Robin turned to Katherine.
“Yes,” he said in a low voice. “We did promise to help Hawkwood by capturing Thomas. But we made no promise about neglecting profit, did we? And although the arrival of these men of York have complicated matters, there is now that much more to be gained by selling these hostages for ransom.”
He lifted his eyebrows in a quizzical arch. “After all, as one of the most wanted of the king’s branded outlaws, I can’t be expected to be sinless.”
Their southward march took them so deep into the forest that Katherine wondered how she might find her way back to any road. The man she knew as Robin led the large but silent procession of outlaws and captives on paths almost invisible among the shadows cast by the towering trees.
It was a quiet journey, indeed almost peaceful. Sunlight filtered through the branches high above them and warmed their backs. The cheerful song of birds seemed to urge them onward.
Twice they crossed narrow rivers, neither deep enough to reach Katherine’s feet as she sat secure on the horse Robin had provided. The men on foot had merely grinned and splashed through the water behind her. Katherine hoped each time that Thomas would topple from his own horse and flounder in the water with his hands bound as they were.
Never will that traitor be forgiven.
Again and again as they traveled, she reviewed the morning’s horror. How had Thomas accomplished it? By prearranging his campsite so that the enemy knights knew exactly where to appear?
Again and again, she fired molten glances of hatred at Thomas’s back. Of course Thomas had known the saddlebag had been leaking flour. To be followed so easily had made his task of flushing them out that much easier. How he must have chuckled as he waited for them in his camp.
Katherine needed to maintain the hatred. Without it to fill her, she would have to face the loss of Hawkwood. Without the hatred to consume her, she would have to focus on the struggle ahead. Yet even with the rage to distract her, questions still managed to trouble her.
With Thomas captured, what was she to do next? Without Hawkwood to guide her, what hopes had she of carrying on the battle against the Druids?
Each time those questions broke through her barrier of hatred, she moaned softly in pain and forced herself to stare hatred at Thomas’s back.
It was after such a moan that the outlaw Robin halted the lead horse. He dismounted, then walked past all the others to reach Katherine.
“M’lady,” he began, “we will leave all the horses here and move ahead on foot.”
He answered the question without waiting for her to ask it. “A precaution. We near our final destination. The marks of horses’ hooves are too easy to follow.” Robin gestured to an outlaw. “Will shall lead the horses to safer grounds.”
Katherine nodded, then accepted the hand that Robin offered to help her down from her horse.
“My apologies again,” Robin said. “For you, as well as the others, must be blindfolded during the final part of our journey.” His grin eased her alarm. “Another precaution. When the king’s outlaws hide within the king’s forests, it is only natural that we hesitate to show hostages—or visitors—to the paths to our camp.”
Although none of the outlaws hesitated to call to one another across the camp, their voices were muted with caution.
It could have been the hush of the forest, however. The great trees in all directions blocked whatever wind there might be; the air in their shade was a blanket of stillness.
In the outlaws’ camp, small campfires appeared in all directions as the shadows deepened with approaching dusk. At some, there was low singing of ballads. At others, the games of men at rest—arm wrestling, joke telling, and quiet laughter.
The fire at the center of the camp was much larger than any other. Beside it, turning the spit that held an entire deer over the flames, was the fat and half-bald man in a priest’s robe. His face gleamed with sweat in the dancing firelight. In his free hand he held a jug of beer he replenished often from the cask beside him. A steady parade of men approached with jugs of their own for the same purpose.
Katherine leaned against the trunk of a tree and watched the proceedings with fascination.
How had Hawkwood known of these outlaws? How had he contacted them? And why had they agreed so readily to help?
At the thought of Hawkwood, her tears—now always so near—began to trickle again.
She blinked them away, then jumped slightly. The outlaw Robin had appeared in front of her in complete silence. Surely in this darkness he cannot see my grief.
“I would bid you join us in our eventide meal,” he said. “I am told our venison will be ready soon.”
“Certainly,” Katherine replied in a steady voice. She did not feel any hunger.
“There is a message I have been requested to relay to you first, however,” Robin told her.
Katherine waited.
“Thomas seeks a private audience with you.”
The outlaw seemed to notice her posture become stiff.
“Do not fear, m’lady. He is securely bound. A guard is posted nearby.”
Katherine noted with satisfaction that her tears had stopped immediately at the prospect of venting her hatred upon Thomas. “Please,” she said, “lead me to him.”
The outlaw took her to a small fire set a hundred yards away. As promised, a well-armed guard stood discreetly nearby.
“He is now yours,” Robin said. Before departing, he added, loudly enough to make sure Thomas received the message, “And, m’lady, do not hesitate to call if he disturbs your peace. A sound whipping shall teach him manners.”
Katherine nodded and the outlaw Robin slipped away with the same silent steps he had used to approach her.
She then turned to Thomas.
He sat on a log, hands bound in front, a chain around his waist and attached to the log. Nothing about his posture indicated captivity, however. His nose and chin were held high in pride.
“You requested my presence,” Katherine stated coldly.
“Yes, m’lady,” Thomas said in a mocking voice. “If it doesn’t inconvenience you too much.”
