by Anna Burke
John and Robyn followed her into the convent. The door shut behind them, walling them in, and Robyn glimpsed a meticulously tended kitchen garden through one arch and a small orchard through another before the woman brought them into a courtyard crisscrossed by flower-lined stone paths. The flowers, too, looked unusually robust, and Robyn guessed the nun accompanying them tended to these beds herself.
“Wait here,” said the nun, vanishing through a wooden door.
“Wow,” said Robyn when she was sure they were alone. “That is quite a woman.”
John opened his mouth, shut it, tried again, and then settled for shaking his head in mute disbelief. They stood together in silence.
Robyn had never had cause to set foot in a priory. Convents were for the devout or, more realistically, for the unmarriageable daughters of the nobility, widows, and the occasional oddity who craved an education—and isolation—over a husband’s wealth. The priory at Edwinstowe had been constructed in her grandfather’s lifetime and finished when her father was a young man. The years since, few as they were, had seen the forest send out ivy shoots to scale the walls and moss grow at the base of the stone in the shadows where the sun rarely touched. The sound of feet on flagstones jerked her attention back to the door in time to see the nun return, balancing a tray on one hand and restraining a massive dog with the other.
“Hope you don’t mind,” she said, releasing the beast.
Robyn stifled the instinct that urged her to leap onto John’s shoulders and stood as if rooted like the ivy to the ground as the brindled mastiff lunged for them. The dog skidded to a halt bare inches from bowling them over, lips wrinkled in a snarl, and let out one loud, slavering bark. Robyn received a distinct whiff of fish and blinked through the spray of slobber across her face.
“This is Sister Mercy,” the nun explained with a wicked grin. “Brother Patience is in the orchard, or else he’d be here to greet you too.”
Robyn uttered a silent prayer for this small grace and stifled a scream as Mercy rose on her hind legs to place her paws on Robyn’s shoulders and deposit a wet lick across her mouth. Thus satisfied, she dropped once more to haunches rippling with muscle, thrust her muzzle into John’s hand for inspection, and circled back to sit at the nun’s feet.
“We get all sorts here in Sherwood,” she explained. “Mercy and Patience help deter the more unsavory ones. I am the Reverend Mother here.”
“I’m Robyn, and this is Little John.”
The prioress looked John up and down. “Is he now?”
John’s cheeks reddened and he cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable.
“He’s not little where it counts,” Robyn assured the nun, taking the opportunity to get back at John for his earlier comment about Marian. She ignored the murderous glare he sent her way.
“God does love his little jokes.” The prioress extended the finger bowl, and first Robyn, then John, dipped their hands and washed the worst of the dust from their faces and fingers before Tuck distributed the dirtied water between the nearest flowers. “Now.” She produced three small mugs from the folds of her habit and poured a golden stream of mead into each. “Tell me why I should entrust Will into your keeping.”
“Why . . .?” Robyn trailed off, too confused to continue.
“Will has requested sanctuary, and I am therefore bound to honor that request and prevent the long arm of the law,” here she paused to pinch John’s arm, “from knocking down the priory doors.”
“We’re not employed by the king,” said John, apparently more offended by this suggestion than by any of Tuck’s previous insinuations.
“Are you related to Will, then?”
“We’ve never even met him,” said Robyn. “We’re only here because Marian—”
“Yes, Marian. You made quite the impression on her, didn’t you?”
Robyn didn’t know what to make of the searching look the nun gave her.
“See?” said John under his breath.
“She asked me to help her friend.”
“And why would you want to do that?”
“Because I keep my word.” Her temper flared.
“Very well.” The nun whistled over her shoulder. The door swung open again, this time admitting a slender youth with hair redder than a fox’s coat and eyes as green as a cat’s, followed by a young woman with a plain face and dark hair. Robyn recognized the hauteur of nobility in the youth immediately. It was in every line of his body and stitched into the very fabric of his clothes. You’re a damn fool, Robyn, she told herself. There were only a few reasons Marian might have asked Robyn to look out for the spoiled progeny of the ruling class. The most likely, and the one that sent a dull ache throughout her chest, was that this boy was her lover, and she’d taken Robyn for the fool that she was in the hopes of sparing her beloved from whatever crime he’d committed. What did you expect?
“Hello,” said Will.
Robyn listened to the sounds of the forest birds twittering in the distance and remembered what Tuck had said a few moments before. God does indeed love his little jokes, she thought, and this one was on her because if his voice was any gauge, the boy leaning against the door frame wasn’t any more a boy than she was.
“God’s blood,” John swore.
“Please,” said Tuck, pointing a finger at the sky. “Do not defame the Lord where he can hear you.”
“I thought he could hear me everywhere,” John said.
“Then don’t do it where I can hear you.”
Robyn drank some of the mead in her mug. The honey exploded on her tongue, but it didn’t wash away the acrid taste of uncertainty.
“You must be Robyn,” the noblewoman said.
“I am.” Although, she reflected, it might have been better if she wasn’t.
“What in bloody hell are we supposed to do with her?” John asked Robyn. Sister Mercy growled low in her throat. “Beg your pardon. Our Lord in Heaven, please send me guidance, because I am in sore need of it.”
