Lady of Sherwood

by Molly Bilinski

  “There are,” Jemma agreed. “We only need one good idea to come up with a plan.”

  Silence fell. Much blinked sleepily still, though it was evident by the crease in her forehead she was fully in the moment and thinking hard. Maggie tapped her fingers against her thigh. Ginny played absently with the end of her braid, more concerned with how her ribbon looked than anything else, which was fine with Robin. The longer they could keep her from the harsh realities of the world in which they were part of now, the happier the rest of them would be. Ginny still had a majority of her childlike innocence, and none of them wanted to see her lose it as they had.

  “What if,” Kitty said slowly, “Robin doesn’t go?”

  Robin glanced at Jemma and shrugged. “She said both of us, but she didn’t say what would happen if only one of us came.”

  “But what if the Sheriff’s men are there? They’ll take Jemma!” Maggie crossed her arms over her chest, chin tilted belligerently.

  “No, they won’t,” Kitty added, keeping her voice calm despite the glower Maggie leveled her way. “Because Robin will be up on one of the rooftops with her bow. And if it’s safe—there’s no sign of the Sheriff or his men—then she’ll come down. The two of you will go out and meet this tinker as planned.”

  “You should have a signal,” Much said. “Something to let you know everything is all right without having to say those words.”

  Jemma turned to Robin, and, rather out of the blue, asked, “Can you still hoot like an owl?”

  Robin let out a soft twit-twoo, sound eerily similar to the tawny owls found in the forest.

  Ginny dropped her braid and sat up straighter, eyes round with awe. “That sounds just like an owl. What other birds can you do? Can you do other animals? How did you do it?”

  “P-practice,” she stumbled, her face flaming. “Lots and lots of practice. Mostly birds,” she added. “Raven, crow, swallow, dove… a lot of birds.” She shrugged and ducked her head. Her only excuse was that she’d spent a lot of time in the woods, and nearly too much time with the Lockesly falconer when she wasn’t shooting in the field.

  “That’s brilliant,” Ginny breathed. “Can you—will you teach me? Us?”

  “We’ve got to find what birds are here in Nottingham, love,” Jemma said. “If they don’t have any of the ones she can do, then we can’t use them as signals, or it’ll be obvious.”

  “It only works if the sounds are already part of normal life,” Robin added.

  “Owls are safe, then,” Maggie said. “I heard one of them the other day, when we went to drop Much at the bakery.”

  Neither Robin nor Jemma had suggested the girls travel at least in pairs when out and about in Nottingham, but they had done it anyway. Ginny especially was never without company in the streets, and Maggie and Kitty seemed to have worked out a rotating schedule of who accompanied Much to the bakery in the wee hours of the morning.

  “What happens if it’s a trap, and the Sheriff’s men are there?” Kitty asked. “What do you do then?”

  Robin didn’t need to look at Jemma to know what she was going to say.

  “They can’t have both of us,” Jemma said. “If they are there, and they do know who we are, one of us will get away at least.” She looked pointedly at the others. “And we’ll come for you. Whatever happens, there will always be one of us here with you.”

  “We promise,” Robin said.

  “And then, we’ll get whoever’s been taken,” Maggie said with a grim finality in her tone. “Nobody gets left behind.”

  Something settled firmly in Robin’s chest. “Nobody ever gets left behind.”

  Quiet descended over the six of them, until someone’s stomach growled loudly. With a giggle, Maggie reached over and poked at Kitty’s belly.

  “Stop that,” Kitty muttered, color rising up her neck.

  “Shall we go feed the beast?” Maggie teased.

  Kitty slapped her hand away with a small growl. Robin leaned once more against Jemma’s shoulder and smiled softly as Maggie’s poking devolved into a tickle fight that soon sucked in a helplessly giggling Ginny and a more awake Much.

  Robin didn’t sleep well that night. She found herself tucking the blankets more tightly around the other girls and soothing them back into deeper sleep when Much began to get ready for work. She and Jemma accompanied Much to the bakery, and then wandered through the windy, mostly empty streets of Nottingham in the pre-dawn.

