No Good Deed

by Kara Connolly

  Isabel took a good look, then nodded to the commander. “That’s him. He drew a knife from his sleeve and tried to stab Prince John in the back.”

  That news rippled through the hall. Queen Eleanor ignored it and touched Isabel’s shoulder. “I am very sorry I did not believe you, my dear. One hates to think there are so many bandits and cutthroats running around Nottinghamshire.” She added drily, “Someone should have a word with the sheriff.”

  As a smattering of quickly stifled chuckles erupted among those close enough to have heard her, Eleanor approached the assassin. Commander Boyer lifted his sword, pointing it at the traitor’s chest, ready to strike if he should lunge at the dowager queen.

  “So,” she said, standing at the commander’s side. The assassin had eyes as blank as a shark’s, and he blinked expressionlessly at the queen. “What have you to say for yourself?”

  I definitely wanted to hear what he had to say for himself. I felt like I had a vested interest for a lot of reasons, in this century and my own. But he didn’t speak, and a moment later the doors to the great hall opened with a crash. Prince John strode in, his fur cloak sweeping behind him.

  “What do I hear?” demanded his grace. “These fools have actually caught him?”

  As he approached, the guests all took a knee, lowering their heads. I was slow to react—not grudging, exactly, just slow.

  It was hard to tell what happened next, while everyone was bowing and not looking. It seemed the assassin grabbed his chance for escape. The guards grappled with him, and by the time everyone looked, the tussle was over. The assassin sank to his knees with the commander’s sword buried between his ribs.

  Only James moved quickly, reaching the man in time to take his weight as he collapsed, easing him to the floor. I followed and knelt beside him, surprised that the guards didn’t stop me, until I realized that Guilbert had my back. Isabel edged closer, too.

  James leaned over the dying man and whispered, “Confess.” But the assassin only breathed once more, then took his secrets with him.

  The hall was so still only the drip of spilled wine proved time hadn’t stopped. The bishop had come forward as well, and he intoned a solemn but short prayer in Latin, with James joining in on “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

  The rustle of sleeves filled the hall like sighs as everyone made the sign of the cross.

  Even Queen Eleanor, with her arthritic fingers. What would she confess? Would I ever confess that I knew she’d pushed the commander’s sword forward and silenced an assassin?

  In that moment when all the assembly was bowing, and I was catching up, I’d seen Eleanor’s hand on the elbow of Commander Boyer’s sword arm. She might say it was in revenge for treason, but I knew, in a way that I couldn’t explain, that my namesake had conspired to have her son killed and to blame it on the local troublemaker.

  And when she saw me watching her, she knew that I knew. Maybe that would put an end to this. She would go home to Aquitaine. Prince John would go on his hunting trip, keep angering lords and barons, and if anything got in the way of that again…it wasn’t my job to fix it.

  Because I also knew it was time for me to go home.

  I couldn’t explain my certainty any more than I could explain how I’d come to be in the twelfth century in the first place. One moment I knelt beside the dead man, wondering which of his faces—monk, soldier, courtier—was the real one, and what it meant that I’d seen him in Nottingham. Was it a premonition or was the vision an effect of the same anomaly that had brought me here?

  Then, with a feeling like that of going down in an elevator, all the things that had become so normal that I’d stopped noticing them became strange again. I felt like my body didn’t quite fit in the space around it anymore.

  So much was happening that when I pushed to my feet and walked to the door, no one stopped me. I listened to the talk, and every person I went past had a different version of what had happened. The Robin Hood legend would stay as contradictory and unlikely as it had always been.

  It should have felt weird to walk out of the castle with no one stopping me or ordering me around. Outside, the bailey was bright with torches haloed by the damp air. I smelled horse manure and wet stone and…exhaust fumes. The fumes smelled as real as the monk had looked on my side of the tunnel. Premonition or a glimpse of where I was going, I took it as a sign.

  I wanted home with all my heart, but I didn’t know how I could bear to say goodbye.

  “You left this.”

  I turned to see Guilbert holding my longbow. “Thank you.”

  He came down the steps from the keep’s main door, and I took the bow from him. “Are you going to run?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, with enough spirit to chase away the feeling I was going to cry. It came right back. “But I am going to leave.”

  His brow rose. “Without saying goodbye? I didn’t think you were a coward.”

  “I am not a coward.” He raised his other brow, and I set my chin. “I’ll start with Will, if you’ll show me where the barracks are.”

  We walked there in silence until I noticed he wasn’t limping. “You exaggerated your limp when we were in the hall this afternoon, didn’t you?”

  “Only a little.”

  “How did you heal so fast?”

  “My strong constitution and the excellent care of Sister Clothilde.”

  He held the barracks door for me, which was even weirder than being able to walk in silence with him. The inside was surprisingly not disgusting for a bunch of men living together in the Middle Ages. But that was relative.

  Will was sleeping in one of the cots, all bandaged up. Just when I was thinking this might be easier than I expected, he opened his eyes. “Have you rescued the prince from the dragon, m’lady?”

  “What kind of drugs are they giving you?”

  He laughed, then groaned. “Not enough.”

