Hood

by Jenny Elder Moke

  “That was your final warning shot,” she said. “If you take one more step, my friends will shoot you through the eye. Lucky for you, you still have a spare.”

  “Search the priory!” Blade shouted. “Tear it apart if you have to, but find whoever dared to take that shot and bring them to me. Alive. And you men, crossbows at the ready. Fire at any shadow that moves.”

  Marien drew Isabelle under her arm and backed toward the safety of the chapel wall as the men’s attention turned to the rooftops. Blade wheeled on the two of them, lifting his dagger and pointing it directly at Isabelle.

  “Don’t move a muscle. You’re not going anywhere. My men will find your friends, and when they do I will make you watch as I strip every inch of flesh from their bones while they scream for death. The Wolf only needs the prioress alive, not you.”

  “That may be,” Isabelle said. “But if you try to stop us now, there is no way you will live to see the outcome. Let us go.”

  “Never,” he said.

  “Then it seems we are at an impasse,” Isabelle said, heart thumping hard.

  “Perhaps I could be of help,” said Robin, stepping from the shadows at the far end of the cloister.

  “Father, no!” Isabelle cried. “It is a trap. You must get out of here now!”

  “Darling, of course it’s a trap,” Robin said. “These sorts of gatherings always are.”

  “That man is Robert of Huntingdon,” Blade called out. “Pretender to the Scottish throne and an enemy of King John. Seize him!”

  Robin held up a hand as the men rushed to do his bidding. “I would rather you not,” he said. “I just had this tunic spun up in Lincoln and the threads are still fresh. I would be sorely disappointed to ruin it.”

  The men faltered, taken aback by Robin’s casual confidence and friendly tone. Even the most hardened among them glanced toward Blade, conflicted by the shift in the balance of power. Blade snarled out a curse, grabbing for the sleeve of the nearest mercenary and shoving him forward.

  “I said seize that man!” he spat.

  “I would stay my hand, were I you,” Robin said to the mercenary. “If you were to draw your sword, I would necessarily draw my bow, and I do not think you would be pleased with the outcome of such a challenge. Unless you are a fool and do not recognize the Lincoln greens.”

  The man blanched and stepped back, his sword thunking into its scabbard. Robin gave a satisfied nod as the rest of the men paused, hands still perched on their sword handles. Some of them even drew away from Isabelle and Marien, and Isabelle pressed the advantage by creeping forward, pulling her mother along with her. Blade watched all this with increasing tension, mottled red spots standing out across his face and neck.

  “Cowards!” he shouted, brandishing his sword high. “If you will not take him, I will.”

  Robin’s hands moved in a blur as he whipped his bow from his shoulder, nocking an arrow and letting it fly at the mercenary. The white fletching whipped through the short space between them, slicing the tender inner flesh of Blade’s sword hand. He cried out, his sword falling to the ground as he cradled his injured hand to his chest.

  “You bastard!”

  Robin clucked his tongue, lowering his bow but keeping hold of it. “If you are going to enter into a contest of skill, be sure you are the more skilled man. Now, if we are quite through with all this posturing and shouting, perhaps we can discuss our true business this evening.”

  The men parted farther as Robin strolled toward Isabelle and Marien. Isabelle was not sure if she wanted to throw her arms about him or slap him. Even if he had brought the rest of the Yorkshire camp into the cloister with him, they were vastly outnumbered, their advantage tenuous at best. And yet Robin looked as relaxed and confident as ever, as if he were feasting among the Merry Men and not surrounded by enemies.

  Robin’s gaze ran over Marien’s face in a caress so intimate that, despite their immediate danger, warmth crept up Isabelle’s neck. Marien smiled a little, the severity of her expression melting, before she reached her free hand out to briefly touch his chest. In that moment Isabelle would have torn the hearts out of every man there to preserve the thin bonds holding her family together. Robin gave her a wink before pivoting on his heel, spreading his arms wide toward the men.

