It was almost full dark in the courtyard and the nuns had only two hooded candles between them, so Robin had to rely a good deal on his memory of Eleanor of Brittany’s face to distinguish any of her features. Once regarded as being unquestionably the greatest beauty in Christendom, the years had been kind. Despite the raw ugliness of the scars that marred the sockets where her eyes used to be, her skin was still smooth and unblemished. There were lines on either side of her mouth and a certain looseness beneath her chin, but these inevitable signs of aging only added a kind of dignity not found on the faces of women desperate to cling to their youth. Marienne had said her once silver-blonde hair was pure white now beneath the nun’s cowl, and had been since the night she had given birth to young Eduard. She had always been slender and delicate of form, but her wrists, where they peeped out from her sleeves, were beyond fragile; they looked as if the slightest pressure would snap them. Surely, the strength of Henry’s grip, when he first opened his eyes and saw where he was and who was tending him, should have crushed her fingers at the least.
“For eleven years he has defied all of God’s efforts to remove him from this earth,” she said when his men had followed the nuns inside with the litter. “I warrant he will survive this just to prove his stubbornness.”
Robin moved forward, the metallic clink of his hauberk seeming to desecrate the peace of the garden as he went down on one knee before her.
“Highness. It was good of God to keep you so well over the years.”
She urged him to stand again. “It was graciously good of God to bring you here safely, Robert, and for him to bless my … to bless Henry with such loyal and steadfast friends. Your family is well? Lord Randwulf, and your mother?”
“They are very well, Highness. I thank you for asking.”
“And Eduard? We heard he was injured in Maine.”
Her voice carried the soft concern of a lifelong friendship and Robin reassured her. “Lady Ariel has him securely bound, hand and foot, or he would have come himself. He is much like Lord Henry. Too stubborn by far to leave this world just yet. But you will see that for yourself when we return to Amboise.”
“Return to Amboise? No. No, dearest Robin, I will not be returning. This is my home now, I have no wish to leave it.”
“But, Highness—”
“Please.” She smiled and pressed a finger over her lips. “Do not address me thus. To the sisters, I am but a humble daughter of the church. And thus I will remain until I have served out my time here on earth. Here, Robin, at Kirklees, where I have found peace and happiness.”
“The king—”
“Is a broken man. He is ill and desperate and he knows his kingdom is in jeopardy. He fears the barons because they grow stronger every day and he knows his army of mercenaries and misfits cannot hope to defeat a host of zealots calling for change. He also knows I am no threat to him. In truth, he even visited me here once, begging my forgiveness.”
“He knows you are here?” Robin was shocked.
“He has known almost from the beginning and has never breathed a word of it, not even to his confessor. Guilt, I think. My brother’s murder weighs heavier on his mind than he would ever admit, and I must believe he has difficulty at night washing the stain of royal blood off his hands.”
“Well,” Robin said with raised eyebrows. “Then it will just be Marienne and the boy returning with us?”
She nodded and clasped her hands solemnly together. “You have seen Marienne?”
“Yes, most happily. And the child,” he added carefully. “A handsome, clever boy. Courageous too. He wanted to fight with us today.”
She reached out to touch Robin’s arm. “You did not allow it, I trust. Oh!” Her fingers found the wetness on his sleeve and traced it up to the gash in his armour. “You are hurt!”
“ ’Tis but a cut, nothing more.”
“Nonetheless, you must let Sister Goneril see to it. Are there other wounded among you?”
“Most have gone back to the camp in Sherwood. I myself cannot linger, for we have a guest of some importance waiting for us there, and the foresters may grow impatient to heat the pitch and pluck the feathers.”
“A guest?”
“Aye. Sir Guy of Gisbourne was invited to come along and listen to some of the foresters’ grievances.”
Her eyebrows arched slightly in surprise. “He did this willingly?”
“Willingly enough. I gave my word he would be returned to Nottingham unharmed. A little ruffled, perhaps, but unharmed.”
Eleanor tilted her head once more toward the postern. “I am also told you have a bold lady archer in your company.”
Robin beckoned one of the two shadowy figures forward. “My sister Brenna.”
Brenna dropped awkwardly in a curtsy. “Reverent Mother,” she whispered. “I have heard so much about you for so long, I…”
“You were beginning to wonder if I was real?” The abbess laughed softly. “It is an affliction suffered by many outside these walls, and I can only hope it grows stronger as the years pass. But you should not be the one to speak of legends and reality. They are saying you can shoot faeries out of the sky.”
Brenna exchanged a startled glance with her brother and the abbess, sensing her puzzlement, smiled again. “Did you not know that Sherwood is a magical place? Did no one tell you the humming you hear high in the boughs is the trees speaking to one another, whispering to those farthest away what is going on at the heart? Within a sennight, every tree in England will rustle with the tales the bards are singing—of Robin in his pilgrim’s hood, and Will with the scarlet hair, and … and a great Saxon warrior who calls himself the Prince of Darkness.”