  When the sky began to lighten, and they could no longer focus on anything other than the impending meeting, they made their way toward the deserted market square.

  Some abandoned crates provided a leg up onto a low-slung thatched roof.

  “Walk soft,” Jemma murmured, handing Robin up her strung bow.

  Robin pulled her hood low over her forehead. “A mourning dove for keep going, a tawny owl for if things are clear, and three caws of a crow means you need to get yourself out of there.”

  Jemma nodded, reaching up to briefly clasp her hand around Robin’s forearm, a warrior’s parting from days gone by. “I’ll keep a sharp ear.”

  With that, Robin nodded once, and stepped lightly—like Jemma had taught her—further onto the roof.

  While traveling from rooftop to rooftop was dangerous, Robin had spent years walking from tree to tree by branch. Once, and only once, she had managed to completely startle Jemma when she dropped to the ground unannounced.

  Robin hunched her shoulders, keeping her footfalls light and even. The spaces between the buildings became nothing more than gaps in the branches of the trees near the field, and she traversed them easily enough.

  When she had her ideal vantage point, and the whole of the empty market open to her, she dropped to one knee. Calming her breathing—and her nerves—she nocked an arrow, and let everything but the tinker stall, the market, and Jemma fade away.

  ***

  Jemma felt it a testament to the trust she had in Robin when the hairs on the back of her neck didn’t give so much as a cursory prickle. She used her quarterstaff like a walking stick while her other hand played with the end of the length of cloth keeping her hair back from her face. Dressed in dark colors to better blend in, she kept to the shadows as best she could until it came time to walk across the market to the tinker’s stall.

  The soft call of a mourning dove echoed behind her.

  Her lips twitched upward at the corners. Her back straightened, and she stepped tall across the uneven stones. There was no reason to look around to make sure she was alone—Robin saw to that, and she had the sharpest eyes of anyone Jemma had ever met.

  The mourning dove called again, followed shortly by a tawny owl. Jemma drew level with the tinker stall and relaxed, resting against her staff.

  “Where is your mistress?” a voice asked from the shadows.

  “I belong to no one but myself now,” she said lightly. “Just like you.”

  “Just like me,” Robin said, appearing quite suddenly by Jemma’s elbow.

  “Light feet indeed,” Jemma murmured. “Well done.”

  Lia stepped forward. She leaned against the side of her stall, her expression calculating as she looked between the two girls.

  “My first and last act as Lady of Lockesly,” Robin clarified. “I’d made a promise, and I kept it.”

  “I see.” Lia beckoned them with a tilt of her head. “Stay quiet and keep up.”

  ***

  Robin looped her bow over her shoulder, ducked her head, and brought up the rear of their little procession through the narrow alleys and passageways of Nottingham. She was surprised by Lia’s nimbleness, but Jemma’s iron control over her body and staff was nothing she hadn’t seen before.

  Lia led them through a drain in the wall to a thin patch of grass and the edge of Sherwood Forest. The stench of so many unwashed bodies and general human filth fell away, and Robin took what felt like her first unencumbered breath in weeks. She spotted the deer path they would take well before they turned down it, furthe
r leaving the town behind.

  A few twists and turns later, the path opened up to a small, natural clearing with two equally tiny dwellings. Lia gave them a wide berth, leading them deeper into the forest. With the sights and gentle sounds of the forest all around them, they stopped in the next clearing. Robin’s eyebrows rose at the sight of an old archery target on the far side.

  “Secluded and safe, I’m assuming,” Jemma said, once more leaning nonchalantly on her staff. “Abandoned property?”

  Lia shook her head. “A wayward friar who likes to keep bees and drink too much honey mead. He won’t bother us.”

  Robin unslung her bow and pushed her hood back. Something in her very being settled at returning to the greenwood, and she honed in on the target with practiced eyes. She nocked an arrow, drew back to her anchor point, and released it all within the same breath. It skimmed past Lia’s arm to land with a solid thwack dead center.

  “A little warning, next time, perhaps?” Lia snapped.

