by Anna Burke
“But,” Alanna continued, “would the sheriff recognize you in a habit, Robyn?”
“Absolutely not,” said Gwyneth, making the connection before Robyn did.
“That could work,” said John.
“No,” said Gwyneth. “You’ll have to rip it off me.”
“Please,” Robyn began, but Will hushed them all with an urgency that rendered silence immediately. Footsteps echoed in the chamber beyond.
“Search the place.”
“Yes, by all means, turn my priory into a tavern if it suits your needs.”
“You can’t hide her forever, Mother,” rumbled the bass voice of the sheriff.
“Well if I do, I assure you it won’t be behind a cask of mead. Sister Angela, raise the torch a little higher so our good friend can complete his search. The sooner he leaves us, the sooner I can write to the bishop to demand an explanation for why my priory has been overrun.”
“Gwyneth,” he bellowed, ignoring Tuck.
Symon gave an uncomfortable whimper, which Gwyneth stifled with a rustling of cloth and her breast.
“Are you quite done, my lord?”
“Mark my words, Mother, I will make you pay for this.”
“Me? Whatever for? She came to me scared and able to pay, and now she has taken holy vows. Had you but come a few days earlier, we might have spoken reasonably, but now my hands are tied. She belongs to God. Not you.”
“She never belonged to you,” Robyn said under her breath.
“You will let me see her.”
“I will not, sir. You have already violated the sanctity of these walls. If our lord Jesus were on Earth, he’d send you to the pearly gates himself. As it is, I feel quite confident that I could give you a kick in the right direction.”
“I will remember this when I come to collect the ransom tithe, woman. If you truly wish to protect the women in your charge, you’d do well to treat me with more respect.”
“Small men make big threats. You will leave this place now, before I have a mind to release my dogs on your men. Unless there is another cobweb you would like to look beneath?”
“My lord, perhaps we should look beneath her skirts. She’s large enough to hide three women, don’t you think?”
“Shut up, Alfred,” said the sheriff with a viciousness that surprised even Robyn. Heavy footsteps retreated, plunging them again into stillness, which was shortly punctuated by Symon’s muffled sobs.
“Hush, little dove,” Gwyneth cooed to her son, but her voice was unsteady.
None of them spoke until Tuck opened the door some time later, the torch in her hand momentarily blinding them.
“He’s gone,” she said. “And I’ve opened a new cask of mead.”
Gwyneth let Robyn put her arm around her shoulders as they exited the hidden room. Symon quit his fussing as he looked up at Robyn, and his face broke into a smile as he recognized her.
“I wish you could stay,” Gwyneth said softly enough that none of the others should have been able to hear.
Robyn kissed the top of her sister-in-law’s head, her heart twisting. “Me too, Gwyn.”
Tuck lit several more of the sconces, lighting up the cellar. Stone arches supported the ceiling, and lining the walls were casks and barrels filled with mead, cider, and ale. Several more doors to what Robyn assumed were other storerooms remained shut, and when she turned to look behind her, she saw the nearly seamless wall of stone where the door to their hiding place had been.
A long trestle table occupied the center of the room. Tuck pulled several mugs down from a shelf and filled them one by one, passing them around as she went. They drank without speaking for a few minutes before Robyn broke the silence.
“Thank you.”
“Think nothing of it. Badgering that man gives me more joy than it should, Lord knows.”
“He doesn’t make idle threats,” said Gwyneth. “He’ll tax you higher than he should for this, and it is my fault.”
“He’ll tax us either way, my dear, and what is it that they say? ‘You can’t get blood from a stone.’”
“He could,” said Robyn. “The son of a whore.”
“No matter, he’s gone for now, though it might be best if you stayed down here for today, in case he left someone standing guard. I can get you on your way before first light. Assuming you are still leaving?”
Robyn glanced at John, trying to read his expression. John merely folded his arms and waited for Robyn to deal with the mess she’d gotten them into.
