stroke of my sword.”

  He paused, and our breath huffed hard from tussling.

  “When I left on Crusade I was fifteen. I was a boy, responding to Richard’s call for holy soldiers. I went with him, campaigning for funds through Europe on the way to the Holy Land. I was a boy up until the moment I drew my sword. And then I was a man, and I had already done unforgivable things.” Rob’s head pressed harder against mine. “I know what it’s like to look into your past and see nothing but your mistakes,” he said.

  My fingers crushed tight into his skin, clawing him like if I could break the skin we’d be connected by blood, and I could comfort him and he could see into me without me having to speak out loud. “They were your orders, Rob. You were a soldier for the King’s Crusade. It can’t be a mistake if you didn’t have a choice.”

  “Yes it can. Because we always have a choice, even when it feels like we don’t. Isn’t that what you’re torturing yourself over?”

  Memories of Joanna bubbled up so hard in my throat I weren’t sure I could breathe, and they choked out as tears instead. “She were protecting me, Rob. She did awful things, things I should have stopped, to protect me. I didn’t protect her, and she needed me to.”

  “Richard liked me. If I had said no, if I had refused, he might have listened. I might have saved those people.”

  A hiccup jumped from my throat, and Rob twisted me somehow so I were tucked against his big chest, restrained like a dog. He held tight, painful tight, my breath rushing out over my teeth, and I wondered if it were me holding him or him holding me. I wanted to tell him he were a fool and Richard wouldn’t never have listened to him, never gone back on his word or his orders for Rob. But he knew that. He knew, and it didn’t help. I knew it weren’t my fault Joanna were dead, but it didn’t help none at all.

  Rob’s breath were pushing over my ear, his chest puffing up underneath me. His heart were beating so close to my own that it calmed me for sheer distraction.

  “I have to help her,” I told him.

  “I know. Let me help you.”

  “Can’t. The plan I have is for one.”

  “How are you going in?”

  “Wall.”

  “And out?”

  “Wall.”

  “She’ll be in no health to climb.”

  “She’ll manage. I’ll carry her if I have to.”

  “I’ll carry her. I’ll go to the wall with you and wait there. You send me a signal if you need me, and I’ll come.”

  I swallowed. “We watch each others’ backs.”

  He nodded. “Precisely.”

  Standing up were strange. I stood first and looked down. I had been all tangled with him. He had been holding on to me. It felt like something changed before I stood up, but on my own two feet I didn’t want nothing to change. It felt like something had shivered loose inside me, and all I wanted to do were keep it in, keep it hidden and deep.

  I pulled away from him. I could see John still sound asleep in the tree and it made it all the stranger. Rob and I grabbed some weapons from the cave and set off on foot.

  There are many things that I never bothered to guess at. Things like weather, or farming, or feelings—I’m fair useless for those sorts. The one thing I know is sneaking—and knives, I reckon—and that night I focused on all I’m good for. We moved double-quick to the castle, and once there I told Rob where to wait.

  On my own, everything gets clear. I don’t worry, I don’t think, I can just sneak. I fade right back into the black darkness and no one sees me. A guard can walk a foot from my mug and he won’t never know I’m there.

  The hard bit were finding her room. There were so many in the residence that I knew it would take me most of the dark hours to look for her. I went through real careful, and I reckon it must have taken me hours, but I didn’t feel it none. It felt pure and simple. It were the only thing in life that were such.

  I found her up on the top floor, sleeping. I swung into her window quiet, going to check the door before I woke her. I creaked it open a sliver and saw a guard blocking the doorway. Window it would be for escape. Just hoped she weren’t too rough off.

  I went over to her, covering her mouth and pushing her a bit. Her eyes shot open and she screamed under my hand.

  “Hush!” I hissed, squeezing her mouth. Had to make sure she minded me.

  She stopped
moving.

  “You know me?” There were a fair bit of moonlight coming in; I could clap eyes on her, so she must have been able to do the same at me.

  She nodded.

  “You’ll hush?”

  She nodded.

  I let her go and sat back. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded.

  I swallowed, and my hand fell on hers like dead wood. “I’m so sorry, Ravenna. I should have gotten you both out last night.” The words rolled over one another. “I’m going to get you out of here right now.”

  She shook her head. “I’m staying here.”

  Not another one. Christ at the crossroads, not another one.

  “They won’t hurt your family. We can get all of you out of Edwinstowe, Ravenna, I promise.”

  She ripped her hand back. “You promised to get us out last night.”

  If all were fair and good in the world, I would have told her that I never promised nothing to her last night. I said “have faith,” and it were only because I couldn’t explain the full plan to get them out today. As it were, her words cut like the truth anyhow. “This is different. We’ll move your whole family if we have to.”.

  She shook her head. “I have another plan. I told the sheriff if he wanted me, he had to marry me. And he said he would.” She pushed her hair off to show me the gold necklace like a shiny collar round her white neck. “He gave me a betrothal gift and he’s calling for my father in the morning. In a month’s time, I’ll be the Lady of Nottingham, and my family won’t just be safe, they’ll be nobles.”

  I felt like stone. “But Ravenna, to marry him?”

  “You may live like an outlaw, Scarlet, but to save yourself from shame you let everyone think you’re a boy.”

  My mouth gaped.

  “Of course I knew—don’t be stupid. You’re too pretty by half for a lad. But I’m not like you, and I don’t have those sorts of choices. I was going to be married anyway, and my father was fishing high, so it might as well be him.”

  I shook my head. “He’ll hurt you.”

  “They all do. At least he’ll be my husband.”