Katherine shrugged.
Thomas raised his bound hands and pointed at her, and his voice lost all pretense of anything but icy anger.
“I simply want to make you a sworn promise,” he said in quiet rage.
“You seem in a poor position to make any promise,” she answered with equally calm hatred.
“That will change,” Thomas vowed. “And then I will seek revenge.”
“Revenge?” she echoed.
“Revenge. To think that I almost believed you and the old man might be friends instead of Druids.” He tried to stand, but the chain around his waist stopped him short. “The old man has already paid for his lies with death. And you, too, will someday regret the manner in which you betrayed my trust.”
For a moment, Katherine could not get air from her lungs. She opened her mouth once, then twice, in efforts to speak. The shock of his audacity had robbed her of words.
“You … you …,” she barely managed to sputter.
She looked about wildly and then saw a heavy stick in the nearby underbrush. Rage pushed her onward. She stooped to the stick, pulled it clear, and raised it above her head.
She advanced on Thomas.
He did not move.
“Barbaric fiend!” she hissed. “His life was worth ten of yours!”
She slammed the short pole downward. Thomas shifted sideways in a violent effort to escape, and the wood crashed into the log, missing him by scant inches.
It felt too good, the release of her pent anger.
She slammed the stick downward again. And again. Each blow slammed the log beside Thomas. He was no longer her target as she mindlessly directed her rage into the sensation of total release. Again and again she pounded downward.
A strange sound reached her through her exhaustion. She realized it was her own hoarse breathing and half-strangled cries o
f despair between gasps. She realized the heavy pole was now little more than a slivered pulp in her hands. And she realized Thomas stared at her in a mixture of fear and awe.
She poked the splintered pole at his face, and stopped it just short of his eyes.
“You craven animal—,” she began, then whirled as the guard’s hand gripped her shoulder while he spoke anxiously.
“M’lady—”
“This is none of your concern!” Her rage still boiled, and the guard stepped away in surprise.
She turned back to Thomas and jabbed the wood toward his face again. “How dare you slur Hawkwood’s name! He was the finest Immortal of this generation! He was the last hope against you and the rest of the evil you carry! He was—”
Katherine had to stop to draw air. She wavered in sudden dizziness. Then as the last of her rage drained with her loss of energy, she began to cry soundlessly.
She had nothing left inside her but the grief of Hawkwood gone. After forcing back her sorrow for an entire day, she finally mourned Hawkwood’s death. The tears coursed down her cheeks and landed softly at her feet.
Blindly, she turned away from Thomas.
His voice called to her. It contained doubt.
“An Immortal?” he asked quietly. “Why do you still insist on posing as a friend?”
“As your friend? Never.” She could barely raise her voice above a whisper, yet her bitterness escaped clearly. “What you have betrayed by joining them is beyond your comprehension. Yet you Druids shall never find what you seek. Not through me.”
“You Druids!” His voice began to rise again with rage. “I am exiled from Magnus. There is a bounty on my head! And you accuse me of belonging to those sorcerers?”
Katherine drew a lungful of breath to steady herself. “You knew we watched,” she said. “Your masters sent you forth from York with Isabelle as bait for us.”
“Sent me forth? Your brains have been addled by the fall. I risked my very life to take her hostage.”
Katherine managed a snort. “Pray tell,” she said with sarcasm. “How convenient, was it not, that the drawbridge remained open for you and not the pursuing knights? And explain how you managed to reach the puppet Earl of York inside the castle, even though he had been forewarned.”
Thomas gaped. “Forewarned? You speak in circles.”
Another snort. “Hardly. You pretend ignorance.”
They stared at each other.
Finally Thomas leaned forward and asked in a low voice, “Who forewarned the earl, if not you, the people who managed to follow me when none other knew my plans?”
Had it been less dark, Thomas would have seen clearly the contempt blazing from Katherine’s eyes. “I was a fool for you,” she said. “Caring for you in the dungeon of Magnus when even then, your master Waleran was there. Then to discover him nearby in York …”
Thomas now gasped. “Waleran? In York? How did you know?” He stiffened in sudden anger. “Unless,” he accused, “you are one of them. Leading those knights to my camp.”
More moments of suspicious silence hung between them.
“Why?” Katherine then asked softly. “Why do you still pretend? And why did you betray us so? Is it not enough you were given the key to the secret of Magnus at birth?”
Thomas spoke very softly. “I pretend nothing. I betray no one. And this secret of Magnus haunts me greatly, more than you will ever know.”
He continued in the same gentle, almost bewildered tones. “Katherine, if we fight the same battle, whoever betrayed us both would take much joy to see us divided.” Thomas shook his head. “And if you are one of them, may God have mercy on your soul for this terrible game of deceit you play.”
“M’lady, what plans have you for the morrow?” Robin asked. Now, with dawn well upon them, lazy smoke curled upward from the dying fires.
Katherine huddled within her cloak against the chill of early day. She stood where she had remained motionless for the last four hours, staring at the embers of the campfire nearest her.
“M’lady?”
With effort, Katherine pulled herself from her thoughts and directed her gaze at Robin.
“Plans? I cannot see beyond today.”