“So,” Robyn said, turning to Will and Alanna. “You can still change your minds. In fact, you should change your minds. We’ll probably all be dead before harvest time, and while I can’t promise to keep you safe, I can promise you cold, discomfort, hunger, and sore muscles.”
“I’ve been on the road before,” said Alanna.
“Exactly. You’ve been on a road,” said John. “We tend to avoid those, seeing as they have people.”
“We can manage,” Will said.
“Any chance you can use that sword?” Robyn asked her.
“I’m a fair blade.”
“You’ll need to be more than fair. What about you?”
Alanna whipped a knife out of her belt and sent it thudding into the cellar door. Robyn blinked.
“I won’t slow you down,” said Alanna with a hint of a self-satisfied smile. “I bring my lyre too, which I’ve found is even better at discouraging violence. I can also pass as a boy. I used to when we traveled, and I’m more convincing than Willa. Or you, for that matter.”
Robyn considered responding, then decided Alanna had meant it honestly.
“One more thing,” said John, lowering his brows forbiddingly. “We need to know who might come looking for you.”
“No one,” said Will, squaring her shoulders. “I made sure of that.”
“How sure?”
“Sure enough that I could invite you to my funeral, if you had a mind to go.”
Robyn saw Gwyneth stiffen out of the corner of her eye and cursed Willa for her poor timing.
“And you, Alanna?”
“I’m just a minstrel. You don’t need to fear the hounds on my account.”
No, thought Robyn. Perhaps not. But the hounds may find us anyway.
Chapter Twenty
Heavy afternoon light filtered through the manor window and illuminated the lady Emmeline as she paced across her chamber, heedless of her limp. “I don’t believe it,” she said to Marian. “No matter what they found, I don’t believe it.”
Marian set aside her needlework and smoothed her face as best she could. The missive Emmeline had discarded lay between them on the floor, but Marian was shaky with her letters, and Emmeline had not calmed down enough to tell her what the lines contained. Marian had a feeling, however, that she knew. No news had come from Maunnesfeld yet, and while Alanna’s absence could be excused a little longer, Emmeline’s credibility had limits. A sick relative either lived or died, and either way Alanna would have sent word.
“My lady?” Marian ventured.
“They found her horse,” she said, her hands white and clenched at her sides.
“Whose horse?”
“And a forester came across a soiled gown in a ditch, along with a handful of red hair.”
“Willa?” Marian didn’t have to muster feigned horror. She hadn’t asked Willa what, if anything, she’d done to cover her tracks. If she had, she would have broken the news to Emmeline herself before she let her believe Willa dead.
“Her father has written to me to ask me to aid him in bringing his daughter’s killers to justice, as my lands border the forest, and as he so kindly points out, it was most likely to me she was running.”
“My lady . . .”
“I don’t believe it.” Emmeline muttered the words to herself as she continued her pacing.
“How do they know she’s dead? Did they find a body?”
“Not yet, but her father seems to think it’s a foregone conclusion.
Had he sent for my help days ago when she first went missing, perhaps we might have found her alive.”
“You know Willa, Emmeline. Is it possible that this is just some sort of, I don’t know, pretense? Alanna’s been gone for some time, too. Perhaps they ran away.”
Emmeline shot her a piercing look. “Do you really think so?”
“I don’t know what to think.” Except that I refuse to let you believe she’s dead. “It just seems like something Willa would do.”
“She would have told me.”
“Not if she thought it would put you at risk.”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“I don’t think so,” said Marian, hating the lie, but if Willa’s father was already casting stones, she needed to maintain it for a little longer. “Neither did Alanna.”
“I just can’t believe it.” Emmeline sank into her chair and buried her head in her hands.
“Can I bring you anything?”
“I think I need to be alone, Marian. If you would.”
