“Oxford is his vassal,” I told her. “He has a right to be back here.”
“You will stay, then?” someone else asked.
My breath hitched. “I can’t. I don’t have the right to be here.”
“But what will happen to us? What’s to prevent him from starting back up tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Oxford—he’ll be better.”
Roger nodded to me. “We’ll be better, m’lady. I won’t let him hurt anyone anymore. Even if I have to wear a hood and learn the bow to do it.”
There were shouts and grunts, all agreeing with the boy.
They’d be killed if they fought back. He were a boy—a young boy, not trained in hardship the way Rob and Much and John and I had been. He still had a heart, and he’d lose it.
But if they did nothing, they’d be whipped, and taxed, and broken.
I shook my head, stepping back from them. “I can’t,” I told them. “I can’t tell you what to do. What choices to make.”
Roger’s mother put her hands on his shoulders. “You’ve shown us all we needed to know, my lady. Thank you.”
CHAPTER
The next morning I went to Allan’s room and opened the door, finding David already in there, rumpled and mussed, sitting in a chair and staring at Allan. He started to stand when he saw me, and I shook my head.
David eased back with a sigh.
“How is he?”
David’s shoulder lifted. “Well enough, I think.” He leaned forward and slapped Allan’s exposed cheek. “Wake up, you lousy drunk,” he growled.
Allan jerked and looked at David with a sleepy smile, then turned and saw me. “Just the lady I wanted to see.”
I snorted. “I’m certain.” I came forward and sat at the end of his bed, careful not to jostle my back. “I’m hoping it’s to tell me that you didn’t get stone drunk with no reason and there’s some plot in all this.”
He sat up full with a groan. “Christ Almighty, Lord, I don’t deserve such a pain in my head.” He touched his face and then his eye, wincing. “And I think I’ve been beset by ruffians.”
“That was me,” David grunted. Allan looked wounded. “You had the audacity to make light of how he injured her,” David seethed.
Allan’s face dropped. “My lady, I didn’t—”
I waved my hand. “I’m hardly concerned with drunken prattle, Allan. But I still believe there’s a method to your particular idiocy, so tell me now if I’m wrong.”
He rubbed the uninjured half of his face. “There’s a reason for sure, my lady. I’ve learned well that men are never so unguarded as when they think there’s a drunkard around. I caught a string of gossip, and I followed that thread as far as I could.”
David seemed even more angry by this. “So you-you-you drink to find information?” he sputtered. “That makes no damn sense—you don’t even remember me punching you. How can you remember anything else?”
Allan’s eyebrow lifted. “It’s a hard line to walk, to be sure, but someone has to do it.” He leaned toward David, his eyes narrowing. “And you’d be damn surprised what I remember, sir.”
David shook his head, standing and going to the wall, farther from Allan.
“Information, Allan,” I reminded. “If you two wouldn’t mind keeping your antics till later?”
Allan sighed. “I can’t confirm it—I was in the middle of doing just that, but I was quite rudely interrupted. But if it’s true, it’s bad. It’s exceptionally bad.”
I waited.
“One of the lords loyal to the prince—he was with him at Nottingham, my lady, and if I remember he wasn’t particularly fond of you.”
“Who?” I asked.
“De Clare, the heir to the Earldom of Hertford. He and the prince have been thick as thieves since Gisbourne’s death, and he started mouthing off when a barmaid wouldn’t have him. He said that within the year, he’d be the right hand of the king—of the new king.”
I frowned. “That’s hardly news, Allan.”
Allan looked at me. “I know. Someone praised you—the daughter of the king—at that, and he laughed. He said Richard wouldn’t come home and you would be shown your place. Someone challenged this, and he said there are ways to kill a person without ever laying a finger on them. He said all you have to do is murder their heart.”
I sat back, my chest tight.
“What the hell does that mean?” David said. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“We have to go,” I whispered.
David looked to me.
My shoulders twisted up. “He doesn’t mean me. He means Nottingham. He means Rob,” I said, and my voice broke to say his name.
“I feared the same, my lady,” Allan said low.
“We’re still days away,” I said. “We have to leave now.”
David stood. “Yes, my lady.”
I gathered my things as fast as I could, making half excuses to D’Oyly and Essex. We rode all night, and I weren’t sure I were breathing the whole way there, or blinking, or had blood rushing through my veins. I were terrified of what would be at the end of this road, and strangely I were eager to meet it as fast as I could.
We stopped only for the sake of the horses, and when we dismounted to let them rest and drink, I were shaking. David and Allan were watching me close as we ate and drank and let the horses do the same, but they didn’t question me. There weren’t nothing to say if they did.
I opened my saddlebag, my fingers shaking as I pulled out the now creased and crumpled letters that I hadn’t the will to open. SCARLET, 132.
My heart strummed loud through my veins as I touched it, the thought of opening it—of being with him in some small measure—thrilling through my blood.
I pushed it back inside. Not yet. I couldn’t do it yet. Especially not if there were some chance he weren’t alive in Nottingham to be found.
We smelled it long before we arrived. It were like the time we near lost Major Oak; even if the burning were through, it hung in the air, resting like ghostly fingers around the trees, the brush, anything it could hold on to.
