by Anna Burke
Anger flared in her breast and uncurled like smoke. This was her own fault. She’d helped Willa escape a fate too similar to her own, and that action, foolish in its own right, had spawned this discontent. She wanted to hit something. More than that, she wanted to run into the woods and beg Robyn to take her, regardless of the risk. None of those things could happen from within her father’s pantry. She took a deep, shuddering breath and stood, composed her face, and returned to dinner.
She managed to get through the rest of the meal without thinking of Robyn. Adeline and Cecire cornered her in the salon over more glasses of wine, their affected French hurting Marian’s ears.
“That is a pretty bit of embroidery. Is it yours?” Cecire asked, thumbing the sleeve of Marian’s dress.
“It is,” Marian admitted. She had liked the golden stags when she’d sewed them this past winter by Emmeline’s fire. Now, she wished they’d frolic away down her hem and dash themselves on the floor. “Do you enjoy embroidery?”
“I’ve been working on a tablecloth.”
“How lovely.”
Marriage won’t be a problem if I die of boredom, she thought as she smiled through bared teeth at the inane conversation. She forgot sometimes that most of the women at court were not like her friends. These ladies seemed to care only for their gowns and gossip.
“Have you heard anything about Richard?” she asked, desperate to discuss something of substance.
“I heard he’s gone to Rome,” said Cecire.
Adeline looked over her shoulder to make sure her husband could not hear her before she spoke. “My aunt is friends with Isabella. She said John and King Phillip have offered the emperor 80,000 marks to hold Richard until Michaelmas.”
The French king would get involved, she thought. “80,000? Where do they plan on getting that?”
“Phillip perhaps? Who knows what John promised him.”
“Normandy probably,” said Marian.
“All I know is that we can’t pay the both of them,” said Adeline.
“What about Eleanor? Does she know about this?” Eleanor of Aquitaine favored Richard, Marian knew, but this went beyond sibling rivalry: it was treason.
“If she does, she hasn’t moved against them. Do you think there will be fighting here?” Cecire paled at her own suggestion.
“If there is, you’ll be safe,” Marian told her. The impulse to comfort the other woman irritated her. Cecire should be frightened. War touched everybody, even ladies whose biggest concern was the embroidery on their tablecloths.
“Marian,” said her father, interrupting their speculation. “Lord Linley wishes to speak with you.”
She rose from her couch. Cecire and Adeline gave her sympathetic looks that only worsened her mood. Yes, pity me, she thought. Pity the poor sheriff’s daughter and laugh behind her back. They dined at her father’s table gladly, but loathed him when it came time to pay their taxes. She’d heard the whispers often enough to know.
“What does he want?”
“Whatever it is, give it to him.” Her father patted her arm. “It’s a good match, Marian.”
For you, maybe.
The viscount poured her a glass of wine and joined her at the sideboard. She drank more of it than was wise for a first sip, but it helped her feign a smile.
“What can I do for you, my lord?”
“I just wished to look upon you.”
“I’m afraid there’s not much to see.”
“The eyes of a woman will never understand what a man sees in her,” said Linley. He raked his gaze up and down her body. It made her skin itch. She would have shed it if she could, writhing out of it like a snake and slithering away to a dark place where men like Linley couldn’t find her.
“She looks like her mother.” Her father joined them, apparently unconcerned by the viscount’s visual assault on her body.
“I see it. She has her eyes. Broader hips, though.”
“Yes. She should birth easily. Turn, Marian.”
She stared at her father. Her cheeks burned with humiliation, and she begged him with her eyes to spare her further punishment.
“Marian, turn.”
She turned slowly, a broodmare at the spring fair paraded before prospective buyers, and the light from the candles pricked tears from her eyes.
“I would like to move the wedding up,” said Linley. “Before the harvest. That will give her time to see my estate before the cold sets in.”
Marian’s legs turned to granite. She beseeched her father with her gaze, but he considered Linley’s words without glancing at her.
“You may go, Marian. The viscount and I have much to discuss.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You’re not like me,” Gwyneth had told Robyn some time after Symon’s birth. It was late, and neither of them could sleep with the baby fussing feverishly between them. Gwyneth still struggled to get out of bed, but some of the color had come back into her face with the poached game Robyn brought home.
“What do you mean?”
“I worry about you. I worry you’ll be lonely.”
“I’ve got you.”
“For now, but I worry you’re not going to like marriage when it finds you, little bird.”
Robyn hadn’t answered for several heartbeats, listening to the rise and fall of the baby’s breaths as she tried to picture her future husband. The image kept blurring. “Perhaps I won’t marry,” she’d said.
“Perhaps you won’t.” Gwyneth had held them both, Robyn and the baby, and Robyn had renewed her silent vow to keep all of them safe. Regret gnawed at her now as the memory faded. She had not realized how much Gwyneth had protected her. Gwyneth had understood that Robyn would not marry, and she had even understood why, though they had never spoken of it outright. There were no words for such things.
She wished there had been. She wanted to tell Gwyneth about the way Marian had kissed her cheek and how the shadows beneath the trees were now limned with the blue of Marian’s dress. Gwyneth would know what to do. More to the point, she would be happy for Robyn, and it would give Robyn an excuse to say Marian’s name.