“Was that really so hard?” said the Reverend Mother.
“I’m not sure I understand.” Will had a cold, clear voice. Robyn guessed she used it frequently to order servants around.
“What are we supposed to do with her, Robyn?” John repeated.
Robyn wished she knew. More than that, she wished she knew why Marian had thought to send Will to her in the first place because the most logical explanation was that she had seen through Robyn’s disguise just as easily as Robyn now saw through Will’s. And if Marian had seen through her, then that meant others might have too.
“What, exactly, did Marian tell you about me?” Robyn asked Will.
“Well, I guessed that you’d be taller.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“The way she talked about your shooting, you would have thought you were a god.”
“Will the blasphemy never end?” said the nun in despair.
“I heard you calling on the blessed virgin’s teats this morning, Tuck.”
“A most holy relic indeed.”
“And you told Sister Meredith to mind her tongue or you’d beat her with, I repeat, the goddamn holy cross.”
“It left an impression, didn’t it?” The nun chuckled at her own joke.
“Marian didn’t tell me you were a woman,” said Robyn.
“Surprise.”
“Sherwood is no place for a noblewoman.”
“Why not? I’ve been hunting these woods my whole life. Legally.”
“With a soft bed and a full table waiting for you when you returned, and someone to lay your fire and fetch your water,” said Robyn, bristling at the barb.
“I’m not weak, if that’s what you’re saying.”
“You don’t even know what weakness means.” Words boiled out of Robyn’s mouth. “You’ve never gone hungry. You’ve never had to watch a child starve to death because you couldn’t feed it, or seen your brother hanged for the crime of trying to feed his family.” John laid a h
eavy hand on her shoulder.
“Noblewomen die the same as any other. With me around, though, at least you won’t hang.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Peace, Robyn,” said John. “She has a point.”
“I don’t see it.”
“My father won’t hang me, and he won’t hang you as long as you’re with me. I can give you the protection of my name, so long as you protect me from him for as long as you can.”
Robyn wanted to hurl more accusations at Will, but John’s hand now gripped her shoulder with a fierceness that promised to leave bruises if she didn’t cooperate.
“We can’t protect deadweight in Sherwood. You’ll have to do your part.”
“I can fight, and I have a hawk.”
Robyn examined Will’s belt and noted the rub on the leather where a scabbard normally hung. A sword might be useful as long as the girl could do more than wave it around. Or, it could get them all killed. “How long have you been at the priory?”
“Three days.”
“Then you have four more weeks before you run out of sanctuary. If I were you, I would stay here. Forget whatever Marian told you. She had no right to make claims on my behalf.”
Panic flashed across Will’s face and supplanted her earlier arrogance. Her eyes darted from Robyn to John, then back to Robyn. “I have nowhere else to go.”
“An argument could be made that you have everywhere else to go,” said John, looking down at Will without a shred of pity. “I assume you realize that you can’t go home again? Or do you fancy that this is a jaunt in the park, a game to amuse yourself until your father comes around? What did he do anyway, beat you?”
“He sold me to a man who’s laid three wives in the ground already. I am dead either way.”
Robyn pushed away any sympathy, refusing to think of Gwyneth and the sheriff. This girl was a liability. “So you’ve run away to the woods, is that it?” she asked.
“An argument could be made,” said the nun, echoing John’s words, “that both of you have done exactly the same thing.” The Reverend Mother’s voice retained its infectious good humor, but Robyn noted the way Sister Mercy’s brown eyes studied Robyn and John, and thought that the dog revealed more about her mistress’s mood than the woman herself.
“It’s hardly the same, Reverend Mother,” said John.
“Does it matter how the sentence is delivered if the end result is death?” said the woman who had followed Will, speaking for the first time. Robyn looked at her more closely. Her face might be plain, but her voice held a richness that promised something deeper than any surface beauty, and Robyn had to shake the spell of her voice off before she could fully comprehend her words.
“And who are you?”
“My name is Alanna of Dale.”
“Well, Alanna, it does matter.” Robyn shrugged off John’s hand and stepped closer to Will and Alanna to look the other women in the eyes. Her temper drained out of her as she noted the dread and exhaustion in their faces. Gwyneth had looked that way when Robyn last saw her. Seven hells. “It does matter,” she repeated more gently. “Especially if one death is swift and clean and the other slow and torturous. I can offer you the first, if it comes to that, and I will do what I can to spare you the second.” She stuck out her hand and waited for Will to accept the gesture, half convinced that this was madness, and entirely certain that she couldn’t walk away from these women now any more than she could have walked away from Gwyneth, or Marian, or anyone else with the same hunted look in their eye that Will tried and failed to conceal. “Collect your things and meet us where the forest joins the road at nightfall. The fewer people who see you leave here, the better. I assume you’re coming too?”
“Yes, if you will have me,” said Alanna.
“Before you go,” said Tuck, stroking the mastiff’s head, “one of our mules went lame this morning. We could use a blacksmith. You know the trade by the looks of you.”
John let out a long sigh and rubbed the shaved side of his head, muttering something under his breath that sounded like “women” and “eternal damnation.”