Smoke.
The cloud of it were hanging in the air like a canopy, and it made my eyes sting and water. We rode forward, slowing as we neared the gates of Nottingham. David called my name and mimicked using his cloak to cover his mouth. I copied him.
The city gate were open, unguarded.
My heart hammered in my throat as we went slow into the bounds of the city. Nearest to the road, the houses and shacks that crowded to be counted in the walls were heaps of charred black.
Burned.
Prince John brought fire to my city.
There were a body in the ditch off the edge of the road. It were a woman, her dress and skin burned, her twisted, blackened hand covering her face.
I turned my face from her, looking up at the castle though I could bare see it in the smoke. My eyes stung fierce, and I let tears fall like they could soothe the pain in my eyes, but it didn’t help.
Rob couldn’t be alive. He wouldn’t have let this happen without a fight, and if there had been enough men to burn a city, Rob wouldn’t have been able to fight them. Alone. Without me by his side, where I were meant to be.
The fires weren’t bare smoking now, almost out. The city must have been razed days before.
I knew I should have stopped, gone through the city and looked for survivors, for people I could help.
I went to the castle. I couldn’t help myself. If he were killed, God only knew what Prince John would have done with the body.
The portcullis were raised, the gate open. I heard a noise, something I’d heard before and couldn’t place, a strange, slow creaking.
It weren’t till I were right beneath the gate that I could see through the smoke, and a low knock drew my eyes up.
The pair of boots hit the stone wall again, and then I heard the creaking of the rope that held them as the body twisted in the wind.
Bodies.
At least five that I could see, hung over the outer wall of the castle and left to die, left to watch as the city burned.
Robin. Robin. Robin. It were all I could think as I dropped from my horse, running into the guardroom at the gate and searching for the staircase up to the parapet. I were shaking so hard I slipped twice when I tried to climb the stairs, like I couldn’t make my wayward limbs obey. Like my hands and legs didn’t want to bear me up, not if I were going to see his face hanging off the battlements.
I found the first rope and I half leapt off the wall, grabbing as low as I could and heaving up. The rope didn’t move and the edge of the wall cut hard into my stomach. Anchoring my feet, I pulled my whole body back, pulling as hard as I could.
Dead weight. The true, horrible meaning of that struck me, and I felt tears run fast down my cheeks. I jerked hard on the rope and it fought against me, dragging from my hands and tearing my skin with it. I cried out, looking at the raw, bloody mess.
“Damn you,” I grunted, setting back at the rope. “Damn you, God. This is your fault. You were meant to protect them. You were meant to protect him,” I accused. The body moved the barest inch, and I planted my feet against the wall itself, heaving back.
Cold touched my neck, and I looked to the side, to see a tall man in a gray cloak pointing a sword at me. “Drop the rope,” he ordered.
“The hell I will,” I snapped back.
“You will not steal from their bodies,” he growled, pushing the sword against my throat. I felt a trickle of wet run down my skin. “How dare you touch them.”
“You have no idea what I dare. And this isn’t a day that should see any more violence. Who are you?”
“My—” David called, cresting the stairs. He drew his sword quick. “Step away from her immediately, young man.”
The man looked at me. “Her who? Her?” he asked, confused, jerking his head at me.
“David, please help me pull him up,” I begged.
The man with the sword faltered. “Put it away,” David growled at him.
The man obeyed, confused. David took the rope, shouldering me off gentle. “Let go, my lady,” he whispered.
I did. David saw the blood on the rope and looked at my hands. “Pull him up, David. Please.”
He turned back to his task, nodding. In a few short heaves of his long arms, David had the body up at the wall. I let out a tortured gasp—it weren’t Rob.
Allan came up as David pulled him over the battlements, and I cut the rope, crossing the man’s arms and pulling the noose from his neck as David went to the next one. Allan skirted past the body without words to help David.
“You’re just—pulling them up?” the man asked.
“No one deserves this,” I whispered to him.
The man went to the third rope and started pulling. “I know,” he said to me. “That’s what I came here for. To bring the bodies back.”
The second one came into a view. It were a woman, and even though it weren’t Rob, my heart still broke, and I started crying helpless over the bodies.
The third were a boy, so young I thought for a moment it were one of the Clarkes. When I cleaned off his smoke-sooted face, I didn’t know it, and still I cried. It would have been easy for it to be Ben or Will or Jack.
“Rylan!” a voice called. My body ran still, my blood frozen in my veins.
Steps were loud on the staircase.
“Rylan, how—”
Rob’s face appeared above the stair, and his eyes met mine like they were tied together, like there weren’t anywhere to look but at each other.
He stepped up one more stair, blood draining fast from his face.
His chest heaved with sudden breath, and he looked at David and Allan and the man, who must have been Rylan. “No,” he breathed. “You’re not—is this—I’m not—”
“Robin,” I said, and it came out a horrible, broken sob.
Half a breath later he had my elbows in his hands, dragging me up. His fingers were on my face, dirty with tears and smoke, and I dug my fingers into his shirt, trying to sink some part of me into him so deep we couldn’t be taken apart again. His shirt caught the drying blood on my hands and I saw it there, bright on his clothes, blood that I put there. I couldn’t stop crying.