  “What a fine collection of hired swords Sir Roger has gathered for his cause,” he called out, his voice rebounding off the cloister walls. Isabelle was surprised it did not wake the sisters sleeping in the dormitory above, but she supposed the wisest among them were keeping the rest well and truly hidden. “Why, such fine soldiers as yourselves must be chafing under the deadweight of playing nursemaid to a handful of pious sisters. Have you not heard there is a war afoot in the country? There is gold to be made for an industrious lot such as yourselves if you were but free to pursue it!”

  “Don’t think your flowery words will tempt my men, Huntingdon,” Blade snarled. “We’re sworn to the Wolf and King John. We’re not your wood-cutting Merry Men, happy to scamper off into the forest with our tails between our legs. We are real men.”

  Robin shook his head slowly. “Luck is on your side that I am the Merry Man who heard such insults. Were it Little John, friend, your head would have already bidden a fond farewell to the rest of you.”

  Blade turned a shade paler at that, but whether from the blood trickling down his hand or Robin’s words, Isabelle was not sure. The other mercenaries shifted restlessly, glancing over their shoulders. Robin held his arms wide once again.

  “I come with a proposition for anyone wise enough to take it,” he said. “It will require nothing of you except to stand aside and let me leave here with my wife and daughter, and in return it will pay out quite handsomely.”

  Robin drew a sack from his belt, the coins clinking with the promise of wealth. The gathered mercenaries fairly salivated at the sound, their eyes following Robin hungrily as he moved to the center of the grass field in the cloister, giving the sack a shake for good measure.

  “I have here two dozen gold pieces,” he called out, loud enough that even those beyond the cloister could hear. “And a thousand more waiting with my men outside. Enough to make each of you rich.”

  Robin turned back toward the mercenaries standing beside Blade. “If you let us leave here unharmed, the gold is yours to split among you as you see fit. That is more of a promise than Sir Roger could ever make you, for even if his king wins his war against the barons, John Lackland is still a desperately broke man. I should think you lot are smart enough to realize a handful of gold today is worth ten times the promise of a coin tomorrow.”

  The men shifted uneasily, the truth of Robin’s words sinking in. The war with the barons started over King John’s insatiable appetite for the finer things in life, and he was draining the country’s coffers to finance his losing battles in France. What pitiful earnings could they hope to accrue stuffed away in a priory?

  “Any fool even considering taking your money would be hanged for treason,” Blade said. “The Wolf will see to it himself.”

  Robin shrugged. “Who among us has not committed a little treason here or there? The king hardly has the wherewithal to consider a crime as petty as treason at this juncture. Last I heard he is on his way to Rochester Castle, hundreds of miles from here. What would the Wolf even know of it?”

  “I would know a great deal,” came a voice from the far side of the cloister. Isabelle’s heart twisted as the glimmer of hope she had been nursing since Robin’s appearance was snuffed out by the Wolf’s gaunt form emerging from the shadows. Robin stiffened before relaxing back into his wide-legged stance, the moment over so quickly she wasn’t sure it had even happened.

  “Sir Roger, how kind of you to join us,” Robin said.

  The Wolf turned his black-eyed scowl on Robin. “I am disappointed, Robert. Look at you. Robin Hood, outlaw king of Sherwood? Though it is the only thing you were ever fit to be king of, a pathetic collection of ragged castoffs fleeing their responsibil
ities to play about in the woods.” He lifted one long finger in Robin’s direction, turning his furious gaze on the collected men. “I will double the promised pay to the man who arrests these three in the name of the crown. And you can keep the stolen gold he has promised when I am done with them.”

  Avarice lit a fire in the eyes of the men surrounding them, and the mercenaries pressed in. Isabelle raised her paltry knife, taking stock of their surroundings. Her gaze flitted up to the roof of the church, where she hoped Adam still stood watch with Helena, but she could not make out any shadows moving up there. She prayed Patrick was keeping Little far away where he could not go charging foolhardy into this fray. What had Robin been thinking?

  Robin sighed. “I had hoped we would all prove reasonable men and it would not come to such a juncture. But it seems you lot are swayed only by blunt force. Did you really think I would come so woefully unprepared?”