  “You’d have moved,” Robin said. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Jemma propped her staff against a nearby tree. “Give me those. Knives first or you won’t have arms left enough to teach us. The draw on that thing is brutal,” she added at Lia’s scowl. “I’ve tried it. Thought my shoulder had come clean off.”

  The tinker looked between Jemma’s sturdier build and Robin’s lithe muscle, clearly skeptical. “Aye. All right.”

  If Robin had thought her mother had been a demanding tutor during her formative years, it was nothing compared to Lia’s ruthless efficiency. The first few movements were done with blunted wooden practice knives the tinker pulled from some hidden place on her person. By the time Robin felt comfortable enough that she wouldn’t lose any fingers, bruises had cropped up on her wrists and forearms.

  She had a few nicks and cuts along the back of her hands and fingers—though nothing that would prevent her from drawing her bow—by the end of the lesson. Jemma hadn’t fared much better.

  “Practice with it,” Lia said, walking the handle of her knife across her knuckles with an ease that made Robin a little jealous. “If you’re sitting somewhere, practice. Hold it in different ways. Do it with both hands. Tell the girls to do the same.” She handed over the wooden practice knives. “Use these first. I don’t deal with unattached fingers.”

  “Thank you,” Jemma said. She took the knives and plopped down on the grass, legs stretched out in front of her. “If you don’t need me, I think I’ll watch.”

  Robin snorted and unstrung her bow. “Right.” She held both out to Lia. “If you want to shoot it, then you’ve got to string it first.”

  It took Lia quite a few minutes to accomplish the task. Before Robin gave her any arrows, she walked around the tinker and corrected her stance, lifting her elbow and gently positioning her knee.

  ***

  For a moment or two, Jemma thought she had gone back in time. She’d watched in much the same way when Robert had started to teach Robin, adjusting her position and murmuring words of encouragement Jemma hadn’t fully heard.

  Robin had smiled the same way Lia did when the first arrow she shot hit the target—proud and unselfconscious, with a touch of awed happiness. It was a good look on her, and it brightened her whole countenance.

  “Two days,” Lia said, reluctantly handing Robin her bow. “Here at dawn in two days. Bring the girls. I trust you can find your way back here?” she added, eyebrows raised.

  “Of course,” Robin said. She reached out and helped Jemma up from the ground.

  “Good.” The tinker took one last look around the clearing, and then began to lead them back to Nottingham.

  ***

  Some tiny part of Robin had wondered when their good fortune would run out. They’d made it relatively unscathed from Lockesly to Nottingham, and they’d been allowed to go about their business without many odd looks from the locals. If the barkeeper found it strange six girls were renting one of his rooms, he certainly didn’t show it, and, on the whole, no one seemed to know Robin and Jemma were outlaws.

  The taproom at The Gilded Crown had a subdued, almost dangerous calm to it. Robin handed her bow—wrapped in canvas, like Jemma’s staff, to better disguise it—to Jemma, and then followed her along the edge of the room by the bar toward the stairs. She expected the number of hungry gazes to follow them across the room. For all their mannish dress and Robin’s low-drawn hood, it was obvious they were women. That much, they had never tried to hide.

  What they didn’t expect was a tear-stained, white-faced Ginny huddled on the stairs just out of sight.

  “Ginny?” Robin sat next to her, and the girl crawled immediately into her lap, seeking comfort. “Lovey, what’s wrong? Why are you out here?”

  “Maggie’s down there,” Jemma whispered as she returned from their rented room. “Kitty managed to escape, and Ginny’s been on the lookout for us.” She stroked the little girl’s hair back from her forehead. “We’ll take care of it. Go up with Kitty.”

  Ginny clambered off Robin and crept silently up the stairs again.

  Robin swallowed thickly. “Make sure the girls are ready to move if we have to.” She motioned for Jemma to go upstairs with Ginny. “There’s a servant’s stairs in the back that aren’t used much. Use them if you have to.”

  “Where do we meet you, if we get separated?”

  “In the clearing in Sherwood in two days, like we told Lia we would.” She reached back and wrapped her fingers around Jemma’s forearm, squeezing gently. “Take care of them, and yourself. And my bow,” she added as an afterthought, mostly to lighten the mood.