Robin gently took her elbow and guided her to the main campfire where the fat outlaw, still with a jug of beer in his free hand, now stirred a wooden paddle in a large iron pot.
“Broth,” Robin directed the fat man. “She needs broth.”
With catlike grace and surprising nimbleness for such a large man, a bowl was brought forth and filled to the brim from the pot.
Robin helped Katherine lift the bowl to her mouth. When she tried to set it down after a tiny sip, he forced it back to her mouth again. And again. Until finally, enough warm, salty soup had trickled down her throat to make her realize that she was famished.
Greedily, she gulped the soup, then held it out for more.
Robin smiled in satisfaction. He waited until she had finished two more bowls before leading her to a quiet clearing away from camp.
“Tell me now,” he said, “what plans have you for the morrow?”
Katherine stood straighter now, and much of her wild hopelessness had disappeared.
“None.” She smiled wanly. “Not yet.”
“I have discovered,” Robin said slowly, “that to make plans, one must first decide one’s goal. Then it is merely a matter of finding the easiest path to that goal.”
Despite herself, Katherine chuckled. “Knowing the goal, my friend, presents little difficulty. The path to that goal?” She shrugged. “One might as well plan a path across open sky.”
The outlaw shrugged. “The task is not that impossible. After all, birds fly.”
“They are not armed with weapons to destroy.”
“M’lady, what is it you want?”
Katherine thought of the secrets she had shared so long with Hawkwood. Sadly, she said, “I cannot say.”
The outlaw studied her face, then said quietly, “So be it. But if I, or my men, can be of service …”
Katherine, in return, studied the older man’s face, almost as if seeing it for the first time. “Why is it,” she asked, “that you offer so much? First to rescue me and capture Thomas. And now this?”
“Hawkwood never told you?”
Katherine shook her head.
“We had been captured once,” the outlaw said. He rubbed the scar on his cheek. “Captured and branded like slaves. Held in the dungeons of Scarborough. The rats and fleas our only companions. The night before our execution, all the guards fell asleep …”
Robin’s face reflected wonderment. “Each guard was asleep like a baby, and suddenly Hawkwood appeared among them. One by one, he unlocked our doors and set us free. When he got word to us to arrange your capture, we were glad to pay our debt.”
Katherine hid her smile. Child’s play for one of the Immortals. A tasteless sleeping potion in food or wine. It did not surprise her that Hawkwood might release innocent men or that he would know how to reach them later. His foresight had almost been perfect—had not the knights of York appeared, he and Katherine could have pretended surprise at the outlaws’ appearance and lulled Thomas into revealing more.
“When?” Katherine asked. “When did this happen?”
“Some years ago,” the outlaw replied. “We learned our lesson well. Since then, the sheriff’s men have not seen so much as a hint of us.” He grinned. “Except, of course, through the complaints of those we rob.”
He went on quickly at Katherine’s frown. “Only those corrupted by power,” Robin explained. “Those who will never face justice because they control the laws of the land.”
“You will continue to be a thorn in the sides of those who reign now, the Priests of the Holy Grail?”
“It will be our delight to provide such service.”
A new thought began to grow in Katherine’s mind. She spoke aloud. “My duty,” she said, “is to fight them also. No matter how hopeless my cause
might seem, I must strive against them.”
Robin nodded. No doubt he understood well the nobility of effort.
“I have little chance to succeed,” Katherine continued. “But what chance there is, I must grasp it with both hands.”
“Yes?” Robin sensed she had a request.
“Offer to battle Thomas. Set the stakes high. His life to be forfeit if he loses or his freedom if he wins.”
“M’lady?”
Katherine spoke strongly, more sure each passing second of what she must do in the next weeks. “Then,” she said, “make certain that you lose the battle.”
“As you wish,” he said, “or my name isn’t Robin Hood.”
ENGLISH CHANNEL, LATE SPRING—AD 1313
“M’lady?”
Isabelle ignored the voice behind her. She knew it belonged to the sailor that she’d sent on an errand. He’d delivered the information that she had needed. His body odor was horrible enough to be noticed, cutting through all the other odors of the docks, from fish guts to spoiled food to the smell of urine at the corner of every alley.
“M’lady?” His voice was louder, more insistent.
She finally turned, within the shadows of the overhang of a building on the street. Beyond, she could see a glint of water of River Hull, which opened here to the channel between England and the mainland. It was good to be free again, but this was not a moment to think of the circumstances that had led her here. Instead, she had an important matter at hand.
“My business with you is finished,” she said, finally turning to face her follower.
Indeed it was. Isabelle had followed Thomas here and had felt fortunate not to lose him when he disappeared for far too long between the outlaws and this port, where he had boarded a ship on the docks of this town, Kingston upon Hull. King’s Town upon the River Hull. Twenty years earlier—around the time that her father Lord Mewburn had taken Magnus—King Edward and a hunting party had chased a hare that led them to the banks of the River Hull. The King had not only been charmed by the beauty of the scene of waters and hills, but had realized the potential of the site for shipping. He’d purchased the land from the Abbott of Meaux, issued proclamations to encourage development, and given it the royal name, King’s Town.
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