  He lifted the white horn from his belt and blew three short blasts, the sound shattering the night air around them. Shadows detached from the interior walls and materialized into the Lincoln greens as the Merry Men from Yorkshire and Sherwood crowded behind the mercenaries, trapping them in the open courtyard of the cloisters. Some of the mercenaries attempted to draw their weapons but found themselves at the sharp end of a sword instead. Little entered the cloister beside his father, both of them ducking to avoid the low arch of the walkway as they flanked Sir Roger. More figures rose from the pulpy light of dawn along the rooftops, and Isabelle’s heart skipped as she recognized Adam’s tall form on the church roof. Hope and fear surged through Isabelle in equal measure.

  “Impressive, are they not, for a pathetic collection of ragged castoffs?” Robin said dryly. He jangled his sack of coins for emphasis. “Now you men have a choice. You can die for free under Sir Roger’s orders, or you can live and line your pockets with enough gold to see yourselves comfortably back to France, well out of John Lackland’s reach. Seems an easy enough choice to me, though perhaps I am spoiled by the luxury of living.”

  The answer was obvious across the calculating expressions of the mercenaries. With the exception of Blade—who had retrieved his sword and now held it in his left hand, the injured one tucked into the side of his hauberk—the men were already lowering their crossbows and resheathing their swords. Robin loosened the straps on the coin bag and tossed a few pieces to the nearest mercenaries, sealing their fate. The men at the fringes edged past the Merry Men, slipping away. Isabelle took firm hold of her mother’s hand, hardly daring to breathe.

  “Do not leave this courtyard!” the Wolf shouted, rage enlivening his features. Little and Allan A’Dale moved forward a step, their staffs hovering over the thin man’s shoulders. “Do not play into their foolish attempts at bargaining. If you abandon your posts now, I will find you all and hang you for treason against the crown. Hold your positions!”

  But the mercenaries did not even hesitate as they filed out of the cloisters, the blades of their weapons growing cold in their sheaths. They knew a better deal when one was presented.

  “And that is what comes of buying your loyalty,” Robin said, sauntering off the grass toward Isabelle and Marien.

  “If you think you have outwitted me, Huntingdon, you are a fool,” the Wolf hissed. “I will tear every stone from every town in the whole damned countryside and turn every poor villager out of their stinking hovels until I find you. And when I do, I will make you rue each braggartly word you just spewed. You are a vermin to be extinguished, and I will purge your kind with fire.”

  “I should think the only vermin that will need extinguishing are the ones that infest the prison cell you shall shortly find yourself in,” Robin said, his expression turning hard. “I have already sent word to Robert Fitzwalter and the rebel barons that King John’s most valued advisor has been taken prisoner and awaits their judgment.”

  “Your pathetic impudence knows no limit,” the Wolf hissed. “I would never submit to your crude attempt at peasant justice.”

  “Oh, by all means, put up a good fight,” Robin said, spreading his hands wide. “The Merry Men would be happy to give you a demonstration of their peasant justice.”

  The Merry Men sent up a deafening cheer at the steel in their master’s voice, lifting their swords and bows aloft as a current of wild energy shot through each man gathered. Isabelle let out her own elated whoop, raising her dagger in triumph. The mercenaries who had not yet left braced against the unbridled recklessness of her cry, their hands automatically shifting to their weapons. It did not escape Isabelle’s attention that they were still in a tightly confined space with two warring factions, and she attempted to rein in her joviality.

  “Let us return to Sherwood, Father,” she said, loudly enough to set the mercenaries’ minds at ease. “And leave Sir Roger to the rebel barons.”

  “That is a splendid idea,” Robin said expansively. “Marien, my love, what a perfect daughter you have raised.”

  “She has far too many of your tendencies to be perfect,” Marien said, but she smiled.

  Isabelle tucked the borrowed knife into the top of her boot and took her father’s hand, linking their little family. She smiled, a warmth she had never known suffusing her chest despite the menace of the remaining mercenaries. Her family was at last whole.

  A flicker of movement over Robin’s shoulder caught her attention, drawing her eye to where the Wolf stood. He snatched the crossbow of the nearest mercenary, lifting it level with Robin’s exposed back.

  “Damn you to hell, Hood,” he hissed, just before firing.