She shot a pheasant on her way back to their camp, plump and ready for plucking. Midge would be joining them tonight if all went according to schedule, and Robyn wanted something to send home with her besides coin. She ranged wider, eventually bringing down a duck by the river and a rabbit near the hollow tree where they stowed their dry goods.
“Good hunting?” John asked when she slipped into the little hollow by the river. She held up her prizes, and John nodded toward the string of fish smoking over the fire. “Will’s good with a spear, and Alanna can catch fish with her bare hands.”
“A net would be easier,” Robyn pointed out.
“But less enjoyable to watch.” John took a break from sharpening his knife to shoot her a grin.
“We could set a net while we’re gone during the day.”
“True. But then what else would we tell our scarlet friend to do with her time?”
“She could make the net.”
“You’re no fun tonight.”
Robyn unstrung her bow and checked to make sure Will and Alanna, who were gathering wood nearby, couldn’t hear her next words. “I stopped by the Harcourt Manor a few days ago.”
“You what?” The playful tone left John’s voice.
“On my hunt. I ran into Marian.”
“You should have told me what you were doing. What if you’d been caught?”
“Then better you didn’t try to rescue me.”
“What makes you think I’d try in the first place?”
“Well, Midge would have. Any sign of her?”
“Don’t change the subject. You took a risk, and I don’t like it. You risk all of us when you risk yourself. And why wait to tell me until now?”
Robyn turned her back on John and took a deep breath, willing herself not to shout. John was right. That didn’t mean she had to like it.
�
�Should I tell Will and Alanna that I saw Marian?” She ignored his last question.
“I don’t see the harm.” John took the rabbit and skinned it, pulling the soft brown fur off in a clean tug that left the rabbit bare and glistening in the afternoon light. “She’s as good as one of the gentry.”
“I know.”
“What does she want with you?”
She wants me. Robyn set to plucking the pheasant with more violence than was necessary. The skin tore, and she forced herself to slow down. “We saved her. Maybe she’s just grateful.”
“Gratitude would have been a fat purse full of coin.”
They fell silent, each lost in their own thoughts.
“Does she like you?” John asked bluntly.
Robyn focused on the feathers in her hand. “Yes,” she said, running a finger along the brown and white-flecked plumage.
He reached out and placed a hand on Robyn’s arm, forcing her to look up into his eyes. “Will was right about one thing. Outlaws without friends hang.”
“I’m not going to use her,” Robyn said.
“Why not?”
“Because . . .” Robyn trailed off. She didn’t have an answer.
“You’re not using her. You’ve caught her eye, for better or for worse, and we’re harboring her friends. This could be a good thing.”
“I thought you didn’t like it.”
“She’s not the problem. It’s the hold she has on you that concerns me.”
“John—” She broke off.
He waited.
“I’ve seen the way you look at my cousin.”
He withdrew his hand from her arm and rolled his shoulders. The tightness around his jaw did not surprise her; the fact that he did not strike her, did. She searched for words that did not exist and tried again. “I’m not—”
“This isn’t—” John looked over his shoulder toward Will and Alanna.
“That’s how I look at Marian.”
John stilled. Robyn felt as exposed as a rabbit in an open field, and his dark eyes searched hers. “I know,” he said at last.
“Is that why you’re John instead of Joan?”
John looked again at where Will and Alanna worked. She wanted to tell him that she would take his secret with her to the grave if that was what he wanted, but he spoke before she could form the words.
“I’m John because that’s closer to who I am than Joan. I don’t—there aren’t—you know what the church would say. God never errs.”
“I think he errs plenty.” She thought of Michael’s smile.
“I was never good at being Joan. I tried. I married. And when I killed my husband, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. It was the worst day of my life.” He paused. “And it was the happiest.”
Robyn tried to picture John as he must have looked then, standing over his husband’s body. She couldn’t. “Perhaps we’re meant to be out here. You, me, and those two.” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder.
“Part of God’s plan?”
“If he has one.”
“I would never hurt Midge. Or ruin her chances of a normal life. I swear it.”
“You’re the best man I know, John. She’d be lucky to have you.” She clasped his forearm, as he had clasped hers moments before, and tried to tell him with her touch how much his friendship meant to her.
“Your noblewoman, though. You might be too good for her,” he said.
“You think so?”
He grinned to show he was joking, and Robyn felt a part of her she hadn’t known was clenched relax.
• • •
Midge arrived later than usual. Robyn saw her small form slipping through the trees, accompanied by two more shapes. She strung her bow and sent up their warning.
Her whistle alerted the others. They took up their positions behind the largest trees in the clearing and waited.
Midge’s return whistle didn’t soothe Robyn’s anxieties. She whistled back once more, a question more than a confirmation, and Midge put her hands on her hips and glared.
“It’s fine,” she said. “They’re with me.”
“I can see that.”
The two figures stumbled forward. Robyn couldn’t quite make out their faces from her vantage point, but that could also have been from the bruises mottling their skin.