  Jemma snorted.

  Pushing her hood back enough to show her face, Robin arched her back a little as she entered the taproom again, pushing her breasts forward. It was an unnatural position for her, but the discomfort brought her what she needed—the notice of the men in the corner.

  And there, in the middle, balanced on someone’s meaty thigh with a blackening eye and split lip, was Maggie.

  “There you are,” Robin said, tone unnaturally brusque. “Well, get over here.”

  Maggie glanced between the man who held her and Robin. After a moment of deliberation, she started toward her. An arm tightened around her middle and hauled her back with a growled, “None o’ that, now. We ain’t done with you.”

  Robin angled herself in such a way so as to check the bar—with the barkeep nowhere to be found—and put a little extra swing in her hips as she stepped closer to the men. There were only four of them, clearly all brawn and little brains, but she was leery of them nonetheless. Men like that would hurt a girl without thinking twice about it.

  She dug her fingers into her hipbones, silently swearing she’d do whatever she needed to in order to make it up to Maggie for this whole ordeal even as she put a cruel edge on her laughter. “That bag o’ bones? She ain’t seen a man naked before. Wouldn’t know what to do with one that way, anyway.”

  Maggie bit her lip and ducked her head. Robin didn’t need to see her face to know she was mortified.

  “And you would?”

  Robin smirked. “Aye. Never had a lover go unsatisfied.” Which, she supposed on further examination, was true. Marcus had been her only lover, and he’d certainly seemed happy enough in the wee hours of the morning after their night together. Not that they needed to know that. Better for them to assume she had many lovers.

  She walked her fingers across her belly, inwardly cringing at the way every eye hungrily followed. “I’ll trade you,” she said, tilting her chin down in order to look up through her lashes. “A woman who knows how to please for a girl who’s never even fumbled in the dark between her own legs.”

  “I need to check the goods.” The same man who had questioned her abilities as a lover stood and ambled his way over. From the smell, he—like the rest of them—were fairly into their cups.

  Robin slipped her left hand around to the sheath at the small of her back. Sweetly, she said, “By all mea
ns.”

  A lady never resorts herself to uncivilized conduct, Sabine’s voice reminded her primly from the back of her mind. We are ladies for a reason, not ruffians.

  He reached for her. She slapped him away with one hand, drawing her knife with the other while kicking him between the legs. Howling, he cupped himself protectively. She assisted him to the floor with a well-placed boot to the back of the knee.

  It was her moment with Gisborne again—her hand in his hair to jerk his head back with her knife at his throat. Her hood slipped further.

  The rest of his companions surged to their feet. Maggie’s captor wrapped his arm around her neck.

  “Let her go,” Robin said with a calmness she didn’t feel. Her heart thudded hard against her ribcage. “Let her go or I’ll bleed him dry.” She dug the point further into his skin.

  No one moved, and the barroom itself seemed to hold its breath.

  “Do as the bitch says.” He winced, and Robin twisted her wrist further. “Do as she says, and let the girl go.”

  Maggie threw herself away from the man who held her and staggered into the nearest table. Concerned, Robin eased her hold for a fraction of a second, and all hell broke loose.

  With a roar, the man shoved himself backward. Robin, over-balanced, windmilled her arms in an effort to stay standing. Maggie screamed. Robin recovered enough to see the man she’d had on his knees—now with a heavily bleeding cut across his face—charge her like an enraged bull. There wasn’t anywhere for her to go, not with the solid weight of the bar behind her, and she curled protectively around her midsection. She turned just enough that when he hit her, he didn’t send her directly onto her back. She spun like a top, her knife yanked from her fingers, and landed on her front on the dirty floor. There was a hollow thunk, followed by a thud from behind her, and she scrambled to her feet as the dust settled.

  She backed over to where Maggie stood, frozen in a mixture of shock and horror, near the wall by the stairs. Gently, she framed her palms around the younger girl’s face and whispered, “Maggie? You all right? Maggie?”