by Tim Hall
“I need to ask of you a hard task,” Sir Bors continued. “I hear reports of a host, gathering in the wildwood. Will Scarlett, formerly Chief Rider of the Sheriff’s Guard, is recruiting bandits and peasants and itinerant swords of every sort. I want you to join them. Pledge yourself to Robin Hood’s cause. Take one other knight with you—the man you trust most in the world.”
“You want Robin to defeat the Sheriff?” said Jack Champion. “Then why send just two? This time of year we could spare a score of men, couldn’t we?”
“Something you must understand,” said Sir Bors. “This war will not be as others. When Robin Hood and the Sheriff clash, fully, I am convinced there will be nothing so quaint as winning or losing. Nothing left to be called victory. You will not be there to fight, except for the sake of appearances. Your primary objective is to watch and to listen, to report back to me everything you learn.”
Jack Champion stared straight ahead, twisting his beard.
“This … war,” said Sir Bors. “I hold myself responsible, to no small degree. They were both of them, at separate times, in my care, under my guidance.”
“Both?” said Jack Champion. “The Sheriff was your ward?”
“He was not always the monster he is today,” said Sir Bors. “He was once a noble young man, and the best and brightest pupil I have ever known.”
“Was he … like us? One of the winter-born?”
Sir Bors nodded. “That is why I fear what is coming. At my age, I have seen history repeat itself too many times. And this, I’m certain, will be worse than all. I cannot watch it approach and stand aside. But be warned, once you have joined the outlaws, I may ask worse of you than spying. In which case you must trust me, and know I act for the greater good. You must understand too that what I told you once has come true, in a way: Your friend Robin Loxley is dead. Someone else—something else—has taken his place.”
He dismissed Jack Champion and the knight returned to take his place in the line. Sir Bors went back to his silence, and his thoughts. He saw landmarks that told him he was close to home. He looked around him at the rolling hills, the sparkling streams, the wooded valleys. This land that had raised him, that welcomed him home like a mother every time he returned from campaign. He studied this land now as if seeing it for the first and last time, and he felt a shiver of doom, and he steeled his heart once more against all that must be done.
Robin walked a ravaged land. The closer he drew to Nottingham the more dead villages he found, some of them razed to the ground, others intact but silent, farm tools left lying in the grass, children’s games abandoned. Even the villages that were occupied had a deathly feel. Often their Trystel Tree had been destroyed, or their ancestral spring desecrated. Robin passed such places and he felt something was rising to the surface—something that had lurked beneath too long. From behind walls he heard dark muttering and sometimes a whetstone rasping across steel.
What had he heard that ranger say? Even the peasants are forming militias. Whittling their dung forks into spears.
Robin crested a hill and stopped. Extraordinary events were occurring below. Four soldiers had ridden into a village and were busy stripping it for their own supplies, filling their packs with what little food they could find. There was a squawk as one of them snapped the neck of a goose before tying it to the saddle of his horse.
But now the texture of this scene was changing. One of the soldiers had gone missing. He had entered a longhouse and had not come back out. Another ranger went looking for him, and as he stepped into the house there was a muffled shout and a repeated wet popping sound. Elsewhere in the village a cry of surprise and a gurgled yell.
Then all became quiet and still. The sounds when they resumed were of heavy objects being dragged across the ground, and the door of the slaughter-shed being closed and bolted, and the sharpening of knives.
Will Scarlett was right: Robin’s attack on the Sheriff had changed everything. A mighty storm was about to break.
What have I started?
He told himself this was none of his concern, not yet. Marian needed him, and he must not be distracted. He left the village behind and continued on his way.
* * *
Finally, just before dusk, he neared Nottingham.
Still playing his vagrant act, tapping his bow, he shuffled up one of the approach roads, joining the procession of soldiers and traders heading for the city gates. A cutler with his wares clanking against his cart called out to Robin as he passed. “You don’t want to go in there, cripple. You have any idea what the Sheriff does to your sort when he finds them in his city? Better to take your chances on the road.”