  The bolt shot out with a crack, and Isabelle only had time to jerk Robin’s arm to the side before it struck, the tip driving through his back and protruding from his shoulder. He grunted and slumped forward, dragging her down to the ground. Blood spattered against her tunic.

  “Father!” she gasped.

  It proved to be the opening note of a violent symphony as the walkways around them erupted in fighting. The Merry Men fell on the mercenaries, fighting their way toward the Wolf even as he disappeared into the shadows surrounding the cloister. The peace of the grassy enclosure shattered, filled with the ring of clashing swords and shrill battle cries. Marien knelt beside Isabelle, and together they pulled Robin into the relative safety of the chapel doors.

  “Damn that poxed cur,” Robin grunted, holding one hand to his shoulder even as Isabelle tried to support him. Marien knelt by his side, her expression calm as she took on the role of healer, her fingers making quick work to assess the extent of his wound.

  “It is a clean shot, no bone,” she said, as if this were another farmer impaled on a thresher and not her husband shot by a crossbow. “Can you breathe?”

  “Not bloody well,” Robin groused, but he staggered to his feet. Isabelle looped his good arm over her shoulder, wrapping her arm around his back to support him as he took a step. The Merry Men had formed a protective ring around them, shoulder to shoulder as the mercenaries put their considerable skill to work. The bag of gold had fallen to his feet, but Isabelle did not bother to pick it up.

  “My bow,” Robin wheezed, already reaching for the quiver across his back. He winced with the movement, and Marien put a firm hand on his shoulder to stop him.

  “You cannot fight right now,” she said. “If you do not tend the wound, you could risk greater injury. We need to get you to the infirmary. I have supplies there.”

  “I am not leaving my men,” Robin said, setting his teeth in a grimace.

  “I will stay,” Isabelle said.

  “Absolutely not,” Marien and Robin said simultaneously.

  “I am fine,” Robin continued, though his skin had paled considerably and a faint sheen stood out along his brow. “It is not the worst I have had to fight through.”

  “You are not staying, either,” Marien said in her best prioress tone. It brooked no argument from the sisters, and it seemed to have a similar effect on the king of the outlaws. “You will both come with me to the infir
mary.”

  Isabelle drew in a breath and straightened her shoulders, careful not to jostle her father. “I am staying here. I will not leave my friends until I see them to safety. Besides, no one knows the secret ins and outs of the priory like I do. Not even you, Mother. I can protect the men.”

  “I will not let the Wolf lay a hand on you ever again,” said Robin.

  “Neither will I,” Isabelle replied. “Please trust me, both of you. I can do this.”

  Marien and Robin shared a long look, an unspoken communication flowing in the quirk of Robin’s eyebrows and the press of Marien’s lips. Isabelle knew her mother well enough to understand the struggle playing out over her features, but she was surprised at how easily she could read Robin’s thoughts in the minor tics of his face. Finally Marien gave a little huff.

  “Entirely too much like you to be perfect,” she said.

  Robin smiled, grimacing again. “Lead them well, love.”

  Isabelle gave him a determined nod, gently moving his arm to drape it over Marien’s shoulders. Her mother pulled him in close, wrapping her arm around his waist to support him. He leaned in close to her, lifting his nose just enough to breathe in the scent of her hair. Something in the movement brought a lump to Isabelle’s throat, but she pressed it down and tapped the shoulder of the nearest outlaw.

  “Follow them to the infirmary,” she said. “Do not let anything happen to them.”

  “Aye,” the man said with a nod. They ducked to the outskirts of the walkways, dodging swinging cudgels and whistling swords as they went. Isabelle held her breath as she watched them reach the far end of the cloister and disappear toward the infirmary.

  Everywhere arrows and swords flew with brutal efficiency, each slicing of flesh and crunching of bone sharp and distinct. A few prone forms littered the open space of the cloister, the blades of grass torn and matted with blood. Frantically, Isabelle scanned the faces of the fallen for any familiar features, her feet frozen into immobility as the savagery of battle stormed around her. It was one thing to promise Robin that she could protect the Merry Men, but how could she hope to lead them to safety?