Until he pushed my tears off and pressed my mouth to his. I heard Rylan murmur “Oh” behind us and didn’t pay attention.
Rob were alive. Rob were alive, and I were home.
Whatever that meant in true.
Rob’s arms shifted to hold me round my back, fortressing round me and pulling me tight to him. Our kiss broke and our foreheads pushed together, and then our cheeks, every little motion like a physical proof the other were there. When my forehead slipped into the bit where his neck met his shoulder, a shudder ripped through me.
“You’re alive,” I breathed against him.
His arms squeezed tighter. “I’m not the one who was meant to be dead.”
I curled tighter. “This was meant to kill you, Rob.”
“I know,” he said. “And it didn’t work. And you’re not dead.” He nudged my head up and kissed me again, then stared at my face. “Jesus, Scarlet,” he whispered.
David and Allan pulled the last body over the edge, and I cringed.
“We should go,” Rob said. “Rylan, I’m going to send Godfrey to help you. Get the bodies back as soon as you can.”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
Rob captured my hand and went to kiss it, but I hissed and he flipped it to see the burns and cuts from the rope. “Come. I’ll bring you back to the forest.”
I shook my head. “Rob, we came to help. Let us help.”
He sighed. “Things are still burning. It looks like rain tonight, though. Hopefully by morning much of the smoke will clear, and the fire will be gone. Until then—we just came back to get the bodies today,” he said soft.
I nodded.
“Here,” he said, producing two leather gloves from his pocket. I winced as he tugged them down over my hands, but once covered, it hurt less, even in the caverns of gloves meant for hands like Rob’s.
“Better?” he asked.
Pushing his forehead against mine, I twisted my hand in his until they clasped together like two pieces meant to fit.
He kissed me again.
Rob led us silent out of the castle, and David, Allan, and I mounted our horses. Rob glanced at the cart in the lane, being piled slow with bodies, and back at me.
I gave him a small smile. “You seem in need of a horse, my lord Sheriff.”
He came close and I offered him my arm. He stepped in the stirrup and swung up behind me, holding my hips and sliding close against me, razing heat all along my skin. He wrapped his arms around me, and I leaned back a little, covering his hand that held onto me. I felt our hearts meet and match, finding the beat that they had in common and settle into it.
“My love,” he whispered, putting his head on my shoulder.
I nodded against his head, and spurred the horse.
CHAPTER
Edwinstowe were abandoned. The houses were untouched, but there were a stillness that were absurd for the small working village. There were no animals in the pens, no children running ’cross the lane, no women creaking water from the well.
We rode through and into the forest.
The fresh hope of spring caught me up in its arms the moment we entered Sherwood. The trees were full and bright, sweet with sap and fir and pine. Weeds and grass and patches of wildflowers had shot up through the ground like they could pierce through the brush and clear away the death of winter.
We went to the caves. We’d stayed in one of the largest ones for many winters until the snows got too deep, and even on the nights when heavy rains forced us out of our tree-bound home. We rode up over the bank that protected the low, hidden clearing where several caves opened their wide mouths, and everyone froze.
Hundreds. Hundreds of people, easily all of Edwinstowe, and most of Nottingham and Worksop
besides.
“You saved them all,” I whispered.
Rob’s hand clutched mine tight. “Not all. Not nearly all.”
My heart stuttered. “Much?” I asked. “Bess?”
“Scarlet!”
I turned to see Much, very much alive. I swung off the horse before Rob could let me down, running down the hill to get to him. He laughed and caught me up in a fierce hug.
I pulled away from him to look at him in full. He were taller still, tall as Rob now, and he looked older in a way I didn’t like. Sadder. Like he knew the sad things of the world.
Which, of course, he did now. We all did.
People started crowding round me. The Clarkes, the Morgan girls, the Percy family, everyone I’d known for years. Touching me, like all of the sudden they thought well of me. Like they’d missed me. It jumbled inside of me, with hurt and confusion and wonder that maybe that were the way of it—maybe they missed me. Maybe they loved me.
Allan set right about greeting the people he knew, and David waited for me to introduce him round, with a stern frown at Rob, who were still holding me close to him.
Robin were there, looking at me strange. People were all talking at once, and I felt so overtaken by all of it.
My people. They were my people now, in a way that had always been true but never so exact. I weren’t this strange hero-thief that they misremembered. I were their lady now.
And they were hurt, and sad, and frightened.
“Will you tell us what happened?” David asked, coming into the clearing.
“Sit,” Rob said over the din. “We can all eat together, and we’ll tell you.”
Rob took my hand and it felt like an anchor on rough seas. He tugged me toward the big cave; when we used to make this our shelter, we’d had one log chopped and laid out to sit on, and they’d brought more down so many more people could sit. It were near enough, and the children clumped together, bumping into one another, torn between playing or seeing what all the fuss were about. Their mothers sent them off to play. It were just as well. From the state of Nottingham, they didn’t need to hear what had happened.
We sat on the log, and Rob let my hand go to sit, but I threaded my fingers back through his. His eyes met mine, shadowed but smiling.