Robin ignored him, shuffled on.
“So be it,” the man called. “It’s your skin.”
Washing out of the city was a cacophony of noise—an almost physical presence as Robin drew near—the first curfew bells were clanging, and shutters were banging closed, watchmen rapping their cudgels against walls, shouting for all citizens to be indoors. At the river port, barrels rumbled and baskets thumped. And everywhere across the city the rattling of bolts as doors were locked against the gathering dark. Beneath these final day-sounds a nocturnal babble was rising: a low moan of laughter and lies and violence from the taverns and the dicing dens.
Robin stopped, overwhelmed. Perhaps he had imagined the city would not be so different to Sir Bors’s citadel. But it must be ten times the size, to produce such a flood of noise. And so much of it was unfamiliar: scrapings and tappings and tickings he couldn’t name. Had human habits and rituals become so foreign to him? Or did this place have rules of its own, which he could not hope to understand?
As he continued up the approach road he sent his mind into the green, trying to sense the city more fully. Above the gates, impaled on spikes, were the boiled heads of executed men—Robin riding with the crows darting in to peck at eyeballs. The clatter-flap of the crows’ wings; the rasp of their voices. Robin trying to spread his awareness further, to fly with the birds across the city roofs. But failing to reach beyond the curtain wall. He tries again and is rebuffed once more. Finally he understands: There are no birds above the city. No buzzards or starlings. Not even pigeons. It is as though the impaled heads form a spirit fence, beyond which birds fear to venture.
No time to think about this further. The second round of curfew bells clanging now within the walls. On the approach road the wagons and carts clattering quicker, everyone anxious to be inside before the gates slam shut. Robin approached the walls—the cold endless weight of them stretching above. A stone bridge took him across the river, and then he was shuffling toward a guard house.
“State your name and your business,” a sentry said.
Robin continued toward the open gate. The sentry stepped into his path.
“I need to go inside,” Robin said. “Let me through.”
“Not until you’ve shown your permit, or paid the entry tax. And not until I’ve seen your face.”
“Get out of my way.”
The sentry advanced, leveling his spear at Robin’s chest. “Harold …,” he called over his shoulder, “we’ve got another one for the river. You stay here, I’ll take care of it.”
“I told you …,” Robin said. “Get out of my way.”
He threw aside the horse shroud. His hand, woven with shadow, went to the hunting knife at his belt. The steel flashed up and out and the sentry’s spear was shorn of its blade.
Robin fought to hold the knife still. The tendrils of shadow were frenzied, urging him to lunge again, to strike this man dead. The sentry was stepping back. He dropped the cleaved spear, stumbled and fell, scuttled away like a crab.
There were other sentries here, but Robin could hear in the racing of their hearts that not one of them was inclined to fight. They turned in silence and they ran.
Robin sheathed his knife. He left his disguise where it had fallen—he strode through the city gates and up through the cobbled streets. He strung his bow and nock
ed an arrow.
He kept expecting those sentries to raise the hue and cry, but no bell clanged or horn blew. No ranger came to face him. Perhaps the Sheriff’s troops now feared Robin more than they feared their master. Perhaps they were willing to leave the Sheriff to his doom.
Well then, here it was, at the tip of Robin’s arrow. The Sheriff would live long enough only to reveal where he was keeping Marian. And there it would end.
From the eastern edge of the city came the clanking of wood and rattling of chains and final ca-clunk as the first of the four great gates thundered shut. Robin didn’t break his stride. He swept through the dusk streets, thinking of all he had endured, burning for his revenge.
The screaming began, and Marian was pleased. The noise brought with it a wave of relief and a smile sprang unbidden to her lips.
A warden hurried past—automatically Marian dropped her smile and lowered her gaze and shuffled on her way, once again wearing her blank mask.
The screeching continued, cutting through the cloisters.
“She’s foaming at the mouth,” Marian heard one warden say.
“Fetch the Apothecary,” came another voice.