This last was said with some curiosity, and Robin beckoned once again into the shadows. “That would be Griffyn Renaud de …” He stopped and corrected himself with a small shake of his head. “Lord Rowen Hode of Locksley.”
The abbess seemed to draw a careful breath as she pressed a hand over her breast. “Surely not … Wystan Hode’s son?”
Griffyn knelt before her as Robin had done and bowed his dark head. “You are kind to remember him.”
“The earl was a good man. When I first came here, he used to deliver us grain and meat through the long, harsh winters. Your arm,” she added hesitantly, reaching down to trace her fingers lightly over Griffyn’s scarred left hand. “Does it still pain you?”
Although Robin had thought himself beyond reacting to any more surprises where the dark knight was concerned, he found himself gaping.
“You two have met before?”
“The earl brought his son here,” the abbess explained, “hoping the sisters might know enough of herbs and medicines to undo the terrible thing the king’s men had done. The young lord was half conscious and burning with fever, so it would not surprise me if he does not remember.”
“I remember,” Griffyn said. “Though I did not begin to suspect whose gentle hands helped me until Robin mentioned that you were …”
“Blind?” she provided delicately. “In truth, I may have lost the sight of my eyes, yet my uncle did not take away my ability to see the goodness in men’s hearts. Your father was a brave and honorable man. We all grieved when he died, and felt the loss as deeply as your own people when you and your young wife were forced, shortly thereafter, to flee England.”
“Huntington was too rich and tempting a prize for the king to leave it in Saxon hands—especially those of a seventeen-year-old hothead who came close to killing him the once and likely would have succeeded had he been given a second chance.”
“And have you come back now, then, to join the other barons and nobles who fear they will also have their birthrights stolen, their sons tortured and imprisoned, their lives torn asunder by the ambitions of an unjust king?”
“I hold no such lofty ambitions, Highness. Huntington has been disseized these past seven years; I do not even think of it as mine anymore. Today I absolved the villeins and woodcutters of all charges of outla
wry, but they were empty words, spoken in arrogance by a man who has no home now except the one he has made for himself in obscurity.”
“Oh,” she mused, “not so obscure, I think. And these lofty ambitions you speak of, they are more a part of your destiny than you may realize.” She smiled gently and tilted her head in Brenna’s direction. “Has he told you how his hand came to be scorched?”
Brenna looked from Griffyn to the abbess. “No. He has not, though I have asked.”
The abbess nodded, as if she expected as much. “When I first arrived, the old mother abbess took me in without question. She was doughty and kind and wise, and we never thought there would come a day when she would not be ringing the bell to come to chapel, never be there to share our whispered fears late into the night, never be there to stand in the gates and defy the soldiers to set a single foot across God’s threshold. After I had been here for several years, the king’s men came to the gates and wanted to search the abbey, but she withstood their threats and their shouting. I had taken refuge in the chapel, preparing myself for what I suspected was my return to prison, but the abbess was successful in telling them to chase their rumors elsewhere; that this was a house of God and their immortal souls would be in jeopardy if they defiled it with their presence.
“A few days later, the earl—who was himself very ill at the time—brought his son here to Kirklees and begged a private audience with the abbess. None of us knew what they discussed until some time later when she suspected the pains in her chest would soon be fatal. She had already chosen me to be her successor and confided in me many things about the abbey, but now it was time to share one last secret about the history that bound Kirklees and Huntington together.”
She paused and laced her fingers tighter. “It seems the king’s men had not come for me at all. They had been chasing a rumor of a different kind—a rumor that had to do with the existence of a great charter drawn up almost a century ago by the son of William the Conqueror. He was young, and in love with the daughter of a Saxon noble, and in an attempt to make peace between the two peoples he would eventually rule, he compiled a list of a hundred promises to be made into law when he became king. True to his promise, he signed and affixed his seal to the great charter on the day of his coronation and dispatched one hundred copies around the kingdom, but he had not predicted the violent reaction of the Norman conquerors—those men who had eagerly followed his father across from France and fought to defeat the Saxons, only to be told by a lustful son that they should now consider themselves equals.
“Fearing this violence could turn into open war, Henry recanted at once and recalled the charter, managing to retrieve all but two of the one hundred copies. Of those two copies, one was said to have burned in a fire, but the other … was rumoured to have been stolen by his Saxon mistress, who in turn, and at great risk to her own life, had it spirited away into safekeeping. Over the years, kings would periodically hear the rumor of its existence again and send their spies out in the hopes of finding it and destroying it. My dear, brave Uncle John was no different. He tore apart the house of every Saxon peasant and noble, determined the charter would be found or the rumor set to rest once and for all.
“When his men came to Huntington, they arrested Wystan Hode and accused him of being in possession of Henry I’s charter. They tortured him cruelly and, when that failed, they declared they would leave the ultimate judgment to God.”
“He was too weak,” Griffyn whispered. “He could barely stand.”
“And so the son took his place,” the abbess said quietly. “He suffered the trial by ordeal in his father’s stead, and when he reached into the boiling oil and retrieved the crucifix, he held it out before the tribunal, defying the bishops to question God’s judgment.”