Normally, this kind of dismissal would have stung, but Marian backed out of Emmeline’s chambers buoyed by a wave of relief. She needed time of her own to think, and so she made a beeline for the small herb garden past the manor kitchens. Bees droned in the lavender, but no one tended the tidy beds. Marian sank to the base of the smoothly fragrant bay laurels on the northwest wall and wrapped her arms around her knees.
She hoped Robyn had kept her word and met Will and Alanna at the priory. If not, Emmeline would find out soon enough the next time she visited her sister, and then Marian would have to answer for her own lies too.
This was my idea, she reminded herself, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. Emmeline’s pain was her doing just as surely as it was Willa’s. Besides—of the two of them, Marian was beginning to think Willa had gotten the better end of the deal. She was out there with her lover, while Marian was here, forced to pretend to grieve. What was it Gwyneth had said? Emmeline would not thank them for lying, or something like that?
Gwyneth. Her jaw clenched as she recalled how unnecessarily attractive the other woman was, with her blue eyes and thick blond hair. Robyn clearly thought so too, for why else would she have given her enough money to buy her way into a convent? And why did that bother her so much?
You know why it bothers you, her heart informed her. But lie to yourself if it makes you feel better.
“I am not in love with an outlaw,” she said to the empty garden. “I hardly know her.”
Her mind provided her with a list of things she did know: hazel eyes lined with dark lashes and a mouth that was quick to smile; strong, callused hands; shoulders broadened from pulling a bowstring; and a voice free from the affected French accents of court. Marian closed her eyes and tried not to think about what Robyn might have noticed about her, or how she compared to Gwyneth.
She didn’t compare to Gwyneth. Not well, at least. Maybe that was why the widow had joined the priory. There, she’d be closer to the woods, where it was easier for Robyn to see her. Stop, she told herself. It didn’t help. Her mind raced on without her, and Emmeline’s grief and her own jealousy vied for her attention with each new sordid image that paraded before her, until she shoved the palms of her hands against her eyes and wept.
• • •
Sleep evaded her for a long time that night. When it came at last, long past midnight, she dreamt of Robyn.
Marian walked in a clearing in the woods. Bluebells carpeted the forest floor, and she thought, in the half logic of dreams, the bluebells will be gone soon for it is nearly June. She did not hear the footsteps approach; she knew them anyway. Robyn’s arms encircled her waist, and she felt her breath on her cheek, warm and fragrant with blackberry wine. It was so easy to turn in those arms, as if she’d done it a hundred thousand times before, and so easy to touch that face.
Robyn tasted of blackberry. The tart sweetness sent heat spilling down her throat as Robyn pulled her closer and then down to the sea of blue blooming above the small meadow. She smelled crushed stems and bruised grass, so real her sleeping self ran fingers over her sheets to feel the brush of petals against her palm. Robyn’s lips moved over hers, slowly at first, and then with a hunger that answered the burning need in Marian’s bloodstream. It coursed through her in a fever that rose to spiraling heights until a release so sweet she cried out broke it, leaving her spent and sated and surrounded by flowers.
She woke up smiling in the gray light of dawn. Her body felt heavy and languid where it lay tangled in the linen sheets. Emmeline snored gently beside her with her son in her arms, and her exhales stirred his ringlets.
Memory fell upon her from the shadows above the bed. Her own breath died in her throat as alternating waves of desire and shame boiled her in her shift. Damp hair stuck to the back of her neck in the same places she’d dreamed of Robyn’s mouth, and she extricated herself from the bed with barely suppressed panic. Her dressing gown hung beside Emmeline’s on the wall. She snatched it and pulled it on as she eased the door open, careful not to strain the hinges lest Emmeline wake and ask her what was wrong. She climbed down a stairway to an empty storage room that had once housed bolts of cloth and salted skins. A few empty crates remained. She sank onto one and let out the shaking breath she’d been containing.
It was a sin to crave the touch of a woman as one should crave a man’s. The church rarely spoke of such things, but Marian knew them all the same. Sex was for marriage. Marriage took place between a man and a woman. Without a husband, a woman depended on the charity of her family, unless she was a widow. Widows, at least, might inherit businesses and estates and rule in their own right, but few other options besides the church presented themselves.