“Tom?” She squinted at the man, struggling to match her memory of her friend to the face in front of her. Someone had taken a fist to that face, breaking his nose badly and leaving a nasty cut across one brow. He gave a painful nod. The girl next to him looked to be no older than ten. She held Tom’s hand tightly, but she met Robyn’s eye without flinching. The imprint of a hand across her cheek stood out starkly.
“Lisbet,” Robyn said, her voice breaking. She didn’t ask what had happened. The fact that they were here told her enough. Lisbet’s eyes traveled around the clearing, taking in their small fire with the fish smoking above it and the skins stretched beside it. Her child’s tunic was made from good quality wool, as were her boots, but blood stained one of her knees and there were more splatters across her front.
“Two blacksmiths,” Robyn said, looking over her shoulder at John.
“Tom,” Tom said as he held out his hand to John.
“Little John.” John winked at Midge.
“And this is Will Scarlet and . . . Alanna,” said Robyn, introducing Will and Alanna. Tom shook her hand, and if he noticed that Will, like Robyn, lacked a few manly features, he didn’t say anything.
“You’re a minstrel,” Lisbet said to Alanna in awe.
“I am. Can you sing?”
Lisbet nodded.
“Come.” Alanna held out her hand. She led Lisbet to the far side of the clearing, removed her lyre from its leather wrapping, and began to play a familiar song. Lisbet joined her in the chorus and Midge gave Robyn a wide-eyed look that plainly said, you owe me an explanation.
Robyn turned back to Tom. He still wore his blacksmith’s apron. A heavy hammer hung at his belt, and as far as Robyn could tell it was the only possession he’d brought with him. “Is anybody looking for you?” she asked.
“One of the sheriff’s men went after my sister. She . . .” He looked at Lisbet. “He won’t bother her again. Or anyone.”
Robyn thought about the bloodstains on Lisbet’s clothes and tried not to imagine what had caused them.
“I couldn’t let them arrest her. I don’t think they’ll come after us, but we can’t go back.”
“She killed someone?” Will asked, her voice thick with incredulity.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. She got him in the stomach with a knife.”
Robyn closed her eyes to dispel the anger that overwhelmed her at the thought of Lisbet, little Lisbet, needing to defend herself against a grown man. The world belonged to men, even those who preyed on little girls, and neither Tom nor Lisbet stood a chance at trial. Especially Lisbet. She prayed that the wound Lisbet had dealt her attacker festered.
“Can you hunt?” Robyn asked Tom, changing the subject before she set off at a run toward Nottingham to finish the man off herself.
“No. But you know I can fight.”
Robyn remembered their childhood brawls. Tom had held his own, even against the older Michael.
“What about Lisbet?”
“She’ll do what you need her to do,” said Tom.
“I hid them in the mill when the hue and cry went up,” Midge explained. “Is that pheasant?”
“Depends. You got ale in that sack of yours?” asked John.
“None for you.” Midge batted at his arm and shouldered past him into the clearing, depositing her sack of ale and bread by the fire.
“How are things in Nottingham, Midge?” Robyn asked as she followed and motioned for Tom to sit. Lisbet peeled herself away from Alanna and leaned her head against her brother’s shoulder. Her eyes glistened in the light of the flames, wide and dark and full of waking nightmares Robyn wished she could drive back into the shadows.
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br /> “Worse than usual. Prince John is gone again, but they say he’ll be back, and either way we have to pay that damned tax. We’ll be lucky to have anything left over for winter.”
“This might help with that.” Robyn tossed Midge a fat purse. Midge opened it and her stubborn lips parted in awe.
“Robyn—”
“Hide it somewhere safe. As for the rest, I trust you know where it’s needed.”
“The rest?”
John pulled three other purses out from the tree. “Small coin, all of it,” he said. “Easier to explain than pounds.”
Midge swallowed. It was more money than most of them had seen in their entire lives. She stroked the worn leather reverently. “I’ll see to your family, too,” she promised Tom.
He nodded, fatigue riding heavy on his shoulders, and gave her a weary smile. Alanna struck up a soothing melody that soon had Midge humming along with a mug of ale in her hand and a half smile on her lips. Robyn looked around the camp, taking in the tender way Will watched Alanna and how Tom’s arm curved protectively around his sister. John met her eye and gave her an almost imperceptible nod, as if he knew exactly what Robyn was thinking.
Perhaps he did. Robyn felt an ache in her chest she hadn’t experienced since the last time she’d seen Gwyneth. Home, she thought, as John’s brown eyes promised the very thing she’d thought she’d lost forever: family.
All she had to do was keep them safe.
• • •
Robyn adjusted Lisbet’s grip on the bow. The girl’s muscles quivered as she pulled the string, but she set her jaw and kept it taut.
“Good,” Robyn told her, impressed despite herself. “Did you help in the forge?”
Lisbet nodded. “I worked the bellows sometimes, and Tom showed me how to make things with a hammer.”
“I’ll make you a bow of your own. Smaller than this one, but you’ll be able to hunt with it, and shoot anyone who comes after you before they get too close.”
Lisbet pulled the bowstring again, testing the weight of the draw. “He didn’t scream,” she said as she sighted down an imaginary arrow. “I thought he would, but he didn’t.”