“And a priest,” said a third guard. “She’s possessed.”
They were talking about Lyssa Brekehart. From the direction of Lyssa’s sleeping cell came yelling and a strangled growl. Something crashing and shouts for help. Girls were looking up in surprise; on any normal day the loudest sound in this place was the muted bonging of a prayer gong.
Everything in the Garden of Angels was tailored toward peace and harmony. Set into alcoves in the walls were acoustic pots that caught the girls’ hymns and their prayers and changed their pitch and carried them warbling through the arcades. Other background sounds were of fountains tinkling and the chirping of caged birds. Equally no noisome smells were allowed. The floors were scattered with sweet woodruff, mixed with dried rockrose. Censers of incense burned everywhere, along with fuminaries of lavender oil.
Marian hated it all. She loathed this place with a howling passion. The softness, the stillness, the stifling banality of every sensation made her want to scream. She daydreamed of running free in Summerswood, the wind biting at her skin; of clambering up a tree, filthy and scratched and smelling of bark and moss; of swimming half-naked in Titan’s Lake, laughing and shouting and splashing from a high rope.
Today she felt more restricted than ever—there was a tightness in her chest and her breath came sharp and shallow. It was always this way following a visit from the Sheriff. In front of that man she struggled more than ever to wear her dumb disguise—to sit there with him and nod and murmur when what she wanted to do was put her fingers round his neck and squeeze and keep squeezing. The Sheriff’s latest visit had been made even worse by Killen Skua. Why had the Prime Warden been so agitated? What was all that talk about Bishop Raths, the Inquisitor? All that can wait, she told herself. Panic now and all this will unravel.
The cacophony continued and guards were hurrying past. Nobody was paying Marian any attention; she could go about her work undisturbed. She would start with the easiest task first. She went to her sleeping cell and collected the Flemish mantel she had just finished stitching. She took it to the dining hall, where she found Peter Child, the chandler. Marian moved down the hall, the polished floor squeaking beneath her feet. Peter Child stopped his work and looked up. He tucked a strand of his black hair behind his ear.
“Did you find more?” Marian said.
The chandler glanced around nervously before putting a wicker pot in her hands. It contained fly-bait mushrooms, red with bright white spots.
“I knew you wouldn’t let me down,” Marian said. “You’re so brave, and clever. One day, when I’m free …” She trailed off. Peter seemed to be trying to say something but he only made clicking noises with his tongue. There were lines of pink beneath his eyes.
“I need more deadly nightshade,” Marian said. “Just the fruit—the devil’s berries. You remember what they look like, and where they grow? And you’ll get this to your mother, I know you will.”
Peter took the cape and hid it quickly among his tools. Marian leaned forward on her toes, as if about to kiss him. She froze, then glanced behind her, apparently startled. “I can’t let them see me here.”
She hurried away, leaving Peter stuttering something behind her. So far, so simple. But Peter Child always had been the easy one. Others today would prove more difficult.
She went to the service quarter, descended the steps into the scullery. It was gloomy down here, and cold, her breath misting. Norman Banes was waiting for her, pacing back and forth, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“You’re late,” the warden said, turning to her with bloodshot eyes. “Give it to me.”
“You first,” Marian said.
“No, that’s not how it goes today. You think you can have everything your own way.”
Marian turned to leave.
“Wait, wait,” the warden said. “I’ve got it here. Look. I don’t care. Just hand it over.”
He took from within his clothing something flat and thin, wrapped in an oiled cloth. “One is the best I could do,” he said. “Even that was a big risk.”
Marian reached inside her smock and took out two stoppered phials, each containing a yellowish liquid. At the sight of the drug Norman Banes’s tongue appeared and worked across his teeth. He was shaking and sweating visibly, despite the chill. She handed him one of the phials. He snatched it, and his eyes narrowed.
“And the other one,” he said. “Give it to me.”
“You brought half of what we agreed,” Marian said, turning to leave. “You get half in return.”