A knock on the door made the fugitives jump.
“Come in,” said the nun.
A young nun burst through the door and stumbled to a halt before her. “Reverend Mother, he’s here.”
“Who?”
“The sheriff.”
John’s hand was back on Robyn’s shoulder so quickly it might never have left, and it was the only thing that stopped her from shoving the nuns aside and running toward the man herself, for all that she was armed only with a staff.
“No,” John said, tugging Robyn back. “Not like this.”
“Christ on a biscuit,” the prioress blasphemed. “Will, Alanna, get them to the cellar, then find Sister Gwyneth and the child and bring them with you. Now.”
John dragged Robyn with her as Will turned on her heel, and the four of them bolted into the dark halls of the convent. Will stopped at the top of a low flight of stairs and pointed toward the door at its base. “Through there. Past the casks is a second door. Alanna knows how to open it.”
Alanna motioned them down while Will took off again. When she shut the door, they were plunged instantly into darkness.
“Seven hells,” said John.
“Try not to trip over anything. Keep your feet under you.” Alanna’s voice came from farther back in the cellar, and Robyn and John did their best to follow it, keeping their hands outstretched before them until Robyn ran into something soft, warm, and human.
“Sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine. Watch your head. It’s tight back here.”
Robyn ducked beneath a low lintel and into a room that smelled oddly of cedar and damp straw.
“We’ll be hidden here,” said Alanna. “At least until the sheriff leaves. This door is almost impossible to see unless you know it’s there.”
“Why is the sheriff here, anyway?” asked John. “What did you do?”
“We haven’t done anything.”
“We wouldn’t judge you if you had,” John said.
Footsteps sounded beyond the door, which opened with a scrape. Robyn couldn’t see who entered, but she heard the sound of several people breathing and moved back to make more room.
“You’re safe,” Will said, but Robyn got the impression she wasn’t speaking to them.
A child whimpered, and a woman hushed it. The voice made the hair on her arms rise, and she remembered what the prioress had said: find Sister Gwyneth.
“Gwyn?” she said hesitantly. The darkness thickened as she waited for a reply.
“Robyn?”
“What are you doing here?” She was already groping her way across the space as she spoke, searching for Gwyneth and Symon with her hands. Gwyneth met her with a small sob. “Hey there,” Robyn said, finding Symon’s tiny cheek with her thumb. “Gwyn, what happened?”
“After the fair I took the purse home. I sat up all night with it thinking, because I knew why you’d given it to us, and even though I don’t think I can ever forgive you for lying to me, I understand why you did it. I also knew I didn’t have much time. Pierrot would have found a way to take the money from us if I didn’t marry him.”
Robyn shuddered at the sound of the sheriff’s given name leaving Gwyneth’s lips.
“All I want is to be left alone to raise my son, and since I can’t come with you, finally I realized there was only one place that would take me. I took my vows two days ago.”
“You’re a nun?”
“A novice, for now. Yes. There are worse things to be.”
“That’s not what I meant. I just . . . I didn’t realize it was that much money.” Most convents took only noblewomen because the large dowries they provided kept the convents running.
“It wasn’t. Not quite. But Tuck is a good woman, and Symon will be pledged to a monastery when he comes of age.”
Robyn wished the nun were here now so that she could thank her a thousandf
old. “Gwyn,” she began, her throat tight with unshed tears, “I’m so sorry I got you into this.”
“I’m not.” Some of the anger slipped back into her voice. “Pierrot would have found a way to force my hand eventually, and there was nothing you could have done to stop him while you were within the law. That still doesn’t make what you did to me right, but you’ve saved our lives, Robyn. I know that.” Her hand cupped Robyn’s chin, and Robyn leaned into the touch, overwhelmed.
“That’s why he’s here then, isn’t it?” said John. “He’s figured out where you’ve gone.”
“I believe so. Either that or he’s looking for her ladyship,” Gwyneth said. “Or should I say, m’lord?”
“You can just call me Will.” Will’s tone suggested this was an argument they’d had before. “Alanna, can you sing for the baby?”
“Shouldn’t we be quiet?” asked Robyn.
“They shouldn’t hear us unless they come into the cellar, but they might hear a screaming child.” Alanna began a slow, low lullaby, and the notes hovered in the close air, breathing a little tranquility into the tense atmosphere. Alanna had a phenomenal voice, but Robyn wished she could listen to the conversation taking place between the prioress and the sheriff. More than that, she didn’t like being penned down here like a rat in a hole. If the nun decided—or was forced—to turn them in, there was nowhere to run.
“Shouldn’t one of us be trying to listen to what they are saying?” Robyn said, interrupting Alanna.
“Tuck will tell us,” said Will.
“And if she doesn’t tell us everything? I’m not saying that I don’t trust a woman I just met, but there are things she might overlook that are important. Things we need to know.”
“Things worth risking your life for?” asked Gwyneth.
“If it will help you, yes.”
“Robyn—”
“I need to know what’s happening.”
The others shifted uncomfortably around them, until Alanna cleared her throat. “All of us are too easily recognized.”
“She’s right. It’s not worth the risk,” said John.