  I laughed, too, and then didn’t. “Will…I have to leave.”

  He sighed. “Of course you do, you strange creature. Is it back to fairyland with you?”

  Laugh, cry, what was the difference? “Is that what you think? James debates between angel and demon.”

  “It depends on the mood.”

  His hand reached for mine, and I held it. “I just wanted to say…,” I began, and swallowed before I could continue. “…that I have a brother somewhere. And he’s lost to me. But now I have another.”

  “Who will never be lost to you.” He squeezed my hand. “But please make the Will Scarlet you take with you better dressed than this.”

  “You’re not dressed at all, you rogue.”

  “All the better.” He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it. “Little John can’t bear goodbyes. I’ll tell him for you.”

  He closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep so I’d be able to leave.

  Guilbert was waiting outside for me. He didn’t say anything, just started walking back toward the keep, pretending not to hear me sniffle. There was a lot of pretending going on. Whatever it took to get through.

  “Do you realize,” he said, idly, “that you have never told me your real name?”

  “Really? It’s Ellie Hudson.”

  “No it’s not.” He stopped, and of course I did, too. “It’s Eleanor Nikola Hudson, of South Bend, Indiana, born in what I assume to be the year of our Lord two thousand—”

  “How do you know that?” Shock knocked everything off-kilter. I swore the whole of Nottingham Castle turned sideways.

  Guilbert reached into his jacket and pulled out my passport and cell phone. “Did you not realize you lost your satchel on the bridge before you jumped? I’m afraid the bag and other items were scavenged. But the guards left these as worthless.”

  I took them like they were precious artifacts. Which I guess they were. Artifacts of the future.

  “How—? What in the world have you been thinking this whole time?”

  “That whatever sorcery brought you her
e would take you away before the sheriff could remove your head.” He frowned, like he found that annoying. “I do believe in justice appropriate for the crime. But I suppose I have to let you go, regardless.”

  The discomfort of somehow not fitting in the space around me had gotten worse since I’d taken back my passport and phone. The pull was tangible but not yet irresistible. “Do you have something to write with?”

  He exhaled in annoyance. “Why didn’t you say something at the barracks?”

  Good to know I could still irritate him.

  We went back to the barracks, and Guilbert found me a scrap of parchment and a pencil that looked more like a crayon. I jotted down a date, time, and place and rolled the note up. “Now I’m ready.”

  He stopped at the door of the barracks. “You know the way from here, I suppose?”

  “I think I can manage.” I paused, though, because he seemed to have something he wanted to say.

  It took him a moment to work up to it. “I am sorry that I was rough with you when you were Robert Hudson.”

  I gave him a suspicious side-eye. “Did James tell you to apologize properly?”

  He looked indignant. “I would have anyway. It has been weighing heavily since you shot me.”

  This was getting awkward. “Don’t make me start liking you now that I’m never going to see you again.”

  He raised one damned eyebrow and nodded to my passport. “That small parchment in your hand bears the seals of governments I’ve never even heard of. How can you possibly say for certain we’ll never meet again?”

  That was a fair point.

  “In that case,” I said, taking a step back, “I won’t say goodbye.”

  I turned and left him in the barracks. My walk was purposeful this time as I headed again to the keep. I wasn’t entirely surprised to see James coming down the stone steps to meet me. I stopped to watch. He really was something else in his mail armor and surcoat, sword at his side. That was something I’d take with me, too.

  We met at the midpoint between the keep and the stables. He looked concerned, then bemused, then just confused by whatever was on my face. I came close to him and pressed the rolled parchment into his hand.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “It’s where I actually come from.” I kept our hands clasped together. “Don’t look at it now. I don’t know what you’ll do with the information, but…it’s yours. So you know.”

  Maybe I was so confident that I’d done what needed doing that I wasn’t afraid of changing the eight hundred years between us. Maybe it didn’t seem to matter since Guilbert knew, or it didn’t seem sporting that one knew and the other didn’t. In any case, it was done.

  “You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.” I felt so strong saying it, but I was shaking. I stepped back so he wouldn’t feel it. “Maybe you should find a way to retire all this holy order business and marry Isabel. Being a farmer and a just and fair landlord would suit you. Living a good life is an atonement, too.”

  One more step, and he stopped me with my name. “Ellie.” He crossed the span of my two steps with one of his and held my gaze in the torchlight. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  He raised his hand and swiped his big, callused thumb over my cheek, holding it up to show tears I didn’t know I was crying. “I told you I wouldn’t allow any harm to come to you.”

  I gave him a watery smile and said, “You didn’t.” I wasn’t conflicted about going home. It wasn’t his fault that going someplace meant leaving someplace else behind.

  Well, someone.

  Some ones.

  “Tell Much…” There, I finally faltered. “Think of something, will you?”

  He stepped back, making it a little easier for me. “Of course. Be careful, Eleanor, back there in West-of-Here. Maybe learn to look before you leap off bridges.”

  I made a face. “What? Have you never met me?”

  I waited for his laugh, then headed for the stable. The doors to the tunnel stood open. I could smell damp sandstone and I could smell coffee, and I burst into a run, not even breaking stride when I reached the pitch-freaking-dark.