“My father died anyway a few months later,” Griffyn said through his teeth. “And a few months after that, the king came back for Huntington, so the nobility of the deed went for naught.”
The abbess shook her head. “You cannot know the pride your father felt as a result of your courage. Nor could you comprehend the depths of agony he suffered, knowing it was his secret you were guarding.”
“Are you saying”—the pale eyes glowed out of the darkness—“the charter exists?”
“He intended to tell you,” she said softly, “but at the time, you were too ill, and later, you were too full of rage. He was afraid of what you might do. Tell me … do you still carry Albion?”
Griffyn looked as puzzled as Robin and Brenna as he reached haltingly to his side and unsheathed his sword. The abbess took it gingerly, the weight of it too great to balance without resting the tip on the cobblestones. Her fingers probed carefully around the base of the serpentine guard and, finding the small indent she sought, pressed a hidden catch that allowed her to twist the rounded cap of the hilt to one side. It did not twist easily, especially to fingers more accustomed to praying than handling weapons of war, and, for a few probing moments thereafter, was still reluctant to give up the secret it had protected inside the hollow grip for so many years. But then she caught hold of something and extracted it with some difficulty, the object having been wrapped securely in cloth to prevent betraying its presence in the hilt of the sword.
She held it out to Griffyn. “Your father entrusted you with the sword, knowing you would never part with it; that it would stay in your keeping until you drew your last breath. He confided his sacred trust in the abbess, hoping she would find the right time to tell you, praying you would understand that he could not risk letting the secret die with him.”
Griffyn stared at the small bundle she had placed in his palm. He began to unwrap the layers of cloth, so old the threads had disintegrated at the creases, but identifiable by its shape long before the glint of metal appeared.
“A key,” he murmured. “But what does it open?”
“There is an old stone altar in the chapel at Edwinstow. On the bottom, near the back, there is what appears to be a crack in the stone, but I am told if the dust and mortar is scraped away and the key fitted to the crack, it will open and a secret chamber may be found therein. The charter is there, in a gold tube, stamped and sealed with the insignia of Henry I.”
Griffyn turned the key over in his long fingers and shook his head. “I thought it was just another legend, like King Arthur and his army of ghosts waiting in the forests, biding their time until England can be reclaimed from the Normans.” He looked up, mystified. “What am I expected to do with it?”
“It is not for me to tell you what to do,” said the abbess with a sigh. “But the king who rules this land now is a cruel and unjust monarch; he believes himself to be above all laws, even those decreed by God. There are other men, good men, at their wits’ end, desperate to find some way to end the tyranny and treachery, to put an end to the injustices and cruelty without having to resort to civil war. The promises contained in this charter are wise and fair; they would make a king accountable to his own laws, to his people, to his God. With a document such as this, the good men of England might be able to find a way to bring the king to justice.”
“Robert FitzWalter,” Robin murmured. “He has the ear of Stephen Langton, and the archbishop, in turn, could use these laws of Henry I to rally the barons into confronting the king. He was able to bring Lackland to his knees once. With the church, the law, the barons, and the people of England behind him, he could do it again.”
“Then you take it to him,” Griffyn said gruffly, offering the key.
“Oh, ho-ho, no, my friend,” Robin said, laughing as he held his hands up and backed away. “This is your country, not mine. Your destiny. You are going to have to play the hero yourself this time, I am afraid. By midday tomorrow I intend to have myself a new bride and be halfway back to Lowestoft.”
Griffyn’s hand curled around the key. “I am not a hero. I am not a leader or a saviour or a Spartan wielding a sword of fire. I do not even think of this place as my home anymore and doubt I would ever have come back h
ere had your destiny not interfered at Gaillard. No,” he said, handing the key back to the abbess. “I want nothing to do with saving a king or a country that destroyed my family, destroyed my life.”
“He destroyed mine as well,” she said softly. “And my brother’s.”
“For that I am truly sorry. But there is nothing I can do about it.”
He turned and strode out of the garden, exiting through the postern, leaving three silent figures staring after him.
“You will have to forgive him, Highness,” Robin murmured at length. “He is not yet accustomed to wearing this mantle of virtue.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” she replied. “Perhaps it is still just my own fear speaking, for the archbishop is the only other man outside these walls who knows about Eduard. He gave me his word, pledged it with his lips on the cross, but he has defied a king and angered a pope by siding with the barons. Imagine how strong their position would be if they could produce a legitimate heir to the throne?”
Robin drew a deep breath and reached over to gently ease the key from her cold fingers. “Eduard will soon be too far out of their reach to strengthen anyone’s position. And if this charter is as important as you say it is, perhaps Langton will accept it in his stead.”
“You will take it to him?”
“Actually, I will have Richard and Dag deliver it. They are considering staying in Sherwood awhile longer … to help Alan a’ Dale make proper fighters out of his woodcutters. They think it would be a worthy adventure to harass Lackland on his own territory for a change.”
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