I could marry Linley and then poison him. First, however, she’d have to consummate the marriage, and that carried the risk of pregnancy and death.
Who am I becoming?
This was why such things were sins. She’d jumped from lust to murder, all in the space of a night, and before that she’d committed treason by helping Willa escape her father’s will. If only she had never come across them at the priory.
If only she had never fallen from her horse and looked up into a pair of eyes that held the forest at their heart.
If only her very blood had not been contaminated by this devastating want.
She felt in the pocket of her dressing gown for her knife. The delicate lady’s blade, used for slicing fruits and trimming threads, slid through the tender skin of her thigh as she tried to bleed out the devils inside her as the doctors recommended. The pain scored a brilliant line across her sight. The opening between her legs was still slick with the memory of dreams, and she drew the tip of the blade upward toward it. Beads of blood blossomed and dripped. Her hand shook as she reached the innermost part of her thigh. With her shift hiked up, she could see the curls that sheltered her, and she let one finger touch herself. The shock of pleasure sent a flash of blue across her vision. Her blade fell to the ground. She stared at the blood she’d let and willed it to cleanse her, even as her body trembled beneath her hand as she sought a different kind of purity.
When she surfaced, she noticed that the shutters over the window in this room had come unlatched at some point during the spring. Rainwater pooled beneath it, flanked by a bank of moss. Pale gray light reflected off its surface and danced on the opposite wall. Marian watched dawn shiver over the stones. I should be on my knees praying, she thought, but the panic had receded. In its wake was stillness.
What had Alanna said? Only Marian knew her truth?
She stared at the blood staining her shift. This, then, was true: she wanted a woman she had met only twice, wanted her with a fierceness that made her wish to shed her skin and run through the forest like a wolf, ripping with her teeth and laughing a wolf’s laugh at the hunters who pursued her, all the while howling.
I could sing you a thousand songs about love, Marian, but until you’ve been in love you won’t believe me.
A bird landed on the sill and trilled a greeting to the rising sun. Marian looked at its red chest and blue wings and laughed. The sound startled the bird, and she named it to herself as it flew away on wings of inevitability.
“Robyn.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Robyn woke before dawn with a start to find a large shape towering over her, only barely discernible from the darkness around her.
“Rise and shine,” said the prioress.
Right, Robyn reminded herself. After the sheriff’s departure and a healthy serving of bread and cheese smeared with honey and preserves, along with too much mead, Tuck had asked John to see to a mule, then some poorly repaired plows, and finally a difficult piece of forging that John had done his best to patch with the limited priory foundry and tools. By the time evening fell, it had been easy enough to convince them to spend the night, and Robyn had been loath to leave Gwyneth and Symon even with the added danger her presence posed to them.
John groaned and sat up beside her.
“I’ve packed some bread and sausage and strawberries for you, along with some cheese and a flagon of mead to break your fast,” Tuck continued.
“Thank you,” said Robyn. The fare the night before had been simple but plentiful, and her stomach still felt pleasantly full. She let herself remember a soft goat cheese mixed with blackberry preserves with a shudder of pleasure.
“I’ve got to be on my way as well this morning, so I’ll walk you to the forest with Sister Mercy and Brother Patience.” The dogs, never far from Tuck’s heels, panted their approval.
“Hello, Patience,” John said as the male mastiff presented its rear for him to scratch.
“Where are you headed?” Robyn couldn’t help the suspicion that filled her voice. The nun had hid them yesterday, but she’d had the night to change her mind.
“Not to Nottingham, if that’s your worry. I keep a few hives in the woods, and early morning is the best time to pay them a visit.”
Robyn glanced around the room. Alanna stirred, but she saw no sign of her sister-in-law or, for that matter, Will. “Where’s Gwyneth?” she asked, panic filling her chest.