  “Miss! You’re not supposed to be in there.” A lady in a blue polo shirt pointed at me with her furled umbrella. “Only tours can go into the caves.”

  “Oh.” It took me a moment to get my bearings. I had a certainty of when I was, but I was still a little confused about where. And how to get out of there.

  I finally did what I had done to get in and climbed over the gate between the terraced top of Nottingham Castle’s cliff and the path leading to the caves beneath it. The Nottingham Castle lady complained some more but then stopped when she looked at my clothes.

  “Is there a reenactment today?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What day is it?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “The date, I mean.” People always got weird looks when they asked that in movies and, unsurprisingly, that’s what I got from her.

  “The fourteenth.”

  The day I left. Or at least the date I left.

  “Are you quite sure you’re all right, dearie?”

  Somehow that was even funnier in her thoroughly modern accent, and I had to stop laughing or she was going to call someone to take me away for psychiatric evaluation. I didn’t want that happening now any more than I had then.

  The lady went back into the tea shop and suddenly I was starving, but I didn’t have a cent on me. At least I had my passport and my phone. That, and a really cool outfit for the next Renaissance fair. I smoothed the front of the leather jerkin and my fingers found the sling I’d fashioned for my bow.

  My longbow.

  I pulled it off my shoulder and checked to make sure. Yep. There was even some of Will’s blood on the string notch. We were still the same as we were back then.

  Now what?

  I took out my phone. The last thing I expected was any charge, but when I turned it on, there was a tiny bit of red in the battery indicator. According to Vodafone, I’d come back within five minutes of when I’d left. Multiply that feeling of flying for nine hours and getting somewhere before you left by about a hundred, and that’s how I felt.

  I supposed I should call Mom with the last of my charge. But my thumb was out of practice, and I hit the picture app instead.

  There was the last picture I’d taken. Me and Robin Hood. I couldn’t help a hysterical laugh. It wasn’t even close to a likeness.

  Then an accidental swipe took me to the next picture. Still at the statue. Still me. And beside me…

  I staggered and had to sit in one of the wire patio chairs outside the tea shop.

  Beside me in the picture was Rob, and we were making like archers in front of the Robin Hood statue.

  I shot out of the chair and ran around the big building that wasn’t a castle and down through the garden that had once been the barracks and out through the gate where Henry Guilbert had ridden up and said to throw me in the dungeon and down to the street that hadn’t been there at all. I ran downhill to the inset concrete space where Robin Hood was now, and where the river had been then. Where James Hathaway had pulled me out of the muck.

  No one was there. Lots of people on the street, but no one at the statue. I circled it, then went around to each of the murals from the legend, and then I went back to the street.

  “Ellie!”

  I swung around. There was Rob, the real Robert Hudson, coming up the hill toward me. My God, he was so thin.

  I ran, threw my arms around him, and didn’t let go.

  “What is wrong with you? God, you smell. What are you wearing?” He pried me off him and looked at me. “Where did you get this getup? Is that a yew longbow?”

  “Yes,” I said. I wiped tears from my face, and my hands came away not just wet but muddy. And my lost brother had just said I smelled. And it was the most beautiful thing ever. “I’ll tell you, but I’m just so happy to see yo
u!”

  He gave me a look. “You saw me thirty minutes ago.”

  I laughed a little hysterically and said truthfully, “It feels longer.”

  It had been, for me. Last I saw him was six months ago, plus Medieval Relative Time.

  Rob gave me an annoyed-big-brother look and I hugged him again. He pulled me off him and examined my face. “You were supposed to meet us at the pub.”

  “Sorry!” I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Now I got the side-eye from the other direction. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Ellie. Ellie Hudson.” It felt wonderful to say.

  Someone spoke behind me. “Glad to meet you, Ellie, Ellie Hudson.”

  It was a male someone. A male someone with a British accent. I turned and saw…

  No one I knew. But for a second I thought I did.

  “Ellie,” said Rob, a little amused and a little annoyed, the way brothers were, “the most bizarre coincidence just happened. I want you to meet the guy who literally saved my life.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said the handsome, tanned, caramel-haired, blue-eyed male someone with a British accent who put out his hand.

  “An honor, your grace” was what came out of my mouth.

  He laughed. “I’m not a duke. The only rank I’ve got is lieutenant.”

  “Oh.” I laughed awkwardly. “I had to practice that line for a play and it pops up at the weirdest times.” Nothing in Rob’s or the stranger’s expression said they believed that, but I didn’t care.

  Rob performed a proper introduction. “Jamie is part of the search and rescue squad that found my group out in the desert. Jamie, this is my usually very serious sister.”

  “Jamie?” I asked, not startled, really.

  “James. A family name.” He looked me over. Not in that way. In a why-are-you-dressed-like-a-complete-nutter way. “Are you a living-history enthusiast, Ellie?”

  “No. I’ve just had a really strange day.” I went to put my hands in my pockets, but I had none. Middle Ages pants. My jeans and sneakers, I realized, were in the past. Oops.