Norman Banes lurched at her, threw out a hand—she sprang out of range. He went for her again and she twisted away. They had ended up changing places, Norman Banes with his back to the steps, blocking the exit.
The tall guard towered over her, his eyes crazed, his breath stinking. “Evil little witch. Give me the rest or—”
“Or what?” Marian said. Her eyes burned into his. Her voice dropped to a menacing hiss. “You really are more stupid than you look. I am the last person in the world you ever want to threaten. You’ve been taking this stuff from me for months, and you’ll have to keep taking it because you’re its slave. You’re more of a prisoner than I am. At least I have choices. I get to choose, for instance, what goes in these phials. Perhaps next time I’ll use less mandrake and fewer poppy seeds and I’ll add a little wolfsbane, or a slice of deathcap, and you’d have no idea, and you’d barely care in any case, you’d swallow it down just the same because you’re so desperate to escape your sorry waste of skin. How does it feel, taking this stuff? Like ‘flying with the angels,’ you said. Any time I choose I can bring you crashing to earth, and then I’ll drag you lower still, until you’re drowning in Hell. How dare you demand anything from me. I’ll have you groveling at my feet, begging to be put out of your misery.”
Norman Banes unclenched his fists and shuddered and looked away from her eyes.
“Keep bringing me what I need,” she said, as she stepped around him. “Raise your voice to me ever again and I will treat you to a death so slow and so painful you will wish you had never been born.”
She walked up and out of the scullery, pathetic Norman Banes already forgotten, her mind turning to the third and final task of the day. The most difficult of all.
She went to her physic garden, a walled patch of earth just outside the main convent. She carefully cut a stem of burn weed, and she picked rosehip berries and sliced them open and scraped out the seeds. She put these ingredients in a mortar and she added some medical spirit and some honey to create a sticky consistency. She poured the mixture into a tincture jar. For a second jar she created an antidote, using butter dock and field balm. She stashed her equipment and left the garden.
She found Aimee Clearwater in her sleeping cell. She was hugging the underside of her thighs, her face turned to the
wall, her red hair cascading around her knees.
“Did he come here again?” Marian said.
Aimee raised one hand to wipe at her cheek. “Why me? Why did he choose me? What have I done to—”
“Stop,” Marian said. “I don’t want to hear that again, ever. You’ve done nothing. It’s his shame and his alone. It’s that man, Gordon Sleth. Do you understand?”
Aimee began to rock. Marian sat and rubbed her spine.
“And I haven’t given up,” Marian said, placing both tincture jars on the cot. “I’ve brought you more. It’s in the brown jar, and in the yellow jar is the curative. Remember which is which. I’ve made it stronger. By morning he’ll have swelled up red as a berry. He won’t dare come near you again.”
“That’s what you said last time. I used it the way you told me, and it hurt him, I know it did because I got some of it on me and it burned and left a rash. For him it must have been much worse. But still he came back.”
Marian sighed. “We’re learning something about men, aren’t we? They are slaves to their urges and their fears. We are stronger.”
Aimee stopped rocking and turned. “We need to tell.”
“No.”
“They’re not allowed to touch us, are they? None of the others do. If we tell the Sheriff what Sleth’s been doing, then he’ll—”
“No!” Marian shouted it and Aimee sat up straight.
“The Sheriff is not your protector,” Marian said. “The moment you go to him for help, that’s where it ends. That’s when you’re fully in his power.”
Defiance had risen briefly in Aimee’s eyes, but now she turned away.
“Real freedom,” Marian said more gently, “with our nemesis dead. That is the prize. Your price has been higher than most, but nobody will be carried. That’s why you’ve got this: to show you’ve suffered, for all of us.” She touched Aimee on the underside of her right wrist, where there was an image of an angel above shattered chains—a tattoo Marian had drawn using a sewing needle and sloeberry ink. “Lyssa will wear one of these, after today,” Marian said. “But not all the girls have earned the right, have they? Their time will come. We will all play our part.”
